This Is Not the End

by Sidney Bell

  “You’re a dick,” she says, as he eases away from her oversensitive flesh.

  He smirks at her in the mirror, but bends down to kiss the back of her neck. “You’re beautiful.”

  She turns, letting him take her in his arms, kissing him back. He’s a sloppy kisser, too eager and pushy, and she’s always liked that, how filthy he is and how much he doesn’t care if it looks pretty or appropriate or right. He’s a proper hedonist, her boy, and she kisses him harder.

  She goes to clean up, and by the time she climbs into bed, he’s lying on his side, eyes closed. She pulls up her favorite camera shop’s website on her phone. As it loads, she gauges his breathing, decides he’s still awake. “It’s okay to want him.”

  There’s a long pause. Then, into his pillow, Zac says, “He’d say no.”

  As she had in the kitchen weeks ago, when she’d first begun considering it, she asks, “Would he?”

  Unlike in the kitchen, this time Zac doesn’t answer.

  She returns to her phone, but she’s not seeing the list of zoom lenses on the screen. She’s thinking about Cal, testing her own interest.

  Zac’s always been careful to let her choose their partners. Once she makes a selection, he only speaks up if he wants to veto someone he doesn’t feel comfortable with. If she says she doesn’t want to fuck Cal, he’ll never say another word about it. She wonders, though, what it would cost him to keep his mouth shut in this particular instance.

  He’s right about what he said in the bathroom—she does find Cal nice to look at. Imagining that pretty mouth on her is hot. She wonders for a moment what he would be like in bed. Nervous, she supposes. Polite. Maybe the sort who asks before he takes each step, which is something she enjoys from a man, if he does it in a way that doesn’t make him seem creepily young and insecure. She likes caution from a new partner because it shows that he values her enough—as a woman, as a lover, as a fucking human being—to care about her comfort and sense of safety. A willingness to consider the experiences of others is a great thing in a person.

  Possibly he would never lose that caution, though, and that’s more of a problem. She also likes being pushed, likes pushing back, as long as it’s by a man she trusts to listen when she really means for it to stop. She can’t picture Cal pushing her in bed the way Zac does. She worries that it would make him uncomfortable.

  Of course, it could be better that they’re not similar. Why should each partner bring the same things to the table? That way lies boredom, surely. It’s good for Cal to stand out from Zac—that’s part of the point of playing.

  “Do you want me to fuck Cal for you?” she asks.

  He doesn’t answer. She wonders if he’s gone to sleep. She puts her phone on the nightstand and turns out the light, sinking down into her pillows. She’ll ask him tomorrow.

  “Yes,” he says into the darkness, sounding hoarse. “But I don’t know if we should, if he’ll... It could go wrong, and I’m scared that...”

  More than a minute goes by and he never finishes the sentence. Her heart aches for him. “I’ll be careful with him. I’ll test the waters. If it seems like he’ll take it badly, I’ll drop it. Okay?”

  She nudges him under the sheets with her foot. He nudges back.

  * * *

  As a young girl, Anya spent summers with her grandparents in Missouri. Their home was situated at the edge of a development, and the backyard stretched into miles of humid trees and knee-high grasses and brown creek water birthing countless mosquitoes. She played for hours in those open spaces with her younger brother, pretending to be safari travelers chasing lions and explorers of the most hidden parts of Africa. They played zookeeper and found broken branches from old trees to build a small pen for the wild hyena of the forest (really their grandparents’ cocker spaniel, Rufus, but needs must).

  But some afternoons it rained, the heavens spitting down drops that hit like bullets, and on those days there would be no playing outside. On those days, Jeremy would be sent to the kitchen with their grandmother to make cookies and Anya would climb into her grandfather’s lap and listen to him talk about chess.

  He’d played competitively for many years. Thick books of strategy by grandmasters overflowed his bookshelves. He would explain different openings and help her understand the elaborate act of planning multiple moves ahead. She was an apt student, but not so very much in love with the game. She enjoyed the attention, liked her grandfather’s assumption that she was smart enough to follow along even at that young age.

  He gave her a set of her own a few years later. Not the pink or purple froufrou stuff that she got from most adults, the stuff that decorated her room at the time, the pretty frills that she did, in fact, like. The pieces were hand carved from expensive heartwood, the black pieces inlaid with bloodred stones, the white pieces inlaid with icy blue stones: the eyes of the knights’ horses, the scepters of the bishops, the crowns of the queens. They were heavy in her palm when she dared to take them out and touch them. Mysterious, somehow, and powerful.

  She didn’t play much after he died, but she still has the set. And she still remembers the best advice she ever got, his words echoing through her memory as he held her on his thigh and pointed at the board, saying in his tremulous, old voice: “Remember, Anya love, don’t move until you see how it’ll end.”

  She’s never been very good at that. Zac calls her a straight shooter, says he likes that she’s direct, that she homes in on her goal without letting potential consequences sway her from doing what she thinks is best. Other people have been less delicate in their phrasing: impulsive. Impetuous. Single-minded. Irresponsible.

