The Space Between (26 page)

“No objections to
Harry
, and busy is something of an understatement. If he earned two permanent positions on your body, I want to know a lot more about this guy. I should be so lucky. That’s why I keep biting you.”

“Three.” I frowned, and Andy pointed to her flank, drawing up her camisole to point at the Farsi inscription. “Three,” she repeated. “And please don’t stop biting me.”

“Yeah, this kid’s gotten enough of your skin,” I said, pulling Andy down to the mattress. “Where’s my spot?”

Andy’s hand brushed over her chest. “How about ‘Patrick’ here?”

Fuck me running, that dry humor was going to be the death of me. I snorted, and trailed kisses over her chest. “That might be a bit much, and I’m really not into possessive assholery. But you know I can’t say no to you.”

“Mmm,” she purred, and as the sound invaded my brain, I stopped dissecting her suggestion of inking my name into her skin as serious or satirical. “Okay. What about a little shamrock, right here?”

Andy pointed to her inner wrist, alongside her pulse. The sarcastic glint was missing from her eyes, and replacing her lopsided smirk was that tiny smile. Nodding slowly, I stared at her wrist, imagining the tiny flower against her olive skin.

Shamrock tattoos. Slow sex. Socks. It came down like an avalanche, and I shifted Andy so her back rested against my chest. One look and she’d see the panic in my eyes. I was supposed to be in control while she was the one who backed away. Those roles worked for us, and I wasn’t ready to give her the impression that anything was changing.

I held her for a long time, my heart hammering against her spine while we watched thick drifts of snow accumulating on my balcony.

“You should stay,” I mumbled, sudden exhaustion weighing down my words. “If it keeps snowing like this—”

She shifted, running her fingers through my hair. There was something new in her affection, something comforting, something dissolving my panic. I arched into her touch.

I nuzzled her neck, inhaling her lavender scent, and melted against her warm body.

“I’m staying,” Andy said. “I’m not leaving you, Patrick.”

*

Andy didn’t leave
that night, or the next.

She stayed in my bed and by my side through the snowy nights of winter, and memories of life before Andy slipped into the dark recesses of my mind. When April rolled around, some of Andy’s clothes shared space in my closet, and her random glass jars of mushrooms and chia seeds and assorted oddities took up residence in my refrigerator.

She made pancakes. Not normal ones, but healthy applesauce pancakes that were surprisingly tasty, all while standing at my stove in tiny camisoles, panties, and the ever-present knee socks on Sunday mornings. My DVR housed all of the
Harry Potter
films, and I acknowledged the appeal of the boy wizard and his crew.

I expected my hunger for Andy to diminish by small degrees each day but it was exactly the opposite. Before the first day of spring, we were intimately acquainted with every flat surface in my apartment. I was hornier than any teenage version of myself, and I turned into a pissy bitch if Andy wasn’t within an arm’s reach. Her Saturday trips to the farmers’ market and yoga with Lauren left me climbing the walls, and I was no better when she met her friend Charlotte for drinks every couple of weeks.

She claimed I growled in my sleep whenever she rolled out of my hold, and on more than a few occasions I found all two hundred-odd pounds of me completely sprawled over her sleeping body. Andy didn’t mind. She was always cold and I was merely making good on my promise to keep her warm.

It all felt right, so fucking
right
.

With some minor exceptions.

We worked hard to keep it professional in the office, though the comforts of intimacy whittled away our cover. Anyone paying attention would have seen us holding hands as we walked up Cambridge Street each morning, or leaving the office together in the evening. We seized every unnecessary opportunity to touch, whether it be brushing against each other at the copier or me pressing a hand to Andy’s waist while I studied her designs. I chose to believe my siblings were too wrapped up in their projects to notice I brought her an iced green tea with lemon every afternoon, or the fierce, heated way my eyes lingered on her.

Part of me wanted to get caught. A big fucking part, and my sanity frayed a little more each time I ignored questions about my weekends or omitted the most important details. Nothing would make me happier than Sam walking into my office while Andy talked through designs with my hand conveniently fondling her ass. It was a matter of time until we ran into one of them at the grocery store, and there was no mistaking the meaning behind a Saturday afternoon Whole Foods trip. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, how I’d tell them Andy was mine, and she accepted every dark, dusty part of me, and I belonged to her.

Sheltering our relationship from my siblings wasn’t without its costs, and I paid the highest price with Shannon. It wasn’t long ago Shannon and I met for dinner or drinks most weeknights, talking through everything from project problems to her latest disasters in dating. Nothing was off-limits: she knew my morning runs doubled, tripled, and occasionally quadrupled in distance when I needed to get laid, and I knew more than enough about the trials and tribulations of finding a birth control pill that kept her periods regular but didn’t make her intermittently crazy.

We still connected a few times each week, but our discussion of personal topics centered around disposing of the estate, Shannon inserting herself into Matt’s wedding, marathon training, and Sam’s impending meltdown. I padded my stories with highlights from European soccer. After an extended analysis of Chelsea’s defense intended to distract her from the fact I ignored all of her texts that weekend because I was buried in Andy the entire time, Shannon gave me a long, contemptuous glare and stopped asking altogether.

