But she’s eight feet away and I cannot reach her.
I tell myself it’s nothing. She’s tired; she said so at Ironwood, three nights ago now. But since then, the whole mood has shifted, and I know it’s more than that. Because I know her study face — I discovered it in the library and have seen it every day since — and this isn’t it.
It’s one of my favorite things about her, and it’s gone.
I drag my eyes back to my own screen.
There’s an email from Coach Franklin saying he wants a sit-down about a third-line tweak, which is Franklin’s polite way of saying my read had better match his. Below that, an email from a sophomore I barely know asks for a reference letter for a scholarship.
I look at Sloane and want to say something about it, but the words don’t come. Three days ago, she would have askedquestions, and I would have felt less alone afterward. Now I’m not sure, so I leave it and tell myself I’ll try tomorrow.
“Row,” she says.
I look up.
She’s watching me. Her face is soft, but her eyes are not. “You okay?” she says.
There it is. The opening. The one I would have walked through a week ago without thinking, because a week ago, I had figured out how to do that with her. I would have said the apartment feels wrong tonight and asked her to sit closer to me.
“Tired,” I say instead, because something changed three days ago. “Long day.”
She nods.
She used to ask the second question. She used to lean across the kitchen island and saytired how, then wait, and the waiting was the gift, because nobody waits for me. But this time, she nods and goes back to her work.
I should put the laptop down, walk over there, sit on the floor in front of her, and say I don’t know what happened, but it happened, so talk to me. But I open my mouth and then close it, because whatever opened in me has shut again.
So I do the thing I’ve done for twenty years.
Go back to problem-solving for everyone else.
But when I look up again, she’s standing.
She crosses the rug in three steps and closes the lid of my laptop. Then she slides between my knees, puts her palms on my chest and her mouth at the hinge of my jaw, and I think — okay, here she is, and this is how it comes back.
“Bed,” she says, quiet.
“Yeah.”
I follow her down the hall.
She turns the lamp off when she enters the room, which is a first, because she’s always wanted the lamp on. And as I stand inthe doorway, she pulls her sweater over her head, and I want her more than anything.
I cross the room.
I lift her chin with two fingers and kiss her. She kisses me back, her hand coming up into my hair. I release the catch of her bra with my thumb and I’m already pulling her against me.
She breaks the kiss and kneels, sliding down between me and the bed, her hands moving to the waistband of my sweatpants, and then her mouth is on me. And the second she takes me in, I groan.
She knows exactly what I like, and she’s doing all of it — my hand in her hair, her hands on my thighs, her mouth wet and warm, taking me deep. But I’m still thinking, that’s the problem, and she isn’t looking up at me.
But I don’t get to why. My hand tightens in her hair and she takes me through all of it, and when I come, she swallows. She breathes out evenly through her nose, sits back on her heels, and wipes the corner of her mouth with her thumb.
“Hey, come here,” I say, reaching for her hand and pulling her up onto the bed. “Your turn.”
I want to touch her, feel her react, and then hear that catch in her breath when her thighs part. I want to feel anything back from her, because she’s felt distant for days now, but I don’t know how to say it without sounding like a guy who’s complaining about a blowjob.
But when I put my hands on her thighs, she moves them away. “I’m okay, Rowan,” she says quietly.
