by Louisa Trent
"I don't think so." But with a finger pointed to the corner behind him, she directed him to the plunger anyway. He had dropped it there earlier. Drew could be forgetful at times. Or, maybe he just wasn't really in touch with himself and his own hidden motivations.
Picking up the plumber's friend, Drew started working the bowl. "Better catch me for that date now. This current project I'm working on in Boston is almost wrapped. Two weeks tops, I'll be on the move again."
Drew the gypsy. He roamed the country, going from one company to the next, assignment to assignment, working out computer glitches, fine-tuning applications, troubleshooting small problems before they turned into big problems. Too bad people couldn't be debugged as easily.
As Drew's arm flexed on the plunger, she took the plunge too. "I've decided to get serious about dating. But it's hard work. All that dead conversational air to fill. I end up telling the same funny anecdotes over and over again. I need new joke material."
"There's always current events," Drew helpfully suggested.
"I want my date happy, not crushingly depressed. Current events are inappropriate for superficial dating banter. Let's face it, without joke material from you, I'm boring."
"You're not boring, Kes. You're a real interesting person."
So like Drew to boost her flagging spirits! "Thanks Drew. It's just so hard meeting guys." She sighed.
"AA didn't work out?"
"Everyone there was a heavy drinker, and you know I don't drink."
"Singles night at the bookstore?"
"Since I do actually read, I got caught up in book jackets and totally ignored the prowling non-reading customers. The customers who might have interested me were also reading. It's a vicious circle."
"The 'Net?"
Another helpful suggestion. "Grandfathers and adolescents pretending to be otherwise, with the occasional married man thrown in also pretending to be otherwise. The nicest guy I met turned out to be a lesbian. We're still in contact. A lovely woman, but I really do need a non-detachable penis. Whatever happened to guys who are who they say they are?"
"Clubs?"
"Funny you should mention that. I joined one. Well, it's not actually a club. It's more like a group. For the recently divorced and/or widowed. Once a week, we meet in the basement of the library to discuss the trials and tribulations of the single life after being a member of a couple. Tame stuff. Mainly talk therapy, some role playing. I was even asked to run a session."
"Figures," he muttered, then did a double take. "Wait a minute, Kes! You've never been married."
"A long term relationship counts."
Dyed blue water splashed out of the bowl as a muscled pair of blond-flecked tanned arms worked in unison. Drew had worked construction to finance his college education. Though his job had changed, the hard body remained. At the sight of that plunger, forcefully driving and thrusting in and out of the toilet bowl, the sound of wetness and suction reverberating in the small space, Kesley's belly clenched.
"Long-term relationship? Sweetheart, I've known you since college. When did you manage to cram one of those into your busy life helping others?"
"Never," she replied, wondering why Drew suddenly seemed perturbed. "Which meant I had nothing to contribute to the discussion, which meant I either sat there in group like a bump on a log or made someone up, which is where the pretend William came in. He left me for another woman."
"That's lame, giving a pretend jerk a name."
"Don't you see? I had to personalize him before I could visualize him. He wasn't real without a name. How could I discuss the no-good creep without picturing him in my head? The name gave him validation. I told the group William left me for someone younger and prettier."
"Twenty-nine isn't old and you are too pretty. Plenty pretty. If Billy-boy had any balls he never would have left you. You should've said you left him. Why give the little fuck the upper hand?"
"I know the other woman thing is a cliché but it did the trick," she said, appalled at how pathetic it all sounded--and devious too--now that she was outing the experience. "Everyone in the group believed me. Anyway, after an hour or so of discussion, we break up into small groups and console each other. Then comes the good part, snack time. That's when we mingle. I met a very nice man over a butterscotch brownie. Ted. Divorced, one child, joint custody, fair child support payments."
Drew stopped what he was doing and stared at her in concern.
"What the hell were you doing eating butterscotch? You know you're not supposed to eat butterscotch! Don't you remember that time we went out for a hot fudge sundae because you were PMSing and you needed a chocolate fix but the ice cream place on Huntington Ave only had butterscotch sauce? I held your head up over this very same toilet while you barfed."
