Teacher's pet - Chapter Seventeen
Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader.
Chapter Summary: Your first year of college is over and you are sad, thinking that finally - maybe - your relationship with Joel is over. Eric convinces you to go to a party, which leads to a lot of things happening in a single night.
Chapter warnings: attempted sexual assult , violence, smut.
if you're new see the tags in the masterlist! 18+
author's note: This chapter is very long, much more than the others. Little bit of drama ;;; see you at the end my loves
wc: 12k
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Chapter Seventeen â.Ë âžâ.Ë The Party.
Jealousy got the best of you again, and there wasn't much you could do about it except live through it, through the anger and the sadness and the hated exhaustion of feeling things you had no right to feel.
The last week before finals you spent most of your time with Addie and Eric, buried under an enormous amount of material, surviving on caffeine and the occasional hour of sleep that actually felt like sleep. Jake wasn't around much, he had his own exams, his own friends, a completely different set of things to worry about, and honestly that was a relief.
Your life narrowed down to papers and coffee and, underneath all of it, always, Joel. Even when you hadn't seen him. Even when you were trying not to think about him. He was just there, a constant low frequency you couldn't tune out.
When finals week arrived the anxiety hit its peak, day after day, one exam after the other, no room to breathe between them. The last time you saw him was during your exam. It was hot that morning, the kind of heavy, airless heat that you hated. You were exhausted from studying, terrified the exam would be harder than you expected, terrified he wouldn't like your paper.
And then there was Meg. You started to hate her, she had annoyed you since the first time you saw her, but the feeling had grown sharper with every passing day, layer by layer, until that other morning in class became the last straw. You had seen her around campus since then but never had the chance to talk to her, which was fortunate, because you weren't sure what you would have said. Something about her made you more nauseous than even the thought of his wife, maybe because she was a student, just like you.Â
He was handsome that morning, as always, and it cost you an enormous amount of willpower not to look at him. His almost gray hair, his neatly trimmed beard, his tired eyes, the ring on his finger catching the light every time he moved.
You tried to keep your gaze on your paper and failed, repeatedly. You caught him glancing at you too, your eyes meeting more than once â more than twice actually, more than was necessary or professional. He looked pensive, turning something over in his mind without any resolution. Far away, unreachable.
When you handed in your paper your fingers touched his for a moment. Just a second, barely anything. Your heart skipped anyway, like a stupid middle school crush, and you hated yourself for it immediately.
You left feeling something close to relief. It was becoming too serious, all of it, the whole thing, and you could feel it in the way your chest tightened every time you walked past his office, every time someone said his name. You wondered if he knew how much just hearing his name affected you. Not choosing his advanced course next year was the cleanest way out. Let it go. Walk away while you still can.
You thought about everything that had happened. Because of Meg you never got the chance to ask him about the polaroids, he still had them somewhere which was both embarrassing and in some small stubborn way exciting. You left a mark on him. You were sure of that much.
No, you didn't, said the other part of you, something crueler that wanted you to go back to this earth. You were just one of the many.
Exam after exam, the anxiety slowly drained out of you and what it left behind was worse in a way. A huge and heavy pool of sadness that sat at the bottom of your chest and didn't move. You stopped making plans. You watched movies you didn't pay attention to and ate whatever was within reach and thought, more than you should have, about how thoroughly you had managed to ruin yourself over a stupid old man who probably hadn't thought about you once since your fingers touched over that exam paper.
It was insane â you were insane for letting yourself get trapped into this relationship for almost six months. But you never ever wanted somebody this much.
Eric had been on your couch since the dorms closed, waiting out the two weeks before his flight home. It wasn't a problem, your roommates had already left for the summer, so the apartment was too quiet anyway. Having him there helped, even when he spent twenty minutes deciding what to eat for breakfast. Yes, not even a meal like lunch.
He was unmovable though, about the party that was organized for the ending of the year.
"C'mon," he said, appearing in your doorway with his usual energy. "You're coming tomorrow. End of discussion."
"I'm not in the mood, Eric." you murmured.
"You will be in the mood once you arrive." He dropped onto the edge of your bed, shamelessly making himself comfortable. "It's going to be fun. Good music, good people. I need you there."
"There's going to be so many people." You pulled your blanket up slightly. "And I don't have anything cute to wear."
His eyes lit up in a way that immediately made you suspicious. âWe can go shopping. Or⌠okay, hear me out, Addie has that black dress you borrowed last spring, the one that ââ
"Eric stop."
"Please." He put his hands together, eyes wide, deploying the praying expression that had been getting him what he wanted since you were nineteen. "I need you there for Becca. You know her, she likes you, you can just be there, talk to her a little, make me look good."
You looked at him for a long moment. Then a small, involuntary laugh escaped you. "Oh. That's why you need me. This is about Becca."
"PLEASE"
"Okay," you said, already pushing the blanket off. "Okay. Only because you need a wingman and frankly you're hopeless without one." you joked.
"Woah, that's offensive. I appreciate your honesty though, the important thing is youâll be there." he chuckled.
His excitement was genuinely contagious, the kind you couldn't defend yourself against no matter how determined you were to stay miserable. By the time you were actually out of the apartment and walking to the shops with him, you had to admit that the fresh air helped.
Eric had opinions about everything, which made shopping with him an experience. He held up dresses and dismissed them immediately, muttered under his breath about colors and cuts, made you try on three things you never would have picked yourself. You were wondering why he ended up studying literature instead of something that had to do with fashion.
You ended up spending more than you planned, and it was his fault. For the party you chose a deep red dress, nothing that screamed "too much", but it worked for a night at the disco. Short enough to be interesting, comfortable enough that you didn't have to think about it. For the resort you found yourself buying new swimsuits and more dresses than you shouldâve.
Eric pushed you to buy a pale slip dress in a soft ivory that looked perfect to bring on vacation. He held it up against you in the middle of the shop and nodded proud of himself, thinking he was making an important decision.
"Jake's going to lose his mind," he said, you just smiled.
The day after Addie was there with you while you got ready, sitting on the edge of your bed, filling the room with that warm energy she carried everywhere. She didn't wear dresses often, but that night she did, and it stopped you for a second when you saw her.
She looked like something out of a fantasy novel, the kind of character everyone would fall in love with. You always thought Addie was beautiful even if she didn't fully believe in herself. Green eyes, her face looked good in any state, without make up, tired, happy, angry. The dress she wore that night made her look like a painting with her red hair.
Truthfully, you felt lonely standing next to her lately. Not because of her, just because of everything you weren't saying.
You used to tell Addie everything. That had always been the deal, the unspoken rule of your friendship, no filters, just the actual truth. But this semester you had been lonelier than ever, carrying things you couldn't put down and couldn't hand to anyone. Part of it was fear.
You knew Addie well enough to know she wouldn't have judged you, not really, she was too good a friend for that. But she didn't like Joel. She had made that clear more than once, and she had only ever seen the surface of it, only the bad parts of him. Which perhaps, you thought, was the only version there was.
