ROMY FLOATED BACK to earth slowly, breaths settling inhalation by exhalation, heart rate decelerating beat by beat.
She wanted the world to stop so she could keep savoring the feeling of Matt still inside her, his head nuzzled between her neck and her shoulder.
Her limbs felt heavy, her eyelids, too; she was warm and drowsy and replete.
She almost couldn’t believe the things she’d said, telling him to go deeper, to stay there, to fill her. Unfiltered demands she couldn’t imagine making of any other man. She felt a laugh burble up, because the moisture coating the inside of her thighs told her he’d taken her at her word and filled her all right.
He raised his head and looked down at her, and for a moment his eyes told her he could belong to her, and only her, forever. His eyes told her that he loved her.
She held her right hand to his face, and he turned his mouth to it, kissing her palm.
“Take it off,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“The ring, take it off.”
And in the time it took her to blink, the poignant tenderness she was so sure she’d seen in his eyes was gone and in its place was that other look, the one full of despair at what he’d done, what it meant. But that was just as fleeting, replaced by an emptiness so icy it made her shiver.
Funny how the springlike warmth their friendship had basked in for so long had transitioned so quickly into a season of extremes—the sear of summer, the frost of winter, no temperate zone.
Matt removed her hand from his face, withdrew from her body swift and hard, and stood. One hand hitched his underwear and jeans back into place. And it seemed they were back to square one: she may or may not be pregnant; he may or may not be interested; and sex was definitely not love.
Unutterably depressed, Romy moved more slowly—getting up off the floor, refastening her jeans, plucking the destruction that was her blue silk underwear off the floor and stuffing it out of sight in her back pocket because she didn’t think he needed the reminder.
And then she fixed her eyes on him. “If you didn’t really want me to take off the ring, what was the point of demanding that I tell you I want you, only you?”
He hunched a shoulder. “They’re just...words.”
“Just words,” she repeated. “I see. Like love. And saying them during sex makes them meaningless?”
He took a step toward her. “Romy, I just—”
“No!” Pulling back.
“I wasn’t going to—Ah, Jesus! I just—I want you to know that whatever applied before still applies, that’s all.”
“What does that mean?”
“Arrangements. The trust fund.”
She took a slow, do-not-punch-him breath. “You know what? Go ahead and set up the trust fund—or not. I don’t care. See your lawyer—or not. I don’t care. I don’t even care if you’ve been with fifteen women in the past month, as long as you give me a shout if you discover you’ve caught something nasty.”
“I haven’t.”
“Caught anything? Good to know.”
“Been with anyone. I’m monogamous on request, remember.”
“I didn’t request it.”
“It was implied.”
“Well, good for you, but like I said, I don’t care.”
“It’s the truth.”
“How many ways can I say I don’t care?”
His jaw had tightened. “Just so you know, Romy, I’ll care.”
“You’ll—?”
“If you’re not monogamous, I’ll fucking care.”
“My, my, how bourgeois! But I suppose you have to have some guarantee that valuable trust fund won’t be supporting another man’s child, right?”
“I don’t give a fuck about the trust fund.”
“For someone who doesn’t give a fuck about it, you talk about it a lot. But anyway, back to the new plan.”
“We don’t need a new plan.”
“Sure we do, Matt, because whatever we’ve been doing for the past ten years isn’t working for me anymore. For ten years, I’ve wanted you. And you’ve known it, and ignored it, because I guess you wanted me just as much as I wanted you but in a different way.”
“Romy—”
“Please, just...let me say this. Think of us as actors in a movie, filming a scene that goes on way too long because nobody’s prepared to call ‘Cut.’ You, our hero, are walled up in a castle tower surrounded by a moat. One by one, the best and strongest women in the kingdom have been diving into the moat and swimming across to the tower hoping to scale your impregnable wall, yet not one of them has made it inside.
“Enter the heroine of the piece—that’s me, in case you’re wondering. I’ve been assessing the structure of your tower for ten years, learning the makeup of the stone and waiting for the perfect moment to make my own attempt. And a window of opportunity opens, and I can see you framed in that window. So I jump into the moat and swim like crazy, but the water is murkier than I expected, choked with weeds, so it’s hard work—so hard, I’m exhausted by the time I get to the tower. I don’t care, though, because I’ve found a gap in the stonework at last, and even if it’s not quite big enough to slip through, it’s there, and I figure if I scrape and claw and gouge and dig, I’ll find my way in. But it takes me a while to realize I’ve torn open my flesh trying to reach you, and my heart...my h-heart is on display. But when I look up to the window in that tower to ask you to open the drawbridge, because my heart needs you, and I know you can see me, clinging to the wall with my heart bleeding, Matt, bleeding for you...you turn away, even though you know I’ll drown if I fall back into that moat.”
“Stop, Romy.”
But she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t. “So I think we need to recut that scene, change it from a heart-wrenching drama into a fun comedy. Which is what we’ve done for the past ten years so it should be easy—all we really have to do is go back to being just friends. We even have a new window of opportunity, because you’re here and I’m here, but this time, we need to stay here, as in together, so as to avoid any unfair accusations about who hasn’t contacted whom in two weeks’ time when I find out if I’m pregnant. My plan—let’s call it Plan C—has two possible outcomes. One—I’m pregnant: we draw up new paperwork according to the level of friend zone success we’ve achieved. Two—I’m not pregnant: you go home and keep the hell out of my life.” She offered him a wintry smile. “Deal?”
“No,” he said, and picked up his duffel bag. “Contrary to what you seem to believe, I don’t enjoy seeing you bleed, and whatever happens, Romy, you will be in my life.”
“I won’t be in your life if you walk out that door, because I will never see you or speak to you again.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Your definition of fair doesn’t suit me. I’ve spent too long waiting for you to see me.”
“I do see you, Romy.”
“You see what you want to see, but I dare you to look harder. I dare you, Matt. Stay and play it out.”
“Jesus!” he said, and picked up his overcoat.
Romy said nothing, did nothing. Even though she knew it would half kill her if he left.
And then he yelled, “Fuck.” He glared at her. “FUCK!” He threw his overcoat and duffel bag across the room. “Fuck this, and fuck you for doing this to me.”
Up went her chin. “You won’t be fucking me, Matt, but other than that, I’ll take your response as a yes.”