The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  “We may have been friend with benefits,” she air-quoted me. “But that part is done. Now we’re colleagues. Thanks for the file. I’ll follow up with…” she picked it up and squinted at it “…Sarah Harrison.”

  “I like you—a lot. It’s your choices I don’t like. Your judgment I don’t trust,” I blurted out.

  “Don’t skimp on the honesty, Lucas.”

  I pushed the door closed behind me. This was not the time or the place. But I went ahead anyway. “I’m not the bad guy here. I’m sure there’s someone great out there for you. I’m sure there’s someone great out there for me too—”

  She stood, moving files from her desk to a box behind her. “I don’t need the pep talk, Lucas. Thanks for the referral.” Her tone was dismissive. Her back faced me. She sorted through some stuff in the back of her office.

  I pushed aside the few items between her and me. Then I did absolutely the wrong thing. I took three quick strides around the desk, stepped over the hazmat bin, and pulled her to me. Her resistance melted away in an instant, stiffness yielding to softness.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said into her hair. She pulled back to look at me. Her eyes telegraphed heartbreak. Then I did another wrong thing, I brought my mouth down upon hers.

  Nari’s gasp of surprise was an invitation. She tasted sweet and tart. In that moment it didn’t matter who was adopted, I wanted her with a fierceness I’d never experienced before. I pulled the elastic from her hair, letting the thick curtain spill across my hand before I cupped the back of her head and pulled her infinitesimally closer.

  My other hand slipped past the white coat, under her embroidered name, and zeroed in on her breast. The beaded nipple that poked at my palm made me groan aloud. This need, this urgency didn’t have judgment. Didn’t care about Nari’s past. Wanted this woman—now.

  The rap on the door threw a bucket of cold water on us very quickly. We jumped apart like teenagers discovered making out on a basement couch.

  “Dr. Yoon?” a nurse practitioner inquired, poking her head in.

  “Margie. How can I help you?” Nari sounded breathless to my ears.

  Margie walked farther into the room. “Oh, Dr. Tucker, I didn’t know you were in here as well.” She looked back and forth between us. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

  Margie started backing slowly from the small office.

  “I was just leaving,” I said. “A patient wanted a woman physician. Dr. Yoon and I were discussing the matter. Patient confidentiality and all that.” I waved toward the partially closed door.

  “Oh, okay. Nari, these were the results you’d requested from the lab. They were able to rush.” Margie dropped the paper in her hand like it was on fire and backed out of the room.

  “I need to look at these before I go home,” Nari said, taking her chair again and pulling the papers before her. A list of numbers engrossed her, shutting me out of her head.

  I wanted to push her to talk, to finish what we’d started there. But the time and place were wrong. If Margie had come in five seconds later…we might have been having a whole different discussion—with the clinic’s director about rules and decorum and ethics and professionalism.

  There was no way I wanted to start my career out that way or jeopardize Nari’s. I did the right thing this time and walked out the door.

  I might have walked away, but I waited in my car. I stepped out the minute I saw her reflection in my rearview mirror.

  “Can we talk?”

  I waited a beat. Two. She nodded. “Where?”

  Of course like an idiot I hadn’t thought that far. Hadn’t thought she’d agree. Nari was more decisive than I would have been in her shoes. “I’m going home. You can come to my place if you like. No obligation.” Her clogs thumped to the monster truck she kept in the back corner of the lot.

  I followed close, but not too. Down Olympic, winding up to her street. Every single stop light, I nearly turned a hard left or right or any direction different than Nari. There was no reasonable explanation for what I was doing. Nevertheless, I found myself sharing an elevator and holding her apartment door behind her. All in silence.

  I pushed the door closed a little too hard. It slammed into the latch. The chain rattled against the wood.

  She spun on me. “What you did back there at work was totally inappropriate.”

  I nodded. “I know. I’m really sorry.” For a moment there, I’d nearly lost my mind. I wasn’t completely sure my dick wasn’t doing all the thinking now.

