his family’s house in connecticut has rules that aren’t written down but somehow everyone knows them anyway. no front stairs—you go around the back. assigned seats at dinner, mine next to david, the golden boy finance brother, who pulls out my chair like we’re at a michelin restaurant instead of a place that still uses a monogrammed napkin at every meal. monogrammed. like they got a bulk deal from some old money catalog and just committed. sarah from the tire shop where i work would laugh for days if she knew. i make $17/hour fixing flats on weekend shifts and here i am at thanksgiving at a house where the napkins have embroidered initials.
my roommate connor brought me. he went to college with rich kids and came back weird about it, so for thanksgiving he’d mentioned casually like it wasn’t a thing that his family said i should come, and his mom had apparently said yes, and now i’m in the cousin’s room—the absent cousin, the one who’s doing something in london and therefore i get to sleep in his monogrammed sheets and use his bathroom where the soap is shaped like a shell.
it’s 12:47am. i can’t sleep. the house is this kind of old and fancy that means it creaks at specific times, and i’m too aware of every creak coming from david’s room two doors down. i’ve been trying not to think about the way his hand stayed on the small of my back when he showed me where the wine glasses go, or how he looked at my thighs when i wore the dress connor said would be “nice” but which is apparently also read as “invitation” in the language old money boys speak.
i shouldn’t want this. class anger is supposed to be my whole thing—i work at a tire shop, my mom’s a receptionist, and here i am wanting a guy whose family probably has multiple houses. i’m just here because connor felt bad and wanted to prove something, and david’s the golden boy who’s engaged-ish to someone named charlotte and works in finance and speaks very carefully about wine pairings. that’s the story. that’s the rule i should follow.
at 1:03am there’s a knock.
i’m awake. i don’t move. the knock is soft, the kind of knock that says i’m hoping you’re awake but can pretend i wasn’t if you don’t answer.
“come in,” i say, because i’m insane. or because i’ve been waiting.
david opens the door with a towel. he actually has a towel. it’s perfect, it’s almost funny, except his eyes go right to where my thigh is showing above the monogrammed sheets and it stops being funny.
“hey,” he says quietly. “i realized we didn’t give you a good bathroom towel. the one in there is for decoration.”
“it’s almost one in the morning.”
“yeah.” he comes in and closes the door behind him. “i know.”
“you came to my room at one in the morning to bring a towel.”
“i did, yeah.” he sits on the edge of the bed, not close, very carefully not close, and i can feel the outline of him trying to be respectful and failing. “but that’s not why. i was coming to ask if you wanted to get some water, because jet lag or whatever, sometimes it helps, and then i remembered the towel as a—” he laughs at himself. “—as a thing to say so it wasn’t weird.”
“it’s still weird.”
“i know.” he looks at me. “is it bad weird or—”
“why do you care. you’re engaged.”
“i’m not. that’s been done for like six months, she just tells her mom we are because it’s easier. we don’t even live in the same state.”
“that’s insane.”
“yeah. a lot about my family is insane. you noticed the napkins.”
“i noticed the napkins.”
“do you want me to leave.”
and the thing is, this is the moment. this is where i get to be good. where i get to be the working-class person who knows better than to want rich boys who smell like pressed shirts and generational wealth. where i get to have principles. where i get to not be that girl who fucks the guy her roommate brought home at thanksgiving.
“no,” i say. “i don’t want you to leave.”
he stands up and locks the door—who even locks a door in your family’s house at 1am—and comes back to the bed, and he’s slow about it, giving me chances to change my mind, and when he reaches for my face with both hands he’s so gentle about it that it makes me angrier, because i don’t want gentle, i want to be angry. i want to not want this. instead i pull him down and kiss him like it’s a punishment.
his mouth is hot and he tastes like expensive scotch from dinner. he leans into me and his hand comes up under the monogrammed sheet and finds my thigh and the angle puts him on top of me, pressing me into the cousin’s bed, and when i’m straddling him five seconds later he’s already breathless.
“are you sure?” he says into my collarbone.
