Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
WELL, TONIGHT WAS A BIG SUCCESS,” FINN SAYS.
We’re seated in a booth at the back of the pub—all the brothers, plus Paula and me. “We got a live performance of Frozen, and Mom cried three times.”
“Janey and Ruby let it go all right,” says Aidan.
I raise my beer to him. We really did.
“And Dan with the ad-lib,” Connor says. “You can write the next toast.”
Dan shrugs. “Maybe I will.”
“It’s weird you all look so much alike,” I say. I meet all of their eyes but not Dan’s. He is sitting next to me in the booth, his leg pressed against mine, and I can feel the heat of those few inches of contact move through the rest of my body.
Connor leans forward, both hands on the table. “This is the part where you’re trying to decide who to fall in love with. Janey, make your own decision, but you should know I’m the only one with money,” he says.
Brian and Finn laugh, and Aidan chucks a balled-up napkin at him. “Slick. I’m pretty sure you’re married.”
“Doesn’t mean Janey here isn’t regretting her choices.” They all laugh that comfortable way you do when you’ve tapped back into a running joke, and I think about love and how it might be real and how, if it is, I’m not sure it’s a choice.
I half expect Dan to chime in with a barb or a happy family memory of one of the brothers stealing someone’s girl. But he just shakes his head. “You guys never stop.”
“He’s just trying to force the issue,” says Finn. They’re all quiet for a change, as if considering the issue. It occurs to me that I might be the issue.
*
PAULA DRIVES AIDAN, Dan, and me back to the house. We take turns using the bathroom. I’m second, after Paula, so I go to the kitchen and get Dan and me each a glass of water after I finish. He likes it cold out of the refrigerator, and I like it room temperature from the tap. I sit on my bed in my shorty pajamas. The room still holds some of the charge from when we were here before the party. I stare at the space in front of me where he stood shirtless, and I almost reach out to touch the air where he was. I don’t know how to get back to the wild making out we did in the car now that I am feeling all these feelings. It’s all too much. I pull my knees to my chest and listen to the water run, the toilet flush, the door open.
“I got you some water,” he says. “Oh, you did too, thanks.” He lines up the glasses, one cold, one not, by our painting on the windowsill between us, and sits on his bed. He’s in his blue T-shirt and boxer shorts. His eyes dip to my legs. He gets up and turns out the light. The room fills with moonlight, and he sits back down on his bed. I rest my chin on my raised knees, and we’re just looking at each other, not knowing how to cross the electrified space between us.
“Fun tonight,” I say because I have to say something. The silence is too much.
“Yeah,” he says and leans forward. He runs his hand down the back of my calf and wraps his fingers around my ankle. His thumb presses just below my anklebone and sends a current straight up the inside of my leg. It terrifies me that he can turn me to jelly with the press of a thumb. I look up, and he is watching me, gaze heavy. He pulls slightly on my ankle, the way your waltzing partner might press on your back, just a bit, to direct you. My body responds by going to him. I am up and on top of him, my arms around his neck as we fall onto his bed. Just like that, in one smooth motion, like I’m smoke rising from a blown-out candle.
We land side by side facing one another. He pulls me close and wraps his leg around mine. I’m overwhelmed by the feel of his bare leg on mine, his hair between my fingers, my chest pressed against him. We are braided together, on this thin stretch of earth where my skin is liquid and my breath has gone uneven.
“Finally,” he says, so much want in his eyes.
“I think this is our fourth date,” I say, sliding one hand from his hair to his shoulders, memorizing the trail of muscles down his arms. “This is the one where I find out what’s wrong with you.” His mouth is a whisper away from mine and his breath on my lips is deliciously warm.
“I’m broke,” he says, unbuttoning just the top “Hug Me” button of my pajama top. We’re well beyond a hug, and I shiver as we both watch his fingers trace my collarbone. I am dancing on the edge of something dangerous as I curve my hips into him. “I turn down work that will get me unbroke. My oven hasn’t worked for six months, and I haven’t called the super.”
“What else?” I barely get it out as he undoes another button. “Kiss Me,” I think this one says.
“I’m always losing my driver’s license,” he says, eyes back on mine but undoing a third button. “I spend half my life at the DMV.”
“That’s terrible.” I run my fingers along that inch of skin between his boxers and his shirt that had hypnotized me earlier. He catches his breath, or maybe it’s me. I grab the hem of his shirt and pull it off. His head emerges, gaze heavy on me. I keep my eyes on his as I run my hands over his shoulders, his chest, and down the ridges of his stomach, tracking when his lids flutter closed, his breath hitches. Everything that looked like marble is warm and buzzing with need under my touch.
“You really don’t hate me anymore,” he says, breath ragged as he undoes my last button and tosses my top to the floor. He takes a second to look at me, and I feel the heat of his gaze everywhere—I think I might be true and beautiful. He runs a hand over my breast and smiles at the sound I make.
