It's Complicated

by Julia Kent

  “And that would be a problem because…?”

  “Because you invited me for a walk!”

  “Then I am uninviting you. There. You are not invited for a walk. Come over for a glass of wine instead. 34 Windsor. C’mon.”

  “You really do live close to me!” By her calculations, his apartment was about two blocks away.

  “I know. If I squint and get a pair of u-bend binoculars and angle seven mirrors with SETI-like precision, I still can’t see in your bedroom window.”

  Silly. She needed silly right now. Silly drove Marlene’s acidity away. “Bummer,” she replied, yawning.

  “You tired?” he asked. The sound of ice cracking filled the phone, then water pouring. “I have a bed you could sleep on.”

  “If I am in your bed, sleep is the last thing we’d do.”

  “Yes, it is. The last thing after plenty of others.”

  Was this an invitation for sex and for an overnight? Could Dr. Perfect be calling in a booty call? Or had the relationship shifted, a casual approach to dating evolving into a more relaxed way of meeting up?

  “On the count of three,” she said.

  “Oh, God, I have to chase you again, don’t I?” he groaned. “Let me put on my shoes.”

  “On the count of three,” she repeated, “let’s run and see where we meet.”

  “You’re not wearing panties, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I meant only panties.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because the last time you sprinted away from me, that’s how you were dressed. Now—GO!” Click. He hadn’t waited for her count of three!

  Completely unnerved, yet tremendously excited, she ran to the front door, grabbing her keys off a hook next to the door, sliding her feet into Crocs. Josie ran with about as much grace as a zombie in a 5K run. Only slower. Alex was practically at her doorstep by the time they met in the “middle.”

  “Half a block? That’s the best you could do?” he asked, laughing. She wore a short camisole that was stretched taut against her middle. He patted it, palm flat against her ribs and belly, the gesture affectionate and thrilling. “You have a runner’s body,” he said, his face screwed up in a puzzled expression as she glared at him. “Don’t you run?”

  “Only when the ice cream truck passes by.”

  A big, slow grin spread across his face. One hand staying on her stomach, the other sliding around her waist, their torsos pulling together inch by inch as they stood on the sidewalk, a welcoming embrace slow enough to savor. On tiptoes, her heels popped out of her Crocs and her calves elongated, all so she could bury her face in his shoulder and inhale. He smelled like soap and spice, and as he pulled back to kiss her, tension from her call with Marlene melted out of her fast.

  This was a kiss between boyfriend and girlfriend, an assumption of access that seemed so natural, as if they’d been dating for months and of course they would greet each other so effortlessly with an embrace and a kiss. Gentle caresses of her waist and back twinned with a not-so-tender kiss, tongues dancing, increasing in urgency and desire.

  “Get a room,” an old man muttered, a rattling sound accompanying the jarring words. They pulled apart to find a homeless dude pushing a bent shopping cart, the metal frame overloaded with twenty or so overloaded bags filled with five-cent returnable cans. Sidestepping the cart, she and Alex wiped the kiss away, taking a deep breath as the guy passed.

  “We should take his advice,” Alex said, looping her arm through his, leading her away from her apartment.

  “Do you always listen to homeless men?”

  “Only when they give me sex toy tips,” he deadpanned.

  “Oh, dear,” was all she could respond with. “You make going back to your place so appealing.”

  “I have wine. Netflix. A bed.”

  “Sex toys?”

  “Uh…well…there’s me.”

  “Even better,” she answered, stopping to pull him in for another kiss. Smiling through the touch of their lips, she felt something soar inside, an energy that was all-pervasive.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked, running his hand through her hair, pushing it off her flushed face.

  “Because I’m with you.” A lump in her throat competed with her speedy pulse. She didn’t say things like that to men. With Alex, though, it just spilled out.

