Chapter Eight
In the handful of days since Jillian’s birth, the only place that seemed to give Josie comfort was Jeddy’s. And she resented it. The coffee was terrible, the companionship was awful. But the service was really great and, as much as Madge could be a sourpuss, at least she was Josie’s sourpuss. So now, every morning around 6 a.m., she got a coffee and some kind of reasonable pastry breakfast and settled in a booth, wishing for the life that had unraveled over the past few days as Laura had moved on.
If Josie had said those words to Laura, “You’ve moved on,” she would have heard a torrent of all the reasons why that wasn’t true. Followed, probably, by lots of tears and an extra order of coconut shrimp or a hot fudge sundae. The protests, though, would come from Laura’s understanding, deep down, that Josie was right. Laura had moved on, finding the true love—true loves?—that eluded Josie.
Sex had always been no problem for her, at least. Even before her recent encounters with Alex. Men found her appealing enough to proposition…but not worthy enough to stay. The few relationships she’d had that had lasted longer than one condom had been fraught with jealousy and anger and accusations of condescension on both parts, typically ending in a “fuck you” phone call. And then a regretful booty call a few days later.
And then—silence.
When Laura had first met Dylan and Mike and had learned about the threesome life that they embraced, Josie had told, for the first time ever, about her own threesome experience. It hadn’t been intentional by any stretch, and it hadn’t even been good. It had, however, triggered a sense of curiosity in her.
It had just been an option. She had taken advantage of the opportunity, lived the experience and woken up the next day alive, fine, and normal. Needing to pee, and eat, and shower, and wash her clothes, like any other day. With the minor additional need to decide what it had meant to violate a social norm and sleep with two men at once. Back then, in college, it had been a coup of sorts, some kind of quiet, dark mark as if she had joined an amoral club that no one knew existed and whose members all kept their mouths shut. If they were female.
A rumor had spread about what Josie had done with those two guys, but it had fizzled fast. She was this boyish, petite thing who had a motormouth; most people dismissed her as un-fuckable. The coup really was hers; her internal scorekeeper knew that un-fuckable Josie had managed to find two guys to sleep with her at the same time. Even the most attractive woman at their small college couldn’t stake that claim. Not out in public, anyway. Being open about it would have brought her ruin. One hell of a Catch-22, right?
Two guys, though, right now…that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was one man, twice over…or to double her over. Alex filled her visual memory: the lines of his pecs, the narrow taper of his waist, the intensity in his eyes in the on-call room. How he had watched her with such steady power, her body on fire just from his look. Picking at the remnants of her croissant, Josie let herself revel in that memory for a few moments before sheepishly admitting a tinge of guilt. Laura had been just a few doors down, as desperate to push something out of her vagina as Josie had been eager to get something in hers.
She snapped back to reality when Madge zipped over, dumped a refill into her coffee mug, and moved on.
If Laura were more available right now, she would be sitting at this table right now, snarfing down a platter of fried green tomatoes, telling her so.
“That’s bull,” she would say, her finger pointed in Josie’s face, happy to be on the giving end of angsty love life advice.
Laura wasn’t here, though. All Josie had right now was her own imagination, her own inner divining rod, and it was saying guys like Alex don’t want girls like her for the long haul—they want them for the quick and dirty. Josie could do quick and dirty. She could do quick and dirty real good.
But spending enough time with Laura, Mike, and Dylan, and now baby Jill, had changed something deep inside her. It made her see a possibility that turned all the other options into pale imitations of life and love. What if that possibility were out there somewhere for her?
Laura’s voice popped into her mind. What if Alex is that possibility?
Josie took a sip of her coffee. It was hotter than she’d expected and burned a bit, shocking her. She drank some water to cool her mouth and then sat with the pain, knowing that she was sitting with a much more intense pain that no glass of water could alleviate.
Just open up to this, she thought. Just do it.
If she didn’t give this a chance, a true emotional chance, she’d be left with a big, heaping hole of regret inside of her.
But that’s better than rejection, another voice said.
She closed her eyes and listened to the cadence of that voice. Whose voice was it? Who was whispering these words that stopped her from acting on hope? It was the same voice that got her out of Peters.
The question was, who exactly was that?
If she were in a selfish frame of mind, which she was drifting into more and more lately, she would indulge in some deep self-pity over the fact that she and Laura had lost their morning coffee ritual.
What she’d got out of her ritual was companionship—someone to bounce ideas off of, a good, deep friend to share the boring details of her boring life and her boring job. Laura had a corporate job that was just interesting enough to keep her there and just boring enough to make it a bit dull. Until Laura had met Dylan and Mike, in fact, they’d both been boring. There had been equity between what Josie would tell and what Laura would tell, a mutual bitching session that in the end balanced them out.
Josie, though, had spent years trying to get herself into a stable economic situation, and boring was an accomplishment. Her life had been more interesting than anyone would wish, growing up. In addition to losing her dad, and putting up with her mom, she didn’t have a smooth time of it at school, either.
“Smartmouth” had been the phrase that teachers had used the most with her. Watch that smart mouth. You’re a smartmouth. And occasionally, along with fingers clenching her bicep, cut it out, smartass, hissed in her ear. That one was the angry English teacher, the furious phys ed teacher—pretty much whichever teacher had a temper and couldn’t stand the fact that Josie did not defer to authority unless authority deferred back.
Socially, she did okay. Being a target for the teachers made her stand out, get noticed. Plenty of boys wanted to date her. Though “dating” was a loose term where she grew up. A date meant that maybe the guy paid the car fee at the drive-in and managed to drive you home after he got what he wanted. Or, once you were old enough for bars, on cheap beer night you might get treated to enough drinks to get you drunk—and then, again, a ride home if the guy got what he wanted.
She’d tired quickly of that scene and had hidden in books, her nose in a tome at the local library and later the university branch campus’s meager stacks, hoping to read her way to a better life. It had worked. Nursing school had been her big ticket out of Nowheresville, Ohio. When she’d earned her associate’s degree she’d qualified for a full ride at the small college in Boston, which, for whatever reason, had picked her out of a stack of Josies and made her a queen.
Once she’d transferred to the Boston area, she’d been able to breathe for the first time, a giant exhale of victory.
It was a big, giant fuck you to the rundown house she’d left, the trailer parks, the poverty, the misery of where she’d grown up. And most of all to all the people who had told her that her dreams had been foolish, that she had been overreaching or snobbish, or too full of herself. She’d had to struggle against it within herself—one part of her saying give up, another telling that part to fuck off. If she could have lifted a giant middle finger, tall enough to be seen the six hundred miles from Boston to northeast Ohio, she would have constructed it.
