This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 36

NINETY MINUTES BEFORE THE RUSH

Bailey picked up her purple-and-black flannel bag from behind the pool house couch, then led me through the open door of the mysterious room. She slid the door shut behind us and looped the hook through the eye on the wall. “Glad it has a lock.”

The room turned out to be a tiny office with a wicker desk the size of an end table. A futon, longer than a love seat but shorter than a couch, stretched the length of the wall next to the door. Yellow-andwhite-striped curtains covered the two windows, enough to hide us but not enough to block all the light from the poolside area.

So I could see Bailey reach behind her back, unhook her bikini top, then let it drop to the floor. My eyes followed it as it came to rest in a pink-and-blue heap, joined a moment later by its bottom half.She spoke my name then, and though it was barely more than a whisper, I stepped back as if she’d shouted through a megaphone.

Like a boomerang I moved toward her again, into her arms. As we kissed, I squirmed out of my swim trunks, pulling one foot out, then using the other to kick them aside. This is actually happening. Let the world end in an hour and a half, I don’t care.

As Bailey draped her towel over the futon cushion, I suddenly remembered the condoms. “I have, um, protection. But it’s in my pants. I’ll go get—”

“Don’t worry, I brought one too.” She lifted her bag and pulled me to sit beside her. “Because of the whole hoping-you’d-be-here thing.”

The plastic cushion squeaked under our shifting legs as we kissed and touched. Her skin and hair smelled of chlorine and her breath of Coca-Cola. I was happy I was sober so I could imprint every detail on my memory.

While I put on the condom (it was just like in the instructions), Bailey lay down on her back, her damp hair splayed around her.

The sight paralyzed me. She’d been 85 percent naked for the last two hours—how could that last 15 percent make such a monumental difference? Part of me just wanted to look at her.

She glanced past me at the door. “We should probably—”

“Yeah.” I took the same steadying breath I would when facing down a clutch hitter with the bases loaded and a full count. What a pitcher wants most is nothing. “Nothing” in this case meant “lack of disaster.”

I tried to position myself between her legs, but the couch cushion was tilted down toward the back, and Bailey’s towel got all bunched up beneath her. So we kept sliding into the well of the sofa, smushing my right side and her left side. My legs had no clue where to go, which meant other, less flexible parts ended up far from the right place.

“Can you shift over?” I whispered. “I can’t even—”

“I think so.” Her elbow hit my cheek. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Maybe if we—”

“Ow, you’re on my hair.”

“Oh, God. Sorry.”

“This isn’t working. Sit up.”

“What?”

“Get off me and sit up.”

“Okay.” I sat up slowly. I knew it: I failed at sex.

“Like this.” Bailey pushed my chest so that I sat against the back of the sofa with my legs over the edge and my feet on the floor. Like normal, as if I was going to watch TV.

“Now.” Bailey swung her hair behind her shoulders and straddled my lap.

Oh.

“Ready?” she whispered against my temple, her voice breathy. I could only nod.

It seemed strange, that this place I’d never been, only in poor simulations created by my hand, could be such a perfect fit. It seemed wrong that I’d ever been anywhere else.

Bailey’s thumbs stroked my cheeks as she examined my face. “You okay?”

Why wouldn’t I be okay? Is she okay?

I got out half of an “Uh-huh”—which was just “uh”—but that seemed to be enough for her to start.

Every part of Bailey was within my reach. I wished I had more than two hands and one mouth to touch her with. What I had wasn’t enough to experience her all at once, not with her in constant, steady motion, alternating with little jerks and twitches that may or may not have been voluntary, that may or may not have been in response to my fingers, tongue, or teeth.

My butt was sticking to the seat, and the backs of my thighs stung where the stone waterslide had scraped them, but it didn’t matter. Bailey did all that we needed. Soon her little jerks and twitches came faster and stronger, and when she kissed me, so hard I thought I would bleed, I swallowed her rising cries.

And then she swallowed mine.