by Siel Ju
“No, not my boss,” I said. “Nothing that intimate.”
Matt laughed. He put his hand over mine and stroked it gently. I turned my hand over to hold his. It was warm, rougher than I’d expected. I started idly playing with his fingers. When I looked over at him his face was in deep concentration, driving with one hand.
We climbed the stairs to my studio. I didn’t bother turning on the light but the moonlight streamed in the balcony windows so we could see, if only dimly. For a minute we stood awkwardly by the couch, looking at each other. “It must be nice, living by yourself,” he said.
Once he started kissing me, he was more confident. He moved me toward my bed, took my clothes off, and pushed me on my back. Then he undressed, unhurriedly, watching me. When he went down on me I came hard and fast, like I’d been suddenly thrown open. Then I went down on him. Afterwards we dozed off, then woke and had sex at dawn. His body moved with an unexpected assertiveness. He asked me to bite his ear. “What else do you like?” I asked. “Just this,” he said, pulling me closer to him.
When I woke again the sun had lit up the apartment, bleaching the sheets a blizzard white. Matt was still asleep. His body was splayed out, limbs loose. There was a careless trust in his posture that I immediately wanted to prod at, complicate. I sat studying him. Once in a while his hands would stretch open then curl back around into a loose, ineffectual grip, like a baby’s. Noticing this, I grew embarrassed. I remembered his nervous face when he told me he was twenty-two. But I also felt he’d gently nudged open a small valve inside me, relieving a pressure I’d grown accustomed to. When he woke up I was in the bathroom feeling bright, cleaning my contacts.
“It looks like noon,” he said, turning my alarm clock toward him. It was a little past ten. “I like how your apartment gets a lot of light.”
We walked to Bagel Nosh and ordered combo plates—bagel, eggs, sausage, hash browns, and lots of coffee. The diner was busy, crowded with the local Sunday brunch crowd. The mood was genial; even the stroller parents looked less harried, sedated by the warm weather. We got lucky and nabbed a booth in the corner. He drowned his hash browns in ketchup, his scrambled eggs in Tabasco sauce. He ate smiling, like the meal filled him with a pure delight. He’d had this same expression when he’d agreed to brunch, expectantly, like it was the only natural thing to do. His easy attitude made me queasy. I felt I was missing something, that there was a joke that I wasn’t in on. I wanted to make him uncomfortable, to tease tight the space between us.
“I’m not sure why I had you stay last night,” I said. When he looked up, I shrugged. “I mean I’m glad it happened, but it’s not something I’ve done for a while.”
“Me neither,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d get to see you again.”
“You don’t seem like you’re that much younger. I mean maybe in some ways, but not others. Once we were alone you seemed different.” I paused. “I had fun.”
“Thanks,” he said, almost blushing. “Me too.”
He was both easygoing and unsure, and I was drawn to this cleaving in his character. I wondered how disappointment might change the shape of his face. I pictured his jaw tensed, his brow hardened and furrowed. This would make him look more self-assured, more adult, though maybe his eyes would still give him away. There was a daring vulnerability in the way he looked at me, like he’d never been hurt but was willing to go through the experience if necessary. I got the sense he believed even the worst would be more exciting than painful. I accidentally bumped his knee with mine, then bumped it again on purpose and left it there, our legs touching.
We left the diner in a light mood. The sun made us squint but also felt soothing, almost amniotic. When we got to where his car was parked on my block I thought he’d say goodbye, but he just followed me back into my apartment. We sat on the couch, facing the blank TV.
“We could watch a movie,” I said.
We started kissing delicately. I wondered if we’d run out of things to say to each other, which made me grope at him more urgently. I kissed his eyelids, then gently pressed my teeth into the angular edges of his face. He pulled me to straddle him. I was wearing a wide V-neck T-shirt, and instead of taking it off, he pulled at the V, slipping his hands under it, exposing and kissing one breast, then the other. He breathed hard against my skin, dampening it, and I sensed he liked this little struggle with the shirt, having something he couldn’t get too easily.
