5. Sophie
Sophie
Idrove home from the hospital around noon, after we got Patty settled with crackers and ginger ale and instructions to rest. Grant walked me to my car again. We said practical things. We didn't mention the elevator.
My hand is still warm where he held it.
I should go inside, draw the blackout curtains, and crash for the next eight hours. My body is extremely clear on this. My brain, which is evidently not on my body's team, has other ideas.
I sit in my car and stare at my phone.
I could text him something normal. Thanks for this morning. Let me know if Patty needs anything. Clean, professional, appropriate for two people who are coordinating a sick woman's care and definitely not thinking about each other.
Except that's not what I want to say.
I want to say I haven't been able to think straight since the elevator. Or the cafeteria where I got more ballsy than I ever had in all my life. I want to say five years is a long time to not think about someone and I'm not doing a great job of it.
I don't text him.
***
Inside, I change into pajamas, set my alarm for five, and lie down.
Sleep does not come.
I lie there for two hours thinking about how Grant's hand felt on mine for approximately three seconds in a hospital elevator, which is a completely proportionate use of my time.
When I wake up, it's almost six. I have a missed call from Patty and a voicemail.
"Hi honey, it's me. Feeling better. Grant made soup. He's being very sweet, very attentive — you were right about him being competent. Anyway, I have bridge club tomorrow night, six to nine. Love you."
I play it again.
Bridge club. Six to nine.
I sit up in bed.
Grant will be alone at Patty's house tomorrow night.
This is not information I asked for. Patty is an excellent woman and I love her dearly and I am very suspicious of her.
My phone rings. Grant.
"Hello?"
"It's Grant." Low. Careful. "Hope it's okay I'm calling."
My heart does the undignified thing again. "It's fine. How's Patty?"
"Good. Sleeping. The nausea wasn't as bad this time." A pause. Silence. I can hear him breathing.
"She has bridge club tomorrow night," he says.
"I know. She left me a voicemail."
"Right." A pause that has weight to it. "She never misses it. Six to nine."
"Okay."
"So the house will be empty."
My mouth goes dry. There it is. No preamble, no dancing around it. Just the fact, laid out there, waiting.
"Grant—"
"Or you could give me your address. If that's better."
I sit in my bedroom in the almost-dark, heart doing something that is definitely not professional or measured, and hear myself say: "Unit 214, Building C. Birch Street Apartments."
"I know where that is."
"Seven o'clock?"
"Seven."
He hangs up before I can spiral. Which was probably strategic.
I set the phone down.
Grant Guilligan is coming to my apartment tomorrow night.
I've invited my ex-husband's older brother to my apartment.
The succulent on the windowsill seems very unbothered by this. Good for the succulent.
***
The next day is a very long day.
I clean my apartment even though it's already clean.
Vacuum the carpets, wipe down the bathroom, change my sheets because apparently that's where my head is at.
Light a candle then blow it out because that's a little too on-the-nose.
I want to seem like I'm not trying, while also having clearly been trying.
Around six, I shower. I shave my legs. I tell myself this doesn't mean anything and fully believe it the way I believe the scale is wrong in the morning.
I pull on jeans and a sweater. Damp hair. Casual. Normal. I am a normal person having a normal evening.
I pace the living room. Adjust a throw pillow.
Check the kitchen is clean. Look at the succulent, which I have now moved to the counter near the door, and wonder if I should hide it or if the presence of a struggling plant is actually relatable and humanizing.
I decide to leave it. We're in this together.
At 6:58, there's a knock.
I take a breath. Walk to the door.
Grant stands in the hallway, hands in his pockets. Dark jeans, hair damp like he also showered. There's something steady about that — that he also showered. That this is also something for him.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
Brief shared silence. Normal apartment sounds from down the hall.
"Come in," I say, stepping back.
He walks past me into the living room and I catch that scent again. He looks at the bookshelf. At the blanket on the couch. At the succulent on the counter.
"That plant looks like it's in trouble," he says.
"It's a succulent. They're supposed to look like that."
"That one looks worse than supposed to."
"I water it."
"How much?"
"A lot. I care about it a lot."
He picks it up, turns the pot over in his hands. "Succulents don't need much water. You might be drowning it." He sets it back down, looks at me. "Or maybe it just needs different conditions to thrive."
