14. Nolan
NOLAN
She kisses me back like the argument is still happening, and in a way it is.
Her hand closes in my lapel the same way it did on the slab outside the West Lake site — only this time she isn’t pretending she doesn’t want me near her.
I steady her by the lower back, careful of her, careful of the small, firm curve beneath the wine-red silk, and guide her two steps back until her shoulders meet the wall by the entry table.
She lets out a sound — small, startled, certain — that I know I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
"Coat," I say against her jaw. "Off. Now. Stop pretending you're leaving."
"I wasn't pretending. I was holding it open as a threat."
"It's a bad threat. You've been in my apartment for fifteen minutes and you haven't moved toward the door once."
"Take it off me, then. You're so good at making decisions on my behalf, Nolan. Make this one."
I slide her coat off her shoulders and let it drop.
She is still wearing the dress and the heels and the small gold bracelet she put on for the foundation chair, and her hair is starting to come loose from the pins at the nape of her neck, and she looks at me in the low entry light with her chin tipped up at me and says, "Bedroom.
I am not having the rest of this conversation against a wall in heels. "
"You said the heels were the only reason you'd look any of those people in the eye."
“I’m not looking at any of those people, Nolan. I’m looking at you. And if you make me say one more clever thing in the next five minutes, my nerve goes.”
I get one hand under her knees and the other beneath her shoulders before she’s finished telling me to stop pretending she’s leaving, and she swears at the ceiling and hooks her fingers at my neck and informs me, with great precision, that I am ridiculous.
I carry her down the hall anyway. She’s heavier than she was in Miami, and that fact settles in my chest the whole way to the bedroom door like a small warm coal.
The bedroom is dimmed the way the housekeeper leaves it at night, curtains half-drawn over the lake, the city below doing its Saturday thing in the snow.
I set her on the edge of the bed and kneel to take off her shoes — something I’ve wanted to do for hours, and something I’m doing now because she doesn’t need to stand in three-inch heels for one more sentence of this.
"You don't have to do that," she says, her hand drifting into my hair.
"I know I don't. I'd like to. Lift your foot, Arielle."
“You’re about to tell me I’m beautiful, and in two seconds I become absolutely unbearable about it.”
"I'm not going to tell you you're beautiful.
You already know you're beautiful, and you don't like it when men tell you, because most of the men who tell you don't know what they're looking at.
I'm going to tell you I have been thinking about you every day since July, which is something different, and I'd like you to hear it once before we go any further than this. "
Her hand stills in my hair. Her fingers, against my scalp, are warm.
"Every day, Nolan?"
"Every day. Not all day. I'm a functioning adult and I run a company, and there are hours where I am thinking about easements and bridge financing and where my sister has hidden my good pen.
But every day, yes. Mostly when it gets quiet.
Mostly when I'm pouring a second cup of coffee in the morning.
You ruined that on me. I poured one for you the day after Miami and it took me three weeks to stop doing it. "
"You did not."
"I did. I poured the second cup into the same mug for three weeks. The housekeeper thought I had taken up day drinking. Lift your foot, Arielle."
I slip the heel off. I set it next to its twin. I run my thumb along the small hot place where the strap has been pressing into her ankle, and she breathes out, slow, like the breath has been waiting all night for permission.
"You hate that, don't you," I murmur, kissing the inside of her knee through the silk.
"Hate what."
"That I have thought about you every day. That you have thought about me every day. That neither of us has gotten an hour off from each other since July. You hate that I have that much access to your head, and you hate that you can't make it stop."
"I hate that you noticed."
“I notice everything, Arielle. I noticed it the second I walked into that conference room in October and you wouldn’t look at me.
I noticed it on Hubbard last week when you laughed at the coffee thing and then got annoyed at yourself for laughing.
I’ve been noticing it since the first time you told me I needed a new mathematician.
I’m not pretending otherwise — that would waste both our time.
You taught me that on a balcony in Miami, and I’ve held on to it. ”
"Stop talking, Nolan."
