Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
We piddle around la Sagrada Família, the Cathedral of Barcelona, and another basilica whose name I instantly forget before winding up at Parc Güell, surrounded by mosaic-tiled walls and stunning views of the city below. It’s the kind of tourist attraction that truly warrants a visit— all of Barcelona has been that way, in fact—and with the sun bouncing in fragments across the thousands of colored slabs around us, ten different languages being spoken in the vicinity, and a tantalizing smell wafting in our direction from somewhere beyond the park gates, I can’t think of a single other way I’d rather spend my twenty-eighth birthday.
“You were right,” I say to Will softly.
“Hmm?” He pushes his sweat-dampened hair off his forehead and pulls an elbow up onto the park bench behind us.
“I’ve missed out on a lot, holing up in my hotel rooms all this time.”
He passes over the water bottle. “You had a lot to juggle.”
“In my defense, I did once try to get out and about in New York City.”
Will’s head turns in my direction. “Yeah?”
“During a VC pitch visit. The firm invited me out for dinner and drinks.”
Will groans, laughing. “Oh no. VC guys are mostly douchebags.”
“I wanted their money, so I agreed. But, like, the vibe of that entire night pretty much cemented my hatred for New York.”
His body freezes. When Will speaks, his tone comes out like a scolding. “I’m sorry. Did you just say you hate New York ?”
“I know you’ve lived there for a while—”
“Nearly ten years.” He turns his upper body to face me, a look of desperation etched into his features. “Four years in college, six years after. I’ve lived there for longer than a while.”
“Right, so I know you like it—”
“ Like it?” Will scoffs. “New York is in me.”
I bristle. I wasn’t expecting this reaction since he keeps flirting with the idea of leaving.
“Well, it’s not in me, ” I say. “It’s crowded and smelly and loud and expensive and everyone’s either a VC douchebag or an art bro with a superiority complex.”
“That is wholly unfair.”
“I just don’t like it!” I say. “I’ve never liked it, not a single time I’ve gone for work.”
Will continues to look at me, a dumbfounded expression on his face. He stands up and starts pacing. Back and forth, right in front of me. I watch him with a half-concerned, half-amused expression.
“No,” he says eventually, more to himself than to me.
“What?”
“No.” Will kneels, literally kneels down before me and says, “One day, I’m going to change your mind.”
“About New York?”
“Yes.” He looks so earnest I can’t help but grin. “This isn’t funny, Josephine. I’ve never been more serious. I’m not asking you to live there. I’m asking you to be excited about the prospect of visiting that city. If I’m there, and you’re visiting me, or if I’m not, and we’re going on a trip together. I need that to be something you could enjoy.”
I laugh, and he cracks a dimpled smile. “New York means that much to you?”
Will nods. Looking so fucking sincere, I want it to be mine. My sincere, mine only. After everything Will has done for me, I will do this for him. I will learn to love New York for him.
After all—just because I don’t understand something (yet) doesn’t mean I can’t respect its importance.
I kiss him. Slipping off the bench, I straddle his propped knee and grab his head and tilt it up and kiss him hard. Our lips taste like salt and sweat, like a full day of looking at buildings. Today is my birthday, and he’s so cute I don’t know how to handle how much of a crush I have on this gorgeous, supportive, life-changing man.
We’ve got high school diplomas from the same school, shared mistakes, too, and that’s the least important out of all of it. Here, now, between high school and this moment, Will spent ten years in New York growing into himself, learning what kind of person he wanted to be while I was in Texas doing the same thing. And now we’re both in Barcelona making out in broad daylight for the second time today because we grew and learned enough on our own to find and maybe even deserve each other.
I want to believe I get this. I want to believe I deserve to have a person to call mine. To believe I’ve earned it, believe I’ve worked hard enough that I can slow down and savor it.
Today only, I refuse to let a single doubt creep in.
We eat tapas for dinner, more aspiring than vegetarian, and split a bottle of wine we cork after one glass and take with us, so we aren’t too tipsy to cycle back to the hotel. On the ride home, the evening air slips over my skin, fingers its way through my braids. I smell the ocean, taste it, hear it hovering against the edge of the city. Maybe tomorrow we can go to the beach.
