by Anthology
"I listed my body type as curvy." Maura stabbed the cake with her fork and took a bite, savoring the fudgey icing. "God. So good."
"Have you heard from him?" Shelly sounded hesitant, almost afraid to ask.
"Nope." Maura stabbed her cake again, but didn't take the second bite. The first had been so good she was afraid to ruin it by overindulging. She'd learned a lesson about that, hadn't she? Something about leaving while the party was still fun.
"Have you called him?"
"Nope."
"...Texted?" Maura smiled and shook her head. Shelly sighed. She reached across the table and took a chunk of Maura's cake with her own fork. "Are you going to?"
"Oh, yes. Definitely. I just wanted to be sure I had something to tell him when I did, that's all. That's part of the deal." Maura sipped her own coffee, relishing the warmth of the mug in her hands. Outside, the leaves were changing early, predicting a terrible winter. It had been two agonizingly long weeks since she'd spoken to Ian. Every day when she woke, she figured she might finally stop missing him. So far it hadn't happened.
"Do you have something to tell him yet?"
The best part of having a best friend was being able to tell her all your secrets. Maura grinned, but said nothing. The other best part was being able to tease her with them.
"Bitch." Shelly shook her head. "C'mon. You know I have to live vicariously through you. I want details. I mean, if you're keeping a frigging spreadsheet..."
Maura laughed. "I have to or else I'll never keep it all straight. For example, Saturday, I met Matt in the morning for coffee. I had lunch at the Taj Mahal with Jordan. He's an investment banker. I'm not sure why I thought that's why he'd pick up the tab for the four-ninety-nine buffet, but nope. He fully supports women taking the lead in a relationship, which apparently included not only me covering my own bill -- which I'm fine with, by the way. But also paying for his. Also would've been fine, I guess, if it hadn't been our first date, and if he hadn't been the one to be so insistent about it. I'd already turned him down a couple times before I gave in. The food was good, though."
"Yikes!" Shelly said, too loud, then giggled. "Wow."
"Yep." Maura nodded. "Dinner that night with Robert, a total sweetheart with two kids under ten. So. No to that."
Shelly wrinkled her nose. She had teenagers, and that was as close to kids as Maura'd ever come. "Hmmm."
"Drinks later that night with...hmm. I'd have to check the spreadsheet. It was either Bill or Brad. Either way, he met me at some jazz club. I wanted to poke my eardrums out before I finished my first martini. It was an early night." Maura leaned back in the booth. "Sunday, I got up early and went to the flea market with Jacob. He's got grandkids. Somehow that bothers me less than Robert having young children. Does that make me weird?"
"Wait a minute. Hold on. All of that in one weekend?"
"Yep. And," Maura leaned closer to say in a triumphant half-whisper, "You'll never guess who looked me up on Connex and asked me out. I mean, like out on a date, out."
"Norman Reedus!" Shelly's shout turned heads.
Maura guffawed. "Don't I wish? That's a Do Not Pass Go, Go Directly to Bed situation, right there. No, it's someone real, actually. Daniel."
Daniel Petruzzi, six-foot-three, blond hair, brown eyes. Wide, friendly smile and a habit of tilting his head to one side when you talked to him. Hands that could palm a basketball. Fingers that could make a girl lose her mind.
"No." Shelly looked stunned. Then both brows went up. "You said yes, didn't you?"
"Of course I said yes. I haven't seen Daniel in what...eighteen years?" Maura paused, thinking of that long-ago hot summer when she and Daniel had nearly eaten each other alive. "There's something about your first real sexual relationship, you know? The one where you stop fumbling around and start to get it right. At the very least, I want to see how he looks in real life, not just in his Connex profile picture. Which looks pretty damned good, if you must know."
"And he just happened to get in touch with you now? Now after all this time? What a strange and happy happenstance." Shelly's brows waggled.
Maura laughed, heat tinging her cheeks. "He friended me a few years ago, but we never messaged or anything. He was out of the country for a while. He...um...well, he said he saw my changed relationship status."
