by Thea Devine
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “I didn’t—not until…not then, not at the beginning at that dinner, at that moment.” I knew my face showed all my emotions—regret, guilt, hope, sorrow.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter had held back until there was a long moment of silence that could not be filled with excuses or lies.
“Not yet,” Paula said edgily, and as the waiter turned away, she added, “Maybe I did want something more with him. But what he did only proved once again it wasn’t possible. And the only thing I cared about after was that I didn’t want you to have it.”
I swallowed hard. “He never said a word.”
I waited for you, he’d said. I just wanted you to know…
“No. Because a couple of weeks later you started that crazy guy diet.”
“But he did wait, Paula, in deference to you. And he never talked about it. Never said a word—”
I wanted her to say it. I didn’t want to have to tell her.
She filled in the blank. “And then you had sex with him.”
“I didn’t quite fall into bed with him. I had reservations. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“So The Guy Diet was all a sham to cover your poaching him.”
“God, it was so not that. It was real, and it had nothing to do with Jed. I didn’t know then. I can’t even wrap my brain around it now.”
“Oh, I think on some level you knew.”
That was true, too, but I didn’t want to examine the thought further.
“I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to be lectured to.”
“I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to tell you about Jed.”
“You didn’t really have to.”
So nothing needed to be said. So odd. It was as if we both had some kind of sonar that picked up the clues.
I didn’t know what else to say, or how to make it better for her and less fraught for me. I should have told her sooner.
“So happy we’re friends again,” Paula said sarcastically.
“Can we not be?”
Paula got up from her chair. “I don’t know.” Her voice was shaky with emotion. “I have to think about it now that I really know.”
I heard the sound of her heels across the floor and going downstairs through a blinding wash of tears. I heard the distant hum of conversation. I thought, Jed was right, I should have listened to him. And I thought, I’ll call and ask him to come have dinner. It’ll be okay.
I didn’t think it would ever be okay. This had been more hurtful than full disclosure a week or two ago would have been. Paula wouldn’t have been so vulnerable. It would have been a swift strike and over.
So instead my ill-considered plan had made things worse; put her in a one-on-one setting, in a public place, where she couldn’t do anything but walk out the door.
“Lo?”
That, inexplicably, was Jed’s voice and Jed’s body in this restaurant, standing inches away from me. I looked up to see that Paula was with him, and talking with another man.
A nice-looking man who was pulling out the chair for Paula, who sedately sat and sent me an inscrutable look across the table.
“This is Brian, a colleague of mine.”
Brian acknowledged me, and Jed went on, “Glad we caught up with Paula downstairs. Do you mind if we join you?”
I swear I could barely see him through the haze of my tears. This wasn’t T-shirt-and-jeans Jed. This was dressed-to-the-nines Jed, all authoritative and socially powerful. And taking back his hands-off stance in terms of Paula. Acting as if we were all old friends, and easing the way for comfortable conversation that never let up all through dinner.
That had to be from years of training in good manners. No one could walk into this situation and make lemonade out of it.
There was this glint in his eyes every time he looked at me. He knew. And I don’t know how; I just understood that it didn’t need to be said. He just knew.
And over and above that, Brian was a really nice guy, projecting that same air of confidence and self-awareness as Jed. There was something about him that reminded me of Jed. Maybe it was that they were cut from the same cloth. They’d had the same upbringing, background and the mandate to make sure that everyone else around them never felt uncomfortable.
It was an astonishing insight for me, watching the two of them operate like a well-oiled machine. There was nothing fake about it. This was how they were with a stranger or a best friend. I was certain of it.
But better than that, Brian seemed to like Paula, and she certainly responded to him. I didn’t think there were any guarantees that anything would happen beyond this dinner. Though Brian wasn’t Jed, he wasn’t focused on another woman, either. And maybe if Paula gave it a chance, Brian might turn out to be the guy with whom she could envision that “something more.”
In any event, it became a really nice dinner, literally stirred up from the ashes of a terrible moment between friends.
I laid it to the fact that there were no expectations and not a single hint indicating a slide toward the bedroom afterward. There was respect in the way both Jed and Brian handled the situation that was almost old-fashioned.
It was so refreshing—at least to me. I couldn’t tell what Paula was thinking.
Did it matter? Something was broken between us, and I wasn’t sure it could ever be repaired.
But to look at Paula’s face, soft with an openness I hardly ever saw, and to watch her body language with Brian, I thought that maybe getting things out in the open had been worth it.
The evening sped by. The conversation never lagged. Jed ordered coffee, espresso, sambuca, a tray of petites fours, gelato.
There wasn’t a shred of tension in the air when he signaled for the check and discreetly tucked it in his pocket.
Brian rose then, saying, “I’ll see Paula home.”
I felt Jed’s hand on my arm and I looked into his warm gaze, and I stayed put until Brian and Paula were out of sight and down the steps.
“I thought you weren’t going to do anything about Paula,” I murmured, conscious of that look in his eyes.
