Jim glances up from his laptop and she is a few feet away, waiting patiently for an older man to wedge a giant duffle into the overhead compartment.  For a second it doesn’t register.  Her face is familiar but contextless—she could be his cousin, his accountant, his preschool teacher. Then the signal reaches the part of his brain that still keeps him up some nights, and a kind of sickened tightness fills his chest. Her name is instantly in his throat.  “Pam!” he calls.

She looks over, eyes widening.  “Hey!” she says.  “What are you doing here?”

“Going to Vienna. You?”

“Madrid,” she says. “One-way ticket.  I’m—“ The man behind her coughs meaningfully, and she notices the aisle in front of her has cleared.  “Oh, whoops,” she says, “I’m holding everyone up.”

“OK,” he says, and watches her shuffle forward and out of view.  His fingers are clamped around the armrest of his chair. He takes a deep breath, and then another, and relaxes.  He’s thought of this, thought of running into her somewhere. He’s pictured it many ways, but never brief, never dismissive.  Inconsequential.  Over. Over in just a few seconds, and accompanied by such an overwhelming feeling of relief.  Well, that could have gone so much worse.  Maybe now you can finally—

And it could be that easy, it could, really.  A funny little coda to neatly cap this non-existent thing between them, this thing he once hoped into existence.  Except that she’d said One-way ticket and now he can’t un-hear it, and so, without a thought in his head, he stands up and scans the rest of the plane. 

He finds her after a moment, across the aisle and three rows behind him. She catches his eye, and smiles.  “Hey, are you travelling alone?” he asks, and then, when she nods: “Do you want to try to switch seats with someone?”

The woman next to Pam grabs for her purse.  “I can move up there, if you like,” she says.

“You don’t mind?” says Pam.  “That’s fantastic, thank you!”

Jim hastily stuffs his belongings into his laptop bag and negotiates his way back to Pam.  “Hi again,” he says.  “Sorry, I was going to die of curiosity.  You say you’re moving to Spain?”

“Looks like!” she says, her pleasure at his tone of shock obvious.  “Can you believe it?”

He can’t, and that bothers him for a reason he doesn’t really understand. “I guess it’s been a few years,” he says.  “It’s possible you’ve been through some kind of life-changing experience. Or you’ve been brainwashed by a cult.”

“The Cult of Convincing People to Go to Spain?” she says doubtfully.  

“No,” he agrees, “you’re right, that’s not likely.  So… you just decided to pick up and go?”

She shrugs.  “I have a college friend who’s letting me stay with her for a little while,” she says.  “And then I’m going to just see what happens.  You probably think I’m way too old for this,” she adds, when he says nothing.

“No,” he says.  “I’m just surprised.  I thought you’d… you’d have a different kind of life by now.”

She shakes her head ruefully.  “You and my parents both.  I’m just having a mid-life crisis a decade early, they think.”

Sitting next to each other, they are both talking more to the back of the headrests in front of them than to each other.  It’s kind of comforting, this not having to look at her, especially when he asks questions like, “And Roy...?”

She bites her lip.  “That is a long story with a stupid ending,” she says.  

“Well, I think our alternative is Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” he says lightly, “so either way…”  She is quiet, and he feels uncomfortable letting the silence stretch.  “This is just so weird, seeing you here.”

“We are truly living the dream,” he says. His left leg sticks out into the aisle, and his right leg is bent awkwardly at the knee and tucked under his left. Flying coach is always murder on his back and limbs, but for once he isn’t thinking about it.

“So what are you going to Vienna for?” she asks.

“You may not believe this,” he says, “but I’m going to study the cello.”

“You’re right. I may not believe this.  In fact, I’m sure I don’t.”

He shakes his head.  “I can’t believe how cynical you are now.  Why crush a boy and his dream?”

“Okay,” she says, “then how many strings does a cello have?”

“I’m assuming we’ll be learning that in the first week.”

She laughs.  “You’re losing your edge.  Time was you could nearly have sold me that story.”

He considers the plastic stem of his glass, rolling it between his fingertips.  “I’ll be a famous cellist one day, Pam Beelsey, you’ll see.”

“You don’t even have to tell me what it is you’re doing,” she says, “I'll deduce it, all Sherlock-Holmes-y.  I’ll be right, too.” 

“That’s a very confident statement,” he says.  “Go ahead.”

She points to his laptop bag.  “For example, you’re on a business trip. You could be making a presentation…”  She cranes her neck at the sheaf of papers sticking out of the side pocket.  “…but you aren’t.  You’ve got course materials there, so you’re either going for training or you’re the trainer.” She glances sideways at his face, presses her lips together.  “Ah, you’re the trainer.  You’re such an easy read.”

“No, I’m matriculating with the Vienna Cello Conservatory, Class of 2012,” he insists.

She ignores him.  “This is not your first time doing this,” she says.  “You have your own headphones and the stewardess recognizes you.”

He frowns.  “What?  I mean, I’m a regular on this flight, but I don’t think I’ve seen her before.”

“Well,” says Pam, “you’re wrong.  You might not remember her, but she remembers you.  Just trust me.  Moving on,” she says, “you’re not working in paper anymore.  You’re doing something you actually like.”  

She gives him an appraising sideways glance, and he feels low buzz beneath the skin of his face and neck. “You may be onto something,” he says.

“Judging from the suit, it’s still something like sales,” she says.  “And it looks to be a thing where you have to make a pretty solid impression. On the other hand, here you are in the budget seats with us riffraff. So you’re going to schmooze with some important people, but also need to be thrifty, so… you are working for a charity or a non-profit.  Yes?”

“Yes,” he says.  “And also I’m a cello enthusiast.”

“Whatever it is you are,” she says, “it suits you.  I mean it.  You look happy.”

He smiles and there is a comfortable pause, during which he considers telling her that she’s at least partly wrong.  The impulse is nearly a physical weight; he can feel it pressing behind his eyes, at the back of his throat, in the middle of his chest. 

“Do you want to sleep?” Jim says.  His watch is already on London time, but his body knows it’s approaching midnight.

Pam shakes her head.  “I’m not tired.”

“It can help with the jet lag,” he says. 

“You can, if you like,” she says.

“I’m gonna brush my teeth,” he says, standing up with difficulty and stretching as much as is possible in the tight space.  “Don’t steal my pretzels.”

When he comes back to their seats, she is flipping slowly through his passport. 

“Sorry,” she says, smiling sheepishly, “it was halfway out of your jacket pocket, and then I couldn’t help notice… you weren’t kidding, you travel a lot.”

He nods.  “I do. I had to get more pages for that thing.”

She bends and fishes her own passport from her bag.  “Take a look,” she says, handing it to him.

He opens it, sees her photo and name and then nothing: blank page after blank page, watermarked with pastel Americana.  “Did you just get it?” he asks.

“No,” she says, “it’s three years old. I’ve wanted to do this—well, it’s sad how long I’ve wanted to do this. At least a decade.  But Roy never wanted to go anywhere we couldn’t drive.” He thinks she’s about to say more, but she just goes back to examining an ornate stamp with the word LISBOA in the middle of it.

“Oh.”  The booklet is glossy and unbending in his hands, like a new shoe.  He doesn’t know what to say, so he pages through it again.  The Liberty Bell.  Mount Rushmore. The Statue of Liberty. Empty spaces for all the places she hasn’t been. He feels the friendly, familiar weight of unrealized potential, and makes a decision.“Look,” he says, “there’s something I should tell you.”

She looks up expectantly, her finger marking her place in his passport like it’s an interrupted novel.

He exhales slowly. “This is maybe obvious already,” he says, “but it’s been a few years.  I just want to—I want to really talk to you, and hear about what’s going on in your life, but I feel like you’re maybe holding back because of what happened, you know, when I left.” He sees her begin to mouth words of reassurance, and presses on. “So I want you to know that you don’t need to do that.  It was three years ago, and I’m not that guy anymore.”

She gives him a small smile and a nod. “Yeah,” she says quietly.

“Is that okay?”

“I’m glad you said it,” she says. “I don’t know, we were friends for so long and I was so happy to see you here, but then I kept thinking—“

“What,” he says, “were you worried I was going to be all, ‘Pam, I love you, run away with me!’ and then you’d be stuck with me at 45,000 feet?”

She laughs with him and at him, relieved. “To be honest, yes. And now that seems kind of dumb.”

“No, it’s fair,” he says.  “I earned it, and I’ll be straight with you: if this had happened two years ago you might have had to get an Air Marshal involved. He would have had to lead me away, sit me down somewhere quiet and say, ‘Mr. Halpert, please take some deep breaths and calm down.  She’s not interested.’ But it’s funny, I can almost tell you the calendar day when that stopped being an issue for me. And seriously, I’ve really wanted to talk with you ever since, just to apologize and clear the air.”

“Hmm,” she says. “You’ve almost convinced me, but I’m warning you, if you start proposing or something I will tell the flight attendant you have a bomb in your shoe.”

“Understood.”

Pam hands him back his passport and tucks hers away.  “So,” she says thoughtfully, “when was the calendar day?”

“When I finally snapped out of it? I would say right around New Year’s Eve, 2008.”

“What happened then?”

He remembers dark eyes over the rim of a champagne flute, and those few weeks (or months?) he’d been so grateful for, but that had turned out not to change anything. He’s always been good at thinking on his feet, but something about borrowing from these memories gives him pause. “I met someone,” he says, “and it was not like a Forever Love thing, but it was nice… she was nice, and she started me thinking.”

“About what?”

“Well, not just that I needed to wake up and get over you,” he says, “but more that maybe I’d kind of invented you. Sorry if that's maybe the most creepy self-involved thing you've ever heard.”

