14. Hugo
— ? —
Hugo
I’ve developed a habit I’m not proud of.
Every night, on my way home from wherever I’ve been, my mother’s house, the gym I started going to just to have somewhere to put my energy, the empty studio where I used to make music, I drive past Lucille’s building.
Not to see her. Not to check on her. Just to confirm that her studio light is off, that she’s gone home for the night, that she’s not working herself into the ground the way I know she tends to.
It takes me ten minutes out of my way. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything.
Tonight, the light is still on.
It’s past eleven, and the storm that’s been threatening all day has finally broken, rain coming down in sheets so dense I can barely see through my windshield.
The streets are flooding at the intersections, and the few other cars on the road are crawling along at half speed, everyone trying to get somewhere safe before the worst of it hits.
But her light is on.
I tell myself to keep driving. She’s an adult. She can take care of herself. She’s made it abundantly clear over the past weeks that she doesn’t need me hovering, doesn’t want me pushing, doesn’t require my protection or my concern.
I pull over anyway.
Through the rain-blurred window, I can see the entrance to her building, and I can see her standing in the doorway, hunched against the wind, her phone pressed to her ear.
She’s gesturing with her free hand, clearly frustrated, and as I watch, she ends the call and shoves the phone into her bag with more force than necessary.
Her car is in the lot behind the building. She should be driving home.
She’s not driving anywhere.
I’m out of my car before I consciously decide to move, jogging through the downpour toward the building entrance. The rain soaks through my shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to my skin, and by the time I reach the overhang where she’s standing, I’m drenched.
“Hugo?” She stares at me like I’ve materialized from thin air. “What are you… why are you…”
“Your light was still on.” The words come out rougher than I intend. “I drive by sometimes. Just to check.”
Surprise flickers in her expression, or maybe that complicated mix of emotions I’ve learned to recognize as her trying to decide whether to be touched or annoyed.
“My car won’t start,” she says. “Dead battery, I think. I’ve been trying to get a rideshare but everything’s surging because of the storm, and I can’t get through to roadside assistance…”
“Come on.” I gesture toward my car, still running at the curb, hazard lights blinking. “I’ll drive you.”
She hesitates.
“Lucille, you’re going to stand here all night waiting for a ride that might not come, or you can let me take you home. It’s ten minutes. I promise I won’t try to have a meaningful conversation.”
That gets me an almost-smile.
“Fine,” she says. “But only because I’m freezing.”
We make a run for it.
The distance from the overhang to my car is maybe thirty feet, but by the time we’re both inside, we’re soaked through. Lucille collapses into the passenger seat with a shudder, her teeth chattering, her silk blouse clinging to her skin in ways I’m trying very hard not to notice.
I turn the heat up as high as it goes.
“Here.” I shrug off my jacket one-handed while keeping the other on the wheel, and drape it over her shoulders. It’s wet too, but it’s better than nothing. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re hypothermic.”
“I’m not hypothermic. I’m mildly uncomfortable.” But she pulls the jacket tighter around herself, and I see some of the tension leave her shoulders. “Thank you. For stopping.”
“I told you. I always drive by.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing that.
“Every night?”
“Most nights.”
“Hugo…”
“Don’t.” I keep my eyes on the road, on the rain hammering against the windshield, on anything except the woman beside me wrapped in my jacket. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m not asking for credit. I just needed to know you were okay.”
The drive to her building, Alice’s building, technically, but she’s been staying in the guest room so long it might as well be hers, takes longer than usual.
The streets are rivers, the traffic lights barely visible through the downpour, and twice I have to navigate around flooding that’s swallowed the intersections entirely.
By the time I pull up to her building, the storm has worsened.
Lightning cracks across the sky, close enough that the thunder follows almost immediately, a booming crash that makes Lucille flinch. The wind is howling now, bending the trees at dangerous angles, sending debris skittering across the pavement.
“You can’t go out in that,” I say.
“I’ll make a run for it. It’s just to the door.”
“The door is fifty feet away and there’s a tree branch the size of my arm rolling down the sidewalk.” I turn off the engine. “Please. Just wait until it passes. Let me wait it out with you. I need to know you’re safe.”
She looks at me for a long moment, rain streaming down the windows around us, the world outside reduced to chaos and noise.