  They’re not inaccurate descriptions.

  She’s determined to take her time with Cal, though. Cal matters to her husband, and she isn’t about to let one of the most important relationships in his life get ruined because she’s reckless.

  First, it would help to know what his orientation is. Not that he’s likely to tell her, not when he’s apparently played his sexual encounters so close to the vest that even Zac doesn’t know how he likes to get down. But at the same time, women are allowed to ask questions of men that other men are not.

  Nosy, happily married female seeking to hook up her husband’s single male friend isn’t a role she normally has any interest in playing. It’s a bit predictable for her tastes. She certainly doesn’t give two shits what Zac’s other friends are doing. But it’s probably her best route to a useful answer.

  Honestly. The things she does for Zac.

  * * *

  “Clean the grill, will you?” she tells Zac the next time they have Cal over for dinner. They’re all grouped around the table, the steak gone, the remnants of the asparagus long cold from the time spent in conversation.

  “I always have to clean the grill,” he says, pretending to be outraged, as if he doesn’t love that grill like it’s their second child, as if he’d let her touch it if she offered. “Where’s your feminism when it comes time to do the dirty work?”

  She considers telling him that she’d trade cleaning the grill for having paparazzi stop trying to get pictures of her underwear when she gets out of a car. But she’s pretty sure he hasn’t realized what those kneeling photographers by the limo line are aiming for and he’ll lose his shit if she points it out. They’ll probably end up in court when he breaks his hand on some photographer’s face at the next awards show they attend. Besides, she has a plan and she’s not going to let him distract her from it with male foolery.

  “If you’d rather spend forty minutes stirring onions while they brown so I can grill next time, we can arrange that,” she says sweetly. She kicks him under the table, giving him a pointed look, and his gaze flashes to Cal. His eyes widen, and he nods.

  “Sure, my bad, no problem. I’m on it.” He presses his toes apologetically against her calf. She bumps her toes against his in acceptance. Married feet are
capable of very complex conversations.

  “I’ll give you a hand, Zac.” Cal starts to get up.

  Anya hurries to interrupt. “Actually, Cal, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use some help setting up the ice cream machine.”

  “You’re making ice cream?” both men ask in unison, and then Zac punches Cal on the arm. “Jinx. You owe me a coke.”

  “If we were in third grade, I would absolutely pony up on that.” Cal picks up his plate and starts toward the sink. “What do you need, Anya?”

  She waves Zac off to the grill with a fresh beer and an admonishment under her breath that he should take his time, and then leads Cal downstairs to their basement, only half of which is finished. There are two rooms they’re using for storage, and in one of them are the still-packed boxes of some kitchen appliances from when they moved in together nearly three years ago. In one of those boxes, buried somewhere, is the ice cream maker.

  Cal eyes the leaning stacks of brown cardboard dubiously, and then accepts the scissors she holds out, his expression resigned but game. “You have any idea which box it’s in?”

  “Zac doesn’t believe in labeling things during moves,” she tells him, unfortunately not lying. “He says opening boxes when you don’t know what’s in them is like second Christmas.”

  Cal laughs, and she notices again that he looks gorgeous when he laughs. His whole demeanor changes, gets easy and inviting. “That’s Zac for you.”

  “It really is.” She braids her hair to keep it out of her face, tying it off with a ponytail holder from her pocket. “Going by the law of averages and mathematical chances, I’m going to say that the ice cream maker is definitely in the last box we’re going to open.”

  “We should start with that one, then.”

  “But that’ll make it the first box we open. Which is how we know it won’t be there.”

  “This ice cream maker seems to be getting around,” he says, with an air of ah, I see.

  “They’re tricky that way.”

  He tugs the nearest box over and starts working on the packing tape.

  “Don’t lose a finger, all right?” She takes up a box of her own. “I really don’t need my husband suing me because I’ve damaged priceless hands.”

  “I’ll be careful,” he promises, smiling at her again. It’s such an attractive smile. Lots of white teeth. It is also 100% the smile that a man gives to his best friend’s wife when fucking her has never once entered his mind because he is Decent and Doesn’t Do That Sort Of Thing.

  Damn it.

  “Sheets,” he announces. “Uh. Should we reseal these as we go?”

  She bites her lip. “I didn’t think of that. Do you think it’s really necessary?”

  “You want to find a bunch of dust and dead spiders when you come looking for these sheets?”

  “Gross. I think we have some tape somewhere. Maybe in the toolbox in the hall closet.” She gestures toward the stairs and he heads up in front of her. “Not packing tape, I don’t think. But the duck kind would work, right?”

  He pauses with his hand on the banister, expression curious. “Sorry. What kind of tape did you say?”

  “Duck.”

