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“Okay, I believe you’re sorry,” she says on an exhale.
Smiling, I wipe my face against her inner thigh.
I want to keep her taste on my lips, savoring the flavor of her because I am the only one who can.
Because she’s mine. Or, I guess at this point, it would be more accurate to say I am hers. And I don’t have any choice in the matter.
By the time Sadie and I get back to the house, it’s late and we’re both exhausted. We don’t talk in the car except about safe, neutral topics like how cute Abigail was at dinner or how good the sweet potatoes were.
When we get to the house, Sadie kicks off her shoes in the corner and walks directly toward her room. But she hesitates in the hallway, and I wonder if she’s feeling the same way I feel. After a long day of feeling like a couple, it’s strange to be going to different beds.
For a moment, I consider crawling back under her covers, using her nightmares as an excuse. But after today, I’ve learned that I am too flippant with her emotions. I need to be more careful.
So, as she meanders slowly to her room, I let her. I don’t even look up from where I’m unlacing my shoes. When the door closes behind her, it’s chilling.
After I get to my own room, I drop onto the bed and stare at the floor. I can’t make myself do anything I normally do—take off my clothes, brush my teeth, climb into my bed. It’s like I’m frozen in this state of discomfort. Everything feels so wrong.
Pulling out my phone, I stare at the screen. I want something to quiet my thoughts, so I first go to my email, looking for a response from the Stratford Project. The feeling used to be hopeful and excited, but now it’s laced with dread.
Dammit, why has she taken away the one thing I’m longing for? Before her, my desires were simple. Work, study, write, read. Alone.
Now, I can think only about her slipping off that dress, red marks on her inner thighs from the scratch of my five-o’clock shadow. Her full breasts under the cotton of an old T-shirt. The clean, floral scent of her hair and the round pucker of her lips.
This is what drives poets mad. Now, it all makes sense. This feeling is like hypnosis. Like I no longer have control over my own mind and body. It’s driven only by her and this irrepressible need to be and give her everything she needs. She is the siren at the bottom of the sea, calling me to my own reckoning. And like the carnal creature I am, I would gladly drown.
Glancing numbly down at my phone, I pull up our text message thread. The world at my fingertips. With just a few words, I could express to her what I’m feeling.
Maybe it would ruin everything.
Maybe it would fix everything.
It doesn’t have to be forever. Perhaps one night of lust would quench this thirst.
I type out and delete a hundred different phrases.
Wanna come over?
You up?
Moby Dick?
I delete them all. I’m being reckless. Even I know that taking this astronomical leap with Sadie wouldn’t curb any of our desires but would only enhance them. I already feel so emotionally chained to her.
I need to be smart about this. Distance and discipline are the only things that could possibly cure this sickness I seem to be suffering from.
So, with that, I drop my phone on the nightstand. Then I tear off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and crawl under the covers to fight off another sleepless night—alone.
Twenty-Five
Sadie
“I’ve decided I don’t want to know.”
I’m standing in the kitchen, watching Luke wrap a Barbie doll for Abigail with green-and-red-plaid wrapping paper. He’s taken twice as long to wrap his Christmas gifts as I have, and it’s mostly because of his meticulous, crisp edges and my wrinkled, tape-covered messes.
“Don’t want to know what?” he asks, not looking up from the gift.
“The sex of the baby.”