She frowns. “I’m not a huge fan of that as a concept,” she says. “Are you sure you haven’t spent the last few years becoming a giant douche?”

“No, what I’m saying is that’s what I was before,” he says. “Like, for example, that thing you just said about Roy not wanting to travel. I’m not sure you know how much that stuff used to tear me up. I used to tie myself up in knots, parsing out those Roy comments, thinking I needed to save you from something, thinking maybe you were trying to send me some coded message, and then it would be five o’clock Friday and I’d spend weekends telling my friends what a shame it was, about you and him, until they all wanted to brain me with a brick. It took me a while to figure out that about half of my feelings for you were all wrapped up in these endless conversations I’d had with myself.”

“Wow,” she says. “Wait, about half?”

He riffles through his passport and puts it back in his jacket pocket. “Yeah, about that.”

“Now I feel like I should have called the Air Marshal right after you recognized me,” she says. “Seriously, I would never have thought that’s what was going through your head. I always thought you were just disappointed in me.  Like, you thought I was funny and cool to talk to, but you just could not understand what I was doing with Roy and it made you sort of dislike me every time I brought it up.”

He grins. “And instead, I was King Melodrama of the Emo People.”

“Yes, exactly.”  She smirks.  “I guess I should have worked that out from the hair.”

He is still telling half-truths, but it feels good and at least she is talking. “So… Mall Cop or the long and tragic tale of you and Roy? And I’m telling you now, I’ve seen Mall Cop five times and it will make you want to be deathly ill.”

“So you’ve seen the movie,” she shrugs, “I’ve lived the Roy and Pam thing. Also, I feel like I might be playing with matches in a balsa mill after what you’ve just told me.”

“What do you mean?”

She looks at him pointedly.

“Ohhh,” he says, the light dawning. “Did you guys break up because of…”

Pam nods.  “Not entirely, though,” she says.  “Only about half because of you. You can wipe that smile off your face, you were just the catalyst.”

“Sure, absolutely,” he says. “Hey, did you happen to notice which row the Air Marshal is in?”

“I hate you,” she says, laughing into her coffee. 

“Well, I don’t know if you heard, but I called off the wedding,” Pam says.

The lights are dim, and most of their fellow passengers are dozing, awkwardly upright, leaning stiffly against the sides of their headrests.“I did hear, yes.” The ice in his plastic glass swirls clockwise, making a chaste rattle.

She spreads her fingers out in a little gesture of self-censure. “Well, a little while later I was bored and lonely. I’m not going to make it sound any less mercenary than that. I’ve never liked dating, and he was just there.” She takes an aggressive swig of her drink. “Really, I was happy to skip the dating part and just be able to bring someone home with me.”

He grins. “Honestly, I think you could have found quite a few people willing to make that deal in any bar in the country. Wait, that sounds terrible. Not just bars. Libraries. Antique shops. The legume aisle at Whole Foods.”

“Yeah, but that was never really my style, as I think you know,” she says.

“Actually, I’ve never known you not to be with Roy,” he reminds her, “so explain this style of yours.”

She considers. “My style, I guess,” she says, “was to pretend to be repulsed by one night stands with strangers when secretly they’d have made my life a whole lot easier. Because there was this whole thing where I just kind of jumped Roy, on impulse, but then because I’ve known him since I was thirteen I had to go through the motions of breaking up all over again. I can’t tell you how much that sucked.”

“Did he take it pretty hard?”

“A little,” she nods, “but I mostly mean it sucked for me, because if it had been my call I would just have sent him on his way right afterwards and never heard from him again. But because I needed to pretend to be a better person than that, I let it fester for a few weeks and then we had to have a big messy scene. So now you’re likely in awe of my breathtaking moral code.”

“No, I know,” he says. “Sometimes you just want someone gone, and once you’ve made that decision, it just can’t happen fast enough.”

“Exactly.” There’s a moment’s pause, and then she smiles up at him.  “This is fantastic. I’ve never told anyone the truth about that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she says, “again, I didn’t want people to know that I had kind of just… used someone, especially Roy… so instead, I had to engineer this make-believe that I really wanted to give it another shot and then get him to break it off. My best friend from high school took me out for dinner afterward and then we ate like a bucket of ice cream at her place.  Even she totally bought it.  I’m pretty good at charades, turns out.”

“You’re Helen Mirren-esque.  I’m a little afraid of you.” He frowns. “So you got him to break up with you? How’d you make that work?”

She slips a sliver of ice from her glass into her mouth and crunches it thoughtfully. “Well, that’s where you come in, my friend. I told him about what happened… well, I told him the beginning of what happened, with you.”

“Why just the beginning?”

“Roy can have a kind of filthy, suspicious mind, sometimes,” she explains. “It was better just to let him fill in the end himself. Worked like a charm: Wham, bam, good day to you, Pam.”

“Wow,” he says. “Well, I’m glad that some good came out of it, I guess.”

“Oh,” she says, her voice tinged with compassion, and squeezes his forearm lightly, “I’m sorry, I am stupid and probably dehydrated. That was a dumb thing to tell you.”

He sighs.  “It’s fine. You got an ice-cream-eating pajama party out of it, so I can take comfort in that.”

“There were no pajamas, just ice cream.”

“Dammit Pam!” he says in mock frustration, “I am trying to find the silver lining in all of this.  I’m doing it, as always, by imagining a pajama party. With maybe deep tissue massages or ticklefighting.”

She laughs, relieved. “Oh, of course. Get a couple of us girls together, and we instantly strip to bras and panties and start rubbing each other.”

The man to her right clears his throat and pointedly turns away from her, thumping his tiny pillow into place under his cheek with palpable irritation.

“Oh hey,” she says, with a sheepish look, “seems like I’m in that phase where I’m saying inappropriate things really loudly. Maybe time to stop drinking.”

“Or you could just say more inappropriate things, but quietly,” he suggests. “Keeping in mind that I spend most of my nights nowadays in business class hotel rooms, alone with my colorful imagination.”

She raises her eyebrows at this. “All alone, just a boy and his skin flicks,” she murmurs.

“Not even,” he says. “I’m like you, I need people to think the best of me, even when it isn’t true. I’m not going to put something on a hotel bill that’ll shock the poor woman in our Accounts Payable. Ass Pirates of the Caribbean or something.”

“I don’t think it works like that,” she says. “Or anyway, I’d be surprised if they put the actual name of the movie on the bill.  It probably just appears as a generic thing like Adult Entertainment Title.”

“Aw, that’s sort of disappointing,” he says.

“In what way?”

“Well,” he says, “I’ve already mentioned the woman in Accounts Payable…”

“Oooh,” she says, “now we’re getting into the dirt.”

“She’s a little bit like Angela,” he says. “Not on such a grand scale. If Angela is a ten on the scale of Angela-ness, then this person is more like a four.”

“Got it,” says Pam, “a little repressed, a little high-buttoned blouse, but not a zealot. And, I take it, kind of attractive.”

“Right,” he says, “and anyway, like I said, I’d be mortified if she ever saw a bill of mine with some sort of charge for porn. A couple of times, though, I’ve looked over the list of titles and tried to figure out which one I’d most want her to see on my expense report.”

“The one she’d find least offensive?”

“No,” he says, “the one she’d find most offensive. I imagine how she’d react to each of them, and then—then I pick the one I think would make her blush bright red and maybe drop the paper. I may be the saddest person you know.”

She is silent, and he wonders if he’s finally made her uncomfortable. “You say you pick the one that this nice accountant will get the vapors over,” she says at last. “To what end, do you pick this movie? You’ve already said you don’t watch it.”

He winces. “I just… think about what would happen if I did,” he says awkwardly. “Or I just read the dirty parts from the nightstand bible. It’s a wild party each and every night, I can tell you.”

“Hmm,” she says, “yes, you are sad. Next time you’re reduced to something like that, you should give me a call and I’ll invent something more fun for you to do.  Like breaking bottles with your face.”

“Or I could just send you the list of movies,” he says, “and you could help me choose.”

“No, no,” she says, shaking her head.  “That wouldn’t solve anything.”

“Trust me, it would make a big difference,” he says.  “Huge. But I guess it doesn’t sound like much fun for you, and plus you’d probably be in a different time zone half the time and I’d just be sitting there, waiting for your text, flipping through Song of Solomon or something and feeling like your pervert uncle.”

Pam’s other seatmate coughs again, this time louder.  She rests her head against the side of her seat, almost on his shoulder. “Oh Pervert Uncle,” she says, yawning, “I’ve missed annoying people with you, a whole lot.”

“Me too,” he says. “I forgot what naturals we are at it. Do you want to try napping for a bit?”

“A bit,” she says. “Just a few minutes.”

And then she is asleep.  He watches her for a long while before his eyelids drift closed.

Jim wakes up to catch Pam cautiously peering at her face in a tiny mirror. She notices him and smiles self-consciously.  “I was all shiny and gross,” she says. “Sleeping in street clothes is always so disgusting. We’re landing in about twenty minutes.”

“What?”  He checks his watch. He had not planned to sleep this long, but she is right, he can already feel the plane descending. No, no, more! says a voice in his brain, and he feels instantly panicky. “Wow, I’m really—I really wish we had more time.”

“Yeah,” she says.  “Me too.”  She tucks the compact back into her purse. “Are you getting right on your connecting flight to Vienna?”

“No,” he says, “I have two nights in Heathrow first, a charity dinner thing.  My flight’s day after tomorrow. You?”

She shrugs.  “Actually, I don’t know.  My friend told me it would be cheaper to just get myself to Heathrow and then buy the cheapest fare to Madrid from there.  I’m hoping she was right.”

