Ben
I sleep like the dead, even on this too-soft mattress, but when I wake up to the sound of Kit’s alarm, my body still feels completely drained. I’m sacked-out, empty-headed, unable to think about anything but Kit lying next to me, the smell of her sleep-warm skin, the way she looks, her lips still swollen from the pressure of my mouth on hers, a pink trace of beard burn on her chest, probably on her thighs too. I wasn’t kidding when I’d said I’d planned to keep her up, but it’s not the fact that we’ve had sex of all kinds for the last twelve hours or so that’s got me feeling this way. It’s that it had taken a herculean effort to wait so long to come to her. From the minute I’d left her on Saturday, this is what I’d wanted, and I’d barely slept all weekend for thinking about her. But I’d been determined to come to her honestly, determined to deal with Jasper first.
I don’t want to think about that now, though. Now all I want is to sleep and eat and fuck her again, not necessarily in that order.
Kit’s swiping at her alarm, letting out a string of curses I’ve never heard her use before. When she finally manages to shut it off, she raises a limp arm in the air, a clenched fist. “You’ll pay for this, Tucker,” she says, then lets her arm drop over her eyes.
“You’re so fucking cute,” I tell her, leaning over to press a hard kiss over her mouth.
“Coffee,” she whispers against my lips. “I don’t care who you have to murder to get it.”
I don’t have to murder anyone; I just use the coffeemaker she has in her kitchen. But the time finally registers and I realize I need to get home. I’d promised Sharon I’d be back by seven to get Dad ready for the day. I clean up the dishes Kit and I left behind last night when I’d hoisted her over my shoulder and carried her back upstairs, and pour her coffee into a mug that says Don’t Test My Metal. She’s still in bed, arm still over her face, a slant of morning light angling across her neck, right where I want to lick her. I’ve never wanted to leave a place less.
“I’ve got to go, honey,” I say, the endearment slipping out before I can even think of it. What the fuck is this. I’m bringing her coffee in bed and talking to her as if we’ve been married for years, and I fucking like it. This makes her sit up, her eyes squinty, her lips puckered with the strain, apparently, of seeing the morning light. Her hair is a mess.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she says.
I set the coffee on her nightstand, lean down and kiss her again, open-mouthed, against her shoulder. I see her nipples peak underneath the sheet she’s holding to her chest, and—oh, come on. Five more minutes? I could get the job done in five minutes…
“So Sharon stayed with your dad last night?” she asks, a total boner destroyer, but I suppose I should be grateful. I pick up my t-shirt from the floor, pull it on, set about finding my boots.
“Yeah, but she’s got somewhere to be this morning, so I need to get back. And Dad’s got more PT today, plus it’s River’s day at the yard. Busy.”
“Hmm,” she says, into her coffee. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking into that mug as if it’s got the answers to the universe in it. It hasn’t crossed my mind to reassure her—that’s at least part because most of my relationships with women have been narrowed by the boundaries I establish out of what I’ve told myself is necessity. I work a lot, much of it involving travel, and I don’t have the time or will to make commitments. I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept next to someone all night, and other than these last few weeks with Dad, I can’t remember when I’ve last had to provide an accounting of my day to anyone who I didn’t share an Outlook calendar with. But it’s also part because already with Kit I feel I’m with her. I feel I’ll see her tonight, every night I can, no questions asked.
That’s sloppy thinking, though, and I know it—I live in Texas, Kit lives here, and I have no idea what she wants from me, or what we’ll be to each other. There’s fallout I have to deal with from being with Kit even this once, and snatches of my conversation with Jasper are already coming back to me—first, his anger, then his attempt to find a workaround, finally, my promises to make this up to him, to make sure our plans come off anyway.
I finish tying up my boot, set a knee down onto the bed so I can lean close to Kit, wait for her to look at me. When she does, her dark eyes are wary, cautious, so different from last night. “Kit,” I say, against her mouth. The coffee steams up between us, nutty and strong.
“I like how that is,” she says back, her voice soft. “You saying my name.”
I kiss her again, letting my tongue move across the seam of her lips before breathing out her name again. “Can I come back tonight?”
Her lashes lift, and that warm glow is back in her eyes. “Anytime,” she says.
* * * *
I walk into Dad’s kitchen at 6:58, thank God, or else Sharon would’ve had my ass. Dad’s at the table, squeezing the strengthening ball he has as part of the at-home PT for his arm and reading out loud to Sharon, who’s filling in a crossword.
