Chapter Eleven
I was shocked that Matt left me alone for several days. No knocking on my front door, nor my wall. He texted a few times. We exchanged little nothings. Little blinking still alive? Oh yes, still alive kind of messages. Meaningless flares sent up heavy and damp into the night sky.
I went back to what I’d been doing before. Early mornings. Gym. Office for nine hours. Dinner. Coffee somewhere. Books and cards in my front room. Working in any in-between times. No downtime. No time to think.
It was late November when Jon called me while I was at work.
“I need to see you, darling,” he said.
“Mm,” I said, cradling the phone into my shoulder. Wondering what to do and say. Not feeling that deathly oh let me come home! ghost siren in my chest anymore at his voice. Just a sort of flat tenderness. Like looking at roadkill.
“I miss you. And I want to talk to you. I’m no good at the distance, I need that face-to-face,” he said. That is at least a full truth; witness his emails.
“I’m living downtown,” I said.
“I assumed as much from your address. Pick a restaurant. I’ll come meet you tonight. Just dinner, I swear,” he said.
It would be just dinner, I decided firmly.
I told him a bistro I liked that I knew he wouldn’t mind. Nothing too dressy. But intimate, cozy and all booths. So we could talk. Nor was it too busy so we could take our time.
I immediately regretted making the date once it had been made. Mostly because I wasn’t prepared. Because I didn’t know what his intentions were. Because I didn’t know how I would respond. I didn’t know what my answer would be to any question he’d ask me.
Will you come home?
Shall we consider this a clean break?
Isn’t there anything from the house that you want?
Who has been sharing your bed, since it’s not me?
Do you miss me?
Tell me you want me.
I considered and rejected going home to change. Wearing a bright blue and teal dress. Low cut, a fit and flare. Orange pumps, orange earrings. Fuck him. You decided to blow in on me, I’m not changing a thing.
I touched up my makeup before leaving though. Wondering if he’d smelled the perfume I’d bought for myself when I came in. Or if it would be diffused enough throughout the day. Thinking of how Matt pressed his nose into my clavicle and behind my ears. Where I rolled it, where I was soft, where my blood was pumping.
I saw him immediately when I walked in. Sitting near to the door, facing it. He was early, because I was early. He likely guessed I would be and still made the drop on me. Which meant he’d ended his work day early to be here. He stood as I approached. Wearing a sort of rusty tweed suit. The camel jacket I bought him folded over the back of his chair.
He kissed my cheek and then handed me into the chair opposite him. I saw he had already ordered me black tea and ice water. He had a coffee in front of his place. As he sat back down he rested his chin on his upraised hands. Looking at me fondly.
“You look just lovely,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, stirring sugar into my tea.
“You take sugar now?” he asked.
“I’ve begun again, yes,” I said.
“Hmm,” he subsided, smiling at me.
My stomach was churning, everything backing up my throat. I never thought I’d feel like this facing him. He was supposed to be the end of the line. Relaxation. Peace.
The waiter came over, and he ordered for both of us. Getting me the French country salad. Asparagus, greens, beets, vinaigrette. Which ordinarily would be what I would have ordered. Especially as I was getting “wedding ready.” But right now I was chilled. I wished I had the French onion soup instead. I was hungry after working all day.
“I can’t get over how gorgeous you look,” he said, snapping open his napkin.
“Thank you,” I said. Feeling that pinking pleasure going across my cheeks. Wanted or not, it felt good to hear his voice like that.
“I assume you’ve been working again?” he asked.
Oddly like a first date with him. It felt like slogging through mud– how had we become so removed from each other? I knew precisely how much pepper to put on his baked potato. I knew his shoe size and his sneeze. How his gym sweat smelled different from his sex sweat or his dancing sweat. What he wanted his first-dance song to be. That he had six birthmarks. I used to memorize his bare limbs, the scar where his appendix had been removed. Having the intrusive thought that I would be the one who would have to identify his body and obsessively learning it. That he got nervously superstitious if we didn’t kiss when we parted. That he said ‘I love you’ and meant it, but when he just murmured ‘luv ya’ it meant he was feeling it across his whole soul right then.
“Yes. I’m working for Timothy again,” I said.
“You seem happy…” he said hesitantly. “Bright-eyed. Healthy. You looked quite fit coming in.”
“I got a membership back at the old fifteenth and Liberty street gym,” I said.
I wouldn’t tell him I’d been dancing still. And other indoor activities.
He started talking about other things. Just the way he always did. Work, the house, people we knew. People he knew. Ins and outs and who knew who and how they knew each other.
“You know who I saw for the first time in years?” he said.
“Mmm?” I murmured.
