Flying Solo(69)

She pulled him close and he threw it over her shoulder, and where it might have landed, she wasn’t quite sure. He tasted like beer, and despite what Ginger had said about beer drinkers, she sort of liked it. But that might have been because it was him, or because it was them, or because it was the beer that he brought over to celebrate their victory. This was the real thing, the big time, the whole shebang about to shebang all over the guest room, and when she stepped back from him for a minute, she put her finger on a round birthmark on his shoulder. “I forgot all about the lucky penny,” she said.

Nick moved his hand down her side, from under her arm toward her hip, and it triggered a memory, rather mortifyingly, of Chris. He would press one finger deeply into the soft side of her until he created a well in her flesh, and then he would smile and say, “I like this,” as if it were the alternative to “I hate this,” or “I can’t believe this.” Nick didn’t say anything. He just trailed his hand around to the front of her waistband, where her jeans buttoned. Into her ear, very softly, he said, “Is helping out a little bit allowed?”

She breathed that it was, and he opened the button, and everything started to melt. She reciprocated by popping open the button over his belly, and then she stepped back again. “Meet me over there,” she said, practically out of breath, pointing to the bed. He nodded. She pushed her jeans and her underwear down, felt that brief moment of fresh air and nerves, balled her clothes up and put them on the chair, wishing she’d thought to match all her underthings. But he didn’t seem too concerned about it, given that by the time she got into bed and pulled the sheet up loosely over her legs, he was only a couple of steps behind her, and then there was nothing between them at all.

He smiled. “I forgot you pull the sheet up.”

“I am who I am,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow. “Speaking of which, I’m not on the pill. I went off it after Chris. I never liked it. And I probably wouldn’t get pregnant anyway at this point, but that’s probably not a ‘probably’ we should rely on.”

“I got you,” he said. He sat up a little and spotted his wallet where he’d left it on the nightstand. He leaned over so far to get it that half of his bare ass came out from under the sheet. “I’m sure this is very alluring,” he said as he grabbed a clutch of three condoms from his wallet.

“When did you put those in there?” she asked warily. “Tell me it wasn’t, like, 1998.”

“It was today, smart-ass,” he told her as he turned back to her.

She laughed. “Okay, I apologize for impugning your extremely fresh condoms. And I admire your optimism.”

He tore one packet off and put it on the very corner of the nightstand, with the other two pushed farther away. “I’ve actually been putting three fresh condoms in my wallet every day since you left, in the hopes that you would one day return to town and I would get to have sex with you again.”

“That’s commitment,” she said. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”

He pulled her close, kissed her with urgency, put the heel of his hand against her ear with his fingers dug into her hair. She could smell it, the smell of his clothes from high school, the smell of his neck, now mixed with sweat and gardenias. This was his hip now, his shoulder now, this was how he kissed now, this was where he put his hand when he wanted her to come closer now. Nostalgia is toxic, false, an impulse based in a desire to escape the present into the imagined past, she knew all that. But it was Nick, and after years of assuming she would never see him again, let alone all this, when her eyelashes brushed his temple, something inside of her went pleasantly slack, far from work and family and a canceled wedding.

It was slick skin and familiar hands, a little trial and error and a little return to form, some rushing and some lingering and some carefully aligned timing, and it was the logistics of adults who are grown and the daring of people who are passing by each other briefly and trying to hold on, secure in the knowledge that whatever is complicated will be over before it matters.

After, she shut off the lights and got back under the sheet, pulling up the light cover to her waist. She lay on her side, facing him, curling her arm under her head, and they stayed there, quiet, with their index fingers hooked, his hand pulled over close to her. “Is it okay if I fall asleep?” he said. “Are you going to wake up at two in the morning?”

It was almost completely dark, just a few bars of light coming in through the blinds. “Of course you should fall asleep,” she said. “And I think you’ve relaxed me as much as I can possibly be relaxed. So I’m optimistic. This mattress is good for my back.”

“Mine at home is too soft, I think,” he said. “Half the time I wake up in the morning and I feel like a pretzel.”

“Warm and salty?”

“I wish,” he said quietly, from inches away. “I keep meaning to buy a new one, but then I have to get rid of the old one, and getting it up those stairs in the first place was such a pain in my ass that I think I’m just going to keep it up there until I’m ready to tear down the house.”

“Oh, you should invest,” Laurie said. “You’ll love it. It’s great for back pain, and you spend hours and hours on it, so you should at least like it.” She let her eyes fall shut, and she said, “Do you need anything? Glass of water?”