Call Me Yours Until Monday

The Kind of Yes I Don't Usually Give

I don't do family. I don't do weddings. I don't stand in someone else's photographs and smile like I belong in the frame. That was the rule, and I liked the rule, because rules keep a girl from getting stupid. Then he asked. Not with flowers. Not with a speech. Just that low, almost-lazy voice of his, like he already knew the answer and was only being polite about the asking.

His sister was getting married in three days, he said. His mother had been circling him like a hawk with a seating chart. There would be questions, and aunts, and a very specific kind of pity reserved for men who arrived alone looking expensive and unclaimed. He needed someone who could walk into a ballroom and make the whole room recalculate. He needed me. He said it like a fact, not a compliment, which is exactly how you get under my skin.

I told him I charged for my time. He said he'd pay for the dress, the suite, the flight, and anything else I pointed at. I told him I wasn't an escort. He smiled like I'd said something adorable. You're a weapon, Maya, he said. I'm just asking you to point yourself in a useful direction for seventy-two hours. Call it a favor. Call it a performance. Call it whatever you want as long as you wear something that makes my uncles forget their names.

I said yes because I liked the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching. I said yes because I was bored of men who asked permission to want me. I said yes because seventy-two hours felt short enough to survive and long enough to enjoy. I did not say yes because I thought it would stay pretend. I am not that naïve. I am just that curious.

The Car and the Script

He picked me up in black, quiet, expensive, the kind of car that makes valet boys stand up straighter. I wore the dress he'd sent without asking my size, which meant he'd been paying attention for longer than this favor required. Dark wine silk. A back that made a promise and a neckline that kept it. When I slid into the passenger seat, his gaze dragged from my mouth to the slit at my thigh and stayed there a second too long for a man who claimed this was logistics.

Ground rules, he said, pulling into traffic like we weren't already late to becoming a lie. We met through a friend of a friend. We've been seeing each other for four months. You're the reason I stopped answering my mother's texts about that lawyer from church. You hate olives. You like your coffee like you like your men. I interrupted him. Don't finish that sentence unless you want me to test it.

He laughed, and the laugh did something unhelpful to the space between us. His hand rested on the gear, close enough that if I shifted my knee I'd feel heat. I didn't. Not yet. I watched the city peel away toward the coast and practiced saying his name the way a woman says it when she has a right to. It sat strangely well in my mouth. Too well. Like I'd been saving the shape of it.

At a red light he reached over, slow, and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. For later, he said. In case someone is watching when we get there. His fingertips skimmed the shell of my ear, then the side of my throat, a nothing-touch that wasn't nothing. I felt it land low, a warm drop of want I had not budgeted for. I caught his wrist before he could retreat. If you're going to touch me for the story, I said, do it like you mean the story. Don't pet me like a nervous extra.

His eyes went dark in a way that had nothing to do with traffic. Yes, ma'am, he murmured, and the words had weight. When he put his hand back on the wheel, I could still feel the ghost of his fingers on my neck, like a brand that hadn't decided to stay.

How to Walk In Like You Already Belong

The venue was all white stone and ocean light, the kind of place that photographs better than it forgives. His family filled the terrace like a painting that had opinions. I felt the temperature change when we stepped out of the car together. Not because of the sun. Because of him. Because his palm found the small of my back with a certainty that made my spine answer before my brain could file a protest.

Maya, he said, and then he said it again, louder, to the cluster of silk and jewelry turning toward us. This is Maya. The way he offered my name made it sound like a secret he was proud of leaking. I smiled the smile I use when I already know I've won the room. I let him keep his hand where it was. I leaned a fraction into him, just enough for perfume to become evidence. His sister hugged me like she'd been waiting years. His mother looked me up and down with the precise hunger of a woman checking for cracks.

I gave her none. I laughed at the right stories. I touched his lapel when I spoke, two fingers, possessive without being cheap. I let him introduce me as the woman who had ruined his sleep for months. Every time he said it, something in my stomach pulled tight, a knot of heat that had no business existing for a script. The aunts loved me. The cousins watched his mouth when he looked at me. I watched his mouth too. I couldn't help it. It kept almost smiling like he was in on a joke that had stopped being funny and started being dangerous.

Someone asked how we met. He didn't use the script. He said I walked into a room and the room lost. He said I still haven't given it back. I felt my pulse misbehave against the thin strap of my dress. I covered it by taking his drink out of his hand and sipping from the same place his mouth had been. For the photograph, I could have claimed. There was no camera on us then. Only his eyes, tracking the rim of the glass like he wanted to follow.

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It gets a lot less tame from here.

