We haven’t done this before . . . we need to put on a condom.
“I think about this,” he whispers, “just like this. Oh, Christ, it feels good.”
It does, and so neither of us stops it. It’s so easy to keep moving, to fall into that rolling rhythm; in the past weeks he’s figured out what I need and starts there: deep, pressing, immediately. My hands roam the skin on his back, down over his ass, his thighs, as far down as I can reach.
He must know he’s forgiven because he doesn’t talk anymore, doesn’t check in with me to be sure I’m okay, and this is something I adore most about him. I think he trusts that if I didn’t want this right now, I would tell him. He isn’t going to let something go unsaid.
But even so, as he moves in these perfect circles over me, another shadow steps into view. I wonder what it is we’re fixing here, and to what end? I’ve already established that we don’t need to be intimate for him to stay here. And we certainly don’t need to be in love. But he kisses me like it’s love, and as he pushes faster into me, he sounds like a man overcome with love, and when he rolls so I’m on top of him, he watches me with something that looks a lot like love in his eyes.
But how would I really know?
“Why did you stop?” he asks, cupping my hips. “Is it okay?”
His chest has a faint sheen of sweat—from exertion, from the heat of our bodies moving together—and I press my palm to it; his heart is racing. I search his face. His eyes are clear, maybe a little worried.
“It’s good.”
I am so bad at asking for what I want.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispers.
Shaking my head, I say, “No.”
He sits up beneath me and wraps his arms around my waist, looking up at my face. “What are you thinking? What can I say to make this okay?”
“I guess I’m wondering what we’re doing.”
He gives me a wicked, cheeky smile. “I thought we were busy making love.”
“Is that what this is?” I honestly have never felt this before, so I don’t even know what to call it. But I’m not sure I can do this and keep myself from falling in love with him.
He kisses my chin. “Does it feel like something else to you?”
“I think it’s starting to feel like that to me, but I don’t actually know.” I press my mouth to his and let him deepen it, before pulling away the tiniest bit. “It feels like we should make sure we’re on the same page after”—he kisses me—“what happened with Lulu and—”
He interrupts me with another kiss. “And the fact that we’re already married?” he asks. His hand moves up my back and into my hair.
“Yeah, exactly. We’ve talked about logistics and backstory and fantasy, but we haven’t really talked about feelings.”
“You were gone all day yesterday. I woke up this morning and you still weren’t here.” He tilts his head, sucking on my neck. “I thought I fucked it up with you, and I honestly have never felt so panicked in my life.”
“The initial plan was a year,” I whisper.
“I say to hell with the initial plan.”
“It’s more complicated than just having a new girlfriend. We took vows.”
Calvin grins up at me. “I’m aware.”
“Doesn’t that paradoxically complicate the new plan?”
“How am I supposed to know?” He laughs into my shoulder and bites me gently. “I’ve never done this before. I just know I’m falling for the girl I married.”
twenty-four
Calvin hands me my buzzing phone. “Lulu again.”
I put it facedown on the coffee table and turn back to my laptop. For the first time in ages, I woke up with words in my head, and I’m determined to get them down before they fade back into fog.
He lies behind me on the couch. “Aren’t you going to call her?”
“Not right now.”
I can feel him reading over my shoulder. “What is this?”
“I don’t even know, actually.” I’m so tempted to cover it up, to hide the words by closing my screen because it feels like a bare tree trunk—all naked and vulnerable to the elements. Instead, I pretend my hands are glued to the keyboard. I’ve listened to Calvin stumble through a new run of notes or work out a new composition a hundred times already, and he’s never shy. Why should I be?
“For a book?” he asks. He knows how long this has eluded me, what having that spark of inspiration has to mean.
“No. Maybe? I’m not sure.” I read back through the notes I’ve made, almost tentative, careful not to chase off the spark. I can’t stop thinking about how it felt to roam the city yesterday in search of a talent like his. I can’t stop thinking about how it feels to listen to him and Ramón play together. “I just had this thought in my head, about how we met and where you are now, and how it feels to have heard you in both places.”
His hand runs over my shoulder and into my shirt, resting at the swell above my heart. “I like the look on your face right now. So intense.”
