“This is hotter than anything that happened to me in high school,” I whispered.
He crawled over me, knee on one side of me, leaning over to kiss my collarbone. “I can’t believe the boys weren’t all over you.”
“You haven’t seen my sister. My first boyfriend only asked me out because she said no. Of course, he didn’t tell me this until after we’d been dating for three months.”
“Unacceptable. I’ll have him assassinated.”
Paul was kissing down the front of my shirt, now, and both my hands were on his shoulders. I was afraid to talk again, afraidto stop the path that we finally seemed to be on. It was so easy to kiss him.
He leaned back a moment later, his eyes dark rings of brown. The look in his eyes was too much for me. I looked away.
“So did you do a lot of this in high school, then?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I was terrified of girls, so I put a lot of effort into being polite.”
“A good Canadian boy.”
He nodded, smiling a little.
“And what would happen if I asked you to be very, very impolite?”
He groaned and pushed me back against the sofa cushions. I hadn’t expected him to be like this: intense, utterly focused. I found that my hands were gripping his shirt, wanting to pull him closer. I could smell his faint scent of soap and pine trees, his body against mine, our breaths starting to sync up faster and faster. I could hear him muttering my name into the shell of my ear, one of his hands tracing along my side. I could hear the sound of the doorbell.
We both sat up. Our breathing was too fast, too messy.
“One second,” he said lightly, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t move.”
He walked to the door and looked out through the peep hole. He glanced at me, his expression shifting.
“I’m sorry. Hold on a minute.”
It was in his face. I knew something was wrong as he stepped outside, and I tiptoed toward the window. His mother again? I wanted to see what she looked like. The rain had turned into a blustering sideways wind, and when I leaned forward to look outside, I could just see a blonde woman standing at his door in a billowing trench coat with a plaid lining. She looked beautiful and wind-tossed, like she was in an advertisement for a high-end British clothing line.
I could see that Paul was talking to her, though only his shoulder was visible. She was nodding, speaking earnestly, nodding again. Then she ran a hand through her hair and laughed.
I leaned out of sight behind a curtain.
It was his ex-wife. I knew it, somehow. It was something about her expression, and everything Lisette had said about her. I didn’t want her to see me here, in case Paul decided to get back together with her. It was like I had already cast myself as the Other Woman.
I had to remind myself that Paul was not married. I was not doing anything wrong.
They only talked for a few moments, but I sat very still, waiting for it to be over. I listen to the opening and closing of his front door, a wrestling against the wind. I turned around. At least he was alone, I thought. At least he hadn’t decided to introduce her to me. That would have been more than I could handle. “And this is my friend Abby, up from New York. Lisette’s friend, really.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“Who was it?” I asked, like I didn’t know.
“Patricia,” he said quietly. “Trish.”
“Ah, okay.” I sounded casual, didn’t I?
“I’m sorry,” he added, a strange expression on his face. “I didn’t know she was back in town.”
Of course she just got back to town, I thought. It felt faithful to the narrative of my life that I had foolishly tried to deviate from. “Is she back permanently or…?”
“It sounds like she’s not sure. But probably. I should…” He shook his head.
I nodded. “So it didn’t work out with the other guy?”