“How was your day?” the concierge asks while he collects our bikes and gear.
“It was perfect,” I respond, smiling at Will.
In the elevator, we’re surrounded by strangers, but Will and I press toward the back of the cab. He looks at me with hot, magnetic eyes until we reach our floor.
We walk around the corner to our set of doors.
“How is your body feeling?” he murmurs, his fingers dancing over mine.
“Like a shower,” I say. I was hot before dinner, but now, after the windy bike ride under a setting sun, I’m almost shivering.
His fingers drop away from mine when we reach his door.
I’m operating on pure instinct. With a lightning reflex, I reach out and grab his hand, pulling him farther along to my door.
“Water—conservation,” I say thickly.
As I fumble with my key card, practically trembling in anticipation, Will comes up behind me, pressing his lips to the back of my neck.
“I have wanted you for weeks,” he mumbles. “Years. A decade.”
Together, we stumble through the door.
In the entryway across from the bathroom, I push Will against the wall and kiss him soundly. He palms at my hips, tilting my lower body inward so my stomach is pressed against his, my shoulders arched back. He tastes like wine now, like Barcelona, the city on the tip of his tongue. Will lets me taste it again through him.
“I wanted you weeks ago, too,” I gasp. His mouth skates down past my jawline, across my collarbone. “You reminded me what it was like.”
“To want?” he mumbles against my skin.
“To feel greedy for something I shouldn’t have.”
Abruptly, Will lifts me off him. He walks me to the opposite side of the entryway, planting a gentle fist against my stomach until my back molds into the wall. His pupils are dilated so much I can hardly see the ocean in his eyes now.
“You should have me. You do have me. I think,” Will says, pinching my bottom lip between his fingertips, “from now on, forevermore, you will probably always have me.”
I smack his hand away from my lips and kiss him again, pushing us back against the other wall. Will groans into my mouth, his hands dropping to massage my butt. I push our hips together—our hinge point—feeling the fullness of his erection against my core.
“Will,” I say. “I had sex with three guys in college. I don’t even remember if I liked it. Even with my ex-boyfriend, it didn’t feel like this. I don’t know…” My voice stutters as his eyes lock on mine. “I don’t know how to be good at this for you.”
His hands move from my ass to my hip bones, and he pushes me back against the other wall. One hand pressing below my throat, his other hand tracing up my thigh. “I will show you how to be good for me. And J?”
“Hmm?”
His mouth drops to my ear. “I’m glad you brought the other men you’ve been with into this room. We’re going to show them how little they ever did for you.”
“How little…”
He kisses me sharply. My brain fogs. “Your sex either wasn’t good, or it wasn’t good enough to remember ?” His voice is incredulous.
“It was years ago,” I murmur.
His hands pull out the elastics at the ends of my braids.
“Sweetheart.” Gently, Will tugs my head up to the perfect angle so all I can see is him. Jumbled brown locks, bright blue-gray eyes, quarter-inch lashes, damp lips. “On my honor, you will die remembering this night.”
We kiss and touch each other until I’m so turned on, a low moan parks itself in the back of my throat. It doesn’t leave, doesn’t ebb. Will’s hands find mine. He tugs me the few steps into the bathroom and flicks on the low light. I find our bodies in the mirror.
Disheveled would be a nice way to put it.
Will steps up to my back and sits his chin on my shoulder, holding my eyes in the reflection. The same way he did in the television screen in Peru two nights ago.
“Do you want to take your clothes off?” he asks, voice hoarse.
I nod.
“Go ahead.”
Slowly, I unzip my jean shorts, peel them down my legs until they drop. Then my T-shirt. Will steps back as I yank it over my shoulders and toss it into a corner. Underneath I’m wearing a lacy periwinkle bra and a plain black thong.
“Can I help you?” he whispers.
I nod again.
His gaze concentrates as he works open the clasp at the back of my bra. It pops apart, and Will traces a single index finger underneath the straps, lifting them off my shoulders one at a time. The bra falls on top of my shorts at my feet. Will’s eyes lift back to the mirror. First to my eyes, and then down to my chest.
