Item One

A My Straight Best Friend’s Bed Bonus Scene
by Aurora North

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Robin

There’s a recipe card on my desk.

That’s a violation. The rule is taped to the wall above the lamp, in her own handwriting. No pastry boxes. No invoices that aren’t hers. Not one crumb. I’ve lived here three weeks. In that time the desk has held one planner, four pens, and, on one occasion, me.

It is 8:41 on a Sunday night in May. Fold closed at two. It’s closed tomorrow. Gemma went downstairs at eight to check a proof, on a night when nothing is proofing.

I pick the card up by its edges.

ITEM ONE

1 apron

0 anything else

1 light, over the bench

9:00 p.m. Back stairs. Wash your hands.

Method: you tell me. Out loud. In order.

Under that, smaller, climbing uphill:

It’s addressed to you, so it’s yours, so it’s allowed. I checked the rule. — G.

I take my glasses off. I clean them on my shirt. I put them back on.

I gave her this one in September, on her bed, over Thai food. I gave her ten words. You. In the apron. Only the apron. On your bench. She laughed until she had to put her plate down. Then she informed me it was a food-contact surface, and I considered the matter closed.

I’ve crossed off an office since then. A hotel. A box of tax documents. This one I left where it was. It’s the oldest thing I own.

8:43. I have seventeen minutes.

I wash my hands for the full twenty seconds. I consider changing my shirt. In the version I’ve been running since the first year I knew her, I’m in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled, so I roll them. Twice each, to the elbow. Then I stand in the hall with the card in my breast pocket and nothing to do.

At 8:59 I go down the back stairs.

The front of the shop is dark. The shade’s down on the coral door. The chairs are up. The case is empty.

One light is on. It’s the one over the bench.

She’s standing under it with her back to me.

I’ve been accurate about a number of things in my life. Par levels. Lead times. The width of a refrigerator alcove. I got this wrong.

I had the strings knotted at the small of her back. They’re tied in a bow. It’s a careless one, with one loop longer than the other, and it sits just above the swell of her ass. I had her shoulders. I didn’t have the two shallow dents at the base of her spine, or the pink line her bra leaves under her shoulder blades at the end of a day. I didn’t have the orange scarf. I didn’t have her standing with one foot on top of the other, because the tile’s cold and she’d rather die than say so.

Navy canvas. A neck strap. A bow. Nothing else. She’s bare all the way down the back, from her nape to her heels.

“Nine o’clock,” Gemma says, without turning around. “On the dot. I’d have been insulted by 8:58.”

“I waited on the stairs.”

“I know. I heard you waiting.”

She turns.

The bib covers not nearly enough. I was right about that part. It was cut for somebody who’s wearing a shirt. The sides of her breasts are bare past the edges of it, full and heavy, and when she breathes the canvas drags over a nipple I can see the exact shape of. The skirt stops at the middle of her thigh. There’s a streak of flour on her left forearm, straight across the burn scar.

“That’s deliberate,” I say. “The flour.”

“I put it on with one finger. There’s always flour on me in your head. Isn’t there.”

“Yes.”

“I knew it.” She’s pleased. She’s also gone red to the collarbones. Her hands are clasped behind her and she’s a careful twelve inches from the steel. “This is as far as the bench goes. I’m not sitting on it. I’m not leaning on it. I scrubbed it at two and there’s a permit by the register with my name on it. But you’ve had six years with this picture, so I thought you should get to stand in it. Take a minute.”

I take the minute.

I look at the clock over the walk-in, out of habit. 9:01. The second hand still stutters. Then I stop looking at the clock.

I look at the hollow of her throat. The crescent scar on her chin. The canvas pulled tight over her stomach and the soft give of her hips at the edge of it. The inside of her knee. Her mouth, which she’s biting.

“Well?” It comes out less sure than the rest. “Whole answer.”

“I had the knot wrong,” I say. “And you’re cold.”

“I’m freezing. My nipples could score a baguette. Is that in the picture?”

“It is now.”

She laughs, and her breasts move under the bib, and my mouth goes dry.

“Office,” Gemma says.

She walks. I follow the bow down the back hall.

