“I do the same thing. I’ve got this big, plush chair I got at IKEA a few years ago, and I think I sleep in it as much as I do my own bed.” She swallows another big mouthful. “So is Christmas busy in the spa world?”
“Massage therapist,” I correct. “That’s an antiquated term they used to use for, well, prostitutes.”
“Does that mean I can’t make happy ending jokes?”
“I guarantee you I won’t find them the slightest bit amusing.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s all right.”
“No, that’s shitty of me to joke about. Although I can’t say as I know the difference between what goes on in a legit massage and a sketchy one. I’ve never had either kind.”
“Really? Any reason?”
“No time, I guess? It just never seemed like a priority to me.”
She finishes her plate and before I can stop her, she’s in my kitchen getting more. “I really don’t care if you have dishes in the sink, Ezra,” she says, sensing whatever my protest would have been. “I didn’t crash your place late at night expecting to find it spotless.”
I can’t stop the words tumbling out of my mouth. “Why did you come here? I mean, you could have gone and hung out with Anja and Mattias or someone else you know….”
She looks at me like I’ve just asked the dumbest question on the planet. “I figured it’d be obvious.”
I sip the still-scalding tea while I try to process her words. She comes back to sit, but spends more time pushing her food around than eating it.
“Jules, look… I think you’re really great.”
“Good,” she says. “I think you’re pretty great, too.”
“I’m really not,” I say with a sigh. “I’m sort of a mess.”
“And I just told you—I don’t mind a mess.”
She sets her fork down and slides a little closer to me. She’s gnawing her bottom lip and the friction of her teeth scraping over the skin pinks up the flesh. My mug is still cupped between my hands when her knee bumps against mine.
“I really don’t get it,” I confess, because I don’t. What does a girl like her want with a guy like me? What could I possibly ever have to offer her?
“I don’t think there’s anything to get. I like you, Ezra. I just… wanted to see you. That’s all. I figured if you didn’t want to see me, you’d have told me to leave when I showed up.”
“Of course I wanted to see you.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“This just doesn’t seem like something friends do.”
“Yeah, well… Maybe it isn’t.”
I wonder if the half-blinking, half-winking thing is more of a nervous tick for her than a purposeful gesture. I could ask her if I wanted to admit just how much I’ve been studying her face since we met. I could ask her if it’d be all right to kiss her, like I so badly want to. Or, I suppose, I could put down my tea cup, put my hands on her cheeks, and do it.
Before I get the chance, she leans over the small space between us on the couch, tilts my chin with the knuckles of her left hand, and brushes her lips over mine.
“Neither is that,” she says.
I must gape at her. I try and recall the last time in my adult life a woman has kissed me before I’ve kissed her. I come up with nothing. ’My heart ’won’t stop pounding in my ears, my mouth has gone dry, and probably my lips, too. All this just from her simply being near me blows how I’ve felt about other women out of the freaking water. I could probably forget about all of them with one more good kiss.
She’s been inside for several minutes, but when I put my mug down and cup her face in my hands, her cheeks are still wintry cold. Maybe it’s the difference in temperature from my mug. Whatever it is, I know I don’t imagine the way she presses the side of her face deeper into my palm and lets her eyes flutter closed. Her eyelashes are dark and practically cast shadows on her cheeks. I expect her to open her eyes again, look at me and pin me with one of those gazes of hers that undoes me. But she doesn’t. I guess she must be waiting. And in truth, so have I.
I lean towards her and slant my lips over hers. Her mouth doesn’t taste like tea or questionable Chinese food—it tastes like her. And I can hardly be expected to not go back for seconds (and thirds and…) once I realize how intoxicating that taste is.
***
“Mmm… You may think it looks like a mess, but I approve of all these pillows and stuff piled on here,” Jules says. “It makes it sort of like a little fort.”
I chuckle. “You don’t suppose we’re a little old for pillow forts?”
“Pssssh. You can never be too old for pillow forts.”
I’m inclined to agree with her. But at the moment, the term ‘kissed me stupid’ applies all too well to me. At this point, I’d be inclined to rob a bank with her if she asked me to.
Besides, we really have created a little fort. Given the late hour, I could easily fall asleep like this. She’s settled herself against my chest, her hips nestled in between my legs. Our fingers are a complicated knot I don’t want to unravel. In this deliriously happy post-make-out state, being with her clothed is better than most of the time I’ve spent naked with anyone else. I marvel again at the natural way our bodies seem to fit together. Sure, it makes me think of other things. But one step at a time. Or at least, that’s what we’d told each other a few minutes ago, when our kisses had gone from feverish to full-on desperate. Too fast is still too fast. Damn it.
I know this is only temporary. She’ll come to her senses soon, and I’ll be left with a nice little memory. Not that I want her to get up and go, of course, but I’m too much of a pessimist these days to believe this is anything but too good to be true.
The cat is perched on the corner of my coffee table, flicking her tail back and forth while she stares at us. Juliana rubs her fingers together again to beckon her, but the cat is frozen in place like a fuzzy, hissing gargoyle.
“What’s its name?”
“Uh….”