Jed sighed. “I wasn’t, but the thought of waiting for Paula to find a sex life wasn’t too appealing, actually. I’d rather have one of my own.”
“Speaking of that…”
“No, we’re not speaking of that. We’re not talking about any of this tonight.”
“We are, too—we need to have the when did you conversation,” I said.
“Do we have to? What else do you need to know?”
Good question. Because he was right. The sequence of events from the time I’d first met him to this moment encompassed everything I needed to know.
If I wanted to list it all, I could start with him putting up with the whole Guy Diet thing. And now I knew the considerate way he’d broken up with Paula. The fact he made certain his people were taken care of in the wake of a potentially disastrous-for-them business deal. The way he didn’t let all my other nonsense deter him. How tonight he turned an untenable situation into something very positive. And the singular idea that, by his own admission, he’d waited.
For me.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
That was important in a way that I didn’t quite know why it was—yet. I knew he was watching me figure it all out as he sipped his espresso.
I threw up my hands. “Okay.”
“Good.” He put down his cup. “So I’ll add this much to your list. You’re funny, you’re loyal, you’re fearless, and you talk too much. Is that enough?”
“Yes.” No. “But…”
“Enough.” He got up and held out his hand. “Come on.”
It was only after we left that I remembered him taking the check and that there hadn’t been an Amex in sight before we exited.
“Jed…?” I know there was panic in my voice.
He read my mind. “It’s taken care of.”
“How? When?” I demanded. Oh, plebian me. In Jed’s
world, these things never needed to be spoken about. He’d likely arranged it before he and Brian had magically appeared at my side.
“Ah, the car is here.”
You know what I was thinking. I’d forgotten about the car. The car was important. On top of everything I’d understood about him tonight. It was almost midnight and Cinderella was about to be left on her doorstep.
I instantly went into panic mode.
Give him up now.
I took a deep breath. “Maybe you should just take me home.”
“And why should I do that?”
Good question. Because I was scared, because it was all too much, because there was something that I wasn’t admitting and that scared me even more.
More than that, the realization hit me like a ton of bricks that he lived in a world beyond mine, and that whatever time we had together would be short-lived because his world would eventually require that he find the socially marriage-appropriate partner.
Who most assuredly wasn’t me.
“Umm, it’s been a really emotional evening with Paula and all.”
“Don’t give it another thought. She’s over it by now.”
I prickled up. “Really? Why? Because between you two frat guys, you decided he was going to seduce her and give her a diet of him for a couple of weeks to build up her self-esteem?”
Jed whistled. “Wow. You make us sound like Neanderthals.”
“I just don’t like what I’m thinking right now.”
“I think you just want to pick a fight and I can’t figure out why after such a pleasant dinner.”
“So take me home,” I said stubbornly.
“I don’t think so.”
See? He was putting up with my nonsense.
“Come on.” He took my hand again as I got out of the car. Instead of heading up to his apartment to go at it like bunnies, we started walking toward Fifty-Ninth Street.
Central Park West was magical at night—the lights from the apartment buildings glowing, the streetlights glittering overhead, the evening balmy with a slight breeze, people out strolling, nodding to each other.
Something about a summer night that was as good as leisurely sex. There was no hurry, no tension, no time constraints, no need for superfluous words.
Maybe that was the point.
Because when he finally kissed me, on the corner of Central Park West Fifty-Ninth and Central Park South, where everyone could see, I didn’t care about anything but him.
Maybe I needed to write a column about what I learned on my summer vacation. A walk on a summer’s night is sexy. A kiss under a streetlight is as arousing as an hour of foreplay. That Jed is not a fly-by guy. That I don’t know what I’ll do when I have to let go.
Tonight I hung on. Tonight was a wild ride, wholly fueled by my high-flying emotions and my lust to subsume his essence into me. I stripped naked the moment we entered his apartment. I meant business; I wanted as much as I could have in whatever time there was left. I undressed him and took him to bed in a fever of lust.
Anything we’d ever done before didn’t seem like enough. I wanted to invent new things to give him pleasure. Everything I thought of didn’t seem enough. I wanted something far beyond anything he’d experienced before. Beyond me, beyond sex, over into forever.
And yet, all I had to do was burrow between his legs and suck at that narrow band of flesh under his scrotum to give him that beyond-forever pleasure. It was such a simple thing. I aimed to suck at it all night, but I felt his hands subtly directing me toward his penis, toward his mouth.
I didn’t need his kisses tonight, I needed his penis, long, strong and penetrating. I wanted to feel him, hard, primitive, rocking my world.
I protected him and mounted without foreplay, arching my body to give him the deepest connection, the utmost fill. The thought of his penis so completely embedded between my legs nearly sent me into spasms. I wanted to sit on him like this for the rest of my life.
He cupped my breasts, he squeezed one nipple and I nearly had an orgasm. But I didn’t want to come, not yet—I’d barely begun my ride, and I didn’t want to move.