Kesley smiled in memory. "Good times."
"The best fucking times. Does this guy Ted even know you're allergic to butterscotch?"
Why was Drew fixating on butterscotch? And how was poor Ted supposed to know she had some weird allergy to butterscotch? They'd only just met; they had no shared history. That's why dating was such hard work. There was no verbal shorthand, no frame of reference, no remembering when.
"As Ted was the one who brought the butterscotch brownies, I could hardly refuse to eat one. And you're missing the whole point! Ted is eligible, he's looking for a committed relationship and he likes me."
"I can't believe you joined a bitch-and-cry group," Drew muttered. "Don't you get enough of that touchy-feely shit at work, Kesley?"
She did. God, she did. She loved social work, but was burning out. Lately, she felt so drained. Working with troubled street kids was particularly brutal. Defiant, resistant, rebellious against authority--and those were the easy cases. Drugs, prostitution, untreated and ignored health problems compounded homelessness and long histories of familial abuse and neglect and abandonment in runaway teens. Some days she just wanted to gnash her teeth in frustration.
Kesley threw her arms up in the air. "I'm desperate, all right? I'm at the end of my rope! That's why I joined yet another group. And here I met this nice guy who wants to go out with me and I'm afraid to go out with him because I'm a complete fraud."
"Okay, okay, relax, sweetheart. Deep breath. How's about a paper bag or something to breathe into?"
"I have never hyperventilated in my life. However, a stress ball would come in handy right about now."
"Stress ball. Stress ball." Drew stuck the plunger under an arm and patted his pockets. "Don't have one of those. Sorry. Wanna give me a stress-busting squeeze instead?"
Arms open scarecrow wide, Drew forded the blue pond to where she stood at the threshold. Not for the first time, she was caught up in his embrace. She didn't even mind that a toilet plunger shared the hug or that the rubber end dripped blue water all over her. It seemed apropos, considering the blueness of her mood of late. "I shouldn't take my upset out on you, Drew."
"You just take out whatever you want to take out on me. My fault you got upset in the first place," he said patting her back with his big blue hands, the suction end of the plunger swinging in the air behind him, the rubber end releasing air and making a farty noise. "Ooops! Pardon me."
She punched him and giggled and felt so much better.
"I don't want you to feel bad. Not ever," he said soulfully. "One little fib about a long-term relationship does not a complete fraud make."
Her head settled under the strong line of his male-model jaw. "It does, when that one little fib implies a whole big lot, like I'm experienced."
"Everyone exaggerates to a certain extent about sex. I, for example, have never done it with triplets as the rumors I started would suggest."
"You haven't?"
"No! Of course not. I'm not nearly that well coordinated. I'm not even coordinated enough for twins. Forget the ladies' room story too. It never happened. I did buy the woman a cake. Well, okay, it was really a cupcake, but that's a small cake, right? She didn't mind that there wasn't nearl
y enough space on top for the fifty candles."
"She was fifty?"
"If she was a day. Personally, I think she was closer to retirement age and that's what got her flipped out. That's what I mean about exaggeration. People exaggerate about themselves all the time and not just about sex. Except you. You're no fraud, Kesley. You're the real deal."
"I am a fraud. And you're not helping me!" And that was not like Drew. He might joke around, never take things too seriously, and his sense of humor was really whack at times, but when the chips were down, he had always been there for her.
"Don't you see? I'm not experienced at all," she told him straight out. "That's why I'm afraid to date Ted, though he's a nice and eligible guy."
"B-b-but Kesley, you gotta have some experience. Even nice girls have some sex under their belt."
"Get a look at my jeans. See anything in the loops? I don't wear a belt, Drew. I haven't even gotten as far as belts in sex. I have no experience. None. I'm a virgin. So how about it? You want to get me up to speed so I can date Ted?"
