His First Love, My Last Goodbye novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Guest Room
Clarissa moves into the guest room claiming a cancer she will not treat; Esme gives Matthias one last night, and he leaves her bed at 3 a.m. when Clarissa calls.
By Friday night Clarissa had made the guest room hers.
Her violin case lay open on the quilt, and a silk scarf hung from the lamp.
She came down to dinner in a camel cardigan with her hair brushed to a shine and a fresh coat of red lipstick.
"I can't eat much," she said, and took a second helping of rice.
Matthias watched every forkful with the face he wore in the ICU.
"Appetite comes and goes with this," he said. "Eat what you can."
"You're so good to me, Matt."
Esme cut her chicken into small pieces and watched.
She had nursed three pancreatic patients in her first year, on the adult float pool.
They were yellow, or they were gray, and they sat forward in their chairs with one hand pressed to the belly.
Clarissa sat back in hers and laughed at her own jokes.
There was no pill organizer on the counter and no bottle in her bag.
There was no pain.
Esme noticed all of it and set it aside with the rest of her own problems.
She had no time left to be right.
"Are you seeing anyone for it?" she asked, mildly.
"I'm done with rooms like that," Clarissa said. "Waiting rooms, scan rooms. I'd rather play."
"Of course," Matthias said, and his hand covered hers on the table.
Esme looked at the hand.
Then she got up and carried the plates to the sink.
He found her there twenty minutes later, up to her wrists in suds, with the window dark in front of her.
"Esme."
"It's fine."
"It isn't." He stood behind her, close, not touching. "Last night was unforgivable. I should have been home. I know it was our night."
She dried her hands slowly.
Upstairs, through the ceiling, came the first slow notes of a violin.
It was something sweet and old, and every note of it said look at me.
She turned and looked up at him.
She had three years of this man to take with her, and a handful of weeks to do it in.
He had a thin white scar through his left eyebrow from a bicycle fall at nine.
He never passed a mirror without touching it.
He had hands that could stitch a heart and could not open a jar of pickles.
She loved him, which was the problem, and she was leaving him, which was the plan.
"Take me to bed," she said.
His face changed.
"Now? She's right upstairs."
"Then she can listen to herself play."
He laughed, shocked, a real laugh.
The bedroom was dark, and she kept it that way.
She turned the lamp off before he could reach it.
Under her right collarbone lay a square of clear dressing, and he would see it.
She kissed him against the closed door.
He tasted of coffee and the mint he always took after dinner, and his hand went into her curls and tightened.
"Esme," he said, against her mouth, like a question.
"Don't be careful," she said. "I don't want careful tonight."
She pulled his shirt over his head and pushed him back against the bed.
He sat down hard, and she stepped between his knees and undid her own buttons while he watched her do it.
The cardigan fell.
The camisole under it she left on.
When his mouth found her right collarbone she took his jaw and moved it, gently, to the left.
He didn't notice.
He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her breast through the thin silk until the fabric was wet and clinging.
She gasped and ground down against the hard line of him.
Her hands were shaking, and she told herself it was wanting.
It was also wanting.
"I've missed you," he said, hoarse.
"Show me."
He rolled her under him so fast the headboard knocked the wall.
He stripped the camisole up and off, careful of nothing, and then her leggings, and her underwear with them.
His hand slid between her thighs and found her already slick and aching, and he groaned.
"God, you're wet."
"You were gone all night."
"I'm here now."
He put two fingers inside her and curled them, and she cried out and arched off the mattress.
He knew exactly how.
Three years had taught him where, how hard and how long, and he used all of it.
His thumb circled her clit in slow tight loops until her thighs began to tremble.
"Matthias, I'm going to."
"Do it."
She came with her mouth against his shoulder, shuddering, her fingers dug into the muscle of his back.
He didn't give her time to come down.
He opened his belt and shoved his pants off, and she reached for him with a desperate hand and wrapped it around his cock.
He was hot and hard and heavy in her palm.
She stroked him once, twice, slowly, and he swore and dropped his forehead to hers.
"Get inside me," she said.
He pushed into her in one slow stroke, until their hips met.
She felt every inch, stretched and full, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper.
"Look at me," he said.
"I can't see you."
"Then feel me."
He drew back and thrust, and then he found a rhythm, deep and hard and unhurried.
She met each stroke with her hips, clutching at his arms, at his back, at the sheets.
He gripped her wrists, pinned them above her head, and drove into her harder.
The headboard hit the wall, and she heard herself say fuck, fuck, yes, right there.
She wanted to remember everything.
The weight of him, the sweat on his chest sliding against hers, the sound of her own name in his mouth.
His breath came ragged at her ear.
"Esme. Esme."
"Harder," she said.
He gave it to her, deeper and faster, until she couldn't tell where the bed ended and he began.
Her second orgasm broke over her without warning, a long hot wave through her whole body.
She clenched around him so hard that he lost his rhythm.
"Fuck, I can't, I'm going to."
"Come in me. Please."
He thrust once more, buried to the root, and came with a rough shout against her neck, pulsing, filling her.
For a long minute neither of them moved.
His heart hammered against her breastbone, steady and strong, the heart of a man who held other people's hearts in his hands.
She pressed her lips to his temple.
She was memorizing the sound of it.
"That was," he said, and laughed breathlessly. "Where did that come from?"
"I just wanted you."
He pulled her into the curve of his body, one arm heavy across her ribs, and kissed her hair.
"Happy anniversary," he mumbled, nearly asleep. "A day late."
She lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling.
A day late, and a day early, and the last one she'd ever have like it.
She did not sleep.
At three in the morning his phone lit up on the nightstand.
A message, and then another, and then the soft insistent buzz of a call.
She saw the name before he stirred.
Clarissa.
The preview read, "Come. I can't breathe."
Matthias slid out from under her arm without waking her, as he had been taught to do at hospitals.
He pulled on his pants in the dark and was gone, his bare feet quick on the stairs.
Esme lay where he had left her, with her eyes open and her thighs still wet.
She heard the guest room door open, and low voices, and the violin case snap shut.
He didn't come back to bed.
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