Page 75 of All Our Almosts

“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you just ask someone.”

“I don’t mind.”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye, then quickly back down to where our hands are joined.

My pulse is racing. Or is that his? I can’t tell anymore.

“I guess I’m just wondering where you see tonight going. Or… how far.”

Next to me, Andy stops breathing.

This is Armory Street.

I rush to explain, “Because we live together, so I’m going home with you, obviously, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything you don’t want to do just because I’m there and I want to. I mean, I’ve never done the whole ‘dating your roommate’ thing and I feel like all the signals I would normally give as the green light are just inevitable because I live there, so I guess I just wanted to explicitly give a green light, but also if you don’t want to give a green light that’s totally fine. Whatever you want. That’s all I—”

“Sophie.” Andy drops my hand to take hold of both sides of my face. He looks straight into my eyes and says, “Green light.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

This is Babcock Street.

I try to control my smile as our hands clasp again, a new energy buzzing there.

This is Packard’s Corner.

This is Harvard Avenue.

By the time the train doors opened at our stop, we’re already waiting by the door.

23

The walk from the train to the apartment is exquisite torture. I’m acutely aware of the press of our hands, the pace of our steps.

I want to do everything perfectly.

I can’t get ahead of myself. It could be nothing; he could change his mind. Or it could be the start of everything.

We unlock the apartment like it’s any other day. Remove our shoes. Andy hangs his coat on the coat rack. I put my purse on the kitchen table. We look at each other, and I can feel the blood in my veins.

Andy’s gaze drags down my body, and it’s another expression I’ve never seen from him before: hunger that borders on impatience.

We’re fifteen feet apart and the distance feels enormous.

Eventually I take the first step towards him, cautiously, then another.

“Andy…”

He’s stepping towards me too, first slowly, then picking up speed until he reaches me and locks me in a crushing kiss. I clasp his face with both hands and he’s hoisting me in the air, carrying me backwards into the kitchen, placing me on the table’s edge and stepping into the space between my legs.

It still feels new—holding him like this, being held by him, pressing my mouth to his and feeling the way our bodies move together. Here in the apartment where we both live, perched on the table where we now eat breakfast together every morning and dinner every night—we’ve somehow skipped over casual and straight into vital.

My back arches as Andy moves to my neck, biting and sucking his way across my skin. He finds the freckles along my collarbone and kisses one, then another, disintegrating all my remaining brain cells. When his path is intercepted by cotton, he looks to me for approval before carefully lowering the dress from my shoulders. It pools at my waist, leaving me in a black lace bra.

He takes one step back, eyes raking over me. And I know my hair is mussed, my cheeks are red, my clothes are in disarray. I must look a mess. But he whispers, almost to himself, “You are so beautiful.”

I reach forward, pulling his face back to mine. One of my hands twines into his hair while the other travels slowly down his body, over the taught plane of his stomach, until I reach the front of his pants. I find the hardness there and let out a small gasp.