The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  The toast, given by the best man – Philippe’s brother – and then the maid of honor were slightly drunken and were the usual fare of embarrassing childhood stories and slightly inappropriate recountings about how the happy couple had met.

  “It seems Philippe got all of the writing talent in his family.” Harry leaned over to mutter in Eliza’s ear.

  She dug an elbow in his ribs. “I thought we were being nice.”

  “That was nice.”

  During the first dance, Harry shifted in his seat as the people at the tables craned their necks to try to get a good look of Philippe and Gina on the dancefloor.

  Eliza leaned over to whisper in his ear. “You just want them to finish up so you can dance with me, don’t you?” she asked.

  “A reason to like weddings,” Harry acknowledged.

  “And you whined and complained about coming out here with me!”

  “Doves. With food trucks. On the invitation,” Harry reminded her.

  Finally, the song ended and the floor was announced open. The band picked up the pace from Gina and Philippe’s stately waltz into a swing dance. Harry was one of the first out of his seat, offering his hand to Eliza.

  She took it and stood. “How do you know I’m any good?” she asked. They had danced before at the charity ball. But that had been only a waltz under fairly bizarre circumstances at that. Swing dancing was more challenging, more full of improvisation, and open to so many more mistakes.

  “A few reasons. One,” Harry said as he led her to the floor, “I’ve danced with you before. I know you can follow a lead...when you choose,” he teased.

  “Two?” she asked as his hand found her waist.

  “Two,” he said stepping off. “You wouldn’t be wearing that retro dress if you couldn’t at least fake this.” He walked them in a quick circle as he said it, then pushed her out to spin her around and pull her back in. “Do you want to hear three?”

  Another spin bought them some more room on the dance floor and as he pulled her back in, Eliza still turning on her toes, he grabbed her so they were back to front, Eliza in his arms as they had been – after a fashion – in Paris.

  “I definitely want to hear three,” she said, but wasn’t sure if Harry could hear her. The music was loud, and while his mouth was at her ear, she could only talk to the air, bewildered and joyful at her perfect and strange life.

  “Three. I’ve been to bed with you. I’ve fucked you,” Harry continued now, brazen. “So many times in so many ways. You can dance. Probably in all sorts of ways I haven’t even seen yet.”

  Eliza pushed back against his lead, just a little. She usually didn’t, not with someone this good. It was rude and not worth it. But she wanted to be pressed against him and look at him as she was. She wanted all of him, in fact, right now, but they were in the middle of a dance floor. Harry took her signal, helped her turn a time and a half in his arms to make it look good, and then laughed with pleasure as she fell into him, perfect and teasing and artful. Eliza pouted, all play, as he had to push her away again to keep moving as the song demanded.

  They only took a break to catch their breath and to talk to Gina and Philippe, who were making the rounds amongst the tables and at the edge of the dance floor.

  “I’m so glad you could make it,” Gina gushed when they congratulated the pair, and pulled Eliza into a hug.

  “We wouldn’t have missed it,” Eliza said. “After all, you’ve both had your own cameo in whatever our story is.”

  “One that will not be winding up in a book,” Harry added dutifully.

  “He says that now,” Gina joked, winking.

  Eliza became aware, as they talked, that Harry had gone from keeping a casual arm around her to rubbing his thumb in small circles that were drifting lower and lower on her back and soon wouldn’t be appropriate at all. It stopped just short of being untoward, and Eliza wasn’t even sure it was a conscious gesture.

  In light of that touch, she resented the effort it took her to focus on the rest of the conversation with Gina and Philippe. But when they both made her promise to stay in touch about her Berlin adventures, Eliza felt sure she would. Gina had been a friend found in the strangest circumstances, and corresponding with both her and Philippe seemed like a tonic against homesickness that might amuse them all.

  Eliza glanced at Harry and smiled. She’d never been homesick before. About anywhere. Or anyone.

  SHE AND HARRY MADE it through another few dances together, the other occupants of the dance floor clearly torn between admiration of their skill together and annoyance at the space they took up.

  “Do you want to take a break?” Harry asked a little breathlessly as the song changed, from swing to something romantic and slow.

  “We just took one,” Eliza pointed out. She wanted nothing more than to be wrapped up in Harry’s arms again.

  A glint in Harry’s eyes, though, told her he had a plan. “Do you trust me?”

  Despite the absurd number of missteps between them along the way, she always had. She always did. Otherwise she never would have spent countless hours curled in the chair in his office. Or broken up with Cody. Or let Paris happen. She wouldn’t have accepted the necklace he gave her, or run through the rain-soaked city with him the night of the charity ball. He’d saved her from hailstorms and ghosts and her own loneliness. And maybe, in the moments she felt like believing in all of Harry’s strange superstitions, from forgetfulness of who and what she’d once been. And in some way, that seemed most important of all.

