Rhea
I’ve text Bailey. As soon as she responds, I’ll hit you up so we can head back to our apartment. Even though the sun will be coming up any moment now.
Phoebe
Thanks, Ree-Ree. Love you.
Rhea
That name is absolutely NOT allowed to catch on.
Idropped my phone on the bed and glanced down at Henry licking tequila off my belly button for the fourth, maybe fifth time within the last hour. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said we were going to enjoy a few shots of the stuff, and when I’d said I felt exhausted after our last romp in the sheets, he’d declared he had the perfect pick me up to battle my tired eyes.
“You managed to buy us a bit more time?” he asked, looking up at me through hooded eyes as he pressed tequila-soaked kisses to my stomach.
“She’s waiting for Bailey to give the all clear to return,” I told him, lying there, my belly twitching every time his lips met my skin. My cheeks were aching. I hadn’t smiled this much in years. “Then”—giggle— “then I can go.”
“Let’s hope Andy knows how to make it an all-night thing, then.” He slid up my body until he was hovering above me. “That way, I get to keep you until morning.”
I reached up to brush his hair away from his eyes before letting my arms fall around his neck. “It’s almost morning now.”
“So, what’s a few more hours.” Henry pressed a tender kiss to my lips, the moonlight illuminating the room with a middle-of-the-night glow. He’d opened the balcony doors at some point, and a soft breeze blew through the gauzy curtains while music rang out from his phone on the bedside table.
The moment he noticed “More Than a Woman” by the Bee Gees playing in the background, Henry began mouthing the lyrics at me, his hair falling forward and his smile coming easily.
“What are you doing?” I scrunched my nose up, trying not to laugh.
“Singing to you. Kinda.”
“If only people knew what a dork you really were, huh?”
“My reputation is the world’s problem. Who I really am is mine, and I’m okay with being me. In fact…” He leaned down to kiss my neck. “I really fucking like being me right now.” He placed another kiss against my sensitive skin before he carried on singing along with the Bee Gees, asking me to always be his baby, saying we could take forever just a minute at a time.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” I asked, trying not to focus on the way the adoration of the lyrics falling from him lit another spark ofsomethingin my chest I had to force back down.
“Of you? No.”
“Remember when you hated me?”
Henry moved to look down at me again. “I never hated you. I just hated wanting you.”
I stared up into his eyes, not knowing what to say or how to handle the way my veins sang every time he praised me in an unexpected way like that.
The song on his phone changed to one I didn’t recognise, and Henry’s face fell, a small huff of humourless laughter escaping him before he dipped his chin to his chest and shook his head.
“Shit,” he sighed, rolling off me until he was sprawled on his back, staring up at the ceiling, running a hand through his hair.
“What’s wrong?”
“This song.”
I listened to the voice, crackling and too outdated to be a modern tune I recognised.
As though he’d become lost to another time and place, Henry started mouthing the lyrics. The male vocalist spoke about how if the woman needed something to play with, she should go ahead and find herself a toy, because playing with his heartmade him furious. But if she wanted him to love her, he would. All she had to do was say the word.
The music floated around the room as I turned on my side and pressed a delicate hand to Henry’s chest. I wanted to ask him what it meant, to ask him where he’d just disappeared to, but I didn’t know him well enough to pry. This thing between us was an arrangement of the physical, not the personal. Not the emotional. We were nothing more than a summer fling, and I had to remind myself of that instead of wanting to stick the fingers of my intrigue into every dark crevice he tried to keep hidden from everyone around him.
But then he turned his head, catching my eye, holding me hostage. “My dad told me he used to sing this to Mum back when he was trying to date her. Every Sunday morning, I’d head downstairs, and Dad would be listening to this on repeat while Mum would be fussing in the kitchen, rolling her eyes at him.”