“Uh, hello,” I say, because—I don’t know what this is that I’ve walked into. It looks as if they have breakfast together every morning.
“Good, you’re here,” Sharon says, standing. “I’ve got my pap smear this morning.”
“Holy shit, Sharon. My ears.”
“Oh, save it. People my age still get those!”
“What? I didn’t—that’s—that’s not the point.” I move over to the counter, pour myself what’s left of the coffee, and close my eyes against the sudden thought of Kit and how I left her, naked and sleepy and smelling of much better coffee than this. Sharon waves goodbye, letting herself out, and the kitchen is quiet but for the faint squeak the ball makes when my dad squeezes it.
“Nice night?” he says, keeping his eyes on the paper, but I can see him smiling.
“Yep,” I say, turning my back to reach into the fridge. “We’ve got to get you ready for your appointment, huh?”
“You know, if you’re wanting to be out more—I don’t need someone staying with me at night now,” he says. “You heard the doc.”
I did hear the doctor, late last week, when Dad had passed all the tests determining whether or not he was still a fall risk. So long as he kept the cane by his bed at night, he had enough weight-bearing flexibility to get back and forth to the bathroom, to get water if he needed it. But I still didn’t feel comfortable with it. I wouldn’t have left him last night without Sharon.
Which—about that. “Dad,” I say, keeping my back turned as I pour myself a bowl of cereal. I may be thirty-one years old, but I’m not sure I’d ever have the balls required to have this conversation with my dad face to face. “You got something going with Sharon?”
He barks out a sharp laugh. “Do I ‘got something going with’ her?” he repeats, laughing again.
I feel my face heat in embarrassment. My dad and I are close, I think, but we don’t usually talk about this kind of shit. Once, after I’d moved to Texas, I’d asked him if he was interested in dating—I worried, sometimes, about him growing old alone—and he’d laughed sort of the way he’s doing right now. “Never mind,” I say, sitting across the table and hunching as far down into my cereal bowl as I can without actually dipping my face into it.
“You got something going with Kit?”
Even her name, it makes my skin prickle with anticipation, heat. “Yeah.”
“Well. Then, yeah. I got something going with Sharon.”
I blink up at him, just—shocked, completely fucking shocked.
“Since you were about fifteen, I guess,” he says, so casual, as if this is not a big deal at all.
“What? Since I was what?” Dad’s calmly squeezing the ball, and now he’s added in some of the slight knee lifts he does for his leg. “I—I can’t—how?”
“How? Well, here’s how it is, son, when a man…”
“Dad, don’t finish that sentence. I beg you.” Jesus, if this keeps up, I won’t even be able to go back to Kit’s tonight. My buddy down there will go on permanent hiatus. “Just—explain yourself.”
Dad lifts his good shoulder in a casual shrug. “Nothing to explain, really. You know Sharon’s my best friend. Turned into something else after a few years, that’s all.”
“You’ve never said a word,” I say, feeling a little mad now. “You guys have—been together for over fifteen years and you’ve never said a word to me? Jesus, why don’t you live together? Or get married?”
“Live together! You must be crazy. Sharon and me, it’s good the way it is, us having our own spaces. We thought about it, once you went away, but I suppose we do best how we are.”
“Jesus, Dad. I feel like an idiot. Probably Sharon wants to be taking care of you, and I flew in here like I was saving the goddamn day. Why wouldn’t you have told me this?”
“Don’t see as how it mattered, right at first, when you were a kid. You were going through a lot back then, anyhow, so it didn’t seem right, and Sharon and I kept it pretty casual back then.”
I don’t dare ask if “keeping it casual” means the same thing to Dad as it means to me, and anyways, now that he’s said it, little things about those last few years I was in the house come back to me, and I see them in a new light—a couple of times, early in the morning, when my dad came in the house, saying he’d just been out for a walk, even though so far as I knew he never walked only for the sake of it, or the time I found one of Sharon’s baseball jerseys in Dad’s laundry basket. “Then after a while,” he says, “it seemed it’d be strange to tell you, I guess.” He clears his throat. “Sorry.”
