Chapter 17 #2
“You promise?” she asked, her tone far removed from the director I’d been working with for weeks now. She was soft and warm and vulnerable and I wanted very much to kiss her again.
“I promise,” I said. “Though I do need to tell you something.”
She smiled. “Yes?”
“No offense to your ex-wife, but this is a genuinely terrible futon.”
“Right?” She turned on her side to face me. “What if instead of sleeping on it tonight, I came home with you instead?”
I sat up quickly, my brain at war with the rest of my body over what it thought it had just heard. “Like … now? In your pajamas?”
“In whatever you want.” Her voice was low, smoky. “What if we made some terrible mutual decisions together, Gardner?”
I found myself nodding, found myself patiently waiting while Rebecca threw a few things into a duffel bag, found myself leading her to my car like this was a regular night and not—
I couldn’t even believe what this night might be.
We were quiet as I drove. I’d forgotten to put on music, so it was only the sound of the road.
Rebecca’s posture, out of the corner of my eye, was the same as it had been.
If she had misgivings, I couldn’t tell. If she wanted this, though, that I couldn’t tell either.
Me, though! I focused on driving, the grip of my hands on the steering wheel, the whir of the freeway below us, the clutch of my fingers on the gearshift, so that I didn’t dwell on the flutter of my heartbeat, the buzz in my limbs, the strained pull of my breath.
At home I parked in the garage and showed Rebecca in as the garage door descended behind us.
“Will Rosie be mad?” she asked.
“She’s staying at daycare because I had plans after rehearsal,” I said, walking down the hallway. “Wait, was this whole thing a ruse to see Rosie?”
“Obviously,” Rebecca said with a grin. “Though since I’m already here, you might as well show me to your bedroom.”
“What are we doing?” I whispered, and she shook her head.
“Honestly, Gardner, I have no idea.”
In my bedroom I pulled back my comforter and sheets as Rebecca unbuttoned her pajama top and stepped out of her pants, like two calm people instead of someone internally dialed up to eleven and whatever Rebecca was.
This was her idea, I reminded myself, as she casually lay back in my bed wearing only a pair of black lace underwear.
“Mmm, this is much nicer than the futon,” she said, as I climbed into bed next to her. “Though I may have played up the futon’s worst qualities to get what I wanted.”
I tried to keep up with whatever was unfolding here. “What?”
“Gardner.” She leaned even closer to me, my name soft in her mouth. “In case it’s not exceedingly obvious, I think you’re extraordinary.”
I shook my head, which made her laugh. The fevered frenzy of last night had left us for whatever this was, a slow drift in the same direction. We had time to think, and we were still moving forward.
Rebecca tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. “Why are you still dressed?”
“I’m out of practice,” I admitted, letting her pull off my top, undo my bra, unbutton my jeans.
There were so many people in my career who had to touch me on a regular basis, from stylists to costume departments to the special effects teams who made molds of my entire body.
None of that felt anything like Rebecca Frisch undressing me now.
“This is what you want?” she asked again, once I was naked except for my sensible black underwear and she was on top of me looking down as if I was the only thing left in the world.
“I’ve wanted this for weeks.” I shivered as her lips closed around one of my nipples. “I thought I was being embarrassingly obvious, honestly.”
“Only a little, and I found it very cute.” She kissed the space between my breasts. “God, you’re beautiful. I feel like I’m in the middle of a dream I’m about to wake up from.”
“Me too,” I admitted, gasping as her lips found me again, her fingertips insistent at my other breast. A slow ache pulsed between my legs, and just the thought of Rebecca satiating it had me biting back a soft moan.
“Do you still like it like you used to?” she asked, slipping her fingers through the sides of my underwear.
I nodded and lifted my hips so she could tug them off, let her roll under me, like muscle memory, like over a decade hadn’t passed since she’d slid her thigh between my legs so I could grind into her in a dizzyingly white hot fever.
It had been so long since anyone else had gotten me off though that I found myself at a precipice, right at the edge but with almost no memory of how to jump down while someone else watched.
I couldn’t believe we used to do this every night, that I’d let myself go without worrying about how wet I was, how long Rebecca had stuck it out in this position, how I’d look when I came—and, now, if my years alone had made it more unhinged than back when it was all new.
