Do I Know You?(48)

She feels incredible. My heart pounds so hard, I’d be embarrassed if I couldn’t feel Eliza’s pulse racing with mine. Like I instinctively know the full experience would overwhelm me, I focus on the details. The intoxicating taste of her lower lip, the curve of her waist under my fingers. Every second is somehow forever and slipping past too soon.

It’s nothing like the kisses I’m used to with Eliza. My mind gropes for why, finally latching onto something. This kiss is uncertain, and the uncertainty feeds the passion in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Every movement is intensely charged with daring, hesitation, and hope. Every moment is question and answer—conversations Eliza and I haven’t had for so long I can hardly remember them.

But I don’t need to remember them. Not when they’re playing out on our tongues right now.

I raise one hand to cup her face, caressing the curve of her neck, while my other snakes lower, eager to explore elsewhere. I feel her reaction in the way she exhales faintly, like a shiver held in—like she doesn’t want me to know how my grip feels.

The next moment, I swear she’s playing with me, leaning into me in response. Is this what you wanted? she dares.

Yes. Yes, it is.

I step her up to the wall, pinning her where I want her. Fingers digging into my shirt, she clings to me so hard I feel our balance shifting. Not wanting this to end, I throw a hand out and press my palm to the cold cement behind her. I don’t know how I’ll ever leave her embrace. How I’ll ever withdraw from her mouth, hot, insistent, desperately pressed to mine. I can’t get enough.

Finally, it’s Eliza who draws her head back, breaking the kiss. Even though she ended it, she’s practically panting, her eyes foggy with desire. The pull is wrenching, how much I want to reach out for her, her waist, her hips, her.

I’m ready to open the door, to take her inside, to finish this in every one of those ways I imagined earlier. Eliza, however, manages to marshal her perfect features into coy victory—like she knows where my head is. “I told you I’d make you regret it,” she says, pulling away.

I have to laugh. “How much longer are we going to draw this out, Eliza?”

She lifts her lips closer to mine, the mirror of how I leaned toward her in the bathroom stall.

“Until we can’t for one second longer,” she promises.

It’s nearly impossible to hear. I’m hungry for her, dying of cold, of thirst. But I push myself, intuiting what she’s doing. You can’t have kisses that feel like answers without leaving a few questions.

I step back, putting more space between us.

Eliza evens out her breath with effort. “I had a good time tonight,” she says, her stare fixed on me. Though featherlight, her words carry the weight of real meaning. “Good night, Graham.”

I watch her walk away from me, out into the darkness.

It’s a few moments before I’m able to shake off the dreamlike daze and find my keycard in my pocket. Still, Eliza’s scent lingers in the entryway, the imagined reverberation of her heartbeat roaring in my ears. I click open my door and step inside.





27


    Eliza


I ONLY SLEEP a couple of hours. The rest of the night I spend repositioning, studying the ceiling of my room, fidgeting the seams of my pajama shorts—replaying my kiss with Graham the entire time.

It was . . . unreal. It took every ounce of willpower I could muster to walk away from his door and out onto the path into the silent forest, instead of asking if I could come in. Every instinct in me, every wave of the heat rolling off my skin, screamed for me to stay. I didn’t.

In the end, I’m glad I didn’t. The exhilaration of last night wasn’t just from kissing my husband for the first time in days. There’s something in the buildup, the deprivation, the wondering that charges our every interaction in ways I can’t get enough of.

It’s not just exhilarating, either. Lying in my solitary bed, I find myself convinced that the slower we take everything, the more we draw out, the better the foundation we will have rebuilt. If we were to hurry into restarting every part of our relationship, in days we might very well return to our old lack of communication. I know we can’t keep up what we’re doing forever, or probably even for very long, but I know I want to keep this going for now.

The next morning, I’m pulling on my shoes and heading to the hotel’s Starbucks, which opens on the hour. I checked the bedside brochure somewhere between four and five a.m. I have two, or maybe more like one and a half, objectives. Mainly, my nearly sleepless night has left me intensely needing caffeine.

If, however, I run into Graham—who I happen to know generally starts his day with coffee—well, then, great.

When I walk out of my building, the morning is deep blue. I cross the patio in the direction of the coffee shop, my nerves jumpy with excitement. I can’t remember the last time I felt this frazzled. It was probably after our real first kiss. I can’t help thinking back to that night, our second date. We’d gone to a movie, and after, Graham walked me to my car even though his was on a completely different level in the massive parking structure of the Grove mall in LA.

There was no one around—I’d had to park in the very back, farthest from the elevators. We talked for an extra twenty minutes, neither of us wanting to leave. Finally, I took his hand. He leaned toward me.