Or maybe that's me.
I remove my lips from his. Like a magnet, they return.
I shimmy off the counter, but instead of looking for my clothes, I seek the couch cushion.
I roll over, truly intending to return to my apartment, but I can't help myself and it's not because I want another cookie. I have the recipe for goodness sakes.
So what is it?
What is it about Spencer that keeps me coming back for more?
"More, more," I call as he thrusts forward, caressing my curves.
The sex is amazing.
The scruff on his chiseled jaw is like soft sandpaper as our lips meet again. I pull his head closer to mine—not that there is a closer; we're pressed together from every angle.
Our breath is one long gust of wind, blowing us into a storm I'm not sure I want a break from as we move together, slowly as the tempest builds and builds and… there is thunder and lightning and I don't resist it blowing off my roof, battering my walls, destroying the village within as I know it.
*
White sheets. White curtains. I sit up. No, that's snow out the window. My sheets are a leopard print paisley combo. Navy says they're garish. I'm in Spencer's bed. Was it too much to ask to wake up in the middle of the night and sneak back to my apartment with my dignity intact?
Never in my entire life have I woken up in a man's bed. Call the Guinness Book and tell them to strike my name from the record. Commence the walk of shame. Thankfully, it's a short walk, fourteen steps, like I said. Nine long strides. I was a runner in high school and at Columbia. Once I got the use of my legs back, my mother said it would be a shame not to put them to use. And I do: running, hiking, yoga, and walking quickly away from every man I've ever slept with.
However, snuggled under his charcoal gray comforter, surrounded by the spicy, soapy, minty, cookie smell of him, I burrow a little deeper and inhale deeply before releasing a sigh.
What am I thinking? This is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I listen for the shower. Just the glide of a plow and honking cabs from somewhere below on the city streets.
I train my ears toward the kitchen. No pots and pans clanging or sizzling bacon.
I roll over.
He left a note on his side of the bed. His side of the bed? What? No, that's not what this is. There are no sides of the bed.
It says:
Good morning, beautiful.
Didn't want to wake you.
I encourage you to have a cookie for breakfast.
-S
It's sweet, brief, non-committal, except that it exists. There's record of my transgression. I have the urge to consult a magazine article to decode the meaning of his words. I want to flee. I never want to leave this bed again! The battle within continues.
No, not a transgression like I'm cheating, but I've gone against my code of conduct. Never, ever stay overnight. That's rule number one. Number two is never sleep with the same guy twice unless he's exceptional and at least a month passes between encounters. I broke that rule more times than not this week. And rule three? Never fall in love.
A stack of colorful clothes sits on the end of the bed. My clothes. He folded them, how nice. But I don't want nice. I want… Well, I don't know what I want. My requirement before was just sexy, good teeth, kind and compassionate, and agreeable to my terms: one night only. Spencer meets the sexy condition and then some; running through the catalog of all the men I've been with, no one compares. His teeth are thousands of dollars in orthodontic perfection and pearly white. He adores Mew and he's always been kind and sweet to me.
He's tall, tanned, chiseled.
His apartment is masculine and clean.
He's successful, well spoken, and confident. Very confident, but not cocky.
He's a little mysterious.
His sexual appetite matches mine. He knows what women like. He's showed me a few things I didn't even realize that I like.
Rule number two? Fail, fail, fail. I've failed miserably.
And three? Let's not talk about that.
I scoot through the hall, feed Mew, and dash into the shower. I will scrub him from my skin. I will wash him from my thoughts. I will…
Those cookies were yummy.
So is he.
My sigh can probably be heard seven stories down, a few streets over, and in the police station. Lock me up. Throw away the key. Save me from myself!
But there is no saving to be had. Just spending—a lot of time with Spencer.
*
That night he brings over wine. We each finish a glass. We have sex. Amazing, this-should-be-bottled-and-sold sex.
