I want to discover who Jack becomes in the fall, when the days get shorter and colder and gray. How does wild, restless Jack pack herself up for the winter to become the version I met in Powell’s? What does she do with those last gasps of sun? I want to solve that mystery and every mystery that is Jack Kim-Prescott, through all the days of all the months.

“What are you thinking about right now?” she asks quietly into my shoulder.

I trace a finger down her spine until she shivers. “I’m thinking about what you look like in shorts in the summertime.”

She looks up at me again, and she’s so recklessly open. “Please,” Jack begs, her voice soft and sweet, even as her teeth nip at my earlobe, “please let me fuck you.”

I want to say yes. Even though the intimacy of receiving pleasure is always trickier than the intimacy of giving it for me, with Jack, I always, always want to say yes. Jack’s hands travel the curve of my ass through my sweatpants, and I nod.

“Can I fuck you on the bed?” she asks plainly. As if I’m in any position to refuse such a request. Instead, I kiss her, deeply and desperately, until we both momentarily forget our mission. When we remember it, we’re both hazy-eyed and swollen-mouthed, our hands joined as we rise from the couch. I’m not sure which one of us is leading and which is following, but we end up on the edge of the one bed, and it’s distinctly Jack who lowers me down. It’s Jack who drops to her knees in front of me.

It’s Jack who undresses me, peeling off my borrowed clothes to reveal the body my mother has never been satisfied with. Just a little too tall, a little too chubby, a little too pale. “You’re so fucking perfect,” Jack whispers. She tries so hard to whisper it.

I close my eyes and try to convince myself this will last.

She traces a single finger up the inside of my thigh until I’m biting down on my bottom lip. Her mouth arrives where her finger is on the inside of my thigh, leaving a trail of kisses and the occasional press of her tongue to my flesh. I inhale sharply. She pushes herself up a bit so she can leave a kiss into the crease of my hip before she lifts my left leg over her shoulder and exhales a hot breath onto my throbbing body. “Elle,” she says, her voice almost stern. Fuck her stern voice. “Will you tell me what you want? What will make you feel good?”

“Everything. Anything.” I wiggle on the bed. “Just touch me, please.”