Текст книги "The Vacationers"

Автор книги: Emma Straub

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“You know,” she said. “I think Anne Brontë is really underrated. In terms of the Brontë family. Don’t you think so?” She kicked her legs, and her right foot made contact with some unseen part of Joan’s body. “Sorry.”

Joan dipped his chin into the bay, showing no sign that he’d heard her.

“Elizabeth Gaskell, too,” Sylvia continued. “I mean, George Eliot gets all the love, and Elizabeth gets nothing, don’t you think that’s weird?”

Joan swam closer, so that his shoulders were only a foot away from Sylvia’s.

“I won’t kiss you if you don’t want it,” he said.

Sylvia wished for a camera, for her telephone, for a reality television crew. Her heart was beating so quickly that she thought the water around her would begin to boil. “That would be okay,” she said, and Joan closed the gap between them. She let her eyelids flutter shut, and then she felt his mouth on hers.

Not counting whoever she’d kissed at the party, drunk out of her mind, Sylvia had kissed five people in her life, roughly one a year since she was twelve. Joan was number six, and the difference between him and the previous seven was so hilarious that Sylvia couldn’t contain herself. Gone were the searching tongues, the cumbersome teeth, the bad breath, the too-soft lips that belonged to every single boy in New York City.

“Are you laughing at me?” Joan said, pulling back. He reached for her waist, unafraid of her answer, and Sylvia felt herself lift her legs so that they wrapped around his torso. Her entire body felt warm and buzzing, like a fluorescent lightbulb. She wanted to kiss Joan until she couldn’t breathe, until they needed to call for help because they were both dead by make-out.

“I think we should have sex,” Sylvia said. Joan put his hands underneath her thighs to brace her weight, and then walked straight out of the bay, dropping to his knees when they reached the blanket. He deposited Sylvia gently on her back, and then slid one shoulder of her bathing suit off at a time, never taking his mouth off hers. When her bathing suit was off, Joan moved his mouth down her body. When he started going down on her, an experience she’d never particularly liked before, she realized that there were parts of her body she’d never met, and he was introducing her to them, which felt chivalrous and empowering and like she’d been sitting in a dark room for her entire life, and now she was naked on a beach in Mallorca and maybe there was a God after all. There was a condom in the basket, or in his pocket, and when Joan leaned back to put it on, Sylvia got to look at his entire naked body, which was so phenomenally beautiful that she forgot to feel embarrassed about her own.

The actual sex didn’t hurt (as Katie Saperstein had years ago told her it would), and she didn’t bleed (again, Katie Saperstein). Sylvia couldn’t say that it actually felt good, either, but her whole body was still humming from whatever Joan had just licked and nudged and paid glorious attention to, and so Sylvia happily went along for the ride. He moved around on top of her, going in and out, and she could hear the bay sloshing around and the birds flying overhead. If anyone had walked down the steep slope and through the tunnel to the beach, they would have seen them, full-on, no question, but no one did. Joan finished with a final push, his beautiful face briefly changing into something complicated and taut, and then relaxing back into its natural state of perfection. Sylvia wrapped her arms around him, because it seemed like the thing to do, and Joan rested his head on her clavicle. He stayed inside her for a moment, and then gently pulled out and rolled onto his back. Their legs were wet and sandy, and when Sylvia sat up, the whole beach seemed to spin. The world was different now that she knew this was a possibility.

“So,” she said. “I think it’s definitely time for a sandwich.”

After a long day of doing absolutely nothing (in pool, out of pool, snack assemblage, snack intake, repeat), Charles and Lawrence had convinced Bobby to play another game of Scrabble with them. Jim and Franny had come home and vanished upstairs, their cheeks red, likely in the middle of another argument. Bobby watched the stairs for a little while like a hopeful puppy, but returned his attention to the game when he realized his mother wasn’t coming back anytime soon. It was Lawrence’s turn, and he laid down PITHY, connecting to Bobby’s PEAR.

“You guys don’t have to take care of me, you know,” Bobby said. “I’m not going to jump off the roof.”

“No one thinks you’re going to jump off the roof,” Charles said.

“No,” Lawrence said. “Not the roof. Maybe an upper window, but not the roof.”

Bobby smiled.

Charles took a moment and rearranged his tiles. In the upper corner of the board, there was an empty double word score, and Charles filled it with SORRY. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” Lawrence said, but then kissed him on the cheek.