The office is eight feet by ten. One chair. One filing cabinet. One bare bulb. The steel desk from her uncle’s garage has nothing on it tonight. No invoices. No label printer. No stapler. She’s wiped it down, and it’s still drying in streaks.

There’s a bath towel on the concrete in front of it, folded in four.

“What is that?”

“That’s for your knee.” She latches the door. “That floor’s concrete, and I intend to keep you down there a while.”

She slaps the desk with her open hand.

“Steel. Thirty inches high. That’s six lower than the bench. I measured, and you’ll cope. It has never met a croissant. Kathy Wu has no jurisdiction over it. I looked up the code section to be sure. It’s in your binder. Tab nine.”

“You read tab nine.”

“For you, I read tab nine.”

She boosts herself up. The cold gets her; she hisses through her teeth and says something about her uncle. Then she settles, and looks at me, and lets her knees fall open.

The canvas drops between her thighs. It hides everything. It hides nothing at all.

“Here’s what I’ve got,” Gemma says. “Ten words and a table. I don’t know what happens next. That’s the method. You tell me, in order, and then you do it. Out loud, Rob.”

Out loud. I said one sentence in a hotel in Harlow and it took me thirty-four years. This is a paragraph.

“You say something first.”

“What do I say?”

“You know what you say.”

Her mouth curves, slowly.

“Whole answer.”

It’s the wrong voice. In my head she said it low. In life she says it exactly the way she says it over a spoon, eyebrows up, a little bossy, waiting to be told the truth.

It’s better. The real one has been better every time. I’ve stopped being surprised and started keeping a record.

I step between her knees.

“I start at your mouth,” I tell her. “Because I was never allowed to.”

“You’re allowed.”

I kiss her. I take my time. Her lips are cold and the inside of her mouth is hot, and she makes a small sound and opens for me, and her ankles hook behind my thighs. I kiss her until she’s the one breathing hard.

“Then your throat.”

She tips her head back before I’ve finished the word. I put my mouth under her jaw, where her pulse is going. I work down the side of her neck to the place where it meets her shoulder, and I use my teeth there, lightly, because I know what it does. Her hips shift on the steel.

“Then?“

“Then I move the bib. Sideways.”

“So move it.”

I hook two fingers under the edge of the canvas and draw it across. Her left breast comes free, full and soft, the nipple drawn dark and tight from the cold. I take it in my mouth. I suck, slowly, and flatten my tongue against it, and she arches up off the desk and swears at the light bulb.

“Coño. Rob.”

Her hand closes on the back of my neck. I move to the other breast. I push the canvas the other way and close my lips on her and roll the wet one between my fingers.

“You didn’t—ah—you didn’t say the other one.”

“I’m adding it.”

“You’re amending your own fantasy.”

“It needed work.”

She laughs. I suck harder and it breaks off into a moan.

“Then,” she says. It isn’t steady. “Then what?”

“Then I get down on your floor.”

“Then get down.”

I go to my knees on the towel. It’s the right thickness. She thought about that.

I put my hands on her knees and slide them up, and the canvas goes with them. Up her thighs, to her hips, until it’s a navy heap at her waist and she’s bare in front of me under a sixty-watt bulb.

“In my head you were already wet,” I say. “I’d decided that.”

“You decided.“

“I decided.”

“And?”

She’s swollen and dark and open. She’s glistening. It’s on the insides of her thighs. There’s a clouded patch on the steel where she’s been sitting.

“I undershot.”

“I’ve been standing naked in a kitchen for half an hour thinking about your face. Of course you undershot.” Her thighs are trembling under my palms. “What else? In order.”

“There’s a hand. In my hair.”

“A floury one.”

“Yes.”

She looks down at her forearm. She drags her palm through the streak, deliberately, and slides her fingers into my curls, and holds on.

“You’re going to have to wash that out.”

“I’m aware.”

“Rob.” Her voice has dropped. “Then.“

“Then I lick you. Slowly. With the flat of my tongue. All the way up, over and over. I don’t hurry.” I’m looking right at her cunt when I say it. I can see her clench on nothing. “I do it until you can’t talk.”

“That’ll be the day.”

I lean in.