Instead, she faced a rather large structure of her own making that she needed to deal with—and that was nearly six figures in student loans. When you came from where Josie came from, people didn’t have college funds, or grandparents who helped out, or even well-established scholarships. A local credit union had thrown $500 a year her way for four years, and she’d managed to get the full Pell Grant three out of five years. She’d spent four years chipping away at her associate’s, and one of those years, her mom had never bothered to file her taxes. In the ensuing mess, Josie, still a dependent, had lost out on her Pell Grants. Community college and branch campus tuitions were low, but not that low.
It was so worth it, though. All worth it. Her graduation day—their graduation day, hers and Laura’s—had been such a triumph for her, in spite of her mom, Marlene, showing up looking and acting like an older, drunker, version of Daisy Duke. It hadn’t been pretty. A day of massive pride for Josie had turned into unrelenting embarrassment. Rather than striking a chord of fury, though, the embarrassment had actually given way to gratitude. A deep, intense, sense of gratitude that she had made it, that these past six years doing everything possible to change who she was, to defy the trajectory that everyone had assumed she would follow, had paid off. She was not her mom.
If Laura had been there, she could have talked about all of that.
But Laura wasn’t.
She’d moved on.
*
Inviting Alex over to her apartment for dinner was turning out to be a colossal mistake. First of all, she actually had to clean the place. Her apartment looked like early thrift shop, circa 1994, with a definite hippie tone to everything. She kept it neat, she just didn’t keep it clean. She had spent most of the day dusting baseboards, pulling things off shelves and wiping under them, cleaning the crud out of the corners of the bathroom and making sure that everything that didn’t really have a place appeared to have some kind of a place.
She opened the windows and aired the place out, and burned a little essential oil in an oil burner to fill the house with eucalyptus and lavender. It made her feel more alert, and calmer at the same time, excited to have a man over in her apartment for the first time in forever. Her cat, Dotty, was not a good helper, instead finding various sunny spots on the windowsills to curl up in.
She’d invited Alex for a 7:00 dinner. It was now 6:30. She’d bought all of the groceries earlier that day, but now panic set in. What if he didn’t like her cooking? What if this really was just about sex? What if she’d been too forward in making that joke about the movie? What if he didn’t like her apartment? What if he was a serial killer and he was going to empty her freezer and put little chopped-up bits of Josie in there to snack on over the next month, and no one except Laura would ever know that she went missing, and all Alex would have to do is say, “Oh, I’m enjoying Josie thoroughly, don’t worry,” and Laura would think that was a sexual innuendo? What if?
As charming as all those thoughts were, Josie shoved all of those insecurities aside, and was grateful that she hadn’t planned to cook any form of meat that looked like it might be human. Tonight, it was a simple pasta dish with an alfredo sauce, a rosemary focaccia, and a tossed salad, with something chocolate from a bakery for dessert. It was great first-date food.
Was this a first date? Second date? Was the coffee shop the first date? Was the on-call room the first date? Boy, if you counted all of those she was somewhere around her seventh or eighth date and she should have been putting out anal by now. Technically, though, she supposed that the coffee shop was date one, and that therefore, this was date two.
Phew, no anal yet. Time to put away the butt plug. Her bedside table was well equipped for what she assumed would be the real dessert. She had condoms, and lube, and a few toys, in case he turned out to be that adventurous.
Everything was set up in the kitchen, the salad was tossed, the bread was ready and sliced, cooling on the counter, and she had the pasta and the water and the salt all ready to assemble and boil once Alex arrived. The sauce was done, and so she found herself rearranging candles on her mantle, making sure that the remote control was next to the television, and shooing the cat off the bed.
Why was she was so nervous when this was a sure thing? It was just a guy, and her, and a basic “come over to my house and let me make you dinner” kind of date. The kind that Laura had gone on when Dylan had cooked for her and Mike, and the three of them had solidified a lot of goodness and hope in their relationship.
Bingo! That’s what made her so nervous. This was more than just a dinner date at her apartment, this was a trial for real life and real love. Alex wasn’t just coming over for dinner and sex, he was coming over to give her companionship and depth, and to trade in that little back and forth, where you give a little piece of your integrity to someone else and see if you can trust them with it. That she looked forward to this scared and thrilled her all at once.
The test of a person comes when they’re at their worst, that’s when the soft underbelly of people gets revealed. Josie had learned that the hard way when her dad had died when she was eleven. She’d watched her entire world fall apart. Her mother had spent six weeks in the hospital, all the way up in Cleveland, recovering from a brain injury. And she’d come back different. When people get hurt, they come back different, Josie had learned. And Josie had gotten hurt, not injured, but hurt by that tragedy, and she had never been the same, either.
The doorbell rang, shaking her out of her reverie, and the cat ran to answer it, like a demented, furry butler.
*
Alex stood on Josie’s front porch and rang the bell. When she’d given him her address, he knew it sounded familiar, but he hadn’t realized that he could walk here from his own apartment two blocks around the corner. They’d both picked East Cambridge for whatever reason, probably the cheaper rent, and he smiled to himself, realizing that the right person may very well have just been right under his nose.
The door opened and he found himself being evaluated by a very fat cat at his feet. It seemed to be unable to decide whether to rub up against him or to run away and hide, and as his eyes lifted to look at its owner, he realized that Josie had an expression on her face that said just about the same thing. They were both nervous. Was that how the whole night would be? The lazy casualness with which he carried himself most of the time disappeared around her.
Breaking the silence, she smiled and opened her door all the way, stepping back with an arm outstretched toward the hallway. “Please, please Alex, come in.”
He’d walked through the door holding a bottle of wine. He hadn’t been sure, red or white, and had made a last-minute guess at the wine store, going for rosé just to be safe.
Alex held up the bottle of wine, hand gripping it like an anchor. “I brought this, I hope it goes with dinner.”
She took it out of his hands and her face softened, shoulders lowering, her body relaxing. “It’s wine,” she said.
“Yeah, you do drink…?” He leaned forward, arm outstretched, his face a mask, as it occurred to him for the first time that maybe she didn’t consume wine. What if she were an alcoholic and in recovery, what if she abstained for other reasons? He should have called ahead, maybe bringing a tiramisu, or something chocolate would have been a better idea. Flowers weren’t even safe nowadays. He’d gone on one date where he’d brought a bouquet that had daisies in it and the poor woman had ended up sucking down Benadryl and leaving early, her flower allergy triggered by what he had thought was a romantic gesture.
She laughed. “Of course I drink, are you kidding me? Do you know anyone in the medical profession who doesn’t drink?”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
Her turn to laugh. “The wine’s lovely, thank you. I have no idea whether it matches this dinner, but I figure it’s wine, so it matches everything.” She walked down a long, narrow hallway, leading to a kitchen. She didn’t seem to be in the middle of rushing around cooking, and yet he saw that a lovely meal had been prepared. A salad, bread, and pasta, about to be boiled. He liked it. Simple, to the point, no frills. Like Josie.