“Yeah, that will work,” he says.  He spins quickly through a few variations of what he wants to say to her next, but despite this preparation, when he speaks the words, he still sounds horribly nervous. “If you want, you could put it off until tomorrow,” he says. “You could spend the day in London…”

“With you,” she says.  It’s not a question.

“Yes,” he says. “You could come with me.”

“Okay,” she says quietly. She goes back to rummaging in her purse, while he silently freaks out.  

She doesn’t say much until they are through Customs and Baggage Claim and standing in the middle of a busy concourse, travellers streaming in all directions. “So…” she says.

“So, regretting this?  Want to go straight to Spain?” he says.

She shakes her head. “No. But you know, I just feels awkward all over again, for some reason. Stupid, when we’ve been talking and talking for hours.”

“Should we just get back on another plane?” he jokes.

“No.” She looks up at him intently.  “Can we try something?”  When he nods, she quickly moves forward and wraps her arms around his shoulders.  “I’m so glad to see you, Jim,” she says softly.

Uncertainly, he hugs her back. “I’m glad to see you,” he says. When she doesn’t pull away immediately, he quickly kisses her cheek. “I missed you.”

They step apart again, and her eyes are laughing.  “There!” she says.  “That was what we needed. Do you feel better?”

“I do!” he says, and it’s not untrue, but he’s been flying ever since they landed, and better is irrelevant to his current state. “So we can take the train, which will be faster, or the Underground, which will be cheaper.”

“I vote cheaper.  I am ridiculously poor now,” she says.  “Plus it wouldn’t be London if we didn’t take the Underground.”

They make their way through a series of escalators, corridors and stairs, buy tickets from a machine, and wait on a cool, dark platform.

“What is that smell?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “That musty smell?”

“I’ve never known,” he says. “It always smells like that. Probably electrified rats and molding fast food wrappers.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not that bad.  I kind of like it.  It’s like old encyclopedia pages, plus maybe the ghost of some ancient gum.”

He frowns at her. “And you like that?”

“Yes,” she says. “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Kensington,” he says. “My hotel’s in Kensington.”  He feels himself flushing hotly, and looks up the line for the non-existent train. Relax. You are not doing anything wrong. “That’s okay, right? You want to check in now and get rid of our bags?”

“That’s perfect,” she says. “I’d also like to have a shower, if I could.”

The cool tunnel air is doing nothing for the heat in his face. “Not a problem,” he says, contriving to sound casual. “I’ll join you.”  There is a long, horrible pause.  “Or, what I mean is—“

She puts her hand on his arm.  “Settle down, I know what you mean.”  She glances away as, with a subdued shriek of metal sliding on metal, the train rumbles into view.  “Now, an important decision,” she says, “do we or do we not pretend there is nothing funny about the word Cockfosters?”

“We’re mature world travellers, so we pretend we don’t even see it there, while inwardly we giggle like twelve year-olds,” he replies.

“That’s what I thought,” she says.  

About an hour later, he holds the hotel room door open for her. “Now, a shower, and clothes that aren’t just one giant crease!” she says with enthusiasm. “Oh, but first, does your phone work here?”

“Yeah,” he says, “you need to call someone?”

“I just want to text my friend and let her know what I’m doing, and that she doesn’t need to pick me up this afternoon,” she says. She takes the offered phone, sits down on one of the beds, and starts typing. “So what do you want to do after this?” she asks absently.

He pauses in the act of hanging up his suit jacket. “Um, your call.  You want to do some site-seeing?”

“I would love to do massive amounts of site-seeing,” she says, pressing a few last keys, “at some point, but not today. Today I want to spend time with you.” She hands his phone back to him and picks up her carry-on bag. “I’ll shower, and you think of a place that we could go and just kind of hang out. Oh, and that also doesn’t cost anything.”

“Will do,” he says, and she disappears into the bathroom. He sits down on the other bed and lies back, his feet still on the floor.  Now that she is out of sight, the idea of her being here seems suddenly improbable: two parts of his life intersecting in a way that feels totally alien. Even stranger is the fact that she is not exactly as he is used to remembering her: there’s a new directness in the way she speaks and decisiveness about the way she moves. He wonders how much he has changed, and if she’s noticed.

The sound of running water begins in the other room, and he closes his eyes.  She is here. What am I going to do now? he thinks.  You are fucked, another voice in his head replies, and as always, you are going to do nothing at all. The phone beside him buzzes briefly, and he glances over at it, glad of the distraction. 

On the display are an unfamiliar number and the words:

THAT Jim?!?

Jim stares at the message, unblinkingly, ambushed into total immobility. Then, with numbed fingertips, he deletes it and shoves the phone back into his pocket. It’s nothing, it’s never anything. The intervening years slide smoothly away, and an old pain snaps back into place. Carrot and stick, remember? he tells himself.  Be smart. 

But it had been no use then, and it isn’t working now, either.  The damage is already done, his mind seizing on those two words and parsing them like mysterious ancient hieroglyphs.  He is THAT Jim; he signifies in some way, three years on and thousands of miles from Scranton. That thought alone, without any interpretation, is tantalizing enough to make him feel a little light-headed.  

The light in the British Museum is clean and cold. A noisy school group moves off into the next gallery, and the room they are in is suddenly quiet.  Pam sits down on one of the benches running down the center, and he sits beside her. 

“So these are them,” she says. “The infamous Elgin Marbles.”

“These are them,” he agrees.  “What do you think?”

She takes a long breath.  “I think… I know it’s been said that they shouldn’t even be here, they don’t belong here. On another day I might even agree, but today—I’m glad they are here today, is what I mean. I’m glad I got to see them.”

“Yeah,” he says. "I know."

They sit in silence for a long while, and then Pam gives herself a little shake.  “If I was here alone, I would be killing myself that I didn’t bring my sketchbook,” she says. “But I’m not here alone, and I won’t let these beautiful things seduce me into forgetting to ask, what’s happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said, “you left, and now: this is your life. Tell me what happened in between.”

He shrugs. “I got interested in the cello, obviously—“

“No,” she says sharply, “no, don’t. I want to know.”

It’s the last thing he wants to tell her about, and yet a big part of him is dying to jump in front of that bus. Before them, the marble shapes of the horses and their riders form an endless line, disappearing into the distance. He turns from them and looks at her. “It’s kind of a downer, honestly. Do you really want to get into this?”

“Yes,” she says.

At his first presentation to a big group of donors in New York, he’d been in a daze at the podium. He’d done enough rehearsal that he hadn’t been paralyzed, luckily, but it had felt unreal, like he was moving and speaking at the command of some powerful invisible puppeteer.

This is a little like that.

“I had to get out of Scranton,” he says slowly. “I know you probably think it was just some crush, but it wasn’t. I was going crazy: I kept thinking about waiting out the last weeks, knowing you were going to marry Roy, and then the day itself… either there at the church or sitting at home staring at a wall… Sometimes I wanted to take back what I’d said to you, a lot of times, actually. Sometimes I was relieved it was over. So I took the job in Stamford, so I could get a fresh start and not have to think about it anymore. Except that totally didn’t work.”

She makes a sympathetic sound, and her eyes are very kind.

“Then I moped around, draining the life out of everyone, for a few months,” he continues. “Until I made a really good friend, and she convinced me that the problem was that my fresh start hadn’t, um… been all that fresh.”

Pam nods. “I guess I can see that.”

“Anyway, her brother-in-law is an accountant for the charity I work for now. They had an opening, and she convinced me to go for it. She was right, it helped, because for the first time in I think ever I had something else to think about at work. In this case, it was the actual work, which… concept. And it turns out when I actually try, I can be good at things.”

“Oh, I could have told you that,” she says.

He shakes his head. “If you had told me that, it would have just thrown me into another tailspin, I wouldn’t really have heard it.  I would have been all, She believes in me and I believe in her, and there I would have been, making spaniel eyes at you and scratching P plus J into the back of my trapper-keeper.”

She laughs. “Or into your arm, by candlelight.”

“Exactly.  But it was a good thing to find out. Anyway, fast forward a few years, and here I am.”

“Not so fast with that fast forward,” she says. “Rewind. You’ve made an awesome friend, and have finally shaken the dust of me and Scranton off your boots. Then what happens?”

He drops his gaze, and focuses on the grain of the dark wooden bench. “You know. The usual,” he says.

“That is completely unhelpful,” she says. “Were you always this annoying?”

“Yup.” Another group of uniformed school kids meanders in, their high voices echoing off the glass roof of the gallery. “You want to go look at something else?”

“Since you’ve decided to be difficult,” she says, “then yes, I guess I’ll just have to entertain myself with these unimpressive ancient works of art.”

“You are such a trouper,” he says. “Come on, let’s walk.” 

Two stone lions with human heads flank a huge bronze gate. Pam stares into their wise and friendly faces for several long minutes. “I feel like I’m being scolded,” she says, finally, “but it a good way, like by my mom. These are wonderful. Why is no one else here?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Mesopotamia isn’t sexy enough.  Or else, I think they have a bunch more of these in here somewhere.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, “they saturated the market. Took away all of the mystery. They should have put the rest of them away, and left the people wanting more. “

She is saying this, standing close to him, her shoulder lightly brushing his, when he realizes suddenly that he has no more conversation. He can only think about kissing her: what it would feel like, what would happen next. Armageddon.  Or nothing. Which would be worse?

It is like pulling apart a magnet to move a step away from her, but he does it.

“Jim,” she says softly, “it’s okay.”

“What is?” he says, trying to keep his voice casual.

She takes his hands in hers. “I think you want to get something out of your system,” she says, then slides her fingers up his arms to behind his neck. “I know I do.”