I got up and got a condom. I took off my pants, then straddled him again. I bit his ear as he entered me. He clenched his hands around my hips. When I looked at his face he had this look of wholesome desire, one that seemed clean and clearly defined and capable of fulfillment.
Suddenly I felt a sardonic sort of mirth. I wanted to slap him across his face. I could picture his shocked expression, then the expression loosening, until we both burst out laughing.
But I didn’t. Instead I pushed his left cheek hard with my palm, turning his face so he couldn’t see me, then kept his head pinned back against the couch. He didn’t resist but his pulse quickened. For a second I felt chastened by his passivity, but then I just pushed his face harder.
Afterwards we lazily peeled the rest of our clothes off each other, then lay in a loose cuddle on the couch. The balcony doors were open but the white translucent curtains drawn; they billowed in and curdled gently in the breeze. We listened to the teenager next door with his basketball on the driveway, two quick bounces each time, followed by a lonely thump off the backboard.
Matt called that night. We breathed excitedly on our respective ends of the line, our minds patting around for things to talk about. “Tell me about you,” I said, and he did so with enthusiasm, like he was happy to be asked at an interview the very question he’d diligently prepared for.
He’d grown up in Hancock Park, where his parents still lived. His father was a lawyer, his mother a psychotherapist. As he talked I imagined him as a child sitting next to his mother on a large couch, his feet dangling over the dark hardwood floors. He was telling her a story, a playground tale about a falling out with a friend, using a tone that showed he’d rehearsed the speech in his head, owning up to the part he played in the affair in the constructive way he’d been taught by his parents. This was the tone he was using now. He said his last relationship had been pretty shallow, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. He said this carefully, like he wanted to be respectful and fair about what had happened, though I was left with the sense he was just recasting an insignificant college fling, the kind that didn’t really go anywhere due to self-consciousness and peer pressure.
I tried to picture us walking hand-in-hand, together amidst throngs of people shopping in the city’s main drags. I wondered how he might appear to me then. I remembered how his head had looked forced against the couch, how his eyes had stayed pressed shut like he was afraid of waking up. I pictured him now with his eyes closed, his cheek soft against the phone, his lips rounding delicately through the vowels. The image endeared him to me.
On Tuesday we went to see a movie, something I’d never done with Blake. Matt seemed to like the ritual of it, agreeing on a drama, finding a parking spot, picking out snacks. By the time we got through the concession line we were late, and we laughed as we ran up the escalators to the theater. Afterwards we rode down more sedately; the film had a sudden, depressing ending. When we pushed out the doors into the street, the night was dark but busy, full of lights and bright-eyed people, pleased to be moving about like we were all part of some bigger event. He suggested we walk to a nearby Italian restaurant-bar for a drink in a way that made me think he’d planned this beforehand. I squeezed his hand.
We sat at a small table; the seats at the bar in the corner were taken up by the regulars who all seemed to know each other, all middle-aged. They looked well-inebriated, jolly in a somewhat lethargic way, like they were resigned to the meager role they played in the small social circle of this bar for the rest of their lives.
“We’re the y
oungest people here,” Matt said. He laughed. “Sorry.”
“I like it. We can actually hear each other.”
At this he nodded approvingly. The wine arrived. He complimented what I was wearing and said I seemed different in a dress. I pointed at my heels. I was almost as tall as him in them. He told me his ex and he had been the exact same height. I asked him if that had bothered him and he said no, but that we fit better. I asked in what way and he flushed, then apologized for having brought up his ex again. “I don’t know why I do that. I really don’t think about her.” He shook his head. “You can tell me about your ex, if you want.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“No really, it would make me feel better.”
“It’s really not worth mentioning.”
He seemed flustered by this, but recovered. “Okay,” he said, grinning. “Tell me something else about you.”