Just as she had on the day that they’d met at the hospital after the baby’s birth, she looked like she put some effort into her appearance. He liked that, but she didn’t need to. The way she’d looked when they’d met at the hospital during the birth had actually appealed to him more. Earthy, no makeup, no pretense, just very, very real. That didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate what she wore right now: a soft, heathered lilac v-neck top, coupled with some nicely tailored pants. She was barefoot, with a little toe ring wrapped around her second toe, a tiny opal set in silver. He couldn’t remember a tattoo from that brief interlude down by the river the other day. Tonight, he hoped, he’d be able to explore every inch of her body and find out what sort of imprints were on it.
She set the bottle of wine down on the counter and turned to him, reaching her arms up for his neck. The embrace was a bit awkward as she planted a kiss on his cheek. He was surprised that she’d made the first move, and he stumbled, then reached around her, hands flat against her back, and pressed against her. From the way her muscles melted, he could tell that she was letting herself sink away from the anxiety and the nervousness. She inhaled deeply against his neck, and he wondered if she liked the cologne he’d chosen, a scent he’d worn since high school, something spicy and citrusy.
Her kitchen was tiny, but so was everyone else’s in Cambridge. She didn’t seem to cook much, he thought randomly; his mind was trying to catalog the room. He shut it off and turned on the animal inside, instead. He wanted to sink with her into a different state of being, letting his desire run untamed now as he pulled her back and settled in for a kiss.
The walk over here had been filled with questions about what exactly was going on between them. But as he bent down to take her mouth fully, and her fingers played with the curly edges of his hair as she slid against him, her body submitting to his, letting him use his lips and tongue and hands to re-introduce himself, what was between them most urgently was his rock-hard—
“Hi!” she gasped, coming up for air, touching foreheads. Grinning, her lips stretched in a feline smile, the kind a woman gives you right after a toe-curling session in bed.
Not before.
The night just got way more interesting. His hands held her hips against his thighs, and he assumed she could feel him, he wanted her to feel him, bending his knees enough to lean down and go for more of that luscious mouth. Maybe an appetizer in bed before dinner. And then dinner in bed. Then bed after dinner.
With a nightcap of sex on the baseball field across the street.
Shivers ran through her body as he held her, as if she could read his mind.
And then she did.
Pulling him by the hand to the kitchen counter, she offered him the bottle of wine to hold, then reached into a drawer for a bottle opener.
“Dinner doesn’t have to be ready for a while. Let’s enjoy a glass or three of wine.” The sly smile tickled her lips and he found himself falling into her eyes, his body harder and needier than he’d been for any woman before. A light jazz sound tinkled through the air, his ears following the sound down the hallway. Her bedroom? What color was her bedspread? Her pillow? Her vibrator?
She had to have one. No one this sensual, this experimental, wouldn’t.
Hell, she probably had devices he’d never heard of.
And then he realized she was eyeing him warily. Too much silence, he suspected. Time to pay attention to the actual woman in front of him and stop ruminating on her battery-operated bedfellows.
“A glass of wine would be lovely,” he said, taking the corkscrew from her.
“You live alone?” he asked, impressed. He knew what he paid in rent at his apartment, a two-bedroom he split with a roommate who was currently on the first week of six out of town on a fellowship. The solitude was refreshing. If she could afford to shoulder this place on her own, she was either an extreme introvert—which didn’t make sense, given her personality—or she was doing well financially.
He suspected neither was quite right, though. Josie was complex. Complicated. Layered. Whatever her answer, he knew it wouldn’t reveal all. He’d have to keep asking.
That was fine.
He would make the time.
“Yes,” she said. “This is only a one-bedroom with a little den, and the owner lives on the third floor. He says he likes having a nurse as a tenant, and I’ve been here for years.” He opened the wine, the pressure of the bottle against his crotch a bit unsettling as he used brute force to uncork it, narrowly missing a horrific groin splash.
Josie pulled two long-stemmed wine glasses from a noticeably minimalist cupboard. Two wine glasses. Two mugs. Two of everything but plates and bowls, and if his eyes cataloged it correctly, there were four each of those, all matching, all neatly stacked.
“I can’t imagine living alone. I’ve been doing the roommate thing for so long,” he ventured. Through new eyes he surveyed the kitchen. Nothing spare in there. She lived a sparse though comfortable life, the incongruity quite charming. Unlike his own rumpled, slightly disheveled place, where no one really paid attention to anything but eating, sleeping, and showering, she seemed to have put a lot of thought into her environment.
And, especially, into what she didn’t put in it.
“I love it,” she answered, shrugging. “Mmmm,” she said through a sip. “Good wine.”
“Good company,” he answered, offering his glass for a toast. Something snapped inside, a sense of longing and crushing desire that made him want her even more. He wanted to spend days in her bed, ordering takeout Thai and answering the door in a towel, moving the coffeemaker to her bedside table so they could be sustained by caffeine and spicy peanut sauce. Licked off her navel.
No. No, Alex. No! He couldn’t keep doing this—it really wasn’t just about sex, even if the hollow in her throat as she lifted the glass to take a big swig made him nearly groan with the need to savor it with his tongue.
Hold back, buddy. You’ll scare her off if you make it all about sex.
Their eyes locked and he saw something in her, a deeper calm that helped to ground him. For a woman who was so focused on movement and wit, she was remarkably subdued in her own home, casual and centered.
And she had let him in.
*
Oh my God, can he tell how nervous and screwed up I really am? Josie wondered as their wine glasses connected, her hand frozen in space as she tried not to shatter.
Not the glass—herself.
On the outside, she worked very hard to be casual and free, but on the inside all she wanted was to pile into bed with him and be fucked mindless.
No! Sex couldn’t be the focus here. Dinner was. Food, wine, talk, and just being together. The kiss they’d shared was a way to say “hello,” not necessarily a preliminary to hot monkey sex. Whether they ended up in bed or not didn’t matter.
Ah, hell. She could hear the snort in her head. Fooling herself was getting harder and harder.
And judging by what she could see of Alex’s package, so was he.
Good thing she hadn’t boiled the pasta yet. A part of her wanted tonight to be about getting to know each other, talking late into the night, curled up and cuddling in the living room. Or enjoying a nice summer stroll.
But…no.
Hot monkey sex it was.
His eyes raked over her body like a man determined, with a look of fire that licked at the edges of her skin, his heat unmistakable and impossible to avoid (not that she wanted to).
How could this feel so right, even through her nervousness? In the morning, she expected to see him in the kitchen at the table, shirtless and tousled, enjoying coffee with her and then, of course, enjoying her for breakfast. The coffee was merely a vehicle for extra energy and a second (third, fourth, fifth) wind. Plus the idea of a shirtless Alex relaxing in a sunbeam in her kitchen made her drool.
