12. Duncan
DUNCAN
The restaurant is tucked into a basement space in the West Village, a place you find by accident or through word of mouth, never Yelp.
I made the reservation under a name that isn't mine, confirmed twice that the corner table would be ready, and showed up ten minutes early because being late feels like the move someone else would make.
Millie arrives at seven thirty in jeans and a black sweater, her hair down for once, curling past her shoulders.
No makeup that I can detect, which means she either isn't wearing any or she's better at it than I thought.
She slides into the booth across from me and sets her phone face-down on the table.
The waiter brings menus and Millie orders wine without looking at the list. We talk through appetizers about nothing consequential.
My sister's new apartment in Brooklyn, my meeting with a startup founder who spent forty minutes pitching an app that already exists.
The food is good, the wine is better, and somewhere around the second glass Millie leans back against the booth and actually relaxes.
"This was nice," she says. "The no cameras part."
"We should do it more often."
"Probably shouldn't. People will get suspicious if we stop performing."
"Let them."
She studies me for a beat. "You're different lately."
"Different how?"
"Less careful. Like you've stopped calculating what you're supposed to say before you say it." She takes another sip of wine. "It's either very honest or very stupid."
"Can't it be both?"
She almost smiles.
We finish dinner and step out onto the street where the air has turned cold enough to see our breath. Millie pulls her jacket tighter and I resist the urge to offer mine because that feels too much like something from a movie neither of us is acting in.
"Walk with me?" she asks.
We end up on the High Line because it's close and open late and neither of us suggests anywhere else.
The elevated park is quieter at night, most of the tourists are gone, just couples walking slowly and a few people sitting on benches looking at their phones.
The city spreads out below us in layers of light and shadow.
Millie takes my arm without asking, looping hers through mine like it's something we've done a hundred times. Her shoulder presses against my bicep and I can feel the warmth of her through both our jackets.
"Can I ask you something?" she says.
"Always."
"When you saw me perform six years ago, that production in Brooklyn, why didn't you come backstage after?"
I've thought about this question since the night I told her. "Because I didn't think I'd earned the right to congratulate you. I was the guy who told you to quit, and then you proved me wrong so thoroughly that showing up felt like admitting defeat."
She's quiet for a while, just walking. We pass a couple taking selfies near the rail and a man sketching something in a notebook balanced on his knee.
"I think about high school more than I should," Millie says eventually. "Every time someone doubts me or questions whether I deserve a role, I'm seventeen again and you're telling me I'm not talented enough. It's exhausting, carrying that around."
"I'm sorry."
"I know you are. But sorry doesn't erase it, Duncan. It just sits next to it."
We reach the end of the High Line and stand at the rail looking out over the West Side.
The Hudson is dark, just the occasional boat cutting through with lights that reflect on the water.
Millie shivers slightly and I do offer my jacket this time, draping it over her shoulders before she can refuse.
"Thanks," she murmurs.
"You're welcome."
She turns to face me, leaning back against the rail with my jacket hanging loose around her frame. "Do you want to come up?"
"Up where?"
"My place. It's ten blocks from here." She pauses. "Just for a drink. One drink."
Every part of my brain that's responsible for self-preservation is screaming at me to say no. Going to her apartment alone is exactly how this arrangement stops being an arrangement and becomes something neither of us knows how to navigate.
"Okay," I say.
We walk the ten blocks in silence that feels different from the comfortable rhythm we've built over the past month. This silence is charged, humming with possibility and the knowledge that we're both making a choice neither of us can unmake later.
The moment we cross the threshold of her apartment, she shoots me a look. "Wine or whiskey?"
"Whiskey."
She pours two glasses, neat, and hands me one before crossing to the couch. I follow because standing in her kitchen alone feels awkward. We sit with a foot of space between us, both facing forward, both drinking slowly.
"I've been thinking about what you asked last week," she says. "On the subway platform."
My stomach tightens. "What did I ask?"
"Whether the public is wrong. About us falling for each other."
I set my glass down on the coffee table because my hand is starting to shake. "And?"
She turns to look at me, and there's something in her eyes that I've never seen before. Vulnerability, maybe, or permission.
"I don't know if they're wrong," she says quietly. "And that terrifies me."
I don't remember moving closer but suddenly the space between us has collapsed to inches. Her face is tilted up toward mine, her breath catching slightly, and I can see the pulse jumping in her throat.
"Millie," I say, and it comes out rough.
"Don't ask for permission. Just?—"
I kiss her.
It's nothing like the kiss at the museum, nothing like the careful performances we've staged for cameras.
This is urgent and messy, her mouth opening under mine immediately, her hands coming up to grip my shirt like she's afraid I'll pull away.