“Everything OK?” Rebecca asked, her face flushed, her breath coming fast, and I had to admit she didn’t seem like someone who’d grown weary of our activities.
“Sorry,” I said, sitting back from her. “This sounds so stupid but it’s like I can’t get there.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid. Do you want to take a break?” She pulled me closer for a kiss. “Or we could try something else.”
“I want to watch you come,” I said, my words surprising me as they left my lips.
Rebecca grinned. “Then you’d better get to work, Gardner.”
I slipped my hand into her black lace underwear, nearly cried aloud when I felt how wet she already was.
It was muscle memory again, how quickly I was on top of her, her knees over my shoulders, my fingertips stroking her until she murmured please and I pushed into her damp velvet heat.
I remembered how long I could make this part go on, make her whimper while I was deep inside her, holding off on pushing her over the edge even after she’d begged for it.
Tonight, though, I couldn’t wait. Tonight I thrust hard, once, twice, three times, and on the fourth she gasped, tightening around me, arching into me, crying out my name.
“Don’t stop,” she said, which was all I needed to hear, picking back up until she exploded again, a guttural sound that I felt all the way down to my core.
“What do you say?” she asked, once we’d both caught our breaths enough to speak again. “I’d love to return the favor, but no pressure.”
I watched her for a moment, her face sweaty and red, her breath still ragged. She’d come apart twice and there’d been nothing about it that hadn’t been beautiful. “We can give it another go, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Rebecca leaned over to kiss my knee, the curved slope above it, parted my legs to kiss the inside of each thigh. “Gardner, I don’t understand how you’re even here for me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Look at you,” she said in a reverent tone, her gaze drinking me in like a glass of dripping water in the desert. “You should be worshipped. And I don’t mean as the people’s choice.”
She kissed my stomach, kissed my breasts, covered my shoulders and my neck with kisses.
All the people who’d touched my body, all the people who’d issued professional directives about my body, all the people who’d opined publicly about my body, none of them had anything to do with Rebecca’s mouth and Rebecca’s eyes on me in this moment.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she said, her hands skimming over me as if every inch of me was worth exploring. “Someone should already be making you come every single night. Someone should have already built a shrine to you.”
“No,” I said, embarrassed. “Never mind, what am I saying? Build me a shrine, Rebecca.”
She grabbed my hips, clutched me hard before burying her face between my legs.
At first it was all her, her tongue and her lips and their slow steady rhythm, but something unwound within me and my hips rose up to meet her, desperately seeking out her mouth.
This time I felt it build, and I let it rise as Rebecca’s mouth and tongue coaxed me further and further down the path.
I chased it to the edge of the cliff and jumped.
Rebecca’s gaze flickered up to me and she murmured something like Come for me, Gardner before her mouth found me again, and the edges of the world blurred and then blew into gold glittery bits.
“Oh my god.” A heat flooded throughout my body that felt different, felt dangerous, felt powerful. It wasn’t just like before; it was brand-new. “That was—”
“Better than a shrine?” she asked with a grin, sitting up next to me. “I did what I could.”
“I was going to say it was worth the wait.” I didn’t know if I meant the time it took tonight or the dozen years since before because I felt too changed, too shimmering with newness, to make sense of much.
I got out of bed and leaned into my bathroom for my robe, wrapping it tight around me.
In the mirror my hair was wild, my green eyes flashed with an energy I wasn’t used to, and my lips throbbed red, swollen, a clear look of satiation.
“Come back to bed,” Rebecca said when I stepped back into the room, but I shook my head and headed to the door.
“Trust me?” I asked, and she nodded, so I walked down the hall to the kitchen.
By the time I got back, Rebecca had pulled on my shirt, and I felt a little weak seeing her in it. Her eyes lit up when she realized I was carrying two dishes of butterscotch pudding. “Oh my god, Gardner.”
“I remember it hitting the spot,” I said, sitting down next to her, and we were quiet for a while besides the sound of our spoons scraping the edges of the glass bowls.
“This is better than I remember it,” Rebecca said.
“No offense to Nancy,” I said, “but I didn’t use a mix.”
