Page 67 of Hamartia
He stiffens, eyes going from ocean blue to twilight. “Are you fucking him? Like, do you fuck him?”
“Right now? No.”
His nostrils flare. “But you have? In the past.”
“Yes.”
He wants to ask more, and I realize that feeding him it in this way is not helping either of us. And it makes things decidedly unclear. I sigh.
“But not for at least six months, perhaps more. It is something we did when we felt…alone, I suppose. It was easy for us. What else do you want to know?”
He swallows, straightens up, something soft and vulnerable creeping into his eyes. “Do you wish he were here right now? Instead of me? Like, do you wish I hadn’t shown up tonight? So, you could have…been with him instead?”
“No, Raphael, I don’t.” I shake my head. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you all day. Wondering whether I would ever see you again. Wondering whether you and your girlfriend were fucking in your room while I looked at pretty, overpriced clothes.” My mouth is completely out of control at this point but I can’t seem to stop it from moving, admitting things. “Wondering if you told her about us. Whether you lied about me. Wondering if you told her I was a mistake.”
I didn’t want to be that to him. God, please not to him. Because I don’t understand how I could ever be anything else to anyone else now.
“But when I opened that door and saw you standing there…” I take a deep breath. “I felt relieved. Happy.Warmand happy. When I am with you, I feel… happy.” And enough. “Happier than I can remember feeling for a long time.”
He stares at me a few beats, the softest hint of smile inching over his mouth, before walking towards me slowly. My chest starts to feel very strange and tight. And as he licks his lips, I feel the want stir between my legs. Those soft red lips he’s always biting or licking around me, those small white teeth that I love to feel pressing into my skin. He brushes a hand through the thick locks that sit messily on top of his head and my gaze clings to the shape of his fingernails, the golden tan of his arms, the jumbled ink over them, surprisingly dainty wrists.
He is perfect, I think with a cold sort of clarity. Like the hero in an American high-school movie that always gets the girl.The girl. The girl.A walking Abercrombie and Fitch poster boy. Calvin Klein model in a rockstar skin.
“Is that all or is there something else you want to know?” My voice is scratchy and low.
His mouth curls up, a sexy smirk that would look arrogant on someone else but looks playful on him.
“Yeah, there’s one more thing,” he wraps his arms around me, warm and strong and just a little too tight. I enjoy the sensation. When he pushes his hips into mine, I feel the hardness at the front of his jeans and it causes my stomach to somersault, arousal to kindle.
“What?” I whisper as he leans in to kiss me. His eyes wide open.
“Do you only ever take a bath after sex?” He rubs his slightly stubbled jaw against my own before nosing behind my ear. “Cause I really wanna take another bath with you.”
Happier than I can remember feeling in a long time. Warm and Happy.
They aren’t complicated words. They’re simple. Really simple. I know what they mean. And yet as he lies sleeping next to me, snoring softly and cutely I still can’t comprehend them. That he said them, about me.
Jae has always been like a complex puzzle with a hundred moving parts and where the instructions are in another language. I’d blundered my way through this thing with him by instinct and raging lust alone. This beautiful enigma lying next to me is still a virtual stranger, and yet by telling me that I feel like he’s just given me the instructions. Or some of them anyway.
I made him happy. I havethatkind of power. Knowing I have any effect on him at all is a heady fucking feeling. It makes me feel important. Terrified too, because if I have the power to make him happy, then the opposite had to be true, right? Despite what I told Kai. I could hurt Jae. It was possible. It’s the last thing I want but it’s stillpossible.
It hurts my head and my heart to think about that. I sit up and look down at him. He’s clutching a pillow to his chest, another between his knees. Soft almost-smile on his face.
We’d fooled around in the tub, making out for what felt like hours, his hands tracing over my tattoos as he rubbed himself against me. Slow and languorous. I’d pulled his tongue and fingers and nipples into my mouth, marveling at how he tasted. A forbidden thing that made me feel more alive than I ever had. I’d sucked the water from the dips of his throat and bitten down on the soft warm skin of his shoulders as I’d gotten him off with my hand. Then he’d urged me up onto the side of the tub and swallowed me whole until I saw heaven in his eyes.
After, silent in words but loud in looks, he’d shown me a few drawers and places inside his closet where I could put my stuff. Domestic shit that I hadn’t done with Camille until we’d moved in together. There had been a blue silk shirt hanging by itself in this section of closet, Gucci tags still hanging from the cuff, yellow bees or something on it. He’d gestured vaguely at it.
“I picked that up for you today,” he said, suddenly not looking at me. “It is the same color as your eyes. It will look good on you.”
It would. I reached up and slid it from the hanger. The size was mine, the richness of the fabric making it feel formal but with a casual look. When I pulled it on, he’d turned, a small, satisfied smile settling over his mouth.
He’d picked it up for me today. When he thought I was fucking Camille. When he thought I was telling her he was a mistake. I could only stare at him in complete worship a few minutes, as he went back to refolding pajamas.
It was easy to imagine it then. Us. Together. Easier still to forget everything else that would need to be fixed and explained first and just imagine us existing here as…a couple. I want it too. Fiercely. I’m sure I just need him to say it’s what he wants too and I’m all the way in. Fuck, I already am most likely. I don’t have all the instructions yet, but maybe I don’t really need them. Maybe all I need is a nod and look from him so I know I’m doing something right.
As he sleeps on, I lean down and kiss his cheek, nosing over his pulse before climbing out of bed. I grab my journal from the front pocket of my bag and slide closed the bedroom door behind me.
The page in front of me has a few lines about New York. About its scale, its mass, about the way you can lose yourself in it. Words and sentences that I like but that don’t necessarily mean much until I start to pull them together. I haven’t written anything in weeks. Not because I’m dry, but because I’m afraid of what will come out. Now, I don’t feel that same fear. Now I scribble down words of self-realization and fate, of regret and guilt, of lust and need. The raw taste of twilight. It sounds like a love song. But not about New York. About something New York possesses tonight. One single perfect thing that no other city on earth has.