Abby shouted her name at him, which was all the conversation the music would allow—a good thing, because his next question would have probably been Where are you from, and at some point he’d follow up with What do you do, and Abby would have to choose between lying or stumbling through an explanation about the gig jobs she took to pay her bills. It was embarrassing to be her age, to have made so many false starts and still not be any closer to figuring out what she planned on doing with her one wild and precious life. She reminded herself that her indecision, while unseemly, wasn’t actively harming anything or anyone.
Somehow, she and the guy had drifted away from the rest of the bridesmaids until they were dancing as a couple (Marissa, the only member of the bridal party who’d noticed this development, gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up, which Abby hoped the guy hadn’t noticed). He was close enough for her to feel the heat of his body. His scent made her mouth water; made her want to press her lips against him and taste the skin of his throat. After two songs, he started to touch her—reaching for her hand, letting his hand rest on her hip, always looking at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for her nod. Abby could feel herself flushing with each brush of his fingers, her skepticism—Me? This guy’s into me? Really?—warring with her desire.
After another three songs, he took her hand and inclined his head toward the corner. Abby let him lead her into the shadows, thinking Do with me what you will. She knew this was borderline scandalous behavior. She also knew that the guy might think she was acceptable, kissable, sleep-with-able, at two in the morning in a dark bar, with loud music and limited options and God only knew how many drinks inside of him, but that he might find her less impressive when he was sober. And there was Mark, back in Philadelphia. They’d been on only two dates since they’d found each other again, but maybe Marissa was right. Maybe there was potential for something serious.
Abby knew all that. But this guy smelled so good, and his hands were so warm, and Philadelphia had never felt farther away. As soon as they’d made it to the corner, Abby stood on her tiptoes, and the guy bent his head and reached down to cup the back of her neck and bring his mouth down against hers. The first brush of his lips was gentle, respectful, a careful taste. Abby was the one to deepen the kiss, the one to slip just the tip of her tongue into his mouth, shivering as she’d felt, more than heard, his groan.
He brought his mouth down to her ear. “Come home with me.” Abby felt her body flush as the words vibrated through her. Immediately, she nodded. It had been years since she’d kissed a stranger in a bar, and she had almost never gone home with a guy she’d just met. But, somehow, this felt inevitable, like it was the only choice she could possibly make.
When they were outside, the silence rang in her ears. Without the crush of the crowd or the DJ providing a distraction, now that the guy could really see her, Abby felt awkward and unsure.
“It’s Abby, right?” he asked, after he’d used his phone to summon a car. “I’m Sebastian,” he said, which saved her from asking, and let her appreciate his exceptionally resonant and deep voice. He had a birthmark, like a single dark freckle, right in the center of his throat, and she couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him right there.
She gathered enough sense to text Marissa that she was leaving. She used her phone to take a snapshot of his driver’s license, which she sent to Lizzie, her best friend back in Philadelphia. “So if you kill me and cut me into pieces they’ll know where to start the search,” Abby said.
Sebastian rolled his eyes a little. “If I kill you and cut you into pieces I’m not going to keep the evidence in my apartment.”
“You might,” Abby said, shrugging. “Some serial killers take souvenirs.”
He stared at her for a moment. Abby waited to see if she’d freaked him out, but all he did was grin and shake his head.
“I can tell you’re a romantic.”
“Safety first,” said Abby. She put her hands on his shoulders, pulling him close, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him.
They kissed on the street while they waited, then they continued kissing in the backseat of the Uber, and they barely stopped kissing after the car pulled up to the address he’d given and he took her hand again and led her down three steps and into his apartment. Abby had a blurred impression of a small kitchen, a short hallway with a high-end-looking bicycle hanging on the wall. At the end of the hallway, there was a bedroom so small that the queen-size bed filled every inch of the space. There was a thin-looking comforter on the bed—black on one side, gray on the other—and four pillows in white pillowcases, piled at its head.
Abby flung herself onto the bed, giggling, still barely believing that this was happening, that she was doing this. Sebastian lit a few candles on the ledge of his windowsill and lay down on his side, facing her. He slipped his hands up the back of her tee shirt, and Abby’s brain went quiet. He pressed her back against the pillows and kissed her for long, dizzying moments, licking her lips and sucking her tongue and nibbling at her neck as he stroked his thumbs against her cheeks and ran his fingers through her hair. He smelled incredible. His hair was so soft as Abby touched it, then tugged it. His deep voice sounded as lovely as she’d thought it would as he groaned and murmured compliments against her skin, and his body felt so good, so unbelievably, outrageously good, pressed against her.
When she couldn’t wait any longer, she helped him pull off his shirt. She rubbed her hands over his shoulders, his chest, admiring him in the candlelight. She asked, “Can I?” and waited for his nod before unbuttoning his pants and helping him work them off, until he was just in a pair of stretchy gray boxer briefs, and Abby was just in her panties. She thought he’d take off his underpants, or maybe hers. Instead, he pressed the length of his body against hers, and took both of her wrists in his hand, pinning them over her head, making a noise that was almost a growl against her neck.
“Oh, God,” Abby breathed, flushed and trembling all over, so aroused that the throbbing between her legs was almost an ache. She lifted her hips, trying to press herself into him, but every time she tried to move things along, to reach down and touch him, to try to take off her underpants, or his, he would hold her wrists down again. Gently but firmly, leaving no doubt as to who was in charge. “Please,” Abby moaned, thrusting her hips, pressing herself against him shamelessly. “Oh, God, please, please, please…”
She hadn’t been to bed with too many guys, and usually, during sex, it was hard to get out of her own head. Abby was curvy. Rubenesque if you liked your euphemisms, obese if you were a doctor, fat, which was what Abby called herself; a word she’d forced herself to use, over and over and over, until all the sting had been leached away and it no longer felt like a slap. She was soft and warm and yielding. She was strong and she was healthy, no matter what the bullshit BMI charts said. And, the world being what it was, she knew that there were more important things to change than her body. But even so.
In college, there’d been a guy named Chris, who had definitely not been her boyfriend, nor even a friend with benefits. He’d been no kind of friend at all—just a guy who’d been willing to sleep with her. Chris would call her after midnight and invite her over, or show up at her room at two in the morning and creep out of her dorm before the sun came up, so that no one would ever see them together. It had left a mark. In the post-Chris era, when Abby went to bed with someone new she would keep her clothes on for as long as she could. She’d keep blankets or, better, if there was one handy, a pillow over her midsection, and she preferred to make love in the dark. She worried about how she smelled, how she sounded, how her body felt, how it looked. It was almost impossible for her to stop thinking about all of that, to be, as her yoga teacher said, present in the moment.