I take the ball from him, squeeze it myself. “You’re supposed to rest after five minutes,” I say, because now I’m more embarrassed, both by his obvious discomfort and by what this entire conversation reveals. The truth is, I thought my dad and I were tight—I thought I kept up with him and his life, considered myself a good son to him. But if he’s been with the same woman for all these years and I didn’t even know? I didn’t even notice? That doesn’t say anything good about me, and this feeling I’ve had since I’ve been home—that Dad’s life is going by without me, that I was wrong not to have known the kinds of risks he took at work—it’s overwhelming right now, settling right into my temples for what I know will be a day-long headache.
“Hey, you got nothing to feel bad about,” Dad says. “I should have told you. Sharon and I should have told you. Though she’s probably going to tear a strip off me when she finds out I let it slip.”
“She didn’t want me to know, either?” This hurts too. I feel as close to Sharon as I do to anyone here at home, and I think of the effort it must have taken her, all these years, to keep this from me, to never betray anything other than friendly affection—but mostly annoyance—with my dad.
“Ah, Sharon’s private in some ways. Not about her gynecology appointments, I guess, but about other things. Don’t take it personal.”
Oh, man. But I have taken it personal. It’s ridiculous, but I think of Kit asking me if Sharon was my stepmom. I was such an unholy terror when I was a teenager. Sharon probably hadn’t wanted to be all in for that. After all, even my own mother hadn’t.
I swallow down more of my breakfast, pulling the sports section in front of me, but not really registering anything on the page. After a few minutes of silence, Dad speaks up again. “Ben, the thing between Sharon and me, it’s how it’s always been. She’s got her life, and her space, and I have mine. We’re as close as we want to be. And you coming here...” He pauses, clears his throat again. “That’s what I needed to have happen, after I fell. That was more important to me than anything.”
It’s my turn to look at him, his turn to avoid my eyes. With his good hand, he’s gathering up the scattered sections of the paper, piling them haphazardly into one corner of the table. I don’t think Dad’s just humoring me. I think it does matter to him that I’ve come, been here to take care of him, and that takes some of the sting out of this revelation about him and Sharon. “Me too,” I grumble, then suck down the last of my shitty, lukewarm coffee. But I suppose I’m still feeling a little bruised, a little resentful, because when Dad asks what exactly it is I have going on with Kit, I only tell him we’ve got to get a move on, and then we’re both going through the motions, another day ahead.
* * * *
While Dad’s in his PT session, I stay outside, doing as much damage control about work as I can from my phone. Jasper’s in flight to California, headed out for a titanium conference where he’ll scout some new tech for the jet engine division. This is for the best, that we steer clear of each other for a couple of days. Sunday had been tense—I’m pretty sure he’d said you’ve got to be fucking kidding about fifteen times. I’d kept clear of the details—so far as I was concerned, all Jasper needed to know was that I’d compromised things by getting too close to the recruit, that I could no longer do the job.
The thing is, it’d never happened to me before, but Jasper and I both knew this kind of shit did happen. Recruiters fell out with clients for all kinds of reasons, and it could have just as easily been something else that broke things down between Kit and me, not the fact that I wanted her more than my next breath. So I think we’d both tried to focus on how to go forward. I’d made promises to deal with Greg, to find another way around the non-compete, to talk to Hamish and Kristen too. Jasper and I will go to our separate corners for a couple of days, and when I talk to him next, I’m confident I’ll have news to placate him.
I call Kristen, who’s already heard it from Jasper and who doesn’t seem bothered at all. She’s not in a hurry about breaking out. Next is Hamish, who shouts at me through the line like we’re using a tin-can phone, but he doesn’t give two shits about a longer timeline, either, and tells me he’s on board for whenever Jasper and I start up. Greg is going to be a tougher case—I won’t go to him until I have other prospects, which will probably take me a couple of weeks to scout given my limited resources here. I know already no one will match Kit, but I also know that’s because now, I’m more biased than Greg is when it comes to her. All in all, though, it’s Jasper’s haste that’s putting the most strain on things, and by the time Dad’s wrapped up his session, I feel less worried about work overall, if a little more worried about what’s got into Jasper.
