Selina I shouldn’t have been responding to Parker this way. I was a curiosity on the edge of his life. Any given evening we didn’t text, he might be curling up around Emily Shapiro, on his sofa, in her bed. When I was in line at the grocery store or descending the subway st eps, I’d imagine them like that. His hair messy from the way she’d run her fingers through it. Her fingers spread against his naked chest, his hand gripping her waist or thigh. They were going on sweet, wholesome dates for nice people. She was kissing confectioner’s sugar off his mouth. His mouth—he’d tilt it easily against hers. This was humiliating. I had never felt so humiliated in my life as I did by this: spending hours texting a man who was in the act of falling for somebody else, because whatever he gave me still felt better than nothing. Since my apology, we’d been texting every day, and I’d begun to acc ept, torturously, that he wanted to be friends. Why had I done this to myself? I didn’t want to be his friend, although, yes, of course I did, because nobody had ever managed to make me laugh so often, alone in my apartment, pausing at the cutting board, wiping slivers of carrot from the tips of my thumbs over and over again so I could answer him, rendering my life slower and more inconvenient and, undeniably, happier. Apparently I didn’t just enjoy his company. Apparently I wanted the version of my life that had him woven into it. I told myself it was better this way. Even if he had been single, and miraculously interested in me despite everything we’d said to each
other, the optics around getting in volved with a writer I’d reviewed seemed less than favorable. Yes: much cleaner to be friends, and stamp out these feelings in my own time. I just had to hope they faded before I made myself sick with sle ep loss. I was spending a few nights a week at the Slippery Cork now, soothed by the rhythms of my fellow regulars. “What’s with you?” Nadia asked one night, r eplacing the dartboard where Haunted Santa had been. “Why?” “You’re here all the time.” “No reason,” I said. “Okay,” she said, and when she didn’t push, I felt embarrassed by my disappointment. January was coming to a cold, dry conclusion, and the City office was somber. So far, I’d been spared getting assigned to the listicles and what Kellie referred to as “the drama beat,” but I knew my days were numbered. Hayden now sat beside Scott at the round table during our meetings, vetoing idea after idea. Her vetoes were met with a dull, resigned silence. We all knew about the rent hike, now. In the first week of February, Hayden turned to me at a pitch meeting, and I knew that my time had run out. “Selina, I have a proposition for you. Hear me out.” “Promising way to start a proposition.” She held up a hand. “I’ve been mulling this over, and I think you should request an interview with Parker Navarro, with his new book coming out.” The sound of his name surprised me into silence. “Okay, no immediate objection! That’s a good sign.” I sighed. “I’m listening.” To my left, Kellie cocked an eyebrow. Her wry looks always had this grim edge to them, these days. “Could be interesting,” she said. “You two could talk about what last fall was like.”
“As long as you can both ke ep it civil for an hour or so,” said Scott. “Okay, but is civil interesting?” said Hayden. She tapped her pen on the round table, a rhythmic tick, tick. “I mean, he spent a lot of time bad- mouthing you in fall. You k ept it pretty clean, pretty focused on his book. But this guy is just like all mediocre men who think they deserve to fail up, right? If we can show how entitled—” “No,” I said. She broke off. The rest of the staff glanced my way. I avoided their eyes. “A ... mutual acquaintance gave me a better sense of his background. I’d given him flak for his advance, but he used a lot of it to help his family.” Hayden set her pen down. “Well, fine. But we want to give people something to click and share.” “Mm,” I said. It occurred to me that I could admit that Parker and I were on friendly terms now. But maybe, in this small, inadequate way, I wanted to ke ep him to myself. “We do want it to be printable, Hayden,” said Scott. “Selina, maybe I could sit in with you, or—” A little laugh came out of me. “No, we don’t need a mediator ... I’ll— it’ll be fine.” “Do you want me to email his agent?” “No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll reach out and let you know the details on timing.” After the meeting, I shut myself into my office and texted Parker. How would you feel about doing an interview with City Magazine to celebrate the upcoming release of High and Dry? More specifically an interview with me? A minute passed. Then he said, Celebrate? I think you misspelled litigate. Or denigrate?
