He doesn’t, even as I’m grabbing up my purse and sliding along the smooth vinyl toward him. I bump against him. “Move!”
He won’t. I don’t want to cause a scene. And sitting this close, I can feel his thigh on mine. I can feel the heat coming off him. When he slides a hand between my legs beneath the cover of the table, all I can do is let him.
“Everyone’s busy,” I tell him.
His fingers press, press, press. “My ex went out of town. I had my kid. I was busy, Elisabeth.”
To anyone looking at us, we simply appear to be deep in conversation. There’s enough distance between us, the angle is just right to hide the fact he’s inching up my skirt to get inside my panties. At the last minute, I clamp my thighs shut, trapping his hand before he can.
“Then you should’ve told me.”
There’s more to it than that. I can see it in his face. He twists his wrist a little, but I don’t give him even a quarter of an inch.
“I told you—”
“Bullshit.” I lean a little closer when the waiter passes by, lowering my voice to keep it from attracting attention. The heat of Will’s hand against my bare skin is beginning to burn. “It’s an excuse, and a shitty one. You think I wouldn’t understand if you told me you had to take care of your kid? You think I’d be some kind of bitch about it?”
Steadily, he works his hand a little higher. His knuckles brush my panties before he twists again to press my clit. I do not move except for the rise and fall of my shoulders when I take a breath. My muscles ache from the effort of keeping him away. When I relax the tiniest bit, he takes advantage, pressing harder. Twisting so infinitesimally that nobody would be able to tell.
He can’t see the golden stars beginning to creep into the edges of my vision, but I’m sure he must see something in my eyes, because his hand moves just a little faster. His pupils are so wide-open his eyes have gone dark. His tongue slips out to touch the center of his bottom lip.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Will says, but low and under his breath.
I do not want to let him see how good he’s making me feel, because I don’t want to be feeling it. But when I put my hand over his, it’s not to push it away. I grip his wrist tight, holding him closer.
“Yes,” I tell him. “You do.”
I am close, so close, but not going over. The waiter shows up then with a dessert tray, and I pull away. I shake my head at the pies and cakes, and decline a box for my leftovers as I slide toward the other end of the booth, now cleared by the busboy. I assure the waiter everything was fine, though I can see by the way he eyes my plate that he takes my uneaten food as a personal affront. I get out of the booth and push past him and out of the restaurant to the New York City street outside, and I breathe in exhaust and heat and the scents of puke and piss, and I blink away the last flutters of gold Will’s touch gave me.
I’m halfway back to the gallery when he catches up to me. He falls into step beside me without saying anything. He follows me through the door I don’t bother to hold open for him, and down the hall past Naveen’s blessedly empty office and into my own. Then, when I whirl on him to tell him to get the fuck out, he shuts my door. The lock clicks.
We sweep my desk clean. Paper clips scatter. Then he’s inside me, and nothing else matters but this.
After, with his forehead pressed to mine and the taste of his sweat on my lips, Will says, “I was ignoring you on purpose.”
I cup his face in my hands and kiss him. “I know you were.”
We disentangle, comb and straighten. He fills a paper cup from my water cooler and drains it, then crumples the cup. I pull my hair back with a spare elastic from my drawer and swipe my face with powder. Fix my lipstick. Will is glancing at the door, ready to make his escape, when I finish. I recognize the look.
“You don’t have to talk to me every day,” I tell him carefully. “If it’s too much. But you can’t just abandon me, Will. That’s not fair. I deserve better than for you to just disappear. Frankly, you deserve better than to be that sort of guy.”
“I came back,” he begins, and stops when I don’t smile.
“You can have a life. I expect you to have a life. I have one, too, you know.”
His brow furrows. “Yeah. Believe me, I know.”
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t have an answer for it. So much to say and nothing seems right, so we stare at each other, too far apart to touch.
“Did you...really miss me?” I almost don’t ask, in case the answer isn’t what I want to hear.
He nods.
I shouldn’t feel so relieved. I shouldn’t feel anything for him, but there’s no holding it back. No stopping it. I sag against the desk a little. “Good. I want you to miss me. A lot.”
“I worry this is going to make trouble for you.”
“It might.” My chin lifts. Shoulders and spine straighten. “But that’s my problem.”
“It would be mine, too.” Will rubs at his mouth with his first and middle fingers. “Sometimes, I think we should stop. Before it’s too late. Before we do something that we can’t take back.”
“It’s already too late,” I tell him. “We’ve already done it. It’s done, Will. We can’t take it back. That’s the way stuff like this works.”
He won’t move, so I do. I pull him closer, step by step, until he takes me in his arms. We fit just right, Will and I, and I don’t want to let him go.
“You’re my kryptonite. I don’t know why.” My words are muffled against his neck. I can’t stop myself from nibbling, just a little, and I can’t stop myself from telling him the truth. “But if you don’t want to talk to me anymore...if you don’t want to see me...”
His arms tighten, just a little, around me. “Are you breaking up with me?”
I look at him. “Are you breaking up with me?”
We both smile at the same time.