  Harry was staring at her, gazing into her eyes really, and she realized she hadn’t answered yet, but that somehow he wasn’t worried. “Of course,” she finally managed. It really was that simple.

  “Then come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” Eliza asked, as Harry took her hand and led her out of the ballroom and down a hall towards the hall’s entranceway.

  “We are going to go outside, and we are going to find a place where people aren’t hanging out smoking, and I am going to kiss you. Because it would be rude to upstage a wedding. Even one as bizarre as to have a giant food truck-shaped wedding cake.”

  “What if I have a better idea?” Eliza asked.

  Harry gave her a curious look.

  Eliza grinned at him, and pointed to a door along the hall. A cloakroom, unmanned, because who needed to check a coat on a day this fair?

  She pulled Harry after her as she tested whether the door was locked and then grinned back at him in victory, before opening it just enough to slip inside. Where racks for absent outerwear didn’t line the walls, dark wood and a cheap sort of red velvet did. She tugged at the curtain that covered part of the door, and then turned the lock inside.

  “Everyone’s going to know what we’re up to,” Harry pointed out even as he crowded her up against the velvet-covered wall.

  “I don’t care,” Eliza said, “as long as they don’t know where we’re up to it.”

  Harry laughed, but it was breathless and cut off in a gasp as Eliza started fumbling with his pants. She knew they were being absurd, and she knew they should stop, but there wasn’t much time until she’d leave for Berlin. She wanted Harry every second she could have him, and she wasn’t going to apologize for that.

  She had to grab onto Harry’s shoulder for balance as she popped open the garter clips on her stockings and worked her underwear off. He held her, hands wrapped low around her waist, until she was standing on two feet again, her underwear looped around her wrist.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed.

  Eliza was tempted to laugh, the situation was so absurd, but they had both turned serious with it. And if she was trembling just a little bit, Harry was even more.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Are you?” Eliza asked.

  “We’re going to ruin their wedding,” Harry said.

  “We are not,” Eliza scoffed. “No one will notice; no one will know.”

  “Unless we cause another ma
ssive rainstorm,” Harry said, half laughing at himself as he did.

  “And if we do, they still won’t know it’s us.”

  There was a convenient radiator cover that ran along the wall, that Harry helped her sit right on the edge of. Eliza was impatient now, though, and no sooner had Harry steadied her in place than she wrapped her hand around him and guided him inside her without preamble. She’d been wet since they had started dancing together. Waiting was now beyond her interest or ability.

  The low breath that Harry let out was very nearly a moan, and Eliza hoped it wasn’t audible outside of this private, hidden spot. She pressed her mouth to his shoulder, warm and damp with sweat, and breathed his name, hoping it would somehow steady him and keep them safe in this silent, magic, breathless place.

  It was less rushed, less frantic than the circumstances might have suggested. Eliza wanted to cry with the need to be closer to him, even when they were as close as they could possibly get. She dug her fingernails into Harry’s back while he gripped her thighs and pushed into her with little whimpered gasps.

  When they had the angle just right and there was no risk of them falling apart, Harry moved a hand up to splay his fingers along her throat and jaw. He held her there in place and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

  Eliza didn’t understand how for all everyone always liked to talk about destiny, no one told her it felt like this; they came at the same time.

  For a long while after, Harry stood with his head pressed against her chest while they breathed together. When they finally stopped shaking in each other’s arms Harry straightened up and slid out of her. She whimpered and stood, her dress a mess, her panties still around her wrist, and clung close.

  He kissed her gently.

  “We should get cleaned up,” she mumbled against his lips, although she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here forever.

  “As soon as we leave here it’s going to be entirely obvious what we were doing,” Harry pointed out.

  Eliza shrugged. “I’ll go to the bathroom. Fix my makeup. Your hair’s curling from all the dancing and the late-summer heat.”

  “Not believable.”

  “No one will say anything,” she said. She unlooped her underwear from her wrist and made Harry give her just enough space to wriggle back into it.

  He slipped to his knees as she finished, kissing each thigh tenderly before smoothing her stockings back up her legs and reclipping them to the garters.

  “There,” he said, but made no effort to move. Instead he pushed up her dress and mouthed for a moment at her panties.

  Eliza had to cover her mouth not to make a very audible sound. She hauled Harry up by the collar of his shirt.

  “We have the whole night.” She combed her nails through Harry’s hair as he stood. “And weeks before I go. But we have got to get out of here first.”

