Chapter 21 #2
When Aspen came, her mouth fell open, her back came up off the bed, and she held Maddy’s eyes right up until the wave took her and her eyes finally shut and a sound came out of her that echoed off the walls. Maddy worked her through every last bit of it until Aspen’s body dropped back onto the bed.
Maddy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and crawled back up until her face was hovering over Aspen’s again.
Aspen cupped her cheeks. “You’re amazing.” She whispered and then pulled Maddy into a deep kiss. She gently rolled them until Maddy was on her back looking up.
Aspen settled against her, chest to chest, reached down between them, and ran two fingers through Maddy’s wetness, coating her fingers. She circled Maddy’s clit slowly, building her up. “Something tells me you don’t need foreplay tonight.”
Maddy shook her head, already feeling close. “I want you inside of me. Now.”
Normally this was the part where Aspen would make her beg.
But she didn’t. She slowly dragged her fingers down her slit, circled her entrance, and then pushed two fingers inside.
Aspen set the same slow pace Maddy had, her forehead coming down to rest against Maddy’s, the two of them breathing the same air.
Aspen found the angle, the heel of her hand grinding against Maddy’s clit on every stroke, and Maddy’s breath stuttered and her hands grabbed fistfuls of Aspen’s back. Every time her eyes closed she forced them back open and locked onto Aspen’s.
“Come for me, baby.” Aspen breathed against her mouth.
The orgasm tore through her at hearing Aspen call her baby, hard and long, and Aspen kept moving, carrying her through it with her forehead pressed to Maddy’s and her eyes never once leaving her face.
When the waves finally subsided, she was shaking.
Aspen eased her fingers out and laid down beside Maddy, pulling her into her arms. And Maddy went, still breathing heavily, her face nuzzling Aspen’s neck.
Aspen kissed her forehead and tightened her hold.
They lay there like that for a few minutes in silence, Aspen’s fingers tracing idle lines up and down Maddy’s arm and Maddy nearly drifted off to sleep when Aspen spoke.
“Can I ask you something?” Aspen asked quietly.
Maddy’s stomach did a small, reflexive clench, because she was already feeling exposed and raw from the sex they’d just had, she wasn’t sure she could handle much more of it. But she was too wrecked and too warm and too comfortable in Aspen’s arms to fight it. “Sure.”
“Why’d you go to film school?” Aspen’s fingers kept moving. “Instead of law school.”
Of all the things. Maddy huffed a laugh into her collarbone. “That’s your post-sex question? Not my body count? My deepest fear?”
“I already know your deepest fear. It’s losing a watermelon-eating contest to an eight-year-old.
” She felt Aspen smile against her forehead before she planted another kiss there and then settled her cheek against it.
“I’ve wondered for a while. I mean, you read trial transcripts for fun.
You were head of debate, model UN, valedictorian.
It just seemed like the thing you were born to do.
And I remember you talking about Stanford.
” She paused. “I guess I was just surprised when I found out you were going to USC for film school instead and never understood why. Did you…” Her voice drifted off.
Maddy lifted her head and met her gaze. “Did I, what?”
Aspen hesitated. “...Not get into Stanford?”
Maddy snorted. “Please. Who do you think you’re talking to?!”
“Well I don’t know!” Aspen’s voice came out high pitched. “I’m just trying to make it make sense!”
Maddy laughed and settled her head back onto Aspen’s shoulder. “I did get into Stanford. Full ride, thank you very much. I also got a full ride to USC. I guess I picked film because…” She realized nobody had ever asked her this question before, and she didn’t have an easy answer readily available.
Her parents and Jake were the only ones who had known about her decision before she left.
They had all been ecstatic about the decision, Jake because it was closer than Stanford, Bunny because it was Hollywood, and her dad because he was the only one who really understood why she’d made that choice and that it was the right one for her.
She felt herself searching for the simplest answer, and decided to stop. Aspen had made herself vulnerable tonight when she confessed to her longtime feelings, Maddy owed her the same honesty.
“When I was a kid,” she restarted, “Bunny was gone a lot. Not gone-gone. Just—out, socializing, being Bunny. Clubs, committees, city council meetings. She had a whole schedule.” Aspen resumed the lines on her arm.
“And when she was out, my dad and I watched trash TV. Reality competition stuff. Road Rules, Big Brother, Survivor, The Amazing Race. All of it.”
