NINETEEN
Before the Streamify contract
Maeve
“Do you think we should take it?”
We’re sitting in my new apartment, which is at least seventy-five percent nicer than my last one. It’s the kind of apartment that isn’t clean and white and soulless enough to be a building with amenities, but that has a brick shower large enough for two people, as much outdoor space as indoor, and only a few holes in the wall that I’ve strategically covered with posters, because although now we’re making money, it’s not enough that I am even thinking about pretending I have the taste to blow huge portions of it on art that might be bad.
But with the deal we’re considering, I could buy whatever bad art I like. Finn rubs his hand up and down my smooth calf, which I shaved just in case I did end up sitting here with my feet in his lap. “Do you want to?”
“I asked first.”
“But it’s yours.”
“It’s really not.” No matter how many episodes we do, how many articles we pose for together, Finn insists that the show is mine and he is a mere participant. I never know if I should be flattered or offended.
“For sixty million and the IP, we probably shouldn’t be debating it. Why aren’t you sure?” Finn looks at me, his gaze focused, and my breath catches. His eyes on me, so intense when it’s just us, is like that first moment when perfectly warm fresh spring air wraps around me when I step out of an air-conditioned car. For a moment everything is impossibly good and inspiration is in the next breath, and I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful than where I am, even if it’s on a couch I rescued from the sidewalk and still am only mostly sure doesn’t have bedbugs.
“Even if we have the IP, it won’t be ours. Streamify will be telling us what to do.”
“If that’s what you’re worried about, don’t be. I won’t let any dodgy exec tell you what to do.” Finn reaches a hand toward me and holds it there, waiting, not dropping it even when I don’t immediately reach out to meet him. I take it. I always take it. “I’ll say you’re an eccentric creative who can’t be controlled. That if they tell you what to do for even one moment, I’ll walk because we won’t be great anymore. That I’ll take a vow of celibacy and shave my head so girls don’t like me anymore.”
I squeeze his hand tightly and bend at the knees, edging closer to him. He hasn’t looked away once, even when he’s taken a sip of wine, but now he puts the glass down and interlaces my hand in his. “I mean that. Let them be my problem while you make what you want and change lives and all that.”
I don’t know whether to believe him. But so far, I always have and he’s never let me down once, so why not? “I guess we have a deal, then.”
I put my own glass down, and Finn tugs me toward him on the couch until I’m basically in his lap and he wraps me in a tight hug. It’s hard for me to believe we’re doing this. I never thought I would live in LA; it has always seemed like a bit of a concrete wasteland. Coming from Pittsburgh I’m suspicious of somewhere that always has good weather. We started meeting with Streamify months ago, and in the first meeting I wore a pantsuit and was sweating buckets before I even stepped inside. And the money? It’s an unimaginable amount to me. Even once the first payment hits my bank account, I don’t think I’ll be able to comprehend it. Why would they pay that to make Tell Me How You Really Feel exclusive to Streamify without even trying to take the IP? I’m living in a fever dream that I don’t want to wake up from, digging my nails into my thigh every hour to see if the moment is real.
I pull back from Finn just slightly and he shifts, pulling me completely into his lap until I’m straddling him in my sundress and I can feel a hard heat between his legs. And it’s both shocking and thrilling, because all this time I assumed he just never felt that for me. My logical brain says that I should pull away, walk away, make sure to keep everything as is because I’ve only just been handed more than I’ve ever wanted. Why ruin it? But maybe the point of this was him.
So instead, I press myself tighter into him and my gasp meets his rough moan of an exhale as his hands slide down from my waist to my hips and he presses me tighter still. I haven’t been looking at him, not really, because we’re too close for that, my face pressed against the side of his, but now I pull back. Because I want to know that it’s me he sees, not just another woman he’ll talk about on the show later. I catch his chin with my hand and pull back, turning his focus toward me, and when his eyes lock on me they’re not unfocused with desire. They’re alert, looking into mine, almost as desperate to see me as I am to see him.
I nod, once. And he pulls my face to his and kisses me. It’s not a pretty, chaste, first-date kiss. This kiss is the last two years of tension, the last six of friendship, and our future all wrapped into one. He crushes me to him and devours my mouth expertly, but not because we teach twentysomethings how to be good at sex, or because he’s been getting a crash course in what I like when I spill my guts to millions through a recorder in our living room every week. It’s like we click into place, and all the kisses I’ve had before this one were just practice for this. Like our relationship has been on pause at eighty percent and we just found the missing twenty.
