All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Title from Nerve; summary from Stephen McLeod. Please send feedback. Gone Without Leaving Violet
She's still at work. She wishes she wasn't so drunk.
The room is too busy, filled with sparkle and noise and the snap of the red and white banner overhead. At the end of his toast, the President said, "Take that thing down before Quebec calls us and asks to secede!" But the flag is still flying, and the laughter and applause is still echoing. Loudly.
The glittering beads on her dress make her wince. C.J. spreads a napkin over her knees, stares down at that. Her head hurts; her stomach hurts. She blames Abbey's wine, the cork, the little ravioli filled with pâté.
"You think they have a special book for these recipes?" she asks. "The Joy of Pretentious Cooking?"
No one answers. She looks up. She's alone at the table.
"Oh," she says. "Great."
Sam was sitting across from her a moment ago, but he's defected. Back to his office, she guesses, to obsess more about the latest pet project. The super-collider. She misses Sam, and she misses when he was seeking something bigger, broader, nobler than these X-files. Hard not to suspect that he's decided the crackpots are the only noble ones left.
He's gone, and Josh has yet to sit down tonight. He's dancing with Amy now; together they are awkward, but smiling, even though he keeps stepping on her feet. Josh looks over Amy's head now and grins at Donna, who's standing by the wall with her chin up, smiling back.
This is so teenage, couples and wallflowers, and she wishes she had someone to say that to. As she watches Josh ruin Amy's strappy shoes, she keeps a half-smile on her own face, frozen there though her lips feel dry and her head is heavy. People nod to her, wave at her, and any second she's sure one of Abbey's guests will drag her into a conversation about child labor, or maybe minimum wage, or God forbid, foreign policy. Holding her accountable for opinions she doesn't hold, words she never said.
She watches the guest of honor leave the room with Leo. It's not her birthday, but C.J. feels older herself, knowing they're going back to the office to talk in voices stripped of the celebratory tone. This is still a workplace. She wonders whether Abbey is glad or sorry for the amount of wine she's consumed.
Work. Think about work. Think about--
Toby drops into the chair next to hers out of nowhere. Out of the sky. She turns, half-hiding her face with her shoulder, and appraises him like a jeweler or like a john. His face is relaxed, almost blurry, drunk. She's not sure whether it's relief or apprehension pricking her spine, so she looks back down at her lap. She wants him to speak first, to set the tone. He won't, not tonight. She curls her fingers around the edge of her napkin and says, "How was Marbury?"
There's a glass of champagne in front of him, and he rescues it from going stale, downs it fast. "Circular," he says.
"Not the last time I saw him," she says thoughtfully. "The last time I saw him he was kind of rangy and--"
"His logic. Not his build."
She tosses her head. "You've got a bubble in your beard."
Most of the napkins on the table are crumpled, stained; people have marked them. He searches the table, gives up, and his hand drops below the tablecloth and pulls the napkin slowly off her knees. To her credit, she doesn't gasp, though goosebumps surface traitorously on her arms. He wipes his mouth and glances upward. "What's with the flag?"
"Donna found out she was Canadian." It occurs to her that he's missed a turn tonight, a twist that happened in a small room with four women and yards of expensive fabric. She starts to brief him out of habit. "The Secret Service found out, actually. That the place she was born is in Canada now."
His eyebrows quirk. "And she was so relieved that she scaled the rafters?"
"I'm trying to tell you." He doesn't apologize for interrupting. She didn't expect it. "It's a--what do you call it? A tribute. That's all. It's--for being honest."
"She's gonna get run out of Washington on a rail."
She smiles. She can still smile at comments about the honesty of politicians and lawyers, but it's an intellectual smile, an appreciation of the theoretical humor. Which is exactly what he intended when he said it. She crosses her ankles primly under the table and watches other people moving, mingling. Her chair grows more uncomfortable by the second, a trap that itches to spring shut with her in its teeth. "Anyway, they played the Canadian national anthem."
He rests his chin on the heel of his hand, habitual gesture, but he doesn't scan the room. As much as his eyes can focus right now, they are focused on her. "Hmm."
"Having a hard time following this, are you?"
