by Serena Bell
“—are there still benefits?”
I’m already breathless and wet, and he doesn’t wait for an answer before he crawls across the couch to make it so.
Chapter 42
Liv
The kissing is so tender. Like we’re kissing for the first time, or maybe like we’ve known each other for years and years and are so comfortable, one kiss flows into the next without awkwardness or trying. And his hands move gently in my hair, brushing it off my face, tugging handfuls, but not hard, just so my scalp tingles all over. And he keeps whispering my name, sometimes so quietly I’m not sure whether he means me to hear or not.
And when he carries me upstairs, he cradles me like something precious and looks into my eyes the whole time. It makes me want to cry, because I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me that way in my whole life. Not since—
Well, not since my mom, and I don’t really remember that.
He looks at me as though he sees exactly who I am and likes me exactly that way.
He sets me down on the bed and resumes kissing me, and these kisses are so slow, soft and sweet, like he’s tasting every corner of me. Like he’s filling every corner of me. And sometimes he stops kissing and just looks at me with those ridiculously beautiful Chase eyes, full of something. Not dark and naughty. Warm and wondering.
“Lie still,” he says when I reach for him, trying to hold him closer, trying to give him back the pleasure he’s giving me. “Just lie still.”
So I do, letting myself melt completely under him, while he drops little kisses along my jawline, while his tongue traces every curl and crevice of my ear, while he nuzzles along the hyper-tuned nerves of my neck until I’m whimpering and clutching.
“Lie still. Just let me.”
He spends forever on my breasts, licking like he’s painting me anew, spiraling in toward my painfully tight nipples, but then backing away, teasing. When he finally closes in on them, he spends what feels like hours there, sucking deep, flicking light, until I am arching off the bed and begging. Then he licks his way down the slope of my belly and parts my sex, licking into my heat.
“Oh my God.”
“Talk to me.”
“Like that. Just like that.”
His mouth is so hot, I want to push my whole self into it. He uses the flat of his tongue and the tip, alternating, strokes, circles, strokes, circles, broader, tighter, broader, tighter, until it feels like he’s drawing the shape of the orgasm to come—everywhere and perfectly focused—
“I have to be inside you. Have to.”
I seem to have lost all use of language. I whimper.
He slides up my body, and my raw nerves feel every texture—the crispness of hair and the hardness of muscle, the heat of his skin and the top of his foot fitting against the tender, sensitive bottom of mine, and most of all, the tease as he fits the head of his cock against the soaking wet opening of my sex.
He doesn’t tease, but neither does he rush us. He eases in, works his way in, and again it could be an hour or a hundred hours or just a minute that my body opens in invitation against his heat and heft and hardness. I don’t know. I don’t care. I only care about the feel of him, stretching and filling me, completing me.
He belongs there. I want to tell him that. You belong inside me. This is how it’s supposed to be. We’re supposed to be like this all the time.
But I don’t, of course.
I say, “More.”
And as if that were a reasonable request, as if he weren’t already buried in me so deep that I can feel him hitched high up against my pubic bone, he thrusts a little deeper.
“More.”
“Jesus, Liv.”
“More.”
He thrusts and withdraws, again and again, and it’s this perfect hot slide, this thick, intense, amazing deep hot slide, and my nipples tighten against the curls and heat of his chest and my hands find his ass because even though I have all of him, over and over, I still want more.
“More.”
He’s thrusting hard now, concentration tight in his face, lifting himself off me to brace himself up on his arms, and I watch him, feeling like everything’s of a piece: the expression on his face, the tension mounting where we’re connected, the emotions that threaten to drown me.
This is probably the last time we will do this.
I wrap my arms around him, tight, bury my face in his neck, and whisper his name as I come harder than I’ve ever come, spasm after spasm, until I grab him and pull him under, under, under with me.
Chapter 43
Chase
Liv comes into the living room where I am sitting and trying to convince myself that I am working on materials for the store. What I am really doing is staring blankly at the screen. It could be anything—the Declaration of Independence, a thriller, porn—and I’d still be staring at it blankly, because my brain is submerged in a freezing fog, like the stuff that drifts over Seattle in January.
“Do you want me to write some cheat sheets for Gillian before I go?” Liv asks me.
“Sure.”
She takes a breath. “She’s going to be great.”
“Yeah. She seems really, um, yeah…great.”
Yeah. That’s about where I am right now. Freezing fog.
She stands there for a beat. Trying, I know from personal experience, to find something to say that will make things okay between us. But there isn’t anything.
It’s Wednesday night now, and this is how it’s been since Monday night. Liv leaves tomorrow morning.
The world keeps doing its thing. Liv met Emily midway on Tuesday to retrieve Katie. Gillian came to the house this morning and met Katie. As predicted, they got along great. They did a Frozen sing-along and a craft project and at the end, I offered Gillian the job and she accepted.
