Exit Event #8
Hands shaking, Lili runs her fingers through his hair. “You can move,” she whispers. “Just, slowly—oh, f-fuck—like that, yes—that’s—oh—”
New places, it’s like he’s reaching new places of depth and darkness in her. Under his next thrust, she groans; something
deep, released from her. It’s always been lurking, waiting between their bodies, right there, fuck, right there—and she’s moaning it out loud, as he drags her hips harder against his.
Under her hands, she feels his heartbeat.
Aleksandr’s exhale is hard against her neck, watching how she takes him. This, this—this is what makes a life, the breath of someone who holds you; someone you love.
A pained noise drags up her throat, but release, it’s release.
Aleksandr lifts his head, looks at her with immediate concern.
The sting of her tears is sudden, seeing that. “I’m okay,” she gasps out, before he can ask. “Keep going, I’m—I—” Lili shuts her eyes, tight. Her nails bite into his shoulders—within grasp, already: the burst of brightness, blooming fast. “Sasha, I—”
I could have you for my whole life, she thinks, if you’d let me, if you wanted me—
“I know,” he murmurs, a rasp of unsteadiness in his own voice. “I know, I can feel you—I know—”
Train platforms, boats under blue skies, dark bedrooms after late bars; it starts to rise, that habitual fear racing through
her thoughts—alone, she will always be alone; her and all her pain—and with it, the desire for emptiness, to be drained of
herself, the calm she has glimpsed only under rough hands, hard sex.
But now—as she allows herself to fall open, lets her pain move through her, rather than blind her—she isn’t alone in it.
She isn’t alone.
The tears, they come again, just as this pleasure pushes past its break—sobs she swallows back, buries her face against his
shoulder—she needs to stop crying, she can’t keep crying—before it spills, light spills over her—clarity and heat and loss
of language. A surrender.
As she comes, Aleksandr breathes deep against her warm, flushed skin. “Missed that, the way you fucking come for me,” he says.
“Nobody else—nobody else comes fucking close to that.”
Nobody else—which means somebody else has been here with him—and she knew that, a specific she can almost recall, another
name, another woman—but she only holds him closer, gaze awash with tears; crying from pleasure released, and pain felt, and
unknown growth, and changing days, and moving forward—ceaselessly moving forward, into the future becoming present, the past
becoming accepted, hurts becoming calmer things.
“One more time,” he murmurs, low rasp. Breathless, he’s breathless for her. “You can come, one more time—”
“Sasha, I don’t—don’t—”
“Trust me,” he groans. “Fuck, just—Lili, just trust me—”
And oh, that—that.
Across this last stretch of gray, this distance between her and the world, she reaches—across it, for him.
“I do,” she gasps out. “I trust you, I do, I do—”
Hands on her thighs, he pushes her legs higher; her hips protest, body already so sore, but it’s the soreness of exertion that brings health.
Her head falls back, a moan running thinner and thinner as the rhythm of his hips grows deeper still, the work of his shoulders, braced over her, like he’s looking for something in her, like he’d break her open to get it—like he is finding it, and he will stay to put her back together, after.
This is real, she tries to tell herself.
He is here. He is holding her through this, and he is not leaving.
His hips roll into hers again—and she is crying, with his name—Sasha—his name, hers to say again, as he kisses her, as the break starts to come, as she holds him closer still, as her body washes
through again: with potential, heat, and possibility; all these glimmering, fruitful things—what she wants so badly it hurts
even to consider having, for the chance of losing it—but she lets go, held in his arms—she lets it be this inseparable, terrifying
mess of her heart, and the man holding her, and the woman she’s becoming; and this is trust, she thinks—to breathe through
the fear of loss, to surrender through the uncertainty of where this might go, and how this might all end—and when he finally
comes inside of her—hot and heavy, so deep it pushes the last of her breath free—Lili closes her eyes, and feels only light.
As he stills, the blur of her own vision settles.
The slick slide of skin, hands tangled in his hair.
He breathes against her neck. Caught in freedom, she’s coming down. Familiar, she feels the oncoming rush of uncertainty,
hopes inverting back into fears—
But he’s with her, now; still.
Against her chest, she feels his own pulse, a thud that’s rapid and hard.
And she finds some strength to claim it.
I want this.
And I will not let it go.
“You’re tan.”
Quiet, his voice.
Aleksandr traces her skin. Bright sunlight filters in from the windows. The white sheets, tangled around them.
His hand skims down her collarbone. His fingers brush her breast, the line of her tan separating paler skin from the sun; where her bikini was, long days on the boat.
