Once I’d stopped trying so hard to find the perfect man, he’d fallen right into my lap. Or well, I’d fallen into his.
“Do you really want to have a threesome? That’s your fantasy?”
We’d gotten onto the fantasy talk after our second round of sex last night, fallen asleep mid-discussion, and picked it back up as the sun rose. Oliver had started it, asking me what I would do sexually if I could do anything. I wasn’t into whips and chains, I was too high maintenance and stubborn for all that. I’d done the regular foreplay stuff; sixty-nine, blowjobs, even a little ass play. Okay fine, I’d done more than a little ass play. I’d been blindfolded, used some sex toys intermixed with dick. Oliver hadn’t seemed surprised at any of this, I mean hell he was older and more experienced.
But I’d always gotten heavily turned on by the idea of a threesome. It was my go-to spank bank scene whenever I wanted to get off in a jiffy, although I’d never truly thought about acting on it and seeking one out.
“I mean, it gets me really turned on. Thinking about it, about what they would say to me, call me. Mostly the dirty talk is the thing that makes me sweat.”
It didn’t feel awkward or strange talking about this with Oliver. I wasn’t trying to impress him or hiding my true feelings because I wanted to make him feel like a macho man. No, he genuinely wanted to know what got me off, what interested me, and how he could help me get there. Sex wasn’t everything in a relationship, but honest sex was supremely important. I don’t know how I’d ever missed that lesson in Dating 101.
“How about you? We could buy a pull-up bar.” I raise my eyebrows at him.
His eyes spark, and his lips curve up in a devilish smile. “Or we could go downstairs to the building’s gym and pray no one catches us. In public and on gym equipment, I’d call that two birds with one stone.”
Rolling my eyes, I was done talking about sex until he fed me some bacon. “I’m hungry.”
“Fine.” Oliver got up, walking barefoot through his gigantic apartment. “What do you want? I can have bagels delivered.”
I smoothed down my bedhead and looked out on the cold November landscape of the city. “Bagels … delivered? Ah, what it must be like to be a rich prince.”
A wet kiss landed on my cheek. “Get used to it, babe. I’m going to be spending all of this money on you.”
I smiled giddily. “I like the sound of that. Hmm, I’d like bacon, egg, and cheese on a whole wheat everything bagel with ketchup, please. You fucked all the calories out of me, I need to replenish.”
“Coming right up, princess.”
Oliver wanders into the other room and does whatever voodoo magic he has to to get bagels delivered here on a Sunday morning. While he’s gone, I traipse to the window, pressing my hands and nose to the glass.
Leaning into it so that I can see the whole city laid out, I look past it over the river. Sometimes I think about myself as a little girl, and then a teenager, in New Jersey. I never felt worthy enough, of what I wasn’t sure though. I never felt the same as my peers, never thought I’d end up having the normal life where everything went right on track. And in some ways, I don’t. Who does really? I have a bunch of friends who belong in a dive bar singing Hootie and the Blowfish throwbacks and doing tequila shots, rather than a sophisticated lounge with martinis. My job is a hybrid between being thrown to the wolves and having fairy dust sprinkled over my head twenty-four seven.
And my boyfriend, who is a leading tech millionaire, is not at all who I pictured I’d end up with and has such different tastes than I, it’s a miracle we have anything to talk about.
If there is anything I’ve learned in my short twenty-five years, it’s that nothing ever goes the way you think it will. Plans fail, happiness peaks out of every corner, surprises lurk just around the corner. Yada-yada, all that bullshit.
I’m just learning to take the lemons and suck hard on them until they turn sweet. Or just slam them after a tequila shot. Wait, that’s limes. Well, whatever. Told you I belonged in a dive bar.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gemma
As opposed to the last time I met someone’s mother, this was one introduction that I was prepared for and happy to be making.
But I was so nervous that I’d pooped twice this morning already and had to use some of my perfume to cover it up. Nothing like a nervous stomach in your boyfriend’s apartment right before you were about to meet his entire family.
“Tell me again about your family. Just run down the names for me. Can you give me flash cards or something? Jesus, isn’t that what good boyfriends do?”
I was pacing around the palatial apartment that Oliver called home, where I’d been staying religiously for the last three weeks. We ate, we fucked, we laughed, we bickered, we watched sports and the occasional Netflix drama. He took conference calls from China while I slept, and my makeup products littered the counter in his bathroom.
And now we were doing the meet the parents thing. Would they like me? Would I like them? From his accounts, they were laid back Californians. His mother taught yoga and his brother handled some of Graphite’s business out in Los Angeles. His father had retired from teaching and now owned a health food and smoothie shop.
I’d been reading up on yoga poses and healthy herbs for two weeks now. What would they think of a high-maintenance New Yorker who drew on her eyebrows everyday and couldn’t last without BB cream and a blow dryer.
“They’re going to love you, because I love you.” He kisses my temple and checks his phone, probably to see the progress of their Uber he’d ordered them from the airport.
