Naked

by Megan Hart

“She doesn’t come here because it’s too long a trip to make in one day, she’s always said, and because she can’t stay here in my house, because she can’t eat.”

  He nodded as though he understood, but said, “Why not?”

  We hadn’t ever really delved into the hows and whys of my mother’s transformation from cultural Jew to full-on observance. “Not kosher.”

  “Couldn’t you make her something kosher?”

  “Even if I bought kosher food, the plates and silverware aren’t kosher. Hell. I guess the air isn’t, or something.”

  It had been a sticking point, not just for me, but with my brothers, who all lived so far away. “It’s important to my mom.”

  Alex frowned and came to look over my shoulder at the message. “More important than seeing her kids?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You know, it seems to me that God cares less about what you put in your mouth than how you treat the people you’re supposed to love,” Alex said. “And besides, she could always bring her own food. Eat on paper plates. Right?”

  “She could have, she just never did.”

  “But now she wants to, right?”

  “I don’t know about the food,” I told him with a wave at the computer. “She just said she’d like to come visit for a day or two, overnight.”

  His hand squeezed my shoulder. “So tell her when she can come.”

  I didn’t have to look at my calendar to know I had no time off in the next few weeks, and that she wouldn’t come on a Friday or Saturday, since that would interfere with her Shabbat. “I don’t know, I’ll have to see if I can take the time off work, but shit, I really can’t afford to do that, Alex.”

  “Olivia, baby,” he said into my ear before he kissed it. “You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. Is it money? Don’t worry about that, I told you before.”

  I shifted on the couch to look at him. “I have to worry about it. I have bills to pay.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “You know, when we’re married…”

  “But we’re not married yet.” I was being stubborn and didn’t care.

  It would’ve been very easy to let him make me his Cinderella. I didn’t have some sort of misplaced feminist pride about bringing home the turkey bacon. It would hurt him if I gave my reasons—that I wasn’t going to bet on this horse until it crossed the finish line—so I kept quiet.

  He shrugged again. “Your mom can still come. I’ll be here when you’re at work.”

  “Really?” I eyed him. “You’d entertain my mother?”

  “My future mother-in-law,” he pointed out. “Sure, why not?”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Okay.”

  As I typed my reply to her, outlining the few days that might work, my e-mail dinged with a new message. My jaw dropped when I read it, an invitation from Scott Church to participate in his next gallery show. I thought at first it was a blanket invite to all the people who’d taken his class, but he’d mentioned a specific photo.

  “Alex, look at this.”

  Wearing his Batman sleep bottoms, Alex bent over my shoulder. “No fucking way! Baby, this is awesome!”

  I high-fived him haphazardly. “I don’t get it…”

  “He wants you to hang one of your pictures in his show. Fuck yeah.” Alex pumped the air with a fist and kissed the top of my head. “I knew he’d pick you.”

  “Wait a minute, you sent him one of my pictures?”

  He jumped over the back of the couch and landed beside me, jostling my laptop. “Yeah. I saw the notice on his blog.”

  “Wait a minute. Back up. You read Scott’s blog?”

  “Sure.”

  Huh. Somehow I’d missed that. “And he posted a notice about what, exactly?”

  “Anyone who’d taken one of his classes should send in a picture to be considered for his next show at that Mulberry Street Gallery place. It’s in September or October.”

  “And you sent in one of my pictures without asking me?”

  He sat back a little against the cushions. “Are you mad?”

  “No.” I looked again at the invitation, which listed all the details of the show. “I guess not, since he accepted my picture. But I wish you’d told me.”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  I lifted a brow. “Well, it sure was. How did you know which photo to send?”

  “You gave me that whole disc. I picked my favorite,” Alex said, and buffed his fingernails against his bare chest. “It’s one of me. Of course.”

  I laughed because I knew he was serious. “Okay, Mr. Vain.”

  “Your work deserves to be in a gallery show, Olivia.”