"You have no idea." His hand wanders, fingers drumming a rhythm on the corner of her chair, a Morse code message vibrating into her bones. Touching her without touching. It's not going to be enough for long. He says, "Marbury surprised me tonight."
Marbury's with the President now, ankle-deep in what looks as intense and silly as a debate in a sports bar. She guesses they're arguing the minor points of the Magna Carta, or witch trials, or Roman imperial lineage. She's grateful she's not being forced to listen. Her gaze drifts over to Donna, who's talking to Ed and Larry now, trying too obviously not to watch the dance floor. C.J. nods. "Sometimes people are more than you think they are."
"Am I in trouble?"
She assumes a blank expression, a face of unshaped clay. "Why on earth--"
"Because lately." He picks up a fork and twirls it in his fingers, more like a weapon than a toy. She feels like something on a platter, the last bite of the pompous ravioli, waiting to be speared. And she stops herself from thinking about his mouth. He continues without completing the thought. "I'm asking. That's all."
"Now you've asked." Her tone is sweet, unaffected, to match her face.
"Yeah." He sets the fork down on top of the napkin. He's running out of things to do with his hands.
"I should get up and mingle," she says. "There are people here we might not get a chance to see in a while, and with eight months to go, we should take advantage."
"You don't think they're just here for the photo op?"
"No. I don't think we're doing well enough for that." She smoothes a wrinkle out of the tablecloth. "This is a meat market."
He shrugs, dismissing it because there's no satisfying reply. "Anyway, the good mingling's already taken." With the muted groan of the old, the invalid, and the wasted, he stands up. He takes hold of the back of her chair. "Come on."
"And?"
"Dance."
She tips her head back so she can look at him as if she's looking down. He shifts his weight, shoulders on a slant. There was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house, she sing-songs mentally. She's drunk. He's waiting. Hovering, so that when she stands, there will barely be breathing room between them. If she stands. She doesn't have to, and there's no good reason.
She stands up and follows him away from the table.
The music changes from a Cole Porter song she recognized to one she doesn't. Slow, floating, familiar. All the singers who could have done it justice are dead. Toby places his left hand politely on her waist. She pushes it away; it's too late for him to decide he's going to lead tonight. He seems to understand; he switches hands and lets her take over.
Around them, the room does not blur; it just becomes irrelevant. She moves closer to him, mostly because it's easier to turn that way. "You didn't tell me what Marbury said."
"About Brendan McGann?"
She shakes her head. "I heard what he said about Brendan McGann. He was trumpeting it to the ceiling. Watch your elbow." They pass Becky Reeseman, and her husband who is young and handsome in an inoffensive golden way. "You didn't tell me what he said that surprised you."
"Ah." It tickles her collarbone when he exhales; when he speaks his words are tangible. "It wasn't anything he said."
He's not going to explain it, so she decides not to push. They dance. She's taller, and leading, and it does remind her of being a teenager--the clumsiness, the inequity. Toby wouldn't appreciate this, and he does dance better than any boy she knew when she was fifteen; she'll give him that much credit. She says, "You know what this reminds me of?"
"What?"
"Andi's birthday party. The year after we met. Remember?"
His left hand tightens in her right. "How does this remind you of that?"
"You were there, I was there, it was a birthday party--it's not that much of a stretch, buddy."
He doesn't remind her that he didn't dance with her then, couldn't have, wouldn't have. That she spent most of that evening uncomfortable on the sofa, making friends with Andi's friends. That she wasn't sure why he'd invited her at all. He doesn't state these things but they are present, fixed points like stars in the space around and between them. As if he's trying to eliminate that space, he pulls her closer. His right hand travels toward her back, to the edge of the dress and then over it. His fingertips draw tiny circles, applying gentle pressure to the bare skin.
"Remember when parties used to be fun?" she murmurs.
"You're not having fun now?"
Though she's a good enough dancer, she'll never entirely trust her feet; like unruly children, they pretend to follow her orders and then run off when she relaxes her guard. He'd probably catch her, or else she'd topple them both. But so far she's vertical, the floor securely under her, the flag above. "Off and on," she says.
