Chapter 9: The Door Opens
The hot water had long since run cold, but we hadn’t cared. We stood under the spray until our fingertips pruned, kissing slowly, washing each other with a clumsy, quiet reverence. Her lavender body wash lathered in my palms as I smoothed it over the curve of her shoulders, the swell of her breasts, the taut plane of her stomach. She did the same for me, her hands sliding over my chest, down my arms, her thumbs circling the faint crescent moons her nails had left behind.
It was a baptism of a different kind.
Now, dressed in fresh clothes—me in a pair of my own jeans and a t-shirt I’d left here weeks ago, her in soft cotton shorts and an oversized sweatshirt that swallowed her hands—we moved through her apartment in a drowsy, synchronized ballet. We opened windows to let the night air escape. We gathered mugs and glasses, the clink of ceramic against ceramic sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet. We didn’t speak much. A look was enough. A brush of a shoulder. A fingertip drawn along the back of a wrist as we passed.
The evidence was systematically erased. The blankets were shaken out on the fire escape and left to air. The cushions were pummeled and rearranged. A spray of citrus cleaner cut through the lingering musk in the bathroom. With each cleaned surface, the night before felt both more dreamlike and more permanently etched into my bones.
The doorbell rang at 10:02.
We froze in the middle of the living room, a pile of laundered blankets between us. Her eyes, wide and sharp behind her clean glasses, found mine. A frantic, silent conversation passed in a second.
Are we ready?
No.
Do we have a choice?
No.
She smoothed her damp curls, took a deep breath that lifted her shoulders, and pasted on her familiar, razor-edged smile. “Coming!” she called, her voice perfectly normal, perfectly Sonalika.
I braced myself.
The door swung open, and Arusha bustled in first, a whirlwind of jangling bracelets and the scent of coconut shampoo. “You would not believe the traffic on the bridge,” she announced to the room, dropping a reusable grocery bag heavy with board game boxes onto the floor. She was all easy energy, her dark eyes scanning the scene with casual curiosity.
Sid followed, quieter, holding a paper bag from the bakery that made my stomach growl. His gaze was more measured. He took in me, standing by the couch, then Sonalika at the door, then the conspicuously airy, clean apartment. A slow, knowing smirk touched the corner of his mouth. “Morning, degenerates,” he said, his voice a lazy drawl. “You two look… well-rested.”
“We slept,” Sonalika said, shutting the door a little too firmly. “It’s a thing people do, Sid. You should try it sometime instead of grinding ranked all night.”
“Ouch, direct hit,” Sid said, chuckling and handing me the bakery bag. The warm, buttery scent of croissants wafted out. “Brought sustenance. Figured you’d need it.”
Arusha was already prowling. She drifted to the couch, ran a hand over the plush arm. “Place smells… clean. Like, aggressively clean. Citrusy.” She turned, her eyebrows arching. “You never clean before we come over. You pride yourself on your ‘lived-in aesthetic.’ What gives?”
“I had a burst of productive energy,” Sonalika said, crossing her arms. Her sleeves covered her hands. “It’s called adulthood, Arusha. Look it up.”
“Uh-huh.” Arusha’s eyes darted to the floor lamp, which was on despite the daylight. To the two empty water glasses sitting side-by-side on the coffee table. To the space between Sonalika and me, which suddenly felt charged, a magnetic field everyone could sense. “You two are being weird. Weirder than usual.”
“We’re always weird,” I said, pulling a croissant from the bag. Flakes rained onto the floor. “It’s our brand.”
“No, this is different.” Arusha plopped onto the couch, tucking her feet underneath her. She was a bloodhound. “Hardik, you’re standing like a guest. You never stand like a guest here. You’re usually already splayed out, stealing the best cushion. And Sonalika, you’re… glowing. And also, you keep touching your neck.”
Sonalika’s hand, which had indeed been drifting toward the faint, shadowed bruise just above her sweatshirt collar, snapped to her side. “Dry skin,” she snapped. “It’s winter. Do you want coffee or are you just here to conduct a forensic audit of my personal space?”
Sid, ever the peacemaker, but also clearly enjoying the spectacle, stepped into the center. “Leave them alone, Arusha. Maybe they just had a… deep, meaningful all-night discussion about Kierkegaard. Right, guys?” His tone was innocent, but his eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Exactly,” I said, meeting his gaze squarely. “It got very intense. Lots of… existential despair. You know how it is.”