But I feel like I’m going through the motions. I feel like Robot Chase, who puts one foot in front of the other and says the right things but isn’t really here.
Maybe I should have argued harder with Liv. Maybe I should have begged her not to go.
But the truth is, I’m done. Done wanting to be who other people want me to be. I tried to be the guy my parents wanted me to be, and look where that got me. I tried to be the guy Thea wanted me to be, and look where that got me.
It doesn’t work, like Thea said. Like Liv said. You can’t change to be who someone else wants you to be.
I won’t try to be anyone other than who I am, not ever again.
Not even for Liv.
Just to clarify, I didn’t make love to her the way I did on Monday night to try to change her mind. I wasn’t thinking about seducing her or convincing her. I just wanted her to know how I felt, that I loved her. I couldn’t say the words, not without feeling like I was trying to manipulate her into staying. I had to tell her the only other way I could, with my body.
And I wanted to say goodbye.
Chapter 44
Liv
Even though she’s known it was coming, Katie flips out when it’s time for me to say goodbye.
“But I don’t want Liv to leave. She is the best with my nightmares! She is the best with making a table! She is the best with helping me shop for things! She is the best with singing ‘Let it Go’! She is the best with getting library books!”
She starts to cry. My own tears spill over, and I do my best to swat them away before she can see.
“I don’t want another new mommy!”
For the first time since our conversation Monday night, Chase makes eye contact with me. His expression is utterly stricken, and I’m flooded with guilt. I never, ever should have said yes to this setup. Look what I’ve done. I’ve made Katie’s transition harder; I’ve ruined a friendship.
But what’s done is done. The past is rearview, and I have to keep moving forward. It’s the best thi
ng for me and it’s definitely the best thing for Katie.
“I’m not your mommy,” I say as gently as I can. “I’m your nanny. And you’ll love Gillian. She’ll be your new nanny, and she’ll come soon and play with you and you will have such a good time with her. Nannies come and go, Katie. They don’t stay forever. But your daddy will always be your daddy. And he is a really great daddy. You are super lucky.”
Chase’s face has that same blank look it got the other night when we were talking about me staying. When he realized I was right and there was no way he could promise me what I needed. But he gathers himself, pulls himself together, for Katie’s sake. A deep breath, and he kneels to face Katie at eye level.
“That’s right, baby. I will always be your daddy. And I will help you with all those things. Singing ‘Let It Go’ and even going shopping and helping you make a table,” he says.
I wait for him to cast me an eye roll, something, but he is entirely focused on Katie. And for some reason, that’s when it really sinks in, that I have lost him. We will not kid around anymore about the ways we are different and the shit that bugs him about me and the shit that bugs me about him. I won’t teach him hairstyles and marketing techniques, and he won’t teach me how to camp or cast or whatever you call what you do with fishing line. We won’t spar or kiss or make love or watch different movies side by side.
It’s over.
Oh, Chase.
I knew this would be hard. I just didn’t know it would be this hard.
Katie tugs my sleeve. “Livvy. Why do nannies come and go? Why do you want to be a come-and-go person instead of a stay person?”
Oof.
I open my mouth to try to explain, when there is no way to explain it at all, but Chase says gently, “Liv has to go to Denver to take her perfect job, doing what she is best at, marketing.”
“She is best at nannying,” Katie pouts.
“She is very good at nannying,” Chase says. “But she deserves to have a chance to do the job that she went to college for, and for that, she needs to go to Denver. And we need to let her go, because that is one of the things you do when you love someone. You let them go be who they need to be.”
Tears fill my eyes, but I blink them back.
I am determined not to cry, because it will only make things harder for Katie.
Gillian arrives as I am packing the car. She’s brought a tub of little troll dolls and a stack of different-colored pieces of felt and some kid-friendly scissors. She gets down on the floor and shows Katie how to cut holes in the felt to make rudimentary troll clothes. Katie is enchanted, and before too long, she and Gillian are immersed in their troll world.
I kiss Katie on the top of the head and tell her goodbye. She stops cutting troll outfits long enough to hug me, then throws herself back down on the floor.
I walk with Chase to the door.
“I’ll walk you to the car,” he says.
I put my suitcase in the trunk.
“Oh, um, shit,” he says, and fumbles in his pocket. He pulls out his wallet and, to my horror, begins counting out money. The rest of what he owes me.
“Chase, no,” I say, but he keeps counting, carefully, bill after bill, and then he hands them to me, still without looking at me.
I fold the money over, trying not to cry.
We stand there awkwardly for a moment, and then I get in the car.
I wave to him through the window. He waves back, his gaze faraway and impersonal.
I almost get out of the car. But I don’t know what I’d say.
You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.
These have been two of the best weeks of my life.
I wish things were different.
I’d stay if I could, but I can’t.
