Harder

by Robin York

  He squeezes, and I close my eyes against the hot slick pulse of it.

  “Up.”

  I stagger upward. At the top of a short flight, I stumble into a door. West dangles a key in front of my nose.

  “The roof?” I ask.

  He spins me, presses me into the door, and kisses me so deeply, with so little warning, I just about black out.

  Can you faint from the combination of three and a half flights of stairs and the deep and unrelenting desire to be fucked?

  It seems likely.

  His thigh moves between my knees. His hands grip my waist and lift me up, and I can’t do anything but dissolve all over him, take his mouth and his grip and his hard heat, the beat of the pulse in his neck where my hand rests, the moan he makes when I find his cock through denim and cotton and rub my hand up and down, tracing the length and shape of him with my fingernail.

  “Right here,” I say. “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  He lowers me and backs away. “On the roof.”

  “Open the door, then.”

  He pushes me aside, unlocks it, and drags me behind him.

  “Why do you have a key?” I ask.

  “It’s Laurie’s master key.”

  “They give out master keys to the art building? That’s not smart. That’s just basically asking students to fuck on the roof.”

  “I know, right? Open season. I’m surprised there aren’t twenty people up here right now.” He turns and grins at me, and then we round a corner and he says, “There we go.”

  “What is this?”

  “Grass.”

  “Right, but …”

  I’m looking at a patch of lawn, about fifteen feet square. Like, just … Grass. On the roof of the art building. “Is this somebody’s project?”

  “It was some kind of prairie restoration experiment thing, I think,” he says. “But that was a long time ago, and now it’s just this rooftop lawn that Rikki mows.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s Rikki. Strip.”

  “Out here?”

  “I want you naked in that grass in thirty seconds. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “But what if there’s ticks?”

  “How could there possibly be ticks?”

  “How should I know?”

  “It’s not like there’s deer up here, Caro. Or foxes, or any other kind of host animal.”

  “We’re a host animal.”

  “I don’t think there’s that many people fucking on this rooftop that they could be passing ticks back and forth.”

  “But—”

  “Quit.”

  “But—”

  He blows out an exasperated breath and whips his shirt off. The moonlight spills over his shoulders and chest, turning his skin a milky white-blue, gooseflesh and hard muscle. Naked West chest and those jeans. Those fucking jeans. When his hands go to his zipper I reach for it, because I want in on this. So much.

  West pushes my hands away. “Strip.”

  “All right.”

  He finishes before I do, which means I push my skirt down with his gaze on me. I’m standing in my bra and panties, a little chilly, a lot turned on. “Come over here,” I beg.

  “Lie down.”

  “By myself?”

  “On the grass.”

  “This is strange.”

  “Humor me.”

  I do as he asks, because it is a little strange, but not so strange that it’s outside my comfort zone, and West doesn’t make so many unusual requests that I have any reason to balk at this one.

  Mostly he just loves me and supports me, bolsters my confidence when I need it, defends me, makes me laugh, makes me come, makes me happier than anyone else ever has or probably ever will.

  So, sure. I’ll lie down naked in this random patch of roof grass for him.

  It’s stiffer than I expected, prickly against my lower back, my neck. Cool on the back of my legs and my butt.

  He kneels beside me.

  “Is this going to turn out to be a kink of yours?” I ask. “Exposure?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Rooftops?”

  “No.” He’s smiling. “I’ve just wanted you naked under the stars since the first time I kissed you.”

  He trails his hand from my neck down through the space between my breasts, almost-but-not-quite brushing my nipples, then lifting every downy hair on my stomach as he strokes his way downward.

  Back and forth. Teasing me.

  I close my eyes. It’s too much to look at him. The intensity in his gaze. The moonlight on his skin.

  He drops down to his elbow, and his face is right there, his eyes and his lips, his chin and his jaw, his mouth. So exactly like it was that night when we climbed up on the roof of my childhood home, even though almost everything is different now.

  That night, I was stoned and I was scared.

  I heard mean voices when I closed my eyes, hounding me, and I couldn’t decide what to do about West because I wanted him, but I didn’t want to get hurt.

  I’d looked and looked at him that night, because I could never get enough of his face, the shapes that make him up, the beat of his heart, the heat of the life moving inside him.

  “Come here,” I say.

  He leans down to kiss me. Shifts closer and warms me as his hand travels those last few inches and his fingers slide in.

  “You’re wet.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Watch it,” he says. “Or I might figure out you’re attracted to me.”

  “Oh, it’s not you. I was just hoping there’d be somebody up here who was willing to fuck me.”

  “Somebody who doesn’t mind bossy chicks.”

  “Don’t call me a chick.”

  He rubs his thumb over my clit and makes me gasp. Mumbles something that sounds a lot like, I’ll call you whatever I want.

  “Be careful,” I tell him the next time I’m capable of drawing breath. “Or I’ll pick someone else to be my first lady.”

  I guess that’s all the provocation he can take, because what he says next is, “Spread your legs wider,” and then he’s moving inside me, hard and harder.