“You don’t remember your cat’s name?”
“She’s not really my cat,” I say. “She belonged to my father. He named her Birdie.”
She snorts. I’d laughed when Mac told me the cat’s name, too.
“Mac had a weird sense of humor,” I explain. “He found her behind his garage when she was a kitten. I guess she’d been kicked out of her litter or something. It was amazing she was even alive. He fed her rice milk out of an eyedropper and fattened her up with tuna after she could hold it down. She was totally attached to him after that. Except first thing in the morning—she’d sit on his windowsill in his breakfast nook and watch the birds in his crabapple trees. I guess that’s how he got the name.”
“You guess? Why don’t you just—oh.”
I swallow hard, not wanting to have to confirm what she’ll ask next.
But she doesn’t say a word, or ask the obvious question about what happened to Mac, or mention the cat again. She curls against my chest and squeezes my fingers between hers.
“So, is it all right if I stay a little bit longer?”
“Is it all right if I kiss you again?”
She turns her face up to grin at me. I don’t need any other validation than that before I surge up and claim her mouth.
***
“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, right?”
Jules startles and clutches her heart through the puffy winter coat she’s shrugging on. “I was trying not to wake you.”
“What time is it?” I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes, realizing I’d fallen asleep with my contacts in.
“Almost six. I need to try to sneak in before Mama realizes I didn’t come home.”
My heart sinks in my chest. I wonder if she doesn’t want to acknowledge anything that happened last night—the kissing, the talking, the falling asleep curled up together—like it was some sort of mistake.
“Mama is prone to asking a lot of questions I’m not sure we’re r
eady to answer,” she says. “At least, not until we can talk a little more.”
“We talked a lot last night.”
“You know what I mean, Ezra.”
I actually don’t have the first clue what she means. Maybe it’s because I’m still groggy. Maybe it’s because I don’t want her to leave. I know it’s because I don’t think we did anything to be embarrassed about. And I’m a guy who knows a lot about embarrassing evenings. But I nod at her through a stifled yawn and get up to at least walk her to the door.
“Wednesdays are still laundry day, right?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I kick one of my laundry baskets for good measure.
“Fair warning, as soon as you walk in the door, Mama will conscript you into helping dust or vacuum or whatever else she can think of for the big shindig. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
We linger in the doorway for a moment. Then she puts her hand on my chest and stands up straighter to kiss me. She’s only a couple of inches shorter than me, so it’s not far for me to duck down to return it.
“Good. I’ll see you later today, then,” she says.
“You will. And we’ll talk if you want to.”
“I do want to.”
There’s a definite nip in the air when I open the door for her, like it might start snowing any minute. I watch her get into her car and drive away. I feel lost without her next to me as I settle back on the couch and crumple into a heap.
She was just here. She stayed all night without me begging her to, and without any ulterior motive than to just be with me. She was here. She wanted to be here.
And if I press my nose into just the right place in one of my pillows, I can smell the faintest trace of her perfume lingering there.
I fall asleep like that, not caring in the slightest how moogly-eyed and love-struck that might make me. I’m a total idiot, and I know it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mama A is a whirling dervish, scrubbing and dusting every surface of her home. According to her, Juliana is supposed to be helping, but got a phone call ten minutes previously and has been holed up in her bedroom ever since. Truth be told, I’m a little relieved. How would we have been expected to greet one another? A hug? A kiss? A casual wave, like we didn’t spend last night in each other’s arms? I’ve never been good at knowing what level of affection is appropriate in mixed company, even when the parameters of a relationship are well-defined.
After I start a load of my wash, Mama A puts me to work, just as Juliana had predicted. Being a good head taller than Mama, I’m tasked with dusting the tops of bookshelves and ceiling fans. It’s mindless work, so I can’t help that my eyes wander to the stairs. I wonder if I’ll see Juliana at all. I wonder if she’s avoiding me.
She comes down around the time Mama A insists on making me lunch. I’m elated to see her, at first. When she barely acknowledges me and takes a glass of water and a sandwich to her room instead of sitting down and eating with us, my stomach clenches in the most uncomfortable possible way. I’d made myself available to talk, like she wanted. I hadn’t made any untoward moves when she’d been at my place last night—and that had been hard in more ways than one. I felt like things were going well. Maybe even better than well. So what’s with the cold shoulder now?
I know I should text Anja and explain what’s going on. The more I think and overthink about this, the more it’s bound to stress me out, and the more I stress—it’s not a difficult leap from confused to disheartened to drinking. But last night still feels like such a special secret between Juliana and me that I’d feel bad mentioning anything to Anja without telling Juliana first.
I’m beginning to feel like I should have known better. I should have thought with my head and not my heart and lips and hands. I guess it could have been worse—I could have thought with something farther south of my hands. I’ve done that exactly enough times to know how bad it can be.
I’m loading my clean clothes into the back hatch of my car when Juliana finally seeks me out. I stand still and stupid, waiting for her to make some sort of move and let me in on what’s appropriate. When she doesn’t do anything, I shut the hatch and lean casually against my car.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk. I had a call from work to deal with, and then when I came down… Well, I didn’t think we should talk in front of my mother.”