The next night it's take out and a movie at his place. The pad Thai gets cold. Poor Ryan Gosling watches from the screen and he's all like, "Girl, what are you thinking…?"
We have couch sex. Floor sex. Windowsill sex.
So much sexy sex.
Navy's gone. There's no roommate or parent or anyone waiting for me with their hand on their hip ready to scold me. Yet it feels like something to be kept secret. From who though?
We're in my bed. He makes a sound. A moan. It's low and long and the biggest turn on. Nerves in my vagina that I didn't know I had spark to life. My nipples are beyond hard. My toes curl.
He's giving me a post-sex massage and it's like icing on the cake. Dessert. Better than cookies!
"You're so tight." He rubs some more, unkinking the knots. Then his hands drift south and east and he rubs.
Oh, sweet sugar and butter.
We explore a new position I'll forever call the banana split. What? I have a sweet tooth.
Breathing heavy and one-hundred percent satisfied, he slings his arm around me, pulling me close. I think this position is called spooning. See what I did there with the banana split and the utensil you eat it with? Yeah. I don't usually do stuff like that. The snuggle afterward, I mean. Maybe half a hug or arms and legs pressed side to side, but the spoon? When two people lay back to front? His arm clutching the sensitive skin just under my boob? I melt like ice cream in the sun.
The parade of women leaving his apartment—never the same face or dress twice—means he's not into commitment, not emotionally available, and not interested in sharing time and resources with the same woman. Not that he's doing that now, but he's not not doing it. Everything about Spencer suggested he was into fucking. Plain and simple. Spooning and whatever it is he's doing with his foot against mine does not fit the equation.
But it does feel nice.
He does make a good big spoon.
I sigh, apparently giving him permission to ask, "What are you doing this weekend?"
Chapter 5
A Sock
What am I doing this weekend?
I'm moving to another state.
Disappearing forever with my newfound powers of invisibility.
Leaving town…?
Only one of them is true, but all three spring to my lips. I go with the honest answer. "I have to teach yoga at a resort up in Vermont. It's a couple's retreat. It was supposed to be on Valentine's Day weekend, but there was that big storm and it was postponed."
He snuggles closer. I can feel his you know what between the backs of my legs. If I were able to change the names and identities in my chronicles of our trysts (Navy used the word and it wasn't that weird. She also blogged about it on the Boyfriend Book blog, but that's another story entirely) then I would describe what it's like when it's hard. Neither one of us is shy, but I should respect his privacy. Suffice it to say, it's fabulous. Okay, yes, I'm a card-carrying feminist who shouldn't be afraid to say his cock against my legs is massive and hot and feels damn delicious, but Spencer makes something in me go all squishy and wobbly. I forget things like sense and that I was supposed to meet Tori for coffee yesterday.
I'm resisting the best I can, but he's holding me close and breathing on my neck and it's just so hard. Can you at least try to understand?
"Is the retreat like that class you sent Navy and me
to?"
"Yeah. Though if I recall Carrick went and crashed your date."
His smile warms the curve that connects my neck to my shoulder. There's a name for it used in yoga, but I can't think of it right now. I can't think period.
"I have to teach a class in the morning and evening on Saturday and then one long one Sunday morning. It's this beautiful resort in the mountains dotted with little cabins and great skiing—or snowboarding if you prefer."
"I prefer. We did spend Valentine's Day in bed."
I melt a little more. It was better than a box of chocolates and you know how I feel about sweets. I add, "And last night and—" I cut myself off because it's as if I'm revealing enemy nuclear codes. If I wasn't all melty and goopy and loopy over this, I'd explode.
"We should go away for the weekend." His fingers trail down the side of my torso, which also has a name, but—my mind is a sieve when I'm horizontal and next to Spencer. I pray he never gets the bright idea to attend one of my yoga classes; my students will lose their respect for me when I stumble over words and say something incomprehensible like, "Move the thing over there by that other part or something…"
"Together?" I ask aghast.