“Oh shut it. That’s just shit good boyfriends say when they’re unsure of how their parents will react to their East Coast girlfriend. And we’ll all sit cordially, but tonight your mom will text you saying she doesn’t approve and to maybe find someone who doesn’t require a two inch heel, at least, on all of her shoes.”
I throw my hands up and keep pacing. Why the fuck am I so nervous? I’m great with parents, have always been great with adults. I can read people well, and have the ability to morph into any character I need to be in that moment.
The buzzer to Oliver’s apartment sends a shockwave down my spine. “Oh my God, they’re here.”
Oliver looks at me like I’m nuts before walking to me. “What are you going to do, hide under the bed? Everything is going to be fine. I love you. Breathe.”
I smooth down my hunter green sweater dress and adjust the camel-colored scarf I paired with it. I hope I look respectable and not too flashy. I tried so hard with the outfit that the rest of my closet is in piles on my bedroom floor back in the West Village.
The front door opens and it’s on.
“Olly!”
“Hi, son!”
“I never get over this place.”
Three people invade the foyer of the apartment, but by the sounds of them, you’d think it was twenty. Oliver had quizzed me about his mom, dad and younger brother for a few days. He’d told me a little about each of them, and I was wracking my brain to remember all of the facts I’d jammed into my head. Not that I hadn’t Facebook stalked too. I needed all of the information I could get.
“Lara, Alex, Teagan … it is so nice to meet you all!” I entered the room and began the flurry of handshakes and hugs.
I plastered my most friendly smile on my face, offered to take bags to rooms, asked if they would like drinks or a snack.
“It’s so nice to finally be here, I don’t do well on plane rides.” Lara sat in a chair around the large kitchen table and rubbed her back.
“Can I get you anything? Maybe a drink, some Advil?” Playing the role of attentive girlfriend was going to be exhausting tonight.
“You don’t need to do a thing, dear. Just come sit down, I’m not a fussy person.”
And I was literally the exact opposite.
“Gemma, right? It’s good to finally meet the girl who made my big brother settle down.” Teagan smiled at me and made me fe
el a little bit better about the whole situation.
“I’m the lucky one … your brother is great.” God, I made myself want to vomit with all the sincere shit.
Oliver snorts. “Don’t let her kid you. She knows she’s the lucky one. If you weren’t all brand new and shiny, she’d be sarcastically reaming me out in front of you.”
I hit him on a reflex. “Oliver!”
“Oh, and she keeps you in line too. I like her.” His father, Alex, goes to the fridge to get a beer. So apparently you can drink beer and run a health store. Good to know.
The room gets quiet as it often does when complete strangers are trying to find things to talk about for the first time.
“Should we get this meal on the road, then?” Lara got up and tied her long blond hair back.
She didn’t really look like her son, but then again he was all his father. I guess he had her build, long and lean, but solid and strong. I decided instantly that I liked her. She seemed no nonsense but kind.
“I’ve never made a turkey, and I’m a terrible cook admittedly, but I’m always willing to learn.” I pushed up my sleeves and took my place beside her at the counter.
Over the next hour, the boys chopped vegetables and peeled potatoes at the table while Lara taught me how to brine and truss a turkey. She asked a lot of questions about my job, and Teagan laughed at some of the stories I had about my colleagues and interview subjects.
They’d come in a few days before Thanksgiving because apparently Lara did a yoga retreat every year on the holiday, so we were celebrating tonight. Secretly, I kind of loved it because it meant Oliver could come to New Jersey with me on the actual day and meet my family.
He was so screwed. My mother was basically going to hook him up to a lie detector. And wait until she found out he was thirty.
“Dad, why don’t you say something?” Oliver nodded to his dad when we all sat down at the formal dining room table.
“Well, okay. Um … hi, family. And to our newest member, Gemma, we are very lucky to have met you. May your stomach be full, may your hearts be light, and may you be thankful for every day you get to live in this life.”
More perfect words could never have been said. I don’t know what I’d been so nervous for. I guess things with Oliver were just going so well, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it had already dropped, months ago.
And he’d picked it up and slid it back onto my foot, Prince Charming and all. Although, it couldn’t have been glass. I was way too tough on my heels for a glass slipper.
“Isn’t it crazy how we ended up here?”
I’m lying on my stomach in Oliver’s bed as he faces me on his side, scratching my back. It feels so good, it’s almost close to an orgasm. But … not that good.
“Where? In my bed in TriBeCa? Because I can tell you, I worked very hard to get here.”
I made an annoyed sound but smiled at him. “No, like you and me here. It started off so … strangely and here we are. At one point, we didn’t even like each other. Who would have thought we’d end up together, in love and all of that other mushy stuff.”
Oliver’s curls flop over his forehead. “Maybe people don’t fall for each other at first sight. Or, at least, not every person.”
“What do you mean?” Oliver flips me and holds my back to his front and strokes a hand lightly up and down my stomach. It doesn’t matter that I sleep with this man almost every night. I’ll never get enough of him, his smooth skin over hard muscle, the way we fit perfectly together. He was like a comfort object, a blanket I needed beside me to sleep.