“Jason Hecklen,” he said. “He’s the CFO for the National Bank affiliate here… You’ve met him. I’ve invited him to a few parties. A good person to know whether or not I will work hand in hand with them in particular.”
“Jason…” I said, pretending to ponder, tipping my eyes to the ceiling.
The waiter arrived with our dinner then.
“You know me, darling,” I said. “I simply don’t have a head for names.”
“Well, interestingly,” he said, spearing up some pork and inspecting it. “He said he ran into you rather recently.”
“Oh, very likely. I see plenty of people I know now that I’m back home and–”
“Home?” he questioned.
“In the city,” I clarified. “Back in the city. I know a lot of people here. I don’t always recognize people right off though. So I may have thought I knew him from here, rather than Newton.”
I took a bite of salad. Feeling acidic. My stomach heaving a bit on an under-chewed piece of asparagus. Helplessly picturing puking up blood-red as the beets came back up.
“Hmm,” he said.
Taking several bites. Waving down the waiter, requesting more tea for me. Slapping his hand on the tabletop and making me drop my fork and squeak in fear.
“I genuinely cannot get over you,” he said. “You’re beautiful tonight.”
He reached forward, grabbing my fork and polishing it in his napkin, even though it had only bounced off the table a few times.
“I’ve had this dress for years,” I said nervously.
“Then I haven’t seen it. Nor that lip color,” he said, leaning across the table.
You don’t like this lipstick. It’s a gloss– more, it’s vermilion. You said glosses are flashy and trashy. You don’t really like any red lipstick. Unless it’s for a cocktail hour, or to the theater. You didn’t like bright dresses for the same reason. Nothing tight, nothing low cut. Slacks were both too casual and too sexual. Gym clothes, a nightmare– pink sneakers too attention drawing. If leggings, then shorts over them. Other women in the gym wore just sports bras. That was deemed tawdry in the extreme by you. And even when I don’t– no lipstick, no leggings, no too-long fingernails or spike heels, you stare jealously at anyone who looked at me. As if I were trying to draw their attention. As if what I was looking for was their attention. I never was, I was looking for yours. Or my own smile in the mirror.
Everything in me went quite still. Sloshing acid in my stomach stopped. Heart slowing to normal pace. Hands still and firm. I gripped my fork confidently and continued eating.
The conversation never became serious. Never made mention of anything, never posed any of those questions that I thought he might ask.
I wondered what the point was. But then again– I didn’t mind. I hadn’t been prepared. If he’d prepared anything he chickened out.
He ordered coffee and tea for us again as our plates were cleared.
“Dessert?” he asked me. I shook my head ‘no.’
“You can certainly indulge, darling. You look good,” he said, gesturing expansively.
“No, thank you,” I said. I just wanted to get home. I was cold, and tired, and wrung out like an overused tea towel.
“I’d like some more time with you. And I doubt you’ll get in my car and come home tonight,” he said, tone very obviously disappointed.
“I can’t,” I said. “I have work tomorrow.”
He sighed, rotating his cup on the table.
“I miss you,” he said.
Finally, whatever veil or veneer we were playing at was gone. Both of us were so likely to put on masks. Step on stage and present our parts correctly. Or at least what we thought correct to be. It was why we fell in love, but recognizing each other’s masks is why we stayed so long. I fell for his stagecraft, and he certainly fell for mine. Daddy-husband and Babygirl stepping out together and saying and doing all the right things. I thought we dropped the facade once the doors locked behind us. But we seemed to have forgotten the skill. But this was real. His ‘I miss you’ crackled between us. His hand wasn’t firm, his eyes were downcast.
“I missed you,” I said. Hurting as soon as I said it. Knowing he was smart enough to catch the tense change.
“There is nowhere I can go… There’s nothing I can do, no one I can be with that stops the missing you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. Because I did.
That heaviness you just carry. It’s on your shoulders, it compresses your neck in your sleep. It cannot be cast off or shrugged aside or put on a shelf to be dealt with later. It just sits and crushes you.
I reached into my bag, pulling out my wallet. The waiter had been hovering for a few minutes, quite discreetly, with the check. I waved him over and handed him my card. Jon snatched it away rudely and replaced it with his own. I sighed, sliding mine back into my wallet.
“You’re not coming home?” he asked. Knowing the answer. I guess hoping that seeing how downtrodden he was I would change my answer.
I shook my head. The waiter returned with his card and he scribbled. The way he always scribbled. His handwriting was disastrous– the way he wrote numbers, the straightness of his columns was a thing to behold, however. I used to joke with him that I was glad the bulk of our correspondence had been via email throughout our courtship. If he had written love letters I wouldn’t have been able to discern them.
I stood up and so did he. Helping me into my jacket just as he always had. Lifting my purse from the floor and draping it on my elbow.
