“You watching me undress makes me all muddled,” he confesses, fumbling with his belt. “It’s like I completely forget how to use my body in the excitement of thinking about yours.”
I grin. “Would you like some help?”
“No, no, I’ll…get there eventually.”
My quiet laugh at his endearing struggle fades away as soon as Cal’s knee presses down on the mattress between my legs and he climbs onto the bed beside me. I didn’t get to see this much of him when we hooked up downstairs or when we were at the photoshoot earlier, and I want to study every angle, every slope of his naked body. The men I used to date kept fit as a point of pride, going for runs, spending hours in the gym each week, trying to retain their youth and health as they aged. So I’m fascinated as I kiss along his neck, his shoulders, his chest, his arms, his stomach, by how Cal’s organic strength, earned through the course of his work at Virtu over the last two decades, feels against my lips. Cal might not have built his antique store (Graham and Harold are to thank for that), but it certainly seems to have built him, in more ways than one.
“So, now that we’re here, how are we feeling?” I ask when I’ve made it back to his mouth. “Still want to keep going as planned? Or we can do some other stuff first, or—”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Keep going.” Then he’s kissing me again as we adjust our bodies to fit onto the bed properly, reclined against pillows that smell so deliciously like him—old paper, polished wood, apples, and sweet autumn leaves. Cal reaches for one of the condoms and I watch, rapt, as he frees it from its packaging and rolls it down his length. Then hepositions himself between my thighs, and I wriggle against the pressure of him settled there at my entrance, urging him on in both a show of encouragement and pure need. But he doesn’t move into me right away. Instead he pauses, staring down into my eyes.
“Hey. All good up there?” I check in.
“Mm. Bit overwhelmed, is all.” He smiles slightly, somewhere between charming and abashed. “Just…I don’t know if you know this,” he says, “but I’m sort of an expert when it comes to beautiful and rare things. And there’s so much that’s beautiful and rare about you, Annie O’Neill.” His fingers brush, feather light, over my neck and his thumb comes to rest gently against my throat. Something about the physical sensation of that, mixed with the sweet words, unlocks the last hidden part of me that was still trying to cling to the role I’ve always played, and I feel suddenly even more exposed than I did the other night, beyond anything I’ve ever felt before. There’s nothing at all left to separate our bodies or our hearts and it’s fuckingterrifying.
But as Cal slides into me at last, his warm eyes never leaving mine, all of my fear is surrendered along with a shaky breath. Everything is too bright with pleasure and joy and a deep abiding knowledge that I’m safe here, with him, as much as he’s safe here with me. Because as vulnerable as I might feel, I know Cal is feeling it too.
This is, I understand deep inside my soul, what it means to take good care of each other. It’s a mutual endeavor, and there’s a slight pain, a tenderness in my chest, when I realize that, despite my supposed “experience,” in this way at least, Cal has a definite advantage over me. I follow his lead, learning as I go to both give and take instead of simply giving and giving and giving as has always been my impulse. I tell him how amazing itfeels to be taking him, slow and deep, but also how he can make it even better for me. Because I know he wants to, the way that I want to make it even better for him. And that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Making something. Building something together. Up and up, higher and higher, until I find my release the same way I did atop the counter Thursday night: intense, all-encompassing, a single moment of both strength and weakness, an explosive beginning and ending. Something I know means so much more than what I told myself it would, especially when Cal immediately follows me over the edge, both of us trembling against each other in the aftermath.
After a few minutes of lying there, tangled and spent, he shifts to the space in the bed beside me. Through heavy eyelids, I watch him slide the condom off, tie it, and lay it atop its wrapper on the nightstand.
“There’s a trash can in your bathroom?” I ask. Cal responds with an exhausted noise that I’m pretty sure is a stand-in for a yes. “I’ll take it with me,” I say, and head to clean up.
When I return, I consider redressing and getting ready to head out. But the space I vacated calls to me, warm and soft, sex- and Cal-scented, and I find myself unable to resist sliding back into the bed. Which Cal doesn’t seem to mind, if his immediate gathering me into his arms is any indication. His breaths start evening out, fluttering the hair by my ear.
