Love, Theoretically

On Friday night, I wear a dress.

Nothing fancy. It’s a cable-knit sweaterdress my cousin handed down to Mom because it was too long, and Mom handed down to me because it was too small. I pair it with my one lipstick, my one tube of mascara, my one eye pencil, my one pair of thigh highs. I curl my hair all on my own, cursing softly whenever I burn the side of my hand, so Cece won’t hear.

Reader: she hears anyway.

“This is such an M. Night Shyamalan plot twist,” she tells me from the kitchen, where she’s pouring milk into a bowl. “Do you see dead people? Oh my God—am I dead?”

“Shut up. I dress up all the time.”

She waves her spoon at me. “Not for dates.”

“Actually—”

“Not for real dates with your professional archnemesis and brother of the guy you used to fake-date, who you wished would incur a death by papercuts but now like enough to fix that cowlick on the back of your head.”

I sigh. “Great synopsis of my life.”

“Thank you. If you ever need a biographer . . .” She pours Cocoa Puffs into the milk, like the nonsensical creature she is. “Where are you guys going?”

“Dinner with his friends. He has this really active social circle that makes me look back to that summer when my best friend was a watermelon with googly eyes and feel absolutely devastated.”

“In third grade?”

“High school.”

“Ouch. Well, you have me now. Ready to call law enforcement if you’re not back by eight thirty. May I? I’ve always wanted to report a missing person.” She holds the spoon like a phone. “No, Officer, she didn’t have enemies, but she was part of a weird sectarian conflict that only someone with a doctorate in physics could fully grasp. Last seen cavorting with a big dude in a Saint Patrick’s Day Porta Potty. Yes, I’ll hold.”

I laugh. “Do text me before you call Liam Neeson. And I might be later than that, but I’m not spending the night.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

She gasps. The spoon clatters. “Are you not letting him smack the salmon because of the article he wrote? Is his seventeen-year-old self cockblocking him from the past?”

I frown—at her usage of salmon and at the reminder that why, yes, the guy I’m going out with did do that. And it’s not that I ever forget. It’s just that I truly cannot reconcile it—the way Jack is when we’re together, kind and funny and even admiring of my work, and the fact that fifteen years ago—

“Elsie? Is that it?”

“No. No, he’s just . . . not planning on having sex with me.”

Her eyes widen. “Are you planning on having sex with him?”

Maybe. Probably. No. Should I? I want to. I’m scared. Maybe. “I have to go.” I chew on the inside of my cheek and pick up my purse. Then stop at the door when Cece says, “Hey, Elsie?”

I turn around.

“You look pretty tonight.” Her big eyes are warm. “Even more than usual.”

I smile. I think I look medium as usual, but my heart feels open all of a sudden, open for Cece, this beautiful, odd person who cannot read analog clocks or tell the difference between left and right, who’s been sticking with me through thin and thin and thin for the past seven years. For a moment, all I want is to open my mouth and say, I hate art house movies. Could we watch a rom-com sometimes? Riverdale? Literally any Kardashian show?

What comes out is “You look like a weirdo, pouring milk before the cereal, but I love you anyway.”

I step out to her middle finger. Then my phone rings, and that’s when my night collapses like an accordion.

In my defense, I pick up assuming it’s Jack, calling to say that he’s late, or that I’m late, or that someone hammered him in the frontal lobe and the resulting brain injury helped him realize that he doesn’t want to see me ever again. A tragic miscalculation on my part, because:

“Elsie, finally. You need to come home right now.”

“Mom?”

“Lance is now with Dana. And Lucas punched him after the soccer game. Everyone saw.”

God. “But I talked to them last week. Lance said he wasn’t interested—”

“He lied, Elsie. I’m disappointed in you for not picking up on it.”

“I—” I exhale, stepping out of the building. “He seemed sincere.”

“That’s why you need to come home and help me sort this out. I have been so tense and jittery. My poor nerves.”

“Mom, I can’t. I don’t have a car, for one. And I have classes.”

“Just find a substitute teacher.”

“That’s not—I’m not—Mom.” I spot Jack’s car. It’s freezing cold. Every instinct yells at me to first finish my conversation, but I cannot resist getting in. The seat is already heated, Jack’s hair still shower damp, curling in soft wisps on his neck. He looks freshly shaved and smells divine—like soap they sell in fancy boutiques and the hollow of his throat when I slept nestled in his arms.

One minute, I mouth. He nods. Mom’s going on about how Lance is misunderstood, Lucas is sensitive, Dad is busy with work, and the mean ladies at church are sure to be rejoicing in the downfall of the once-esteemed Hannaway household. Meanwhile, Jack studies me through my open coat. My dress hits only about midthigh when I’m sitting. His eyes follow the line of the hem, stop on my knees. Linger for a longer-than-polite moment. Then his Adam’s apple bobs, and he turns away. His shoulders rise, then fall, and then he’s driving out of the parking lot, looking anywhere but at me.

Oh.

“Mom, I have to go. I’ll call them both tomorrow and talk them out of . . . illegal stuff, at the very least—”

“You can’t solve this at a distance.”

I sigh. “I’ll do my best. Honestly, I’m not sure I can solve this at all. I’m not sure anyone can.”

Mom gasps, outraged. “How can you be so selfish, Elsie?”

I exhale slowly. “I don’t think I’m being selfish. I’ll help as soon as I’m able, but they’re both beyond listening to anything I—”

“Unbelievable,” she says, and then . . . nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

“Jack?” I say.

“Yes?”

“If I’m talking with someone and out of the blue I hear the busy signal . . . what does it mean?”

He gives me a look. “Sounds like you already know.”

