Roomies

“I’ve wanted this since the first time we had lunch.”

What?

His smile moves up my neck, pressing parentheses into my skin. “I remember how nervous and sweet you were.” More kisses. “I wondered whether you liked me that way. But you kept so calm with me in your house . . . and I’m out here on the couch thinking about you.”

I don’t even know what to say to this. I want to repeat the way he says tinking about you. He was out here feeling what I was feeling? My charade was too convincing; apparently I could have been getting Calvin Sex for the past month. I want to both celebrate and scream.

“And then we fell into your bed,” he says, and his mouth moves across my throat to the other ear. He sucks just below, pressing into me. Something hard digs into my hip, and I gasp.

It makes him hiss. “I like your sounds. I remember how many of them you made.” His mouth moves closer to mine. “What do you remember?”

“Earlier,” I say, and he kisses me once, “in the elevator, when you were close to me, I was thinking about . . .”

He pulls back, waiting. “Thinking about . . . ?”

“When we were in my bed.”

“What were we doing?”

I push back the self-conscious doubt in my throat. “You were on top of me. We were already . . .”

Moving together, I don’t say.

Calvin groans, sliding his hands under my shirt to grip my waist. “You were thinking about fucking me in the elevator?”

And just like that, I am hot everywhere. He’s making this so easy. “I was remembering that feeling of skin on skin, where you can’t get enough?”

His mouth comes over mine, and I remember this, too. It’s not a new kiss, it’s a kiss we’ve done before—teasing only at first and then sucking, and deeper, and hungry.

He slides his hands farther up my shirt, and around so he’s unfastening my bra with a tiny pinch. My shirt and bra are pulled off together, and his mouth moves down, dragging words over my skin. I stare down at his shoulders, reaching for his shirt, wanting to see the way the muscles move as he grabs me and holds me, as he works his mouth down my belly to the clasp of my skirt.

My clothes are peeled off in front of the door again, but this time I notice everything. I notice how his skin looks in the dim light coming in the living room window, and I notice how he smiles even when he’s kissing me.

I notice the feel of his skin on my fingertips and how it’s even smoother against my lips.

I notice he likes being licked on his chest, he likes being bitten near his hip, and his hands shake when he slides them into my hair as I move lower, taking him in my mouth.

But the things I learn about Calvin right now won’t ever be shared in an interview; finally we have something that is just for us. I don’t need to know that he’s quiet while he watches, his breaths initially cut off and then gasping. I don’t need to know that he begs sweetly when he’s close, or that he warns me, trying to slow his body down before he comes—but I learn these things anyway. And I don’t need to know for anyone but myself that he’s a tease when he puts his mouth on me, or that he’ll touch me with the same fingers he uses to strum his guitar and it’s that knowledge that will send me over the edge on my living room floor.

We get a drink of water, we move to my bed, and his mouth is all over me again, along my thighs, over my stomach, sucking, sucking at my chest. I’m sure we’ll talk later, but for now we’re only sounds and breathing. It feels like all we’ve done is talk—in this instructional, memorizing way, knowing that everything we say needs to be filed away for a later date—but right now the only thing I want is to reconstruct that choppy memory of how it feels to have his weight on me and his skin all over mine.

The strange thing is that all of this feels so easy and familiar, but when he’s there—above me and then pushing inside—that’s where the familiarity ends. I know now that that night we were nearly numb with intoxication, and I can say with certainty that he didn’t watch as he inched into me; he didn’t go this slowly. I can say with certainty that my eyes were probably closed and it was all wilder and rougher because we could barely process a thing.

And I know for sure it didn’t feel like this. I’m so sensitive that he’s only started to move and I’m clawing at him, pressing into him to get closer, and closer, and we find a rhythm for so long where everything feels so good we can’t stop marveling over it, and it blows over me, unexpected—

I’m coming and he’s watching,

moving faster he’s so focused—

his hips stutter against mine and he’s there, following just after me; his deep groan of relief vibrates against my throat. I have one hand in his hair and the other on his neck; my legs are wound around him, hooked together at his lower back: like this, we go still.

It’s raining outside, I didn’t even realize. Heavy sheets of water sluice over the eaves and down onto the sidewalk.

“Was it good?” he whispers, quietly reverent.

“Yeah.” I swallow, catching my breath. “You?”

He pulls back a little and stares down at me. “Yeah.” He bends, kissing me. “I’m reeling.”

Calvin’s breath is warm on my neck, his back still slick beneath my palms. The other night seems like drunken fumbling compared to what just happened between us, and I’m left momentarily out of words.

He pushes up onto an elbow and reaches down between us with his other hand, anchoring the condom as he pulls out. When he shifts away to throw it in the bin, the entire front of my body goes cold, and I urge him back, pulling the covers over us.

“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to fake an orgasm with me.” His voice is muffled by my shoulder.

This makes me laugh. “What? I mean—I wouldn’t fake an orgasm—but what makes you say that?”

“You get this flush, up your neck and across your face. I thought I could go a bit more but then you started to come, and I was done for.”

I curl into him. The feel of his arms around me is so insane. I want to look at him again and again, to make sure I’m not imagining this.

“What time is it?” I ask.

He stretches to see my alarm clock on the other nightstand. “Two.”

We have twenty-seven blissful hours before we have to be anywhere. I nestle closer.

“Holland?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know that my parents couldn’t afford to come to the wedding?”

I pull back so I can see him. “I just made that up. I assume Molly’s medical care is really expensive.”

“It is.” He leans in, kissing my nose. “It’s been this enormous stress, her whole life.”

This pushes a little ache into my chest.

“I’ve tried so hard to keep them from worrying about me,” he says. I stare up at his face, watching his jaw tense as he swallows. “Didn’t want them spending the money to come out to see me living in Mark’s flat, paying fuck-all in rent. Little lies turned into big lies and—” He stops and looks down at me, searching back and forth between my eyes. “I’ll tell it all to you someday but not now. It just felt good when you said that.” He slides a hand up, over my breast and coming to rest on my sternum. “Feels like I don’t always have to explain myself so much with you.”