Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Maya: If I had a euro for every time I fell asleep after a sexual encounter with you and then woke up to find that you’d left for another country, I’d have two euros.
Maya: Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice
Conor: Not funny, Maya
Maya: Omg. Sir?? My text was chosen from the slush pile??
Maya: I’m picturing those sperm cells that race up the Fallopian tubes to reach the egg.
Maya: Oh, no. Wrong simile? Did it activate your favorite kink? Did it turn you on during a meeting with your legal team?
Conor: Again, not funny.
Maya: A bit funny, come on.
Maya: If I give you my two euros, will you forgive me?
Conor: No, but I’ll use them to buy a gag and mittens, since you are unable to behave.
Maya: You really don’t know the price of things, uh.
Maya: Anyway, where are you?
Conor: Check your phone
Maya: Oooh. When did you share your location?
Conor: You were asleep.
Maya: Cute! What else did you do to my nubile body while I was unconscious?
Conor: Check the sole of your right foot.
Maya: Wow.
Maya: I can’t believe I actually expected to find something.
Maya: Well played, Harkness.
Conor : It’s what you get.
Conor: Trouble.
It takes two days for the eruption to die down, three for flights to become available, five for me to head back with the dogs. Good times, good food, good company. I miss Conor, but not in the way I used to. Less like a hole in my chest, and more of a temporary ache in my joints.
Paul offers to help me transport Tiny and Bitty, and flies into Austin with me.
“Thank you,” I tell him at the airport, as we finish our espressos at the bar counter, elbows brushing, croissant flakes sticking to our fingers.
“You’re welcome. So, you and Hark?”
I nod.
“Cool. I mean, weird.”
“Why?”
“Well, he’s terrifying.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yeah, he is.”
I laugh. “Okay, fine, yes. He is a bit terrifying.”
Paul snorts. “I just didn’t see this coming. I mean, did you know I interned with him? He was such a hard-ass. And you…you’ll always be the girl who puked on me all those years ago.”
I think about the stench of half-digested mac and cheese filling Eli’s beat-up Honda Civic. And then about what’s to come—new job, new life. New boyfriend, old love. I think about the little moments that are going to make up my near future. Sorting myself out. All the firsts ahead. Baby steps and races to the finish line. Building memories.
With a smile, I say, “I won’t, though.”
Nyota: First day back at work. Had an EGG WHITE OMELETTE for breakfast.
Nyota: I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Maya: I can’t believe we voluntarily came back, Ny
After Sicily, I don’t see Conor for sixteen days. He flies directly from Ireland to Canada for some reason that rhymes with active deal, but since Eli, Sul, and Minami are all still in Europe, I try not to take the comings and goings of financial markets too personally.
There is something icy about the way he constantly keeps me updated via message— should be back in two days ; there were errors in the due diligence ; a meeting was moved ; three days ; next week, unless these idiots fuck up —and while I know he’s not lying to me, there’s a pinch of unease in my stomach, a residual from years of being avoided, rejected, pushed away.
He never says that he misses you, an insecure, jellylike bit of me points out.
He’s busy, my brain quips back. You’re overthinking.
And I know I am—alone in Eli’s house, dog-sitting two ungrateful beasts who like each other more than they like me, damn them, eating takeout every night, friends out of town, rink closed, nothing to do in the sweltering, oppressive Texas heat except classroom prep that at once terrifies and electrifies me. But Conor does feel off. There’s a layer of transparent tarp between us: I can see him through it, but he’s a little distorted. And about seven days in, when we FaceTime, I ask him directly.
“You sound weird.”
“Do I?”
“Like you…” I adjust myself on the pillow. “Like there’s something you’re not saying.”
“There isn’t.”
“Right. Of course. But if there were…?”
“I don’t…” He shakes his head. He’s still wearing his button-down, and his hair sticks up on the left side of his head. It’s a fucking tragedy, how little I’ve been able to touch him lately. On the very day I got permission, his skin was taken away from me. The Hague would convict. “It’s okay, Maya. Tell me about Tiny and—”
“It’s okay, but…?”
A deep sigh. He glances away, laughing, irritated, needled . I love him. He’s stubborn, thinks he always knows best, has no clue how to talk about his emotions, and he’ll probably be a pain to have as a boyfriend.