  “Then I hope to make you smile more.” A kiss. A squeeze. And then—

  “Home, sweet home. Welcome to the castle,” he joked, gesturing at the front door of a building that was pretty close in age and architecture to hers. Same locked main door, same entryway with mailboxes, same hallway with apartment doors. Alex lived on the first floor, and as he unlocked his door and let her enter first, she burst out laughing.

  Bikes. Three of them. And helmets, pant straps, and assorted other bike accessories. Of course he and his roommate were Cambridge bikers. Of course.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “The bikes. It’s so stereotypical.”

  “Of what?”

  “The urban young doctor who is a fitness freak.”

  “Not!”

  “You’re fit,” she said in an incriminating tone, running her hands along his washboard abs, trying and failing to find fat to pinch at his waist. She reached around for a squeeze of his ass. Solid muscle.

  “Okay, so I’m fit. Doesn’t make me a freak.”

  “I’ll bet you compost, too. And in the backyard you have some cherry tomato plants, plus you use a solar charger for your phone, attached to the backpack you wear when you bike.”

  His jaw was on the floor.

  “See! I was right!” she crowed.

  “Wrong on all counts.”

  “What? But…”

  “Although you just described my roommate to a T.” With that, Alex laughed and marched ahead into the carved out living room corner that served as the kitchen. A partial wall formed a counter for two bar stools, leaving a full view of the cooking area. The place was decorated in shabby chic thrift shop furniture, like hers. A dining table from the ’70s, a slim, steel gray IKEA bifold couch, a few halogen lamps, and posters from classic rock concerts ranging from Pink Floyd to The Doors.

  Photographs of everyday locations in Cambridge peppered the walls, all black and white, with intriguing composition. Josie wandered around looking at them closely. A bike tire. The foot of John Harvard’s statue. A crest on a building from Harvard University. An espresso cup on a laced-steel table top. “Who’s the photographer?” she asked as Alex opened a bottle of something he pulled from the refrigerator.

  “My roommate. John. He’s out of town for a few more weeks on a fellowship.”

  “Medical?”

  Pop! Alex used a manual corkscrew to open what she now discerned was a white wine—Chardonnay, from the looks of the label—and he poured a glass for each of them into very nice, if mismatched crystal wine goblets.

  “Yes. He’s a lab rat. Oncology.”

  “MD and Ph.D.?”

  Alex nodded, sipping his wine. He seemed nervous, a bit rattled. Being on his turf was a change, and it gave her a touch of comfort to know that Dr. Perfect cared about what she thought.

  “Nice,” she said, holding the wine glass out after taking a sip.

  He shrugged. “It’s wine.” The two shared a smile and Josie looked around. Dark wood baseboards and trim. Wide doorways. Tall ceilings. The heating bills were probably a nightmare in the winter, like hers, but it beat the tiny little modern apartment buildings with crazy-high rent, or the brick cubes that sardined people into cookie-cutter apartments.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “About a year.” His sentences were clipped. He was really nervous. What a change! Usually she was the nervous one on a date. Was this a date? He’d invited her over for a glass of wine, so she would count it as a date, even if she was dressed in a tank top and wore Crocs. Was he awkward because he wanted to hurry up to the sex part? If this was just a
booty call, maybe she was reading his signals wrong. Indecision set in. Her own self-consciousness took over, blended with the noxious aftertaste of her conversation with her mom.

  Awkwardness from one person was one thing; when both were being weird, it compounded the feeling by a factor of eight. Finally, he broke the silence.

  “This feels really weird.”

  Ah, shit.

  “Yes,” she conceded. But why? she wondered.

  Placing his glass of wine on an end table, he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. “I feel like a geeky eighth-grader because you do that to me, Josie. Like a stumbling teenager with his first crush. And now that I invited you over, and you’re here, in my apartment—my space—I don’t quite know what to do next.”

  Josie brought her glass of wine to her mouth and drank it down in two gulps. Alex’s serious eyes remained on her the whole time. “You what?” she squeaked.

  “I said that I like you when we were on the phone earlier.”

  She nodded.

