Chapter Eighteen

For the next two weeks we were back to what we’d been doing. Or maybe a little less. Having dinner together once a week, working before and afterward. I wasn’t assured of sex. Sometimes we saw each other for lunch. He didn’t mention our conversation again. Nor did I. I really didn’t want to revisit it. We hadn’t had sex since the conversation, in fact. But he had a big rally coming up, so I wasn’t terribly surprised. I liked having my time back, frankly.

Doing errands on Saturday, I detoured past Zevi’s. Pitching some gravel up at the second story window, just to see if it would work. Eventually, it did. He leaned out the window, waving down at me.

“Dinner tonight?” I called up to him.

“Surely, surely,” he yelled back. 

I spent a leisurely afternoon at home. Prepping us something good for dinner. I’d also made sure I had chocolate and crackers to make s’mores with him tonight. I thought he’d like that. It was finally dipping past sixty in the evenings. 

“‘Lo, ‘lo,” he called. 

I was just pouring charcoal into the grill and hollered, “backyard” at him. He came around the corner, hauling my lawn chairs with him. 

We talked about work. Talked about autumn; he was a fan, the leaves changing made me sad. Books– we’d both started something new. He hinted that something had gone right with the lot. Some project coming to fruition. When I pressed for more information, he just shrugged and grinned and avoided my eyes. I knew it couldn’t be anything reprehensible, or else he wouldn’t even mention it. Still, I was sure he’d say that he was going to sell it to some kind of “good” fast food place or something. 

We sat with our feet up on the spindle. Talking lazily. Drinking tons of water. Laughing a lot. Slapping mosquitoes off each other. He got up, taking my plate off my lap, heading toward the back door, toward my kitchen.

“There’s a paper bag for you on the counter,” I yelled at his back. 

“Oh-ho-ho!” he laughed back at me. 

As he wapped back through the screen door, he shook the makings for s’mores at me happily, doing a little dance down my back steps. I handed him a skewer. The sun had set, the back of my house faced east and we were mostly working by the light of the embers. 

“How’d the conversation go?” he asked. 

I wondered if he’d purposefully waited until sundown. When we couldn’t see each other so clearly. 

“Um,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound evasive.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he whispered. 

I glanced at him, wondering if he were guiding us back to silly, the way he seemed to. I couldn’t tell in the darkness, his cap drawn low. Didn’t see his teeth flashing at me. 

“Okay,” I said, sounding as unsure as I felt.

“My mother died when I was young– I know yours did too,” he said. “I got to have mine for a few more years than you did. Your father lost your mother in a flash. My father lost my mother slow. And he never broke in front of me but once. I told him I wanted to go to the hospital to see her. He hesitated. I yelled at him. He said, ‘her hurt hurts me.’ I didn’t understand. I thought he was being weak. I thought he was withholding himself from both of us. Betta… I can’t taste anything around the taste of your blood the other night. Your hurt hurts me. I don’t know how much longer I can take that.” 

“What are you going to do?” I whispered. 

He plucked my skewer from me and plunged both of ours near the embers. Turning to face me and now I could see he was giving me the grin. The ‘don’t pay me no mind, I’m just your silly little guy’ smile.

“Don’t know,” he said, shrugging, pulling the marshmallows out and blowing out the one that caught. “Run away? Grand gesture? Who’s to say?” 

We sat back down quietly. Handing each other crackers and chocolate back and forth. Arguing about procedure and what went first and how to not make a mess. 

Feeling brave and evil, I thrust my hand toward his face, sticky and black with charcoal. He took the bait, leaning forward, nipping the marshmallow off my fingertips and then licking over the spot. Heat and desire barreled into my lower stomach, lighting me practically on fire. I didn’t react or gasp, though.

“Can you taste that?” I asked him. 

“Every little bit,” he said.

We fell quiet again. Listening to crickets and dogs across the street and the crunch of crackers between our teeth.

“I don’t think the conversation went well,” I said quietly. “I’ve got some thinking I need to do.”

“Mm,” he said. 

“He misdirected,” I said. “And asked me if someone was ‘pumping’ information into me about sex.”

“Mm,” he said again. I heard him taking a breath, the sound of his tongue popping against his teeth, and stayed quiet to hear what he would say next. “This isn’t a lecture, Betta. Just a thing to consider. If he doesn’t like you leveraging language at him… If he doesn’t want you informed… Maybe he doesn’t want you to speak. If he's getting angry because you're getting smart, maybe he wants you to stay uninformed.”  

We stared into the darkness across the alley. A light going on across the way. More of them followed. Washed in flickering televisions through blinds, the warm glow of kitchens. The grill dying out. 

“How do you do that?” I asked him.

“Oh what, judging exactly when the marshmallows are perfect?” he asked.