Ha, I said. I’m serious, though. You? Serious? I need to sit down. Parker. He laugh-reacted to my message. Then: Yeah, I’ll do an interview with you, Selina. Apparently my masochism knows no bounds. “Your masochism?” I muttered. He had no idea. I was the one who was going to have to speak with him for an hour, trying to ignore my own inevitable reactions to the sound of his voice. When are you free? I asked. The earlier the better, so that I can have the interview finalized before your release date. You say that like this interview will help me sell copies of the book. All publicity is good publicity, I said. I’m beginning to think that phrase was invented by bad publicists. I turned my chair away from the door as though, through solid wood, somebody might see me smiling at my phone screen. I’m free tomorrow, he said. Great. Would you prefer a video call or a phone call? I asked, but even as I hit Send, he asked, Want to just do the interview over dinner? I went still in my chair. Sorry, he said almost immediately. We can do a call. No, I said. Dinner is good. An awkward pause. I continued, Dinner is better for me, actually. I have two pieces to finish tomorrow. Great, he said. Another pause. I stood up abruptly, my palms tingling. Why had this become uncomfortable? It was a business dinner that happened to fall on a Friday. So what? But then I imagined going to a restaurant and realizing that one of Parker’s friends, or some author, or any person peripherally in volved in publishing, was seated next to us. On second thought, I said, it might not be the most prudent thing for us to have dinner in public.
Yeah, maybe not, he said. Thirty seconds passed. The ellipsis appeared as he typed. I typed, too, then deleted, then retyped. I was pacing more quickly now, my mouth bone- dry. I wrote, You’re welcome to come over to my apartment for dinner. My finger paused over the Send button. This was inappropriate. This no longer sat within the bounds of a business dinner that happened to fall on a Friday. It was just that I’d agreed to dinner, and the prospect of trying to hold eye contact with Parker in a crowded room felt agonizing. I pressed Send just as a message arrived from Parker: It’s okay. We can do a call instead. “Fuck,” I said, and began to type: Yes. A call would probably be easiest. If evening is best for you, then A message appeared from him. Oh—sure, I could come over. I deleted what I’d written. I could feel my pulse near the top of my stomach, shallow and quick. He sounded taken aback. Or was that a tone of casual dismissal? Veiled reluctance? If a call is easiest for you, then we can do a call, I said. And I thought, I don’t want to settle for a call. And I thought, Please just ask me to call you, how am I going to stand you walking into my apartment. And I thought, Please come inside, please stay for hours, please find something in the corners of my life that makes you want me. He typed for a while. I wondered if he was writing a joke or a gentle letdown. Then he said: Just tell me what time to be there. After a lot of careful deliberation, I left work an hour early the next day.
“Leave work early?” Scott asked, startled. “Why?” “If it’s not all right, I can—” “No, please, by all means. I’m just wondering if, somewhere, pigs are beginning to fly.” I smiled. “No, I just need to—I’m doing the Navarro interview tonight and I need to pr epare some, some notes.” Scott’s pantomimed shock faded, and to my surprise, he patted me on the shoulder. “Thank you for doing this, Selina. I know the last month has been ... but I’m sure you’ll make something wonderful out of it.” “You’re not expecting me to play some trick on him for the clicks?” “No.” “Good. I’m glad.” I hesitated. Scott’s weariness shadowed his face, de epening the pouches beneath his eyes, the sag of his cheeks. I forced myself not to turn tail. I swallowed the cordial exit line that was always, in situations like these, on the tip of my tongue. “Scott,” I said. “Yes?” “Do you remember Marcy D’Artagnan’s review of Asylum Piece?” Scott settled back into his office chair, frowning. “Asylum Piece ... the Anna Kavan? Marcy would have reviewed that ... fifteen years ago?” “Eighteen. I—I just wanted to tell you how much that piece meant to me. And that”—I cleared my throat—“that it still means everything to me to be here every day. No matter how different things look.” Scott looked at me in astonishment. I ducked out before he could find his voice. The difference in my d eparture time gave me enough leeway to beat the rush hour and nip into the Chinese grocery store a subway stop away for ground bean sauce. It would also give me enough time to steam the buns.
