THIRTY-TWO
HANNAH
Daniel’s weight lifted from me at once.
He moved to the far side of the bed and stood. His belt hung open, his shirt lay near the doorway, and his breathing was still rough. He picked up the shirt, shrugged into it, and left it open. Then he turned toward me with both hands at his sides.
“Okay,” he said.
I sat up and pulled my blouse closed. My fingers missed the first button twice.
The room looked indecently ordinary around us. My book remained open facedown on the nightstand. One of Grace’s hair ties circled the lamp base. Rain moved softly against the window while my body still ached with wanting.
“I thought I could,” I said.
Daniel fastened one button and stopped with his fingers at the next. “Do you want me to go downstairs, or do you want me to leave?”
“Leave.”
The answer hurt after everything I had done to bring him there. He gave one short nod.
I stood and turned away to finish the buttons. Behind me, Daniel buckled his belt and buttoned his shirt. He lifted the comforter from where it had twisted beneath us and drew it back across the bed. Then he picked up the two pillows that had fallen to the floor and set them against the headboard.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I knocked them down.”
He said it as if the pillows were the only part he could put right. He straightened the corner nearest the door.
“I can’t explain it yet.”
“Then don’t.” He faced me, desire still visible in the flush along his throat. “I don’t know how to leave without making it feel like I’m punishing you.”
“Just leave.”
He nodded. “Thursday is still Thursday.”
“Seven.”
I walked him downstairs. He put on his shoes, took his coat from the hook, checked that his phone was in his pocket, and left. I locked the blue door after him.
Upstairs, my bed was almost the way it had been before. One pillow sat backward, the zipper on its case showing at the top. I turned it around and got beneath the comforter in my clothes.
On Thursday, Daniel arrived at seven.
We ate at a small Mexican restaurant with paper stars hanging in the windows.
For the first ten minutes, I kept waiting for him to become overly agreeable or too cheerful.
Instead, he complained about a spreadsheet someone had formatted in six shades of orange and asked whether Grace had recovered the science notes she thought she lost.
Halfway through dinner, I set down my fork.
“I wanted you Friday.”
Daniel’s attention settled on me.
“Then I remembered the hotel. Not everything. Just enough that I couldn’t have you in my bed and keep breathing normally.”
He rubbed his thumb once over the condensation on his glass. “I’m sorry.”
I looked down at my water glass. Daniel let the server refill it and asked if I wanted to split another order of tortillas.
At my door later, I kissed him good night. His hand moved into my hair, and the kiss deepened until I felt the same pull low in my body. When I stepped back, he touched his forehead briefly to mine.
“Sunday?” he asked.
“I’ll pick the movie.”
“Then I reserve the right to object.”
“You can object from your own seat.”
He smiled and went down the walk.
We kept dating.
On Sunday, we saw a mystery whose solution Daniel guessed forty minutes too early.
The following week, he cooked at his apartment while I sat at the counter and watched him try to make a fifth meal out of eggs.
We kissed in his kitchen until the pan began smoking and the alarm sent us apart laughing.
He opened the windows, scraped dinner into the trash, and ordered noodles.
I went home afterward because I wanted my own bed.
Another night, we stood beside my car for twenty minutes, kissing beneath a parking-lot light while people pushed grocery carts around us. I wanted him then too. Wanting no longer felt like an emergency that had to be answered before he changed his mind.
The next Wednesday, a late school bus stranded six students outside the office and I canceled dinner with forty minutes’ notice.
Daniel asked whether I needed him to collect Grace.
When I said she was already home with me, he moved the reservation to Friday and sent me the new time.
I worked until the last student was gone without also managing his disappointment.
On Friday, he arrived hungry and complained that the restaurant had given away the table by the window.
He continued calling on the days we had agreed to call. He arrived for dates and left at the end of them. By the third week, Friday had become one evening among several.
Three weeks after I stopped him in my bedroom, my sister invited Grace to spend Saturday night with her and my niece. By then, Daniel and I already had plans for dinner at my townhouse.
I stood in a pharmacy aisle after work and chose a box of condoms. I bought no decoy item from the shelf beside them. At home, I put the box in my nightstand and changed the sheets.
Then I sent Daniel a message.
Grace will be gone all night. I want you to stay. Bring what you need for the morning.
His answer came a few minutes later.
I want that too. I’ll be there at six.
He arrived with groceries in one hand and a small overnight bag in the other. He set the bag beside his shoes and carried the food to the kitchen. We cooked pasta, opened wine, and ate at my table while the townhouse darkened around us.
There was no performance of normal conversation. We talked, but every time Daniel’s gaze dropped to my mouth, I felt it between my legs. When he reached past me for the pepper, the brush of his sleeve against my arm made me lose the sentence I was saying.
After dinner, he carried both plates to the sink.
“Leave them,” I said.
He turned off the water.
I crossed the kitchen and took his hand. “Come upstairs.”
I had made the choice hours before Daniel arrived. The box waited in the drawer because I had put it there. When we entered the bedroom, the sight of him beside my bed tightened something in me, but it did not send me back to a hotel or a hospital floor.
I closed the door.
Daniel touched my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Hannah.”
“Kiss me.”
His mouth came down on mine. I gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him against me, feeling the hard length of him through our clothes. His hands moved over my back and down to my hips, drawing me closer until I could feel every breath he took.
I opened his shirt one button at a time. His jaw tightened while I pushed the fabric from his shoulders. The body beneath it was familiar, but I had never touched him in this room with rainless dark at the windows and my own keys on the dresser.
