When they got to her street, she said, “Don’t park in the driveway. The neighbors will get weird.”
He parked farther down, hidden from her house by a boxwood hedge. He turned the key. “Sunny, can’t we just talk right here?” But she got out of the car and threw the door closed without answering.
He shook his head and looked at the bag on the seat beside him. How in hell was a guy supposed to eat ten pounds of meat and not drop dead of a heart attack on the spot? His chest hurt just thinking about it.
“Ré!” she snapped, banging her hand on the trunk. “Come on!”
21
R
The inside of Sunny’s house was all soft edges and beige. The furniture matched the knickknacks, and the carpet went right to the walls in a color that wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds at Ré’s house. And it was quiet, the low hum of central AC the only sound. He had a hard time believing that the hurricane had swirled up out of a place as calm as this.
She went up the stairs ahead of him, leading him to the third floor. Her bedroom was at the front of the house. Like Evie’s, it had a gable facing the lawn, but unlike Evie’s, it had a door onto a small balcony, and the paint wasn’t all chipped to shit.
Sunny sat on the bed. Ré walked past her to the balcony door, looking out instead of at her. “So what’s up?” he asked, sliding his hands into his back pockets.
“What’s up?” she echoed indignantly. “Why don’t you tell me?”
He flinched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do, Ré.”
He took a deep breath, still staring out at the trees. “Okay,” he said. “What’s up is that you’re my buddy’s girlfriend.”
“Oh, whatever, Réal,” she snapped. “You and I both know how much that means to you.”
He turned to look at her. “It means a hell of a lot more than you think it does, Sunny.”
“Oh yeah?” She raised her voice. “That’s funny. ’Cause it didn’t seem to at all until Evie came along.” Seeing his reaction, she said, “Yeah, that’s right. I know something is going on with you two. I’m not blind.”
He stared at her with his lips pressed thin. “There’s nothing going on,” he told her quietly.
She said, “You’re a shitty liar, Ré.”
He’d known Sunny for three years, and they’d been almost instant friends, but not in a buddy-buddy way. More like fire and gasoline. Hornets and honey. So when had things got so fucked up between them? He thought back to September, to Shaun getting a real girlfriend instead of just laying his good looks down and catching whatever walked by.
That’s it, I guess, Ré thought.
Before Evie, he and Shaun had spent most of their time together. But girlfriends have a way of taking time, and so Ré had spun loose, found a new constellation. He and Sunny couldn’t be more different from each other, but somehow that had only made them like each other more. He acted like he hated her, but the truth was a lot more complicated.
He shook his head and said, “Sunny, I can’t do this anymore.”
She didn’t answer right away. And then she whispered, “I knew it.” Tears had welled in her eyes, pulling his heart out through his bones.
He crossed the room and sat next to her on the bed. He put his hand on her back lightly, but didn’t know what else to say. He’d never broken up with anyone before. And she wasn’t even his girlfriend. It was all just such a mess.
She took a shaky breath and wiped her eye with the back of her wrist, smearing black makeup across her cheekbone. Then she put her hand down on his thigh.
“Sunny…” he warned softly, looking at it.
“I know,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper. He closed his eyes.
She turned into him and touched her mouth to the curve of his neck, where it met the collarbone. He gasped, eyes fluttering open, then closed again. I can’t, he wanted to say. Please, stop. But the words never made it out of his brain. Her lips opened, her tongue warm and wet against him, and her hand moved slowly up his leg.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
His breath caught in his chest. He wanted to put his hand over hers, to stop her, but he couldn’t move. Instead, he leaned into her, his whole body wrapped up in the warmth of her mouth, dangerous and perfect and bewildering all at once, like it always was with her.
Her long fingers went under the edge of his T-shirt, tickling his bare skin, gathering up the shirt and pulling it over his head so it flipped inside out. She threw it on the floor.
“Sunny,” he said again, his voice a quiet whine. “I—”
But she kissed him, stopping the words before he could say them. And he kissed her back, hard, their mouths tangled up together, his hand going to the back of her neck. Silky black hair sliding through his fingers.
She’d lured him here for this. And he’d let her. He knew that now. In all the months they’d been careening at the very edge of it, they had never let actual sex become a possibility. And that fact had been the one and only thing convincing him that he wasn’t a total asshole.
He’d told himself over and over that it was under control, that it would never in hell get as crazy as this.
But like she said, he was a shitty liar.
They’d never been this alone before. And now they had this whole house to themselves, and he was half naked, and her hands were on his belt buckle. His mouth was on her throat, his hand up under her tank top, her bone-white skin so soft