"Because you're the one," he says, "who usually has fun for both of us."
She laughs at him, drawing it out, teasing. "So that's what I've been doing here all this time?"
He sighs. "You used to know."
To deflect the sting, she shows him her frosty half-smile and looks over his head. Abbey's returned, bringing some strange gravitational pull with her. The crowd flows toward her to start saying goodnight, and she beams, gracious and grateful. C.J. swallows. "Slow down."
"We're not moving very fast." He scrunches his forehead. "Are we?"
She wavers a little, or the floor does. The hollow of Toby's palm fitting neatly, naturally over her spine. "Slow down," she says again.
"Marbury likes Lagavulin," he says.
She hates that she's learned, simply by keeping him company, the qualities of whiskey she doesn't drink. "We had some very good wine."
"The Willamette Valley whatever?"
"Well, that was good too." The music spins them. A strand of her hair catches on his beard. She brushes it away and rests her wrist on his shoulder. "No, there's been--you missed a lot."
"I can tell." He looks up briefly. "Everyone got drunk and sang the Canadian national anthem."
Under her breath and against the music, she sings: "O, Canada. Terre de nos aïeux..." He blinks at her. She shrugs as best she can while dancing. "My father's always been a big hockey fan."
His right hand slides downward, from supportive to suggestive, too slowly to be accidental. Lower, and then two fingers dip into the back of her dress. She doesn't squirm, refuses to let herself squirm. Instead she relaxes into the touch, tapping her fingers lightly as snowflakes on the back of his neck.
"People are staring," she says, not sure whether it's true. He murmurs something she can't make out, though the sound makes her throat tingle. "Hmm?"
"You should be used to that."
"Used to what?"
"Being the woman in the room people are staring at."
It's something she never gets used to, the way she's gotten used to his cigars or his warm, relentless touch. She wants to protest that it wasn't always this way. That she sat on a sofa once and watched him hold Andi's arm, whisper in Andi's ear, while she fidgeted with her dress and felt a headache seep through her skull. That tonight it's the First Lady people are watching, and yet it makes no difference. Toby looks at her the way he's looking at her and it's exhausting. And it still tempts her to sink into his arms. Her knees are embarrassingly weak, yielding like water.
"Not here," she says.
He moves his hand up, and his head back to study her face. "You look tired."
"Well, there's good old seductive Toby." She summons all the chilliness she can. "That's what really puts the icing on the cake."
"It wasn't supposed to be seductive."
"You're telling me."
"I'm asking you."
She already knows she could push him away, crawl back to her office and sleep with a pillow over her face. He wouldn't say anything about it, and Carol would appear with fresh clothes first thing in the morning. It's her choice, always. "Share a cab," she says.
"Share or split?" he asks.
"Share."
They dance out the last few seconds of the song. Separating, he moves his hands briefly, dangerously, to her hips. He walks away, and she looks around the room instead of after him. Donna's gone; Josh and Amy, too. Abbey's caught in a cluster of well-wishers, inaccessible, walled in. No one was staring, after all. C.J. leaves the party without saying goodbye.
Somehow it's difficult to walk the halls she paces all day, every day, difficult to keep from crashing into walls or collapsing into corners. Eyes half-closed, fingers trailing along the wall, she makes it to her office. To her desk. To her chair. Names and phone numbers are scattered over the desk blotter, in her most careful handwriting: Chinese and Italian takeout, interoffice codes, the cab company.
The dispatcher makes her repeat the location three times, and she starts to wonder whether she's slurring her words. Once the call's made, she leans forward, rests her forehead on the surface of the desk, lets her mind wander.
They have always been able to divide their attention. So for several years she was able to share drinks and meals and space with Toby and Andi, trying to understand them as a couple. She felt excluded sometimes from their unity, envious, but not angry. Her own ex-boyfriends were smart like Alan, cute like Luke or convenient like Tad--they took her too seriously, or not seriously at all. Toby used to make fun of them, on long-distance calls or across pool tables, but it was never anything to take to heart.
Although she takes everything he says to heart.
