Her hand disappeared in the steam for a moment, and then I felt it on my neck.

“How’s your shoulder?” she said.

“Tender. My hip, too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. And then she bent to one knee and tugged up my shirt. When she kissed the skin around the bandage over my hip, her tongue felt electric.

I bent and wrapped my good arm around her waist. I lifted her off the floor, sat her on the sink, and kissed her as her legs curled around the back of mine and her sandals dropped to the floor. For at least five minutes, we barely came up for air. These last few months, I hadn’t just been hungry for her tongue, her lips, her taste—I’d been weak and light-headed from wanting.

“No matter how tired we are,” she said as my tongue found her neck, “we don’t stop this time until we both pass out.”

“Agreed,” I murmured.

Somewhere around four in the morning, we finally did pass out.

She fell asleep curled on my chest as my own eyelids fluttered. And I found myself wondering, just before I lost consciousness, how I could have thought—even for a second—that Desiree was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

I looked down at Angie sleeping naked on my chest, at the scratches and swollen flesh on her face, and I knew that only now, at this exact moment and for the first time in my life, did I understand anything about beauty.

31

“Hi.”

I opened one eye and looked into the face of Desiree Stone.

“Hi,” she said again, her voice a whisper.

“Hi,” I said.

“You want coffee?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Sssh.” She put a finger to her lips.

I turned, saw Angie sleeping deeply beside me.

“It’s in the next room,” Desiree said and left.

I sat up in bed and took my watch off the dresser. Ten in the morning. I’d had six hours’ sleep, but it felt like about six minutes. The last time I’d slept before last night had been at least forty hours previous. But I guess I couldn’t sleep through the day.

Angie seemed to be giving it a good bid, though.

She was curled into the tight fetal ball I’d become accustomed to during her months on my living room floor. The sheet had risen up to her waist, and I reached over and pulled it back over her legs, tucked it in at the corner of the mattress.