“France,” she supplies. “We spent time on the water.”
“Where were you?”
“Paris, first,” she says. She shifts onto her stomach, nestling closer into him; she kisses his bare shoulder, before propping
her chin on his chest, looking at him. “Then in the south for most of it.”
“Where in the south?” He brushes her hair back from her face, tucking strands behind her ear.
“Cassis, Amina’s family has a place there.”
Aleksandr stares at her, and then laughs, shaking his head.
“What?” she asks.
“I have a house there.”
“What, in Cassis?”
“Near the water, yes. That was one of the places I was thinking we could go, when I mentioned taking a trip.”
“Oh.” That morning he’d left for London, before she tore everything down. But before it can darken this light moment, now—he
speaks again.
“Tell me about the trip,” he says. Against her back, his fingers trace over her spine.
“I kept seeing you. Kept thinking I’d seen you, I mean.”
“In what sense?”
“Everywhere I went, I kept thinking I saw you—someone your height, or with your hair, or your clothes—up ahead of me. In the
streets, bookstores, cafés. There was this one moment, right after we landed in Paris. Near the Armenian church in the third.
I was convinced for a moment that it was you. That you had come after me.”
“Ah.” He hesitates. “Was that before or after you tried calling?”
“Before,” she murmurs. “Before.”
It’s quiet again, then. Questions, too, that she wants to ask.
Vulnerable with hesitancy, Lili draws patterns on his chest. Soft touch, loved skin. The windows are open, sex lingering in
the air. “What . . . what was it like for you, really?” she asks, finally. “The last few weeks.”
Aleksandr gives a laugh, close to a wince. He settles her hand against his chest, thumb brushing over the hollow at the base of her wrist. “I was useless. The first few days, I just worked and drank cognac and listened to Vysotsky. Michael almost called my mother.”
“He cares about you. He loves you, a lot.”
Aleksandr hums a sound of assent, grudging. Lili hides a smile.
“He thought this might happen,” he says, after a few moments.
“What?”
“Michael did. Or rather, I think he hoped.”
“That . . . surprises me,” she says. She slides her fingers between his, fiddling with his father’s ring. “I’d have thought—I’d
understand if he hated me, now.”
He shrugs. “Michael isn’t predictable, not really. He tried to talk to me about this. Told me to swallow my pride about forgiveness.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“He came to me, after seeing you. He told me what happened, then he told me to talk to you. I was angry—God, I was so fucking
angry. At you, but also at him, for telling me to consider talking to you, after what you’d done? As the weeks went on, he’d
keep coming to the loft in the mornings, waiting outside my car when I was trying to get to work—he saw other women leaving,
and the look he’d give me, Christ . . . like he had any right.
“I think I tried to fire him at one point. When I found him waiting for me in my office, after some exhausting client dinner—and
he tried to tell me how life is messy, and forgiveness is never clean, and guilt isn’t something that you weigh and balance
between you and a person you love.
“I don’t know, I thought—God, I thought it was such bullshit. Him talking about how forgiveness isn’t a transaction, confession and apology aren’t things you heap onto scales to assess;
you don’t earn forgiveness, you can only give it, and forgiveness isn’t weakness. All these stupid fucking metaphors—and he
kept trying to emphasize that it’s not always selfless, that forgiveness can also be hope for what you want.
“But in the end, he just said he didn’t care if I decided to be with you. If we worked things out, if I forgave you, but that
hate—my hate would only ruin my life, not yours.”
Lili can barely breathe.
Between you and a person you love.
“Did you hate me?” she whispers, instead.
“Yes,” he admits. “But I couldn’t stomach it in the end.
Hating you, that being the end of it? The thought of us as strangers, out in the world, and that’s it, that’s my life?
Pride saved maybe, but what potential happiness lost .
. . and is it weak, to want to hazard a chance at happiness, instead? ”
And that, the idea: that she could make him happy?
Lili rests her head against his chest, looking at their hands. She traces her thumb over his knuckles.
Questions still hover: Have you forgiven me? Do you want to? Is this forgiveness?
Instead, Lili whispers: “Could I stay here tonight?”
Aleksandr pauses. “I need to speak to Sanae.”
Her heart tightens. “Oh. Does she . . . does she stay here often?”
“No, not really,” he says. “But we should also . . . we should take things slow. This time.”
She nods—right. Trust, a gradual thing she has to regain. “Yes, that—that makes sense. Dating, I guess . . . we could start
dating?”
“I don’t want to date you, Lili.”
All the breath gathered in her lungs—hope, beginnings of joy—stills.