I built the taste of her once, out of parts. The salt at the back of her neck. The sweetness she can’t scrub off her hands. I’ve had eight months of the real thing, and it’s still information every time. She’s hotter than I ever made her. She tastes like skin and salt and something darker underneath. I open my mouth against her and lick, flat and slow, from her entrance to her clit.

“Oh—okay. Okay.” Her hand tightens. “That’s—you’re doing it slower than you usually—is this how I—in your head, do I—”

Again. The whole length of her. I let my tongue drag.

“—because I’d have thought I’d be more—Rob, I’d have—oh, fuck, that’s—”

Again.

She stops.

In the middle of a word. Her mouth’s open and nothing comes out of it but air. Her head goes back. Her thighs fall wider. She just breathes, ragged, in time with my tongue.

I count it. Forty seconds. It’s a record, and I’ve wanted to be the reason for a very long time.

I close my lips on her clit and suck, softly.

“Right there,” Gemma gasps. “Don’t you dare move.”

I stop.

“I said don’t move—”

“You say that.” I’ve lifted my head. I can’t help it. “That’s the line. In the original. Those exact words.”

“Then I’ve got good lines. Robin Hale. Mouth.“

I put my mouth back.

I give her what she asked for. I stay right there, and I suck, and I work two fingers into her and curl them. She’s slick and tight and burning. She clamps down on me and her hips start to roll. She grinds her cunt against my face without an ounce of shame, wet to my chin, her heel digging into my spine and her fist in my hair. Her other hand’s locked on the edge of the desk. I watch the burn scar flex.

I keep my eyes open. I get all of it. Her stomach pulling tight. The scarf slipping. Her mouth.

“Ay—ay, Dios—carajo, Rob—”

She comes hard, against my tongue, around my fingers, loud enough to ring off the filing cabinet. I feel every pulse of it. I stay on her until her thighs stop shaking and she pushes weakly at my forehead.

“These walls,” she pants, “are drywall.”

“We’re closed Mondays.”

“Thank God.”

I get up off the towel. My knee doesn’t say a word about it.

“There’s a second time,” I tell her.

“There’s a second—”

“I stand up. I use my hand. So I can see all of you.”

She’s flushed and loose and wrecked, with the apron rucked at her waist and both breasts out and wet from my mouth. She looks at my hand. She licks her lips.

“How many fingers?”

I open my mouth to tell her.

“Three,” Gemma says. “I want three.”

I didn’t give her that. I gave her ten words on a Monday in September, and that wasn’t one of them. I stand between her legs with my hand in the air and learn that I made her up fairly well.

“Three,” I agree.

I push them into her slowly, and watch them go. She’s soaked and soft from coming, and she takes all three with a long, low groan. I set my thumb on her clit. I fuck her, deep and steady, and curl my fingers on the way out.

“Good,” I tell her. “Just like that. Look at me.”

She looks. Her pupils are blown. Then she can’t hold it; her forehead drops onto my shoulder and her arms come around my neck, and her breath goes ragged in my ear.

“Más.” It’s barely a word. “Más, más, don’t stop—”

I don’t stop. I go harder. The desk doesn’t move; her uncle bought well. The sound of it is wet and loud in a room this small. I can feel her heartbeat on my fingers. She’s squeezing me so tightly that I can count it.

“That’s it. That’s mine. Come on, Gemma Ruiz.”

She bites my shoulder through my shirt and comes again. It’s longer this time. She shakes through it, and gushes over my hand, and says my name into my collar until it isn’t a name anymore.

I hold her up. I keep my fingers in her until she’s still.

Then I take them out, and she watches me put them in my mouth.

“Jesus,” Gemma says faintly. She sags back on her hands. “So that’s it? That’s where it ends?”

“That’s usually where I finished.”

Her head comes up.

“Usually.”

I say nothing. My hand goes to my glasses. She catches my wrist.

“There’s a card upstairs, Rob. Number seven.”

No half answers. No half anything. I set it level myself.

“There was another ending.” It comes out quiet. “I rationed it. One night in ten. It cost more than the others.”

“Tell me.”

“You get down off the bench. You put your palm on my chest, and you walk me backward to the cooler door. You say your turn. You put your hand down my trousers.” My voice isn’t doing what I’ve told it to. “You look at me. The whole time. And I let you.”

