“I would never ask you to leave Jessica, or your mum.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” I slide my hand out of her grip and cup her face. “That’s one of the many, many things I like about you.”
Likefeels like the weakest word in that sentence, but I’m not about to detonate the bomb that is the other word beginning with L. Not now when we’re at a perfect and agonising stalemate.
“So that’s why when I think about us, and about what I want from a relationship, I come up blank.”
Maeve leans into my palm. “But if those things didn’t matter. If we lived in the same city. What would you want from me, from us?”
I can’t stop my sigh as it hollows out my chest. “But we don’t live in the same city.”
“I asked you a question. Honest Answers Only.” She pouts at me.
“Maeve, I would want to be with you, whatever that looks like.” I give her my honest answer and wait for the radical truth that lives in those words to physically hurt or scar me. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, I feel my lungs expand a little quicker and easier than they have in weeks. “I would want us to do exactly what you just said, to make our own unique version of a relationship.”
“Even if that means no sex?” Maeve’s voice cracks just before the word ‘sex’ and she winces. I want to wince too, for her unnecessary embarrassment and whatever shame there is inside her that deems this a question she needs to ask. “Honest Answers Only, Loncey.”
I don’t take my time to answer because I don’t know what to say, or because I don’t know how I feel. I take my time replying to Maeve’s question because I want to find the right words, thefinalwords, the words that will end this line of conversation once and for all.
I bring my other hand to the other side of her face and I hold her like this for a moment, running my eyes over her features and taking in her messy hair and the natural glow of her skin.
“For the last four weeks, I haven’t had sex. And I haven’t had you either. Can you guess which one I have missed most? Can you guess which one I have been thinking about without end? Can you guess which one has kept me awake at night, kept a dull ache in my stomach, and a tension headache in both sides of my temple? Can you guess which one makes me want to totally upend my life just so I can live in the fantasy I only sometimes allow myself to think about?”
I watch as tears mist up Maeve’s eyes.
“But sex is so important to you. You love sex,” she tells me in a fragile voice. “It’s what you do, for work and well, in life.”
“You’re right. I’m not going to argue with you. But I am starting to question a lot of that. Yes, I still love sex. I can’t lie about that. And if I’m being completely honest with you, which I have to be, because Honest Answers Only…”
“Honest Answers Only,” Maeve repeats as a single tear snakes down her cheek.
“I will always want to have sex with you, Maeve. I can’t and won’t deny how attracted to you I am, sexually, but I know in my bones that I don’t have to act on that. I maywantit but I don’tneedsex with you. I know enough about desire to know how it works so please trust me when I say, I can and will be okay not having sex with you.”
“But how?” Maeve croaks and she starts to shake her head like she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.
“Because to do so would hurt you. And I can’t live in a world where I hurt you.”
“But I don’t know if I can live in a world where I deprive you of something so—”
“Stop, Maeve.” I tighten my hold on her face and it jolts her eyes up to mine. “Stop. Don’t you dare say that being with you would deprive me of something. Being with you would be a gift I would treasure and celebrate every damn day. You are so much more to me. You are close to becoming everything to me. You are a solar system of fascinating planets and shooting stars and shimmering moons. You are a galaxy I will never get bored of discovering. You are a whole universe of wonder and surprise. Fuck, Maeve, you are too many stars to count.”
Maeve’s face cracks as more tears spill out of her eyes.
“Hold me, Loncey,” she says and I hear it in her voice. Her own vulnerability, something that Maeve protects fiercely, but there it is pouring out of her eyes and her mouth, and it’s asking for me to hold her.
So I do.
Chapter Forty
Maeve
They hold me for a long time. They hold me until my tears turn into little sobs. They hold me until my little sobs bring on my stupid fucking hiccups. And they hold me until I stop hiccupping and crying, and finally, silence fills my hotel room.
They hold me until I am ready to let go, which is just before there is a knock at the door.
“Shit.” I sniff. “Our food.”
Loncey looks down at their negligee. “I’ll get it,” they say and before I can stop them and offer to go myself, they walk away.
