23
WE BOTH DROPPEDthe giant boxes of relay stuff on the floor the second we were inside the boathouse. I stood there, panting, as Mack reached around me and hooked the rudimentary lock closed. The second I heard it clink shut, I reached for him, desperate to remember what it felt like to kiss him.
“Millen.” His voice was rough like sandpaper, and then his teeth were skating down the edge of my jaw, his tongue teasing the soft, sensitive skin at the nape of my neck. “I know it’s corny to say this, but I’ve been dying to be alone with you.”
“Since when, last night?” I said, running my thumb across his chin, tilting his mouth back against mine.
He chuckled, his breath warm on my skin. “Since last night, since last year, since forever.”
Since forever. His words sent my mind spinning wildly, spiraling through a sea of what-ifs and maybes.
But then I caught that mischievous glint in his eye, and it dumped an ice-cold bucket of reality on my head. This was Charming Mack talking, and nothing more. There was no point in reading into what he said, no need to make more of this than what it was: pure, white-hot lust.
“We’ve wasted a lot of time not doing this,” I teased, and I was relieved—disappointed?—to see he was just as eager as I was to get back to our regularly scheduled banter. My hands skated greedily up under his T-shirt, squeezing his ribs. “We really need to catch up.”
“Before I start ripping your clothes off,” he said, pulling away so that his eyes were flush with mine, “I want to make sure I know your boundaries here. Because we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Or if you ever want to stop, that’s always okay with me.”
“Mack, all my boundaries involve you ripping my clothes off, and then some.”
He chuckled, that slightly arrogant laugh that was still so familiar, and brought his lips back down to my shoulder, where they bloomed into a smile against my skin.
“I’d like that very much.” His voice vibrated against my skin as he continued to slowly tease my neck with his mouth, stopping only to let me yank his shirt off over his head.
Suddenly he spun us around and walked our bodies forward until I was pressed against the counter. Smiling at my involuntary yelp as my ass hit up against the edge of the smooth-as-stone wooden surface, he slid his palms down my body, pausing at the hem of my shorts. He tugged them low until I could kick them off my ankles and then hooked a finger into my cotton briefs, peeling them off me slowly, effortlessly, just like he did everything else.
And then in a move that felt like magic, he stood and lifted me up, setting me on top of the counter. I leaned back, and my head bumped up against something hard, the edge of a paddle board or a rudder or something. I didn’t care. If it meant having Mack’s mouth on my body, I’d spend the rest of my life wedged up against a canoe if I had to.
My brain jolted back to reality for a second. This is ridiculous, I thought. We are two grown adults who haven’t seen each other in years, and we’re making out in an old boathouse on top of a slab of wood, and not on, like, I dunno, a king-size bed in the middle of a luxury suite at the Four Seasons.
But the rational part of my mind sputtered to a halt the second I felt his teeth trace the edge of my nipple through my bra, and his hands under my thighs, bringing my legs to wrap around his waist.
Then I remembered: I’d had sex with Charles in a Four Seasons in Hawaii; utterly predictable, formulaic, hump-vibrator-moan-the-end sex. It wasn’t the place that made things electric, it was the person there with you. And right now, that person was hooking his fingers under my bra straps, his mouth learning my body, my neck, my breasts, my ribs, the dot of a scar above my hip bone where I had my appendix removed when I was nineteen.
Mack shifted my legs again, bringing them over his shoulders, and then he ran a finger from my belly button to the pubic hair I’d neglected to shave in months, to the most sensitive part of my body. My hands slid into his hair, soft like corn silk through my fingers. I closed my eyes and let myself fall through the darkness.
All his attention was on me, my body, my pleasure, and when my orgasm hit, it felt like diving into the moon-soaked lake, the moment of impact when warm meets cold, those long seconds of swimming through underwater darkness, and then coming up for that first gasp of air.
“Do you have condoms?” The words were choked and desperate coming out of my mouth, my voice raspy and wanting, my heart desperately trying to pound its way out of my chest.
I opened my eyes, and the world came back into focus above me.
Mack rested his cheek on my stomach, his hands lightly tracing lines up and down the backs of my thighs, which were still locked over his shoulders.
