My fingers snake into his hair, drag down his neck, his pulse humming under my touch. My mind feels like it went straight through a shredder and into a kaleidoscope. His fingers skim up the inside of my thigh until they can go no higher, his eyes watching the progress with an almost drunken sheen.
My knees fall open for him. His jaw tightens as he runs his hand over me, featherlight at first and then with more pressure. His fingers slip under the lace, my hips lifting into the motion, no sound in the room but our ragged breath.
“You have the red splotches, Nora,” he teases, drawing his lips over my throat. “Are you mad at me?”
“Furious,” I pant as his mouth drags lower, one of his hands working the top buttons of my blouse loose. He tugs my bra down until the cool air meets my skin.
“Tell me how I can make it up to you,” he murmurs against my chest.
I arch back to give him more of me. “That’s a start.”
He draws me between his lips and I try not to cry out when a low groan rumbles through him. His hand is under my skirt again, his breath catching against my chest. “You fucking undo me,” he says.
I pull him closer, needing more of him. We’re more or less flat on the table now, the inside of my thigh against his hip. I bury my mouth against his throat to stifle the sounds he’s drawing out of me.
I feel totally out of control, and what’s more, I can see how much he likes seeing me like this, and it’s only fanning the flame. I want to be out of control. I want him to see me like this and know he’s the reason why. His hand roams down my side until it reaches the spike of my heel, hitching my leg higher, coiling it around his hips as we try to get closer.
If we had anywhere more private to go, we’d already be gone.
“I want to go down on you so badly,” he rasps into my mouth, my heart spiking.
“I want go down on you,” I tell him.
He gives a low laugh. “Everything’s a competition with you.”
I slip my hands beneath his waistband, all of my focus narrowing to the feeling of him, the sound of his breath turning jagged when my grip tightens, his hips shifting to let me have more of him.
I have never enjoyed this so much. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed this, period, but I’ve also never seen Charlie so uninhibited and I’m drunk on the power.
“God,” he says, “I need to be inside you.”
Everything in me pulls taut. “Okay.” I nod furiously, and he laughs again.
“No, you’re right,” he says. “Not here.”
“We don’t have many options,” I point out.
“When we finally do this, Nora,” he says, straightening away from me, his hands slipping my buttons back into buttonholes as easily as he undid them, “it’s not going to be on a library table, and it’s not going to be on a time crunch.” He smooths my hair, tucks my blouse back into my skirt, then takes my hips in his hands and guides me off the table, catching me against him. “We’re going to do this right. No shortcuts.”
23
I LEAVE THE LIBRARY on shaky legs, heart racing like I’m forty minutes deep into spin class. I’ve gone hours without checking my phone, and the usual emails have accumulated — one from my boss, who rarely honors the concept of the weekend, and a slew from clients who feel similarly — along with a string of texts from Libby.
I squint against the sunlight to see the pictures she sent of the progress she made today. The Goode Books café now looks snug and cozy, and the window display of SUMMER FAVORITES is lined in twinkly lights. In most of the pictures, Sally stands off to one side, beaming, but in one wonky shot that includes a good portion of someone’s thumb, Libby stands with arms flung wide and a huge smile on her face, silky pink bun lopsided atop her head.
Her heart-shaped face looks more or less the same as when she was fourteen years old and got accepted into the high school art show: proud, confident, capable. Even with all the weirdness between us, it makes me so happy to see her like that.
Looks amazing! I tell her. You’re a wunderkind!! Can’t even tell it’s the same place!!!
Thanks! she replies. Everything all right? Not like you to be late.
I was supposed to meet her at Poppa Squat’s ten minutes ago. I type back, All good. Be there in a minute.
I just have a call to make first. I stop at one of the green benches along the street, the metal hot from baking in the sun, and dig through my purse for the phone number Shepherd gave me. Maybe it’s old-school of me to follow up with someone to let him know I’m not interested, but Shepherd’s a nice guy. He deserves better than long-form ghosting.
The line rings three times before someone picks up, a woman’s voice saying, “Dent, Hopkins, and Morrow. How may I help you?”
After a second of confusion, I say, “I’m looking for Shepherd?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, “there’s no one here by that name.”
“Um, can I — who is this?” I say.
“This is Tyra,” she says, “at the law offices of Dent, Hopkins, and Morrow.”
“I must . . . have the wrong number.” I hang up and feel around in my purse until I find a receipt with chicken-scratch numbers on it. This is the one Shepherd gave me. The number I just called . . . must’ve been the one Sally gave me. For your sister. I dug up the number she asked for.
I could use some food to soak up the gallon of coffee I drank today, but it’s not just over-caffeination making my hands shake as I type the name of the law office into a Google search.
When the results appear, it’s like someone injected ice into my veins.
Dent, Hopkins & Morrow: Family Law Attorneys
Libby asked Sally . . . for the number of a divorce lawyer? For an instant, the street, the stone walkway, the pale blue sky, the world feels like it’s being shredded into ribbons. My lungs are overinflated, something large and heavy blocking anything from getting in or out.
I’m back in our old apartment, in those terrible weeks after Mom died, watching Libby fall apart, holding her tight while she sobs, until she can’t breathe, until she’s gagging.
I’m drowning in her pain, my own hardening, calcifying into my heart.
I don’t want to be alone, she sometimes gasps, or else, We’re alone. We’re all alone, Nora.
I’m holding her tight, burying my mouth in her hair and promising she’s wrong, that she’ll never be alone.
I have you, I tell her. I’ll always have you.
All those nights I jarred awake and found it all still there waiting for me: Mom gone. No money. Libby breaking.
Sometimes she cried in her sleep. Other times I woke while she was in the bathroom, and the cold spot in the bed beside me sent me into a panic.
In those days, pain waited like a shadowy monster, towering over our bed, and instead of shrinking night by night, it grew, feeding on us, getting fat with our grief.
Early one morning, we lay wrapped under the blankets and I smoothed my sister’s strawberry hair, and she whispered, I just don’t want to be here anymore. I want it to stop.
And that same cold panic grew too big for my body, swelling, throbbing angrily.
Without thinking about money or work or school or any of the millions of practicalities for which I’d become responsible, I said, Then let’s go somewhere.
And we did.
Bought round-trip, middle-of-the-week, red-eye tickets to Los Angeles. Checked into a seedy motel whose dead bolt didn’t work and wedged the desk chair under the knob while we slept each night.