Chapter Six #2
We downed our drinks and ordered a second round.
He’d been married before. He had a kid. I lied and said I’d recently gotten out of a long-term relationship.
I told the truth and said I didn’t want to talk about it.
He managed a local outfitters and was on the volunteer crew that rescued missing and stranded hikers.
He was passionate about climbing and downhill mountain biking.
He wasn’t a reader. I would never be able to keep up with or marry a guy like him.
He was perfect.
Everything was so much easier with a man who was genuinely into me and not just looking toward a goal, even though a goal, mutual and unspoken, was clearly on the table.
We ordered another round. We excused ourselves to go to the bathroom at the same time, which cracked us up again, and then we made out in the poorly lit hallway outside the restrooms. He was tall with long, strong limbs.
His five-o’clock shadow rubbed against my cheeks and chin.
I felt ravenous, and for the first time since this whole thing had begun, I didn’t overthink it.
We went to his place, which was my choice. I texted his address to Kat and Brittany as well as a photo that he happily posed for. I was self-conscious when he removed my clothes, but I gasped when he touched me. When he entered me. When I came.
I awoke around dawn to another new experience: somebody else’s home.
As the first light of day slipped in through the windows, Justin’s bedroom began to reveal itself.
A chair over there piled with clothing, a sconce with a swing arm beside my head, a dramatic black-and-white photograph of a cliff above a sturdy dresser that didn’t look like he’d had to assemble it himself.
It was reassuring that the room aligned with how I’d seen him the night before—as an adult responsible enough to own a house and keep his laundry clean but whose priorities did not involve putting the laundered clothes away.
I felt safe and happy. I sneaked out of bed to use his bathroom, which was unremarkable except for the fact that it was bigger than my own, and then gathered my things to leave.
He woke up as I was putting on my shoes.
“That was fun,” he said in a voice thick with slumber.
“It was,” I agreed. “Keep sleeping. I’ll see myself out. I’ve gotta get ready for work.”
“Have a nice day,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.
We didn’t discuss seeing each other again because we’d both gotten the experience we’d wanted.
As I crept toward his front door, I lingered to inspect each room that I passed: a bedroom with a BB-8 bedspread and shelves of completed Lego sets that must belong to his son, a living room with a banana tree and more black-and-white mountain photography, a kitchen with heavy oak cabinets that were more dated that the rest of the house, an entryway with a rack for climbing gear and a console table with a pile of mail.
Few things interested me more than the books a person owned, but I saw none apart from some chapter books in his son’s room and a few guidebooks in his living room.
A whole life, briefly visited and departed.
“Not only did I have sex,” I bragged to Kat over FaceTime in Justin’s driveway, “but I had a one-night stand.”
I floated through work that day. My pelvic floor felt pleasantly warm, like a good secret.
I was chatty and even a little flirty with the patrons, and the atmosphere inside the library lifted to meet my mood.
Macon was the only one who seemed suspicious.
That evening, as Gareth and I had our usual animated discussion about his rentals—Tarkovsky verdict: meditative and punishing—Macon vibrated beside me like a storm cloud ready to burst.
“You decided not to ask him out?” he asked the second Gareth left.
I was taken aback. This was the first time he’d addressed my situation directly.
“I’m not asking anybody out,” I said, cool and poised. As if that hadn’t been my plan all week.
Macon hmph ed but became a fraction less disagreeable. It was a confusing reaction from somebody who didn’t want to kiss me, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret it. At least what I’d said was true. I didn’t need to ask anybody out, because I finally felt fulfilled.
The hunger returned that night, more insatiable than ever. I dug out my vibrator and then ordered a new one. I scrolled through the app and rejected everybody. I regretted not asking out Gareth. I would ask the next time I saw him.
Justin messaged me through the app on Saturday. I gave him my actual number, we texted, and then my one-night stand became a two-night stand.
I packed my first overnight bag, which was just my regular tote with a few additional items tucked inside.
