“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
The words hit her hard but she kept the fear off of her face and out of her voice. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not like an assassin or something, are you?”
“More like a black widow.” Because of all the broken hearts she left in her wake, that’s what Mother called her when she wasn’t mocking her as little girl or drama queen. “I mate then I kill.”
“How come I’m still alive?”
“Because I fell in love with you.”
“Lucky me.”
No, Kerri thought, lucky me. Then she realized that she was not only asking what he saw in her so she could be reminded but that he too would be reminded. “Tell me a couple of those ‘hundred little things’ you see.”
“I see beauty, of course.”
“I wish I could see that.”
“Come on. You know you’re beautiful.”
“No. I don’t. I mean, I’m okay. But I’m no great beauty.”
He studied her.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m wondering if you really believe that or if you’re just fishing for compliments.”
“Why fish for compliments when I don’t believe them anyway? I know you are not lying to me; I know you see the beauty you say you see, but I really can’t even imagine it. For just a minute, I’d love to see what you see.”
“Maybe you can.” He nodded toward the large wooden framed mirror in the corner of the living room. “Go to the mirror.”
“No! I’d feel stupid.”
“Do it. Go to the mirror.”
She climbed out from under the blanket and looked around for her clothes.
“Stay naked,” he said.
She stood up and walked to the mirror, meeting his eyes there.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “Look at you. Tell me what you see.” She felt embarrassed; she wished she wouldn’t have said anything now. She glanced at her reflection and was suddenly more naked than she’d been a few seconds ago. Her face flushed. “Tell me,” he demanded.
“I see me,” she said.
“How do you look?”
She looked at herself quickly and back to his eyes. “I am naked.”
“And?”
She didn’t like this game. She felt absurd. “And what?” She narrowed her eyes and said in a phony voice, “You want me to tell you how hot my pussy is for you?”
He got off of the floor, came up behind her and slapped her ass hard.
“Ouch!”
“For real,” he said, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “Tell me what you see. For real.”
If he wanted the truth, she’d give it to him. “A girl with bony legs and lop-sided tits. And a fat, bloated belly.”
“You’re not looking,” he said resting his hands on her hips “Close your eyes.”
She did. He took her hands and guided them slowly over her body. “Keep your eyes closed and keep touching yourself. Everywhere. All over.”
“Why are you making me do this? I don’t like it.”
“I want you to see how beautiful you are.” He let go of her hands and she felt him move away from her. “Keep going.”
Her movements were mechanical. This was dumb. She was about to open her eyes when he said, “How does your skin feel?”
“Soft,” she answered truthfully.
“Use just your fingertips now.”
She did and a little laugh escaped her. “Tickles.” The fingers of her right hand ran over, under and around her left boob. She moved the nipple back and forth. “It’s hard,” she said, circling it with her middle finger, feeling it in her stomach. She noticed that her hand was shaking a little. “Fuck me,” she whispered.
“Stay focused,” he said.
Her hands continued to move down to her belly. Her fat, ugly belly and she was embarrassed. “I’m all bloated from the coffee—”
“Don’t judge. Don’t explain. Just feel.”
What she felt was…nervous. “Protruding,” she said, running her hand around her stomach. It was disgusting. “Round. Hard. Ugly.”
“Stay there for a while. Go back to your whole hand.”
She sighed. Part of her wanted to tell him to fuck off, but touching with the palm of her hand felt different now than it did before. It felt…“Nice,” she said, and swallowed, feeling like she’d said something obscene. “Nice to touch. Nice to be touched.”
She explored the sides of her legs, then the inside of her thighs. Her skin was different temperatures. Cool in some spots, warm in others. “I need you inside me,” she said, wanting to open her eyes, but keeping them closed.
“Focus on what you’re feeling,” he said. “Keep going.”
She sighed and moved her fingers upward, snaking up her torso, over her face, through her hair, touching her ears, pinching them, tugging on them, then going back to fingertips, she grazed her neck, back down the sides, the small of her back, over her ass. She was covered in chills. Her ass cheeks were cold except for the spot he’d slapped earlier. It was hot. She circled it with a finger. She was trembling. She was aware of her breath, in and out, in and out.
“Now open your eyes,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”
She saw a complete stranger. “A woman,” she said barely above a whisper. For that first instant, she was no one she knew. “A beautiful woman.” Her nose tingled and she felt like she was going to cry. She met his eyes in the glass to keep from doing so. He was sitting on the couch with the blanket wrapped around him. “You make me beautiful.”
“No,” he said, coming up behind her. “You are beautiful. You saw it with your own eyes.” He kissed her neck. “Remember that.”
But she was already forgetting it.
9
By Sunday afternoon, Seth was sitting on the king-sized bed, freshly showered, deliciously exhausted, watching Kerri perform her end-of-the-weekend ritual. He took his journal from the nightstand drawer to capture the moment in words as she swayed to the music of Sade in the master bathroom and rubbed an apple-scented lotion over her body. Here, of all places, he saw her innocence: pretending to be unaware of his attention, nonchalantly stepping into a lacey thong as if it hadn’t been carefully chosen and packed Friday morning for this private performance, still believing she had made all this happen because she’d done some scheming to seduce him. As if chemistry could be coerced or controlled.
