“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,reallydon’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 herselfoutthere, 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 tohaveher, 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.
Chapter 15
Kit
“I mean I’m not saying you have tonarrateit. But I am saying I haven’t had sex in eight and a half months, so if youdid…”
It’s Sunday morning, and instead of brunch, Zoe, Greer, and I have met for a walk in Hazleton Park, one of the historic gardens not too far from Zoe’s condo. It’s a gorgeous day, a perfect, clear blue sky and a breeze that carries the smell of roses from the west garden, and it’s finally, finally, not too hot for a mid-day walk. Brunch was out on account of the fact that I’d overslept, waking up after nine with Ben’s chest pressed against my back—the way I’d woken up most of the mornings since I’d found him on my stoop six days ago. I wasn’t the type to cancel plans for a guy, ever, so I’d been prepared to throw on whatever clothes were closest to me and go to brunch with the worst case of bedhead I’d ever had in my life, but when I texted Zoe and Greer to let them know I’d be late, Zoe had sent a bunch of hot pepper emojis and told me to stay in bed for another hour, that we’d meet up later. Although now I realize the error of my ways. Clearly she thinks I owe her details.
“I’m not going to tell…”
She’s not even really listening at this point, just pressing on.“I meanthinkabout it,” she says.“I could have gestated ahuman beingin the time since I’ve had sex.”
“It’s only a dry spell,” Greer says.“You’ll get back out there.”
I seize this opportunity.“You know, Zoe, there’s some very nice men at the university…”
“Who, like your pal Diego from the English department? Nope.”
I have to laugh, thinking back to my one ill-fated attempt to date someone from the university. Diego had been sweet, soft-spoken, but he clearly had some kind of clinical impostor syndrome about being a professor. He smoked a pipe even though he confessed to hating it, and he had at least one sport coat with elbow patches. Then on our third date he’d taken me to a poetry reading, and I’m an open-minded person but frankly I draw the line at Diego doing an open mic rendition of the poem he wrote about the infant trauma of losing his foreskin.
“I saw him kiss her,” says Greer, out of the blue, and I shoulder-check her off the path. She laughs, coming back, linking her arm through mine.
“Tellme,” says Zoe, her eyes going comically wide.
Greer shrugs casually.“Yeah, last weekend. He leaned right in and laid one on her. It looked good to me.”
“You guys. I don’t need your assessment.”
“Because it’s so awesome, you mean? Like we couldn’t even possibly assess something that awesome?”
The smile I try to hide is the only answer Zoe requires.“God. I’m sojealous,” she says.
“Jealous and really, really happy for you, Kit-Kat,” says Greer.
“Well, we’ll see.” Suddenly, I feel—not embarrassed, not with these two, but—cautious, I guess. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ben this week—at my house, at the salvage yard, even one evening spent at his dad’s house, where we ate pizza with Henry and Sharon, who showed me an old picture of Ben wearing frog-printed swim shorts over a pair of sweatpants. But in all that time, we’ve never said anything about the fact that Henry’s moving around pretty well now, scheduled to be out of his arm sling full time next week and in a walking boot that allows him to get around pretty easily. There’s no way Ben doesn’t have to get back to Texas soon, but every time I’ve tried to talk to him about his home there, his work, how it’s going with his partner, he gives me a noncommittal answer, telling me work’s fine, everything is fine. I’d press him, but I’m not even sure I want to know. I only want to keep going on this floating, perfect island of Ben—sex with Ben, laughter and conversation with Ben, light home improvements with Ben, just Ben in general.
“So has he given up recruiting you?” asks Greer.
“Yeah—conflict of interest, I guess. Anyways I think I’d pretty much convinced him already that I wasn’t interested.”
“You weren’t even alittleinterested?” says Zoe.“I mean, that thing he said, about you being the gem? That was pretty convincing.”
I pause where I am on the path. Greer stays with me, her arm linked to mine, and she seems to know, instinctively, how I’d take this, because she draws herself a little closer to my side.“Did you—did you think I should have been?”
Zoe stops, turns to look back at me.“Kit, you are insanely talented. You love what you do more than anyone I’ve ever met. All I mean is that it’d be perfectly understandable if you thought about going to do it somewhere where you’d have a lot more opportunity.”
“Idon’tthink about it,” I say, too quickly for it to be convincing.“I’m really happy here. I don’t want to leave.”
Zoe’s brow furrows in concern, her eyes serious.“I know you don’t. And I’d never want you to. God, I’d probably have to be sedated for weeks if any one of us ever moved away. But sometimes…” Here, she breaks off, looks toward Greer, maybe hoping she’ll take over, but Greer just looks down at her feet.
“Sometimes what?”
