It wasn’t because he sounded so desperate that I agreed. It was because I echoed his prayer. I not only wanted more of him, I wanted more of me. The witty, confident me that I was with him. The me that he saw me to be. Were they one and the same? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted them to be. And he was the reason I’d seen the possibility.
I wanted them to be so much that I didn’t think about what I was agreeing to, not as we walked hand-in-hand to his hotel, not as I followed him up the narrow staircase, not as he slid the key into the lock—one of those old-fashioned kinds, not the plastic keycard sort—not as he pulled me past the threshold and into his arms.
My lips shifted against his easily that time. The first kiss back in the restaurant lav had been awkward with its greediness, our teeth clacking and our tongues in the way. In his room, the kiss was like slow dancing, languid and in sync, and though I was not often very big on kissing, I could have stayed in that embrace, our mouths locked, for hours.
But of course there’d be more than kissing, and it wasn’t until we were on his bed and his hands reached for the buttons of my long-sleeve blouse that I began to panic.
I put a hand up to stop him, and before he could ask for an explanation, I cupped my palm over the thick bulge in his crotch, which turned out to be an effective distraction for all of about five minutes. Soon enough, he was fumbling with the buttons once more.
This time putting up a hand wasn’t enough. “Could we…” I’d never stumbled on this request before. I didn’t know why it was so hard to voice it this time. “Do you mind if we keep most of our clothes on?”
He let go of my shirttail and cupped my face, pulling me in for a searing kiss. “Whatever you need,” he said, and I knew he meant it. He had the patience of a wildlife photographer, after all. “Just, you should know how badly I want to touch you.”
I could have let it go at that. Skin-to-skin during sex is a beautiful thing, definitely heightens the intimacy, but since beautiful and intimate are not ever my objective, I am apt to not care about the absence.
Most men don’t care either once they’ve got their cock inside me. It’s helpful in this that they tend to have a one-track mind.
But there with Hendrix, pressed up against him with my clothes on and still feeling miles away from satisfaction, it was harder to ignore his desires. His desires were my desires, deep and desperate and greedy.
I glanced across the room at the windows, covered with blackout curtains. The lamps around the room were already all turned off save the one on the nightstand. An excited sort of anxiety tightened around my chest, gripping tighter as the urge to speak increased, like a failsafe my body had set up in case of stupid decisions like this one, a warning that it would shut down my ability to breathe before it let me proceed.
But Hendrix made me feel brave. Because I was in love with him. Because I was in love with the person he saw when he looked at me. Because in that moment, I was happy.
“Turn off the light?” It was a question because I was uncertain about what I was doing, but he answered like it was meant for him to answer.
“I can do that if you prefer.”
I didn’t know what I preferred. I knew what was necessary because now that the idea was in my head, I needed to be naked against him as surely as I needed to not be seen. So I said, “Yes. Please.”
It was torture just to lose his presence long enough for him to roll over and reach for the lamp. He flipped the switch, and we were pitched into the security of darkness. Pretty solid darkness, too. Those blackout curtains earned their name.
It was more eagerness than nerves that had me fumbling with the buttons of my shirt. Then I was fumbling with his buttons, and quickly we were both bare, top to bottom, wearing nothing but the dark.
And God, had touch always felt that magnificent? Like a favorite blanket fresh from the dryer, I wanted every part of my skin wrapped with his. I can still feel that want with an embarrassing degree of lust. Can still feel the desire to explore every inch of his nudity with the tips of my fingers.
I didn’t indulge, of course. Those kinds of liberties are expected to be exchanged in kind in those situations, and I couldn’t endure much in return. I did allow him to fondle my breasts, let him tease my nipples to sharp peaks. Allowed my own palms to sweep up and down the sculptured landscape of his chest.
When it seemed the touching might progress to more wandering, I distracted him yet again. “I have a condom in my purse.” It was going to be hard to find in the darkness, but I was up for the challenge.
“I have one. Grabbed it from my wallet before my pants came off.”
What a gorgeous man. Sincerely. Perfection.
Also a mite alarming that he’d had more than one condom stashed away, but I wasn’t about to get hung up on his possible sexual habits when I was the benefactor, and who was I to judge anyway?
The series of photo memories that play out from here aren’t necessarily my favorite of the album, but they are the ones I look at the most often. Usually with my eyes shut tight and my hand buried between my legs. It’s an absolutely wicked arc of a story they tell, provocative and obscene with the way he drilled into me, the way he ground his hips against mine. The delicious drag of his cock moving in and out and in and out. It was slower than the frenetic pace from the bathroom earlier, but still a tempo that had us soon sweating.
The sticky feel of his body pressed to mine may have been the trigger for my first orgasm. Bless the man, I had three total. Three earth-shattering Os that each wrecked me in its own beautiful way.
I’m not sure I would have had any of them at all if I hadn’t been able to relax with him as I did. I tend to be overly tense with my clothes off, even in the darkness, but the fear that Hendrix’s hands might roam while we fucked was quickly eliminated when he drew my arms over my head and threaded his fingers through mine.
