by Anne Marsh
I swear I hear miniature violins playing a har-de-har-har chorus as he speaks. Is she really going to fall for this? When she and I could go upstairs and take our kissing to its logical conclusion?
In short: yes.
She pats me on the arm. “Thanks again.”
And...that’s it?
“Madd and I should talk—” she continues.
“Who’s he?” Madd cuts her off.
I smirk. “Her date.”
“My boyfriend,” she says at the same time.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Maple
#plottwist #shakespearewouldbeproud #choices
LAST NIGHT WAS—well, I’m not exactly sure what to say about last night other than that it pretty much turned out exactly like Romeo and Juliet. There was gorgeous music, some fairly memorable speeches, orgasms for all, and then it all went to hell and no one ended up happy.
After Max reluctantly left, I dragged the box of Madd’s leftover stuff down the stairs. Dealing with him feels like the dream where you suddenly realize it’s the end of the college term and you haven’t been to class once—but now you need to pass the class. I’m lost and running to keep up, but then I wake up and realize that it was just a dream.
We’re not going to get back together.
We’ll never be a couple.
I’m not going to score an A—and I don’t care. I don’t need to be who he wants me to be anymore. I wake up—alone—the morning after my Madd showdown and wait to feel regret. It’s like poking at the tooth that was sore for days or weeks and now there’s no pain and it feels a bit like a miracle. Madd’s flowers are in a vase on my bedside table. Which is also my kitchen table and my coffee table but...details. Perhaps I should have tossed the flowers in the dumpster, but I’m a sucker for hot pink stargazer lilies. Their gorgeous scent fills my studio. Someone’s even snipped off the orange stamens that stain your fingers and clothes so that there’s nothing to mar the pretty.
Madd himself? Well let’s just say that I suspect his harem was about as happy as I was with his unwillingness to pick a partner. He’s come back because I made him feel good and who doesn’t like that? Plus, now that his new girl’s kicked him to the curb, I’m useful again. Whatever. He may have traveled for business or been unhappy with his life or decided that I wasn’t Ms. Perfect, but that didn’t excuse his choice to cheat or to post our private video. This time, I want someone to choose me.
And speaking of choices?
Max has been a busy, busy boy. His latest text reads like the top ten from Kinkster, and let’s just say he knows how to make his case. There’s a reason (or nine) why he’s the king of hookups.
Hey girlfriend. Choose the one place you’d really like to have sex:
1. Redwood Park. Big-ass Redwood trees, Jurassic Park-worthy ferns, and all the suits in the Transamerica Pyramid watching from their fancy building.
2. Greenhouse in the lobby of an office building.
3. Golden Gate Park. They’ve got a park, a conservatory and a beach.
4. Coit Tower. Come on—the name begs for it.
5. Muir Woods. Pick a tree. Any tree.
6. Quickie in the Japanese Tea Garden.
7. Baker Beach.
8. Sexy times walk in the Marin Headlands.
9. The Sutro Baths. No idea, but anything that rhymes with Kama Sutra has to be good.
I stare at my screen for way too long, imagining him writing this. I can see his face, intent on the screen, the little crinkle he gets between his eyebrows when he’s working through a problem. Is he in his office even though it’s Saturday? In his enormous bed in his even bigger, emptier Santa Cruz beach mansion? I’ve seen him naked now, so it’s far too easy to dress him in a pair of faded blue jeans, feet bare, T-shirt gone so that I can mentally ogle his chest and remember what it felt like to anchor myself on his biceps.
Is he serious? I don’t even know what some of those places are, but already I feel like we share a little secret. That I’ll never see or hear those names again without thinking about having sex there. With Max. God, he drives me a little crazy.
Before I can remember the dozens—and dozens—of reasons why public sex is a bad idea, I’m committed.
Tell me about Golden Gate Park. Show me a secret part.
He texts back a map pin. Meet me at 3.
