1. Kristie’s Party, 2006 #2
When Ren spoke again, his eyes were on the ceiling. “I’m not good at relationships. And you’re a relationships person. But I wanted to ask if you wanted to sleep with me. You were looking really sad tonight and that’s one thing I’m good at. But we shouldn’t do it if it will mess up our friendship.”
Sarah could barely contain a burst of delirious laughter. “So you saw that I was sad and are nobly offering to cheer me up by giving me a good lay?”
He chuckled and leaned closer, his voice just audible above that stupid, sexy song that Kristie was playing. “Okay, first of all, there’s nothing wrong with sex. It can be healing, especially after a break-up. That’s one thing I know for sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.”
He made a small sound, somewhere between amusement and frustration.
Then she felt him shifting slightly lower on the bed, getting closer as he stretched beside her.
She had always assumed that he got women into bed with a combination of witty flirtation and intense eye contact.
Now she wondered if he did it by squirming into their blankets like a puppy.
Even more frustrating was that the tactic was working.
Her heart was beating faster just being next to him; his body was warm through her thin sheets.
She liked him, and she had always been attracted to him, and he was right there.
She could pull him close and kiss him all night.
He had given her permission to do it, and he smelled nice.
He always smelled nice, like cloves and coffee and vanilla soap (mixed, admittedly, with hints of cigarettes and weed).
Her nerves were humming like a struck chord and her cheeks felt hot; her body had clearly made the decision of ‘all in favor’ when it came to Ren.
Her body had probably made that decision the first time she saw him in class, trying to reassemble a pen he had taken apart and getting a furious grimace on his face when the pieces wouldn’t fit.
She had been utterly lost for a while when it came to him.
“The thing is,” he added quietly, “I really like you. And I know you don’t want a relationship. But if we slept together, I mean as long as both people know it’s casual and are sober enough to consent…”
“I had two glasses of wine and you had at least three of Kristie’s martinis. Shouldn’t I be the one worried about your sobriety?”
He grinned as he shook his head. “That was liquid courage so I’d have the guts to do this. Doesn’t count.”
“But why? I mean, why do this?” His face was dangerously close, so she pushed a little farther up in her bed to put a safe distance between them.
“Because I’m attracted to you?” His pale eyes looked confused. “Because we get along? Even if you have total contempt for me?”
He was attracted to her? That was new. She stared at him in the half-light, her breathing shallow, then pushed up even further until she was fully sitting up.
“I mean, seriously, though, think about it, Ren,” she said. “You’ve slept with both my roommates and now me? Do you just need the trifecta?”
“Is that what you think of me?” He sounded a little wounded.
“That’s not what I think of you, Ren. It’s what you do! First Anya, then Kristie, Suki, Ellen, Yelena, Paulette—”
“Yelena and I never hooked up. I took her home from the bar one time when she was too drunk to get home safely.”
That was kind of him, but Sarah didn’t let it stop her. “My point is,” she said primly, “that I think this is an unhealthy habit for you.”
She watched his mouth slowly crook in amusement. “You think what…I’m a sex addict?”
“No.” She stared at the ceiling and searched for words.
“Okay, so you know how if you go to a party and you announce that you’re not drinking, most people will be cool with it, but there’s always that one person who keeps pushing you to drink, and insisting you have a drink?
And that’s always the person who has the alcohol problem? ”
His voice got quieter. “Yes?”
“Well, that’s you with women. You’re the person who can’t be friends with a woman without taking her to bed, because you’re the person with the intimacy problem.”
She could tell that her remark had landed from the long silence that followed. “Well, if I’m a sex addict, you’re a love addict.”
“Ha.”
“No, I’m serious. Look at you and Ivan.” He slid up fully to face her now. “He wasn’t nice to you. He didn’t even remember your birthday. He didn’t give you his coat that time it was snowing.”
She remembered the day Ren was referring to: a late October weekend when they had gone to the movies as a big group and Sarah had naively chosen to wear a t-shirt, expecting the weather to be the same after nightfall as it had been four hours earlier.
When they left the theater, the wind was up and it had started flurrying.
