Page 17 of Exit Lane
“Teddy, this is a lot to take in.” I brace for impact, certain she’s about to send me right back to the airport. “And I know you’re jet-lagged, so maybe it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s late. Can I make the bed in the office, and we can talk about it in the morning?”
Less enthusiastic a response than kitchen sex, but I can work with it. My entire body relaxes at the thought of at least another day with her. “That’s perfect. Thank you.”
Silently slipping from her seat, Marin pulls some sheets from a burl wood wardrobe, tossing me a towel with her initials embroidered on the side. In the shower, I try to convince myself that coming here was right, that there’s a world in which I leave Denmark knowing if Marin and I could ever be something. With a towel around my waist, I discover a cream daybed wrapped in striped sheets with a tiny chocolate placed on my pillow. I interpret the hotel turndown service as an olive branch and fall asleep grinning.
Marin
Teddy McCarrel, arms splayed and draped off the edges of my guest bed, in my apartment. It’s like seeing a ghost, except this apparition falls victim to morning wood and audible snoring. The light falls across his face from where I stand in the doorway. He’s just so Teddy. Of course he flew here. Of course he thinks we can power through years of attachment theory work in a week. Of course his dick is huge. The way his mouth dips open in his sleep, his lips soft. He’s beautiful. And brash. I’m trying not to stare at the abs that lead to the sturdy hip bones that are somewhere near his cock, straining against a pair of poplin pajama pants. It registers as a stirring between my legs nonetheless. He’s borderline otherworldly in this setting. And I need a coffee before I do something stupid.
“You knew about this?” I ask as sternly and quietly as I can into my phone. I’m in the kitchen soft-scrambling eggs and doing my best to hold off on the espresso machine until Teddy’s awake. It’s the middle of the night for Sloane—and technically for him too—but I knew she’d answer. That getting a call like this is an actual bucket-list item for her, one informed by a steady diet of ’90s rom-coms and an emotionally withholding best friend.
“To be clear, Carter knew about this. I had no idea until Teddy landed. Not that I disapprove. I just think it’s a little reckless on his part.” Before I can interrupt, she self-edits. “But charming. Just go easy on him, OK? Or just have the incredible, pent-up sex you both needed to have and then break his heart, I guess. Which is more your speed.”
“Sloane, I don’t like surprises.” I’m shocked at the vulnerability in my voice. She’s heard it before, about my family, but never my love life. I lift myself onto the counter, resting my socked foot on the island, pressing my head back into the cabinet, face to the skylight above. Undulating between excitement and apprehension, part of me wishes I’d never let him into the apartment. But another part of me can’t believe the luck of him being here. That he did the bold thing that I never would have done.
“Mar, babe, I know you don’t. And I know you have a whole plan about marrying a wealthy eighty-five-year-old in New York and never coming back to the Midwest ever again. I get it. But there’s a man asleep in your apartment who adores you almost as much as I do, despite you giving him almost nothing to work with over the last five years.” She’s right, per usual.
“You know I can’t end up with Teddy,” I sputter before I can stop myself. “It can’t be that easy. Anything that easy comes with a catch.”
“I’m not your therapist, although, you know, Jessica is doing God’s work. But I will remind you that maybe some things can be easy. We were easy, right? You took a chance on me, and look at us. Try to go easy on yourself too. And maybe open yourself up to the slight possibility that Teddy could be the love of your life? Just an idea.”
I grumble out something about calling her later, and I hate that she can tell she made headway with me. That she’ll be too excited about it to fall back asleep right away.
I send a note to the office, letting my partners knowI’ll be taking the day, which they’ll all be pleased by. It’s been a year or so since I took a proper vacation, and I’ve grown accustomed to stacking my weekend with the kind of appointments normal people take during work hours. It’s a badge of honor to leave my unlimited PTO untouched. Though I suspect the badge is revoked as soon as I spend any time examining why that matters to me.
Lounging on my sofa, desperate for coffee and further explanation from Teddy, I start to wonder what mornings would feel like if I didn’t start working from my phone in bed. I could read a book from the pile I’ve accumulated from my local bookstore or finish a crossword from the care package my mom sent.