But she can't remember when that started. They were careless about each other during the campaign, and casual, and capable of leaving each other alone. Two years ago Danny was in and out of her office, letting her kiss him when she shouldn't. It was foolish, and a failure, but it was easy. Just a few months ago, there was Will Sawyer in her doorway, winking, saying: "You know, you've been thought of in places no American woman's ever been thought of before."
She laughed and didn't ask exactly which places those were. But it could have been another simple thing, like Danny had been. Like Ann Stark could have been for Toby. There's been jealousy, but she's beginning to believe jealousy is easier to live with.
Before he says a word, before she looks up, she realizes Toby has shuffled into her doorway. She lets him stare at the top of her head for a little while before she says, "Ten to fifteen minutes."
"How'd you know?"
"They told me."
"That I was standing here."
"Spider sense." She lifts her head, tucking a hand under her chin. "What've you been doing with yourself?"
"With my--nothing." He takes his hands out of his pockets. His shoulder bumps into the frame of her open door as if it's refusing to let him approach her. "I checked out with Sam, that's all."
"Yeah? Do you have any idea what he's doing with that physics thing? For starters, what a super-collider is?"
"I've never been mistaken for Mr. Wizard," he says.
She sighs, wishing that they understood Sam's thing better. Wishing that they could be what Sam's become, infatuated with these causes, fighting passionately and far away from the war. Standing up, she bangs her knee into the edge of a drawer, cuts a wince off with her teeth. She grasps the narrow strap of her beaded purse. "I need some air. Let's wait outside."
They leave her office, not touching but conspicuously together. She finds herself slouching, shortening her stride.
Outside, the air is barbed with chilled droplets of mist, tiny and brilliant as the beads on her dress. He reaches for her and she turns sideways, letting her elbow block him, just enough to create distance. She cracks a smile. "I forgot my coat."
"It's not so bad." He strokes the inside of her elbow with his thumb. "It's spring."
"Not quite." She turns to squint down the road, past the lights to see if the cab's coming. He looks, too. They stand this way for a while, and then a while longer.
"Did you tell them this corner?" he asks finally.
"Yes." The 's' twists away from her tongue. She tries again. "Yes."
"I believed you the first time." He chuckles and then stops as if he's going to kiss her. She closes her eyes, waits, opens them again to find that he's stepped back. "There is no present or future," he intones, "only the past happening over and over again--now."
She blinks and presses her fingers to her upper arms, kneading the goosebumps out of the flesh. "...Marbury?"
"Eugene O'Neill. A quote. What do you think?"
"I think the cab's not coming," she says. "What should we do?"
He hesitates, eyes steady on her face. He starts to walk.
She follows him along the perimeter, past the greening lawn where every now and then someone sets himself on fire. "You think there's anyone left inside who'd give us a ride?"
"I don't think anyone who's still in there is coming out."
They round a corner and their cars are in sight: her midnight blue Nissan and the silly, small green Dodge he always parks too close. He reaches into his jacket and she hears a jingling sound. "We could sleep here," she suggests, knowing it wouldn't be a first for him either. In the morning, washing newsprint off their faces, lurking to pounce on the first pot of coffee.
"You want to?" He extends his hand. The keys lie in his open palm, bright as shards of a smashed mirror.
For a minute she considers turning on her heel, leaving him behind. Then she reaches out to close his hand. "Fuck it," she says, and the words are crystalline and clear. She pulls her own keys from the little bag and unlocks the car doors, both sides, and they climb in.
The keys turn in her hand as they normally do, and the engine comes to purring artificial life. Fastening her seatbelt takes precision, like threading a needle. She shifts into drive without looking at Toby. Her shoulders are straight as an arrow on a compass, and she places her hands exactly at ten and two on the wheel. She releases the brake, steps on the gas. They start to move.
Under the wheels the wet road spools away, a black satin ribbon with white stitches down its center for a lifeline. She stays five miles below the speed limit, takes her turns wide and gradual. Sweat breaks out in the soft places between her fingers, under her breasts and behind her knees. Her teeth stab into her lower lip, cracking it, and now she's tasting blood, but her eyes do not stray. She's waiting for a crash and the shriek of crumpling metal, and trying to outrun it at a crawl. Toby opens his mouth to say something and she hisses through her teeth to hush him. Think about driving. Think about driving.