“Just don’t ever disappear on me again. If you have to stop talking to me—”
“I don’t want to stop talking to you.”
“Then...don’t. We’ll find a balance.” I say this more confidently than I feel, but it seems the only thing to say.
Then I kiss him, kiss him, kiss him until neither of us can breathe.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Find a balance. That’s what I’d told Will we should do. It was certainly what I believed I wanted when I said it, but sitting here alone on a Friday night with nothing but a carton of ice cream and a spoon to keep me company, I’m feeling decidedly...unbalanced.
We’ve been cautious with each other. Not talking every day. It isn’t like it used to be. There’s a distance. I don’t like it, but I understand it. We haven’t seen each other in what feels like forever, and though I’d told him I would be alone this weekend, he’d already planned to have his son.
I try to miss my husband instead. Isn’t that what good wives do? Pine for their mates when they’re away on business trips? It’s what Andrea would do, and even though she’s my best friend, I shudder at the thought of ever being like that.
Still, I try. I thumb his number into my phone. Ross picks up just before the call gets shunted to voice mail. “Hi.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. What’s up with you?” I keep my voice light, just a little teasing.
“Working,” he says, after a hesitation that’s just a little too long. “Finishing up some stuff, then heading out for dinner.”
He’s in Arizona. I forgot about the time difference. “Oh, right. Where are you going?”
“There’s a Ruth’s Chris Steak House here. We’re going there.”
“Out, after?” I know how those guys work.
“With clients.”
“Have fun,” I say, and add impulsively, “Maybe some pret
ty girls will ask you to dance.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I hadn’t meant anything by it, actually. Just teasing. “Nothing, Ross. It means nothing. Have fun, that’s all.”
“You think I’m out having fun? It’s taking clients out, that’s all. A few drinks, some sports on TV, maybe some pool or something. Jesus, Elisabeth. You act like I’m out stuffing dollars in a stripper’s g-string!”
“I wouldn’t care if you were,” I counter. “It sounds like that would be more fun than pool, anyway.”
Another short but weighty silence. “Dinner and drinks, that’s all. Jesus.”
“I was teasing you!” I snap, and bite my tongue against anything else that tries to slip out. I take a breath. Try again for sweetness and light. Be a good wife, a good wife. “Anyway, I’m jealous. Ruth’s Chris. Yum.”
“Did you get the letter about the home insurance payment?”
I think for a minute of the stack of mail on my desk. “...Yes?”
Ross’s voice is muffled as though he took the phone from his ear. I can hear him muttering to someone else. Then he’s back, voice clear. “Did you take care of it?”
I taste burnt sugar. Bitterness. “Yes.”
“Because you know we don’t pay that. You have to send that to the mortgage company.”
“Yes, Ross, I know that,” I say around the stinging flavor his voice has pressed against my tongue. “I’ve been paying the bills now for...oh, eighteen years or so. I got it.”
“Well, sometimes you ask me about it. You have to send that to the mortgage company.”
“Yeah, I got it.” A sting in my palms alerts me to the fact I’m about to ruin my manicure from pressing my nails into my flesh. I relax my fingers. “Thanks.”
“It’s not a bill,” my husband starts, and I lose it.
“I got it! Okay? I understand all about how the home insurance is paid, Ross, I take care of it every year. I’ve taken care of it every year since we bought this house. I’m completely and totally capable of making sure it’s all taken care of,” I say tightly, without taking a breath. “And stay the hell out of my stuff.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he cries, wounded.
“It means that you wouldn’t even have known about the letter if you hadn’t been sifting around through the mail on my desk.”
“What, I’m not allowed to look at the mail?”
“If there’s something you need to see, I put it on your desk. The rest of the stuff is mine, and I take care of it. You’re more than welcome to start paying all the bills and balancing all the accounts and making sure everything in this goddamned house is taken care of, Ross,” I say, too loud, too harsh. Too angry. “But since I don’t see that happening, just leave my desk and everything in my office alone, and stop acting like I need you to hold my hand through every little fucking thing.”
“We never got a letter like that before,” he cries. “I just wanted to make sure you knew!”
I rub my tongue against the back of my teeth to scrape away the flavor of his voice, and force myself to calm down. “We get a letter like that every year. Just because it’s, like, brand-new to you doesn’t mean I don’t know how to handle it.”
Ross says nothing.
“Go to dinner,” I tell him, and disconnect the call.
Friday night alone, ice cream and a fight with my husband. It’s no wonder I’m ripe for seduction, and still I’m surprised when Will pings me. He says his ex won’t be dropping the kid off until tomorrow, and yep, I hate her.
At least there’s video chat.
“I’m just your little lady in the box,” I tease. “Your genie.”
“You gonna grant me a wish?”
I wish I could. “Depends what it is.”
Will laughs, and his phone shakes a little. “I’m getting ready for bed now. Come with me?”
“Do I have a choice? I’m in the box. I go wherever you take me.”
I watch my laptop screen carefully as he lifts his phone. The sensation is disorienting; for a moment I can imagine I am actually in a box, being carried in his hand. That I am tiny, that I am small. That I am made of magic.