All the air rushes out of the room, and then she is kissing him, or he is kissing her. It doesn’t matter for now. It’s probably a mistake, a train wreck, a scene he will play painfully over and over in his mind for the next decade, but for now he is content to feel the breath moving in her body and her lips warm on his.   

If he stops kissing her, it might be the last time, and so he doesn’t dare stop, doesn’t want to anyway. She is real and she is here and she is not pulling away. Something inside him roars back to life, and the unexpected momentum takes his breath away: zero to sixty in no time, flames on the pavement. He wants to kiss her until something breaks and everything goes dark. He lets the choking feeling in his chest come out of his fingers, tightening under her shoulder blades.

A thousand years later, she breaks the kiss, stumbling against him slightly. “Wow,” she says into his ear, “that’s not exactly how I remembered it.”

He rests his forehead against hers. “How d’you mean?”

Her voice sounds distant. “Your friend… your friend from Stamford… did she teach you to kiss like that?”

He flinches. In a way it’s true, but he doesn’t want it to be. “It doesn’t matter,” he says reflexively, “she wasn’t you.”

A few footfalls sound nearby in the corridor behind them and instinctively, they break apart. In an effort to act normal, he finds himself reading the white, wall-mounted placard over and over again, feeling childish and self-conscious.  883 to 889 BC.  883 to 889 BC. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…The footsteps die away again, and he gives her a sidelong glance. She is gazing at him, her expression both amused and hesitant.

“I wrecked it, didn’t I?” she says.  “I shouldn’t have mentioned her. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “We’re older, stuff has happened to us.  I don’t know where your sore spots are either.”

They stare together at the two stone lions.  The lions stare back with their knowing smiles. Jim gets the distinct impression that they have witnessed this scene before, and that they know exactly how he feels right now: standing stock-still, while inside a thousand bees race in every direction at once.

It is the way she has always made him feel, really, only magnified.

“Was that spur-of-the-moment, or premeditated?” he asks.

“Definitely premeditated,” she says. “I’ve changed a little since the last time I saw you, but I still love to overthink things. I’ve been wanting to kiss you since we got here.”

“Oh,” he says. “Any reason, or just a big fan of antiquities?” 

“Yes, it’s the erotic power of the exhibits,” she says.  “I was helpless to stop myself.”

“That explains why I never got anywhere with you back home,” he says. “Scranton just didn’t have enough old things.”

“No, I guess not,” she says, “I mean, other than Creed…”

“So, are you over it, now?” he asks.  “Did that help to get it out of your system?” He keeps his tone light, but he can see her gaze wander down to his lips, and the bees moving in his bloodstream become frenzied.

She looks right into his eyes, and shakes her head, once.

He leans across the small space between them, bringing one hand up to the side of her face.  Shallow kisses at first, but he can think a bit clearer now and realize that he is already slightly out of breath.  The angle is awkward, and the button on his cuff catches at her earring.  Take your time, she isn’t going anywhere. He forces himself to move more slowly, wait for her, for them to fall into each other’s rhythm. Through half-closed eyes, he can see the color in her face.

The last kiss ends, but he doesn’t want to pull away. He slides his fingers up to stroke her hair. 

“How about now?” he whispers.

“You know,” she says softly, “I wonder if this really is a solution.”

“Let’s at least give it a fair chance,” he says, and her mouth opens under his again, generous and soft.

The ground reels under his feet; he feels drunk and concussed and wonderful. Unhurried, grateful, sloppy kisses, slow explosions of color and light behind his eyelids. This is happening.

“Stop,” she murmurs, her voice very low, “stop, we should stop.  Not here. We should go.”

Reluctantly, he straightens, feeling her hand slide back down his arm to nestle in his.  “Where d’you want to go?”

“Honestly?  The hotel,” she says, dark eyes flashing, “but that would be a terrible idea.”

“That sounds the exact opposite of a terrible idea,” he protests.

“Right now, it would be,” she says. “You know it would be.”

He can still taste her on his lips, and the immediacy of that sensation makes it difficult to think of all the things he hasn’t told her. Right now he could easily forget all about Karen. But tomorrow, how would you feel?  He nods. “You’re right.”

“It’s five,” she says, “and I know it’s completely American and crass of me to want dinner this early in London, but it’s ten o’clock my time and I’m hungry.”

“I could eat. What do you feel like?”

“Anything. It has to be nearby, and it has to be cheap. Those are my terms.”

“I know a pretty good pub close to here,” he says.

She smiles in agreement, and they start together back down the long, well-worn hallway. Her hand is warm and solid in his, evidence that something has changed since they made the trip in the opposite direction.   He keeps hold of it.

The tealight on their table gutters slightly as another waiter sweeps past.  It is not even dark yet, and the dinner rush hasn’t really started. Most of the crowd is sitting or milling around the bar; only a few people are sitting around them in the pub’s red leather-backed booths.

The cheap wine goes down easily, like watered-down fruit punch, and gradually Jim loses his fear of being caught staring at her. It’s just too easy to do it; to relax into listening and to just let himself look. And either Pam doesn’t notice or she doesn’t mind, so he revels in it: the fucking unbelievable luxury of being able to look directly at her, without pretense.

The leather behind her is the color of freshly bitten lip; the candlelight puts streaks of the same color in her hair.

He takes a deep swig from his glass. “This wine is repulsive, by the way.”

“I know,” she says. “It’s the cheapest they had, and still my budget for the day is blown.”

“You could’ve let me pay,” he grumbles.

“No.  I do nothing I can’t manage on my own,” she says. “Sharing your hotel aside, anyway.  My need for independence is very selective.”

“So I see.” He has somehow forgotten that she will be in his room tonight. Unbidden, his mind goes back to the museum. Then the two thoughts connect and expand, and he feels his mouth go dry.

“Hmm,” she says, eyes lighting on something beside her on the bench. She picks it up and places it triumphantly on the table between them: a single small coin.  “Penny… or nickel… or whatever this is… for your thoughts?”

“It’s ten pence.”

“OK,” she says. “And you can keep the change. What were you thinking right then?”

He pulls the silver coin across the tabletop toward him, flips it over. The lean profile of two lions, their faces turned toward him.  Say it.  “I was remembering what it was like, kissing you, and—and hypothesizing.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Safe high school science lab hypothesizing or wacky quantum physics hypothesizing?”

“One turned into the other,” he says. 

She shakes her head at him, her color rising. 

“I couldn’t help it,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“See, that’s what makes no sense to me,” she says. “You’ll tell me that… really, it seems like you enjoyed telling me that a little bit, and in some ways talking to you seems like the most honest conversation I’ve had with anyone in years, but then all of a sudden you’ll just, like, snap shut with no warning.”  She looks at him appraisingly.  “Was I right to order just one bottle? Should I have them put another on stand-by?”

“One should be enough,” he says.

She frowns.  “I don’t know.  You are very… reserved on some points still. I was hoping that a combination of red wine and jet lag would start to wear you down.”

“Do you want me sleeping or talking?”

“Maybe both,” she says, refilling his glass.  “Maybe neither.  Never mind, I’m not going to push. I know that’s never going to work with you.”

“Thanks.” 

“That was reverse psychology, by the way.”

“Yes, I know,” he says.  He spreads his fingers flat on the table, feels the push and play of taut wires in his arms running down the center of the bones into his hands.  “It’s just such a long story, and I didn’t really know how to get into it.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she says.  “I’ll get you started.  It’s New Year’s Eve, 2008, and our hero is in Stamford.  Presumably at a party, yes?”

“Yes,” he says, “I get dragged there by a coworker.”

“And at the party,” she continues, “you meet the girl.”

“Not exactly,” he says.  “The coworker is the girl.  I mean, we’d already met.  We just—we’d just been friends.”

“Oh.”  Pam nods slowly.  “Right, so you go to the party with her, and then that changes.  What was she like?”

He sighs.  “Smart,” he says, “beautiful, funny, determined. Brave.”

Pam’s gaze flickers down to the table.  “Wow,” she says.  “That’s quite a resume. And she was good for you?”

“Yeah,” he says, “she changed my life.  I thought for a while that… it wasn’t like with Katy, where I knew all along I was just spinning my wheels. The thing I’d built in my head about you: that was done, I had to accept that. So with her, it was amazing, because it just seemed so effortless. She said, come out for drinks and then we did, and I said let’s go camping and we did.”

Her lips tighten, and he wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.  In the confused silence that follows, she looks more like the Pam of his memories.

“Then what?” she says finally.  “Was it sunshine and roses?”

You have to tell her.  Tell her all of it.  “Yes,” he says. “It was like that.”

“And so?”

The rest of the world fades away in his peripheral vision, leaving only her face, and he feels his heart pound against his ribs: it’s fear, and little bit of adrenaline, and everything depending on what she does when he pulls the trigger. “And so… I married her.”

She nods, once, almost without moving her head.  She doesn’t say anything.

He wants to say a thousand things, then, but his tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Pam’s fingers find the bottle, and she refills her glass almost without looking at it. “You know,” she says, “I know I have no right to be angry, but that doesn’t stop me from…” She trails off, and shrugs helplessly.  “This is it, right? This was the elephant we’ve been maneuvering around all this time? Nothing else?”

“No, nothing else,” he agrees.

“Good,” she says.

“Or, wait,” he says, “I guess there’s also the thing where we’re still technically married.”

She stares at him.  “Technically?” she says. “You’ll define technically right this minute.”

“We’re separated,” he says. “I talked to her a week ago; before that I hadn’t seen her for almost a year.”

“Oh,” she says, with a trace of a smile.  “That’s saved you from wearing this wine.”  She frowns at the coin on the tabletop.  “I’m going to stop asking you questions now.”

“Really?” he says.  “You don’t want to know how we got from sunshine to—“

“No,” she says. “Maybe another time."

