The party was still going strong, but I’d had enough. Too much drama for one evening. If I hadn’t had a few too many glasses of wine, screw the drive, I’d have gone home to sleep in my own bed. As it was, I was coming down from the adrenaline high and could barely manage not to slur my words.
“You know I can’t use that one. Too complicated.”
He eyed me. “Are you drunk?”
“No. Just tired.” I hugged him, surprising him for a second, I think, given the way he jumped. Only for a second, then his arms went around me. Held me tight until I pushed him away. “I’m going to bed.”
“Already?”
“I’m wiped out!” I knuckled his side and Patrick tried not to laugh, but gave in. “What is your problem, anyway? Why’d you come in here like the back end of your broom was on fire?”
My joke annoyed him. “Very funny. I was looking for you, that’s all. You disappeared.”
“Uh-huh.” I yawned behind my hand. “Well, here I am. No big deal, Patrick, sheesh.”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Liv. Is that so wrong? Making sure my best girl’s all right?”
“You haven’t called me that in a long time.” My fingers, trapped in his, twisted. He let me go.
“I mean it, and you know it.”
If you’ve ever loved someone for too long to stop, you know how I felt just then. Standing in the kitchen Patrick shared with someone else, bleary from exhaustion and red wine, I refused to give in to melancholy. I kissed his cheek instead and patted his ass the way I always did.
“I’m going to bed.”
I went up the back stairs. Narrow and steep, with a sharp bend halfway up, they were difficult to navigate even clearheaded. The sound of the music faded but the bass thumpa-thumpa continued as I climbed the stairs and went through what Patrick and Teddy called “the back room,” which had one door leading in and another leading out, and down the long, narrow hall. Like the stairway, the hall had a jog in it, sharp to the left. I loved old houses for their nooks and crannies, and this was no exception. It had been cut into apartments when Patrick and Teddy moved in, but they’d been renovating back into a single dwelling. I touched the wallpaper in the hall, revealed when they’d stripped off a layer of tacky 1970s paneling. In the dark I couldn’t see the tiny sprigs of lavender flowers against the pale yellow background, but I knew they were there.
Once I’d taken a photo of the view down this hall. The light from the window at the end had sketched shadows beneath the light fixtures, which weren’t fancy enough to be considered antique, just old. I’d captured a misty, fuzzy figure in the corner, something like the shape of a woman in a long dress, her hair piled high on her head. Trick of the light, perhaps, or optical illusion. It was just out of focus enough for me to never be sure. But nights like this, when I thought I might stumble from weariness or too much cheer, I imagined I felt her comforting hand helping me along.
I went from doorway to bed in a few steps, shedding my clothes and diving onto the soft mattress with its mound of covers and pillows. I tossed them on the floor without ceremony, knowing Patrick would squawk, but too tired to pile them neatly on the trunk beneath the window. I reached to the nightstand and ruff led around inside, past the box of tissues, the lip balm, and found the small square box of earplugs I kept in there the way I kept a spare box of “girl” things under the bathroom sink.
In half a minute I had blessed silence, though an occasional surge of bass from downstairs still vibrated my stomach a little. I pulled on an oversize T-shirt from the bottom nightstand drawer and snuggled beneath the heavy comforter, the extra pillow tucked firmly between my knees to alleviate the pressure on my aching back. I couldn’t hear my sigh, though the dull thud of my heartbeat still sounded in my ears.
I couldn’t sleep.
My sophomore year of college, I shared a room with three other girls. The dorm I’d chosen had been overbooked. I’d been given the choice of living in a different building, farther away from my classes and the cafeteria, or moving into a converted study lounge for the semester. It hadn’t been so bad. The larger room meant we’d all had a bit more space, and the lounge was in the corner of the building, so instead of the one small window the regular rooms had, we had four large panes of glass. The downside was the complete and utter lack of privacy. Forget about having a guy over; it was impossible even to masturbate without an audience.
I don’t know about the other girls, one of whom was a devout Christian whose missionary position had nothing to do with sex, but I have always been, and suspect I always will be, an avid fan of getting myself off. I’d learned the trick back then of rubbing off on a pillow tucked between my legs, just this way. Of using the slow, steady push of inner muscles to bring myself close, slowly, and finishing myself off against the pillow. I hadn’t come that way in a long time—I lived alone now and could strip down naked and do it on my dining-room table, if I wanted. Not that I ever did.
But I hadn’t forgotten how to do it, how to press and release and inch my hips forward and back, just so. I gave half a second’s thought to embarrassment and tossed it aside in the name of orgasm. After all, I hadn’t burst in on them, or sneaked up to peek through a window. The show on the porch had been dropped in front of me like nondenominational holiday gift, and I’ve never been one to return a present just because it didn’t fit quite right.
The memory of Alex Kennedy’s groan slid over me in the darkness and straight to the pit of my belly, inside me. Down to my clit. I shifted ever so slightly against the pillow. How must it feel to be the reason he made that sound?
I was suddenly tipping closer to the edge. I shifted again, tightening my inner muscles and holding, then releasing. Slow, sweet waves of climax began deep inside me. I turned my face into my pillow and bit the softness to stifle my own groan. I rode the waves of pleasure with my eyes closed tight.
Of all the pictures my mind had taken that night, his face was the one I could still see.
The house was quiet when I woke. I stretched under the weight of the blankets. The tip of my nose and cheeks had gone cold, and that didn’t bode well for how the rest of me would feel should I venture out of my warm cave. Patrick and Teddy’s house was old and heated unevenly, and I’d forgotten to open the register the night before. This could mean only my room was chilly, or that the entire house was shiver-inducing; it really depended on what they’d done with the thermostat before they went to bed.
My stomach rumbled. My bladder, the most effective alarm clock I would ever have, reminded me of all the wine I’d drunk. Worse, my mind insisted on replaying the activities of the night before in vivid black on black.
Had I really made myself come while thinking about Alex Kennedy getting a blow job? It would seem I had. I stretched again, feeling softness beneath me, warmth around me, the brush of smooth fabric on my belly where my T-shirt had bunched up. I waited for shame, or at least embarrassment, but nope. Nada. I was thoroughly depraved.
This more than anything got my ass out of bed, because one could really be appropriately depraved only with an empty bladder and a full stomach. I took care of the first easily enough, skip-hopping down the cold, bare wooden floor of the hall and into the bathroom, where I could actually see my breath, and the hot water from the sink scalded my hands. I gave a longing look at the bathtub, an old-fashioned claw-foot tub Patrick hated and I coveted.
Downstairs, the kitchen was gloriously warm. Heat flooded up from the open grate in the floor from the furnace directly below. In another twenty minutes I’d probably be sweating, but for now I gloried in it. I also reveled in the shelves of leftovers from the party the night before, everything tucked away in plastic containers and stacked neatly according to size and shape. Patrick’s work. I could only guess how late he’d stayed up, tidying, before Teddy forced him to bed. On the upside of that, I could be sure none of the food would give me food poisoning. Patrick was a stickler for keeping