I ran my palms over his chest, down his stomach, and opened his belt.
Daniel caught my face between his hands and kissed me harder. His tongue stroked mine. I pushed his pants and boxer briefs to his thighs and wrapped my hand around him.
His forehead dropped to my shoulder. “God.”
I stroked him slowly. His hips jerked into my grip, knocking my wrist against his belt buckle.
“Sorry,” he said, breathless.
“Don’t apologize for that.”
The startled laugh he gave me loosened the last stiffness in my shoulders.
“My turn,” he said, voice rough.
He drew my sweater over my head. My bra followed, then my jeans, his hands steady while mine were not. When I stood naked in front of him, his gaze stayed on me. He did not hurry to cover it with words.
I reached for him again.
He kissed me and walked me backward until the mattress caught behind my knees. I sat. Then he went to his knees.
His mouth closed over one nipple. Pleasure pulled sharply through me. I held the back of his head as he sucked, then switched to the other breast, his palm moving along my thigh. He kissed down my stomach and eased my knees apart.
The first touch of his tongue made me gasp.
Daniel hooked one arm beneath my thigh and drew me closer to the edge. He licked through me slowly, finding my clit and circling until my fingers tightened in his hair. My hips moved toward his mouth.
“More,” I said.
He gave me more. His tongue pressed harder, then softened when I pulled at his hair. He slid one finger inside me, then another, curling them until the pleasure gathered too quickly to contain.
“Right there.”
He stayed with the rhythm I gave him. The orgasm broke through me hard enough that I had to brace one hand behind me on the mattress. Daniel held my thigh while I shook against his mouth, drawing it out until I pushed weakly at his shoulder.
He rose and kissed me. I tasted myself on his tongue and felt his erection against my inner thigh.
I pulled him onto the bed.
For a moment he lay over me, his forearm beside my head, both of us breathing hard. The pressure of his body was what had stopped me last time. Now I put my hands on his back and drew him closer.
“The drawer,” I said.
Daniel reached into the nightstand and found the box. He opened one packet, rolled the condom down his length, and waited for me.
I turned us before he could move, pushing him onto his back. Then I straddled him.
His hands closed around my hips. I lifted, guided him to me, and lowered myself slowly. The stretch made me stop halfway, my head falling forward.
Daniel’s fingers loosened at once.
I took another breath and sank the rest of the way. My body clenched around the familiar stretch of him.
“Hannah.” My name came out broken.
I planted my hands on his chest and moved.
The first strokes were slow. His face opened as I found the angle I wanted, rocking forward until the base of him pressed against my clit. Daniel’s hands traveled up my sides and cupped my breasts. His thumbs moved over my nipples, and the sensation pulled a moan from me.
He started to lift his hips.
“Let me,” I said.
He settled back against the mattress.
I rode him faster. The room filled with the soft strike of our bodies and the uneven sounds neither of us restrained. Daniel’s gaze moved over me as if he could not decide where to look. I took one of his hands and brought it between my legs.
“Touch me.”
His fingers found my clit. He matched the pace I set, his other hand gripping my hip as pleasure tightened again.
My thighs began to burn. I bent over him, kissed him, and kept moving. Daniel wrapped an arm around my back and matched my rhythm.
“I’m close,” he said against my mouth.
“So am I.”
His fingers pressed harder. My orgasm rose fast, catching me with him deep inside. I cried out and clenched around him. Daniel thrust up once, then again, his hand tight at my back as he came with a low, shaken sound.
I stayed over him until my legs stopped trembling. He kissed my shoulder, my throat, the corner of my mouth. When I finally shifted, he held the condom at the base and went to the bathroom.
I lay beneath the sheet listening to the water run. The lamp cast a warm circle across the wall. My clothes were scattered from the doorway to the bed, and Daniel’s overnight bag still waited downstairs.
He returned with a damp washcloth and cleaned me gently before throwing it into the hamper. Then he got under the sheet beside me.
“Come here,” I said.
He came willingly, one arm beneath my neck. I settled against his chest.
We did not decide anything in the dark. We slept.
In the morning, I woke to the smell of coffee and the faint clatter of a pan downstairs. My blouse and jeans were folded on the chair. Beside me, Daniel’s half of the bed had cooled, and the sheet remained tangled around my legs.
Daniel had made eggs. He put a plate in front of me and glanced at the clock.
“Your sister said ten thirty, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll leave by ten.”
He ate with me and rinsed his plate.
“Where do you keep fresh sheets?” he asked.
“Hall closet. Top shelf.”
While I showered, he stripped the bed. When I found him fighting the clean fitted sheet, one corner had snapped loose for the second time.
“You can run a five-state team,” I said.
“This mattress is hostile.”
I caught the opposite corner. We made the bed together, laughing when his side came loose again.
He still zipped his toothbrush into the overnight bag before he went downstairs.
At the door, I kissed him.
“Call me tonight,” I said.
“I will.”
He stepped outside carrying everything he had brought. I turned the lock after him, then went upstairs.
The bedroom smelled faintly of detergent. The pillows faced the right direction. My book sat on the nightstand where I had left it, and the only toothbrush in the bathroom cup was mine.
Four days later, the principal asked me to cover a district meeting on the same afternoon Dad’s cardiologist moved his follow-up. Grace had an event she had been preparing for all month, with a pickup time that overlapped both.
I spread the three schedules across my kitchen table, then shoved them into a pile. I knew what I would have done a year ago: erase my meeting before anyone else saw the collision.
Daniel’s name waited in my phone.