Living in San Francisco, you learn quickly that so many things are less romantic or glamorous than you believed. Fog is cold and damp. You have to step over passed-out alcoholics and the homeless in order to exit the train station, and there are so many of them that it gets harder and harder to remember that they’re people, not obstacles. You see people doing things in the street—personal, private things—and sex is the least of it.
I know that meeting Max in a public place for sex isn’t romantic. It won’t be comfortable.
But I do think it will be exciting—and excitement is something that’s been missing from my life for a long time. I’ve spent years dancing to other people’s scripts, and while I couldn’t see myself making a habit of hooking up in a public park, I want to do it. Maybe just this once or maybe twice or however many times we feel like it. I don’t know how it will end, but it feels right. It feels like I’m finally embracing some part of myself that’s been hiding in the wings, waiting for her cue to come center stage.
I roll onto my back, letting the phone slip beneath my covers. I can feel the broad smile stretching my lips, but there’s no one here to see me grinning like a loon.
Light slips in through the windows, along with street sounds. San Francisco’s awake even if I’m not. Sirens blare over the muted roar of cars; Bob’s sorting cans in the alley between my house and the next. There’s music from downstairs because my neighbor likes to salsa while she housecleans. Later there will be the rumble of delivery trucks and the barking call of the food vendors who trundle their carts up and down 16th Street offering churros, corn on the cob and lime-and-chili-flavored slices of watermelon.
Not ready to move yet, I trace my ribs with my fingertips, stroking up over my breasts and then down. Max O’Reilly is funny and he goes for what he wants. Not in a greedy, I-have-to-have-it-all way. It’s more like he simply plans the shit out of his life and therefore gets more done than others.
Case in point? He has not one but two PhDs. Who needs more than one? Who has the time? He did his graduate work at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, where someone told him he could only enroll in one program because no one could possibly complete the dual coursework, let alone write two dissertations. Max’s reaction was pretty much watch me. He lived on Red Bull. Lola says he never slept more than two hours in a row, so he didn’t bother renting an apartment—he just moved from lab to library and back. Now he has PhDs in computer science and philosophy.
Three o’clock seems far away. To kill time, I force myself to get up. Max loves my “bendiness.” I suspect he’s had the usual fantasies about dating a gymnast but has decided that a ballet dancer works, too. He’s right. As he’s seen for himself, I can indeed put my leg behind my head.
I work through my usual morning barre routine on the tiny scrap of balcony in front of my studio. Since my apartment sits on a bit of a hill, I have a view of the opposite hillside and acres of pastel-colored houses and roofs. The BART train snakes through it all—and since I overslept this morning, the fog has mostly burned off already.
As I launch into a series of pliés and tendus, Lieutenant Bob waves up at me, off to do whatever it is he does when he’s not sleeping in my driveway. Driveways are small and steep in this part of San Francisco. We curse the rare days when it rains because the water rolls down the eight feet or so of asphalt to decorate the garage floor. Bob doesn’t seem to mind the slant, though, and since none of us has a car, everyone in the house has decided not to mind Bob.
He and Max seemed to hit
it off. There’s lots of lip service about the homeless in San Francisco, but few people go hands on. It’s too easy sometimes to just think of Lieutenant Bob as part of the landscape rather than as a person. Not that I’m shooting for saintliness or anything remotely like it.
But Max took the time to chat with Bob, and I like that. Sure, Max is still the elusive, sometimes cranky, often filthy billionaire who likely has a higher IQ than all of NASA combined. He prefers watching, but he also likes to fix things and I suspect that he’s slowly coming around to the idea that he and I are not a one-time thing. Not that we’re a real couple, but I almost thought, given enough time and dirty texting, that we could be friends.
