“Oh god. I’m sorry, Gina. I wasn’t thinking.” Then, frowning a little, I lift my index finger in the air, to be clear. “But I’m not sorry about the shower sex.”
Gina just smirks and continues to help shape the flat boxes into usable square ones.
“Can we make a suggestion?” Wynn asks as she finishes cutting bubble wrap into squares. “Cut the sex until the wedding.”
I scowl and start opening my dresser drawers to be sure they’re empty. My mother finishes taping a box closed, then heads to the next full one, peering up slightly at that. “I think that’s a great idea, Rachel.”
“No, Mom. Trust me. It’s not.”
Wynn starts to wrap all my photo frames in bubble wrap and tuck them into a box labeled FRAGILE. “Think about your wedding night. You’ll only have one of those. Don’t you want him to be wild for you?”
I look at them.
They don’t know that Malcolm enjoys me like saints enjoy holy water and sinners enjoy sin.
We’ve been having sex daily, several times a day. We need it like food and water.
“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Imagine how much more smoldering that first night as man and wife will be,” Wynn says, eyes bright with excitement.
“I definitely didn’t sleep with your father the whole month before. It drove him crazy but that’s why I got pregnant so fast with you.”
I shoot her a wide-eyed look, then her eyes widen as she realizes what she said.
“Mother! TMI!”
“He would wait until the wedding night if you asked him to,” Wynn advises. “Saint has been patient when it comes to you.”
I shake my head, refusing to speak more of it.
Finished filling up my makeup box, I glance around to see what I need to tackle next. The room is looking sparse now, save for the big things. Which are staying. All the furniture stays here with Gina and her new roomie. Wynn is supposedly considering canceling her lease and moving in. I plan to beg her to because I don’t want Gina to feel lonely, and I’m afraid that the month I’m on my honeymoon there will be loneliness here to spare. Even though Gina assures me that she’s “good.”
Wynn leaves the box of fragile items for my mom to tape and then walks toward my bed. “Are you taking your pillow?”
“No.”
“How can you not take your own pillow?”
“I don’t know. I like to lie on his chest.”
“What if one day you guys are mad and there’s no awesome chest?” Gina counters, opening a new flat box to make a box for the pillow.
“I hope even when we’re mad I get to lie on his awesome chest. Or his awesome shoulder. Or his awesome pillows. In his awesome bed. No, no pillow.”
“Oh, you! Well, this pillow’s mad.”
She hits me with it, and I grab it, squeeze it, and toss it back on the bed with a little pang of remorse.
It is my pillow. It is my room. My apartment. But if I clutter my future with too much of my past, there won’t be room for the new. And the new—even though a little scary—is something I’m looking forward to.
We take a lunch break, and my mom goes to her canasta game. Wynn and Gina stay until Otis helps us load the rest of the boxes. By the time we come back up, sweaty and exhausted, I’m done, my room looks bare, and pretty, and . . . I look at it harder.
I sit on my bed. My single-Rachel bed. I look at Wynn and Gina, who are looking at me with mixed emotions from the door. Emotions like “how exciting” and “we miss single-Rachel” and everything in between.
I love single-Rachel. But she was never as happy as I am now.
“Wynn, I hope you come live here. It’s such a good little room. I’ve got great memories here.”
That evening, I’m finally at his place. Malcolm’s on a phone call when I arrive, and he trails off when I walk in. I had showered and changed and I am wearing a tight tracksuit and a ponytail. He’s in tan slacks and a black button shirt, and both of these clothing articles fuck his body every which way possible.
I melt first. Then I wave at him hello, walk up to kiss his jaw, and feel him give my ass a little possessive squeeze, his eyes meeting mine—hot and approving and welcoming.
I mouth: I’m going to go and invade your male space.
And as he murmurs something in German into the headset, he lifts his thumb and rubs it against the corner of my lips, his eyes silently saying, It’s all yours to invade.
God.
He makes my knees go weak, this fiancé I’ve gotten myself.
I go start making myself some room in Saint’s closet and en suite bath.
I hang all my clothes to the left side of the closet and put my sweaters, jeans, and shoes on one of the shelves next to rows and rows of identical designer items.
I’m finding space for my lipsticks and stuff in his bathroom when he stalks in, still speaking into the headset. A little cold, a little demanding. Kicking off his shoes, he yanks his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks and I can’t stop looking at him.
I can never seem to screw my head on right when he’s near.
Today, especially, when I think of how awful it would be to not have sex with him.
Torture.
Purgatory.
Absolute torment.
No, no, no, no abstinence.
My Sin is physical and hot for me, and I’m always a wet mess for him.
It would be hell for us. Hell.
I take off my shoes, kick them aside. At the sound of them falling he looks down, and then frowns a little as he stares at my legs, hugged by my tracksuit. He looks at my hand, my ring, smiling to himself, and his eyes slide up to meet mine.