Page 35 of Intersect
15
QUINN
Three days later, the perfect little house becomes ours. I oversee the delivery of our new bed and couch, then wait impatiently for Nick to get back from packing his place so we can christen one, or both. The last time we were alone for any extended period of time was last Monday in his office. Needless to say, we are both about toburst.
“Honey, I’m home!” he calls. His voice echoes over the bare hardwoodfloors.
I lean over the upstairs railing, smiling down at him. “I think we might need somerugs.”
“It’s perfect like this,” he says, taking the stairs toward me, two at a time. “I can demand a blowjob from any room of the house without even raising myvoice.”
He walks right into me, lifting me as he continues on a path to our room. “Are you planning to demand ablowjob?”
He grins. “Of course not. I’m assuming you’ll offer one long before I get to that point.” He presses his mouth to mine and holds it there a moment before he sets me down in our room. “So this is thebed.”
“This is the bed. Is it everything you hoped it wouldbe?”
“All I hoped for was a flat surface big enough to pin you to, so yes, it’s perfect.” He glances at the corner of my room, to the boxes I carried in from the trunk of my car, and frowns. “You already started carrying stuff in from Jeff’s? I told you I’d getit.”
I shrug. “There wasn’t much. I’m alreadydone.”
His frown deepens. “Wait. You’re saying that’sit? That can’t possibly be all of yourstuff.”
I slide my hands into his. “The tumor kind of brought everything into focus. I decided I was only bringing the things I reallyloved.”
This, to me, is a good thing, but when he averts his gaze I remember how much he hates even the smallest reminder this is all going to end. “Nothing about your tumor is normal,” he says, turning away to drop his wallet, phone and hospital ID on one of the boxes. “Your last MRI showed it hadn’t grown at all. Possibly it was even smaller. And also—it’s not affecting you. At all. I mean, aside from those seizures, you haven’t had a single symptom,right?”
“I guessnot.”
“You should have,” he says, turning back to me. “So maybe it’s…this is going to sound crazy, but maybe it was just some weird time-traveling thing and it’s all solved now that you’re doing what you were supposed to. We’re back together, you’re getting your degree…maybe that’sit.”
There’s a desperation in his voice that saddens me. It’s what he wants to believe. And, God, I want to believe it too. I wish I’d never said anything—today is a day for us to enjoy what we have, not destroy it with thoughts of what’s to come. I slide my shorts off as he watches. “I feel pretty healthy at the moment,” I reply. The T-shirt is removednext.
His eyes flicker over me, gone sharp and feral in the blink of an eye. “Youlookexceptionallyhealthy.”
I walk over and lie back on our brand-new mattress. “How do you feel about taking advantage of an exceptionally healthygirl?”
He runs his tongue over his lip and unbuttons his shorts. “I’m feeling better about it by thesecond.”
* * *
That nightwe order Chinese food and eat it in our garden, on a blanket under the stars—a romantic way to deal with the fact that our kitchen chairs are backordered for the nextmonth.
“When was the moment you knew you’d break up with Meg?” I askhim.
He sets his plate off to the side and leans back on the blanket. “That night in Baltimore. Sometime between leaving the diner with you and jerking off in the shower at 3:00 a.m. because ofyou.”
“You didn’t,” I gasp, wide-eyed and completely turned on by the idea at the sametime.
He grins. “Are you kidding me? We were two seconds away from having sex when I woke up. There was no way I was falling back asleep without taking care of it. What about you? When did you know you were breaking up withJeff?”
I try to focus on the question, but really I’m a little too busy imagining him in the hotel shower. I might need him to stage a reenactment. “It’s not nearly as exciting as your story. There’s almost no jerking off in it atall.”
He pulls me down beside him. “I kind of figured that much. But seriously, when did you know? I mean, you went to the airport with Jeff so it had to be kind of last-minute,right?”
I stare at the sky, wondering if I’m looking at the Big Dipper or just a bunch of random stars. “My dad told me this story when I was a kid, about the good wind and the bad wind, and how you had to let them both in. I always thought it was his way of telling me not to be scared of storms, but that morning on the way to the airport, I finally realized it had nothing to do with weather. It was about opening yourself up, risking all the bad that can come along with the good, because without it you will suffocate. And I knew I wassuffocating.”
He gives a low laugh. “Wait, are you saying I might be thebadwind?”