They Never Picked Up My Calls, So I Made Dolls That Answer novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Box

Fletcher took my hand.

His palm was rough and warm, and he held on.

We went in through the dark shop.

The machines were covered for the night.

The new cutting table shone under the exit light.

Six hundred and forty doll bodies sat stacked in bins along the wall, waiting for their hearts.

At the bottom of the loft stairs he stopped.

"Elsie."

"Yes."

"I need to hear it. Plain."

I turned around on the first step. It made me almost as tall as him.

"I want you," I said. "Tonight. Upstairs. Yes."

His breath went out of him.

He kissed me right there on the stairs, one hand on the rail and one on my waist.

It wasn't slow like the loading dock.

It was hungry.

I pulled his flannel shirt open and the buttons gave up one by one.

He wore a white T-shirt under it.

I shoved that up too and put my hands flat on his stomach.

Warm skin, hard muscle, a line of dark hair.

I felt him shudder.

"Your hands are cold," he said against my mouth.

"Complaint?"

"No complaints."

He walked me up the stairs backward, kissing me the whole way.

On the fourth step I pulled my sweater over my head and dropped it.

He stopped and looked at me in my plain black bra in the light from the window.

"God," he said, very quietly.

Nobody had ever said it to me like that.

Like a prayer and a swear word at once.

At the top of the stairs the loft was dim and cool.

The window unit hummed.

Gus's wife's old Singer sat under its cover by the window, the way it had for seven years.

My bed was against the far wall.

It was a real bed now, a double, under the quilt I'd made from scraps of every doll I'd ever sewn.

He saw the quilt and smiled.

"Of course you made the quilt."

"I make everything."

"I know," he said. "Let me do something."

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me between his knees.

He kissed my stomach, right above the waistband of my jeans, and I grabbed his hair.

His mouth was hot through the denim, and I could feel the shape of his smile.

"Impatient," he said.

"You have no idea."

"I have some idea."

He unbuttoned my jeans with one hand, slow, watching my face.

I lifted my hips and he pulled them down, taking my underwear with them.

The air hit me and I shivered.

He kissed the inside of my thigh and I made a sound I didn't recognize.

"Fletcher."

"Still here."

He stood and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

His chest was broad and dusted with dark hair, and the muscles in his shoulders moved when he reached for me.

I unhooked my bra and let it fall.

His eyes went dark and hungry.

"Lie back," he said.

I did.

He knelt over me, one knee between my legs, and kissed me again, slower this time, like he wanted to memorize it.

His beard scraped my cheek and I arched up into him.

"You're shaking," he said against my mouth.

"Cold."

"Liar."

He kissed down my stomach, over my ribs, and when his mouth closed over my nipple I grabbed the quilt in both fists.

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