She looked over the edge. “Sure. But how do we get back up here for our stuff?”
“Good question. There’s a path back up, it’s not steep.”
She nodded and gave me the thumbs up.
“I’ll go first, and I’ll be there waiting for you if you panic.”
She smiled. Every now and then, I said the right thing, and that smile of hers made me feel like the king of the world. I grabbed her face and kissed her, then took five steps back, ran and jumped off of that cliff.
For a second I was flying, and it was exactly how it felt to finally let myself fall in love with my favorite person in the world—exhilarating but familiar like a dream, a beautiful release. The shocking embrace of cold water that followed made me feel so awake and alive, and the only thing better than experiencing it myself was knowing that Gemma was about to experience the same thing.
When I sprung up for air, I shook my head and wiped my eyes and saw her looking down at me.
“You ready?” I called up, as I swam a safe distance away.
“Now?”
“Now!”
She disappeared for a second, and then I held my breath and watched as she took a powerful leap off of the edge and into the air with perfect form. She came crashing into the water six feet from me, barely making a splash because she had done exactly as I told her to do, her body was straight as an arrow. When she surfaced, we swam towards each other and she covered my face with wet smiling kisses.
“Thank you!” she yelled out, and it echoed across the lake. “Thank you thank you thank you.” She was breathless again, and we floated on our backs, holding hands, and we were young and happy and carefree and we were rocking that honeymoon and I was proud of us. I knew that I’d go back to that lake with her, over and over again, if only in my memory. No matter what happened.
After returning to the cliff and drying off, we retrieved the take-out food from the hotel restaurant and lounged on a dock at the edge of the water. We weren’t alone, but it wasn’t crowded. It was sunny and peaceful and we were so content we barely spoke.
Because she jumped into a lake with me, I offered to browse a home décor shop in Whistler Village with her. She posted pictures on Instagram, and I actually enjoyed watching her examine items with an expert eye. I offered to buy her whatever she wanted, but she declined. She didn’t say it, but she still wasn’t completely sure where she’d be living. I tried not to let it ruin my mood.
I suppose I wasn’t so good at hiding the fact that my mood had changed, but once we got back to the room, Gemma was determined to make things up to me in a way that I was not expecting.
I had unwittingly slammed the door to the mini-bar shut when I took out a bottle of water, and then placed the bottle on top of the counter with a little more force than necessary. I turned to her, frowning, and found her with both hands on her hips, studying me.
“What?”
“I’ll show you what,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the bedroom. She pulled my shorts down, pushed me down onto the edge of the bed, and kneeled on the floor between my legs, licking her lips as she looked up at me. I was instantly hard, and when I watched her contemplate my cock while she cupped my balls with one hand, I knew that she was going into this with the intention of doing it right. I was about to ask her to marry me again, but when she started licking my shaft, I forgot how to speak.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the whole universe had suddenly been distilled down to my intense erection and the unbearable pleasure that her hands and mouth were awarding it. I felt worshipped and desired and accepted and nurtured, but she was totally in command. I had always loved her messy wavy hair, but looking down at it like that, while she was doing that to me…Fucking bliss. I was grabbing fistfuls of it, while she managed to stimulate every single one of my hot spots with her soft, warm, wet mouth and gentle but firm fingers.
Talk about not being aware of time. I have no idea how long it lasted, but she wanted me to come in her mouth, and I just remember feeling so good and grateful afterwards that it scared me. As an adult, I had never felt like another person had so much control over me, or that I could lose control of myself because of it.
I had collapsed onto my back. She climbed up on top of me, wiping her swollen lips with the back of her hand, and I reached out for her. I reached for her hand, I placed my fingertips on her mouth. Who are you? What did you just do to me?
“How?” was all I could manage to say, at first.
“How what?”
Part of me knew that I shouldn’t ask, but I had to know. “How did you learn to do it like that?”
She blushed and covered her face, shaking her head.
“Tell me.”
“Did you like it?”
“Gemma. The word ‘like’ doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt about that. No words can.”
“Good…Andrew made me watch a porno once, to show me how to do it.”
I raised myself up on my elbows. “You did that to him and he still cheated on you?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t do it very often.”
“Baby. Nothing that you did or didn’t do was a good enough reason for him to —”
“Yeah yeah I know. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Me neither.” I also don’t want to think about you doing that to him but now I may never be able to stop.
“I guess…Andrew just wasn’t very expressive, so I could never tell if I was good or not. But I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Let’s never talk about him again.”
I kissed her, long and hard, to erase his name from her lips.
“I love you,” I groaned. Groaned. Like it hurt me. It did. I ached for her, even when our skin touched, it never felt like quite enough. So different from the soft and sweet “love you” we had said to each other a handful of times over the years.
“I love you,” she said, so quietly that I barely heard her.
