There is no distance between us and I don’t want any more distance. I want closeness, I want connection, I want it with her. Then she loosens her grip. Not by much, but enough to bring her sweet lips to my ear. She grazes me with a whisper, her voice soft. “I want you to take off your shirt and I want you to tell me everything. I want to see your new ink. I want to understand you.”
I am an electrical line, buzzing. “Do you want to come to my place?”
“Yes.”
Chapter Seventeen
Trey
The subway takes too long. But if I were in a cab with her, I’d probably jump her, and whatever is going to happen between us tonight needs to happen behind closed doors. I want to be alone with her. I want to have her to myself. I don’t want anyone around, anyone to walk in, anyone to find us. I want to hole up with her and kiss and touch her all night long, until morning comes and our lips are red and raw, and we still can’t get enough of each other.
But the practical matter of transportation downtown comes first.
“I have big news,” she tells me as the train rattles underground.
“Yeah?”
I trace the vein on her forearm, from the heel of her hand to her elbow. Goosebumps rise on her skin, and she shivers. I will never grow tired of the way she responds to me.
“You make it hard to focus,” she chides. “And I want to tell you something. I finished. I’m done with Miranda!”
“Shit! Are you serious?”
She nods several times. “One hundred percent. Sent it off tonight.”
“That’s amazing. I’m seriously proud of you. Which I know sounds like a weird thing to say, but I am.”
She pats her back, pretends to look over her shoulder to see what’s there. “See that? Oh wait. You can’t. Because the monkey’s off my back.”
“Good riddance, monkey.”
There are other chains that bind her though. My chest constricts as I ask the next question. “But what about Cam? Did you tell him you’re done? Are you done?” I ask, hoping, praying, needing her no more than air right now.
She lowers her eyes. “I haven’t told him, but I will now.”
She takes her phone from her pocket, taps open a new message. I look away as a thick plume of jealousy snakes through me. I don’t want to know what she’s saying to him. I have to trust that it’s exactly what needs to be said.
She stuffs it back into her pocket. “Done. I’m free of these burdens. I want to start over. Start my new life from this day forward. Start everything like it’s the first time.”
“So this is it? No more Miranda, no more Cam, you’re done with the past?”
She nods.
“I don’t want you with him, Harley. He’s no good for you, and you don’t need that anymore. Okay?”
“I know. I know,” she says, and she seems resolute.
“Promise me you’re done? Promise me he’s the past?”
“I promise. I told him I won’t do the job he asked me to do. Some stupid dinner event. I said it’s over.”
I shake my head in disgust. I hate every single guy who’s hired her. I hate every dude everywhere who’s hired a girl. Because I’d be willing to bet most of those girls didn’t really want to be hired. Fine, Harley made her own choices, but she also didn’t. Her mom boxed her into a corner, gave her no choice, no options. So Harley did what I did. She tunneled her way out through sex.
“Good. Because I don’t want you with anyone else,” I tell her as the train winds around a curve, and I’m struck with how easy that was to say. I used to think speaking honestly was impossible, but now I’m two-for-two tonight.
“But what about rules? And trying to stay away? And being in recovery and all?”
“Fuck the rules,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “I want to be with you.”
“I want to be with you so badly it’s killing me,” she says in a breathy, desperate voice that makes me want to stop time and never forget this moment. Because this is perfect. Us. Here. Now. On the graffiti-filled subway, chugging into my stop, after I’ve told her the ugly truth of me, and she wants everything I’ve ever wanted too. Each other.
“I’m dying, Harley,” I say, bending my head to her neck. “I’m fucking dying without you. I need you. I want you. I want to teleport to my apartment right now because I can’t stand being on this train a second longer. I want to touch you all over. I want to be with you.”
“I want that too but we can’t go all the way. We can’t have sex. I’m just not ready.”
“We can do whatever you want. I have waited six months for you. I can wait longer if I have to. I can wait as long as you need. If all you want to do is kiss, I will happily spend the night doing that. Hell, if you want to play bridge we can do that too. Even though I have no clue how that game works.”
“I bet you know how to play strip poker though,” she teases.
“That I do.”
“Or just strip.”
When the train stops, we practically leap out of the car and bolt up the steps. After several blocks of near race-walking, we make it inside my building and up two flights of stairs. I unlock the door to my tiny studio, open it, and before the door closes, my hands are on her face.
“Kiss me,” I tell her. “Kiss me, Harley. And don’t stop.”
“Never,” she says, and then her mouth is on mine. She kisses me hard and ruthlessly, attacking my mouth, sucking on my tongue, nibbling and then biting my lips, and it’s like she’s devouring me and I want it. I desperately want her to feast on me, to leave bite marks all over my neck, to pin me down if she wants to, I don’t care, I just want her. I want to know what it feels like when the girl I am mad about is consumed with this kind of wildfire, this kind of intensity that she digs her nails into my wrists and slams her body into me, like we’re being crushed by some unseeable force that’s pushing us together, and if there’s any air or space left we’re dead. She wriggles that sexy, beautiful, insane body of hers against mine, her breasts smashed against my chest, her hips jammed into me, and her lips insisting on exploring every inch of mine.
This girl can take me, have me, tie me up, blindfold me if she wants, even though that’s honestly not my thing. But how I feel for her threatens to overpower everything else because this is a sweet unraveling as she obliterates my hold on the world, on time, on space, on anything but the ferocity of her kiss.
Then, in an instant, she breaks the kiss. She’s panting, and her brown eyes are wild, so wild, and her lips are parted and bruised already, and I feel like I’m a cartoon character seeing stars swirling around my head. Like I’m one step away from a dizzying collapse brought on by all these sensations that don’t just race – they tear like crazy fucking race cars taking curves at high speeds – through my veins.
“Hi,” she says, breathing out hard.
“Hi.”
“Are you going to show me your tattoos now?”
“Um, yeah,” I say, managing a few syllables though I doubt I’ve recovered the power of speech, considering how she kissed me raw and senseless. I am standing here stupid with lust, hard as a rock, and unable to form coherent thoughts.
Fortunately, I don’t have to.
She takes my hand, guides me over to my futon a few feet away. My apartment is crazy ass small, like most in New York, but it’s mine, and it’s stuffed with my notebooks and drawings and paperbacks and music. I hit the on button on my iPod in its base next to the futon that doubles as a bed, and turn Arcade Fire on low.
“Best. Band. Ever,” she says as we fall down onto the futon.
“No. Questions. Asked,” I say, with a smile, repeating the words we both said the night we met. I curve a hand around her neck. Bring my mouth to her ear. Hear her sigh. Whisper. “You said that the first time I saw you at my shop.”
“I know.”
“And we talked about everything that night. We talked about the beach and how much you want to go there again, and how you felt when you were there as a kid visiting your grandparents. And we talked about the music we love, and what we wanted out of life. And now here we are again.”