CHAPTER 19
ALEX whistles as soon as Daniel steps through the door. “Welcome back! I’ve missed you dearly.”
His roommate’s cheeky grin gives Daniel pause as he slips out of his shoes and strips off his coat. Sweet Potato sniffs at him curiously before letting him scoop her up. “Missed you, too.” He passes a Tupperware container brimming with leftover latkes, and Alex rubs his hands lasciviously before popping the lid.
“Not you, sweet thing. I was talking to your ‘I just had sex’ face. I was getting worried I’d never see him again.”
Daniel laughs. There’s no real point in denying it. “That bad, huh?”
Alex vigorously nods, his mop of curly hair bouncing. “You stink of it, too. Even Sweet Potato noticed,” he says.
“Thanks for feeding her, by the way.” He neglected to tell Liyah that he had already texted Alex when she asked if he was free. Better to keep some cards close to his chest. “Also, please pop those in the toaster oven. Eating them soggy is gross.”
Alex shrugs and takes a bite. “Anytime, but especially if it’s going to get you laid. Was it everything you ever hoped for? Is the sun shining brighter? Did birds sing to you on the walk back? A new feeling in the air?”
“I think I got windburn on my cheeks, if that counts.” Daniel can feel his lips sliding into a satisfied smirk, though, and it’s enough to make Alex slow clap.
“Bravo, dude, bravo. You tell Jordan yet?”
Daniel shoots him a warning look. Alex mimes zipping his lips. “I’d like at least a chance at a second time.” He chuckles to himself. “Or third, technically.”
Alex whoops. “Finally, man! I can’t single-handedly be carrying the orgasms for this household.”
“I’m going to shower and change. In part because I probably do stink, but mostly because I want this conversation to end.”
“Message received,” Alex says, and carries the cold latkes back to his room for his midday nap.
Toweling off his freshly cleaned body fifteen minutes later, Daniel notices little red crescent moons on his bicep. He twists to view his back in the mirror, and sure enough, Liyah’s nails have left thin red lines bracketing his spine. He remembers her fingers scraping down his back this morning, sinking deeper when he groaned in her ear, but he’d been too focused on the way she tightened around him and fluttered her eyelids shut in pure bliss when he hit the right angle to realize she was leaving marks.
Goddamn.
He surveys himself in the mirror. Alex is right: there’s an air of smugness written all over his features, but he can’t help it. Touching Liyah is something else. Being touched by Liyah is something else.
Back in his room, he sifts through the various button-down shirts in the casual dress side of his closet. He spends a few minutes waffling between a white one with painted oranges and a light-wash denim. The orange pattern seems a bit sunny for November, but the first time he wore it in front of Liyah, she spent half the night sneaking glances at his chest. He pulls it off the hanger and slips it on.
A judgmental meow comes from the ginger loaf on his bed.
Daniel narrows his eyes. “What?”
Sweet Potato makes no additional noise, but her look says five minutes to pick out a shirt, huh? It’s a museum, not New York Fashion Week.
He digs through his drawers, pulls on his favorite pair of Levi’s, then sits next to Sweet Potato on the edge of his bed so he can roll on thick socks. She stirs at the movement, refolding her limbs underneath her belly and giving him that same censorious look. “I’m being cool, I just like taking my time on the weekends. I wear a suit five days a week, you know.”
Sure, we’ll go with that, she blinks in response. Are you going to take twenty minutes for the shoes?
Daniel gently scratches behind her ears. “It’s a human thing, you wouldn’t understand. Because you’re a cat. Who I’m talking to. I’ve officially started talking to my cat,” he realizes aloud.
Yeah, you’re totally playing it cool, she stares, and Daniel gets up in search of his high-tops before she can look any other quips his way.
LIYAH ARRIVES AT Division slightly out of breath twenty minutes after the agreed-upon meeting time and finds that Daniel is walking up as well.
“Right on time.” He draws her into a hug but doesn’t try for a kiss. A good thing, she thinks. It means he probably has the right idea about them. He’s got on a beanie that’s rolled so it only covers the tops of his ears and a matching green scarf that she hasn’t seen him wear before. It’s a beautiful color against his golden skin.
“I thought I was running late.”
He flashes his crooked smile. “I factored in the expected time delay.”
“What is that, Liyah rule number two?” she asks as they move through neighboring turnstiles.
“Number five.”
She rolls her eyes, laughing.
They’re on the train for two minutes before she blurts, “We’re—this is a friend thing, right? We’re friends?”
Their gazes meet for a painfully long moment. “Yes, Liyah, we’re friends. Are you feeling weird about the sex? It doesn’t have to … it can be a one-time thing if that’s what you want.”
“No!” Too quick, an octave too high. She clears her throat. “No, that’s not what I want.” Too quiet now. Fuck. She tries again. “I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page if we’re going to keep doing this. Especially since we’ve still got a few events left as semi-coworkers.”
Daniel cracks a smile, resting his elbow on his knee and dropping his chin to his palm. “Is this the Liyah Cohen-Jackson ‘Let’s Keep It Casual’ speech?”
She flicks his thigh. “No! I don’t usually spend enough time with someone for them to get the wrong idea.”
“Well, I’m honored to be the first. Could use some work, though. May I suggest rehearsing in the mirror?”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, Liyah.” He nudges her knee with his own. “We’ll just be friends.”
