Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 6 of 40

Chapter 6: The Counter

He followed me up three flights of stairs without saying a word.

I could hear his boots behind me on every step, and I focused on the climb to keep from turning around.

My door stuck, as it always did, and I leaned on it with my shoulder.

His hand came over my shoulder and pushed it open.

I went in ahead of him and turned on the kitchen light, and he stood in the doorway taking up all of it.

The kitchen was small and yellow.

There was a counter, two chairs, a table with a pile of unopened mail, and a window that looked out on the roof next door.

"It's a mess," I said.

"I know where everything is."

That was true, and it undid me a little, because it was only a year since he'd stopped coming up those stairs.

He shut the door behind him and put his back against it.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen with my coat still on.

"You first," he said.

"What?"

"You said it was for people who can stop. I'm waiting to see which one you are."

"That's a very stupid thing to say to me," I said.

"I know."

"I don't need your permission to take my coat off."

I took it off and dropped it on the chair.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps.

He didn't grab me this time.

He put both hands on my face, slowly, with the stitched one on my left cheek, and held it between his palms.

His thumb moved over my cheekbone.

"You didn't sleep," he said.

"I work nights."

"You didn't sleep before that, either."

I opened my mouth to tell him to mind his own business, and he kissed me.

It was slow.

It was the opposite of the shed, a kiss that took its time and asked nothing and gave me every chance to be angry.

I was angry, and I kissed him back anyway.

My hands went up under his jacket and over the flannel and the hard back of him.

He made a low sound against my mouth.

I pushed the jacket off his shoulders and it hit the floor.

"Not a porch," he said into my neck.

"It's a kitchen."

"Is it covered?" he said.

"Shut up, Dyer, and take my shirt off."

He did.

He pulled it over my head carefully, because of the hand, and dropped it, and his eyes went down.

I was in the plain gray bra I wore to work.

He looked at it for a long moment.

"Come here," I said.

I took him by the belt and walked backward until my hips hit the counter, and I boosted myself up onto it.

The laminate was cold under my thighs.

I yanked my jeans open and he took over, pulling them down and off with my socks, until I sat on the edge of my own counter in my underwear with my feet dangling.

He stood between my knees, and for a moment he just looked.

"I want to taste you," he said.

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