The Ex Talk

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “What do you think?” Dominic asks as we shuck off our muddy shoes. “Pasta again?”

  “Only if you don’t complain about the noodles,” I say. “Besides, now that I know you’re a cast-iron expert, I feel like we could do better.”

  “For the tenth time, they’re not supposed to be that soft, they’re supposed to be al dente,” he says, though there’s a teasing lilt to his voice. He unzips his jacket and hangs it in the hall. His T-shirt clings to his chest, showing off muscles I didn’t know he had and am not displeased to see. “And those skillets aren’t ready yet. You’ll have to wait until we’re back in Seattle for me to show off my cooking skills.”

  I want to press for more information on when, exactly, I’ll be in a position to enjoy his cooking skills, but I’m not ready for the real world. I fill Steve’s food bowl and try not to think about the wet T-shirt contest Dominic is currently winning. “I should shower first. Wash off all this nature.”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll take the downstairs, you take the upstairs?”

  It should feel good to get a break from him. Some space for my mind to untangle. Except once I’m under the hot water, attempting to relax, I can’t keep from imagining Dominic doing the same thing downstairs, running his hands through his hair and down his chest and along other choice body parts. The jokes he made today, the things we said last night . . . we’re closer than we’ve ever been, the charge between us more electric.

  I wrap my hair in a towel and spend far too long deciding what to wear. Ultimately, I settle on leggings and a boatneck tee, forgoing makeup since he’s already seen me without it.

  When I reach the kitchen, he’s at the counter, chopping vegetables from the farmers’ market while oil sizzles in a pan on the stove. His back muscles flex against the gray T-shirt he’s wearing, his hair damp and curling at the ends. He must have brought his regular soap and shampoo because there’s that scent I’ve come to associate with him.

  “Pasta primavera,” he says, dropping broccoli and peppers into the pan. “Slightly more advanced.”

  “Anything that involves more than one pot and no recipe is impressive to me.” The sight and scent of him have turned me to overcooked spaghetti.

  When I spot two glasses of wine waiting on the table, my heart beats triple time in my chest. This is Dominic Yun, arrogant cohost, too tall for his own good, who set this up for us. Dominic, who comforted my terrified dog. Dominic, who spilled his secrets to me last night and encouraged me to do the same.

  Who kissed me and asked if we could forget about it.

  It’s our last night on the island, and I can’t bear to later get in bed next to him without touching him. No more pretending this isn’t something I’ve wanted since we started The Ex Talk. I need to know it isn’t one-sided.

  “We’ve been honest with each other, right?” I say to his back. “This whole weekend?”

  “Right.” He adds squash, zucchini, garlic.

  “I know we were supposed to forget what happened after the bar.” My pulse is roaring in my ears, louder than the rain outside. “But . . . I haven’t.”

  Finally, he turns away from the counter, facing me. I didn’t know sweatpants could be sexy, but that’s the only way to describe how they hang on his hips. “I haven’t, either,” he says after a pause. “I haven’t even tried.”

  I’m not sure if I’m more relieved or turned on. “Even though you wanted to pretend it didn’t happen?” My voice is barely a whisper. I curse myself as I ask it, but I have to know.

  “It seemed like it would be easier.”

  “Has it been? Easier?”

  A wry smile. “Sometimes,” he says, and there are only a thousand ways I could interpret that. He glances toward the sautéing vegetables, gives them a stir.

  “If we’re really supposed to be bonding this weekend, getting to know everything about each other . . . maybe we should know what it feels like for real. Sober.”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “No?” My heart drops to the floor. I’ve never been able to read him, but I didn’t expect him to shoot me down like that.

  “If I kissed you again,” he says, stepping closer, an intensity in his gaze I’ve never seen before, “it wouldn’t be for the show, or for research, or for any reason other than that I wanted to.”

  Oh. I have to grip the edge of the counter to keep myself upright. I’m not sure what the rules are now. The line between reality and fabrication is smudged, blurred, stamped out completely.