I kissed his cheek.
“You fucked up, Jon,” I said.
He blinked at me. I wasn’t sure if the phrase had quite hit him– he may have been too shocked by the cursing for it to land on him. It would later, even if it didn’t now. I kissed him again and walked out.
When I got back to the apartment I knocked on Matt’s door. Surprised but hardly disappointed to hear him approaching the door. Heard him peeking and unlocking things.
Hand on his chest, I pushed him back through the doorway, dropping bag and coat willy-nilly in his entryway.
"You're always pushing for more, why can't you be satisfied?" I asked. Returning to the question of his attempts to make Catharina jealous.
"Why can't I be satisfied?” he asked playfully, flashing his teeth at me. “I’m never satisfied because you won’t satisfy me.”
“How much time do we have? Maybe I can try now,” I said.
“An hour,” he said, crushing me into his chest. Arm around my waist, free hand cranking my chin up to look at him. “I have to play tonight, but I’ll come back for you right afterward.”
“Good enough,” I said, letting him lead us backward to his bedroom.
We got hastily undressed. That kind of adolescent hurry-to-the-good-part kind of undressing because of our time limit. He pulled me into the bed and I followed. Straddling his hips and loving having him between my legs again. I watched his chest rising and falling and feeling a similar rhythm in his hips underneath me too. But neither one of us made contact yet.
“How do you need me?” he asked.
“You could be rough with me,” I said. Wanting that. In general but especially from him. See him letting loose. And I need that kind of collision.
“Like what? Be clear,” he said, with the same kind of excitement when I told him to take. Like he’d seen something delightful but too new and foreign to interact with it.
“Put me in your favorite position,” I said, dropping a little deeper into him, rolling my hips on him and feeling him thump against me. “There's something that feels better for you than anything else.”
He sat upright swiftly, bringing our chests together and snapping me onto my back. Literally getting the drop on me and mounting me just as quickly as I had him. Catching up both my wrists again above my head. But then with his free hand he sealed his palm over my mouth. Very effectively, lips together, feeling my teeth against his crushing hand, his fingers locked around my jaw.
“You shutting up,” he said. “I love when you just… shut up.”
It shouldn’t have worked but it did. Maybe he knew that. That frenetic chatter, always trying to explain myself. Always feeling like I held forth and bored everyone around me. And I couldn’t help it. Staring down the barrel of his arm I moaned, arching my back, spreading my legs for him.
He wasn’t slow or teasing this time. Plunging into me, only resting once he buried himself. Moving viciously once he saw I’d settled into him. I tilted into him, but only for a moment. It was too much, I didn’t want to come too early knowing he usually lasted longer than me. It still happened though, crying into his hand as I did. He sounded the same and different– moans shorter, deeper than usual from him. He fell into me like he had before. Face against mine, flat to me. Which felt so good. It seemed like I had every part of him. Like if I could inhale deeply enough I’d be able to take all of him into me in one breath.
Still, “oh, Anna” from him. Longer still and deeper. And I responded, without meaning to. Turning my mouth into his ear and whispering his name over and over. Which drew him out longer, it seemed. I was glad he stayed with me again, just like the last time. I didn’t even have to keep him clenched like before. We just panted, though he nuzzled into my face as we lay.
“Good work,” I said to him finally. He laughed, that breathless, hacking laugh he did.
“I liked that,” he said quietly.
“Me too,” I sighed, and then shifted under him. He made himself heavier, his hands clamping over my ears for a moment.
“You have to go shower,” I said to him, looking up into his eyes. “You gotta go, baby.” Remembering that he liked ‘baby.’
He groaned, shaking the bed by grasping the headboard and shaking both of us in frustration. I just laughed.
“More later,” I promised.
“Fine,” he grunted, getting up. Heading toward his bathroom. I rolled into his blankets for a moment. Smelling him and smelling us in them. Hearing the music he’d been playing when I first came in, still playing softly and nearly imperceptible from his front room. When he got out of the shower, I sat up, getting redressed myself.
“You’ll be waiting for me? At your place? When I get back?” he asked, finger pointing at me. I laughed.
“Yes. You just may have to wake me up,” I said.
“You bet your ass I’ll wake you up,” he said.
I laughed again, liking the play. Besides, it felt just like having a conversation with him. Swinging in this little fun space with him. Lacking the heaviness of anything else. Just feeling safe and yet unattached from him. A similar feeling to running into your best playmate at the park when you were a kid. Just loving serendipity. We parted at his doorway and I went back to my apartment. Got undressed and showered. Lay naked and piled under many blankets with my book and waited for him.
