Page 19 of Exit Lane
There’s so much to say.I think I’m in love with you.Or,I’m desperate to kiss you right now.Or,The dullest, bleakest phase of my adult life was when we didn’t speak for years.But instead, I just watch her. She glances at me, then backout the window for the duration of the ride. It should be unnerving, but instead, a sense of peace floods my senses. It feels so easy to be around Marin. No one else—well, maybe Carter—makes me feel this all-consuming calm. I forgot about that part.
The walk to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art from the train is dotted with charming houses and blanketed by wide-open sky. “Imagine living here,” I say, then laugh when she responds, “I kind of do.” Most of the day’s crowds have headed back into the city by the time we check our coats, and we have entire exhibitions to ourselves. An Elmgreen & Dragset diving board, designed specifically for a windowed room, stops me in my tracks. The teal against the gray-blue that’s darkening by the minute feels like an apt metaphor. I text Carter a picture with the caption “Here goes nothing,” to which he responds, “Is this supposed to be a modern art meme?”
I watch strangers watch Marin. Maybe it’s her ease that they notice, the way she carries herself with a sense that she belongs in every single room she steps into. It could be her height, which feels fitting amid the towering installations and the backdrop of evergreen pines. Watching her move, I try to dismiss the sharp pain in my stomach, a pain I’ve been carrying with me for months. It’s a near-constant ache, right there, alongside joy and hope and what I’m starting to feel certain has to be love.
Marin and I barely speak, wandering from room to room, eventually finding ourselves facing the expanse of water separating us from Sweden. Arms crossed, she leansher head on my shoulder, and it’s as if she’s breaking the fourth wall between us. It’s impossible to know what she’s thinking. But this act of affection—this acknowledgment that there is intimacy between us—is enough at this moment.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Teddy.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, almost lost in the crashing of the waves. I wrap an arm around her shoulder, trying not to shake as we stand there, hopefully, on the precipice of something.
Back at the apartment, it’s pitch black. Marin lights a sea of candles—“It’s cultural. I’m not setting the mood”—and pulls ingredients from the refrigerator for chicken soup. She opens an ice-cold bottle of Grüner, which feels like the last thing I want to be drinking, until she lights a fireplace I barely noticed before.
“A real fireplace, huh? FourVC really hooked you up, Mar.”
“And somehow, I still miss New York.”
The pot’s simmering in the kitchen now, and we’re reaching our hands toward the warmth of the hearth. We keep finding reasons to stand closer together. The flames light her in amber. Kissing her is the only intelligible thought I can muster. She looks around the room, then back at me, straightening the collar on my sweatshirt.
The way she says “New York” makes it feel like she’ssaying she misses me. I let my eyes drop to her long fingers wrapped around her wineglass, turning my shoulder into hers, and playfully reach for the drawstring on her cashmere sweatpants.
“I get the feeling New York misses you, too.”
After dinner, dishes drying, we take the rest of the wine to the rug in front of the fireplace. She pulls pillows from the couch and sits cross-legged. Marin, the woman whose features I copy and paste on top of every other face I kiss, the person whose gestures I collect like seashells as she reveals more and more of herself to me, is laughing next to me, reaching for my knee to stabilize herself. Every micro contact turns me on, stirring a desire I swear has been dormant in every other romantic encounter of my life.
“But where’s the slush? How does it stay so clean?” I ask. We’re talking about snow in Copenhagen, but we’re really talking about that night, when flakes were falling outside my window and we were in bed together with an ocean between us. Her hand stays on my knee, and her middle finger traces along the bone there. There’s a gravitational pull tugging us toward the conversation. Momentum, wine, and the consuming effect of wanting this more than anything.
“New York is dirty,” she says with a shrug. “That’s part of its appeal.” She sets her wine beside her.
We’re going to talk about it. I inhale before diving in, hoping for the mentally clarifying benefits of oxygen, but instead finding the intoxicating scent of fireplace smoke and Marin.
“Everything you said that night,” I start, leaning alittle closer, testing the waters, “is that how you talk to everyone on the phone past midnight?” Marin laughs. Our faces are closer than they’ve been since Envy’s Pub. I could count the freckles on her nose if it wasn’t for the cool darkness of this room, punctuated by the light of the fire and candles.