  “And that sounds so lame,” he chuckled. “What I should have said is this.” Bending his knees slightly, he made a heartfelt attempt to come eye to eye with Josie, but it didn’t quite work, so he dragged her by one hand to the blue couch, pulling her in for an embrace. Curling her legs nimbly around his waist, her ass nestled into his lap. She studied him from an angle, heart thumping, wondering what the hell he was going to say next. The room was silent, with the faint hum of a fan in the background and the distant, slow whoosh of cars driving down the small street. Wine loosened her up, and whatever weirdness had descended between them earlier faded as he opened up about his own weirdness. It felt good to be weird with someone.

  That was new.

  She liked it.

  “I haven’t really dated a woman in a long time. Not like this. And I realize,” he said, his voice going low and hushed, “that it’s been a very short time, but this isn’t just…casual for me.”

  Blink.

  “I’m really enjoying spending time with you. I don’t get much free time. I have to be at work in twelve hours or so, and then I don’t have another day off for three days. But whatever time I do have off, I want to spend with you.”

  “Why?” she blurted out. Even as the word passed over her tongue and between her lips, she regretted saying it, knowing it sounded so plaintive and disbelieving.

  Those chocolate eyes turned pensive. “You don’t realize how smart and funny and”—he growled a bit, squeezing her into him, one hand playful the other stroking her arm—“how sensual you are. You’re the whole package, Josie. Let me in,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck.

  “Let you in?” The leer in her voice was evident.

  “Not like that,” he objected.

  “Not any of that?” Deflecting was easier than directly saying what her heart was screaming. A stark boundary that she’d drawn around herself long ago, fortified against calls like the one she’d just had with Marlene, was rapidly disintegrating with each second she spent with Alex. She could almost feel it, fading away inside her. A diffuse sense of trust seeped in layer by layer as she inhaled him, let her fingertips trace his jaw line, smiled a musing little grin of acceptance.

  “Well, some of that,” he backpedaled.

  Her smile spread to a full-on grin as she leaned into him and kissed, inhaling deeply, breathing him in, making him part of her.

  “You’re nervous,” she murmured, their lips still together.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t seem like you’re the nervous type.”

  “I’m not.” He shifted one hip and their bodies touched in new places, his rock-hard shaft pushing up under her. A swell of need raced through her, forcing her to control her breathing. Just having sex would be easy.

  Suddenly, Josie didn’t want easy. Pulling off her clothes and fucking him right here on the couch, or on the floor, or in his bed—hell, the shower—would be easy. Staying for dinner and ordering Thai food in between sex sessions would be easy. Getting tipsy on wine and exploring each other’s bodies would be easy.

  Spending time together, getting to know one another, without using sex as a tool?

  Hard.

  “Let’s go for a walk!” she announced, jumping off his lap and bouncing on her toes like a six-year-old eager to go to the park.

  “A walk?” He moved slowly, as if dazed. And then she realized this really was hard. Or, at least, he was.

  Stifling a snort, she walked quickly towards the door. “Yes—a walk. Remember? You invited me over for one.”

  “But I—”

  Giving the guy a break, she called back, “Do whatever you need to do to go for a nice, long walk—the sunset will be gorgeous!”

  Without a single clue of what she was doing, she marched out onto his porch and waited.

  The agony. His dick felt like one of those party balloons you blow up and twist into a dog. He had a fucking latex poodle in his pants. And a frog in his throat. His body was a zoo during a full moon, howling and frustrated.

  A walk? After starting to pour his heart out and fumbling through it like a complete idiot, she wanted to take a walk? Calling her after a difficult shift at work had seemed so natural. Few births stayed with him for very long, but this one he couldn’t shake. A mother who wanted a vaginal birth after a cesarean. Preserving her VBAC had been hard, but it had worked—insofar as she’d given birth vaginally. But the baby had had complications. The attending OB warned him there would be a review, and it hung over him like a storm cloud. If something had happened to that baby because his instincts and judgment had been wrong…

  Coming home to his empty apartment, he’d picked up the phone on a whim and found himself dialing her number, as if on autopilot, as if this was what he did every day after a tough shift.

