As we come down, I feel electric and sated all at once.
His hand twines into mine, squeezes.
I hope, with all my heart, that he feels like I do, that he never wants this to end.
I desperately, fervently, want him to love me back.
58
KATIE
We’re on my roof at nine p.m. Tristan told me he wanted to go to my apartment, because helikes it better, which seems insane to me, because he has about twelve times the space, but I’m too lust drunk to worry about it.
I’m sleepy and deliciously full from the grilled cheese he made and the second round of sex. He set me on the counter, murmuring that it was the perfect height, then pushed into me with his mouth on my neck. He came apart with husky sounds and shuddering pulses and then finished me with his tongue between my legs.
His finger skims up and down my arm. We watch a satellite wink above the big dipper.
I love him.
The secret is ballooning inside me, sending shivers down my spine.
“Why won’t you marry me?”
The balloon pops.
I sigh and push to sitting, then scoot until my back is tothe raised portion of the eaves. Tristan does the same. Our shoulders touch.
“Do you remember the first time we did this?” I slant him a look, seeing frustration on his face at my lack of answer.
“Yes.” He tips his head back, his throat working. “The night of my birthday, two weeks after you started working here.”
Warmth curls through me at the memory, at the first time we were an us. “You were drunk. You were on your way out the door after the party to go to a bar. But you didn’t go. Why not?”
He looks thoughtful for a second, emotion passing over his face, his strong throat working in a swallow. “It felt like I was meant to be here,” he says finally. His voice is slightly husky. “You anchor me, Bailey. I told you that. That day and every day after.”
My eyes are heating and I blink furiously. “You anchor me too. But more than that, you picked me. Starting that day and every day after.”
He looks surprised, then pleased. His smile is dawning, so easily, as it always does. “Let me pick you now.”
My stomach bottoms out. “But what if you don’t? In the future.”
“Katie, no,” he breathes. His hand wraps around mine where it sits on the blanket. He squeezes, but this isn’t a hurt he can fix just by being Tristan.
“Just listen. Don’t try to fix it. No Tristan magic, okay?” I give him a watery smile and he squeezes more tightly. I turn my eyes to the sky, trying to figure out how to shape my loneliness into words.
“I moved a lot with David. You know that.”
“Eighteen places before eighteen.”
“Yeah. And I had friends. Kids in school. Boyfriends, even.”
“Fuckers,” he mutters.
I bump him with my shoulder. “None as hot as you, don’t worry. All of it ended. I’d cling. I’d text. Call on the weekends. And for a little bit, it would work. And then it would fade. Every time, I was the annoying girl who couldn’t let go.”
I can feel him breathing next to me, shallow and fast, and I will him not to speak. Our hands are clasped so tightly that it’s nearly painful. It feels like he’s trying to squeeze the bad feelings out of me and take them for himself, and I love him more for it.
He knows all this, and I try to figure out how to tell him the things he doesn’t know. The things I can’t admit even to myself.
