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“Ha!”The laugh escapes her, but she falls forward and hides her face in her hands immediately afterward.“I usually don’t come so fast.”Her words are muffled.“It’s like I knew it was you somehow.Like my blood and cells and mitochondria said, ‘It’shim.’”
Shit.Add that to the list of fantasies I didn’t even know I had.
“Question.”She lifts her head to peer at me.“Why don’t you smell like you at the club?”
I blink.“I have a smell?”
She gives me an exasperated, affectionate look.“Come on, you have to know it’s the best smell in the world.Warm skin and shampoo andboy I like.”
Holy shit, she thinks I have the best smell in the world.Also…
“Boy I like?”
“It’s a smell, okay?”she says defensively.
I set my elation aside to consider a question I’ve never really thought about.“I shower in the dressing room with whatever soap and shampoo’s lying around, usually when I get there because I work out immediately beforehand to get a pump, and then always afterward.When I’m at home, I use my own stuff.”I shrug.“No big mystery.”
“God, it must be easy being a man.”
“I did find that patriarchal privilege and the sexual double standards significantly mitigated the toll of my profession.”
She stares at me like I’ve sprouted antlers.
“Landon—uh, Kelvin—took a women and gender studies course last semester at Rayman.We talked about it a lot in the dressing room.”
Her pretty pink lips fall open.I’m sure she’s picturing the discussions happening as we were oiling up in our thongs, and honestly, she’s not wrong.
She shakes her head and refocuses.“Well, the different showers thing makes me feel a little better.It’s one less clue for Lois Lane to have missed.”
“Lois Lane?”
The lightness that was starting to creep into her tone vanishes.“You know, the stupidest journalist in the world.”
“No.”I’m off the couch and around the table as soon as I realize what she’s implying, and I put my life in my hands by sitting down on the couch next to her.I keep a respectful distance, but at least we’re in the same square footage.
“Do you feel bad that you didn’t figure it out?I worked so hard to keep you from realizing it was me.”Her gaze narrows, and I quickly add, “Which I know is manipulative and controlling and deceitful.I was an idiot who was terrified of losing you, and I knew that every day I didn’t tell you was just making things worse.Please don’t kick me out of your house yet.I have at least six more hours of apologizing planned.”
“Six?”
“Sixteen.Six hundred.Whatever it takes.”
She exhales and sags against the back of the couch, silent as she stares straight ahead, lost in thought.
“Okay,” she eventually says.“I can maybe—maybe—understand why it wasn’t easy for you to come right out and say ‘Hey, I’m snake hips.We cool?’when it first came up.”Her eyes cut to me.“It still doesn’t make it okay, but I understand how it all happened.”
I slip off the couch and kneel in front of her.I did this onstage too, pleading for her understanding.This time’s different.It’s private, and I don’t let myself touch her.I just gaze up at her and speak from my heart, which batters itself against the messy emotional coils wrapped around it.
“I’m sorry about everything.I made assumptions about how you’d react; I didn’t respect your right to make your own decisions, and I didn’t stop things when you asked for the private dance.But I swear, I never intended to lie to you or mislead you.I just sort of… fell into it.And I never laughed at you, never made fun of you.Not once.I tried to do the things that would hurt you the least.I tried to stay just friends with you so when you left town, you’d just forget about me instead of remembering me as the guy who tricked you for so long.”
“Wait.”She sits up.“You thought I was going to forget you if I left Beaucoeur?”At my miserable nod, she slips off the couch and kneels to face me, her voice incredulous.“You seriously thought that?”
My mouth opens.“Um.Yes.Why would you rememb?—”
She kisses me, grabbing my shirt and pulling me forward for a fast, slightly awkward press of her lips to mine.It’s the best kiss I’ve ever had.
“I love you too, you know.”
My stomach goes into free fall at her words, and I can’t pull together a single response.Not even a croak.That’s how enormous and earth-shaking those six words are.