  “Dominic.” I try to put a question mark at the end of his name, but it comes out breathy and needy. If he doesn’t touch me in the next few seconds, I might explode.

  He must hear that neediness in my voice because he switches off the stove and almost closes the space between us, a few inches between his chest and mine. I want to devour each one of his labored breaths. When he looks down at me, there’s none of the ego I used to see. Eyes dark, mouth slightly parted—maybe this is the expression I haven’t been able to interpret. His hair is damp and messy, and I’ve just decided that is exactly the way I like it. I’ll like it even more when it’s between my fingers and brushing across my stomach, my thighs.

  He lifts his hand, his thumb landing on my cheekbone, skimming across it before sliding into my wet hair. “I’d want to remember every detail. The way you taste. The way you smell. The sounds you’d make.”

  At that, I let out an involuntary whimper. It’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me, and if I were able to speak, I’d tell him I wanted to learn his sounds, too.

  “Shay. God. Do you have any idea—” He breaks off, like he’s too overcome by want to finish the sentence. It’s powerful, the realization that you can steal words from someone like that.

  A crash of thunder rocks the house, but I don’t flinch. I am only want and need and the spaces he’s touching me. His other hand moves to my waist, where I can feel the press of each fingertip through the fabric of my shirt.

  “What?” I say, desperate to know how that sentence ends. I plant my hands on his chest, the heather gray T-shirt. He is taut and warm beneath my palms. Slowly, slowly, I move them upward, and his eyes flutter shut when one of my hands reaches his cheek, feeling the stubble there. Letting it scrape against my skin. “Do I have any idea what?”

  “How fucking perfect you are right now.”

  That’s all it takes. My hands dive into his hair, and I tug his mouth down to mine. I am kissing Dominic Yun, and he feels incredible, so warm and slick and right as he parts my mouth with his. I thought this would feel like immediate relief, but it’s the opposite, a deep and dizzying need that grows and grows. I need him to kiss me harder. And he does, matching the swipe of my tongue and the bite of my teeth. I’d forgotten that rush of adrenaline that comes with being this close to someone new. Someone I supposedly broke up with a few months ago.

  He spins us so he can push me against the counter, then kisses a trail from my mouth to my neck as his hips roll against mine. He’s so much taller than I am that I feel the hard length of him against my navel, and it turns me wilder. There’s a low rumble in his throat when I press back against him.

  We shouldn’t be doing this.

  We have to keep doing this.

  I murmur an oh my god as he sucks at my neck, teeth on skin. I feel myself about to buckle, but he’s there, holding me up. “Bedroom,” I gasp out.

  He pulls me forward, wrapping one of my legs around him, indicating I should do the same with the other. Then he’s picking me up, gripping my thighs and then my ass as we stagger upstairs.

  “You have moves,” I say when he sets me down on the edge of the bed, giving me a moment to catch my breath and safely deposit my glasses on a nightstand.

  “No moves,” he says, sounding earnest as he slides onto the bed next to me. “Just something I’ve been wanting to do for a whi
le.” His mouth, back on my neck. His hands, roaming the sides of my body, lingering at the dip in my waist.

  “Me too.” I experience a flash of panic as his fingers graze my breasts. “I should warn you, I’m wearing a truly hideous sports bra.” It used to be charcoal, but now it’s an unfortunate watery gray, the elastic peeking through various holes in the seams. Really, I should win an award for packing the world’s least sexy clothing.

  A laugh gets caught in his throat. “I can one hundred percent guarantee I won’t care.”

  I can’t take my shirt and bra off fast enough.

  “Don’t tell me you prefer the bra,” I say when he just stares at me.

  “Gorgeous,” he says, but he’s looking at my face. He leans in to kiss me again, a thumb stroking the hardened peak of one nipple before he bends to take the other into his mouth.

