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  I spent the rest of the morning working and texting my mother and Jill, who were now all caught up in some kerfuffle about hosting a brunch on the Sunday after William’s Bar Mitzvah. Susan, as it turned out, had told them to do whatever they pleased, to invite whomever they chose, and both of them were somehow affronted that they were getting exactly what they wanted.

  “I don’t care what you do,” I said finally to my mother, when I could no longer deal with typing on my phone and called her. “I’m busy at work. Susan said you and Jill should plan the brunch, so just do it.”

  “Well, we need to think about who to invite. This is supposed to be for our family.”

  I grimaced. “So you don’t want to invite Susan’s family, or what? They’re all coming in from out of town, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t even know them.”

  “Ma,” I said. “You can’t have some kind of brunch thing and not invite Susan’s family. They’re William’s family, too. Either invite everyone who’s staying at the hotel, or don’t have it. Why is this such a thing? It’s common courtesy!”

  “Don’t you take that tone of voice with me. I don’t need a lecture from you on how to live my life,” my mother said.

  “Apparently, you do.”

  When I was small, my mother had taught me how to dance the Watusi and the Pony to old records she played on the record player she’d had since high school. A cigarette tucked in one corner of her mouth, she’d roll up the living room rug and take my hands to teach me the steps while she sang along with whatever song she’d put on. My mother had taught me how to put on lipstick, how to match my shoes to my belt. She’d once gone to the school to confront a teacher who’d given me a hard time about the books I’d chosen to read for my book reports, telling him that her daughter could read any damn book she pleased, even if technically it was from the reading list two grades higher.

  In short, my mom has not always been a raging thundertwat.

  “I find your attitude disgusting!”

  I sighed. “I find your consistent and utter lack of consideration for anyone but yourself to be really disappointing.”

  She was quiet, to my surprise. Then she said, “Fine, I’ll invite everyone.”

  I needed a shot of liquor after that conversation, but I settled for a coffee from the Morningstar Mocha, where I went to grab some lunch. “Hey, Tesla. How’s the panini today?”

  The Mocha’s manager sported an asymmetrical haircut, bleached blond, and today wore a T-shirt with a picture of a zombie Marilyn Monroe on the front. She turned to look at the menu board. “I’d go with the avocado, Portobello and…oh, I’ll make it without bacon for you. I can add some sprouts or something, instead.”

  “And some macaroni salad.” I looked in the glass case. “Oh, I’ll take one of those giant frosted brownies, too.”

  My brother called me while I waited for my food. I didn’t mention the brunch, and neither did he. He didn’t actually say anything about my mother or our sister or the Bar Mitzvah at all. He’d just called to chat, and I was reminded how lucky I was to have a brother who I loved and considered a friend.

  “Hey, so, what’s up with you and Niall?”

  I licked fudge frosting off my finger. “Nothing’s up. Why?”

  “You went out with him again, didn’t you?”

  I laughed. “Did he tell you that?”

  “He mentioned it, yeah. Gave me kind of the third degree about you, to be honest. Wanted to know if you had a boyfriend, how often you still modeled, what you were into.”

  “Did you tell him basket weaving and underwater interpretive dance?” I asked, only a little sourly.

  “He meant, you know.”

  “Gross, Evan. That’s so gross. I don’t want my brother discussing my…God!” I lowered my voice when heads turned.

  My brother laughed. “Hey, believe me, I don’t really want to think about it, much less talk about it.”

  “Why the hell is everyone so fucking obsessed with what I choose to do in the bedroom?” I hissed and stabbed my brownie with a fingertip.

  “Because it’s weird.”

  I knew he was trying to make light, but it hit me hard. “Fuck you, Evan.”

  “Hey. Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just meant that…shit. I’m sorry. It’s the pictures, that’s all. Nobody would even know if you hadn’t ever done any of those pictures. Or if you’d maybe just said it was a thing for the pictures, not something you…do.”

