Chapter 4: Cloud Nine Has a Dress Code

I’d had the best night’s sleep since Tyler barged into my life. I woke up full, the kind of full that has nothing to do with food and everything to do with a chain around an ankle, the card still sitting next to me on my bedside table, and the man who had sent them to me. I opened my eyes and took my first breath of the day, completely overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I lay there in my bed grinning at the ceiling like an idiot, and the grin would not come off.

I was happy. Not coping-happy. Not the brittle version I wore to work after a bad code. Stupid, bright, inconvenient, all-consuming happy. Tonight I would see him again. Tonight I would walk into his house, and he would touch me, kiss me, hold me, and nothing on earth would matter. My planned speech about gates and eyes was still there, like a stick of gum I lost in my purse. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t be bothered to dig through the mess to find it. It just wasn’t important right now.

I reached for the phone and opened the picture first, the way he had asked, the way I had started wanting to. I did not just look at the picture now; I absorbed it, I lived it. I imagined myself like that in his house, starting and ending each day with me on my knees, my mouth full of him, and what that would feel like. My pride still prickled at the thought, and the shame still flickered. They just could not get a full shift. Under it was the other thing, the one I kept refusing to name out loud: I felt desired in a way that did not have a volume knob. I felt wanted. I felt like someone had aimed all that intensity at me on purpose and had not looked away. My chest did the helpless, lifting thing it did when I let myself admit I was in love with him, and then my brain tried to call it chemistry, and then my chest won.

I sat up and pulled the sheet back. The bracelet was still there. Of course it was. I had not taken it off. I turned my ankle in the morning light and touched the little t with my thumb, tracing the curve of it like it might explain itself if I was gentle enough.

It did not explain itself. It just sat there being his initial against my skin, light enough to hide, heavy enough that I could feel it when I flexed my foot.

“You are being ridiculous,” I told my ankle. “You are a piece of jewelry. You do not get to rearrange my entire personality before coffee.”

My ankle, to its credit, did not argue.

Two texts were waiting. Mike’s name sat on top of the lock screen again, loyal as weather. I opened Tyler’s.

I dreamed about you all night. I woke up reaching for you, and the bed was empty, and I hated it. I cannot wait to touch you. I want to smell you on my sheets. I want to taste you. I want to hold you and not have to count the minutes until you leave. Tonight cannot come soon enough, angel. Send me a picture of the bracelet on your ankle. Wear the plug again. All day. Keep it in when you walk through my door. I want you arriving already mine.