Drool was good.
Why try to fight it? She squared her shoulders unconsciously with the decision to go forth, and was keenly aware that the gesture pushed her breasts forward. Shifting to relax a bit only succeeded in loosening her hips, and the thought flashed through her mind of her legs wrapped around his hips. A flood of heat pooled between her legs and she sighed. The form-fitting cotton pants she’d chosen so carefully for the way they made her ass look now plagued her as she shifted slightly, body warming up and raring to go.
He took her sigh as an invitation to step closer.
Excellent.
What he had chosen to wear intrigued her, turning up the fire inside yet another level. A button-down oxford, somewhere between turquoise and light blue, with the top two buttons undone. A sprinkling of dark chest hair peeked out from the V at his throat. His leather belt was so distressed it might very well have been made from a dead cow dragged twenty miles through Arizona desert, but he’d looped it through very simple dark blue pants. His dark eyes watched her watching him.
The air between them held the scent of wine and a hungry tension. Neither seemed able to put anything to words, but gestures and expressions were also inadequate. The longer they stared, the more the energy seemed poised to crackle into actual sparks; even her fat cat, languidly sauntering past them, seemed to notice it, glancing their way and dashing inexplicably in a new direction. Cars rumbled past outside, and a sudden burst of field lights from across the street told her the Little League game was in session. Their glow added a surreal shine to Alex’s eyes, fixed on hers as he finished the rest of his wine in one long gulp.
Copying him, she gulped the rest of her glass and held out the bottle, tipping the neck as if to say, More? He nodded, and her hand rotated slowly, his eyes burning into her as she poured his second glass. She flickered her gaze away only enough to ensure she didn’t spill the wine, but missed only a blink or two of Möbius strip of reciprocal observation.
And then he asked, “Is Josie short for Josephine?”
Another preliminary to get out of the way. Names. “Yes. Josephine Elizabeth Mendham.”
His smile lit up the room. And her heart. He bowed slightly, a joking move, and said, “Alexander Edward Derjian. At your service.”
That name rang a bell, but before she could think twice, he closed the space between them and slipped an arm around her waist, his free hand first setting down his wine glass and then carefully prying hers from her own hand. His fingers so gentle and facile on the stem that she swooned. Surgeon’s hands. Long fingers. Oh, what could those do to parts of her that cried out for heat and touch and more?
She was about to find out.
“Alex, I—” His fingers, achingly soft, landed on her lips, silencing her, and the arm around her waist tightened, the hand splayed against the middle of her back where her shoulder blades met.
“Let me speak first, Ms. Josephine Elizabeth Mendham.” The roll of her full name off his tongue sent her knees into a weak state, thighs humming, and her breathing becoming a bit labored with lust. The very air between them felt changed, now thick with a new element, one of luscious, unqualified want.
His hair slid over his forehead, the brown waves out of place yet damn near perfect. His wide cheekbones and bright eyes competed for her attention with his fingers, which now played with her lower lip. Two fingers rolled out a peek of the wetness of her mouth as his touch trailed to her chin.
“I said the other day that this isn’t just about sex,” he continued.
“I know—” Now he pressed his middle three fingers against her mouth, harder. She moaned involuntarily, her hard swallow and slow, long inhale the only way to hold back from coming right there in his arms in full view of the damn cat, who had now decided to come back and study them like intriguing prey.
“I know you think you know.” Alex pivoted and grabbed a kitchen chair with the hand that wasn’t making love to her mouth, sitting down and pulling her into his lap. The push of his hardness under her ass made her center swell, her throat tighten with need, and her mouth seek his.
A smile tickled his lips as he stroked her hip, running one wide palm down her thigh. This was a man who enjoyed touching women, sending a thrill of damn near everything through her, as if what she had thought was an isolated, insular act—making love—was instead a blanket that covered her entire world.
Instead of separating and compartmentalizing—This is sex time. This is lunch time. This is work time.—he made it seem, in this split second, that it could all be integrated into This is life.
“I need to make sure you know, Josie. This is me telling you so. But first, I want to make love with you, because no matter how many times I tell myself this isn’t only about sex, and that I don’t want to scare you off by making you think I think it’s only about sex, all I can think about is getting you stripped bare and using my hands and tongue and”—he shifted, making it obvious which other part of his body he wished to use—“to make you cry out my name like it’s the only word left in your mind.”
Josie had no words. She couldn’t even try to speak.
“And then we’ll work on the rest of the getting to know each other stuff, like your cat’s name, and—”
Sweetly, with an exquisite motion that took time and broke it into little slivers of awareness, she rose up in his lap, wrapping her legs about his waist on the chair, the rasp of cloth against cloth a friction that set her entire body abuzz. With one finger, she traced a lazy path from his eyebrow down his face, the aroma of his cologne infusing her as she let all her senses come forth and accept this as it blossomed, time changing in the air between them.
The look of her skin against his, how his eyebrow raised with a questioning look, how his eyes told her more in an unspoken language than every word she’d heard in her lifetime could possibly have communicated.
The brush of her fingertips against his freshly shaven chin and the taste of his jawline as she leaned down to kiss it mingled with the sounds of kids and parents cheering across the street, blending with blues that poured out of the speakers in her bedroom. What had felt like a nervous rush since the second she’d met him in the hospital last week turned on a dime.
His strong, smooth hands now caressing the nape of her neck, his abs brushing against hers, their bodies seeking to fit into each other just right as their tongues found each other, a savored entwining that she deliberately drew out, as if to tell him in tender flesh that this now was not measured in seconds or minutes or hours.
It had its own timeline.
“Cats,” she said slowly against his mouth. “I have two. One hides nonstop, but the one you’ve met is Dotty.”
“Dotty,” he murmured.
“Yes. Dotty and Crackhead.”
“Crackhead?” he sputtered, wiggling his hips almost enough that she could have dry humped him and walked away with one of the best orgasms ever. It was, however, in her best interests to stick around and go for the more mature climactic approach. The way he moved juuuust enough to set her right on top of his erection told her he was thinking the same thought. Her lust twin.
How convenient.
“Now that you know their names,” she whispered against his mouth, “are we done with all the ‘not sex’ parts, and can we move to the ‘sex parts’?”
“I like your sex parts,” Alex sighed, sliding one hand up to cup her breast, the nipple responding to his touch.
Her hand found his erection easily, though it was blocked by clothing. “I’d like yours more if I could see them,” she teased.
“At your service, Ms. Josephine.” Nearly falling to the ground as he stood, Josie found herself the only customer at a private striptease as Alex unceremoniously unbuttoned his shirt, his fingers precise and efficient. As the shirt hung open at the chest, she realized she’d only caught glimpses of his nakedness in the handful of romps they’d had, illicit moments stolen in an on-call room, an outdoor trail, an elevator.