I thought about it. “The first time I met you, well I guess saw you, out on that street where you kept me from smashing my face into the pavement, I looked at you. But I didn’t really register you. I thought, ‘Well, he’s good looking.’ But I didn’t really give you any other thought, not until we ran into each other at the awful brunch spot. Let’s agree never to get breakfast that isn’t really breakfast ever again?”
Oliver nods and kisses the crown of my head. “Deal. Eggs and pancakes it is forever.”
I wiggle backwards. “Anyway, even when we started sleeping together … the first couple of times I didn’t really have feelings for you. Sure, I liked you as a person and thought you were good in the sack, but I never considered the possibility of more. But over time, you grew on me. I started to regard you as the closest person to me in my life, the person I wanted to tell about my day and everything that happened in between. I fell slowly for you, but once I was down for the count, there was no hope of getting up again.”
“That’s because love and relationships aren’t a fairytale. They don’t go completely written to plan, like we see in the movies or read in books. They’re messy. They cause such an upheaval in our lives. You’re making room for a second human being in your singular life, of course it’s not going to go smoothly.”
I turn to face him in the dark. “I’m glad you uprooted my life.”
“And I’m glad you made a fucking mess of mine.”
Epilogue
Gemma
Six Months Later
In real life, there is no happily ever after.
Sure, we get the guy, slay the dragon, nab the fairytale ending we have all been searching for.
But then you move in together. Share spaces. Share bathrooms. Fight over who cooks dinner and what TV show you binge on. He wants sports, you want Bravo.
The other day, Oliver and I had the following conversation while I was in the shower.
Oliver stood over the sink, brushing his teeth. "Do you use the soap bar in there?"
"Of course, what else would I use? Are you calling me dirty?" I squirt conditioner into my hand.
"No, babe. But like, when I use it, I put the soap in my hands first and then wash my body. You do the same, right?"
Taking the razor from the wall, I start on my armpits. "Um, no. I just rub the bar all over my body."
"In your butt? That's gross."
He looks at me from the mirror as I stick my head out of the glass door.
"Honey, we put each other's private parts in our mouths. I think your point is pretty much moot."
And that is the discussion almost daily. We bicker, laugh, and at the end of the day, get into bed in nothing but our underwear and eat ice cream sandwiches. We still fuck like animals, but there is another layer there. An added compassion, friendship or understanding. It means more because we know that once the sex is over, we are still going to be the couple who is together even when we get food poisoning from a Japanese restaurant that keeps us in the bathroom half the night.
And yes, I did say I peeked out of a glass shower door. It's the fanciest fucking shower I've ever lived in, and is probably half the size of my old West Village bedroom.
But most notably, that shower is not in Oliver's apartment. No, part of the deal of moving in together after a couple of months dating, was that we find a new place. Obviously mine would not work, nor would I want to include Sam as the third wheel in my relationship. And I wasn’t moving in to his mansion, which I couldn’t begin to pay for, plus it was far too far from my work.
That had started another conversation about money. Oliver was insistent that he could just pay for wherever we lived, that he had enough money to cover everything and I shouldn’t worry about it. I told him where he could shove it.
I wasn’t so independent or girl power that I didn’t want my man to treat me like a princess. Sure, I wanted doors opened, surprise flowers, breakfast in bed, a nice gift that I wasn’t expecting now and then. But I also respected myself, and planned to keep the independence I’d built when I moved to New York City by myself. I had a good job that I worked hard at, I paid my bills and was responsible enough to save a little at the end of the month.
I wasn’t going to allow the prince I’d found to sweep me off my feet and take care of everything. I was too stubborn to let someone control my whole kingdom.
So we’d gone apartment huntin
g, seeing five places before we settled on one that was just flashy enough but also inside my price range. We split rent seventy-thirty, and I picked up the grocery bill.
And seeing as Oliver hadn’t really cooked food for himself in three years, I was schooling him on some things in life.
“Do we really need five packs of chicken?” He steers the cart, looking warily at every shelf in Whole Foods.
“Yes, because unlike some people, us peasants cook our meals after we defrost them from freezer Siberia.” I smack his ass and love the feeling of the firmness through his sweatpants.
“But we could just order takeout … I didn’t even have a microwave in my old apartment.” He eyes a package of kale I put in the cart.
Shaking my head as I select containers of yogurt, I laugh. “I know you didn’t, but I’m domesticating you, this is my job. I’m not telling you you have to cook anything. God knows I don’t want our building burning down.”
“Is this a similar argument to the clothes chair?” Oliver leans over and plants a kiss on my cheek.
“The clothes chair is an essential piece of furniture in which clothes that you may wear tomorrow, for example sweatpants, can stay out of the closet to remind you to wear them again.”
I didn’t understand what he didn’t understand about the all-important chair you place in your bedroom to put non-dirty, possible outfit items for the week. Every woman had one, be it a piece of workout equipment, a chair, or whatever else you could hang clothes on.
“Sure, babe.”
“Midnight Train to Georgia” comes on over the loudspeakers, and Oliver starts shimmying down the aisles. I laugh at his two-step while he pushes the cart, and I realize, with two packages of english muffins in my hands, that I’m a damn lucky person.
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