I trace his collarbone with my finger and ask, “What are you thinking?” In the past, I never would have dared.No man wants to converse right after sex, I would tell myself.Especially about emotions. Don’t make him think you’re needy.But I’m flying high on the novelty of no longer centering my partner’s needs to the detriment of my own. I want to keep going after whatIwant, and right now that’s to know if Cal felt the same way I felt, andif he’s aware how much more it meant to me than I ever intended. “I’m thinking…” he says slowly, “that I’m glad I recently happened to put clean sheets on the bed.”
“I also appreciate that.”
Cal loosens his grip in order to put enough distance between us to look me in the eyes, his voice going quieter and more earnest. “I’m also thinking that it’s almost three in the morning. So maybe you should just stay here tonight instead of going back to Harold’s.”
“Oh. Um.” I’m thrown off by the suggestion. Itislate, and Iamtired…
“You don’t have to, though, if—” he starts.
“No,” I cut him off. “I’d like to. I want to. I’ll stay.”
I figured heading out right after we were done was the best way to reinforce that this is just a casual fling. But it isn’t. I think we’re both aware of that, even if I’ll never admit it aloud.
TWENTY-SIX
Callahan
I have to stopmyself from whistling so as not to wake Annie, still sound asleep in my bed, as I throw on a pair of jeans and an old college sweatshirt.
Annie. In my bed.
God, I still can’t believe it.
I’m not sure she can believe it either. Or that she’ll want to, at least.
Maybe what we did downstairs in the shop Thursday night could have been dismissed as a one-time impulsive sort of thing. But last night? There’s no way Annie can deny that what we shared was more than what she suggested this would be between us. I may never have had sex with someone outside of a serious relationship before, but I know it isn’t supposed to feel likethat. That was as intimate—if not even more so—as anything Nicole and I ever did over the course of our fifteen years together.
I get it now, finally. What Nicole meant when she said shewanted to find someone with whom she had “a spark,” and why she agreed to marriage so quickly once she’d met Isaiah. I mean, I understood before too, but in a more abstract way that still allowed for some secret skepticism that what Nicole said was missing between us was there, even if it had faded over time. But after having sex with Annie, I trulyget it. There’s no doubt left in me that something was missing from my and Nicole’s relationship, because it’s abundantly clear now that it wasthat—the magic Annie and I shared last night and then early again this morning when we woke up and reached for each other like it was the most natural thing in the world. It isn’t just a physical need, but an emotional one too, and I’m so proud of Nicole for not settling for a life where she never got to feel that. Not to mention immensely grateful to her for not letting me do the same.
It’s early, still—about 7:30, and Virtu doesn’t open until 11:00 on Sundays, which means there’s no real rush to get up and get moving. But the longer I lie next to Annie, the harder it is not to touch her. That would wake her, though, and I want to let her rest after our long, eventful night. So instead I’m getting myself together to head out to the coffee shop to get her that blackberry white mocha she likes. Because, yeah, maybe the gesture was too much the other morning, but surely now it’s warranted. Besides, I know how she is before she gets caffeine in her system. I leave a hastily scrawled note on my pillow letting Annie know I’ll be back soon in case she wakes up and wonders why I’ve disappeared, and I go downstairs, through the still-dark antique store, and out into the bright, frost-dusted morning.
Mindy is working the register again, and, despite all the time that’s passed since our ill-fated encounter, the sight of her standingthere imbues me with an intense sense of guilt that I just joyfully spent the night with someone after so badly bungling telling her that wasn’t something I had an interest in doing. There’s a small, cowardly part of me that considers turning right around and leaving before she can spot me, but there’s a much larger, wiser part that urges me to try to make amends. Not that I haven’t tried before—there were at least three times in the weeks following our date that I attempted to apologize. I can see now, though, with a new sense of clarity, why those apologies all fell so flat; I kept trying to justify my lack of tact instead of actually showing remorse for it. I might’ve started in the right direction with “I’m sorry,” but I always followed with an explanation of why she’d been wrong to take what I said so personally. As if I could convince her it wasn’t my fault she felt hurt and disrespected by my hurtful and disrespectful words.