She grinned at me, started to say something, and stopped.
“Sorry if earlier was—” This time it was me stopping myself. “It was so much more awkward than before.”
Rebecca raised her eyebrow. “Hang on, don’t judge me.” She held up her dish and licked a streak straight down the middle of it. “Damn. Did you really think tonight was more awkward than having sex in a twin bed that creaked, a room over from—what were their names? Kiki and the other one? Margo?”
“No one was named Kiki,” I said with a laugh. “You’re nice, you know.”
Rebecca smiled. “You’re nice, too. I never would have—sleeping with a cast member is something I would never do normally. Nothing about you is normally, though.”
I got up to carry our dishes to the dishwasher instead of reacting to that, blurting something out that was bigger than I wanted to say to her. And anyway, what was I doing? Another limited run of Rebecca, another affair that was bound to mess us both up and leave us heartbroken later?
“You look serious,” she said when I returned to the room. “Everything OK?”
I nodded because the problem was that it was hard to look at her and not feel that it was.
“Come here,” she said, as I turned out the light and dropped my robe on the floor before getting into bed next to her. Rebecca wrapped her arms around me from behind. “Let’s get some sleep. Is this all right or do you still have to be the big spoon?”
“No, this feels great,” I said, leaning back into her. “I can’t believe how sweet you are to me.”
She brushed my hair aside and kissed the nape of my neck, her lips soft on my skin. “I don’t think you understand how easy you make it, Gardner.”
If you were deeply closeted and tried to pretend for years that maybe you weren’t and you’d get past it someday but eventually you gave in and finally had gay sex again, the worst possible way to wake up the morning after was to a literal alarm.
I jolted up with a panic in an empty bed, and if I weren’t still naked I might worry I’d dreamt the whole thing.
“I’m so sorry.” Rebecca, dressed in a blazer, striped tee, jeans, and loafers, stepped into my doorway. “I thought I could let myself out and—please tell me I didn’t somehow summon the police.”
I leaned over to pull my robe off the floor and wound it around myself as I rushed down to the alarm display in the hallway. The flashing lights and blaring alarm stopped the moment I punched in the code, and Rebecca exhaled loudly behind me.
“You’re good to go,” I said, knowing how I deserved this and hating it anyway.
“This looks bad,” she said. “But we obviously can’t arrive to rehearsal together. And I need to grab some things from the loft and—”
“It’s fine,” I said, breathing through it to hide the emotion threatening to break through my tone. Acting school came in handy all of the time. “Last night we agreed we were making a terrible decision. I shouldn’t be surprised that you—”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, stepping closer to me, resting her hand at my waist. “You looked so peaceful. I was going to text you from the Lyft, thank you for dessert. Find out when I could make some more bad choices with you.”
“You promise?” I asked, and held my hands out. “Sorry, promise is intense.”
“No, I do promise,” she said, her tone gentle, leaning over to kiss me. “I’m sorry about the alarm.”
“The code’s 1023,” I said, returning the kiss. “For next time.”
She slipped her hand into my robe and squeezed my breast, and I gasped and then laughed at my reaction.
“Sorry, you’re very distracting in that,” she said. “Got it, 1023. Is that your birthday? Is it strange I don’t know when your birthday is?”
“It’s Rosie’s,” I said. “Or the rescue group’s best estimate at least. Now you know my dog’s birthday and not mine.”
“I’ll check IMDb later,” she said.
“You may notice some years shaved off,” I said with a shrug, and she laughed. “Not my idea. The day is real, though.”
“OK,” she said, leaning in to kiss me again. “Can you believe this is not the most awkward way I’ve left a woman’s house the morning after we slept together? Please don’t wear this robe to rehearsal today, by the way, I won’t make it.”
I walked her to the side door. “All right, but I’m going to feel awkward nude.”
She leaned in again, kissed me sweetly, kissed me like I’d never broken her heart.
I watched her walk past the gate and to the curb where her Lyft was waiting.
For a second I pretended this was a regular day for us, that she’d be home later and we’d talk about our days while I made dinner and she played with Rosie, and we’d fall asleep together the exact same way, her arm slung around my waist like nothing could harm me as long as she was there.