“Oh my God.” I’m dumbstruck. “My mom just hung up on me.”

He nods. “Should I be shocked? Is that something that doesn’t happen in functional families?”

“I . . . don’t know. Does your father hang up on you?”

“Does my father have my number?”

I laugh, and we exchange a half-clueless, half-amused glance. Peas in a pod, really. “It’s a first.” My stomach feels heavy. “She usually likes me. Or pretends to, anyway.”

Jack looks at me with his resting I see you face. I’m not used to Mom being this mad at me. It feels terrible, like my entire soul is passing a kidney stone, and suddenly the idea of going out to dinner holds zero appeal. It’ll be good, I tell myself. You like his friends. Laughter is the best medicine. Or opiates.

“Want to tell me what happened?” he asks gently, twisting the car through Boston’s narrow one-ways.

“My family is . . . embarrassing.”

“More so than a dozen people in monogrammed shirts vulture-circling a ninety-year-old in the hope that she’ll drop dead and a few wads of cash will roll in their direction?”

“My family would do the same, if there were any money to be had. If something happened to my grandma, my brothers would beat each other up over the six-pack of beer she left in the fridge.”

“Is that what they’re fighting about? Beer?”

“I wish. It’s . . .” I roll my eyes. It sounds too stupid to bear. “A girl.”

“A girl.”

“Well, she’s a woman now. But she was a girl when it all began.”

He frowns. “How old are your brothers?”

“Older than me. And honestly, I blame this entire mess on traumatic encephalopathy. Both of them were on the football team getting their brains oatmealed, and there were seventy million cheerleaders they could have, I don’t know, played D&D under the bleachers with, but no, they decided to choose the same one. Dana.”

His mouth twitches. “I don’t think that’s what people do under the bleachers, Elsie.”

“They’re my brothers, okay? For the purpose of this conversation, they’ve been fighting over the exclusive right to attend Dana’s decoupage classes. And the most ridiculous thing is, they fancy themselves in some kind of Legends of the Fall situation. They both think that the big love of their life is doomed to fail because of the machinations of their evil twin, but the truth is, it’s so obvious from the outside that no one loves anyone here. Dana gets ninety percent of her dopamine from watching two guys fight over her. Mom only cares about what her cousin’s husband’s sister’s nanny thinks, and is totally fine with them shanking each other as long as they do it privately. And the sad thing is, Lucas and Lance used to be best friends. They’d have fun trying to convince me that ChapStick was made of dromedary sperm and watching me gag. But by now . . . they’ve forgotten that they’re brothers, forgotten why they liked Dana in the first place, and are just chickens pecking at each other’s feed—like they’re two hydrogen atoms, and Dana is the electron they constantly steal back and forth. But they’re both nonmetals, and even though they wish they could pluck that electron out for good and keep it for themselves, nope, same electronegativity, sorry, it won’t work. And we’re back to square one every six damn months.”

“And where do you come in?” Jack asks, voice quiet in the car after my bout of yelling. I feel guilty for unloading my entire life story on him, like he’s Oprah or something. I should be fun.

“Mom sends me in to broker peace.” I squirm against the seat. Jack’s eyes slide to my legs, or maybe they don’t. The car is dark and I can’t tell.

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“It sounds like your brothers are having issues with one another.” I nod. “Why does she send you?”

“I—because—we—” It’s such a Why is the sky blue? question. Scattering of solar light through the atmosphere, duh. “It’s my family.”

“It’s your mom’s family, too. And your dad’s, and your brothers’. And yet they’re fine with not addressing the issue and asking you to take care of it.” He takes a right turn, and the lights of the truck coming toward us hit his jaw at the perfect, most handsome angle. There’s the way he looks, his low voice, this smell of his. What does this man want with this? With me?

“I owe it to them.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You don’t understand—I was . . . I gave them lots of problems growing up. My diagnosis was such a hassle for them, and the medical care was so expensive. I owe it to them.” My stomach drops. Now Mom is mad at me. I’m an ingrate.

“So, to summarize: Because your pancreas stopped producing insulin when you were a child, you now owe your family a doula-worthy degree of emotional labor?”

It sounds horrible, put like that. Downright horrifying. But. “Yeah, kind of.”

“What does your family think of your job situation?”

“Oh, that.” I shrug. “Not much.” I don’t plan to elaborate, but he’s giving me a raised-eyebrow look, and I want him to check the road. “I don’t tell them about that stuff.”

“You don’t tell them about your life?”

“It’s not what I meant.” Though I don’t. “Just . . . I’m a first-generation college student.”

“There are plenty of first-generation academics whose parents are supportive and engaged.”

I roll my eyes. Because it’s not like I don’t know that he’s right, or like my heart doesn’t feel heavy at the thought. “Just go ahead and do it.”

“Do what?”

“You’re dying to armchair-psychologize me.”

He doesn’t even hide how entertaining he finds me. “Am I?”

“You obviously have an opinion.”

“Hmm.”

“Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“That I don’t tell my family about my job because I’m unable to let people know that I’m more than the sum of the ways I can be useful to them. That if I show my true self, with my needs and my wants, I risk being rejected. That I’ve wielded my ability to hide who I am like an emotional antiseptic, and in the process I’ve turned myself into a puppet. Or a watermelon with googly eyes.”

He maneuvers the car past the glow of the streetlights, and as the seconds pass in silence, I grow afraid that I’ve said too much, showed too much, been me too much. But then:

“Well.” His smile is fond. Tender. “My job here is done.”

I close my eyes, letting my forehead slide against the window—hot skin and cold glass. “I know how messed up I am.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know how to stop.”

“Then maybe my job is not done. And you should stick around.” I turn to check whether his expression matches his tone—a mix of teasing, sweet, amused, hopeful, other things I can never understand.