I cannot wait for our first real fight. I cannot wait for the rest of our lives.
“I just—” He stops. At last, restarts. “I just really need to be, at the very least, in the same fucking country as you.”
I smile. Hug my knees to my chest, trying to keep all the warmth his words generated inside me. “Tell me more,” I say.
Conor: You cannot do that
Maya: What?
Conor: You know what.
Maya: Do I?
Maya: Wait. Is this about the thing I sent?
Conor: You know it is.
Maya: So, I’m not allowed to send you photos?
Maya: I’m confused .
Conor: You have never been confused a day in your life.
I grin.
Maya: First time for everything.
Maya: I just don’t get what the issue is. Do you think this is a copyright infringement situation? Because maybe it’s not clear, since you can’t see my face, but the picture was a selfie. It’s my intellectual property.
Conor: Maya.
Maya: I own it. Legally. And I am of age.
Maya: Why? Did you not like it?
Maya: Are you saying that I’m ugly?
Conor: Are you trying to give me an aneurism?
Maya: Listen, use it as you will
Maya: If you don’t want to look at it, you can always delete it.
Conor: I’m not going to fucking delete it.
Maya: But what you’re saying is that I should absolutely not send you more, wearing less?
Conor: Fuck.
Eli and Rue return before Conor, tanned and relaxed and loose-limbed, smiling like they’re high on the most magical cocktail of uppers and downers, not yet ready to start keeping their hands off each other.
“I’m going back to my apartment,” I yell five minutes after Eli deposits his suitcases at the foot of the stairs. I stuff the bag of loukoumi they brought back under my arm, and sigh when I receive no acknowledgment.
“It’s so lonely at my place,” I tell Conor later, phone wedged between my shoulder and ear as I cut tomatoes. “The AC is about to crap out. I have no plants—no dogs. I should get one. Oooh, should I get a cat ? Austin Pets Alive! always has the cutest—”
“Where’s Jade?”
“At her parents’ for the next two weeks.” I sigh. “It’s okay. I have plenty to do, I just miss having pets, and—”
“Go to my place.”
I stop midchop. “Do you have a secret ferret I don’t know about?”
“No.”
“Then how would that change anything? Your house is still deserted, and—”
“My AC works. And I have an alarm. It’d be safer. My bed is probably more comfortable than yours, housekeeping comes once a week, I have a large TV—”
“When’s the last time you watched a movie? I know it’s a hard question, so you have ten whole minutes to come up with a reply.”
A groan. “Maya.”
“Yeah?”
“Just go to my damn house.”
I grin. Pop a tomato slice into my mouth. “I’d love to. Should I break in? Window in the back?”
“Eli has a set of spare keys.”
“Hmm.” A beat. “You know that if I go to him and ask, he’ll realize that—”
“Yes,” Conor says.
And that’s that.
Conor arrives home in the middle of the night, the day before he was originally scheduled to.
He’s very quiet. Nonetheless, I hear him, and before he can turn on the light, I’m out of bed, pointing a butcher knife at his throat.
“Oh,” I say.
“Oh,” he grumbles. Gently takes the knife handle from me and sets it on his dresser. “I was trying not to wake you up.”
“Right. Um…I was gonna come pick you up. Tomorrow.”
“With or without the knife?” He looks at me from head to toe. Takes in the shirt I stole from his closet, the French braids I put in my hair after my shower. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “I got an earlier flight.”
Oh my god.
It occurs to me that—he is here. Conor’s done overhauling the biotech market, and he’s here .
I’m itching to touch him. After all these days of missing and wishing and burying my nose in his pillow and hating that the only smell I could pick up is detergent. After low-res video calls and all the food he had delivered for me. Even fresh off the plane, he smells so good, he feels so concrete and perfect and familiar and new, and he hasn’t shaved in a while, which makes him extra handsome, and…
My breath hitches. “Bless Seb,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“I hope his bonus is giant.”
Conor nods. “It is.”
“I’m willing to contribute to it with my salary. And I could top it off with nudes.”
“That will not be necessary.”
“Let’s ask him. He might be into the idea.”