“I really don’t,” I whisper.
He rolls on top of me and kisses me, finally, and his mouth is an open door to the rest of him. Strong and sure and capable of undoing me. The liquid warmth of his kiss, combined with the weight of his chest on mine, sends a wave of sensation through my body that’s almost unbearable. I wonder if it could kill me, the depth of this kiss and all that bare skin. He stops and looks at me, eye to eye. My heart is racing, and I feel embarrassed by how much I want him.
“You are just so . . .” he starts to say and then kisses me, even more deeply. My hands graze the soft stubble of his cheek. He pulls away, his lips the barest brush against mine, and all my nerve endings are suddenly in my lips. Heat pulses from where his mouth is on mine to where my hips can’t stop pressing up into him. He takes a breath as if he’s going to finish his sentence, but then runs his fingers down my neck and kisses me again, a claiming kiss. It finishes the sentence for him. I am so beautiful. I am so wanted. Inside this kiss I am all the things I have believed I am not.
“Do you feel that?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, mouth on my neck. “This feels like something I’ve never done before.” His hands clutch my hips and my legs wind around his back. Another current moves through my body and I take a sharp breath. This feels different in every way. This feels like something there’s no coming back from. He rests his forehead on mine, his breath jagged.
“You are just . . .” he starts again. “I had this feeling, the day when we fought about that stupid movie, that I’d lost something I didn’t even understand.”
“Stop calling my movie stupid,” I say, tightening my legs around him.
“Well, it was,” he says.
“You talk so much for an introvert.” I keep my eyes on the place where his chest meets mine. I run my hands down the sides of his ridiculous stomach. He takes in a breath, and I feel wild with power from being wanted like this.
“Everything is different with you, Jane. I feel like I never shut up.” My fingers curl inside the top of his boxers and his breath hitches. It might be my new favorite sound. His mouth grazes my ear, my neck, my breasts. My mind blurs at the sensations, his hands trailing up my legs, liquid heat everywhere. My pajama shorts are at my ankles, then someplace with his boxers, and there is no turning back. The want I am feeling has consumed me, and, like fire, it’s turned me into something light enough to blow away. I forget to be terrified by how easily I’m slipping into this moment and how easily it can be taken away from me. Dan rests his forehead on mine and steadies his breath. I can feel how fast my heart’s beating. His eyes scan my face and the length of my body like he’s making a digital print, and tears prick the back of my eyes. I’m going to have sex with this intense, beautiful man, and nothing is ever going to be the same. He has been unstitching me since we met—my rules, my pretending, and now my heart. His eyes settle on mine. “You’re just . . .” he starts again, but then kisses me so deeply that my mind gives up listening.
There’s a condom just out of reaching distance and a moment when we nearly roll off the bed. He asks me if I’m okay as we right ourselves. I’m exceptionally okay and wonder if this is the first time I’ve ever been in bed with a man without my mask. I am unconcerned about how I look or sound; I’m just a mass of nerve endings, falling into this thing with Dan. Tonight I felt what it is to want someone else’s happiness more than anything. I felt what it is to lend someone else your bravery and then to be brave yourself. I want to tell Dan that I think this is what love is. I want to ask him about it as we move our bodies together, but then my thoughts quiet and I am nothing but my senses. His hands gripping at my hips, cupping my backside, the softness of his lips against my ear sending electricity straight to my core. As the intensity builds, he whispers my name, and I feel as if the last stitch in my heart has been snipped, and I unravel in his arms.
*
“I’M TOTALLY PAST the fourth date,” he says after. We’re lying on our sides, facing one another, legs entwined. His hand makes a lazy path up and down my back.
“Let’s see. We went to the beach, the crab shack, and then the museum. The party. Yeah, I think you made it.” I reach out and try to organize his hair. It pops back in all directions, and it makes me smile. I have this thought bubbling up that I’ve gotten to the place I was trying to go, but without trying at all.
“Yeah, this was a good date. And you’re acting exactly the right amount bored,” he says, and I laugh. My arms rope around his neck and my leg creeps back up over his hip, in the place, it seems, it was designed to stay forever. I am having an avalanche of thoughts: that I’ve never had fun during sex before, that I want every moment of my life after this to be the same exact perfect mix of intensity and fun, that I understand why this is better than insta-love. It’s the time spent digging that makes unearthing the treasure so satisfying. I desperately want this to be the end of the story. We feel like this and it just stays. I can’t even imagine how awful it would be to lose a person like Dan.
And then I think of my mom. And all the pretending.
“What?” he asks.
“Are you reading my mind again?” I scrunch my face up to hide what’s there.
He laughs. “Don’t be conflicted, okay?”
“This just isn’t a thing that I do,” I say.
He runs his hands up my hip and along my side, and I shiver. “It is now.”
“Don’t take it back.”
“I won’t,” he says.