Chapter 13 #3
Despite the fact that I know he’s right, I feel a profound surge of sadness at how transparent we all are to him.
I wonder if he sees anyone as a friend or if he at least believes there are people who see him as a friend.
Or maybe he sees everyone through the lens of what they can do for him and imagines everyone looks at him the same way.
I rush to reassure him. “You’re Ellie’s friend. Cat’s too. They wouldn’t have invited you if you weren’t.”
“Is that what we’re doing?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, but based on the dread that’s pooling in my stomach, I already know.
“I thought we had an unspoken agreement to be real with each other tonight, but if that’s not the case, let me know, and I can slip back into social niceties.”
He stares at me, his words hanging in the air.
“I’m not going to say you’re right—”
“You know I’m right.”
“I’m not going to say it,” I stress.
He laughs, a short and rough sound of surprise, and says, “Fine, you don’t have to say it.”
“Thank you.”
He smiles, his eyes twinkling with humor as he says, “Now that we’ve established that, do you actually want to go somewhere or should we head back inside and pretend this heart-to-heart never happened? You can take Ellie up on that dance he saved you.”
I roll my eyes at his sarcasm. “Since we’ve agreed to be real with each other—”
“I can’t wait to hear what’s coming,” Alex cuts in.
I shoot him what I imagine to be a stern look, but I guess there’s no heat to it, because he just keeps smiling while I continue.
“They refused to tell me the wedding cake and groom’s cake flavors—they said it was a surprise, but I’m now convinced it’s because they knew they were choosing two of the worst cake flavors in the history of cake flavors. ”
“The worst,” he agrees.
“I need dessert.”
His eyes, already bright with mirth, light up even more.
“How do you feel about pie?”
Despite my love for the east side, I’ve never been to House of Pies in Los Feliz, which absolutely shocks Alex, who refers to it as an LA institution.
I text a lie about drinking too much and calling an Uber to both Ellie and Madison before turning my phone to Silent.
When we arrive at House of Pies, I fumble to get my door open, and I learn that fancy cars are somehow too good for normal door handles. Alex has to lean over to help.
Somewhere between Alex’s car and the booth, his suit jacket comes off. His tie gets loosened, top button unbuttoned, and shirtsleeves rolled up. It’s an enticing image, but I do my best to pretend I don’t notice.
Alex and I decide that this is an evening for celebration, after all, and order two kinds of pie each—strawberry cream and Bavarian chocolate for me, fresh peach and southern pecan for Alex. We end up sharing all four slices.
We stay in the booth for hours, talking about random stuff.
College, work, movies and books we like.
Embarrassed, I admit that I’m not a big reader and would rather just watch the movie, even if everyone in the world is going on about how much better the book is.
He doesn’t judge me for it. We don’t delve into anything too deep, but we get to know each other in little details that have never come up.
Before I know it, it’s after midnight. The wedding reception has long since ended.
Alex makes a comment about it getting late, and we leave.
He pulls up to my apartment to drop me off, and I direct him to the tandem parking spot where my car is. He turns to me, the car still running, and we both pause, allowing the moment to drag on. I should get out of the car. I know I should, but I can’t quite make myself.
Over the course of the night, something has shifted, and this man who was nothing but an acquaintance earlier feels like so much more.
I know the moment he leaves, the illusion will shatter. Almost like it never happened.
After several moments of silence, Alex turns off the engine. “What are you thinking?”
“Do you ever know you’re about to make a mistake you’ll regret later, but you can’t stop yourself?”
“Sometimes I stop myself and regret that,” he counters, his eyes heating in a way that makes me think he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
So I say to hell with it, and I cross the space between us.
This is the part I’m most ashamed of, the part I conveniently edit out in my recollection of the night. I make the first move. Everything from here on out happens the way it happens because I start it. Alex is just enthusiastically along for the ride.
Our lips crash together a little too forcefully at first, but we find our rhythm, and before I know it, I’m lost to the sensation of how right this feels.