He watches her intently; her face is unreadable. “How deep a pit have I dug myself, here?”

She shakes her head. “It’s not the worst thing that… Wait, you didn’t have kids, did you?”

“No,” he says. “No, thank God.”

“Okay,” she says, “then it’s sort of a shock, but life goes on. I mean, demonstrably, some serious life has gone on.”

“Yeah,” he says, “but if I had it to do over again—“

“No, don’t say that.  Stuff happened, but now we’re here. “

“That’s a very grown-up attitude,” he says. “Just know that I’m wishing I’d spent the last few years in a monastery. Or maybe half my time in a monastery and half in a gym.”

She grins. “Maybe a monastery with a gym?”

“Yes, exactly,” he says, “fasting, chanting, weights, and illuminating your name in the margins of holy books.”

“Amazing,” she says. “It sounds like it would get old, though.”

“Sure, after a few months,” he says, “and then I would have drawn some naked pictures of you on vellum and hidden them in my cell. To keep me company on those solitary evenings.”

She frowns at him in mock exasperation.  “That, Jim, was inappropriate.  And here all this time I believed you were a nice boy. “

“I am a nice boy,” he insists. “But I’ve still had… thoughts.”

“Hmm,” she says, “I remember vowing to stop asking you questions, but it’s like an addiction.  I’d love to know if your thoughts matched any of my thoughts.”

“Ms. Beasley, I am scandalized. Was I wrong to assume you were a nice girl?”

“You were, because I’m not,” she says, her eyes laughing at him. “But I think you were probably hoping for that.”

“I was.  I was hoping for filth, to tell the truth.  I’m that depraved.”

“Not filth,” she said. “Or at least, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he says. The silver coin slides back across the tabletop, the metal warming under his fingertip.  “10p for an example of one of your thoughts.”

She considers this for a long time. “Or a demonstration,” she says finally.

A demonstration… “What—I’m not sure what that even means.”

“It means I’m gonna slow up on this wine a little,” she says.

“No, wait,” he says. “I gotcha now. Please carry on.”

She turns the coin over in her palm, smiling at him. “It has been awhile, hasn’t it?”

“I really am a monk these days,” he says. “You have no idea.  It’s probably for the best if you just forget it. I’ve had an unbelievably crap year; if you said something truly dirty, it would probably stop my heart.” He takes another sip of wine. “Don’t let that trouble you, of course.”

Even in the waning light, he can see her cheeks flush. “Okay,” she says softly, “guess what I’m thinking.” Her gaze flickers down for a second, then she lifts her face resolutely, stretching out a hand to intertwine with his. Her eyes are round and bright, her expression slightly glazed, openly greedy.  He feels the charge of it travel through him, starting in his spine and blooming outward to suffuse his limbs and the surface of his skin.

He lets go of a shaky breath. “You want to get out of here,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

-----

They manage the street and the Underground with only one minor issue, when the surprising and delicious physics of two bodies pressed together on a slowing train cause him to briefly lose both his mind and sense of direction and they ride right past their stop.  For that reason, it’s half an hour later when he lets them into the vestibule of his tiny hotel room.

“Hi,” he says, his voice is barely above a whisper.  His fingers brush up her arm, over her shoulder, to her face.

“Hi.”  She presses against him, her face upturned to his.

Something's gone badly wrong with his vision. He needs to see her, but the light is too bright; he can barely look down at her face, blurred and so close that he can feel the heat of her skin. She is breathing fast, mouth slightly open, her lower lip red and swollen. She wobbles backward unsteadily, overcompensates, and leans harder into him, and against the rising of his blood a jangling alarm begins to beat out a faint but persistent rhythm.

"Hey,” he says gently, “you had a lot to drink tonight.”

"You had more," she says truthfully. "C'mon." She slips a finger inside his shirt cuff and leads his hand around her waist to the small of her back, and then lower. "C'mon," she repeats when he hesitates, "you can't kiss me like that and then get all responsible."

"Okay," he says, "but now I've asked the question, I need an answer." His voice sounds convincingly stern, but she has her other hand on his belt now and it's difficult to think.

She sighs. "Fine," she says, "yes, I am well and truly drunk. This is nothing I wouldn't do stark staring sober, though." She gives his cuff another, more determined tug, and now his hand is on the curve of her ass. "I have to say, I didn't think I'd have to talk you into it."

He rests his forehead against hers as he feels the floodgates coming down. "I guess I just never thought that this would ever actually happen."

She rocks forward onto her toes, her body moving against his, her lips brushing his neck. "Dear Penthouse," she murmurs into his ear, "I never thought this would happen to me..."

Both of his hands are on autopilot now, gliding and exploring. He pulls her closer, and she shapes herself to him like warm, living wax. Every switch in him is on, every nerve is on fire. "You feel so good," he says, "I don't want to stop."

"But I haven’t asked you to stop," she says.

It occurs to him, very suddenly, that she is serious and he is in trouble. His forte with her, reinforced over years of repetition, is restraint. Even after the long separation, he can't shake the conditioning telling him Be cautious, be careful. He is at sea now, her lips and tongue sliding with his and his heart hammering under his ribs and all the while a voice in his head hissing, Wait, Hold on, Slow down.

The experience is faintly familiar, and in a flash he places it: Caroline Taylor’s bedroom in eleventh grade, after three months of go-go-stop, and then one miraculous afternoon all lights had gone green at once and yet he hadn’t quite been able to shake the feeling that he should be ready to pack his bags and go at a moment’s notice. He’d been a kid, and it had been strange to wrap his mind around the idea of a girl wanting to touch him as much as he wanted to touch her.

The adolescent shellshock falls away, and something else takes its place. He is abruptly, gratefully aware of his years and ability. His fingertips skate the length of her spine as he lowers his mouth to her neck, just under her jawline, and feels her breath catch.

In all the time he’s known her, he’s never found a way to completely extinguish the tiny flame of optimism she excites in him; it’s always flickering under the surface of his skin when she is with him, or he thinks of her, or someone says Pam. But to have everything come true at once—all his ships coming in together, his stars miraculously aligning and pointing the way to infinity—goes past hope.

Jim feels the words I love you forming in his throat and wills them back, not because he doesn’t mean them, but because they are out of place in this claustrophobic dark, his body pressing into hers against the slight give of the louvered closet doors. Not yet. Focus. You’ve got this. The skin of her back flows under the fingertips of his right hand, glowing with heat. His left hand is laced into her hair as he kisses her, the heel of his palm angled slightly under her jaw, and her face is the same: hot to the touch, like a new sunburn.

She is fumbling at his shirtfront. “Too many clothes,” she murmurs into his mouth, and he nods, and then both her sweater and his shirt are on the floor at their feet. She grabs at the sides of his belt and walks him a little forward. Before he had the luxury of shirttails and a slightly oblique angle, but now they are torso to torso. He feels her hips jump a little under his and returns the pressure, and there, there, there—how easy it would be to let his vision narrow to that one point of contact, to make that sensation his life’s work and until he goes off like a cork on New Year’s—

The memory of that New Year’s Eve, not long ago, gives him a moment of clarity and he takes a deep breath and stills against her. Count to five hundred. Think of England, for fuck’s sake. He switches gears, kisses her again, and then moves his focus to just under her jawline.

She runs a hand over his shoulder. “All this bare skin;” she breathes into his ear. “Of course I knew it was here, under your clothes, but still… were you always this pretty?”

One of her fingers sweeps over a ticklish spot and he feels a muscle twitch. “More or less. You’re being too nice,” he says. “I’m not playing ball anymore, and I don’t run as often.”

“Dammit,” she says. “Well, that will haunt me forever now. That, and the fact that I had a chance to change earlier and I still haven’t matched my bra to my underwear.”

He slips a forefinger under one strap and slides it off the edge of her shoulder. “You didn’t know it was going to go like this,” he says.

“I did, though,” she says.  “I knew on the plane.”

He feels her press forward, hard against him, and in an instant he’s teetering again.  Such a lightweight. Find some willpower, quick, or this is going to be the end of you.  He pulls away from her a little. “When on the plane?”

“The whole time,” she says softly. “Especially during your sad, sad tales of the lonely business traveller…”

She’s laughing at him now, and that’s not going to work either, so he leans in close again, angling his thigh between her legs and kissing her hard on the throat. Her words trail off in a soft cry and her fingers dig into him until it hurts. Better.  You can do this for hours. Or minutes, anyway.

She is salty and sweet and here. He wants to make this last: tasting her skin under his lips, finding the places she likes to be kissed and touched, hearing her breath catch. He feels powerful, while at the same time his legs want to fold under him.

One of her hands slides around to his belt buckle; he moves it gently but firmly back to his waist and out of harm’s way. She makes a sound of disappointment. “Let me.”

“No, I—“

“But I want to touch you,” she says.

Those nights, alone and awake and thinking of her, he’d always been frustrated by lack of detail. For whatever reason, his imagination—which filled in the blanks nicely with other women—balked at invention when it came to her. He was left with a flimsy patchwork of threadbare memories: her hand on the inside of his upper arm from the day she’d slipped on the wet lunchroom floor, the smell of her hair and the weight of her head on his shoulder once in an endless staff meeting.  Sometimes that was all it took, rationed and timed correctly.

Now he has the opposite problem: she is warm and alive in his arms, and it’s too much all at once.  That and the wine.  You made a bad call there.  “Look,” he says, “I’m… it’s been kind of a long time. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself… no, actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Could we maybe… could we just focus on you for a bit? Once we add me into the mix—“ he pauses awkwardly.

She takes a deep breath, and kisses him chastely on the cheek. “What do you want me to do?” she says.