  “You gave me the ultimate kiss off yesterday. I got it, Lucas.” She was quiet a long moment. “Why are you here?”

  We stood like gunslingers at five paces. Like a moth to flame, I closed the distance. I cupped her head in my hands. “This,” I whispered against her lips. I’d never seen myself as one of those endlessly macho guys. But standing within fifty feet of Nari, I wanted to pound my chest, roar, then lock her somewhere tight where she could never be hurt. Keep her away from all the other guys who thought they wanted her but didn’t really know her. “This is why I’m here,” I said. Then kissed her. Hard.

  Despite all her cool bravado and talk, Nari didn’t resist. Didn’t push me away. Accepted what I was offering. Even if that was only for this moment.

  I walked her back two steps, shrugged off my jacket. She kicked off one clog, then the other. Like a flame to tinder, I was suddenly on fire. I couldn’t get to her bedroom fast enough. Couldn’t push her V-neck sweater off fast enough. Couldn’t unbuckle my belt with enough speed. Like a bolt of lightning hit me, I suddenly understood her yearly need to lose herself with someone else. I wanted the combustion of our two bodies coming together to make me forget all that was wrong with what we were doing.

  I knelt, pulling down her pants and underwear. I laid her down on the cloud of white bedcovers. She looked like the Greek goddesses we’d talked about so often in high school. Her golden skin stood in stark contrast to the snowy white duvet. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, brown pointed nipples begged for my touch.

  I shoved off everything and knelt at the end of the bed. I picked up her hands in mine and drew her to me. When I sat back on my haunches, I lifted her slight weight onto my thighs. “Jesus effing Christ,” I breathed, breaking commandment number three.

  She was the aggressor this time, leaning forward and opening my mouth with hers. Surrounded by her hair, her scent made me crazy. I untwined my fingers from hers and smoothed them down the arch of her back. In response, she curved toward me, thrusting her hard-tipped breasts against me. Our mouths broke apart. She lay her head in the crook of my shoulder, breathing heavily. I palmed her ass, sliding up her ribs, then around front, finally landing where my thumb and forefingers wanted to be. I pinched and pulled until Nari sunk her teeth into my shoulder.

  I don’t know if it was pain or pleasure or both, but my cock got that much harder. My throbbing penis didn’t escape her notice. At once, she had one hand on me, gripping hard, slowly pulling up and down. We both watched as the tip disappeared and reappeared from the foreskin.

  “I’ve never…this is really hot,” she said, sliding away. Then her mouth was on me. Pleasure more intense than I ever remembered experiencing blurred my vision, scrambled my brain. Enough of the fog lifted that I lifted her mouth from me and crushed it with mine. We rolled around. I was trying in any way possible to possess her. Her mouth, her nipples, all of her. Pinning her down, I knelt again, this time between her thighs. Using my mouth on her clit and two fingers inside her, I brought her to the edge.

  “Let go,” I said, my voice vibrating against her. Like that, spasms quaked against my fingers. Nari’s thighs closed like a vice against my ears.

  When her legs relaxed falling open, I lifted my head. The afternoon sun blazed through the window, highlighting the sheen of perspiration. My need to possess her nearly overwhelmed me. “Do you have—”

  “Drawer.”

  I pulled open the bedside table drawer, fisted the purple packages I fo
und there and tore one off. I had to grit my teeth to get the latex near the tip of me.

  “I’ll do it,” Nari said, rolling it down unnervingly slow. Once I was sheathed, she pumped me a few times for good measure. Like a caveman, I pushed her back and plunged into her without preamble, without my usual polite introduction.

  She was along for the ride though. I don’t think I’d ever known a woman who enjoyed sex with as much abandon as Nari. She made me want to rock her world for a second time. But it never got that far. She pulled me down for a kiss and in a few moments, rocked mine instead.

  I couldn’t help but collapse on her. For a few long minutes, we remained joined. Deep breaths slowed my heartbeat, returned my lung function to normal, allowed me to take in the unique coconut and citrus smell that was the woman under me. I grabbed myself, easing from her. Limped to the bathroom like a wounded warrior.

