The True Love Experiment

“That was the best sex of my life,” I say.

He doesn’t look surprised or skeptical. He says only, “Same,” as his lips make a warm path down my neck.

“I want to do it again.”

He laughs. “Do you see how sweaty I am?”

“Mmm, yes.” I run my hands over his shoulders. “Let’s go rinse off together.”

We stand and I see he was right: the bed really is a disaster. Connor holds my hand even for the short walk to the bathroom, and it’s good he does because my legs are shockingly wobbly. He presses his front to my back as we wait for the water to heat, his arms banded around my waist. He is a whole planet behind me, a sun.

Under the water, we share wet kisses and sudsy hands and it’s not long before he’s impatient again, too. He drips footprints on the bathroom floor as he rushes out to hunt for the second condom. Such confidence in this man who packed up his things earlier today.

This time the cold shower wall is at my back and his skin is hot, pressed all along my front. It’s slow and careful, then hard and frantic, his fingertips gripping bruises into my thighs, his body thrusting so deep it obliterates every other sensation. I don’t know how I’m going to function if I have to leave this room and act normal after this. I don’t know how I’m going to pretend I don’t want him with a clawing hunger every time I see him.

I finish him in the bed with my hands and mouth, his fingers a chaotic mess in my wet hair, his rough, filthy words scraping the walls as he comes. It’s a long silent pause after, my face pressed to his stomach, his heart pounding through the entire length of his torso.

“I’m crazy about you,” I say.

His voice is a low vibration reverberating down his body. “I’m out of my mind.”

“I’ll want you again tomorrow, and the next day, and literally every day after that.”

Connor is quiet so long I think he’s dozed off, but then his voice rises out of the darkness.

“Can we fake it?” he asks, finally. “I’m lying here wondering if we can do both. This and that.”

“I promise to do the best acting of my life, and I played a sun in a fifth-grade play, so I can assure you I’m very good.”

Laughing, he pushes up onto an elbow, looking at me with a pleasure-drunk blur to his gaze. “A sun?”

“I had to just stand there.” I kiss his navel. “You know me. Trust me, it was very difficult to not join in the orbit dance.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t take over his face the way I expect. “I’ll have to hide my jealousy.”

Oh.

“I won’t fall in love with any of them, Connor.”

He drags me up his body, aligning me over him. Our hearts pound in tandem, recharging. “What if you need to, to make the show work? That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. You have chemistry with Isaac. I should let you pursue that. This—you and me—seems like such a terrible idea, but I want you so bad. I can’t say no to you.”

“Let’s just take it one day at a time, okay?”

I haven’t felt this way before. It’s such a simple declaration, and for now I can only make it to myself. Any lie I ever said about keeping this easy, about being able to walk away and focus on the show, is obliterated into dust. There’s a universe expanding in my rib cage, stars and planets and all kinds of dangerous sparking debris that could destroy me. I’m consumed by a distracting ache, a sharp want, a desperation for this thing I have already in my arms. I know what this is even if I’ve never felt it before. I’m falling in love.





thirty-six FIZZY




I’m falling in love, but I’m also falling asleep, in the warm circle of his arms, with the hard planes of his body somehow forming the perfect mattress. We both wake up with a jolt when someone drunk bangs on the door across the hall.

Overheated, I slide off Connor’s body onto the cool, twisted sheets. He groans, rolling to reach for a bottle of water, offering me some and then taking a long drink.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Around three.”

We’d barely been asleep twenty minutes, but it felt like hours for how deep I’d been.

“I wonder if anyone noticed that we disappeared,” I say.

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll get a lot of questions about it at the brunch tomorrow.”

“Especially from your sister,” he says, and I laugh. Connor rolls away to put the water back on the nightstand and I take the opportunity to run my hands up his back, mapping the broad expanse. He returns to me, and I’m just as happy rubbing my hands all over his front. “Easy enough to answer, right?” he says. “We were watching tonight’s episode together.”

“Mmm, I know you’re saying words,” I say, tracing his ribs, “but all I see is naked.”

He puts a finger under my chin, tilting my face up so I look into his smiling eyes. “I meant to ask how the wedding was for you, but we got distracted.”

My first instinct is to look away and make a joke about finding joy in thwarting familial expectations, but the new instinct, the bigger one, is to be bare with him. “It wasn’t as hard as Alice’s,” I admit. “At her wedding, everyone felt sorry for me, and it completely caught me off guard because I was there to celebrate, and I got all this pity and concern instead that the younger daughter was getting married first. At least yesterday it felt like a meme that I’m single, rather than gossip.”

He studies my expression for a few quiet beats, then just gives a quiet “Hmm.”

“I’ll get married, or I won’t,” I tell him. “It shouldn’t affect anything anyone else does. But I know it isn’t that simple. My parents worry because they love me. They want me to be married because they are happily married; they want me to have kids because they love having us. Even though it stings, I know in my heart the reason my mom always refers to my ‘real novel’ is because she is sure I’m the best writer alive, but knows the world looks down on romance. She doesn’t want me to put myself in a position where I’m not valued for what I can do. It isn’t because she doesn’t value my skill, she just sees writing literary fiction as the more ambitious way to do it.”

“I don’t know,” Connor says quietly. “Seems it’s pretty hard to write a compelling book when the reader already knows how it ends.”

Perfect, I think. He’s perfect. I need a new track or I’m going to climb on him again and I don’t think he can fit more than two condoms in that wallet.

“What about your dad?” I ask. “I assume he knows about the show now?”

“He talked to Stevie. She told him.”

“And? Is he impressed that his son is being stalked on social media?”

“Not exactly.” He picks up a strand of my hair and twists it absently. “Your mum might not understand romance, but she’s proud of you. Her concern comes from a place of love and good intentions. The problem is that I’m not who my father wants me to be.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I used to think it was something deeper, something unfulfilled in him, but I think he’s honestly just a shitty human.” His forehead furrows with a frown and I tip his face down, press a kiss there until the tension smooths out again. The idea that anyone could look at him and not see all the wonderful parts of who he is makes my insides boil. “But I have Natalia and Stevie,” he says with a smile. “More than makes up for it.”

“What was your wedding like?”

“To Natalia?”

“Yes?” I say, grinning. “Unless there’s another wife somewhere in an attic.”

He laughs. “It was at the courthouse. It was very simple.”

“How old were you?”

“When we got married? Twenty-two.”

“Oh. Babies.”

“Yeah. And baby.” He smiles at me. “She was pregnant.”