After half a block of walking, Ren stopped and peeled off his sweatshirt under a streetlight, handing it to her without a word; it smelled faintly of coffee and weed, and she washed it carefully before returning it to him the next day.
Ivan had seen the sweatshirt exchange from a few feet away and had been furious with Sarah for not ‘giving him a chance’ to offer her his jacket.
He had scolded her for not telling him she was cold and for not thinking about how it would make him feel to see her in Ren’s sweatshirt.
Ren, of all people. Ren, the man-whore. When they got home, Ivan and Sarah had one of their huge fights, the kind that ended with both of them in tears; it was the first time Ivan said he’d be suicidal if Sarah left him, and she had ended up apologizing for hours.
“I didn’t want Ivan to give me his coat!” Sarah insisted now. “I wanted him to have it because I loved him.”
“But that’s my point. You’re always giving more than people give you. That’s… This is the whole problem with women.”
Sarah’s jaw fell open. “Did you just announce a whole problem with women? Right after admitting that you’re incapable of relationships?”
He sighed, close enough to her shoulder that she could feel the warm puff of his breath.
“You know what you don’t understand about love?” Sarah went on. “It isn’t about who gives more or less. It doesn’t come with a calculator.”
“Well, it should.”
“Exactly. You think that way,” Sarah said fiercely. “You’re always focused on how many women you’ve slept with and how many orgasms everyone has had, but when you love someone—”
“I’ve given more orgasms than Ivan, I can tell you that much.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You know nothing about that relationship.” She could feel her face growing heated. Ivan wasn’t Mister Orgasm, but he had gotten it right more often than not. Forty percent of the time, anyway.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Then another thought occurred to her. “So wait. If I wanted a relationship, let’s say I wanted one with you, would that be something you were offering?”
There was a pause of several seconds before he looked away. “That’s not the reality we’re living in. Let’s get back to the topic at hand.”
By now, her emotions were tossing in an unpleasant swirl.
This was likely to be her last chance to kiss the most beautiful man she had ever met, and she couldn’t do it because they were friends, and because a small part of her was in love with him, and because a larger part was furious.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeding into this weird fetish where you have to hook up with every girl within a fifty-meter radius. ”
“I don’t see you like that,” he said. “You’re different.”
She snorted. “And I’m sure you’ve said that to all the other women.”
“No, I haven’t!”
“You’re like the boy who cried wolf, except instead of crying wolf, you’re saying, ‘You’re not like the other girls.’ But the only way I’m not like the other girls is that you haven’t slept with me yet.”
She heard the sharp intake of his breath as he pulled back to look at her.
“You’re important to me.” His words grew faster now, more insistent.
“Remember that night freshman year that I came to your birthday party? The only reason I hooked up with Anya instead of you was because we had that whole conversation about love. Remember? And you talked about how you were looking for something serious, and I wasn’t, so it wouldn’t have been fair to hook up with you.
But I’m not taking advantage of people.”
For a moment, Sarah believed him. She believed that he believed it, anyway.
She suddenly felt vulnerable, like she’d admitted too much.
She slid down again, deeper under the covers, twisting her face away from him.
“Well, don’t worry,” she said with more sarcasm than she felt.
“There is a whole party full of women out there, one of whom is sure to fall for your handsome, moody thing.”
“You think I’m handsome?” She could hear a smile in his voice, which angered her enough to shove at him with her feet, just enough to push him slowly towards the edge of her bed.
“Goodnight, Ren,” she said. “Go find someone else.”
After a moment, she felt him heave himself up and take a step away from her. Then he paused. She could hear him in the darkness, stopping to look at her one last time. “There is no one else I like this much.” The words gave her a strange sensation of vertigo, like she was getting everything wrong.
Then he turned and left, the music growing louder and quieter again as he shut her door.
Two days later, Ivan showed up on her doorstep begging for forgiveness, and Sarah reluctantly agreed to get back together with him.
The next time she saw Ren, he waved at her once from across the street and she waved back.
He had a strange expression on his face, almost like longing, and her heart did a flip at the sight of him, like she had lost something that she couldn’t put a name to.
She didn’t talk to Ren for another five years.