She reads every sign closely, double-checking to be sure she doesn't miss a turn. After a very long dark time, she reads the name of her street. She turns with more caution here than anywhere else, glancing compulsively in the mirrors as if there's something trailing them. Cruising slowly past her building, around the block; her neck is beginning to ache. She ignores it.
A parking space appears--a mirage? A miracle. It's real, and open enough for two cars. She angles in, swallowing the taste of metal and pain, easing almost imperceptibly from the gas to the brake. Reaches for the gearshift. They stop moving.
She shuts the engine off. Her hands fall into her lap, pale and trembling like baby birds out of the nest. She expects the windshield to shatter inward, a snowstorm of glass and a siren to lacerate the darkness. Nothing comes.
"That was stupid," she says. The words are winged by breath she didn't know she'd trapped in her lungs.
"Yeah." Toby reaches over--she flinches--and he releases the buckle of her seatbelt. His hand stays there by her hip, waiting for her to move. She doesn't.
"So stupid. Really. People--" Something drowns her out. A heartbeat. "Die, doing this."
He touches the artery in his throat, checking for a pulse. "We didn't."
"People we know have died because of this. You." The recollection is lightning-sudden: stone columns, stained-glass windows, the sting in her eyes. "You carried her coffin."
"I remember."
"Why'd you let me?"
He slumps a little, his eyes wide enough for guilt to walk in. There is no excuse. "Are you going to throw up?" he asks.
It's a question worth considering. Her mouth tastes of rotten fruit, and she's too warm for a March night with no coat. But she swallows, and her stomach does not cringe. "No."
"In that case." He plucks the keys from the ignition and drops them in her lap, between her hands. She curls her fingers around them and frees herself from the seatbelt. He gets out first, walks around the car, opens the door for her.
The air is cold and crystalline and damp. She looks at her shoes as she inches toward the sidewalk. "I'm about a foot away from the curb."
He's holding her arm now, depending on her as much as he's keeping her up. "Don't worry about that."
It's a command, and he can't command her now, outside of the workplace and the workday. She closes her mouth anyway. They struggle up the street. Her sleepy, bored doorman barely notices them passing. The elevator is waiting for them, silver doors standing parted like sentries. Inside, Toby releases her arm to run a finger straight down her spine. She jumps a little and peeks at him, ready to glare if he's grinning. He's looking vaguely at their blurred reflection in the metal, his face unreadable. But his hand is warm. They lean on each other, rising.
The key does not fit in the lock. The key does not fit in the lock because it's still the car key that she's clasping, and she hates herself for driving. Almost hates him for trusting her: he does, so much, trusts her to be present and to be herself. She wonders when that started to happen. She switches keys and opens the door. He walks in first.
By the time she's got the front door shut he's facing her, his knuckles grazing her tailbone, drawing her close for the kiss and then pushing her back. His sour-sweet tongue between her lips is a challenge, is a call. For a moment she wishes she'd lied, claimed nausea, and dismissed him by crawling into her bedroom. He shifts forward, kissing her throat now, a knee between hers and then closer. He smells of whiskey, heat, and smoke and ink, and she wants him. More than that: her body draws to his like blood to a needle.
He likes to undress her, and his hands often shake when he does it. The gown she's wearing was expensive, and she's not making half a million dollars a year anymore. She steps out of her shoes, hears herself say: "Be careful."
She guides his hands over her shoulders, helps him find the zipper, lifts the spangled skirt herself. There's nothing under it. He takes the gathers from her, pulling them taut across her waist like the seatbelt. Holding her in place. Her head is foggy and her vision, too, the lines of her own apartment spilling out and away--how could she have driven?--until she's lost them. He kisses her right kneecap gently, though his beard is rough, and upward. With each kiss he pulls back a little, looking to see whether he's left a mark. Over the ridge of her hipbone. Just below her navel.
The words shudder out of her before she can censor them: "We ought to be seeing other people."
