Brody whispers, “Shhh. Baby, hush.”
I whimper into the pillow. “I need to come so bad. Please make me come.”
He bites me softly on the shoulder, and then nuzzles my ear, nosing aside my hair. His hand is still between my legs, gently stroking, keeping me right on the razor’s edge.
“Let me get a condom.”
“I’m clean,” I say immediately.
“Me, too. But—”
“And I’m on the pill.”
Brody’s exhalation is half growl, half groan. “You want me to fuck you bare, sweetheart?”
I open my eyes and look at him. In a harsh whisper I demand, “Make me yours. Come inside me and make me yours.”
Brody takes my head in his hands and kisses me so hard I can’t breathe.
Then he rolls me over again and hooks my leg over his arm so I’m spread open wide. He guides the head of his throbbing cock to my wet entrance, takes one of my nipples into his mouth, and begins to suckle it, holding himself still, not pushing forward inside me.
I groan, pulling hard against the ties around my wrists and rocking my hips so the head of his cock is sliding up and down, slipping through my folds. It’s friction, but it’s not enough. I’m out of my mind with need.
Brody eases forward an inch. I moan brokenly, calling his name.
Then I start to beg.
“Please fuck me. I need you to fuck me. I need it now, Brody, now, please—”
“So demanding,” he whispers, and flexes his hips. It takes him another inch inside.
I moan in frustration, loud and long. Into my ear Brody breathes, “Oh, sweetheart, you know what I said about that.”
He curls his fingers around the stocking on my left leg and rips it right off the garter by pulling it sharply down my thigh. The delicate nylon tears apart like gossamer. The garter springs back. He bends my leg, yanks the stocking all the way off, and then balls it up and shoves it in my mouth.
Then, with one hand gripping my ass and one cradling my head, he thrusts inside me.
My sob of pleasure and relief is muffled by the stocking.
Brody puts his mouth next to my ear. Whispering how much he adores me, how good I feel, how he’d do anything for me, he starts to fuck me as he said he would on the phone, deep and slow. His breath is uneven, his body is heavy, hot and shaking on top of mine.
I come fast and hard, convulsing beneath him, crying out against the stocking, feeling the slap of his balls against my ass as he fucks me with firm, rhythmic strokes of his cock. He kisses my breasts and neck and face, his big hands roaming all over my body.
“Grace,” he gasps, thrusting faster. He grips my head in both hands and stares down at me, so I see the exact moment it happens. His eyes close. A sound comes from his throat, deep inside him, a guttural noise of pleasure. Then he comes, jerking and groaning, gasping for air.
“Grace,” he rasps, shuddering on top of me. “My saving Grace. My angel.”
Still moving inside me, he presses his cheek to mine.
I don’t know if the wetness I feel there is from his tears or mine, but I do know, with every wild, painful beat of my heart, in all the dark, abandoned parts of my soul, that he’s got it wrong. It isn’t me who’s saved him.
It’s him who’s saved me.
Hallelujah.
We sleep. I awaken sometime in the night, whimpering from a bad dream, but Brody is there, shushing me gently, stroking my back, cradling me against him. Soon I’m quiet and fall back into slumber in his arms.
When the day breaks gray and still outside, he makes love to me again, but this time slower, softer, and silently. There are no words or bindings or spankings. There are only our bodies and shared breaths, a mutual sense of wonder reflected in our eyes.
We sleep again.
When next I awaken it’s to a brilliant blue sky and the smell of frying bacon.
Brody is gone. On his pillow are three Polaroid pictures of us, taken while I was sleeping, my head tucked into his neck. He’s looking into the camera with the expression of a man who’s converted to a new religion.
With the pictures is a note.
Grace,
I don’t know who I am today. Yesterday I was someone else, someone smaller. Today I looked in the mirror and it’s like I grew a foot taller and understand things I didn’t understand before. I feel like a new man. A better man.
Because of you.
