“Which way we goin’, angel?” she asks, raindrops sliding into her mouth.

August blinks water out of her eyes. “I don’t guess you wanna take the subway?”

“Fuck you,” she says, and she laughs.

August grabs her hand, and they throw themselves into the back of a cab.

As soon as the door slams shut, she’s in Jane’s lap, swinging a leg over to straddle her hips, and she can’t stop, not when she thought she was never going to see Jane again. Jane’s fingers dig into her waist, and hers twist into Jane’s hair, and they kiss hard enough that the days they missed all fold together like a map, like the pages of a notebook shut, like it was no time at all.

Jane’s mouth falls open, and August chases after it. She skims that soft bottom lip with her teeth and finds her tongue, and Jane makes a low, hurt sound and holds her tighter.

The first time Jane kissed her for real, it felt like a warning. This time, it’s a promise. It’s a sigh of relief in the back of her throat. It’s a string of fate August never thought she’d believe in, pulling tight.

“You wanna give me an address or what?” the driver says from the front seat, sounding absolutely bored.

Jane laughs, wide and bright, right up against August’s mouth, and August leans back to say, “Parkside and Flatbush.”

On the curb outside the Popeyes, August drops her keys, and a moving truck trundles through a deep puddle of sludge on the street and drenches them both.

“Fuck,” August says, taking her dirty glasses off and plucking her keys out of the gutter. “I pictured this a lot more cinematic.”

She turns to Jane, dripping and soaked through and slightly blurry, covered in mud and grinning, still there. Just continuing to be there, somehow, despite every goddamn law of the universe saying she shouldn’t be.

“I don’t know,” Jane says, reaching out to thumb at the mascara raccooning under August’s eyes. “I think you look great.”

August breathes out a delirious laugh, and at the top of the stairs, she pushes Jane through the front door of the apartment.

“Shower,” August says, “I’m covered in street juice.”

“So sexy,” Jane teases, but she doesn’t argue.

They stumble toward the bathroom, leaving a trail of shoes and wet clothes. August turns on the faucet—somehow, miraculously, for the first time since she moved in, the water is hot.

Jane pins her to the bathroom sink and kisses her, and when August is finally down to only her wet bra and underwear, she opens her eyes.

She keeps having these moments, where she has to stare at Jane, like if she looks away for too long, she’ll disappear. But here she is, standing in August’s bathroom, hair damp and sticking out in every direction from where August has been tugging at it, in a black bra and briefs. There are her hipbones, and her bare thighs, and the rest of her tattoos—the animals up and down her sides.

August reaches down and trails her fingers over the snake’s tongue just below Jane’s waist. Jane shivers.

“You’re here,” August says.

“I’m here,” Jane confirms.

“What does it feel like?” August asks.

There’s a pause as Jane’s eyes sweep open and closed, her fingertips grazing over the porcelain of the sink behind August’s back.

“Permanent.” She says it like a complete sentence.

August’s hand slides up her back, to the clasp of her bra. “We need to talk about what this means.”

“Yeah,” Jane says. “I know. But I…” She leans back down, kissing the top of August’s cheekbone. She’s moving again, restless, finally let off the leash. “I can think later. Right now I just want to be here, okay?”

And August, who has spent every minute of the last few months wishing she could touch Jane one more time, says yes.

They manage to work wet underthings off wet bodies and then, in the shower, they dissolve into each other, graceless and messy. August loses track of who washes whose hair or where the suds are coming from. The whole landscape of the world becomes golden-brown skin and fluid black lines of ink and a feeling in her chest like flowers. She kisses, and Jane kisses back, again, forever.

It’s supposed to be just a shower—August swears—but everything is wet and warm and slick and it’s too easy and natural for her hand to slip down between Jane’s legs, and Jane’s pushing back into her palm, and it’s been so long. What else is she supposed to do?

“Missed you so fucking much,” August breathes out. She thinks it’s lost in the rush of the shower, but Jane hears it.

“I’m here,” Jane says, licking water from the hollow of August’s throat. August replaces her hand with her thigh, bearing down on Jane’s in return, and they move together, one of Jane’s hands on the wall for balance. Her breath hitches when she says it again: “I’m here.”

They’re kissing, and Jane’s grinding against her, and she feels herself sinking into a fog of want, molten skin, a mouth on hers. It’s too much, and it’s not enough, and then they’re stumbling out of the tub and August’s back is on the bathmat, on the bathroom floor, and Jane is kissing her like she wants to disappear into her, hands roaming.

“Hang on,” Jane says, moving to pull back. August grabs her wrist.

“Why—ah—” August gasps at the change of angle before Jane takes her fingers away completely. “For God’s sake—why would you ever stop doing that—”

“Because,” Jane says, pinching August on the hip, “I don’t want to fuck you on the bathroom floor.”

“We’ve fucked on the subway,” August says. Her voice comes out pouty and petulant. She does not care. “The bathroom floor is an upgrade.”

“I’m not against the bathroom floor,” Jane says. “I mean, there are a lot of places in this apartment where I have every intention of fucking you. I just want to start with the bed.”

Oh, right. The bed. They can have sex in a bed now.

“Hurry up, then,” August says, clambering to her feet and pulling a towel with her. It’s a testament to all they’ve been through together that she doesn’t even think to care what her body looks like as she wrenches the door open and crosses into her bedroom.

“You’re so annoying,” Jane says, but she’s close behind, shutting the door and pulling August into her, throwing the towel across the room as carelessly as she threw August’s glasses that night on the Manhattan Bridge.

She backs August toward the bed, and August can feel warm, shower-fresh skin everywhere, and she’s going crazy over it. Jane’s waist and hips, the tight swells of her ass and thighs, ribs, breasts, elbows, ankles. She’s losing it. She’s a lifelong heretic suddenly overwhelmed with blissful gratitude for whatever made this possible. Her mouth is watering, and it tastes like honey, but maybe that’s because Jane tastes as sweet as she smells.

Jane gives her a little push, and she lets herself fall into the sheets.

She lies there, watching Jane look around the room—the tiny writing desk stacked with textbooks, the basket of carefully folded laundry by the closet, the potted cactus on the windowsill that Niko gave her for her birthday in September, the maps and timelines that she hasn’t yet brought herself to unpin from the walls. The jacket on the chair. August’s room is like her: quiet, unfancy, gray in the stormy afternoon, and filled up with Jane.