“I’ve had a bottle of wine and I have some real things to say.”
Riley stood in the middle of the cabin living room with her curly brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. She wore one of my old sweatshirts that hung off one shoulder and a pair of cutoff shorts she had cut even shorter herself. We had driven up that afternoon for my birthday weekend. The plan had been simple. Two friends who happened to split rent getting out of the city noise for a couple nights. Nothing complicated. Nothing that would ruin the easy way we had fallen into living together after she answered my ad back in March.
Three months earlier she had shown up at the apartment with one suitcase and a box of books. The first thing she did was open every window even though it was cold. She told me she hated feeling closed in. From that day she left the bathroom door cracked when she showered. She borrowed my hoodies without asking and left them draped over the couch. She cooked dinner for both of us more often than not and never knocked before coming into my room to ask what I wanted to watch. I told myself it was just her personality. She was twenty-eight, outgoing, and used to doing things her own way. I was thirty and trying to keep the peace in my own space.
The cabin was small but clean. One main room with a fireplace, a tiny kitchen, and a bedroom with a queen bed we had both avoided looking at when we dropped our bags. We cooked cheap pasta on the stove and opened the cheap wine she had bought at the last gas station. Rain started hitting the roof around eight. It made the place feel even smaller. We sat on the worn couch with our plates balanced on our laps. She laughed when sauce dripped onto her shorts. I handed her a paper towel and our fingers touched for a second longer than necessary.
She had green eyes that turned darker when she was tired. That night they looked almost brown in the low light from the single lamp. She kept pushing the same curl behind her ear every few minutes. It was a habit I had noticed in the apartment too. Whenever she was working up to saying something important she did that gesture. I had seen it the day she told me her last roommate had been a nightmare and she was glad to be out of there. I saw it again now.
Riley finished her first glass of wine and poured another. I was still on my first. She set the bottle down on the coffee table and looked at me sideways. The rain picked up outside. A log shifted in the fireplace and sent a small pop into the quiet.
“The apartment feels different when you’re not there,” she said.
“How so?”
“Too quiet. I leave the TV on just to hear voices.”
I nodded. I had done the same when she stayed out late. The place felt empty without her laugh echoing from the kitchen.
“I started thinking about you more than I should,” she continued. Her voice was softer than usual. “Like all the time. When you come home from work and kick your shoes off under the table. When you hum in the shower without realizing it. It started as just noticing things and then it turned into wanting to be the reason you were smiling.”
I set my plate down. My hands felt clumsy. I wiped them on my jeans even though they were clean.
“Riley—”
“Don’t tell me we are just roommates right now,” she said. “Because I have been trying to be okay with that and I am not okay with it anymore.”
She moved closer on the couch until her knee touched mine. The sweatshirt slipped further off her shoulder. I could see the strap of her bra underneath. It was black and simple. I looked away and then back because not looking felt worse.
“This trip was supposed to keep things easy,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant.
“I know. I helped plan it.” She gave a small laugh that sounded shaky. “I thought if we got away from the apartment maybe I could say it without ruining everything.”
She reached out and put her hand on my forearm. Her fingers were warm from the wine. She drew small circles with her thumb without seeming to realize she was doing it.
“I want to know what it would be like,” she said. “If we stopped pretending the tension isn’t there.”
I could feel my pulse in my throat. Part of me wanted to stand up and grab my keys like we could just drive back to the city and reset. The bigger part stayed sitting because her hand felt right and because I had been thinking about her the same way for weeks. I had caught myself watching her walk around the apartment in leggings and tank tops. I had replayed the time she hugged me after a bad day and how her chest pressed against mine just a little too long.
“What if it messes up the living situation?” I asked.
“Then we deal with it like adults,” she said. “But right now I don’t want to be adult about it. I want to be selfish.”
She leaned in slowly enough that I could have stopped her. I didn’t. Her lips touched mine and the kiss was soft at first. Then she made a small sound in the back of her throat and it turned deeper. I felt her hand move to my chest. My own hands found her waist under the sweatshirt. Her skin was warm and smooth. I traced the edge of her shorts and she shifted closer until she was almost in my lap.
We broke apart breathing hard. She kept her forehead against mine. The rain was steady now. It sounded like it might last all night.
“Is this okay?” I asked. My voice sounded like someone else’s.
“Yes,” she said. “I want this. Do you?”
“Yeah. I do.”
She kissed me again. This time I pulled her all the way onto my lap. Her legs straddled me and I could feel the heat of her through the thin shorts. She rocked once and I groaned. The sound seemed to encourage her. She took the sweatshirt off and let it fall to the floor. Underneath she wore only the black bra. I ran my hands up her sides and cupped her breasts through the fabric. She arched into the touch.
“Bedroom,” she whispered against my mouth.
