Reid spreads his hands across my rib cage, with a quiet meaning. I love when he does that, when he spreads his hands wide like he wants to cover as much of me as he can. Heat pools low in my belly even though the rest of the room seems to be breaking into twelve-year-old-boy chaos of belching full sentences and jokes about lead pipes.
“I’m proud of you,” he says quietly.
“I’m proud of me, too,” I say. “And I really like that you’re here.”
“Do you think we can sneak out of here unnoticed?” he asks, lips pressed gently to my ear. “I’d like to go have sex now.”
I nod. “On the count of three.”
“One,” he says.
“Two,” I say.
“Three.”
We stand, slowly backing away from the table. Alex has Ed in a headlock. Chris is leaning out the window, trying to reach the shoe that Alex just launched outside.
Reid and I manage to tiptoe all the way down the hall to the master bedroom before our absence is noticed.
“Don’t think we didn’t see that!” Alex yells.
“We’re turning the music up tonight!” Ed says. “Don’t be weird!”
“We’ll do our best!” I call back.
Last night, I barked like a dog just to freak them out.
Tonight, we might make a lot of fake spanking noises.
But then we’ll climb between the covers, pull them over our heads, turn on a flashlight, and make each other laugh with stupid stories that we never seem to run out of. I’ll tell him I love him too many times, and he’ll kiss me to shut me up. And from there, it will all go quiet, and sweeter than I could have ever imagined.
We’ll get an entire night—every night, for the rest of our lives if we want it—and for those perfect eight hours, we can forget there’s anyone else in the house, the city, the world.