The front door opened and Sylvia slunk in, her hair wet in spots and dry in others. “Hey, guys,” she said. “I’m just going to take a shower.” She hurried toward the stairs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Charles said. “You were out with Joan this whole time?”

Sylvia didn’t blush, but she also didn’t slow down. “Yes. Yes, I was.” And with that, she was up the stairs, in the bathroom, and in the shower. It didn’t matter how cold the water was, or who could hear her. She sang “Moves Like Jagger” until she didn’t know the words, and then she made them up.

“Huh,” Lawrence said.

“Huh,” said Bobby.

“I think we should focus on the game,” Charles said, and they did.

Day Thirteen

LAWRENCE WOKE UP EARLY TO CHECK HIS E-MAIL. Santa Claws would be the death of him, he was sure. The last e-mail he’d received from Toronto was about the lead actor going on strike because of a heat wave, and the suit, and the fur. It was not Lawrence’s problem, except that he had to keep track of every dollar they spent, and the actor’s strike meant that they were spending lots of money on craft services and union lighting rigs when nothing was actually being shot. He carried his laptop into the kitchen and stood with his back to the sink.

There were twenty new e-mails in his inbox. He scrolled through quickly—mostly J.Crew and the like pressuring him to buy more summer clothes—but stopped when he got to an e-mail from the adoption agency. He opened it one finger, pulling the computer closer to his chest. When they’d started, Lawrence thought the whole adoption process would be like the scene in John Waters’s Cry-Baby, with children performing domestic scenes behind glass, like at a museum. You’d pick the one you wanted, take them home, and love them forever. But it wasn’t that simple. Lawrence skimmed the e-mail, reading as fast as he could. The e-mail was short—Call me. She’s made a decision. You’re it.

Lawrence nearly dropped the computer. He didn’t realize he was making any noise until Charles rushed out of their bedroom in his pajamas.

“What happened?” he asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”

Lawrence shook his head vigorously. “We have to go home right now. We need a phone. Where’s the phone?” He spun the computer around so that Charles could read the e-mail. Charles took the reading glasses off Lawrence’s face and put them on his own.

“Oh my God,” Charles said. “Alphonse.”

Lawrence started to cry. “We have a baby boy.”

“A baby!” Charles shouted. “A baby!” He put the computer down on the kitchen table and pulled Lawrence into his arms, dipping him, murmuring names into his ear. Walter. Phillip. Nathaniel. It didn’t matter where Alphonse came from, what the circumstances had been. What mattered was that they were going to take him home.

With all the commotion of booking new flights and helping Charles and Lawrence pack and get out of the house, everyone was awake and alert much earlier than usual. Franny decided that pancakes were in order, as they were a celebratory breakfast food. Jim stayed close to her, cracking eggs when instructed, and searching through cabinets for vanilla extract. Bobby sat at the table alone while Sylvia made the coffee—it had always been her favorite activity, the French press. She timed the brewing on the oven clock, no longer even missing her phone. She could have thrown it down the mountain and watched it crack into a thousand pieces and she wouldn’t have cared. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could feel Joan’s mouth on her body.

“They’re going to be really good, don’t you think?” Bobby was starting to look more like himself—he’d been sleeping better and eating like a teenager.

“I do,” Franny said. “I really do.” She whisked the batter and then slid her finger around the edge of the bowl and stuck it in her mouth, nodding with self-approval. She knifed a small pat of butter and melted it on the hot griddle. “Are you making coffee with your eyes closed for a reason, Syl?”

Sylvia’s eyes flew open. “I was just testing myself,” she said. “Yep, three minutes.” She carried the French press to the table and released the plunger. Bobby held out his cup. “Pour it yourself,” she said. “I’m busy.” Sylvia slid down the bench toward the wall and closed her eyes again, a half-smile on her face.

“You are a weirdo,” Bobby said.

“Oh, yes,” Sylvia said, eyes still shut. “I am.”

That was exactly what his sister had always been good at—being herself. Bobby thought about the slick suits in his closet that he wore when he showed expensive apartments, the hi-tech fabrics he wore to Total Body Power, the faded jeans he’d had since college that he wore when Carmen wasn’t around because she called them “dad pants.”

“You know, I don’t even like real estate that much,” Bobby said. “Or working out. I mean, I like working out because I like to feel healthy, but I don’t really care if I have the best body in the world.” He paused. “I wonder how hard it is to adopt a baby.”

