Tropesick

Chapter 44

Tyler

I slammed the door to the cottage shut so forcefully it shook the pictures on the wall. What was I doing here? What did I

think was going to happen? Did I honestly believe I was going to turn back time? Did I really think I could be Katie’s friend?

Pretend I didn’t care that another guy was sliding his hand up her thigh and taking her home? Pretend it didn’t kill me, realizing

that the story we were writing was nothing more than a fucking fairy tale? That every goddamn trope on Katie’s twenty-page

list wouldn’t have been enough to give a guy like me a second chance at a girl like her?

I started packing up my shit. I was throwing boxers and notepads and loose socks into my backpack. My sweatshirt. My phone

charger. My toothbrush. Everything, and as fast as I could. I did not belong here. This whole summer had been a mistake. A

reopening of a wound that was never going to heal. Of a hundred other traumas that should’ve been kept asleep.

When I was done, when all my crap was in my bag, I closed the door to the cottage, sat on the foot of a lounge chair on the pool deck, and shut my eyes.

The past two months played back. Katie’s face, the minute I walked through that café door.

The tremble in her voice the following morning, telling me to go.

The light in her eyes, teaching me to write a different kind of story.

The way the days and weeks had started to melt into each other.

How I never wanted the work to stop. How I would’ve written every minute of every hour of every day if it meant we could just sit there, laughing like we used to.

But none of it mattered. Nothing was ever going to change. We could not be friends. We could barely be colleagues. It was

too much to ask, and I had known it from the start. I had known, and then I had tested the truth anyway because I had to see

it for myself. The fallout of what I’d done. And now, sitting here, left with no choice but to turn my back on the two things

in my life that seemed like they might be good, I let out a single, quiet—

“Hey.”

I looked up.

“Where—where’s Danny?”

“I ended it.”

“Wh-why?”

She took a step closer. Her mascara, dripping down her face. Her dress, sliding off her shoulder. Her too-strappy, too-studded

sandals, dangling in her hands. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Because,” she said, “he’s an asshole.”

“And you,” I said, “don’t like assholes.”

She nodded, coming closer, dropping her shoes to the stone. She was standing between my trembling knees, tracing the links

of my watch, biting her bottom lip.

“Except for you,” she said.

“Except for me,” I said, rising to my feet. Our bodies, inches apart. Her fingers, light and tentative around my wrist, but

dropping now, steadying into the palm of my hand and lingering for a single, eye-crinkling second before hooking themselves

into my belt loop. My pulse was pounding.

She tugged me forward, her mouth wet and her eyes wide as she took one, two, three steps back. Behind her, the pool glowed turquoise.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Leveraging the setting.”

I laughed. She took another step backward and into the water—onto the pool’s first stair. She was still in her dress, still

chewing her lip. Her fingers were circling the buttons on my jeans, slowly unfastening each one and then exploring the swell

of cotton she’d found below. She tugged again on the denim.

“Katie,” I said.

“Take those off,” she said.

I nodded, muttering, making quick work of my pants, my shirt, my glasses as she stood there, watching. I stepped in after

her, and then her hands were in mine, and I was so fucking hard, and she was halfway down the stairs and facing me, the water

at her knees, guiding me deeper and deeper into the soft, cool blue.

“Katie,” I said again.

“Yeah?” The water, by now, was just below her collarbone, clinging to her skin, lifting her breasts, and turning her dress

into nothing—into tissue paper, into a scrap of drenched, sheer silk. And that was when, out of nowhere, it began to drizzle.

Out of nowhere, without warning, it began to rain.

“This is in our book,” I said.

“It’s all in our book,” she said.

I laughed, taking a step closer, wiping the water off her face, then dropping my hands to her hips.

The hem of her dress had floated to the surface, and I was testing the lace of what I’d discovered below—flimsy and delicate and, thanks to me, slowly pushed down another inch to reveal arching bone and satin skin.

She grazed my jaw, stopping at the scar just beneath my right eye.

The same jagged dash I’d owned since the day our lives changed.

She traced it for a moment, then tipped her chin toward mine. My fingers were still making sense of her skin, and rain was

still falling, catching on her lashes, on the bridge of her nose, the grooves of her clavicles, and I was taking another tiptoe

toward her, my heart pounding and my dick throbbing and her inhale catching as I finally locked her flexing legs around my

tilted hips.

She moaned at the press.

“Katie,” I said.

“Yeah?”

I leaned in an inch. Her eyes, emerald, and daring me closer. Her lips, rain-slicked and watermelon pink and begging to be

licked. I swept the hair out of her face, then—after a long, deep inhale—brushed her mouth with the tip of my teeth. She let

out this soft little sound, then did the same to me. I whimpered something—a curse, a groan—and did it again. Another graze.

Another lick. Another bite. And when the test was over, once I’d had a taste of her, once I’d realized I still wanted her,

I pulled her closer, pressed my forehead against hers, and repeated her name. This time, like a question.