“Come inside,” she says finally. “Just until the storm passes.”
Alice is out of town for work, which Lucille mentions as we climb the stairs to the apartment, as if she needs to explain why she’s inviting me in.
I don’t comment. I’m too focused on not dripping all over the hallway carpet, on keeping my eyes straight ahead instead of on the way her wet clothes cling to every curve.
The apartment is warm and quiet, a stark contrast to the violence of the storm outside. Lucille locks the door behind us and stands there for a moment, both of us dripping onto the hardwood, the silence suddenly very loud.
“I should change,” she says.
“You should.”
Neither of us moves.
She’s standing three feet away from me, wrapped in my wet jacket over her ruined silk blouse, her hair plastered to her cheeks and neck, her chest rising and falling with each breath.
The rain has made her makeup run slightly, dark smudges beneath her eyes that should make her look tired but instead make her look wild.
Real. Unguarded in a way she almost never is around me anymore.
I want her so badly I can barely see straight.
“Lucille.” Her name comes out rough, a warning. “I’m trying so hard to be patient. To earn you back properly. To not push or pressure or do anything that makes you feel like I’m claiming what you’re not ready to give.”
“I know.”
“But you’re standing there in wet silk looking at me like…” I stop, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “Looking at me like you want me to stop being patient.”
Her breath catches.
“And if I do?”
“Then you need to tell me. Because I can’t read your mind, and I won’t take what you don’t offer, and if you need me to leave right now I will. I’ll walk out that door and I won’t bring this up again. But I need you to tell me what you want, Lucille. I need to hear it.”
The silence drags between us, electric.
And then she crosses the three feet of space and kisses me.
The first touch of her mouth is a match striking.
I’ve been so careful for so long, patient and restrained and desperately controlled, that when she finally gives me permission, everything I’ve been holding back crashes through at once. My hands find her waist and pull her against me, and she makes a sound against my lips that I feel in my spine.
“Tell me to stop,” I manage between kisses.
“No.”
“Lucille…”
“I’m still angry at you.” She’s pulling at my shirt, her fingers clumsy with cold and want. “I’m still so angry at you, Hugo.”
“I know.”
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”
“I know that too.”
I back her against the wall, my hands sliding beneath the wet silk of her blouse to find the warm skin underneath. She gasps when my cold fingers make contact, her back arching off the wall, and I swallow the sound with my mouth.
This isn’t soft. This isn’t the careful, tender reunion I imagined during all those nights alone. This is hungry and desperate and almost punishing, months of frustration and longing and grief pouring out of both of us at once.
She bites my lower lip, hard enough to sting, and I growl against her mouth.
“Bedroom,” she says.
“Where?”
“Down the hall. Left.”
I don’t let go of her. I can’t. Instead, I lift her, and her legs wrap around my waist instinctively, her arms circling my neck. She’s lighter than I remember, or maybe I’m more desperate, and I carry her down the hall without breaking the kiss, navigating by memory and luck until I find the door.
The guest room is small, dominated by a bed with white sheets that seem to glow in the darkness. I set her down on the dresser just inside the door because the bed feels too far away, because I need her now, because I’ve been waiting so long that every second of distance feels like torture.
“This okay?” I ask, my hands on her thighs.
“Yes.” She’s already reaching for my shirt, pulling it over my head with an urgency that makes my blood run hot. “Yes, Hugo, just…”
I silence her with my mouth.
Her blouse is next, buttons proving impossible with shaking hands, so I simply pull until they scatter across the hardwood. She laughs against my lips, surprised and breathless, and the sound undoes a knot in my chest.
“That was expensive,” she says.
“I’ll buy you ten more.”
“I don’t want ten more. I want…” She breaks off as my mouth finds her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breast above the lace of her bra. “I want…”
“Tell me.”
“You. I want you.”
The words hit me like a physical force. I pull back just enough to look at her, perched on the dresser, half-undressed, her eyes dark with want and her lips swollen from my kisses, and I feel a fracture open in my chest.
“You have me,” I say. “You’ve always had me. I was just too stupid to show you.”
“Hugo…”
“I’m going to show you now. If you’ll let me.”
She answers by pulling me back to her.
The dresser is cold beneath her thighs, but I warm it with my hands.