Chapter 20
Blue
I wake up at seven, and she’s on my chest.
I don’t move. I just smile and look at her.
Her mouth’s parted a little against my skin.
There’s the faintest crease at the corner of her eye from how she was sleeping.
A piece of hair is stuck to her cheek where she drooled in her sleep — actually drooled, my girlfriend, a small wet patch on my chest — and I’m staring at it like it’s a religious artifact.
Her eyelashes are dark fans against her skin.
There’s a small scar on her chin I don’t remember her having before, white and faded, and I’m going to ask her about it later when she’s awake. I’m going to ask her about everything.
She makes a soft sound and shifts closer.
My heart thumps.
I can’t believe she’s mine.
I lift my hand and push the stuck piece of hair off her cheek with my knuckle. She doesn’t wake up. She just sighs into my collarbone, and her hand tightens against my skin.
I close my eyes.
I want to remember this.
The weight of her. The way her breath is warm on the side of my neck.
The way her thumb is twitching in her sleep against my ribs like she’s dreaming.
The way the sheet smells different now — like her shampoo, like vanilla mixed in with my detergent.
The way my whole bed has, in eight hours, become a different bed.
I drift back under with her on me.
I wake again at eight to her stirring.
She lifts her head off my chest, blinking, and her hair’s wild around her face — half-up from where I had my hand in it last night, half-down where it’s escaped — and she’s looking down at me with a soft smile.
The smile starts at the corner of her mouth and spreads.
Her cheeks go soft pink. Her eyes get that thing in them I’m learning is mine.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight.”
She drops her forehead to my chest and groans softly. “Oh my god. I drooled on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s fine.”
“It is not fine.”
She laughs into my chest, and I feel the laugh travel through my whole body. She tilts her head back up to look at me, and her hand comes up to my jaw.
“Come up here.”
She crawls up. Her chest against mine, her mouth at my mouth, her hair falling around our faces in a curtain that turns the world into the small dark space between us.
I kiss her.
The frantic first of last night is gone, replaced with something easier, something that already knows where it’s going.
My hand finds her hip over my t-shirt, the one I gave to her to sleep in.
Her hand stays on my jaw. Her thumb keeps moving.
She’s looking at me like she did last night. Except softer.
She grins against my mouth. “Are you sore?”
“From what?”
“The shoulder.”
“Not enough to stop me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, it’s getting better.”
She kisses me harder. I bring my hand to the small of her back and pull her down against me. She gasps into my mouth, and her hands fist in the pillow on either side of my head, and we’re already there. We’re already back at the edge of it. Eight hours of sleep was apparently a long time.
She sits up on me and pulls my t-shirt over her head, and the morning light catches her, and I forget what I was thinking.
Her hair falls down her shoulders. There’s a small pink mark at the hollow of her throat from my mouth last night. Another at her collarbone. Another at the slope of her breast.
She braces her hands on my chest and smiles. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
I reach for the nightstand for a condom. I tear it open with my teeth, and she takes it out of my mouth with a small Blue, Jesus, and rolls it on for me herself, slow and steady, and I have to close my eyes for a second because the casual competence of it might actually kill me.
She lowers herself onto me.
“Melly.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
She sighs a small breathy laugh like she’s enjoying having power over me, and I love her so much I might break. She’s moving above me now, slow rolls of her hips, her hands flat on my chest, her hair around her face, the morning light catching the curve of her shoulder.
I can’t keep my eyes off her.
Every place my eyes land is the new best place.
The slope of her neck. The small slack of her mouth when she rolls her hips, and it hits her right.
The way her hair falls behind her shoulder.
The way her fingers spread on my chest and grip just a little when she breathes in.
The small unconscious bite she does at her own lower lip when she’s trying not to make a sound.
She makes the sound anyway.
A small soft oh at the back of her throat.
My hands finds her waist, not to guide her. I’m along for whatever she’s doing. She’s running this, and I’m letting her. I love what she’s doing to me.
“Blue.”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
I hadn’t realized my eyes had closed. I open them. She’s looking down at me with her cheeks flushed pink and her mouth parted and her hair a mess and her eyes — God, her eyes — wide and blue and on me.
“I love you.”
The morning version of the sentence. Calmer than last night. Heavier in a different way.
“I love you, Melly.”
She moves faster.
Her hands grip my chest harder. Her breath comes in short hot hitches.