Sonalika snorted, a real, unfiltered sound that made my chest tighten. “He cried twice,” she said, falling back into our old rhythm with practiced ease, but now it felt like a performance. A delicious, secret performance.
“I did not cry. I was emotionally moved by the concept of the leap of faith.”
“You wept. I had to fetch you tissues.”
Arusha looked back and forth between us, suspicion softening into amused confusion. “You’re both full of shit. But fine, I’ll allow it. Set up the game, Sid. I’m in the mood to crush you all.”
The tension broke, swirling away into the familiar comfort of our Sunday ritual. We settled around the low coffee table, Sid unloading the board game—a complicated thing with modular tiles and wooden pieces. Sunlight streamed in, illuminating dancing dust motes. The apartment no longer felt like a secret chamber; it was just her apartment again, filled with the sound of our friends.
But everything was different.
Every point of contact was a lightning strike. When Sonalika leaned over to move her piece, her hip brushed my shoulder. A jolt, straight down my spine. When I handed her a die, our fingers touched for a half-second too long. The air between us crackled, a private current in the midst of Sid’s strategic muttering and Arusha’s triumphant cheers.
I watched her. I couldn’t stop. The way she bit her lower lip in concentration, the way her glasses slid down her nose and she pushed them up with a single impatient finger. The way she tucked a curl behind her ear, revealing the delicate shell, still pink from the shower. My marks were on her, hidden under soft cotton. The knowledge was a slow, burning coal in my gut.
“Your turn, loverboy,” Sid said, not looking up from his own cards.
I blinked. “What?”
“The game. Your turn. You’ve been staring at the board for, like, ninety seconds.”
“He’s strategizing,” Sonalika said, not helping. She kicked my foot gently under the table. “He’s very serious about his wooden sheep.”
“I’m building an agrarian empire,” I retorted, dragging my attention to the board. My sheep were, in fact, threatened. I made a move.
Arusha crowed with delight. “Yes! That blocks Sonalika’s port! God, I love this game.”
The morning slid by in a haze of casual cruelty over fictional resources. The normalcy was a thin veneer. My senses were tuned only to her. The scent of her lavender soap cutting through the bakery smell. The soft shush of her sweatshirt sleeve against the table. The quiet, almost-inaudible sigh she let out when she was losing.
During a heated debate over a trade, Sid got up to refill our water glasses. Arusha was busy arranging her cards with intense focus. In that moment, Sonalika’s leg shifted. Her bare foot, warm and smooth, slid over my instep, then pressed down, her toes curling against my ankle.
My breath hitched. I didn’t move. I kept my eyes on my cards, a meaningless blur of colors.
Her foot began a slow, subtle massage, rubbing up and down the line of my tendon. It was an intimate, claiming touch, hidden beneath the solid oak of the table. A secret within a secret. My body flushed with heat. I could feel my pulse in my throat, in my wrists, under the gentle pressure of her foot.
She was looking at Arusha, arguing about the value of brick versus ore, her expression one of academic disdain. But her foot told a different story. It said, I remember. I remember the taste of your skin. I remember the sound you made when I bit you here.
When Sid returned, she withdrew her foot casually, as if it had been a mere accident of posture. The loss of contact was a physical ache.
“So,” Arusha said later, as we were packing up the game, her tone deceptively light. “Anything else… new with you guys? Besides the sudden obsession with Scandinavian philosophers and aggressive hygiene?”
Sonalika stacked tiles with sharp, precise clicks. “Nope.”
“Nothing at all?” Arusha pressed. “No late-night… developments?”
I saw Sonalika’s shoulders tense. This was the gauntlet. Sid was watching us, pretending to be engrossed in the rulebook.
Sonalika lifted her head, and her gaze wasn’t defensive or evasive. It was pure, unadulterated Sonalika steel. “Arusha, if you’re asking if Hardik and I finally fucked, the answer is it’s none of your goddamn business.”
The air left the room.
Arusha’s jaw dropped. Sid choked on a sip of water, coughing into his elbow.
I sat very still, my heart a drum against my ribs. This wasn’t the plan. Deflection, misdirection—that was the plan. Not a tactical nuclear strike.
But Sonalika just stared Arusha down, a challenge in her gold-ringed eyes. “We are, as ever, a mystery wrapped in an enigma and stuffed into a ‘Mind Your Own Business’ burrito. Capiche?”
