The Fix

by Kristin Rouse

  Her arm twists behind her, clearly working at the clasp of her bra when a rational thought finally crashes around me. I gurgle out a request for her to stop, to wait, and see her arms fly to cover her chest protectively. I sit up on my elbows, lean her face towards mine, and kiss her soundly. “I don’t want to stop. It’s just that I keep certain things in the bathroom and—”

  “Right,” she says, relieved. “I’ll wait here.”

  I can’t help but kiss her long and slow before I leave the room. My head spins as I flip the light on in the bathroom. My face in the mirror is flushed, thoroughly kissed, and piqued to every thing around me. I’m so hyper-aware, in fact, that I know before I open the medicine cabinet what I’ll find there. Or rather, what I won’t find there.

  Funny how replenishing your supply of condoms becomes less of a priority when you aren’t bringing girls from a bar back to your place on a regular drunken basis.

  My heart sinks, but it’s nothing in comparison to the aching protestation from my groin. The girl of my goddamn dreams is here, in my apartment, half-naked for fuck’s sake, and all I can find is lube. There are convenience stores literally seconds away from my place, but Juliana is here now. The spontaneity, the impulsivity of this incredible moment is gonna fly out the damn window the second I go back to my room and go for my shoes. Who the hell even knows if she’ll still be here when I get back? It’ll probably be just enough time for her to come to her senses.

  My erection mocks me all the way back to the bedroom. When I see Jules spread out on my bed, having taken the liberty of shirking the rest of her clothes and wrapping herself up in only my comforter, I physically ache for her.

  “So those things I keep in the bathroom,” I say with a wince, “turns out I didn’t have the stock of them I thought I did.”

  “Oh.” She sounds as disappointed as I feel.

  I start searching around for my shoes, my coat, everything else we managed to get off me before I came to my better senses, then say, “I know it kills the moment, but there’s a gas station like, two minutes away….”

  “Ezra….”

  “I know, it sucks, but I had a lot of sex without protection when I was messed up.” I shove my left shoe on, frustrated when it gets stuck on my heel. “I know I’m clean, but probably only by the grace of God, really. And you mean more to me than that. Just, please wait?”

  “Ezra,” she says in that sing-songy way she convinced me to dance with her at the wedding. “Take that shoe off and come here.”

  I toe off my sneaker and approach the bed. She sits up, yanks at my wrists, and I crumple in a heap next to her. She laces her fingers in my hair and our lips meet, tentatively at first, then with all the primal fervor of before.

  “I’m not getting up and leaving. And neither are you. Not right now. We don’t need a condom for what I have planned.”

  My spine tenses and releases with every wicked word she says.

  Her mouth trails back to my ear lobe, which she suckles luridly before she lies back, her dark hair a curtain against my pillow under her head, and grins up at me.

  She’s right: there is plenty to do, no condom required.

  ***

  Hours and both of us falling asleep later, I run my fingers through her hair. She wakes, stretches like a cat, and yawns loudly into the crook of my elbow before smiling up at me. “Time?” she asks sleepily.

  “Almost midnight. I didn’t know if you needed to get home or not.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “Not at all.”

  She smiles and pulls the covers around our waists up to her chin. “Then I won’t.”

  I kiss her forehead and untangle my fingers from her tresses. She whines at me when I move to get out of bed. “I’m happy you’re staying, but I still really need to get up for a minute. I’m not going far, promise.”

  She pouts at me, but I know it’s in jest when she does that wink/bat thing with her eyes. I want a better name for that. Especially now that I’m going to get more time with her.

  “Want me to get you some water or anything?” I ask as I pull my underwear back on.

