He immediately drove his tongue between her lips, alternating thrusting, sucking, and licking with a level of enthusiasm that left her gasping for air. Meanwhile, his hands found her breasts, squeezing and kneading in a manner that could only be described as dough-adjacent. She imagined this was what it might feel like to go through a car wash.
Grey tried her best to salvage the situation. She gently guided his hands down to her waist, then took his face in her own hands, pulling his head back a little to try to temper the vigorous onslaught of his tongue. However, this only seemed to encourage him to double down on his efforts. After several minutes of sloppy, ineffective tussling, she broke away, untangling herself from what seemed to be hundreds of groping hands and thrusting tongues.
“I, um—sorry. Thanks. Nice to meet you. Sorry,” she stammered, unable to meet his eyes as she stumbled back through the door. Miraculously, Kamilah was alone by the railing, and as she turned and took in Grey’s disheveled appearance and stricken expression, opened her arms to her wordlessly.
Grey wrapped her arms around Kamilah’s waist and rested her head on her shoulder.
“I missed you so fucking much,” she mumbled drunkenly. Kamilah leaned her head on top of Grey’s.
“Missed you, too. I assume you’re not up for the after-party?”
Grey shook her head. “You should still go, though. I’ll get a car. But can you come back for breakfast? Both of you. I want to hang out with Andromeda for more than five seconds.”
“As long as you’re okay with breakfast happening after 3 p.m.”
Grey laughed. “Deal. I’ll make vegan pancakes.”
“Blueberry banana?”
“Obviously.”
Onstage, Andromeda reappeared for their encore, stripped down to the spandex straps, with huge, skeletal angel wings strapped to their back. They sat alone in front of a keyboard, and played a long, eerie chord.
Their voice rang out, cool and clear, sending a dagger straight to Grey’s heart.
“It’s been seven hours and fifteen days…since you took your love away…”
The tears that had been brewing in her chest all evening bubbled up abruptly in an embarrassingly loud sob. Kamilah squeezed her shoulder as Grey wept openly, cathartically, through the entirety of Andromeda’s plaintive rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” When the song ended, she was so emotionally exhausted she thought she might fall asleep standing up.
She felt purged. Cleansed. And more fucking confused than ever.
“PREVIOUSLY, ON POISON PARADISE…”
Ethan had only meant to watch one.
Lucas had already left for the evening. To both of their surprise, Ethan’s awkward invitation for sports and a burrito had turned into a semiregular hang. When Lucas returned that first night, the two of them had sized each other up, trying to make the other one be the first to admit that he didn’t actually want to watch sports.
“How do you feel about Ken Burns?” Lucas finally asked.
So now, twice a week, the two of them ate takeout and watched an episode or two of The Vietnam War. They didn’t talk much, but Ethan had still learned more about Lucas in the past few weeks than he’d known in the past year Lucas had worked for him—or the twenty-three years that had preceded it.
He learned that Lucas lived with his boyfriend, Cal, and their rescue pug, Squidward (who, naturally, had his own Instagram). He was working on his MFA in graphic design, with a goal of getting into production design. And eventually Ethan learned more about the family that he’d been avoiding. The nieces and nephews he’d never met, the milestones he’d missed. He tried not to shut it down when his guilt made it too hard to listen. He’d even called his sister for the first time since she’d forced him to hire Lucas. He hadn’t said much, but she’d been more than happy to fill the silence.
Though he’d never expected Lucas to assume the role of his main companion, right now it was the only thing forcing him to keep track of what day it was. He’d called Nora to apologize for missing his weekend with the girls, and though she’d been furious at first, she was ultimately sympathetic. He’d asked, with some trepidation, if Elle and Sydney had seen the pictures, but she’d assured him that they were (miraculously) ignorant of the whole situation. He promised to take them for an unscheduled weekend later in the month to make it up to her. Both she and Lucas had tried to pry information about Grey out of him, but he refused. He wasn’t ready to talk about her. She was already on his mind enough.
After Lucas left, disposing of their Thai containers on his way out, Ethan took advantage of the television already being up and running to scroll through his streaming options. When he saw Grey’s face pouting at him from one of the on-screen squares, he felt like he’d just been defibrillated.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to watch it in his current state. But seeing Grey’s eyes staring back at him for the first time in weeks—as lifeless and airbrushed as they were—rendered him physically incapable of doing anything but pressing “play.” He’d just meant to watch the pilot. But before he knew it, it was 3 a.m. and he had watched six episodes in a row.
There was no way around it: the show was pretty bad. It was also completely addictive, though he doubted it would have had the same effect on him without Grey’s presence. It had been unreasonable to expect himself to go cold turkey, he rationalized. For two months, he had gotten regular infusions of her company, taking for granted how much he had come to depend on it. Watching her show was like methadone: not as good as the real thing, but better than nothing at all.
As he watched, he felt like someone was reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart every time she made an expression he recognized. The chilly hauteur when she felt insulted, the little smile and blush when she received a compliment, her wary eyes when she was sizing up a new situation. His heart ached even more for the expressions he didn’t see, the ones that had been for him alone: the way the corners of her mouth twitched after she’d made a joke she knew he’d like. The unvarnished empathy in her eyes when he’d opened up to her. The way her face flushed right before she came.
He’d tried to pace himself, but by the time Lucas showed up with a pizza box for their next date with Ken Burns, Ethan was halfway through the fourth season. He’d been so absorbed with watching Grey perform an emergency tracheotomy on one of her classmates that he hadn’t heard the front door open. A subtle throat-clearing noise, combined with the aroma of freshly baked dough, alerted him to Lucas’s presence a little too late. Ethan scrambled to pause.
“Lucas! I didn’t hear you come in. I was just…um…”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. Ethan realized there was no way to spin it, and quickly exited out of the episode and navigated to the last place they had left off in The Vietnam War. Thankfully, Lucas said nothing, just turned around and set the pizza on the kitchen island. Ethan made a mental note to give him a raise.
“Sorry I’m late. Audrey asked me to stop by and pick this up for you.” Lucas tossed a manila folder onto the couch next to him before going back to the island to grab a slice. Ethan flipped it over to read Audrey’s inscription on the back, in her neat, precise handwriting:
E—
This won’t go to press for a few more weeks, but I thought you might like to see it now.
xxx
Audrey
Intrigued, he bent back the metal prongs, opened the flap, and slid out the heavy stack of paper inside. Even though he’d been bingeing on Grey for the past week, the top page still felt like a punch in the gut.