  Fast, with his fingers sinking into the flesh at my hips.

  Wow.

  Breathless, I say, “You weren’t kidding about wanting this.”

  “I was thinking about coming over to see you at the library.”

  “For how long?”

  “Since lunch.”

  I laugh, and then I can’t, because he’s thrusting into me so hard that my whole body turns into a bow, arching up, tensing, tight. My mouth falls open.

  West kisses my neck, my jawline, my throat.

  The world smells green and new.

  I close my eyes, and when I open them, the stars are a careless spill of diamonds decorating the night.

  His thumb finds my clit and moves in slow circles in time with his thrusts.

  Into me. Into me. Into me.

  He eases his hand over my shoulder and down my arm, over my hip.

  Pulls up my knee. Looks in my eyes.

  We go deep and then deeper, falling, spinning.

  When he’s with me, I’m never lost.

  Caroline

  There are few things in life as fantastic as tackling another human being.

  Like, at the top of my list of physically enjoyable things I want to be doing as much as possible, it’s basically orgasms and tackling people. And sometimes I think tackling people is better, although I’ll admit it also comes with a higher likelihood of getting kicked in the face.

  The first time I brought down another woman on the rugby pitch, I felt like I’d cracked a code. Stolen a secret men had been keeping from me. Because the thing is, guys make it seem difficult, as though tackling requires either blind rage or shoulder pads to be even doable.

  We women watch from the stands, sipping hot chocolate high in the bleachers, and there is never any s
uggestion that this activity might be for us. That we might have what it takes to get this job done, too.

  I used to be a good girl. I sat in the stands. I followed the rules, worked hard to get straight A’s, dated a nice boy, and made him wait a long time for sex.

  It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was in the right neighborhood, and it seemed like the thing at the time.

  There is a way in which smart girls, good girls, grow up thinking that if we keep following the rules, the world will hand us what we want.

  So we line up, and we wait. But no one ever shows up to deliver the goods. And the longer we wait in that line, the more likely we are to take receipt of one ration of shit after another.

  Being a good girl didn’t work out for me.

  At the end of my junior year at Putnam, I’m not that girl anymore. I’ve stepped out of the line.

  I’ve become someone else.

  I am engaged, every day, in the process of becoming myself, and one of the things I understand now that I didn’t used to is that every possible activity is for me. Anything and everything I might want is available to me if I’m willing to do what it takes to claim it.

  Sometimes it will be fucking unpleasant.

  Sometimes people will hate me for it.

  That’s okay.

  It’s okay, because on a Sunday morning in April on the Putnam College rugby pitch, I can feel the softness of the earth beneath my cleats. I can smell manure, sharp and sweet, in the wind that whips the hair out of my ponytail.

  I can look to the sidelines and see Krishna and Frankie and West sitting on a blanket. The white of Krishna’s smile. The light in Frankie’s face when Krishna teases her and West ruffles her hair, tickles her until she’s collapsed, laughing, over his legs.

  I can look to my right and see my friend Quinn, big and solid, wickedly funny.

  I can look to my left and see my friend Bridget, slight and freckled and redheaded, nervous because this is the first time we’ve managed to get her out on the pitch to give rugby a try.

  I told her not to sweat it. Tackling another human being is easy. All it requires is a willingness to throw yourself at their legs and a complete refusal to let go.

  That’s it.

  Swear to God.

  I’m not big, and I’m not strong, but I could bring down a three-hundred-pound woman through the sheer force of my will. I could bring down a fucking elephant.

  Facing off across the line from us is a team of strangers in red-and-black jerseys, stern mouths and ruddy cheeks and wind-whipped hair, and they’re going to do this, too. We’re all going to do this.

  We’re going to throw the ball, catch it, and run as fast as our legs will carry us.

  We’re going to get a bead on the carrier, sprint after her, launch ourselves through the air until she’s down and we’re breathless, sweating, tangled up in limbs and dirt, grass stains and grit.

  I have what it takes to claim what I want. I always did.

  All of us do.

  That’s what I tell West when he loses faith. That’s what I’m always going to be here to tell him.

  It’s what I’ll tell Frankie when she asks me, when she doubts herself, when she needs to hear it.

  It doesn’t take anything special to fight back against the world and all the ways it wants to box you in, hold you down, limit you, and keep you from thriving. You just have to know what it is you want to accomplish. You have to know who you want to be with and what you’ll give up to get them.

  You have to let yourself want what you want as hard as you can, as deep as that goes, even if it scares the fuck out of you.

  Even if your want and your need are bottomless, timeless, and your fear is so big that it’s hard to breathe around it.

  Because in the end, fear doesn’t matter. Pain doesn’t matter.

  You get kicked in the nose, and the disaster of the blow blooms across your face and screams through your nervous system, but then it’s over.

  It’s over, and you’re on the the other side, one blow closer to the life you want.

  I’ve got my life locked in. I’m right in the middle of it, my friends around me, West on the sidelines, our unconventional little family together and happy.

  I’ve got that because I went after it.