  She hadn’t moved when I came back. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling evenly. But I knew she wasn’t asleep. I don’t think I’d ever seen her that vulnerable. I lowered myself to the bed. The covers rustled as I turned to look at the woman next to me. A pointy elbow jutted toward me. “What now?” Nari asked, her forearm obscuring her eyes.

  It wasn’t a stupid question. I wished I had an answer.

  Chapter 27

  Nari

  “You should find Minnie,” he said. If the syrupy weight of my lethargic bones hadn’t held me down, I might have slapped him. There was probably a self-help book for this. It would be called: What to do when you have great sex with a great guy who says shitty things.

  “She’s eleven,” I responded. Pulling out my clinical voice, I continued, “That’s a hard age. Hormones are starting to surge. Separation’s beginning from the parents. Not to mention that she’s not a legal adult.” We didn’t treat children without their parent’s consent. It was a huge no-no in our field. We left that to those clinics that were lightning rods for controversy.

  “You could approach her parents,” he reasoned.

  “Why, Lucas? There’s no good reason I can think of to do what you’re suggesting.”

  “Can you really believe that after you’ve seen what I’ve gone through these last few weeks?”

  In an instant I realized this conversation was not at all about me. It was about him. So I turned the tables where they needed to be. “When did you find out you were adopted?”

  “I always knew. Maybe when I was three or five, I got it. Babies came from their mommies’ bellies. My mom didn’t have the pictures holding her stomach.”

  “My mom doesn’t have those either, Lucas. I think she’s way too modest or practical to do that sort of thing. Belly bump pictures do not make anyone more of a mother.” I lifted my head an inch, sneaking a peek over at the naked man next to me. His face looked pained. I wanted to physically shake him and tell him to get over it already. He had a living, breathing family who loved him. “Being pregnant did not make me a parent, Lucas. Do you think gay parents who adopt are any less parents because the child doesn’t share their DNA?”

  Like I anticipated, his liberal Vermont guilt rushed to the surface. “No…no I believe people can choose their family or make one.”

  “Then how is it your parents are exempted from this license you grant everyone else?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I asked more quietly. “Why aren’t I?”

  I wanted to disappear into the silence that followed my question.

  “William Coates is still upset with Laura.”

  I’d wondered what had happened at that dinner. Had it been awkward? Affirming? “Why?”

  “He said it wasn’t his idea to give me up,” he said. If I wasn’t listening for it I wouldn’t have heard the slight yearning in his voice. I knew that feeling. The desire to turn back time. To have different choices made. He wanted his parents to want him. I wanted to have driven up to Philadelphia. Either I would have saved Andrew or we would have died together.

  Skipping the emotional, I turned to the rational. “To hear her tell it, it was his idea to step out on her.”

  “Sounds like two sides of a bad situation.”

  “You can’t blame them for not wanting to bring a baby into that. Daisy’s parents probably should have divorced a long time ago. Instead her dad enables her mom’s drinking. It’s not a pleasant situation.”

  “Are you saying they shouldn’t have had her?”

  “Not in her case, no. They had a lot of money to smooth that over. And I love her. She’s my best friend. But she is not without huge issues that she’s still dealing with. If you add financial and marital instability, not to mention being out in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean with no support system, I can understand Laura’s decision.”

  Lucas’ hand rubbed my arm. His eyes left mine and strayed down to my breasts. I reached out, cupped his jaw, and titled his head back up. I needed him to hear me before the other thing between us distracted him. The other thing pulling us together like magnets. The other thing that we weren’t the least bit ready to talk about.

  When he looked like he was done with talking and thinking about kissing, I sat up abruptly.

  “I want the real you, Lucas,” I said. “But you don’t want the real me. It was never the other way around.” When he didn’t say anything I poked him—hard. I pulled at the flesh of my abdomen. “These are stretch marks, Lucas. I got them when I was twenty-one and carried a baby to term. A baby I don’t have. A baby I’m not looking for. I’ve accepted who you were from the beginning. But you’re the one who can’t accept me.”

