Roomies
My saggy tights.
My skirt at my waist.
And, later, my shirt unbuttoned to my navel.
“Oh God.”
He laughs. “Sit.”
“I was such a mess.” I drop down beside him.
“You landed on the subway tracks and knocked your head.” He looks at me quizzically. “Of course you were a mess.”
“No,” I say, groaning into my hands. “I mean you probably saw my saggy crotch and my boobs.”
A strangled laugh comes from beside me. “I wasn’t really thinking about crotches and boobs at the moment. I jumped up, telling the bum to wait, but he ran. I tried to reach you but couldn’t. I worried if I tried to fetch you, we’d both be stuck down there. I called the paramedics, called the MTA. The ambulance arrived, and that was that.” When I look back at him, I find him studying me. “It happened so fast. I wasn’t sure what he was doing at first, but then he came for you. I don’t have a legal ID or residence. I was paranoid. That’s really it.”
“Okay.”
He nods to my cast again. “How much longer do you need to wear that?”
Tracing a finger along a line in the hardened bandage, I say, “I get it off in three weeks.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
He nods, and the silence swallows us.
We look around. At the dark television, the window, the bookcases, the kitchen. Anywhere but at each other.
My husband.
Husband.
The more I repeat the word in my head, the more it sounds fake, like it’s not a real thing.
Calvin clears his throat. “Do you have anything to drink?”
Booze. Right. This is the perfect situation for some booze. I jump up, and he laughs, awkwardly. “I should have thought to get champagne or something.”
“You bought the dinner,” I remind him. “Obviously the champagne was on my list and I dropped the ball.”
Pulling a bottle of vodka from the freezer, I set it on the counter and then realize I have nothing to mix it with. And I finished the last beer the other night.
“I have vodka.”
He smiles valiantly. “Straight-up vodka it is.”
“It’s Stoli.”
“Straight-up mediocre vodka it is,” he amends with a cheeky wink.
His phone buzzes, and it sets off a weird, giddy reaction in my chest. We both have full lives beyond this apartment, which remain complete mysteries to each other. One difference between us is that Calvin likely doesn’t care about my life outside of this. Yet I care intensely about his. Having him here feels like finding the key to unlock a mysterious chest that’s been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for a year.
Buzz. Buzz.
Looking up, I meet his eyes. They’re wide, almost as if he’s not sure whether to answer.
“You can get it,” I assure him. “It’s okay.”
His face darkens with a flush. “I . . . don’t think I should.”
“It’s your phone! Of course it’s okay to answer it.”
“It’s not . . .”
Buzz. Buzz.
Unless, maybe, it’s some Mafia drug lord and if he answers his ruse is up and I’ll kick him out. Or—gasp—maybe it’s a girlfriend calling?
Why had this not occurred to me?
Buzz. Buzz.
“Oh my God. Do you have a girlfriend?”
He looks horrified. “What? Of course not.”
Buzz. Buzz.
Holy shit, how long until his voicemail puts us out of our misery?
“. . . Boyfriend?”
“I don’t—” he starts, smiling through a wince. “It’s not.”
“ ‘Not’?”
“My phone isn’t ringing.”
I stare at him, bewildered.
His blush deepens. “It’s not a phone.”
When he says this, I know he’s right. It doesn’t have the right rhythm to be a phone.
I lift the vodka to my lips and chug straight from the bottle. The buzzing has the exact rhythm of my vibrator . . . the one I tucked beneath that cushion on the couch days ago.
I’m going to need to be pretty drunk to deal with this.
eleven
I roll over onto my side, right into a solid, warm body. It’s black all around us, and the darkness only amplifies his quiet moan. Against me, Calvin is completely bare; we both went to bed clothed, but somehow I ended up back out in the living room—naked—and the unbelievable heat of him seems endless in the tiny sofa bed.
The springs creak when he rolls to face me, nibbling a path from my shoulder to my jaw. “Well this is unexpected,” he says.
I want to ask him how long I’ve been out here, but he wipes away all organized thought, leaving only a trail of fire behind as his hand slides up from my hip, over my breast to my neck.
“You didn’t want to fuck in the bed?” he asks, speaking into a kiss against my jaw. “I would have come to you.”
He shifts away just enough to let me explore with my palms: the solid expanse of his chest, the hair on his navel, and lower, to where he’s hard for me, shifting into my palm when I curl a fist around him.
Like this he moves for a few tight breaths, sucking at my neck, cupping my breasts in his rough hands. But every inch of my skin feels tight and aching—I need him over me, inside.
“I want . . .”
His mouth hovers over my nipple, teeth bared. “Want?”
I try to blame my impatience on the fact that it’s the middle of the night, and I’ve somehow wandered into Calvin’s bed, and he’s totally fine with it—I don’t want to lose a single second of this by either of us overthinking it. So I urge him over me, staring up at him in the dark.
“Did you get enough dinner?” he asks, kissing from my breast slowly up to my neck.
I don’t know why he’s joking about the steak right now, but it doesn’t even matter because I can feel him press against me, and then he shifts his hips and he’s sliding inside with a moan that vibrates against my throat.
The stretch of him inside me is so new, so unexpected, that I cry out and he turns his head, covering my open mouth with his. He says something I can’t make out, but it’s probably less about the words themselves than it is about my inability to process beyond the feel of him sliding in, and back out of me.
It seems unreal that he’s here, moving, pulling my legs around his waist. He’s not quiet—he lets out a gust of pleasure with every thrust, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this wild: pushing up into him, digging my nails in his back, begging him for faster, for harder.
Then he’s behind me—how, it was so fast—and I feel the sharp sting of his hand, the satisfied grunt he makes when I cry out. And then I’m over him, his hands on my breasts, fingers drawing maddening circles around the peaks.
“Are you close?” His voice is tight with restraint.
“Yes.”
“Fuck. Good.” His hands come to my hips, and he starts working himself up into me, hurried and deeper. “It feels so good.”
And it does. My skin feels staticky, my spine is tight with the spiral of pleasure.
“Jump on me,” he groans.
“. . . Jump?”
“Rabbit,” he growls. “Like in a field. Carrots.”
With a gasp, I startle awake into the darkness of my bedroom. The sheets are a tangle at my feet. My door is still closed, and I am completely alone with my hand down my pants.