He let me know when he was in the elevator. I opened the door for him, still undressed. He growled, falling into me, kissing me furiously. He smelt like sweat again– whatever the gig had been, it required exertion. He didn’t have a case with him, so I didn’t know. And it just didn’t matter. Feeling all the different and overlapping calluses he had on his fingertips, where his fingers met his palms, on my back.
He hadn’t had a hair cut in a while, hair falling down nearly to his chin now when he didn’t have it neat, which he didn’t now. I laughed against his face, a little giddy with his onslaught. Falling back onto a cushion on the living room floor beneath his momentum. Both of us giggling briefly and hushing each other for the shuddering thud we’d caused falling to the floor the way we had. Still snickering a little, he forced his face between my thighs, licking me. I gave in, leaning back against my table.
“You’re so good at this,” I murmured to him, tangling fingers into his hair. Feeling him moan against me, seeing a shiver go across his shoulders in the gloom of my front room.
“You make me feel so good, baby,” I said. Now his fingers sinking into me, moaning again and wriggling deeper into me.
I couldn’t stop touching him now. If I hadn’t been so overcome with sensation, my heart would be breaking for him. Poor thing, just wanting soft words. But I liked to give them to him. Liked getting to say it, and liked meaning it. Liked his response to it most of all.
“I want you, I want you, I want you,” I said, repeating myself from earlier.
He sat up, kissing my stomach briefly. Then surprising me with his speed. Jerking me up by my arm, pushing me toward the table. Gasping, I bent forward on it, hearing the clank of his belt and his zipper, but not hearing him get undressed further than that. Reaching over my shoulder, he covered my mouth again, and I groaned into it.
“I don’t want to disturb our neighbors any further,” he said, giving me that devilish tone.
I groaned, muffled, into his hands, wagging my hips grossly. He was inside me in an instant. Pulling me back into him with his hands sealed around my chin. When he was buried, and I tried to move forward, he held me impaled, hands smushing my lips into my teeth. It was all so delicious I gushed on him, grunting through my nose.
“Show me you want me,” he panted. “Come on me.”
I started working with him, with the rhythm he was bruising into my hips. Meeting every thrust but feeling impossibly filled.
I almost shrieked into his hand when I came. I could tell he felt it because that’s when his usual song started. The quick, harsh ‘ohs.’
I gave up, going limp across the tabletop top, knees sliding further apart, just taking him. Good, but exhausted. This time when the ‘oh Anna’ came it was from above my head. Not moaned into my ear but quietly shouted into the room.
He lifted me up to my knees, off the table. Still sliding out of me. Flopping us onto the floor, spooning. Feeling his bunched-up jeans between our knees, his cotton-warm torso on my back.
“I was thinking about you all night,” he said, almost mournful.
“I was thinking about you, baby. It was nice,” I said.
He wriggled into me tighter, crossing his arms between my breasts and crushing the air from my lungs.
“I want to–” he said, and I could hear his tone becoming plaintive.
“Let’s not,” I said gently. “Just get in my bed.”
“Okay,” he said, kissing the back of my head.
Getting up he dropped the rest of his clothes on the floor of my front room. I settled him into bed, refilling my water glass and handing it to him as I got in beside him. He drank thirstily. We fell into how we seemed to need to sleep together– tangled. One or the other of us would bury our face into the other’s chest. Limbs knotted together. Even if we shifted in the night we kept as much of our bodies in contact as possible. I’d never been with anyone who wanted as much as I did. Who would give me their whole weight and take all of mine in return. Who would let their hair mingle with mine, our sweat to mix, our fingers catch together, and our edges become edgeless.
I woke up to his voice in my ear, room pitch dark with blinds pulled.
“Anna?”
“Mm?” I asked sleepily, touching him.
“Anna… I want more,” he said, almost growling now.
I was still fighting sleep, trying to figure out the time and exactly what he was asking when he took his head from my shoulder, laying on his side and pulling me into him, spooning once more. I gasped, still half awake, feeling his erection rising between my thighs.
“Hush,” he said, hand on my waist. Rubbing me with himself, velvety smooth and utterly intoxicating. I let my eyes drop close again. Sort of being edged, barely conscious. When he pressed into me this time it was slow. I moaned out his name.
“Right, Anna,” he whispered, lips on the cup of my ear. “Right there. Just take it. I’m so close. You’re almost done.”
“Oh, Matt,” I said, eyes still closed, barely moving against him.
Just being held, rocked by him. Still undercover. This time it was all dream-like. My eventual orgasm quiet, slow, longer than usual. Like being taken under by a wave. His “oh Annas” whispered over and over again. No crashing finale, just him sort of whimpering out his finish. I sighed when he finished, drawing his arms tighter around me, and fell almost instantly to sleep.