far, I could maybe get a name for that employee and maybe track her down and maybe she’ll know something.” August puts her pencil down, looks at Jane finally—who is staring at her with cheeks stuffed full of dumpling and a startled expression—and prays she survives this. “Or, we could get you to remember this girl’s name.”
“How’ll we do that?” Jane says through a mouthful of pork and dough.
August looks at her puffy cheeks and swoopy hair and blows right through every piece of mental caution tape to say, “Kiss me.”
Jane chokes.
“You—” Jane coughs, forcing it down. “You want me to kiss you again?”
“Here’s the thing,” August says. She’s calm. She’s totally calm, just doing casework. It doesn’t mean anything. “It’s April. The Q shuts down in September. We’re running out of time. And the other day—when we kissed—that worked. It brought back something big. So, I think—”
“You think if you kiss me, it’ll bring this girl back like it brought back Jenny?”
“Yeah. So. Let’s…” August thinks back to what they said last time. “Do it for research.”
“Okay,” Jane says, expression unreadable. “For research.”
She bundles her takeout back into its bag, and August stands and throws her hair over her shoulder. She can do this. Start with what you know and work from there. August knows this can work.
“So,” August says, “tell me what to do.”
A beat. Jane looks up at her, brow furrowed. Then her face smooths out, and a smile plays at the corner of her mouth, the one with the dimple.
“Okay,” she says, and she spreads her legs apart a few inches, gesturing loosely for August to sit. “Get down here.”
Shit. August supposes she did ask for it.
August settles herself on one of Jane’s thighs and tucks her legs between them, her feet skimming the floor between Jane’s sneakers. If she’s being honest, she’s imagined more than once, more than a few times, what Jane’s thighs feel like. They’re strong and firm, sturdier than they look, but August doesn’t have a chance to feel anything about it before Jane’s fingertips are nudging her chin up to look at her.
“Is this okay?” Jane asks. Her hand squeezes the curve of August’s hip, holding her in place.
August looks at her, letting her gaze drop to Jane’s lips. That’s the whole point of this. It’s mechanics. “Yeah. Is this how you remember it?”
“Kind of,” she says. And, “Pull my hair.”
For a few ringing seconds, August imagines herself melting onto the floor of the train like the ghosts of a million spilled subway slushies and dropped ice cream cones.
Completely under control.
She pushes her fingers into Jane’s short hair, scraping her nails across the scalp before she closes them on a fistful and tugs.
“Like that?”
Jane releases a short breath. “Harder.”
August does as she’s told, and Jane makes another sound, one deep in her throat, which August assumes is a good sign.
“Now…” Jane says. She’s looking at August’s mouth, eyes dark as the pit at a punk show. “When I kiss you, bite.”
And before August can ask what she means, Jane closes the space between them.
The kiss is … different this time. Hotter, somehow, even though it’s not real. It’s not real, August recites in her head as she tries to pretend there’s absolutely anything academic about the way her mouth drops open at the press of Jane’s lips, anything scientifically impartial about the way she pulls harder at Jane’s hair and sinks into it, letting Jane drink her in.
Jane’s words come back to her, syrupy sweet and slow, bite, and so she sucks Jane’s bottom lip between hers and digs her teeth in. She hears her sharp inhale, feels Jane’s hand tighten in the fabric of her shirt, and thinks of it as progress. Results. She moves the way she imagines the girl Jane remembers would have moved, tries to give her the memory with her mouth—bites harder, tugs at her lip, runs her tongue over it.
It lasts only a minute or two, but it feels like a year lost in Jane’s hair and Jane’s lips and Jane’s past, Jane’s hands fisting in her curls, Jane’s thigh warm and steady under her, Jane for hours, Jane for days. It pulls like an undertow, and the case is up on the surface, and August is trying to stay there too.
When they break apart, August’s glasses are crooked and smudged, and an old woman is staring disapprovingly at them from across the aisle.
“You got a problem?” Jane says, arm slinging protectively across August’s shoulders.