Chapter 18
I come back to my body slowly, registering soft movement at the curve of my neck. His mouth. A kiss, I think at first, but his lips are moving. Forming the faintest, softest words.
“Jacob?”
He stills, then kisses me at the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
“Yes?”
I shift slightly, making his hand brush against me, and I inhale sharply, still sensitive.
He removes his hand and retreats, his chest no longer pressing against my back, but I reach for him.
“No, stay. Like this,” I say. “I want you like this.”
Relief settles through me when I feel him again, his warm skin meeting mine, but a second later, he’s gone.
“Jacob,” I say, the word a long sound, almost a whine, but he shushes me gently, one hand tapping my hip.
“Lift,” he says, and I do, just as he slides a pillow beneath me.
“Good?” he asks, running a hand down my spine, and with that firm pressure, with the pillow underneath me, I feel surrounded on every side. In a way that makes me feel safe. Cocooned.
I move a little, finding what feels comfortable, bending my knees at an angle. “Yes,” I say, and his hand moves lower, over the contours of my body. I lean into his touch, reveling in the sensation, the way he grips me.
I want him inside me. I want to feel him again. With nothing between us.
I freeze.
“Wait,” I say. “We didn’t talk about it, but—” I look over my shoulder. “I would be fine with…I’m on the pill,” I tell him. “So, if you’re comfortable with it—”
I watch him, taking in the tension on his face, the way his chest moves as he releases a ragged breath. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. If you want—”
“God, yes.” He leans down, capturing my mouth. “I don’t have test results on me, but I’m good.”
“Me too.” I wouldn’t take a stranger’s word for it, but this is Jacob. We may only have one night, but I wouldn’t classify this as a one-night stand. Not like last time. Whatever we’re doing, it’s somehow…more.
He kisses me again, and then he’s moving. My cheek falls back on the pillow as his hands find the dip of my waist. And slowly, so slowly, he pushes in, the pressure building, a gradual sense of fullness.
“More,” I say, and he responds so quickly I gasp, my body rocking forward, then back, then forward again, the friction from the pillow beneath me sending sparks behind my eyes.
I can hear him, his breathing harsh, a rush of incoherent sounds, but between them I hear something else. My chest grows tight as I make it out.
Neelam.
This name that no one else calls me.
This name he just learned, though he says it like he’s always known it.
Like he’s always known me.
I respond with his name, and his hand lands on top of mine, holding it tightly.
He’s close, I can tell. I know the signs now. The noises he makes, the way he moves. I can predict it. Sense it.
But he’s holding out, waiting.
“Do you think you can?” he asks. “Again?”
And as good as this feels, as much pleasure as I’m finding in this, I know I can’t. And I don’t need to.
I want this.
Exactly like this.
“Let go, Jacob,” I say. “Let go.”
And he does, my name on his tongue as he comes apart.
—
We sleep, and wake to find each other, then fall asleep again.
We laugh, whispering stories about the time he broke his leg climbing a tree, how James had to carry him home, how both his mother and Maggie yelled at the two of them for being so reckless, how they both cared for him as he got well.
I tell him about my mother, how we used to spend Friday nights on the couch, a sacred tradition of takeout and a movie that continued into my teen years, my preferred way to start the weekend even when my peers asked to hang out and do something else instead.
We spend the rest of the night doing everything we’ve been imagining, making the most of this time. Repeating the things we like until we’re both too exhausted, our limbs too heavy to move.
And when the morning comes, we’re both awake. Lying on our sides, facing each other.
I lift a hand, running it over his cheek, the texture rough, his stubble grown in.
“You’d look good with a beard,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. It’d be very professorial.”
He laughs, a joyful but tired sound. Neither of us got enough rest last night, but I wouldn’t change a second of it for anything.
“Why poetry?” I ask him. “That’s what you teach, right?”
“Yeah. I—” He stops, his brows creased in thought.
“I never planned on it, really. I just—I had a hard time expressing myself as a kid. I didn’t talk much, and my mother, she worried about that.
” He rolls onto his back, lifting his hand and placing it under his head.
“Until James, I didn’t have very many friends, and I think it was actually Maggie who suggested it.
James was signed up for football at the local community center, and Maggie saw there was a creative writing class there and told my mother about it.
She signed me up, and…after that, I never considered studying anything else. ”
“You write?” I imagined him in rooms of dusty textbooks, poring over old poems, writing papers, analyzing and finding meaning. I didn’t imagine him producing work of his own.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Poetry?”
He nods. “And short fiction, but I haven’t done that in a long time. It’s mostly poetry these days.”
My brows rise, and when I don’t say anything for a long moment, he looks over at me. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing. It’s just…I don’t understand how you didn’t lead with that.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “What do you mean?”
“The night we met. I can’t believe you didn’t introduce yourself as a poet. A bagpiping poet. Like, c’mon. How is that not your opening move?”