“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time, sweetie, okay?” Franny said, swanning over with a plate stacked high with thick pancakes, some dotted with blueberries.

“Okay,” Bobby said, and forked three of the pancakes onto his plate.

“Okay,” Sylvia said, finally opening her eyes. “These are the best pancakes I have ever seen.” She looked up at her mother. “Thank you, Mom.”

Franny wiped her hands on her skirt, slightly flustered. “You’re welcome, my love.” She turned around to get the syrup, which Jim was already holding.

“I don’t know what happened to our children,” she said. “But I like it.”

Jim kissed Franny on the forehead, which Sylvia and Bobby pretended not to see. All four Posts held their breath simultaneously, each wishing for the moment to last. Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. Even the poor souls who had children in an attempt to rescue a dying marriage were doing so out of a misguided hopefulness. Franny and Jim and Bobby and Sylvia did their silent best, and just like that, for a moment, they were all aboard the same ship.

Sylvia had been thinking about Joan every minute since she’d left his company the day before. She wanted to have sex again and again, until she felt like she really knew what she was doing, and Joan seemed like a good partner. He could pick her up, for fuck’s sake. He knew about secluded beaches. Who cared if he listened to terrible music and wore shirts with fleurs-de-lis printed on the shoulder when he went out dancing? At home, Sylvia would never in a million years have been interested in anyone who went out dancing, period, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she needed to figure out a totally natural way to sneak Joan upstairs to her bedroom without her parents noticing.

In the few minutes before he rang the bell, Sylvia opened her laptop at the kitchen counter. There was a message from Brown with her rooming situation—Keeney Quad, what she’d been hoping for, where most of the freshmen lived—and contact information about her new roommate (Molly Krumpler-Jones, of Newton, Massachusetts). It was the e-mail that Sylvia had been waiting months for, but she barely even looked at it, because right above it was an e-mail from Joan.

S– Sorry to cancel our second to last session, but I won’t be able to come today. I will see you tomorrow at ten to say good-bye. Had fun at the beach.—J

He could easily have sent it in a text message, but if he’d texted, she would have seen it faster and responded. The e-mail was a time bomb, waiting for her to open her computer in order to detonate. Sylvia felt her cheeks go up in flame, but then she heard someone at the door and was instantly relieved. He’d been joking! Obviously, Joan wasn’t that much of an asshole—he was just playing with her. Sylvia scrambled to the door. She considered flashing him when she opened the door, but her breasts had never been particularly impressive, and decided against it. She was laughing as she pulled the knob.

A tall woman—taller than Sylvia by several inches, which meant she was close to six feet—was bent in half on the other side of the door, rooting around like an anteater in a gigantic leather purse.

“Can I help you?” Sylvia asked. She put her hands on her hips in hopes that her posture would communicate that she was not the slightest bit interested in doing anything of the sort.

The woman looked up startled. “Oh, Lord. You must be Franny’s daughter, are you? I saw the car in the drive and knew that I must have mixed up the dates. Isn’t that just like me,” she said, as if Sylvia would be able to corroborate. She stood up and gave her long, wavy blond hair a shake. “I’m Gemma,” she said. “It’s my house!”

“Oh,” Sylvia said. “Then I guess you should come in.” She gestured toward the foyer, stepped inside, and screamed for her mother before retreating to her bedroom.

Franny hadn’t seen Gemma in person in a decade and was horrified to find her remarkably unchanged. Gemma got herself a glass of water—Oh, you’ve been using the filter? I just drink straight from the tap like a cat. I think it’s what keeps my immune system in such top shape—and then they went out to sit by the pool. Gemma had just come from her house in London, a limestone in Maida Vale, but before that she’d been in Paris for two weeks, and before that, Berlin.

“It’s so exhausting,” Gemma said. “I really envy that you have this lifestyle. You can pack up the kids and just go somewhere for two weeks and no one will even bother you.” She widened her eyes at the word bother. “You can just get away. I would pay a million dollars for that. Even when I do go on vacation, the gallery is always calling me, or one of my artists, and then I have to get on a plane just to massage someone’s fragile ego, and I want to say, you know, I was just about to have a snorkel in the Maldives.” Gemma ruffled her hair with both hands, laying it over the back of the chaise longue. “It’s a nice house, isn’t it? Quaint.”

