I’m so close that it’s agony. So close that I almost don’t notice that Real Julian said the words too, that their mouths moved at the same time, that they are both looking to their corresponding me (us) with ravenous anticipation. I bend forward, grab hold of the footboard of the bed, and Julian follows me down, dogged in his pursuit of my answer.
“I’m yours.” It comes out in a gasp, but the words fill the room, echo against the walls like I’ve shouted them. “I’m yours, Julian, oh god, please—”
The lights flicker, and suddenly I’m back in Julian’s bedroom, his hot skin sticking to mine, hot breath wafting against my neck. His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise, and when he pulls back to meet my eyes, there is something helpless in his gaze. Like he has let go of the reins and allowed his body to pull him asunder.
“Oh Sean,” he whimpers, and it’s a prayer, an invocation to thedivine, and the moment my name leaves his lips I am overcome. The heat between us mounts, overwhelming. I’m being remade, I think, reforged, a phoenix forming in a bed of ash. I remember a distant dream, a room on fire, an echo in my skull:Give yourself to me.
And then I recall nothing else, because nothing else matters—just this, just us, just now, just this towering tidal wave of molten pleasure that crashes into me and turns me into sea-foam.
Thirteen
I wake to an alarm I don’t remember setting in a room I don’t remember falling asleep in, in a bed I was sure I shared with someone else. But I’m alone, and the sheets next to me are cool.
Before the panic can set in, I take a deep breath and activate Emergency Sean. Emergency Sean does not freak out because her patient’s blood pressure is tanking or the guy she (finally) slept with has left her alone in a strange bed. Emergency Sean catalogs facts and figures out what she needs to do next.
I find my phone plugged in on the nightstand. According to the home screen, it is still Thursday, and it is seven thirty in the evening, which means that I’ve been out for about two and a half hours. I also know that, despite getting somewhere in the vicinity of an hour of sleep last night, I feel better rested than I have in days.
There is also the where. This one is easy, even if it sets my cheeks to burning—I am in Julian Conrad’s bedroom, in Julian Conrad’s bed. As far aswhathappened in it…beyond the most rudimentary terms, I am not exactly sure. On one hand, I’ve just had what was easily the best sex of my life. On the other hand, I appear to have intermittently passed out several times over the course of the act, judging bythe presence and, erm,participationof the Julian I encounter in my dreams. Which…wow. I must be sicker than I thought, in all senses of the word.
There’s a robe hanging from the door. I hop out of bed, slip it on, and tiptoe down the hall.
I find Julian sitting at his dining table, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses balanced on the bridge of his nose, staring down at his laptop screen with rapt concentration that’s only broken when I speak.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I say.
Julian starts, whipping the glasses off his face as he rushes to my side.
“I don’t usually. I’ve been staring at a lot of screens lately; these supposedly help with the eye strain,” he says distractedly. He cups my face in his hand, studying it from under a brow furrowed with concern. “You crashed pretty hard. How are you feeling?”
“I’m good,” I say, blushing under his close attention. It’s hard to look directly at him, so soon after he wrought rapturous havoc on me, and so I turn toward his computer instead. “What are you working on?”
There is a brief moment when I see Julian hesitate, sense that he might press me for more. But then his hand falls from my face and he settles back into his seat. I collapse across from him.
“I invested in a company based in Delhi that’s developing small solar-powered kitchen appliances, with an emphasis on stoves,” he says. “They’ve been running into some issues with their manufacturer and the NGO that was supposed to help with distribution just lost their grant, so I’ve been helping to put out fires.”
“Solar-powered stoves,” I say, curious. “Who would those be for? Campers?”
Julian rests his chin on steepled hands.
“Delhi has some of the worst air pollution in the world,” he says. “Almost two million people live in the slums surrounding the city, a lot of them in poorly ventilated quarters. They do a lot of their cooking with makeshift earthen stoves, and the initial idea was that these would replace those. They’re a good team, very mission driven, but I think they’re missing their target as far as consumers.”
He goes on to explain the clear barriers to adoption—many of the foods cooked by the entrepreneurs’ community require open flames for charring rather than induction ovens, and the team of engineers, composed entirely of men who have never cooked a day in their lives, arrived at a solution to a perceived problem without seeking the opinions of their actual potential users first. Besides, their proposed consumers are unlikely to have the resources to help them reap a profit. A noble mission, Julian emphasizes, but misguided.
“The actual technology has so much promise,” he states. “I personally want them to pivot. There are so many other devices they could apply this to that can still help address their goal of decreasing emissions and making renewable energy attainable at a consumer level, but—” He freezes. “I’m boring you.”
“You aren’t,” I say. I mean it. When we first met, I’d poked fun at his description of his work as philanthropy, but a dig through Reddit forums reveal that he wasn’t kidding about only taking a meager cut. Getting sponsored by the Conrads is apparently the equivalent of acquiring a fairy godmother; his firm functions as both an accelerator and an investor, providing significant mentorship in addition to funding in exchange for considerably less equity than his competitors. His passion is both obvious and infectious, and, if I’m honest, attractive too. “I think it’s cool that you’re so involved.”
“I have an incentive to see them succeed. Not just financially. This is about advancement,” Julian says. “I see this happen all thetime—brilliant people with good ideas who are just asking the wrong questions. Part of my job is leading them to the right ones. They do this properly, and they could change the world.”
He wags his head, then snaps his laptop shut and reaches for my hand, brushing a thumb across my knuckles.
“But enough of that. I’ve missed you.”
I roll my eyes. “Ha! Whose fault is that?”
The moment I say it, I freeze. A second realization has dawned on me: Julian ghosted me, and for over a week. So how did I end up here, in his apartment, in his bed? My memory is hazy, like I’ve drunk four too many margaritas at happy hour and shuttled forward in time. I consider the series of events that could have led me to Julian’s dining room table, and it takes them a moment to crystallize: falling asleep in morning clinic, running into Leila, her voice cracking as she declaresJules is important to both of us…“Wait, weren’t you just on the brink of death?”
It’s probably my hypervigilance talking. Probably a relic from the way I used to search Eric’s face for the slightest shift in mood to govern what would be safe to say next and what might send him into a rage. But I could swear that right before Julian laughs, his eyes widen with shock.