And all of the little anxious thoughts that I usually have, the same ones fans write in about—does my stomach have rolls when I sit like this, do I look good at this angle, can he see up my nose, does my breath smell, are my hands too cold, am I too heavy, is he thinking of someone hotter—not one of them is here. It’s like the chatter in my brain has been turned to silent. And for the first time in two years I know I’m doing something that will never make it onto the podcast.
We kiss and kiss and kiss, and if it was just this forever, it would still be better than anything else. But after who knows how long, Finn pulls back. “It’s embarrassing to admit how much I’ve thought about this, Maeve. About you.”
“Wow, Finn. I mean, tell me how you really feel,” I whisper playfully. I should be embarrassed. I mean, did I really just say that?
But he just laughs. “Can I take you to bed now?”
I nod and kiss him, and it seems that suffices because he picks me up without a moment’s break and carries me to my bedroom, lowering me onto the bed.
He kisses me so gently, so tenderly, it’s like he’s concerned he’ll never get to again. Which is silly, because how could we do this and not have it be the start of the rest of our life? For a moment, I’m distracted by the realization that maybe he was waiting for this. Because the show will change. But it won’t matter once the deal is signed. Maybe that’s why he was promising to take the brunt of any disapproval changes, to unburden me so I didn’t have to worry about what this means.
The thought makes me feel better. Calmer. Less worried about this not meaning all that I want it to.
Finn pulls my dress over my head and discards it on the floor, watching it fall for a moment before turning back toward me and leaning back for a moment to look at me. I hitch forward to unbutton his shirt, bring him to meet me, but he holds out a hand. “Wait, Maeve. Just let me look at you. Fuck. I just never thought I would get this moment with you.”
And it is a beautiful moment. He reaches for me and slides my underwear off, and these last seconds before we’re touching, they are what will separate our before and after. I always said I would never take a nude photo, but right now I wish I could bottle this moment, preserve it, have it to look at all those future nights that come afterward. I want to remember this feeling before our bodies are familiar.
Finn’s eyes travel up and down my entire body, drinking it in, and there’s not one part of me that I don’t want him to see. When he reaches my eyes, we lock in, and he leans forward, holding himself over me carefully and leaning down to kiss me, his shirt and belt and shorts rough against my already exposed body. He keeps kissing me while I start unbuttoning him, getting everything halfway undone, all the easiest bits, before he’s ripping off his clothes, the restraint gone. He lowers his mouth to my clit and I can confirm that everything said in episode three was more than true.
After a moment, two of his fingers are moving in and out of me rhythmically while his mouth works around me and his other hand holds me flush against him, and I should be self-conscious, because I always am at this point, except now I’m not, and then I’m coming and exploding around him and he’s pulling me closer, not stopping until it’s happening again, and then I’m limp. He pulls himself up and rests his head on my chest and I play with his dark hair, which smells like the mint shampoo that I keep at my place now because he stays here so often even though until now we were just friends.
I run my nails down his back and feel him shudder, so I pull him up to kiss me, and feel how ready he is between my legs. I’m wet and slick, so wet that this is the first time in years I don’t reach for lube, which I always use on principle because we should all use lube, because it makes a woman’s orgasm from penetrative sex eighty percent more likely and it has our podcast’s logo on it, but now I don’t. Because I don’t even want to orgasm again, I just want him inside of me to complete this night. To be as close as I possibly can. To feel him lose control.
I can feel how hard he is against me, and when I reach down and touch him, his face clenches and he groans. I grab a condom from the bedside and put it on him, then guide him to my entrance and remove my hand, leaving his tip barely poking in. He holds himself there for so long I wonder if he’ll pull away. When he finally does push in, in one slow thrust that should hurt due to his size but doesn’t because all I want is for him to fill me and he’s gotten me so ready for it, he looks at me. And I look at him, my eyes steady, not breaking the eye contact for a kiss until he’s fully inside of me. I have never felt more connected to anyone than I do in this moment.
When he starts moving, it feels so good . This is lacking the awkwardness of a first time as we move against each other, and I feel him pressing into me, knowing that the way I move around him is what is making him sweat and moan. It’s not that long, but it’s perfect, and when he finally releases, I hold him to me tighter. We’re sweaty and gross and it’s everything. I should get up to pee but I don’t, and instead we just lie there intertwined, him still inside of me.
Finn kisses me on the lips, then the side of my head, over and over and over, and I nuzzle my face closer to him. “Fuck. I love you, Maeve,” he says as he squeezes me in a tight hug.
I should just enjoy it. But his tone … it’s too nonchalant. I don’t know what it means. If it’s a declaration, or just the casual words we’ve said so many times on the show. I try to measure my own tone when I respond. “I love you too.” But I want to know how he means it.