How Not To Fall by Emily Foster (12)

The next thing I know, it’s Monday morning.

I’ve been woken by the sound of the shower.

Ah shit.

On the bright side, I got, like, nine hours of sleep—but on the dark side, it’s Monday morning, which means Charles has work, and I have to wait all day for home base.

I hear the shower turn off and realize belatedly that I could have snuck in there with him. Then I hear him move through the apartment, hear water run, hear the coffee grinder, and at last there’s the smell of coffee, which pulls me from my bed like an invisible hand. I pull on my clothes—they’re waiting for me on the dresser—and find Charles in the kitchen.

He is dressed in his usual blue Oxford and khaki pants. He looks exactly like Charles.

Charles, whom I’ve spent two days and nights touching in every—almost every—way I can imagine.

And Charles, the postdoc in my research lab, scruffy and bedraggled with his wet hair and button-down shirt.

I spent twenty-something months fantasizing about all the ways he might seduce me or that I might seduce him, planning all the things I might do, if only he would take me to bed, dreaming of what his skin would feel like and taste like. And he turned out to be so vastly much more than my imagination could capture. He is beautiful in ways I didn’t anticipate, kind and funny and gentle and erotic and demanding and surprising.

And there he stands . . . making toast.

And I’m still a virgin. Mostly. Sort of.

“Hey,” I say, and he turns.

“Hey,” he says with a grin.

“I fell asleep,” I say.

“You did,” he says. “You snore charmingly.” And he seems perfectly content.

“I don’t snore!”

“No, you don’t. You barely moved all night, and you didn’t make a sound. But you were charming.”

I say, “I’m sorry we missed out on home base.”

He looks at me, surprised. “Did we miss it? Was that my only chance? If I had known that, I’d have woken you up, charming snore be damned.”

I smile and look at the floor. “I just mean, I’m sorry I have to wait all day while you go to work. Unless”—I rub at a spot on the floor with my toe—“you wanna be late?”

“No, siren, back to your shoals,” he says, and his toast dings. “What will you do today?”

“Clean our apartment, probably. My parents will be here Thursday, and our place is enough of a shithole without a semester’s worth of scuzz all over it.”

“You know just what to say to turn a man on, young Coffey. Your parents and scuzz in the same compound sentence. How are you getting home?” He sucks marmalade off his thumb.

“I rode my bike here,” I say.

“Right. How about I text you around noon, and we can make a plan for tonight?”

“What’s to plan?” I say. “I come over, you fuck me. Finally.”

“I thought you might like to do something . . . I don’t know, special, I suppose? It’s not nothing, letting someone put their body inside your body.”

“You’ve already put your hands inside my body, and your tongue. Is it really such a big deal to put genitals in?”

He comes over to me and puts his hands on my neck. He kisses me—our glasses tap against each other. “Yes, it is really such a big deal,” he says, and he wraps his arms around me. He says into my hair, “It’s a big deal, Annie.”

 

All morning I can feel that hug, feel his body on mine. I feel his lips and his hands, like a phantom limb. I clean my kitchen and vacuum the living room and remember his body and his voice and his heat.

Margaret isn’t home—she’s spent the weekend in Indy with Reshma. They’re talking about moving in together after Margaret graduates, and I find myself wondering how that’s going. She hasn’t texted me at all—but then, I haven’t texted her either. We’re both having pretty important weekends. I send her one message—

 

 

And she answers:

 

 

So, she’s pretty excited.

I take a long nap that afternoon—much longer than I intended when I “just put my head down for a second” after having lunch around eleven—and I wake up to a series of texts from Charles:

 

 

And an hour later:

 

And an hour after that:

 

 

And an hour after that:

 

 

And finally:

 

 

That last text was about fifteen minutes ago. I look at the time. It’s four thirty.

I call him.

“Hey,” he answers softly.

“Oh my god, I’ve been asleep for almost five hours. I’m so sorry,” I begin. “I just woke up and saw your texts. You must think I’m a total crazy passive-aggressive bitch. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”

I hear him exhale into the phone. “Nothing of the kind. You’re all right?”

“Yeah—I mean, I have a nap hangover and I’m totally embarrassed about the ways sleep is trying to prevent me from losing my virginity, but otherwise, I’m great.”

He laughs, just a rhythmic breath into the phone. “Good.”

“How about you?” I ask. “Everything good today?”

“Yep. Everything good.”

“Good.”

There’s a silence. Then he says, “I got you something. A present, sort of.”

“Ooh! What is it?”

“It’s a surprise, you ninny,” he says. “Come over and get it if you want to know.” He’s smiling; I can hear it. I’m smiling too. My heart’s beating very fast, considering I’m just sitting here, smiling into my phone.

“I haven’t even showered yet today,” I say, “so it’ll take me a minute to get ready. I’ll be there in maybe an hour? Little less?”

“In your own time,” he says. “Unless you’d prefer I come to you, instead.”

“Oh hell no, I haven’t cleaned my bedroom yet, and anyway, your bed is way bigger and more comfortable than mine.”

“So . . . beds are definitely on the table?” he says. “Like bread, for sharing?”

I laugh, surprised and touched that he remembers, and I wonder if it’s possible that Charles Douglas might feel now some of the trepidation I felt that day in March.

“Definitely on the table,” I say, and then, my smile trembling and my hand shaking as I hold the phone, I add softly, “Charles.”

“I was worried I’d hurt you,” he says in a quiet rush. His voice sounds as unsteady as mine. “It’s so important to me, Annie, that I not hurt you.”

“You haven’t hurt me.”

“I’m glad,” he says in that same unsteady voice. “I feel this compulsion to apologize to you anyway.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. For . . . not deserving to be the person you share this with?”

“Don’t I get to decide that?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m choosing you.”

After the slightest pause he says, “You honor me.” The formality of his words, the intensity of his voice, make me believe him.

“I’ll be over in an hour,” I say.

 

I shower. I repack my backpack with clean underwear and a change of clothes. I bike the few miles to Charles’s apartment. There’s an elevator up to his floor. When I rode it on Friday, it felt fast. Today it feels slow.

I knock on his door, just like I did on Friday. He opens it. Last time we did this, we were both smiling goofily. Tonight I’m trembling, and his face is serious.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” His face eases a little. Like last time, he lets me in and takes my bag from me, but then he puts his hands on either side of my jaw and kisses me hello. It’s more than a kiss hello, though.

When he breaks away, he says, “Before we begin tonight’s proceedings, I’d like to offer you . . .” He pulls a shiny key from his pocket. “It is a key to the flat. I offer it without expectation or demand, but with the hope that the next several weeks will bring us both a great deal of pleasure, and that your free access to my bed will facilitate that.”

I take it, warm from his pocket, and put it in my own pocket, trying to smother my smile.

“Listen, if at any point, tonight or ever, you want to stop, you must just say so and we will. The least doubt or hesitation. I can think of nothing less desirable than taking to bed a woman who isn’t quite sure she’s having an excellent time.”

I nod. “Okay.”

He’s looking at me seriously, uncertainly, his hands on my triceps. “Are you interested in dinner? Would you like . . . I don’t know, anything at all?”

“Just you,” I say.

“Well then,” he says with a wry smile but in a serious voice. “Annabelle Coffey, it would be an honor and a privilege for me to sully your maiden virtue this fine evening.”

I break into a maniacal grin. “When do you want to start?” I ask.

“No time like the present,” he says, and leads me by the hand into the bedroom.