Balcony Lip Lock

The city spread out beneath us like a circuit board that somebody had left running all night, all those tiny lights still burning for no one. Forty-three floors down, cars crawled along the avenue, their headlights smearing into long yellow threads. I couldn't hear any of it. The balcony doors were shut behind us, and the glass did its job too well. Just Margaret's breath against my mouth and the wet click of our lips parting and finding each other again.

She'd kicked off her heels an hour ago. They were lying somewhere near the railing, one on its side like a dead bird. Her bare feet were cold against my ankles and she kept pressing them there anyway, a small cruelty she enjoyed.

"You're going to make me miss my flight," she said, but she said it into my neck, which meant she didn't care.

"There's another one at six."

"There's always another one at six."

I pulled her closer by the waist and she came easily, the way she always did when it was late and the wine was down to the last inch in the bottle. Her dress was black and thin and had been riding up her thighs since we stepped outside. My hand found the hem and stayed there, not moving, just holding the edge of it between my fingers like a card I hadn't decided to play.

She bit my bottom lip. Not gently. I felt the sting bloom and then her tongue smoothing it over, apologizing and not apologizing.

"You do that when you want something," I said.

"I do that when I'm bored."

"You're not bored."

"No." She kissed me again, slower this time, and I let her set the pace. Her mouth was warm and tasted like the cabernet and the mint she'd stolen from the restaurant on the way out. Somewhere below us a siren unspooled through the streets and died out before it reached the river. Margaret didn't flinch. Neither did I. We were past the point where the city could reach us.

I'd met her eleven days ago at a conference I hadn't wanted to attend. She was standing at the bar in a hotel ballroom, arguing with the bartender about the correct ratio of vermouth to gin, and losing, and not caring that she was losing. I'd watched her for maybe thirty seconds before I walked over and told her she was right. She looked at me like I'd handed her a knife.

That was the whole beginning. Eleven days.

Now her fingers were working the buttons of my shirt loose, one at a time, patient, like she was undoing a knot she intended to keep. The night air moved across my chest and I felt it everywhere. She pressed her palm flat against my sternum and held it there, feeling my heart do whatever it was doing.

"Fast," she said.

"You have that effect."

"Don't be charming. It's late."

I laughed and she kissed the laugh out of my mouth. Her hair was down and it kept catching on the stubble along my jaw, little snags of pain that I didn't mind. I gathered it in one hand and tilted her head back and put my mouth on her throat, right where the pulse was thickest. She made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

This is the part I want to remember later, I thought. Not the hotel room, not the conference, not the eleven days. This. Her throat under my tongue and the city going on without us and the wine going warm in the bottle by the door.

She pulled back. Her eyes were dark and steady and she was looking at me the way she looked at the bartender, like she was deciding whether to keep arguing.

"What," I said.

"Nothing."

"Margaret."

She stepped out of my hands and walked to the railing. The dress settled back down around her legs. She put both hands on the metal and leaned out and looked at the city below, and I watched the line of her back, the small knobs of her spine under the fabric, and I wanted her so badly it was almost anger.

"The last time I was in this city," she said, "I was twenty-four and I was here with someone I shouldn't have been here with."

"Okay."

"He's still here. Somewhere down there." She gestured vaguely at the lights. "Probably asleep. Probably has a wife and a kid now."

I didn't say anything. I came up behind her and put my hands on the railing on either side of hers, not touching her, just making a cage out of my arms. She didn't move away. The wind off the river pushed her hair across my face and I let it.

"I'm not telling you this to make you jealous," she said.

"I know."

"I'm telling you because I want you to understand something."

"Understand what."

She turned around inside the cage of my arms and looked up at me. Her face was very close and very serious and I could see the small scar above her eyebrow that she'd never explained.

"That I don't do this," she said. "Ever. That this is not a thing I do."

"Okay."

"So when I say I'm going to miss my flight, I mean it. And when I say there's always another one at six, I mean that too. And you should probably decide what you want before the sun comes up, because I'm not going to be here tomorrow night."

The city hummed below us, indifferent. I could feel her heartbeat through the thin black dress, or maybe it was mine, or maybe it was the same thing by then.

"I already decided," I said.

She kissed me before I could say what. Her mouth was hard and open and she pulled my bottom lip between her teeth and bit down, and this time I felt it all the way to the base of my spine. I lifted her by the hips and she wrapped her legs around me and her dress finally gave up and rode all the way to her waist. The railing pressed into her back. She didn't seem to mind.

"I'm not going to be here tomorrow night," she said again, against my mouth, like a warning, like a dare, like she was trying to talk herself out of something she'd already done.

"I heard you the first time."

"Good."

She reached behind her and slid the balcony door open, and the city rushed in all at once, sirens and tires and the low endless rumble of everything happening everywhere. She took my hand and pulled me inside. The room was dark. The bed was still unmade from earlier. Somewhere on the floor her phone was buzzing with a reminder about the six a.m. flight.

Neither of us looked at it.