We are not talking about the succulent.
I should offer him something. Coffee. Water. Beer. I have a whole kitchen full of things I could offer and instead I'm standing six feet away from him unable to do anything as complicated as forming sentences.
"I don't know how to do this," I admit.
"Do what?"
"This." I gesture vaguely between us. "I don't do casual."
"Who said anything about casual?"
"It has to be casual. You're leaving in three months."
His jaw tightens. "Yeah. I am."
"So this is temporary."
"Does that bother you?"
I think about it honestly. "No. I think that's what makes it feel safe."
He crosses the room. Slowly. Stops in front of me, close enough that I have to look up. He's warm and solid and he's been in my head since a dance five years ago and he's right here.
"Safe?" he asks.
"I know where it ends. That's all."
"Sophie." Low. "Look at me."
I am looking at him. At the silver threading through his dark hair. At the lines around his eyes. At the way he's looking at me right now.
"If we do this," he says, "I need you to know — it might not feel safe. It might feel like everything but safe."
"I don't want an out."
"You should."
"Stop telling me what I should want." I step closer, eliminating the last of the distance. "I want you. I've wanted you since that dance and I'm done pretending otherwise. Is that clear enough?"
His hand comes up to cup the back of my neck.
"Crystal clear," he says.
Then he kisses me.
Five years of wanting hits like that — the accumulated weight of every time I didn't let myself think about him, finally released all at once.
He kisses like he's been holding his breath since the wedding and just now remembered how to exhale, and I feel that exhale everywhere, low in my belly, in the sudden weakness behind my knees.
I kiss him back, hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. His other hand grips my hip and we're moving until my back finds the wall near the bookshelf, and the solid impact of it punches a sound out of me I don't recognize as mine.
His mouth moves to my neck. I tilt my head back and I understand in that instant that this is going to be nothing like anything I've had before, and that I am not remotely prepared for it.
He's better at this than I imagined.
He takes my hand and I lead him down the hall.
We don't make it to the bed immediately.
We're kissing in the doorway, his hands in my hair, and I'm thinking this is Grant Guilligan and I invited him here and apparently I've been making good decisions today and then his teeth graze my bottom lip and I stop thinking about anything at all.
His hands find the hem of my sweater. He breaks the kiss just long enough to pull it over my head and toss it, and then his mouth is on my neck, my collarbone, while his hands map down my back like he's memorizing the shape of me for later.
His hands. I was not prepared for his hands.
There's a deliberateness to them. He knows exactly where he's going and he takes his time getting there, and I had some vague expectation of urgency, of someone who's been waiting as long as I have and would want to rush.
He doesn't rush. He treats my body like he has all the time in the world, like the entire night belongs to this and nothing else, and every unhurried inch of it makes me shake harder than speed ever could.
That contrast — his patience against my readiness — does more than the kiss did.
He unclips my bra and it goes. His mouth finds my breast, tongue circling, and I arch into him with a gasp. His other hand palms the other side, thumb dragging slow over my nipple until it's almost too much, and I'm already trembling, fingers digging into his shoulders to keep myself upright.
"Grant—"
"I've been thinking about this for longer than I should admit," he says against my skin, and I feel the words as much as hear them, low and rough against my ribs.
"How long?"
"Years. Every single time I let myself think about you, which was more than I'll ever tell you." His mouth drags lower, tongue tracing the underside of my breast, and I lose whatever I was about to say.
"Okay," I manage, which is the most intelligent thing I've produced since the doorway. "Okay, but—" He does something with his thumb and I lose the rest of the sentence entirely.
He pulls at my jeans and they go, along with everything underneath them, and I'm bare against the cool air of the hallway while he's still half-dressed, which feels like a specific kind of unfair I don't have the words to protest. His own shirt comes off — I help, which feels like a contribution — and I get my first real look at him.
Broad chest, dark hair across it, softer belly than I expected and somehow more appealing for it.
A scar along his ribs, another on his shoulder.
Evidence of a life lived in places that left marks, and I want to trace every single one of them with my mouth, which is a thought I'm having with startling clarity for a woman who's currently naked in a hallway.
I run my hands over him and his muscles tense under my touch, a full-body response he doesn't bother to hide.