I found cooking meditative; it had never made me nervous before. Of course, I’d never cooked for someone who’d occupied my thoughts like this. For that matter, I couldn’t remember even knowing anyone who’d occupied my thoughts like this. In the couple of faltering six-month relationships I’d had in my twenties and the endless stream of first and second dates in between, my interest in men had always been something slow and measured, something I could, to a degree, evaluate and control. This was different, this spiky, erratic feeling that had me distracted at work, that had me losing track of paragraphs halfway through a book, that had me staring into the darkness beyond the subway windows and thinking about the sight of him, messy-haired, in his apartment doorway. I stirred the onions in the skillet, trying to steel myself. Parker was used to being liked; he was probably used to being wanted, too. The important thing tonight was to stay steady and professional. Not to show myself. He buzzed two minutes before seven. My heart in my throat, I pressed the button with the open-door icon and flipped the dead bolt. I stood by the mat, thinking about Parker in the elevator, his hands in his pockets. Two knocks on my door. I tugged my hair down from its ponytail, then tucked it behind my ears. I forced myself to think of Emily, told myself that it didn’t matter how I looked, but I still glanced back at my dark reflection in the oven. I pulled the door open. Parker had a bottle of wine in one hand and a finished hardcover of High and Dry in the other. His shoulders lowered slowly, as though he’d just drawn a de ep breath, and it occurred to me that he might be nervous about what I intended to ask him. I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to look at him for a long
time, the lapels of his wool coat, the corner of his jaw. “Parker,” I said. “Selina.” When had it started feeling like this to hear him say my name, like a shot of adrenaline? Had that been true since October? “Come in.” “Thanks.” He slipped his shoes off inside, surveying the kitchen, the living area. I wondered how my home looked through his eyes. “Anything surprising?” I asked. “Yeah. Where’s the rack? And the iron maiden?” I tried to suppress a smile. “They’re collapsible. They fold up into the wall like a Murphy bed.” “Right, those classic Brooklyn space savers.” He was smiling, too. I looked away. “You can hang your coat in the hallway. There’s a hook by the clock.” As Parker took off his coat, I turned back to the steamer on the counter. I didn’t want to watch him, but when he emerged from the hall, I couldn’t help it. He wore a black knit shirt that clung to his shoulders, his hair falling over one side of his forehead. “It smells delicious,” he said, scanning the table, the centered carafe, the reed placemats topped with symmetrically placed wineglasses, cups for water, and folded napkins. “This is way more than you needed to do. Not that I’m surprised.” “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, handing him a corkscrew. “What’s in there?” he asked, nodding to the bamboo steamer. “Goubuli buns. My family’s from Tianjin, so—street food. If you’ve ever had pork buns from a dim sum place, those are similar.” “Tianjin.” He twisted the screw into the cork. “That’s in the north?” “Yes, a couple of hours from Beijing. Though my dad’s side is from Hong Kong, originally.”
“Do you go over there often?” “No, I haven’t been in, I think, fifteen years.” I hesitated. Some part of me wanted to admit that without my parents by my side, I worried that I’d feel like a tourist in China, foreign to my own heritage, my own extended family, my own body. I considered admitting that these recipes, and Chinese books in translation, and even the language dying on my palate, sometimes made me feel like a tourist, too, as though these efforts to come closer only made me more aware of an unbridgeable distance. But to say any of this to him would have felt the same way: a painful try at closeness. Instead I lifted the top of the steamer, and the white flower unfurled from inside, hot and moist. The buns hadn’t collapsed. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Ravenous.” He popped the cork, and we sat. As I looked across the table at him, everything that had happened since Juliette’s event seemed to hang between us like a blue haze, but I wondered if Parker was thinking twice about any of it. In all likelihood he was thinking about the interview, maybe even about the ways I’d insulted High and Dry. “How long did this take you?” Parker said as he picked up one of the buns. “A lady never reveals her secrets.” “I thought that was magicians.” “Yeah, it’s a close Venn diagram.” He bit into the bun and made an indecent sound. Warmth twined between my ribs. “Good?” I asked. He swallowed. “Okay. Wow. Remind me not to make fun of your menus ever again.” I smiled. “You’re allowed.” “Really? Why?” “It feels like an intrinsic part of the dynamic now.” “You could just call it an inside joke.” “Right,” I said slowly. “In-side joke. Is that something that people with ‘friends’ do?”
