I send it to Lila, followed by a second message:
Liam
You were right, but don’t be too smug about it
My phone pings back in under ten seconds.
“What does she say?” Peyton cranes her neck to read.
The first text is an unhinged string of emojis. Hearts, fireworks, champagne bottles, crying faces, more hearts, and a cat for some reason.
A second message follows.
I read it aloud.
“‘I’m not smug, I’m just exhausted from being right all the time. It’s a burden, really.’”
“Gosh, I love her.” Peyton laughs. “When did she say we should be together?”
“The day we went to the pumpkin patch.”
“Ah.” She chuckles. “When she caught us making out in the corn maze?”
“Actually, before that.”
Peyton frowns. “Before? How could Lila know before?”
I smirk. “I’m not exactly the festival-going, pumpkin-carving kind of guy.”
The furrow deepens. “Then why did you come with me that day?”
I trace a finger along the line of her shoulder. Her skin is impossibly soft. I’ve wondered about it for weeks, and now I can touch her whenever I want. That freedom is dizzying.
“I went because I didn’t want you to go alone.” My finger trails down to the crook of her elbow. “And because I wanted to spend time with you.”
And my best friend saw what I couldn’t admit yet. She saw the reason I’d spend a Saturday at a farm, covered in gourd guts, just to be near a woman I’d married on a Zoom call.
“And the second time?” Peyton asks.
“That was purely to have my way with you in the corn maze.”
Her mouth drops open before she beams at me. “You naughty, naughty husband.”
The callback hits me with a shot of adrenaline. The first time she said those words to me, she was standing in my study, wearing nothing but my suit jacket, patting my chest with a smirk designed to detonate my self-control. Now she’s naked in my bed, flushed and glowing and mine. Only this time I’m free to follow through.
I kiss her.
She kisses me back.
We don’t talk for a while after that.
* * *
In fact, we spend most of the weekend in bed.
We make love and catch our breath and make love again, the urgency softening into a slower, more thorough exploration. In the spaces between, we lie face-to-face on the pillows, inches apart, doing literal pillow talk.
Meaningless conversations that only happen in the strange, timeless cocoon of a bed where two people have stopped hiding. We confess more of our secrets. The small ones and the medium ones and the ones we’ve never told anyone.