All told, I needed Shannon. I wasn’t equipped to confront the emotions stemming from an increasingly serious relationship, and though Shannon sure as shit wasn’t either, I knew she would understand and get me through it. If there was anyone who knew a few things about helping me make sense of myself, it was Shannon.

I wasn’t going to be settled until they knew.

Wondering about life post-apprenticeship replaced most of the time I previously dedicated to obsessing over Andy. Most. Her hair was still everywhere, she still drove me crazy with her ‘hm,’ and springtime meant there were fewer black layers between me and the body I knew better than my own.

We never discussed the next step. It was a delicate détente, and it was easier to joke about keeping my siblings in the dark than addressing the reality that was closing in around us. I watched Andy in those in-between moments when she wandered around the apartment in a bra, panties, and knee socks, when she gazed at her designs and twirled the amethyst studs in her ears, when she read new restaurant menus as if she was looking at the Rosetta Stone. I tried to decipher what I wanted. What she wanted.

I wanted this, but
more
, and that scared the living shit out of me.

That ‘more’ was a giant fucking question that kept me kicking copiers and yelling at Shannon’s herd of support staff whenever their atrocious grammar made it into client emails, or they applied whimsical organizing principles to the materials room.

‘More’ always translated to Andy dumping her apartment. I’d never seen it and she lusted over my wide balcony and restored hardwood. I wanted to be open with my siblings and have a shared address, and every combination of possibilities beyond that consumed my thoughts like a spectacular case of flesh-eating bacteria.

Andy’s exams couldn’t come soon enough, but I needed every minute of the next few weeks to get my shit together.

*

“You want to
give me the fifteen-second update on Wellesley?” I pressed my fingers against my eyelids to clear the fog. I never regretted late-night indulgences in Andy’s body. I only regretted the amount of time it took caffeine to hit my brain cells the next morning.

Andy’s rapidly expanding expertise meant she was able to manage the majority of my projects, the Wellesley project in particular. I checked in once or twice each month, and we all gave up on the wall issues after she talked us out of tearing into it. She might have said something about being a human barricade if my crazy ass even thought about coming at the wall with a sledgehammer, and not being afraid to drop Riley and Matt with one swing each if they tried.

“Hm.” She paged through her notebook before glancing up. “Still on the timeline. Once electrical wraps this week, floors are scheduled for refinishing and a saltwater pool pump is going in, and I told you that taking advantage of me at two a.m. would turn into only three hours of sleep and a day full of surly.”

“I wouldn’t be surly if you let me take advantage of you against the wall in the printer room, or,” I rolled away from my desk and gestured underneath, “you could take care of my mood down there.”

“It’s seven twenty-eight.” That tiny smirking smile appeared, the one I thought of as the smile she reserved for me, and there was no stopping the flood of heat to my crotch. “Wouldn’t want you to be late.”

“You’re evil. You know that, right?” Groaning, I collected my laptop and coffee, and rounded my desk to stand behind Andy. I leaned over her shoulder, and, always keeping up appearances, I pointed to something on her screen as if we were discussing a project. “When I get you home tonight, I intend to take advantage of you. Multiple times. You might want to stretch.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” My lips passed over her jaw, and before I could change my mind, I sprinted upstairs to the attic.

“Hit any good keggers recently?” Shannon asked. “That’s why you look like death warmed over, right?”

Withholding information from my siblings turned the dial way up on my paranoia, and Shannon’s assessing gaze when I settled into my seat put me on alert. I shook my head and sipped my coffee, hoping the right explanation was mixed in with the milk and sugar. “Nah,” I replied. “Up late watching a few games, and Matt’s a demented bastard who thinks wind sprints are good fun on a Monday.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured, her eyes narrowing over her iced latte. “Let’s get this show started.”

The business was in good shape. After all these years of busting our asses and hanging on by threads, our plan was working. Listening to my partners detail the progress on their projects only reaffirmed that for me. We accomplished everything we set out to, and we weren’t white-knuckling it anymore. For the first time in forever, there was space in my life for more than our business, and filling that space with Andy was the only thing I wanted.

“There are some other things on my list,” Shannon said after we walked through updates and strategy for new properties.

I shot her a surprised look; we usually worked through her list before discussing them with the group.

“I also have a few things, so get ready for me to drop some knowledge,” Riley added, and four pairs of confused eyes landed on him. “Don’t look at me that way, you assclowns. Stop being so superior.”

“Enlighten us,” Shannon said.

Riley produced several blueprints and unfurled them in the center of the table. “It took a few months, but I found two more offices. It means subdividing the biggest offices with some strange geometries. Matt’s office here,” he pointed to the document, “and Patrick’s office here, but that just cuts some of the space wasted on conference tables. And for real, people, we have three conference rooms we never use, so it’s no loss. The new offices are smaller, but at least Princess Jasmine and I won’t have to be squatting like bums on the street.”

“‘Princess Jasmine?’” Sam snickered. “Isn’t that a little…inappropriate or…insensitive, or infantilizing, or something?”

I thought about my dark-eyed girl and smiled, betting she’d start assembling the Halloween costume today so long as it was an ironic exploitation of her culture’s misappropriated icons, and not a benediction on cartoon princesses.