I cup her jaw the way I did at the museum but I don't let go this time, just hold her there while I kiss her deeper.
She makes a sound low in her throat that undoes me completely.
We break apart long enough for her to stand, pulling me up with her, and then we're moving toward her bedroom with my jacket finally falling from her shoulders.
She kicks it aside without looking and pulls me through the doorway into a room that's dark except for the light from the hallway behind us.
The bed is unmade, white sheets twisted like she got up in a hurry this morning. She backs toward it and I follow, my hands finding her waist, sliding under the hem of her sweater to touch bare skin that's warmer than I expected.
"Duncan," she breathes, and hearing my name in her voice like that nearly kills me.
I pull her sweater over her head and drop it somewhere on the floor. She's wearing a black bra, simple and perfect, and when I run my thumb along the edge of the cup her eyes flutter closed.
"Look at me," I say.
She does.
I kiss her again, slower this time, walking her backward until her legs hit the edge of the mattress and she sits. I kneel in front of her, my hands on her thighs, and she watches me with an expression that's half challenge, half surrender.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"Everything."
I unbutton her jeans and she lifts her hips so I can slide them down her legs along with her underwear, leaving her bare except for the bra.
She leans back on her elbows and I take a moment to just look at her, stretched out on white sheets with her dark skin glowing in the dim light and her chest rising and falling too fast.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I start at her ankle, kissing my way up her calf, the inside of her knee, the soft skin of her inner thigh. She's trembling by the time I reach the place where she's already wet for me, and when I put my mouth on her she gasps so loudly I think the neighbors might complain.
I take my time, learning what makes her moan, what makes her hips lift off the mattress, what makes her thread her fingers through my hair and pull hard enough to hurt. She tastes like salt and something sweeter underneath, and I can't get enough.
"Duncan, I'm—" She breaks off into a sound that isn't words, her thighs clamping around my head as she comes against my mouth.
I work her through it until she's pushing at my shoulders, oversensitive, and then I kiss my way back up her body. She pulls me down for a kiss that's filthy, tasting herself on my tongue, and then she's reaching for my belt with hands that are shaking.
I help her with my clothes because coordination is beyond both of us right now. Shirt, belt, jeans, everything ending up in a pile next to her sweater. When I'm finally naked she runs her hands down my chest, over my stomach, lower, and when she wraps her fingers around me I stop breathing.
"Condom," I manage.
"Nightstand."
I find one, tear it open with my teeth because fine motor skills have abandoned me, and roll it on while she watches with eyes that are dark and hungry. Then I'm over her, braced on my forearms, and she's guiding me in with one hand while the other grips my shoulder.
I push inside and we both freeze.
She's tight and warm and perfect, and I have to close my eyes for a second to keep from coming immediately like a teenager. When I open them again she's staring at me with an expression that looks almost surprised.
I start to move, slow at first, watching her face for cues. She wraps her legs around my waist and tilts her hips to take me deeper, and the angle makes both of us groan.
"Harder," she says.
I give her what she wants, driving into her with enough force that the headboard hits the wall.
The sound is rhythmic, steady, punctuating every thrust. She doesn't complain.
Instead she digs her nails into my back hard enough that I'll feel it tomorrow, and meets every thrust with one of her own.
Her hips roll and push against me, matching my rhythm, turning it into something we're building together rather than something I'm doing to her.
The sound of our bodies coming together fills the room, obscene and perfect and better than anything I imagined.
Which I did. More than I could ever admit.
She slides one hand between us, wedging it into the tight space where our bodies are pressed together.
I feel her fingers brush against me as she circles her clit, and the sensation is overwhelming in a way I wasn't prepared for.
Feeling her touch herself while I'm inside her, feeling the movement of her hand and the way her body responds to it, tightens around me in pulses.
I know I'm not going to last much longer.
I'm already too close, have been since the moment I pushed inside her.
"Come for me, Millie," I say against her ear, my voice rough and barely recognizable.
She does. Her body clenches around me so hard I see stars, actually see them, white bursts behind my eyelids.
Her breath catches and then breaks into something between a gasp and a moan, and I feel every muscle in her body go taut before the shuddering starts.
I follow seconds later, burying my face in her neck and saying her name like a prayer, like an apology, like the only word I know.
We stay like that for a while, both breathing hard, my weight pressing her into the mattress. Eventually I roll off and deal with the condom, tossing it in the trash can by her nightstand. When I turn back she's pulled the sheet up to her waist, her hair spread across the pillow in a dark halo.
She turns her head to look at me. "Are you leaving?"
"Do you want me to?"
"…No."
So I stay.