Page 20 of The Circle

“You really don’t.”

“I know.”

“So…?”

“I want to.”

“Do you?”

She thinks for about half a second before tilting her head in an unimpressive nod.

“Christine—” I start, before being interrupted by—

“What’s going on?” Alec stands in the doorway. Still shirtless.

I drop Christine’s hands. It’s weird. It somehow feels like we just got caught doing something wrong. Even though we didn’t, and even if we had been… who fucking cares? But there’s an entirely different kind of intimacy at work now.

It’s been growing since Alec, Christine and I re-consummated our… whatever. Since we’ve reconnected there’s a new intensity that wasn’t there before. And that makes everything feel elevated. Amplified. Like there’s even more at stake. I mean there is, objectively, more at stake. Notably a two-year-old who happens to be Alec’s kid, but even beyond that. More at stake between us.

It’s starting to feel like maybe we have a shot at happiness or contentment or something. The kind of shit that we’ve never really entertained having before, I don’t think. And that’s… that’s scary. It means that now there’s something different on the line. And that’s scary because that can lead one to playing defense instead of offense. And that’s a bad, bad place to be operating from in our world.

“Nothing,” I answer. “Just… getting our game faces on.” Alec nods in a way that lets me know he knows I’m full of shit. But I continue on: “Let’s get everything back into the van and—”

I start out past him, but he puts his hand on my chest and stops me. Just like I stopped Christine. I look down at his hand, then back up into his eyes. “Your hand is on me,”

“Mm-hm,” he hums.

“Why is your hand on me?”

“Do you not want my hand on you?” he asks in a kind of seductive way.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. Just presses into me, backing me up until I bump into the fucking sink again. “Alec? What are you doing?”

I can feel the heat emanating off his naked torso. And I can smell him. He smells like… I dunno. Like fury, and sexuality, and danger, and death, with a splash of Musc Ravageur cologne misted over the top for good measure.

“What’s wrong, Danny boy? Thought you said we have an hour.”

“I—Yeah, but—Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I repeat.

“No. No, I don’t think I am.”

He’s very much upon me. I look over to Christine for some kind of support or… something. But instead, she just takes off her own shirt and circles to stand next to Alec.

“What the fuck are you doing? Are you both stupid? No. That’s rhetorical. You’re fucking stupid. This is not the time.”

“On the contrary. I believe it is exactly the time,” says Alec.

Again, I look at Christine for a little help, assuming that at least she and I can agree that right now is a bad moment to all get naked and shit. Christine responds to my nonverbal plea for logic by taking off her bra. And now she and Alec are both naked from the waist up, standing side by side, Alec looking at me like I’m the crazy one.

What the fucking fuck?