What would you even tell her? How confused and sad you felt most of the time? How he left you alone in that hotel room to go back to his wife, like you were something he could fold up and put in a drawer until he needed you again? The humiliation of that, said out loud to someone who loved you, felt unbearable.
And then there was Jake, completely undeserving Jake, who Addie introduced you to herself, who she still asked about with genuine warmth. She would know you cheated on him. That you had been doing it for months, and that you hadn't stopped â worst part? you felt like you couldn't stop doing that. Your head started to hurt just tracing the outline of it.
You put on your red dress and looked in the mirror and decided â for one night â not to think about any of it.
Addie turned to you when she finished her makeup, tilting her head slightly like she wasn't sure about something.
"How do I look? I'm not convinced."
"You look beautiful," you said meaning every word. "You always do. Stop thinking about it."
She smiled, a little relieved, then crossed the room and pulled you into a hug. You hugged her back, your chin on her shoulder, and felt the weight of every single lie you've told her. The thing was, she knew you too well and noticed too much.
"We're going to have fun tonight," she said against your hair. "Are you sad because Jake isn't coming?"
"No," you said. It came so fast. You just wanted to tell her you were sad because you thought it was over with Joel.
"I needed some time to myself, honestly. It's fine." Jake had gone back home out of state the day after finals ended, something with his family, an urgency he hadn't explained in much detail and you hadn't pushed for.
Addie pulled back and looked at you for a second, like she was deciding whether to ask more.Â
"Right." she said, turning back toward your dresser and starting to go through your perfumes. "Lone wolf." She picked one up, smelled it, set it back down. "Do you think Becca will actually give Eric a chance tonight?"
You laughed, genuinely. "Absolutely not."
"Yeah." She picked up another bottle. "Me neither."
"Although" you leaned against the doorframe, "we might be wrong. Eric can be really charming when he actually tries."
Addie considered this seriously, which made you laugh again.
When Eric was finally ready the three of you took a cab to the party. Thirty minutes of Eric cracking jokes to the driver, who laughed more than was strictly necessary, which only encouraged him.
You heard the music before you even arrived, a low thud you felt vibrating in your chest when you were still a few minutes away,meaning the night was already well underway. When you walked in it wasn't that late but the place was already packed, loud and smelling like alcohol.
Familiar faces appeared everywhere, people from your classes, people you had passed in hallways for a year without ever properly meeting, people whose names you half-knew. It was weirdly intimate even if half of the people didn't even know each other, everyone suddenly friendlier than usual, the shared relief of having survived something loosening people up. Addie took your hand almost immediately and pulled you toward the bar.
"One drink," she said,. "It'll help."
It did. You took a cocktail, then another, and somewhere between the second and the third the knot in your chest loosened slightly and you stopped monitoring your own mood quite so carefully. The music was good and the people were easy to talk to â well when people are drunk they are always happy to be there.Â
The moment you spotted Becca you pulled yourself together and actually tried, talked her up to Eric, found the right moments, said the right things. You weren't sure exactly how you managed it, but at some point during the night you looked across the room and saw them kissing in a corner. The alcohol probably helped.Â
At some point Addie appeared at your elbow.
"I'm going out for a smoke. Come with me?"
"Yes." You said it immediately. "I need air." The place was getting warm and slightly too much, the walls a little closer than they felt an hour ago. You needed a break from the noise, from the drinking.
You walked out to the terrace with a cocktail in your hand, which somewhat undermined the break from drinking. Outside the air was cooler and the music dropped to a manageable thud through the walls. Addie leaned against the railing and lit her cigarette, tilting her head back slightly as she exhaled.
"Did you see Eric?" she asked, the beginning of a smile already on her face.
"I did." The laugh that came out of you was loose and easy, you were already way too tipsy. "They should get a room."
She nodded, exhaling slowly, when a group of girls spilled out onto the terrace, looking for air like you, or a quieter place to talk. They stopped right beside you, beers in hand, loud in the way people got when they had too many drinks.
And then you saw her. Meg. Laughing at something one of her friends said, close enough that you could catch pieces of the conversation without trying. Addie glanced at them briefly and looked away. You didn't.
"I think I got him." Meg smiled, satisfied, turning slightly toward the girl beside her. "I think he'll keep me on as his assistant next year too."
"I'm so jealous," her friend said. "He looks so fucking hot."
"I know, right?"
You had no idea what got into you. It was probably the gin, but before you fully decided to do it you had already taken a step toward them.
"You're Professor Miller's assistant?" You smiled at her, easy, like it cost you nothing. "We've met before, actually. Remember?"
Meg looked at you for a second, something shifting briefly behind her eyes. "Oh," she said. "Yes. The one without the appointment." She smiled back.
"How is it? Working for him?" you said, eagerly trying to get information.
Everyone on the terrace seemed to look at Meg at once.
"Where do I even start." She exhaled, almost happily. "He's such an interesting person. The way he thinks about literature, the conversations we haveâŚand working on his writing with him, it's justâŚ" she paused, like she was choosing the word carefully.
"It's a lot." She looked genuinely pleased to say it. Bragging about it, even. She was holding something most people couldn't reach and wanted everyone to know it.
"Isn't he kind of mean, though?" someone asked, half smiling. "Like, that's probably what makes him so hot."
"Yeah, Meg." You turned to look at her directly. "Isn't he mean?"
"He can be," she said, with the tone of someone who considered this a selling point. "But he knows how to make things interesting, if you know what I mean." She bit her lip. The girls around her laughed.
You felt something, a sharp movement through your chest.
Seemed like you were surrounded by fucking middle schoolers.
"What the fuck are you even talking about?" It came out before any part of your brain had the chance to stop it, direct â too harsh for the terrace conversation.Â
The laughter stopped. Everyone looked at you. Meg looked at you. Even Addie, beside you â you could feel it.
"What?" Meg said.
"She's had too many drinks." Addie's voice was smooth, immediately trying to fix it. She took your hand, firm. "Sorry about that. Right?" She squeezed, a clear and specific warning.
"I want to know." You didn't move. "What exactly makes it so interesting." you said again, boldly, your expression was definitely looked pissed.
Meg stared at you, visibly thrown, trying to work out what she was looking at.
"C'mon." Addie pulled the drink from your hand with a calm that suggested she had done this before, and steered you firmly back inside. "Now."
The group behind you dissolved into whispers and low laughter as you walked away.
"What is going on with you?" Addie murmured, close to your ear.
"She's annoying," you said. Still too harsh. Still not entirely in control of your own voice.
Addie looked at you for a moment, "I know," she said finally. "But it was strange...what you did. She just likes to brag, she's always been like that about everything. I think that's enough drinks for tonight, yeah?"
You nodded, your heart beating too fast and too loud. You wanted to know. You wanted to know exactly what he did with her, what she meant by interesting, whether they saw each other outside of college. You wanted to punch her for talking about it like that, casually, proudly, in front of strangers, when you had been crying yourself to sleep since finals ended.