She’s very still. Her eyes are wet.

“That’s the one that cost.”

“I couldn’t stand being looked at. Not even there. It was my own head and I still wanted to turn away.”

“And you did it anyway. One night in ten. Years before you’d let anybody.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Gemma says softly.

She slides down off the desk.

She’s barefoot on the concrete. The apron’s twisted on her. The bib’s shoved to one side, and her thighs are wet. She puts her palm flat on my chest, over my breast pocket, over the card. She walks me backward. It’s three steps; it’s a small office. My shoulders hit the door.

“It’s not a cooler. It’s what I’ve got.”

“It’s fine.”

“Your turn.”

It’s the wrong voice again. It isn’t smug. It’s rough, and it shakes.

She doesn’t undo my belt. She gets her hand down the front of my trousers with the button still done, wrist bent, knuckles catching on the zipper. It’s clumsy. It’s completely sure of itself. I had that right.

Her fingers slide down through me.

She makes a sound. It’s surprised, and pleased, and a little smug after all.

“Robin Hale,” she says. Exactly the way I say her name.

“I’ve been on my knees for twenty minutes. What did you expect?”

“I expected it. I just like finding it.” Her other hand comes up to my face. “On or off?”

My glasses.

“On.”

She pushes inside me.

Two fingers. A baker’s hands, with the nails cut to nothing. She doesn’t wait to be walked through it. She took one direction, once, and never needed another. She goes deep, and curls, and sets her thumb where I live, to the left, light and slow.

There’s nothing for me to do. I hold on to her shoulders.

She watches my face.

I want to turn it into the door. It’s been eight months and I want to. I feel it come up, the old reflex. Close the eyes. Lock the jaw. Get a hand over the mouth.

I leave my hands where they are. I keep my eyes open.

“There you are,” Gemma whispers.

She fucks me against the door of her office, slowly, with her eyes on mine. I can hear myself. My breath’s coming in pieces. My hips are moving and I’m not directing them. Her thumb circles, light, light, and my thighs start to shake, and she feels it and doesn’t speed up. She knows better. She learned it from me.

“Look at you,” she says.

Her mouth’s an inch from mine. She’s smiling, and she’s crying a little.

“Six years. You could’ve just said.”

Everything in me stops.

I never told her that. I never told anyone. It was the last line. It was the thing she said in the dark, in a bed with hospital corners, on the nights I could afford it.

“Say that again.”

“You could’ve just said.” She’s laughing now, wet-eyed. Her fingers don’t stop. “You impossible woman. I’d have dropped a tray. I’d have locked us in the walk-in. Rob, you could have just—”

I come.

It tears up through me with my eyes open and my glasses on. My head hits the door. I clench on her fingers so hard she gasps. I say her name, both syllables, wrecked and loud, in a lit room. She’s right there to hear it.

My knees go. She gets her hip against mine and holds me to the door.

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Keep going.”

I keep going. She works me through it, gently, until it finally lets go of me.

We end up on the floor. I’m on the towel with my back against the desk. She’s across my lap in a twisted apron, with her head under my chin. There’s flour in my hair. My trousers are a disgrace.

“How did I do?” she asks. “Against the original.”

“The original had a higher surface.”

“The original was a health violation.”

“In the original I never had to say a word.”

“And?”

I consider it properly.

“This was better. I’d like that noted.”

“Noted.” She fishes in the apron pocket. She comes out with a pen. Of course there’s a pen. “Card.”

I take it out of my breast pocket. It’s bent. She holds it flat against my collarbone, and I draw one line through ITEM ONE. It’s level.

“What’s left?”

“The ladder. The walk-in.”

“The walk-in’s thirty-six degrees.”

“I told you they weren’t all good ideas.”

“The door needs a second coat before summer.” She says it to my throat. “Coral. I’ll want somebody to hold the ladder.”

“I’m available.”

“You’ll look at the backs of my knees.”

“For six hours.”

She laughs. I feel it in my chest. I look up for the clock. There isn’t one in here.

I don’t know what time it is. I find that I can live with that.

“Stay there,” Gemma says, and climbs up off my lap. “I’ll get the water.”

I stay.

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