  I closed the laptop and put it on the footstool to kiss him. “You love me. You’re supposed to think nice stuff about me.”

  Alex cupped my face. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”

  I believed him, which made it all the nicer.

  He kissed me, then looked into my eyes. “You should quit Foto Folks and that other job. The traveling one. Spend more time on your own work. Get your business off the ground.”

  I shook my head so slightly my hair barely moved. “I’m not quitting my job. Not now. I can’t let you…keep me like that.”

  He sighed. “Fine. But after we’re married, will you consider it?”

  “After we’re married, I guess I’ll consider a lot of things,” I told him with a waggle of my brows.

  He took my hand and linked our fingers. My diamond, still so bright and pretty there were times I had to sit and stare, flashed. Alex touched it with a fingertip. We smiled. We kissed. But neither of us pulled out a calendar and talked about a date.

  Sarah looked tired. She toyed with her salad, poking at the croutons and spearing a cherry tomato but not eating it. She yawned and put aside her fork. “Eh, fuck it.”

  I’d devoured my own half sandwich and cup of soup, and thought about heading up to check out a brownie from Panera’s selection of homemade treats. Then I put a hand on the curve of my belly, calculated the hours I’d have to spend working off dessert, and settled for a refill on my iced tea.

  “I like this one.” Sarah pointed at the brochure I’d pulled from my bag. She was on a break from her job and I was on my way to work at the mall. “I like the graphics.”

  “I like that one, too.” I studied the front of it, then flipped it over. “I’ve got some nice stock shots I can use for the back, but if you’re free this week, I’d like to take some more. Sarah?”

  She wasn’t listening. Her eyes, thickly framed today with black glittery liner, widened. She looked past me, toward the entrance and the long line of people waiting to order.

  “Shit,” she said in a low, very non-Sarah voice.

  I started to turn to see what had her so spooked, but she hissed at me to freeze.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I demanded.

  Her mouth thinned and she ducked her head, then put her elbows on the table to press her face into her palms. “Fuck.”

  “Sarah, what’s wrong?” I twisted in my seat though she’d told me not to, but still couldn’t tell what had upset her.

  She looked up at me. “It’s him.”

  “Him, who?”

  She frowned and shifted her chair behind the pillar, blocking her view. Or the view of her—I wasn’t sure. “Some dude I’ve been seeing. Not important. Maybe he’ll leave.”

  “The one on your Connex page?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Damn, girl, you’ve been holding out on me.”

  Her smiled seemed more natural this time, though still a little strained. “You’ve been a little busy, muffin. I didn’t want to harsh your buzz. Besides, there’s nothing to tell. You know me. One guy, another guy, whatever.”

  I made a face. “That’s so not you.”

  Sarah dated a lot, and freely, and it was true she wasn’t always serious. She was…friendly. Sarah loved easily and it wasn’t always romantic. She wasn’t a p
rude, but she didn’t bed-hop, either.

  “His name is Jack,” she told me.

  The way her voice caught on that single syllable told me a lot.

  “Aw, honey. What happened?”

  She shrugged fiercely and wiped at her eyes. “Nothing. That’s the problem. Nothing is happening.”

  A wide-hipped woman in a flowing dress, her makeup too thick, her jewelry too flashy, passed us with a much younger man behind her. His baseball cap hid his hair and his long-sleeved shirt covered any tattoos, but the way Sarah looked told me everything. He stopped at our table, a dead, full stop as though someone had suddenly nailed his feet to the ground.

  “Sarah.” Longing dripped from his voice, but she pretended she didn’t hear.

  His gaze caught mine for a second, both of us embarrassed, and he moved on as though he hadn’t spoken. I saw him talk to the woman, his hand on her back and her greedy gaze devouring him. She didn’t look our way, but nodded and got up to move to the other side of the room, behind a wall so we couldn’t see.

  “Do you want to leave?” I asked.

  Sarah stabbed her salad again. “No. I’m not letting that fucker ruin my lunch.”