I bring up the last picture I took last night. In it, Max is leaning against the edge of our box, his hands in his pant pockets. He looks like a Silicon Valley James Bond in his expensive tux, rich, powerful, but still rough around the edges because he doesn’t play by other people’s rules. I’d been trying to play it cool, but it had been tough. Billionaires aren’t part of my daily life, and just scoring the invitation to the charity performance had been huge. How I ended up, even temporarily, with a guy like Max is one of life’s fabulous mysteries. I’m not sure he even realizes just how much of a unicorn he is. He knows he’s good at his job and he has a pretty good idea of what he can do with that magic penis of his, but people look up to him for other reasons, too.
I want to reach right through the picture and lick him. He makes me laugh, he makes me come, he makes me feel as if when he looks at me, he sees me. I’m struck by that the most. I’ve spent all of my adult life dancing on stage, so I’m used to people watching me, but they saw only the character I was dancing. Between the costumes and the makeup, the sets and the lights, there was no way they saw me.
I think Max does.
Or at least as much as I’ve been willing to show him.
My finger hovers over the picture. I should post it to Instagram. My followers like frequent peeks at my personal life, and I follow the general rule of thumb of posting three parts promo to seven parts content. I show them what I eat, what I wear and how a ballerina works out. I let them follow me backstage, onstage—pretty much everywhere. That’s life in the influencer fishbowl and I have no reason to think Max isn’t aware of what I do. It’s no secret.
And yet I sort of don’t want to share him with my world. Max is mine. I scroll through the photo album on my phone. I don’t have many pictures of him, but Max isn’t the kind of guy to strike a pose. His poise on the red carpet last night surprised me.
He gave me a present—for no reason—and while I’ve never been a jewelry girl, I love my new bracelet. I feel my heart pick up its pace a little remembering the brush of his fingers against my wrist, his thumb tracing the pale blue veins beneath the fragile skin as he worked to do up the clasp. The car charm is to remember the opera, he’d said.
As if I could forget.
I’m humming a made-up tune patched together from my favorite ballets when I head into the steamy bathroom for a shower. It’s silly, but I take a picture. Of me in my towel.
And I send it.
To Max.
I’m not completely naked because I’ve learned that lesson and I really don’t know Max. Even if I am having fun getting to know him. I text.
See you at 3
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max
I SPOT MAPLE before she sees me. She’s focused on her phone, following the map pin I texted her. Golden Gate Park covers more than a thousand acres. In addition to a network of roads and trails, there’s a carousel, an aquarium, a museum and multiple flower gardens—all teeming with San Franciscans determined to enjoy a Saturday outdoors. She’d never find me without a specific point to meet.
The July weather is a sticky, humid weight against my skin, but Maple makes everything better. Her yellow sundress with the white polka dots is like a walking, bouncing ray of sunshine, although she’s caved to the practicalities of a park meetup and chosen practical white canvas sneakers. An enormous straw tote bag bangs against her hip as she walks and she’s pulled her hair back in a high ponytail that swishes from one shoulder to the next.
She has the exotic walk of a dancer, legs turned out ever so slightly. I almost forget to breathe watching her. She’s strong, the skin exposed by her dress sun-kissed and lean. Dancing burns a ton of calories, plus the girls are encouraged to keep themselves skinny because their partners have to hoist them overhead. That’s one thing Maple said she didn’t miss about the ballet world, the constant focus on how much a dancer weighs. I don’t get it because she looks amazing and I think everyone should eat, but she just said that I’d never had to leap in circles while holding another dancer over my head and that I’d feel differently about those five pounds if I did.
She looks up from her phone and spots me, her face breaking into a smile. She looks so happy that I pull out my phone so I can relive the moment later. And when she swats my phone away, I pull her into me for a slow kiss. We have hours. I don’t have to rush.
“Have you done this before?” I ask when we come up for air. Her pretty mouth is pink and swollen, her lips parted and damp. I’ve left my mark on her.
And then I realize that I’ve been so busy staring at the visible signs of our kiss that I’ve entirely missed her answer. I lean down and brush a kiss over her cheekbone. She has a freckle there, half-hidden by her hair. “Tell me again?”
