I reached my hand over, leaned in a bit, rested my palm on the inside of Sam’s thigh. Their leg dropped open immediately for me, and I smiled, the ache in my chest loosening as my hand moved slowly upward. Until Sam hissed out a “Lily” in whispered warning, and I stopped. Instead, I coached their arm to rest on the seat between us, palm up.

And until the car stopped at Sam’s apartment many minutes later, I ran my fingers in small circles along that palm, around their wrist, up their forearm and back, listening closely for how their breath hitched, feeling the slightest shivers tremor beneath their skin, feeling more like Bold Lily than I had ever felt. It was even better than the power of Carrie or Dolly, feeling the goosebumps rise along Sam’s arms. Knowing that I was the one who had put them there.

6

Sam

I dropped my keys on the ground. Kicked the front door shut. And pushed Lily against the wall, Lily with her featherlight fingers that had made me so hard in the Lyft I could barely think straight. And I was feeling pretty good about myself, honestly—that was some damn good romantic prowess, the door kicking and everything—and thought Lily felt the same, being that she took my lower lip between her teeth and tugged, but a second later, she leaned away with a frustrated groan.

“Listen, I love the urgency, I really do, but we already did the wall thing at Moonie’s and my feet are killing me. I need a bed, like, pronto.”

I nodded. “Done and done.”

As I led her into my bedroom, I was grateful my tiny apartment was relatively clean, that I had wasted away this afternoon until I could leave for Moonie’s doing the dishes and going through my stacks of junk mail and sorting through the clothes I inevitably left in a pile on my floor each week, to later be separated into “should wash” and “eh, could wear again.”

Not that Lily seemed to be paying much attention to my apartment.

She slipped her velvet jacket off her shoulders as soon as we entered the bedroom, and looked like she was moving to take off her dress, too, until I quickly interfered.

“Wait.” I walked behind her to the zipper. “Can I?”

“Fine,” she huffed, that same frustration in her voice as she’d had outside of Moonie’s. It drove me wild. “But don’t be all slow about it. I’m dying here.”