“In a minute. Stand up. Turn around. I want the dress off you, slowly. I’ve had four hours to look at the back of it, and I’d prefer the night to unfold on my terms.”
She stands. She turns. The line of her shoulders is bare in the lamplight, the small dark place at the nape of her neck where the dress's hook hides under her loose hair.
I undo the hook with my thumb. I draw the zipper down one tooth at a time the way I did it in July, except this time the small swell of her stomach is what falls free under the silk, and the breath I take at the sight of it is unsteady in a way I am not used to my breath being.
"Don't," she says, soft, without turning. "Don't say something that's going to make me cry, Nolan. I am not in a crying mood."
“I’m not trying to make you cry,” I tell you. “I’m trying to open the things you’ve been bracing against for hours. And you’re going to let me speak, because you’re done pretending you don’t want this conversation — and I’m done pretending I can leave it alone.”
"That's worse. That's worse than the crying thing."
"You'll survive it."
I set my mouth lightly against the back of her shoulder, a steadying touch, and move down the wing of it the way I did the first time, slow and careful.
When she draws a soft breath, I stay until she settles.
The dress slips to her hips. I ease it the rest of the way down and help her step free of it.
She’s left in a pair of sheer black underwear and the gold bracelet, one hand braced on the bed frame, her hair fallen loose down her back.
I rest one hand, flat, on the curve of her stomach.
"This is the part where you tell me what I am allowed to do tonight," I say against her ear. "Be specific, Arielle. I guess."
"Don't be careful, Nolan."
"Sweetheart—"
"Don't. Don't be careful with me tonight.
Be careful with her. You can be as careful with her as you want.
But I have spent four months being careful with myself, and I have spent tonight being careful in a room full of people who do not deserve careful, and I do not want careful in this bed.
I want you to put your hands on me like you have been thinking about doing it for five months.
I will tell you if she needs me to. I trust myself to tell you. Trust me, too."
"I trust you. Look at me."
She turns. Her eyes are wet in the way she said she didn't want them to be, but she does not blink the wet away, and she does not let me look away from it either.
"I trust you, Arielle. I have been trusting you since July. I am asking for the same back, and tonight I am asking for it on this bed instead of in a glass office two doors down from your boss."
"You have it, Nolan. Now stop making me say it twice."
I kiss her. It’s the kiss I’ve been holding back since I saw her standing in that wine-red dress—starting slow, careful, and then gathering the momentum I haven’t let myself touch until now.
She drags my jacket off my shoulders and I let it fall behind me without looking.
She works the buttons of my shirt with hands that have steadied since Miami, sure now in a way they were not on the balcony, and when she pushes the shirt off my arms she sets her palm flat against my chest the way she did in Miami and breathes out as if she has been holding the breath since.
I get her on her back in the middle of the bed.
I take my time with her mouth and her throat and the line of her collarbone.
I kiss the soft place under her ribs where the small curve of her stomach starts, and I do not say anything sentimental at it, because she warned me, but I do, briefly, rest my forehead against it.
"Nolan."
"I heard you. I'm not saying anything."
"You are saying everything. With your face."
"Then close your eyes."
I work my mouth down. I take the underwear off her with my teeth at her hip, because she laughs once, surprised, when I do, and that laugh is what I came here for tonight more than anything else.
I spread her knees with the flat of my hands the way I did in Miami, slow, watchful, and her hand is already in my hair before I have asked.
"Tell me what you want, Arielle."
"You know what I want. Stop checking in like we're in a meeting."
"I'm not checking in. I'm asking, because there is a difference between what you tell me you want when you are angry and what you tell me you want when you are honest. Tell me both, and I will figure out the rest."
“Honest? I want you close, immediately, without you trying to be careful about it. And then I want something I’ll wake up remembering — something you’ll remember long after this year turns over.”
"You're going to."
I put my mouth on her. The first long drag of my tongue against her pussy makes her hand tighten in my hair and the small sound she makes goes through me from the back of my skull to the soles of my feet.
