Spin (14 page)

“Me?” I mouthed silently.

He nodded, then said into the phone, “So I
missed a practice. I never miss. I’ll be there Friday.”

I could hear a metallic little voice
respond, but it was hard to make anything out. Finn hit a button on
the phone, lowered his mouth and took a taste of me, a hard, fast
stroke with his tongue straight up the center of my pussy.

I dropped my head back as he nudged his
tongue up inside me, then he pulled back and slapped my pussy with
his hand, hard and wet, so hard it stung. It also almost made me
come.

I flung my head back and cried out. I
couldn’t help it. Finn’s tongue, slow and coaxing and hot, licked
up after his sting. My hips lifted into the air, my blood electric
and dangerous.

I felt one hand go away. He hit a button on
his phone—he must have muted us—and said, “Okay, fine. I know
that.”

He hit the button again, and I curled my
fingers into his hair, pulling his face into me and moving against
him, rocking my body into his mouth as the tinny voice went on and
on.

It was the oddest, freest moment, to be used
like this, to have Finn watching me, making me wild, doing
something so mundane and controlled with one part of his brain,
while I came undone on the bench in front of him.

I had my arms up over my head, hanging off
the end of the bench. Finn held the phone with one hand and worked
me with the other, gently curling his fingers, dark, hard pressure,
until that feeling undulated through me. Like a deep water
vibration, it rocked through me from the bottom up.

He knew it. He mouthed,
Like this?
Then he did it again, slow and deep, aiming for the spot.

He hit it.

I came hard. I held my hands over my face
and shuddered, and he kept the rhythmic pressure up as my muscles
clenched around his fingers. The phone voice went on and on while
Finn made me come, crying, half-naked on the bench in his
kitchen.

Then he clicked on the phone, said curtly,
“I said I’d be there tonight. Later,” and flung the phone onto the
table. It skidded off and fell to the floor. He rose up, stood
between my legs, and unbuttoned his jeans. He didn’t even pull them
down, just shoved the waistband out of his way and pushed into
me.

He leaned over me, one hand on the bench
above my shoulder, and pumped in hard, swift strokes, looking at
me.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, and I said, “So
are you,” and then he laughed as he came inside me.

God, I loved when he came inside me. I loved
the way his head went up, the way the muscles in his neck stood
out, the way his jaw locked down, knowing that inside, his hard
body felt explosively good.

Because of me.

Something was happening here between me and
Finn, something bigger than I intended and bigger than I knew how
to handle, and I was powerless to stop it.

He took hold of me and swung us around and
sat me on his lap, holding me close, kissing my head, his hand
behind my back.

I closed my eyes—because they were hot,
pressed with tears—and leaned into him. He stroked my hair and
every so often I felt his lips on the top of my head with gentle,
absent kisses. It was like the calm after a storm. We sat like this
for a very long time.

“I have to go to work,” he finally said.

My head jerked up. “Right. Work.” I slid off
his lap.

He rose, tugging the waistband of his jeans
back up. His short hair slid forward as he looked down to button
them, and I felt a wave of tenderness, followed by a jerking
riptide of something biting and complicated and deep in my chest.
It snapped through me so hard and so fast I almost lost my
breath.

He tipped his face up. “When are you
leaving, Janey?”

Bam.
He always caught me off guard
and hard, like a lightning storm.

I took a shaky breath. “I’m supposed to fly
out in six hours.”

He stopped buttoning. For a long time, we
just looked at each other. I felt every breath of his. I waited for
him to say,
What do you mean, six hours?
or
When were you
going to tell me?
or
What the fuck, Jane
y
?

Instead, he said, “What’s that mean,
‘supposed to’ fly out?”

Oh, clever, clever Finn.

“Well,” I said. “I was just thinking,
there’s so many things still to do.” I noticed my fingers were
twisting around the hem of my shirt. I forced them down.

“There’s a lot to do,” he agreed, having no
idea what I had to do. But then, he wasn’t talking about my job.
And neither was I.

“The caterer is this close to quitting”—I
pinched my fingers in the air—“and then there’s the tents, and I
have to find some night-of help, and there’s the chair covers,
and…just so much.”

None of which couldn’t be handled from a
distance, unless there was a problem. But what if there’s a
problem, I asked myself. A problem leaving Finn, for instance.

He put his arm around my back and hauled me
slowly closer while I prattled on.

“And we only have one other event this week,
because the Harris party was moved to last weekend, and old Mr.
Hinemann died, so that cancelled our Thursday event, and Savannah’s
got the Griffin party this weekend covered pretty well, so she
really doesn’t even need me.”

“Savannah’s going to rock that party. You’ll
just be in the way.” He started kissing my neck.

