HEAL YOU | JENLISA

EIGHTEEN

JENNIE

* * *

WE GRAB FALAFEL AND PITA SANDWICHES FROM A FOOD truck and eat them as we walk by the marina, where the sail-less masts of the boats point toward the sky like upside-down lollipops. We talk about octopi and joke about the possible places where we might find one hiding along the shore. Like usual for us, we end up kissing, but when Lisa touches me, her hands feel like ice on my skin. I don’t want her to die of hypothermia, so I insist we call it a night.

Outside my apartment building, I debate things for a second before asking, “Do you want to come up?”

“Do you want me to?” she asks instead.

“I asked first.”

She laughs as she fiddles with my helmet. It seems to take her a long time to lock it to the back of her bike before she says, “Yeah, I want to.”

“Then come up with me,” I say.

After attaching her own helmet to her bike, she follows me into the building and up three sets of musty old stairs to my apartment. Inside, I step out of my shoes, remove her jacket, and drape it over the back of my armchair, suddenly ill at ease. I know what comes next, but I don’t know how to get us there.

“A-are you thirsty?” I ask.

“No, thanks,” she says.

“Do you want to watch TV?”

Her lips quirk in amusement. “It would be different to finally watch something with you in person, but no, I don’t feel like TV right now.”

She advances toward me, and my breath catches. The way she walks, like she’s going somewhere important, appeals to me. Because she’s coming to me.

“I figured out how we need to do this the first time,” she says.

“How?”

She leans down and presses her lips to my temple, my cheek, the soft spot behind my ear. “In the dark.”

I immediately think of her self-consciousness with regard to her surgery and nod. “I’m okay with that.”

We head down the hall to my bedroom, and in the doorway, I automatically fumble around for the light switch until Lisa whispers, “Let’s keep the lights off. Unless you changed your mind?”

“No, I just forgot.” I wander through the darkness, eventually bumping my knees against the cushioned side of my mattress.

I turn around to find her, and smack straight into her chest with an ooof.

“Okay?” she asks.

“Yes, but this is a little awkward.”

“A little,” she agrees. “But I kind of like it, too. I get to learn a whole new side of you.”

“The clumsy side of me?”

“I’m so used to seeing you. Now I get to focus on feeling you.” Her lips land on my forehead, on an eyebrow, eliciting a laugh from me, on the tip of my nose, my mouth. She sucks on my bottom lip, licks, and then claims my mouth with bold strokes of her tongue as her hands sweep over my body.

When she palms my behind and squeezes, my inner muscles clench tight, and moisture floods between my thighs. Logically, I know she won’t ease the ache in my body—there’s no way she could know how—but I want her anyway. I want her kisses, her caresses. I want her close. Most of all, I want her to want me.

My kisses acquire a wild edge. I slip my hands under her shirt and test the sexiness of her stomach, her chest, her back. Even without the light, I can sense how strong she is, how fast. I am neither of those things, and I delight in our differences. When I register the hardness pressing against my lower belly, I rise instinctively onto the tips of my toes until we line up … just right.