A beat of stunned silence. Then Arusha burst out laughing, a loud, relieved sound. “Okay, okay! Jesus, Sonalika. Touchy.” She shook her head, but the suspicious glint in her eye had been replaced by resigned amusement. “Fine. Your weird, pseudo-sexual tension box is yours to keep. I’m just saying, the world would be a happier place if you two just—”
“Babe” Sid cut in gently, placing a hand on her knee. “They’re adults. Let them… not tell us things.”
The moment passed, but the line had been drawn. She hadn’t confirmed a thing, but she’d claimed the territory. Our silence was now a deliberate choice, not a passive secret.
When they finally left, hours later, the goodbye was a flurry of hugs and promises to text. Sid clasped my shoulder, his grip firm. “Take care of each other,” he murmured, low enough for only me to hear. His knowing look was gone, replaced by something gentler, older-brotherly.
The door closed with a solid, final thud.
The quiet of the apartment rushed back in, but it was different now. It was ours. Tested. We stood in the hallway, listening to the echo of their footsteps fade down the stairwell.
She turned to me first. Her fierce expression from before had melted away, leaving something raw and uncertain. “That was probably stupid,” she whispered.
“It was perfect,” I said, and closed the distance between us.
This kiss was not slow, nor was it frantic. It was deep, claiming, and full of relief. My hands came up to cradle her face, my thumbs stroking her cheekbones. Hers fisted in the fabric of my t-shirt, pulling me closer until not an inch of space remained between our bodies.
We broke apart, breathing heavily. Foreheads touching.
“They know,” she said.
“They suspect. There’s a difference.”
“Sid knows.” She pulled back to look at me. “He knows knows.”
“That’s okay.” I kissed her again, because I could. “He’s happy for us.”
“I’m happy for us,” she whispered, the words a fragile, wondrous confession against my lips.
The confession seemed to hang in the silent hall, a living thing. I kissed her again, because words felt inadequate, my mouth soft against hers until her grip on my shirt loosened from a clutch to a gentle hold. We swayed there for a moment, two people in a doorway tasting the quiet, unfamiliar shape of shared happiness.
The apartment held the ghost of the morning—scent of coffee, echo of laughter, the scattered crumbs of our performed normality. She sighed, a contented, weary sound, and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’m also starving for real food. We ate pastries like we were being timed.”
I laughed, the vibration felt by both of us. “I’ll cook. You have eggs?”
“I have existential dread and half a jar of paprika.” She pulled back, a wry smile touching her lips. “But we can order. My treat. For being… you.”
“For being me?” I followed her as she drifted toward the kitchen, my hand finding the small of her back.
“For not running screaming when I quoted Kierkegaard as a cover story. For playing along. For the way you looked at Sid.” She flicked on the kitchen light, casting a warm glow over the remains of our morning—the four mugs, the butter-smeared plates. “It was a specific look. A ‘this is mine’ look. I liked it.”
My chest tightened. “It is mine,” I said, the words simple and absolute.
Her breath caught. She turned on the faucet, the water roaring suddenly, a blunt, practical sound. “Dishes first,” she said, her voice now businesslike, though her cheeks were flushed. “Then food. Help me.”
We cleaned up the dishes. I watched as she finished the last ones.
Her hands moved with efficient grace in the hot, soapy water. I stood beside her, towel in hand, taking each wet piece from her grasp. The domestic rhythm was new, intimate in a different way. Water droplets clung to her wrists, catching the light as she handed me a rinsed plate. I watched the flex of tendon in her forearm, the delicate curve of her knuckle as she scrubbed a stubborn spot of raspberry jam.
She was quiet, her focus on the task. This was the other Sonalika, the one not performing for friends or wrestling with revelations. This was the person in the quiet aftermath. A tiny bubble of soap foam landed on her birthmark. Without thinking, I leaned in and brushed it away with my thumb.
She stilled, her hands suspended in the cloudy water. She didn’t look at me. “Hardik.”
“Hmm?”
“Last night. When I… when I painted myself.” Her voice was low, almost lost in the splash of water. “That wasn’t just a thing. That was a claim. A stupid, primitive, possessive claim.” She finally glanced at me, her eyes huge behind her glasses. “I need you to know that.”
I set the plate and towel down. I took her wet, soapy hands in mine, not caring about the suds dripping onto the floor. I brought them to my mouth, kissing each slippery knuckle. “I know,” I said against her skin. “I welcomed it.”