She is wetter than she was in July and quicker, too — months of arguing in glass offices and waiting rooms and Greek-food deliveries has done what it was going to do — and I take her there for the first time inside three minutes, her thigh trembling against my shoulder, my name coming out of her mouth in a voice she would not let any one of those people at the gala tonight hear in a thousand years.
I do not let her come down. I work her up again with my fingers while she catches her breath, slower this time, and she swears at the ceiling and pulls me up the bed by my shoulders.
"Now, Nolan. Now. I'm not asking again."
"You're not going to have to."
I am out of the rest of my clothes inside of a minute. I brace over her on my forearms, careful of her stomach, and I reach down between us to guide my cock against her. She is hot against me, slick, and her breath stutters at the first press of me inside her.
"Look at me, Arielle."
"I'm looking at you, Nolan, God?—"
"Easy. I've got you. Tell me if she needs me to stop."
"She doesn't. I don't. Move."
I sink into her, slow, and her whole body unspools under me the way it did in Miami, except this time she is the one pulling me down to her, this time her arms come around my shoulders and stay, this time when I bottom out inside her she breathes my name against my throat like it costs her something.
"You feel like a fact, Nolan."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you feel like something I cannot argue with. Which is going to make me hate you in the morning. Right now I do not care."
"Then don't care, sweetheart. Hate me in the morning. I'll be there to be hated."
I move. I keep it slow at first, because of her, because of the way her hand has flattened on my back like she is holding me there on purpose, because months of this have built up between us and rushing it would be a kind of theft.
She rocks her hips up to meet mine, and her mouth finds mine again, and somewhere in the back of my head every conference room and waiting room and snowed-in lobby of the last five months is folding into this one bed.
"You ruined me in Miami, Nolan, do you know that?"
"I know."
"You weren't supposed to. You were supposed to be a story I told myself once."
"I know, Arielle."
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not. I'm wrecked about it. I have been wrecked about it since the morning you left. I poured the second cup of coffee for three weeks, sweetheart, I told you. Move with me. Stay with me."
When she comes the second time it is with her forehead pressed against the side of my neck and her hand fisted at the small of my back, and she says my name as if she is angry at it, which somehow makes it the best sound I have ever heard.
I follow her a few strokes later with my mouth against her temple and her name in my throat.
I don’t move away from her. I stay braced on my forearms, careful of her, until she gives the smallest nudge for me to shift. Then I draw her in against my chest beneath the covers, and she lets me — and that, more than anything else, is the part that stays with me.
Her hand spreads flat on my sternum. Her hair is a mess. She is breathing into my collarbone like a woman who has stopped fighting something she has been fighting alone for a long time.
"We need to pick a name eventually," I say, into the top of her head.
"Not tonight, Nolan."
"Not tonight. I'm saying eventually. I'm saying I'd like to be in the room when we do. I'd like to bring a list. I'd like you to laugh at most of the list. I'd like the part of the list you don't laugh at to be the part we pick from."
"What's on the list?"
"I have not made the list yet. The list is theoretical. I'll have a list inside in a week."
"Of course you will. You're going to make spreadsheets, Nolan."
"There will be one spreadsheet. It will be color-coded. You will pretend to hate it and you will read every row."
She laughs into my chest, and then she goes still, and her hand on my sternum moves once, like she is steadying herself for a sentence she did not plan to say.
"This feels too easy," she says, soft. "Lying here. This part. It is not supposed to feel this easy with you. Not after tonight. Not after October. Not after Miami. I do not know what to do with how easy this part feels, Nolan. It is making me nervous."
"Let it be easy, Arielle."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have tonight. Let it be easy. Tomorrow we can argue about whether it should have been."
I wait until her breathing has gone soft and even against my chest. The snow is doing its quiet thing against the windows.
The lake somewhere below is black and patient.
I put my hand on the small warm curve of her stomach under the sheet, and I keep my voice low enough that I am almost telling it only to myself.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell them. “Let’s be clear. Not tomorrow. Not in April. Not after that. I’ve spent thirty-seven years walking out first, and I’m done doing it in this room. That’s my promise. I’ll be here.”
She doesn't answer. She is already asleep.
I stay awake another hour, listening to her breathe.