But it’s still a tedious day, because I count the hours—minutes, really—until I can see Kit again. River, now sporting a much more agreeable haircut and attitude in general, helps me with the chandelier, mostly with ordering some replacement pieces online. He’s good with tech—I think he’s even bringing Dad around to the idea of a new point of sale system, a miracle since Dad still used a carbon-copy credit card swipe until the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Right before close, after River’s gone, Sharon comes in, and Dad must’ve told her about our conversation, because the first thing she does is point a finger at me and say, “It’s nothing against you, Ben, us not telling you.” Then she adjusts the front of her jersey and says, “I’m taking your father out for dinner and then we’re going to a movie. And I’ll handle bedtime, so you can go out with your new girlfriend.”
There’s something I should say here, I think—something about how I’m okay with Dad and Sharon, but she’s so determinedly not looking at me that I don’t want to make the situation worse, so I settle for the unbelievably immature, “I don’t know if she’s my girlfriend,” which at least gets Sharon to look at my face, if only to roll her eyes at me.
So by the time I get to Kit’s, the weirdness of my day—and the fact that I only slept for three hours last night—has taken its toll. If I weren’t so hard up for her, I’d probably make the sensible decision to stay away, since I’m guessing I’m not good company. But I’m not sensible, not right now, probably not since I’ve met her, and when I knock on her door, all I can think about is getting my hands on her, sinking into her, letting myself get lost in her. It takes her a minute or so to answer, and as soon as she opens the door I know why. Her hair is flat on one side, a red mark on her cheek, her glasses a little crooked. “I fell asleep,” she says, “on the couch,” like this is the most appalling thing she’s ever done.
I’m kissing her before I’m even all the way through the door, and the way her arms go around me, the little moan she makes at the back of her throat—I’m already hard as a rock, but I ought to slow down, take it easier, because as bad as I want her, I don’t want her to think I’m just here for that. So what if I haven’t even worked out for myself what I am actually here for, but I know with Kit, it’s not just sex. I pull back from her mouth but wrap her tighter against my chest, lifting her a little so I can bury my face against her warm, smooth neck. I take a deep breath. Whatever shampoo this woman uses, I want the smell of it on my sheets all the time.
She shivers against me, and I try not to notice the way I can feel her nipples through her thin shirt, pressing against my chest. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Weird day,” I say, the sound muffled against her skin, and holy shit, it just—hits me, I guess, this feeling that I’m so glad to see her, be with her, at the end of this kind of day. It’s so striking that I take a step back, put a bit of distance between us. I run my fingers across the creases on her cheek, straighten her glasses.
“Was it—are things bad for you, at work? Because of this? Or is it your dad?”
I think of unloading it—everything I found out today about Dad and Sharon, my plans with Jasper, and the fact that he’s suddenly gone attack-dog at them—but, fuck. It feels so complicated. I don’t know if I’m there with her yet, and anyway I haven’t even figured out how I feel about most of it myself. “Everything’s good,” I say, running my hands up and down her hips, her waist. “Just, you know. Recovering. Some insanely hot woman kept me up half the night.”
“I didn’t! You’re the one…”
I cut her off, kissing her again. “You want to go get something to eat?” I ask. “Because I figure, we’re probably not going to get much sleep tonight, either, so we’d better at least keep our strength up.”
And if her smile looks a little disappointed at the edges, I pretend not to notice.
* * * *
We go to Kit’s favorite place, a sandwich shop called The Meltdown that must’ve opened in the last couple of years. She orders for me—trust me, she says, in this bossy way she has, and for the first time in my life I think about asking a woman to tie me up, but I get my mind out of the gutter long enough to lead us to a booth in the back, where we drink beers straight from the bottle and talk about Kit’s house, the plaster worker who’s coming tomorrow, the timeline she has for her kitchen renovation.
When our food comes, she takes both of our plates and swaps one-half sandwich for the other, so we each have half each other’s. “You’re going to love these,” she says, and I’m pretty sure I’d eat a sardine sandwich if she was the one giving it to me.
“Anyways,” she continues, “I wanted to ask Alex what he thought of the exposed brick idea, but…you know. That didn’t work out.” She furrows her brow when she talks about him, a shadow of that sadness I’d seen over the weekend when she’d told me about his brief visit.
“Have you talked to him again?” I ask, but then I’m taking a bite of my food, and—fuck, this sandwich. It’s really good. I think I just made a sex-adjacent noise about it.