I laughed as he slid his hands up my ribs.
The heat of his hands burned through my shirt. “So I was thinking
maybe—”

“Definitely.”

“It means I’d have to keep to rental car,
Finn,” I told him the hard truth.

“We can handle that, Janey.”

“And the hotel.”

“You don’t have to keep the hotel.”

We looked at each other. I knew what he was
saying. He knew what he was saying. But no one was saying it,
because I think we both knew it might make me bolt. “I better keep
it,” I said swiftly.

“You better keep the hotel,” he agreed. He
kept seeing through me but never said a word.

I took a breath, then let it out. “I don’t
know how long it’ll be for—”

“Just stay.”

A tiny plume of white light rose up through
my chest. Clean, cool, bright. “Okay,” I said, and so it was
decided. And really, what harm could come from being here an extra
few days?

He slid his hand around to the nape of my
neck. “Stay away from Pete Sandler,” he murmured.

“I will. He’s flying back to DC for a few
days.”

“Good. I’ll be home by midday. You?”

“Same.” Then I sobered, because, well, it
had to be discussed. “But I’m probably not going to be able to… You
know.” I gestured to my girlie regions. “I mean, if that’s what
you’re thinking….”

He grinned. “We’ll watch a movie. I’ll get
pizza.”

I grinned back stupidly. “Pizza. And a
movie. That sounds good.”

“Very good.” He kissed me. And I kissed him
back. And I did not run away.

~ Jane ~

I CANCELLED MY flight. Then I worked until midday.
Hard. Mrs. Lovey was delighted that I was staying longer, and much
as I indicated that the reason was her mania for last-minute
changes and that it would cost her, I don’t know that I convinced
her I was truly disappointed.

Then I came home, and Max drooled on me and
Finn kissed me, and we barbequed, and I made Finn hellaciously good
alcoholic drinks that I had him taste-test for me. Then I fell
asleep on his couch again, with my knees hooked over his, so
comfortable and tired I was probably drooling like Max.

Wait. Did I say I
came home
?

WE DIDN’T USE any produce that night either. Just
Finn’s hands and mouth and words, whispering scary, amazing, dirty
things, telling me how to please him, asking how he should please
me—I was getting more ideas the longer I was with Finn—and every
time he tried to slow things down, I sped them back up.

I felt
hungry
for Finn. Like I was
devouring these moments, because this was just a wave, and one day
it was going to crash me into the shore real hard. But I’d made the
choice, and now I was riding it for all it was worth.

I felt like I was in a race. Against
myself.

~ Finn ~

I AWOKE IN bed alone. Janey wasn’t there.

I sat up, then pushed out of bed and, on a
feeling, went first to the window and looked out. She was standing
on the deck, in the moonlight, looking up at my half-done
masterpiece.

I tugged on a pair of jeans and went out to
stand beside her. She didn’t look over, just took a couple of steps
closer, up to my side. I threw my arm over her shoulder.

For a long time we just stood just there in
silence, the zebra-stripe wash of moonlight and shadow falling
across the dirt of the site. An owl hooted, and far away, a coyote
yipped. The air smelled of dark green pine and clean dirt and
freshly sawed boards. Wind rustled the tall treetops, then faded, a
faint hushing sound, moving away.

“How’d you get away?” she asked. Her voice
was quiet.

I didn’t need to ask what she meant. It’s
what she’d been asking about for the past thirty years of her life,
as far as I could see.

So I told her again. “College, army, good
friends. Money helps.”
But not a lot.

She listened, then shook her head. “No, I
think it’s this.” She pointed at my half-done masterpiece. “This,
and your music. I think that’s how you got away. You just went your
own way.”

We looked at it again together in silence, a
graceful skeleton made from cut wood, cold iron, and old dreams.
She had a point.

“Maybe so,” I admitted.

But it wasn’t enough. Not anymore. I needed
more than hard things and old dreams, no matter how much money they
seemed to be bringing me.

That was thing about chips. Carrying them
around on your shoulder distracted you. But if you ever set them
down, you found out you still had a ragged-edged hole screaming
inside you.

Janey shifted against my side, turned to
snuggle the front of her body against the side of mine, warm and
soft, as we looked up at my home together.

“What are you doing after the Sandler’s
party?” I said.

She tilted her head back to look up at me.
“You mean that night?”

“I mean ever.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
For a long time, we just looked at each other. Her eyes were bright
in the moonlight. Not in a good way.

“Right,” I said slowly, nodding. I reached
down for her fingers. “Come here.”

“I can visit,” she said as I took her
inside.

“You should definitely visit,” I said. “So
can I.”

“It’s a long way.”

“It’s not so long.”

Her eyes were getting bright. “Finn, I
just…. I might be moving to DC.”