“Come here.” He grabs her hand and leads her a few steps to sit with him on the edge of the bed. A little light from the window partially illuminates her flushed face and tousled hair, and then he needs to kiss her again, pulling her down on top of him on the cool cotton of the duvet. The friction of her body on his feels much too good much too fast, and he rolls them both over hastily, settling with her knees on either side of him.

God, would you look at that…  Her breasts, half-covered in blue lace, are under his fingers.  He kisses his way between them, as slowly as he can bear to, letting his hands run parallel to his mouth from the curves to the flat of her belly. He reaches the top of her skirt and stops, finds the metal tab at her left side, and a second later slides the skirt uphill to her knees, then back downhill over her calves and feet. When he reaches to repeat the motion with her panties, he feels her breath quicken and the muscles in her abdomen tighten.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, her voice just above a whisper.

The panties—red-and-white-striped, like a candy cane—join her skirt on the bed beside them. He kisses the inside of her ankle, her knee, her thigh, on a gradual descent. Her fingers gather fistfuls of bedding as he finally lowers his head to her. 

He’s been told this is something he’s good at, and he’s never needed that to be true more than now. He wants her happy, writhing, laughing, coming; he just plain wants, from his head to the bottoms of his feet. He can see her from here, can watch her expression change as he tastes her for the first time: her teeth raking at her lower lip, her eyes closed. Her face is so completely familiar but the angle is shockingly foreign, sending a jolt all the way down his spine. There she is, he thinks, and then: Caroline Taylor was a long, long time ago. Let’s see how much you’ve learned. 

He keeps it light, at first, stroking tentatively while he works out her particular puzzle. A tangle of pale pink and darker rose, inner thighs that open further the longer he spends exploring. Her spine arches up sharply when he uses his lips and tongue together, so he tries it again, still gently. Her mouth falls open a little, then wider as his tongue slips over her a third time before she’s recovered from the second. One of her hands slides up from the bed into his hair and there, that’s your rhythm.

His skin is on fire, and he is desperate with need, but he manages to ignore it, to keep her spinning there for awhile. Not up, not down, suspended in space, the soles of her feet pressing into the bedclothes, breathy sighs loud in the small room. A minute, a year, time doesn’t matter to them here anyway. Now add strings.

He runs the pad of his thumb slowly down the center of her, then slides a finger, two fingers, slowly inside. Circles, rubs, flicks a glance up to her face and there it is, that subtle frown, that mounting intensity of purpose.

Her feet slide and lock behind his shoulder blades. Her hips move with the motion of his mouth and hands; deliberately, he keeps the pace the same, watching as her movements become feverish, the frown deepening.  There, yes, please. Her whole body stills and then shudders, her back curving away from the bed, muscles tightening around his fingers.

He moves up to lie beside her, dizzy from relief and lack of air. After a long while, she opens her eyes lazily, rolling to face him. “Holy fuck… You,” she says thickly, “you…”

“Mmm-hmm?” he says, grinning.

She pokes him in the chest with a forefinger. “That was… stop that smirking already, or I’ll make you get back down there and do it properly.” She pushes her hair away from her face, laughing. “Now, what about you?”

“What about me?”

Her hand moves down his chest, pausing at just below his navel. “Are we still working with a short fuse, or what?” 

“Way to build a guy up,” he says, but then it doesn’t matter because she’s got his belt and fly open and he may be having some sort of embolism.

“No, not a short fuse,” she says, with another low laugh. Her soft fingers close around him and his hips rock forward of their own accord.

“It’s not gonna take much, though,” he breathes, and then freezes, an awful thought dawning. Oh God fucking dammit, please…  “Wait, you don’t… I don’t have a condom.”

She stops, her eyes round. “What?”

“No… do you?”

“No,” she says. “Oh my God, Jim, I’m so sorry.”

He slumps back into the pillows.  “No, this sounds exactly like me. You’re finally here with me, and I’m carrying the wrong wallet.”

“We can probably find some,” she says hopefully, “maybe with an amusing British brand name like Sir Pimm’s Finest or Spotted Pullets. “

“Yeah,” he says unenthusiastically.

“Or…” she slants a smile up at him. “I could just return the favor. I promise I’d make it worth your while.”

“Hmm,” he says, “or maybe that would be good.”

Pam’s hands are cool on Jim’s skin as she eases away the rest of his clothes. She stretches out beside him on the bed when she’s finished, palm smoothing down his body from his shoulder, down his chest, pausing at his hip.

Then her fingers slip around him and he flinches slightly. He is over-sensitive, too far gone. He needs a distraction.

“This is really pretty,” he says, tugging at the strap of the blue lace bra, which hangs off her shoulder, “but can it be off?”

She smiles, reaches behind her, shrugs the bra forward and oh, she is amazing, all generous curving buttery skin that belongs in his mouth. Breasts that were made to be cupped, suckled, held, kissed, so he tries it, each in turn and all at once. So sweet, I could do this all day. The angle is awkward, so he cups her ass and pulls her up and across him, straddling his waist.

He takes his time, her hands raking through his hair. Pale, soft, delicious, welcoming. Coming home.

She moans and kneads gently at his shoulders, her voice above him uncertain. “Hey,” she murmurs, “I thought it was supposed to be your turn.”

“This is my turn,” he insists between kisses. “Or… am I bothering you?”

She runs a hand down his back. “No, the opposite of that,” she says. “You’re making it really hard to be as unselfish as I know I should be right now.” 

“Then it’s win-win, yes?” he says, his hands and mouth still busy with her.

“No, not really,” she says breathlessly, “because you’re making me want other things too.”

“Other things like?”

She slides her hand behind her, between his legs, gives him a long, smooth stroke that gets his attention. He feels pressure building already, his head buzzing and fogged with sensation. Eight times seven is fifty-six. Eight times eight is sixty-four. Eight times nine is eleventy-billion.  “Uh… okay, the fuse is even shorter than I thought,” he manages.

Pam kisses his forehead, his temple, his cheek. Her face is an inch from his; they are breathing the same air. “That’s not helping,” she says.

“Sorry, I wanted this to be—“

“Not what I meant,” she says, her teeth catching at his upper lip. “Maybe this is dumb or deviant, but I kind of like the idea of you being on a hair-trigger.”

He laughs self-consciously. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s your wildest fantasy come true.”

“Oh, it’s not a game I’d want to play every day,” she says softly, “but for today… right now, the thought of it’s completely driving me nuts.  I’m not kidding.”

He opens his eyes and hers are so close it’s hard to focus on them, but they are wide and dark and perfectly serious. “It’s kind of both of our lucky days, then, isn’t it?” he says. “Because if you want a rolling grenade, I’m your guy.”

She wriggles in his lap, friction in all the right places, and both of their breathing gets noisier. She rests her forehead hotly against his. “Know what else I want?”

“What?” he says.

“I want to be irresponsible,” she says, and shifts in his arms, drops lower, grinds her lower body down over his, and he feels the wet heat of her, so close, so close.

“No, no, no.” He can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t hold still. “Don’t, don’t… I can’t… I’ll do it, I can’t stop…” He wants to forget; he wants to close his eyes, cross himself, and jump; he wants to be inside her and blow apart into vapor.

She stops moving, her mouth twisting apologetically. “I know, I know.  God, though, for a second there I didn’t care, not even a little bit.”

“One of us has to care,” he says, feeling some sanity returning, “and tomorrow, I swear that can be me, but…” It races through his mind that he is assuming that they will have a tomorrow, and wonders briefly how that idea is playing on her side, but she appears to take it in stride.

“Okay,” she says, “I’ll be the designated grown-up tonight.” Her lips sweep over his one more time. And then she is gone, kissing down his chest and fuckfuckfuck.

His head rocks back on the pillow and his eyes slam shut. Her mouth is warm and wet, all around him, moving slow like dripping honey. He wants to have more, to memorize how this feels, but it doesn’t matter: he’s fully primed in an instant and there’s nothing he can do about it but groan, “Pam,” and then his final digit flips over to zero and he is going, going, gone.

He lies still, open-mouthed and weak, panting like he’s just run a marathon, until her head hits the pillow beside his.

“Wow. You weren’t kidding,” she says, her eyes laughing.

He puts a hand to his forehead, embarrassed. “I’m surprised I lasted that long, honestly.”

“I was going to show off all my very best tricks,” she says with a mock pout. “It was going to be spectacular.”

“Rain check?” he says.  She doesn’t reply immediately, just draws a series of curving lines on his chest with a fingertip, and he suddenly feels awkward. “Or you could just describe them?”

“No, no,” she says, giggling. “It’s best to just experience them.  I’ve had rave reviews.”  She pauses. “Not that I’ve had so many audiences, mind you.”

“Right, no,” he agrees. “Or at least, I assume. Not when I knew you, anyway.”

She regards him contemplatively.  “That’s right, you were away for my promiscuous years.”

“I was… well, you’ve only mentioned dating Roy again briefly, since I left,” he says. “You didn’t mention the rampage you went on after that.”

She draws herself up on one elbow, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hardly a rampage,” she says. “I was speaking relatively. A mini-riot, maybe. A little tantrum. I didn’t go out much at all, really.”  She sighs. “I saw Ryan a few times.”

“You… Ryan?”  His relaxation vanishes. “Ryan? Why? When was this?  Also, why?”

She grins. “It was nothing, just dinner.  You don’t know what happened to Ryan, do you?”

“I know what I’m hoping didn’t happen to Ryan.”

“He got a job with Corporate, and ended up… well, it’s a long story.  He went on a journey.  I know it was a journey, because that’s the word he kept using to describe it at dinner.  It sounded like he just got addicted to pills, or something.”

“Oh,” he says, relieved. “What kind of pills?”