I didn’t want to wake you because you looked so peaceful. I went surfing. Will be back by 8. I hope you don’t think it’s creepy that I took pictures while you were sleeping, but I wanted to capture the moment for the memory book. The moment we first became Us.
Yours,
Brody
PS – I’m crazy about you.
PPS – I absolutely adore you.
PPPS – I’m so fucking insane over you. I’m out of my mind.
The sheet of paper trembles in my hand. I realize my cheeks are wet, and start to laugh. How is it possible for the human body to hold so much emotion? How is it possible that I’m not splitting wide open with all the hope and terror and joy I’m feeling?
I don’t know. I don’t care.
Right now I really just need some bacon.
I leap out of bed. My new dress is on the floor, demolished. I pick it up, laughing again, and hug it to my chest. I spin around in the middle of the room with my arms flung wide like Julie Andrews in the mountain meadow when she played the nun in The Sound of Music. Except naked.
And I’m no nun.
I take a shower, singing show tunes at the top of my lungs.
When I’m done with the shower, I rifle through Brody’s drawers and steal another T-shirt, this one advertising Bad Habit, how apropos, and a pair of his sweats, which I have to roll up at the ankles and fold over at the waist. Then I head out to the kitchen and the delicious scent of breakfast.
“Magda!” I shout when I see her at the stove, cooking.
She jumps and turns to look at me.
I spread my arms and smile. “BUENOS DÍAS!”
She snorts, rolls her eyes, and turns back to the stove, shaking her head. I go up behind her and give her a hug.
Poking at sizzling bacon with a metal spatula, she says to me in Spanish, “He’s a slob, you know. A terrible slob, worse than a pig. You think this house is so clean because of him? No. Also, he doesn’t call his mother enough. And he uses a pore-reducing facial mask. What kind of a man does this? Ech. He’s too pretty for his own good. But if you can get past all these character flaws, I think you will be happy with him. He’s trainable,” she says with a shrug, like that’s the most we women can hope for in a life partner.
“You’ve done a good job with him,” I say.
She pauses her stirring to contemplate the bacon. “He was a wild thing when he was a boy. I worried that he’d turn out bad. But he learns from his mistakes. Like I said,” she begins to stir again, “trainable.”
Eager to hear stories of Brody as a boy, I’m just about to pepper Magda with questions when the man himself walks in through the patio doors.
He’s barefoot and dripping, still in his wetsuit, smiling a smile that would put the sun to shame. “My two favorite girls in the kitchen,” he says, his gaze trained on me, green eyes alight.
Magda barks something at him in Spanish that I don’t bother to translate. I run over to him and fling my arms around his neck.
He laughs, staggering back a few steps. “Whoa. Did someone have a Red Bull this morning?”
I smile up at him, not caring at all that the front of my T-shirt is getting wet. I whisper, “Someone had a raging bull last night.”
Grinning, he lowers his head and kisses me. He tastes like the ocean, sweet and salty. “You’re getting better at those compliments, Slick. Keep ’em coming.”
“Yes, sir!” I reply. He lifts an eyebrow.
Looks like I’m trainable, too.
Pointing with her spatula at the towels she left for him on a l
ittle table by the patio doors, Magda shouts at Brody to dry off before coming in the house. Though it’s spoken in Spanish, he gets the idea.
“As you command, evil overlord,” he says seriously. He bows.
Magda and I share a look. She turns back to the stove, smiling.
Brody dries off and goes to change while I help Magda set the table. Though she protests we should have our privacy, I insist she have breakfast with us. When Brody reappears and sees the two of us getting ready to sit down, he smiles.
“You’re looking a little misty-eyed over there, Kong,” I observe, watching him pull out his chair. When he sits down, I pass him the bowl of seasoned home-fried potatoes.
He takes it from me and scoops some onto his plate. “Honestly? I feel like I won the lottery or something.”
Magda yells at him that he did and he better not fuck it up. Brody looks to me for help.
