“She was just being melodramatic. I just stood still and waited until she knew she couldn’t get a rise out of me.” I stepped forward and then carefully kissed him, my arms wrapping around his shoulders. He was lean, his arms warm even after the drive in the darkness.
“Let me get the stove started,” he said after a moment. “I want you to get your money’s worth from Canada.”
I watched him building up a pile in the stove. Kindling and logs carefully built into a stack. Once it was lit, he turned back to me and smiled, and I could see flames in his eyes, briefly. The room began to smell of winter restaurants and the farmhouses I’d been to for friends’ weddings. I thought about one of my mother’s boyfriends who had let us build a fire in his fireplace, and how much we’d liked him. He’d been one of the good ones, which meant he hadn’t lasted long.
Paul walked up and sat next to me on the sofa. “Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey.”
He ran one hand along the back of my neck and the other behind my waist, pulling me into a kiss. It was gentle at first, but it seemed to flip a switch inside him. All the passion was at the surface, suddenly. It felt like I was experiencing the real Paul, just for a moment, without all the careful measures of control.
When he pulled back, his irises were darker, his expression intense. Then something shuttered again.
“Abby, I really want to take you to bed,” he said at last.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
I nodded. He smiled a little, then he took my hand and led me upstairs, leaving the scattered remnants of chaos behind in his front hallway.
Paul’s room was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and an old wooden desk with even more books stacked on it. I hadn’tconsidered what a reader he was, but this was a reader’s room, piles of books on every available surface. There was a large photo on one of the walls of a Southwestern desert.
He hesitated at the door as I stepped in ahead of him.
“It looks like you,” I said. “Your room.”
“Boring and steady.”
“Smart and sexy.”
He closed the door behind us and then leaned back to kiss me against it. He was kissing my neck, my forehead, and then he paused again, breathing hard. It was the same push and pull I always saw from him: desire and then control. Careful, always stopping himself.
“What is it?”
He shook his head and then leaned his head against my shoulder.
“Paul, what is it? It’s okay.”
“I just want to make sure I get this right.”
“You are.”
He nodded, but he didn’t move. I waited for him to say more. I was pretty sure this was the first time he had slept with anyone since his divorce. Was he thinking of Trish? Regretting this already? I put one hand gently on the back of his neck, waiting until he spoke.
“I’m sorry. Trish told me I was bad at this. At sex. When we were breaking up, she said a lot of hurtful things, but that was one of the last things she said on her way out the door. I know she was just trying to justify what she was doing, but it got in my head. So you have to tell me if what I’m doing is working for you.”
“You don’t kiss like you’re bad at this,” I said, rubbing my hand along his shoulder.
“I just start to overthink,” he said finally. “I want to get this right.”
“You’re in your head about it? That’s not allowed. You’re an improv guy.”
“I know, but that’s my point. This is exactly the kind of situation where I can’t follow my instincts. I don’t trust myself.”
“Please tell me your instincts aren’t cannibalism.”
I felt him laugh against me. He shook his head slowly. I thought about what he was saying. I also thought of what a disaster it would be if I started giving him precise instructions, turning this into an exercise where he felt like he was being graded, trying to measure up.
