Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Cat
Back at my car, Andi informs me her motorcycle is down the road from where I parked—I must’ve missed it on my way up—and gives me directions to the nearest diner. Her voice is strangely steady, enough so that I venture asking her if she’s already come up with a plan for Monday. She doesn’t respond, though, only cups my cheeks and kisses me until I see stars behind my eyelids. With her hands the only things holding me up, I feel the earth tilt a little more on its axis and I forget to worry about tomorrow.
We kiss for long minutes that pass like seconds. Only when the cold gets to be too much do we pull away. Reluctantly, we separate and drive into the velvety dark.
As soon as we arrive and get seated, Andi excuses herself to place a call using the diner’s landline. While she’s gone, I fiddle with the corners of the plastic menu and commit to memory its many typos. I’m on “Bug Light” when she comes back.
“Did you …?” I ask, trepidation gumming up my airways.
Tossing her head slightly, she smiles and slides into the booth across from me. “Not yet. But I have an idea. It involves reaching someone over the phone, which I wasn’t able to just now, but I’ll try ’em again tomorrow. They should be very interested in talking to me. I think it’ll work, but in case everything goes sideways, I’d rather keep you in the dark. Maintain your plausible deniability.”
I nod past the lump in my throat. It stings that she doesn’t want to share her plan with me, but this isn’t about me. This is about Compass Hollow , a game for which I’m just a full-time temp. “Okay,” I say, gilding the word with an edge of brightness. “I understand.”
“Hey,” she says, her mouth curving down. “You don’t have to pretend around me, Cat. You can be mad at me for not telling you.”
“I’m not mad.” Just hurt.
“I promise it’s not because you’re unimportant. If anything, to me, you’re the opposite.”
Her gaze is so intense that I look away, down at the menu. Bug Light , I read. Pantcakes . Waffly fries. “So you’re gonna try and save our romance?”
“I am,” she says. “Do you believe me?”
Her question hangs in the air between us. Do I believe her?
Meeting her eyes, I surprise myself by saying yes.
A waitress swings by with our order—hot cocoa for me and decaf for Andi—and for a few seconds, we sip our drinks. There’s an old-timey song playing overhead, with annoying lyrics about love being patient and kind. I do my best to block them out.
“Do you mind if I ask you what happened with Sally?” Andi says quietly.
“Oh!” In my haste to deflect, I bang my teeth against my mug. “We don’t have to get into that tonight. You have enough going on as it is.”
Andi studies me until my skin prickles all over. “What if I said I want to get into it tonight?”
My teeth catch my lower lip. On the one hand, I feel like I’m bursting at the seams, like there’s a weight on my chest that can only be banished by spilling my guts out to Andi. On the other hand, I don’t want to pressure her. Not when she already has the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“Cat?” At the sound of my name, I refocus on Andi. “Whatever you’d like to tell me, I’d like to hear. Honestly, earlier, I only asked about Brett and Jan first because it felt safer than asking about Sally.”
“Safer?” I ask, incredulous.
Baring her teeth, Andi lifts her chin. “I can survive Jan. The worst thing he could do to me, he’s already done. I know I don’t look like it to normal people”—I suppress a flinch—“but I’m okay. I’m not perfect—things get … difficult, sometimes—but I have ways of coping with people like Brett and Jan that work for me. Like you said, I’m all right. But you …” She curses under her breath. “I know we kissed, but … I don’t know how you feel about me, or why you and Sally broke up. Maybe you want to be on your own for a little while. Maybe you like someone else I don’t know about. All I know is—”
I swallow. “What?”
With a growl that sends shivers down my back, she curses again. “All I know is the idea of not being able to kiss you again is more terrifying than anything Jan could ever do to me.”
Like I’m leveling up, it hits me. I’ve been wrong this entire time. Andi isn’t unromantic. She’s deeply romantic. The only thing is … she’s also afraid. And for the longest time, that’s all I saw. That’s all she let anyone see.
I get into it. I tell Andi what happened with Sally, how we started out real dating and ended up fake dating—her to get under Andi’s skin and me to avoid yet another family gathering where I’m a disappointment. It doesn’t take very long, and in the retelling, I realize how silly I was to have clung to Sally as long as I did, all because I thought she’d make my life easy for a few days at the end of November. But life isn’t easy—like a heartbeat, its ups and downs are inevitable—and at the end of the day, I’d rather live out a good story than an easy story, which is something I think Andi understands.
“Goddammit, Sally,” Andi murmurs when I’m done. Rubbing her chin, she smiles without humor. “So that’s why you froze up whenever she tried to … well, you know.”
“Yeah.” I train my eyes on the distance between my hands, flat on the flaking formica table, and hers, now cupping her coffee mug. “Are you mad?”
“At Sally? Hell yeah.”
I gulp. “What about at me?”
Andi sighs. “I guess that depends on why you’re here.”
“Why I’m here?” I parrot uselessly. And even though I don’t deserve it, I still think, Hold my hand, damn it. Please hold my hand.
She doesn’t hold my hand. She doesn’t move at all, in fact, except to say, again, “Why are you here, Cat?”
Her voice splinters my one-syllable name in half, and the ache of it is enough to send my eyes searching for hers. Her gaze asks all the questions her mouth didn’t. Why am I here? Is all of this—is any of this—really about Compass Hollow , or my career, or even Andi’s reputation?