  “Sorry if I refused to closet myself for the comfort of my family and friends,” I told him. “You’re married. I could assume that makes you a reasonably straight male who gets laid once every few weeks and maybe gets a blow job for your birthday. You don’t see me going around speculating or trying to psychoanalyze you about it.”

  “Calm down.”

  “Fuck you,” I said again, hating the way tears clogged my voice. “While you were blabbing away to a stranger about how I like to fuck, did it ever occur to you to tell him to fucking ask me?”

  “I did tell him,” my brother said. “I told him that you were my sister, and you were awesome and that if he wanted to take you out, he’d better be fucking prepared to handle you with care, or I would mess him up.”

  I sniffled, hoping nobody in the coffee shop could see me crying. “You didn’t.”

  “I totally did.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to go out with him.”

  “You’re going to do what you do. Doesn’t matter what I want.”

  That was the truth. “Well, considering he totally blew me off, maybe he’s not such a nice guy, after all. Or maybe what you told him scared him off. So I guess your evil plan to prevent us from finding true lurve worked.”

  “C’mon, Lise, I got your back. You know that.” Evan paused. “You know I don’t care what you do. Whatever. Some people like black licorice and some people don’t.”

  “Thank you. I love you.”

  “Gross,” my brother said. “Shut up.”

  In the bathroom before I left the coffee shop, I got a clue as to why I was in such a bad, weepy mood. In high school, Alicia’s mom had still referred to periods as “the curse.” I totally felt cursed just then, cramping and bleeding and bloated and emotional. As I washed my hands, I caught sight of the rabbit on the inside of my wrist, and I let myself touch it briefly, just once.

  George had always brought me chocolate ice cream when I felt this way.

  And then I was crying again, deep and gasping sobs I stifled with the back of my hand while I prayed nobody was waiting too long on the other side of the door.

  CHAPTER 21

  I could’ve canceled my rendezvous with Esteban. Should have, maybe, considering how I felt, physically. But it was how I felt mentally that kept me from calling it off.

  I did prepare him, though, when he called me the morning before our evening rendezvous. “Just to let you know, my lady garden is in full bloom.”

  We’d talked about it before—fucking during my period was nothing I’d ever wanted to try, though Esteban had said more than once he wouldn’t mind. Ask it of him, and he would comply.

  That was why I liked him, after all.

  He laughed. “I’ll come prepared for whatever you want. I’m already tingling with anticipation.”

  “Me, too. I’m looking forward to it.” The words were out before I knew to stop them—once said, impossible to call back. I meant it. I just hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

  He sounded pleased. “Kisses, until later.”

  We said our goodbyes. I lay back on my bed, the heating pad not even coming close to doing what it was supposed to do. Ibuprofen didn’t help, either. The curse of womanhood, I thought with a sour, bitter sigh and pressed ungentle hands to my belly, thinking if I could rip my uteru
s out with my bare hands, that might be a lesser agony than this.

  Cranky, crampy, emotional. I blamed that for the reason I took up my phone to log in to the email account I hadn’t used in years except to store all my saved messages from George. The pictures he’d sent—his socks, his sandwiches, his smiles. The buckle of the belt I’d bought him, a snapshot that should’ve meant nothing but had me fighting an indrawn breath that wanted to become a sob.

  I’m no masochist, but there was no doubting that I took some sort of twisted pleasure from hurting myself this way. Over and over. So desperate to cling to the memories of how he’d made me feel that I would gladly suffer this pain if only to have a moment’s bliss of remembering.

  It was bad enough to look at the messages and pictures, the screenshots of our conversations, but it was the final photo of the two of us that tipped me over the edge. Us, together, smiling as though there was nothing in the world that could make either of us happier than to be with each other.

  I’d looked at the photo a hundred times if I’d looked once. That and the one I’d taken the first night we met. How many people have a picture of both the very first and very last times they were together? I hadn’t known in the first that I’d ever see him again; I hadn’t known in the second photo that I never would.