You took the cocktail back from Addie's hand. "Just let me drink."
"Heyââ
"I'm going inside. I don't want to see her face." Before Addie could say anything else you were already through the door, swallowed back into the noise, the heat and the press of bodies.
You started drinking more, instead, trying to silence your brain, at some point the room stopped making sense. The lights bleeding into each other at the edges, every face around you a little blurred and too close, too loud all at once.
You reached for something to hold onto and found a wall, or maybe a person, and stood there for a moment just trying to remember which direction was forward. Your thoughts had stopped arriving in order. They came in fragments, Meg's voice, his name, the way she bit her lip, the ceiling of the lab, the hotel room, all of it surfacing and dissolving before you could hold onto any of it. Your mouth tasted like gin. The music became a single unbroken pressure behind your eyes.
You needed to sit down. Getting to the door took longer than it should have. You kept one hand on the wall and moved carefully, trying to look like you knew what you were doing and fairly certain you weren't succeeding.
"Hey, pretty."
A man's voice, somewhere to your left. Your head was still spinning too hard to place it, it sounded far away, muffled, like everything else. You didn't respond. Maybe it wasn't for you. You sat.
"What are you doing out here alone?"
Closer this time. Definitely for you.
"Leave me alone," you muttered, not looking up.
"Why so unfriendly?" He chuckled unbothered, like your answer had been an invitation rather than a refusal. "Maybe I can help."
So fucking annoying. You planted your hands on the ground and tried to stand, which was a mistake. The heels and the alcohol combined against you immediately, the pavement tilted, your ankle turned slightly, and before you could correct it he had his hand on your arm.
"Careful."
"Don't touch me." You pulled yourself free, or tried to. "Leave me the fuck alone."
You started walking, not entirely sure where, just away, just not back inside â not back toward the noise and the lights and Meg's voice still rattling somewhere in your head. The world refused to stay still around you. Every step required a negotiation.
"Can't just leave a pretty girl alone out here, can I?" His voice came from behind you, closer than it should have been. You could hear him moving, following, chuckling like he found this funny.
The fear arrived quietly, underneath the alcohol, small at first â it knew the difference between annoying and something worse.
"Someone cut your tongue?" He laughed, and his hand closed around your wrist.
He pulled you toward him before you could react, your back against his chest, his grip firm enough that twisting away didn't work the way you needed it to. His hands moved to your hips first, a possessive hold that made your skin crawl, and you felt him laugh quietly against the side of your head, like this was still funny to him, like you were still funny to him.
"Stop." Your voice came out smaller than you wanted. "Get off me."
He didn't. His hands moved higher, sliding over your waist, your ribs, and you grabbed at his wrists and pulled but your coordination was wrong, your strength not where you expected it to be.
"I said leave me alone." Louder this time, shaky. "Don't touch me."
"Relax," he said, close to your ear. His hands reached your chest and you flinched hard, your whole body recoiling against a grip that didn't move. "You're fine."
"Get your hands off me." You dug your nails into his forearm. "Now."you tried everything you had to not let the words come out broken and shaky.
His lips found your neck before you could turn away, wet, uninvited â your stomach turned completely.
"No." You twisted hard, both hands pushing against his arm. "Stop it. I said no."
He didn't stop. His mouth moved along your neck slowly, he had decided your words were background noise, like no was just something you said before you meant yes. His hands stayed on you, one on your hip, keeping you against him.
"Let go of me." Your voice cracked slightly. You hated that it cracked. "Please. Let go."
You pulled at his wrist again, harder, and got nowhere. The alcohol made everything feel slow and slightly wrong, your body not responding the way you needed it to, your balance unreliable, the pavement unsteady under your heels.
The fear wasn't small anymore. It climbed up from your stomach into your chest and stopped there, taking up space, crowding out everything else. You became very aware of how far you were from the door. How loud the music still was inside. How unlikely it was that anyone could hear you.
"Someone's going to come," you said, more to yourself than to him. Your heart was hammering. "Someone's going to come out here."
You felt him on you for one more moment, his hands everywhere, his mouth where it had no right to be, and then the scene shifted so fast you couldn't follow it. The alcohol made everything fragmented, each second disconnected from the last. There was a man. His hands were no longer on you. Someone had him by the collar.
He hit him once, hard enough that the sound of it cut through the music still bleeding through the walls. Then again. There was nothing controlled about it, just the fury of someone whoâd completely lost his mind. The guy's face was a mess. Blood on his mouth, blood on the manâs knuckles, the guy's legs barely keeping him up.
"Get the fuck away from her." You recognized his voice in the middle of the dizziness.
Joelâs voice. It was completely serious, you could feel the rage in it. His hand was still in the guy's collar, holding him up slightly, like he hadn't decided yet whether he was done. "Or I will kill you. I'm not joking."
The guy didn't argue. When Joel let go he stumbled backward and didn't come back.
You felt the ground tilt. Your legs stopped cooperating and you thought you were falling â but you weren't, Joel caught you, one arm around you, steadying.
"Hey." His voice changed entirely. His hand moved to push your hair away from your face, careful. "Are you alright?"
"Joel?" You looked up at him. The confusion hit you in waves, too much alcohol and too much adrenaline and too much of everything all at once. Your eyes filled up with tears, all you wanted to do was cry, and let him hold you.
"You're okay," he murmured. "Heâs not here anymore."
You almost hugged him. You were about to, your body was already moving toward him, when a female voice cut through the air behind you.
"Joel! Joel, are you okay?" Her voice was sharp with worry as she reached him, slightly breathless. She looked at you, then back at him. "It was too much, look at you, you're covered in blood." She sighed, shaking her head. "It could have ended much worse than it started..." She looked half relieved and half worried.
Joel ignored her. He put a hand on your arm, trying to get you upright. You felt her hands find yours a second later, cool, careful, pulling you gently toward her.
"Are you okay? Thank god we were walking to the car." She squeezed your hand once, then looked back at Joel with that same expression. "You got her dirty." she said, quieter. Probably meaning the blood.
"I â what's happening?" It came out in pieces, barely a murmur. The nausea sat heavy at the base of your throat, the voices around you still arriving muffled, late, like a signal struggling to come through. The pavement under your feet felt uncertain. You weren't entirely sure which parts of the last five minutes had been real.
"Maybe we should take her back to ours for a bit." she said, looking at Joel. "She's way too drunk to leave here alone. I'd feel terrible." She was still holding your hands, rubbing her thumb over your knuckles in small circles.
You watched Joel nod. Slow, silent, his face carrying an emotion that told you he agreed but wasn't entirely sure he should.
His wife. She's his wife. You're standing here with his wife.
