by Lissa Linden
Paul trails kisses along my shoulder. “Let’s compromise. It’s our bed.”
My skin burns under his lips and I know I should move away. Put space between us. But his tongue drifts over my skin, and I melt into him. “Sure. Our bed. For six more days.”
He rolls me onto my back and leans an elbow on either side of my head. “Like I said the day you got here, I can stay as long as you need.”
The heaviness spreads from my gut to my limbs. I know I should go. I should crawl out from under him and break the connection we found last night. Because this morning I’m just the wrong woman playing a role in his dream. But I still can’t bring my legs to bend.
The phone rings in the living room. “You should get that,” I whisper.
He smooths my hair from my forehead. “It’s not important.”
The sharp trill pierces the morning again. “Maybe not,” I say, “but it’s annoying as hell. Please make it stop.”
He kisses my cheek and pushes himself off the bed. My eyes stay on his naked form until he’s through the door. Then I curl into myself and pull the sheet over my head. The phone’s screaming stops and I count my breaths in and out. Paul’s voice is muffled through distance and my cotton barricade, but the timbre is unmistakably his. I press a hand to my chest and knead the knot under my sternum.
He offered to stay. For as long as I need. But that’s not our deal. It’s not what I want. Our deal is sex until he leaves. Until he leaves, and I stay. Paul and Amy, filling the bang bank, getting the relief we both need.
And we can do this. Even though last night’s sex was the most intimate I’ve ever had. Even though we lost sleep to exploring each other in so much detail that I know his big toes are shorter than his second toes. Even though he licked my center while I sat over him, cock in mouth, balls in hand, his name falling on repeat against his silken skin as I came apart on his tongue.
We can do this even though I have to force myself to throw back the sheet. To get out of bed. To search for my dress so I can leave like I should have before we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Paul’s socks are lying by the bed, but that’s the only clothing in the room. My head falls back and my eyes close. “Dammit.”
His eyes light up when I walk into the living room. My nipples turn to peaks and I tell myself that there’s no connection. That there’s a draft. I nudge Chuck off the dress he’d been using as a bed and shimmy into it feet-first.
“Laurie?” Paul says. “Listen. That’s great, but I have to go.”
My throat constricts and the elastic snaps over my breasts.
“Yeah. I got it. Three o’clock. And I can crash at your place after?”
Blood rushes to my head. It pounds in my ears and heats my cheeks. Of course he has women in town. In the city. That’s no amateur alphabet his tongue drew between my legs. He couldn’t have gone five years without any action. I just didn’t expect him to be setting up more while I was still here. Not when he’d worked so hard, deprived himself so much, to get all of me into bed.
“I don’t know,” he says. I reach for the door handle and the couch groans with the loss of Paul’s weight. “Got to go.” The phone beeps the end of the call and Paul’s arm reaches above my head. He pushes the door closed and turns me into his chest. “Leaving so soon?”
I keep the doorknob wrapped in my fist. Count the hairs on his chest. “Yeah, I should go.”
“And do what? Come on, let’s have some breakfast.”
I shake my head. “We shouldn’t. We have a deal. This is just sex, and breakfast isn’t sex.”
“To be fair, you’ve never tried my French toast. It’s pretty orgasmic.”
He reaches for my hand and I pull back. “I can’t, Paul. You asked for all of me, and I gave her to you. Last night was… It was…” I breathe in the smell of him. And me. And us together. I clear my throat. “You asked for the whole woman. The woman who wanted you in her bed—inside her—and you got her.”
“And now you’re trying to hide her away.”
Paul seeks out my eyes. I try to avoid looking at him. Try to keep my gaze on the floor. To count the knots in the planks. My eyes dart to his anyway. “You need to leave camp. To find someone who wants you in bed and out of it. Because I’m not that dream.”
He grazes his fingers down my cheek. “What if you are?”
I pull his hand from my face. “I’m not. Your dream woman would want you all to herself. She’d fight for you. Want to be near you. She’d care if you were setting up a date with another woman while she stood in the same room.” I drop his hand. “And me? I don’t care.”
Paul steps back. “What are you talking about?”
I set my face and force my shoulders to stay down. “Laurie.”
His eyes widen and he breaks into a grin. He laughs and reaches for me, but I cross my arms. Pull my elbows tight against my sides. “Don’t laugh at me.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m not laughing at you. I swear. Just, Laurie isn’t a woman. It’s a dude who had the unfortunate break of being born to very Scottish parents.” Paul buttons the khakis that he’d hastily pulled on. “He’s an old friend who’s set up an interview for me.”
The pieces click into place. My head falls back against the door. I hate that I can hear the relief in my voice. “He’s your lead. On that teaching job.”
“You got it. It turns out the principal wants to get his hiring done before he heads off on vacation, so it’s now or never.”
I look at my bare feet. Realize I was about to leave without shoes. That I nearly fucked up. Showed him how thrown I am. How terrified I am of sharing a bed. “When is the interview?”
His toes come into view. He lifts my chin with a knuckle. “Tomorrow. But I told him I wasn’t sure that I’d go.”