“Do it,” she said.

I nodded, walking us back toward the edge of the pool. I was desperate to get a better grip on her, to find something hard

and rough to pin her against, and she was right there, forced against the wall, her ass in my hands, her thighs slammed around

my erection, her wet, wild hair clinging to her perfect, gasping face and then, nearly three thousand words late, I kissed

her.

I kissed her harder than I’d kissed anyone ever before.

Even her, even then. I could not get enough of her.

I wanted her by the mouthful—lips and tongue and teeth and the curve of her jaw, angled toward mine.

The concrete was sandpaper against my knees, and I did not care.

I had her. I had her, and the water—the rain, the pool—was softening everything else, even the sounds we were making, the way our bodies were moving, the way we were finding our way back to each other, in ripples and dripping wet.

“Fuck,” I said, barely coming up for air, my mouth still glued to hers, my tongue in her throat, her hands in my hair. She

was moving against me, and I was helping her do it, and the water was rising around our ribs, and the dress was even better

now. An accessory, a prop—something to lift and touch and search and suck through. “I’ve wanted you all summer. I’ve wanted

you for so fucking long. When you wore that skirt, and after that ballgame . . . Last weekend, when you left, I thought I

was dying. I . . .”

“Stairs,” she muttered through a moan. I nodded, carrying her, devouring her, discovering the taste of her hard nipple when

the only thing that separated me from it was a whisper of soaking silk. “Right now.”

I was still licking through the fabric, still working through it with my teeth, letting her sink into my lap on the second

step of the shallow end. She shoved down the elastic of my waistband, searching for me, her fingers fumbling closer and closer

to exactly where I screamed for her.

“Maybe we should slow down,” I said, but I was still jerking her into me.

Still biting and licking and sucking and kissing.

Still raking my hands through her hair, sinking my teeth into her shoulder, thrusting myself between her straddled legs and watching her eyes go wide when we both acted surprised by the sounds that came out next.

“I’m not a little girl,” she said.

“I know.”

Another jerk. Another gasp.

“I’m not just Mikey’s little sister anymore. I’m twenty-five years old, I—”

“I know.”

“Haven’t you been dying to fuck me your entire life?”

I closed my eyes and muttered. When I realized that was not an answer, I tried again. “More than anything. I want you more

than anything. I want to fuck you so hard you can’t breathe. I want you in my mouth, in my hands, on my face. I want you in

ways you wouldn’t believe.”

“Then show me,” she said, and now she was moaning into my ear, sliding whatever was left down my hips, and her dress was so

sheer, and her body was so sure, and I could see her heartbeat through her chest, and everything around us was so wet, and

I was throbbing in her hands, and my hands were everywhere, showing her what I meant by hard, showing her that I meant what

I said, and I was sliding off her panties, twisting them between my fingers, letting them float beside me, thinking of all

the things I could do to her now that they were off, now that she was soaked and skin-close in the palms of my hands. The

rain clouds were glimmering off the water, and I could smell the sea, I could smell the sand, and Katie was whispering please, she was whispering it over and over, please, Tyler, fuck me, please.

She was tightening her thighs around my hips like she meant it, tugging me toward her, groaning, gasping, grinding against me, and I could not breathe, I could not speak, I could not connect the dots.

I could not think about all the things I needed to think about, like a condom or how wide her eyes might go when I was finally inside her or what she might sound like when she came or what might happen when I did, and it was all too much, too real, too soon.

“Katie,” I said. “I can’t do this. I can’t give you what you need.”

“I just need you. Yes, you can. Don’t say that. Don’t—”

I kissed her. I absolutely ravished her. I was selfish about it. I took every bite of her I could, and then said, “I really

can’t do this. Not with you. I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

She pulled away, frozen. She suddenly looked ten years younger, and everything inside of me drained. “Not with me? What’s

wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not you. It’s me, it’s . . .”

Her arms were wrapped around her elbows, and she was already standing on the opposite side of the shallow end, shivering.

“You,” she said, “are such a fucking piece of shit.”

“Katie, stop. You don’t understand. It’s not what you think.”

“You started this,” she said, backing farther away. She was nearly out of the pool. “You started this, and you chased me,

and you made me feel safe, and you brushed your knee against mine on that beach, knowing I’d remember. Knowing what it meant

to me. You made me think you were different, that you’ve changed, but you haven’t. You just can’t stand it when I’m with somebody

else. You don’t want me, and you don’t want anyone else to have me either. You just want to keep me on a shelf to play with

when you feel bad about yourself, and that’s it. You are so fucked-up, Tyler. You always have been. You are fucked-up beyond

repair.”

“Katie, please. Let me explain. Let me . . .”

She was halfway to the house, and the drizzle had turned into a downpour. I could hardly see her. Could hardly hear her over the gushing. Could hardly piece together how, a mere minute ago, she was half-dressed and a mess, begging me to make her mine.

“Every time I have let you in,” she said, “has been the biggest mistake of my life.”