The thoughts came in and broke apart before you could do anything with them. Your eyes burned. You wanted to cry again, or maybe you were already crying â and you couldn't tell anymore which feelings belonged to the fear and which ones belonged to the fact that you were in this situation. He was there. He was there at exactly the right moment, and he was here because of her, and all of it together was too much for your brain to process in its current state.
A tear ran down your face. You didn't stop it.
"Oh, sweetheart." She reached up and touched your cheek, gentle, completely unaware of who she was touching. "It's okay. Don't cry. Do you want to come with us for a bit? Just some water, some air, you'll feel better."
You looked at her. Her face was blurred, you couldn't hold the details together.
"You don't have to," you managed. "Thank you."
"I insist. Come on, Joel, let's go to the car." she murmured, "At least until you feel better."
She guided you toward it with a hand on your back, Joel already ahead of you. Maybe you silently agreed to this with your expression, you weren't sure, confusion never hit you so much so fast.
You got into the back seat. She sat in the front. The doors closed and the noise of the party disappeared, replaced by the quiet of the car and the low sound of them talking, her voice, then his, words you couldn't quite assemble into sentences.
Your head spun worse when you were still. You focused on the back of Joel's seat instead, on his hands on the wheel, dried blood still on his knuckles, dark against his skin in the low light. Her perfume reached you from the front seat. At some point Joel's eyes found the rearview mirror, looking for you.
Why the fuck were you in his car with his wife?
Cutting through the alcohol fog a thought hit you for exactly long enough to make your chest tighten. The anger you had been suppressing for weeks surfaced briefly, tangled up with something closer to panic. You were going to his house. His actual house. With his wife sitting in the front seat talking about whether you needed aspirin.
You didn't have much time to think about it. The drive took something like fifteen minutes.
Joel opened the car door for you when you arrived, one hand steadying your arm once more as you got out â not looking at you directly. The building was enormous, a place that had a doorman in a dark coat who nodded at them by name, marble in the lobby, elevators with mirrors on every wall. You caught your own reflection and looked away. Your heels were destroying your feet. Your heart was exploding somewhere in your throat. The elevator ride up felt very long.
A fucking penthouse.
The doors opened directly into the apartment and you stood in the entrance for a moment, genuinely unable to move.
It was vast. An open plan living space that seemed to go on longer than made sense, ceilings insanely high. The far wall was almost entirely glass, floor to ceiling windows that framed the city below like a painting, all amber light and dark geometry stretching out into the distance. You had never seen the city from that high before.
The interior was all clean lines and considered materials, pale stone floors, walls in a deep warm white. The furniture was clearly chosen carefully â a long sofa in slate gray linen, a coffee table in smoked glass, built-in shelving covering an entire wall and filled, not surprisingly, with books. Hundreds of them, organized with precision.
In the corner near the kitchen there was a bar cart, the type you only saw in films. Crystal decanters, good bottles, glasses that caught the light.
The whole place smelled faintly like him. You stood in the middle of it and felt, all at once, exactly how far outside his real life you had always been.
She removed her jacket, âGo wash your handsâ she sighed, looking at him, âyou ruined your shirt tooâ, you looked at the hem of his shirt sleeves, it was true, a little of blood there too.
You stayed silent, you felt so small there, his wife and him, the embarrassingly huge house in front of you.Â
How fucking rich are they? He is just a teacher.
âSweet heart you can sit on the sofa, Iâm going to make you tea, alright?â You nodded, going on the sofa, that huge and surely extremely expensive gray sofa. This was the first time you actually had a chance to really look at her.
A totally and extremely beautiful woman, and she looked expensive too â you noticed it catching the red sole in her heels, Louboutin heels. What the fuck. Her hair still the same you learned to recognize: dark, almost black, perfectly blown out as always. Her coat was camel cashmere, a tailored black dress that fit her like it had been made specifically for her body â it probably was honestly. Brown eyes, warm and deep. And her features, they were soft but still elegant. She smelled extraordinary, something sweet, spiced, exactly the kind of perfume you would associate with a successful woman.
She was, in short, exactly what you would have built if someone had asked you to design the right person for Joel. Or maybe that was your insecurity talking, she looked totally perfect as a woman. She fit, they looked like they would go well together. The nausea climbed higher.
You sat on the sofa and felt the space close in around you despite how vast it was. The city stretched out beyond the glass, all that light, all that distance, and you felt completely claustrophobic inside it, like the walls were closer than they appeared, like the air had a weight to it. You wanted to get up and leave, but you felt made of stone.
Joel came back after a few minutes, you noticed his hands were clean. You watched him without meaning to, tracked him across the room the way you always did, automatically by now. He didn't look at you directly. He looked worried â or maybe anxious â you couldn't read him properly, your head still spinning slow lazy circles, the room was occasionally tilting without warning.
From the kitchen you could hear his wifeâs voice, on a phone call while she made your tea. Joel moved to the bar cart in the corner. You watched him pour himself something dark â cognac perhaps â from one of the crystal decanters. He didn't add anything to it. He drank it in one go, set the glass down, and stood there for a moment with his back to you.Â
"Where's the bathroom?" you murmured, the nausea pushing up your throat, unsure whether it was the alcohol or the insanity of the situation you somehow ended up in.
"Down the hallway." He raised one finger, pointing, already pouring himself a second glass without looking at you.
Truth is, Joel was absolutely freaking the fuck out.
He had never, in a million years, expected to find himself standing in his own living room in this situation. You on his sofa. His wife making tea in his kitchen. His knuckles still raw. The cognac was supposed to help, was supposed to settle something, burn through the noise, but his thoughts kept moving too fast for it.
What did he need to do? How did he get himself out of this without anything escaping from you?
He was worried, yes. He was also genuinely relieved he had been walking past when it happened. The thought of what could have continued, what that man had already done, what he might have done to you if no one was there. The image of someone handling you like that, your voice telling him to stop, the fear he had heard underneath it even from a distance. It made his stomach crawl, thinking it was a miracle he was close with his wife when that was happening.
His hand tightened around the glass. The anger that came with that thought was disproportionate and he knew it. He knew it and he couldn't do anything about it.
You got up slowly and made your way toward the hallway. The apartment demanded attention even in passing, every piece of furniture chosen with a precision that was almost aggressive, ornaments that looked precious and specific. Books everywhere, naturally. And then, in the corner near the hallway entrance, a guitar. It was the least curated thing in the entire apartment, actually used, the finish worn in places, a capo clipped to the neck. The hallway was long and lined with photographs. You slowed down.
They were everywhere, framed, arranged with the same careful eye as everything else. Travel, mostly. An almost absurd amount of travel. Europe, Asia, Africa, places you couldn't immediately name. Every fucking country, you thought. Not a single corner of the world left unvisited, and in every picture they stood together smiling.
You stopped at the wedding photo. They were younger, him especially, noticeably. His hair darker, his eyes something you didn't have a word for. Warmer, maybe. Less cold. It was strange seeing him like that, catching a glimpse of someone you weren't supposed to know existed.