A shudder ran through her. She pulled one hand free, leaving it damp against my cheek. Her thumb traced my lower lip. “You’re too good for my particular brand of chaos.”
“Your chaos is my favorite symphony,” I murmured, turning my head to kiss her palm, tasting the faint, clean bitterness of soap.
She made a sound, a soft hmph in her throat, but her eyes were shining. She pulled her hands back and plunged them into the water once more, retrieving the final fork. “Sap.” The word was an accusation, but her tone was fond.
We finished in silence, a comfortable, saturated quiet. The kitchen was clean, order restored to the small universe of her apartment. The digital clock on the microwave read 2:17 PM. The entire world existed beyond the windows, but here, time felt soft and shapeless.
She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms, studying me. The cuffs of her sweatshirt were damp. “So,” she said.
“So.”
“Now what?”
I stepped into the space between her and the counter, my hands resting on the edge on either side of her hips. “Now we order food. We eat it on the couch. We maybe watch something terrible. We don’t answer our phones.”
“And then?”
“And then,” I said, leaning in so our foreheads were almost touching, “I take you back to bed. Not to claim you. Not to prove anything.” I brushed my nose against hers. “Just to learn the new map of you in the daylight. Slowly.”
Her lips parted. A flush spread from her throat up to her cheeks. The intellectual bravado was gone, stripped away by the plain, earnest hunger in my statement. She was just a woman, wanted, her own complicated want mirroring back at her.
“Okay,” she breathed, the word a surrender and a promise.
My phone buzzed violently on the counter, shattering the moment. We both jumped. The screen lit up: Sid Calling….
We stared at it. The buzz was an aggressive, metallic vrrrt-vrrrt against the granite.
Sonalika’s eyes flicked from the phone to my face, her earlier vulnerability hardening into something defensive. “Don’t,” she said.
“I should.”
“They’ll know for sure.”
“They already know for sure.” I didn’t move. The phone stopped buzzing. A second later, a text notification chimed, loud in the quiet.
Another chime. And another.
I sighed, picking it up. Sid’s messages flooded the screen.
Bro.
Just talked to Arusha in the car.
She’s convinced you’re just being weirdos as usual.
But I saw the blanket on the fire escape.
And the way she couldn’t stop looking at you when you weren’t looking.
So. You’re welcome for the croissants.
And whatever else.
I showed the screen to Sonalika. She read it, her expression unreadable. Then she took the phone from my hand, her fingers typing with decisive taps.
I watched over her shoulder. She wrote: The blanket needed airing. Mind your business. P.S. The croissants were adequate.
She hit send, placed the phone facedown on the counter, and looked up at me. “There.”
A laugh burst out of me, relieved and incredulous. “Adequate?”
“I have standards.” She slipped her hands under my t-shirt, her cool, damp palms flat against the skin of my stomach. I sucked in a breath. “Now,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that sent heat straight through me. “About that map.”
Her cool palms on my stomach were a brand. "The cartography requires full attention," I murmured, brushing her damp curls back from her forehead. "And better lighting."
"I hate good lighting," she whispered, but let me take her hand and lead her out of the kitchen’s sterile glow. The floorboards creaked a familiar protest under our combined weight. The bedroom was as we’d left it, the sheets a tangled nest at the foot of the mattress, the air still holding the faint, sweet musk of us beneath the citrus cleaner.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her to stand between my knees. The afternoon sun, thin and winter-pale, cut across her hips. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her soft cotton shorts. “These are in the way.”
She placed her hands over mine, stilling them. Her touch was a question. “Just looking?”
“No,” I answered, honest. “Touching. Tasting. Learning.”
A sharp inhale. Her grip tightened, nails pressing into my knuckles. Then she let go, giving a single, shallow nod. I dragged the fabric down, the soft shhh of cotton over skin unbearably loud. She stepped out of them, kicking them aside with a practiced flick of her ankle.
My hands settled on the smooth skin of her outer thighs. They were cool, slightly goosebumped. I let my gaze travel up, over the swell of her hips, the dark thatch of hair, the gentle curve of her stomach where my t-shirt—her t-shirt now—ended. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the inside of her thigh, just above her knee. Her skin jumped under my mouth.
I kissed a slow, deliberate path upward, savoring the subtle shift in texture, the scent of clean skin and lingering lavender. My hands held her in place, not restraining, just grounding. She trembled. A loose curl fell forward, brushing my temple. I could hear her breath, fast and shallow, competing with the low thrum of my own pulse in my ears.