He laughs then, the sound deep and rich, and satisfaction rises within me.
I’m going to miss this.
When I leave this room, we’ll still talk to each other.
We won’t return to the awkward, stilted interactions from before, but we won’t have this…
intimacy. I won’t have the privilege of reaching my hand out and being able to touch him, of lying beside him, of feeling like I can ask him anything and not be rebuffed.
We won’t have this openness between us, the way we both want to share, stories and details about our lives tumbling out of us, and none of it feels like it’s too much.
The more I learn about him, the more I want to know. But soon, this will come to an end.
I’ll have questions I won’t get answers to.
There are parts of him I’ll never know.
“I think you overestimate how many women are into bagpiping poets,” Jacob says.
“And you clearly underestimate them.”
“Well,” he says. “I’m just glad you number among them.” He smiles, slow and lazy. “I prefer a different kind of creative myself.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. I’m more drawn to reality television producers. Especially ones who eat bugs. That’s what really gets me going.”
A laugh escapes me. “You make it sound so awful. I’m not just picking up bugs and eating them for fun.”
“I don’t know. It sure sounded that way.” He reaches toward me, pushing a piece of hair out of my face. “Worked for me, though, didn’t it?”
We watch each other, and I try to memorize what he looks like this close. His absurdly long lashes; the sharp line of his nose; the small mole he has on his chin, one I didn’t notice before but can make out from this angle.
His smile fades a bit, and I can feel the shift in mood. What was once light and airy starts to gain weight, sinking, everything turning heavy.
“I probably need to go soon,” I say. Not because I want to, but because I can tell those words are coming and I want to be the one to say them first. Silly, maybe, but I need that illusion of control. I need to pretend.
Because won’t it hurt less if I’m the one to leave? Instead of the one who’s left?
“Okay,” he says, his expression soft. Resigned.
He doesn’t push, or ask for five more minutes, or ask me to stay a little longer, and I almost wish he would. How unfair of him to respect the boundaries I set. How unfair of him to do what I told him I wanted. To allow this to end.
I sit up and climb out of bed, and he does the same. I pick my clothes off the ground, and he pulls new ones out of his suitcase.
“I’ll call the garage,” he says, slipping a clean shirt over his head. “Find out when the car will be ready.”
“All right.” I zip my dress up as far as I can and slip my feet back into my shoes. I scan the room quickly, grabbing my purse and putting it over my shoulder. “I guess…I’ll see you down at breakfast, then?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Okay.”
I step toward the door, but Jacob beats me to it, prepared to open it for me.
“Neelu,” he says, and I look up at him. There’s the briefest flicker of hesitation, and then he moves toward me.
And it’s natural. The way my eyes slide shut, the way I meet him halfway, the softest brush of his mouth against mine.
I feel his fingers at my chin, the pressure light as he keeps me there, his eyes bouncing around my face, as if he too is memorizing this moment, savoring it so he can recall it later.
And something about that look, the way it lays him bare, makes me want to erase every line I’ve drawn.
“I don’t want to go,” I say, and his mouth parts in surprise.
“What?”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to go.”
His eyes soften, and his fingers move, traveling along the line of my jaw. “I don’t want you to go either. But—”
“I know we need to leave the hotel today,” I say. “I know we’re going to Skye, but when we get there, tonight, stay with me.”
“I—” His forehead creases. “I thought you said—”
“I know.” My pulse speeds up. “But…I’m here. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I don’t know when I’m going back, but until I do, why can’t we have this?”
His expression doesn’t change. He remains the same, watching me, no hint of a reaction on his face.
“That is, if you want to do this again,” I say. “If you…I don’t want to assume.”
“No, I—it’s just…what do you mean by this? Sex?”
I almost flinch.
I don’t know why. That is what we did. What we’ve done before. But that word feels so…clinical. So matter-of-fact.
“Yes,” I say.
He swallows roughly. “That night. What I said about why I couldn’t see you again, it wasn’t a line. I meant it then. And even more now that I know you…”
I hear those words now, an echo, traveling through time.
I don’t know if I can do this again without knowing your name. I don’t know if I can do this again knowing you’re leaving.
“You were fine with last night,” I say.
Jacob’s chest expands, and then he releases a long breath. His voice is painfully sincere when he says, “That’s because I couldn’t stay away.”
“Then don’t. Let us have this.” I’m pleading, and I don’t even care. There’s no pride being bruised. No ego.
Because I can see the conflict on his face—the want mixed with fear. It’s a mirror, a reflection of how I feel.
I rise up on my toes, kissing him softly, and he meets me there, responding in turn.
“Just think about it,” I say, and when I break away, he chases my mouth, drawing me back to him.
It sparks something within me. The smallest glimmer of hope.
“All right,” he says quietly. He kisses me one more time, and then he turns the handle, and I slip out the door.