  As they exited their hideaway, as neat as they could get, Eliza watched as Harry immediately darted out of the building, and looked up at the sky, still bright and clear as the sun dipped toward the horizon.

  “I’m so confused,” he said, as Eliza came to stand beside him.

  She took his hand and smiled at the day. “I’m not.” She tuned to him. “We’re not a tragedy this time, with nothing to destroy.”

  ON THE TRAIN BACK TO the city, they wedged themselves into another seat for two, although larger benches were available this time. Eliza pressed herself against the window again, and Harry curled around her. She tried not to doze, wanting to take in the scenery in the gloaming and appreciate every moment of Harry’s breath, warm and sleepy against her. Eventually, as church bells chimed in whatever town they were passing through, she slipped under the ocean of comfort and safety that was his arm around her waist, to wake again only when they reached the island citadel of their here and now.

  Eliza led Harry off the train silently, pleased with the feeling of him trailing after her, and even more pleased when he put his jacket over her bare shoulders in the cool dark of the evening as they waited for a taxi to return to Harry’s home, where they spent too much of their time.

  Once they reached the little mews house and made their way inside, upstairs, and into Harry’s bedroom he turned down the bed and handed her into it, as if it were just one more conveyance on the way to somewhere called home. When he climbed in after her, he skimmed his lips down the center of her, from nose to throat to sternum, and then further, to where she was still damp from where he had come deep inside her at the wedding.

  Then they slept.

  When the sun was still hours away from rising, Eliza found herself awake and restless. In bed next to her, Harry stirred. Finally, he put a hand on her waist to still her incessant tossing and turning.

  “What do you need?” he asked, his voice quiet and slurred in sleep.

  “I don’t know. I can’t sleep.”

  “Come here.” Before she could protest, Harry pulled her bodily toward him until her head rested on his chest and his arms were wrapped, low and snug, around her waist. Their skin was hot and sticky and covered in the salt of their sweat.

  “What are you thinking of?” Harry was fully awake now, his voice alert and kind.

  “How much I’ll miss you.” Having finally managed to form the words, Eliza felt nothing but devastated. She and Harry had both been working so hard to be sanguine about Berlin, but now the reality of it was hitting her in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

  “I’ll miss you too,” Harry said. “But that’s not it.”

  “I can’t wait to go,” Eliza confessed, her voice almost a whisper.

  “I know.”

  “You’re not angry at me for that?”

  “Whatever you encounter on your travels,” Harry said, running a hand through her hair and pressing his fingers, gently but firmly, against her scalp and then down the knots of her spine, “Whatever you want to experience. I will never do anything but help you do that. Or achieve it.”

  “I know.”

  “So tell me what you’re afraid of, Betts.” The name was so sweet on Harry’s lips that Eliza – that Betts – had to turn her face into his chest and hide, just for a moment, while his fingers combed through her hair and he hummed comfortingly at her.

  “Losing you.”

  “You won’t,” he said. “You never could. You never have.” He touched her cheek and turned her face up to look at him. “We may not be marching towards everyone else’s logical conclusion, but whatever we do, we do together. I’d like to say, you’re my partner, if you’ll let me, because I think you are. I know I’m yours.”

  Eliza nodded fiercely. The word was such a small, precise thing, almost clinical. But also the stuff of dreams and freedom, a past she didn’t understand, and a future she couldn’t wait to see.

  Harry’s hand settled on the back of her neck, his fingers resting lightly over where her pulse fluttered in her throat. “Good,” he said. “Then let me show you the truth of that,” he said, “every day, for the rest of forever.”

  THANK YOU FOR READING The Opposite of Drowning! If you want more romance, magical realism, and mythology in a contemporary setting, try A Queen from the North.

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  IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR more lushness, longing and bisexual characters, pick up the award-winning The Art of Three!

  24-YEAR-OLD JAMIE CONWAY has just moved to London, is starring in his first feature film, and hasn't yet figured out how to navigate fame, adulthood, or being bisexual in public.

  When Jamie hooks up with his much older polyamorous costar Callum Griffith-Davies, he sets off a chain of delightful complications, including an unexpected affair with Callum's no-nonsense wife, Nerea.

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  FOR MORE INFORMATION about Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae’s work, visit their website at www.Avian30.com. Or sign up for their newsletter to be the first to hear about sales and new releases.

  Also by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese

  Novels

  The Art of Three

  After the Gold

  The Royal Roses Series

  A Queen from the North

  The Love in Los Angeles Series

  Starling

  Doves

  Phoenix

  Cardinal

  Love in Los Angeles Box Set Books 1-3

  The Love's Labours Series

  Midsummer

  Twelfth Night

  Novellas and Short Stories