Screwmates(39)

I marched my ass into the kitchen, and got it all over with.

“Hey, are you feeling better?” Marc asked from the table, where he was still nursing some coffee and flipping through a book with a highlighter in hand. It didn’t look like he’d showered yet. A secret little thrill ran through me, knowing that I was still on his body. That neither of us had rinsed off the last thing that remained of us… however briefly us had existed.

“I am, yeah. Thanks.” I puttered around for a second, opening and closing the fridge, pouring myself a mug of now-cold coffee and tossing it in the microwave. “Actually, I’m feeling pretty amazing.”

“I have to agree with you,” he said, as the grin slowly spread across his mouth, making his eyes crinkle just a little at the corners.

“Yeah. It was good that we got it done, finally. So I guess we can move on with that out of our systems.” I dropped my eyes, not willing to see the expression of relief I was certain was written all over his face. “I’m pretty excited to move forward.”

By the time I worked up the nerve to turn back around with my cereal in hand, he was immersed in his book again.

“I mean…” I started again.

“Yes?” He looked up so eagerly it almost seemed like he hadn’t been reading at all.

“I mean you actually taught me a lot,” I admitted shyly. “I’m really glad we did that.” There was no harm in telling him it meant something to me, as long as I didn’t let him know that it actually meant everything.

“You should do really well now, I think.” By sheer force of will, I actually smiled at him as I said that. As I gave him my blessing to go forth and be fertile in the lavender fields of France. Or whatever it was that they did over there. I decided I hated France, and would no longer acknowledge its existence.

It was going to be freedom fries here, from now on.

He looked surprised, even disappointed? Surely not. It’s truly staggering how the human heart can project its feelings onto someone else. Then he smiled back, and my momentary confusion passed.

“Last night was perfect,” he said. “I think we both learned a lot about minimalism when it comes to seduction. You’re going to do pretty well yourself, I think.”

Now was clearly not the time to enlighten him about my breakthrough, and how I’d discovered I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else any time soon. Things got quiet, and awkward. At least on my part. I ate a few bites of cereal, exaggerating my chewing so it didn’t make weird milky-smack-y noises in the quiet. Marc went back to his book, flipped a page. Highlighted a passage and dog-eared the page. That animal. I knew librarians that would slap him for that. I slurped some of the excess sugary milk from my bowl, staring at him all the while.

Flip. Highlight. Dog-ear.

“I have to say, though, we still suck pretty hard at wine. That won’t serve you well on your trip. I’m willing to, uh, read a book or two, if it’ll help.” At that, Marc’s eyes lit up.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” he asked.

“I just did?” But I knew what he meant. We wouldn’t be sleeping together again (farewell, multiple orgasms! I hardly knew ya.) but we weren’t done adventuring together. And even though it didn’t quite fill the empty hole that seemed to have taken up residence in my chest, it felt really nice to know that he was still excited to spend time with me. Although in some ways, I couldn’t blame him.

I had certainly brought the color into his beige existence.

And speaking of, I believed it was time to liven up the wall art. Surely now that I had shared Marc’s bed, in the sexy way, I was entitled to put my stamp elsewhere too. He had slammed his book shut as I dreamed of large prints over the Couch of Love, and hopped up.

“How about I fix us some snacks, and let’s spend today reading. Maybe tonight, when we’ve recovered, we can go get a single bottle of wine, and do a responsible tasting.” He looked thrilled, and I was hungry, so I nodded and collected a heavy tome from his stack of wine books.

A few minutes later, there was a plate of sandwiches on the Coffee Table of Doom, and I’ll be damned if that book wasn’t slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. It turned out that the way grapes grew actually did affect the taste. And here I had thought Marc made that up to convince me to read. But lo and behold. Dirt wasn’t just dirt, after all.

I snuck a glance over at him, completely absorbed in his own reading. I had made the right decision. Beyond loving him, I loved spending time with him. As much as it hurt to remember he wasn’t mine, it was a balm to feel this connected.

I might not have been acknowledging France anymore, but the French word terroir was now firmly part of my vocabulary. Assuming I pronounced it right, I planned to introduce it into many conversations to appear sophisticated and worldly.

The definition was something a little fuzzy, but it roughly meant “the taste of a place”.

And what a sexy thought, that the very essence of Tuscany ended up in the red you can have with pasta. That by simply opening a bottle, you had transported an entire country home with you. The sensations on your tongue here in the smack-center of the United States were exactly the same as the ones on the vintners’ on a sun-baked peninsula in the Mediterranean.

Unsexily, it turned out that shit like nitrogen actually was a big part of that.