by Ruby Lang
They followed Magda up the stairs to a formal dining room. The room had been staged, with fresh flowers on an old table and chairs, and two full place settings at opposite ends of the table—two kinds of wine glasses, a gleaming array of forks, knives, spoons, napkins rolled in fancy jeweled rings, plates and those bigger plates that went under them that you weren’t supposed to actually eat off of. But glass cabinets shone back at them, empty. Magda pointed out the picture frame molding, the smooth hardware, and the pocket door that led to the living room. Someone had installed a swooping light fixture with a shade in a vivid bordello red. Oliver switched it on and off briefly, and all three of them were a little startled by the sharp electric light. The room was scrupulously clean and smelled faintly of lemon Pledge, and Oliver briefly wondered if the broker had been here herself just before they’d arrived, wiping down the surfaces. Surrounded by all this beautiful, dark, gleaming wood, he was tempted to touch all of that smoothness.
He wasn’t alone in that thought. As Magda talked more, spinning a comforting tale about the wonderful dinner parties that he and Darling could have here, Fay wandered off to trail her fingers across the empty surfaces. She paused to swing open the built-in china cabinets with one hand, her other still caressing the smooth surfaces behind her.
He wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she could almost hear the clink of silverware, the soft murmur of wealthy people. Perhaps she was wishing that she could really live here with all this space, with all this sleek polished wood that probably ran like silk under her fingertips. He’d never really cared about money, but security had been another matter. Another worry to thank his dad for, he supposed. But it was his own fault he didn’t have a job, and sooner or later he’d have to talk to Fay about her firm. He stared hard at the two place settings and imagined her sitting at one end of the table unfolding a napkin and smiling blankly at the person at the other end.
What did it mean that she’d given the broker fake names? What did it mean that he hadn’t corrected Magda about his name? Not that Olly couldn’t have been one of his nicknames. But it wasn’t. He was Oliver; he’d never had to insist.
But as Oliver was about to say something, Magda’s phone sounded and the doorbell rang. She said something about the next interested clients being early, which was likely supposed to be an incentive to spur Olly and Darling to make an offer. She quickly excused herself downstairs, her ear pressed to her phone.
“Let’s go up,” Fay said abruptly.
That was the line he’d been planning to use, but she delivered it much better. She had already headed out and up to the third floor where the bedrooms were. After a moment of checking the floor plans, just to be sure, Oliver followed her.
She was waiting for him inside one of the still-under-renovation bathrooms, perched on the edge of a claw-foot tub, one shoe dangling precariously from her toes. He admired the long graceful arch of her foot, the strong line of muscle under her jeans up to her knee. He’d like to touch that knee, trace the line of bone and muscle up the inside of her thigh.
Oliver asked, “Should I close the door?”
“Lock it.”
He sprang to action. He shut the door quietly and looked for the locking mechanism. It was an old-fashioned knob with a pin that could be twisted. It did not twist. He jiggled the handle, turned it to the right, turned it to the left, and tried again. The door didn’t seem to want to cooperate. Oliver silently cursed vintage hardware, slow restoration efforts, and the lack of WD-40. He opened the door. He closed the door, more firmly this time, and twisted. Nothing.
He got down on his knees and jiggled the doorknob and he tried again, once, twice.
The room was getting stuffy and warm. And not just because Fay was waiting patiently. He got up and opened the door. He tried the lock while the door was open. It didn’t budge. He straightened. A thin trickle of sweat had started down his back.
It was a lot cooler downstairs.
“Never mind,” Fay said, her voice a little strained. “Just close it.”
She was starting to look nervous, too. They’d wasted time. They didn’t hear anyone from below, but in some ways, that was worse. Fay moved as if to come off the tub, but her shoe finally slipped off her foot and fell on the floor with a loud thunk.
They both jumped. And when Fay twisted to pick it up, she lost her already precarious balance at the lip of the tub and with a yelp, slid in ass first, taking part of the flimsy shower curtain with her with an ominous rattle.
Oliver sprang forward and pulled the plastic off of her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m—fine.”
“Let’s get you out of here in case that whole curtain track decides to come down.”
Fay started giggling, and it only made her legs, which were sticking out of the tub, flail more. Oliver tried not to laugh as he helped pull her out. But Fay was too far gone to notice. “Oh God,” she said, wiping her eyes, “I cannot wait to explain this to Magda.”
“It’s a very boring story,” Oliver said, brushing the dust out of her hair. “We came upstairs to take a look at the bedrooms and bathrooms and not at all because we wanted to make out like teenagers—”
“Right. That’s all we wanted to do.”
“Please do not torture me with what could have been. We came upstairs, and you backed into the bathroom to take a picture and most certainly did not look extremely alluring just before you took a spill.”
“Extremely alluring, is that how I looked?”
Fay shucked her other shoe and hopped up on the ledge of the tub. By tacit agreement, Oliver stood by the tub, letting her steady herself against him as she readjusted the track. And when she was ready, he helped her hold up appropriate sections of the curtain. Luckily it was mostly not torn. Mostly.
