The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Commencement

"You should take it," I said. "You're her mother."

"I'm sixty-eight years old and I trip on stairs," Frances said. "I'm not walking across a stage in front of eight thousand people in a dress I'd have to buy."

"Then her brother."

"He'd wear the suit."

"Frances."

"You'll already be up there," she said. "In a cap and gown. In the same row she'd have sat in. You'll just have to walk twice."

Ben, beside me in the other porch chair, put his glasses back on.

"She's got you," he said.

"She always has me," I said.

Frances went back inside, satisfied, to lose the dishwasher argument.

The first Friday in December, it snowed.

I finished my last seminar paper at eleven at night and sat on my dorm bed looking at the window.

Then I put on my denim jacket over my gray sweater and walked two blocks off campus in the snow.

Ben lived in one room over a laundromat. The dryers ran all night, so his floor was always warm.

I climbed the outside stairs.

I stood at his door with snow in my hair.

Nobody had sent me. Nobody was waiting in a car to see if I did it.

I knocked.

He opened the door in a station hoodie and flannel pajama pants, with his glasses on and a pencil behind his ear.

He looked at me for a long second.

"You knocked," he said.

"I knocked."

"Laney." His voice went low, his hand tightening on the doorknob. "Tell me what you came for."

"I walked here on my own feet," I said. "I want you. Tonight. All of it."

He took the pencil from behind his ear and dropped it on the floor without looking where it went.

"Okay," he said. "Come in out of the snow."

I came in.

He shut the door behind me, and I pushed him back against it, and kissed him.

"I should tell you something," he said into my mouth. "After the stadium lot, I washed these sheets three times. Out of pure optimism."

I laughed so hard I had to hold on to his hoodie.

"Good," I said. "Show me."

I kissed him like I'd been waiting to all night.

I had been waiting to all night.

His hands came up slow, like he couldn't believe his luck.

Then they slid under my jacket and spread across my back.

"Laney." His voice was low. "You're shaking."

"It's cold out."

"It's not cold in here."

His glasses went first.

I took them off his face and set them on the counter by the door before he could reach for them.

I pulled his hoodie up by the hem.

He raised his arms and let me strip it over his head.

"Now you," I said.

His fingers found the zipper of my jacket.

He pulled it down like he was unwrapping something he wasn't sure he got to keep.

I shrugged it off and let it fall.

Then my sweater.

Then his hands were on my bare skin, and he made a sound I wanted to hear again.

"Laney," he said, the way he'd said it in the stadium lot.

He walked me backward, his hands on my waist, until the backs of my knees hit his mattress.

The dryers hummed up through the floor.

The snow ticked against the window glass.

I sat down and pulled him with me.

He braced himself over me, one hand by my shoulder, and looked down.

"For weeks I've thought about this exact thing."

"Show me what you thought."

He unbuttoned my jeans with steady fingers.

He pulled them down my hips, my thighs, and I kicked them off.

Then his pajama pants went, and he was bare over me.

I let myself look.

He was hard.

His cock was thick, and the sight of it made my stomach drop.

"Come here," I said.

He lowered himself onto me, and the weight of him was the best thing I'd ever felt.

His mouth found my collarbone, then lower.

He took my nipple in his mouth and sucked, and I arched up off the mattress.

"Fuck," I breathed.

He laughed against my skin.

"Already?"

"Shut up."

He moved lower.

He kissed down my stomach, over my hip bone, and then his mouth was on my pussy.

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