Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            I’ve felt out of place my entire life, and nothing anyone ever said made me feel any less so. So I stay silent and just lean forward, hide my face in Jack’s throat, press a kiss to his Adam’s apple right as it moves. His hand comes up to cup my head, keep it there, and I feel him turn to the screen again. Bella’s pregnancy complications are getting alien-like, and he groans into my hair.

            “Elsie. I can’t watch this.”

            “But it’s the best part. The emotional roller coaster of her transformation. The inappropriate Jacob plotline. Her face when she drinks blood.”

            “No way.”

            “Fine. You may amuse yourself otherwise. But stay close, because you’re a space heater disguised as an organic life-form.”

            “Perfect.” He lifts me like I’m a pliant little thing, flips us around, braces himself over me. I can only watch him in confusion while he lowers himself down my body with a concentrated frown between his brows and then lifts my hoodie as though . . .

            Is he . . .

            He’s not . . .

            Is he actually?

            “What are you doing?”

            “You told me to amuse myself.”

            I sit up on my elbows. “I meant take another nap, or do today’s Wordle—”

            “Just watch your movie, Elsie.”

            “But—”

            He takes my hips within his hands and holds me like I’m a precious artifact, at once firm and gentle. His kisses between my legs are long, savoring, messy, slow licks that have me arching up against the couch and trembling into his mouth. There is something shameless about this—the way he enjoys it, the sounds he makes, the fact that he seems to go away at moments, like he does this for his pleasure more than for my own.

            “Oh,” I say, clawing my nails into his scalp. His arms wrap around my thighs, palms holding my knees open, and for a while I manage to swallow down the begging, moaning sounds in my throat. Then no more. “Oh. Oh, Jack” and I come once, then once again, then some more, and then his shirt is off and he’s above and inside me, patient thrusts as he kisses me endlessly and tells me how beautiful I am, how much he loves this. Breathless laughter against my gasps as he reminds me of when I was afraid that this wouldn’t be good between us—that this resplendent, life-altering, unearthly sort of pleasure might not be enough.

            “It was cute,” he rasps in my ear, “how you thought that fucking you once would make me want to fuck you less.”

            I cling to the sweaty muscles of his back, feel my entire body shake, and when he orders, “Eyes on me,” my lids flutter open and we both come. The pressure in my belly and chest is heavy, overwhelming, delicious, and my nails sink into his shoulders as the evening becomes night.

            “Second time we do this with Twilight in the background,” he says.

            “I can’t believe we missed the part when Bella beats up Jacob.”

            “Jesus, Elsie, what is this movie?”

            The room is pitch black except for the glow of the TV. I laugh into Jack’s skin, and it feels just like coming home.



* * *



            • • •

            He won’t let me leave. Though, to be fair, I’m not trying very hard.

            “I have class at eight a.m. tomorrow.”

            “Doesn’t matter.”

            “At Boston University.”

            “Still doesn’t matter.”

            “I need to get to my place, get dressed, pick up my stuff, take the bus—”

            “I’ll drive you.”

            “Drive me where?”

            “Anywhere.”

            I’m sitting on the counter while he chops carrots for the soup I’m craving. The recipe is pulled up on his phone, a bright-red ad for a couples’ cooking class blinking at us from the counter. “You’d have to wake up at, like, six. I cannot ask you to do that.”