  I was sure he’d already ruined it, but didn’t say so. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Jack,” Sarah said, “is a whore.”

  “Oh, my God.” I remembered our conversation from a few months back. “You weren’t kidding?”

  “No. He fucks women for money.”

  “Oh. Wow.” I had nothing more to say about that.

  Sarah drank angrily and tore a hunk of bread into increasingly tiny pieces. “At first, you know, I was like, whatever. It’s just a job, right? God knows I’m no virgin or anything. I’ve fucked dudes for reasons other than love.”

  “Well…I think everyone does, sometimes.”

  She shook her head and stared at the mess on her plate. “And I don’t care that he did it, Liv. I really don’t. I just care that he keeps doing it.”

  Her voice broke, and I wanted to pet her. Sarah was the hugger, and she needed one now. I had to settle for taking her hand and squeezing it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She squeezed back, then withdrew it to wipe the crumbs from her palms. She looked up at me. Her smeared mascara made her look even more tired.

  “I know a lot of women who wouldn’t be able to get past that he did it at all, you know?”

  I thought of the first time I saw Alex. “Yes. Boy, do I ever know.”

  She nodded, her expression serious. “Yeah. You do. So I can…not forgive, because I don’t think he did wrong. But I can put whatever he did before me aside, because you know, it was before. And it’s not everything he is. But…I can’t be with him if he still does it. You know?”

  I thought of the airline steward’s hopeful eyes and Alex’s bad joke about the cream for the coffee. “I understand, absolutely.”

  Sarah smiled. “I know you do.”

  “So why didn’t you talk to me about this before, dumb-ass? God, how long has this been going on?” I studied her. “You look like shit, by the way. I didn’t want to say so before, but since we’re being all honest and stuff—”

  “Fuck you, Olivia,” Sarah said, but she was laughing. Some color had come back to her cheeks. She actually ate a bite of bread. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to weigh you down. I didn’t want to talk about it because I just…Shit. It’s different with him, that’s all.”

  She looked very sad and very small. “Or at least, I thought it could be.”

  Sarah had seen me through many a bad date and derailed relationship, but I’d never seen her this way before. “I’m sorry.”

  She heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s okay. I’ll get over him, just to piss him off.”

  We laughed. When we left, I looked for a glimpse of the man who’d tried to break my friend’s heart, but he must’ve left from a different door.

  My mother arrived the next week with several grocery bags full of food, and not only so she’d have something to eat. She’d brought me plastic containers lovingly stuffed and labeled, a year’s worth of dinners to shove in my freezer. I burst into tears when she handed me a container of homemade chicken broth, the same she’d always made for me during college to take back to school.

  My mom hugged me and rubbed my back the way she’d always done. She’d brought her own plates and silverware, but didn’t say a word about my microwave or oven not being kosher enough to heat up the food she’d brought. She stayed for three days.

  I don’t know why I was surprised she got along so well with Alex. I knew how charming he could be. I came home from work every day expecting to find him in his place downstairs, where he was sleeping during my mom’s visit, and her wearing a judgmental frown. I waited for the lectures. But my mom loved him.

  I walked through the door one night after getting off the early shift, thinking of suggesting we go to the movies or something, since it was her last night there. I came into the kitchen to find my mom and Alex bent over a vat of bubbling chicken stock.

  “It’s the seltzer,” my mom was explaining. “That gives it the lift. Oh, Livvy, hon. Come here and be our taste tester.”

  She held up a spoon of broth with a giant matzo ball teetering on it. She blew to cool it, then held it out. I looked at Alex, who was smirking with pride and leaning against the counter. “Did you make these?”

  “He did,” my mom said. “I helped just a little. But he’s a good cook, that one.”

  “I know.” I took the spoon and bit into the matzo ball, which was perfectly soft and had just the right hint of spices. “Mmm, definitely a floater.”

  “What do you know of floaters?” my mom teased. “Grab some bowls. Let’s eat this soup before it gets cold.”