  Fuck he’s good at this. At this rate, I’m half-convinced I could come before my leggings are off. I go for the hem of his shirt, and he helps me yank it off. I barely have time to appreciate the ridges of his chest before I’m tugging at his waistband. I’m so greedy that even with his pants half-off, I reach inside, desperate to feel him.

  He groans in my ear as I close my hand around him. He’s hot and smooth and rock-hard, pulsing in my fist. “Don’t—don’t go too fast,” he says, and I’m reminded of the fact that he’s only done this with one other person. That this is a big deal to him.

  That it must mean I’m a big deal to him.

  “I won’t.” I draw back. Not too fast. I can do that. I can savor this.

  Because there’s a nagging thought at the back of my mind that I don’t know what this will mean when we’re back at the station.

  We readjust so he can remove his pants, and then he holds himself over me as he fumbles with the waistband of my leggings. Another terrible clothing choice.

  “They’re kind of tight, so—”

  “Making me work for it,” he says, but he’s grinning “I don’t mind. I have a master’s degree, after all. I’m used to hard work.”

  I nod toward the impressive tent in his boxer briefs. “I can tell.”

  He slides my leggings off and kisses me from ankle to knee to thigh, stroking along the outside of my underwear, already wet with my need for him. This pair is granny panty–adjacent, and yet I’ve never felt sexier.

  “This okay?” he asks, his breath ragged. A finger grazes the fabric, and my body focuses all its attention on that single piece of cotton. I hold tight to his shoulders, silently begging him to push aside my underwear, tear it off, anything to feel skin on skin.

  “It must be pretty obvious that it is,” I manage, but because I appreciate he asked, I add: “Yes. Yes.”

  Except he pulls back into a seated position on the bed next to me. I’m still panting, half-embarrassed by how feral those few strokes of his finger turned me.

  “I just realized I don’t have a condom,” he says, and the reality is louder than a thunderclap. He runs a hand through his hair, looking sheepish. In this moment, even his sheepishness is hot. Inconvenient, but hot. “Shit. I’m sorry. Do you—?”

  I cut him off with a shake of my head, forcing myself up so I can lean against the headboard. My dating app hiatus evolved into a birth control hiatus. “No. Didn’t really think this would happen, so . . .”

  We’re both quiet for a few moments. Enough for the awkwardness to set in, enough for me to feel a little exposed.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I could go get some?” But the rain only seems to pelt the tiny house’s roof harder, reminding us of the storm and the fact that the nearest drugstore is at least twenty minutes away.

  “I . . . kind of don’t want to stop.” I lean in, palming his erection. “There are other things we could do.”

  He closes his eyes and lets out another groan. I could get addicted to that sound—Dominic struggling to stay in control. I grab at the elastic of his boxer briefs and help him out of them. A naked Dominic is almost too much: the cut of his stomach muscles, the V shape that drags my attention downward. He’s more beautiful than I thought he’d be, and I have thought about him like this a lot.

  “You are . . .” I gesture to him, struggling to come up with an adequate compliment. “You are an extremely attractive man.”

  That earns me another grin. I swing a leg over him and settle into his lap, feeling him through the fabric of my underwear.

  “Christ. Shay,” he says. A warning and a plea. His hands are on my hips, guiding me as I roll forward. He feels so goddamn good like this that I have to wrap my arms around his neck to steady myself. My breasts press against his chest and I grind into him harder, faster, the friction bringing me closer and closer to release. “You are killing me. I have to touch you. Please.”

  He waits for my exhaled yes before he takes charge, pushing me onto my back and inching off my underwear, letting it drop to the floor. He nips at my throat as he teases me with one finger. At first he’s tentative, drawing soft circles everywhere but the place I need him most. He moves so achingly slowly that I buck my hips, trying to encourage him to go faster. This makes him laugh, a rough noise at the back of his throat.

  Don’t go too fast.

  Distantly, I wonder if this is what Dominic is always like in bed: determined to make it last as long as possible. Maybe he wants to savor it, too. He slips a finger inside me, and I can’t help it—I gasp. He picks up speed, and I let my head fall back against the pillow.

