Page 124 of Only After We Met
“I want you to be happy and not just make me happy. But I’m fucking selfish, and I like thinking I’m special to you, even if, when I look in the mirror, I don’t understand why you think I am.” I split her legs wider with my knee and sank into her. “I feel you, Ginger. Too much. I feel you all over.”
As if she were my roots.
And for the first time in my life, I realized I wasn’t just fucking someone; I was making love to her. With her. With Ginger. I was…lovingher with my hands, with my skin, with my eyes, clouded by desire, with our bodies united, rocking.
I understood so much now.
And I remembered her words. The ones I read one day months before that made me slam my laptop shut in a rage.
What is it to be in love?
It’s feeling a tingle in your stomach when you see them. Not being able to stop looking at them. Missing them even though they’re right there. Wanting to touch them at all hours, talking about any- and everything, feeling like you lose all sense of time when you’re together. Noticing the details. Wanting to know everything about them, even the stupid stuff. You know what, Rhys? I think it’s actually like being on the moon permanently. With a smile on your face. Without fear.
71
Ginger
We were tired, satiated, lost on the moon.
We’d made love all night, almost without speaking. Or not speaking in words, anyway. Just with looks, touches, and sighs. My head on his chest, following his muscles down to his belly button with my fingertip, touching the tattoo of that little bee that symbolized life for him. I saw goose bumps appear on his flesh.
“You could stay.”
It was just a murmur.
I sat up and looked at him. “Are you serious?”
“Why not, Ginger?”
“What would I do here?”
He wavered, doubted. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
“Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?” I started putting on my clothes, but he stopped me.
“I just mean, like, for now, dammit.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“Because we’re already here. And I have a job.”
“Seriously? For years, you’ve been going from place to place,laying your head wherever, and it never entered your mind that you could stay in London for a while? And now you’re asking me to stay here. Far from my family. Far from everything, when you know I want to try to make my publishing career happen. And I will. You can’t do this to me.”
I was crying again. The whole day had been a roller coaster, down and up and back down again. Full of vertigo. Sad every time I looked at him. But also angry, disappointed, tender, unsure, yearning.
“You’re right.” He shook his head.
“Of course I’m right,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure.
“Plus, we don’t even know if it would work.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“We should get some sleep. It’s late.”
Night after night, we’d stayed up late talking, laughing, getting drunk, burning the midnight oil in the bed that the sun shone on in the morning, but now, because I had to fly out the next morning, it waslate.
Rhys turned off the light, and I lay beside him. His body was close to mine, hugging me. I couldn’t stop thinking of how he said I could stay. And I couldn’t breathe. Why did he have to say that? Why, why, why? That wasn’t supposed to be an option. I shouldn’t have been thinking about it.