Her laugh now is not the one I hear most of the time. It’s deeper, tugging at something she barely allows to see the light of day. I’m scared to move an inch, to break the spell of Marin unarmored.
“You know me, Teddy. I’m a phone sex addict with crippling insomnia.” Her face grows pink from the middle, a softness washing across it. “That was my first time. I don’t really know what came over me.” Her flush suggests a bashfulness contradicted by her direct eye contact when she says it.
I reach for her forearm, reckless or jet-lagged or both. “Mine, too, but I hope you couldn’t tell.”
Her skin’s soft, and I press my thumb against her pulse, wanting to feel her as much as she’ll let me. If we kiss, it’ll change everything, just the way it did the first time. There’s nothing I want more. The seconds drag on while I wait for her to want the same.
Her conspiratorial smile, the way her collarbone moves with her breath against the button-down she’s barely bothered to button. “I could tell,” she says. “And that was part of the charm.”
She reaches for my hand, tracing her finger over my pointer finger and thumb before resting her hand over mine.The fire crackles. She shifts onto her hip, her eyelids drop, and then, like that, her lips are on mine, soft and deliberate. Every night I’ve wasted not on the phone with Marin, not here with Marin, unspools in one second—the moment she kisses me, five years later.
XV
Marin
The kiss was bound to happen. I knew it the second I saw his face at my door. There was nothing in the cons column to stop it. Teddy makes me feel. It’s that simple, and I hate that I want that despite myself. My typical rationales and the lengths I’ll go to for self-preservation aren’t worth anything with him. Even over the phone I felt helpless. Now, his mouth—his sweet, starving mouth—pressed against the corner of mine disarms whatever protective instincts remain. The only thought I have ismore.
Teddy’s hands are urgent. I’m somewhere between disbelief and delight, pulling my shirt off so I can feel closer to him. Every inch of my skin feels alive with sensation—the softness of the rug underneath us, the heat of the fire on my face, the wetness of our mouths moving against each other, the strain of my nipples against my bra. There’s a current between us, bringing everything to the surface. I’ve felt this electricity before. But now there’s a power supply fueled by years of unspoken conversations, thousands of text messages that were never sent, all the times our lives dropped us off at the other’s proverbial front door. Then,Teddy showed up at my actual one, and it feels shockingly simple.
He sighs when he sees me in my bra, the deepness of it a contrast to the shallowness of our breathing. “What is it, Teddy?” I tease. We can’t stop kissing, not even when he lifts his sweatshirt and T-shirt over his head all at once. My lips, the cotton pulled over his lips, more kissing. Our bodies stretching and tangling into each other. This is the part where I normally start playing out the next twenty minutes, game-planning exactly what I’ve signed up for and preparing myself accordingly. But I can’t get past his mouth, the way it falls on mine hungrily every time. His hand moves to the strap of my bra and gently tugs it down as his tongue presses deeper. I feel it in every part of my body, a throbbing between my legs, a magnetic impulse to be as close to him as possible. His other hand works its way into my hair, the soft part of his thumb presses against my ear. Nothing has ever felt so consuming.
I pull back, holding his face in my hands and watching him watch me, his eyes scanning incredulously, his need for me already obvious.
Unstoppable, that’s how I feel.
Teddy hooks his arm around my waist, pulling me onto his lap, and I straddle him as he leans against the base of the sofa. Every muscle in my body softens to give way to the tension building between my legs. His hands run from my waist to my thighs, leaving a heat map in their wake. I’m caught between total surrender and wanting to memorize every moment. His cock pushes against his jeansand against me, and I feel desire everywhere. “Every time I look at you”—he kisses my neck, under my ear—“I want to tell you how desperately I want you.” His teeth scrape at my shoulder. I reach around my back to undo my bra and then look down to track as his thumbs stroke my nipples. I shudder, feeling my stomach bowl out and my neck stretch in his direction. “I’ve never wanted to be your friend.” He leans his head into me and kisses the words into my clavicle.