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What the Camera Makes You Do

They posed us under a trellis of white flowers that smelled like money and June. Closer, the photographer said, like we hadn't already been standing close enough to share breath. His arm tightened around my waist. My hip found the line of his thigh. Silk whispered. I felt the heat of him through two layers of well-behaved clothing and decided well-behaved was a costume I was tired of.

Look at each other, not the lens. That was the instruction. So I did. I looked at him like I had been paid to, and then I looked at him like I hadn't. There is a difference, and he felt it. I watched his throat work. I watched his gaze drop to my mouth and stay, unprofessional, unperformed. The shutter kept clicking. I did not hear it. I heard him inhale like the air had gotten expensive.

His thumb moved at my waist, a small, secret stroke just above the seam of the dress, hidden from everyone except my nervous system. I should have stepped on his foot. I should have laughed it off as method acting. Instead I let my fingers curl into the back of his jacket, gathering fabric, gathering him. For the picture, Maya, he said, so quiet only I got it. I know, I said. That's the problem.

They asked for one more. A kiss, nothing indecent, just enough to make the album honest. He hesitated like a gentleman, which was insulting, because gentlemen do not look at me the way he was looking at me. I solved it. I rose onto the balls of my feet, framed his jaw with my hand, and put my mouth on his like the weekend had already run out of patience. It was supposed to be a stamp. A prop. It lingered. His lips were warm and sure and slightly stunned, and then they weren't stunned at all. He kissed me back with a slow, devastating accuracy, like he'd been rehearsing in private for a part he pretended not to want. When we broke, the photographer said perfect, and I thought: that wasn't for you.

The Dance They Put on the Schedule

Dinner was a blur of toasts and silver and his knee against mine under the table, a steady, shameless pressure that made dessert irrelevant. Every time someone mentioned the future, his hand found my thigh, high enough to be a claim, low enough to stay decent. Decent is a sliding scale. By the third course I had forgotten which side of it we were on. I kept my voice sweet for his mother and my eyes dirty for him. He kept missing his own punchlines.

Then there was dancing, because of course there was dancing. The band played something slow enough to be a dare. He stood, offered his hand, and I took it like I'd been waiting to. On the floor he drew me in until there was no polite space left, until my chest met the heat of his, until I could count his breathing by the way it moved against me. One of his hands spanned my back, fingers splayed over bare skin where the dress forgot to exist. The other held mine like we were in church. We were not in church.

You can hold me like you want to, I said against his cheek, because the room was loud and I am not a woman who whispers for no reason. I am holding you like I want to, he said. That's the issue. His mouth was close enough that the words touched me. I turned my face a degree, enough for my lips to graze the corner of his. Not a kiss. A warning. He made a sound I felt more than heard, a rough, restrained thing that lived in his chest and traveled straight into mine.

We turned. The lights made a gold smear of the terrace. Other couples existed somewhere in theory. His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, right over the frantic proof that I was not acting anymore. I wanted to tell him the contract had a hole in it. I wanted to tell him Monday was a rumor. I wanted, with a clarity that almost embarrassed me, to be taken apart by the same hands that were being so careful in public. I did not say any of that. I let my body say it. I fit myself against him until there was nowhere honest left to hide, and I stayed there for the whole song, and the next one, and the silence after, when the band paused and we didn't.

The Hallway After the Last Toast

People thinned. Perfume and champagne and leftover violin hung in the air like a spell that hadn't been told to stop. He said goodnight to his sister with me still under his arm, still playing the part, except my smile had gone private and his voice had gone low. Someone joked that we should get a room. We already had one. That was the joke, and also the threat.

The corridor to the suites was long, carpeted, dim, the kind of quiet that makes every footstep sound like a decision. He walked beside me without touching me, which was worse than touching. I could feel the heat of him anyway, a weather system at my shoulder. When we reached our door he stopped with the key in his hand and looked at me like the weekend had just remembered it had a body.

You were very convincing, I said, because if I didn't put words in the air I was going to put my mouth on him again, and this time there would be no photographer to blame. So were you, he said. Too convincing. His gaze dropped, rose, dropped again, hungry in a way he wasn't bothering to costume. I leaned my back against the door, not opening it, not letting him open it, trapping us in that last public inch of hallway where anyone could turn the corner and see what we were about to stop pretending.

Say it, I told him. Say what this is, or don't come inside talking like it's still a favor. He stepped in. Not all the way. Just enough that I had to tip my chin up. Just enough that I could feel how warm he was, how tightly he was holding himself together. Maya. The way he said my name then did not belong to his mother, or the album, or Monday. It belonged to the space between my mouth and his, a space that had gotten small and electric and badly behaved. If I kiss you now, he said, it won't be for them. I know, I said. That's why you're still standing there like a man who wants to be ruined on purpose.