Strange how connected to a person you can feel just by having your hands laced.
His cock inside me, too, but our hands...maybe because it was exactly what I needed at the moment, I’m not sure. Whatever the reason, it’s our locked hands that I focus on the most whenever I look back.
The series ends with his collapse on the bed next to me, my cheek pressed against his chest as his breathing evened out and grew deeper, his arm wrapped loosely around my waist. I don’t ever look at the sequence of events that followed—the part where he fell asleep, the part where I swallowed back a sob, the part where I stealthily rolled from his arms and groped around in the dark to find my clothes and then dress and then leave that me—his me—behind with him. There’s a story in those memories too, but I’ve done my best to forget them. And today when I’d do best to remember why I snuck out, why I couldn’t possibly stay, why there is no way on God’s green earth that it could happen again, I still can’t bring myself to acknowledge them.
Maybe I avoid that story because it’s too hard to bear.
More likely I avoid it because it’s so easy for me to see it ending another way.
Chapter Six
Juxtaposition: An act of placing things close together or side by side for comparison or contrast. - MoMA Glossary of Art Terms
It was a moment of weakness to agree to dinner, but at least I had sense enough to insist that I’d meet Hendrix at the restaurant instead of letting him pick me up. It makes it easier to lie to myself about what this is, why I said yes. It’s a fact-finding mission. That’s all. Not a date. Not an encounter with expectations beyond the meal. Not an opportunity to spend time with someone I am really, really fond of.
He picked well for the location, too. It’s more pub than restaurant, which keeps it casual and helps enforce my lie. Since it’s not one of those fancy places with rules about only complete parties being seated, he’s already at our table when I arrive. He sees me when I’m still across the room, watches as I approach with keen eyes and barely any movement. I know in my gut that this is exactly the way he looks when he sits in wait for his elusive wild cre
atures to appear.
It makes my breath catch, the awareness that he’s waiting for me with that depth of perseverance.
He stands when I reach him, but he’s wise enough not to try to greet me with any physical connection. I find that both admirable and disappointing.
“You’re ravishing,” he says after his gaze takes in my gray ruffle blouse (long-sleeve, of course) and my black cigarette pants. His voice is reverent, as though he’s awed by the sight of me. As though he still sees me as that woman I became with him.
Talk like that will be my undoing.
“This is not a date,” I say, an attempt to plant myself on firm ground.
His lip twitches like it’s fighting a smile. “Of course not.”
I’m not reassured. But I sit anyway. He follows suit.
So. This is really happening.
“I’m not late,” I say, more of a statement than a question. I know I’ve arrived right on time. I planned it so, but as much as I despise small talk, I need something to say and it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
“No. I’m early.” He’s still looking at me with that expression of wonder that has me feeling all sorts of wrecked inside, and fuck it, I can’t sit here if he’s going to keep this up.
“Stop.” I can’t even look in his direction. His gaze is like a studio lamp, too bright to look directly at. “Stop looking at me that way.”
“What way?”
I’m annoyed by his feigned innocence. “Like you’re amazed by my presence.” I feel uncomfortable as soon as I’ve called him out. Then it occurs to me that maybe his awe is in the fact that I showed up. “You didn’t honestly think I might ghost, did you?”
He gives a half-shrug. “It crossed my mind.”
My chest loosens. That’s a much more tolerable reason for awe than the alternative. “Please. I said I’d be here, and so I am. I’m not scared of you.”
“Yes, you are.”
And just like that, I’m tight and tense again. It’s not fair that he knows that. It’s hard enough being the one afraid.
As though he senses my alarm, he adds, “If it makes you feel any better, I’m scared of you too.”
“Bollocks. As if I’m to believe that after all the adventures you’ve been on. It’s unlikely you’re scared of anything.”
He folds his arms and leans them on the table between us, pitching him forward. “Now that is awfully presumptuous. Just because I’m out facing the fear doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. Believe me, I feel it quite intensely.”
“Then why do what you do?”
“Maybe I like being scared.” His tone doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be a tease, rather that he’s trying to figure it out for himself. “Maybe it makes me feel alive. Maybe it’s because the truly scary things tend to bring the biggest reward.”
Well, then. We’re far from the shallow now, aren’t we? Is it too late to run?
Fortunately, Hendrix decides I need a reprieve. “How about I go order? Do you know what you want?”
I’m so eager for him to be gone, for me to have a moment to regroup that I don’t even bother with the menu. “Fish and chips are fine.” Greasier than I usually go for, but it’s an item I’m sure they’ll have.
“And to drink?”
“You choose.” It instantly feels too personal for some reason, but it’s been said and even the “Whatever” I add doesn’t diminish the intimacy.
But it’s enough to send him on his way, and with him gone, I can breathe. In, out. In, out.
And now that I can think again, I miss him.