I try not to laugh when I say, “She said she really loves you. That’s all.”
His lips twist. “Hmm. I see I’m outnumbered.”
Magda brings over a plate of bacon on paper towels and a bigger plate piled with scrambled eggs and dusted with Mexican cotija cheese. She pours glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice from a pitcher, sits down at the table with us, folds her hands under her chin, and closes her eyes.
When Brody and I just sit there looking at her, she opens her eyes. “Grace!” she barks.
She doesn’t mean my name.
Though I’m as religious as a garbanzo bean, I obediently fold my hands together and bow my head. Sitting across from me, Brody does the same, hiding his smile behind his clasped hands.
“Good morning, God,” begins Magda, sounding like they’re business partners. She’s praying in English, which means she wants Brody to understand what’s being said. “We thank you for this food, and for this day, and for this family. We thank you for the blessings of our health, and our friends, and the many bounties of this life you have given us.”
I was given this life because I’m strong enough to live it.
Given by whom? I never thought to ask myself before now. I listen with my heart beating harder as Magda continues.
“We thank you for the lessons you teach us, even when they’re hard, and for loving us, even when we don’t deserve it. We thank you for forgiving us all our many sins, and we promise to always do the same for each other. No matter what. Amen.”
There’s a moment of silence so stark I’m sure I can hear my fingernails growing. Then Magda makes the sign of the cross over her chest, and happily begins to eat.
Brody and I stare at each other across the table. He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He reaches out for my hand. When I grasp it, his fingers are trembling. He squeezes. I squeeze back.
And just like that, over bacon and eggs and a morning prayer, a pact is sealed between us.
Forgiveness, no matter what.
From the corner of my eye, I see Magda smile.
Brody has a taping for Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show with the band today, so after breakfast I’m left to my own devices.
My “devices” include floating through the air as if on clouds, dreamily unpacking the clothes I bought yesterday and hanging them in the closet in the guest house bedroom, and calling Kat, only to forget what I wanted to say by the time she picks up.
“What’s the matter with you, space cadet?” she asks when it becomes apparent I have no idea why I’m calling. When I don’t answer quickly enough, she gasps.
“You got the D!” she screams gleefully.
Boy, did I ever.
“I . . . oh, Kat. Why didn’t you warn me it would be like this?” I ask feebly, staring at myself in the bathroom mirrors. My cheeks are red. My eyes are wild. I look like I just snorted a line of heroin.
The laughter on the other end of the phone is raucous, and lasts a ridiculously long time.
“I hate you,” I say, only that sounds dreamy, too.
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall!” she crows. In the background I hear a voice asking her what’s going on. She covers the phone with her hand, but not tightly enough, so I hear her muffled response.
“Brody has entranced Grace with his enchanted penis and now she’s in love!”
“I can hear you, idiot! And who are you talking to?”
She comes back on the line. “Chloe and Abby are over. What’re you up to today?” She giggles. “Besides being dick dazzled.”
I run my hand through my hair, watching it sift through my fingers, fascinated for some strange reason by the fiery color of it, the way it drifts down to my shoulder like feathers on a breath of air. “Nothing. I . . . I’m off this week. I need to go house hunting, and shopping, and . . .”
When I trail off, distracted by the weird glowing light behind my eyes, Kat starts to laugh again.
I say, “Kat.”
“Yes, Gracie?”
“I owe you an apology.”
“An apology?” she repeats, confused. “What for?”
I touch my cheek, feeling the burn. “For any time I didn’t support you about what you felt for Nico. For any time I mocked it or said something insensitive or was a horrible, cynical bitch. I just didn’t . . .” I inhale a shaky breath. “I just didn’t understand.”
After a short pause, Kat whistles. “Wow. You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
I close my eyes, nodding. “Yes. The worst. And to be completely honest, I’m so happy I could die and so scared I could piss myself. I have no idea what to do.”