You picked up another frame, unsure of when it was took â just him, with the guitar. Candid, unposed,a photo someone took when the subject wasn't performing for the camera. It was a beautiful picture. So intimate that it made you feel like you were trespassing.
So the guitar was his.
The bathroom. Stop looking at this.
You found the door and closed it behind you and sank down until your back hit the cabinet under the sink, the cold of the floor coming through your dress. Your eyes filled up for the millionth time that evening and this time you let them. You actually cried sitting on the bathroom floor of his apartment.
Because while you had spent the weeks after finals drowning in sadness in your stupid little apartment, crying yourself to sleep and replaying everything on a loop, he came back to this. To her. To the perfect wife and the stupid books and the photographs of every fucking country they had ever visited together. He came back to his devastatingly perfect life and felt absolutely nothing about you.
You stayed on the bathroom floor for a while, the nausea forgotten, replaced by anxiety adn sadness. Until you heard a knock.
"Are you alright? The tea is ready." His voice, through the door. You wanted to disappear.
You got up, looked in the mirror, did what you could to fix the mess on your face and opened the door. Joel was standing there, looking at you. Close enough that you could see the tension he was holding somewhere in his jaw.
"You should go home," he whispered. "I can take you."
So he was anxious of having you close to his wife.
You looked at him with something that felt very close to disgust and walked past him without saying a word. Absolutely fucking insane, the whole thing. All of it.
She was already in the living room, the mug of tea waiting on the coffee table. She looked up the moment she saw you, her expression was genuinely warm.
"Feeling any better, sweetheart?" She handed you the mug as you sat down.
"Yes. Thank you." You wrapped both hands around it. "You're very kind."
"Don't mention it." She smiled, settling into the armchair across from you, finally relaxing. "I'm Elizabeth, by the way. I'm sorryâŚwith everything that happened I didn't even think to introduce myself."
Elizabeth. Of course. Even her name was perfectly elegant. Fuck off completely.
You told her yours and took a sip of the tea.
"Joel." Elizabeth turned toward him, where he stood by the bar cart â again â not quite looking at either of you. "Maybe she should stay? The guest room is ready. Until she feels a bit better."
The anxious pause before he answered was very short but you caught it.
"No." His voice came out sharper than he probably wanted it to be, so he adjusted his tone. "I'll drive her home." said softer.
You looked at him. He didn't look back. He was scared, that much was obvious, written clearly underneath all that careful composure. Scared of you in his apartment, scared of how long you stayed, scared of what you might say.
Good, you thought.
"Oh â" Elizabeth looked between you both, then back at you, her brow slightly creased. "Or maybe you'd feel more comfortable in your own space. That makes sense after something like that."
"I can take a cab," you said. "Really. You've already done so much."
"I will drive you home." Joel's voice landed flat, that same cold tone you had grown so used to. He still wasn't looking at you. "It's not a discussion."
You didn't respond. You stayed on the sofa and finished the tea Elizabeth had made you, a lump in your throat, not looking at him. When Elizabeth's phone rang she stood up immediately. "Sorry, I have to take this," she said, already moving toward the hallway.
The room went quiet.
Joel looked at you. "Aren't you cold?" he said, lower now â talking about the dress. You said nothing. You were furious and you didn't trust your voice. "At least tell me where you live," he continued.
"I'll call a cab."
"No. You're drunk. Just tell me."
You set the mug down on the coffee table and stood up. Why the fuck were you still dizzy after all of this?
But you replied, you told him your address â fuck it, the least he could do was taking you home.
He exhaled, looked like he was relieved, he was already reaching for his jacket.
Those twenty minutes had been an eternity. The longest, most uncomfortable eternity of his life, a spectacularly bad dream he had somehow walked himself into by being in the wrong place and doing the right thing. He was angry at the situation, at himself, at the coincidence of it. And you were angry at him too, he could feel it radiating off you, which was insane given that he had just saved you but fine. Fine.
Elizabeth put her hand on this and there had been no way out of it, no version of no that wouldn't have raised questions he had no interest in answering. He knew that the moment she suggested it. He did the only thing he could do, which was say yes and get through it as quickly as possible.Â
He opened the apartment door for you, then stood and watched you walk to the elevator without a word. Thirty minutes, he thought. Thirty minutes of agonizing silence and the full weight of your anger in an enclosed space. Excellent.
The elevator was silent too. When you got to the car he opened the passenger door â the front seat, beside him, because of course he was going to try to say something, and he needed you close enough to say it. You looked at him with an expression of boredom, and got in without a word.
He got in after you and started the engine.
"Seatbelt," he said, turning at you.
You stared out the window and said nothing.
He made a sound low in his throat, a sigh to which followed him reaching over, pulling the seatbelt across you himself. His hands were on you for less than three seconds. You stiffened like he'd done something unforgivable.
"You act like a child sometimes," he said. "You know that?" he muttered, annoyed by your behavior.
Nothing, again.
He pulled out of the parking garage and tried to think of something useful to say. There wasn't much.
"It wasn't my intention to bring you thereâŚ" he said finally, eyes on the road. "I would have just driven you home." He glanced at you briefly. Your face was turned away, toward the passenger window, jaw set.
Okay. This is going nowhere. Just drive.
Thirty minutes of it. Thirty minutes of slow, grinding silence, anger, and the faint smell of your perfume mixed with alcohol filling the car until it felt airless. The only sounds were the light rain starting against the windshield, and his fingers tapping against the steering wheel.
You didn't look at him once.
He felt the absence of it the same way he felt it those days after you walked out of his class following the scene with Meg, that stubborn pointed withdrawal that was louder than anything you could have said.
You were hurt. That was it, underneath all the anger. You were hurt, sitting so close to him â but he felt there was nothing he could do about it that wouldn't make everything significantly worse.
When you two arrived, he watched you get out of the car without a word and something in him snapped. He opened the door and got out after you, the rain hitting him immediately, and you were already walking so he reached out and took your wrist.
You stopped at the touch.
"Can you tell me why the fuck you're doing this?" His voice came out hard, annoyed. He was past caring.
You turned around , the rain was starting to soak through your dress but you really couldn't care less. "Do what?" Your voice was ice. "Do I have to talk to you just because you can't stand someone not doing what you tell them to?"
"I saved you tonight." He stepped closer, his grip on your wrist tightening. "Do you understand that? Who knows what would have happened if I wasn't there."
Something crossed your face â all the emotions that you tried to suppress in your mind and body came out all at once.
"Oh!" The laugh that came out of you was short, sarcastic, sharp. "Thank you so much. You're my Saviour." The sarcasm landed like a slap on Joel.
But it wasn't over. Quieter, with complete conviction you added: "Fuck you."
Joel knew it, the situation with Elizabeth was absolutely uncomfortable and it shouldn't have happened.
"I told you, I couldn't do anything about what happened back there. My wife wanted you to come. I had no choice."