“You’re perfect.” His head drops to kiss my shoulder. Then his lips trail down my back, and he kneels. “Perfect for me.”
Will’s hands squeeze my ass softly, just before he hooks his fingers into my underwear and pulls them down past my hips.
“Do you remember when we were reunited, and I was already on my knees for you?”
“Will.” I can barely manage his name.
“Turn around.”
I do as he says. Will’s fingers trail up my calf as he kisses each of my knees. His lips mark a path up my thighs, then hover by my naked core. Not for long, though. Like, really not for long. I start gasping again, his telltale sign that he’s undone me, and his lips jump to my stomach as he laughs and mumbles, “I hope neither of us ever gets used to that.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my insides still fluttering. My hands clutch at his shoulders.
“Take that back,” he mumbles into my skin.
“It’s embarrassing,” I manage. “That never happened with the others.”
“It’s on the very top,” he says, kissing my belly button, “of the list of the best things about you.” Slowly, Will stands, his hands moving from my waist to thumb at my breasts. “Go start the shower.”
In a daze, I pull open the glass door and turn the handle. Through the slowly fogging window, I watch as Will rids himself of his clothes. Then as he grabs a foil package from his pants pocket, rips it open, slides the condom on. He locks eyes with me and walks toward the shower door, stepping through, closing it behind him.
Heavy, wet air hangs between us, blurring the lines of his body. I want to look down, to see all of him, but I can’t take my eyes off Will’s as he catches my waist and walks us both underneath the warm spray.
For a minute we just stand there, almost hugging—if a hug included the slide of someone’s naked body against yours in a way that feels addictive. We listen to the sound of each other’s breathing even out.
Will’s lips trace the rim of my ear. “Is your body ready now?”
Already, I’m geared up again. I try to say yes but don’t quite manage it. Instead, a series of noises that absolutely do not form a grammatically correct English sentence leave my mouth.
I’ve never had shower sex before, though I’ve listened with tears of laughter in my eyes as Cami talked me through the logistical nightmare of her and David trying it in a space that was admittedly much smaller than this one. But Will doesn’t look concerned with logistics as his fingers play between my legs, as my body wilts against him.
“Waiting on a confirmation,” he says.
I manage a shaky “Yes.”
His hands move to my hips. Deftly, he hauls me off the ground and pushes my back against the tile. On instinct, both of my hands reach up to wrap around the showerhead.
I don’t know how he manages it—if I was more lucid, maybe I would have paid better attention—but somehow, he enters my body in a single, perfect movement without ever readjusting his hold on my ass.
“ ThankyouEquinox, ” I say on a garbled exhale.
Will laughs, his eyes twinkling at me. He presses closer, officially hinging my body to his. “Tell me, Josie. Do you think you’ll forget this?”
I shake my head, unable to form words at the feel of him inside me.
He kisses me languorously, the rest of his body frozen still. “This is only going to work the way I want it to,” he says, nose dropping between my breasts, “if we go very slow.”
“Mkay,” I sigh out.
“You be still.”
“Not going anywhere,” I joke with a smile.
His lips tilt up, and at the same time, he starts to move his hips.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Something about the angle Will is employing is working against my body so thoroughly I see stars. My back arches when he groans and bites softly at my shoulder. The space between our bodies is negatively charged, like electricity about to give off a static crack. I’m lightheaded.
“How does it feel for you?” he asks, voice muffled against my skin.
Transcendent.
Impossible.
“It feels good,” I say. Though the way I say it—breathy and broken and vulnerable—tells him what I mean but can’t articulate. That it feels a lot better than good.
“You are so good,” he says, picking up his pace by only a fraction. It’s a tempo designed to drive me crazy. “The best. Because it’s you, and your body might have been made for me. Look how perfect we fit, Josephine. Look what our bodies can do.”
“I know,” I say. “This is insane.”
Our foreheads rock against each other. “So good,” he says again. “You are so—so—”
I break apart around him. Not for the first time since we started this, not for the last time before we finish it. My hands drop from the showerhead to his neck. Will’s movements never cease, drawing it all out.
“Good,” he finishes.