I’m watching her come apart above me, and I’m gripping the sheet next to my hip because I’m trying — I’m trying — to hold on long enough for her, and she’s so close, I can see it on her face, in the way her stomach is tightening, in the way her mouth is shaping a word she’s not making, and —
She breaks.
She breaks above me with a small, high broken sound, and her hands fisting in my chest and her hips stuttering, and I let go right behind her, my hand tight on her hip, my eyes locked on her face because I want to see her, I want to watch her, I want every frame of this for the rest of my life.
She collapses onto my chest.
Both of us breathing hard.
I wrap my arm around her back and hold her there.
“Fuck.”
She laughs small and breathless. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Melly.”
I get out of bed, throw a pair of sweats on, and go to the bathroom.
I come back with a warm washcloth and sit on the edge of the bed.
She closes her eyes and lets me clean her.
I don’t say anything. She doesn’t say anything.
But her face does the soft thing it did last night as she watches me, and I’m going to be a man who does this for her for the rest of our lives.
I toss the washcloth in the laundry.
“Hungry?” I ask.
She lifts her head and nods. Her hair’s a complete disaster. There’s a pillow line on her cheek. Her lipstick from last night is mostly gone except for a faint stain at the corner of her mouth. She’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
Her eyelids fall a little.
“You’re —”
She touches her hair. “I probably look insane.”
“You look perfect.”
“Stop it.”
“You’re beautiful, Melly.”
She covers her face with both hands. “Stop.”
I grab her wrists. “Don’t hide your face from me.”
She mutters, “I will.”
I tug at her arms. “You’re my girlfriend now.”
She drops her hands with a cute smirk on her lips and bright eyes. “Stop it, Blue.”
I watch her and smile. “Let’s go get food.”
We get up.
I dig through my dresser and throw her a pair of sweats. She holds them up to her front and gives me a look.
“Blue, these are huge.”
“Roll them.”
“They’re going to fall off.”
“Then they fall off. We’re going eight feet to the kitchen.”
I throw her a t-shirt, and she pulls the t-shirt over her head. It comes down to her thighs. She steps into the sweats and rolls them twice at the waist. She stands in the middle of my room, swimming in my clothes with her hair piled up on top of her head in a knot that’s already coming loose.
I want to put her in my clothes every day for the rest of my life.
She looks at herself in the mirror hanging behind my bedroom door. Her face pulls.
“I look so bad.”
“You look like mine.”
She turns red all the way down her neck and pretends to fuss with the sweats so she doesn’t have to look at me.
I open the bedroom door and say, “I think I have an extra toothbrush.”
She follows me into the bathroom, and I can hear the guys downstairs eating breakfast already. I dig in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet. When I find a new toothbrush, I smile and hand it to her.
She brushes her teeth at my sink. She rinses. She sets the toothbrush down on the edge of the sink and leaves it there. She doesn’t look at me when she does it. I don’t say anything. She fixes her makeup the best she can in the mirror, and it only takes a second because it was never bad.
I take her hand at the top of the stairs.
“Ready?”
“No.”
We go down.
The kitchen, when we walk in, fumbles.
Stanley’s at the table mid-bite of toast, and he freezes with the toast halfway to his mouth.
Benson is at the counter pouring coffee, and the coffee goes past the cup onto the counter before he stops it.
Lucy turns from the stove, and her spatula slips out of her hand and clatters onto the burner.
Rowan, on the stool at the island, takes a sudden interest in the back of the cereal box that he was not previously interested in.
Percy just continues sipping his water like nothing’s going on.
Stanley unfreezes. “Morning.”
Benson puts on a stupid grin. “Morning, Blue. Melly.”
Melly looks at Benson, then Lucy, and says, “Good morning, everyone.”
Rowan says, “Golding. Melly. You guys want eggs?”
Lucy says, “Hey, Mel. Hey, Blue. There’s coffee. I’ll do eggs in a sec.” Her eyes flick to Melly. To me. Back to the eggs. She’s grinning into the pan and trying to hide it.
Benson grabs a paper towel and wipes his spilled coffee. “You guys sleep okay?”
There’s a beat of silence so loud you can hear the eggs sizzle.
Benson realizes what he asked.
His ears go red.
“That’s — I didn’t mean — I meant — generally. Because you stayed the night. And –– Christ.”
Stanley laughs hysterically. “I don’t think they got any sleep last night, Reeve.”