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
All the life facts I could think to mention seemed like landmines I’d been gingerly stepping around for years. The father who’d disappeared when I was seven. The mother who still worked for an hourly wage at the flower market. Even my friendships were too petty to mention. There were the college roommates whose emails I’d been avoiding in an effort to forget those messy, degrading years. And then there was Erin, with her new drunken hookup habit, each tryst followed by despondence, then resentment. We were a lot alike, except she expected better.
I put on my most enigmatic smile. “I can’t think of anything under pressure,” I said.
He leaned in, about to press me, but I turned and motioned for another round. When I looked back at him he grabbed my hand under the table and held it possessively with both hands. We grinned at each other. He asked me if I wanted to go to his place. First he said he wanted me to meet his roommate, a friend from college called Johnny, then said Johnny worked late at his startup most nights when I demurred.
We walked into a pitch-dark apartment. When Matt turned on the light, I saw the place was nothing like I’d imagined. The living room was neat and thoughtfully furnished, if somewhat cheaply, with well-matched secondhand furniture that gave the place a warm, welcoming feel.
“It’s kind of like my place, but bigger,” I said.
“Not with two people.”
He led the way to his bedroom. His laptop’s screensaver rotated through photos of Versailles; I asked to see other pictures from his trip. We sat shoulder to shoulder against the headboard, the computer shared across our knees. Most of the photos were of architecture. When we got to Italy a girl with sandy blond hair started popping up. Eventually there was one of Matt and the girl with their arms around each other. They were the same height and looked like fraternal twins. She was kissing his cheek.
Matt sighed. “I thought I deleted this.” He stopped scrolling and faced me, like he owed me an explanation. He said they’d met in Venice. “The hostels were all like eight beds to a room,” he said, “so we never had any real privacy. I think it felt more intense than it was, just because we were both all alone, in this extreme situation moving around every day.”
I took over the touchpad and studied the photo. I noticed how young he looked, like a kid on spring break. “You look happy,” I said.
“We emailed for a while, but she lives in Sydney,” he said. “That was the thing. She acted like she knew what she wanted, but she didn’t. She was so—the girls my age—” I looked at him. He had on a perplexed grimace that seemed put on to mask something else. Then he suddenly laughed. He squeezed the sides of his head with his hands. “Okay, this is so not like me,” he said. “No more ex talk from now on, I promise.”
I laughed. “It’s fine,” I said. “Really.”
“Now you really have to tell me something about your ex. The mysterious guy with the tie you won’t talk about.”
I paused. “Hey, I’m really not seeing him anymore.”
“I know,” he said. He got up and put the laptop on the desk. “I’m just curious because you’re all secretive about it.”
“I’ll tell you some stories next time,” I said. I took his wrist and pulled him. “You’ve been warned.”
He started tickling me and I shrieked. Just then we heard the front door open; Johnny was home. “Shhhh,” Matt said, putting a finger on my lips. “We have to be quiet.” He slid his body over mine, pinning me down. “Or else my roommate might call the cops.”
We lay still, holding our breaths, until Johnny’s steps disappeared into his room. Then Matt reached up and turned off the lamp. He had blackout curtains; we could only locate each other by touch. We took our clothes off slowly, piece by piece, then had hushed, exploratory sex over the covers. The quiet of it felt a little like college, and the unhurried pleasure nothing like it at all.
The next morning, though, when Matt’s alarm went off at five for his opening shift, I woke up gloomy and angry. Our stopping in at the bar in itself seemed a juvenile act, embarrassing in its desperation to interact as an adult couple. When Matt dropped me off I dozed for a bit, then went to Bagel Nosh to try working there; I’d seen a new “Free WiFi” sign on the door. I hid irritably behind my laptop, but no one was paying me any attention anyway. Only a few people were in the place, all older men in their late fifties or sixties, each sitting at his own table, sopping up runny egg yolk with bagel bits and watching golf on the TV. They looked like they’d been divorced for years, comfortably resigned. I imagined their female counterparts, how they must be eating similar meals, but alone in their homes. I could easily imagine myself as one of these women, a thought that troubled me. Blake would never end up here in middle age. He’d find a willing new woman right away, younger and more docile. And Matt—he wouldn’t get divorced. His wife would outlive him, plan a warm memorial service where friends would weep genuinely and fondly then leave comforted, with a sense they’d communed, if briefly, with the delicate beauty of the cycle of life.