Before dinner, when I got out of the shower, I saw Gemma looking at her phone while she was changing in the bedroom. As soon as she saw me, she closed the app and turned her phone over. I had been hoping for a different kind of reaction when she saw me naked, running my fingers through my wet hair, with a towel wrapped around my waist.
I laughed. “What?”
“Nothing. Just a work email.”
“A job offer?”
“An opportunity. I’d still have to meet with the production designer. It’s just a short film, but it would add another set designer credit to my resume. I’ll look into it when we get back to LA. Could be good.”
“Is Ben the one who emailed you about it?”
“Yes. The director’s a friend of Ben’s.”
“You should take the job.”
“It’s all on location. In Big Bear. Ben would be there.”
I managed to unclench my jaw to say: “Cool. Sounds like a good gig.”
“We’ll see. Should we go for a walk in the village or something?”
“I want you to take the job. I want to make this work. I want you to go to work without having to worry about me being a jealous maniac. I’ll be cool.”
“Yeah, cool. I’ll think about it when we get back to L.A.”
I walked over to her and put my arms around her. “I love you, Gem. Nope. I lied. I just lied. I’m head-over-heels, so crazy deep in love with you. I had no idea it was possible to feel like this. I don’t want to fuck it up…Oh shit.” I fucked up.
“What?!”
“It’s fine. I just realized I had a conference call scheduled. Where’s my phone? It’s fine.” It was insane that I had gone so long without checking my phone, but she had literally blown my mind earlier.
She looked very concerned. “That is…unlike you.”
“We’ll just reschedule, it’s not a big deal.” It was with one of my investors. It wasn’t not a big deal. “You know what, I’m gonna see if we can get him on the phone now. I’ll say I didn’t h
ave a signal. I’m on vacation, he’ll understand.”
She nodded, and I could tell she was trying not to look worried as she watched me scroll through my messages when I finally found my phone. I was able to get back on track with my investor, and Gemma and I were able to get back on track with our vacation not long afterwards. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that we would be able to stay on that track forever, but one always hopes.
20
Gemma
After three days together on a mountain, we returned to sea level, high on love and lust. True to his word, Theo had shown no signs of jealousy or possessiveness since that first night at Whistler. We got along beautifully, and that nagging feeling I had that this couldn’t possibly work was gone, somewhere at the bottom of Green Lake by now.
Officially, I continued to stay at Chloe and Ethan’s. Even though I never really wanted to leave Theo, I also enjoyed the kissing in cars and on doorsteps as we greeted or said goodbye to each other. I loved the little texts we sent to each other throughout the day, and the anticipation of seeing him at night. Being so openly in love in L.A. somehow felt even dreamier and more surreal than when we were on vacation.
We went to Winsome for brunch, sitting side-by-side, holding hands, and those waitresses who had always flirted with Theo looked surprised to see us like that, but not so shocked that I’d feel insulted. We met Ethan and Chloe for drinks at Library Bar downtown after work—our first double date—and it absolutely felt different than all of the other times we’d all hung out together before. Instead of feeling more grown-up, it made Theo and me act like a high school couple around them for some reason. We delighted in making Chloe laugh and Ethan uncomfortable because of our public displays of affection.
It was when we were lying together, wrapped up in each other in that hammock that he had set up on his back porch, while listening to the birds chirping and the small fountain gurgling, that I had felt so overwhelmed with pure joy and bliss I suddenly burst into tears. If I had done this with anyone else that I had been dating for a couple of weeks, it would have surely ended things. But Theo just glanced down at me for a moment, then went back to closing his eyes, and tightened his grip around me. “I know,” he said. “It’s good.”
Once I’d dried my eyes and calmed down, he removed his arms from around me, reached into his pocket, and then held up a ring so that I could see it. It was an elegant, wide sterling silver band with a matte finish. Simple and lovely.
“This is for version 3.0 of our relationship. It’s engraved on the inside…”
I tilted the ring so that I could see the secret message. This is real.
“You can wear this until you feel comfortable wearing the wedding band. In public, I mean.”
I slid that ring onto my finger and kissed him. “I love it. I love you.”
“Me too…Should we try to fuck on this hammock, or what?”
I playfully punched his bicep. “Way to ruin the moment.”
“Successfully fucking in a hammock could only make this more romantic.”
I waved my hand in the air. “I have to ask you something first.”
“No, I’ve never fucked in a hammock before.”
I covered his mouth with my hand.
“Something’s come up. I have to go to Cleveland next weekend, for my parents’ thirtieth anniversary party. Their best friends are organizing it for them, at a country club…Are you busy next weekend? Would you like to come?”
I removed my hand from his mouth.
“If you want me there, of course. I’ll come.”
“Really? Do you want to stay at my parents’ house with me?”