The plunger dropped out from under Drew's armpit. With a blue splash, it sank into the pond on the floor. "Well, suck my dick!"
"Fine! That's as good a place as any to start," she replied in relief.
CHAPTER THREE
The next day it poured. Not just a fine drizzle or intermittent sprinkles. Buckets. Since Kesley refused to believe that sometimes clouds prevail over sunshine, Drew trotted his ass down to the trolley stop to meet her after work. In his hand, he carried one mother of an umbrella, raggedy with use. Unlike the optimistic Kes, he took out the ol' raingear at the first hint of moisture in the air.
While he waited for the streetcar to clickety-clack its way down Huntington Ave, in his mind's eye, he saw Kesley and her "nice guy." They were together. In bed. Kesley languished on top, a black peek-a-boo-lace number draped to her curves; Ted wore lounging pajamas tied loosely around his love handles, butt-crack prominently displayed. In an irritating, dream-sequence kind of slow motion, Ted's pudgy soft hands reached out to paw Kesley. Drew could actually smell the reek of the guy's cologne. He could actually see his slicked-back oiled hair. In his dark imaginings, Drew rushed the room, grabbed Kesley off the bed, buried his fist in Ted's jowls, and kicked the chump's wide ass out the door.
That's all Drew planned on doing, he swore.
Until...
Kesley sort of stumbled and he sort of caught her against him and the strap of her black lacy number sort of fell off her shoulder and they sort of ended up back in the bed somehow, and what the hell, he kissed her, and damn, one thing led to another, and before he knew it, as a good fantasy should, they were rolling around on top of the bedspread and...
Drew didn't go any further.
This was Kesley he was having dirty thoughts about. The woman was a saint. What she did for those screwed-up kids at The Shelter was over and above the call of duty. She practically lived there. Kesley was a good woman, and she deserved all the good stuff in life.
It's just that ... the thing of it was... Drew had a bad feeling about Ted. Kesley understood the human psyche. Why didn't she get that a recently divorced guy was a guy on the lookout for a good time? Christ, coming off marriage, the poor bastard probably hadn't gotten any in years, so he was on the make. Why didn't Kes understand how men really thought?
Because she wasn't experienced.
Drew needed to lay it on the line for Kesley, and in graphic terms, so she'd comprehend what guys like Ted were after. Nice guy Ted wasn't looking for a commitment, he was looking to do the nasty with as many women as he could get in the sack.
The trolley brake pads screeched, the double doors folded back, wisps of short brown hair blew across a beautiful, wholesome face.
Smiling, Kesley came towards him. Never one to beat around the bush, she asked, "What are you doing here?"
Reasonable question. "It's raining, and you forgot your umbrella," he said, and tucked her into his side. "Whereas I never forget mine."
"Babe magnet?"
"Nothing better. Get a woman when she's wet and vulnerable, then cover her quick, that's my modus operandi."
"Smooth," Kes replied, and as he hoped would happen, she laughed.
His sweetheart laughed soft and low, kind of throatily. A bedroom laugh, if ever he heard one. And, he had heard quite a few bedroom laughs in his illustrious career. Because of the driving rain, they walked companionably close, her very nice breasts rubbing his side because that was his umbrella arm. They had walked close before, hundreds of times. They hugged, they always kissed goodbye when he left town, but this was, honest to Christ, the only time he'd ever been conscious of the round firmness of her breasts beyond the basics--which was to say, he was a guy, he liked breasts, and hers were nice. Nothing beyond that. But since plunking her virginity in his lap, he had begun to speculate about them.
This made him uncomfortable.
Walking companionably with Kesley tucked into his side would never be the same again. The mention of sex had already spoiled things. Why did she have to go and bring up the subject, anyway? Wasn't it enough they got along? They had so much of the good stuff. Why'd she have to go and louse up the perfect relationship with sex?