Not a chance.
Steeling myself, I confess, “For you, Andi. I drove here for you. Because … I like you. Actually, I think I’ve liked you for a while now.”
A beat passes, ragged and swollen with anticipation. Then: “Even though I’m difficult? Even with my baggage?”
Straightening, I home in on Andi’s face. Behind the set of her jaw and the high ridge of her brow, I catch a hint of softness, or maybe fear, and my insides melt. “I told you seven weeks ago: narrative complexity doesn’t faze me. I don’t mind your baggage, Andi. Anyone who does doesn’t deserve you. Either that or they just need to git gud.”
Andi laughs, and some of the tension that’d been gathering across my neck and back leaves me. I’m about to take a nervous sip of my cocoa when she asks, “Were you, um, planning on driving home tonight?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t really think through what I’d do after I found you,” I admit.
“Stay with me,” Andi says. “I got a motel room for the night next door. It’s not”—she hesitates—“a nice place, but it’s a place to sleep for the night.” Relinquishing her hold on the mug, she plows her hands through her hair and clasps them behind her neck. “There’s only one bed, but I’ll take the couch. We don’t—”
She breaks off, screws her eyes shut. “This is a no-strings-attached offer. Obviously, there’s a lot on our minds. You just got out of a”—she pauses, searching for the right word—“ ‘thing,’ and whatever’s going on between us is …” Opening her eyes, she draws a circle in the air. “I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
We both stare at her outstretched hand, both watch as I take it and trace a path from her lifeline, up her wrist, to the base of the mountain where I found her, or rather, where she found me. “Okay,” I say with a nod. “Let’s go.”
We barely make it into the room before my hands are on Andi’s forearms, shoulders, neck, tugging her down toward me. The second before I press my mouth to hers, I hear her gasp a little. Then she’s nipping at my bottom lip, a little teeth, a little tongue. Hungry, but gentle. Tentative. She tastes like coffee, like smoke and fall leaves and never being cold again, and suddenly, I can’t get enough of her. I drink her in greedily, meeting her tongue with my own while pulling her toward the bed.
A squeak reminds me I’m still wearing her leather jacket. I let go of her face just long enough for her to push it off my shoulders before my hands are roving again, searching for the hem of her T-shirt and peeling it up and off her torso. Underneath, her skin is a tapestry of art, dice and sigils and more landscapes. I want to examine each and every inch of her, commit all her tattoos to memory, but later. I run my fingers underneath the band of her sports bra and pull.
“Oh no you don’t,” Andi says in a tone that makes me shiver.
Flicking down the straps of my dress, she kisses the tops of my shoulders before capturing both my wrists and pinning them against the pillow overhead. She begins making her way across my clavicle and down. Wherever her mouth goes, she leaves behind a trail of goose bumps, until finally, my dress is off both shoulders and puddled around my waist.
“Lift your hips for me, darling,” she commands with a kiss to the hollow at the base of my throat.
I comply, even though my first instinct is to curl myself into a ball. The lights are still on, albeit dimly, and I swallow, nervous for this first time Andi will see me without armor on. Where she is taut, all abs and angles and tan skin, I’m soft, with rolls you’d never find on the cover of any game case or movie poster. At the sound of cloth hitting carpet, though, I force myself to open my eyes.
My vision adjusts to the faintly lit room. I can hardly believe that any of this is actually happening. Andi is warm and real and here , with me , even though I’m weird and uncool and have arguably picked the wrong dialogue option every time with her. I shouldn’t say anything now lest I ruin the moment, but I can’t help it.
“Is this—am I—okay?” I ask in a whisper.
Andi pauses in her journey down my torso. With pure hunger in her eyes, she peers up at me. “You’re beautiful.”
My heart incandesces, like it’s a ball of light that’s been hit by a surge of electricity. Andi dives lower, her left hand teasing my left breast as her right slips under the band of my panties. With her tongue lapping at my right nipple, I nearly lose it then and there. I bury my hands in her hair and pull her against me. Never before has my skin needed something so badly as the touch of her skin, and with desperation firing through my veins, I claw my hands down her back, earning a shudder.
“You’re wet,” she murmurs. Her fingers slide up from my opening to my clit and make circles there that have me thrashing and arching my hips into her.
“Fuck, Andz,” I say. I’m clutching her hard enough to leave marks.
“Okay,” she replies with a smile I feel rather than see. Latching onto my pulse point, she takes the tender skin of my neck between her teeth and works at it with her tongue. Everything goes white as waves of pleasure roil down my entire body.
Then she slips her fingers into me. I moan and sink my teeth into her shoulder but she doesn’t let up, only moves in and out with maddeningly slow thrusts, each push nudging me closer to the edge.
“You okay?” she asks, kissing me again and again, on my neck, my throat, my mouth.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m—”
She curls her fingers, stroking the inside of me, and the swell of pressure that’s been building crests and breaks. It rips all the air from my lungs and leaves me shaking and clinging to Andi like she’s a piece of driftwood in a boundless ocean.
“You okay?” she asks again as I come down from my delirium. She pushes my hair out of my face, damp with sweat, and nibbles my earlobe.
I swallow, my throat thick with feeling. I’m a boneless, quivering mess, and—for the first time since meeting Andi—speechless too. So I nod and pull her even closer, until she’s covering me with her warmth.