My Guys

by Tanya Chris

  “Like you said, we don’t have to figure it all out tonight.” My head hurt and my tea was cold again. “That’s fine about keeping your paycheck. It’s fair. I’ll move some of the savings into the checking account tomorrow to make sure we’re covered.”

  “Thanks. It’ll be nice to get out of this dump. I’ll start looking at options.”

  “I will, too.”

  “No hurry. It doesn’t make any sense for you to move out until we’re ready to sell. Unless you’ve got some place to go.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know. If there’s some guy you’re looking to move in with. Then I could stay in the house.”

  “There’s no guy I’m moving in with. Why don’t you move in with one of your women?”

  “I’m not seeing anyone seriously.”

  “Well, neither am I.”

  I heard him sigh through the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. I pictured his sorry face: eyes closed, forehead lined with scowl grooves, his mouth a grim line. “Jealousy again. I know you think I deserve for this to be hard, but it’s hard.”

  “It’s hard for me, too.”

  “Then why are we doing this?”

  “You’re asking me why? You’re the one who said we should get divorced. You’re the one who filed papers.”

  “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll say no, try to talk me out of it. Maybe I want you to fight, for God’s sake.”

  “Fight your lovers for you, Alex? A sexy cat fight over you, is that what you were hoping for? Fingernails and lipstick and dresses getting ripped like Jerry fucking Springer?”

  “No.” His voice was flat, the enthusiasm drained out of it.

  “Then what?”

  “Never mind.” He breathed heavily into the phone. “Look, you know you have to file a response to the summons, right?”

  “I can read.”

  “OK, well, if you need help or anything ...”

  He might be a lawyer, but he wasn’t my lawyer. I looked at the clock. Rehearsal should be out by now. Nate would be calling any minute.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I’m expecting a call.”

  We exchanged curt goodbyes and hung up. I ran my thumb over the screen of my phone, waiting for it to ring. When it didn’t, I took it upstairs to my bedroom.

  With all our pillows piled behind me, I picked up the book I’d been reading—a new romance novel from one of my favorite authors. I would have been enjoying it if the hero weren’t so annoyingly reminiscent of Alex. Every time the author described his tall, wide-shouldered frame, an image of Alex popped into my head. The guy was even named Alec, as though to taunt me.

  The heroine had long, swinging blonde hair and perfect C-cup breasts and might as well have been named Emily, although her name was actually Bree.

  Alec was cooking Bree dinner because he was an enlightened man with skills. Alex had made me dinner once too, mostly as an excuse to get me into his apartment.

  Alec made Bree homemade pasta with sautéed vegetables. Alex had burnt some pork chops and served them with frozen not-quite-heated-through french fries.

  Alec set the table with scented candles. Alex and I ate in a haze of greasy, pork-scented smoke.

  Alec fed Bree bites of chocolate torte off his own fork. Alex accidentally upset the card table we were eating at, spilling the remains of my pork chop into my lap, saving me from having to eat it.

  Then he’d brought out one of his sweatsuits for me to change into and I’d snuggled into him on his futon which was still, at that point, set up like a couch, feeling warm and comfortable and desirable even in an over-large man’s sweatsuit because his eyes told me I was.

  We’d finished the bottle of wine I’d brought—thank God I hadn’t left that part of the date up to him—sitting right up next to each other, hips jammed together, my knees curled up into his thighs, watching each other over the rims of our juice glasses, like Alec and Bree watched each other over the rims of Wedgwood crystal.

  When the wine was gone, I’d said that perhaps I should go and he’d taken my glass and put it on the ugly box-like thing that served as a coffee table—much as Alec took Bree’s glass and put it on the mahogany side board—and he kissed me. It wasn’t our first kiss, but it was our last as non-lovers. I’d known when I’d agreed to dinner where the date would end—in the unfurled futon.

  Bree was more resistant. She would only let Alec kiss her for so long before her eyes started spitting fire, which was something her eyes did a lot. Bree wasn’t worried that if she didn’t put out, she’d lose this guy who was smart and funny and good looking with a bright future. Bree had some sort of reason for not wanting to be with this guy who was smart and funny and good looking with a bright future, which I’d lost track of. There was always a reason or there wouldn’t be a book, but I’d had no reason, no reason at all, to not want to be with Alex. He was smart and he was funny and he was good looking and he did have a bright future.

  When my friends and I had played Dream Date—conniving to concoct the perfect man out of pink-backed pieces of cardboard—it was Alex I’d built over and over. He was even tall, a fact I rationally knew to be of no importance whatsoever, but there it was. And his eyes were a dreamy hazel green and his smile was an even white and his hair curled up at the edges when he went too long between haircuts. And he loved me.

  He loved me with an all-consuming desire like Alec loved Bree. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do without me. His eyes gazed yearningly into mine, his lips murmured passionate words into my ear, his strong arms trembled with barely-controlled restraint against my back as he pressed me to him.

  I hadn’t known fuck-all about love, I thought, tossing the book away from me. I’d known what a man was like on the hunt because these books had described it for me and called it love. I’d known what it was like to have a man desire you, and to desire him because he desired you and because he was perfect and you wanted perfect, wanted someone to write “happily ever after” on your life story and close the book before you could turn the page.