  He turned to Josie.

  No other woman had ever filled this role.

  Maybe no other woman ever will. Whatever triggered that thought shocked him, made him stop cold as Josie hung out in front of his building, waiting impatiently. He gave himself ten seconds to review the past hour. A race, his apartment, some wine, some emotional sharing, and now—a walk.

  Where in the hell did this huge case of nerves come from? And on his part. She was the nervous one, the person in this—relationship?—who deflected and held back. Not him.

  And that was it.

  Wedging the door to her heart open with a toe, he’d pried inside her by being the one to share first. Like stripping naked before sex, if he went first, she would follow. That was why this felt so unsure. Because he couldn’t read her signals.

  His signals? His were easy to read. Just look for the deflating poodle.

  “Alex?” Josie called out.

  Shake it off. Shake it off. A few deep breaths and he made his way outside. Thank God he was wearing jeans. Lycra running shorts would have made his erection stand out like a drunk Jets fan at a Pats game.

  “You okay?” Josie asked, an impish smile twisting her lips.

  “I am,” he said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. A walk? Fine. But on his terms. “So where are you from?” He’d held off on the standard “getting to know you” questions but now he was just going to go for it.

  “Ohio.”

  “And your parents…?”

  “My dad died years ago. My mom’s still alive.”

  “Oh.” He cringed. “Sorry.”

  “What? No. It’s fine.” Her voice was tense. “He died nearly eighteen years ago, so it’s not like it’s fresh.”

  Something in her voice said that was a lie, but he wasn’t going to pry. “And your mom’s back in Ohio?”

  “Yep. What about you?”

  “I don’t have a dad, and my mom lives in Watertown.”

  “You’re a medical marvel. Did they inject the Y chromosome into you using nanotechnology?”

  He laughed. “That’s why I’m an OB. So I can understand this whole reproductive thing.” Explaining this was always hard. “My dad le
ft before my mom even knew she was pregnant with me. I never met him.”

  “Oh.” They were strolling toward the park as dusk settled in, the air cool enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay. No baseball games tonight, it appeared. A pink line in the horizon faded to nearly gray as the sun dropped out of the sky.

  Thinking it through, he asked, “How old were you?”

  “When my dad died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eleven.” She wasn’t giving him anything more than he asked. Still waters run deep. The way she sidestepped any additional information, and yet continued to answer what was asked directly, made him decide to push it.

  “How did he die?” he asked gently, stopping and making eye contact. Her eyes were wide and yet guarded, the brown irises closed off, but the whites of her eyes seemed bigger, a contradiction of nonverbal signals.

  “A car accident.” The words slipped out of her mouth so simply, and yet he knew they were packed with hundreds of layers of meaning.

  “I am so sorry. Were you—” He started to ask whether she was in the car but stopped, feeling like a jerk. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths and the hand he held in his trembled. The topic clearly upset her and he felt like an ass for bringing it up. And yet, it meant something special. If he could just understand her better…

  “Was I in the car? No.” For the first time in the conversation she added something he hadn’t asked. “But my mom was. And my aunt and uncle.”

  “Your mom’s still alive, you said.”

  “Yes. My dad and uncle died, but my mom and aunt lived.”

  “Oh, Josie.” Emotion filled his voice as the impact of what her childhood must have been like hit him. “That’s horrible. Were your mom and aunt okay?”

  She snorted, shaking her head. “Define ‘okay.’” The smirk that crossed her face was like a wall slamming shut between them.

  “I’m upsetting you.”

  “You’re not doing anything. I just…I’ve never talked about this with a guy before. Ever.”

  His heart melted as it pounded against his ribs. Now he was getting somewhere. “If you don’t want to talk, I understand.”

  “What about your mother?” she asked.

  “She’s a clinical psychologist. Alive. Forty-six.”