  And, because I was stupid and melancholy, because I was hurting and hormonal, because I was in love, I emailed him the picture along with a message.

  This is a picture of two people who are ridiculously happy when they are together.

  One of them thinks that state of ridiculous happiness would extend into the kitchen at dinnertime and in the morning bathroom routine and at the grocery store and on road trips and during thunderstorms and bill paying and laundry and arguments and watching TV and being sick and during holidays and making love on clean sheets and using the Crock-Pot and in the backseat of a taxi at four in the morning after pancakes, and even at an amusement park in August, although that is its own level of hell.

  The other one is you.

  I’d sent dozens, no, hundreds of messages, but in three, almost four, years, I had never emailed him. Unlike the agony and ecstasy of being able to see that he’d received and read my text message, I would have no way of knowing if he’d opened an email. But I knew he would read it, just as I knew he would not reply, just as I knew it might hurt him a little even though really, I wanted it to hurt him a lot.

  I wanted him to ache and burn and mourn and yearn and grieve for me the way I was helpless to stop myself from doing for him, but I knew he never would.

  CHAPTER 22

  Esteban and I pulled into the parking lot at the same time. Usually he texted me the hotel room number ahead of time and I met him there. Seeing him get out of his car, I didn’t get out of mine. We wouldn’t walk in together. It wasn’t like that for us, and never had been. Instead, I sat in my car looking uselessly at my phone, pretending to wait for Esteban’s message but really waiting to see if an email reply from George had somehow managed to sneak through while I was driving. Esteban rapped on the window a few minutes later.

  His smile, oh, his smile.

  “Here,” he said and slipped a hotel key into my hand when I rolled down the window. “Meet you upstairs.”

  I could’ve said that unexpected meeting, that skew in our routine, or even my relentlessly awful period were what changed the tone of our rendezvous, and I wouldn’t have been lying. It was all of those things, but it was also my stupid email, still unanswered, that made it hard for me to shrug off the outside world the way I’d done for all our other dates. I tried, though. Of course I did. It wasn’t Esteban’s fault that I was in a bad mood—if anything, seeing him lifted something inside me, even if only the tiniest bit.

  “Leave it,” I told him when we were in the room and he started to unpack his bag. I’d always made him lay out whatever it was he’d brought, and I knew that was why he hesitated, but that three seconds of hesitation before he nodded and complied clenched my jaw. “Take off your clothes.”

  His hands were already moving to the buttons of his shirt, though I saw the twist of his mouth and flash of something uncertain in his eyes. Esteban stripped out of his shirt and laid it neatly on the chair. He left the T-shirt beneath to work at his belt and zipper, but I stopped him.

  “Shirt off.” I sat in the armchair, one leg crossed high over the other to allow my skirt to ride up, showing off the gartered stockings I wore beneath.

  I wanted to be in flannel jammies. But the clothes were part of this—part of it for him. Most of it for me. The heels that made me three inches taller than him, the stockings, the vintage-style garters, the sleek wrap dress that came undone with one single tug. The clothes gave me power, and tonight I needed that more than ever, so instead of comfy sweats and a carton of ice cream, here I was.

  Esteban reached over his shoulder to pull off his T-shirt, folding that neatly, as well, and putting it on the chair. He stood in front of me, his jeans shifted low on his lean hips. He looked, as he always did, at the shadow between my thighs. I watched his throat work as he swallowed. I eyed the growing bulge in his pants, and waited for that answering tug inside me that began when I saw him getting turned on. His fingers curled slightly at his sides then relaxed. His tongue slid along his lower lip; his teeth dented it briefly. He met my eyes.

  Waiting.

  I did tingle, then, at the sight of his face. I could order him to his knees. Tell him to put his mouth on my pussy, right here in this chair. Through my panties or not. Period or not. And he would do it, I knew he would, because Esteban, unlike that other man, always, always, always fucking gave me what I wanted.