"You could have done anything." Your voice broke on the word. You pulled your wrist free and stepped toward him instead of away, close enough that he had to hold his ground. "Anything. But you're a fucking selfish asshole â that's all you are. Go back to your perfect wife and your fucking life."
The alcohol was making it easy to finally show the bitter emotions he made you go through the past six months. You didn't care about his reaction, about his power on you, about anything. It was over.
"Now you're just being crazy" he replied, shaking his head slightly.
"I'm crazy?" You got closer, rain running down your face, not bothering to wipe it away. Something reckless moved behind your eyes. "You don't like me so much now, do you?"
His jaw tightened. "You act like everything that happened between us was something I did to you." His voice rose despite himself, raw, bitter. "You practically begged me to fuck you." His grip found your wrist again, almost involuntary, holding on while you stood close enough that he could feel the heat of you despite the rain and the cold.
"Like Meg?" you said.Â
The silence lasted one second, you could see he was completely annoyed and over it.
"This fucking Meg again." He rolled his eyes. "You're obsessed."
"Yeah." Your eyes didn't move from his. "Because she goes around telling everyone about your appointments. Because everyone knows how you â" your voice climbed, cracked, but then you kept going, "how you go around fucking your stupid assistant."
"You're acting crazy." He repeated again, "Why would you even care about something like that?"
"Why would you care about my boyfriend?" You threw it back at him without hesitation, your eyes not leaving his face for a second. âHuh? You were obsessed with it. Every time he came near me you were dying to let me know how much that pissed you off.â
"That's different." he muttered, his eyes still on you.
"How?" You stepped closer. "Tell me how."
His jaw moved but nothing came out.
"You liked it," he said finally. "All of it. Don't pretend otherwise."
"That was before I opened my eyes." Your voice went flat and cold, "Before I realized how disgustingly selfish you actually are."
Something shifted in his face. "Then go." He let go of your wrist. "I don't need spoiled little girls around me."
"I bet you think about this spoiled little girl." Your voice still calm while you kept your eyes locked with his, "When you're fucking your boring wife."
The atmosphere changed, the tension could be cut with a knife.
"Don't do that." His voice came out lower, guarded. "Don't talk about my wife."
"Or what?"
Your faces were inches apart. The rain had soaked through both of you completely and neither of you moved. His eyes dropped to your mouth for one second and then back up. A moment of silence.
His mouth came down on yours and the kiss was nothing like the argument had been â it was worse, hotter, his hands finding your face and your waist simultaneously, pulling you against him with the kind of force that made it clear he had been fighting it for the last thirty minutes or maybe more.
You kissed him back just as hard, your fingers in his wet hair â the anger didn't disappear, it just changed shape, became something visceral, there was something almost violent about the kiss. It deepened almost immediately, his tongue finding yours with an urgency that made it clear this had nothing to do with tenderness â it was all the things you had said to each other in the last ten minutes, all the weeks before that, exploding all together.
Your fingers started twisting in his wet hair, pulling it, and he made a low groan against your mouth, his hands moved everywhere. Your waist, your hips, up your back, back down again, it was restless, possessive, like he was trying to cover as much ground as possible, he had been waiting too long to be careful about it now. One hand slid to the back of your thigh and pulled you closer, eliminating whatever distance was left between you, and you followed without resistance.
The street was empty, it was late enough that the city went quiet around you, just the rain on the pavement and the distant sound of traffic somewhere far away. It wouldn't have mattered. Neither of you were paying attention to anything outside the radius of each other.
Joel started walking without breaking the kiss, his body moving yours backward, one hand still on your hip and the other braced against the car behind you as he guided you into it. The impact when your back hit the door was rough, but you didnât care.
He pressed himself against you, pinning you there, and kissed you deeper, his thigh pushing between yours while his hands slid under the hem of your dress without asking. You made a sound against his mouth when you felt his thigh press between yours, his grip on your hip tightened in response.
Your hands moved over him restlessly as much as he did, his wet hair, the back of his neck, down to his chest, feeling the heat of him through the soaked fabric of his shirt. You needed to touch him.
His free hand dropped behind you, fumbling for the door handle without looking â he didn't break the kiss for more than a second and even that second he used to drag his mouth along your jaw before finding yours again. The door clicked open.Â
Joel pulled back just enough to get in, sliding into the back seat, and looked up at you for a second before he reached out and took your wrist. One pull. That was all. You climbed in after him, the door swinging shut behind you, and he caught you before you could find your footing, guiding you down onto his lap as you straddled him, your knees on either side of his thighs.
You found his mouth again immediately, your hands went to his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders. He helped without breaking the kiss, shrugging it off, letting it fall somewhere beside him â not much after his hands were back on your hips, pressing you down against him just enough to make you feel how hard he was, a low groan coming from him at the friction.
You felt his arousal against you, and couldn't help but let out something between a breath and a moan, swallowed almost immediately back into the kiss. His hands tightened on your hips in response, not letting you move away even slightly.
Then his mouth left yours, he moved to your neck, finding the spot below your ear that he already knew too well you liked and you let your head fall back, giving him room. His hands stayed on your hips, rocking you against his arousal with a rhythm that was as violent as the kiss. Your fingers found the buttons of his shirt.
The first one came undone easily. The second. By the third your patience had run out entirely â you could feel him against you, could feel his mouth on your neck, and the careful approach stopped making sense. Your fingers pulled at the fabric, not quite tearing but close, working the buttons open with a desperate speed that made him laugh just a little, against your skin.Â
You got the last button open and pushed the shirt off his shoulders, your palms flat against his chest for a moment, finally feeling his warm skin â Joel's heartbeat faster than he would have wanted to admit. You rolled your hips against him and watched his jaw tighten until found your mouth again.
"You're a selfish asshole," you said against his mouth.
âYou already told me that.â His hands found the zip at the back of your dress, fingers tracing down your spine until they found it.
"It bears repeating." You moved against him again, your hands in his hair, and felt him exhale hard.Â
You shifted your weight and helped him pull the dress down, lifting slightly, maneuvering as best you could in the cramped space of the back seat, the ceiling too low, your elbow hitting the window once, neither of you caring even slightly. The dress came off and he dropped it somewhere on the seat beside him without looking at it.
His mouth found your shoulder immediately. Not a kiss exactly, more than that, hungrier than that. His lips dragged across your shoulder, down toward your collarbone while his hands spread across your back holding you in place as he worked his way lower. When his tongue traced along your skin you shivered.
You were aching to have him, to finally feel his body close to you.
"Joel â"
He didn't stop. His mouth moved to the curve of your breast after he took off your bra, his tongue still working on your skin, on your nipples â and the whimper that came out of you was only half-contained, a broken breath that made heat settle in your stomach. Your hands dropped to his belt. You worked it open while his mouth kept moving, the leather sliding free, and you felt him tense slightly against you.
Button, zip, your fingers moved with an urgency that wasn't firm, because every time his tongue found a new patch of skin another half swallowed moan escaped you and your concentration suffered for it. You finally got his trousers open and felt him groan quietly against your chest, an involuntary sound that he didn't bother to hide.