  What sucked about losing Alex, because it did suck. It really sucked. What sucked about losing Alex wasn’t losing the Alex who’d seduced me on his futon after a few glasses of wine. It was losing the Alex I’d come to know since then, the Alex who was so much more than Alec because he didn’t stop after two hundred and fifty pages and couldn’t be assembled from interchangeable pieces of shellacked paperboard.

  My phone chimed from underneath the book I’d thrown on top of it. Nate.

  “Sorry went late. C u thurs”

  He hadn’t even called to say it. I was involved with two guys and the best they could deliver when I needed consolation was a semi-literate text message. Alex had been more comforting than that. At least, in his practical way, he’d tried.

  Chapter 17

  By the time I saw Nate on Thursday, my anger at him for not coming over Monday had dissipated. He had Derek to thank for that. When I got to the gym Tuesday night, Derek was sitting on the front step, his phone in his hand. His face brightened when he saw me.

  “I don’t have your number,” he said.

  “I know.” I sat next to him and fished out my own phone so we could exchange numbers.

  “I would have called.”

  “Thanks.” I tilted my chin up to him, expecting a kiss.

  He pulled his chin back, glancing around. “I don’t know if ...”

  “I understand,” I said, by which I meant that I now understood how Nate felt when I did the same thing to him. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t advertise.” My mood, which had gone up when he’d been so eager for my for phone number, dipped.

  “You want to climb, right? If we start kissing, I won’t want to climb.” He stood up and opened the door for me. “Now that I have your number, we can talk about where to climb so we’re not stuck in here on a beautiful day like today.” The door swung shut and the gloom of interior lighting settled arou
nd us.

  Later he followed me home and restored my bedroom to a place I wanted to be, leaving only when I physically pushed him out. When I paused in shutting the door to catch a last glimpse of him, he stepped back towards me and I had to shut it right in his face to stop him. I’d leaned against the closed door, wondering if he was leaning on the other side.

  So when Nate approached me at rehearsal Thursday, I turned my face up to his without any reproach and enjoyed the brief but deep kiss.

  “Do you know how long it’s been?” he asked, rubbing his chin against mine, his arms still wrapped around me.

  Longer for you than for me, I thought.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” Donna said, bouncing up to hug me. “How was the climbing trip?”

  “Very nice.” I peered up at Nate from under my eyelashes.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

  “What?” Donna asked.

  “Nothing. Nate thinks he can read minds.”

  “I can read your mind, sweetheart. You’re not a very good actress, remember?” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll let you girls catch up.”

  “What was that all about?”

  I debated answering her. On the one hand, what was known couldn’t be unknown, and Donna would be insufferable with the knowledge. On the other hand, it was hardly worth sleeping with two different twenty-five-year-olds if you couldn’t tell somebody about it.

  “Have I ever mentioned Derek?”

  “I think so. Climbing dude.”

  “Hot, young climbing dude.”

  “Lissie!” Donna had picked up my theater nickname. “Did you mix a little horizontal mambo into your vertical adventure?”

  I nodded.

  “What about Nate?”

  “What about him? He didn’t want an exclusive arrangement, so: non-exclusive.”

  Donna laughed and pulled me in for another hug. “You go, girl. That’ll show him.”

  “I don’t think he really cares.”

  Since he’d walked away, my eyes had been following him. Not once had he turned back towards me. Now he was sitting on top of his character’s desk talking, of all people, to Deb. She was standing in front of him holding a bundle of papers in front of her chest like a shield, but she was talking back. They wore the same very slight smile—polite but tentative.

  “So how’s the show?” I turned intentionally away from Deb and Nate.

  “I think it’s pretty good, but who am I to judge? Wait until you see my costume. It’s like 1950 meets 2150—this adorable silver suit with lapels like wings and the steepest heels. I’ll tower over everyone. Wayne says maybe in 2150 secretaries have all the power. Nate is fantastic, by the way. He’s like Humphrey Bogart squared. If you decide you’re done with him—”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m only kidding. Actually ...”

  “Hmm?” I realized my gaze had drifted back to Nate and Deb. What could they be talking about? I turned my head back to Donna.

  “Maybe Wayne.”

  “You and Wayne?” I remembered Wayne as the father in the last show—a beaten-down man lost in the face of his wife’s decline—but he was directing this show.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Taking things slow for a change.”

  Good advice I hadn’t been following. I looked around the room and found Wayne in the audience seating, a pad balanced on his knee. Around him stood a cluster of actors listening. I’d seen him in his street clothes before but had never paid him much attention. He was a bit older than me and Donna, but not as old as he’d appeared in stage makeup.

  As I watched him, his eyes flicked up and found Donna. He smiled and waved her over. She squeezed my arm and went to him.

  A few minutes later, the stage manager called the actors up on the stage for warm-ups and Deb came over to sit with me in the audience.

