34. Katerina #2
It's slower, more intentional, no rush of Bourbon Street adrenaline or the impetus of a dare. This is a deliberate choice, a yes we've voiced in words first. We take our time, tugging off layers with murmured laughs and breathy sighs, pausing to check in with each other's eyes.
Heat coils in my stomach, but I'm not nervous.
She moves gently, stroking my arm, peppering small kisses along my collarbone.
I let my fingers slide along the plane of her shoulders, noting the tension that lingers there.
Bex lets out a shaky exhale, and I realize she's letting go of some final barrier.
We sink onto the bed. The fabric of the comforter crinkles under our combined weight. She braces herself on an elbow, leaning over me. Her hair falls forward in a dark spill, brushing my temple. I curl my hand around the back of her neck, feeling the slight humidity of her skin.
With each small shift, we learn each other more. The quiet of the world outside underscores every breath. The city keeps living, the horns keep blaring, but in the apartment above the shop, we create our own intimate orbit.
I lose track of time. It could have been ten minutes or an hour. All I know is the slow, careful exchange of warmth, the repeated ways we ask are you sure and answer with kisses or murmured yes.
When the last layer of tension finally dissolves, we find ourselves entwined: me with one leg slipped between hers, her arm looped under my shoulders. There's a faint sheen of sweat at my temple, and I feel her heart thumping steadily against my side, a gentle percussion that matches my own.
We don't speak, not right away, because whatever we might have said is already there in the softness of her palm on my hip, the way we breathe each other in. The bed might be narrow, but it feels huge in possibility.
Eventually she shifts onto her back, and I curl against her, resting my head on her shoulder. A mild breeze wafts through the open window, stirring the edges of the curtains. Street noise drifts up, a cluster of voices, the distant wail of a siren.
I realize my face feels damp. Not tears exactly, but a kind of overwhelming flood behind my eyes, the type that leaves me blinking hard. I press my fingers to the side of my nose, exhaling to steady myself.
Bex turns her head, concern flickering. "You okay?" she asks softly.
"Yeah," I answer, my voice still wobbly. "Just thinking about how this is what I do for everyone else in my job. Creating magical moments for them. And I never."
I pause, swallowing.
She brushes a thumb across my cheek. "Never what?"
I close my eyes, letting the quiet sink in. "Never knew it could feel like this. Like I'm actually part of it. Not orchestrating someone else's happiness, but living my own."
That confession is so raw it makes my stomach tighten. But Bex just turns toward me, pressing a gentle kiss to my temple. "You deserve it," she whispers. "You realize that, right?"
My throat squeezes, and I nod, taking another breath. "I'm starting to," I say.
We stay still for another few beats. The bed dips beneath us, the sheets warmed by our bodies. I trace a lazy pattern against her arm, following the faint lines of old ink near her biceps, some leftover script from a band's lyric, I guess. She lets out a small sigh of contentment.
I want to remember every single detail of this.
If I ever turn a camera on for a documentary about this exact feeling, I'd want to capture the light through the curtains, the softness of her arm under my fingers, the particular quality of deciding something and meaning it.
The old me would have tried to fit it into bullet points: emotional honesty, physical closeness, yes.
But I just let it be instead, because it's big enough on its own without a label.
Bex's phone buzzes from somewhere in the living room, and she sighs against my hair. "Should I bother checking?"
"That's your call," I murmur, not moving.
She shifts a bit, enough to reach the phone if she really wants to, but seems to decide against it, settling back and tucking me closer instead.
I trace the ink at her shoulder one more time, memorizing the shape of a lyric I don't recognize yet but plan to ask about.
There's a whole conversation still waiting in that faded script, in the travel guide to Japan on her shelf, in the phoenix wing half-finished on her drafting table.
I want all of it, not just this afternoon.
I press a kiss to her collarbone and push myself up onto one elbow, looking down at her properly. "Hungry?" I ask. "You mentioned lunch, before things got, productively derailed."
Bex laughs, the sound rumbling under my palm where it rests on her chest. "Extremely. There's a Thai place two blocks over that delivers in fifteen minutes flat. I have connections."
"Of course you do." I reach for my shirt, pulling it back over my head, already smiling at the ordinary shape the rest of the afternoon is taking. "Order for both of us. I trust your judgment."
"Bold move, Bennett." She swings out of bed, already reaching for her phone. "I'm ordering the spiciest thing on the menu just to see what you do with it."
"I contain multitudes," I say, and her laugh follows me all the way to the kitchen, where I start hunting through her cabinets for plates, already, absurdly, at home.