“Right, yeah. I understand.” It’s dawning on me that maybe I’m Juliana’s dirty little secret. I’m a holiday fling, hidden and not thought of again once she’s home and amongst men who actually deserve her. The way she keeps looking towards the house, through the windows like she’s worried Mama A might be watching—well, that says a lot.
“I do want to talk to you. I just—I got sort of blindsided by something, that’s all.”
“Look, it’s all right,” I tell her, shoving my hands in my pockets. “We can just let it be what it was. It was a lot of fun. It doesn’t have to be anything more. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
She rears back. “Is that really what you think I was going to talk to you about?”
“I think you might be too nice to just say it, in case I… Look, I get that I’m not really a desirable guy. And you live in another country. It’s all right if you’re looking for casual. But casual really doesn’t work for me.”
She looks like she wants to slap me. “That’s not what I meant. At all. We’ll talk later, once I’ve figured out what to say. If you’re interested in listening, that is.” She strides up the walk and slams the front door behind her.
It sinks in that I was kind of an asshole to her. I want to kick myself in the ass, but I settle for pulling my hair and groaning before sliding behind the wheel of my car to chain-smoke my way home.
Anja’s and my mother’s voices both ring in my head again that alcoholics in recovery and burgeoning relationships don’t mix. I really should have listened in the first place.
***
Other times in my life, a small setback like this would trigger a binge of the highest order. I’d get a handle of Wild Turkey, a couple of two-liters of club soda, and maybe a growler from Comrade if I was feeling particularly thirsty, and lock myself in my apartment. I’d call in sick to work and watch the bottles disappear. I’d savor the burn, the blurry edges, the way time speeds up and slows down all at once. Six months ago, I’d have been drunk for five days after realizing how badly I’d screwed up my chances with the girl of my dreams in less than five minutes.
Let it never be said that I don’t possess a modicum of self-control. As I’m stacking my folded clothes into my dresser and begin to feel that sort of intense yearning coming on, I unlock my phone. Anja programmed nearly every AA meeting in the greater Denver Metro area into my calendar so I always know where one is. There’s one starting in twenty minutes at a church not too far from my apartment. I opt to jog there instead of drive—it’s the one habit I’ve carried over from my drinking days. Running would help sober me up and sweat out enough alcohol from a bender so I could go into work and not reek of booze. Now it just helps me clear my head.
I sit in the back of the meeting, my chips clutched in the palm of my hand. I remind myself that things could be worse… they could always be worse, and I’m a testament to that.
Then I remember the way Juliana fit perfectly against me, and my spirits sink all over again. I don’t want that to be it. I don’t want to pretend like nothing happened. I don’t want to pretend that I wouldn’t take a night like that one with her again if she offered. It doesn’t matter that whatever I forge with her is fleeting, and I’ll be left totally crushed when she gets on her plane back to Brazil. I want to be crushed by her. Then at least I could say that I had her, if only for a moment.Wanting her like I do is such a huge mistake.. And the problem is that if I could take back everything I’ve felt since the first moment I saw her, I wouldn’t. I’d live these days over and over and over again, because God—she seems so disastrously worth it.
&
nbsp; ***
It snows overnight and most of the day before the Christmas party. When I arrive at the Almeidas’ around dusk, the Christmas lights on their house are especially lovely, and the always-warm little house seems especially cheerful and inviting. I juggle the gifts in my arms before going up the shoveled, salted walkway, and let myself in. The house smells of cinnamon and pine. I try not to dwell on the unanswered email I’d sent Juliana after my AA meeting yesterday, apologizing for being brusque with her, and greet everyone with smiles and “Merry Christmas” on my lips.
Anja has a special sense for when things are bothering me. She links arms with me after I set the gifts down, grabs a plate of appetizers, and forces me out onto the back porch. She noshes on a bruschetta while I light us cigarettes. All it takes to get me to open up about the whole sordid situation is one of her significant looks.
“I wondered why Jules was so quiet today,” she says after I pause long enough to take several drags before my cigarette burns down to ash. “You need to talk to her, Ezra. For real.”
“I know I do. I just don’t know what to say. I think I might have really hurt her.”
“I think you might have, too. Which makes it all the more important.”
“I’m just so bad at all this. The last time I showed interest in a woman I… Well. You know what happened.”
She nods, and I know she’s thinking about how she’d found me in the ER, gauze shoved up my nose and my eyes blackened.
“You’re a different person now, though,” she says.
“I’m still a fuck-up, Anja. Eight lousy months doesn’t change that. And I don’t want to fuck her up. Everything I’ve touched has turned to shit lately. How the hell do I live with myself if I do that to her?”
She purses her lips for a second and studies my face. “Everything? You sure about that?”
“I’ve got the deviated septum to prove it,” I say, pointing to my nose.
“Look, I stand by what I said last time this came up: I’m not sure you’re ready for a new relationship. But Jules is tough. If anyone’s tough enough to figure out how to be with an alcoholic and make things work, it’s probably her. She and Mattias have that in common.”
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