"Yeah." His chuckle is low and sinister as though he's trying to lure me into his bed. Wait, we're already in bed. What is the matter with me?
I swallow. "Oh, okay. You could snowboard while I teach and then—"
"I like the idea of an and then in a secluded cabin, warm by the fire..." he says, but doesn't wait to show me what he means.
*
I wake up alone, on my flannel sheets covered in hearts—they're from my mother who worries about me getting cold at night, sleeping solo in my bed. She's never come out and said she's concerned about my singlehood, but she makes it known in other ways: a gift certificate for a couple's massage, an invite to a friend's wedding insisting my plus one isn't Navy.
Something balled up and dark hangs off the edge of the bed. It's not Mew, who has the habit of sleeping on my chest like a furry scarf until I wake up and feed him. He's curled up on the still-warm other side of the bed.
I rub my eyes, hoping it's not a rat.
It's worse.
Spencer left a sock.
It's an ordinary black, ribbed crew sock. All those knots Spencer worked out when he gave me that massage tighten back up and somehow find their way to my stomach. It dips and flops and a sheen of sweat spreads across my hairline. The sock doesn't smell, but I pad to the closet to grab an umbrella, tripping over the jeans and sweater he flung from my body last night. Also, one of the heels on my red-soled fuck-me-now heels stabs me in the bare foot. Mew makes a sound of annoyance.
I'm naked and freaking out a little while I use the end of the umbrella to poke the sock onto the floor. It's not that I don't want to touch a dirty sock, but it's Spencer's. It's part of his intimates—do guys have intimates? Anyway, he left his sock in my apartment. (If you must know, I went home at a sensible time and then he came over, complaining he couldn't sleep and suggesting we do something less than sensible.)
Back to the sock. Okay, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic. I dial it down a little, but leave the sock on the floor by the rest of the evidence from last night. I'll deal with it later.
Later comes when I have a roomful of level three yoga students in a flying crow pose variation. I'm also balancing on my forearms, fingers spread, pressing into the mat, my chin inches from the floor. My hips are lifted, one knee presses into the back of my arm with my foot locked against the other. The other leg is extended long and high off the ground. It sounds complicated because it is—just like the way I'm feeling.
I've been called graceful by famous clothes designers, lithe by top yoga teachers, and agile by the guides that brought me to some of the world's highest peaks, but nothing about the face plant that comes next as my cheek smooshes into the mat and my feet bang into the wood floor suggest flying, crow or otherwise.
Twenty-seven pairs of eyes land on me. "What? A guy asked me if I wanted to go away for the weekend?" I say matter of fact.
"It happens to all of us," one of my well-meaning students says, indicating my fall, but which one, I'm not sure.
My palms sweat and I take a long sip of water. "Now for the other side," I instruct after they lower down.
I don't even bother demonstrating the other side because my arms are like limp spaghetti.
What did I get myself into?
After class, Omar waits for me by the juice bar at the front of the gym slash studio.
"I heard you fell hard."
I shake my head, "I am not!"
He gives me a sideways look. "You aren't what? I was talking about falling out of crow pose. What did you think I meant?" He looks me over.
I don't answer.
"You okay?" he asks with genuine concern.
The last half hour comes back to me. "Oh, that. I thought you meant falling—never mind."
"My job is injury prevention through fitness. Why don't we go stretch?"
Of course, that's what he meant. Duh. I take my green juice and follow him to the mats on the other side of the gym.
I plop down and say, "I just spent ninety-minutes stretching."
"Elbows and wrists," he says, gesturing for me to hold them out.
I hold my arms lamely in front of me and he presses his palms into mine, giving me a strong stretch. I whimper, just a little.
"Feels good, right?"
I nod. It does, but not that kind of good. Remember, Omar's gay. And I whimpered because I agreed to go to Vermont with Spencer.
"So, what's the actual problem?" Omar asks.
My brow furrows.
