Chapter 2: Blackout Fantasies
The lasagna was good, but the silence was heavier. We ate at the breakfast bar, the echo of our forks against the plates loud in the quiet house. She asked about my parents, about school. Safe things. Her eyes kept skipping away from mine, landing on my shoulders, my hands, then darting back to her food.
“Mark says he might have to go to the Chicago office next week,” she said, swirling her wine. “For three days.”
“That’s rough.”
“It’s fine.” She said it too quickly. “Just more quiet.”
A low grumble of thunder punctuated her sentence. We both looked toward the window over the sink. The sky had turned a sickly greenish-purple while we ate, and now the first fat drops of rain began to splatter against the glass.
“Great,” she mumbled. “I hate storms.”
The wind picked up, howling around the corners of the house. The lights flickered once, twice, and then died with a palpable click. The kitchen was plunged into a deep, velvety gray, broken only by the sporadic flash of lightning through the windows.
“Oh, perfect,” Alice breathed. I heard the scrape of her stool.
“Flashlights?” I asked.
“Junk drawer. By the fridge. I think there’s one.”
I slid off my stool, my eyes adjusting. The geometry of the room was reduced to shapes and shadows. A flash of lightning, blinding white, froze everything for a second: her silhouette, hand clutching the counter edge. Then darkness, thicker than before. The thunder crashed directly overhead, a sound that vibrated in my teeth.
She gasped. A small, sharp sound.
I fumbled in the drawer, my fingers closing over cold cylindrical plastic. I clicked the flashlight on. The beam cut a wobbly path across the tile floor, illuminating her feet. I swung it up.
She was pale, her eyes wide behind her glasses. She hugged herself. “It’s fine. I’m just… jumpy.”
Another crack of lightning, simultaneous with a boom of thunder that shook the windows. She flinched violently, stumbling back a step. Her hip caught the edge of the open dishwasher door.
“Whoa!” I was across the kitchen in two strides. The flashlight beam jostled crazily. I dropped it on the counter, flooding the area in a diffuse, upward light. My hands went out to steady her, finding the curves of her hips, my fingers pressing into the soft linen of her dress.
She was solid, warm, and trembling.
“I’ve got you,” I said, my voice close to her ear. I didn’t let go.
The thunder rolled away, leaving only the relentless drumming of the rain. She was breathing fast. My thumbs were just above the crest of her hips. I could feel the heat of her skin through the fabric. She didn’t pull away. She leaned back, just a fraction, into my hands.
Another lightning flash. This one lit her face from the side. Her lips were parted, her gaze locked on the window where the storm raged, but she wasn’t seeing it. Her mind was somewhere else entirely. On the pressure of my hands, maybe.
We stood like that for a long moment. The air between us was electric, more charged than the sky outside. I slowly released my grip, letting my fingers drag lightly down the sides of her thighs as I stepped back.
“You okay?” I asked, my voice rough.
“Yes. Sorry. Clumsy.” She straightened her dress, a nervous, habitual gesture. “Battery candles are in the living room. We should…”
“Yeah.”
We lit the candles, their fake, flickering glow pushing the shadows to the corners. We sat on opposite ends of the sofa, the storm our loud, indifferent chaperone. We talked about nothing—books, a movie she’d seen. The normalcy was a thin film over something that had cracked wide open. Every time our eyes met, the memory of my hands on her hung there, unspoken.
I went to bed first. The guest room was an oven, the air dead without the AC. I stripped to my boxers and lay on top of the covers, listening to the rain slow to a drizzle. The house settled into a new, deeper quiet.
Then I heard it.
A muffled sound through the wall. Her bedroom shared a wall with mine. It was a sigh, strained. Then a shift of weight on bedsprings. Then nothing.
I held my breath, my whole body tensed and listening.
It came again. A soft, rhythmic creak. Deliberate. Slow. Then a gasp, stifled into a pillow. My name. It was whispered, then choked off.
“Danny…”
A jolt went through me, hot and immediate. She wasn’t just thinking about it. She was there, in the dark, chasing the phantom feeling of my grip on her hips, the look I’d given her in the guest room. Every soft, desperate noise was a brushstroke painting a picture in the dark. The quickening pace of the bedsprings. A sharp, bitten-off cry that was all release.
Then silence. Heavy. Spent.
I stared at the ceiling, the blood pounding in my ears, a fierce and racing heat coiling low in my stomach. The storm was over. The real electricity was right here, humming in the walls between us.
I turned onto my side, facing the wall, as if I could see through it. A slow, triumphant smile touched my lips in the dark.
She was thinking about me.
And tomorrow, I wouldn’t let her forget it.