Page 54 of Atmosphere

But he pulled away from her. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for months now,” he said.

Joan opened her eyes.

“But not when you’re drunk.”

“But I want to,” Joan said. “Right now, I want to. And I may not want to tomorrow.”

Griff smiled, but his eyes were sad. She could see that.

“Then we shouldn’t,” Griff said.

Joan had seen enough movies to know what to do. She grabbedthe lapels of his jacket and pulled him toward her, pulled him against her, her body pressed against the brick wall behind her.

He gave in to her then, put his hands on the wall and pushed against her. He kissed her back.

He tasted like rum, and she wanted to gag. The roughness of his chin. The smell of him. She hated it as much as she’d known she would.

She pushed him away—she had to.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “I don’t think we are…like this.”

He frowned, but she felt such relief. She had finally said it. He could stop trying to love her now. Because she did not want him. She wanted something, she wanted it so badly. In her bones and her legs. But she did not want him at all.

He backed away a step, and then he laughed to himself in a way that wasn’t funny. “It’s okay,” he said. “I had a feeling this would happen. It’s why I haven’t made a move.”

“I’m sorry, Griff,” she said. “It’s just…it’s complicated.”

Griff nodded. “I thought it might be. I thought you might be.”

Joan did not want to know what he meant.

A taxi came down their side of the road. Griff hailed it and opened the door for Joan. He put her in the backseat and gave the driver the name of the hotel.

“Thank you,” Joan said, her hand on the edge of the open window. She was overwhelmed with love for him. Love in the sense that she trusted him, and saw all the good in his heart, and cared about him and wanted only good things to ever happen to him. Love in the sense that she would always be on his side, even if he was wrong, in the sense that he was one of the people on this Earth she believed in. And in that moment, the swelling in her heart was unbearable. Absolutely unbearable.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, don’t be. I’ll be okay. Give me a little while and I’ll be just fine.”

She nodded.

“You looked gorgeous tonight, Joan,” he said. And then he tapped the cab’s roof. And off she went.

As the cab drove away, Joan touched her lips. Her lipstick was smeared. And her lips felt as if they were tender, buzzing not with satisfaction but with longing.

That night, Joan dreamt of things she’d never dreamt of before.

—

She woke up to thefog of morning. The bright sun coming through the window was a shock to her cloudy vision. She reached for her sunglasses on the nightstand and put them on. A loud pounding on her door forced her to finally get out of bed.

She was naked, which surprised her. She grabbed a robe from the closet and then turned to see that the bed was covered in sketches. She’d used up the entire hotel stationery pad. Joan looked at them, trying to remember drawing them.

Every single sketch was of Raven.

Raven smiling at her. Raven dancing. Raven with her top off. Raven’s hips and her stomach.

Joan gathered them all up frantically as the pounding continued. “Be right there!”

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