Chapter 17
Jane
“S o, you did it?” Claudia asks. “Was it satisfactory?”
I blush. “More the satisfactory. Better than it’s ever been for me before, to be honest.”
I haven’t slept in my bed for the past two nights, but I’m using it for a video call with Claudia while Evan is on his usual walk. Then I’ll go downstairs and cook dinner.
“Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the details,” I say. “Actually, if you want me to stop talking about this completely…”
“No, no, it’s okay. I get that it’s the biggest thing happening in your life right now, and I want to know. It’s not like you’re trying to convince me that I should get married and have sex, and that if I find the right person, ‘everything will change.’”
“Oh God, no.”
“I know, so it’s all good.”
People have wanted to change me, too. The friend who made me feel like a bad feminist, for example. I rarely spoke about the fact that I hadn’t had sex in years, but I know some people would have felt it was a problem that needed to be fixed ASAP.
Evan was actually the first person who suggested I could be on the ace spectrum. I’d thought it didn’t apply to me because I do have a libido, and I had—twice, at that point—been sexually attracted to someone, but he suggested I do more research.
He wasn’t wrong.
“My mother texted me earlier,” Claudia says. “Her friend’s daughter found someone on a dating app, and they’re getting married. She wants me to try using the app. Actually, she’s already made me a profile.”
“Noooo,” I say.
“I keep explaining that I’m aroace and while it’s not the same for everyone, I’m uninterested in dating and marriage. But she refuses to accept it.”
The first time Claudia complained about her mother to me, she immediately felt guilty, knowing mine is gone, but I insisted it was fine. If hers was trying to get her to do something that she’d asserted—over and over again—she didn’t want, she was free to complain.
They don’t have a close relationship. Sometimes they go months without talking, like me and my father. But my father never tries to interfere in my life.
I’ve also never told him that I’m demisexual. I suspect he’d wonder why I was telling him, then frown and say, “Isn’t that normal? At least for a woman?”
I talk to Claudia for a little longer, and then I find myself looking at my wedding pictures. It’s the first time I’ve done it since Evan and I slept together. When I get to the picture of us kissing, I stare at it for a long time, and I imagine telling my former self about what would end up happening. A burst of laughter escapes my lips.
Come to think of it, I’ve been laughing more these days.
“This weekend,” Evan says as we eat dinner, “Isobel and Daisy invited us over. Do you want to come, or would you prefer I go without you?”
“I’ll go with you.”
He smiles at me, and for some reason, I find it devastating. And when he touches my leg under the table…
How do I tell him that I’m interested in having sex tonight, if he is? I could, of course, straddle him while we’re watching TV again, but I’d prefer not to do that every time.
I’m not very experienced at this sort of thing.
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
Sometimes, I wish he wasn’t so aware of every little change in my body language—he’s become even more attuned to me lately.
But I sort of love that about him, too.
Not that I love love him, in the way many people love their spouses, but I’m extremely fond of him.
“Do you want to have sex after we clean up?” I say in a rush. It feels neither romantic nor sexy, but it gets the point across.
In response, he smiles again, and my skin prickles as he slides his hand even farther up my leg.
After cutting the grass on Saturday afternoon, I take a shower and put on proper clothes for our dinner with Isobel and Daisy. Nothing too fancy: jeans and a black blouse that just came out of the wash.
“You look nice.” Evan kisses me on the cheek as we put on our shoes by the front door.
I do feel pretty, but as he drives us toward his cousin’s, I feel a strange itch on my shoulder. Hmm. Maybe it’s because I’m in close proximity to Evan—this is the first time we’ve been in the car together since we started having sex. And since I started feeling attracted to him, which was less than a week ago.
Yeah, it probably has something to do with sexual attraction, and I’m just not used to it.
We arrive at the apartment building, which is in the north part of Toronto, and park in visitor parking. We’re buzzed in and proceed to the fifth floor. I’ve got a bottle of wine in my left hand.
Isobel opens the door, and Nolan is right behind her.
“Uncle Evan!” Nolan flings himself at Evan’s leg. “Do you want to see my new car?”
“Your new car?” Evan says. “I didn’t know you were old enough to drive.”
Nolan giggles. With a hand that looks a bit sticky, he grabs Evan’s wrist.
“Do you remember who this is?” Isobel asks Nolan before he can scamper off. She gestures toward me.
I stand there awkwardly as Nolan looks me up and down. Under his scrutiny, I feel that itch under my shirt again.
He shakes his head. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jane.” After handing the wine bottle to Isobel—who murmurs her thanks—I bend down, both to get closer to Nolan’s height and to take off my shoes.