The phone buzzed again on the kitchen counter, a distant, angry insect. We both ignored it.
My mouth found the soft skin of her inner thigh, high up, and I tasted salt, clean sweat from the morning’s charged proximity. Her fingers slid into my hair, not guiding, just holding on. I opened my mouth against her, a soft, wet pressure, and bit down gently. Not enough to mark. Just enough to make her gasp.
“Hardik—”
The sound of my name, strained and breathy, went straight to my core. I soothed the spot with my tongue, then pulled back, looking up at her. Her glasses were slightly fogged. Her lips were parted. The gold in her eyes was molten. “Tell me what you remember,” I said, my voice rough. “From the map.”
Her throat worked. “The bite on your hand. The… the taste of you. The sound of the blanket when you moved.”
“Good.” I kissed the other thigh, mirroring the path. My thumbs rubbed slow circles on her hip bones. “What else?”
“The scratch on your shoulder. My fault.” Her voice was a thin thread.
I moved my hands to her rear, squeezing, pulling her a fraction closer. My breath ghosted over her, warm. “Not a fault. A footnote.” I nuzzled her, breathing her in, the muskier, essential scent of her beneath the soap. “Now I’m reading the text.”
I licked her, a slow, flat stroke from bottom to top.
Her knees buckled. I held her up, my hands firm on her ass, my mouth finding her wet, swollen center. The noise she made was a choked-off sob. I licked again, deeper, curling my tongue, feeling her give way. She was slick and hot, a devastating sweetness. Her fingers clenched in my hair, a sharp, bright pain that arced down my spine.
I set a slow, relentless rhythm. Lick, swirl, suck. The intimate, wet sounds filled the quiet room, a lewd counterpoint to the distant traffic hum. She began to move against my mouth, small, involuntary jerks of her hips. I let her. I followed, encouraged, my hands spreading her wider for me.
“Please—” It was a gasp, stripped of all its usual bite.
I slid a finger inside her, slowly, feeling her clutch around me. I added another, stretching her, my thumb finding the tight, hard knot above. I pressed, and her whole body bowed. A high, thin whine escaped her.
“Look at me,” I managed, pulling my mouth away for a second, my lips glistening.
Her eyes, dazed and desperate, found mine. I held her gaze as I sucked that perfect, sensitive bud into my mouth again, flattening my tongue against it. I worked my fingers inside her, curling them, searching. Her mouth fell open in a silent ‘O’. Her knuckles were white in my hair.
I found the spot, a subtle, textured ridge. I pressed firmly, in a slow, come-hither motion.
Her cry was loud, sudden, shattering the afternoon stillness. “There! God, there!”
Her hips snapped forward, grinding against my face. I stayed with her, the rhythm of my tongue and fingers becoming urgent, consuming. The taste of her flooded my senses, salt and musk and something uniquely her. Her thighs tightened around my head, trembling violently. She chanted my name, a broken litany. “Hardik, Hardik, fuck—”
Her release was a hot, liquid rush over my fingers, a pulsing, rhythmic clutch that seemed to go on and on. She sagged, her grip in my hair going slack. I gentled my mouth, licking her through the last shudders, drinking her in until she whimpered from oversensitivity.
I withdrew my fingers slowly, kissed the inside of each shaking thigh, and rested my forehead against her stomach. Her hands fell to my shoulders, her body slumping over me. We stayed like that, connected, breathing the same air, the taste of her still on my lips.
The fridge kicked on downstairs. A car alarm blared somewhere and then cut off.
Her voice, when it came, was scraped raw. “That… was a very thorough reading.”
I looked up. She was smiling, a wobbly, dazed thing. I kissed her navel through the soft cotton of the shirt. “I’m a thorough scholar.”
She tugged on my shoulders. “Up. Now.”
I stood, and she surged forward, kissing me hard, tasting herself on my tongue. Her hands went to the button of my jeans, fumbling. “Your turn. I need to—” She broke off, pushing the denim down, her small hand wrapping around me. I hissed, my head falling back. “I need you inside me. Right now. No more waiting.”
I kicked my jeans away. She shoved me back onto the bed, climbing over me, her legs straddling my hips. The worn cotton of her sweatshirt brushed my chest. She was flushed, glorious, her eyes blazing behind her fogged lenses.
