The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

He’d jog out with a little smile on his face and keep me there until I’d caught him up on the parts of my day he hadn’t seen. I thought a lot about his attention when things disintegrated between us. When we were friends, and especially after we became more, I felt like the only person in the world. Like I belonged to someone. He picked up every detail of my life like he was ravenous for it. I wondered a lot, alone in our bed while he pulled another all-nighter, when he stopped being hungry for me. Now, as he stops two feet away, his gaze piercing in a way it’s been all day and not for years, I feel the phantom pang in my stomach.

Over the years, I grew more careful with my closest friendships. I’d learned from Heather and Mya, where I’d been too eager, too needy for their time and attention. I tempered myself, never asked for too much, made sure I gave more than I took. I was most careful with Eli, maybe because deep down I knew a fracture between us would shatter me. When we fell in love, I hesitated before I took the leap, even though I was sure about him. I’d have more to lose—not just a best friend, but everything: my Person, now my boyfriend, someone who could give me forever, a thing I craved so deeply, but only if I played my cards right. In hindsight, I see how easy the first two years of our relationship were, how effortless it was to not ask for too much, because Eli was giving me everything anyway—attention, love, time. It wasn’t needy if I didn’t request it, right?

In a flash, his palm is shaping my cheek, then palming the back of my neck to bring me closer. And it’s not warmth now, it’s heat. Something that will burn me if I don’t pull away. But I can’t. “There you are.” A smile melts across his face, slow and sleepy. “Hey, Peach.” It’s been more than five years since Eli’s called me that.

“It’s not what you think it is.” “It doesn’t matter what I think.” “It actually does,” he says, his voice low. “Very much.”

His eyes flicker lower, then widen, and I watch, mesmerized, as his Adam’s apple undulates against his throat. “You…are wet.” I look down. “Oh.” My sleep shirt isn’t white, but this is a bad time to discover that if white’s winning the wet T-shirt contest, lavender’s a fierce contender. It doesn’t fully reveal the shade of things, but it certainly details the shape. Eli flushes, swallowing hard again as he looks away, scratching at his stubbled cheek. We used to see each other naked every day, in mundane moments and intensely pleasurable ones. He’s perched on the closed toilet seat to talk to me while I showered; I’ve watched him strip out of his work clothes while I recited a grocery list. He’s had the nipples that are making his ears flush red now in his mouth hundreds of times. He’s touched my breasts, kissed them, given them ridiculous pet names and fucked them. I could draw this man’s dick by memory, have had my hands and body all over it, and yet catching a glimpse of his chest this close makes my face bloom fire-hot. We’re both embarrassed, as if all that knowledge doesn’t sit between us.

A hot tear rolls down my cheek. Eli’s expression morphs from confusion to surprise to intense tenderness so fast it hurts, right beneath my ribs.

I try to keep my attention on his work, but soon enough I’m following the trail of undulating muscles in his forearms up to the bunch and release of his biceps, the shift of his shoulders and the flex of his back. Then, torturously, he lets out a soft grunt of exertion. My body recognizes it immediately as the sound he’d make when he’d watch me take him inside, and every erogenous zone I have lights up like a pinball machine. I’m not going to survive this.

“No, still working hard.” I shrug. “Probably until the day he dies.” For a moment he’s quiet, jaw flexing. And then he says, “He’ll regret that someday. Having a daughter like you and not taking advantage of every minute.” My throat clogs. “It’s—” “Don’t say it’s fine.” His eyes are locked on me, his voice strangely hoarse. “It’s not.”

“Oh my god, you got it!” It’s like someone’s plucked me by the back of the shirt and dropped me over the edge of a cliff. The relief is that visceral. It’s the excuse I’ll use later for why, when Eli stands, I throw my arms around his neck.

I don’t know the last time Eli and I hugged for real, because of a shared happiness. If I could pinpoint that moment, I probably would’ve spent the last five years torturing myself with it, so maybe it’s for the best. I just know that when Eli wraps his arms around my waist following a brief hesitation, it feels like coming home after the longest time away. He lets out a shattered breath, pulling me closer, crushing my breasts against his chest. His heart hammers with mine.

“In thirty seconds, you’re not going to want this, and I can’t pull away, so you’re the one who has to.”

“Okay. Four things you can touch.” He closes his eyes. “The sheets. This pillow under my head. The breeze coming in from the window. Myself.” “That’s a little personal, Mora,” I tease, trying not to imagine that. Or remember it. I know exactly what it looks like.

