Page 7 of Brash for It
“Here I am,” I echo, forcing a smile.
He kisses my cheek instead of my mouth.
Quick.
Impersonal.
My skin cools where his lips touched.There is no passion left and I’m not sure when it left.
“You want another?”he nods at my glass.
“I’m good.”
He leans on the railing, staring out at the water like he owns it.Maybe he does, in some way.He pays for the view.He pays for everything.
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.“Busy day?”
“They’re all busy.”His voice is clipped, like he’s half here and half already gone.
I set my glass down.“We could?—”
“We could go inside,” he interrupts, turning toward me with that look.The one that says he wants me to stop talking and start undressing.
My heart trips.Because part of me wants to cling to any scrap of closeness he’s willing to give, even if it’s just sex.Maybe if I give him what he wants, I’ll get what I need.
I nod, step past him, and he follows me inside.The sliding door shuts with a whisper, shutting out the ocean, shutting out the noise, shutting out the truth I don’t want to face.
Inside, the house is too clean.The kind of clean that feels like a stage set.The kitchen island gleams.The couch looks like it has rules.Even the art leans just so, like it’s posing for a camera that’s always watching.
Brian’s hand finds the small of my back.It’s a guide more than a touch—firm, directional.He steers me toward the bedroom like he’s moving through a meeting agenda.I hate that the part of me that’s aching for reassurance falls into step, eager, obedient, like the right choreography might bring back the look in his eyes I haven’t seen in weeks or maybe it’s been months.I don’t know when exactly this distance creeped in, but I can’t deny the way it’s obvious between us now.
He closes the door with a soft click.The ocean’s muffled now, a low thrum through glass and drywall and insulation, like a heartbeat I can’t quite reach.
“Come here,” he says.
I do.He doesn’t kiss me right away.He loosens my dress at the zipper, slow enough to feel like foreplay but focused enough to feel like a task.The fabric slides down my sides with a whisper and puddles at my feet.He steps back to take me in, gaze traveling, cataloging.Approval glints, quick and faint.I reach for him, and he lets me, but he’s already somewhere else—eyes flicking to the nightstand where his phone lies face-down, then back to me, then over my shoulder to the bathroom.
“Brian,” I say, quiet, because I want to pull him into the moment and not let him skip to the next one.“Look at me.”
His jaw flexes.Then he does.And for a few minutes, I can pretend I’m the only thing he sees.
We kiss.It’s practiced, the way all things become after time.I know what he likes—where his shoulder is tight from lifting and where to press my thumb to make him breathe out a soft sound, how he hates teeth but loves the edge of tongue.
He knows me, too.Or he used to.Tonight feels like a song we learned together and somehow now we are playing apart, just slightly off tempo, like there are other lyrics running under the melody he’s not cuing me into.
Still, when his hands finally map me, when my body answers, heat blooming in all the right places, I let myself fall.Maybe this is how we bridge the gap.Maybe connection is a muscle and we can work it back from weakness.
His mouth finds my neck.Fingers trail my thigh.The bed is cool against my calves.For a breath, I close my eyes and try to quiet the part of me that’s tallying every glance at the nightstand, every message alert he’s silenced all evening, every mechanical shift in his grip.
“Brian,” I murmur again, softer, like prayer.
He answers with his body, and for a little while the edges blur.I let the waves of it rush up and over me, not thinking, not measuring, letting the need to be chosen, to be wanted, eclipse anything that’s jagged and sharp.
And then, at the moment the scene becomes its most private, I let it go—to black.I let the details fade out like lights deliberately dimmed, the warmth and rhythm flattening to the shape of a memory I don’t have to replay.What matters isn’t the mechanics; it’s the ache afterward.It’s the way he is done and I lay over him, listening to his heartbeat wishing it beat for me only once again.
He rolls away first.He always does now.
“Shower,” he says, already on his feet, already scooping his phone off the nightstand without thinking and then putting it back down—oddly, carefully—like he remembered something and then decided against it.He twists the bathroom knob and steam starts to echo as the water thunders on, a rush that swallows the room.
