15 - Cuckqueaned by my Fabulous Friend from College #2
Raquelle nodded, but I could tell she didn’t quite buy it. She’d always been good at reading people. Back in college, she could tell when someone was lying about being fine before they’d even finished saying it.
We talked for another few minutes. She told me about a beach in the Algarve where she’d spent a week doing nothing but reading and swimming. I told her about the summer reading challenge and how one kid had read forty-seven books in two months. Normal conversation. Normal friends catching up.
But my brain kept sliding sideways. Every time she smiled, I saw her smiling at Ben. Every time she tucked her hair behind her ear, I imagined her doing it in a hotel mirror while he watched from the bed.
“He told me,” I blurted out. “About Paris.”
Raquelle’s hand paused halfway to her cup. She looked at me for a long moment then nodded slowly. “I wondered if he would.” She picked up her coffee, took a sip. “I wasn’t going to bring it up. That didn’t feel like my place.”
“How random was it?” I asked. “That you ran into each other?”
“Completely. I was there for a friend’s gallery opening. He was at some conference.” She shrugged. “Same hotel bar, same jet lag. We got to talking.”
“And then?”
Raquelle studied me over the rim of her cup. “And then we had a nice weekend. It was a long time ago, Nora.”
“I know.” I did know. That was the logical part. The illogical part was still running a loop of images I couldn’t turn off. “I’m not mad. I’m not—it’s not that.”
“Then, what is it?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “What was he like?”
“What do you mean?”
“With you.” The words came out before I could stop them. “What was he like with you?”
Raquelle set down her cup. Her expression shifted—still warm, but careful now. Assessing. “Why do you want to know that?”
I stared at my latte. A leaf pattern was dissolving slowly in the foam. “I can’t picture it,” I said. “Ben isn’t boring—I know he had other lovers before me. But a weekend in Paris with you? I can’t make it fit with the guy who makes me coffee and argues with Lily about waffles.”
“People contain multitudes,” Raquelle said. She was still watching me carefully.
“I know. I just—” I rubbed my face with both hands. “I keep trying to imagine it, and I can’t get there. And because I can’t get there, my brain keeps making up increasingly insane versions.”
“Insane how?”
“Fireworks over the Seine. Multiple orgasms on a balcony. You whispering French poetry while he—” I stopped. My face was burning. “Never mind.”
Raquelle laughed—not at me, but with a kind of surprised warmth. “I promise you, it was far more ordinary than whatever’s happening in your head. It was a nice weekend with some good sex. You’ve had those.”
“Have I?” The question came out more honest than I’d intended.
She tilted her head, considering me. “Okay. What do you actually want to know?”
I thought about it. Then I thought about how we used to talk in college—late nights in her room, dissecting every hookup, every almost-kiss, every charged moment with a boy or, in her case, sometimes a girl. How easy it had been to ask: What did he do? and What did you do back? and Was it good?
“Pretend it’s college,” I said. “Tell me about this … ‘Brian’”—I made air quotes, tried to smile—“that you hooked up with in Paris.”
Raquelle studied me for a long moment. I could see her weighing it—whether this was a good idea, whether I could handle it, whether she should be the one to give me what I was asking for. Then something in her face relaxed.
She leaned back in her chair. “Okay,” she said. “Brian.”
She took a sip of her coffee, settling into the memory.
“I noticed him at the hotel bar because he was trying to order in French. And I mean, trying. He had a phrasebook open on his phone, and he was squinting at it, and the bartender was being very patient in that way Parisians are when they’re actually being extremely impatient. ”
I snorted. That sounded like Ben.
“So, I helped him out. Ordered for both of us. He was embarrassed but charming about it—bought me a drink to say thanks. We got to talking.” She traced the rim of her cup with one finger.
“He was funny. Self-deprecating. Asked me a lot of questions about myself instead of just talking about his conference the whole time, which, trust me, is rare.”
“How long before you went upstairs?”
Raquelle smiled. “Two drinks. Maybe three. He asked if I wanted to see the view from his room. I said that was the oldest line in the book. He said he knew, but the view really was good.” She shrugged. “It was.”
I shifted in my seat. The coffee shop suddenly seemed warmer than it had a few minutes ago.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then …” Raquelle’s voice dropped, not quite a whisper but something more private. “He kissed me by the window. Didn’t rush it. Took his time. Some men just grab at you, you know? Brian wasn’t like that. He paid attention.”
