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Maren: i am going to sit here and not ask, extremely loudly
Me: his eye is a color. he’s fine.
Maren: i didn’t ask about his eye
Maren: delaney
Me: what
Maren: nothing
Maren: it’s only that you answered a question i didn’t ask in eleven seconds flat, and you have left three texts about book club sitting since Thursday
She’d counted the seconds. I flipped the phone over on the counter and didn’t pick it up again for an hour.
Iris went down for the night.
I didn’t leave the kitchen. I told myself I was cleaning. I did two pans and a cutting board, and then the counters were clear and I was still standing there, wiping the same four feet of granite with a dish towel that had been dry for ten minutes. Down the hall Iris’s door was open its usual two inches.
He turned up a while later. He’d changed into a different shirt and sleep pants that rode low on his hips, and his feet were bare. He stopped inside the doorway and took me in across his kitchen before he moved. He kept one hand on the door frame while he did it, high up, so the shirt lifted away from his waist on that side.
“You’re still up.”
“I’m cleaning.”
“There’s nothing out.”
“I’m aware of that.”
He crossed the rest of the way in and took no detour around the island. Then he kissed me.
It wasn’t like the night before. On the stool he had run it slow to prove he could. This one had no patience anywhere in it. He got a hand into my hair, tipped my head, and took my mouth. The scab on his lip caught against mine and he paid it no attention at all. I got both fists in his shirt and pulled. He made a low sound into my mouth. The towel dropped out of my hand and I didn’t hear it hit the floor.
He walked me backward out of the kitchen and down the hall, one hand at the back of my head, and put my back against my own door. Through his sleep pants he was hard against me, and there was no mystery left about any of it.
“This is what I was thinking about,” he said against my throat. “Since August.”
“Eli—”
“Say my name again.”
“Eli.”
His hand slid up the inside of my thigh and stopped there. His palm was hot and dry, and the calluses at the base of his fingers dragged on the leggings. The sound I made filled the hallway and I didn’t care about it.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
“I want your hand inside these.” My voice came out steady, and no other part of me was. “I want your fingers in me against my own door, and I want you watching my face while you do it. Then I want you to fuck me until I can’t be quiet in this house anymore.”
It hit him. His hand tightened on my thigh and left a print in the fabric. His forehead dropped against mine, and he stopped moving completely.
“Delaney.”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
“Say it again.”
I said it again. Every word, slower, with his forehead against mine and his breath turning ragged on my mouth.