Then I notice where we are. “This is your apartment.”

“Yup.” He parks. No, he reverse parks. Without sweating or crying or a litany of fuck shit fuck. I hate him.

“Did you forget something?”

“Nope.”

“Then why—?”

“I figured we’d take it easy tonight. Relax.”

“What about your friends?”

“They can entertain themselves.”

“But they’re waiting for us.”

“Nah. I texted them.”

“When?”

“While you were comparing your brothers’ relationship to a nonpolar covalent bond.”

“I . . . Why?”

“Because you’re obviously upset. And probably had a long week at work. And you had more-or-less nonconsensual lunches with two people whom I know to be giant pains in the ass. I think it’s better if we stay in.” He kills the engine. “Just us.”

“But . . .” I look up at his building. Unlike mine, it doesn’t look like it’s twenty minutes from being condemned and thirty-five minutes from burning down due to exposed circuitry. “What are we even going to do?”

I hear the smile in his words. “I have a couple of ideas.”

•   •   •

“So, Breaking Dawn’s the first one.”

“What? No. Twilight is the first one. Otherwise it’d be the Breaking Dawn Saga.”

“Right. Need a blanket?”

The lights are low, but Jack tracks my movements as I shake my head and fold my legs underneath me. The hot chocolate he made sits on the coffee table, right next to his Heineken, and I think I saw him raise the thermostat when we first came in, after he noticed me shivering in the chilly hallway. I’m overdressed, over-made-up, overcurled for a night on the couch. I don’t care, though.

“Okay.” He grabs the remote and sits next to me, near but nonthreatening. Not close enough to touch, but the cushion shifts, and the air around me is warmer. Denser.

“I cannot believe you own a Twilight box set.”

“I needed to see what the fuss is about.”

“You bought the Blu-rays. Who buys Blu-rays?”

“People who can’t find the VHS.”

I study him. His odd, beautiful eyes. “How old are you, precisely?”

“Seventy-three.”

I laugh. “No, for real.”

“Seventeen.”

“You’re thirty-three, aren’t you? Thirty-two. Thirty-four?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Give me a hint. What do you remember most from your childhood? Slime? The DSL dial tone? Butterfly hair clips? People dying of the bubonic plague?”

“You can shit on my Twilight Forever box set all you want—I’ve seen the way you’re eyeing it.”

“With polite but detached interest?”

“With shameless, covetous lust for the ‘Edward Goes to Italy’ featurette.”

I laugh again. It’s nice, being here where it’s warm. “So what do you know about the movies?”

He drums his fingers on his knee. “They have a bloodcurdling CGI kid named Elizabelle—”

“Renesmee.”

“—and something about sparkly dermatology? Spider monkeys?”

“There’s also vampire baseball.”

“Encouraging.”

“Okay, real talk.” I turn a little toward him. “Are you going to hate this?”

“Probably. But no more than 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“What do you like?”

“Physics-defying car chases, mostly. People climbing buildings. Space monsters.” He shrugs. “George calls them my ‘white male rage’ movies.”

“Okay, well, we can watch one of those. Avengers’ Infinity Endgame or something with The Rock. I mean, what about what you want?”

“What about that?”

“We never focus on that.”

“That’s because I have no issues asking for what I want.”

“That felt like a backdoor brag,” I mumble resentfully.

“It was fully front door.”

I play with the hem of my dress. “I understand that this is about helping me reclaim my individuality, but if we’re going to be friends, we should do stuff you like, too. Otherwise—”

“Elsie.” Hands on my chin, he lifts it till my eyes are on his. “You’re doing it. We’re doing it.” I keep looking until I cannot bear it anymore, then free myself.

“Okay, well.” I swallow. Twice. “You still didn’t need to buy the box set.”

“I told you, I—”

“No, I mean . . .” My cheeks are warm. “It’s streaming on Netflix. And on Prime.”

I pluck the remote from his hand before he can ask me how I know. And then I ignore the amused way his eyes linger on me, and laugh over my hot chocolate at his soft comments: “Very green,” or “They go to high school?” or “What’s up with the ketchup bottle?”

About halfway through, I pry myself from the hormonal ride of paranormal teenage angst to look at Jack. He’s studying the movie intently, watchfully, like it’s a documentary on unparticle physics. “I promise I’m not going to quiz you afterwards,” I tell him. “You can scroll on your phone. Fall asleep. Roll your eyes.”

“Is that what people do when you watch Twilight with them?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t . . . ?”

“Watch it with anyone.” I never spend time with people doing something I unabashedly enjoy. “I usually stream a cam version on my laptop and give off a dense, guilty aura. Once Cece came in in the middle of Eclipse. I turned off the monitor and swore I was masturbating to stepbrother hentai.”

His mouth curves. “Not Bill Nye?”

“Didn’t think of it.” He looks back at the screen, but something’s blossoming in my stomach, something heavy and uncomfortable, and when I say, “Hey,” he turns to me again. “Thank you.”

“For suggesting Bill Nye porn?”

“No. For . . .” I cannot put it in words. Until I can. “For wanting to know me enough to watch my favorite movie with me.”

I lean forward, fully planning to kiss him on the cheek. But something happens once I’m inside his space, and . . .

Plans change. I linger.

Jack is warm. He smells nice and feels familiar, real like very little in my life does. So I stay. Just because it’s that good. And I stay even when he turns toward me, and his mouth is so close to mine, I’m almost sure this is going to turn into something else. Into a kiss.

He exhales.

I inhale.

His hand rises. Grips the back of my head to hold me still. My eyes flutter closed. A tight flush spreads all over my stomach, skin on fire, heart pumping.