  I chased it and jumped it and fucking wrestled it to the ground, and I am not ever letting go.

  Ahead of me is all the work I can do in this world.

  I’m not afraid.

  I’ve got this.

  West

  “I don’t know why we weren’t doing this last year,” Krishna says. “I don’t know why I haven’t been doing this every single second since I came to college.”

  We’re sitting in the grass on the sidelines, passing Krishna’s flask back and forth, sipping whiskey and watching muddy girls bruise one another. Frankie’s twenty feet down the sideline, worshipping Quinn, who’s taking a breather after playing the entire first half of the game.

  Or first quarter.

  I’ve got no fucking clue, actually, how this game works, but Krish has got a point. There are thirty college girls on the field flinging themselves around, and it’s pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened.

  “I don’t know how you kept this from me,” he says. “You had to know I would kill to spectate this sport. I’m going to spectate the fuck out of it now. They won’t know what to do with me, I’ll be spectating them so hard.”

  “This is the first game I’ve made it to.”

  “The fuck?”

  “I always had work.”

  He blows out an incredulous exhale. “And I always said, Work less. You’re only young once.”

  “You also said a lot of other stupid bullshit. Including Don’t tie yourself down to one chick.”

  I watch him scan the field until he locks on Bridget. She’s got to be the scrappiest, tiniest, muddiest thing out there, but she’s hanging in. I watch her fling her arm around Caroline’s neck, attempt a chest bump, and fall down on her ass.

  Then Caroline’s sinking to her knees, down to her hands, her hair hanging down in the dirt, because she’s laughing so goddamn hard, she can’t keep herself up.

  I was missing this. I can’t believe I let myself miss this.

  Can’t believe I got here, that I get to have it now.

  We’re thriving.

  All three of us. Not just surviving—thriving.

  And seeing that, I think about Silt. How I went home thinking I would never lay eyes on Caroline again.

  How I thought nothing could be harder than walking away from her, but it was.

  Hard. Harder.

  Too hard to take.

  I went home thinking I was the sheriff, and my fight was with my dad. But the fight I got wasn’t the one I expected. The gunplay all happened on someone else’s watch. I ended up alone on the streets of a ghost town in full daylight, with the black borders closing in on me.

  Caroline’s the one who pulled me out through that pinhole, back into the light.

  It’s always been Caroline, because from that first day when she groped me at the library, rode my thigh, and then told me to leave her alone—as if that was a thing that could ever happen—she saw me in a way I’d never seen myself.

  She knows who she is. She knows who I am. How we fit.

  I’ve been a lot of things since I met her. Guide, villain, pioneer, exile. But I’ve never been the sheriff, because I didn’t understand what it takes.

  The sheriff isn’t there to vanquish evil. He’s there to keep an eye on the future. He’s the guardian of the law, the protector of the rules, the fists that keep chaos at bay.

  You can’t be the sheriff if all you’ve got is someone to fight against.

  You’ve got to have something to fight for.

  Something like Frankie with Quinn on the sidelines of a rugby game. My sister in jeans and a hoodie that actually fits, her hands in her back pockets, talking and smiling and squinting into the sun.


  Something like Caroline rolling over onto her back, flinging out her arms, laughing up at the sky.

  A sketchbook full of ideas. A pile of copper tubing. A plan.

  All of it easy.

  All of it mine.

  For Mary Ann, with love and gratitude

  Acknowledgments

  I always put a lot of myself in my stories. This time, I drew deeply on what I’ve learned about love, life, and what it means to survive and thrive. I’m grateful to have grown up with love and opportunity all around me, and with a life full of beauty, art, and possibility. Thanks to my parents for giving me the wide-open horizons West wants for his sister. I hope I did West and Caroline justice. I certainly tried.

  As I wrote the manuscript of Harder, Mary Ann Rivers helped me figure out what to do when I got stuck. Serena Bell reminded me not to lose sight of the love story. My agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, held my hand, and my editor at Bantam, Shauna Summers, told me how to fix the parts I’d gotten wrong. Be glad you didn’t read the book without their input.

  At the research phase, I relied on a number of friends with expertise, friendly experts, and expert friends. Thanks to Erin Rathjen, Holly Jacobs, Erica Johnstone, Jeni Mokren, Marian Houseman, and Patrick Wilson for being willing to answer odd questions and talk to me about all manner of things.

  Raffe’s video art installation is inspired by a wonderful piece I saw at the Milwaukee Art Museum. If you’re ever in Wisconsin, I can’t recommend a visit too highly.

  Thanks, finally, to my readers. You guys are the best.

  BY ROBIN YORK

  Harder

  Deeper

  ROBIN YORK grew up at a college, went to college, signed on for some more college, then married a university professor. She still isn’t sure why it didn’t occur to her to write New Adult sooner. She moonlights as a mother, makes killer salted caramels, and sorts out thorny plot problems while running, hiking, or riding her bike.

  www.robinyork.com

  Facebook.​com/​writerrobinyork

  @RobinYorkNA