  She can tell when he smiles that something about her words is wrong. Thankfully, it’s not that smug, condescending smile that some men (the assholes, coincidentally) tend to get when they’re feeling superior over a woman because she makes an honest mistake. Instead, it’s warm and almost affectionate, like she’s done something unbearably cute and he finds her endearing.

  “That’s not what it’s called, is it?” she guesses, feeling sort of self-conscious. “What’s it actually called?”

  “Duct tape,” he says, emphasizing the T. There’s no laughter in his voice, which she appreciates. He leads the way to the hall closet. “Here?”

  She nods as he opens the door. The kitchen is quiet. Zac is still outside. Or he’s gotten bored and wandered upstairs to their bedroom to watch television. Either way, she and Cal are alone. “If it’s not in the toolbox, there might be some in that crate thingy in the back.”

  He squats to look around. It only takes a minute, and then they’re working their way back down to the basement.

  They’ve opened a few boxes in companionable silence when she says, “Thank you for not making me feel like an idiot.”

  “It’s not a big deal. Everybody makes mistakes like that.”

  “Kind of an obvious one, maybe. Everybody knows what duct tape is.” The word feels weird in her head with a T on the end, even though it doesn’t sound all that different. She says it again, quietly, to herself. “Duct. Duc-T.”

  “There are lots of words I get wrong. I thought cicadas was pronounced kick-a-das for a long time.”

  “You’re very sweet, Cal.”

  “Oh.” He immediately turns bright red, and now it’s her turn to find him endearing. “No. I’m—Anyone would say that.”

  “No, anyone wouldn’t. Anyone would tease me. The anyone upstairs working on the grill would tease me mercilessly and you know it.”

  “He can be kind of a jerk,” Cal agrees, but he doesn’t seem all that unhappy about it.

  “We must be masochists.”

  “I think so.” He opens another box. “Blender. We’re getting close.”

  A sign that it’s time to get to work, she decides, and abandons the boxes altogether in favor of turning to face him. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re a great guy. You’d make someone very happy. Why aren’t you seeing someone?”

  He straightens, fingers fiddling with the roll of tape. He doesn’t look at her. “Why?”

  That’s a reply she hadn’t expected. “Well, married women, traditionally, are the kinds of monsters who want to set up all their single friends. You qualify, pal.”

  It’s only when the line of his shoulders relaxes that she realizes how tense he’d gotten at her question. She continues, watching him more carefully. “But it occurred to me that you might be single for a good reason. Hence the asking before I start lobbing my single girls in your direction.”

  “You don’t know duct tape, but you know hence.”

  “You don’t know how to effectively change the subject. You don’t have to tell me if it’s private. You can tell me to butt out. But...we’re friends, right?” She pauses, decides that he’ll appreciate honesty, and corrects that to “We’re friendly. Potential friends. I feel like I don’t actually know you that well, which is a bit weird, considering how much a part of my life you’ve become since I met Zac. I’d like to know you better. Will you tell me?”

  Cal’s been watching her all through her explanation, his dark eyes steady on her, making her a little self-conscious. Now he sighs, more thoughtful than exasperated, and takes a long minute to consider. It seems to stretch out for ages, but she’s learned the trick to getting Cal to open up by now—she waits as patiently as she can.

  He finally says, “I’m not very good at people.”

  She eases one hip onto a stack of boxes, sitting on what she’s pretty sure are binders full of sheet music and guitar tabs, judging from how sturdy they are. “Okay,” she says, hopefully encouraging him to say more.

  Again, the entire Cenozoic period could fit into his silence, but eventually he adds, “I’m not very good at being...uh...intimate. With people I don’t know very well. I’m not what most people who get interested in a musician are looking for.”

  Everything about that statement is so Cal that she could wrap it in a box and put it in a museum with a plaque that says Cal Keller, folks. Everything from using the term intimate instead of fucking, all the way to the part where he calls himself a musician instead of a bona fide rock star. Not to mention his confession that he’s the sort of lay that groupies wouldn’t want, which only makes her think better of him.
<
br />   “People,” she repeats, and his gaze flies to hers, narrowing slightly.

  “Yes. People.”

  “Interesting lack of a gendered pronoun.”

  His jaw tightens. “So?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t care. I won’t be a jerk. I think you know that Zac won’t care either.”

  He looks down.

  Gently, she asks, “Gay? Bi?”

  He clears his throat. “Bi.”

  Unexpected heat swims through her. “Zac is too.”

  Now his head comes up, fast and intent, those dark eyes almost mean. He opens his mouth to speak but shuts it again, fast, with a snap of his teeth. For a good five seconds, he stares at her. She loses her breath at the sheer intensity in his gaze. If someone told her right then that Cal hated her, she’d believe them. She might also believe that person if they said that Cal loved her. It’s an impossible gaze to parse. The only thing she’s sure of is that there’s more inside of him than she’d anticipated, and for that split second in time, whatever that emotion is, it’s about to boil over.

  Zac was right. Cal Keller is not remotely boring.

  He sucks in a breath and his gaze drops to the floor. “You outed your husband.”