Page 131 of Deep End

Lukas spots me through the windows and immediately extracts himself from the conversation he’s having with Johan and a couple in ASU tees. I meet him in the kitchen, and I want to touch him so bad, my blood fizzes like champagne.

He looks at me like a bird of prey. Focused. Acquisitive.

The U of A diver excuses himself.

“I cannot believe you allowed this,” I say. “Who’s going to clean this mess?”

“Not me.” He drains the last of his beer and sets it on the counter. “Detailed contracts were drawn.”

“You’re the least fun roommate, aren’t you?”

“I’m the roommate who lays down the rules.” He stands over me. “Let’s go upstairs.”

It’s the closest we’ve gotten to sneaking around, except that Lukas is not the kind of man to keep his head less than high. Five minutes later I’m inside his room, and he’s inside me.

“I fucking missed this,” he tells me.

I’m on top, but have no delusions about who’s in control. I have to take several deep breaths, because it’s a new position with Lukas. He drags my hand to my abdomen and covers it with his own, pressing down. Through my flesh, I can feel the faint outline of him, spearing inside me. “This.” He kisses my shoulder, and I feel his cock twitch, like he needs to get deeper.

“A little more,” he says, thrusting up, pulling me down. “Just a little. Be a good—fuck,yes, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Once he’s in all the way, my thighs spread wide to make room for his hips. I feel like I’m being split open. He lets out a pleased, guttural sound. One of his hands closes around my waist, the other cups my ass, and then he moves me—up, and up, and then down again, eyes flicking between mine and the bounce of my tits. Then he lets go and says, “Stop.”

I do. He’s inside me to the hilt, and I can barely breathe around him.

“Come here.” He hugs me closer. His hand splays on my back and pets me, a soothing vertical motion that lulls me into a floating, dreamlike headspace. He plays with my nipples, pinching them hard enough for me to moan in the right amount of distress, the one that’ll make him harder and me wetter. I try to roll my hips, but he won’t have it. “I don’t think so.”

It dawns on me then, what he’s planning. The wait ahead. Iwhimper, and he clicks his tongue soothingly. “It’s okay, Scarlett.” It’s the permission I need to bury my face in his neck and complain. I kiss him there, licking the salt off his skin, a couple of whinedpleases, a handful of truly pathetic tears, a hard bite on his trapezius that he barely notices. He comforts me through it, tormentor and savior, and once I’ve exhausted myself, he settles me down in his arms.

Music vibrates through the walls, drowning laughter and chatter. I feel like an object, created for him. By him. Did I exist before the first time he fucked me? I have no memory of it. Do I exist when we’re not together? I’m just a toy. His favorite. Irreplaceable.

And that’s when he speaks about Stanford’s acceptance. How he couldn’t wait to tell me. How dark Sweden is this time of year, but every message from me felt like a little burst of sunlight. He tells me what he’ll show me when I visit in the summer, and that he doesn’t want us to be apart for as long as we have been in the last couple of months, because it feels “cruel, Scarlett, to know that you exist, but I can’t touch you and fuck you and be with you. You get it, right?” And after minutes or centuries of this, he finally takes pity on me. “You are so sensitive—you’d come if I moved just a little. You’d come for me, wouldn’t you?”

I would. I nod.

It takes one thrust, and that’s it for me. Maybe two more for him. We both come silently, clutching each other through shudders and twitches and aftershocks that never seem to end, and when the sweat is cool on our bodies and I can breathe again, I say, “Lukas?”

He nods his head into my throat, like he doesn’t trust his vocal cords.

“Sometimes I’m afraid that this is the best thing I’ll ever have. For the rest of my life.”

He sighs, and murmurs something in Swedish that my Duolingo app has yet to cover.

Downstairs, the party trudges on.

I wake up alone in Lukas’s bed, to a handful of noises coming from downstairs—like someone’s gathering trash or washing the dishes.

Well, shit.

The weather’s gray and dull, but it’s already midmorning. If Lukas’s roommates are up, getting out unseen is going to be difficult. Impossible, since I’m not willing to dive out of a second-story bedroom and into a dumpster full of beer bottles.

I clean up quickly, slide my jeans up and my shirt down, and make my way downstairs, as inconspicuous as possible. I stop in the hallway to the kitchen, listening for voices, wondering if I should just go back to Lukas’s room until the coast is clear.

“. . . was asking after you,” Hasan is saying.

“She has my number,” Lukas replies, unconcerned.

The rustling of plastic bags stops. Someone kills the faucet. “You told me a couple months ago that you guys broke up, but last night you went upstairs with Vandy. I wasn’t sure if I could tell Pen, or . . .” Hasan sounds puzzled.

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