He shrugged. Or at least, the back of his shoulders did. Thatwas all I had of him right now. A mop of still-damp hair, a pair of gray sweatpants. A body that showed every sign of curated toughness, but held little, if any, at all.
His next few sentences came out in a squeak. “I don’t know how to connect. I don’t know how to make it anything more than sex. When I finish, I’m just done. The feelings are gone, and then I leave, and everyone is upset, and I can’t stop it, and I can’t do that to you. I couldn’t do it to you when we were teenagers, and I can’t do it to you now.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes. My chest, aching. My brain, reeling, rearranging his words, attempting to connect them with all the memories I’d filed as irrefutable evidence of why I needed to stay the hell away.
“Come here,” I said.
He turned around, everything he’d just told me written across his frowning face. “I can’t get in bed with you, Katie. I’ll kiss you, and then I won’t be able to stop myself, and—”
“We’re not going to have sex, you moron. We’re going to cuddle.”
“I don’t know how to, um...”
“To cuddle?” I tapped the bed again. “You almost railed me in our boss’s pool. You told me you wanted me to fuck your face. The least you could do is get into this bed and let me play with your hair.”
He let out a sort of half laugh, then hung his head. “I don’t want you to think I don’t want you. That I can’t take care of you. That I can’t do all those things I said I’d do to you. That I’m less of a man, or...”
“I don’t think that.”
He looked up. “You don’t?”
“No,” I said. “I think you’re more.”
“Really?”
I blotted my eyes and then pointed to the mattress. “Yes, really. Now come on—get in here. Come be my little spoon.”
He hooked his hands behind his neck. And then he took a long, deep breath, walked over to me, crawled under the covers, and—so, so tentatively—curled his body into mine. I pulled the sheets to our shoulders and wrapped my arms around him, and I could feel his every inhale through his shuddering spine. I nuzzled my nose into the nape of his neck, slid my fingers underneath his shirt, and began to trace the hunch of his back, the curves of his muscles, the constellation of his bones. My hands were shaking, and those flames were flickering, and the rain was pounding on the roof, and every pitter-patter was in sync with the beating of our broken, buzzing hearts.
“I really want to do this,” he whispered. “I just don’t know how.”
“That’s okay. I can show you.”
46
Tyler
I woke up to chirping birds, hazy slices of clear blue morning, and Katie Caruso sleeping in my bed. There was a pillow between her knees, and the waves of her hair were everywhere. My clothes, loose and effortless on her perfect, peaceful body.
I was also hard as a rock.
I carefully began to roll out of bed to handle this, to take a long, hot shower and get my shit together, but the second I moved, she pulled me into her arms and kissed the back of my neck.
“You,” she said, “have had that all night.”
I stared at the framed quilt on the wall very intently, sure my eyes were bulging out of my head. Her lips were wet at the top of my spine, and her hands were falling down my chest. “Did I, now?”
“Yep,” she said as her fingers dipped to my stomach. I counted the squares on the patchwork beneath the glass: one, two, three. I was half sure I’d seen this thing on loan at the Whitney at some point. Americana. Pretty nice.
“Katie...”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Katie.”
“We’re not...” Another kiss. This one, with the help of her tongue, which grazed the edge of my shoulder blade. She’d peeledoff my shirt, and I could not tell up from down. “Going to do anything about...” Her hands dropped another inch. “That.”
“Okay, because—”