  “I’m all right.” As I leave the room, I spy her making a nest out of my pillows. It’s maybe the most heart-bursting thing I’ve seen her do tonight, and that is saying something. I take a look at myself in the mirror as I’m washing my hands. There are a few errant red marks from Juliana’s long nails and nipping teeth, particularly around the patches of my skin in between the whirling black and grey ink on my chest. She seems to be entranced by the tattoos that nearly cover my left chest, back, and arm—as entranced as I am frankly embarrassed by a few of the images, permanent remnants of drinking nights that got way out of control. Her tongue outlining them had felt too good to ask her to stop, so I decide to wear the marks proudly, like the tangy sweetness of her that lingers on my lips and tongue. Because against all the fucking odds stacked against me, I fell asleep naked with her. I touched her everywhere someone can want to be touched. I’ve tasted nearly every inch of her skin. I’m going back to bed with her. She’s here, and, inexplicably, she wants me.

  She’d never have looked at me twice nine months ago, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to. Any girl who settled for Drunk Ezra would be settling for a real loser. And the jury is still partially out on whether or not I’m that much better sober.

  Regardless, she’s in my bed tonight. She may be in my bed a lot more nights in the near future. I grin to myself, still in a bit of disbelief about my incredible luck, and stride back to my room.

  Her face is illuminated by the light of her cell phone. She tosses it onto my bedside table when she sees me come in.

  “Just letting Mama know I’ll see her in the morning.” She slides over to let me back between the blankets, warm and inviting from her body heat.

  My throat goes a little dry. “Did you, ah, tell her that you’re with me?”

  “I told her I’m crashing at a friend’s place. I figure I’ll tell her which friend in the morning and let her decide what she wants to decide.”

  She slides over towards me and looks as though she’s mulling something over in her head. After a pause, she says, “If you want me to, anyway. I don’t have to tell her anything. Or I can tell her everything. Well… everything that’s PG, of course.”

  “I’m okay with telling her everything PG.” I try to sound nonchalant about it, but it thrills me to my very core.

  She shivers and kicks at my shins playfully when I wrap my arms back around her. “Your feet are freezing.”

  “My bathroom tiles are always subarctic,” I say, trying to sound contrite. “Why wouldn’t you think I’d want you to tell her?”

  “Technically we still haven’t really talked about it. We’ve talked around it, sure, but about what you and me are? Not yet, anyway.”

  “We agreed we want to spend time together. Especially with you coming back here for good.”

  “I do. But I know you’re in sort of a weird place. I don’t want to mess that up, you know?”

  I nod. I appreciate how respectful and careful she wants to be, but I’m also already wondering how she can’t see how much better I am around her. I saw her drinking at the wedding and it barely fazed me. She was standing next to me when I had a glass of champagne in my hand, and I didn’t drink it. Maybe it’s my own willpower I’ve never given much credit to, but it can’t be only coincidence that I don’t crave around her.

  “I don’t think you’re going to mess me up, Jules. I can’t make the same promise about me to you, though.”

  “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. And I know what I want.” She kisses me tenderly and beams at me. “You’re coming to Christmas, right?”

  I groan. “Actually, I’m spending it with my mother.”

  “Oh,” she says, her tone a little crestfallen. “Anja said she’d invited you to be with us.”

  “She did. I’m coming to dinner Christmas Eve. I’m heading to Constance’s house strai
ght from there for the next day. It’s the first time I’ve spent Christmas with her since I was really little—I can’t bail on her.” There’s Gemma, of course, too, but I don’t know if I’m ready to unload all of the sordid elements of my biological family on her just yet.

  She sighs. “I’m going back to Sao Paolo the day after. Only for about two weeks, just long enough to pack up my stuff and get it shipped up here.”

  Disappointment crests over me. Two weeks sounds like an eternity when I didn’t think she’d be slipping through my grasp again at all. A part of me really does want to bail on Constance and Gemma, but that seems too much like something I’d have done nine months ago. I’m not that guy anymore. I can’t be that guy anymore.

  “I don’t work tomorrow,” I say. “So there’s that.”

  “There’s that.” Her hands begin to roam across my still-bare skin and tug at the waistband of my shorts. “Why’d you put these back on?”

  “I didn’t miraculously find condoms in there,” I say. As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I realize how thick I sound.