But the stillness starts to creep me out. I slip on my Levi’s, a massive sweater, and the Max Mara coat I bought myself with my last year-end bonus and grab my keys. The cold air works its magic, and I’m determined to take at least some of Sloane’s advice. On my bike, pedaling to Andersen & Maillard, it feels good to get into my body. To remember I have limbs and lungs, that I’m not just a brain and the worry that comes with it. I order a cortado. Two sticky buns. A loaf of sourdough. More espresso beans. I’m on my way back, certain that despite the time change, Teddy will be awake, and now I’m ready for him.
XIII
Teddy
I wake up with a sore back, a dead phone, and a Zen-like calm I haven’t felt in years. The sun is warm, casting a pale light across the office. I tiptoe over to Marin’s desk, wiggle a mouse to check the time, and see that it’s almost noon and that—according to an OOO notification that pops up on the screen—she took the day off. Marin Voss has taken exactly zero vacation since I started working with her. I count my wins: She didn’t kick me out. She isn’t dismissing me for work. In the kitchen, there’s a carafe of water with a matching cup and a note on the counter: “Be back soon x MV.” Marin’s handwriting, the way it flops to the right somewhere between print and script, puts a stupid grin on my face. That I get to see it at all feels like we’ve unlocked some new level of closeness, earned or not. I’m buzzing as I settle at a barstool.Things could work out, I dare to think. This could be the moment we look back at in forty years, the fulcrum in the story where everything changed.
In the bathroom, Marin’s left a D.S. & Durga candle burning over the toilet, and I instantly recognize the scentas the perfume she wears. Or at least, the perfume she wore five years ago.
I am in desperate need of another shower after hours of tossing and turning while trying to force my body onto Copenhagen time, to keep it from picking apart every single gesture Marin made and every syllable she uttered since I arrived. Under the steady stream of hot water, I give up on collecting my thoughts. I’m here because I think I might be in love with Marin. Or at least, I’m here to find out if I could be. If the entire thing blows up in my face, at least I’ll know I tried. Maybe then I can finally let go of this crush I’ve harbored for most of my adult life.
Thoughts at top volume, I wrap myself in another towel and walk back toward my makeshift accommodations. I turn the corner in the hall, and as I slow in front of a Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition poster—how did we never talk about both seeing this?—I promptly slip on the hardwood floor. I am on the ground, at the feet of Marin Voss, wrapped in a camel coat, carrying what smells like pastries. Seminaked, I look up at her expecting to see something smug cross her beatific face. At my clumsiness. At my presence at all.
But instead, Marin can’t stop laughing, dropping her bags to the counter and stabilizing herself against the wall. “It’s... it’s so funny, in a slipping-on-a-banana-peel way. That you’re here at all. I’m sorry, are you OK?” She pulls me up, and for a second, we’re inches away. My chest damp and heaving. The belt of her coat undone. I notice her pajamashirt from the night before, still so goddamn unbuttoned. Her cheeks are flushed from being in the cold. The afternoon sun streams into the room with full force, lighting up a face I’ve only seen on a computer camera for the last two years. She does that hair-tuck thing, reenacting a moment I can’t stop replaying in my head from the road trip, and I realize I am getting hard underneath her monogrammed towel, which is possibly the only thing that could make this situation more awkward.
“Nothing to see here.” I stand taller and rewrap my towel.
Her eyes flit to my waist, and she rests her hand on my bare shoulder and leans to speak into my ear. “Breakfast when you’re ready.”
She’s cheerful, maybe even flirtatious. Enough so that I momentarily consider pressing her against the wall, yanking the belt of her coat, and kissing her for the second time in my life.
But if I want this trip to be more than one kiss or the culmination of our phone sex session, there’s talking to do first.
I scuttle into the office to change into a sweatshirt and pants with wool socks. The whirl of the espresso machine strikes me as intimate in a way it never has before, and I realize there’s been a pair of rose-colored glasses permanently affixed to my face since the moment I walked through Marin’s door. Well, probably the moment I spent $4,000 on a last-minute ticket. Making the decision to ignore the voicemail from my doctor that came in duringthe flight, I tell myself that everything else can wait. Someone stop me. I’m an optimist on the loose.
Marin
“I assume you take yours with milk and sugar?” I ask, handing him a mug of my dad’s so precious to me that I wrapped it in two cashmere sweaters and transported it in my carry-on when I moved.
“And yours is black still, I presume?”