“That job came first at a time when it shouldn’t have, and I paid the price for it.” A fissure cracks my heart before I can stop it. He’s not talking about us, but in another life, that sentiment would fit perfectly. A puzzle piece we’ve been missing for years. If we were talking about us. God, now we really have to get out of this. “Does Adam know?” Something flashes in his eyes—that disappointment again, maybe. “You’re the only person I’ve told, other than my family. I’ll tell him once they’re back from the honeymoon.” I nod, then say softly, “Wow. You really blew up your life.” Our gazes catch and hold. I feel so many things—confusion wondering why now and not five years ago, sadness knowing the answer would likely devastate me, fear and pride and such an intense, unwelcome wanting—and I hope he doesn’t see any of that. I hope he sees a Georgia who’s surprised but unruffled by this news. Who’s unruffled by him in her bed at three in the morning on a Tuesday, in the place where we started to tip into love years ago. After an unbearable beat, he looks down, his ears turning pink. “Belatedly. But yeah, I did.”

“That loveseat is for toddlers. Just stay here tonight.” He gazes at me, and in those seconds, I think five times about snatching my words back. But then he says, voice pitched low and rough, “I can’t.” “Why?” A stupid question. I can think of a million reasons we shouldn’t, and yet the single reason we should wipes all of that away: this bed isn’t either of ours. Sharing it tonight doesn’t have to count. “I—” He grimaces, then lets out a helpless, pained sound. “What if you have another panic attack?” I want to smack myself for pushing. “I don’t wa— you shouldn’t have to be alone.” I don’t want you to be alone. He hears the words I didn’t even say, and some of his hesitation dissolves.

then warm skin as my mouth traverses the column of a throat. I sigh against the rumble that vibrates my skin. It’s the kind of vivid, early morning memory-dream that used to torture me, but now I sink into it, remember the hands that would— “Yes,” I sigh as a broad palm cups my ass, cinching me tight to the body I’m wrapped around. Fingers graze the waistband of my sleep shorts, moving under my shirt to trace the column of my spine until they curl around my ribs, digging into the underside of my breast. There’s a neediness to the touch that makes my stomach spiral.

I crave a mouth against my throat the second before it’s there—teeth scraping my skin, almost biting, a burn that dissolves into throbbing pressure. A deep groan echoes mine. Someone desperate for me. No, not someone. Eli. His sleep-slurred, “Fuck, Georgia,” is pressed against my cheek as I’m gently pushed onto my back. My eyes pop open. It’s not a memory or a dream. It’s now, time as twisted around us as the sheets. Eli’s hovering over me, his chain dangling in the bare space between us. His pupils are wide, mouth parted and swollen from sleep. I want them swollen from me. It’s a fully coherent thought and a terrible idea, and yet— My hands move up his sides with a mind of their own. He shivers, his eyes falling shut, and my body gets heavy again, not with sleep but something hazy and warm like it. I search for telltale signs that Eli’s in one of his dream states. “Where are you?” I whisper. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. Huskily, he says, “With you.” “Are you awake?” His eyes are wild and hot, not because he isn’t here. Because he is. “Do you want me to be?”

“Can you be awake in three minutes instead?” His expression slackens in relief, and he lets some of his weight settle onto me, slotting in right where I need him. “You’re in charge of the timer.” “Why?” I gasp, arching my hips against his. “Because I won’t be able to stop,” he murmurs. “And we have to. Right?” “Yes,” I start to say, but he dissolves the word when his mouth slants over mine. There’s no easing into it. Eli knows exactly what I like—a teasing tongue sliding against mine at first, an overwhelmed groan as he takes it deeper and then pulls back to bite at my lower lip. The reality of kissing him again is a shock I couldn’t have prepared myself for, like finding something I thought I’d lost forever sitting on my top shelf. Within reach the whole time, back in my hands again.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he breathes. “Thank god I jerked off earlier.” His admission pierces my sex fog, then intensifies it. “What?” He sucks a path down my neck. “Before we went swimming.” I pull back. “It took me, like, five minutes to get changed, and you were already in the pool when I got out there.” He raises his head, his lust-drunk expression turning sheepish. “Yeah, well, it took me like five seconds.” I let out a cackle that pulls his swollen mouth into a wide grin, and he bends, dissolving into soft laughter as he scrapes his teeth against my collarbone. “What were you thinking about?” “You.” He presses the word into my skin; it goes straight to my veins. “This. The way you taste and your sounds and your laugh. How well you fill my hands. What it would feel like to have you again.”