Time for the big unveiling.
Big.
*
Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun getting naked for a woman. Toppling Josie out of his lap had been tough, but necessary, if it meant he could take the lead and show her what “sex parts” really meant.
You want ’em? You got ’em.
The cat—was that Dotty or Crackhead?—sniffed with pretentious condescension and headed for the living room.
Good. The only audience he wanted was Josie.
As he slid his shirt off and slung it over the back of a kitchen chair, she joined him, to his delight. She reached down with both hands and pulled her knit top off in one intensely erotic motion, throwing the light piece of cloth onto a little bench behind her. The silken lilac bra underneath was so feminine, so achingly delicate, that he wanted to take it off her with a savage grace. Holding himself back, he took her in with his eyes while she returned the favor.
They both seemed to like what they saw.
He nodded. “Go ahead.”
She frowned, hands on hips now. “Go ahead what?”
“The bra.” He stood before her, shirtless, filled with a thrumming that blocked out the rest of the world.
“What about the bra?” she asked, looking down at it.
“You need to take it off or I’ll rip it off with my teeth.”
“You can’t!”
“I have very strong teeth.”
She lowered her eyelashes as if thinking of a retort, but after a moment, her arms slowly reached behind her, for the clasp. And then, before his mind could process what she was doing, Josie spun and darted down the hall, screaming,“Only if you can catch me!”
God, she was fast.
Running, his legs constrained by all-too-tight pants, he chased her. He reached the door of her bedroom as she was laughingly turning back to it, her elbows still winged out as she wiggled the hooks free. “I beat you,” she was gleefully crowing, but before she quite finished the taunt, he caught her, caught the loose strap as it began its slide down her left shoulder, and pulled the bra from her grasp.
Her laugh cut out as she caught her breath; she panted a few quick breaths as their eyes locked again. He slid the bra off entirely and momentarily looked away for a place to toss it.
The bedroom was nicely decorated, homey, with rather large bedside tables and a multicolored silk scarf suspended from the ceiling, covering a light fixture. The last of the day’s light poured in from the windows, but soon dusk would make it too dark. He planned to be here through the stillness of the summer night.
And into the bright light of the sun’s wake-up rays.
Her gaze pulled his eyes back to her and he let the bra fall to the floor.
He said, “I will always catch you.”
*
Why did he have to be so damn hot? she wondered, standing next to her bed, stripped down to her panties and trying to play off how much he overwhelmed her. As if she routinely played tag with men with washboard abs and faces like models, routinely ending the game in her bedroom half naked.
Like that happened every Tuesday.
Maybe it can, a voice whispered in her head.
Roadhouse blues floated through the air, the smoky tones of scratched vinyl mixed with saxophone foreplay adding to the perfection in the room. Dusk settled the edges of the window’s harsh daylight glare into a more modest tone, but still she felt illuminated and on display as Alex’s eyes hungrily ate her up.
She returned the favor as he revealed himself, stripping down to boxer briefs, the fluid lines of his powerful thighs making her even wetter and more ready—as if that were possible. Naturally olive-toned skin peppered with curly hair where it ought to be, thickening right where she remembered. The boxer briefs clung to his upper thighs, ass, and manhood exactly the way they should, as if female appreciation were woven into the contours of the cloth, directing the fibers to hug his body exactly as Josie wished.
She really could have watched him all day.
He had other ideas.
I will always catch you. Did he really just say that? She shivered with arousal, gooseflesh taking over her exposed arms, chest, and breasts, her nipples tightening. Before she could continue her mind’s inner chatter, Alex had crossed the room like a lion leading a pride, his nearly nude body pulling her onto her patchwork quilt that covered the bed. The comfort of worn cotton invited her to stay awhile, the hot press of his chest against hers a sensation she could bathe in forever.
His kiss was slow and seeking, with a barely restrained urgency that made her back arch, breasts pressing into his bare pecs. So much flesh touching. Quite different from their first rushed moments. The completeness of it made her skin tickle, and the heat that emanated from their entwined bodies seemed to pool between her legs. A shift of his hips and his hard cock pressed into that heat, the frustration of two thin swaths of cloth enough to make her gasp.
The song ended, and an Etta James croon came on, enough to make him smile through a kiss. Alex propped his head, elbow on the bed, and looked at her with delight, taking his sweet time to survey her body. Immodest, she reveled in it, flouting all the chick-magazine-y rules on how to behave in bed with a man.
“Behave” wasn’t in her vocabulary right now.
“Obey”, however…might be, depending on what Alex had in mind…
He was exquisite, and her hands took the liberty of running over his chest, down to his waist, where a sharp inhale told her what he wanted. No rush, right? As he dipped his head to watch her hand memorize each pore, every skin cell, that led her to what she really wanted to touch, he gripped her wrist and forced her to pause, his knuckles pressing into the soft flesh of her belly, inches above where she really wanted him to touch.
“No rush,” he said, letting go, then sliding his palm along her hip. The slow journey up the curve of her waist to the edge of her breast, then to her shoulder, was like a long lick up an ice cream cone in August. She was, like the ice cream cone, dripping.
And then he rolled her onto her back, eyes taking her in. “Beautiful,” he whispered as his mouth took one budded nipple and rolled it between his tongue and lower lip, the ache for completion driving her to arch up into him, begging him wordlessly for more. His calves brushed against her thigh as he changed position and angled his mouth at a better degree, spare hand sliding not down, but up to her jawline.
This would be slow, wouldn’t it? Could she make love at the speed of Alex? It was a physics formula that jumbled into a potpourri of letters and words as his lips brushed a line across the valley of her breasts to give equal attention to both, as if the symmetry mattered.
What was he thinking, taking all the time in the world to explore her, the newness of him as foreign and exotic to her as she must be to him? Was this really about “sex parts”? If so, this would be enough. The chase was over. She was firmly caught. An all-body hum began the slow build inside her as his mouth now turned south, blood rushing to her ears and the red, throbbing core between her legs.
Peeling her panties from her hips, he took the time to caress her legs as his nimble fingers dispensed with the thin wisp of cloth, throwing it somewhere in the general direction of her vanity. Now the symmetry was broken, for she was bare. Time to make things even again.
“Fair is fair,” she murmured as her hands slipped under the waistband of his boxer briefs, sliding them down to his feet with a deftness that belied her normally clumsy nature. Both fully nude, they paused, taking each other in. Neither was self-conscious. The mutual appreciation made her laugh, a low, throaty sound that sounded far too bold and sophisticated even for her.
“You see something that makes you laugh?” he asked as he looked down at their naked, interwoven bodies.