She pinches my ass. “I’m a park virgin.”
I know she hasn’t had as much sex as I have, but even if it makes me a caveman, I like the idea of being her first. And best. I table that thought for later. Right now I have a fantasy to deliver.
“Would you rather have a bed?” She shouldn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. Or, rather, she should do as much as she wants. It’s like the eating thing. She’s never going hungry again on my watch.
She pinches my ass again. “You promised me a fantasy.” Apparently she’s determined to drive me crazy, because she leans up on tiptoe, her mouth brushing my neck. “I’m not wearing any panties. I figured that would make things easier.”
Well, fuck. I grab her hand and pull her across the grass and toward a clump of Monterey pines on the far side of a duck-filled pond. There’s tons of cover here, including a faux Greek ruin, a genuine folly like the kind you find in a Jane Austen novel. Cover seems important because while lots of people have sex in Golden Gate Park on a regular basis, I don’t think Maple truly wants to get caught. The possibility might be exciting, but getting busted by a cop and then dealing with a ticket or worse? Not so fun. Ask me how I know.
Or don’t.
That’s okay. I don’t want to think about anyone other than Maple today. When I unfold my brand-new picnic blanket, Maple’s watching me, her cheeks pink, her smile growing. I can almost see the happy, dirty, playful thoughts tumbling through her head. She’s so gorgeous, I think, and wonder why we’re out here, about to have an afternoon quickie instead of taking our time in my bed or hers. I could strip her down if we were alone. I could make her scream. I could break through that ever-so-slight reserve that whispers to me that she’s still on guard and that she still doesn’t trust me, not one hundred percent.
Her smile gets broader when she pushes me onto my back. It’s a game, obviously, because I’m a big guy and she can’t force me, but I take her love tap and flop down obediently.
“Taking charge, are we?” I give her a mock-stern look and open my arms wide. “So come and take me.”
She drops down onto me gracefully. I wonder if she was ever awkward when it comes to moving and knowing how to propel her body from one point to another. Is it something they teach in ballet schools or was she born that way?
Laughing, she leans down, planting her hands on either side of my head. We did it like this at my house, my brain reminds me. I should make this different. Make it better.
“You’re the expert,” she whispers. “Now show me what you like to do outside.”
We kiss for a long while, my hand sliding up underneath her dress. She wasn’t lying—she’s not wearing panties. I’m content not to rush at first, stroking the soft curves and then delving deeper. She’s just starting to make those happy moans I love so much when there’s a suspicious rustling in the bushes. Maple jumps to her feet, her hands abandoning the buttons of my jeans. A black Lab bursts through the shrubs. A guy calls in the not-so-distant distance and the dog abandons us.
When she laughs, I stand up, lifting her into my arms so that her bare legs are wrapped around my waist. We kiss like that, swaying together to some music she can hear and that she’s making me feel. I’m not really into dancing, but this is good.
Except then the homeless guy wanders through. He’s not quite all on planet Earth—based on his one-sided conversation with invisible alien overlords—but he notices enough to give me a thumbs-up.
Maple buries her face in my throat, shaking with silent laughter. “I can’t. We’re going to end up on America’s Funniest Home Sex Videos.”
It’s funny and awkward and strangely hot. I’ve never laughed with any of my hookups before. Or with a lover. Maple is dying as she points out a very suspicious pile of trash in the bushes. I don’t think our hookup spot is as exclusive as I’d thought.
But the day’s fucking gorgeous and the sun’s warm. It would be a shame to waste it. I can smell roses somewhere, and the ocean. There are palm trees not too far away, and some tall, pink and white spikey plants that I’ll google later because they’ll have a name. The dog reappears.
“Plan B,” I tell her, dropping us down onto the picnic blanket.
As my fingers fly over my phone, she leans back, one arm braced around my neck, the other arched over her head as if she was trying to hold a balloon. Sunlight dances over her face.