No, he thought, like a force of nature, it came and went on its own accord and the only choice the smitten had was to resist or surrender to it. He was glad he hadn’t resisted long. Though this brilliant storm they were caught up in was about to change direction. Whether they were escaping reality here or living some heightened version of it, they couldn’t keep going like this. Life just didn’t work that way. Things either moved forward or fell apart. They were at that point. He could feel it. Their little fantasy was about to turn into something else and if it was between letting it go or seeing where it could go, he’d take what was behind door number two. After Megan, he’d been afraid this kind of passion wouldn’t come to him again, that it was reserved for the very young and his great loves were already behind him. He didn’t doubt that he would love again, surely, but to never fall in love again, to never be overwhelmed, foolish, on fire with it again was an unbearable thought. Watching her brush out her long, blonde hair, still wet from the shower, he knew that whatever lay ahead for them, he would never regret these weekends that began with an anticipated kiss on Friday evenings—her lips cold, the winter air clinging to her—and ended like this on Sunday afternoons.
He wondered if she was as ready as she thought she was to make the leap from a secret couple to a public one and if she had any idea how strongly he was considering it. The adjustment would be a difficult one. The age difference would stir plenty of raised eyebrows and backbiting and they couldn’t stay at the same school. It would probably be tougher for her than for him. He wasn’t a secretive p
erson; his family and closest friends already knew about Kerri and had from the start. They had all been somewhat taken aback but were not surprised to see him following his heart over his head. They’d seen him land on his feet in the other areas of his life enough times to assume that he must know what he was doing.
He didn’t, of course, but for the first time in a long time, he felt good, like he was in the right place, on a path he’d chosen even though he wasn’t completely sure why he’d chosen it. Just then, she turned the music down. He looked up from his journal and caught her eye in the mirror. She smiled at him and said, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
“I saw it.”
“Put it on the list anyway. I want to watch it again…with you.”
Seth laid his journal aside and retrieved the list from the nightstand on her side of the bed. They had started it during that first weekend following their reunion. They had been discussing movies and realized that she had never seen many of his all-time favorites. In fact, there were a lot of great films that Kerri had never even heard of. Introducing them to her and rediscovering them himself was almost as good—sometimes better—than discovering them had been five, ten, even twenty years ago. Seeing through her eyes while simultaneously remembering what the movie had once meant to him and what it was to him now was hard to explain. Each perspective saw a different movie, erasing the boundaries that kept life plodding along in a linear fashion to offer, instead, a glimpse of a world that was timeless, in such a state of flux and rebirth that boredom was impossible…or at least, inexcusable.
After writing down Kerri’s suggestion—number seventeen—he thought of another one. “Have you ever seen Cool Hand Luke?”
“Never heard of it. Who’s in it?”
“A lot of great actors. Paul Newman was incredible as Luke.”
“He was the guy who made salad dressings, right? Died quite a while ago?”
Seth was mortified and yet, he was delighted because he got to introduce her to Paul Newman! In this case, some of his best work was long before Seth’s own time: The Hustler. Hud. “Have you seen The Sting?”
She shook her head no.
He wrote that one down. “You know Robert Redford, right?”
“I’m not an idiot. He started Sundance. He was in The Horse Whisperer. I loved that movie. It was one of Scarlett Johansson’s first roles. How about Lost in Translation?”
“I’d see it again,” Seth said, adding that one. “Speaking of Bill Murray, what about Groundhog Day?”
“I saw a chunk of it on HBO a while back. It bored me. This guy living the same day over and over again.”
“You can’t judge a movie by popping in on the middle of it for a few minutes,” he said. “That’s sacrilegious. You wouldn’t pick up a novel, read a random chapter and put it back on the shelf.” Then he looked at her realizing that she might.
“We do need more comedies, though,” she said. “Smart ones.”
Seth snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Albert Brooks! Lost in America. Oh! Even better, Defending Your Life.” She would love that one, just like he had. “Which also has Meryl Streep. Who we haven’t even talked about yet. And foreign films. Oh, God, there are so many great foreign films. Maybe we should split the list up into different categories—”
She jumped on top of him, pinning his arms above his head. “Slow down, cowboy! You’re making my head spin.” Looking down at him, her damp hair hanging around her face, the minty scent of toothpaste on her breath, she smiled and said, “I swear if one more person asks me what’s come over me, why I’ve been so nice lately, or what I’m so freaking happy about…”
Only her brother, Timmy, knew about their affair and she promised to keep it that way until Seth was ready—if he was ever ready—to come out of the closet. “So what? Until I came along, you were mean and sad?”
“Pretty much.”