Franny could have described the house using a hundred adjectives, and quaint wouldn’t have been on the list. “It’s incredible,” she said, not wanting to contradict Gemma outright.

“Most Brits think Mallorca is for drunken teenagers,” she said. “It’s sort of like reverse psychology, buying a house here, up in the mountains. It really is the best place to get away. It’s like if you and Jim decided to buy a house on the Jersey Shore, everyone would think you’d gone mad, but then there you are at your lovely house, miles away from the puddles of sick and the beaches covered with pale skin and babies in dirty nappies. None of my British friends would ever come here.”

Franny stared out at the mountains. If the house had belonged to her, she would have invited everyone she knew, and they all would have oohed and aahed. She could have her whole terrible book club come and read George Sand and laugh about how wrong she’d been about the island, how depressive. Literally any person in the world would love the view, the food, the people. Franny thought she could write a new brochure for the tourist board if someone so much as slipped a pen into her hand.

“Well, we’ve all had a wonderful time. Eating our way through, really.”

“Oh, I never eat anything. Just the ice cream. I come for a week, eat only ice cream, then go home feeling like I’ve been on a cleanse.” Gemma closed her eyes. The sun was beating straight down on them, and Franny felt the warm part of her hair. “So,” Gemma asked, eyes still shut, “where’s my Charlie?”

He hadn’t told her. Of course he hadn’t told her! If Charles hadn’t said a word to Franny, then he wouldn’t have dared say anything to Gemma. Not since she was in the eleventh grade had Franny felt such delight in the knowing and dispensing of news about her friends’ lives.

“Oh, you don’t know?” Franny feigned surprise. “That’s so odd that he wouldn’t tell you—I know how close you two are.”

Gemma’s eyes flew open. She blinked several times in a row, giving the impression of a rodent emerging from months spent in a dark hole underground. The skin around her eyes had begun to crease, and maybe even sag. Franny didn’t often revel in other people’s flaws, but in this case, she would make an exception. Gemma was waiting for her to speak, with her own lips parted, as if that was where the information would enter her body. She looked like a beautiful, stupid dog. Franny wanted to kiss her on the mouth and then shove her into the pool.

“They went home to get their baby,” Franny said. “A boy. They’re adopting a baby boy.”

“They left? To buy a baby?”

“They’re not buying a baby, they’re adopting a baby.”

Gemma let out a bark. “On purpose? I thought babies only happened to people by accident. I’ve had three husbands and have narrowly avoided them half a dozen times! What on earth is he thinking? Really. Oh, Charlie. Now his paintings will all be dewy little portraits of a half-naked Lawrence with a baby asleep on his chest.” She paused. “Now I’m doubly sorry to have missed him. The last hurrah!”

Franny tried to smile, but couldn’t. “I suppose.”

“Are you and Jim in the master, upstairs?” Gemma asked. She slipped her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “You wouldn’t mind moving to whichever room Charlie and Lawrence were staying in, would you? You know how it is to sleep in your own bed. All the other mattresses are too soft for my back, like sleeping on giant pillows. You’ll be fine for one night, I’m sure, won’t you? If it’s not too much trouble.” She stood up and dusted off her spotless blue jeans. “I’ll call Tiffany’s and send over a spoon.”

“How nice,” Franny said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start packing upstairs so that you can have your bedroom back.”

The two women walked toward the door side by side, each one trying to reach the handle first, as if to stake claim to the entire property. Franny would have won if her legs had been a few inches longer, but Gemma grabbed it first, her long, thin fingers gripping it like it was a loose diamond floating in the swimming pool. She held the door open for Franny, who walked in with her head held high. She wouldn’t tell Charles what a bitch his friend was—that would turn her moral high ground to mush. Instead, she would just be secure in her knowledge that she was the better friend, and that his baby, whoever he was and whoever he would grow to be, would call her his aunty, whereas Gemma would never be more than a terrifying shrew on the other side of the globe.

Bobby wanted to swim until he could no longer feel his arms or legs. His personal record in a pool was a mile, mostly because that was six laps at Total Body Power, and doing less than six laps seemed pathetic, but he didn’t much like swimming. No one in Florida did. Swimming was for the tourists, splashing around in a way that would never equal the calories in a single Cuban sandwich. Right now, being in the pool was the only way to make sure that no one would speak to him, and so that’s where Bobby wanted to be, exhausting his limbs and his lungs and avoiding his entire family.

