Page 28

She grips the shower rail.

"You don't have to—" she begins.

"I know," I say, and I put my mouth on her.

She gasps. Her hand finds my hair and twists. The water drums on my back. I take my time. I use my tongue in slow circles. I listen to her breathing. When she gasps, I do it again. When her hips shift, I hold her steady with one hand on her hip and keep going.

Her thigh shakes against my shoulder. The sounds she makes echo off the old tile, unguarded and loud.

"There," she whispers. "Yes. Just like that."

I stay there. Steady. I feel her body tighten. Her breathing goes ragged. Her hand tightens in my hair. And then she cries out, my name broken and breathless, and her knees give.

I catch her. I take her weight against my chest and hold on, my face pressed to her stomach. Her laughter shakes through both of us, wet and helpless and wonderful.

"I can't feel my legs," she says.

"I've got you."

"That's the most dangerous thing you've said yet."

She slides down to her knees in front of me. Water runs over both of us. She kisses me, tasting herself on my mouth. Then she wraps her hand around me.

I groan. My head tips back. She strokes me, slow and firm. Then she leans down and takes me in her mouth.

The heat is almost too much. I brace one hand against the tile. Her mouth moves over me, steady and thorough. Her eyes stay on mine the whole time. I say something that doesn't make it to a full word.

She takes her time. She learns what makes my breath catch, what makes my hips jerk. She does it again. And again. The pressure builds. My hand tightens in her hair.

"Hollis," I warn.

She doesn't stop. She takes me deeper. Her hand works in rhythm with her mouth. The pressure breaks. I come hard, groaning her name, and she doesn't pull away.

After that, we stand there with the water running cold. She rests her forehead against my sternum. I rest my chin in her hair. Neither of us moves until the pipes start to knock again.

We dry off in the steamed mirror, passing the towel back and forth without talking. She wraps it around herself and tucks the corner between her breasts, and I watch her wipe the fog off the glass with one hand and squint at her reflection. Her hair is plastered dark against her skull. Her glasses are somewhere in the bedroom. She looks about sixteen years old and impossibly beautiful, and I have the sudden violent thought that I would very much like to see this every morning for the rest of my life.

I don't say that. I follow her out into the hall, pull on yesterday's trousers, and stand in the bedroom doorway while she finds a shirt and a pair of leggings and my gray button-down from last night, which she holds up with a question on her face.

"Yes," I say.

She grins and pulls it on over nothing at all.

The kitchen is the mirror of mine. I stand against the counter while she cooks. She's in my gray shirt, its buttons losing the argument across her chest. She looks down at herself and sighs. "Well. That's an architectural problem."

She's put her hair in a damp knot and her glasses on. She's making eggs and humming Ella and talking, talking, talking. About the apple tree behind Carmen's café, about the winter she tried to paint the Granary in watercolor and the roof leaked on the paper. She flips an egg without looking. She shoves a mug of coffee at me.

At some point I realize my hand is resting on the small of her back. I don't remember putting it there.

Her phone buzzes on the counter. "Carmen," she says, reading. "'Bunny says the lantern at forty-one was seen kissing on the bridge by eleven people. ELEVEN.' She's very upset about the count."

She scrolls. "And my grandmother. 'Pie at four-thirty. Wear pants.'"

"She knows."

"She's eighty-one, Ben, she knows everything. She knitted the future."

I laugh. It comes out easily, like something that's been waiting at the door. She turns and looks at me with the spatula in her hand and the sunlight in her glasses. There's a small, unguarded joy on her face that I would cross a minefield to see again.