It’s like wanting to hit the brakes and the gas all at once; I want to go faster, feel him moving in me, but want to savor every second of this because it’s so many of my lifelong fantasies come to life and he’s perfect, like he read the Guidebook on Mae’s Body and is determined not to miss a bullet point. I’d had no clue that Andrew felt anything but big brotherly feelings toward me until today, but, with my very simple invitation to explore an us, he’s on board. Totally. It’s almost as though he’s been waiting, too. He’s had fantasies of his own that he’s finally able to bring to life. Which is completely surreal.
He disappears beneath the top of the sleeping bag, and with a combination of kisses, dexterous fingers, and determined hands, he manages to unbutton my jeans and get them down my legs and shoved to the bottom of the sleeping bag.
I can’t see him, can only feel his mouth on my knee, my thigh, the smallest press of his mouth between my legs and, good God I might die, I don’t think I have ever wanted something more in my life, like I would sacrifice anything just to feel the direct, heated press of his kiss there—
Andrew scrambles up my body, crawling in a panicked flurry, and takes a deep gulping breath of air once he manages to emerge from the sleeping bag. “Holy shit.” He sucks in another breath. “I have never been that close to death.”
It’s a combination of shocked laughter and mortified cry that escapes me.
Obviously everything down there is terrible and horrifying? Why has no one ever told me the truth?
I clap my hands over my face. “. . . Are you okay?”
“I’m great. I wanted to—but I couldn’t hold my breath—” He gasps, inhaling again deeply. “It is so hot in that flannel sleeping bag, there’s, like, no air.”
I burst out laughing, dropping my hands. “I was making a mental deal to sacrifice all of our loved ones if it’d keep you going, but it isn’t worth your death by suffocation.”
He bends, leaning his forehead on my bare shoulder. “I accuse Mae, in the sleeping bag, with her vagina.”
I completely lose it when he says this, and he’s shaking with laughter, too. Honestly, laughing with Andrew while I’m naked might be the best feeling I’ve ever had. He slides to the side in the giant double sleeping bags, propping his head on his hand. With the fingers of his other hand, he draws little circles on my stomach, my chest, my neck.
I like looking at him in this light; with the way it’s angled across the room, it makes him a perfect combination of angular and soft. Sharp jawline and cheekbones, the gentle bow of his lips, his impossibly long eyelashes.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?” he asks. “You’ve got this doe-eyed, innocent Gidget thing going on.”
I laugh. “That’s an awfully old-man thing to say, Mandrew.”
“No, listen,” he insists, pushing up and hovering over me. “I used to watch reruns of Gidget when I was home sick, and I’m not kidding, I think Sally Field was my first crush.”
“Is that weird?” I ask. “I can’t decide.”
“Not weird.” He bends, kissing my jaw. “She’s a babe. Even in her seventies, she could get it.”
“Did you know Tom Cruise is almost sixty?” I ask.
He looks mildly concerned. “Do you have a thing for Tom Cruise?”
I scrunch my nose. “Definitely not. I just think it’s funny that he looks eternally forty.”
He hums thoughtfully. “Did you know Christopher Walken is almost eighty?”
I laugh. “Why do we even know these things?”
“We’re the good kind of weird?” His mouth moves up my neck.
“But is it bad-weird,” I say, “that I’m naked and we’re talking about Christopher Walken?”
“It is good-good that you are naked. And frankly,” he says, “I’m happy to share this moment with Christopher Walken.”
I’m overcome with a fondness so consuming that I cup Andrew’s face and pull him to me. It isn’t just about how good this feels or how flat-out gorgeous he is, it’s about how easy and natural it is to be with him, to talk between kisses, to be totally unselfconsciously naked, to laugh about Andrew’s near-death experience between my legs.
The kiss starts sweet and calm, but when he grazes his teeth across my lip, I make a noise that seems to uncork something inside him, and he’s over me again, elbows planted beside my head, kissing me so good I’m dizzy with how much I want him.
My fingers toy with the waistband of his sweats, and skim just beneath and then—why not—I push them down his hips, and his warm skin slides over mine. I think for one second that it’s moving too fast, but I sense the same awareness in him because he shifts back and away.
I’ve never been in sync with someone like this. It feels like hours pass while we’re kissing and touching, talking and breaking into spontaneous, loud bursts of laughter. The sex is right there, but so is the blackness of night, reminding us that no one is in a hurry and we have plenty of time for fun. Even the fumbling condom unwrapping leaves us in hysterics. He’s still laughing into a kiss when he moves over me, and into me, and then I get to see the quiet, focused side of Andrew, the one who makes it his life’s work to listen, because he works so carefully to respond to every single sound I make.
When we finally pull our clothes back on and he walks me across the moonlit expanse of snow, there are two things I want with equal intensity: I want to turn around and go back to being naked in the sleeping bag, and I want him to follow me into the kitchen, sit down at the table, and talk to me for hours.
chapter twenty
At five thirty in the morning, two and a half hours after Andrew walked me back to the house, I give up on sleep and shuffle upstairs to the kitchen. I am a sewer creature emerging into daylight; a woman who very definitively needs eight full hours of sleep. Today should be interesting.
Ricky stumbles in about the same time I do, and we both freeze at the sight of his son at the end of the table, bent over a bowl of cereal. My heart falls into my stomach, and I watch in horror as Andrew lifts an arm and casually wipes away a drip of milk from his chin.
He hasn’t heard us approach, I know, but the view of him bowed over the table, the silence that seems to stretch like a canyon across the otherwise warm, inviting space . . . it’s so similar to that horrible morning with Theo that I am instantly queasy with dread.
Is this the catch? The surprise ending? Gotcha! You’ve made the same mistake with Andrew. Did you really think the point of all this was for you to be happy?
A sound creaks out of me, something between an inhale and a groan, and Andrew’s eyes shoot up, and then back over his shoulder to his dad, before returning to me.
His sleepy gaze immediately shifts into twinkling happiness. “Well, good morning, fellow early risers.”
He’s looking at me like I’m exactly who he wanted to find this morning, but my doubt takes a beat to wear off and the feeling keeps me from moving deeper into the room.
Ricky looks at me, then the coffeepot, and then me again meaningfully before he eventually gives up and walks over to it himself. “What’re you doing up so early, Drew?”