“Do you remember when we got together…” He shifts over to my other breast, murmuring, “And I told you about the things I wanted to do our last summer here?” Hazily, I recall Eli handing me confessions: I wanted to get my hands all over you in the pool so you’d feel me when you went to bed, he whispered at the corner store one night. Wanted to put you on your knees in your cottage living room, he murmured against my ear at a party, his body curling over me from behind. Wanted to kiss you in the middle of a vineyard block. Tell you I love you at breakfast, while we were working, in the middle of the night— Just because I could. The last thing winds itself around me. It pulls fear and exhilaration into my veins, even though I know he’s talking about what we’re doing now—finally getting to act out the way we wanted each other then. “I remember,” I sigh. “I’ve still got my list,” he says, his hand curving over my thigh. “I know how you love those.”

When he puts his mouth on me, the sound he makes is utterly wrecked, his fingers digging hard into my thigh. He doesn’t have to say the words for me to know it’s good, but he does anyway because he knows the praise will make me mindless. He whispers, “You taste incredible, you’re so fucking good, Georgia, look at what you do to me,” as he wraps a hand around himself, stroking slowly while he licks me so well.

I’m done, but he’s not, not until I’m begging, pulling at his hair. He rises to his knees, his eyes glittering in the darkness, still stroking himself. “Jesus.” “Are you joking?” I nearly slur. “How did you get better at that?” “Not with practice,” he assures me. “It’s just you.”

❤️

“God, you feel so good. I missed you so much.” His voice breaks in the middle of the confession, cracking a tiny fissure into my heart. Soothing a missingness I’ve carried with me since I left New York.

“This is on the list.” “What is?” “Kissing you right here. I always loved being outside with you at night in the summer. You looked so beautiful that it made my heart ache.” His voice drops. “And so happy. I loved seeing you like that.”

“Will you give me your mouth now?” It’s so easy to say yes. He lets out a bare groan as soon as our lips touch, another one, hungrier now, when I give him my tongue, my taste, those quiet sounds that seem to wind his need so tight. He curls over me, hand still cradling my face, gentle despite the way our kiss turns deep and unrestrained.

“Fuck, the way I’ve wanted you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I don’t know how anyone can look at me and not see it.”

How, even if Eli and I had talked ourselves hoarse when we lived together, even if I had begged him every night to take better care of himself, of me, he would’ve chosen his job. How I would’ve had to hear that out loud instead of living it silently. It wouldn’t have made things better. It would’ve hurt more. Jamie’s fingers tighten around my leg, holding me in place. “What you’ve been doing the past five years hasn’t brought you any peace, but six days together has pushed you two into some other space. What if what Eli wants does, too?” “No,” I say thickly. “It’ll ruin everything.”

Comeeeee onnnnnnn

“Relationships are messy, but that’s how you know they’re real. Blake and I have shown each other every ugly piece of ourselves and she still loves me. She loves me more for it, in fact. Sometimes you have to cut yourself open, Georgia, and you hold yourself so tightly.” “I have to.” I hate the way my voice breaks. “You think so, and I understand it,” she says. “You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?” I look at the blurred shape of her, blinking as a tear rolls down my cheek. “Because then I’m alone.”

🥺

“He has no idea. You’re going to flatten him.” She doesn’t mean Adam. He and Eli come in last. They’re nearly side by side, broad-shouldered with lines bracketing their mouths and the corners of their eyes. They’re the boys I ran around every inch of this property with, now all grown up, and the nostalgia of it nearly knocks me over. I measure Adam’s expression first—confusion, then realization, his eyes meeting mine as his mouth falls open—then look at Eli. He’s staring at me. His face is totally blank at first, but then I see it—the way his eyes start to glisten, the shake of his hand as he rubs his mouth. The sweep of his lashes as he looks down, turns to Adam, and then pulls him in for a hug.

“I can’t say what I really want to,” Eli says hoarsely. “So right now I’m going to say thank you and hug you, because if I don’t get my hands on you in some way I’m going to fucking lose it.” I get out a relieved, whooshing, “Yesokay” before he pulls me close. One hand curls around my shoulder to anchor me to him, the other wrapping around my back, his fingers digging in so hard it’s pleasure-pain. He breathes out against my neck, not quite a sigh, almost a groan. “So, hey,” a voice says in my ear after a lingering moment. I wrench back to find Jamie standing there with a too-wide grin on her face. “The pelvis-to-pelvis-hug situation can only go on for a few seconds if you’re going to pull this off. I’m just saying.” My cheeks erupt with color. “Right.” Eli coughs, ears flushed. “I’m gonna—”

Awww hahaha

“I counted. You were across the room with Adam and you laughed and I l—” His exhale is hard and shaky. “I wasn’t going to be able to fake it. I had to face the wall and count streamers.”

“It’s unreal,” he says quietly, “that I love watching you get dressed as much as I love watching you get naked. I used to sit at the office when I was working late and think about how you were probably putting on your pajamas and I was missing it, and fucking hating myself. I never thought I’d get to watch you do it again.” His exhale brushes over my neck, right below where I’ve fashioned my hair into a loose bun. “Don’t think I’m taking this moment for granted, Georgia, or any moment you’ve given me this week.”

