“Good,” I say, “but I didn’t say the bedroom. I said during sex. Because I won’t promise that we’ll always be having sex in a bedroom.” I kiss her before she can blush, rolling us again so that she’s on top of me. I like the feeling of her draped across my body. It’s luxurious.
“I have one more thing,” I say, “and I think it’s going to turn you on.”
“Oh?” she giggles. “More than I am right now?”
“Yes.” I make sure she’s listening to me. “I know we don’t live together, but if we’re trying this, we’re going to try it for real. You’re not allowed to come without me. No going home and thinking about me and touching yourself. If you’re not with me and you want to come, you have to call me. Because I’m in charge of that.”
Amber goes so still that for a second I think that she’s not breathing. And then she’s kissing me and we’re both laughing and tangled together again in the sheets.
15
Amber
Past
It's perfect. The shabby little apartment that I've got in lower Manhattan is perfect. It is shabby, but it's supposed to be. New York is overpriced and crowded and even possibly saving money on dorms is hard with these prices, but I feel good about the decision. I was planning on going to college and being fully independent, and now I can do that.
I flop down on the couch, exhausted. My parents helped me move in yesterday, and my apartment is still a crazy mess of boxes and crap everywhere, but it's mine. Now I can have people over, I won't have to worry about roommates and awkward shower sharing. Yeah. This was the right decision.
Opening my phone, I flip to the text message because it's become a habit. I look in case there's something I missed, in case it's not really a message saying that the number is out of service. In case for some weird reason Peter has suddenly decided to re-activate his number and text me out of the blue. But looking at it today, I feel tired. Tired of it and the space it's taking up in my brain.
I close out of it and instead start to organize everything that I'm going to need for the first day of classes tomorrow. It's going to be crazy and I’m so excited. I've got a stack of books as long as my arm, and some extra supplies that I'm going to pick up in the morning. I haven't got a backpack, but I'm going to take the risk that film school doesn't actually require us to bring our books to class and get more of a feel for it tomorrow.
It's been months since I came here for the interview, but everything seems like it's moving so fast. I got the letter saying that I'd been accepted a week after I interviewed, almost like they'd just waited for me to come in so they could send out their decision. I sent Mr. Davidson a thank you card, because I honestly don't know if I would have gotten in if it weren't for his recommendation. He sent me a nice text afterward, but he didn't really seem to want to take credit even if it was his words.
But the week after that, we started looking for apartments, and then I was singing a lease and it's been full couple of months of shopping for furniture and dishes and everything I took for granted in my parents’ house that I never thought that I was going to need. Now I have to put it all away, but I feel the deep urge to take a nap.
I've just closed my eyes when my phone buzzes on my chest. It's my mother.
"How's my college girl?"
"Tired," I say. "I've been unpacking and I was just going to take a nap."
I can practically hear the frown in her voice. "Don't push yourself too hard."
"I'm not. All of this is just exhausting."
"Got that right," she laughs.
I sigh, snuggling down further into the couch. "What's up?"
"Not much," she says. "I was just starting to make dinner and was thinking about you. Remember, a call a day keeps the mother away."
I laugh in spite of myself, because she's said that phrase to me approximately a thousand times in the last two months. Five hundred of them possibly in the last week. "Maybe I'll order my first New York take out," I say.
"I didn't buy you all that kitchen stuff for you to just order take-out the whole time," she scolds, but I can tell she's not serious.
"Half my kitchen is still in boxes. If I wanted to spend three hours trying to cook while also trying to dig through everything to find the cheese grater, I would. But that will have to wait till everything's unpacked."
She laughs. "Fair enough. But really, I just wanted to check in and make sure that you were doing okay."
"I'm good. It's going to be good."
"It is," she agrees. "I don't want to keep you. Take your nap!"
"I will. Love you."
"Love you," she says before the line goes dead.
I'm about to take my first New York nap in my first New York apartment. I wonder how long it will be before I stop calling things 'New York.' Probably when I finally start to feel like I belong here. I'm not sure when that will be, if ever. But there's one thing I can do.
I open my phone to that same text message and look at it again. I scroll back through the messages, an archive of something that's long gone. I've been holding on to this because it seemed like a memorial almost, of the dream to move to a city together and help each other with our dreams. But that's gone now, and I have to make it on my own.
I only hesitate for a second before I delete the text conversation, and then Peter's number, from my phone. It's time to start the rest of my life.
16
Amber
Present
I wake up to the buzzing of my phone. My body immediately knows that it’s way too early. Way too early. I reach over onto my nightstand and look at the screen of my phone. It’s Peter.
A thrill goes through me and a smile even though I think I’m still mostly asleep. It’s been a couple days since we made up and made our bargain, both of us so busy with things that we haven’t been able to really find time for anything else. I had to work with the editors to get spots ready, and Peter has had press and promotional shoots. I answer. “For the love of God please don’t tell me that you’ve turned into a morning person.”
