33. Chapter 33 — Ty #2
We lie there. The room is dark. The city hums past the glass.
"I need a shower," she says eventually.
"Okay."
She doesn't move.
"Ava."
"Still comfortable."
"I could come with you."
She lifts her head. Looks at me. "Could you."
"Purely logistical. Conserving water. Very environmentally responsible."
She stares at me for three full seconds. Then she gets up.
I'm behind her before she reaches the bathroom door.
***
The bathroom is all white marble and low light. The shower is enormous — a glass enclosure, rainfall head, two body jets positioned at exactly the wrong height for anyone who isn't five-ten. My first apartment cost less per month than this room costs per night.
She reaches in and turns the water on. Steam starts building almost immediately.
I come up behind her. Get my mouth on the side of her neck. She tips her head to give me access and keeps her eyes on the shower like she is doing a very responsible job of testing the temperature.
"The water needs a minute," she says.
"I can wait."
"You're not waiting."
"I'm being patient."
"You have never been patient in your life."
I laugh against her skin. She steps into the shower. I follow.
The water is hot. I turn her under it and she goes, tilting her face up, hair going dark and wet. I stand there for a moment just — looking at her.
Ava Ruiz in a hotel shower in Los Angeles two days before the Super Bowl, completely unguarded, water running down her collarbone.
"You're staring," she says.
"You're worth staring at."
She rolls her eyes but doesn't hide the small pleased thing that moves across her face. I reach up and run my thumb along her jaw.
"Turn around," I say.
She raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"Please," I add.
"That's not more convincing."
"Ava."
She turns around.
I get my hands into her hair, working shampoo through it from roots to ends, slow and thorough. She goes still under my hands. Not tense — the opposite. Something in her spine releases, degree by degree.
"This isn't what I expected," she says.
"What did you expect?"
"Less — this."
"I contain multitudes."
She makes a quiet sound that might be a laugh. I rinse her hair. Run my palms down her back.
She leans into it.
"Ty."
"Yeah."
"If you keep doing that I'm not going to be responsible for what happens next."
I lean down to her ear. "That's sort of the plan."
She turns around.
***
This time is different.
Less careful. Less slow. The steam and the hot water and the specific restlessness of two days out, one more night, everything-almost-over has burned off whatever patience we had left.
She gets her hands in my hair and pulls me down. I walk her back until her shoulders meet the marble wall. The cold of it makes her gasp. I catch the sound with my mouth.
I pin her there. One of her legs hooks over my hip.
"Is this—" I start.
"Yes," she says. "Keep going."
I lift her. She locks her legs around me. I press her into the wall, the water running over both of us, her head tipping back against the marble as I find the angle that makes her grip my shoulders hard.
"There," she says. "Right there, don't—"
"I've got you."
She comes apart against the wall, loud and unguarded, water in her eyelashes, both hands fisted in my hair. I watch every second of it. I will remember every second of it.
I follow moments later, my face against her neck, her name somewhere in the sound I make.
We stand there breathing, the shower still running. Her legs slide down. I keep my hands braced on the wall on either side of her, not quite ready to move.
"Hi," she says.
I pull back and look at her. Her face is open and bright and water-wet. Entirely hers.
"Hi," I say.
She reaches up and flicks water off my nose. I blink.
"Multitudes," she says.
I grin. Wide open. All the way there.
***
Later, she's lying on her side facing the window. I'm behind her, not asleep, watching the city outside go from black to dark blue.
"The piece on Indiana," she says. "The one your dad called into."
"Yeah."
"He was good?"
I think about my dad's voice on the phone this afternoon. Steady. Not performing, just telling. He was six years old when I saw him catch his first pass. I knew then. I made a mistake. That was my mistake, not his. He earned everything he has.
"He was good," I say.
She takes my hand and brings it to her chest. Doesn't say anything else.
I close my eyes. Think about a kid in a Friday night stadium. My dad in row four, left side. The specific low angle of October light through the goalposts.
I'm going to show her that stadium someday. I'm certain of it.
***
My phone buzzes on the nightstand at eleven-forty.
Marcus: Team meeting tomorrow at 9. Coach wants everyone.
I look at it. Read it twice. Set the phone down.
She's still awake. I know her breathing by now.
"Marcus," I say.
"I heard it buzz."
I show her the screen. She reads it.
"Whatever he says tomorrow," I say, "I want you to know that nothing that happens in that room changes anything."
She looks at me for a long moment. The composed expression is gone — the one she wears in buildings, in corridors, in every professional space she's ever moved through. What's underneath is just her face, quiet and certain.
"I know," she says. "I've known for a while."
I put the phone face-down.
Two days out, Valentine's Day on the other side.
I'm not afraid of the morning.
I fall asleep faster than I expect.