One Key, Two People Who Should Have Known Better

The suite was all ocean glass and low lamps and a bed that had been made by someone who didn't know what we were about to do to the idea of sleep. The door clicked shut. The performance should have ended there, the way a costume comes off when the lights go down. It didn't. He set the key on the table with too much care, like any sudden movement might detonate the air. I unzipped nothing. I didn't have to. The dress was already a confession.

I walked to the window because I needed a second that wasn't his mouth. The water outside was black and restless. Behind me I heard him shrug out of his jacket, the quiet violence of cufflinks hitting wood. Then I felt him. Not touching yet. Standing close enough that his breath warmed the nape of my neck, close enough that my skin tightened in anticipation like it had been trained for him. You can still keep it clean, I said, and even I didn't believe me. I don't want it clean, he said. I want it true. For a few hours. For however long you'll let me stop lying.

His hands found my waist from behind, slow, giving me time to refuse a thing I had no intention of refusing. Heat through silk. The solid length of him a promise at my back. I let my head fall against his shoulder and felt his mouth land, finally, on the side of my throat, not rushed, not shy, a lingering open press that made my breath catch hard enough to embarrass the quiet. His fingers spread, sliding up, tracing the edge of the dress where fabric surrendered to skin. I covered his hands with mine and kept them there, greedy, guiding, showing him I was not a prop he had to handle gently.

Turn around, he said, and I did, because I like being told when the telling sounds like worship. We were so close our mouths kept brushing as we tried to talk and failed. I hooked a finger in his collar and pulled. He made that sound again, the one from the dance floor, and then his kiss was not for any camera that had ever existed. It was deep and unhurried and starving in turns, like he couldn't decide whether to savor me or take. I decided for both of us. I kissed him like the weekend was a fuse. I kissed him like Monday could beg. My back met the glass, cold against overheated skin, and his body followed, pinning heat to chill until I couldn't tell which one I was melting from.

The Almost That Wouldn't Resolve

We made it as far as the edge of the bed and no further into sense. His tie was gone. My hair was a wreck he had made with both hands. The dress had slipped off one shoulder and he kept kissing the newly bared line of it like it had personally offended him by being hidden all night. I had his shirt open enough to feel the heat of his chest under my palms, the hard working rise of his breath, the way he trembled when I dragged my nails lightly down and then stopped, cruel, because I wanted him to ask.

Maya. Please. It wasn't pretty. It was better than pretty. It was a man who had spent an entire wedding introducing me as his and had only just realized he meant it. I took his face in my hands and made him look at me. If we do this, I said, you don't get to call it a scene in the morning. You don't get to put the script back on with your cufflinks. You don't get to tell your mother I was a weekend with good posture. His forehead rested against mine. We were breathing like we'd been running. His mouth hovered, wrecked and close. I wasn't acting in the hallway, he said. I haven't been acting since you took my drink. I might have been acting the day I asked you. I'm not now.

That should have been the moment we fell. It almost was. His hand slid up my thigh, under the slit, a slow claiming that made my whole body arch into him, made a helpless sound leave my throat that I will not pretend was ladylike. He kissed it off my mouth. We stayed like that, shaking, pressed together, the want so loud it felt like another person in the room. I could have pulled him down. He could have finished what the photographs started. The air was thick with the decision.

A phone buzzed on the table. His. Then mine, a second later, like the world had noticed we were about to stop being useful. A message from his sister: breakfast at nine, Mother wants Maya next to her. A reminder that the act still had hours on the clock. He didn't look at the screen. He looked at me, pupils blown, mouth wet from mine, and I saw the war happen in real time: the man who needed a date until Monday, and the man who was one thin inch of self-control away from forgetting there was a Monday at all.

Don't you dare fix your tie, I whispered, because if he put the costume back on I was going to do something unforgivable with it. He smiled, wrecked and wicked, and his hand tightened on my thigh like a vow he hadn't said out loud yet. Breakfast is in six hours, he said. Tell me to stop and I will. Tell me to keep the act running and I will smile for my mother with your lipstick still on my mouth. I didn't tell him either thing. I pulled him closer by the open shirt until there was no air left to be honest with, until the next kiss was inevitable, until the only unfinished business in that room was us. The phone lit up again, ignored. Somewhere below us the ocean kept throwing itself at the rocks like it also didn't know how to quit. I had six hours, a borrowed name, and a man who had stopped feeling borrowed. I let the dress slip another inch, and I waited to see which version of him would reach for me first.