Page 118 of Bad Words

Selina, already brushing her hair at the side of the bed, gave me an amused look over her shoulder. “I assume you live a life completely without alarms?”

“Yep.” I stretched out in her bed and folded my hands behind my head. I liked the way her eyes played over my arms when I did that. “I wake up with the sunrise, most of the time.”

“Of course you do. Parker Navarro, at one with nature.” Selina moved to her dresser and snapped on one of her lace bras. “And today?”

“I should probably go home. Maybe go to the gym.”

She zipped up a crisp sheath dress. “What are you going to tell Arthur?”

I stood, stretching. “What makes you think I won’t tell him the truth?”

“A hunch.” She approached and gave me a lingering kiss. “I know you like a well-kept secret.”

I caught her before she could step away, held her beautiful face in my hands, lowered my mouth to hers again. “Are you going to tell Jacob and Cassie?”

“We’ll see. They’re traveling to Thailand in a couple of weeks, so maybe I shouldn’t distract them … Also, they’ll be insufferable about it.”

“Did they give you a hard time about New Year’s?”

“Of course. I kept telling Cassie how much you hated me and that she was making something out of nothing.”

I ran my hands down over her waist and felt an unwelcome quiver in my chest. I had hated her. The pain and anger I’d felt as recently as a few weeks ago, rereading her reviews, had been real.

Some unsteady part of me wanted to ask if she still felt that about me or my writing—if some part of her still thought I was contemptible.

“What?” she said, her fingers stepping up the back of my neck and tangling in my hair. She’d pressed her hips forward into mine at my touch, and a hit of arousal confused my thoughts.

“I don’t think you have time for what I’m thinking,” I said, squaring my hips against hers, pressing her gently against the wall.

“I could be late for work for once in my life.”

“What? Who are you?” I said, but instead of answering, she took my earlobe between her teeth, and I melted down toward her, drawing her into me, the cotton of her dress whispering over my chest.

When she left for work, I rode the subway back home. My apartment felt different somehow when I stepped inside, its colors dim, its air quiet. But my mind felt clear. I settled down to work on the sofa and wrote carefully for unbroken hours, feeling lucid and exacting, uncompromising.

When Arthur came back from work that evening, he threw his hat at my face.

“Finally,” he said. “I was this close to calling the cops. Who’s this girl?”

“You’ll meet her soon,” I said, spitting out wool.

He flung his scarf at me too. “Bro, come on. Do I know her? Is it bookstore girl? One of your San Francisco friends?”

“You don’t know her.”

Arthur rolled his eyes and grabbed his hat and scarf out of the air when I threw them back. “Fine. I hope she’s better than Kate.”

“Your faith in me is overwhelming. What’d you do this weekend?”

“Threw a massive rager. Reduced this place to dust and rebuilt it with these hands.” He shucked off his gloves and waved his hands at me.

“So … you phone banked, went on a bad Tinder date, and binged another season of Severance?”

“Fuck off,” he said. Then, grudgingly: “Two out of three.”

I grinned and keyed in a shortcut on my laptop. Arthur nodded to the computer as he picked through our snack cabinet. “How’s the writing?”

“Good,” I said. “I’m going slow. It feels better.”