Chapter 13 Adult Female and Male Reproductive Systems
ADULT FEMALE AND MALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS
*Samantha*
We left the wine bar and walked through the lightly falling snow, neither of us in a hurry.
The air felt more like powdered sugar than ice; it didn’t bite so much as dust and then vanish.
The only sound was the click of my boots on the concrete and Andreas’s steady, careful pace beside me.
I wore his left glove, which swallowed my hand, and he gripped my right hand in his bare left, tucking it deep into the pocket of his coat.
It was possibly the most effective means of preventing frostbite ever invented, and it was also unfairly cute.
Most of the world had clocked out for the evening. Rows of apartments stretched above us, with windows like little yellow beehives, people moving and living inside each frame. For blocks, it was just us and the odd taxi, the hum of the city distant and muted by the snow.
We didn’t talk. I kept waiting for Andreas to say something, but his eyes were on the street, like he was trying to memorize the shapes of the shadows or the traffic cones, or maybe he was playing some internal game of urban chess, seeing moves no one else could.
He only broke the silence when we turned onto his block, pausing to scan the avenue up and down.
“Is it too early to put up Christmas decorations?” he asked with a seriousness that made me look twice.
I followed his line of sight to the lampposts, which were now draped in silver garlands and had huge, cartoonish snowflakes affixed at the tops. Every other building had pine wreaths or string lights over the awnings. Now that I took a moment to notice, it struck me as magical.
“It’s the first Friday in December,” I pointed out. “Christmas is less than twenty days away.”
He nodded, absorbing this information with an almost anthropological interest. “What do you want to do for Christmas?”
It wasn’t the kind of question I’d expected. “Do you not have any family you want to spend it with?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I studied his profile. No lie detected. “Not even on your mom’s side?”
Andreas considered this for a moment, then shook his head again. “No.”
We crossed the street in tandem. I tried to remember if I’d ever actually spent Christmas with anyone in my adult life, or if it was always a hodgepodge of roommate dinner parties and Skype calls with Kaitlyn.
“I go to mass on my own,” I said. “And then, not much. If any of my roommates are around, we’ll have dinner together.
Kaitlyn is usually in California with her parents. ”
“What do you think about getting a tree for the apartment?” He made the words sound like he was proposing a research collaboration.
The last time I’d had a Christmas tree was when Kaitlyn and I lived together in our first off-campus apartment.
I’d made gingerbread cookies and burned half of them, and Kaitlyn had decorated the tree entirely in purple tinsel, mostly because she’d gotten it for free.
We’d even tried to make eggnog from scratch.
I’d forgotten how much I missed that, the precious little rituals.
I squeezed Andreas’s hand inside his pocket. “Sure. Yeah. Let’s get a tree.”
His smile was small but instantaneous. But then he tore his eyes from mine and wiped all expression from his features while clearing his throat, eventually saying, “Then we will.”
We arrived at the glass-and-steel awning of his building. Mr. Costa, the doorman on duty, held the door and smiled as we passed.
“Samantha. Hello,” he greeted me warmly.
I returned his smile. “Mr. Costa. I hope you’re staying warm.”
Shifting his attention to Andreas, he offered a more formal sounding, “It is good to have you back, Mr. Kristiansen.”
Andreas gave the man a small nod and responded with a simple, “Thank you.”
We walked through the marble lobby and waited for the elevator, Andreas still holding my hand in his pocket as he glanced over his shoulder toward the front of the building. “Do you know the doorman?” he asked me.
My cheeks were warm, and it wasn’t just the change in temperature.
“Yes. Well, sort of. I introduced myself to all of them over the last two weeks and brought whoever was on duty hot tea and cookies in the morning when I left.” Lifting my chin toward the building’s entrance, I explained, “That’s Mr. Costa.
His wife works at the United Nations and he’s a sixth-generation New Yorker.
He gave me some good tips on the best Puerto Rican bakeries near our—I mean, your apartment. ”
Andreas nodded lightly, as though absorbing this information and deconstructing it into pieces. His gaze grew unfocused as he did so and he repositioned our hands in his pocket, fitting our fingers together more tightly.
When the elevator arrived, we stepped inside. Still, he kept my hand, holding it in his, our threaded fingers tucked in the pocket of his coat like we were smuggling contraband affection.
