Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            I grind my ass against his abdomen, shallow, slow, awkward at first, because the position is weird and because what even am I doing? But my hips circle in a long, sinuous move, and something hits just right, and—

            We gasp in unison.

            “There?” he murmurs against my ear, angling my hips to give me even more. “That’s how I make you come?”

            My mind blurs. “You already made me come.”

            He makes a guttural noise. “I want to feel it. When my cock is inside you.”

            I moan, and then I’m not in charge anymore. The pleasure gushes inside me, scarily strong, quicker than I thought possible, unraveling like an avalanche. I squeeze his fingers and he squeezes back, and when my body clamps down on his, he does press me into the mattress, and he does fuck me like his control is not fully there, and he does say my name over and over, like a war chant. He smells like sex and our sweat and the best sleep I’ve ever had, murmurs sweet, filthy things in my ear, promises that he’ll never let me go.

            The sun is high in the sky, Jack is deep inside me, and I smile into the sheets for no particular reason.



* * *



            • • •

            I think I might be happy.

            Though due to a lack of hands-on experience, I cannot be sure.

            But in the bathroom, while chasing droplets down Jack’s throat, my legs wrapped around his waist as he pushes me into the tiled wall, I wonder if maybe this is it. This warm, comforting weight glowing shyly behind my sternum could be something like hope.

            Hope that there’ll be more days like this one.

            “Stop smiling like that,” he whispers in my ear. The jet of the shower pounds over his back, and his lips taste like hot water. “Or I’ll be on you all day.”

            I laugh into his neck and pretend I didn’t hear him.

            The clock in the bathroom, the one I imagine Jack curses at when he runs late in the morning, reads 12:37. I towel myself dry, buzzing with possibilities, with the tenuous, burgeoning impression that for once I’m not running away, but heading somewhere.

            “Food,” he tells me once I’m wearing my—his—hoodie and a pair of socks that won’t stay up on my calves. His smile is handsome, self-deprecating. “I have these elaborate daydreams that I’m feeding you a five-course meal I hunted, field-dressed, and prepared all by myself,” he says with a kiss on my forehead.

            “Why?”

            He gives me an arch look. “Don’t ask why, like it’s a rational impulse. So, what do you want?”

            “What can you make?”

            “Nothing.” He shrugs at my startled laugh, then throws me over his shoulder to take me downstairs. I feel like a sparkly drink. “I’ll learn. It’s a new obsession for me.”

            I can’t remember the last time I giggled this much.

            The five-course meal turns out to be slightly burned grilled cheese with boxed tomato soup. I sit on my stool at the island, and he eats his own standing across from me. It’s simultaneously the most ordinary and the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

            On my phone there is a text from Cece, time stamp 9:23 a.m.

                             CECE: “I’ll never spend the night at Jack’s,” she said. “I’m destined to die alone, strangled by the tumble of cobwebs that have overtaken my vulva due to sexual inactivity,” she said.



            I laugh, and Jack smiles just because of that, which is a little unlike him and also stupid. He’s stupid. I’m stupid. We’re stupid. Or maybe we’re just sixteen. Jack Smith, Jack Smith-Turner, Jonathan Smith-Turner and I have had sex. More than once. More than more than once. And now we’re having breakfast at one p.m. This is not my timeline, but I’ll claim it anyway.

            I tell him about the science of grilled cheese, the negative surface charge of the lipid molecules, stress and strain, the optimal pH, which should always be somewhere around 5.5. (“Manchego, then,” he says. “Or mild cheddar. Gouda, too.”) My heart is spinning dizzily at the thought of this man who knows the pH of different cheese types off the top of his head, when my phone beeps.