  “Have I not made myself clear enough yet?” she asks. Her hand slips fully under the waistband and her lithe, talented fingers circle me. “We don’t need condoms quite yet. Why would we when there’s….”

  Even in the dark, I can see she’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat. That is, until my eyes roll straight back into my head.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Juliana comes back to Denver three days before my nine-month sobriety anniversary. It’s not a moment too soon, too, because as soon as she mentioned to her family where she’d been the night she spent at my place, Mama A began hounding me like I was already her new son-in-law.

  “I knew she’d find someone to ground her one day,” she’d said to me. “I think you’re it. You’re perfect for one another.”

  It took an impassioned phone call from Jules to convince Mama to cool her jets and remind her we aren’t anything official yet, but she still grins at me like she knows something I don’t every time I see her.

  We have dinner plans a few nights after Jules gets in. It’s torturous to know she’s in town and not be able to see her, but she’s getting settled into her little cottage-sublet and I’m making up for a few sick days I had to take after the new year with extra hours at work. It takes the edge off how much I’ve missed her.

  Her new place is in the newly gentrified and posh LoHi, just a short walk from some of the trendiest bistros in town. She’s got her sights set on one in particular for what I’ve only now realized is our first, real, proper date. Desperate not to look as exhausted as I’ve felt the last few days, I thumb through the dress shirts I own, and can’t seem to decide which one looks the least ratty. There’s a cigarette burn on the sleeve of the white one. The navy one has a dark stain on it I set in by drying it. In the heyday of my drinking, I didn’t have a steady enough hand to own and operate an iron without scorching my clothes, so the grey one would never work. I’m aware I need new clothes. But, honestly, broke, recovering-alcoholic massage therapists don’t have a lot of occasions to wear a collared shirt—and when we do, like for a wedding, we typically rent them.

  It strikes me that I have one more. It’s not mine, per se, but I do have it. It’s buried in a flat plastic storage box under my futon where I never have to look at it. It’s tucked in with an obnoxious, stained tie with dancing turkeys in Pilgrim hats, a couple of old books and photo albums, and a blanket that’d been on my bed in Mac’s house since I was old enough to remember. The shirt probably wouldn’t fit me anyway (Mac had about fifty pounds on me, after all), but it’s there, and I entertain the thought of cracking open the lid and trying it on.

  But it might still smell like Mac. And if it does, I can’t let that scent out. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. So I shrug on the navy one, hoping the stain isn’t too noticeable in a dark restaurant.

  There’s an abysmal amount of traffic driving north. My phone rings a couple of times, but as I keep getting cut off by semis and idiots smoking pot behind the wheel, I don’t answer. By the time I finally pull off at her exit, navigate the twisty old neighborhood to find her place, and find parking on the crowded street, I’ve got two voicemails and three text messages from her. I quell my nerves and knock on the door of the bright green bungalow, the small bouquet of flowers I brought with me behind my back.

  “This really great woman I’m nuts about thinks I’m standing her up for our date tonight,” I say when she opens the door. “Would you mind telling her that Denverites have no fucking clue how to drive and let her know I brought contrition flowers?”

  Jules grins a mile wide. If it weren’t for my holding the flowers off to the side when I pull them out from behind my back, she’d crush them between us when she leaps into my arms. Kissing her makes me delirious.

  “Can you blame me for being anxious to see you?” she murmurs between kisses.

  “Not at all.”

  We stumble through the front door, lips reminding us each how the other tastes, hands roaming to recall how well we fit together. I pull away to get a good look at her face — flushed as it is, it looks a lot like it did the last time I saw her on the porch of Mama A’s house when we said goodbye on Christmas Eve. It strikes me as even more lovely because I know this is the first of hundreds of times I’ll get to see it. My head swims at the thought, and I have to kiss her again.