“It is. Don’t worry, you’ll learn.” He poured me a glass of wine. I watched his hand, his knuckles, the tendons drawing lines down to his wrist. The way a muscle in his forearm flexed when he set down the bottle. “Thank you.” I tasted. “It’s good.” “Thank God. I didn’t want you to have to break out the rack this early in the evening.” “No, you’ve bought yourself some time.” Our eyes met, and, smiling, I felt young and obvious, and I busied myself with spooning peanut sauce onto my plate. It occurred to me to say something about the book, or about Emily, to reestablish boundaries for my own sake. “In regard to the interview,” I said. “Right.” “I have eight questions for you. You can look over them before we start, if you’d like.” “You mean, if I’m scared.” “If you were scared,” I said, “you wouldn’t be here.” “I think you’re giving me too much credit.” I gave him an amused look. “Yes, Parker. That’s what I’m known for: giving people too much credit.” Parker smiled, but he didn’t answer. I felt an unhappy tug. Was he scared of me? About a decade ago, I’d acc epted that my baseline for interacting with other people was that they’d feel some level of intimidation or discomfort, but Parker? I didn’t want that with him. I wanted the endless giddy serve and hard-hit return of our messages. I wanted the way he’d looked at me in Jacob and Cassie’s apartment, or even in the bar after the convention, as though he saw me as an equal. “Brought you a present,” he said, pushing the hardback of High and Dry across the table. “I do already have an advance copy.” “What, you’re not overjoyed to get a finished version of your favorite book of the year?”
I flipped the book open to the title page. “You didn’t sign it to me.” “Yeah, I thought maybe you’d want to give it to someone as a gift. Or as punishment.” I knew he was joking, but the words saddened me for some reason. “There are people who will love this book,” I said. “Lots of people.” Puzzlement flickered in his eyes. “I just want to be clear that I don’t think my opinion is the only one that matters.” “I know you don’t,” he said. My pulse quickened. I closed the book and slid it to my right. “And I don’t need to see the questions,” he added. “I trust you.” My gaze strayed up onto his. His eyelids contracted slightly, as though I’d shone a penlight into his face. The moonlike lamp hanging above my table made him glow, like his skin was burnished, and his hair shadowed his left eye, and I didn’t know when it had become this bad, I didn’t know when I’d started wanting him so much. But he had somebody, a nice girl, a good person, and I reminded myself that I was lucky even to have him in this limited way, to have reached a point where we could eat dinner and trust each other. After dinner, we moved to the window. I’d positioned a two-seat table there beneath the cool, leaky glass. When we sat, he angled his legs outward so they wouldn’t touch mine. I set my phone on the table between us. “Ready?” I asked. “Ready.” “The written introduction will have a description of High and Dry, so we can go right into discussion.” “Great.” “Before we start...” I looked out the window, down at the street, where the grocery store awning was retracting. “When we were at dinner with Juliette, you said you never expressed what you’d like to in interviews. So, I wanted to say, there’s no rush to answer these
questions. You can take your time. I’m not”—I tugged at the sleeve of my dress—“I’m not going anywhere.” Parker was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Thank you, Selina,” his voice a little rough, and I felt the words like the brush of his fingers against mine on New Year’s Eve, slow and deliberate, and I hoped the tension in my body wasn’t visible on my face. I collected myself and pressed Record. “Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Parker.” “Thank you for having me.” “It’s always a pleasure to talk about a book I loved, but when a book and I disagree, I usually find myself with a longer list of questions.” “Right,” he said. “And what are the chances that I give such insightful answers to your questions that your entire outlook on the book transforms?” “Low.” “So, you’re saying there’s a chance.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Nothing’s impossible. My first question is this: What transformations did High and Dry undergo during your editing process? I think it’s easy for a reader to look at a novel and say that it needed editing, because the reader can imagine the book transforming in whatever way is convenient for them. So, I’m curious what did change here, from first draft to final manuscript.” “Well,” Parker began. Then he stopped. Swallowed. He took a sip of water and gave me a look that was half question, half apology. “It’s fine,” I said quietly. “Take your time.” He nodded, and his sight line moved up over my head, fixing to a spot on the ceiling as he thought. “So, the project expanded by seventy, eighty pages,” he said eventually. “My first iteration of the book had a more grounded approach to the passengers on the bus. The riders were trying to find