I thought about what Erin would say if she knew I was seeing Matt. These days she was too often in her sullen post-hookup, bubble-burst mood to be happy for me. I imagined myself breaking the news in different tones: an excited whisper, a matter-of-fact summary, a preoccupied aside. In each case her reaction would be exactly the same, a tight smile, vaguely tinged with jealousy. I pictured her nodding with that forced grin as I talked about him, then saying something benign on the surface but cutting beneath, something like, “So when’s the next keg party,” before turning back to her drink. I let myself feel the sting of this remark, feel it spread from my center like a thick fog. This made me feel closer to Matt, united against a common adversary. I felt protective of him again, his amiable sincerity.
I ate my hash browns. They tasted greasier than usual, like they were cooked in old oil. The TV was showing highlights from the US Open. A golfer who had Blake’s posture took a big swing. The ball launched, and the camera cut to the golfer’s face, showed how it shifted into a satisfied smirk even before the ball started its downward arc.
We’d made plans for Saturday night, but when Matt called after his shift ended on Friday I invited him over. I thought seeing him might bring back the sense of playful complicity. “Missed me?” he said when I opened the door. He presented me with a cookie, one of the artisanal ones from the coffee shop with its dime-sized dollops of dark chocolate, and a pound of Yirgacheffe. He hesitated until I smiled, then he leaned in and kissed me. He tasted like café au lait. He pushed the door closed with his elbow and pulled me against him.
“Have you had dinner?” I asked.
We walked to Whole Foods. His mood was buoyant. He wanted to try everything in the hot food section and filled his container with a weird mishmash of Indian and Greek dishes, plus mac and cheese. Watching him do this, I felt a sense of revulsion grow, though the rational part of me thought his impulse to get the variety he wanted was wise, the true point of buffet-style dining, in fact. I looked down at my meager meal of salmon and rice. I added charred b
roccoli, then mashed potatoes, then a half-slice of lasagna.
Once we were back at my apartment and the wine was opened, his enthusiasm felt more touching. We drank in gulps and ate our dinners happily, sitting thigh to thigh on the couch. It felt like we were in collusion again, though when I tried to get a good grip on that feeling I felt it go slack. We seemed to be miming togetherness, showing off our united resolve in an attempt to scare off a force that didn’t even exist.
“Next time, we should pack up all this stuff and have a picnic,” Matt said. “Like at the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Okay,” I said. “I haven’t been there since I went to see Björk three years ago. Nosebleed seats, but it was fun.”
“My parents actually have season tickets to the classical series. One of the boxes up front.”
I nodded. I imagined him asking his parents for the tickets. Then I imagined him stealing them, slipping them out of his mother’s red planner on his way out the door. I couldn’t decide how I’d feel about this, whether I’d like the cheeky exuberance or scorn it, but I could see us there, sitting in the center box with our Whole Foods containers and plastic forks, eating selfconsciously under the curious gaze of the gray-haired couples sitting around us, staring as they carefully masticated their cobb salads with their dentures.
To change the subject I put my head on his shoulder, then leaned my whole body heavily against him. He pressed back and started gently mussing my hair. He said one of the actresses in the movie we’d seen, the brunette that played the star’s sadistic sister, had come in to the coffee shop that day. She’d ordered a macchiato, then asked for more milk. “She seemed nice,” he said. Then politely, he asked about my work. I said I was getting burned out, that the work was steady, but repetitive. I said I was thinking of working in-house again, though not for tiny trades like I’d done before. I wanted to be somewhere I could be proud of, ideally at one of the big Condé Nast magazines, though that might be unrealistic unless I was willing to take a major pay cut and fetch coffee. Still, I wanted to try living in Manhattan before I got too old.
