Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kieran

When we got to Ventura, the fog was stretching thin fingers over the ocean. It had been a long time since I'd been on this beach, longer since I'd been here sober, and as I walked toward the water with Ellie, Converse and socks in my hand, I was aware of everything. The cool grains of sand under my toes, the salt spray in the air. The woman at my side, the lush, generous curves of her against all my jagged edges.

She started speaking quietly, like she was still thinking the words as she said them. "I think you were an asshole as a kid because they wanted to shove you in this ridiculous box. Every time you messed up, they got mad at you for not fitting, instead of asking whether the box was right for you in the first place, and now that you've broken out, now that you're hundreds of miles from that stupid box, they keep running after you with it."

I turned to her. "I can't change it, though. I can't change that I lied, and broke shit, and hurt people." Though suddenly I was desperate to.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "What matters is what you want now."

I wanted her calm. Her gentle thoughtfulness. I wanted to drink her down and feel her warm me from the inside out.

She shivered a little bit, and I put my arm around her.

"No one's looking," she said. But she didn't move away.

"I know."

She nestled into me with a sigh, and I pressed my nose into her hair. Clean laundry and bergamot.

I could stand here and hold her forever. I wouldn't mind that at all. Listen to her dry jokes and excited explanations. Though it would be even better to hold her in bed, discover if the rest of her body was as silky soft as her hands. I wanted to be as close to her as I could get, intertwined, breathing in her strength and her certainty as I breathed out all my loneliness.

"We should have sex," I blurted.

She jerked away. "What?"

I was like Wile E. Coyote sprinting off the cliff without realizing there was nothing under him. "We're hot for each other," I said, trying not to sound as confused as I felt. "We should have sex."

"Yeah, no, still not understanding you."

"We need to get rid of the tension," I said desperately.

She blinked slowly. "What tension?"

"You can't say you didn't feel it." Kissing her hand had been erotic, tender, beyond my wildest dreams. Not to mention her mouth.

"It was fake," she told the waves.

The word was a needle, but I tried to keep my bubble from popping. "If that's how you kiss when you don't mean it, please warn me before you do it for real, because I need to write my will."

She didn't laugh. "That's very flattering, but I'm still stuck on the word should . Why should we have sex? Because there are several excellent reasons why we shouldn't ."

I put my head in my hands. "Jesus, you're killing me here. Like, just dig a hole for me and put me in it already."

"I'm sorry you feel that way. But in what universe does having sex make a relationship less tense?"

I looked up. "Does that mean you've never had a friend with benefits?"

She stomped away a few steps. "Oh my God, I can't believe this."

"That's a no?"

When she turned back, her face was incredulous. "That's an absolutely not, I would never, what on earth."

I shrank into myself, trying to ignore the chant of You're not good enough that played in my head. "You don't need to be all judgy about it. Everyone I've ever done it with has been on the same page."

She shook her head, and her voice softened. "No, that's not it. I don't judge other people for doing what they need to do. But you know what sex does? It makes oxytocin. Bonding hormones. Running around your system willy-nilly and making things all warm and fuzzy. Anyone who thinks that they can have sex more than once without catching at least some kind of feelings is delusional, because catching feelings is biology ."

I put my hands up. "OK, Einstein, I take your point."

"Einstein wasn't a biologist."

I laughed, all disbelief. "I'm telling you that I want to be naked in your bed, and you're being a smartass?"

She blushed. "Stating facts isn't smartassery. It's pedantry."

She was so fucking smart, and so far out of my league. But right now, she could decide to eat me alive and I'd hand over a knife and fork.

"Look," she said. "We're making good progress with the book. It would mess things up, to sleep together."

I couldn't help myself. "Tell me one thing."

Her eyes closed. "I'm going to regret this. Sure."

"Do you want me, too?"

"That's…"

"Irrelevant," we said at the same time.

She half-laughed. "I need to buy more five-dollar words."

"Yes or no, Ellie."

Her hands went to her face. "I shouldn't," she said through her fingers.

"That's a yes, then," I said impatiently.

And there she was. "Oh, for crying out loud. Yes, Kieran, I am sexually attracted to you." My mind snagged on the word "sexually," so I almost didn't hear her say, "But I'm not going to do anything about it. So that's that."

Ellie

On the way back to Ojai we barely spoke, and when we did, we were so polite . The warm river of complicity that had floated us through that party and out to the beach had dried up. I lost count of the number of times we said, "You go ahead," to each other when we got back to the motel and needed to change out of our party clothes. I'd almost blurted "Rock, paper, scissors?" when Kieran said, "Ladies first, for fuck's sake," and I gave in.

I stripped naked, rinsed grains of sand off my feet, showered off the sweet, spiced perfume Max had given me for our last anniversary. He'd been so excited to give it to me that I hadn't had the heart to remind him that I wouldn't be able to wear it when I worked, which was most of the time.

I rubbed makeup-removal goop all over my face, and as I washed it away, I watched my girlfriend mask eddy in pink-and-black-tinted swirls down the drain. All the while, Kieran's passionate, surprised words echoed in my head.

We should have sex, he'd said. As if it were some kind of biological imperative.

My wide-eyed bare face stared at me, aroused and unsure. The beautiful man on the other side of the door wanted to have sex with me. And it would be so easy. Tad didn't know we were sharing a room. Didn't know we'd kissed, that the kisses had felt like a Fourth of July's worth of fireworks.

But I'd know I'd broken my promise.

"New pajamas?" Kieran asked when I came out of the bathroom.

I looked down at the sleep shirt and pants, with their just-unfolded creases. "Yeah. I don't usually wear them." I turned strawberry red as I muttered the last words. High on the list of things Kieran hadn't needed to know was that I usually slept naked. "Never mind."

I could have sworn I saw Kieran gulp, but maybe that was just a trick of the light. "I'm going to go shower," he said.

When he'd said "shower," he'd really meant it. I'd read a chapter of my book and turned my light out by the time I heard the bathroom door open. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep.

No such luck. The unfamiliar bed felt hard and hot, and the pajama fabric snagged around me every time I turned over. How did people wear clothes to bed? Did they just sleep in their own sweat?

A faint snuffle came from the other side of the room. At least one of us was sleeping. I counted sheep. I even tried burrowing under the sheets and inhaling carbon dioxide.

When I threw the sheets back and flicked my bedside light on, I saw I wasn't the only one who'd overheated. Unconscious Kieran had shoved the sheets and blankets down, leaving them wrapped around his lower legs. The soft gold light illuminated his long, pale, freckled back, cut off by the band of his black boxer briefs. He had his arms wrapped around a pillow, his cheek pressed into it like he was dreaming of having something to hold.

The smile curled my lips before I knew it. He'd been so good at holding me. Kissing me. He kissed like it was the only thing in the world he could imagine doing, like he could explore my mouth for days. Even his lips on my hand had been overwhelming, out of all proportion to the contact.

I told myself to stop staring at him. But another part of my brain was determined to imagine what it would be like to return the favor. Kiss the nape of his neck, lick between his shoulder blades, suck on the base of his spine.

Jesus, I needed to reactivate Hinge when I got home.

I could not sleep with Kieran. I could not sacrifice my long-term plans and obligations for short-term pleasure. Even if I wanted that pleasure more than my next breath.

I turned out the light and clamped my pillow over my head.