lost family members, or they were flood victims with all their worldly possessions on their backs, that sort of thing. Some of that is still in the book, but as I worked through my early draft, I realized I wanted to go weirder and wilder. The more absurd the passengers become, the more absurd it is that Dave continues to drive as if nothing’s changed, as if he’s not changing through exposure to his warping reality.” “Thus the mutant alligator.” “Yeah, thus the alligator.” “This idea is important to you. The way people are bent on continuing down a predetermined road.” “Absolutely.” “Can you expand on that?” His leg began to jog, his fingers tracing patterns on the table. I saw him sorting through his thoughts. I felt a sudden, painful surge of contentment. This would have been a perfect night, I thought, if I could have stopped recording. “I think resisting inertia is the predominating challenge of being alive right now,” he said. “Obviously the book is preoccupied with how this presents in the context of labor, billions of people clocking into and out of their lives, signing over the majority of their waking hours. But you see it everywhere. It’s easier to ke ep believing what you already believe than to absorb new information and react to it, and it’s easier to ke ep scrolling than to put down your phone, and it’s easier to ke ep gliding along any frictionless surface because that’s a comforting state. People have such a strong aversion to disruption, even when what they’re going through is actually so much worse than change.” I looked down into my water glass, thinking of myself even a single month ago, warring against what I was beginning to see in the man opposite me. The slowness of my reactions to my parents. My father’s unanswered email.
“And for people who like what they have?” I asked. “I’m sure they exist. I’m not sure they make for extremely compelling books.” Parker seemed to have relaxed. I asked him what he thought made a compelling book, and I asked why on earth he’d chosen not to bring back any of his side characters, and in the face of my bewilderment he laughed. “Why? Did you get attached?” “I didn’t have the chance to get attached, Parker. You wrote them on and off in a few pages apiece.” He shrugged. “Maybe the gamble of the book is that you’ll like Dave.” “I didn’t like Dave, that’s true.” “Maybe this is the critical problem. I assume that if somebody hates Dave, they’ll stop reading. They won’t willingly spend six hundred pages in his company. But you’re held hostage by your job.” “Am I held hostage by my job,” I said, “or by you, who wrote a six- hundred-page book?” “Why don’t you like Dave, anyway?” Parker said. “What did Dave ever do to you?” “He ke eps driving. He doesn’t react. Nothing he thinks or feels is ever externalized. I appreciate that you had thematic reasons for him to act like this, but it’s extremely annoying, especially for six hundred pages.” “Careful, Selina. You’re almost making it sound like I wrote exactly the book I wanted to write.” We k ept talking. He began to smile after my questions, which I didn’t understand. At points we wandered away from the topic to joke around, to laugh. This interview was going to be a nightmare to condense. Outside, people clustered around the nearby bars, and their exclamations echoed up toward us, sounding thin and far away. Eventually we reached the last of my questions.
“I’ll cut this question if not, but would you like to tell the readers of City Magazine anything else about High and Dry?” “Just that I’m having a launch event at Word in Brooklyn on February fifteenth.” I looked down at my phone, and the giddy feeling in my chest punctured. Emily sat at his table in my mind’s eye, the bright spot in his life. “Events aren’t usually the sort of thing we print.” “Right. In that case...” Parker reached out and hit Stop. I watched his hand withdraw. “How are the numbers looking for the launch?” “Not bad. We’re almost at capacity. I’m sure that’s because we got Tessa Hargreaves to be my conversation partner. It should be fun.” “Oh, that’s exciting.” I steeled myself. I had to do this, had to say it. “It was nice seeing Emily the other day. Is she working the event?” He paused. “I’m not sure. I haven’t checked in with her in a week or so.” The silence in my apartment grew louder, then differentiated. I could hear the distant tick of my bedroom radiator, the gentle hum of the kitchen light. The faintest strain of a violin was se eping up from a different floor. “You—you two don’t talk much about work, then,” I said. “No, I meant we haven’t spoken. We went on a couple of dates, but it didn’t work out.” The words reverberated through my body. I didn’t lift my gaze. I entered Navarro interview as the title of the voice memo and pressed Save. “Oh,” I said, trying to sound like myself, but something seemed to be accelerating in me, vibrating, as though I were pressed back against a seat on a high-speed train.