"Darla is a gossip," Omar says, nodding his head toward the juice bar. "Our top yoga teacher doesn't fall out of a pose unless she has something on her mind."
I bite the straw of my juice.
Omar must push on a pressure point or something because the words spill out of me. "Things with Spencer started out easy because that's what I do, easy. No repeats, no relationships, no dates."
"And you've been seeing him for a few weeks, meaning it left the realm of a hook up."
"We're neighbors. I told myself it was fine because we always have our apartments to return to."
"So…?"
"A trip with a guy feels a little like a commitment."
"And that's a problem because?" Omar asks.
"We'll be trapped in the car for hours. Then the same cabin and—"
"You do realize that sounds super romantic. Dinner in the lodge, a crackling fire, no choice but to keep each other warm—"
I interrupt his musings. "And you do realize I don't do romantic."
Omar's laugh is a loud squawk. "You so are a romantic."
"Am not."
"Are so." He gazes past my independent, feminist, mountain climbing exterior right into my mushy, cookie-loving core.
I shake my head. "No."
"You're a romantic at heart."
I cross my arms in front of my chest. "How do you know?"
His smile lights up his whole face. "I just do, Katya Aphrodite. I just do."
Omar may know my middle name, after all, he and I have gotten to know each other well while in this room working out our frustrations and our booties, but he's wrong. He's damn wrong.
"It's just a weekend. It's not as if you're moving in together. You have your own places to return to, like you said. A little buffer."
"Exactly. We're neighbors, meaning I will have to see him if I want to leave my apartment. How do I get out of this?"
"You don't. You go."
I shake my head and slurp the dregs of my green juice. "I need a milkshake."
"It's, like, fifteen degrees out. You'll get worse than a brain freeze."
"Something hot and sweet then."
"Sounds an awful lot like Spencer," Omar says with a laugh.
I playfully shove him, but just like Spencer, he's made of rock, not man. Every inch of him i
s buffed to perfection. Like Spencer, Spencer, Spencer. Spencer, get out of my head!
"I was talking about hot chocolate," I say.
"Still sounds like Spencer to me."
"Are you saying he's liked whipped cream?"
"I don't know what I'm saying, but the man is good to look at."
Without a backward glance to let Omar know I'm not really mad, just stewing and steaming, I bundle up and step into the descending twilight. With every street I cross, I go back and forth about calling off the trip.
I have to paint my apartment.
He'd want to help.
I have an emergency.
He'd want to make sure I'm okay.
I have… I have nothing except a Nutella hot chocolate topped with toasted hazelnuts, marshmallows, chocolate shavings, and bits of waffle. I need a spoon.
No, I don't need Spencer. I don't. But do I want him? That's another question entirely.
The Man-bun-barista no longer works here, but I should give Spencer the dirty brownie recipe—Navy and I ate an entire pan in one night after we found out her date with the long haired dude does dirty deals on the side of the espresso bar—he was a drug dealer in case you're wondering.
I pop by the bookstore on the corner because I promised Navy I'd pay them back for the books the Book Boyfriend stole, for her. Thoughtful, but also illegal.
The hall is quiet when I step off the elevator in my building. It smells like Mrs. Hess's wet dogs and for once, I'm thankful it doesn't smell like a certain round, baked disc of deliciousness. I tiptoe past Spencer's door. Mew meets me, but otherwise I'm alone.
Chapter 6
Two Truths and One Lie
It's Friday, which means I need to a) fake my own death and flee the country. But living in anonymity for the rest of my life because I'm supposed to be dead doesn't sound appealing. I'm a social creature and a relatively well-known yoga instructor.
There's plan b), which is to pretend I'm terribly ill and can't go to Vermont. I'd have to cancel with the lodge—totally blowing my sense of integrity. Spencer would probably also want to check in and make sure I'm still breathing. I fake a cough. No, not passable.
Or c) put on my big girl pants and go through with it.
How Not to Fall in Love (Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told #2) Page 3