She reached between us, guiding me, notching the head of me against her. She sank down slowly, a breathtaking, tight, wet heat enveloping me inch by inch. We both groaned, a ragged, unison sound. She stopped when I was fully seated, her body trembling with the effort, her head dropping forward.
“Look at me,” I echoed her earlier command, my hands finding her hips.
She lifted her head. Her expression was one of stunned, overwhelming possession. “Mine,” she breathed, the word a raw echo of my own from the kitchen.
“Yours.” I thrust up into her, shallow and sharp.
She cried out, her eyes squeezing shut, then flying open. She began to move, riding me with a frenzied, desperate rhythm, chasing another peak so soon. The bedframe knocked a dull, steady thump-thump-thump against the wall. Her sweatshirt slipped off one shoulder. I leaned up, capturing the exposed skin with my teeth, sucking a new mark into the pale canvas as the old ones ached beneath us.
“Hardik, I can’t—it’s too much—” she sobbed, but her body kept moving, slamming down on me, taking me deeper.
“You can,” I gritted out, my hands moving to her breasts, feeling their weight through the fabric, my thumbs circling her nipples until they were hard peaks. “Give me another. I want to feel you again.”
Her rhythm fractured, became jagged, erratic. A guttural moan tore from her chest. She clenched around me, a series of spasms so intense I saw stars. I held her through it, my own control fraying. As her contractions slowed, I rolled us over in one fluid motion, pressing her into the mattress, never breaking our connection.
I drove into her, deep, punishing strokes. The scholarly pace was gone, replaced by a feral, claiming need. Her legs locked around my waist, her heels digging into the small of my back. Every snap of my hips drew a choked gasp from her lips.
“Say it again,” I demanded, my breath hot against her ear.
“Yours,” she whimpered, nails scoring my back. “Yours, yours, yours—”
My release tore through me, a white-hot current that pulled a raw, gut-deep groan from my throat. I buried myself to the hilt, my body shuddering as I spilled into her, pulse after endless pulse, the feeling so profound it bordered on agony.
Collapse was inevitable. I caught my weight on my elbows, my forehead against her shoulder, our sweat-slick skin sealing us together. Our panting filled the room, a ragged, shared soundtrack. Her hands moved weakly up and down my back.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The slant of sunlight had moved. The phone, forgotten, was silent.
She shifted beneath me, a wince followed by a contented sigh. “You’re heavy.”
“You’re perfect.” I kissed the birthmark on her chin.
She turned her head, her nose nudging mine. Her glasses were crooked, one lens pressed against my cheek. “We didn’t even take my shirt off.”
“I noticed.” I carefully removed her glasses, folding them and reaching behind me to place them on the nightstand. The world without them was a softer, smudged version, but her face was sharp and clear to me. “Next time.”
“Mm. There’s a next time.” It wasn’t a question.
“Many.” I rolled off her, pulling her instantly into my side. She curled against me, her hand resting over my pounding heart. The room smelled of sex and us, a scent no citrus spray could ever hope to conquer.
We lay in the quiet, listening to each other breathe, the sweat cooling on our skin.
Her stomach growled, a loud, rude interruption.
I laughed, the sound rusty. “We still haven’t ordered food.”
“I know.” She traced lazy patterns on my chest. “I don’t want to move.”
“Then we won’t.”
“We’ll starve.”
“Worth it.”
She pinched my side, but snuggled closer. The peace felt fragile, enormous. My phone buzzed again from the kitchen, a persistent, vibrating skitter. We both tensed.
“It’s Sid,” she muttered into my skin. “He’s going to keep texting until he gets a better reaction.”
“Probably.”
She was quiet for a long minute. Then, “What if we just told them?”
The question hung in the air. It meant walking this thing out of the sacred, secret dark. It meant exposing this raw, new shape of us to the air. “Are you ready for that?”
She propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at me. Her curls were a wild mess, her lips swollen, my marks rising on her neck and shoulder. She looked thoroughly, completely claimed. “No,” she said. Then a slow, sly smile spread across her face. “But I’m ready to watch you try to explain it to Arusha.”
I groaned, pulling her down for a kiss. “You’re evil.”
“You adore it.” She kissed me back, sweet and lingering. “So, we tell them… tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed, a flicker of both nervousness and anticipation in my gut. Today was still ours. Tonight was still ours.
Her phone, charging on her nightstand, lit up with a notification. Then another. The sound was different from mine—a melodic chime. Arusha’s ringtone.