Finally, a kiss that I want. And oh, do I want this kiss. I want to—

“No,” he says. His lips nearly move against mine. “No.”

He lets go abruptly. I open my eyes and he’s on the edge of the couch, feet away from me, facing away. “Jack?” His back is rigid.

He rubs his eyes, mumbling something that sounds a lot like “Too soon,” and I’m suddenly cold and full of dread.

“I didn’t mean to . . .” I reach out and lay my hand on his shoulder blade. He instantly moves away, and I realize it’s the wrong way to ask for forgiveness for invading his personal space.

“Elsie, I need you to not touch me for a minute.” He goes to stand by the window, rubbing his fingers over his mouth. On the TV, Bella is crying. I feel like crying, too. Mortified to the core. My embarrassment could power a midsized European country.

“I’m sorry,” I say to his taut shoulders. “Maybe I . . .” Honesty. When is honesty too much? “I think I may be attracted to you.”

“Fuck,” he breathes out. He turns around, running a hand through his hair. I’ve never seen him openly show distress before. “Fuck,” he repeats softly, and I’m lost. What did I do? I didn’t mean to—

He takes a deep breath. Suddenly he’s even more imposing. “I’m not going to fuck you,” he promises me quietly, almost talking to himself.

“I . . .” Have no idea what to say to that. “I am . . .” Confused? Rejected, maybe? But I didn’t ask him for that. He’s assuming a lot based on a couple of seconds of proximity, and I’m tempted to point it out, which is why I shock myself when what I say is vaguely resentful. “Right. You mentioned before that you’re not interested.”

He lets out a laugh. “I never said that.”

“At the restaurant, you said that you didn’t want to have sex with me.”

“I said that I wasn’t going to have sex with you.”

I frown. “That’s the same thing.”

“It’s not.”

My mind rushes to catch up. Then it does, and my entire body flushes with heat.

“Is that how you interpreted what I said?” He sounds incredulous. “Lack of interest?”

I shrug, like it doesn’t matter. Like it didn’t cut deep.

“You think I don’t want to fuck you,” he says, blunt as always.

“Why else?”

“Why else.”

I clear my throat. “Why else won’t you?”

Jack shakes his head. His jaw has a stubborn set, like this is a rule he’s made for himself, something he’s thought a great deal about. “It’s what’s best for you. For us. Right now.”

“I’m sorry, did you . . .” I clear my throat. “Did you just inform me that we’re not going to have sex, because it’s what best for us?”

He nods once, like he would to a known, undisputed fact. Water molecules slow down light. And that’s when I stand, indignant. “You understand that this should be the product of a dialogue between two people, right?” I’m barefoot. He’s so much taller than me, my neck protests the unnatural angle. “You can’t just hand out decisions without explanation—”

“I can, actually.” The way he bends down can’t be comfortable, either. We’re sharing about two square feet of space. Cross-armed. Unsmiling. A second ago we were joking on the couch. What the hell?

“This is incredibly patronizing. You can’t assume that you know what’s best for—”

“Okay, then.” He shifts forward, and I can feel every millimeter. “How do I make you come?”

I . . . must have misunderstood. “What?”

“What do you like when having sex? What do you want? What are your needs?” His eyes are pools of black in the dim lights. “How do I make you come?”

I shake my head. Edward is moving at light speed to save his love, and my mind is as slow as a slug. “Sorry?”

“You said it was patronizing of me not to discuss sex. So let’s talk.” This is the Jack from our first meeting: challenging, uncompromising, demanding. “Unless it makes you feel uncomfortable. A good sign that maybe it’s best for you not to have it, either, but—”

“That’s not it,” I hurry to say. But maybe it is, a little. I don’t talk about sex very much with people. Just Cece, and mostly in terms of what fourteenth-century nuns were supposedly up to when they should have been tending to the herb garden. But it has nothing to do with comfort. We don’t talk about sex for the same reason we don’t talk about stock dividends: we have very little of it.

“Then tell me,” he repeats. His look shifts to something that’s not quite daring. Like for once this is not a power play of his, and he genuinely wants to know. “How do I make you come?”

“This is such a weird thing to ask. I—” Light bulb: on. “Oh my God. You think I’m inexperienced.” I laugh right in his face. “I’m not. I’ve had sex with J.J., like, a million times, in a million ways!” I add, just to get a reaction out of him. But Jack’s reaction is infuriatingly nonexistent. “You think I’m lying?”

“I don’t. If you told me you’re a card-carrying member of the Orgy of the Month Club, I’d believe you. But since you have all that experience, you’ll have no problem telling me: How do I make you come?”

I open my mouth and . . . immediately close it.

“I’m waiting, Elsie.”

I hate him when he’s like this. Just—smug and merciless and all-seeing and—

“Still waiting.”

I look down at my feet, the stockings sheer around my toes, and all of a sudden I’m feeling just . . .

I’m embarrassed. I have no idea what to tell him, and for a second I consider lying. Pretending that I’m a fucking sex goddess. Twenty orgasms in a trench coat. But Jack is lie-repellant, and he’d know, and it’d be even more mortifying than the truth: I have no idea how he can make me come.

My mind turns to J.J., and here’s a truth I’m not going to admit out loud in this fancy open-plan apartment: I don’t even know if I have the capacity to like sex. I never wondered, because me enjoying something was never a priority.

“Is this something you do with every girl you sleep with?” I ask bitterly. “An entrance exam?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Other times it’s more trial and error.”

Something heavy twists in my stomach. “And after that?”

“After that, I do what they like. Have them do what I like, if they’re up for it.”