  “You have no idea how hot you are right now,” he says. “My imagination didn’t do you justice.”

  Half his mouth curves into a smile, like he knows how close I am. Knowing he imagined this sends me right up to the edge. I let out a whimper and squeeze my eyes shut. The pressure turns ruthless, white-hot, shimmering as I come hard against his fingers.

  When I blink myself back to earth, he’s grinning like we just hit the Apple Podcasts Top 10.

  “So smug,” I say, trying to catch my breath even as I’m reaching for his cock.

  He flinches. “Only if you want to.”

  “You think I’m not dying to see you go fucking wild after that?”

  He’s already lying back, letting me take control. I watch what I’m doing play across his face: the twitch in his jaw, the fluttering of his eyes, my name on his lips. And the sounds he makes, these growls and grunts that spark right to my core. I haven’t done this—given a hand job as anything except foreplay—since college, and the power is intoxicating.

  Suddenly, he turns, slipping out of my grasp. “I want you to come with me,” he says, voice shredded, trailing a finger up my leg.

  Those words alone nearly make me collapse. I spread my legs to help him find that perfect spot again, and then I ride his hand as he drives into my palm, each thrust of his hips more frenzied, more desperate as he chases his own release. It’s almost too much, touching him like this while he’s touching me, but somehow I manage to hold on.

  “I’m close,” I say, and that’s when he brings his fingers to his mouth, licks them, and returns them to the ache between my legs. “Dominic—”

  I fall apart a moment before he spills into my hand with a low moan.

  I am boneless. Weightless. Wrecked.

  Both of us go still, the only sounds the rain on the roof and the rhythm of our breaths.

  Neither of us speaks when he excuses himself to clean up. I pull on a T-shirt, suddenly feeling a little cold. There’s an awkward moment where we switch places so I can wash up in the bathroom too, one that makes me hyperaware of the fact that we are Shay and Dominic and definitely not a couple.

  To thousands of people, we are the opposite.

  When I get back to bed, he’s slipped on a clean pair of sweatpants, but he remains shirtless. His face softens into a smile and he pats the bed next to him.

  “Come here,” he says, and my
whole body sags with relief.

  “That was . . .”

  A half grin. “Better than the fun drawer?”

  “Significantly.”

  I’m not sure why I assumed he wouldn’t want to hold me afterward. Maybe because we haven’t discussed what this is or what this means, if it’s a onetime thing, or if not having a condom necessitates a redo once we’re back in Seattle.

  I settle against him, trying to ignore how natural it feels to rest my hand on his chest. His fingers play through my hair, feather across my back. We’ll have to get up eventually—have to talk about this eventually—but for now, I want to curl up inside this moment of not-quite real life.

  So I pull that moment tight around us, and I don’t let in anything else for the rest of the night.

  22

  His side of the bed is empty when I wake up. I feel for him with my hand first, eyes closed, trying to ignore the knot of disappointment that settles in my stomach when I find cold sheets, a dip in his pillow but no Dominic.

  Last night might have been the hottest night I’ve had in a long time, maybe ever, and it’s been a while since I slept this soundly. And yet . . . waking up alone makes the whole thing feel dreamlike. Distant.

  But I can’t forget what he said about personal and intimate and the possibility that this meant something to him, even if I can’t quite unravel what it means to me.

  I hear distinctly breakfast-like noises from the kitchen, and then some of Steve’s little snerfling sounds. I put on a hoodie and meet them there.

  Dominic’s standing beside the stove, fully dressed and freshly showered, moving a pan from a burner to the sink. I don’t know if he forgot a razor or didn’t bring one on purpose, but the scruffiness makes me itch to run my hands over his face again. Except it’s been a while since I navigated a post-hookup breakfast, and I’ve never done it with a coworker.

  I’m unsteady on my feet as I reach the table.

  “Morning,” Dominic says, sounding much too chipper. “Pancakes?”