When I’m out of sight, I throw the money across the seat and burst into tears.
Chapter 45
Chase
Later that afternoon, I pass her room and stop in the doorway.
She left everything. I mean, not her clothes and stuff, but all the decorations. The quilt and the curtains, the white fabric and the doodads and knickknacks, the photos on the walls.
I sink down on the bed and Liv’s scent rises up around me, and I clench my hands into fists to keep from just—
I don’t know. I don’t know if what I want to do is scream or punch something or rip something to shreds or whip my phone out of my pocket and call her right now. Beg her to turn back. Tell her I will promise her anything she wants. I will be anything she wants me to be.
Will she start over in her room in Denver? Will she make a shopping trip to a new Goodwill, to one of the Denver Target stores? Will she come home with a hundred dollars’ worth of scraps and make another room, somewhere else, beautiful?
This is what home is to her. Trappings. Stuff. Visuals.
Not people.
Not Katie and me.
I pick up one of the cobalt bowls from the night table and throw it at the wall as hard as I can. It shatters into a million pieces, but I don’t feel any better.
Chapter 46
Chase
Brooks rings the doorbell on Thursday night. I get up from the couch long enough to open the door, then sink back down in front of my glass of bourbon. It’s my third. Or fourth. Or maybe fifth.
Brooks strolls over and stands beside me, forehead wrinkled. “You look like the walking dead, Chase. What the fuck?”
“I didn’t invite you over.”
“No, I came over because Rodro and I are worried about you. You were a zombie at work today. You looked happier when you were in the middle of that fight with Thea about where Katie was going to spend Christmas.”
“I’m happy.”
“Happy dudes don’t drink by themselves,” Brooks points out.
“There are more glasses in the kitchen. Right of the sink.”
He rolls his eyes, but crosses to the kitchen and comes back with an empty lowball. He pours himself some bourbon and sits beside me.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“No.”
Brooks, wise man, stays silent. Around us, the house is making its night noises, the refrigerator humming, the joists expanding and contracting. I’ve heard quite a bit of the night noises recently, during the not-sleeping portions of the last three nights, which is pretty much all of them.
Normally, when I can’t sleep, I make Liv come watch movies with me. Yes, it’s true: I have actually made up nonexistent dates just to have the excuse for one of our consolation parties.
And somehow it never occurred to me that that might be indicative of a problem.
Not too bright, this guy.
Brooks is still eyeing me like I’m a ticking time bomb. “Does this have something to do with Liv’s leaving?”
Outright lie? Half-truth? Silence?
I don’t get the chance to decide, because Brooks nods like I’ve confirmed something he already knew. “That’s what Rodro was guessing. He said you were in love with her. Is that true?”
He asks it the way you’d ask a close friend to confirm the rumor of a cancer diagnosis.
I open my mouth to deny it, because a long time ago, I decided I would never let the phrase “in love with her” apply to me again. But now that Brooks has let it drop like a bomb in my living room, I can see it’s true.
That it’s probably been true all along.
I think of that first blind date. How beautiful and polished she was, how even then I wanted to feel every curve and secret of her, and how that scared the shit out of me, because the only other time I’d wanted that before, it had landed me in sewage.
I can tell already this isn’t going to work.
A wall I threw up between us, because I knew if I let myself, I would fall for her.
All I can
do is nod.
Brooks opens his mouth and I think he’s going to howl with laughter, but then he seems to realize that I’m in no condition to be laughed at and shuts it again. “We’re talking about the Liv who—and I quote—is your friend ‘like you and Rodro and I are friends’?”
I have to rest my forehead briefly in my hands.
“Chase, you okay?”
“No. I’m not okay. I’m definitely not okay.” Pretty sure, in fact, that I feel less okay as time passes.
“What happened? How the fuck—” He seems to suddenly realize that we have a genuine humanitarian crisis on our hands. “How do you get from ‘just friends’ to…this?”
His gesture takes in the mostly empty bottle, the mostly empty glass, my trashed living room, and me.
He looks pretty freaked out, too, as if something like this could happen to him if he let his guard down.
I tell him my insight about our first date. How even then I liked her too much. How I put the right amount of distance between us. I made a list of all the reasons we could never get along. I made everything between us about what we couldn’t agree on. The movies. Our snacks, our drinks. I loved that we couldn’t agree on a movie because it put all that space between us on the couch. It meant there was never anything shared between us that could pull us together.
And then…
“I asked her to come help me with Katie. Why do you think I did that?”
Brooks looks, if possible, even more freaked out.
“I don’t know, dude. Because you’re an idiot?”
“Thanks, man. That helps.”
“You know what I think you really need? Another drink.”
He’s right. I pour another bourbon, and let the rhetorical question drop.
Chapter 47
Liv
I cry most of the way to Boise, and then I dry my eyes, fix my makeup, and check myself into a Comfort Inn.