It didn’t include a number of the practical items I normally required, like pajamas or my night guard, but surely everybody’s overnight bags were a lie.
Maybe that was how people even knew when a relationship had advanced from a fling into something more: the night guards and orthopedic pillows and CPAP machines came out.
But Justin and I were not there, nor would we ever be there. That wasn’t the point of Justin.
I felt shy about disrobing in front of him again, but although this self-consciousness had yet to abate, the stimulating, shuddering, overwhelming sensations of something familiar yet completely brand-new hadn’t either.
I was a spring bud exploding into exquisite blossom.
These experiences were important to me personally, but they didn’t feel important to me specifically.
I understood that these early blooms wouldn’t—couldn’t—last the entire season.
Did the flowers outside sense the killing frost, too?
By design, they were temporary pleasures.
Ecstatic in one moment, withered the next.
Sue brought us all hot chocolate with pink marshmallows for Valentine’s Day.
She and Russell were going salsa dancing that night.
Alyssa said Tim had made reservations at the fancy steak restaurant inside the Tamsett Park Inn, and several of her storytime kids dropped by to give her cards and drawings.
And while Macon seemed like the type who would rail against ugly baby Cupids and the environmental impact of out-of-season roses, he didn’t join in when I griped.
He was content to let other people enjoy it. Macon was above Valentine’s Day.
Cory and I were in agreement that the holiday was stupid—yet another by-product of being undatable teenagers—but we always made cards for each other and baked a heart-shaped pizza for dinner.
Did he have plans that night, or would he also be eating a frozen pizza for one?
He’d probably go out with his coworkers.
Alyssa and Tim might even see them at a bar at the inn.
I didn’t like the idea of them seeing Cory flirting with other women.
It made me angry with Cory and angry with Phoebe (the coworker I suspected he was most likely to sleep with) and angry with Kayla (the coworker I suspected he was second most likely to sleep with) and angry with Tim for making the reservation in the first place.
Of course fucking Tim wanted a fucking steak.
Meanwhile I’d be stuck at home, forced to listen to the downstairs neighbors, well, fucking.
I didn’t expect to hear from Justin, but a text arrived in the late afternoon: This holiday sucks. Wanna come over?
I did.
A couple of days later was another Gareth night.
Upon his arrival, I grew hot and stumbled over my greeting.
I could feel Macon’s side-eye. Was I still going to ask out Gareth?
I tried to decide while he made his selections, but my mind was a buzzing void of unintelligibility, and soon he was back at my station.
No, I wasn’t ready. Or maybe I didn’t need to ask him out anymore, now that I was sleeping with Justin.
I wasn’t sure how I felt, so the risk didn’t seem worth it.
When he left, the tension left the building, too.
Macon settled back into an article he’d been reading about the United States shooting down four objects in eight days: a spy balloon from China and three UFOs.
The events were strange, but even stranger was seeing the word UFO in the headlines.
Even though it was only meant in its most literal sense—three of the objects had yet to be identified—a lot of people were suddenly interested in the aerial phenomena.
All of our books on the subject had been quietly checked out.
And I do mean quietly. They had arrived at our circulation desk sandwiched between other books on less stigmatized topics, barcodes arranged for quick scanning so that we wouldn’t notice or judge or ask questions.
We always noticed, but we never judged or asked questions. We were professionals, after all.
Experts were reporting that these new UFOs were most likely errant sky junk, possibly civilian, possibly military—balloons or drones or some other type of science or surveillance crafts. Non-human intelligence was low on the list of suspects.
“What do you think they are?” I asked.
“Hm?” Macon glanced over and saw that I was staring at his computer. I missed our conversations and sensed that he did, too. Work was dull without them.
“Probably something boring,” he said. “Not like they’d tell us the truth, anyway.
” Although he wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, he was deeply mistrustful of the government.
I didn’t trust it either—what American did these days?
—but he had mistrusted it for longer. Also, I didn’t dwell on my mistrust the way he did.