“Remember we went to a wedding earlier this summer?” Isobel says. “That was Uncle Evan and Auntie Jane’s wedding.”
Nolan twists his lips. “I remember,” he says to me. “But you looked different then.”
“Yes, I was wearing a white dress.”
“Like a princess.” He pauses and tilts his head. “You don’t look like a princess now.”
I shouldn’t be insulted that a four-year-old is telling me I don’t look like a princess, yet I feel a smidgen of irrational disappointment.
“I think she looks very pretty,” Evan says as I stand up. He puts a hand on my lower back, which, weirdly enough, has started to itch.
“She is pretty.” Nolan nods solemnly. “But she doesn’t look like a princess.”
“What do I look like?” I ask. “A stegosaurus?”
I hope I’m doing okay at this. I haven’t spent much time around children. Even when my half-siblings were this age—and that was over a decade ago—I didn’t see them often. Yet despite my lack of experience, I want to have kids of my own.
“No!” He laughs. “Stegosauruses don’t wear jeans.”
Well, then. That sounds pretty definitive.
Nolan proudly shows us his Hot Wheels and spends ten minutes lining up the cars while making loud zoom noises. When he and Evan are busy adjusting the track, I itch my back before taking a sip of wine and helping myself to some baby carrots.
Isobel’s wife, Daisy, announces that dinner is ready a few minutes later, and we crowd around the table and eat spaghetti and meatballs and the most delicious garlic bread I’ve ever had. When I ask Daisy for the recipe, I feel extremely domestic. But my skin is still itchy, and even homemade pie isn’t enough to make me forget about it.
Once dinner is finished, Nolan wants to play at the park. After making sure he’s gone to the washroom so he—hopefully—doesn’t have to go while he’s out, Isobel asks if Evan and I would mind taking him by ourselves. Evan looks at me, and when I don’t have any objections, he nods.
Nolan assures us that he knows the way and we “don’t have to look at our phones” to get there. As we take the elevator, I think about how different the world is from the one I grew up in, how different our children’s childhood would be from our own.
When we have to cross the “big street,” Nolan reaches for Evan’s hand without being asked, and for some reason, that makes my eyes water. If I saw a random person holding a kid’s hand, it wouldn’t affect me, but the fact that it’s Evan—and a child whom I’ll watch grow up, presuming I don’t fuck up this marriage…
“Look at me, Auntie Jane!” Nolan calls, rushing up a slide. A smaller child watches avidly, perhaps trying to figure out whether she, too, can use slides in that way.
But it’s those words, so easily spoken, that stop me in my tracks. Sure, his mother introduced me as that, but now he’s calling me “auntie” without any prompting.
“Oh wow!” I say, unable to come up with any more words.
Evan also looks toward me, and something catches in my throat. How did I not realize before that he’s incredibly good-looking? I know this is how things work for me, but it seems impossible now, given how much I’m affected by him. There’s something about him that just makes me…itch.
At the top of the slide, Nolan turns around. He’s about to slide back down when the smaller child puts her foot onto the slide and tries to climb. An adult whisks her away just as Nolan releases his grasp on the edge of the slide.
“Did you see me?” He runs up to me.
“I did. Is that one of yours?” I point to a toy car on the ground near the slide.
“Benny!” he cries, running toward it. He grabs the car and runs back to me.
“How many other cars do you have in your pockets?” I ask.
He holds out two.
“Do you want me to keep them safe while you play?”
He nods vigorously, hands them over, and goes back to the playground, this time deciding to tackle the swings while I sit on the bench. He can get himself moving a little, but not too well, and he asks Evan to give him pushes so he can go higher.
It’s a nice way to spend an evening, something as simple as going to the playground. I have vague memories of going to the park with both of my parents, the memories pleasant but tinged with sadness because of everything that came afterward. I absently rub my hand over Benny’s wheels.
Hm. My lower back is getting itchy again. I set the cars in my lap and discreetly reach behind me to scratch my back, over top of my shirt.
There. That feels a bit better.
“Did a dog lick you?” Nolan asks.
Where did he come from? How is he suddenly in front of me?
So much for being discreet.
At my puzzled look, he says, “One time, a puppy licked me, and I got itchy. Mommy says I probably have an allergy.”
Everything suddenly slots into place. The weird things happening to my body? I’ve been blaming them all on the unfamiliar feeling of attraction, but this is definitely something else.
As Nolan begins talking to a boy about his age, Evan sits on the bench beside me. I try to ignore the warmth radiating from him.
“This is nice,” he says, echoing my earlier thoughts.
“Uh. Yeah. Evan?”
