Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
The knot under Michelle Chen’s left shoulder was the one she swam back into her body every time she decided a six-hundred-meter set should be fifteen hundred, and Aspen leaned into it with both thumbs and maybe half her attention.
The other half was still in her own bed, where she’d left Maddy forty minutes ago—face-down, dead to the world, one arm flung across Aspen’s side of the mattress like she’d been reaching for it in her sleep.
“You’re chipper today,” Michelle said into the face cradle.
Aspen found the edge of the knot and pressed. “I’m always chipper.”
“You’re extra chipper. I can feel you grinning at my back.” Two years of 8 a.m. Thursdays had taught Aspen that Michelle didn’t ask questions so much as log findings, and she missed nothing. “And you’re humming.”
Was she? Well, that’s embarrassing. Or at least it would be, if she weren’t so ridiculously happy.
“So. Who is she?” Michelle grunted as Aspen pressed harder.
She’s the woman currently asleep in my bed that I’ve been obsessed with since I was fourteen, and this week she’s been letting me make her coffee every morning and steal the first sip, Aspen didn’t say.
“Lie still,” she said instead, pulling Michelle’s arm back into a stretch, and letting her fill in the gaps on her own.
It had been the best week of her life, and she couldn’t be bothered to feel even slightly ridiculous about it because one thing kept repeating over and over in her head: she was dating Maddy Sterling.
Okay, well, not officially. Nobody had said the word that ended in -friend.
They hadn’t talked labels yet. But they kissed all the time, and they had sex, like, an insane amount of it, and as of this week, they had started going on actual dates.
In public. With both of them fully aware, the entire time, that it was a date.
So yeah, she was now one of those disgustingly happy and smitten people who apparently hummed.
Maddy’s original six week departure date had come and gone.
Six weeks ago, her plan had been to leave two days after the Cup.
But she wasn’t needed back in LA until the fifteenth and even though they’d never formally discussed her extending her stay to spend more time together, Aspen knew it was already agreed upon.
On Monday, she’d gone over to Bunny’s to cook Maddy dinner, and kept things entirely PG, as promised.
Maddy had texted at two that afternoon and asked would it be weird if our parents joined us?
And then Aspen had spent the next forty minutes deciding the lemon-garlic chicken needed to be the best chicken she had produced in her life.
She paired it with blistered green beans and a loaf of crusty bread she’d picked up from Crown Bakery on the way over.
Bunny had contributed the wine and approximately four hundred opinions.
It felt easy, standing there at Bunny’s stove with Maddy leaning against the counter, stealing green beans straight out of the pan, Bunny monologuing from the barstool, her dad sitting next to her laughing, the dogs doing their figure-eights around everyone’s ankles.
After dinner, Bunny announced that they had to watch When Harry Met Sally and the four of them migrated to the living room.
Aspen and Maddy took one end of the big sofa, Aspen’s arm along the back of it and Maddy folded into her side.
Bunny and her dad took the other end with both Pomeranians and the remote, which Bunny held hostage because Maddy wanted to watch Face/Off instead.
And then Bunny narrated. The entire film.
She informed them which lines were coming before the characters said them.
During the deli scene she pointed her wine glass at the screen and announced “This, darlings, is acting,” and Maddy laughed into Aspen’s shoulder, her whole body shaking with it.
When the credits rolled, Maddy walked her out to her SUV in the dark, and they stood in the driveway as Maddy told her about her talk with Bunny that morning. Not all of it, but more than Aspen expected. Then she kissed Maddy goodnight, got in her car, drove home, and slept a full eight hours.
It had been a perfect, domestic night as a couple, with their parents—who Maddy had been warm and gracious towards all evening—and she rode that high for the next twelve hours.
Then on Tuesday, Maddy texted at 10:44 a.m. to ask Aspen when her next client was, to which she responded: 11:30.
Maddy walked into Offshore fifteen minutes later in a blazer and her most neutral, professional face, and asked whether she might have a word in private.
Aspen had barely gotten the treatment room door shut before Maddy had her up against the table—the same one Michelle was on right now—tugging at the waistband of her pants, and dropping to her knees under the dove-gray banner Bunny’s sewing club had stitched for the room—THE BODY IS THE FIRST WITNESS—which had never once felt pointed until right then.