She had to be overstating it, but he’d seen a lot of changes himself. She was getting along better with her mother, talking more with her father, making an effort with her estranged brother, reevaluating her friendships, letting some of them go, while nurturing the ones worth nurturing. And she did look happy. He tried to remember how she’d looked on their first date and before that, when she was one of his students. Always, there was the flashbulb memory of losing his place in the lecture when their eyes met. There was something intriguing and intelligent and sexy about her, but would he describe that girl as happy? No, he wouldn’t. Maybe he was remembering it differently now that he knew her, but there seemed to be a big difference between that girl and the one lying on top of him now.
She let go of his arms and laid her head on his chest. “I hate this part. Leaving. I hate it. Sometimes I feel like you are the only one who really understands me. The only one I can trust.” She kissed his chest and nuzzled into it. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand it when May comes and you leave here. Honest to God, I don’t.”
“We don’t need to think about that right now.”
“I do. I have to prepare for that. It will kill me if I don’t.”
“Maybe it won’t even happen and then you worried for nothing.”
She sat up and looked at him. “What do you mean? Maybe it won’t happen?”
“Maybe I’ll end up staying longer.”
“Is that possible?”
“Anything is possible. I talked to the Dean. There aren’t any full-time positions available and he can’t even promise that there will be any part-timer positions open next year, but if there are, they’d be happy to have me stay on. Maybe I could get back to the book. I am feeling more inspired these days.”
“You’d do that?”
“Yeah. It’d be tough financially. They don’t pay part-timers much and I’d have to go from a rent-free house to paying for an apartment, but it could be done.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think, Ms. Genius IQ?”
“I can’t think about it. Not unless I knew for sure that it was going to happen.” She noticed his journal. “Were you writing about me?”
“Of course.”
“Can I read it?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why? Is it bad?”
“No,” he said, leaning up, moving his mouth toward her breast.
She pushed him back down, pinning his arms over his head again and arched her back, keeping out of reach. “Then why can’t I read it?”
He laughed; he could have easily broken the hold. “Because it’s my journal.”
She looked into his eyes and he couldn’t tell if she was really getting angry or just teasing. He wondered if she knew herself. “I’m going to get a journal,” she said, “and write things about you and not let you read it.”
“You should. Journal writing is good for the soul.”
She kept looking at him, expressionless. Then she began to gently roll her hips over his groin. “Please. Pretty please.”
“Not fair.” He started to get hard and never breaking eye contact, she kept rocking back and forth, readjusting until he could feel her lips, fat and damp, through the thin fabric of her underwear. “Not fair,” he said again.
She leaned forward, putting her breasts in his face, still warm and tender from the shower. He kissed them and closed his eyes. “You smell so good.”
“Forbidden Fruit.”
“You ain’t kidding.”
“That’s the name of the lotion, smartass,” she said, reaching down, freeing him from his underwear and taking him in her hand. Looking into his eyes, she slid down, her ass rising in the air, until her mouth hovered over his erection. “If you read, I’ll suck.”
He grinned. “You are such a bitch.”
“No,” she said. “I’m just a girl. Just a girl who needs to know.” She ran her tongue, relaxed and wide, the full length of his cock, then brought her mouth down over him, rolling her tongue this way, then that. She lifted her head and gave him her dirtiest smile. “Do I
continue…or not?”
“You’re a brat.” He picked up his journal. He’d never shared it with anyone. It was the place where he worked out his most private thoughts and feelings. Some of those he was uncomfortable reading himself let alone sharing with someone else. In this case, however, there was no shortage of things he could read to her, things she would find flattering. Lots of purple prose shamelessly describing how beautiful she was to him, these weekends, and the conversations about everything and nothing, the sex, the sex, oh great God the sex, falling asleep in each other’s arms, the chill of the mornings and the warmth of the fire, the smell of burning wood mixed with the aroma and flavor of their favorite coffee.
But what he chose was a passage he’d written last weekend. He and Kerri had fallen asleep on the couch and spent the whole night there. As he began to read, she took him back in her mouth with a smooth, easy motion. He read about how he had opened his eyes that morning just in time to catch the sun sneaking into the sky, pouring light across the sparkling, unbroken snow and through the tall pines casting ever-changing shapes across the smooth wooden floor and Dr. Jarrell’s now infamous Persian rug. He and Kerri had been wrapped around each other, cocooned in a blanket; all that had been left of the fire was a pile of glowing coals. “…their faint hiss,” he read, “the only sound in the world.”
He turned the page and closed his eyes, feeling the lazy swirl of Kerri’s tongue, the light graze of her teeth, her hair brushing and tickling his thighs, the cold, stone heart at the end of her necklace tapping against him while her body rocked back and forth, her head, up and down. A deep breath escaped him as he reached the moment where the burning impulse to come crashed head on into the cool desire to make it last longer. But Kerri was making the decision for him, slowing down, stopping, yet keeping him in her mouth. She pressed her necklace to her chest. She angled her head enough to gaze up at him, demanding and yet submissive, keep reading, her eyes insisted, then softened, please…
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