In “Map Reading,” set between Playing the Game and Crossing the Lines, Jay has his first lunch meeting of the new year with Alice and thinks about how far their relationship has come.
Three weeks since Jay and Alice had shared a Tuesday meal at the diner. Too long. Not as long as they’d had to wait between Fridays, though. For the first time, going home for the holidays had felt more like an endurance road race than an eyes-closed coast down a smooth slope with a fresh breeze in his face. Alice must have felt sorta the same.
Four weeks was too long. I missed this.
Her confession had tumbled to the top of his head a thousand-thousand times since Friday night. More often, even, than the image of her bowed head as she wrapped her lips around his cock for the first time ever—God, what a fucking reward that had been, thank you, Henry—and effortlessly took control, as if she hadn’t been the one bound and blindfolded.
I missed this.
As close to saying I need you as Alice ever got. Every time Henry got her naked, she crept closer to the line he wanted her to cross. To the side where they waited for her, where clothes didn’t matter because the nakedness was all inside, in the secret places you only got to see when you were willing to be naked, too.
Alice hadn’t seen all of his secret places yet. The ones he’d be ashamed to show her, the ones he still froze up about when Henry wanted him to talk through them. Why he got the fear-shakes around bondage and floggers and whips. Why he wanted them anyway. And the good secrets, the dreams his wish book held that he ached to show her now-now-now but had to keep quiet because Alice should be allowed to go at her own pace. Not rushed. Not forced. Never.
Somewhere inside the business-casual Alice across the table from him waited the woman who curled around him in her sleep. Who laughed and squirmed when they woke her with kisses on Saturday morning in sheets that smelled of satisfaction. Who twirled down the hall to the kitchen with him, the morning light splashing them in ways that made Henry hum. Five’d give you ten he had them on canvas like that somewhere in his studio.
Alice rapped her menu against his. Her smile crested the top. “It’s been a while since we’ve done lunch. You think we’ve forgotten how to talk?”
“I—” He stretched out the I like a skeptical siren. Alert, dangerous idea forming. “Dunno. Maybe we need to try something new. For the new year and all.”
She giggled behind the menu, the laminated sheet bopping her in the nose as she ducked her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I think—” She sipped her water, coughed once, and got herself under control. “I think I’ve tried a lot of new things in the last six months.”
“Good things, right?” The question slipped out before he could call it back. He wasn’t supposed to be interrogating her about their Fridays. The whole subject was off-limits. But she’d brought it up. Hadn’t she? “So we could try something we haven’t tried before.” Not a fresh menu item, because they’d eaten practically everything on it. “How about you order for me, and I order for you?”
A game, but a test, too. A friendly nudge to show her how well they knew each other. Remind her he and Henry would catch her if she leaped.
“Good things,” Alice whispered. She lowered her gaze to the menu, her mouth puckered. “You order first. We engineers like to collect observable data when we try new things.”
She’d agreed with him. Their relationship, all the new and unfamiliar terrain, didn’t read Here Be Dragons on Alice’s map. When she came to see them, she entered the Land of Good Things. Her map had shifted in subtle ways in the last six months, but she’d moved in big ways, too. Like the newly forming trails laid out by her I missed this. Her almost I need you.
He tried to shake off rowdy happiness in a casual shrug. “We daredevils like steering by the seat of our pants.” With a raised hand, he flagged the waitress and rededicated himself to studying the menu.
A soup for Alice, because January was a cold month, and Alice ran colder than he and Henry did anyhow. On the best Saturday mornings, she burrowed between them for warmth and moaned her satisfaction with the heat she found. A small sound, yeah, but so unmistakably pleased with him that he always wriggled in tighter for the joy of hearing her again.
Lunch, though. The waitress waiting on him. Not the time, not the place.
“A bowl of beef vegetable soup, please.” Not a cream soup, because that might sit heavy in her stomach after lunch, and Alice worked off brainpower, not a snoozy full belly. Meat, because their Midwestern girl really could pack away as much rare red beef as she’d bragged the day they’d met. “With an extra slice of bread and butter on the side.”
Alice laughed silently, her cheeks pink and round, her eyes flashing bright greens and deep browns. She laid down her menu and quietly clapped, her palms barely touching before she whisked them apart. “Okay, you know your stuff. Go ahead and be impressed with yourself.”
He settled back in his seat. He had a thick burger coming his way for sure. Greasy and dripping with cheese, sharing a plate with a heaping pile of fries. Definitely the worst way to fill his stomach for riding, but today was a paperwork Tuesday. Once he got back to his office, he could digest in sprawling peace while he went through scheduling and billing.
Alice folded her hands and leaned toward their waitress. “The menu says some breakfast items are available after normal hours. Can I get him a bowl of oatmeal with almonds and fruit on top and a side of scrambled eggs?”
Could—what? He almost missed the woman’s cheery response. Aside from one pancake foray, Alice always ordered from the lunch menu. As the waitress hustled down the aisle, her sensible tennis shoes squeaked a funeral song for his cheeseburger.
“You got me oatmeal?”
“And eggs.” With her level gaze and hint of a smile, Alice mimicked Henry more than she’d ever know.
He sat up straighter, his skin prickling with familiar awareness. His whole body whispered submit in the language so many years with Henry had helped him recognize. “But why?”
She arched her brow and stared, fuck, all of her attention pouring over him in a heated burst. “It’s what Henry would have ordered for you.”
He burned under her gaze. Someday, her look would be a command to take her hand, follow her to the restroom, and lock the door. Beg her to let him kneel and lunch between her legs. Drive her to the edge with his tongue again and again, until she twisted her fingers in his hair and ordered him to stop.
He took a ragged breath.
Alice unrolled her napkin and laid it across her lap. “You need a mix of slow and fast carbs to keep you going. And protein to help repair the muscles you work so hard.”
Her shirt collar slid across her neck as she bent forward and scooched her chair closer. Her slender neck, so in need of a thousand kisses.
“Small meals, frequently spaced, so you aren’t lugging around a gut busy breaking down food and making you nauseated when you’re trying to focus on a million and one inputs from the traffic around you. Am I wrong?”
“Not even a little.” Henry’s brilliant problem-solver. When Alice wanted to know something, she did her research. Which she wouldn’t have done if she didn’t care about him.
“You never ask if you can still get breakfast.” She tugged her lip, her teeth a tiny white flash in the corner. “Maybe because you don’t want to be a bother. But it’s the best meal to keep you fueled until your next snack. Henry would make sure you get what’s best for you. He’d ask. So I asked.”
His legs wobbled like so much jelly. If the fire alarm went off and they had to stand, Alice would have to drag his ass out of the diner.
She’d been reading him. Them. This whole time, all these months while he’d been learning to read the map of Alice, she’d been doing the same to him and Henry, only she probably pictured it as some mechanical blueprint.
If she understood that much—enough that she knew what he needed, and she knew why, and she knew what Henry would do and why, too—then nothing was stopping them from being a family. From carrying her stuff across the hall and into their apartment for good.
He beat down the urge to drum his feet on the floor. Alice wanted him. Alice loved him the way Henry did, all care and concern and without conditions.
“You got me.” He let the grin out, couldn’t help it. Too much energy zipping through him to hold back all of it. Maybe he could skip the damn paperwork and pedal straight home, fueled by Alice’s brilliant lunch choice, to share the news with Henry. “Breakfast-for-lunch, here I come.” He lifted his water glass and waited for Alice to follow. “To trying something new.”
Alice nodded, her eyes deep and hazy, her smile the soft bow of early mornings when he and Henry woke her together. “To trusting in your partner.”
The glasses chimed.