Grace and Lena, thankfully, were a hundred yards down the sand setting up for the eleven-thirty beach yoga class, and their receptionist, Hannah, had music playing too loudly at the front desk.
Aspen had then spent ten minutes disinfecting every surface in the room. Twice.
And since then, well, they’d been insatiable.
Every gap, every evening, every stolen middle of the afternoon.
Coffee in her kitchen before work turned into counter sex, and Aspen being five minutes late for her first client of the day.
Her lunch break was spent rushing home for a quickie.
Movie nights on her couch never made it to the second act.
They both knew how many days were left. Neither of them was going to waste another one of them sleeping.
Friday, they wrangled Jake and Chloe into joining them at Nicky’s.
It was Maddy’s idea, technically, though Aspen had spent days complaining about her sister to make it happen.
Chloe and Jake had been texting regularly all week, and according to Chloe, he’d come by Paws & Reflect twice.
With no dog. Just walked in, said hi, chatted for a few minutes, then when the moment arrived to either explain his reasoning for stopping by or freaking ask her out, he stammered over his words, abruptly said he'd better let her get back to work, and walked out stiff as a board.
So, they proposed a double date. Low stakes. Just four people at a sticky table with a bartender named Russ and a jukebox that had been broken for the past seven years.
Jake asked questions about Maisie and her obsession with marine life, then confessed he had been obsessed with dinosaurs when he was Maisie’s age and had watched Jurassic Park every single day for a whole year.
Chloe laughed, and the conversation flowed easily.
Aspen’s chest felt warm and fuzzy about the entire night.
Her little sister, her good friend, and the woman of her dreams, all crammed around one tall table, swapping stories about their weird childhood obsessions.
It would’ve stayed wholesome, except Maddy got bored.
It started around the second round—Maddy’s fingers tracing a slow line up the inside of Aspen’s thigh under the table while she asked Jake a perfectly sincere question about his fall roster.
They’d had sex twice already that day, and it hadn’t taken the edge off at all. She wanted her all over again.
She had lasted until they reached the car.
They’d taken Maddy’s Range Rover, with its blacked-out windows, and Aspen would be grateful for that one detail for the rest of her natural life, because they did not make it home.
They climbed into the back seat like a couple of giggling teenagers and had sex right there in the parking lot.
They were half-laughing the whole time, Maddy’s knee colliding with the front seat, Aspen’s elbow finding the door handle.
It was ridiculous, and it left Aspen grinning and pressing her forehead to Maddy’s shoulder in the dark afterward, catching her breath, fogged windows, Nicky’s neon sign bleeding red through the tint.
And she couldn’t conjure up even an ounce of shame.
Saturday night, they stayed in.
They’d ordered too much Thai and not finished any of it, and Aspen leaned in the doorway between her living room and kitchen, watching Maddy open a bottle of wine.
Maddy was barefoot on the cedar floors, in only her underwear and one of Aspen’s t-shirts, a soft blue one. Her hair was down. She had the bottle braced against the counter and was working the corkscrew with that adorable concentration line between her brows, cursing quietly under her breath.
It was such a different picture from the first time Maddy had ever stood in this bungalow, six weeks ago.
Aspen crossed the kitchen and came up behind Maddy, sliding both arms around her waist and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, just under her ear. Because she could do that now.
Maddy made a low hum and leaned back into her. Then she set the bottle down, cork still in it, tilted her head to give Aspen more of her throat, and reached back to slide her fingers into Aspen’s hair. Aspen pressed another kiss to the curve of her shoulder where the worn collar had slipped down.
Then Maddy slowly turned until they were face to face, and brought both of her arms up around Aspen’s neck, locking Aspen in close, and looked at her for a second in the low kitchen light. Then she leaned in and gently kissed her.
How is this my life? Aspen thought to herself.
* * *
On Sunday, Aspen had—very intentionally—made a reservation at The Huxley.
A little over a month ago, they had both been in that dining room on dates with other people—Maddy at a two-top with Jake, Aspen four tables over with Danielle.
She’d spent the whole dinner pretending to follow Danielle’s biotech career while she was actually tracking Maddy’s every move thirty feet away.