“So much to choose from.” She walked fingers up his pec and neck and then rubbed her knuckle across his bottom lip. It was embarrassing how badly he wanted the kiss she was surely teasing. He stopped breathing, held super still. It was life and death.
And then she took her finger away and stepped back. “Now I’m hungry,” she said, moving past him into the other room.
What else could he do but try to keep his balance around her? He put his teeth into his lip to recapture the feeling of her touch. She was clearly trying to strangle him with sexual tension. It might work.
“Jay,” she called from the bedroom.
“You’re evil.” And smart to throttle their awkwardness with fever.
“Come in here and tell me that.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Scared.”
She laughed in a mission accomplished kind of way. “Of me?”
“Fuck yeah.”
The next laugh was classic horror movie chilling. She probably rubbed her hands togeth
er as she laid new traps for him to walk willingly into. “I’ve finished being weird and silent. I’m sorry you had to see me crying before. I hated that. I’m a little excited that you kept Suzy Q. My hunger will wait. I have taken my clothes off and I am dedicating myself to kissing all of my favorite parts of you.”
Hope was a very hard dick. “My mouth.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Evie, you never have to feel bad for showing me how you feel.” If only he’d understood that better before now. “Are you really naked?”
“You doubt me?”
“I’m deeply into self-preservation.”
“Have you ever had a vibe ring used on you?”
He groaned. “You’re trying to fuck me up, aren’t you?”
“It would be no fun it I didn’t at least try.”
He walked into the other room, half expecting her to be holding the TV remote in one hand and the room service menu in the other, fully dressed and totally fucking with him. She was kneeling on the bed, utterly naked except for the pink ring, which she switched on.
Jay loves Evie Everyday. Even when she was distrustful and resentful and weird and silent and jerking him around and disrespecting his property and making him want to beg for her mouth and her vagina.
“How are you still dressed?” she said.
Fair question. He took his shirt off and something shook loose in his head when her eyes lit up. Maybe they could do this. Be okay together again. “We’re not just sex?” It was a center but it wasn’t the whole.
“Be careful how you use that word just.”
Also fair, given the mood. He undid his belt. “Sex was a big deal for us but it wasn’t all we were.”
She lifted her hands to her breasts squeezed them together, then played with the nipple cuff. “I can treat you to a history of the things we did that weren’t about sex or you can lose the pants and get with the program.”
He didn’t need a lesson.
He cherished their history. It was shared books and movies and Evie beating him at video games. He knew how to tell if a piano was out of tune and choose ace clothes because she taught him. She knew how to make Singapore noodles because he’d shown her. They’d daydreamed out loud and been comfortable in silence. He’d once known which tampons to buy for her. She’d once known which razors he liked best. He’d rubbed her back when it ached, she’d made him hot soothing drinks for a throat sung raw. She was the first person he’d turned to in confusion, in fear, in fun. He was her respite from family infighting. He’d once known what made her sad, what excited her and he craved to know those things again.