Page 74 of Don't Go
I made it to the back seat.
The Range Rover had tinted back windows. In my head, I thanked whoever at the dealership had the foresight to push the option.
She came over the console and landed against me. She got on top of me in the same motion, her knees on either side of my thighs, her hands flat on my chest.
The laughing stopped.
I kissed her.
I had a bartender on top of me in the back seat of a car parked between two strangers' cars, and I wanted ten minutes without interruptions.
She kissed me back.
Her mouth opened under mine. Her hands went to my belt. My mouth went to her neck. My hand found her hip and worked the waistband of her jeans down — she pushed up from her knees to help me. I had her jeans down past her hips, and she had my belt undone. We didn't have enough room in the back seat, not enough time in the day, but we didn’t care.
I lifted her by the hips, and she came down on me.
A sound caught against my collarbone — short and rough.
I held the back of her head, and she moved.
The seat creaked.
I had a hand at her hip, and one at the back of her head, her hair loose over my knuckles, her forehead against mine, and the back seat of a car parked in a residential block in the city was, for ten minutes, the only place in the world.
And I let myself forget.
14.Sabrina
The grilled cheese was halfway done when I let myself notice I was happy.
The agreement was no commitments, no promises, no talking about what came next, and no bringing him into Bonnie's life as anything other than the man who had given her an octopus and held a heavy door for her at piano. He was just a man I was sleeping with.
I dropped the second sandwich into the pan.
His father had been dead for less than a month. That was the part of the happiness I wasn't allowed to look at directly. He wasn't okay. He was using me to help him forget his pain, and we both agreed to that. It worked for both of us at first. But over time, even though I was the one he was using, I started to care about it — and I never expected that to happen.
I pressed the second sandwich flat with the spatula.
I wanted to fix him, but I wasn't allowed to. We had a deal, and the deal was that I wasn't in his life that way.
A weight landed on the counter beside me.
"Pickles."
He stared at me.
"I just fed you. Go away."
He stared at me longer.
I picked him up and put him on the floor.
He sat down where I had put him and looked up at me. He glanced sideways, deliberately, at the kitchen table. Then stood up and walked, with great dignity, toward it and climbed into Bonnie's lap.
Bonnie was applying glue to a cotton ball, as if she were performing a small surgery. The cotton ball was joining a collection of cotton balls already glued to a square of cardboard. The cardboard was supposed to be Saturn. Saturn had been chosen by Bonnie because it had the best rings in the solar system, and the best rings deserved a cotton-ball ambassador.
Beau was at his mother's house.