Kat says gently, “Join the club, Titanium.”
I groan, covering my eyes with my hand. Kat hurries to add, “But don’t worry, it gets better. The terror recedes. I mean, a little. And if you’re together long enough you’ll get bored of him and won’t want to have sex with him anymore and he’ll start to irritate you and it will get easier.”
My eyes widen. “Is that true?”
She laughs. “No. I was just trying to be helpful. If it’s true love, it doesn’t change. Ever. Every time he walks into a room you’ll still feel those butterflies. Every time he smiles at you you’ll still feel like you’re home. Did you think all those books and songs and plays about love that have been written over thousands of years were bullshit?”
I think about it for a minute. “Well . . . yes.”
She sighs. “I kinda feel sorry for your patients right now.”
My patients. Holy shit, my patients! How will I ever face the wife who admitted she’s only staying married because her husband is filthy rich but she’s in love with the gardener, or the husband with five children who thinks he might be in love with his secretary—his male secretary?
Everything is so much more complicated when you understand.
Love isn’t a problem to be parsed out on a spreadsheet with columns of pros and cons. Love isn’t something you weigh against money, or duty, or convenience. Barney was right: love is everything.
Love is the only fucking thing that matters, the only really real thing there is.
I burst into tears.
“Grace!” Kat cries. “Oh my God! Are you—are you crying?”
“The worst part is that I can’t unknow it!” I sob, my shoulders shaking, tears streaming down my face. “Now that I know, I can’t go back to the way I was before!”
Kat’s sigh is soft. “Oh, sweetie. Welcome to the human race.” She pauses. “You’ll like it here. There’s a lot of weeping and stupid fights, but we have really good make-up sex.”
In between my tears, I start to laugh.
“Atta girl. Now you’ve got the idea,” Kat says. “Just keep that up for the next few months straight and you’ll have a glimmer of understanding of what the rest of us have been going through since birth.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. You’ll live. So are you coming over or what?”
“I am. And I love you, Kat. I love you so much.”
She mutters, “Holy Christma
s, now she’s so nurturing she’s practically a womb.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
“We’ll be waiting with bells on. And Grace?”
“What?”
I can feel Kat’s smile over the phone. “I love you, too.”
On the drive to Kat’s, my insurance company calls to say that if I can sign all the claim paperwork today, the settlement for my condo and temporary living expenses will be in my bank account within seven business days. I make a detour to their offices, and arrive at Kat’s feeling like I have a new lease on life.
Because I learned from my parents to have everything I own insured to the teeth, I’m looking at a substantial chunk of cash. I had no idea my condo had gone up in value so much since I bought it, and had forgotten about the annual inflation clause in the insurance policy that increased the value of things like my jewelry from their actual purchase price.
For obvious reasons, I did not include my cherished vibrator collection in the policy.
I’ll have to ask Brody if he thinks I’ll require replacements. That’s a conversation I’m very much looking forward to.
By the time I ring Kat’s doorbell, I’m grinning like a maniac.
She opens the door and blinks at me. “I’m sorry, we don’t allow solicitors here.”
“Solicitors?”
“Yes. Judging by that zealous smile, you’re obviously with some crackpot religious outfit and are here to discuss my relationship with God. And when I tell you I’m in tight with the man upstairs, you’re going to ask me for money. Go sell crazy somewhere else.”
She slams the door in my face.
Two seconds later it opens to reveal Chloe, laughing.
I say, “Is she getting weirder in her old age?”
Chloe replies, “She’s a total whack job. And she’s talking about getting cats, so we might want to arrange an intervention. Come in.”
She pulls me over the threshold, closes the door behind me, and gives me a hug. Looking effortlessly gorgeous in a simple white shirt and blue jeans, ballet flats on her feet, her long blonde hair in a ponytail and not a speck of makeup on her face, she sets her hands on my shoulders.
“I hear you’re in love.”
Sin With Me (Bad Habit) Page 24