“No,” I laughed, then sighed. “When I’m pursuing someone… I get…” I laughed again, this time, nervously, ashamed. “Ravenous.” I finished.

“Mhm?” he prompted.

“So how do you… I said I had some thinking to do about the man I’ve well… Tacitly said I was going to marry. And you didn’t jump on it. You’re still not pressuring me. Everyone thinks it’s bad… But you’re… not yelling at me.” 

“What would be the sense in that?” he asked easily.

I laughed again.

“If our places were reversed… Oh, Zev… You’d hate me. Think me hungry and desperate and obvious.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” he said slyly.

“I promise you, that kind of chasing down isn’t so nice,” I said, heavily, bringing the mood back down. 

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe we’re just different. Not bad, just different. I don’t want to chase. I don’t want to run you down until you’re exhausted and can’t fight me off. I want you to come to me. I don’t want to follow where you don’t want to lead me.” 

“How long do I have?” I asked. 

“Until what?” he asked.

“Until you’re sick of waiting for me? Until I push you too hard?”

“That’s a good question,” he said, sinking further into the lawn chair, crossing his ankles the other way. “It’s a very… mature question of you. But then, you’re more serious than me… And definitely more mature. Are you looking for a deadline, Betta?” 

I could tell he was trying to joke. Wishing, once more… why couldn't he be just a little more… Serious?

“I’m hoping… I’m hoping that if you say I don’t have much time… I’ll do my thinking… Make my decision a little faster. I couldn’t stand to lose you,” I said. 

“Who said anything about losing me?” he said. 

“You’re made for loving,” I said helplessly. “And you like to do it. So it’ll happen and then…”

“Are you saying you’d be jealous if I started dating someone?” he asked, back to that sly little tone. My head whipped toward him, seeing his grin in the light from across the alley. He laughed, throwing his head back, losing his cap. 

I reached out and pinched his arm, hard. He returned the pain. 

“I know,” I sighed. “I’m so fucking awful. So slinking and shitty.”

“You’re not,” he said, still laughing. “And I’m not dating anyone. But doesn’t that sort of help you answer your question? If you can’t bear to see me with anyone else?” 

I pressed both hands to the center of my chest and took a deep breath. It was true. Oh, no. I wanted him. It wasn’t just that lightning flash of heat suffusing me when I felt his tongue on my fingers. It was far more than that. It wasn’t just the crush, or the curiosity about what happened after I got another one of the best-kisses-of-my-life. How was it that Baron was the neighborhood but Zevi was the one that made me feel all the good things about it? Safety and sunshine and the sounds of play and if not the history, he felt like the future. 

“Oh no,” I whispered.

“Oh yes,” he said back. “A crack in the defenses.” 

Chapter Nineteen

We started tumbling into fall in this fashion. Feeling like I was keeping secrets from everyone but Zevi. I was seeing him more frequently than Baron. Just lunches. Talking for fifteen or twenty minutes out on the lot. Trading drinks and candy back and forth. 

I wasn’t sure if Baron was genuinely busy or freezing me out. That too made me nervous, and felt like another secret I was keeping. He came by for dinner just as frequently. We worked together at the dining room table. One of the nights he initiated sex before dinner. I was glad for it. I faked an orgasm. Another secret. Glad that he let me finish him with my mouth– oddly unwilling to be either crushed or manipulated. Another secret. 

But then he let me lay in his lap. He didn’t shift or lift me or take us into the bathroom afterward. Just let me lay with my cheek on his thigh as he brushed my hair back behind my ear over and over. I could have cried and fallen asleep right there. He’d listened. For a long while, he just let us sit like that. Then his laptop beeped and we both got up at the same time. 

I was overwhelmed with tenderness sitting opposite him afterward. How his eyebrows drew down. How he wore his little glasses nearly at the end of his nose. I rested my chin on my upraised hand, watching him working and frowning for several minutes. 

He looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. He needed to shave, shadow obvious by this time of night. Thinking about listening to him doing that in the morning. How I’d have to clean up the sink after him. 

“That’ll have to hold you for a while, dear,” he said. 

I blinked at him. No longer feeling glowy and cozy in the circle of light cast by the lamp on the table. Downright chilly. 

“Oh?” I said.

“Busy month ahead,” he said, turning back to his screen.

I got up, made coffee. Leaned against the counter. Listened to him typing. What if this is what marriage would be, too? He wanted me to work less, but wait around for him? Would I ever be allowed to sleep? Would I be waking at four in the morning to make him eggs and toast and ham, and be expected to have steak and fries ready at eight in the evening? Would I be left alone all the time? Expected to put on pearl studs and modest dresses and shake hands for him when he eventually ran for office? Make sure I always looked right and stood right and never said anything except for approved soundbites? And be content with the fact that now, at least, we shared a bed? When did I become happy with a blowjob and being able to rest for eleven minutes? 

