Page 46 of A Night to Remember

“If you did, would she have been in her rights to refuse to vacate?”

Slowly he turns his attention back to me and blinks a little, like he’s surprised, but pleased, to see me there. He looks like a man who’s waking up from a dream. I’m about to repeat the question when he replies.

“Yes. The couple in the question only had an oral agreement. According to most state laws, promises made in consideration of marriage have to be in writing to be enforceable.”

“Very good, Counsel,” I answer. “And no, I don’t think you’re crazy for paying your half of the rent. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, and I wouldn’t expect any less of you.”

“Youwouldn’t have let me,” he says with a grin.

“Iwouldn’t have cheated on you,” I retort, scrolling down my list of sample bar exam questions in search of a stumper. “I’m kind of famous for being honest. It used to drive Alli nuts. In college she paid a design student $200 to Photoshop fake IDs for us, but I would never use mine. I still gave her my half, though.” I look up at him with a smirk and am surprised by the serious expression on his face. He seems to be studying me carefully. He opens his mouth to say something, then apparently thinks better of it.

When he finally speaks again, he simply asks, “So what’s the next question?”

You know I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t really desperate

I know, but Sunday mornings are my time off, and I have so little time off as it is

I’ll pay you twice what you would have earned at the café. You’ll be doing me an enormous favor

I sigh.Meg and Jason are both up to their eyeballs preparing for Hungry Hearts—she’s finalizing her catering menu, he’s obsessing over his playlist—and are desperate for me to babysit starting at 10:00 A.M. on Sunday. Ordinarily I’d be happy to, but I have a dastardly plan to sneak off to a B&B on Saturday. My plan is to tell my mom I’m going to spend the night at Alli’s (because I’m sixteen, apparently), but actually spend a blissfully naked Saturday evening and Sunday morning with Gabe. This way, I’d have to cut Naked Sunday short. Not the end of the world, but still.

Pretty please with a cherry on top? I’ll give you all of the following Saturday off, with pay. Please please please prayer hands emoji prayer hands emoji?

The fact that she actually types out “prayer hands emoji” makes me laugh, and I finally agree.

But when I text Gabe to tell him the bad news, it turns out he’s in the same boat: Lucy has Hungry Hearts prep to do, as does his mom, and his dad and brother are going to his uncle’shouse to watch football on Sunday. So someone needs to watch his niece and nephews. I don’t exactly understand why Adam can’t watch football and care for his own children at the same time. And Gabe, I suspect, loves the Kansas City Chiefs as much as anyone. I hope very much that I’m not the reason why he isn’t being included in this outing.

I don’t push him on any of this, though: instead, I enjoy eating pizza and watching bad movies in the four-poster bed in our fussy but cozy B&B, located a safe 80 miles from Kentwood. I’d been the one to insist on someplace far away, though my desire for secrecy has been a source of friction—not the good kind—between us.

“Johnson,” Gabe had said, as we were dressing after another late-night romp in the Navigator. “We made out in public. I took you on a date. I would take you on more, if you would let me. I eat lunch with you every day at the café. We’ve met up at the library almost every afternoon. Who exactly do you think we’re fooling?”

“We did that kind of thing in high school, except the making out, and everyone thought we were just friends,” I pointed out.

“Nobodythought we were just friends, with the possible exception of you.”

I had frowned at this, but hadn’t been able to contradict him. I changed tack. “You said that Adam could make refinancing difficult for me if he wanted to.”

Gabe sighed. “Yeah, true, but the mediator ought to be able to stop him from denying you outright for no good reason. And plus, he’s not an idiot. I’m sure he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on. My parents know I’m seeing someone too. And I think they’d feel better about it if things were more out in the open.”

The back of Gabe’s car is big enough to have sex in, but small enough to feel like a cage if your friend with benefits startsputting on the pressure. Anxiety bubbled up inside me. Still, it felt wrong to sayI don’t want people to know we’re together because we’re NOT TOGETHERten minutes after he’d pulled out of me.

“We still have the problem that both of us are living with our parents,” I’d said instead. “Even if we spent the night at each other’s houses, I couldn’t really relax. Maybe I’m just a private person and I want to spend some time alone with you somewhere other than a car.”

He’d nodded slowly, like he didn’t fully accept my reasons but wanted to be done arguing.

“I want to spend time alone with you, too,” he said with a smile, and finished putting on his second sock and shoe.

Now that we’re here, though, I think we can both see that this is far superior to our childhood bedrooms or a car. It’s the first time we’ve been able to fully unwind around each other, to see each other’s toothbrushes and phone chargers and jammies. I make fun of his sleep mask; he makes fun of my refusal to go barefoot in a hotel room. I discover that he showers at night and prefers the right side of the bed.

Not that we go to sleep right away. Sex in a normal bed is just as dreamy as I thought it would be. We turn the lights down low (“Not off,” Gabe had insisted, “I want to be able to see you”), undress fully, and take our time.

I run my fingers through his thick, dark brown hair, noticing for the first time the hints of red that gleam in the soft lamplight. His skin is a few shades lighter than mine. I admire the contrast and wonder, before pushing the thought away, whether our children would inherit his pale complexion or my tawny one. I stroke the stubble starting to form on his cheeks, which always rubs my chin and breasts and thighs raw whenever we meet late at night. He has just the right amount of chest hair: not a dense forest, but not bare skin, either.

Before I explore any lower, I gently push him onto his back and climb on top of him for the first time.

“Now why haven’t we donethisbefore?” Gabe asks softly, reaching up to massage my breasts as I rub against his cock, teasing him before taking him inside.

“Because,” I say, perilously close to coming already, “we were in your stupid car, and I didn’t want anyone to see.”

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