“Grandma, please.” I feel a blush creeping up my face again. “You’re exaggerating.” I’m reasonably certain Marcus wouldn’t punch a guy just for saying hello to me. He’s not that territorial.
Is he?
“No, I’m telling you, sweetheart. What is it you young people say? He has the hots for you? No, that’s not quite right—though he clearly has that too.” Setting down the salt shaker, she winks at me, and I almost die of mortification because there’s only one thing she could be referring to: the sounds coming from our bedroom at night.
I do my best to stay quiet, but Marcus makes it impossible. By the fourth or fifth orgasm, I lose all sense of time and place—and my grandparents must’ve noticed.
Grandma bursts out laughing. “Oh, you should see the look on your face right now. Do you think your grandfather and I haven’t had fun times of our own? I’m happy for you, sweetheart—for both of you. But especially you, as it’s always harder for a woman.”
Oh my God. Kill me now. Like, literally right now. I do not want to picture my grandparents having “fun times”—and I definitely don’t want to discuss my sex life with Marcus with my grandmother. It was one thing for her to have the birds-bees-and-contraceptives talk with me when my period started at age twelve, but this? My orgasmic capacity is not a topic for pre-dinner conversation—even if said capacity has grown tremendously since I met Marcus.
“All right, all right, I will zip it,” Grandma says when I hide my tomato-red face by diligently scrubbing at a barely-there spot on the tablecloth with a wet paper towel. “You can—”
“Zip what?” Gramps asks, walking in with Marcus at his side. Marcus had been showing him some kind of trading software for the past twenty minutes, and the two of them look thick as thieves.
“Nothing,” Grandma says with a surreptitious grin at me. Facing the men, she says briskly, “Let’s just sit and eat.”
17
Marcus
I never thought I’d say it, but I’m in love with Emma’s grandparents. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had grandparents of my own—or normal parents, for that matter—but this long weekend with Emma and her family counts among the best days of my life. Maybe even the best, because I can’t recall the last time I’ve had such a prolonged sense of well-being.
Mostly, of course, it’s due to Emma herself. Each night since my arrival here, I’ve gorged myself on her sweet, lush body, feasting on her without restraint. I’ve had her in our bed, inside the shower, up against a wall, and even on the floor, when we didn’t make it all the way to the bed one evening. But as wonderful as that has been, I’ve derived nearly as much enjoyment from the simple pleasure of falling asleep with Emma in my arms—and waking up still holding her, breathing in her warm, delicious scent. The bone-deep contentment I experienced that first night with Emma wasn’t a fluke; it’s there each time I hold her.
And Emma’s family has added another layer to that feeling, a sense of belonging I didn’t realize I’d been missing. Even as a child, I knew better than to rely on anyone but myself, and though I never had trouble making friends, most of those friendships had been light and casual, barely skin deep. Same for my relationships with adults. Even Mr. Bond, the second-grade teacher who’d become my mentor, hadn’t really seen past the confident demeanor and the cloak of ambition I’d worn as shields.
But somehow, Emma’s grandparents have. Mary doesn’t bring up my past again, but each time her gaze falls on me, it’s soft and warm, holding a wealth of gentle understanding. She fusses over me just like she does over her husband and granddaughter, constantly feeding me, worrying whether I’m warm enough or cool enough, if the coffee I downed at dinner will keep me up at night. And Ted, in his own gruff way, is just as kind, making me wonder what it would’ve been like to have an older man in my life who wasn’t just a mentor but a friend, someone to talk to about things both minor and important.
Someone like a father… or a grandfather.
“I wish you two didn’t have to leave already,” Ted tells me over breakfast Sunday morning, and I smile regretfully, wishing the same thing. This holiday weekend has been an interlude out of time, a sun-soaked break from the reality of my nonstop, high-stress life. The parks, the beach, the warm, humid air—I feel rejuvenated by it all, refreshed in a way I haven’t experienced in years. And it’s not because I didn’t work this weekend. I did. Despite all the outings and family time, I got nearly as much done over the past couple of days as I normally do on the weekends. The difference is, it was mostly with Emma at my side. And she was there when I went to bed and woke up, her dimpled smile greeting me, her soft arms embracing me whenever I reached for her.
With her grandparents as a buffer, the residual tension between us melted away, her resistance to me fading until it was as if my stupid mistake of staying away from her had never happened in the first place. She didn’t even object when I paid for everyone’s lunch at the Italian restaurant, though I did find a twenty lying prominently on my wallet later that evening.
Once we’re back in New York, it will be different, I can tell. The next big battle—getting Emma to move in—is already brewing. When I came out of the bathroom this morning, I caught a glimpse of apartment listings on her laptop screen before she closed the computer—which means my ploy with her landlady is both working and not.
My kitten is planning to move but on her own. Despite our growing closeness over the past four days, she’s still afraid to trust
