ELEVEN YEARS OF US

The Last Thing To Go

Chapter Three:

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‎She pulled his shirt loose from his jeans, felt the warm skin and hard muscle of his stomach under her palms, and he shuddered at the touch, breaking the kiss just long enough to look at her — really look, eyes dark, breathing unsteady, one hand braced against the wall beside her head like he needed the support.

‎"If we do this," he said, "I need you to know something first."

‎"Okay."

‎"It's not going to be some goodbye thing for me. Some last-hurrah, get-it-out-of-our-systems thing before I fly off and we go back to texting each other memes and pretending this never happened." His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, slow, deliberate. "I'm not built for that. If this happens, I'm going to want all of it. Long distance. Plane tickets. Video calls at two in the morning because the time difference makes no sense. All of it."

‎Something in Maya's chest loosened that had been tight for years.

‎"Good," she said, pulling him back to her by his collar, "because I already looked up flights to Portland before I came over here tonight."

‎The laugh he let out was startled and delighted, disbelieving in the best possible way, and then it dissolved into another kiss, deeper this time, and his hands found the hem of her shirt again — and this time he didn't stop. He pulled it up and over her head, tossed it toward one of the half-packed boxes without looking where it landed, and paused just to look at her for a long moment, like he was trying to catch up on eleven years of not letting himself.

‎"You're staring," she said, half-laughing, suddenly shy in a way she hadn't expected.

‎"I've earned it," he said. "Eleven years of earning it."

‎"Bedroom," she managed, when his mouth found her collarbone and her knees threatened to give out entirely. "Please tell me the bed's not packed yet."

‎"Bed's the last thing to go," he said against her skin, already walking her backward down the short hallway, hands sure on her body now that permission had finally, finally been given after over a decade of restraint. "Some things you don't rush getting rid of."

‎She laughed, breathless, and pulled him through the doorway by the front of his open shirt.

‎The bedroom was dim, streetlight filtering gold through half-closed blinds, and it was mostly empty already — dresser gone, nightstands gone, just the bed and a single lamp and a stack of boxes labeled BOOKS in his familiar, messy handwriting. It didn't matter. Nothing in the room mattered except the two of them and eleven years finally catching up to the present tense.

‎He laid her back against the sheets like she was something rare, kissing his way down her throat, her collarbone, murmuring things against her skin that weren't quite words — her name, mostly, over and over, like he still couldn't believe he was allowed to say it like that. Her hands found his belt and he groaned low against her stomach, and after that neither of them said much of anything that made complete sense, just each other's names and half-finished sentences and the soft sounds of eleven years of almost finally becoming something real.

‎Later — much later, tangled together in sheets that smelled like him, streetlight still slanting gold across the ceiling — Maya traced a lazy line down his chest with one finger and felt him laugh, quiet and warm, beneath her hand.

‎"What," she said.

‎"Nothing. Just thinking that if I'd known confessions led to this, I would've done it in year three."

‎"You had eight years to catch up. I'm not complaining about tonight, though."

‎"No," he agreed, pulling her closer, pressing a kiss to her temple. "Tonight was worth the wait."