“I didn’t ask, I was too busy blowing him,” she says. “Kidding! So kidding.  Although maybe I would have had to listen to less about his dark, tortured soul if I had made the offer. Seriously, it was dinner twice, then he cried and put his hand up my skirt and I told him I didn’t want to lose him as a friend. I felt sorry for him.”

“I don’t,” says Jim.  They lie in companiable silence for a minute.  “You don’t feel sorry for me, do you?”

“No, of course not,” she says. “I have nothing but fiery loathing for you.”

“That’s a relief.  Jesus, you just about stopped my heart with that Ryan thing, you know.”

“So sorry, Mister Legally Married,” she says sarcastically.

“Touché,” he says. “Well, damn.  I guess that’s your trump card.”

“You bet it is,” she says.

-----

His eyes are heavy, but he finds himself talking in spite of himself. “Um, about tomorrow… “

“I swear to God I will respect you,” she says, yawning. “I will respect the hell out of you.”

“No, listen,” he says, “stay one more day.”

He hears tension creep into her voice. “But you have that work thing,” she says.

“You can come with me to that,” he says. “It’s a dinner for the charitable fund that sponsors us.  I’m giving a bit of a presentation, but other than that it’ll just be good food and a night out.”

“This isn’t just so you’ll have a chance to try out some Spotted Pullets?” she asks.

“No, no,” he reassures her. “Well, partly yes, but mostly I just don’t want to try to sleep knowing that this is over tomorrow.” Though day after tomorrow doesn’t sound great either. 

“I’ve got nothing to wear to a swank London dinner party,” she protests. “I have, like, an old sundress scrunched into the corner of my suitcase.”

“We can find something. I will make you a dress out of curtains and positive thinking.  Please think about it?”

He feels her open her mouth to argue more, but after a few seconds, she just says, “Okay. I’m in.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I will go to your fancy gala, Jim Halpert, in my wrinkled cotton dress and a pair of sandals. Now go to sleep.”

He puts his arm around her and pulls her close, kissing the back of her shoulder. “You’ll be gorgeous.”

“Yes,” she says. “This time next month, everyone in Europe will be wearing wrinkly sundresses.  Sleep, now.”

Jim closes his eyes and breathes deep, smelling her hair.  He thinks about asking her to come to Vienna. Or how long is the train to Madrid? There will be weekends… At the end of that, though, there is his ticket home. A brick wall.  Not now, not after—

But she is warm in his arms, and they have tomorrow. He sleeps.

In the morning, the other side of the bed is empty.

Jim’s skin prickles coldly and for a moment he stops breathing, but then he sees her handwriting on a single sheet of hotel stationery.

Woke up and got restless -- gone out to explore cheap wardrobe options. Back soon. Pam.

He sinks back into the pillows, relieved. It's not over yet. There is something new about the way Pam makes him feel, now, and he can't quite place it. He has never been sure what she's thinking, but he's always been sure of her, or at least, of his worth to her, and now... It's reversed, somehow. She says what she means, with a dizzying frankness, but he wonders how easily she could have left him this morning with no note. It makes his stomach do flips, thinking about it.

He pushes away the bedclothes that smell of her and him together and stands up. Her suitcase is still on the chair, he notes reassuringly. His feet are silent on the soft carpet as he pads to the shower, where the mirror is still smoked with condensation and one towel hangs damply askew.

The water smells different--metallic, like a penny--but it's plentiful and scalding hot. He angles the showerhead so the spray hits him full in the forehead, water streaming in a heavy sheet down over his nose and mouth, so that every breath comes filtered thickly through steam.

A small tablet of soap is already unwrapped and slippery in the soap dish, he picks it up, slides it easily across his chest, settling into the pure visceral pleasure of hot water and white lather.  It's not over yet. She's coming back.

It is this thought, initially comforting, that breaks his mood, because with it comes memories of blue lace under his fingertips and her mouth on him, and now he just wants more. Or just wants, is more like it. His hand drifts downward, covered in soap.

He thinks of her lips curving wickedly as the train’s sudden lurch sends her into him roughly, a moment’s breathless honesty as his body makes things explicit that he’d rather have left ambiguous, for now. The hitch in her breath as she whispers into his ear, “Please tell me it’s the next stop.” He thinks of his hand, sometimes on her hip, sometimes lower, as they negotiate the few blocks to the hotel. Fumbling like teenagers in the hallway, and then in the room, and then on the bed. The taste of her skin, the sound she makes when she comes, her lips and tongue and fingers working him over…

His other hand comes up, palm against the white tiles, and keeps him from falling over as his vision partially fills with flashing lights and he coasts effortlessly into a climax, water smoothing over his mouth, stifling his groan.

---

He is fully dressed by the time she gets back, carrying a small shopping bag over one wrist.  “Any luck?” he asks. He feels self-conscious no matter where he looks: a strange amnesiac dislocation. She is simultaneously achingly familiar and entirely new.

“Yes and no,” she says.  “I had high hopes for a sort of bohemian street market thing that’s happening a few blocks from here, but it turned out to be way more expensive than a department store back home. If I can’t afford to buy a dress off a folding table under a canvas tent in this city, I think it’s safe to assume I just can’t afford a dress, period.”  She sits down on the bed beside him. “So that’s that.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “we can go out for breakfast and try somewhere else after, if you like.”

“No,” she says, “not right now, anyway. Because I did have one triumph.”  She reaches into the little plastic bag, pulls out a box of condoms, and solemnly places it next to him on the bed.

He feels his heart stop completely, and then start again with a roar.

She looks at him, her mouth twisting a little awkwardly. “I had to guess at your size and the color,” she says, with a slightly unnatural laugh. “Also, did you know that in England, a drug store is called a chem—“

He grabs her, not gently, and she instantly stops speaking, her mouth opening eagerly under his. Her fingers grope for the buttons of the shirt he’s just put on, briefly at cross-purposes with his efforts to pull her sweater up and over her head. Then the skin of her torso is warm against his, and he can feel her smiling beneath his kisses as he flips her onto her back on the bed.

He should go slow, make it last, but he doesn’t seem to have a brake anymore, and her hands are already busy with his fly and peeling away his pants and boxers, so that he doesn’t feel like trying. “This is okay?” he asks hoarsely, as he helps her wriggle out of her jeans.

“What? Of course it’s okay,” she says. “This is all I want.” Her lips are hot against his neck. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t really come down from last night yet.”

“No?” The shower should have released some of this tension from him, but it doesn’t feel that way; he is so turned on he can’t breathe, and his fingers are too shaky and stupid to open up a simple cardboard box.

Her hips move impatiently under his. “No,” she says, “I woke up wanting you. I walked around all morning wanting you.” Her thighs part, heels sliding up to meet at his lower back.

The first condom wrapper doesn’t seem to be designed to open; after struggling with it for a few seconds he tosses it aside and grabs a second, which tears perfectly on the first attempt. The condom itself is also cooperative, and he should take a breath, make this perfect…

Instead he just sinks into her, quick and deep. Her nails bite into his shoulders and she exhales in a long, shuddering sigh. “So good,” she whispers, her voice muffled in his neck. “Oh, so good.”

He surges deeper, then raises up a little and watches her face, her lips parted, her forehead already twisting into a frown. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me what you want.”

“This. You,” she says, her eyes closing for a moment. “More of this. And…”

“And what?”

Her eyelids open again. “And I think I might want to break something."

“Break something?”

“For real. Something fragile.”

This amazing girl. He smiles. “Like something glass?”

“Yes,” she says, twisting under him, “exactly like that—“

He rolls over, taking her with him so that she is straddling him, reaches out to the nightstand and wordlessly hands her a tall water glass.

A short pause, and then she leans over, kissing him long and hard on the mouth. Then she is moving over him, hips and thighs working smoothly together, one hand on his stomach for balance, her face a study in concentration.

Being inside her, finally inside her, makes him feel drunk all over again, and no amount of time in the shower this morning would have prevented the mounting feeling of impending combustion beginning to sweep over him.

He shifts up onto his elbows, and her face is now only a breath away from his. He can see her better, see her expression change with every stroke. Her eyes flick open, watching him in return, and it’s an unstoppable freight train now, a feedback loop: each soft sigh makes him harder and seems to set off something inside her as well, endless echoes getting louder instead of softer.

Her grip tightens around the water glass, and her other hand moves from his stomach to his shoulder. Her eyes do not leave his.

Now, now while she’s still here.  “Pam, I—“

“Hush,” she murmurs, barely audible, and then she is gasping: short, sharp waves breaking inside her. He grabs her waist, rolling his hips up to hers, pulling her deeper onto him.

Her low cries grow louder and her head arches back. He feels himself begin to come undone. “Smash it,” he says.

The glass flies out of her hand and seems to explode, shattering deafeningly somewhere on the wall behind him. She cries out as it breaks, sobbing for breath, spasming around him, and he feels the last stitch give and he is coming, so hard he can’t see, blood thumping  so loudly in his ears that at first he doesn’t hear her.. “I love you,” she is saying brokenly, both arms around his neck, “I love you, I love you…”

He can’t speak, so he holds onto her.

It takes him some time to come back to earth and so he doesn’t immediately realize how still the room is.

They are lying side by side, facing each other. He pushes aside the curtain of hair that partially covers her face, and sees her brows pulled together, lips slightly tight. “What?” he asks quickly.

She smiles and shakes her head. “You know—this is wonderful, we should have done this years ago.” She kisses his forehead and curls into his chest. His arm wraps around her reflexively.

He wants to just let it go, because he’s got everything he ever wanted right here in this tiny bedroom, right here slowly cutting off the blood supply to his left arm. So stupid to question it. To ruin everything by pushing. Like you’re about to. But she’s deeply worried about something and they both know it. And so: “What’s going on?”

