She threw up her hands. “Forget it. You’re impossible when you get like this.”
I leaned against the wall, wishing I had a cigarette. I’d trashed my pack earlier in the day. I needed to quit for Hannah, who summoned my dead parents against me … in defense of Seth.
“Go to bed,” I said.
“I am going, but not because you say so. I’m not a child.”
“No? You’re happy to act like one when you need taking care of.”
She turned scarlet and scowled at her feet.
“There’s no shame in that, little bird.” I strolled toward her and took her jaw in my hand. I forced her to look at me. Defiance shone in her eyes, and a little alarm. “Just remember who loves you. Remember who takes care of you.” I brushed my thumb over her lips. “Sleep.”
*
I ran that night the way I had run when Hannah broke up with me in April: past the boundary of my stamina, into pain and then numbness.
Anything can become self-harm. Not just sharp objects and drugs and alcohol, but exercise and creativity, ambition, desire. Love. What else is love, if not the power to destroy?
In a moment of carelessness, Hannah could ruin me.
But she is gentle, I wrote, having returned from my run and gone straight to my desk. Sweat dripped down my face. The desire to put Hannah into words, and to understand her, seared me. She spoke about my parents and Seth. I saw their faces in a constellation, meaning nothing. She is like the little bird I call her. Strong and delicate. I’m out of my depth.
Chapter 23
HANNAH
On Friday morning, Matt and I acted as if we’d never argued.
I could almost believe we hadn’t.
Last night, I’d set foot in that no-man’s-land topic—his parents—and he locked up like Fort Knox. End of discussion. End of the evening.
“Happy Friday,” he said as we toweled off after our shower.
“Same to you.” I hugged him tight. Matt communicated through physicality, something I’d learned, and a hug meant more than a dozen apologies.
His semihard cock pressed at my belly. Oh Lord.
If I dress in a hurry … maybe we could quickly …
I tugged off his towel and he laughed reluctantly.
“Hi,” I whispered, wrapping my fingers around his dick.
“Ah, fuck.” He locked his hands behind his skull. I tugged at him gently. Would I ever get tired of the way he responded to this? Like a gun to his head.
I shook off my towel and pressed my sex against the cold marble corner of the sink.
“Go on,” he said, fixated on the V of my thighs. “Get wet on that.”
He liked a little show, and despite my sometimes crippling shyness, I liked putting it on for him. I jerked him off and rolled my body against the blunt corner, soaking it. Soon he was bucking into my grip, pulling me away from the sink and taking over with his expert hands. Hands I loved, long and veined. Fingers that thrummed my clit at perfect pitch. Fingers that entered me boldly, possessively, and almost carelessly. As if this part of me were his.
I watched us handling one another in the mirror, and coming; Matt first, in a thick pale jet against my belly, and me a moment later, my pleasure dripping over his hands.
I carried that memory with me to work.
Matt forwarded an e-mail to me at noon.
Subject: Fwd: Listings
Sender: Matthew R. Sky Jr.
Date: Friday, July 4, 2014
Time: 12:08 PM
Who the hell works on the Fourth of July? Only my workaholic wife-to-be.
Thanks for the helping hand this morning.
Okay, that was pretty bad …
Marion sent the listings just now. I like the look of a few. She can start showing us around as early as Monday. Thoughts?
Also, please find attached Chapter 4, for your reading pleasure.
Matt
Attachment: UNTITLED.doc
I started to read Matt’s chapter before I even glanced at the listings. Priorities.
He began with a transcript of that racy journal entry, EXHIBITIONISM, which made me feel fluttery and aroused and alarmed. And he wrote about … I frowned and reread. Hm, something he felt when we drove past my parents’ house? It was the night he proposed to me. Something between the lines.
I closed the Word document with the definite sense that I was missing something.
Or worse, choosing to ignore something.
The homes listed in Marion’s e-mail ranged from suburban to country, two-bedroom to ten-, and affordable to impossibly expensive.
But impossibly expensive was affordable for us.
Still, I couldn’t help but notice more seven-figure listings than not. In fact, Marion included only three houses that looked reasonable for a two-person family.
Matt’s chapter loitered in my mind for the rest of the day. As I read queries and responded to e-mails, I thought about that word—“exhibitionism”—and how we might go about attempting such a thing.
Why am I considering this? I tried to ignore the thought, but it kept creeping back.
The logistics of it.
Who watches other people having sex? Voyeurs, that’s who. But they watch in secret.
My mind drifted to the Dynamite Club, where a year ago, Matt had watched a stripper give me a lap dance. I shivered. That was hot.
A bulb winked on in my brain.
The club. The strippers! Surely one of those dancers, at least, was into exhibitionism. I knew some stripped because they’d hit rock bottom, but others seemed to revel in the work—the exposition of the body, the tease and play of it.
I was muddling over how my request might go—“So, heh, me and my fiancé”—when I snapped out of it. The hell? Was I planning this for real?
I stared at my lap and questioned my sanity. I could no longer tell where Matt’s desires ended and mine began, or what I wanted and what I just wanted to give him.
I put in eight hours that day, making up for lost time in April.
Matt sent a volley of filthy texts: I know you’re alone at the agency. You are alone, right? Remember, it’s the Fourth. My hands have plans related to your— Oh my God. Matt!
The building was eerily quiet as I left. My sneaker squeaked in the lobby and I jumped.