We drank coffee, ate cookies. Talked about his work. He kissed me good night. He no longer tipped my head back with his knuckles. He just bent forward and kissed my cheek. I couldn’t quite place the last time he’d kissed my mouth. He’d remarked one evening, watching me typing, that I had a cut on my bottom lip. I thought I’d been covering up marks from my anxiety pretty well– between jelly at night and lipstick during the day, I was pretty sure no one would be any the wiser. If he’d been kissing me, he would have felt the wound by now. 

He kissed my cheek again that night. Another “good night, Elsbetta” and then I was left to sink into bed alone. 

There was a pile of new supplies outside of Zevi’s lot, along the back and sides. A few new guys I didn’t recognize as well. 

We had dinner, listened to music. Made beans outside. Pizza on the grill. More s’mores. Hot cocoa inside while we laid around on the couch. I pulled splinters from his fingers. I found him another postcard while I was a few towns away out on errands one day. 

Baron and I were going to have a quick lunch on Sunday– just to catch up, we hadn’t seen each other for several days. Talked on the phone a few times, but never for very long. One or the other of us was usually working. 

I met him at the diner out on Main. I was surprised that he let me order. His eyebrow quirked again. But he didn’t say anything, or frown, or claim that I was too skinny. Both of us seemed to be treading lightly with each other. Which was at once a relief, and another secret, it felt like. 

When we finished food, he sat back, having his third glass of coffee while I fiddled with straw wrappers and sugar packets. 

“Obviously, I couldn’t purchase an imported diamond,” he said suddenly. “Though I would be fine with lab diamonds, if you wanted a diamond. Unless you wanted something else entirely?” 

I blinked at him, fingers numb on the paper I’d been folding into a paper plane. 

“Ah, sorry,” he said. “I forget, occasionally, that you can’t read my mind or understand that we’re in the middle of a conversation– you so often do keep right on my thought line that it seems as though you can.” He laughed, and then patted my hand. “As to an engagement ring. No unethical purchases, but willing to have a conversation.” 

“Um,” I said. Took a sip of water. 

“Not to say that I have a particular timeline or anything,” he said, sounding like he was backpedaling. “Merely that I’ve begun ruminating on it.”

I took another sip.

“I know,” he sighed. “Not terribly romantic of me. But we’re both adults, Elsbetta.” 

“No, I don’t care about that either,” I said, meaning that much. “But um… Let’s not… Let’s not make any decisions or… Or purchases right now.” 

He frowned at me, opening his mouth, when suddenly someone popped up beside our table.

“Hiya, Betta,” Silvio said to me, turning his attention immediately to Baron to discuss something. I knew Silvio from a business development group I’d been in some years ago. He wanted to talk with Baron about some kind of football scholarship of some sort he was trying to get off the ground. 

I was glad for the interruption. Still feeling the weight of Baron’s frown as he had a perfectly ordinary conversation with Silvio for several minutes. When he was finally dismissed, Baron turned back to me. 

“What’s the meaning of that?” he asked.

“Of what?” I asked archly. Hearing my tone and unwilling to school it in another direction or bite my tongue.

“Why suddenly ‘wait’ when all I’ve been hearing from you is ‘now, now, now’?” he asked.

“Does it feel like it’s been ‘now, now, now’ to you?” I asked, genuinely curious. I didn’t think I had been pressuring him. I’d been talking about it. I wanted to be married. He’d all but assured me of it, so I wasn’t terribly worried about the when. 

“You want to live together,” he said, hands spread wide on the table.

“Right,” I said. “You had the caveat that it waited until marriage. That’s not me setting a timetable.”

He sighed. “You’re being purposefully obtuse.”

“I’m stating facts.”

He sat back, fingers tented on the tabletop. I wondered if he was purposefully letting his shoulders widen, his chest expand as he sat back against the booth. 

“Why am I waiting?” he asked. And though I’d thought he was trying to intimidate with his size, the voice he used was just limp. He sounded anxious. He sounded unsure.

“Because I need more time,” I said. 

He swallowed, quickly turning his head to one side. 

“What is it?” he asked. Still sounding… So unlike himself, it made me nervous. Realizing that I was hearing something other than total confidence and certainty for the first time. 

I shrugged. Getting more and more nervous by the second. Fiddling with paper again. Avoiding his eyes.

“I’m feeling adrift, Elsbetta,” he said quietly. 

I stood up, gathering my bag, smiling at him. Leaning forward. Kissing one cheek, then the other, lingering over him. Smelling aftershave and sweat. 

“Me too,” I said.