My gaze meets his. “Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Well, there’s Chuck.”
Chuck’s tail thumps at the sound of his name. “I can take care of Chuck,” I say. “Don’t worry about him.”
“And, you know, I haven’t put anything together for an interview.”
“What would you put together?”
He runs a hand along the back of his neck. “I don’t even know, to be honest. I just don’t have to leave. I mean, I don’t want to think about it yet. And honestly, now that I know what it’s like to wake up with you in my bed, I—”
I step into him and press my lips to his. I kiss him hard. Touch my hip. I nip his lip when I pull back. “That bed isn’t yours. It’s ours. And for the next six days I will come to you as Amy and I’ll come only for Paul. But then you need to go find your dream. For real. And I need to find out if I have any left.”
Chapter Twenty
I drink the rest of the milk straight from the jug and grin. Amy was jealous. She can try to hide it behind friendly advice all she wants, but I saw the way her body relaxed when she found out the truth. I felt the relief in her lips when she kissed me. She doesn’t want me with anyone else, but she has to know I haven’t thought about another woman since she got here. Since it became clear that a lifetime of weeks spent together would never be enough.
Maybe she’ll let me stay, at least for a while. I mean, just until we figure out if we’re burning off excess sexual energy, or if we’re melting into each other—blending together in a combination that’s exciting and new, but could solidify into something strong.
But things unsaid curdle the milk in my stomach. It’s not like I’ve lied to her, exactly. But my gut doesn’t give a crap about technicalities. The milk jug skitters across the counter and tips over in my rush to get to the rec hall and make things right.
“Hey,” she calls from the bedrooms when I open the door. “What’s the plan for today?”
I squeeze the tension in my neck. “Well, it had been to sneak up on you and get attacked by your underwear, but you’ve gone and wrecked that idea.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I heard you coming.”
Her boots thump on the floors as she strolls into the multipurpose room and my heart forgets its job. It forgets that its sole purpose for being in my body is to keep beating and pumping blood and keeping me alive. Her standard jean shorts and hiking boots aren’t meant to be sexy. It’s not like she’s dressed like it’s Vegas and she’s a sure thing, but every cell of my being is ready to give me up for her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” She pulls on the bottom of her T-shirt. “Do I have deodorant on me or something?”
I close the distance between us and loop my arm around her back, pressing my lips to hers. She runs the tip of her tongue along them, looking for entry, but I release my grip. “Are we good?”
She feeds her hand into my back pocket and pulls me close, raising her eyebrows when my reaction to our kiss hits her. “I am if you are.”
I take a deep breath, ready to tell her everything. But I can’t make myself think about Tanya—not when Amy is scratching my ass through denim and making camp wear look like lingerie. “When we were sixteen,” I say, “you had red hiking boots.”
She cocks her head. “You remember those?”
“I remember a lot of things.”
“Yeah, well, I’d forgotten how awesome boots could be.” She pulls her hand from my pocket and props her heel on the ground. “This is the first pair in years that I bought for comfort and practicality instead of style.”
A smile plays at my lips. “I can’t see you being preoccupied with all the latest styles.”
The corners of her eyes crinkle when she laughs. “You would not have said that to me a week ago.”
I thread my fingers through hers and lead us toward the supply cupboard. Keys jingle when I pull them from my pocket. “Oh yeah? You cared about who was wearing what and when?”
“I was preoccupied with it, but I didn’t care.” She rubs her thumb over my fingers. “Not about anything.”
The lock to the storage cupboard pops open and I hand her the key. “Not even gold versus rose gold?”
Amy slips the key into her pocket and licks her lips. She cracks a knuckle. “So. What’re we looking for?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Other than a different topic of conversation?”
“Right,” she says. “Other than that.”
I pull two bows and a sleeve of arrows from storage. “We’re coming back to this.”
Amy shrugs. “We’ll see. But in case you’ve forgotten, I always sucked at archery.”
“Oh, I haven’t forgotten. It was the one thing I could always kick your ass at.” And the one thing I could think of that would give me the upper hand—that would be second nature to me, and just distracting enough to her that she wouldn’t completely zero in on the fact that I was in fact planning to have a sleepover with my ex-girlfriend, her husband, and their son.
She takes one of the bows. “Is this punishment for thinking your buddy was a hookup? Because it’s not like I said you couldn’t sleep with other people, you just made it sound like you weren’t. You know, starved from the lack of social interaction and all that.”
Amy steps by me and I fumble with the lock. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else,” I call over my shoulder.
She stays ahead of me. “Nothing in our deal says you can’t. You probably should, actually. You know. Work on finding that dream girl in the city.”
At the front door, she pushes instead of pulls. Her cheeks are red when I hold the door open. “I have no plans to sleep with anyone else. Honestly. Sex with you is…” My hands gesture in some kind of abstract explanation that fills in where words fail.
“I completely agree. It really is that good.” She pulls back on the bow. “Unlike my archery skills. Which I can guarantee you are way worse than they used to be.”
We turn up a narrow trail behind Cabin 2. “That’s not even possible.”