I looked up and found Parker watching me. My breath lodged in my throat. Don’t, I thought. Nothing had changed. Yet everything felt different. With a titanic effort I stood and took a few st eps away from him, vaguely in the direction of the dining table. I said, “I suppose you’ve had a lot of time to write, then.” I heard the sound of his chair as he stood, too. “Yeah, enough to scratch the itch.” “This new project.” I picked up my near-empty wineglass from the table. “Is it another story about a critic who gets what she deserves?” Parker stopped at the opposite corner of the table, one hand curved gently over its edge. “It’s not.” He paused. “Why? Is that what I should be writing?” I could only think, He isn’t leaving. We’d finished the interview, and he wasn’t going to see anybody else, and he wasn’t saying it was late and he should get home. Instead, he was continuing to watch me, very still. I began to feel as though a hand had closed around my heart, squeezing every time it beat. “I don’t know,” I said. “The descriptions were interesting, last time.” “Which ones?” he said quietly. I held my glass to my lips but didn’t drink. “You tell me.” My throat was so tight, I didn’t know how I was still speaking. Parker took a st ep toward me and my heart began to speed. It doesn’t mean anything, I told myself, clinging to anything that would guard me. He would take the glass from my hands and pass into the kitchen. That was what was happening, not what I wanted. “I did my best,” he said. “But I had to imagine a lot of the details.” With another st ep he closed the distance between us. “Like what,” I
said. He took the wineglass from my hand, set it on the table beside me, and didn’t st ep back. I finally let my gaze rise then, from the neck of his shirt to his eyes, fixed intently on mine. “This place,” he said softly. He paused, his eyes straying down to my mouth, his head dipping by a fraction of an inch. “Your perfume.” If I had ever felt this way in my life, I couldn’t remember it, like my torso had filled with surging waves, like every sensation was a static shock. I let my head tilt back until it gently met the wall. I turned my chin half an inch to one side. I watched something change in Parker’s eyes, a dark glaze that made heat sear across my abdomen. He lifted his hand and slowly, deliberately brushed back my hair, his fingertips skimming my neck. Then he leaned down and set his mouth to the corner of my jaw and drew a quiet, shaky inhalation. Tingling spiraled down across my collarbones. I imagined how his lips would feel, the graze of his touch. “Selina,” he said, just beneath my ear, and then his other hand found my waist, and I turned my face toward him, and his mouth pressed de eply to mine. My eyes fell shut. My mind hummed. Parker moved closer, his hand tightening in my hair. A mess of impulses fired in me. To wrap my arms around him, to fist a hand in the back of his shirt, to press myself up against his body so he’d know what I wanted. But instead my hands rose and gently cupped his face, holding him, just feeling him here. He made a small, low sound. I felt like something had broken open in my chest, and what it spilled was molten, searing through me vessel by vessel.
Kissing was not supposed to feel this way, I wasn’t seventeen, but when I breathed in, his scent seemed to fill me, that rich, sweet smell, almond and amber, intensifying this sensation like hunger. I slipped one of my hands around to the back of his neck, feeling the rigid muscles there against my palm, and tugged him down into me. He responded. Pressed me up against the wall, slow and hard, one hand tightening on my hip. His tongue drew a line over my bottom lip with an unhurried confidence that made my face burn. I curled a hand around his bic ep, scraping him with my nails, and he made another low sound into my mouth that made me push away from the wall, toward him, toward his palm, which was slipping down my thigh. Parker let go my hair and wrapped his arm around me, his forearm locking into the small of my back. He pulled me backward toward the love seat, our st eps clumsy. His hand pushed under the hem of my dress as we went, mine under his shirt and tracing the flex of muscle in his side and back, the curve of his shoulder blade. He pulled away to yank his shirt over his head. I reached up, closed my hand over the place his neck met his shoulder, and he sank onto the love seat, looking up at me flushed. The sight of him here, in my apartment, shirtless and hair rumpled, sent a warm shock down through me. I st epped between his legs, then settled my knees on either side of his hips. Parker’s hands found my thighs and squeezed. He pushed up my dress as I settled onto his lap, cupped his face in my hands, and lowered my mouth to his again. His teeth closed on my lip, gently first, then harder. One of his thumbs slid under the elastic of my underwear at the hip, the other up