Jealousy. That’s the feeling—I’m jealous of these unnamed girls. In my mind they all look leggy, stunning, smart. Worthy of being fucked by Jack.

Unlike me.

I turn away and step to one of the million windows. I don’t know how he stands it, the nakedness of this place. It’s a fishbowl. He needs curtains.

“Elsie.” He’s behind me. I see his reflection in the glass, holding my eyes like in a mirror. “You have a pattern of doing things you don’t enjoy for the sake of others, and I need to be sure the two of us don’t fall into it. I need to know that you’re not initiating anything with me because it’s something you think I expect. And I need to be certain that you don’t feel like you have to be some . . . fantasy lay whose only focus is my pleasure. That you’re in a place where you’re able to acknowledge and articulate your needs.”

I let my forehead fall against the glass, watching my eyes cross over my nose.

“You should tell me what you’re thinking,” he says after a while, much more gentle than a minute ago.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.” He sighs. “And you promised you’d try.”

Right. Yes, I did do that. Stupidly. “I’m thinking . . .” I turn around. Drum my nails against the windowsill and close my eyes when I can’t bear to look at Jack. What am I thinking at any given time? The more I try to grasp my own mind, the faster it goes blank. “I’m thinking that two things can be true at once: you want to protect me, and also do it in a patronizing way. I’m thinking that by trying to respect me, you ended up making a decision for me—like everyone else before you. I’m thinking . . . that I don’t really know you, not yet, but sometimes, when I’m with you, I feel like you know me better than I do myself.” I swallow. “But I’m also thinking something else.”

“What?”

I open my eyes. He is—I want him. For myself. I have no idea in what shape, timeline, texture, but I do. “I’m thinking that I don’t know how you can make me come. But it would be fun to find out together.”

I’m exhausted from all the thinking, overthinking, rethinking, unthinking. So for the first time in my life, I just let my mind white out. I step out of my head and into my body, savor the absence of formulas and prediction models, and just do it.

Grab the hem of my dress.

Take it off in one fluid motion.

Drop it until it crumples at Jack’s feet.

It’s a big gamble. I’ve never done anything this brave, stupid, reckless before, but this is Jack: having so many of my firsts. And it doesn’t even matter if the second my clothes are off, I’m all out of courage. I stare at the fabric, too scared to move my eyes anywhere else, letting the tension stretch, the pressure build, till I hear a low “Elsie.”

I glance up.

I’m not insecure about my body, probably because I am so busy being insecure about every little thing I do, say, broadcast. But if I were, if I had any doubts about whether I’m attractive, pretty, desirable enough to him, they’d dissolve like sugar in water.

Jack’s cheeks are pink. His pupils fat, fixed at some point between my belly button and the elastic of my panties. At his sides, both his hands twitch, then clench into fists. “It’s too soon,” he says again. “We should wait till you’re more comfortable around me.”

“I’m at my most comfortable around you,” I say. And then, because honesty: “And also at my least. But that’s because you’re an asshole, and unlikely to ever change.”

He exhales a sharp laugh. I look at him looking at me, thinking that I might win this if I play it right. And then he says, “If we . . . We need rules,” and it occurs to me that I’ve already won.

“I don’t—”

“I need rules,” he says firmly, in a tone that brokers no objection. He’s staring at the swell of my breasts over my bra, mapping the edge of the simple black cotton. “You promise me you will—”

“Stop you if I need to. Tell the truth. Be honest.” I nearly roll my eyes. He’s right, but I’m impatient. Hot. Tingling with a sense of almost victory. Of possibilities.

His throat bobs. “We take it slow.” He’s starting to sound like he just finished a sprint. I consider making a CrossFit joke, but my mind’s occupied. “We’re not having sex. And clothes stay on.”

I glance at my dress. “Should I put it back on?”

“Jesus.” He licks his lips, steps closer. His hand lifts to hover somewhere around my waist but doesn’t touch me. “My clothes stay on.”

They won’t. They can’t, logistically. But he seems obsessed with being in control, so I say, “Suit yourself.” I reach around behind my back to unclasp my bra. He stops me and shifts even closer.

“Leave that on.”

I nod and bend down to roll off my thigh highs.

“Leave them on, too.” His jaw works. “Please.”

Oh.

“Okay.” I clear my throat. My heart is pounding and he’s flushed, and neither of us is doing anything. We’re caught. Stuck in the transition. “Can we . . . I don’t know. Can we kiss now? Or is it still ‘too soon’—”

Jack is not clumsy, not ever, but the embrace somehow is. Too hurried, greedy, impatient, the momentum too strong when he presses me against the window. The cold glass bites into my skin, a heady contrast to the unyielding weight of his chest on my front. “Why are—?”

His mouth is on mine, and I’m overwhelmed, then dizzy, then confused. In my experience, kisses are brief, something to do before moving to other body parts, to the real thing. But Jack won’t let this one end: his tongue presses against mine, strokes slowly, coaxes my jaw open. He kisses like he’s already inside me. I don’t know what to do about that, so the moment stretches endlessly, full and hot, until I cannot help squirming against him.

There is a couch nearby. A bed, countless chairs, an air mattress I’ve heard tales of. We’re here, though, the windowsill digging into my hips till he lifts me on top of it. He’s still taller, bigger, stronger, but he yields a few inches of advantage and I arch into him, twisting to get closer.

“Wait. Wait, let me—” His fingers close on my wrists and draw my arms around his shoulders. His hand slips between my thighs, lifts one up to make room for his hips, and then we’re locked together, finally close enough.

I moan into his mouth. He grunts and breaks the kiss. “Is this okay?” he pants. Something hard pushes against my stomach through his jeans. “Is this okay? Do you—”

“Yes.”