“Will you help me decorate the tree?” Andreas pressed the button for our floor.
“Yes.” I smiled despite myself, and my reflection in the elevator’s mirrored wall looked almost deranged with how wide the smile was. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so thoroughly flustered by someone simply standing close to me.
“Do you get any time off around Christmas?” he asked, tone conversational.
“Yes. The week between Christmas and New Year’s.”
“I have a tournament right after Christmas.” Voice neutral, he glanced at me, then away. “In Rome.”
There was a catch in my chest. I tried to ignore it, but it was there. A twinge of discomfort. “Oh?”
He didn’t say anything more. But he did remove our joined hands from his pocket and look at them, as if calculating the odds of something he didn’t want to say aloud.
The elevator deposited us at his floor, and as we exited. My palm had suddenly gone sweaty at the continued discomfort in my chest. I gently withdrew my hand, telling myself I’d done it so he could unlock the apartment. He did with his thumbprint, then gestured me in first, ever the gentleman.
Inside, the air was warm and smelled faintly of the cookies I’d made earlier in the day for the morning doorman, Mr. O’Brein. Andreas wordlessly helped me with my coat. Then I unzipped my boots, also without speaking. The mood between us suddenly felt introspective instead of comfortable.
“Thank you for letting me borrow your glove,” I said, trying to mimic his good manners. Pulling off the borrowed glove, I handed it over to him.
Eyes on the offering in my hand, he took it, holding both gloves in one hand. “You should come with me. To Rome.”
Looking up at him, I inspected his features. That mask he wore when we were alone together was now firmly back in place. Stoic and bored.
“For the tournament,” he went on as though to clarify.
“Since you have time off work, would it not look strange for you to stay here alone? We need to be careful and convince my brothers this is real between us. I do not think you want to open the door to suspicion. If you were my fiancée, you would travel with me.” He set his jaw, the line of his mouth slanted downward.
The change in his demeanor from friendly to standoffish knocked the wind out of me.
Not only that, but his reason for suggesting that I go to Rome with him—not because he wanted me there, but because we needed to keep up the charade—made my stomach turn cold.
I’d been feeling so light, so comfortable in my little holiday fantasy, and now the idea of being together with Andreas in Rome simply to perpetuate our fake engagement sent all those swirling hopes straight down the drain.
This is all fake. And everything tonight, all the touching and joking and closeness, has also been fake.
My throat felt tight and I didn’t trust myself to speak quite yet, so I made a short humming noise and stalled by lining my boots up neatly in the closet.
Needing space, I then walked to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and sipped it slowly.
I wasn’t drunk, but the leftover buzz from the wine made everything feel dreamlike, a little less real.
To put it bluntly, I didn’t trust myself not to say something I’d regret.
A moment later, I sensed Andreas enter the kitchen behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed him hovering at the entrance and leaning against the doorjamb.
He waited until I finished the glass, then said, “I am sorry.”
I twisted at the waist, inspecting him again. He still wore the same expression, eyes half-lidded, gaze unreadable.
I faced the sink again. “What are you sorry for?”
“I overstepped, asking you to come with me to Rome. Of course, you should spend your free time as you see fit.”
I laughed, a short, confused sound. I was too tired to keep up with him, his offers and apologies. So, I made another humming noise, hoping he would interpret my “Mmm” as he saw fit, and I rinsed out the water glass.
I didn’t know how to exist in this gray area between what was pretend and what was real. No matter how much of a crush I had on Andreas, the constant confusion wore on me. What was performance and what was genuine?
Some of it has to be genuine . . . right?
Muddled and too much in my own head, I walked past him into the living room, plopping down onto the couch. He followed but didn’t sit, instead standing at the edge of the rug, hands shoved in his pockets. I sensed his eyes on me, but this time I didn’t glance at him to confirm.
It was strange, this behavior from him. Andreas was the picture of confidence and charisma in public, a master of social and literal chess, every move and every word calculated yet perfect.
But in the privacy of his own apartment, when he had no audience, he withdrew into himself.
He was quiet, almost sullen. The difference gave me whiplash.
Eventually, he spoke. “What are you thinking?”