“I do,” he said, gently unhooking my legs from around him as he stood. “But please know it’s been a while.”
He gave me a puppy-dog face, all pouty lips and exaggerated sad eyes, as if I was supposed to believe that Mack had ever even uttered the words “dry spell,” much less even knew what it was.
“Oh please,” I scoffed, and he yanked a basket off of the highest shelf at the far end of the counter and pulled out a giant box of condoms. He held it close to his face, squinting to read the package.
“Not expired!” he shouted triumphantly, lifting it overhead like a trophy in what was a typical Mack move.
“Really? It’s been a while?” I repeated his words back to him, letting him know I wasn’t buying it. “You have a Costco-size box of condoms.”
“Millen, god, these aren’t for me. Do you know how many counselors get sucked into summer romances up here? I like to look out for them. I’m happy to give you the phone number of the woman I dated last fall if you want to check my references. And no, there hasn’t been anyone since.”
His eyes stayed on me, wide, and he cleared his throat, giving me a sheepish look that was unbearably sweet. It triggered a recurring thought I’d had over the last few days: Maybe he wasn’t as full of it as I thought. Perhaps the always collected, perpetually unflappable man I knew was just very, very good at hiding his nerves. Because for someone who excelled at getting the last word in, he didn’t seem to know what to say next.
“Should we go up to the loft?” I asked, sliding off the counter until my feet hit the wooden floor. I reached down and fiddled with my clothes for a quick second, his gaze locked on me as he nodded.
I yanked my bra off over my head and tossed it at him. He caught it, of course, still graceful and athletic even when having a rare awkward moment.
“Yeah, as much as I’d love to do all sorts of things to you up there,” he said as he chucked my bra over his shoulder and nodded toward the counter, “I think it might go against the logic of physics.”
I laughed out a big, loud “Ha!” that filled up the nervous space between us. I could have sworn there was a slight blush under those tanned cheeks, and he looked like his teenage self again, for just a split second.
The moment my hands gripped the edges of the ladder I froze, suddenly panicked by the realization of this. What the fuck was I doing here, contemplating sex with Mack? I should pick my clothes up off the floor and run right back to Sunrise. Rewind time and press play on the Clara I was just a few days ago.
But that Clara hadn’t been working for me. I wasn’t just stale at work; my whole life had turned into this crumbling, brittle thing that I could barely hold together anymore.
And so I kept climbing.
I’d never been in the loft before, and it was surprisingly spacious, with a giant screened window that looked out on the lake, showcasing a view of the sunset, the dusky pink sky reflecting off the dark water below. So what if the ceiling was dangerously close to the top of my head. Mack’s bed was big and white, with two stacks of pillows and a crisp, light comforter. There was even a tiny bedside table next to it that looked handmade.
I shifted onto the bed and tucked myself in. Just as I felt myself about to get trapped in my head again, he was there to pull me out, his hand sliding down the length of my thigh, to my calf. As if motivated purely by instinct, I responded by shifting my leg closer, draping it over his hip bone.
I had him exactly where I wanted him, and his breath hitched as he traced a finger up my thigh.
“This still okay?” he asked in a gravelly voice, and I kissed him yes.
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumbled, and he broke away from me for a second to grab the box of condoms that he’d placed near us. Then there was that sound: the rip, and the shuffling that always followed, and then he sighed, and my entire body ached in response. When he pushed inside me, slower than I’d ever seen him do anything in my entire lifetime, I cried out, uninhibited.
The few times I’d let myself imagine what it would be like if Mack and I ever slept together, I pictured it quick and dirty, a “just get it over with” kind of experience where we’d both dust off our hands when we finished and walk away. Instead, he was slow and patient, as if he was trying to memorize every inch of my body, like he didn’t want this to end.
I wrapped my legs around Mack and pulled him closer, shifting my hips higher to meet him as he gripped my hands in his, bringing them to rest alongside my face. Slow kisses morphed into something more frantic, searching, the promise of so much more left to discover.
Finally, for the first time in so long, I felt completely in the moment. I wasn’t anxiously anticipating emails from Amaya, or rehashing my failed relationship, or shame-spiraling over the friendships I’d let lapse without realizing it.
I was, simply, here.