  “Nate had some good ideas about the lights for the end of Act I,” she said. She showed me the sequence in her copy of the script. “See where the segue into the fifth dimension happens? Wayne wants some kind of lighting effect there. Nate says his character causes the shift, which I didn’t pick up from the script. What he suggests is we hit him hard right on the forehead—with light I mean—and then he does this swooping thing—” she mocked a sort of sideways throwing motion “—and we roll the lighting effect—a color change, I’m thinking—across the stage. Like he threw it.”

  “We can do that?”

  “I think so.” She picked up the light plot we’d been working on—a large sheet of graph paper on which was laid out the set with our planned lighting design drawn in on top. “We’ll have to be really exact with the timing—us and Nate—but he’s easy to work with that way.”

  “How about that light on his forehead?” I asked. “You haven’t shown me anything that would make a beam that small.”

  “We might have to put you in the audience with a flashlight.”

  I gaped at her and she laughed.

  “Only kidding. I think I have something in the light booth that’ll work but we’re going to have to be very precise with it. Luckily Nate knows how to hit a mark.” Suddenly Nate was her hero. “If there’s a spotlight, you can bet he’ll be in it.”

  Or perhaps not.

  Wayne called the rehearsal to order. Deb and I watched with our heads together, comparing our design for each scene to the actors’ actual places and movements.

  “I think we’re in good shape,” Deb said when the rehearsal ended. “Tomorrow we’ll hang that forehead light and re-cable these instruments for the color shift so they’re all on separate dimmers.” She looked up at the ceiling then back down to the stage. “I think it’ll work.” She mimicked the swoosh movement that Nate made at the end of the first act. “Tell him I said it’s a good idea.”

  “You can tell him.”

  “Nah, I’m out of here. Best part about not being an actor is you don’t have to stick around for notes. Unless you’re dating an actor.” She smiled snarkily and left. I sat down to wait for Nate.

  “You impressed Deb,” I told him as we walked out to the parking lot half an hour later.

  “And not you?”

  “I don’t know enough about lights to be impressed yet, but I’m impressed that you impressed Deb.” We stopped in front of my car.

  “Never mind Deb. I’ve got my mind on other things.” He pulled my hips against his. I was startled to find him already erect. I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I told you it had been a long time.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t last night?”

  “Different.” He nuzzled into my neck. “Take me home before I do indecent things to you in the parking lot.”

  I led the way to my house, wondering as I drove what had him so worked up. As soon as we got into the house he pushed me up the stairs and relentlessly down the hall to the bedroom.

  “Is this about Deb?” I asked as he pulled my shirt over my head.

  “Not about Deb.” He pulled my bra over my head too, not bothering to unfasten it.

  “Then what?”

  “Derek.”

  “Derek?” I obeyed the push of his hand against my chest and sat back on the bed.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Nate!” I stopped his hands on my hips, forcing him to look up at me. “What?”

  “It’s hot.” He knelt between my legs and kissed me slowly and deeply—his method of persuasion. “Tell me.”

  “We had sex.”

  “Details. While I go down on you.” He tugged at my pants again and I let him draw them down along with my panties. He put his nose between my legs and rubbed the bridge of it against my clit. “Tell me.”

  “You want me to talk dirty to you?”

  “Mm-hmmm,” he agreed, his nose buried deep into my slit now.

  “Well, he’s very well hung.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed in memory and because Nate was only nibbling at me lightly. “Beautiful cock. Round and t
hick with this giant head on it, like a big meatball on top of a stick of salami.” I giggled at the image.

  “Does it feel different?”

  I considered my answer carefully, then decided the hell with it. This was Nate and he’d asked for it. “It was amazing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Stop talking.” I pushed his face into me. I waited until he picked up some rhythm and then I did my best—between moaning and embarrassment and just a little worrying about Nate’s ego—to describe how Derek’s cock made me feel.

  Every time we fucked, he gained more control. The last time, he’d been able to push past my ability to take any more. I’d finally opened my eyes, the fog blown away by emotional exhaustion.

  Derek’s thighs were along my sides, his butt on the bed between them, his body leaning away from mine as his arms around my legs pulled me relentlessly against him. He watched me from beneath his eyelids, intent.

  “Enough,” I’d croaked. A triumphant smile had flashed across his face and almost immediately he’d come, his body dropping back even farther as his grip on my legs faltered.

  “He made you say enough?” Nate asked, pulling me by the arms so I was lying on the bed next him. He picked my hand up and put it on his erection.

  “You make me say enough all the time.”

  “Not by fucking you.”

  “For what it’s worth, his oral technique is lousy.” I no longer bothered to steer Derek in that direction.

  “Oh yeah? That’s too bad.”

  “Don’t you want to be good at something?”

  “I am good at something. Tell me I’m not.”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s not a competition.” He wiggled his hips at me to suggest that I get on with the matter at hand. “Recovered yet?”

  “OK, OK. Such a task master.” I smiled as I rotated into position to go down on him.

  I licked him all over from balls to tip, getting his cock nice and wet. Nate put his arms behind his head and tilted his pelvis up at me, settling in to enjoy the ride. Taking him deeper into my mouth, I began the rhythm that I knew he liked, mixing it up now and then with more long licks or a circle around the head. Before long I felt the bubbling rush along his shaft that meant he was almost there.