“shut up.”
i want to go slow. i want to hate him. instead i’m pulling his button-up open—it’s a real button-up at 1am on thanksgiving, because of course—and he’s the kind of fit that comes from a gym membership you pay $200 a month for, and my hands know it’s wrong and take him apart anyway.
“i want to—” he starts, and i already know.
“yeah.”
i slide off him and onto my knees on the floor—the floor’s marble or something equally ridiculous—and pull his pants down. he’s hard already, been hard probably the whole dinner, and when i wrap my hand around him he makes this sound like a confession.
i take him slow. his cock is thick and curves slightly and he’s so careful about not pushing, hands on the mattress next to my head, just letting me set the pace, and god, the respect of it makes me want to bite him. i go deeper, till he’s at the back of my throat, and he says “okay” like he’s checking in, and i nod with him still in my mouth and he closes his eyes.
“if you keep doing that i’m not going to last,” he says against the top of my head.
“good.”
i don’t let up. i want him wrecked. i want him to be undone by the girl who works at the tire shop, the girl his family probably hoped he’d be “careful” with. his thigh muscle starts shaking under my hand and he pulls me off him gently.
“i want to fuck you,” he says. “can i?”
Connor didn’t mention condoms. i’m on birth control but i’m not insane. “drawer,” i say.
he finds it in about two seconds—of course he does, he probably knows every drawer in this house has condoms, or his brother does, or—i don’t care. he rolls it on and comes back over me.
i want to slow down. i want to savor it, make it mean something. instead he bends me over the edge of the bed and i’m gripping the monogrammed sheets and his hand comes up over my mouth—not choking, just there, his palm flat against my mouth, muffling the sound i make when he pushes in—and he starts fucking me and it’s not gentle anymore, it’s quiet but it’s not gentle. his hand stays over my mouth, his other on my hip, and every stroke is trying not to make noise while also going deep enough that i feel him in my stomach.
“don’t make a sound,” he whispers. “my mom’s room is right below us.”
it’s such a he-said thing that i hate laughing against his hand. the laugh makes me clench and he groans into my shoulder.
he’s good at this. like, actually good. he uses his angles and he knows where to aim and he’s reading my body like it’s a language he studied. the monogrammed sheets are bunched up under my fists and i’m biting the inside of my cheek to stay quiet and his hand is still over my mouth and it’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.
“come on,” he says in my ear. “let me feel it.”
i come with his hand over my mouth and my back arching off the bed. it takes two more strokes before he’s there with me, coming quiet and deep, his forehead on my shoulder blade, his whole body going still.
we lie there for a second. his hand falls away from my mouth. he’s still inside me, breathing hard against my back.
“your brother can’t find out,” i say.
“Connor can suck it.”
“you’re insane.”
“yeah.” he pulls out and sits back, disposing of the condom in the bathroom like an adult. when he comes back he kisses the back of my neck. “are you okay.”
“i’m fine.”
“good. i’m going to go now so it’s not weird if anyone sees.”
he gets dressed slowly, buttoning his shirt up wrong and then having to start over, and when he kisses me goodbye it’s on the mouth and it tastes like commitment and his whole family sleeping down the hall.
after he leaves i lie there in the cousin’s monogrammed sheets that now smell like both of us, and i think about driving back to bend tomorrow and telling sarah at the tire shop that i spent thanksgiving getting fucked in a house with assigned seating and embroidered napkins.
breakfast is at 8. the napkins are linen. they have little embroidered initials in the corner of each one. i sit across from david and his mom is talking about christmas and the fact that his father is “transitioning into philanthropy,” which i think means retirement. david and i don’t look at each other. his mom asks me if i slept well and i say yes. my napkin is folded in my lap and it’s monogrammed with someone else’s initials, the family’s initials, and when i unfold it— —wait.
it’s got something written in the corner in pen. just a small mark. a phone number. written in ballpoint on a monogrammed thanksgiving napkin like we’re in a movie.
under the table i’m grinning like an asshole while his mom talks about the yams.
