Page 24 of Skyn (After the End #3)

Marriage, Josh

I wake up on the beach. Not the worst place I’ve woken up, but definitely in the top three for wondering what the hell just happened.

I’m not sure I’ve ever sleepwalked before, but apparently, a night with a platinum-tipped dick will do that to you.

Sometime in the night, I ended up sprawled on a padded mat, my skin dewy and salty, the air warm and thick.

The sun is just starting to stretch itself across the horizon, golden fingers licking at my skin.

I lie there for a minute, letting it warm me and thinking about how I like the way it makes me look.

To my right, there’s a tray of fruit and pastries glistening like they’ve been shellacked—an absurd oil painting of excess. Fresh coffee steams from a delicate porcelain cup.

I stretch, my muscles tight and sore in that satisfying, post-ravishment way, and rise to my feet.

The warm sand clings to my soles; a few grains stuck between my toes.

Out in the water, Ben is naked—of course he’s naked—and glorious, his body gleaming in the early-morning light.

He’s grabbing fish with his bare hands and tossing them to the bots, his laughter loud and infectious, rolling over the waves toward me.

“Lunch!” he calls out, holding up a wriggling fish in one hand like it’s some kind of prize.

God, he’s so different from Josh, whose insecurities hang on him like a damp sweater, always too tight, too awkward, too heavy.

This—this with Ben—feels easy, natural, like I’ve slipped into someone else’s life and found it infinitely more comfortable than my own.

I spear a few pieces of fruit on my fork, the juice sticky and sweet against my lips as I walk into the water. It’s warm, like liquid silk sliding up my legs, kissing my skin. Ben splashes toward me before wrapping me in his arms, his body still wet from the ocean.

“Your comm has gone off three times,” he says sheepishly.

If it’s the shopkeeper, I’m prepared to call him a kook and keep it moving. Yes, there were some irregular patterns, maybe a few natural accidents, but nothing to pack up your family for. Nothing to cause a riot in the whole sector over.

But it’s not the shopkeeper.

The comms are from Josh. Every single alert is from Josh, each message a beacon of rising anxiety, the tone of his voice climbing from concerned to outright panicked.

When I comm him back, he answers on the first siren. The sound of his voice jolts me back to what feels like twenty years ago.

“Oh my God, Fawl! What in the hell are you doing with a machine?”

I look at Ben, and he looks back at me.

“Marriage, Josh,” I reply, deadpan. “What else?”

“Fawl, are you a skin bride?” He couldn’t hide the judgmental distaste in his voice.

“An actual bride, I fear. Look, is that all you wanted—”

“Wait, wait.” His voice wavers. “How are they treating you?”

His voice is low. I can’t mistake the touch of curiosity. Both our ideas of the aboveground have shifted. He’s likely being treated like shit, and the golden boy of the underground is perplexed.

In a moment of softness, I say, “Belowground wasn’t so bad.”

Josh is quiet. It’s hard for a person whose whole personality is about striving to admit that his pinnacle might not have been worth it.

“Hey, listen, I wonder if you might introduce me around?”

The comm line is so quiet, I think he’s hung up. Of course he needs help. Of course he’s still climbing.

“I know we parted on not-great terms, but I love to see one of our own come up, and I know you’re the same. Rooting for everybody from the Mines,” he repeats the old adage.

Josh is such a sad mistake. I start to tell him so, but Ben lifts my wrist.

“Joshua.” Ben’s voice is cutting. His jaw is tight, and every muscle in his body strains against some unseen force.

“Uh, hello?” Josh says.

“Nice to finally meet one of my wife’s oldest friends,” Ben continues, but there’s nothing friendly in his tone. The words are clipped, his teeth nearly gritted as he forces them out.

“She wasn’t—” Josh starts to explain, but Ben cuts him off.

“Peculiar that we haven’t eaten together. My wife and I should go down to your apartment,” Ben says. The words somehow sound like both a threat and an invitation.

“Uh, s-sure, I—” Josh stammers, probably seeing money signs in his eyes.

“Tonight. Sunset,” Ben insists. Water beads trickle down his stomach. He looks at me again like he won me at a sector fair.

“Um…yeah… Yes, sir,” Josh replies.

“Fawl likes chocolate cake,” Ben adds, and with a flick of his wrist, he ends the call.

His eyes are still amused, but there’s a caution there now, just beneath the surface—a flicker of calculation or maybe doubt.

“Josh is curious about you,” he says. “There is a high probability he will want you back.”

The words settle uncomfortably between us. I laugh, but it’s too fast. I’m trying to beat back the first bloom of anxiety. Because Ben says it like data—like he’s already run the simulation, and the outcome is inevitable.

I hold his hand. “Can you guess the probability I’ll return his curiosity?”

“I can never guess with you. Dice are more reliable,” he says proudly.

“After this business with Josh,” he says, his voice low, “is the Charity Ball wrapping up the end of our fiscal year.”

I stiffen slightly, but his arms tighten around me, his breath hot against my neck.

“I won’t let them harm you,” he continues, “but I want us to have a clean slate. To live here. After you see Josh and tell your family, I have to tell Lily the truth. She may be expecting…that is, I gave her an impression before you and I met that this would be temporary.”

His words ring through me like a struck bell. So, we’re permanent, I think. The realization is a jolt—half joy, half panic. Everything is ending up being so much bigger than it started out.

“Do you think she’ll take it well?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even.

I don’t want him to hear the unease sneaking up my spine like cold fingers, but it’s there, curling at the base of my neck.

I wrap my legs around him in a monkey hug, grounding myself in his warmth, in the solidity of his body.

“She must.” He shrugs, already walking us back toward the beach, his hands holding my ass.

I feel him lengthen and harden beneath me, and it makes something flutter low in my stomach.

But under the heat, under the want, there’s a whisper I can’t shake: The world is bigger than this island.

“Fawl, I feel your reticence,” he says, his voice husky, “and am compelled to assuage your anxiety. I am completely given over to you, wife.”

“I think you may be, Ben.” I smile into his kiss, soft and slow and deep, and he walks me back into the sturdy post of the yurt, grounding us in something real.

But social exile wears on a person—even a person like me. Even when I pretend it doesn’t.

“Humans are meant for connection,” I whisper against his throat.

“I am barely human, Fawl,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against my temple, “and you are my connection.”

The words crack something open in me.

I’m still aching from last night—my skin marked by him—and when he pushes into me again, right there, with my legs wrapped tight around his waist, we move together like we’ve done this in a hundred lifetimes. Like we’re trying to memorize each other before the world calls us back.

He drives into me until we’re both slick with sweat, shaking, unraveling in each other’s arms.

And, for a moment, I’m silly enough to believe him.

That we could withdraw from the world.