“Do they know about us? About what’s going on now, I mean?”
“Yes. I told them before we went to Whistler. Let’s just say they’re pleased. I wouldn’t want it to go to your head or anything.”
“Really?” He grinned. “Good. My Mom’s happy too.”
“Really? Good.”
He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it.
“So Andrew will be there?”
“Yes. I mean, I assume so. Is that a problem?”
“No. I’m fine with it. As long as you are. Have you been in touch with him? Lately?”
“We send polite birthday and Christmas texts. You know. Like old family friends.”
“So he doesn’t know about us?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I doubt it. I’m sure he doesn’t care, either.” I buried my face into his chest and we didn’t talk again for a while.
That nagging feeling that this wouldn’t work had emerged from the bottom of the alpine lake, crawled out and found me again. But I ignored it. It was the nagging feeling that didn’t feel right to me anymore. What I had with Theo now was real, and we deserved to stay happy like this for as long as possible. That was the goal, and whatever I had to do to achieve that goal for us was necessary and worth it.
That’s what I told myself—it was like successfully fucking in a hammock. At least one of you has to keep both feet on the ground at all times, and it’s important to stay quiet and maintain a sense of balance while enjoying the blissful, dizzying feeling of being so connected to someone while suspended in mid-air.
21
Theo
Visiting Cleveland was never on my bucket list, even after I’d met Gemma, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it when we got there. I loved seeing her parents and the house she grew up in, how warm and cozy it is, and it was fascinating and hilarious to me that Gemma’s bedroom—which was unchanged from when she lived there—had absolutely no style. Whatsoever. None. It looked like every generic teenage girl’s room I’d ever seen on screen, complete with framed Twilight poster and a picture of Zac Efron that was torn from a magazine and pinned to the corkboard over her white desk.
“Now, what does this bedroom tell us about the character?” I said, as I picked up a plain white music box and got smacked in the back of the head with a pillow.
“It tells us that she would one day live in a house with some asshole in L.A.”
“And?”
She plopped down onto her double bed with a floral comforter. “And that I never really felt like I belonged here, so I tried to make it look like I fit in.”
I put down the music box and sat next to her. “Are you saying you actually designed this room to look generic?”
“Maybe. I don’t think I did it consciously, but I guess I just…I always felt bigger than my life here, so I tried to make myself smaller.”
By dating a guy who didn’t deserve you.
“I’ve never said that out loud before.”
I understood. This room was where she first started designing sets, and secretly designing her future. It made me sad to think that she felt she had to redesign herself to fit some cookie cutter image when she was younger, but happy to be a part of the life she wanted for herself once she’d started becoming who she wanted to be.
“It’s weird, being here with you.” She rested her head against my shoulder.
“I love being here with you.”
“I feel self-conscious.”
“I wish I could show you the house where I grew up.” My voice cracked. That was weird. All of a sudden, I was thinking about homes and childhoods and future homes and future children. Was she thinking about those things too?
“Your Mom lives in a condo now?”
“Yeah. In a suburb of Toronto.”
I was getting all introverted, and Gemma knew better than to ask any more questions. That’s why she was my best friend. She just lay her head against my shoulder until her Mom asked if we wanted coffee and apple crumble. We did. We definitely did.
When Gemma was in the bathroom, I was alone in the cozy kitchen with her parents, and I understood how it was possible for her and I to have such comfortable silences together. Her parents were the same way. It never felt awkward with them, they never felt the need to make small talk just for the sake of filling the void. I liked them.
I wanted to be a part of this family. Gemma and I had given them a joint anniversary gift—pearl-colored sateen sheets—pearl being the traditional gift for a thirtieth wedding anniversary.
It was the most couple-y thing we had done so far, to me, and I liked it.
Gemma’s father handed me a bright yellow happy face mug of coffee and said, in a hushed tone: “Thanks for taking care of our girl out there in La La Land, Theo.”
“Hah. It would be my pleasure, but I think she pretty much takes care of herself.”
He patted me on the back, smiling, and Gemma’s mother looked up from the apple crumble to give me an exaggerated wink.
I want to be a part of this family.
“So, tell us about the techno biz,” he said, pulling out a kitchen table chair. “Gemma said you came out with some fancy new exercise clothes…”
After that, Gemma took me on a little tour of the neighborhood, including her old high school. Although I’m sure I would have liked any town or neighborhood that she gave me a tour of, I have to admit that it was impossible not to think about how she had spent all that time growing up with Andrew there. As much as I knew that Gemma was mine—Cleveland was Andrew’s. I was in his territory, and not looking forward to seeing him at the party that night. I wouldn’t have missed it, but I’d had a bad feeling about it ever since Gemma had brought it up.
Green: a friends to lovers romantic comedy Page 18