“You moved out, and Adam and Grace moved away, and now we barely see each other. It feels like the fuller your lives get, the less space there is for me. If I leave, maybe that space will go away completely.” Eli’s attention is a weight, like his hands on my back just minutes ago. It was like that with him, too. The bigger his job and anxiety got, the further it pushed me until I was crammed into a corner. Until I was so small there was no space at all.

“Growing up, I didn’t have the true-friends thing, or the close-family thing, and then you came along and turned into both for me. And I’m sorry, I know it’s so much to take, but I need you all. I don’t want you to forget me if I move to Seattle and I don’t want to miss you the way I have for the past nine months, and I’m scared I’m the only one who feels that way.”

“Those shoes are lethal,” he murmurs in my ear. I pull back to see a trace of a smile on his lips, the storm clouds cleared from his eyes. I grip my bouquet. “I’m throwing this entire outfit away when I get home. It’s trying to kill me.” His Adam’s apple presses hard against his throat, a transfixing undulation against his skin. “I think it’s got a vendetta against me, too.” “Not another victim,” I murmur. “Sadly.” He skims me from head to toe. It’s quick, maybe three seconds, but it lingers on my skin. “You look so beautiful I can’t feel my knees.”

When she meets his eyes, her face breaks into a smile that’s sun-like, and Adam’s eyes flood with tears. They don’t stop looking at one another, not even when her dad hugs her and then Adam. Their dizzy-looking smiles are identical as they face each other, clasping hands. “Hello, wife,” he whispers. She gives him a radiant look. “Not yet.” “Hurry,” Adam tells Cole without looking at him, drawing a ripple of laughter from the guests.

Legitimately the most touching wedding I’ve read and they’re not even the main characters. I’m crying

I thought I knew what the reckoning would be, but when he turns on his heel and stalks back to me, I’m in no way prepared for what he actually says. He stops just short of me, a flame in his eyes. No, not a flame—a wildfire. “It matters,” he says, his voice breaking, “because I’m in love with you.”

“What?” I whisper, flattened. “I’m in love with you,” he repeats, calmer now. For a flash we’re back to the night he told me he loved me for the first time, a week after my birthday. We’re at the grocery store, delirious from studying, and I’m blearily arguing with myself over whether Smucker’s or Welch’s has the more accurate grape flavor for the PB&J I plan to annihilate. I look over to find Eli watching me, the softest, most happy smile on his face. His paper-rings smile. In that moment, I say “What?” and he says, “I’m in love with you.”

“Oh my god, Eli.” My voice shakes. “What does ‘still’ mean?” He inhales, but my imagination has spiraled. “Are you talking this week? A few months? Were you in love with me when you flew the woman you were dating across the country to go to Nick and Miriam’s wedding?”

didn’t want to miss the wedding, but the thought of going alone and seeing you with someone else, someone you’d been dating for months—” He inhales sharply, like it hurts to even say it, and that pain radiates into me.

I spent that whole night so miserable thinking he wanted her, thinking he’d moved on when I couldn’t, even if it looked like it from the outside. I spent the months after trying to shake it off, trying to pull myself back into the space where that old list kept me safe. But maybe it was dead even before he stepped off the plane last week. “When I say I’m still in love with you,” he says quietly, “I mean today and yesterday and this entire week. I mean at Nick and Miriam’s wedding and I mean for the past five years.” If possible, he gets even quieter, but now he’s closer so I get every word. “When I say I’m still in love with you, I mean the first time I saw you and right now. I mean every second in between.”

“This week has shown me we can still have that, but if we keep doing this, I’m going to think about how you’re in love with me and you’ve been in love with me this whole time—through everything—and yet you let me leave you without a fight. I’m going to think about how you quit your job now and how you’re going to therapy now and how I wasn’t enough for any of that five years ago.”

Because you were so excited to see me when I got to BY yesterday that you ran too fast down the driveway and ate shit. Because you let me carry you inside. Gonna think about your breath on my neck all summer. Because the cartoon Band-Aids Julia brought made you laugh, then you laughed harder when I wiped the dirt off your teeth. Even like that you’re so beautiful. Especially like that. Again, because you were so excited to see me. Fuck, I am so in love with you. And another one. Because I came to bed at 3 last night and you were asleep, but you turned toward me and let me hold you. Feels like it’s been weeks since we’ve hugged.

“Georgia, come on.” His voice turns quiet, his eyes warm and happy. “The cupcake is a front. I’m here because I love you.”