He laughs, the sound low and sexy and I can tell that he just woke up too. “No, but I’ll get up for you. I want to see you, and to sweeten the deal, I’ll make pancakes.”
I roll onto my stomach. “I can make pancakes here. What else are you offering?”
“I’ll put chocolate chips in the pancakes.”
I bite my lip, trying to hid my smile even though he can’t see me. “And?”
“Sex.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
His smirk is obvious through the phone. “I know.”
“Fine. I hate that you’re making me leave my very comfortable, very warm bed, but I’ll be over soon.”
“I’m offering sex and breakfast, you’re not going to get a better offer than that.”
I stick out my tongue at the phone. “I’ll see you soon.”
Dragging my butt out of bed I shower quickly and put on the clothes that I’ve picked out for the day, and just for good measure, I grab an extra set too. Peter is in charge of our sex life right now, and even though I know he’d never embarrass me, I’m not going to make myself late because he fucked me in pancake batter. If that’s his plan at all. He said sex, he didn’t say orgasms.
Peter is clever with his words and often makes literal loopholes. So I’m taking no chances and I switch my stuff to a bigger bag that has room for an extra set of clothes.
If we’re going to keep doing this, we’re going to have to figure out a way that our cars aren’t so recognizable at each other’s houses. It probably won’t matter so much at my apartment, unless someone follows him here. But Peter is gaining enough attention now that having photographers outside his house isn’t something that will be uncommon.
But I can’t exactly park down the street and walk in, that’s even worse. So, for this time, I just park in the driveway. I don’t see anybody with a shiny lens around, but some of them are really good, and I’m sure June Cavallaro thoug
ht there wasn’t anybody around either.
I move from the car to the house as quickly as I can, punching in the code, and I’m immediately overwhelmed with the smell of chocolate chip pancakes. Okay, so this would have been a good trade even without the promise of sex, and I turn the corner into the kitchen, that's confirmed. Because Peter is standing, flipping pancakes, in nothing but loose pants. I can see the lines of muscle in his back and as he turns towards me I follow those lines all the way as the snake down his body and out of sight. I'm lucky that I know exactly what that sight is. "That smells really good," I say.
"I have a magic recipe."
"Oh? Where'd you get it?"
He tosses another pancake to the already big stack. "I invented it when I was young and starving in L.A. and needed some kind of food that was cheap to make but also comforting. I messed with the proportions and the batter recipe until you have, what I think, is the perfect pancake."
I don't even wait for him to serve them to me. I grab one off the top of the stack and take a bite. It's light and fluffy. Peter isn't lying that is by far the best pancake that I've ever had.
"I know," he says smugly.
"You're going to have to teach me how to make these."
"At some point, I will," he says, "But I also might enjoy holding these over your head for a little while. I think they could be used as a very effective bribe."
I take another bite of the pancake. "What exactly would you be bribing me to do?"
Peter catches me around the hips and pulls me into him, and his voice is on my lips. "I can think of so many things."
Instead of letting him kiss me, I take another bite of the pancake, a burst of chocolate exploding on my tongue. But he kisses me anyway, and I know he's been sneaking some of the chocolate chips because he tastes like chocolate too. "There's no way I'm going to be able to eat more than like...two of these."
"They do really well in the freezer," he says. "You can have the rest later."
"Good," But there's something else I want. "So how do we transition from this to sex, because you promised me, but you're still in charge, so I don't really know how this works, and—"
Peter cuts off my words quickly with a kiss. "That sounds an awful lot like worrying."
"Not worrying," I say, shaking my head and pretending like just kissing him doesn't make me wet and want to take all my clothes off. "Just logistics."
He presses his mouth to my ear, and now I have goosebumps. "Strip," he says softly. "How's that for logistics?"
I manage to find my voice. "Pretty straight forward."
"I think that's what you're going to need while we try this or you're going to get too caught up in worrying about how we transition from pancakes to sex."
"I mean, yeah..."
Peter smirks at me. "I think it's a pretty natural transition, but I'm going to show you."
I take off my clothes, and notice the way Peter is watching me, holding still like he wants to grab me and put my back on the kitchen table and fuck me till I scream. That actually sounds nice, and I blush, because that's crazy. That's something that gets written into a script in a movie and not something that happens in real life. "What are you thinking?" he asks as I take off the last piece of my outfit.
"Nothing."
"Than why are you blushing?"
"I'm not."
Peter sighs, and pulls me to him, lifts me so that I'm sitting on the counter and he's standing between my legs. I can see that he's hard when I look down, his cock tenting those thin pants, and we're so close. Peter doesn't seem to notice how it easy it would be for him to just...slip inside. But then his fingers are on my chin, making me look at him. "Time out."
"From what?"
"From me being in charge for a second, because we need to talk about this."
“What? I didn't change my mind, you can still be in charge."
"No, Amber, the fact that you don't want to tell me things." He takes some chocolate chips and dumps a pile into the skillet without any batter. The stove is on a low heat, but they start to soften and shine as I look at them.