“Thank fuck.” He sweeps my hair away and holds his nose to the hollow of my throat. Inhales sharply. “You smell out of this world. I’ve been stuck on it since last summer, but it’s gotten better, and—”

“Bed. We should go to bed.”

“We’re not going to bed.” He nips my cheekbone, then licks the sting off, and we both moan at the feeling. “I’m not going to fuck you. We’re just . . . making out. Fooling around. This is not . . .” He hooks his finger into the soft cup of my bra and lowers it. His forehead presses against mine and he looks down, to the hard point of my nipple. “Jesus,” he mutters.

“I can take it off—”

“No.” He groans softly and thumbs the pebble back and forth. Pinches it just this side of too much, making me gasp. “I’m not going to fuck you, but God, I could.” His entire palm rubs against my breast, and my whimper is humiliating.

This is going to feel good. Really, really good. It’s already much better than . . . than anything. Pulling embarrassing, unfortunate noises out of me.

“What do I do?” he asks, fitting his fingers in the dips of my ribs.

I look up at him, glossy-eyed, already a little dazed. “What?”

“What do you like?” He’s looking down at my body like it’s a beautiful space oddity, something belonging to a minor goddess, to be investigated in filthy, methodical, obscene ways. His hand traces my flat stomach. Skims the place where my thigh highs transition into tender skin. Brushes reverently against the pod right above my panties, like this little thing my life depends on is as much a part of me as my navel. J.J. asked me to take it off, said he found it off-putting. Made bionic woman jokes. And then there’s Jack. Licking his lips and asking, “Where do I start?”

I have no clue. “Um . . .”

He kisses me again, this time slow and gentle, pulling back from that initial brink. He uncovers my other breast, and his fingers are back, playing with my nipple like it’s an instrument. Liquid warmth hooks low in my belly. “Trial and error, then.”

“What do you do with other girls?”

“Other girls?”

“Normal girls.”

He laughs into my collarbone, then starts sucking on it. “Elsie.”

“I just want to know. If I . . . if I weren’t me, what would you do?”

“No.” Against my sternum.

“I just—honesty, you said.” He’s licking the inside of my breasts like they’re luscious, sweet fruits. I run my fingers in his hair, bow into him, beg, “Please.”

He hums against my nipple. I wait for him to take it into his mouth, tense as a violin string, and when he doesn’t, when he pulls back to stare at me, I nearly groan.

I do groan. A soft, miserable whine.

“If you were any other woman . . .” His palms stroke my knees, spreading my legs apart. “If you were anyone but you, I would take you to bed. And I’d fuck you everywhere you let me.” His fingers are like electricity, climbing up my inner thighs, lighting up nerve endings. “I would go down on you, maybe while you’re going down on me. And because your tits look like something I’ll be dreaming about for decades, I’d ask for permission to come on them. Paint a picture.” He reaches the elastic of my panties. I inhale, sharp. “I’d clean you up and feed you before taking you home, if you wanted me to.” His thumb pushes the wet cotton to the side. Slides underneath. “But you wouldn’t be you. And afterwards I wouldn’t think of you very much.”

He taps against my clit and I let out a moan. It’s knee buckling, how good this feels, the rush of pleasure climbing down my spine.

“This is way too fast,” he says hoarsely, but he’s drawing slow circles around me. My pussy throbs in time with my heartbeat, and my nails dig hard into the windowsill. I am grateful for my black panties, which won’t show how wet I am. For the low lights. I’m grateful that I can close my eyes, pretend he’s not looking at me and seeing every little thing I’m made of. “Elsie, maybe you should ask me to stop.”

“Don’t. Whatever you do, please don’t stop.”

He laughs, breathless. “More? Less? What do you want?”

I want everything, and nothing will ever be enough. I’m empty and I ache and I’m clenching around nothing and—

“Elsie, what do you—”

“I don’t know,” I whine, burning, out of control. “I don’t know, but please—can you—”

“Shh. It’s okay.” The thumb presses harder, and my head falls back against the window. “I barely know what I want from you, and I’ve had much longer to think about it.” He’s close, licking my neck and my nipples, scraping his teeth around my throat. It makes everything worse and so much better. “I don’t know what I’m doing, either. Not with you. This is new.”

My head is a jumbled mess of pleasure and panic. This is—oh God. “That’s humble of you,” I manage to push out. My hips shift, trying to meet him and get more friction. Jack sees me strain, and he does nothing. I hate him. I hate him, I hate him, I—

“There’s something really humbling about having the face of your brother’s girlfriend in your head every time you come.”

Another whimper. Mine. “I was never his.”

“I didn’t know it. For months, I didn’t know.”

I want to ask him what he thought of. When it started. I just say, “I was sure you hated me.”

He laughs, a little wistful, and leans in for a kiss against my temple. “I did sometimes. For making me hate my brother, just because he was the one who got to eat you out.” His hand twists, and something in his grip changes: more points of contact, Jack parting my folds, the heel of his hand pressing against my clit. It’s even better. So much better. “Should I put a finger inside you?”

A flush spreads up from my chest. My entire body is burning, a blend of embarrassment, heat, pleasure.

“I don’t . . . I usually . . .”

I feel him nod against my cheek. “No, then.”

“But . . .” Historically, penetrative sex has done very little for me. But then so has kissing or touching, and as I sit here, trembling from Jack’s hand between my legs, I cannot help thinking that maybe there could be more to that. “Trial and error,” I say, which makes him laugh, a deep rumble in his chest.

“You sure?”