Couldn't she have pretended he was her gay best friend or something? Every woman seemed to have a gay best friend nowadays. He could have been hers. Only he fucked women not men. That was the only difference. Oh, and his décor taste was up his ass. He wasn't real great in the clothes department either. Good thing Kes picked out his wardrobe.
Big deal, he didn't know brand names or how to arrange flowers. He was good at other things, like fixing toilets. And, he was good at loving her. Had always loved her. Since the day they first met. Loving Kesley was the one constant in his nomadic life.
Kesley was tiny, he was not, so she had to crane her neck up at him whenever she spoke. As his sweetheart was big on talking, he feared for her spine.
He went into a slouch.
"You know," said she, "when you're on a job halfway across the country, it still rains here in Boston."
What was up with Kesley giving him a weather advisory?
There had to be one of those hidden messages somewhere in that meteorological report. He'd never know unless he asked, because after years of telling things straight out, Kes had suddenly decided to go symbolic on him.
"Uh ... sweetie ... what's that supposed to mean?"
"It means, that when you're not around and it rains and I forget my umbrella, I get wet. And I survive."
Drew frowned. He didn't like this. Kesley sounded testy, like she was trying to prove something. What? What was she getting at? He always understood her before. Bring sex into perfection and it just screws everything up, logic included.
"I know," he replied, though he didn't know.
"And when my toilet overflows, I either fix it myself or call Mrs. Harris, who in turn calls the plumber."
His frown deepened. What, now he was expendable? Is that what she was trying to say? He couldn't arrange flowers, didn't know a designer leather handbag from a faux knock-off, and now she didn't need him to fix her toilet?
This was about Ted. Man, he hated that scheming prick. The guy was running a mind scam on Kesley so he could get his dick up her.
Nope, Drew wasn't going there. No thinking anatomy when it came to Kesley. Saints don't have body parts.
Drew took the high road. "If you're trying to tell me you're a self-sufficient independent career woman who doesn't need a man around to fix leaking toilets or hold umbrellas, save your breath; I get it. But I'm here now. And I like doing little things for you."
"Oh, yeah? What about the dick-sucking?"
Just when he needed Kesley to beat around the bush, she dropped the symbolism, and went back to telling it straight. He was getting dizzy just trying to stay oriented.
The way he looked at it, when it came to sexual quid pro quo, a BJ was right at the top of the "Something a Woman Does for a Man" list
, whereas he was talking about doing things for Kes, like umbrella carrying.
"Dick-sucking--that's not a little thing, Kes. If you saw the size of my dick, you would understand it's not a little thing."
"Oh, yeah? So prove it!"
Why couldn't Kes leave sleeping coc... dogs alone? Why couldn't she accept he liked doing little things for her? The hobby went way back. Since they first started living together.
A little bit of over-exaggeration there. They didn't exactly live together. They rented different flats in the same three-decker. For the past ten years, it had been his privilege to share the same front staircase, the same communal hallway, the same very-much-present, always-snoopy first-floor landlady, Mrs. Juanita Harris, with Kesley, a girl in a million. They had a great set-up. Kes took care of his plants and mail while he was away, and he had someone to call and ask about said plants and mail while he was away. Then when he was home, he tried to return the favor by doing little things for her like meeting her with an umbrella on gloomy days when he just knew it was going to rain. The arrangement worked out swell. At least, he thought so. So how come there was an uncharacteristic twinge of resentment in Kesley's voice? What was up with that?
Had to be sex. The fact she had offered to suck his dick. He just about swallowed his own tongue at the thought of her swallowing his...
Nope. Wasn't going there. The woman was a saint. Women like Kesley did not do those sorts of things. Making him chicken soup when he came down with a cold, now that was a nice woman's thoughtful gesture. But going down on him? That was ... that was...
It was wrong. So wrong.
His dick did not agree. The twitch in his pants notched up to semi-firmness.
Kesley had these really fine lips. Kind of full. He knew they were soft because when he kissed her goodbye he always zoomed in on her mouth. It was the best part of leaving. Sometimes, he only took a job as an excuse to lock lips with her.