“Oh, I assure you it is. The only targets I’ve had in my sight over the last decade have been sales-based.”
“No archery at your other camp?”
She laughs. “None. It was glorious.”
I set the sleeve of arrows at the archery stations and set to work righting the targets. “Ah. So that’s why you worked there instead of here. I get it now.”
She rolls her eyes at my grin. “I didn’t avoid this place because of archery.”
The last target tips and I squat to weigh the jug down with some rocks. “But you did avoid it.”
“Clearly.”
“How come?”
“Because of you, obviously.”
The arrow rolls out of my fingers and onto the ground. “You never worked here because I might be here?”
“Because I knew you would be. We’d been talking about being counselors up here since we were twelve.” She draws an arrow and wrestles it into the bow. “Running into you only a couple of years after, well, everything, would have been hell. Seriously. But not because you’d kissed me. I’d been catcalled enough times by then to boil those kisses down to tits and ass. But I was so embarrassed that I’d made it into something it wasn’t. That I thought you would break up with Tanya for me. So coming up here again and seeing you with her?” She shrugs. “I didn’t need to see how much I couldn’t compete.”
I step behind her to adjust her elbow and loosen her finger on the shaft. “There was never any competition. Tanya and I just filled a void for each other. She’s also never worked here.”
She lets the arrow fly and it falls to the ground before the targets. “Never?”
“Never.” I shoot and my arrow lodges itself into an old detergent jug.
“Oh.” She sorts through the arrows one by one and they tick against the plastic container as they fall. She selects the arrow with the most intact fletching and wrestles it into the bow. “This is the only thing you both beat me on, you know.”
My stomach clenches. This is it. The opening I need to tell her everything. “T wasn’t great at a lot of camp stuff, but archery she liked. She used to pretend that the target was her mom.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “She repeatedly visualized shooting her mom?”
I line up my shot. “Yep.”
“Well, shit,” she says. “Kind of puts her in a different light.”
“Her mom wasn’t great.” I pull back on the string. “She’s a good one, though. Tanya, I mean. She got married a while back. Had a kid last year.”
“You told me you hadn’t talked to her since you were sixteen.”
My grip releases and I fire the arrow wide. “What?”
“In the office,” she says. “When I asked you if you’d stayed in touch. You said no. You said that you only talked in the summers, and that you’d broken up when we were kids.”
The office, where she’d come to me as Amy. The morning when she’d pressed her lips and soul to mine with a trust I wouldn’t break even by giving her the release she wanted so badly—a trust that she doesn’t give easily, but has given to me, bit by bit. A trust I need to keep if I have any hope of again waking up to her love-messed hair and sleep-drunk smile.
“We, you know, know some of the same people.” The arrows vibrate in the sleeve when I try to pick one out. “I sent them the toaster they wanted. I mean, for the wedding. Years ago.”
Her fingers graze mine when she selects an arrow. “Such a sham.”
I jerk away. “What?”
“Wedding registries. Couples are all, ‘This adulting thing is expensive! Buy us all the gadgets we think we need to have a happy life.’ Meanwhile, they’re dropping thousands on the wedding, and I swear half of them are already planning the divorce. It’s all so misleading, just sucking toasters and towels out of people they claim to care about.” She shakes her head. “Can’t stand them.”
“Oh.” I tap the bow against my leg. “Yeah. Misleading sucks. For sure.”
“You okay?” She places the back of her hand on my head. “You look a little green.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and swallow hard over the creeping a
cid of all the things I haven’t said—all the ways I didn’t mean to mislead her. “Honestly,” I say, “I’m feeling pretty damn shitty.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Paul sits on a rec hall couch and drops his head into his hands. I shove the bows and arrows away and snap the lock into place. “Need a bucket or something?”
He shakes his head and pats the cushion next to him. I slip into the space and snuggle into his shoulder. “Seriously. What’s up? You were fine, then bam. You’re not. I’m getting worried.”
He rests chin on me. “I wish I was still in the getting stage of worried.”
I weave our fingers together. “Are you nervous about your interview?”
His chest deflates in a quiet sigh. “In a way.”
I tilt my face toward his. “In what way?”
Our eyes meet for an instant before his lids shut. They crease with the force of keeping them closed. “In the way that I’m afraid I’m screwing everything up.”
My hand creeps behind his back and I wrap him in a hug. He squeezes me tight. “You’re not screwing everything up,” I say. “You’re doing what’s going to make you happy.”
He clears his throat. “What if it doesn’t though?”
I pull away. Pinch his chin between my thumb and finger. Turn his face to mine. “Then you find something that does.”
“It’s not that simple.” He takes my fingers off his chin and wraps them in his camp-worn hand.
“Starting fresh is that simple. It’s just hard.” I breathe out to the count of ten and lower my shoulders with each passing second. “Do you want to know how I ended up here? I mean, the whole story?”
His head jerks up. “There’s more to it than you’ve told me?”
“Of course. Seeing clients in love was nothing new. What was new was that I didn’t care.” Paul tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and I disentangle my body from his. I pull my hair into a messy ponytail.