It was so easy for most people. His high school friends had all gone to college and found women to marry. His college friends, too. They met in the dining hall, or in Psych 100, or at a party after a football game, just like they were supposed to. There were a few holdouts, a guy here or there who’d dumped or been dumped or was too much of an introvert to get a real girlfriend. When those friends came through Miami, they’d always have a good time. Bobby would take them to clubs and they’d drink all night. Girls in Miami wore the tiniest dresses and the highest heels, and his friends were always shocked by how many of them there were, like ants on a picnic table. The married friends didn’t visit much, and when they did, it was for dinner and maybe a single drink, and they went to bed. Not even to fuck, but to sleep. Bobby would pretend to leave when they did, but then circle back to the bar by himself. Who went to bed at ten o’clock? He was close to thirty, but he wasn’t dead.

Bobby hadn’t had a real girlfriend until Carmen. Sure, there had been girls, but never anyone serious. When he lost his virginity his freshman year at Miami, he didn’t tell the girl it was his first time, though it was probably pretty obvious. In retrospect he wished he had, because he’d never forget her name—Sarah Jack, like a lumberjack, she’d said at the party where they met—and now it felt weird, like he was still keeping a secret, even though it was almost ten years ago. Bobby felt his outstretched fingers brush against the wall of the pool, and did a somersault underwater to go back in the opposite direction. The water wasn’t chlorinated, and he could open his eyes without them stinging. There were leaves at the bottom of the pool, and he thought about diving down to get them, but he didn’t.

There had been a dozen weddings since college, and he went to all of them—some in New York, some in Florida, but mostly scattered around in the brides’ various hometowns, with some destination exceptions. The most expensive wedding had been in Vail, Colorado, at the top of a mountain. He and Carmen went skiing together for the first time that weekend, and she met all of his friends from high school. A few of them pulled Bobby aside afterward, in the lodge and at the house they were sharing and at the reception, and they all wanted to know how old Carmen was. Some of them were impressed and some were clearly weirded out, but none of them expected to get an invite to Bobby and Carmen’s wedding, that was for sure. At each subsequent event, they were surprised to find the pair still together. A few even included Carmen’s name on their wedding invitations, instead of just a plus-one. But there was always someone sticking his elbow into Bobby’s ribs, always someone calling Carmen a cougar.

Twenty-eight was neither young nor old. Obviously it was young in the scope of someone’s whole life, but it was already getting late in terms of figuring out what you wanted to do. Bobby’s parents got married when they were twenty-three and twenty-five, which seemed normal only in the context of time, as though they were cave people who didn’t expect to live to thirty. But that’s when his friends had started getting married, too.

Selling real estate was supposed to be steady, but it wasn’t. There were reality television shows about guys his age selling ten-million-dollar houses in Malibu, but Bobby was struggling to rent fifteen-hundred-dollar apartments. He and Carmen lived like roommates or, worse yet, family members. He cooked and she cleaned. Carmen reminded him to pick up his dry cleaning and kissed him on the cheek when she felt like it. She had never wanted kids—never. If he was being honest, that was the problem. Not her age, not anything else. Carmen may have wanted to get married, but she never wanted to have children, and he did. It was how he knew it didn’t matter that he didn’t love her.

Bobby let himself slow down. The muscles in his back were already tired. It was so hard to know when you’d made a mistake. What was it? Staying with Carmen for so long? Cheating on her? Telling himself that it was justifiable, because he knew they weren’t going to last, so what did it matter, anyway? Bobby opened his mouth and let it fill with water, and then pulled his face out of the pool and spat the water out. Maybe the problem was Miami. Maybe the problem was the gym, or the debt, or the loneliness. Maybe the problem was him. It all seemed so easy for everyone else, choosing the right person to marry, as if they had some secret sign, a tattoo in invisible ink. How else were you supposed to know? Bobby was looking for certainty. He’d tried to ask some of his friends, in an offhanded way, how they knew their girlfriends were “the one,” but the question always sounded hypothetical and got him answers like “I know, right?”

From the middle of the pool, all Bobby could see were the sky and the trees ringing the property. An airplane flew overhead, and Bobby wished he were on it, going somewhere he wanted to go. Instead, he put his face back in the water and kept swimming, back and forth, back and forth, until he was so tired he thought he might have to crawl to the house on his knees. It was time for him to straighten out, and if nothing else, he could start with this, the length of this pool, over and over again.