Oliver grasped her waist while she popped the undamaged sections into the curtain rings. He helped her down again. It wasn’t quite how he’d hoped their tryst would go, but he had at least gotten to touch her knee, her hip.
But as Fay bent to put on her shoes, Oliver noticed a very white streak of dust over the back of her dark capris. Fay twisted around and grimaced. “Serves me right for attempting the luge down the side of a tub in a house that’s still being restored.”
“Can I help?”
“Yes, I—”
Oliver started to dust her off. And that’s how Magda and her new clients found them—urbane, polished, murder-mystery-solving Olly slapping Darling’s butt in the third-floor bathroom while Darling bent over laughing, her head turned to watch his progress.
* * *
“I thought she was pretty understanding, considering,” Fay said when they reached the end of the block.
Magda had not let them out of her sight after that moment. Although she probably didn’t suspect that he and Fay had been trying to find a place to tryst and was more likely afraid that Fay—no, Darling—would smash a stairway spindle or accidentally cause a collapse of one of the brick fireplaces rather than get up to any naughty business. It was Fay’s guilt causing her to turn red. Oliver managed to appear perfectly serious and apologetic as he gave Magda a version of the events that had led to that moment. The broker had also refused the twenty dollars Oliver quietly offered to pay for the shower curtain.
They’d stayed to admire the rest of the house—the bedrooms, the windows, a walk-in closet that had been installed sometime in the 1990s, the washer and dryer. Oliver had asked questions about the boiler and the roof that Magda relished answering—the broker really seemed to want to use all of her knowledge and research—and that had at least restored Olly and Darling in her eyes somewhat in the end.
Fay stopped. She faced him. Might as well be direct. “What are you thinking? Are you interested in coming back to my place? Or have we had enough adventures?”
“I want to see your place,” he said simply.
Somethi
ng about that was so reassuring, that she didn’t worry much about the fact that she didn’t have a couch and that her apartment was only partly unpacked, and that her bathroom floor was a mess of pried-up tiles. If anyone was likely to see the potential in the confusion of all of it, it was Oliver. Oliver who helped her when she needed it, and who looked at her in a way that made her feel like she could say what she was thinking, who thought she was alluring even when she was sitting on the edge of a tub in a dusty old bathroom.
The day had gotten a lot hotter. And by the time they walked the three stories up Fay’s apartment, they were both sweating in their casual-but-upscale house-hunting jeans. “It’s a mess. I just moved in. But I can get you some water. Or a beer?”
“Water would be great. Beer, too, if you’ll have some.”
“I have a fan somewhere, too.”
“I see it.”
By the time she got back from the kitchen, Oliver had rearranged the fan and some cushions and boxes into some semblance of comfortable order. “You have a lot of cartons of books.”
“How do you know they’re books?”
“They’re heavy. The boxes say ‘Books’ on them. Let me guess, fifty copies of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”
“Yes, that’s it. I was planning on leaving one at the door of each of my new neighbors.”
“Doing the Lord’s work.”
“You have that right.”
She sat down carefully on one of the low cushions near Oliver. If she wanted to—if he wanted to—she’d be able to slide over beside him and put her face up and pull him down for a kiss—and it wouldn’t be a completely uncomfortable position.
But she would have to be patient. Oliver picked up and drained his entire mug of water, and she watched his throat, watched the small bead of moisture that had traveled along one cheekbone and along the clean contour of his jaw.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked, setting down the glass.
“A month. I’m still—” she grimaced “—I’m working on it.”
“Let’s see what you’re doing.”
He stood up gracefully from the floor. How did he do that? And he helped her up, too. Their hands meeting, sliding over each other in a firm grip. That was nice. It was also nice that he didn’t step back when she was up. That he looked down, a question in his eyes and she nodded, and he leaned over and kissed her.
That was very, very good, too.
She took a deep breath and stepped back, pulling his hand, still in hers. “Come see the hall closet,” she said. “It used to be a dumbwaiter shaft.”
It was a pleasure showing him the apartment. He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t gotten furniture, why she hadn’t fixed certain things or unpacked others. He didn’t expect her life to be complete and perfect, and he didn’t complain about sitting on the floor or drinking beer from the same mug that had held his water. What he did do was get as excited as she’d felt when she first saw this place.
She took a deep breath and led him to the hall in front of her bedroom.
He was staring at the doorway. “Look at this. I’ll bet there used to be a transom window over this door. You can almost see the outlines of it.”
“Oliver.”
Her hand slid up his arm.
He glanced down, blinking.
“This is my bedroom,” she said.
She was usually a decisive person, used to figuring out a situation quickly and deciding on a path based on what was in front of her. What was in front of her now was Oliver. And she wanted him. She’d been touching him all afternoon, and he’d been touching her. And it had been wonderful and frustrating. She liked kissing him—more than liked it, she craved it. And because her body was as good at decisions as the rest of her, it had mapped out for her across her skin a guide, a flowchart, detailing every step, every degree of how good it would feel to have his body against hers.