Really? He made it so easy to wisecrack, to hide. Fifteen different sarcastic retorts fought against her lips. Taking the harder path, she just smiled and said, “I don’t know why I’m laughing. It’s just…”
“Joy,” he said simply, brushing a lock of her hair off her cheek.
“Joy? What is this ‘joy’ of which you speak?” she joked. Except she wasn’t joking. Joy? What was that? Who talked like this? Happiness—sure. Contentment—okay. Pleasure—no problem.
Joy?
“It’s a feeling,” he whispered, moving down to her navel, his tongue slowly tracing circles around her belly button, making joy pour out of her body in the form of muscle spasms that needed him inside her to grip against.
“Oh, I’m feeling,” she gasped, fingers reaching for his hair, working hard to fight against the tidal wave that splashed against her V. The last of the daylight flirted with the horizon, little touches teasing the clouds. Cooler night air wafted in the windows, making the room perfect.
“I want you to feel joy, Josie. And this, too.” Closing her eyes, she knew what came next, the unhurried movement of her legs sliding apart on the coverlet, how her ass filled his hands, his forearms under her, the rush of his warm mouth on her, the slowness speeding up so suddenly, the world cracking at the edges and turning from a sphere to a relief map, all laid out on her skin for Alex to explore.
Joy? Oh, yes. Heart swelling in tandem with her sex, she took in his shoulders, lifting up to meet the gift of his tongue. The way his hands had touched her earlier, every time, had told her he enjoyed women.
His tongue confirmed it. As he explored her body’s joy and desire through his mouth, stroking and tuning her to a new frequency, she faced a layer of intensity that she’d never experienced before with a man. The accumulated moments before this one all a nuanced tapestry in her mind and flesh, the knowledge that Alex liked her, that he wanted her, that someone so steady and hot and focused and real could be in her bed right now, naked under her palms, laving and giving without pretense—knowing it was more erotic than his actual touch.
And then there was his body. Opening her eyes, she allowed herself to see what he was doing to her, to watch rippling muscles in his arms as he took care of her first. Panting, her breath coming in little gasps, she felt the wave push into and out of her at once, hips bucking, as if the thought of what this meant for her and Alex was enough to take her into orgasm.
More than this, though, she wanted him above her, in her, driving home the connection and surrounding her with his scent, his heat, his light, and the sound of his own pleasure when it mingled with hers.
Her hands clawed at the bedsheets, pulling them from the corners and twisting as her body twisted, too, Alex coming up to kiss her with such certainty, her taste on him and now in her own mouth, his mouth so soft, hands on her breasts. Suddenly aware of how little she had focused on him, she moved past her own pulsing pleasure and reached down to stroke him, finding him hard and ready.
Joy. Joy coursed through the veins that made him so casually authentic, and when the song on the radio changed, his low chuckle made her halt her hand, fingertips enjoying the sensation.
“Dirty Dozen Brass Band,” he said, kissing the hollow of her neck.
Knowing the song—and delighted that he knew the band, because no one she knew ever did—she stroked him twice, then slid her hand along the tight ridges of muscle in his inner thigh.
“‘Don’t You Feel My Leg,’” he said.
“Song title, or command?”
“Song title, of course,” he whispered, eyes closing as she wrapped her hand around him, fingers struggling to touch. The tuba’s deep bass line felt jaunty and joking, a bit out of place for this moment, and yet it was fitting. Whatever came to them just did, as if life orchestrated what fate poured into the air. He stopped her, opening his eyes and pulling himself up over her, giving her access to all of him. My God. How beautiful he was.
“I want to be in you, Ms. Josephine,” he said, as if he had to ask permission. Yet it wasn’t a question, was it?
“And I want you in me, Dr. Perfect,” she replied, rolling over to open the drawer where she stored the necessary precautions. As she turned, his hand caressed her ass, lips dipping down to kiss her on each buttock, making her laugh. This was intense and frolicking, all at once. The two, it seemed, were not mutually exclusive in Alex’s bedroom world.
“Dr. Perfect?”
“McDreamy was taken.”
The baritone laugh that came out of him, his face morphing from sexual intensity to pure delight, made her fall a little more into something she feared was as close to love as she was capable of feeling. Where was the awkwardness? The self-conscious mental ricocheting of thoughts and worries and suppositions?
She and he were two people entwined on her bed, about to make love, and as he took the condom from her and dispensed with the formalities quickly, she found a glee in her that had never been present during sex before. Instead of hiding her emotions, as she normally did, focused solely on the animal nature of the act, on surges and rushes and highs and explosions, Josie allowed Alex to bring her to a new kind of lovemaking. It was almost too easy.
Almost. Tears threatened to fill her eyes, drawn out by a groundswell of emotion that made her look at him—really look at him—and see a man she could spend her whole life with, love—
“You are so amazing,” Alex said, interrupting her thoughts. Thank God.
“You are, too,” she said, her body surprised when he rolled and pulled her on top of him. Oh, he liked it this way? Enjoying the power of having him spread out before her, her hands washed over his chest, up his neck, to his face, tracing his lips with fingers that tried to memorize him. Adjusting her hips, she ached to have him in her. He made her feel tiny and delicate, but also on display as his hands roamed up her belly, over the edge of her ribcage, then cupped both breasts.
“This,” he said, hands now on her hips, guiding her, “is amazing, too.” And then all she needed to do was a small lift with one thigh, a knee placed on the bed just so, and the tip of him filled her, the pressure so inviting that he entered her slowly, the gasp of pleasure as their eyes met, the wordless communication and communion actually bringing those tears out.
Leaning together for a kiss, their bodies moved in rhythm, her deep core of heat growing, emanating out into her limbs while tightening at the center, her walls clamping down as Alex groaned, lips pressed against hers. At some point, the kiss became lost as each felt the climax form, something shared that could only be fueled by mutuality.
“Josie,” he whispered through gritted teeth, just as she was about to say his name, too. Both felt it, and then he added, “Are you…?”
“Close?” she filled in for him. “God, yes.”
That was all it took as Alex enveloped her hips with his strong, big hands, a conductor of the symphony’s end, setting the rhythm and choosing strokes far more sensual than any she would have found on her own. One, two, three thrusts up and the orgasm slammed into her, grown large by an impossible sense of longing that played itself out in an embrace as she wrapped every spare section of skin against his body, holding on for dear life as stray strands of his hair caught in her mouth, ragged gasps her only words now, proving him right. She could think of nothing more than Alex, Alex, Alex, his name an infinite loop of pure joy, her body racked with wave after wave of him.
Whole body on fire, the heat receded slowly, her awareness of aching hips and a slightly raw feeling where he entered her reminders of the juxtaposition of their sizes. Alex was big, she was not, and whatever similarities they shared, in bed he was decidedly all man. He made her all woman.