He pulls me over the center console until I straddle him in the driver’s seat, only barely able to make myself fit.
It’s cramped and uncomfortable and altogether perfect.
As we continue our kiss, I glide my hands down his chest, into his waistband, and yank out his shirt so I can get my hands on his skin.
He grabs my hips, pulling me closer until I feel how hard he is beneath me.
I gasp at the sensation, and he trails kisses down my jaw, neck, shoulder.
“Do you want to…” He pauses. Waiting. Allowing me to lead.
“Let’s go inside,” I say, and once the words are out there, my impatience builds. I need out of this car. I reach to open the door, then pull back when I can’t find the handle. Right. Buttons. We went through this dance at House of Pies. Which was it again?
“It’s this one.” He presses one of the buttons on the door and helps me out of the car. I glare as he shuts the door behind him.
“What was so wrong with door handles?”
He laughs and cups my chin in his hand. He leans forward and brushes his lips over mine in a soft kiss, and I forget everything but this feeling.
I guide him to my apartment, and the moment the door closes behind us, he’s back on me, pushing me against the wall. In a frenzy, I yank off his tie. He rips off my dress. His shirt, my bra. Until there’s nothing but the two of us pressed against each other in the dark.
He murmurs my full name, “Josephina,” and for the first time, it feels right. He kisses me as he gets down on his knees, hitches my leg over his shoulder, and licks me until I’m a shaking, gasping mess, unable to hold myself up, grasping at the wall for balance.
In my room, I push him onto the bed, turn on a lamp, and grab a condom from my drawer. A natural pause in the rhythm. An easy place to stop.
That’s the thing about torrid affairs. In retrospect, they feel like they happened in a flurry. A snowball of passion that couldn’t have been stopped once it got rolling. You refer to your actions in the passive voice. You got carried away. You were swept up.
But in reality, there are pauses. Places where you have to think.
Where you have no choice but to make an active decision, whether you acknowledge it or not: The moment you have to figure out which button functions as the door handle.
The seconds spent fishing your keys out of your purse.
The time it takes to grab a condom from a drawer. The time to put it on.
He flips me over so he’s on top, lines himself up. Pauses and looks me in the eye.
“Tell me you feel this too,” he murmurs. “Tell me it’s not just me.”
“I feel it too,” I say, ending on a gasp as he pushes into me.
We move in tandem, the rhythm hard and fast, overwhelming in the best way. We don’t speak, the air around us filled with nothing but the sounds of our gasps and moans and skin slapping against skin. It’s what we both need, to feel like we’re nothing but bodies, sensations.
My orgasm builds fast, crests before I’ve had time to fully process it, and his follows shortly after. We lie there, catching our breath. He turns to me, and we kiss slowly, languidly.
To think, tonight easily could have never happened. If I hadn’t snuck out that side door. If I’d gone back inside to take Ellie up on that dance. If I hadn’t said, “Sure, why not invite him?” when Ellie and Cat had been deliberating on it all those months ago.
It shouldn’t be possible, I think, to have such chemistry with a person and never know it. Would it always have been this good, or did the pieces need to fall exactly as they did? Years of indifference, one night of connection, and then—
We start again, this time slower, lazy, almost sleepy.
No less overwhelming.
Afterward, he gets up to grab a washcloth. We clean up, and he returns to my bed. Neither of us brings up the option of him leaving. We fall asleep in each other’s arms.
In the middle of the night, his phone rings. I grumble for him to turn it off, thinking it’s an alarm, though of course I later realize that no one sets an alarm for three a.m.
“It’s just work,” he explains, and tells me to go back to sleep. But I’m awake now. When he turns to find me watching him, he asks, “What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking I want to keep you.
“I’m thinking I want to do it again,” I say. So we do.
“Say it’s not the last time,” he murmurs as my orgasm starts to crescendo.
“It’s not the last time,” I gasp.