"And he asked you out on a date. Woo hoo!" Shelly made guns of her fingers. "Pow, pow! Take that, Ian dingleberry."
Maura laughed so loud she clapped a hand over her mouth. More heat flooded her, a little guilty this time. "Don't call him that."
"Well," Shelly said. "That's what he is."
Shelly wasn't wrong, which was both hilarious and sad. More doublethink. Maura shrugged.
"I'm having dinner with Daniel Saturday night. Tonight, I'm meeting James at the gym for a complimentary weight training session. On a Friday night. I think that tells you how well it's going to go. I've got a plan to meet someone for drinks later. Can't remember who, but it might be a second date. I'll have to check my spreadsheet."
"You're going to burn out!"
Maura shrugged again. "I told you. Serious business."
"Why, sweetie?" Shelly frowned. "Why does it have to be so serious?"
"Because." Maura thought hard about what to say for the rest of her answer, but that was the best she could come up with.
The conversation turned to other things, which was something of a relief. They hugged in the parking lot, and Shelly squeezed her hard. When she pulled away, she searched Maura's face with her gaze.
"Call him," Shelly said. "You want to."
"Of course I want to. I want to every day." Maura's mouth twisted. "I'm crazy about that kid."
Shelly laughed and rolled her eyes. "So. Call him. Or at least text him."
"I can't. Not yet. All I've done is go on lame dates with people I have no interest in seeing again."
"Isn't that kind of the point you want to make to him?" Shelly pulled her jacket closer around her neck and looked up at the gray sky with a shiver. "That you don't really want anyone else?"
It was the point, but it hadn't quite been made yet. Maura knew him too well to believe that a few coffee dates and some funny stories equaled what Ian thought she needed. "I haven't even tongue-kissed any of them yet, much less had rampant, wild sex."
Shelly made a face. "Are you really going to sleep with someone else just to prove your point?"
"Maybe." Maura lifted her chin. "Why not? I'm a woman empowered by her own sexuality, ready to take control of my passion. If I want to go out and get laid, why shouldn't I?"
Shelly didn't say anything.
Maura sighed.
***
As it turned out, she didn't have to call or text Ian, because Saturday night her phone pinged while she was in the shower. Once upon a time, the sound would've been like the bell to Pavlov's dogs. Now, head bent under the hot water washing away the feeling of Daniel all over her, Maura seriously considered not even looking at the message.
She did, of course, though not right away. Let him stew for a little while, she thought. Let him wait. Let him pace and ponder and fret.
She dried herself carefully and smoothed her body with lotion, remembering Daniel's hands. Here. There. She pressed her fingertips between her legs and felt herself, still slick. Her still-tender nipples tightened under her next touch. She rubbed her hair briskly to dry it, then combed through it and stared at herself in the mirror while she brushed her teeth, all the while waiting for her phone to make that sound again.
It did, finally, when she'd slipped beneath her covers and lay in the dark with her phone pressed to her heart. She hadn't yet checked Ian's message, but the fact he had indeed sent another message meant something. Didn't it? She could read it and find out for sure, but what if he'd said something she didn't want to read? Something like he'd met someone else, fallen in love. Maybe that he'd finally fucked that girl who always wore yoga pants, the one forever making eyes at him in the coffee shop. Patty, h
er name was. Yoga Pants Patty.
And what would Maura be able to say to that, considering what had happened less than two hours ago?
She needed to read his message and couldn't bear to read it. Doublethink, doublethink, she'd grown too adept at the concept of holding two contrasting ideas simultaneously. Pick one, Maura. Read the fucking message or delete it, but do something.
She thumbed her phone's screen to bring up the text and took a deep breath, readying herself for disappointment.
All it said was hi. Then, hello.
Maura let out a long, streaming burble of humorless laughter. She typed quickly.
Hey
She'd probably missed him. It was late, after all. But no, within seconds came a reply.
Yo
"Oh, God, Ian." This time, she burst into real laughter and clutched the phone to her chest again like a schoolgirl with a love note. She loved him so fucking much it hurt. She dialed his number and waited, breathless, for him to answer.