A loud crack pierced the air, and then the crowd at the baseball field cheered, the sound bursting through the open window.
“Well, I knew I was good, but I’ve never had that kind of reaction before,” Josie said, sitting up, her hand cradling Alex’s face. Rich, brown eyes met hers with a kindness and depth that would have terrified her even a day ago.
“I would give you a standing ovation,” he said.
“You just did,” she said, squeezing a Kegel around him. Laughing, he slid out of her, then rolled her off him, spooning. So much warmth. The man’s entire body was one big heating pad, and she wondered what this would feel like in the dead of winter, cozy in bed with Alex, no longer needing the cats to warm her feet.
That thought made her roll her eyes, the intrusion of cat-lady fears seeping into the afterglow. She and Laura had often mournfully joked about being alone in old age, surrounded by cats. Alex’s steady breath filled her ear, the rasp of stubble against her neck, the slow, layered relaxation of her body against his banishing those fears. They were one right now, and then her stomach gurgled, a horridly intrusive sound that seemed louder than the crowd outside.
“We forgot to eat,” he said, the rush of his breath against her ear a luxury she could become accustomed to making commonplace. As if on cue, his stomach growled as well, sending them both into giggles, their bodies shaking in bed, joy pouring forth in new ways.
The room had darkened enough that she reached forward to snap on the bedside table light. Still nude, their bodies were a series of legs and hips and arms, all mixed together like a bouquet of flowers. Peeling away, she searched the floor for her clothes, spotting each piece and cataloging. Whatever happened next was random, so she was uncertain. Get dressed? Slide under the covers? Hop in the shower? Boil the pasta?
Alex made a quiet exit from the room, his ass an inviting sight as he padded out into the hallway. Ah. The condom. How base and embarrassing it often was to have a guy deal with the aftermath of what had been hot and frenzied. Here it was just something to be done, like putting on shoes, or combing one’s hair. By the time he returned she had located her panties and sat on the edge of the bed, feeling a bit unmoored.
Joy resumed as he stood before her, completely nude and utterly self-composed.
“I’ve never—” they said in unison, making Josie burst into laughter. Alex smiled and reached down for his underwear, slipping into them. Symmetry.
His face was solemn as he said, “You, too? You mean you were a virgin until just now?”
She snorted, a decidedly unfeminine sound. Again, fifty different wisecracks flooded her. As he leaned in for a kiss, she decided that saying nothing was the best course.
*
As he leaned in for a kiss, she stayed silent. He took her solemn look as an invitation to continue being real with her. Their lips met and the kiss lit him on fire, made his legs tense, and yes, he was hard again. Josie seemed to trigger that condition twenty times an hour when he was around her. She shifted just enough that her breasts were soft and yielding against his chest, as he bent at the knees to press into her, to really kiss her in a way that he hoped would make her toes curl. Yet again their stomachs gurgled, like chirping birds desperate for a meal. He pulled back and she held three fingers up to his lips, mimicking his earlier gesture from a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime. Time had escaped him and for all he knew he was marking the minutes and the hours all wrong. She had that effect on him.
“Let’s get dressed and let’s eat.”
“How about we eat and then get undressed,” he said.
She laughed, reaching for her shirt and pulling it on, leaving the bra untouched.
A good sign, he thought, of things to come. By the time he’d pulled on his pants and his unbuttoned shirt, she was down the hall. He heard the sound of the refrigerator door opening, cupboards open and shut. As he reached her in the kitchen, she was in front of the stove, turning the stove up under the pot of water.
“More wine?” she asked, her hands slipping on the wine bottle, condensation having formed around it.
He’d brought it chilled, and now, based on the temperature as he took a sip of his poured wine, he could guess how long they’d been. Not long enough. Her nervousness began to rattle him. This was the awkward part, wasn’t it? Perhaps he should have waited, but he couldn’t, unhinged by her. Small talk seemed so trite, and yet it was a kind of social lubricant that made whatever needed to come next that much easier.
She took the lead. “So, what in the hell do we talk about after that?” she asked, nudging her head toward the door to the hallway to her room.
Disarmed, he burst out laughing and drank down half his glass of wine in one big gulp. “Is there a manual for this?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen one show up on my Kindle,” she replied.
“Maybe there’s an app that we don’t know about.” He reached for her, grateful for her bluntness, and his eyes recognized in hers the same searching that he was feeling. They looked at each other for a good, long minute, neither flinching, or wincing, or breaking eye contact, just letting it deepen. Their bodies relaxing layer by layer, their souls really seeing each other.
“Can we just agree that this is what it is, and it will unfold however it unfolds?” he asked. Her face clouded and he realized that she was taking it wrong; the words so noncommittal, the kind of thing assholes say…Can we just take this step by step?
He tried to explain what he really meant, which was, “Josie, what I mean is that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences that I’ve ever had with a woman. Not this,” he said, his hand pointing vaguely toward her bedroom, “this.” He squeezed her hips, pulling her tight against him, enjoying the feel of her hands against his bare back, sliding up under his open shirt. “This. Whatever you and I have, every second we’re together, is new territory for me.”
Her eyes went wide and her expression seemed to flip through her entire repertoire of emotions. She finally settled on a relaxed, open look, that he knew intuitively was not part of her standard operating procedure for relating to men. “I don’t do this, Alex,” she said quietly. “I don’t have relationships with men. I have flings, I have casual friends-with-benefits-type things. I sleep around…did.” She held up one hand. “Did. Slept around. That should be past tense, shouldn’t it, when it’s been years? I date. I see ‘guys,’” she said, using quotation marks with her fingers to indicate self-conscious irony that he didn’t quite grasp. “What you’re proposing is that I show you who I really am, layer by layer, through wherever this takes me.”
“Yes,” he said simply. She got it; she knew exactly what he felt.
Her face became more serious, if that was possible, and she said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask me for a threesome?” Pause. “Joking!”
He pulled back and laughed at his own surprise and at her words.
”You’re asking for a hell of a lot from someone like me,” she continued.
“Someone like you?” he asked.
“I don’t do emotional openness,” she explained, “I do sex, I do fun, I do sarcasm, I do…”
“Your nails?”
“Yeah, my nails,” she said. “You like them?”
“Cute.” Her fingernails looked like lilac bushes, sprigs that matched the color of her shirt. “Then maybe it’s time you tried something new,” he said, pulling her close again. The struggle remained evident on her face; she wanted him and not just his body, he could tell. But something held her back.
“You said that we needed to take this moment by moment and let it unfold, right?” she asked, stepping out of the embrace.