my abdomen, and when his palm brushed over the thin lace of my bra I whispered, “Take it off.” “Impatient,” Parker said, and when he kissed me again I could feel him smiling, and all I could do was melt de eper into him, pushing him against the back of the sofa. He moved his hips. I could feel how hard he was. One hand sprang the clasp of my bra, and he broke the kiss to lick the pad of his thumb before reaching under my dress again, under the loosely hanging fabric of my bra, circling my nipple with his thumb tip. I leaned back, my eyes easing open, and watched him watch me. His other hand moved, still stretching the band of my underwear, to the front of my body. His fingers slipped down, slid wet against me, and the touch felt so good, I sank down against his hand, my breaths growing ragged. A small, controlled sound came from his throat. I saw him swallow, and his fingertips ran back and forth until I felt drunk on the pleasure of it, until finally he pushed his hand forward and sank his finger de ep into me. I groaned. Closed my eyes and moved on his hand. He wrapped one arm around me again, then tilted me until my back was flat on the sofa seat, one of my feet hooked over his hip. His finger stayed de ep inside me, moving slowly, curling, touching a place that made me see white. “I was imagining this,” he murmured in my ear, “all night.” With his other hand he pushed up my dress. I pulled it over my head, flung it away. He leaned back to look down at me, then slid a second finger inside, moving faster. “Parker,” I said unsteadily. I reached up and touched his jaw, and like I’d tugged some invisible cord in him, he bent down and kissed me hard, his lips warm and wet now. I traced his lip with my tongue and reached down, searching for the button of his jeans. His hand brushed mine. I heard the buzz of his zipper, the rustle of cloth.
I cast a look at the hook on the wall, his winter jacket. “Did you bring a condom?” “Fuck.” His hand stilled between my legs. “No. I had no idea there was any chance of this happening.” “We can still ... I have the implant. I’m up to date, if you—” “Me too.” “Good.” I trailed my hand over his hip, the skin at the top of his thigh, his hardness. He stilled, then pressed his hips forward, putting himself in my hand. I gripped tighter. He groaned into my mouth, bit at me gently, his fingers withdrawing from me, slipping against my thighs. “You’re so wet,” he said onto me, sounding hoarse. “It’s driving me crazy.” “I want you,” I whispered. “Say it again.” “I want you. Now—please.” He pulled my underwear down and lowered his hips between my thighs. I felt him brush my entrance. I was so sensitive, the air cold, his skin so warm. But with my last shred of clarity I touched the back of his head, and he looked up at me, his eyes full of desire, and held my gaze as he slid into me, inch by slow, full inch, pressure building inside me. “Please,” I said, opening my legs wider. He moved faster, de eper. I took his hand from my hair and moved it down toward my center. His thumb settled there and brushed, teasing, dipping, as I lifted myself up into him, the heat seeming to echo and multiply. Our noses brushed, his breaths rough against my cheek, and I said his name, and his mouth pressed hard to mine, and I held tight to his shoulder as his thumb hit that perfect spot again, and as he thrust into me I came undone under him, insensible, unable even to kiss him, so that his mouth moved over my chin and into the crook of my neck, his teeth teasing the skin there.
I cried out, gasped. Satisfaction jerked through me, tight and fast, then loosening out into steady, rhythmic waves. He k ept pushing into me, riding me out, and I rolled my hips and felt his body go rigid, his mouth slackening against my neck. I lifted my legs around him, holding him de ep in me. The breath rushed out of him, and he crumpled, catching himself just above my body, on his forearms. My heart pounded. Every inch of my body felt alive with minuscule bursting sensations, as though my blood were carbonated. He pulled out slowly, gently, one hand still tracing my hip. “Selina?” he murmured onto my earlobe. My eyes had fixed on one corner of my ceiling, a weathered spot of molding. I tried to steady myself, to understand why, suddenly, I wanted to pull a blanket over my body, to curl up in darkness. “One second,” I whispered. I hurried to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, not looking in the mirror. I looked down at my hands on the edge of the sink, at my thighs. I redid the clasp of my bra. The apartment was so quiet. He’d felt so good. The warmth and certainty of his hands. I wanted to walk back into them. I wanted to shy away. I brushed my hair over my shoulder, then returned to the sofa, where Parker levered himself upright, watching me. I perched on the seat beside him, my thighs pressed together. “Hey. Was it all right?” Parker said. The question felt so ridiculous that I looked up, startled. “All right?” I r epeated. “Parker.” I saw tension ease in his face, and there was something amused in his voice when he said, “Well?”