I pressed my thighs together under the table.
“He undressed me slowly. Kept stopping to look at me, like he was memorizing it. The contrast—” She gestured at her own arm, her dark skin. “He seemed fascinated by it. Kept running his hands over me, watching his fingers against my skin.
“Some white men try to pretend sleeping with a Black woman is no big deal,” she continued.
“Like they’ve done it a hundred times, nothing to see here.
Others can’t stop talking about my skin, my curves, like I’m some exotic thing they’ve discovered.
” She shrugged. “Brian knew exactly what to do. He touched me like I was an amazing delight without making me feel like the ‘other.’ That’s rarer than you’d think. ”
My mouth had gone dry. I took a sip of my latte and almost missed my lips.
“He went down on me before anything else,” Raquelle continued, matter-of-fact. “For a long time. Until I came twice. And then”—she smiled—“he flipped me over like I weighed nothing and took me from behind. His hand on the back of my neck, holding me down. Not rough, but … certain.”
“Certain?”
“Like he knew exactly what he wanted and wasn’t shy about taking it.”
I was gripping my coffee cup hard enough that my knuckles had gone white. “Did you …? Did you speak French to him?”
Raquelle smiled. “Not in that position.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping. “But later, when he was on his back and I was riding him, I lowered my lips to his ear and whispered, Jouis pour moi, mon beau. Remplis-moi.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I said, “but it’s so sexy.”
“He must have thought so, too.” Raquelle sat back, grinning. “He exploded the second I said it.”
“You made him come with French?”
“I made him come with French.” She laughed. “We both laughed about it, actually. He almost apologized. But thirty minutes later, he made up for it.”
I was pressing my thighs together so hard my legs were starting to shake. My face was flushed. I knew she could see it. I didn’t care.
“Nora.” Raquelle’s voice was gentler now. “Tu as l’air chamboulée.” She tilted her head. “What do you actually want out of this? Your marriage seems good.”
I stared at my latte. The foam had completely dissolved into nothing.
“It’s not just about Ben,” I said. The words came out in a rush. “I kind of always had a … like a little crush on you. In college. In a girlie way. I’ve never done anything with a woman. And now that I know you both got to have each other, I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Raquelle was quiet for a moment. Then she reached across the table and touched my hand. “I promise you, whatever you’re imagining is far more grandiose than what actually happened. It was a nice weekend with some good sex. ”
“Yeah, but like I said—in my head, there are fireworks over the Seine, and you’re both having endless orgasms on a balcony.” I laughed, but it came out shaky. “If I could just see it, it wouldn’t be so bad. I’d probably calm down.”
Raquelle laughed. “Well, I’m game if he is.”
I stared at her.
Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry—that was a joke.”
“Would you be?”
***
The hotel bar was the kind of place where a single cocktail cost more than our usual dinner.
Low lighting, velvet chairs, a bartender who looked like he’d been trained in Paris.
Ben had raised an eyebrow when I’d suggested it for date night, but he hadn’t argued.
He never argued when I wanted to do something nicer than usual.
We’d just gotten our drinks—his old fashioned, my glass of wine—when I saw Raquelle walk in.
She was wearing a black dress that stopped just above her knees, simple but expensive-looking, and heels that made her legs go on forever.
The gold bangle was the same, catching the low light as she moved through the room like she belonged in places like this.
She slid onto the stool on Ben’s other side.
He turned, still mid-sentence about whether we should finally repaint the bathroom, and stopped. I watched his face cycle through surprise, confusion, and something else I couldn’t quite name.
“What’s going on here?” He looked between us. “Not that it isn’t nice to see … both of you?”
“For what it’s worth,” Raquelle said, signaling the bartender, “this was your wife’s idea.”
Ben turned to me.
I took a sip of my wine to buy time then set it down.
“After I found out about you two,” I said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Raquelle texted me the next day, and we got to talking.”
“She wanted details,” Raquelle said, a small smile playing at her lips.
Ben’s face flushed. He looked at me, then at Raquelle, then back at me. “Slow down, please.” He glanced around the bar, lowering his voice. “Okay. Am I in trouble with one of you?”
“Quite the opposite, apparently,” Raquelle said.
Ben was quiet for a moment. I watched him start to put it together—the fancy hotel, the surprise appearance, the two of us sitting on either side of him like we’d planned it. Which we had.
He looked at me. His expression said he understood, but he wasn’t saying it yet. Waiting for me to say it first.