She slides her palm against his chest and sighs a little. “I… There’s a complexity here that is very much my fault,” she says, “and for that reason I kind of want to rewind the last hour.”

His heart sinks and maybe he reacts physically too because he feels her become alert to the implications of her own words. She raises her head from his chest to give him a panicked look of reassurance. “NOT for the reason you thought just now, no, no, not at all. I am so on board with that part.”

“What part, then?”

She winces. “I said—I said that I love you and I didn’t really mean to do that.” Before he can say anything she continues, now talking very fast. “A whole lot of stuff is happening all at once, with me personally recently, and with me and you right now, and it all kind of burst out of me and I don’t know how to walk it back without saying even more things I don’t mean, Jim.”

He feels his stomach lurch hideously. “I get it.”

“I’m not trying to jerk you around here; I know this is bullshit.”

“If it’s true it’s not bullshit. You can be honest with me—I can take it.”

She gives him an imploring look. “I just wish I hadn’t said it because leaving it said is too much but taking it back is wrong too. I barely know you, I did once but even back then it wasn’t love, it couldn’t have been love…”

He sees a younger version of himself telling a younger Pam his one, worst-kept secret like he was apologizing, watching her face grow rigid as the terms of their unspoken armistice were irrevocably broken. “I know, I know.”

“I am just making it worse,” she says helplessly. “How do we pull outta this nosedive?”

He considers this. “Love was too big a word. Maybe instead tell me what you do feel? And I can do that too, if you want?”

“Yes,” she says, and the relief is palpable in her face, “that would work. What if we’re not on exactly the same page, though?”

He shrugs. “Then we’re not on the same page, because we’re two separate people and it’s been less than 36 hours,” he says, and finds that saying it out loud helps him mean it.

“Okay,” she says resolutely, “I kind of put us in this pickle so I’ll start.” She settles back down into the pillow beside him, but keeps her hand on his chest. “Easy part first: physically I am 100% there…”

“Okay,” he says.

“Don’t you smirk at me!” She gives him a light slap. “And your ego will probably explode to know that that’s not new.”

“Ha! No,” he says. “I think I already knew that, in a way.”

Her eyes go a little wide. “Really! Okay, that’s something we can come back to. And I will also say that I like you, a lot: you’re funny and kind and interesting and being with you makes me feel like… like time goes faster and slower somehow when we’re together.”

“Yeah, it does,” he says.

“And after you left,” she says, “I thought about you—not every day or every month, even, though at first I did a lot. And every time, I thought: what if? Every time. And sometimes the way that played out was… love. More often than not, to be honest. So, seeing you again, I guess that part of me was never totally over that possibility, if that makes sense.”

He looks at her. “So what you said was not something that all of you unanimously agrees on.”

“Sure, and obviously I realize how messy that makes me sound.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and feels for her other hand under the sheets, taking it between both of his.

“Now you go,” she says.

There are at least two directions open to him, but really there has only ever been one for him with this woman. He takes a long breath. “I’m in love with you,” he says. “And yes I know, before you say it, I agree with you: love isn’t like that, you can’t really be in love until you’ve lived it with that person, and I don’t really know you like that, or at all anymore. I’ve had it explained to me that what I feel is something more like obsession—“ Cold eyes at the breakfast table, telling him some truths about himself as a punishment that he more than deserves. “That what I love is a fiction I made long ago out of loneliness. But fuck it, even if that’s half-true, it still feels more real to me than anything else ever has. The day I met you was like coming home. I love you. I am in love with you.”

The pensive look is back on her face and he feels the tension in the hand between his. He releases it.

“Jim—“

“So not quite the same page then,” he says ruefully.

Her eyes are luminous. “There’s no part of you that thinks: Too fast? I was engaged and you were married, we’re both people who make the wrong choices…”

“This is the exact opposite of that,” he says, “because none of that felt right at all but I reasoned it away because it *should* have worked, on paper it worked great. With you, there’s nothing to convince myself of.”

A tear streaks sideways onto her pillow. “We’re closer to the same page than you maybe think.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so,” she says, taking his hand again. “I do know what you mean and I feel something like that too but I think the difference is I am too afraid to trust it.”

He squeezes her hand. “We have time, there’s no rush.”

She nods, and returns the squeeze. They lie in a more comfortable silence for a few moments while he feels a strange elation, like his arms and legs are carbonated.

“Oh and physically, also kinda into you,” he adds like an afterthought.

She laughs. “You hide it so well.”

He kisses her, and it starts gentle, but when he pulls her to him her lips open under his and he feels himself getting hard again almost immediately. She moans softly into his mouth as she feels it too, and then all at once he wants everything at once and nothing is enough.

—————

A slow slide and he’s inside her again. His back is against the headboard and she is sitting in his lap, knees on either side of him, his hands cupped under her ass and holding her there. Her face is so close to his and he can’t stop looking at her: almost a frown as she rocks back, her parted lips a little wider as he pulls her down again. He moves one hand out from under her to go between them and stop where their bodies meet.

Just a little extra pressure—he is amazed how little extra it takes. He lets her body set the rhythm and keeps a circling fingertip on her as she moves and it’s incredible to watch it take her over: to watch her eyes close and her head roll back, and to feel her fingers dig into the tops of his arms as she spasms around him.

“I can’t—“ she says breathily, when the waves have stopped, “—I need a little break. No—“ as he starts to roll them both sideways, “can you stay there? And just, maybe you stop moving for a minute?”

“Yeah, of course!” If she’d suggested flying to outer space right now he’d be up for that too. And being at rest with her like this is new and wonderful, being deep inside her with their foreheads together, while they breathe the same air: like kissing but more intimate.

A few smaller waves ripple around his cock and he tries to keep his hips still, mostly successfully, gritting his teeth.

“Aftershocks,” she says apologetically.

“Understood."

He feels himself soften a little and it’s honestly not surprising, he has been too wired too long and this is some heavy traffic for what’s usually a quiet country road. He strokes her hair, kisses the tip of her nose.

“Stay still now,” she reminds him.

“I know, we can—" he begins and stops abruptly as she dips her hips forward, taking him a little deeper. “Hey!”

“Don’t you move!” Her tone is lightly mocking. Her thighs move smoothly once, twice, three times, and with the renewed friction his blood does a U-turn so fast it makes him gasp. His hands tighten around her torso. “You promised…” she says sternly, and the words end in a shivering sigh as the last stroke seems to put him right where she needs him. She takes one hand from his shoulders, skims it down her abdomen to stop between her legs.

“I thought we would both be—fuck.” His breath leaves him, because she’s rocking over him again, gaining momentum, touching both of them at once now: her clit and the root of him on each stroke. He groans and surges up toward her.

“No, don’t move, be a statue,” she murmurs, shaking her head at him, her face flushed. “Be my statue. Don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move…“

Concentrate on her. Her fingers and form move together. You are her statue. He tries as long as he can, straining in the effort to remain motionless and just watch her, but then You are her toy runs through his head and that’s not the same at all and he nearly loses it. “Oh god—stop—”

She moans, pulling against his restraining hands, “More.”

“Okay, more, but not of that,” he says, and flips her over, slides down her body and buries his open mouth between her legs.

She makes a strangled sound like a muffled scream. He keeps going, palms on her hipbones, pulling her toward him, and she writhes, her fingers scrabbling at his shoulders. “No, no you, I want you…”

“You have me,” he says, his mouth still busy with her.

“God I want you everywhere,” she whimpers, and her face twists as her back comes up off the bed.

He raises his head as her muscles slowly go limp, feeling himself throb against the smooth fabric of the sheets.

She takes a deep, shaky breath. “Holy hell, my ears are ringing.”

He grins, kisses her softly on the inside of each thigh. “From me?”

“Probably from the plane,” she says dryly. “No, of course from you, you narcissist, you’ve made someone come so hard their ears rang, are you happy?”

He is and he isn’t, but right now he’s just greedy, and plants the next kiss more centrally.

She bats him away. “It’s your turn now,” she says.

He kisses her stomach instead. “I want it to be your turn again.”

“We are going to you next,” she said, “for reasons of fairness and because I don’t think I even can anymore, I don’t think I have another turn in me.”

“I want to test that hypothesis,” he says, moving lower, “for science.”

“Not even for science, Jim, I’m way--” she begins firmly. His next kiss interrupts her thought, and she has to start over. “Okay, maybe.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Her thighs go wider, opening more, and he returns his attention to her sensitive flesh, more cautiously now, gentle strokes with his tongue and lips. He wants to lose himself there, to ignore the persistent thrum of his own need.

“Fingers,” she says, “please, can you…?”

He adds his fingers to the mix, and watches how it sets her off, feels her roll her weight to the top of her back as his hand and his mouth work together.  Just look at her. “Your turn is so beautiful,” he says thickly.  “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m going to fly apart…” She pulls at his shoulders again then, meets his gaze. “But this time, with you, okay?”

Once she’s said it it’s the only thing he can think of. “Okay.”

He slides back up her body, pausing for a moment before sliding back into her, drawing a quick groan from both of them. He’s been aching for her but distracted, and returning to that soft wet heat is good, so good.

“There,” she whispers, her hips moving with his, “oh there, there, that’s what I needed…”

He feels himself begin to break and slows a little. “Tell me,” he says, “tell  me when, are you…?”

“Almost,” she says raggedly, “don’t stop, don’t stop, just don’t…oh fuck now nownownow.”

He lets go gratefully and feels it hit them both at once: a hoarse shout in his throat as his climax hits him like a short, sharp, near-painful shock; her arms and legs wrapped around his back as she shudders.