  I didn’t want to think about Niall, who’d blown me off so casually. And I definitely didn’t want to think about George any longer. That bridge was burned. Suddenly angry—at both of them, at myself for letting it still hurt, at the world, at everything—I lifted a foot and pressed the heel of it into Esteban’s bare, muscled belly. Not hard enough to hurt, though it wouldn’t take much pressure to bruise him with the stiletto.

  He drew in a breath, blinking rapidly. “Oh…”

  “Hush.” Neither of us moved. I couldn’t keep this position very long. It looked good, but stretched me in ways that would’ve been uncomfortable even without the exploding uterus. I pushed for a second, making him sigh, and took my foot away. “Come here.”

  He did at once. Obedient. Willing. Eager, in fact, for whatever I was going to do. I grabbed him by the hips, just above the denim, and held him still so I could lean forward and kiss the spot I’d poked. The flesh there was red, not broken. It wouldn’t be permanently marked. Still, I kissed it then let the tip of my tongue stroke along that tiny spot. His muscles leaped under my mouth, his belly warm and smooth, his skin fragrant and smelling of soap and desire.

  “Take off your pants.” My voice hitched. Arousal. Emotion. It didn’t matter. I gave the command, and he obeyed. That was how it worked with us. It was what I wanted.

  Right then, it was what I needed.

  Esteban stepped back to unbuckle his belt. His button, his zipper. He pushed the denim over his hips and thighs and stepped out of it. Without waiting for me to tell him, he took his socks off, too. But not the briefs. His fingers hooked in the elastic, but he didn’t push them down. He looked at me, waiting, and oh, God, there was that moment when I knew finally I was going to lose myself in this and him. When everything inside me coiled, and the edges of the world went a little red, a little blurry. When I was in control.

  “Let me see you,” I said in a low voice.

  I delighted in the ripple of gooseflesh that rose immediately on his arms when I said that, and in how he trembled, just slightly. Esteban eased the elastic of his briefs over his hips, releasing his cock inch by delicious inch, and I lost myself in admiration of it as I always did.

  He stood nak
ed in front of me as he’d done dozens of times before, and I was no less moved this time than any of the others. Esteban gave himself to me. Sometimes I took him with a little cruelty. Sometimes with humor and fondness and affection. Tonight was the first time I ever did with desperation.

  He was already hard. I took him in my hand, using his cock as a lead to pull him closer. Still seated, I looked up at him as I stroked the shaft, easing close to the head but not actually touching it. Stroke, stroke. I’d watched him making himself come enough times to know how he liked it.

  When his eyes fluttered closed, I gripped his cock hard at the base. “Look at me.”

  He did. “Yes, miss.”

  As almost always, a clear bead of precome was dripping. I used my thumb to swipe at it, then tucked my thumb in my mouth. I would never pass up the chance to taste him. He shuddered at that, and my insides clenched at how lovely he was when he was reacting to me.

  “I like to taste you.”

  “Thank you, miss.” His voice, raspy and low, sent a thrill through me.

  “Would you like me to taste you again?”

  He blinked, looking uncertain for a second. “Yes…?”

  There’d been many times we’d laughed about the things we did. Let’s face it, ass-in-the-air is a position that leads to laughter, if you’re going to be anything but hardcore about it. It was part of what I enjoyed so much about being with Esteban, that playfulness even when we were doing strange and beautiful things.

  I didn’t laugh this time. Not looking away from his eyes, my fist still gripping him tight, I leaned to let my tongue stroke along the edge of his cock head, then up to catch the shining droplets of his arousal.

  His hips bumped forward. A low cry eased out of his throat. His hands went behind his back, crossed at the wrists, though I hadn’t told him to do that. It pleased me, though, that he knew just what I wanted, even if I hadn’t said so. I licked him again then took him in my mouth, sucking gently even as my grip on the base of his cock kept him from thrusting.