At the Field, Daniel tells her that he trusts her expertise and gives her free rein. They don’t have time to visit every single exhibit before dinner, so she decides on what she views as the bare essentials. It’s been a long time since she’s walked through the museum as a visitor, and it takes no more than five minutes for giddy excitement to take over. Walking alongside Daniel is like discovering it anew. He engages with each plaque, asks questions about how the spaces were designed, teases Liyah for wanting to go through all the interactive stations even though she has the inside scoop. At first, she thinks he might be humoring her, but he lets out an aah when a digitally rendered radiodont floats across the wall in her favorite part of the Evolving Planet exhibit, and she knows he feels the magic, too.
“I get why you love this place. I feel like … I don’t know. Trying to come up with all these ways to promote it, I managed to miss the forest for the trees,” Daniel says, bumping Liyah’s elbow as they exit Inside Ancient Egypt.
“Yeah?”
His tongue sweeps out over his bottom lip, leaving it plump and glistening. Liyah tries not to stare. “I mean, I still don’t think we’re going to win new patrons with promises of SUE’s furcula alone. But I can do more to promote what the museum already has to offer, instead of just the events. You really do something great here.”
Liyah goes on her tiptoes, cupping his ear and whispering, “Softy.”
“Stop trying to ruin my bad-boy reputation,” he whispers back. Then, at normal volume: “Where to next, tour guide?”
Liyah’s probably smiling like a lunatic, but she’s a kid in a candy shop. “I’ve saved the best for last. Underground Adventure, here we come.”
She’s not even sure why it’s her favorite (larger-than-life soil-residing microbes weren’t exactly the focus of her anthropology degrees), but it always has been. It’s also definitely for kids, but she genuinely enjoys walking through the mirrored halls and strange lights that claim to shrink her down to less than the size of a penny. She makes Daniel stand next to the giant “ruler” on the wall and snaps a picture. “Only three quarters of an inch tall! Looks like you’re going to need some help with the overhead bins next time.”
“The sign said the shrinking experiment would be reversed at the end!” he protests.
Liyah shakes her head. “You didn’t read the fine print. It only works 99.9999 percent of the time. You could be that one in a million.”
Daniel feigns a gasp and clamps his hand over his mouth. “There’s nothing I can do about it?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then you’d better show me the exhibit. I don’t want those seventy-four missing inches to go to waste.”
He beams when she laughs, and all it takes is a gentle elbow tug to guide him to the wondrous underground. She shows him the best bits, like the earthworm that comes up from the floor and disappears into the ceiling, the enormous crayfish popping out of a pocket of water, the earwig protecting her eggs.
They’ve almost made it to the exit when Daniel yelps and jumps back, nearly knocking Liyah to the floor in the process.
When she sees the animatronic spider before him, she doubles over in laughter. “It’s … not … real,” she wheezes.
“I see that now.” Daniel frowns, but there’s laughter in his eyes as he pats his body as if to check that his major limbs and organs are intact. Liyah is still laughing. “Looks like I’m alive, thank you very much.”
She wipes at the tears leaking out of her eyes, taking calming breaths to slow her shaking body.
Daniel grins. “That thing scared the living sh—” He registers the two toddlers running by him as their parent glares. “—ish. Living ish out of me.”
And like that, her giggles bubble to the surface again and she’s clutching her stomach in laughter. Soon, Daniel can’t help but join her. Liyah’s standing in the middle of the doorway, and an annoyed museumgoer jostles past her, forcing her into Daniel. His arms find their way around her, and they stand there like that, mirth rippling through them until finally they can hold it together enough to walk out.
Any worry Liyah might’ve had that sleeping with Daniel would make things weird between them is long gone. Everything is as it was before.
Except now, when Daniel sweeps his tongue across his bottom lip before asking if she wants pizza, she doesn’t wonder what it would feel like running along hers instead. She knows.
The moment the door to his apartment shuts behind them (the pizzas balanced precariously in his left hand) she tests that memory for accuracy. Her neural networks have precisely captured the feel of his lips against hers, but God, the way heat radiates through her body from every point where they touch? Her own mind can’t do it justice.
SSC #14 MEETING NOTES
Secretary: Liyah
• Work
• Jordan’s supervisor has been less of a total sleazeball
• (My words, not his. This is important to note for some reason)
• Liyah is still tiptoeing around Jeff
• No, would not like to elaborate
• Siobhan got a Hill & Mountain ad on Instagram! Very exciting
• Dating
• Siobhan had a good date with Will last weekend
• They kissed!
• (Will be asking for details offline)
• Jordan and Nisha are OFFICIALLY officially done
• This is upsetting because he said that they’d been over for a month two weeks ago, but managed to reunite and part in that time
• Liyah would appreciate it very much if Jordan would stop asking her to contribute to this portion of the meetings
• “It’s not my thing” is, in fact, a perfectly good explanation
• A snowball has been thrown in hell because Daniel agrees
• Note: Siobhan is leaving for three weeks in Dublin next Saturday (WHICH MEANS SHE IS DESERTING US FOR THE HOLIDAY PARTY LIKE A TERRIBLE FRIEND, but I digress). Jordan will be in Raleigh from three days before Christmas. Everybody out of town New Year’s. Next week will be the last Survival Club of the year
• It is on record that everyone has agreed to tequila shots, so this does not count as any one person’s suggestion for Rule #7
• No rule additions
SSC #15 MEETING NOTES
Secretary: Jordan Liyah
• Jordan had tequila and did not take any notes
• “Because he is a dumbass”—Daniel
• Siobhan will miss us, and we will miss her, too