"Joe's Blowhole, best discount blubber on the East Coast."
Maura didn't miss a beat. "I'd like twenty pounds of your most gourmet blubber, please."
"Hi," Ian said.
"Hi. It's late." She snuggled deeper into her blankets and looked up. She'd covered the ceiling with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars. Why? Because she could. A few of them had started to fade, but the ones closest to the overhead light were still bright.
"Were you sleeping?"
"No," she told him. "I just got in."
A pause, a breath. She imagined his look of surprise, but maybe he wasn't. "Oh."
She waited for him to ask her where she'd been. He didn't, the bastard. He said nothing, leaving it to her to move the conversation forward.
"What's up?" Maura said finally in a too-bright voice when an eternity had passed with them both playing the waiting game.
"Nothing much. What's up with you?"
Games. Always the games. Maura sighed. "Ian. Don't do this."
"Don't do what?" Predictably, he sounded disgruntled she'd called him on it.
"It's been weeks since we talked, but that doesn't make us strangers. Can we not pretend we're chit-chatting at a cocktail party? Can you just talk to me? Can't you tell me that you missed me?"
"Did you miss me?" Ian asked at once.
"Every day," she answered honestly. "All day long."
Ian sighed. "I missed you too."
She smiled, relieved but hating herself, just a little, for letting what should've been such an easy, no-brainer of a sentiment make her heart leap so high. "Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me all about it."
"All about what?"
"Everything," she said. "What's been going on?"
The heat between them, that chemistry, the way a simple look from him could make her nipples hard and her clit pulse. That had always been great. But this was what she loved the most. The way they could talk about anything and everything, for hours and hours. She loved the rise and fall of Ian's voice, the faintest drawl that came from who-knew-where, since he wasn't from the south.
He told her about his job. Not the work part of it -- she'd have listened, of course, if he'd needed her to. No, Ian told her about the people he worked with. She'd never met any of them, but hearing so many stories about his co-workers had made her feel like she had. Good old Merv, the office custodian, full of advice on Ian's dating life as well as confidential asides about who left rubbers in their trash and who'd been known to hide a bottle in the desk drawer. Perky Peg, the receptionist with crazy eyes who baked cookies every week that Ian suspected might just have weed in them. He had Maura laughing so hard with his stories that at first she didn't hear the question he'd asked her.
"What, honey? I missed what you said."
"I asked you," Ian said, all traces of good humor aside, "where you were tonight?"
Oh.
Maura cleared her throat. This was what she'd wanted, wasn't it? To give him what he'd said he wanted? To make him know it?
"I was on a date."
Ian said nothing and was so silent, not even the sough of a breath in her ear, for such a long time that Maura was convinced he'd disconnected the call. Finally, he spoke. "I see."
"I've been on a lot of dates." She kept her voice flat and neutral, wanting no hint of triumph or dismay though in truth, she felt a little bit of both. "Close to forty, as a matter of fact."
"I see," he repeated. It was what he said when he was pissed but didn't want her to know it.
More games. Maura's jaw went tight. "I'm doing what you wanted me to do. Right? Going on dates. Making sure I know what I want."
"And this one, tonight? How...how was it?"
"Well, Ian," Maura said slowly. "Let me tell you a story."
Chapter Six
Time hasn't been unkind to me. I'm vain enough to admit that. Practical enough to see the lines and creases, that stubborn silver hair that insists on coming back right there in the front by my part. I don't have an eighteen-year-old body anymore, but on the other hand, I sure know what to do with the one I have.
Daniel, however, is even hotter than he was that summer before my first year of college. The years have polished him like a diamond. He's so gorgeous it's hard to look at him dead-on because I'm terrified I'll simply blurt out something stupid like, "please let me sit on that perfect mouth and ride until one of us breaks."
His smile when he sees me is like a supernova. When he leans to kiss my cheek, one big hand on my upper arm, he smells so good my mouth literally waters. Vanilla sugar. What man smells like vanilla sugar unless he wants to get eaten?