The rest followed with the same necessity, his trousers, whatever was left between you, a tangle of hands and limited space and neither of you willing to slow down long enough to make it graceful. At one point there was nothing left in the way, you found his mouth and kissed him once again â you waited too much to not take any moment to kiss him â you moved your hips and took his cock in without preamble, no waiting, or adjusting, you were too worked up for that.
The stretch of it made you inhale sharply through your nose, a stab of pain that ran up your spine, but you didn't stop, you didn't want to stop. The pain was part of it â part of the whole insane evening, part of the argument still sitting unresolved between you, part of the weeks before that and everything you hadn't been able to say to him. You pressed down further to take all of it and felt your breath leave you completely.
You knew he was big, but having it inside was a whole another story. Perfect, filling you up in ways you could only imagine.
Joel groaned against your skin, the kind of sound he couldn't have controlled even if he'd tried, his head dropped back against the seat, jaw tight, eyes closed for a moment like he needed a second to stay where he was.
You felt every inch of his cock stretching you out and the breath that left you came out ragged, your forehead dropping to his shoulder for just a moment â you needed a second to get used to it before you started to move. Slow at first, your hands pressed flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammering under your palms. His warm hand slid to the small of your back pressing you into him as you moved, and the other stayed on your hip, like he needed something to hold onto.
"Fuckâ" It came out of him completely involuntary, swallowed almost as soon as it arrived. His grip tightened.
You kept on moving around him, the pain now leaving space to a pleasure you were begging for since youâve first met him. Your hips found the pace on their own, your breathing already uneven. The cramped space of the back seat just made it more intimate, Joel pressing your body against his just to feel your skin on him.
You moved faster, the faint ache was still there underneath everything, that painful edge of your carelessness, and you chased it anyway. You kept pressing your nails into his chest while your breath was coming in short broken intervals. He was getting even harder inside of you and you could feel it, shocked that he could get even more aroused than that.
"I hate you so much," you said against his jaw, breathless. Joel kept your body pressed against his, while his own breathing was getting broken, feeling every single movement of you around his cock, every single squeeze on his hardness as your hips moved on him.
"I know, baby." his mouth brushing your temple as you kept riding him.Â
You stopped being careful about it at that point. Your hips moved faster, harder, the pace no longer tentative but almost desperate, and the moans that started coming out of you were dripping of lust, completely drown in the moment.
Nothing really mattered at that point. The back seat was too small and it didn't matter. The windows had fogged over completely and it didn't matter.
Joel's hands moved over you like he was trying to memorize you, up your sides, your waist, your back, one hand spreading flat between your shoulder blades and pressing you into him, the other sliding to your thigh and gripping hard.
His mouth found your neck, your shoulder, the curve of your jaw, everywhere he could reach while you moved above him. His breathing had gone ragged, a low groan escaping him when you changed the angle slightly, his head falling back for a moment.
"Don't stop." Joelâs voice was almost unrecognizable, stripped of everything careful and composed, just the raw fact of it.
His hands pulled you down against him as you moved, meeting your pace, trying to go deeper, to feel you more.
"Do you think about her when you're with me?" The words came out between one breath and the next, your hips still moving. "Elizabeth. Do youâthink about her right now?"
His jaw tightened. His hands pressed you down harder against him and for a second you thought he wasn't going to answer.
"Do you think about Jake when you're with me?" he said instead. âSince you want to play that game.â
"I hate you â assholeâ
"You keep saying that." His mouth found your collarbone, while you moaned, getting even wetter as you moved on him. "Doesn't seem to be stopping you." he said against your skin.
"She was bragging to everyone." You dug your nails into his shoulder, not entirely sure if it was anger or something else. "Everyone knowsââ
"There is nothing with Meg." He muttered, his voice dripping pleasure. "There has never been anything with Meg."
"Then why does sheâ"
He didn't answer. Instead his hands moved to the back of your thighs and lifted just enough, just the right amount to shift the angle entirely and taking the rhythm out of your hands without asking permission.
When he started moving, whatever you had been about to say dissolved immediately. The depth of his cock inside you knocked the words out of you completely, deeper than before, deeper than you had been prepared for, each thrust absolutely rough in a way that made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing to your mind, he decided to stop being patient about it.
With one of his arms wrapped around your lower back and the other between your shoulders, Joel was holding you flush against his chest while he moved underneath you, his cock hitting your sweet spot over and over again in this angle.
You couldn't speak. You couldn't think of anything to say. The argument, Meg, Elizabeth, Jake, all of it gone, pushed out entirely, you felt like he was fucking your soul out of your body honestly.Â
The car was filled with the noise of his wet thrusts inside of you and your broken moans cutting the words out of you. Every time Joel drove his cock inside of you like that, you had to fight to not let out sobs of pleasure.
"You feel so good, so â good." You moaned, it came out broken, barely above a whisper, your forehead dropping against his. You didn't mean to say it out loud.Â
"You have no ideaâŚ" he murmured against your mouth, his pace not slowing for a second. "How good you take it" said into your skin like he hadn't entirely meant for you to hear it either.
The windows were completely opaque by now, fogged over, the outside world reduced to the muffled sound of rain and the occasional blur of a passing light. The car had become its own small universe, warm, smelling like both of you, the leather of the seat, your perfume mixed with alcohol. Every sound you two made stayed contained in that small space, filling it completely.
You felt it building, tightening low in your stomach and that meant you were closer than you wanted to admit, your thighs pressing against him, your fingers twisting into his hair and pulling, hard enough that his breath caught against your jaw.
"Tell me." His voice came out rough, strained at the edges. His hips didn't stop, your walls were clamping around him, and it was taking all he had to not just cum straight into you without asking. "Tell me where you want it."
The question short circuited everything that was left of your brain.
"Don't stop." Your grip in his hair tightened as you whimpered, feeling the orgasm about to explode in your body. "Just â don't stop, please â"
"That's not what I asked." He slowed down just enough, a warning probably. His mouth brushed your ear. "Tell me."
"Inside." The word came out wrecked, halfway between a breath and something that sounded embarrassingly close to begging. "Come inside of me, please â you can, please.â Your voice broke on the last word, your eyes stinging, the overwhelming accumulation of the entire evening pressing up through your chest and finding the only exit available.
His arm pulled you in tighter, impossibly closer â he buried himself completely, and the groan that left him was long and completely unguarded, rumbling against your collarbone where his face was pressed. His hips kept moving, deep and relentless, and every thrust drew another groan out of him.
You wondered if Joel wanted to fuck you like this since that day in the office and just used all his willpower to not do it. Every time, the classroom, the elevator, the hotel. He was driving into you so hard it felt more like he was venting all the frustration of keeping back.
âGodâ barely a word, more breath than voice, his mouth dragging up your neck.