He wanted, he needed motion. His body beneath mine was restive, rippling with the need to thrust, and my desire to feel him driving me to climax overrode my lust to keep him rooted, hard and quiescent, between my legs.
My emotions felt raw, utterly primeval, propelled by a force outside myself as old as time. That was what it felt like to lose myself in his relentless possession of my body. I lost time, I lost thought, I lost myself to the insensate pleasure I pulled from his body.
This was not making love; this was pure animal mating, older than time. I drove him, I claimed him by the pure force of my violent hunger for his sex.
And when I could bear no more, he rolled me on my back, and just let me feel the heat and heft of the most indomitable part of him planted deep within me still lusting after my pleasure.
This time, he kissed me. This time, kisses that were slow and languid, rocking and rolling. This time, the full awareness of every inch of him was overpowering, turning my body molten, and sending hot rills of pleasure swirling through my veins to explode between my legs.
How could there be more than this? And then that encompassing feeling afterward—how could I even describe it?
And yet I lay still, so wide-awake, wondering when and where it would ultimately end.
“So,” Jed whispered, sometime deep in the night when he sensed I was still awake and trying hard not to rouse him, “here’s the one and only when did you part. Don’t say a word. The only reason I feel comfortable telling you this is that we’re in the dark, and it’s a secret. It was that evening you came to have dinner with Paula and me. That moment when you paused in the doorway, all tall and wind-blown, stamping off the cold, and wearing that long camel-hair coat, those jeans and boots and that turtleneck sweater. You were so fresh, so full of life and energy, so beautiful, and in that moment, I saw…” He paused, as if he were seeing it all again. “I saw myself with you.”
I let that sink in. That evening. If I closed my eyes, I could see it. The three of us in that crowded restaurant talking about harried lives and fast, cheap food.
“And my when did you,” I countered, “was before that lunch when you told me you’d sold the paper. I was watching you from inside the building and it struck me suddenly that I was seeing someone who was wholly different than the guy I’d known only through Paula’s eyes.”
“Definite epiphany,” Jed murmured. “It changed everything, obviously. Diets, attitudes, everything.”
“Actually, it did.”
“Well, now I can see that.”
And everything would change again, I thought, but that was okay. I had tonight, and however many more tonights there might be with Jed’s magic hands coaxing me to arousal, to climax. It didn’t take much; all he had to do was play with my nipples and I was gone…. He could take me anywhere the whole night long—and again, tonight, he did.
I WENT BACK to my real life, where a paycheck was paramount, my roommate hated me and impossible deadlines loomed.
How could I concentrate when sex occupied my thinking all day long now. When you have it, you can’t get enough of it. There really was a good reason for a Guy Diet—at least you could focus on the important stuff.
Though, what was more important than sex? And Jed?
Maybe Paula and me on speaking terms?
I tiptoed into our apartment that night but she’d beat me home, and she actually was in the kitchen puttering around.
She held up a forkful of spaghetti. “Does that look done?”
“Taste it.”
“Ewww. With no sauce?” She sipped a strand. “It tastes wet. Slimy. Firm.”
“Good. Drain it. Please don’t tell me it’s jar sauce.”
“It’s jar sauce because I didn’t know if you were coming back here tonight.”
“I didn’t know if you were,” I countered.
“I took
a day off to think about it—Brian, I mean…about everything.”
“Was it good for you?”
“He’s a nice guy.” She poured a whole jar of sauce into a saucepan and set it to heat. “That was nice of Jed.”
“I thought so.”
“He did that for you, you know.”
“What?”
“Brian—he did that for you.”
Oh, oh, oh…I felt her words reverberate. I thought about my all-encompassing list of what didn’t need to be said. He did it for me.
“He did that for you,” I said carefully.
“No, you don’t understand. He didn’t know if Brian and I would click. He just wanted to make it better…for you.”
Omigod. Don’t examine that too closely. Distract her.
“But did you like him?”
“Brian? I liked him. I liked that there was no pressure, that he was easy to talk to, that he was a gentleman, that he called today. Yes, I liked him. Yes, I’m going out with him again. And yes, I’ll have sex with him if he asks.”
“Good.”
“What are you going to do?”
I am not going to let myself fall in love.
I didn’t say that. I was halfway there already. Because he did that for me. All of it. Even deliberately giving me the chance to write the grab-and-go column.
Got-my-back guy. That was what it boiled down to. Maybe not love-me-forever guy, but—oh my God. Jed was my longed-for got-my-back guy. And he never gave up. And I never saw it coming.
It shook me up. Made me think about things that were impossible to dream about.
Or talk about. So I said, “I don’t know what I’ll do. I guess, just enjoy it while I can.”
“What do you mean, while you can? You think this is going to be over and out by tomorrow?”
Damn. I really didn’t want to ruminate on the reasons why I didn’t think it could last. “Don’t you? I’m not exactly in his stratosphere.”