“Hm?”
We both have our gazes on Nolan, who is now racing the other kid.
“When you did the laundry,” I say, “what kind of detergent did you use?”
“They were out of the usual one at the grocery store, so I got what was on sale.”
I was right. This hasn’t happened in over a decade, which is why I didn’t immediately realize what was going on.
“I told you,” I say, “to always buy the same detergent. This one gives me contact dermatitis.” To emphasize this, I scratch myself again, but then I stiffen.
Are we going to have a fight in the middle of a public park?
Maybe I should have kept the annoyance out of my voice, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I told him what to do, and he didn’t listen…or ask if it was okay to buy something else.
My shoulders are hunched up near my shoulders as I watch Nolan on the playground. Maybe being with someone is too complicated. Being alone is simpler. And if we have kids, there will be even more conflict…
“Hey.” Evan puts a hand on my knee. “I’m really sorry. This is my fault. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll buy the right one, no matter how many stores I have to go to, and rewash all your clothes. Actually, maybe I should wash the machine first to make sure there’s no residue—does vinegar help? I’ll look it up.”
I just stare at him.
Why didn’t I expect him to be understanding? Because I’ve seen Suzanne and my father have long arguments over the stupidest shit? They don’t argue a lot, but when they do, it’s bad.
And my last relationship was so long ago, and we never lived together…and it’s easy to imagine that my ex would have refused to believe I could be so sensitive to detergent, at least by the end.
But this is Evan. Of course he would trust me to know what’s happening to my body, and he’s able to admit he screwed up.
“Hey,” he says again. “I know you’re spiraling—I do that too sometimes, like when the air conditioning stopped working. I don’t know why it’s happening to you now, but I’m so sorry. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me that you had a really good reason for always using the same detergent—”
“I should have told you the reason.”
“No, no. You said to always get the same one, and I was thoughtless. I swear I’ll fix it as soon as I can. Do you want to go home now?”
I squeeze the toy cars in my lap. “Not right away, but I don’t want to stay late.” I scratch my waist, and Evan looks pained for a moment, like my distress hurts him.
But he papers that over a moment later, as if afraid I’ll try to assure him that I’m okay, and he doesn’t want me to try to soothe him.
God, relationships are complicated.
“At first,” I say, “I thought the itching was, like, a strange expression of physical attraction. Since, you know, I’m not used to experiencing attraction.”
He looks like he’s trying to hold back laughter, but when I chuckle, he chuckles, too.
Marriage isn’t quite what I thought it would be.
“Where’s Benny?” Nolan is right in front of me again, and I’m disoriented for a moment, but I manage to hold up the correct car.
“Are you ready to go home?” Evan asks.
“No!”
“Five more minutes, okay?”
“Okay, but Auntie Jane has to come with me.” He grabs my hand and takes me toward the swings. He rarely seems to walk anywhere; he’s always running. “Sit down,” he commands, pointing to a swing.
I sit. He tries to push me, but I don’t move much. When he pushes me again, giggling, I make myself swing, just a little.
“Here, let me help you,” Evan says.
He moves behind me, and now there are two pairs of hands on my back, one much larger than the other. Evan’s hands are higher, and they push me gently but firmly, and I don’t have to make myself swing this time. Nolan’s giggles ease something jagged inside me.
“Okay,” Evan says at last. “It’s been five minutes—”
“How do you know?” Nolan asks. “You didn’t look at your phone.”
Eventually, Evan manages to coax Nolan away from the playground, and we head back to the apartment building. There’s a bit of a slowdown when Nolan wants to eat some so-called blueberries off a bush—they’re definitely not blueberries—but we get there eventually.
As dusk starts to settle, Evan drives us home. I’d planned to drive back, but he said I should have my hands free to scratch myself. How sexy.
At home, I remove the offending articles of clothing, take an antihistamine, have a shower, and put on some clothes that I know weren’t washed in the last load. I give my shirt a sniff. The difference in scent is very faint, which must be why I didn’t notice earlier.
When Evan walks around his bedroom while brushing his teeth, I’m already in his bed, and he looks a little surprised to see me here.
“Do you want me to sleep in my room today?” I feel a flicker of disappointment, but he’s free to have his bed to himself if he wants.
“No, I’m glad you’re here. I just thought you might not want…”
“Of course I want.”
He smiles at me as well as he can with a toothbrush in his mouth, then returns to the bathroom, and I think back on what I said.
Of course.
But I only started sharing his bed less than a week ago. It was never the plan, yet now it seems only right.
When he climbs in next to me, I pull him close.
“Let’s go out tomorrow night,” I murmur.