You started moving against him, matching his pace, chasing it, your hips rolling into every thrust with desperation, so hard that it was getting difficult for him to get out of you. Your mouth found his and the kiss was violent, sloppy, all teeth and breath and neither of you able to sustain it for more than a few seconds before it broke apart into open mouths against skin.
The sounds filling the car were obscene at this point. His groans, low and continuous now, one running into the next, his composure entirely gone. Yours, higher, broken, swallowed against his jaw and his neck and his mouth every time you found it again.Â
Joel's hand fisted in your hair, everything but gentle, a proper grip, fingers curling at the root, pulling your head back as he watched you.
You really, couldnât take it anymore, the orgasm caught you stronger than you thought, you cried out as held you, your whole body tightening and shaking around him, your nails dragging down his back. He followed you over almost immediately, coming inside of you â spilling every drop of his climax as he let out a pleasure filled groan, your name somewhere inside it, his hips pressed up into you one last time and stayed there for a moment.
You let him fill you for a moment more and then lifted yourself off him slowly, letting a small whimper and the sudden emptiness. Your legs felt unsteady, you stayed exactly where you were, your forehead against his shoulder, your hands loose on his chest, not ready to move further than that. Not ready to look at him yet.
His head was back against the seat, eyes closed, chest rising and falling too fast, you could feel it under your palms. The rain had softened outside, just a light patter against the roof now. The windows were still completely fogged. A few minutes passed like that, with you both trying to catch your breath without talking.
Then you heard him move, his arm shifting beside you, the rustling of fabric. You didn't lift your head, you felt him reach for his jacket somewhere on the seat, heard the soft resistance of a pocket, the small cardboard sound of a cigarette packet. The click of a lighter. The smell of smoke reached you a second later.
You turned your head slightly without lifting it from his shoulder and looked at Joel from that angle, his profile in the dim light, the cigarette between his lips, his chest still not entirely steady. His hair was a disaster, it made you almost smile. This was your first time seeing Joel so lost in the action that he couldn't even talk.
He took a long drag and said nothing, the ember glowed briefly in the dark of the car, then faded. His chest rose and fell under your cheek, slower now, almost back to normal.
Then, without a word, he moved his hand and brought the cigarette to your lips, you froze for a moment, then you inhaled.
The smoke was grounding and you held it for a moment before letting it go, your eyes fixed on the fogged window in front of you, not trusting yourself to look at him. Your heart was going faster than it had during any of it, faster than the argument, faster than everything that had just happened in the back seat of his car.
Not from what had just happened. From this. From the unbearable intimacy of this small gesture, his hand steady, the cigarette passing between you in the dark without either of you saying a single word about it.
It felt like something out of a dream you would have been embarrassed to tell out loud.
After a while you spoke, "Your apartment is beautifulâŚand big." you laughed a little at the end of it, not quite a real laugh, just the ghost of one, enough to break the silence. He took a drag before answering.
"I don't like it much." He said it simply. You lifted your head slightly to look at him. He was staring at the fogged windshield, the cigarette loose between his fingers. You didn't understand why he said that, and couldn't manage to decode what was happening in his eyes.
"How can you not like it?" you murmured.
He didn't answer. Just brought the cigarette back to your lips.
You inhaled, your eyes on his profile. He waited until you were done, then took it back and put it to his own mouth. The small ritual of it settled something in the air between you, a peace youâve never felt before around Joel.
"It's Elizabeth's, mostly." he said eventually.Â
You put your cheek back against his shoulder and watched the ember glow in the dark.
When the cigarette burned down to nothing he dropped it out of the window, just enough to let it go, and the small light disappeared.
The atmosphere broke with it.
You shifted off him and started looking for your things in the dark, your dress somewhere on the seat, your bra half-tucked under his jacket. The back seat was a disaster and the limited space made everything harder, your elbow finding the door again, your hair still damp and tangled. You pulled the dress back on as best you could, reaching behind you for the zip, getting it halfway before giving up on the last few inches.
Joel was doing the same, taking the shirt that dropped off the seat, buttons done up in the wrong order and then redone, belt buckle loud in the quiet of the car. His hair was unsalvageable and he seemed to know it, running one hand through it once and abandoning the project entirely.
You found one shoe, then the other. Neither of you said anything. The movements of getting dressed filled the silence adequately, the rustle of fabric, the small sounds of two people trying to reassemble themselves in an insufficient amount of space. You pushed your hair back from your face and looked at the fogged window.
He looked at you. "Ready?" he said.
You nodded and looked at him for a moment. Joel's eyes were already on you. The distance between you was nothing, the back seat still warm, the smell of smoke and sex still everywhere.
You thought about kissing him but you quickly decided against it. You were scared he would pull back.
"Thank you," you said instead. "For tonight..for what you did. I was scared."
He held your gaze for a moment without saying anything and he nodded, once, small.
You opened the door and the night air hit you immediately, cold and damp â the rain reduced to almost nothing now, just a fine mist that settled on your skin as you stepped out. The street was empty, the smell of the rain filled your senses, and lit with amber and orange reflecting off the pavement, everything slightly blurred from the rain.
You closed the door behind you and through the window you watched him climb into the front seat. He adjusted the mirror, didn't look back at you.
You stood outside for a second, still slightly dizzy about what just happened between the two of you, then you turned and walked toward your building, your heels loud on the wet stone â you knew though, that the car didnât move until you were inside.
Joel drove in silence for all thirty minutes that separated your building from his. He let the city pass and didn't try to stop his mind from going where it wanted to go; the argument and how it ended. The sex. It was strange, and his chest and mind were filled with emotions that made him unsure of how to navigate that.
Sensations he hadn't felt before, not in this twisted heated way, not with anyone. He didn't want this. He didn't want any of this to happen, and didn't like how far outside his own head he went when you were involved. It irritated him. It irritated him specifically that it was you causing it, that you had somehow gotten under his skin in a way nobody had managed in a very long time.
Honestly, all of it was very confusing, and he did everything he could to not think too much about it.
He hoped Elizabeth was asleep. He needed the apartment quiet and with no questions, not tonight.
But she was on the sofa when he walked in, the television on low and a blanket across her lap. She was waiting for him.
"Joel." She looked up, immediately grasping that something happened since he looked less put together than when he left. "What happened? I called you."
He ran a hand through his hair and kept his voice calm.
"The girl. I dropped her home and then I walked around a bit, I needed to clear my head after everything, but it started raining" He thought about how to continue for a moment "That thing I did on the street was â I don't know. It got to me. It was too much for me."
Elizabeth looked at him for a moment, then her expression softened. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "That was a horrible thing to witness. You should rest."Â
"Yeah," he said finally. His voice came out more secure than he felt. "You're right."Â
author's note: they finally kissed!! I was so excited writing this and I REEEEALLY want to know what you guys think about it. Definitely a turning point for them.
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Born to ride or whatever Lana said.
Pd: I don't see this ending well for any of them đ¤