I’ve been in his bathroom before, of course, but the angle is different and everything is off-kilter. Will props his phone on the sink and bends to look at me.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I reply.
We’re both grinning like idiots, like dogs in August, as my grandmother would say. She had a lot of folksy sayings, most of which I never understood. This one, I do. We grin and grin because there are no words, because joy is manifesting itself in my face.
Will runs the water in the sink and brushes his teeth, making a show of it. Eyeing me once in a while while he makes a grand display of scrubbing. Suds foam from the corners of his mouth. I’m totally charmed, incapable of doing anything more than watch raptly as he mugs for the camera.
With an audience, I discover, Will is a showman.
He rinses. Spits delicately. Looks at the camera.
“See what you’d be in for,” he says, “if you had to face that every day.”
But I want to, are the first words that come to my lips, and of course they’re bitten back. I’d love to. I want you.
I say nothing.
I smile and he smiles, and he leans again across the counter, his face immense, and then only his smiling mouth is on my laptop screen. I wait. He retreats a little, peering into the lens as though he’s looking into my eyes.
“What next?” he says.
“You tell me,” I say, then boldly add, “I think you need a shower.”
“Do I?”
“Oh, yes.” Excitement quickens in my stomach, the beat of my heart, the pulse and throb of my blood in my throat and wrists and cunt. “Definitely.”
Will gives the shower, which I can just catch a glimpse of in the corner of the screen, a sideways look. Then back to me. A quirk of his grin. “You think so?”
“Yes. You’re filthy.”
He straightens, brow furrowed as though considering. His hand taps, taps on his stomach, fingers inching his shirt up to tease me with a hint of his belly, but so casually, so nonchalant, as though he has no idea what he’s doing to me. He looks again into the camera.
“I’d have to take my clothes off,” Will says seriously. “Be naked.”
“That’s how one usually takes a shower.” My voice is serious, too. Cool. Almost disinterested, if you didn’t know me, but of course he does. Too well. Better than anyone ever has, I think.
Will reaches to tug his shirt over his head. I’m breathless, watching. He takes his time, easing the shirt up, up, bunching the fabric in his fist and revealing himself to me one torturously slow inch at a time.
I was dressed for ice cream gluttony and bedtime, and there’s no hiding the sharp jut of my nipples through the thin fabric of my tank top. I could cross my arms, but I force myself to keep my hands on the table in front of me. I want him to see what he does to me without even touching me.
Chest bare, Will straightens. His fingers slide along his ribs before he puts both hands flat on the counter. He bends again to look into the camera.
“Now what?” Will says, but his fingers are already hooking into the waistband of his jeans, tugging them a little lower. I can see the hint of the hair just below his belly button. “I guess I should take these off.”
I make my eyes wide. “Oh, not that. Anything but that!”
His fingers flip open the button. The zipper parts a single metal tooth at a time, just a few before he pauses to look again into the camera, serious as a heart attack. “I can’t take a shower with the jeans on, Elisabeth. I have to take them off.”
I clasp my hands in front of me like Brer Rabbit pleading w
ith Brer Fox not to throw him in the briar patch. “Oh, please, oh please! Anything but that!”
Will smiles. “Don’t you try to briar patch me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I smile, too, leaning forward as though getting closer to the screen can get me closer to him.
The zipper is down the rest of the way and the jeans pushed past his hips, pulling his gray boxer briefs along with them just enough to tease me with a glimpse of his erection. Then he moves out of sight, kicks off the jeans and stands straight again, his cock pushing at the front of his briefs. His hand curls around the length, stroking gently through the fabric. He’s already hard. I’m already wet.
“Elisabeth, Elisabeth, Elisabeth,” he murmurs. Even through space and time and the barrier of metal and glass, the sound of my name in his voice sparkles and dances in glittering blue and green and gold. “What am I gonna do with you?”
“Whatever you want,” I breathe. My hands are on each side of the laptop screen, easing it closer. “Anything you want.”
He’s not smiling now. Will’s entirely serious, his hand on his prick, mouth slightly parted. I’ve seen that look, the one that goes from teasing to need. The lighting isn’t good enough for me to count the colors in his eyes, but I know them well enough by now. His pupils are large and dark. His hand moves gently up and down until he stops, gripping.
“Take them off,” I whisper, not sure if he can hear me through the computer, but unable to say it louder.
Still, he hesitates. I’ve seen him naked now so many times, and yet I understand. What is natural in person seems harder this way. I’m fully clothed and still feel totally exposed.
Will hooks his fingers into the briefs and pushes them off. At this angle, he’s a little too close to the phone. I can see him from midthigh to just below his mouth. When he straightens, that beautiful cock is perfectly framed. Helpless, ridiculous, I reach to touch. My fingertips skid on the laptop screen.
When was the last time I touched him?
Too long ago, but a few minutes would seem too long at this point. I remember how he feels. Smells. Tastes. I withdraw my hand, fingers curling into my palm, where the flesh still stings from where I earlier clutched it. Will stands without touching himself. His penis is so fucking pretty I can’t stand it.