I nod. And then his middle finger nudges at my opening, tapping gently while his thumb strokes my clit, and I think it’s going to be a process, I think my body is going to have to work for it, but I’m wrong. He sinks inside me like a stone in water, gentle but not tentative, and it’s tight, but the friction is good. He pulls back to hold my eyes, and we stay like that, both vaguely surprised, both not quite daring to breathe. Until he kisses my mouth and hooks his finger inside me.

I arch and contract around him. We both jolt.

“Fuck,” he breathes out. “Here, huh?” He does it again, hitting a spot that’s somehow indecently, massively perfect. My entire body blooms with heat, thrums from the intensity of it.

“Oh my God, Jack, you—”

He does it some more, and I lose any ability to speak. His kisses deepen, become more aggressive, but I am too lost in the pleasure shooting up to my brain, too uncoordinated to return them in any meaningful way. He realizes it, I think, because he groans in the back of his throat, and his other hand moves between my shoulder blades and he pulls me into his chest, a soft creature he scooped up from the floor, squirming under him, melting between his fingers, utterly defenseless. “I imagined being with you like this a lot. But, Elsie, this is unreal. You are unreal.” His lips trail across my cheek. “When I get inside you, I’m going to lose my fucking mind,” he pants against the shell of my ear, like it’s too dirty to say out loud, even alone in a dark room.

“You are inside me—”

“You know what I mean.” He bites my lobe. His hand caresses up and down my spine, a soothing touch that’s the polar opposite of the slick mess between my legs. “Two?”

I swallow. My thighs are starting to tremble, and a frightening thought occurs to me: I might come from this. I might actually have an orgasm. I might lose all control and a fair bit of dignity, in front of someone else. In front of this someone else.

“Elsie? One finger okay? Or you want more?”

I don’t know. No. Yes. I shake my head and blindly grab his arm, digging my nails into him. His biceps is an oak tree, no give to the heavy muscles, and I feel less stranded. Anchored.

I want more of this. Of Jack. But I’m already full, bursting at the seams. “You have really big hands,” I say, and I don’t say, I like your hands. I love your hands. I watch your hands.

“Okay.” He wets his lips against mine. We’re drawing a map together, of a place neither of us has visited. “Okay, let’s stick with one.”

“I think . . .” I cup his cheek. Make sure my eyes are on his. “I think we should go to bed. Have sex. Real sex.”

He laughs, strained. “I think you should let me go on my knees and eat you out until tomorrow morning.”

God. God. I shake my head, dizzy, warm, dazzled. “Let’s just have sex. You—you can’t be enjoying this,” I tell him around a moan. I clearly am. Enjoying it.

“You sure?” He angles me a little, and there is no mistaking the hot bulge of his cock against my hip.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not—I’m not even doing anything. If we went to bed, I could—”

“You make soft little sounds. You shift your hips when I do—ah, yes. This. And these tiny spasms around my finger, which make me think of you clenching around my cock. Given how tight you are, it isn’t happening anytime soon, but—” He closes his eyes and takes a deep, undone breath. “Sorry.”

His rhythm on my clit is picking up, and I’m fading fast, all shallow breathing and spotty vision. “Sorry?”

“Just trying to get a grip.”

“You don’t have to get a grip. You can take me upstairs and—”

My channel contracts around him and we both groan. “You sure you don’t want two fingers, Elsie?”

I let my shoulders fall back against the window. It’s wet with my sweat, not cold anymore. “We should try.”

He watches himself this time. He stares at his index finger disappearing inside me alongside the middle, his other hand drawing calming patterns on my waist. I clench and gasp and twist on him, but he doesn’t let up, keeps pushing in slowly, and after some resistance, I’m taking him, arching involuntarily to make room, letting out a final little noise of gratitude and disbelief.

“Jesus,” Jack says. “Fuck.”

I’m getting used to it. This sense of being crammed with something hot and beautiful. I move experimentally. Squeeze around him till we both make sounds that belong to animals.

“Good?”

I nod. The edges of my vision are blurry. “Good.”

His kisses are gentle pecks, almost chaste. Afterthoughts, punctuations to this lurid, soaking thing we’re doing. “So maybe you like to be full,” he says, voice husky.

I nod. Maybe I do.

“I will give you anything I have—anything you want, if you let me go down on you right now.”

I lie back, enjoy the fullness, and try to decide in the mush that is my brain. “I’ve never done it,” I whisper, and Jack must find the situation unacceptable, because he drops to his knees in front of me and inhales deeply against the crease of my abdomen.

It takes exactly two swipes of his tongue to send me to outer space. One around my opening, where he’s stretching me too wide, and I think I’m going to die of embarrassment, of heat, of the liquid pressure that grows with each of his guttural groans. Then he moves up to my clit, and I know—I know—that nothing has ever felt like this in my life, that good things come sparingly, that I should try to make this last, but it’s over before it starts. My body seizes and snaps and bursts into a bubble of simple, pure, physical pleasure that feels too intense to weather alone. My fingers pull Jack’s hair too tight, dig in his scalp, and he keeps on eating at me, even when I’m coming down. His fingers stay deep inside, as if to give me something to contract around while I ride it out, and it’s perfect, this. It’s explosive, crashing, nuclear. Somewhere in the universe antimatter is being produced, and it’s all because of this.

Because of us.

“I think I’m dying,” I say the second I can breathe, completely serious. My heels are digging into his back, and wet noises rise up from where he’s still running his tongue over me.

“I think I want to do this every day,” he responds, kissing my pussy like he would my mouth. “Every day for the rest of my life.”

His words barely register, the glow of pleasure scrambling my mind as he pulls out his fingers and stands to press a soft kiss on my jaw. He murmurs soothing praises and nuzzles the top of my head, like he knows how disoriented I feel. I think these are cuddles. They feel as good as the orgasm.