We stood up together. She took my hand and led me the short distance to the bedroom door. The bed was already turned down from when we had dropped our bags earlier. She sat on the edge and pulled me between her knees. Her fingers worked at my belt. It got stuck on the first try and we both laughed. The laugh turned into another kiss while she freed the buckle. I pushed my jeans down and stepped out of them while she watched. She reached for the button on her shorts next. I helped her slide them off along with her underwear. She was bare underneath and I had to take a breath because seeing her like this after months of pretending I didn’t notice felt overwhelming.
She lay back on the bed and I followed. We kissed for a long time with our bodies pressed together. Her hands moved over my back and down to my ass. She squeezed once and smiled against my mouth. I moved down and took one nipple in my mouth. She hissed and threaded her fingers through my hair. I switched to the other side and she arched up again. When I kissed lower she spread her legs without being asked. I used my mouth on her and she tasted clean and a little salty. She made soft sounds that got louder the longer I stayed there. Her thighs started to shake against my ears. She reached down and pulled me up by my shoulders.
“Inside me,” she said. “Now.”
I reached for my discarded jeans and found the condom I had tucked in the wallet out of some stupid hope. She watched me roll it on with shaking hands. When I positioned myself she looked me in the eye and nodded. I pushed in slow. She was tight and hot and her mouth opened on a long breath. I stopped halfway and waited. She nodded again and I went the rest of the way. We stayed still for a few seconds just feeling it. Then she wrapped her legs around my back and I started moving.
It was not smooth. My elbow hit the headboard once. She laughed and I laughed with her. Then the laughing stopped and it got serious fast. She met every thrust and said my name in a low voice I had never heard from her before. I reached between us and rubbed her the way she had shown me with her own hand earlier. She came with a sharp cry and her whole body went tight around me. I followed right after with my face pressed into her neck and her name in my mouth.
We stayed there for a while. The rain had not let up. I pulled out carefully and disposed of the condom. She pulled the blanket over both of us and curled against my side. Her hand traced patterns on my chest the same way it had traced circles on my arm earlier. I could feel her heartbeat slowing down against my ribs.
“That was not supposed to happen,” I said eventually.
“I know. But I am not sorry.”
“Neither am I.”
She lifted her head and looked at me in the dark. The only light came from the living room lamp still on. It made shadows on her face. She looked softer than she usually did when she was being loud and boundary-less in the apartment.
“I have wanted to do that since the first week you let me move in,” she said. “You kept being so careful around me. I thought if I pushed enough you would either tell me to back off or finally stop pretending.”
“I was trying not to make things weird.”
“It was already weird. I was walking around half naked half the time hoping you would notice.”
I laughed and she joined in. The sound felt good in the quiet cabin.
We fell asleep like that. Sometime later I woke up to her getting out of bed. She pulled on my sweatshirt again. It smelled like her now. She came back with two glasses of water and set one on the nightstand for me. She drank half of hers in one go.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Better than okay.” She slid back under the blanket and kissed my cheek. “But I need to say one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“I don’t want this to be a one-time thing because of the trip. When we go back to the apartment I want to keep doing this. But I also want you to tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not too much.”
She settled against me again. Her breathing evened out after a few minutes. I stayed awake longer listening to the rain and thinking about what the apartment would feel like now. The thought did not scare me the way I expected it to.
The next morning we woke up late. Sunlight came through the curtains in strips. Riley made coffee on the small stove while I watched her move around the kitchen in just the sweatshirt and underwear. She kept smiling at me over her shoulder. We ate cereal standing at the counter. She stole the last of the milk and I let her. After we finished she told me she needed to drive into the nearest town for a couple hours to handle something she had forgotten about work. It was supposed to be her day off but she had left a file behind that needed attention.
“It won’t take long,” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
She packed a small bag and kissed me at the door. The kiss lingered. She tasted like coffee and the mint from her toothpaste. I watched her car pull out of the gravel driveway until the trees hid it. The cabin felt too quiet without her voice filling it. I cleaned up the breakfast dishes and started a fire even though it was not cold. I straightened the bedroom even though we had barely messed it up. Then I went back to the main room and left the front door unlocked in case she came back earlier than planned. I found a half-melted candle on the mantel and lit it with a match from the kitchen drawer. The flame caught slowly and threw a warm light across the wooden floor. I opened the window a crack so fresh air could come in and mix with the smoke from the fire and the smell of last night’s pasta. The rain had stopped sometime during the night. Outside the trees dripped and the world looked clean. I sat on the couch and waited for the sound of tires on gravel. I did not know exactly what we were now but I knew I wanted to find out.
The hours passed slowly. I replayed the night in pieces. The way she had looked when she took the sweatshirt off. The sound she made when she came. The feeling of her hand on my chest afterward. Every time I thought about going home I pictured her there in the apartment wearing my clothes again. It did not feel like a mistake. It felt like something we had both been waiting for without saying the words out loud until the wine and the rain gave us the push.
When the sun started to set I checked the door one more time. It was still unlocked. The candle was still burning low. The window let in the evening air. I sat back down and listened for her car. The cabin did not feel empty anymore. It felt like a place we had started something real in. Something we could keep building when she walked through that door again tomorrow night.