A laugh moved through Aspen’s chest under her cheek. “I cannot picture your dad watching Road Rules.”
“He was obsessed.” Maddy smiled, her chest feeling both tight and warm at the memory.
“But we didn’t just watch it. We ranked contestants, critiqued their strategies, placed wagers on who would get voted off next—in the currency of snacks, because I didn’t have any money.
And my dad would give these whole speeches about which alliance was going to hold and I’d tell him he was wrong, and I was usually right, and it would cost him a bag of fruit snacks.
” She paused, her smile fading. “It was ours. And it only ever happened when Bunny was out. It was the one thing in that house that was just mine and his.”
Aspen’s hand had stopped on her arm. She didn’t say anything, which Maddy was grateful for. She just held on and let her keep going.
“And I remember watching these shows, season after season, that were so predictable, and I realized that it had all been perfectly curated. That there was someone behind the scenes pulling all the strings, deciding who you rooted for, who you hated, whose meltdown made the cut, and whose elimination was two minutes and a cab ride home nobody remembered.”
Maddy pushed up onto her elbow so she could see Aspen’s face.
“Lawyers work in somebody else’s structure.
The judge’s courtroom, the client’s mess, a precedent some dead guy set in 1894.
There’s no real control over the outcome.
You can make a solid case, but you’re still at the mercy of the judge and jury and antiquated laws.
If I’d become a lawyer, I’d be making arguments, which we both know I’d be excellent at, but I’d still be performing inside an architecture I had no control over.
As a producer, I build the whole fucking architecture.
I decide who gets airtime, which story the episode turns on, who gets the close-up and who gets cut to B-roll.
And honestly, it’s just fun. Every day on set is chaotic, but it's the kind of chaos that is fully within my control. I have a system for everything, and there is something so satisfying about watching the chaos turn into a flawless episode because of the five-hundred little fires I put out to get it there.”
Maddy watched Aspen take everything in. She realized she’d never said any of this out loud to another person before, and she felt lightheaded—had she even taken a breath during that entire monologue? God, she didn’t know how Bunny did it all the time and stayed upright.
“I think,” Aspen said carefully, after a few seconds, “that’s the most words you’ve ever said to me.”
Maddy huffed and dropped her face back onto Aspen’s shoulder. “Don’t get used to it.”
Aspen pressed her cheek against Maddy’s temple and squeezed her tight. “Thank you for sharing that with me.” She rubbed Maddy’s arm with her thumb. “He’d be so proud of you. You know that, right? Co-Executive Producer of a hit reality show. He’d lose his mind.”
Maddy’s eyes went hot with unshed tears.
She was right, he would have lost his mind.
He would have called every week to get the inside scoop and fish for spoilers.
He’d never gotten to see the career they basically built together in their living room, and the unfairness of that still occasionally stole the breath from her lungs at the least possible convenient moments, such as lying naked in her childhood bed with the last person she ever thought she’d be having this conversation with.
“Yeah,” Maddy said, when she could. “He would’ve.”
Aspen pressed a kiss to her hair and didn’t push for more, just held her, and Maddy stayed there, letting her.
* * *
Maddy woke up to sunlight and a dead arm.
The arm was dead because Aspen was laying on it, and the rest of her body was thrown across Maddy’s, face shoved into Maddy’s neck, completely out. The sunlight was coming in at an angle that meant they’d overslept and were probably supposed to be down at the beach already.
But Aspen looked so cute and comfortable, Maddy didn’t want to wake her.
God, who was she?
She’d woken up next to plenty of people over the past fifteen years.
She had a whole protocol for it: assess, extract, coffee, exit, gone before anyone had time to talk about feelings over a bagel.
She didn’t ghost them, she’d learned her lesson on that one, but people tended to be more sentimental first thing in the morning after a night of good sex, and Maddy liked to nip it in the bud. Keep things casual.
She looked at Aspen, waiting for the assessment, the urge to extract, but it didn’t come. She wanted to stay exactly where she was, with a numb arm and someone else drooling slightly on her shoulder.
Aspen stirred. Her eyes blinked open and she lifted her head to meet Maddy’s gaze, and the smile that broke across her face was so first-thing-in-the-morning happy, that Maddy had to kiss it before her own face did anything humiliating.
“Morning,” Aspen mumbled against her lips, voice rough with sleep.
“You drooled on me.” Maddy smiled.