"It was just a thought."
"About sex?"
I nod.
"So why don't you want to say it?" I reach out and wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer, try to kiss him, force my breasts more firmly against his chest so that he'll be distracted. He doesn't buy it.
"I just didn't think it mattered."
Peter presses his forehead to mine, and I'm flashing back through time to all the times that we've done that before. The way it grounds us here together, in a moment, and I take a deep breath. "I know that it's going to take time," he says, "and that we're different, and that it's never going to be exactly the same, because it can't be. But we used to tell each other everything. There wasn't anything that happened in my life or mind that I didn't want to share with you, even after we separated. And I want you to know that hasn't changed for me. I don't care if it's a silly thought or a simple thought or a sexy thought. You don't have thoughts that I don't want to hear, Amber."
Then, finally, he kisses me, and it's filled with delicious, slow heat. When he finally pulls back and the world rushes back in, it feels new. Because that's so simple, and yet I can see it. I understand and I remember, and to make this work we're going to have to talk to each other. That's all there is to it. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah."
He nips my bottom lip. "Tell me what made you blush."
I glance away from him. "I saw you watching me undress, and it kind of looked like you wanted to grab me, throw me on the table and fuck me." I blush again, because saying these words out loud is harder than it feels like it should be. "Till I screamed. And I thought that might be nice."
"That's exactly what I wanted to do," he says. "Time in." My breath hitches as he reaches over to the pan of now melted chocolate and runs a finger through it. "That’s what I plan to do after I finish a couple of other things."
He spreads the chocolate across one of my nipples and leans down to suck it off. The chocolate is warm and sticky, and the way he has to work to clean it off my skin has me moaning. I like the way his tongue feels on me. I could have it that way forever.
Everywhere.
My hands are on his shoulders and I'm struggling not to try to force him closer, because that's not what we agreed, and it's kind of nice. He knows what I said I wanted, or thought about, and he said he wants that too, but I don't have to worry if he's going to do that. There's something in my mind that eases. Even if he doesn't take me on the table, I know that Peter is going to take care of me. He's going to make me feel good. And it's not something that I'll ever have to worry about.
It's like a little thing clicks in my brain. The other night when we talked about it, I couldn't help feeling guilty, like I was piling all the responsibility for both our pleasure on his head and it was going to be overwhelming. But now, thinking about our history together, it's always been like this. Peter's always taken care of me and given me what I needed. Has always somehow known how to get me out of my own head. But he can't do that if I don't talk to him. "Oh."
"Mmm?" The questioning sound vibrates through his mouth and onto my skin as he licks chocolate off my other nipple and sends sparks bounding downward to my pussy.
"I just had a realization, that's all."
His mouth is on mine and it's all chocolate. "Tell me."
"You always seemed to know what I needed...before. You knew when to calm me down and when to pin me down and distract me. But you did that because we were talking. Or I was talking. Or you saw something that helped you figure out what I needed even if I didn't say it exactly."
Peter laughs. "Yes. I'm not a mind reader, and I'll never be one. But if you talk to me, I'll always be there to help you. I might not always give you what you want," he says, "But I'll do my best to give you what you need."
It hadn't seemed fair to me, dumping it all on him. But he was doing it anyway, taking control
and helping, I was just getting in the way. Not in the way, I was just making it harder for both of us. A weight falls off my shoulders, and I lean forward, my head on his shoulder, and he hugs me, hands sliding down my back. I'm not dumping some task that he doesn't want on his head, I'm letting him pick up the slack he already wanted. A task he was already trying to do. It seems so obvious.
"I think I get it now," I say into his skin. "Even if it still feels weird." It does. Just because I have a burst of clarity doesn't mean that it still doesn't feel strange to me.
Peter weaves his fingers in my hair and guides my head off his shoulder and tilts it back so I'm meeting his gaze. "What do you get?"
"That I'm not forcing this on you."
"No," he says, "you're not. You're asking me to do this for you, and I'm asking for you to let me."
"You want it too?"
He smiles, and tightens his fingers in my hair. "I've been thinking the past couple of days, too. I had the same realization that you did, that I was already trying to do this, but we didn't really have the ways to say it. We were quietly letting it happen, but because we didn't really have the life experience to say it, it wasn't working as well as it could."
I shake my head, and he lets my hair go and I reach over to grab another pancake. I kind of interrupted his promised sex and the fact that he was sucking on my nipples with my realization. "This isn't exactly the conversation I was expecting to have this morning."
"It's important though," he says.
"I never realized how much of this was...that," I say, not knowing how to label it. My mind keeps flashing to the moments in our past when Peter would cover me with his body, be inside me, and just lay there until I couldn't think about anything else. He took it out of my hands. Not in a way that was bad or overbearing, just helping me quiet my brain. A brain that always runs too fast for its own good. I get tripped up in my own thoughts and run in circles.
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