Her voice is a tin cup rattled against iron bars. He's kneeling at her feet, looking up, eyebrows reaching for the place his hairline used to be. His mouth twitches; he might be about to laugh. She might be about to cry. He drops her dress. "Which other people?"
She shakes her head, hair swishing in front of her face. "That's not the point."
"I'm asking." He wipes his thumb across his mouth, pulls at his chin. Trying to make her think he's trying to be serious. "What are you gonna do, rekindle your sparkling liaison with Danny Concannon?"
"Toby."
"Have Abbey introduce you to a nice single doctor? While I'm, what, cutting a swath through the girls in the typing pool?"
She is aware that her hands are still clutching the door frame, that her arms are splayed wide. She folds them in defiance, in defense. "I'm not talking about picking people up."
"Then why the--"
It shows in his eyes then, for less than a second. Sheer terror. Vertigo.
He lowers his hand, close to her ankle. "C.J., you're not--this isn't..."
So she has to reply, "No."
She hates the way the word sounds like 'of course not,' hates his shoulders for slackening with relief. He tilts his head back further, looking ridiculous sitting there in a bow tie. "We're really having a conversation right now?"
"Right now," she says firmly. "Sparkling liaison?"
"Which other people?"
Jealousy won't let her name names, won't let her point him to the other women who'd willingly be next to him on nights like this. Pride won't let her count the doors she's closed behind her. So she shrugs and doesn't answer.
"There are rumors you have a thing with Sam," he says, smirking shamelessly now.
"There are rumors I have a thing with Leo, too."
His deadpan is perfect. "Do you?"
She lifts one eyebrow, a trick she copied from him years ago. "Yes. Yes, Toby, and my name is Electra, and please go to the kitchen and get me a melon-baller so I can gouge my eyes out. God!"
"Which--"
"Stop asking me that." She can't stand to hear it again. Not one more time. She uses her most practiced Press Room voice. "There are other people."
"Yes." The smirk wilts. "I suppose there are."
"Some days," she says. But there's not really a way to say it. He already knows that she's tired, that the water is deep, that he's tough on her. He's known that all the time. He trusts her to overcome it, as he overcomes exhaustion, irritation and impatience for her. She hopes she's not still shaking. "Some days I just want to go home from work."
He glances back at the rest of her apartment, still dark. The chaos is barely controlled. The debris of daily schedules and briefing memos litter her desk and her coffee table; there's dust, unrinsed coffee cups, empty water bottles. Her mother would disapprove. "I don't like to state the obvious, but you're home."
He loves to state the obvious, she knows, except when he's ignoring it completely. "No, Toby. In the entire time we've done this, I have never gone home from work."
"That's the job," he insists, tapping a finger near her instep. "You wouldn't be any different."
She bends forward a little, still using the door for support, trying to fish the right words from the whirlpool in her mind. "I told Abbey tonight that she's lucky, because she has this career and then she has a marriage and a family and a position of power. I told her that if someone took work away from me I don't have anything. I don't have a cat, Toby, and I don't have children, and it's not that I need those things. But I can't--" She breathes in and wipes the moisture off her forehead with the back of her hand. It doesn't help. "I used to have fun. And if you take work away from me, I really don't have anything."
"This is stupid."
"Maybe it's my night to be stupid for both of us." She chokes when she says it, but she doesn't stop. "And I think we should be seeing other people."
In the silence she braces herself for his anger, fueled by the last of the Lagavulin and champagne in his blood. For his argument, for accusations she's heard before from other men. It will be awful, and then it will be over. She'll lie in bed alone tonight, wondering where he'll go after he slams the door and stalks out. She uses this time to prepare for that, and she'll spend the rest of her weekend preparing for Monday morning, when he meets her in the office and looks at her like a stranger.
"You know--" He scratches his forehead. "You should do whatever you want."
He looks up at her like an old friend, no dissembling, no disguise. He's still drunk. He is looking at her with compassion and confusion, and the last traces of the smirk, with regret, with a little bit of fear. With trust. His eyes are on hers with the unalloyed lure and the unsatisfied hunger of gravity.
She's destroyed the mood, demolished it. But she can never really kill it.