She put her arms around his neck. Oliver caught her and pulled her closer. He lowered his head. He could have kissed her, but he was still searching her face, still hesitating. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes. I know my own mind.”
He gave a short laugh. “I don’t know my own half the time.”
That caught her up short. “But do you want this, too?”
“Yes.”
It was the truth. She could tell by his hands, which moved up and down her back of their own accord, and then stopped abruptly every time he had a doubt, a shadow, a memory. She wanted to tell him how much she liked him, how considerate he was, how fun he was, how much she could already trust him—but she’d always had trouble praising people, especially when she cared. And all of those words seemed so small and cold compared to the warmth behind what she felt. How could she explain to him how important and rare it was to know someone who helped her out of bathtubs, who walked through her neighborhood, her apartment, her everything, and listened to her?
Not that she was getting emotional about this. So instead, she drew him down and tried to kiss his doubt away.
She moved her lips along his jaw and licked the sharp turn of his cheekbone. She kissed up to his eyes, which were closed, fluttering under his lids. She ached deep down, she was thick with aching, and the sound of it came out in a long moan.
His hands became surer, and then more urgent. In one swipe, he pulled up the back of her shirt, his fingers skimming across the valley of her spine, and up around the front to her breast. They found each other’s lips now, their tongues, the heat of their mouths and the desperate clash of their teeth.
She stumbled backward out of the doorway, and pulled him with her, bumping him into the door frame once or twice. Not that he seemed to mind.
In a moment, they were both kneeling on the floor by her mattress. “Kiss me, please keep kissing me,” she said, even as she bent her own head out of the way to fumble with the buttons of his shirt.
Her own tee was off and on the ground somewhere. And he was slowly, softly biting her earlobe and breathing into her neck, raking down the straps of her bra. “Like this,” he said, nudging her head up to him again and taking her lips once more.
His kiss was lush and soft, and then hard when her tongue met his. He’d succeeded in pulling her bra down and the cotton of his shirt, which she’d been less successful at removing, rubbed against the tips of her breasts.
She could feel herself sinking farther down. But he was trying to pull her melting, uncooperative body onto the mattress. “Help me here,” he murmured.
She forced her legs, which didn’t want to do much besides open, to lift her. She lay down on the very edge, with Oliver following, with him on top of her. They were both still in their jeans, those stupid, too-hot jeans they both wore because they’d been trying to prove something instead of just getting straight into bed.
He reared up, panting, his hair wild, his glasses smudged, and he looked at her for a moment. Then his head was down again, kissing her, moving to her breasts, lipping her nipples, and then he slid himself lower, between her legs.
His fingers traced the seam of her pants.
She shifted uncomfortably.
“Are you all right? Are you okay with this?”
“I do want it. But it’s hot out, and I’m sweaty. I’m not usually shy about stuff like this.” She almost laughed. Usually? What did that mean? She’d been in another relationship for the last ten years. She couldn’t say that finding Oliver Huang—or anyone else—on her mattress was commonplace.
He pressed her with his thumb, and she whimpered at that. Oh, she wanted him to do it, she wanted him to lick her right there. He raised himself again and said, “I like your soft skin. I like your heat. I like all the scents of you. I would like to see more.”
“I want the same things you want—okay, not exactly the same, you get the idea. Are you still with me?
Is this still okay?”
“Uh, yes. Definitely.”
They both paused to laugh a little uncomfortably. Then Oliver took a deep breath. He undid the button and stroked the small patch of skin revealed. He slid the zipper down slowly, slowly.
She shifted again, this time, impatient. She could feel the warm rush of wetness gathering as he looked at her intently.
He cupped his hand under her ass and slid everything off, his hands, leaving a warm trail to her legs. He kneeled back and unzipped his own jeans and pulled his pants down, giving his cock a sure stroke. She enjoyed that. She could have watched him for longer. But too soon, he took his glasses off, put them on a box, and settled between her legs again.
“Do you like this?” he asked, pressing his thumb down on her mound. It was the lightest touch, but she felt her legs opening wider as he moved. She threw her head back as his fingers gently traveled down the folds. She caught a glimpse of him lowering his head and then the warmth of his breath was on her. The first swipe of his tongue and she let out a tortured gasp, the grip of his other hand on her thigh, on her butt.
She dug her heels into the mattress and tossed her head back and forth, trying not to thrust into him as he touched her, carefully at first and then with growing assurance. Then, he angled his finger into her and sucked, and she cried out.
She was getting a crick in her neck from trying to hold herself up on her elbows, to watch him. But she had to—she had to see him, to see all of it. With one hand he was careful and delicate, feeling his way along her skin, with the other, the other that held her thigh, he was strong, a brute, his thumb digging into her jumping inner muscle, causing her to screech and growl.