  We ate soup and played round after round of cards. Then my mom excused herself to take her nightly shower, advising us with a wink she’d be in there for a while.

  “Is that so we don’t bang on the door?” Alex asked.

  I laughed as we cleaned up the kitchen. “No. It’s so we can canoodle.”

  “Ah.” Disregarding the mess, he pulled me into his arms. “I didn’t know anyone did that anymore.”

  I kissed his chin and then bit it lightly. “We don’t have time for a quickie.”

  “It’s been three days,” he murmured into my ear, his hands roaming. “A quickie’s all it would be.”

  A hiss of breath, a kiss, a touch. It was like that with us. A flame. I leaned into him. I heard the pipes squeal as my mom turned on the shower. I did entertain the idea of dropping to my knees and giving him a quick blow job, but just for that moment being hugged up against him was so sweet, so perfect, I didn’t want to move.

  “I want to go home,” Alex said against my hair.

  “Now? Okay.” I nestled closer. “Wait until she gets out of the shower?”

  “No, Olivia. Not downstairs.” His hands moved in circles on my back. “I mean home, to Ohio.”

  I pulled away. “To your family?”

  He lifted my hand with the ring on it and tipped it back and forth to catch the light. “Yeah. I think I should introduce you, don’t you?”

  My heart turned in my chest. “Yeah. I guess I should meet them before we get married.”

  He laughed without sounding happy. “Memorial Day weekend? We could drive up Friday, come back on Tuesday.”

  I didn’t want to say no right away, but calculated the time off in my head while I stalled him with a kiss. Alex knew what I was doing. He let me kiss him, then pulled back enough to say, “When’s the last time you took a vacation?”

  “Oh, so a visit to meet your family is a vacation?”

  Alex bit down on a grin. “Well, it’ll be a trip, I can guarantee that.”

  Chapter

  19

  So it was decided. I made the arrangements to take the days off, finished up all the work I had for my personal clients, and rebooked the few portrait and modeling sessions I had. It
meant working a lot of hours for a couple weeks, but Alex didn’t complain about not seeing me as much.

  He was quiet about a lot of things. Preoccupied. I chalked it up to the impending visit, since I knew his relationship with his family wasn’t very good. I tried asking him about it.

  “You’ll understand when you meet them,” he said.

  “I’d like to understand at least a little before that. So I can be prepared.”

  We were on the couch, spooning while we watched some random series of home improvement programs. I couldn’t see his face, but his arms tightened around me. His breath blew hot on the back of my neck.

  “Let’s just say this mask of sophistication I wear didn’t come about naturally.”

  I snuggled a little closer. “Does anyone’s?”

  He chuffed against the back of my neck. “My dad’s a drunk who doesn’t drink anymore. My mom’s a doormat. My sisters, God bless ’em, were the sorts of girls who had their names written on bathroom walls. Well, fuck, I guess I had mine written on some, too.”

  “In high school?”

  That finally earned a laugh. “No doubt.”

  We were quiet for a minute while we watched some perky, bubble-breasted brunette describe how she’d made “original art” from a collection of milk jugs, a pair of candlesticks and an old throw rug.

  “You know I will still love you no matter what your family’s like,” I said as the show mercifully cut to commercial.

  He squeezed me. “I hope so.”

  I shifted to face him. “I mean it, Alex. I don’t care if your family’s awful. I’m glad you’re taking me to meet them.”

  His brow furrowed and he looked as though he meant to say something, then changed his mind. He shook his head a little.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  For the first time, it seemed as though he was hiding something from me. I studied him. I stroked the hair back from his face. “You can tell me.”

  “Nothing,” he said again. “It’s nothing.”

  And because he’d never given me reason to do anything else, I believed him.

  Sandusky was a long-ass drive from Annville. We made it in nine hours, pulling into town about three in the afternoon. My legs were stiff and I had to pee like crazy, and my stomach was rumbling because all we’d had to eat was a couple of doughnuts from a rest stop.