I miss writing. I wrote endless short stories during college and while getting my master’s. I had to write every day or I felt like a clogged drain, full of words. The day I got my degree and turned to face the world as a person no longer under the protective umbrella of school, it seemed like all the ideas dried up.
And that’s been true since I started working at the theater. After talking to Robert and Jeff, I wonder if it’s because I’m surrounded by people who are brilliant in a way I’m not, and it leaves me feeling ordinary by comparison.
But this . . . writing about how it feels to listen to music, to have found him—it almost feels like I’m writing a description of how my organs work together, what keeps me breathing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this before.
His hand slips lower still, toying with my nipple, and his mouth comes to my neck, warm and biting. “Can I do this while you write?”
I’m still tender from the second round of makeup sex we had only an hour ago, but when his fingertips trap the peak of my breast in a gentle pinch, my whole body hums. “I’m not sure I could focus. It’d be like me putting my mouth on you while you play.”
His laugh is a low vibration against my skin. “We should try that later.”
I turn to capture his mouth in a kiss. “I’m almost done.”
Calvin retreats a little, moving his hand back up and returning his mouth to the back of my neck, and although I worried this distraction would chase away my muse, the words seem stronger, if anything. I remember this feeling—the thrill of being so full of something and having it come out with such clarity. My fingers fly over the keyboard and I ignore the typos for now, ignore the way I see him following my thoughts on the screen, ignore everything.
The creativity is back, and the knowledge that it’s back because I’m happy propels me forward in this positive feedback loop that just keeps sending more and more words from my brain to my fingers.
My phone buzzes again, and Calvin reaches for it, turning off the vibration.
And then it lights up again, and again, ringing. I catch the name Lulu on the screen, and my writing mojo is still flimsy enough that the anxiety over dealing with her punctures a tiny hole in it.
“She’s called ten times already today,” he says. “She called a million times yesterday, too.”
I growl at the sight of the phone lighting up with another voicemail.
“I bet she’s violently hungover even two days later.” He rests his chin on my shoulder. “Do you want me to put your phone in the other room?”
I want to say yes. I want to return to what I was doing, and have him return to peppering kisses along my neck and shoulders, but in truth, the core of the idea is laid out on this page in front of me, and I know that the niggling awareness of Lulu’s panic is going to spread if I don’t call her back.
I’m angry, yes, but I’m not punitive.
I drop my hand onto my phone and pick it up, sighing. “Let me just get this over with.”
The call doesn’t even seem to ring through before she’s answering. “Holllllls. I am an asshole.”
“You are.”
“Dude. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
The thing is, I know she’s genuinely mortified about her behavior the other night. Lulu is her own worst enemy. Drunk Lulu is a brutal alter ego and a burden she has to carry as long as she lets herself get wasted like that.
“I don’t even know what to say,” I tell her, rubbing my eyes. I feel gross all over again just thinking about it, and part of me wishes I hadn’t called.
“Are you guys okay?”
“We are now. We talked it out this morning.”
“This morning?” She groans.
“I stayed at Jeff and Robert’s last night.”
She makes a little squeaking sound of terror. “Holls. Was Calvin pissed?”
“What do you think?”
“Were you?”
I bark out an irritated laugh. “Lulu, be serious. You made me sound like a total freak.”
Calvin leans forward when I say this, resting his lips on the side of my neck. I reach back with my free hand, sliding my fingers into his hair.
“What can I do?” she whines.
The simple fact is that something was damaged that night—things have been chipped away for a few weeks now—and I’m not sure we can go back to the way things were. I know Calvin can hear her, too, and so I look over my shoulder at him. He shrugs.
“Anything,” she says. “I want to make it up to you.”
“Don’t be rude and obnoxious with us anymore.”
She lets out a hoarse laugh; I can practically hear the hangover in it. “I know. I think I’m just thrown by this marriage thing. You used to be my person.”
It’s true. I was there whenever she needed someone to go to a show with, a bar, a concert. But I was also her fallback when she didn’t have a steady plus-one for her Groupon adventures, and it’s been our dynamic ever since I can remember: I’ve always been there for Lulu.