In the time it takes for her pulse to beat once, she's lowered herself to her knees, gathered her dress up to her rib cage. If he's surprised, he has the decency to conceal it. She throws the dress away like a tissue before he can even get out of his jacket. Her hands scrabble at the tie, then the buttons on his shirt, then the rest. She pushes him over backwards, takes him in her mouth and he's hard again in seconds.
She crawls over his body, an explorer, a conqueror. One of her knees grinds into the hollow of his shoulder as she drags the rest of the tuxedo away from his body, her back bent into a cathedral arch. He reaches into her hair and draws her down, whispering into her ear between kisses, tonguing her earlobe when he realizes she isn't listening.
How quickly this becomes a teenage wrestling match, and though her arms are strong, she winds up with them pinned above her head. His right hand covers both wrists; his left is between her thighs, doing things to her that take away her senses.
He says, "If you take away work, I don't have anything, either."
She gasps, as if surprised. Does not tell him that this is what scares her the most.
The wooden floor against her shoulder blades is as cold as a stone in the shade, but she is feverish. Their fingers, together, spread her open like splitting a fruit. Letting him in, and she curses him--out loud?--for knowing what she wants. Curses herself for wanting him, always and in all these ways.
Her feet are crossed over his backbone, hips and thighs socketed around his. Built for this. His unshaven jawline gnaws at her collarbone, her cheek; he's coming at her like a starving man. Someone's groaning. Screaming. He covers her mouth with his hand and the screaming stops. She can taste herself on his fingers, and knows she'll still be tasting him in her morning coffee. He fumbles for a kiss, and she pulls him in further, closer. Can't remember a time before she knew what he felt like, can't imagine letting go.
She whimpers around his thumb and it makes him clutch her hip and work harder. Exactly what she needs in this absurdly missionary position. It's almost enough. Not enough. Never enough. And then the wave hits, like the final chord of a familiar song, and she's gone.
The back of her head smacks against the wood, hard, and she sees stars and the black of tar. Just as she's starting to get herself back, he collapses into her and onto her. Smothering, but her hands are on his shoulders and she doesn't let go. They are wet, tumbled and tangled on the slippery floor. Attempts to breathe turn into laughter. Laughter dies as he rolls over.
"We should've spent the night in the office," she says.
He sits up, grimacing as he rubs one punished elbow, focusing his eyes on hers again. "We made it home alive."
It's no excuse, but it's true. With effort, she gets to her feet, grabbing at the back of the couch to keep her balance. When she stands the fever trickles out of her. She knows she's mostly sober now, has been maybe since the adrenaline flood of the drive home. In the morning, she'll feel like hell. "I'm taking a shower."
"Okay," he says, but she hears: Whatever you want.
First she picks up her dress, piling it into her arms like treasure, and drapes it over a chair. Her walk wobbles on the way to the bathroom, and she hates it. She stumbles slightly over the bathroom threshold and yanks the door shut, too loud, behind her. The light is harsh and so is the mirror above the sink; she averts her eyes from the red marks, illegible writing on her skin.
She turns the shower on, up all the way, and takes her jewelry off before stepping in. Steam drifts around her, streaking the flamingo shower curtain someone left on her desk months ago. She pours mango-scented soap from a bottle into her trembling hand, smears it over her breasts and belly and down to her ankles. The water's prickly heat turns her pink all over, erasing his fingerprints, the lather, her night. She turns her face up to the stream, closes her eyes, moves as little as possible.
She doesn't hear him come in until the shower curtain jangles open. He watches her for a while, letting the water splatter onto her tile. When she doesn't say anything, he steps into the tub behind her. She doesn't turn around, but she doesn't resist as he edges closer. He wraps an arm around her waist and one around her shoulders, burying his face in the back of her neck. She places her hands lightly over his and decides to let herself lean back.
He is smiling into her shoulder. Not, she guesses, the tender smile of a movie boyfriend, but the I-just-fucked-you-and-I-might-fuck-you-again-in-a-minute smile that never fails to make her shiver. She can see it glowing inside her eyelids, an echo that she'll never shake.
She wishes she was still drunk. The water turns cold.