Chapter 491 | This Was Foreplay

Chapter 491: 491 | This Was Foreplay

Jordan opened his mouth to answer, and Simp Brain was already upstairs fluffing pillows. It had folded the duvet into a hotel triangle and set a glass of water on the nightstand on a coaster, because Simp Brain believed coasters were a love language and had never once been corrected.

New Jordan told Simp Brain to sit down. Simp Brain started looking for a second coaster.

New Jordan let it look. Nobody was coming upstairs tonight except the one person who would knock a coaster off the nightstand on principle.

He got two words out, "You can," before Chloe answered from the island without looking up from her tea.

"Four-oh-three, with Kumiko."

Alexis’s mouth turned down at one corner for a full second. Her shoulders dropped half an inch inside the pink fleece. She hid both about as well as she hid the tail, which swung behind her every time she shifted her weight.

"Fine, obviously, as if I wanted your loft. It probably smells like protein powder and regret."

"It smells like lemon cleaner," Chloe said. "I picked the lemon cleaner."

Kumiko launched off the couch so fast the slipcover came loose. She grabbed Alexis by the black cuff poking out of the fleece sleeve and held on like a winning lottery ticket.

"Sleepover! A real sleepover, that’s page forty-five, I wrote it in October and never got to use it! I have a second pillow shaped like a dumpling and you get it because guests always get the dumpling, that’s international law!"

"I don’t want the dumpling."

"Everyone wants the dumpling, Alexis-chan, you just haven’t met it yet."

At the island, Chloe’s mug stopped halfway to her mouth for exactly one second. Then it kept going.

Chloe finally looked up, over glasses that had slid low on her nose. Jordan had last seen that look aimed at a Wayfair customer service agent.

"Your phone goes face down after ten. You text your mother tomorrow morning in four sentences or fewer, and you do it after coffee."

"I don’t drink coffee before nine."

"Then text her at nine-oh-one."

"And if she calls tonight?"

"Your phone is face down. You don’t see it. That’s what face down is for."

"My mother doesn’t call. She has people call."

"Then the people can leave a voicemail," Chloe said. "People love voicemail."

Alexis opened her mouth and closed it again, which for a Van Der Berg counted as a white flag and a signed treaty. Kumiko hauled her toward the door, the tail dragging a line through the dust Chloe had missed under the shoe rack.

At the threshold, Alexis looked back.

Her hood had slipped sideways, one triangle ear pointing at the ceiling, the other sagging toward her cheek. Her mascara had given up around the second massage. She looked like the last girl at a slumber party who still hadn’t decided if she wanted to be there, and Jordan felt the stupid tug under his ribs that he had learned not to trust around midnight.

"Goodnight, princess."

"Don’t call me that while I’m wearing ears. It undermines the whole brand."

"Your brand is a cat now," Kumiko said, and pulled her into the hallway.

Alexis didn’t argue. She let herself be pulled, and the tail went last.

Chloe lifted two fingers off her mug without looking up, which from Chloe counted as a wave goodnight.

Down the corridor, Miss Valentine’s door opened two inches and closed again. Kumiko’s voice faded toward 403 in a rapid stream of Japanese and dumpling facts, a door shut, and the loft went quiet except for the fridge.

"She’s going to bake," Jordan said.

"She’s already baked twice," Chloe said. "She’s pacing herself."

Chloe rinsed her mug, dried it, set it handle-left on the rack, and walked past him to the stairs without a word. Jordan followed. A silent Chloe climbing stairs was a summons. He had stopped pretending otherwise around week three.

The fourth stair creaked under her. She stepped on it again, harder, on purpose, loud enough to carry through a brick wall.

The loft smelled like his laundry soap and the last of the galbi smoke drifting up through the rafters. Chloe set her glasses on his nightstand, right where Simp Brain had imagined the coaster. There was no coaster. She looked pleased about it. Then she pushed him down onto the mattress, wall side, and climbed on top of him in his black henley with nothing underneath.

Through the brick, Kumiko laughed, faint and muffled, and a lower voice answered it, slower and dry.

Chloe had gone still above him, her head turned an inch toward the wall. She was listening too. She caught him catching her and narrowed her eyes.

"Stop listening to the wall, Jordan."

"The wall started it."

"That was foreplay, sweetheart. Learn the difference." She dragged his sweats down and sank onto him in one long slide.

It was an argument, the way most of theirs were. She set the pace and dared him to change it. He caught her hips and held her still for three seconds just to hear what she would say.

"Don’t you dare manage me." She rolled against his grip anyway until he let go. "I manage. You comply. That’s the arrangement."

Her nails found the faded crescents she’d left on Wednesday and renewed them. His thumb found the knot above her right hip that had been bothering her since she started cooking at six that morning.

"Don’t fix my back while I’m riding you, you cheater. Keep doing it."

The headboard found the shared wall. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

The laughter on the other side of the brick stopped dead.

Chloe noticed. A wicked little smile curled her mouth, and she slammed down harder. The headboard cracked against the wall.

She leaned down until her hair curtained both their faces. "Say my name. Not the voice. Just you."

He said it. She made him say it again, louder, and turned his chin with two fingers so it went at the wall.

"Chloe, they can hear us."

"Good. Ahhh. Let them. Mmmh. Let her hear what she’s waiting for."