Kit smiles at my reaction, but then her face falls again, remembering my question. “No. But that’s not really that weird, I guess. He travels a lot for his job. He’s a photographer.” She pauses, takes a bite of her sandwich, but I think talking about her brother has taken some of the pleasure out of this for her, and I’m sorry to have brought it up. After a minute, though, she continues. “When he was here, I tried to give him money.” She shakes her head, breathing out this soft, sad laugh. “I suggested that he move here. I’m an idiot.”
“Why does that make you an idiot?”
She shrugs, takes another bite, and I wait her out. “He’s a complicated guy. We’re complicated, together, I guess. He raised me, from the time I was a baby, basically. I mean, I mentioned the thing with my mother—that’s not Alex’s mother; she died when Alex was four. And my dad—he’s not very reliable, so Alex kind of had to take over.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” I say, but this is grudging. I don’t know two shits about Alex other than I hold him responsible for Kit crying, and I hate the thought of her crying, hated the sight of it more.
“You know when I was twelve, he took me to buy my first training bra, which you’d think would be completely mortifying, but it wasn’t. Or if it was, for him, he knew it was worse for me. So he—I don’t know. He just did it. Marched us right into that department store’s lingerie section, asked the woman at the counter to point us in the right direction, and fifteen minutes later, we’re out of there. When it was time for me to apply to colleges, he worked doubles so he could pay for my application fees. He drove me to scholarship competitions all over the state. He’s always been that way, a problem-solver.” She picks up a chip, sets it down, picks it up again. “Or at least he always solved my problems. So it sucks that he won’t let me solve his.”
“What do you think his problem is?”
That seems to land in a place that hurts her. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, her eyes falling back to her plate, and goddamn, this is hard. Maybe I should have kept her at home, taken her to bed again. But Kit waits, thinks, then speaks again. “I guess I don’t know. I thought it was money, or maybe I wanted to believe that it was. I think maybe I’m his problem, or at least the fact that I was his problem for so long. He needs a break from me, maybe.”
This sends a shock of anger so acute through me that I clench my hand around my bottle of beer. I’m white knuckling this sucker like it’s done me wrong. “Then he’s an asshole,” I say, and I don’t even care if I don’t have a right to that sentiment, about someone who’s known her way longer than me.
“No,” she says, so serious that she sets an hand on my forearm, across the table. “I don’t want you to think that. I really, really don’t.” She says this as if it matters so much to her, those black cherry eyes right on mine. So I move my arm, take her hand and squeeze it briefly, and she smiles at me, sweet as all hell, and I wish I was sitting right next to her, on the other side of the booth. I don’t care how cheesy it would look. I feel restless, unsettled, a little, and I know it’s because Kit just—she just puts herself out there, telling me this thing about her and her brother, and I’m still dammed up. I try and imagine what she’d say if I told her how I took it about Dad and Sharon. That’s new, that imagining—because while I’ve been told by more than one woman that I had problems communicating, I don’t think I’ve ever thought once about how I might go about doing it better.
We finish our sandwiches and when we get outside, I take her hand and hold it all the way back to her place. Inside her house, up in her bedroom, I swipe at least four of the crazy throw pillows she has arranged on this bed onto the floor, and then I take all the time I didn’t take the first time, last night. I lie on top of her, kissing her and learning all the shapes of her through her clothes first, until we’re both a little crazy with it, moving against each other like a couple of teenagers, so that when I finally start removing our clothes, piece by piece, it feels as if we’ve crossed a new threshold. When the skin of our stomachs touches, she gasps, her hands rubbing up and down my sides, her kisses growing deeper, more frantic. I slow her with my mouth, moving down her neck, across the fine shelf of her collarbone, down the center of her stomach.
I did this for Kit last night too, tasted her, felt her come against my mouth before I took her the second time. But I think now it was selfish, some other way for me to have her, to make her mine, even for that small slice of time. Tonight—I don’t know—I’m trying to give her something, something I can’t say, something I don’t know how to feel. I pay attention to every hitch of her breath, every line of tension in the muscles along her inner thighs, every clench of her hand in my hair. Despite the tight, pulsing protests of my dick, I focus on nothing but her and the way her body twists when she comes, her back arching off the bed, her mouth open in a silent cry. Every ounce of energy in my body is concentrated on the need to rear up and drive into her, but I don’t. I kiss my way up to her stomach again, rest my forehead on her sternum and wait, breathing as if I’ve run flat-out for miles, just from the desperation of it.
And it’s only when she tells me to come to her, come into her, that I can settle down again.