“Maya, if you—”
I jump him. There is no other word for it: my thighs around his waist, elbows on his shoulder, my lips hitting his in a way that’s probably too toothy and painful and not pleasant at all, but his hands are under my ass, tugging me to him.
He returns my kiss, and then we’re on the mattress. He says it about ten times, how perfect I am, “too fucking perfect, going to be the end of me,” but when I push at his shoulders to get his weight off me, he lets me flip us over.
“Has the deal been inactivated?” I ask as I work on his belt, pull the henley out of his pants, already winded.
“I—that’s not a thing—”
“But is it over?”
“It’s over—”
“You’re not leaving—”
“I’m not leaving, I’m not fucking leaving until— ever .”
“Good—I missed you.” We kiss, messy, sloppy, too fast. “I missed you.” My hand is in his boxers, and I’m pulling his cock out, and maybe it’s the way I lick my lips, but he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“Maya. Love.” His hand in my hair. “I don’t think now is the best—”
“Really? That’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Because I do think now is the best.” It’s nice, feeling the weight of him over my tongue, the stymied exhale as his head falls back. He feels too big, and perfect. Twitches at the light scrape of my teeth, the way I part my lips and suckle the head, studying every intake of breath, every flutter of his eyelashes.
His hands in my hair, holding, not pushing.
My name, whispered, groaned, pleaded.
A muttered, “Fuck.”
After a little while he keeps my head still and he thrusts inside my mouth, slowly, gently. “Fucking hell, Maya.”
I suck, a strong pull. His fingers tighten against my scalp, trying to pry me away.
“Maya,” he warns.
I hum around his cock. Feel him shiver.
“I’m really trying to be a gentleman here.”
A lurid pop. “Are you?” I ask, delighted by the roll of his eyes as I lick the underside of the head.
“Yeah. But—” I twist my hand at the base of his cock, and his words catch. “But I’m starting to think that you’d let me do anything to you, Maya. Anything at all.”
“I’m not sure how— oh —how you had missed it before—what are you—?”
He has my back pressed against the mattress, and is inside me, just like that. A little too hard, too fast, the burn of the stretch otherworldly, the multiple thrusts until he really is all the way in, ruthless, perfect—
“Yeah,” I say.
“Jesus, Maya.” His hands close around my wrists. Trap them above my head. “You have no damn patience.”
Not when it comes to you , I want to say, but my mouth is too full of his kiss.
“I haven’t taken a single breath since Sicily,” he says against my ear, inhaling me, rolling his hips into mine. “I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s fucking distracting. You are disruptive . Of my work. Of my sleep. Of my ability to think . ” I thought he was all in, but no. Another push, and he bottoms out. “Fuck. Fuck . You feel better than anything I could make up with my mind.”
I smile against his jaw. Try to free my arms. Realize that I can’t. So I say, “Conor?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to fuck me a thousand times. Everywhere you humanly can.”
He very nearly comes. His breath is loud, a rough exhale against my shoulder, then a deep grunt as his hands rip the sheets off the mattress as his cock jerks inside me. “You are so fucking dangerous .”
I grin, and he splays me open like I’m a doll, unmoving under him, and kisses and kisses and kisses me, the shallow, lingering slide of his mouth against mine, his hand coming up to the stem of my neck to angle me to him, and I try to move my hips so that we can finally—
He pulls out. Flips me on my belly. Slams back in, fucking his way into me, and it’s so agonizingly good, I see stars.
“Menace,” he growls in my ear, and when he starts moving, the rest of the world recedes, his thrusts so hard that I’m sure he’ll finish before me, but his hand reaches around, his fingers find my clit, and this is so beyond the realm of good, I’m not sure what to do with my own body. I claw at the pillow, say nonsensical things that only amount to please, don’t stop, if you stop—please don’t stop . The pleasure blasts through me with the force of an earthquake. I press my palm against my mouth to muffle my scream.
“No.” Conor yanks my hand away, laces his fingers with mine, pins it to the mattress. “ No . You’re going to fucking scream it. I want to hear it. I want to hear you and you’re going to let me .”
I do. And I dissolve.
It’s not until much later, his arms wrapped around me like safety ropes, that it occurs to me to say, “Conor?”
“Yeah?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Smile into the pillow. “Welcome home.”