Jim and Franny took their time packing their things and bringing their suitcases downstairs to Charles and Lawrence’s room. Charles hadn’t stripped the bed when they left, being in such a hurry, and so Jim and Franny were changing the sheets, even though it seemed silly, just for one night. Franny was buzzing with irritation. It was Gemma who’d made the error, not them.

“If it was me, I would sleep in the guest room for a night,” Franny said, for at least the tenth time. “I would.”

“I know, Fran.” Jim pulled the sheet over the upper left-hand corner of the mattress, and waited for Franny to do the opposite one.

“I might even go stay somewhere else or, at the very least, offer!” Franny threw her hands up. “It’s so rude.”

“It’s so rude.” Jim pointed, gently, at the tangled sheet. Franny nodded and pulled it taut on her side, stretching the elastic over the thin bed. “But it is her house.”

“The other beds really aren’t as nice as hers, huh?” Franny quickly tucked in the last corner, and they moved together toward the pile of pillows, throwing them back on the bed. “What a cow.”

“What a cow,” Jim repeated, and softly pushed Franny onto the bed.

“What,” she said, not unkindly, as he moved on top of her, his knees on either side of her waist. Jim lowered himself as gracefully as he could and kissed her on the forehead. His eye socket was still green, but she was getting used to it.

“I was just remembering how it felt to bring Bobby home,” Jim said. “How terrifying it was—driving those fifteen blocks from Roosevelt felt like driving to Timbuktu. The world was so loud. All those honking taxis. Do you remember?”

“You drove so slowly,” Franny said. “I loved it. I wish you’d always driven that way, like the car was made out of glass.”

“I don’t think Charles and Lawrence have any idea what they’re getting themselves into,” Jim said. “But neither did we.” He rolled onto his side, tucking his long legs against Franny’s body.

“They’ll be good,” she said.

“We were good, too, weren’t we?”

Franny could remember those first few days as a complete haze, as if shot in soft focus. Her nipples had hurt more than she’d thought they would, but really, what had she thought at all? It was almost impossible to imagine an actual baby existing where there wasn’t one before, even when you could feel it kicking away inside you. It was easier with Sylvia, of course. Poor Sylvia. The second child never did get the same kind of attention. They’d leave her wailing in her crib, they’d set her down on the kitchen floor with nothing more than a wooden spoon to entertain her. Every time Bobby screeched, they ran. Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first child was the second. Maybe that was where they’d gone wrong, by always giving in.

She rolled onto her side, too, her nose level with Jim’s. A swath of her dark hair fell out from behind her ear, covering her eyes. “Should we worry about him?”

Jim reached out and brushed Franny’s hair out of her face. “Yes. What choice do we have?”

“I love you as much as I hate Gemma,” Franny said. “Which, right now, is a lot.”

“I’ll take it,” Jim said. “And you know, I kind of like being down here. It’s more private. Doesn’t it feel like we’re in a hotel? Or, at the very least, a bed-and-breakfast?”

“Oh, God, bed-and-breakfasts,” Franny said. “Where you’re forced to eat subpar blueberry muffins with strangers.”

“Yes, and have sex with your wife.” Jim put a hand on Franny’s lower back and pulled her toward him, pressing her against his body hard enough that she would be able to feel his erection.

“Is the door locked?”

“I locked it as soon as we got in here,” Jim said. “I was a Boy Scout, remember?”

“Ooh,” Franny said. “Tell me again about those tiny little shorts.”

Jim let the joke go, wanting to move on, wanting to take her clothes off while she’d still let him. That was part of the appeal of Madison Vance, not knowing when and if she would stop him. He thought he knew Franny well enough to know that she was ready, but it had been a long time, and it seemed possible that the signals had changed. He kissed her neck the way she liked, up next to where her jaw met her earlobe, and then climbed backward to pull her dress off over her head.

Franny pushed herself up on her elbows, creasing her stomach at the waist. Jim quickly undressed next to the bed, his hard-on springing upward joyously when he pulled down his boxer shorts. Franny’s body knew just what to do, her hands and her mouth and her legs, and she was ready to do it all.

“Take them off,” she said to Jim, and he obediently pulled down her underwear, one side at a time, inch by inch, until they were wrapped only around her left ankle. “Now come here,” she said, and he moved back on top of her, filling her mouth with his. They didn’t speak again until it was over and they were lying on their backs, glistening with a job well done.