  We collapse together, our lips still tangled, on an overstuffed, over-wide chaise in the corner of her very put-together living room. She sinks into the brown and white velour pillows, pulling me by the collar to spread out on top of her. Her legs loop with mine, holding me there so all I can do is kiss her, fill my senses entirely with her, her, her. It flits through my brain that making it to the restaurant for our seven o’clock reservation is never going to happen if we don’t straighten up and get going. But why would I want to go anywhere other than here, with her, losing my mind with how miraculous she feels underneath me?

  She has the same idea, apparently, because her fingers begin working at the buttons of my shirt. The skin of my chest burns when her fingertips graze over it, mapping the lines of my tattoos again as if she’s memorized them. My own fingers creep under the cashmere sweater she’s wearing. Her skin is as wickedly soft as I remembered, begging for every inch to be touched and kissed. Her lips find my earlobe when I graze my thumb under her navel, and the little gasp she utters echoes in my ear. I rear up on my knees enough that there is space between us to fumble at buttons, tug on hems, and work the front-clasp of her bra and the fly of my slacks. More fumbling and writhing, a few well-placed kicks and pivots of hips, and there’s nothing between us. I look down on her in awe, as if I hadn’t seen her naked just a few short weeks ago. She smiles up at me, her eyes hooded and lips plump. Once our gazes are locked, her eyes flit over to the small coffee table between our chair and her couch, where her purse lies partially open. I already know what she’s implying I’d find in there, but I have a staunch rule against going through a woman’s purse. And besides, I’m not going to be ill-prepared twice.

  I press a kiss to her lips, her jaw, a trail of them down the smooth column of her throat, in between her breasts, pausing for a moment against her stomach before turning away from her to fumble through the pockets of my discarded pants. She must recognize the tearing sound the foil makes, because anticipatory whimpers bubble up and spill over her lips. I turn back, hover over her, and kiss her breathless as her knees fall open under me.

  She pulls me down on top of her and pivots her hips up to meet mine until we’re both gasping with relief. Finally.

  It’s slow at first. She’s writhing and bucking her hips to meet every thrust of mine, but I take my time because she feels so good. I close my eyes and let myself sink into her deeper, let the sounds she makes engulf my senses as we build our rhythm. It’s steady and perfect. The perfect part must be her.

  For the briefest second I let my mind wander. I remember other girls, ot
her beds, other times I’ve been inside a woman, and only then do I acknowledge my own clarity. Other moans laced with lust and desperation, other hips snapping against mine, begging to be filled and pleased as quickly as possible—I can remember them, but their memories are hazy and muddled. I remember obliging their whims and demands, my head never really clear, never quite cognizant enough to realize that girl wasn’t what I actually needed—just what I momentarily wanted.

  But not now. Not with Juliana. When she presses her lips the patch of skin under my ear and groans my name, I feel every centimeter of her mouth, every puff of her breath. It’s only her. The sounds she makes. The way her body writhes under mine. Her smell, her taste, her smooth skin and soft hair. She’s every ounce of my awareness. I could be with her like this forever and it would never get old, dulled, or muted. My heightened senses, so blissful, so intense, threaten to betray me far too fast.

  I hang on as long as I can, because every sound she makes is perfect. When the pressure at the base of my spine is too much to hold back, I grunt her name and snap my hips with an overwhelming finality.

  A little whimper of release echoes from her throat into my ears, and she cups the back of my neck to hold me still on top of her.

  Panting, exhausted as I am, it’s several long minutes before I can actually breathe enough to speak. When I look down at her, she smiles blissfully up at me. I kiss her again and again, until my arms are too shaky to hold myself suspended above her. I fall into a heap on the throw pillows next to her, and snake my arm around her shoulders as she wiggles and presses herself into my side, her head lolling on my chest.

  We lay there in satisfied silence while I rationally piece together the thoughts that churn about in my brain. It renders me speechless, to the point where I only snap out of it when she tickles my sides and tilts my face down to look at her.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  I smile at her, the sort of irrepressible smile that comes so easily for me when I’m around her. “That was….” I sigh in wonderment.