“Close,” he says. “It’s when you climb boulders.”
“For . . . what reason?”
“To get to the top, presumably.”
“And then?”
His golden shoulder lifts in a shrug, water sluicing down his chest. “Probably there’s another boulder, and then you climb to the top of that one. Human beings are a mysterious species, Nora. I once watched a bike courier get hit by a car, get up, and scream I become God at the top of his lungs before riding off in the opposite direction.”
“What’s mysterious about that?” I say. “He tested the limits of his own mortality and found they didn’t exist.”
Charlie’s pouty mouth tugs to one side in a half smirk. “That’s what I love about New York.”
“So many bike couriers with god complexes.”
“You’re never the weirdest person in the room.”
“There’s always that person in silver body paint,” I agree, “who asks for donations to repair his UFO.”
“He’s my Q train favorite,” Charlie says.
My skin warms. I wonder how many times we’ve passed each other in our city of millions.
“I like that you’re anonymous there,” he continues. “You’re whoever you decide to be. In places like this, you never shake off what people first thought about you.”
I swim closer. He doesn’t retreat. “And what did they think of you?”
“Not huge fans,” he says.
“Mrs. Struthers is,” I point out, “and—your ex is too.” I shoot him a glance and sink lower in the water to hide the way my body lights up under his gaze.
I don’t feel like Nadine Winters when he’s this close. I feel like I’m sugar under a blowtorch, like he’s caramelizing my blood.
“Mrs. Struthers liked me because I fucking loved school,” he says. “I mean, once I figured out how to actually read. Didn’t exactly make me a hit with other kids, though. In high school, things weren’t as bad, and then eventually . . .”
“You got hot,” I say somberly.
His laugh grates over my skin. “I was going to say ‘I moved to New York.’ ”
We’ve stopped moving. Heat corkscrews through my rib cage, coiling tighter with each spiral.
I clear my throat enough to joke, “And then you got hot.”
“Actually,” he says, “that only happened four or five weeks ago. There was this big meteor shower, and I made a wish and . . .” Charlie holds his arms out as he drifts closer.
My heart feels light and jittery in my chest, my limbs incongruently heavy. “So you’re saying Amaya’s expression was less about longing than outright shock over your new face.”
“I didn’t notice Amaya’s expression,” he says.
My mouth goes dry, heaviness gathering between my thighs. He catches a bead of water as it trickles over my cupid’s bow. My lips part, the pad of his finger lingering on my bottom lip.
I’m acutely aware of how flimsy the space is between us now, slippery, finite, closable. Maybe this is why people take trips, for that feeling of your real life liquefying around you, like nothing you do will tug on any other strand of your carefully built world.
It’s a feeling not unlike reading a really good book: all-consuming, worry-obliterating.
Usually I live like I’m trying to see four moves ahead in a chess game, but right now I can’t seem to think past the next five minutes. It takes a lot of effort to say, “You probably want to get home.”
He shakes his head. “But if you do . . .”
I shake my head.
For a moment, nothing happens. It feels like there’s a silent negotiation happening between us. His hand catches mine under the water. After a beat, he draws me toward him, slowly—plenty of time for either of us to pull away.
My fingers brush his hip instead, and the chessboard in my mind disintegrates.
His other hand finds my waist, closing the gap between us. The feeling of being pressed against him is somewhere between bliss and torture. A small sound sighs out of me. He doesn’t tease me for it. Instead his hands cut a slow path down my sides, tucking each inch of me against him: chest, stomach, hips flush, all my softest parts against all his hardest, my thighs settling loose around his hips. His thumbs catch on the curves of my hips, and a gravelly hum rumbles through him.
My nipples pinch against his skin, and his arms tighten across my back.
We’re both silent, like any word could break the spell of the silver moonlight.
Our lips catch lightly once, then draw apart, slip together a little deeper. His hands follow the curve of my back lower, curling around me, squeezing me to him, rolling his hips into mine.
My mouth feels like it’s melting under his, like I’m wax and he’s the burning wick down my center. One of his hands curls around my jaw, the other sweeping up to cup my breast as my thighs wrap tight around him. My breath catches against his mouth when his thumb rolls across my nipple. He hitches me higher, everything to my belly button above the water now, exposed to the moonlight, and he’s looking, touching, tasting his way across me.
My brain grapples for control of my short-circuiting body. “Should we think about this?”
“Think?” He says it like he’s never heard the word. Another hungry, stomach-flipping kiss erases it from my vocabulary too. My hands twist into his hair. His mouth moves down the side of my throat, teeth sinking into my collarbone.
I’m trying to think my way through this, but it feels like I’m a passenger in a very willing body.
Charlie teases against my ear, “You should never wear clothes, Nora.” My laugh dies in my throat as he pins me against one of the flat rocks at the edge of the water, my hips locking around his, sensation flaming through my thighs at the friction between us, at the push of his stomach and his erection shifting against me through our underwear.
Charlie kisses like no one I’ve ever been with. Like someone who takes the time to figure out how things work.
Every tilt of my hips, arch of my spine, shallow breath guides him, landmarks on a map he’s making of my body.
He hums my name into my skin. It sounds as much like a swear as when I slammed into him at Poppa Squat’s, his voice sizzling through me until I feel like a struck tuning fork.
His lips drag down my throat to my chest, his breath ragged as he draws me into his mouth. His fingers circle my wrists against the rock, our hips moving in a hungry rhythm.
“Shit,” he hisses, but at least this time, he’s not slingshotting away from me. His hands are still everywhere. His mouth hasn’t left my skin. “I don’t want to stop.”