Chapter 26
Beau falls to my side, one heavy leg draped between mine, his palm on my breast, head burrowed in my neck.
His breathing is labored, and I watch the rise and fall of his chest. I curl into his touch, hoping to avoid the embarrassment and vulnerability of the aftermath by staying tethered to the moment.
I kiss his scratchy cheek, and he turns and steals a deeper one—it’s lazy, contented, familiar, like we do this all the time.
“Hi.” He smiles into another kiss, and his grin is everything. “I guess it’s about time we consummated that backyard marriage.” He drags a fingertip down my torso, and I liquefy underneath the touch.
“How’d you get so good at that?” I mumble, still feeling the aftershocks of him. He played my body like he owns the instruction manual. I didn’t even know how to ask for what he knew to give me.
His laugh is a soft burst of air against my throat. “You really want to go there right now?”
But my curiosity is a beast, and my response is an unconvincing, “Umm, no?” I imagine Beau learned his talents with the woman he meant to spend his life with—while I had unsatisfying sex with selfish partners who left me feeling deserving of nothing more.
Being with Beau felt ... special , as uncomfortable as it is to admit it.
Did it for him? Do I want us to be on the same page?
Two weeks ago, I was more likely to muzzle him than nuzzle his neck.
He laughs again and kisses me with his palm on my jaw. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have. And then you have to answer mine,” he says. “And if you say you’re ‘fine,’ I’m going to make you stay up all night talking about your feelings.”
It’s a joke. Sort of. But it feels like a threat.
I laugh uncomfortably.
“I can’t believe we just had sex,” he says, chuckling. “It’s like all my teenage dreams come true.” He rolls away, steps into the bathroom, and closes the door behind him.
And that vulnerability I feared? Well, it washes over me like a tidal wave.
A stew of unfamiliar emotions brings my body to a boil.
I don’t know how to behave now that we’ve slept together while I was still figuring out how to be his friend.
I wish I could escape to avoid the dissection of what we just did, the awkwardness of postcoital confrontation, and the threat of spilling even scarier emotions all over this tiny motel room.
Finally, Beau had said. What did he mean?
And, more important, what do I want it to mean?
Did he have sex with me , thirty-four-year-old Ophelia, who’s lost and alone and never measured up to her potential?
Or did he have sex with his teenage fantasy—the popular, too-cool girl who no longer exists?
Did he cave to his basest desires? Was he revisiting ancient infatuation while I opened myself up and showed him my heart?
Will he regret this if I can’t keep my cool?
I’m afraid that what I feel for Beau is beyond attraction.
And it occurs to me, too late, that perhaps I have always liked Beau more than I could handle.
Maybe it’s why he’s always gotten to me, why his opinions and disapproval injured me, why I’ve loved to get a reaction out of him—searching for a scowl or a laugh.
Maybe I’ve always been chasing that feeling of our first kiss—the surprise of it, the comfort of it, the fullness of it.
Kissing Beau feels like coming home.
And he’s the last bit of home I have left.
But I don’t know how to confess that I have never felt anything like this. I worry that I’ve been doing sex wrong this whole time. I’ve been doing everything wrong. I want to touch Beau every day for the rest of my life, and I wish I never knew what his touch would do to me.
This bed may be a cramped tomb for our budding friendship.
And I feel very, very naked suddenly. I inhale, but my chest constricts; I can’t get a lungful. Then I start to shiver uncontrollably.
I flip on the light and cover my eyes with one hand, my head throbbing from the glow of the flickering fluorescent fixture.
My focus adjusts to the glare as I try and fail to find my PJs.
I scamper to the closet to throw on a pair of shorts and a torn Beyoncé concert T-shirt that drapes like a hospital gown.
It hides the red marks on my hips from his fingers, the rash on my thighs from his stubble, the skin still fevered from his touch.
I throw my hair in a messy bun and slide a hoodie over the shirt.
When the faucet stops, I freeze, waiting for him to emerge.
I pace along the narrow strip of carpet, bang my shin on the foot of the bed, and swallow a scream.
Beau steps out of the bathroom and halts when he sees me hunched over and spiraling—eyeing me with unguarded wariness. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say before dropping to the side of the bed, my leg bouncing so visibly that Beau looks at it with furrowed brows.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Good.” I release an unhinged laugh. “Which side of the bed do you want?”
He stares at me, hangs his head, and then grabs his boxers. He slides his legs through quickly, as if my self-consciousness is contagious, and sinks onto the mattress without touching me, which is a feat in this doll bed.
“You gonna join me?” he asks. And there’s that irritation I know so well.
I lay back along the far edge with my back facing him, and Beau exhales an exasperated breath.
“Ophelia,” he says, “what’s wrong?”
And then I’m saved by the fire alarm.
I’m outside on the cracked parking lot with a dozen exhausted travelers displaced from this shitty motel as Beau tries to figure out what the hell is happening.
I eat up the pavement with anxious steps.
The fire trucks have come and gone. Meanwhile, the alarm shrieks into the void, crying wolf despite the absence of flames.
In my corner of the lot, a weary woman bounces a crying baby while a scantily clad couple argues in hushed tones.
Most guests have retreated to their cars, but I have too much static energy to sit.
Beau stalks out of the shade of the overhang and into the harsh streetlamps.
He’s all shadow and sharp lines—brooding and disheveled and so fucking hot.
Once he filled out after high school, I could acknowledge that he was handsome in a classic, predictable way—symmetry, bone structure, lean body, chiseled chin. I’ve never been into predictable.
But I’m afraid he’s not as predictable as I thought.
Before I can brace myself, he’s beside me, and the reality of what we just did is blaring between us like porn on a colleague’s computer in the adjacent cubicle.
The punctuation mark on that reminder is his shirt, inside out and backward, the tag marking an embarrassing post-sex blunder under his chin.
“It’s an electrical issue. An electrician is on the way, but ...” Beau shrugs.
He slides into the car and flips the lock on the passenger side, pushing the door open toward me. I hang there, my hand braced on the door, and peer in. “So, we just wait?”
“Well, you could call the police, but I’m pretty sure they won’t have an electrician available.”
I fall into the seat and crank it back until I’m fully reclined, my legs stretched along the dash. The alarm is shrill, even dulled by the sealed car doors. “They won’t allow us back inside even though it’s a false alarm?”
“It’s too loud. I prefer my eardrums intact.
” Beau drapes his forearms over his face after dropping into a matching incline.
His knees are bent at a harsh angle and bump against the steering wheel.
His muscles are rigid, his posture tightly wound.
There’s nothing left of the contented, liquid ease of an hour ago.
“What’s up with you?” I ask, turning my head toward him. We’re inches apart, but he feels worlds away.
He drops his arms and cracks his eyes open. He chuckles, but it’s bitter. “What’s up with me?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, but lose confidence by the end of the syllable.
“There’s nothing up with me, Ophelia.” And he closes his eyes again, rolling his head until his chin is tipped toward the sunroof.
He’s silent, his eyes are closed, but he’s too rigid for sleep.
I finally give up and stare into the distance.
The night sky breaks out into a splintered canvas of scattered stars I once wished upon—when I had the audacity to wish.
The panicky siren mimics the trip wire of my nerves, and my brain distorts the repetitive rhythm into an accusatory chant: Ophelia, you fucked up.