“Well, what?” He leaned closer and stroked a lock of hair back from my face. “Maybe I want to hear you say it.” I couldn’t help a laugh. “That you’re good in bed?” “Yeah. I don’t know, maybe that does something for me.” I licked my lips, which still tingled, swollen. I looked at his disheveled hair and the lean slopes of his body and his talented fingers. Obviously, I thought. Obviously. His hand found my thigh, and it was downright unreasonable the way my breath caught all over again. “You are,” I said unevenly. He met my gaze, and I breathed through the intense feeling of exposure, finding that freckle in his iris, examining the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. “Really?” he said. “The best I’ve ever had.” I leaned toward him and brushed a kiss just on the edge of his mouth. “Honest.” He cupped my face in his hand. Kissed me gently. His hand splayed over my thigh and squeezed. “Can I take you to bed?” “Please,” I said. De ep into that night, when we were both exhausted, lying in bed, I killed the light. I didn’t know the time. We might have moved outside time completely. He faced me in the dark and stroked my hair behind my ear, away from the sticky nape of my neck. “I haven’t sl ept with anyone in a while,” I told him. “How long?” “A little over two years.” “Want to make up for lost time?” I felt momentarily wordless with relief. It was the first indication he’d made that he wouldn’t leave in the morning, say he’d had a good night, and move on with his life. “Sorry,” he said, “did saying ‘lost time’ activate your death thing?” I half smiled. “Oh, I was already thinking about that. Sex and death go together.”
Parker sighed. “Is this where the rack comes out?” “Yeah. Hands up. Stretch out for me.” He draped his arm over my waist. My bedroom was always cold. I pulled the blanket higher and moved toward his warmth, shifting one of my legs between his. I watched the curves of his neck and shoulders move as he breathed. “Do you have any idea where that comes from?” he said in a sle epy murmur. “The death thing, I mean.” I considered a while. “I guess sometimes I have these disconnected feelings. Like other people have some innate tie to the world that I don’t. And that’s a morbid feeling, I think.” I hesitated. “But when I read something really beautiful, that does make me feel connected. I read Asylum Piece and think, you know, somebody felt this, or ... somebody knew me, even though she died sixty years ago, and feeling that way just suffuses everything with meaning. I don’t think my parents ever understood that reading is one of the only things that makes me feel that way.” “How long has this been going on with them?” I told him how they’d cut me off in college, about our fits and starts in the intervening decade. Somewhere in the retelling, I hit the limit of my ability to speak. “Sorry,” I said quietly, “this is strange for me. I hardly ever talk about it.” “Don’t apologize.” Parker kissed my forehead. “I can’t imagine. Just the total opposite of my parents.” I laid my head on the pillow beside him and let myself look at his sympathetic expression. My feelings for him just then, the intensity of them, terrified me. “To be honest,” I said, “part of the reason I don’t like to talk about it is that I feel like the average person will assign it this dominating importance, and then that’s all I’ll be for the rest of my life. Someone with a dysfunctional family.” I hesitated. “The way most people see
me, even if that’s a tyrant or an aesthetic snob or whatever, I think that’s closer to what I am.” A small smile made the shadowed contours of his face curve. “What?” I asked. “I said that to Emily at the bar after the festival. I said, people know Selina how she wants them to know her.” I found myself smiling too. “What about you?” I brushed his cheek, and he moved infinitesimally toward the touch. “Do people know you the right way?” “What do you think?” he said. “I’m not sure.” I hesitated. “The way people spoke about you online, and wrote about your work. It made me so frustrated. I felt like ... but it’s ridiculous.” “Tell me.” “I thought, they’re not listening to what he’s saying. They’re not seeing everything I’m seeing. Or not understanding it like I do.” I moved a strand of hair from his forehead, my fingertips lingering at his temple. “But maybe I was just imagining that.” He took my hand in his, kissed my palm, and whispered, “You weren’t.”