I contain multitudes. Not just contradicting myself from day-to-day but from minute-to-minute. I don’t want to be here, in this situation, feeling this unmoored. And, also, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
It’s better when he returns. Like his absence has reset the conversation, and we start again, on surer footing when he asks my opinion on the Gupta exhibition at the TPG. We quickly slip into that familiar banter I remember. It’s easy to discuss art and philosophy while we sip contessas, a variation on the classic negroni, I learn, when Hendrix explains all of his favorite varieties of the Italian cocktail.
I learn other things too. Silly, trivial things. That his favorite movie is Kurosawa’s Ikiru. That Hendrix is a family name and not a tribute to the famed guitarist. The evening is reminiscent of the first series from our first night together—engaging dialogue, passionate opinions. Nothing too personal. Nothing too hard. And all underscored by that happy glow of feeling at home with someone. If I’d wondered at all that our ability to connect had been a one-time thing, I now know definitively that it was not. Hendrix Reid fits me tonight as well as he did last autumn. Like tailor-made trousers. Like a memory card in my Nikon D6. Like the key in the lock of his hotel room in Paris.
While it’s both of us directing the turns of conversation equally, I avoid the questions that I have told myself are my reason for being here. Not because I suddenly don’t want the answers but because I suspect those will be harder subjects to negotiate. For me, anyway. Perhaps for him too.
It’s not until we’re on our third drink and I’m pushing away the scraps of my meal that the shift occurs. It’s my fault because I bring up Freddie. Nothing major, just an anecdote that relates to our discussion on conceptual inspiration, but speaking his name at all opens a door to more personal topics, and exactly as contradictory as I was earlier, I’m not sure if I want to cross that threshold or not.
Hendrix makes his own decision and steps in before me. “Are you interested in more children?”
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly so it reads as untrue, and it is, which feels very unscrupulous. I might not be forthright when it comes to this man, but I haven’t been outright dishonest. I don’t like the taste of the dishonesty now.
I take a sip of my drink, and I amend. “Well. I did.”
“What made you change your mind?”
I almost laugh. Isn’t it obvious? “I’m too old now.”
“No. You’re not.”
I circle my neck, stretching the tendons that have tightened there. “I might be,” I say, and that’s honest. For some reason it’s easier to just assume that I am. The possibility that the season hasn’t passed is way too fragile of a thing to hold in my head. “Biologically, I might be done. Once a woman hits thirty-five...it’s harder.”
He nods in acceptance, as though my answer has anything to do with him. “Then you adopt,” he offers.
I’ve actually considered it. Especially when Fred was younger, and I dreamed of having another for him to play with. And also I’ve considered it recently. Now that he’s six and the age difference between him and a new sibling would be the same as the age difference between me and Edward.
There’s only one thing that stops me. “I don’t want to do it alone again. I can afford it, I know. I could hire the help. I believe, I think, that a parent doesn’t need to be omnipresent to do a good job. But it’s lonely. To not have someone invested as much as you are. To have to wonder and worry and dream all on your own. I hadn’t planned to parent alone the first time. I don’t think I can do it willingly.”
“Then don’t do it alone.”
Now I do laugh. “Just poof a partner into being? It takes time to do the whole dating thing. Then the engagement. The marriage. There’s an order to it. Even if I found the right man today, it would take probably more time than I have, especially since I won’t be giving my heart out easily this time.”
He does that arms on the table lean, bringing him centimeters closer to me. “Fuck the traditional order. Do it however you want. Find the guy, decide to be parents together, take your time to see if it turns into more.”
Even fucking the order, there are still flaws in his idea. Finding a guy who wants to partner in parenting, finding a guy at all.
Unless he’s offering to be the guy.
And I’m suddenly hopeful and terrified that he is. The bubble is on the verge of popping
and I’m not ready.
Oh, God. What am I doing?
“Why did you come here?” I blurt it out, out of nowhere. Because it’s time. Because I need to know. “Why did you enroll in my class, out of all the classes you could take in the world? And don’t give me some bullshit about wanting to broaden your skills because that doesn’t answer why me. And after seven months with no word between us, why now?”
“You were the one who snuck out without leaving any way to contact you.”
“That’s the universal code for this is only a one-night stand.”
“Which is why it took me seven and a half months to show up.”
He’s intense when he’s serious. Intense and vulnerably accurate. I’d held back adding the half to our months apart because I didn’t want to give away that I’ve counted the time, but he’s put it out there for me to see it of him. Even if he’s scared, he’s so much braver than I. I’m too scared even to respond.
Boldly, he reaches across the table to stroke my hand with his thumb, the way he did that other night. I should pull it away. This series cannot lead to the same series now as it did then.
But he’s pinned me in place with the simple power of his touch, and like an animal frightened by a possible predator, I remain in place.
While I stare at the path his thumb takes, I can feel him staring at me. “I was trying to honor your choice,” he says softly, a whisper really. “I really was, Camilla, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep pretending that there was anything in the world that interested me besides you.”
Oh my.
To be wanted. To be wanted enough to be pursued. I haven’t entertained those possibilities in a very long time. Haven’t even entertained the fantasy. It’s too ludicrous when I feel so unworthy of that kind of wanting.
Slash: A Slay Series Novella Page 6
