Page 13 of Exit Lane
“Well, I probably wouldn’t have kissed you,” she starts. I’m gutted, red in the face in a dark room. I hear her readjusting her blankets, maybe turning on her side. “But I think about that dive bar all the time.”
Relief floods my system. I’m not completely alone. Even if her feelings for me pale in comparison to mine for her. I fight the urge to make a joke. The tension is clear, but I know it’s worth staying inside of it—how often do I have access to this side of Marin?
“I keep expecting another kiss to feel like that.” I want to be honest without freaking her out. I worry I’ve gone too far.
“I think a lot of it was the nerves of moving to the city and being exhausted from the drive,” she rationalizes. Then she pauses, and I steel myself to reply with “Of course” or “Right.” But she’s not done. “It was all those things, but it was also you, Teddy. Us.”
My breath hitches. I could listen to her say my name over and over and over and find a new reason to rejoice every time. Fuck caution. I want all the risk associated with telling Marin how I really feel. Whatever strategy orrestraint I’ve been exercising hasn’t worked thus far. I make the decision. I’m all in.
“Mar, I think about it every time I kiss someone for the first time. I always wonder if it’ll feel as... earth-shattering as ours did.” I wait, realizing my voice is shaking a little. “It never does.”
“Not even with Caroline?” Her voice is lower, gravelly and perfect. It makes me shudder, the intimacy of it. I’m no longer imagining her a phone call away. She’s here, next to me.
I feel enough shame that I can’t say Caroline’s name but not enough to keep from confessing. “It’s only ever been you.” My guilt is buried under the thrill of my proximity to the real, unarmored version of Marin. The part of her that’s as hard to catch a glimpse of as unblemished New York City snow.
I close my eyes, taking in the moment one inhale, exhale at a time. The quiet doesn’t scare me anymore. What terrifies me is what I hear myself say next, emboldened by the desire—theneed—for Marin to know how close I feel to her even in her absence. “If we were together, right now, what would we be doing?”
IX
Marin
“Disbelief” isn’t the right word. I took the mushroom chocolate, and I waited. I’m the one who called Teddy. I didn’t stop him when he started talking about that night at karaoke. Instead, I pulled the thread of the conversation further until we landed here. “Regret” isn’t the right word, either. I wouldn’t have pushed us to this place on my own, but something in me has uncoiled now that we’ve arrived.
Teddy’s quiet on the other end of the line. Copenhagen’s quiet, too. This time of night, there are the occasional bike tires whirling below. Every so often, an ambulance. I miss the din of New York, which I play from my phone on nights when the lack of sound gets too loud. I miss my gorgeous Tribeca apartment that is still shitty in some ways, as almost all New York apartments are. My cortado at the Elk. Walking down Canal into a summer Friday sunset. Making a guest bedroom out of sheets on my sofa for my sister. And tonight, I miss Teddy. A New York fixture for me even if I’ve only seen him there once.
I adjust the AirPods in my ears, nestling into the pile of down pillows propped up against my headboard. I hearTeddy sigh, standing at a crossroads after deliberating. Am I smiling? It’s almost as if there’s no decision at all. For the first time, I start to wonder if this was always where we were going to end up.
“I wish we were together,” he says. Normally, our banter is quick and clear. But tonight, his tone matches mine—slower, like every syllable counts. “Not at work or in that old car, but in the massive bed you’re bragging about.”
Fighting to ignore every instinct and move through the mental walls I’ve built to organize my life, I try to imagine another way. What if it was simple? What if how Teddy makes me feel—present and giddy and unencumbered—isn’t something to work against?
I can already picture myself tomorrow morning, charting my plan to reconstruct my barricades. But tonight, as terrifying as it sounds, I just want to be here, with him.
I sink deeper under my covers, a hand mindlessly pulling at my pajama pants’ drawstring. He’s gravelly when he says, “I wish I was in bed with you, Marin Voss.” I can picture him rubbing the back of his neck as he says it.
I’m lightheaded, dazed by how one sentence can unlock something in me. Teddy wants me. I can’t pretend it’s news, but hearing the words, I have to acknowledge how much I want Teddy, too.
Ignoring the creep of early morning, I make a decision of my own. “If we were together—” I pause, noticing my index finger tracing the edges of my underwear. My breathing hitches. “I’d want you to be naked. It’s strange that we’ve never seen each other without clothes on, isn’tit?” I’m emboldened by something, using all my strength to push away thoughts of pragmatism and control.
“Considering we’re—and these are your words, not mine—‘strictly colleagues,’ I don’t think it’s that strange,” he says. “I never—” He cuts himself off, and his voice deepens. “I’m sorry. I’m nervous.” His laugh is like an exhale between us, easing the tension just enough for him to continue. “I’d give anything to see you naked, Marin. To see how much you’re like what I’ve imagined.”
My feelings, stuffed down and stifled for all these years, flood my body with warmth. My body tenses, then loosens. My jaw unclenches, and my legs splay open, the way they always do when I touch myself. I can almost remember his scent, inches from his face in that karaoke room, all those hours in the car. “I’m nervous, too,” I whisper back. “But I wouldn’t be if you were actually here. Something about being around you makes me feel like we’ve always known each other.” Teddy is grinning. I can almost see it. My chin tilts, his imaginary finger lifting it to his face. “That feeling unlocks something in me. And it terrifies me.”
“Me too.” He sighs. We could still retrace our steps, call it a fluke, pretend the conversation never happened. But he goes on.
“I think about our kiss all the time. Most days,” he says. “It feels so juvenile—I never think about any other kiss—but that one plays on repeat like a movie scene for me.”
The tiniest sigh escapes my throat as I lift my hips and slip my underwear and pajama pants off, bunching themunder the covers. “I think about it, too. I half expected you to come knocking at my hotel room. For the two of us to fuck that night.” Maybe there’s a more eloquent way to slam the door of plausible deniability than the word “fuck,” but I can’t think of it, not in this state.
“Trust me, Marin, I wanted to. Had to settle for jerking off thinking about you down the hall. More than once that night. You had me so worked up I couldn’t sleep until I got you out of my system. Only I’ve never been able to get you out of my fucking system.” Blood rushes between my legs at the thought. In my head, he’s here, his thumb brushing across my lips, trailing down my neck, skimming across my nipples that are pressing against the ribbed cotton of my tank top. I suck in a shallow breath, and I know he can hear it, register the nature of my reaction to his confession.
“That kiss made me feel like a teenager,” I whisper. “So does this.” I cringe at myself. Not because it isn’t true—that the heady feelings I get around him aren’t real—but because for me, thoughts of those years bring up weeks of hospice, waves of grief. I push myself to be present. To be here in this new feeling, even though it’s uncharted. To experience Teddy as something other than part of the life I left behind. All I want is to give in to him completely, to tell him he’s on my mind all the time and that I want him in every way imaginable, but that’s a leap I’m not ready for. I settle for the silence of our breathing, growing heavier by the moment. I settle for his voice in my sheets.
“If I was in Copenhagen, naked in your king-size bed, I would kiss you again.”
I reach for a pillow, stuffing it under my hips, feeling myself open at the thought.
He keeps going. “This time, I wouldn’t stop there.”