"So good to see you," he says. "Wow. You look fantastic, Maura. Your pictures don't do you justice."
I find a smile for him. "That's saying something, considering the only ones I post are the ones where I'm sure I look ten times better than I do in real life."
"No." He looks serious, shaking his head. "You're so much prettier in person."
What answer can a woman have to something like that but a blush? Heat radiates from my toes to my forehead, bathing me in the warm, golden glow of being complimented. In all the dates I've had over the past couple weeks, nobody's told me I'm pretty. A few of the men told me I looked "great." A few dingleberries, to use Shelly's terminology, had said I looked better than my pictures, but somehow the way they'd said it had conveyed reluctant relief and not Daniel's seemingly genuine appreciation.
I remember now why I liked him so much. Daniel is a veritable fountain of praise. He likes my hair, my dress, the shoes I picked out at the last second and had been second-guessing. He likes the restaurant I suggested and the cocktails we order. And all of it, every positive comment, is accompanied by one of those mega-watt smiles that melt the panties off every woman within a ten-mile radius.
The conversation with him is easy. We haven't kept in touch the way we each have with other friends from that long-ago summer, but we still share mutual acquaintances. And we didn't end badly, Daniel and I. No hard feelings. It's not hard to see him again. Not at all.
"Wow. It's been so long," he says when the waiter puts our food down in front of us. We're sharing an appetizer tray and will share the hotpot entree too. Daniel's never been to a hotpot restaurant, but this is one of my favorite places. "How've you been?"
My life is boring compared to his; I give him the brief rundown, but I'm more interested in hearing about him. "What about you?"
"Guatemala for the past five years. El Salvador before that." Daniel designs and oversees the construction of infrastructures for companies building up their businesses overseas. I'd never known what he studied in college; we'd never delved that deep during our relationship, when the only engineering I'd ever known him to do was how to fuck me hard against a wall without dropping me. He'd been very good at that; I'm not surprised he's won awards for designing bridges.
"I haven't done anything nearly as exotic. Or exciting."
"Do you still write songs?"
I sit back i
n my seat, stunned that he remembers. "Oh. Wow. Um...well, I haven't in a long time."
I wrote a song for Ian, but I'd never played it for him. It had been too long since I'd played or sang. I'd been embarrassed.
"That's too bad. You wrote some great songs. I still have the tape you made for me." For a minute he almost looks shy. "The one with the song on it."
"Oh, wow, Daniel. Wow." I blush again, even hotter than when he'd said I look pretty. I had written him a song. Not a love song, really, because nothing we'd ever done had been quite big enough to be called love. But I'd meant every word at the time.
"It broke. The tape I mean. I listened to it too much, and one day it wore out I guess." He scratches his fingers through his golden hair, rumpling it. The twist of his mouth is totally endearing. "You're the only girl who ever wrote me a song. And sang it. And played the piano."
I slap a hand to my embarrassed face. "Oh, God. That was terrible."
"It wasn't terrible. It was great." He grins and leans over the table a little toward me. His eyes are very, very blue. The lines in the corners make him exponentially hotter. "Very sexy. You were always so sexy."
Trip-trap-trip, the beat of my heart bumps in triple time. There's an answering pulse and flutter between my legs. My clit's so easy to please. I shift in my seat, the pressure of my thighs sweet and tantalizing. My eyes go heavy lidded for a second at a memory of Daniel's tongue against me there. Even at eighteen he'd been a champion pussy eater, willing to go down and stay there as long as it took to get me off multiple times. Once, a memorable five in a row.
I wonder if he's remembering the same thing? The look in his eyes tells me he might be. Or that he'd need only the vaguest of reminders. Suddenly, there's a heat between us that's not from my blush or the burner in the center of the table that is now cooking our food.
I've been on enough dates the past few weeks to appreciate how effortless our conversation is. My memories of Daniel have never been about his brain, but I'm pleased to discover that he's smart and not just pretty. He's got a good sense of humor, too. He makes all of this so easy.