Then something occurs to me: I came. He didn’t. I think of that moment of tense desperation just before, the fear of being stuck on the verge of pleasure, and I wonder if that’s where Jack is at now. If that’s how he feels, pulled too tight, too big for his skin.

“I want to have sex,” I tell him for the millionth time, and it’s true. I do. I want to see Jack come, for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with him. I’m utterly, purely selfish.

“Against tonight’s rules,” he mutters into my shoulder.

“So you’re just going to stop?” I shift my thigh, and it’s still there. His erect cock.

“I’m fine with—”

“Honesty,” I cut in. We’re both starting to wield the word like a weapon. “What do you want now? Putting aside your ‘rules.’ ” I roll my eyes at the last word, which seems to amuse him. My stomach blooms with heat—a physical reaction to his dimple.

“I don’t have to—”

“Honesty.”

“Okay.” He exhales and stares down at my body. Considers the possibilities. “I want to come on your stomach.”

“Oh.” I expected . . . I don’t know what. Not this. “Is it a . . . kink you have?”

He shakes his head. “Not usually, no. But . . .” He looks past my eyes, uncharacteristically bashful.

“Honesty?” I request.

“I never thought of myself as the possessive type. But . . . you were someone else’s for a long time. It drove me a bit crazy in my lizard brain.”

I nod, thinking of my own vague jealousy. “I think you should, then.”

He swallows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I bite back a smile. “Make sure your clothes stay on. Rules and all.”

He gives me a dirty look. For a second I’m giggling on the high of teasing him, then there’s his belt clinking undone, the catch of a zipper, brushes of fabric as he takes himself out, and the smile dies on my lips.

I am looking, and he isn’t. He doesn’t watch for my reaction. Just takes himself in hand, pumping up and down. His cock is hard, long and thick in a way I didn’t think possible. I glance at the way he’s stroking himself, then away to the couch, then at him again, and ask, “Doesn’t it . . . get in the way?”

It’s a mortifying question, and I want to air-fry myself out of this plane of existence the second it’s out of my mouth, but Jack’s not listening. His eyes move rapidly all over my body, like I haven’t been almost naked in front of him for the past ten minutes. “You really are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs.

“You said you don’t care. That you barely notice. That there are lots of beautiful women.”

“I don’t know.” He’s usually so confident, but right now he sounds as disoriented as I feel. “With you, I notice.” He nips wet kisses down my jaw. “You think you can come again?”

Impossible to tell. I haven’t come with another person before, and an improvement rate of 200 percent seems steep, but maybe? I’d rather be present for this, though. Study him. Know what Jack looks like when he’s not fully in control. “I think I don’t want to.”

He nods, and what happens next is not really for me. He steps between my thighs and angles the underside of his cock so that it hits my clit. It has us both gasping, but it’s about what he wants. As is the way he slots the head against my opening, and the long moment he leaves it there, grunting, a turning point in the multiverse, where two futures exist: one in which he pushes in and fucks me, the other in which he follows those inflexible rules of his.

Unfortunately, Jack Smith-Turner is a stickler.

It occurs to me that I could be doing this for him. I could be more than just a warm body and slender arms looped around his neck. “Should I—”

“Not tonight.” His movements are picking up, knuckles brushing rhythmically against my slit. “I just want to look at you. Know you’re here.” He uses my slick to make himself wet, hard, fast pulls, and after just a handful of seconds I see the tension in his arms, the muted tremors in his fingers, how close he already is. “Shit, Elsie.” His voice is urgent. A little desperate. His forehead presses against mine. “There were days, these last few months, when you were all I could think about. Even if I didn’t really want to.” Then a choked “Fuck” that feels like a rush of breath against my lips, and I know he’s there.

I think he’ll finish with a growl, make a mess out of me, maybe admire his handiwork, but that’s not what happens at all. Instead he pulls back so that his eyes can hold my own till the very last moment, glassy and nearly all black. His free hand searches blindly, frantically. It grabs mine when he finds it, twining our fingers together in a tight grip, and that’s when I know. When I realize deep in my belly that for Jack this is not about friction or about fucking. It’s not even about coming, or about anything else I might have stupidly suspected.

This is about him and me. And the possibility of something that goes far beyond the both of us.

“Elsie,” he mouths when he comes. He seems to retreat into himself, to dig deep into his head to deal with the shocking pleasure of it and avoid losing his mind, and all I need to do is hold him tight to remind him that yes. I’m here. With him.

I’m here.

It’s downright terrifying, what this could be. What I want it to be. It makes me tear up, and then it makes me sob, and then it makes me clutch at Jack for dear life, the splotch of his semen sticking to his shirt and my stomach, pooling in my belly button. To his credit, he doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. He doesn’t beg for explanations. He just holds me close, both arms wrapped around me, even when my tears morph into giggles, like I’m some crazy, unstable girl who doesn’t know what to be or what to feel.

Wait. That’s exactly who I am.

I laugh. Then I laugh some more. Then I cannot stop. The movie is over, “15 Step” by Radiohead bafflingly plays during the black-and-white end credits, and I’m laughing again.

“You’re ruining the moment.” His lips curve into my throat, winded like he just finished an Olympic race.

“I’m so sorry. I just—”

“What?”

“Just wondering if you still think it’s ‘too soon.’ ”

He slaps my butt. I yelp and then keep on laughing.

“Yes.” He maneuvers back and angles my head so that I’m looking at him. “It’s really soon. But the only person who can slow us down is you, so . . .”

“So what?”

He pushes a strand of sweaty hair behind my ear. His eyes are worried, and warm, and empty of everything that’s not us. “Be gentle with me, Elsie. That’s all I ask.”