Turning away from her, he closed his eyes, not sure what to say. “Yes,” he said again, careful not to overwhelm her with more. Her hands shook as she stirred the boiling water, pouring the pasta in bit by bit. He was absolutely terrifying her, wasn’t he? It dawned on him that whatever he felt for her, she seemed to feel it, too.
When had this gotten so complicated? he wondered, staring at her arms as her elbow bent to stir the pasta, her face obscured by rising steam.. The conversation had gone deep and a bit dark, suddenly, as if he were pressuring her for something rather than offering.
“I don’t want more from you than you…want to give.”
She smiled, an indecipherably bitter grin. “You were about to say ‘capable of,’ weren’t you?”
“No, actually,” he said, stopping the arm that stirred the pot and turning her toward him, “that wasn’t the word in mind.”
“What was, then?” she asked. On the surface, she was closed off, but he sensed that underneath she was fighting against whatever demons she had inside. He wanted to see those demons, expose them to the light, to his want, his acceptance, and—he couldn’t believe he was thinking the word love, but yes, love, so that the demons could be vanquished. Getting her to drop that shield was his only hope.
Inhaling slowly, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and breathed out her mouth. The way her body moved, fluid and graceful as she made herself relax, made him appreciate her even more: the lines of her arms in motion, or her forearm in his hand, of how her neck sloped just right into her earlobe, the way the skin around her eyes told him twenty-seven different things in one look. And yet…she was not completely relaxing. Her muscles were still tense, a bit awkward, as if they weren’t certain which Josie they were supposed to be.
“When did this get complicated?” she asked, as if reading his mind.
“It’s always complicated.” He shrugged.
“Don’t say that,” she growled through gritted teeth.
He stepped back, a bit surprised by her ferocious retort. “Okay,” he said slowly, “then I won’t say that it’s always complicated. Do you want me to say that it’s never complicated?”
“I don’t know what I want you to say.”
The words were the most earnest thing that had come out of her mouth in the week that he had known her, and it gave him hope. His stomach chose to speak for him in that moment, growling, almost matching her tone a moment ago.
“The perfect response,” she said, resuming her cooking.
“You know how it goes, the way to a man’s heart and all that…”
“I thought the way to a man’s heart was through his groin?”
“Then you’ve got me already.”
“Good, ’cause I’m a lousy cook.”
“I doubt you’re lousy at anything.”
“Oh, trust me, Alex, once you get to know me you’ll learn that I’m lousy at lots of things.” She pulled the stock pot off the stove and drained the boiling water, clouds of steam covering her face and making her hair curl up at the ends. Her cheeks were pink and her face glistened from the moisture. The cloth of her cotton v-neck clung to the tops of her breasts, her nipples hard and tight. Without a bra her form showed better through the clothing, and he wished that they were in bed again. Already, already he was hard, dammit, his pants a miserable prison for his arousal. “What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Help me show you how lousy I am?” she said, a grin on her face. She poured the pasta into a large serving bowl and stuck a claw into it. Was there some official name for those utensils? He and his mother just called it the pasta claw.
“You could put the salad on the table,” she said.
He did what he was asked, enjoying the domestic routineness of it, until finally the food was on the table, the dishes were set, and they sat down to eat, each covered in the other’s musk, each starving. The meal itself was quite quiet, neither of them particularly interested in talking anymore.
“This is good,” he said.
“You’re just saying that because you think you have to.”
“I don’t say anything that I don’t mean. It’s good. Thank you. You’ve made a lovely meal.”
She looked at him as if he had four heads. “You know, we already had sex, Alex, you don’t need to butter me up. I’m kind of a sure thing.”
“If you came over to my place for dinner, trust me, this would be a luxurious meal.”
“What would you serve if you invited me over for dinner?” she asked.
“Takeout pizza, Thai.”
“In bed?” She looked down at the bowl of pasta and grabbed a bit of salad, putting it on her plate. “That might taste better.”
“The only thing that would taste better is you,” he said without acrimony, and she smiled, reaching across the table for his hand.
“Thank you.” She closed her eyes again and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, I just have no framework for how to behave with someone like you.”
Now he was hitting paydirt. “What do you mean?”
“I like you, Alex. I just don’t know what men like you are like.”
“The only way out is through,” he said, squeezing her hand.
*
And just like that, Josie’s ridiculously self-defeating forcefield melted away. The food that had felt like lumps of nothing in her mouth resumed its flavor, the oregano and basil bursting forth as she swallowed and drank a few mouthfuls of wine. Music lilted through the air, the low tones of a perfectly played bass lifting her heart. Alex’s smile seemed less an indictment of her emotional stuntedness and more an invitation to a future.
Letting go meant feeling.
Surefooted and smart, he sensed it, leaning closer, filling his mouth with more wine and resting in place, letting the enormity of it all sink in. Together, they just sat there at her kitchen table as headlights flashed strobe lights on the wall, car engines turning on, rear lights blinking as the game ended across the street and people made their way back to their normally scheduled lives, the fun of the diversion over.
The diversion, for Josie, had been her shell.
Time for real life to kick in.
“Do you watch The IT Crowd?” she asked.
Alex’s eyes narrowed; she knew he knew this was a test. “No.”
“Want to?”
“Now?” His voice rose with the question, a bit incredulous.
“Now,” she stated definitively. “All of the men I date have to pass the IT Crowd test.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else…” Damn it. He’d caught her. “I don’t know.”
“How did the other guys do?”
“You’re the first.”
“What about Downton Abbey?”
“You watch it?” she squealed.
“No. Just asking. I don’t watch anything, Josie. I work hundred-hour weeks.”
So many responses. As the air pivoted, she realized she could use this as a lever to get out. You don’t have time for me, she could say. You’ve overworked. You’ll move when your residency is over and leave the city. You will find someone better and leave me.
Why even try, then?
Holding back from self-sabotage, she said, “We have time now!”
“We have lots of things we could do with our time.”
“IT Crowd or Downton Abbey are good non-sex parts of a relationship.”
One eyebrow rose on his face. “Is this a relationship?”
Caught. “It’s a…something.”
“I’m in a something with you?”
“Yes. Don’t push your luck.”
“What’s the next step in a something? An everything?”
Oh God, yes, she thought. “A maybe.”
“Ooooh, I can’t wait for a maybe. Followed by a possibly?”
“No, after a maybe comes anal.”
He slapped a palm against his forehead. “Only Ms. Josephine Elizabeth Mendham would talk about anal and Downton Abbey in the same conversation.”
She gave him the stink eye. “You really haven’t seen the show, apparently.”
Sighing, he stood, refilled their wine glasses, took her hand, and walked her toward the television in the living room. Both carried their wine in their spare hands. “No, I haven’t but now I have to. Downton Abbey it is.”
“And IT Crowd next time,” she blurted out.
“To next time,” he said, holding his wine out for a toast.
“‘Next time’ is code for sex, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”