  He shook his head slowly, deliberately. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Lucas. I am Nari Yoon and that’s never going to change. My past is fixed. My future is full of possibilities. Whether you’re a part of that is up to you.”

  The landline rang, shattering the downbeat mood.

  “Is that your telephone?”

  “It’s my buzzer.”

  “Who’s visiting you on a Thursday night?” he asked, a proprietary tone in his voice. A tone he wasn’t entitled to have.

  I had two guesses. I crossed my fingers while blindly seeking out my white silk robe. I could only hope it was Daisy.

  But before I could answer the phone, press the button unlocking the downstairs door, there was a knock at my own.

  Lucas stood on the bedroom threshold at least partially covered by boxer shorts this time. I wanted to usher him back in, but the key scraped in the lock and the door pushed open before I could even do that little bit of damage control.

  The last time my parents had been in this apartment, Daisy had been filming sex on the couch. I’d done my best to usher them out, hide their eyes, and make excuses. But this time I didn’t do that. I didn’t make a fuss, or pretend what they were seeing wasn’t what it was. If I was ever grateful to Lucas for one thing it would be that. He’d taught me to stop pretending.

  “Oma, Apa. This is Lucas Tucker,” I said to my wide-eyed parents. “He’s a doctor in my office. Lucas, this is my mom and dad.”

  Chapter 28

  Lucas

  I did what any decent man would do. I stuck out my hand and shook first her father’s, then her mother’s. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I didn’t get your names.”

  Before her dad could say anything, Nari took over. “My dad Soon-Bok Yoon. My mom Sun-Hee Ahn.”

  They bowed slightly. I nodded in response. I had no idea what the custom was here. I was hoping they wouldn’t expect anything from me—the big American. A draft stole through the room, lifting the hair on my almost nude body. “I’m going to get dressed,” I said, feeling way more naked than I’d felt with Simon there. Their silent scrutiny was unnerving.

  That quiet abated the moment I closed the bedroom door. There was a lot of talking, some raised voices. Thank God I’d waited until I got in here to get undressed. My clothes were everywhere in the bedroom, but at least they weren’t on the couch, or hanging off the proverbial chandelier.

/>   I slipped the button down shirt over my undershirt rescued from the floor. I sat a moment, scanning the room for socks. I found one, then the other, slipped them on my feet. Pulled up my dress pants, buckled my belt. Despite the attention to my wardrobe there was little break in the discussion outside the door. I heard a door slam, not once but twice.

  I took a deep breath and manned up. Being a coward wasn’t called for. All they knew about me was that I was nearly naked in their daughter’s apartment. Not a great start for anyone meeting their lover’s parents for the first time.

  Nari’s mom was setting her dining table, pulling food from a bag. Her father was sitting on the couch like he owned the place. The vibe was weird. I wondered if there was something about their culture that didn’t follow the same boundaries I had with my parents. That any adult did. I tried to imagine my mother waltzing into my apartment without an invitation. Maybe stoic New England politeness made us different from people in ever-casual California.

  Nari and her mother gripped the same bowl for a long moment. Words passed between them and they continued to set the table. “Do you want to join us for dinner?” Nari asked. They were the first English words I’d heard in several minutes. Her voice was tense while her face was deceptively placid. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to say yes or no.

  I went back and forth for what was probably too long a time to be socially polite. “Sure, point me to my seat,” I said like we were having a casual dinner and not enacting a scene from an Edward Albee play.

  Nari pointed to a chair opposite. “You need me to get anything?” I asked. A quick shake of her head made me drop the subject and pull out a chair.

  Nari’s mom brought in plates, bowls, chopsticks. She worked in the kitchen without getting Nari’s permission to open drawers or take out dishes. My mom would have asked first. Everyone sat, but I had no idea what to do with the little bowls of vegetables in front of me. There wasn’t a fork and I certainly didn’t want to ask for one.