by Box Set
He stayed inside me, breathing hard and holding me close, until we both found our equilibrium again, then he slowly slid out. It tickled just a little, and left me feeling like a puzzle piece I hadn’t known about was now gone.
I shivered, but not because I was cold. Although, it wasn’t as warm without Marc’s heat on top and all around me. It was more of a delicious shiver, counting up all the times he gave me the highest pleasure and comparing them to all the lackluster times before.
So this was what I’d been missing.
Chapter 12
Waking up in Marc’s bed was a very different story this time around. For one thing, there was no hangover. For another, there was no question at all of what had happened the night before: I had officially gotten laid.
Not just laid, I’d gotten thoroughly banged six ways from Sunday. If all the waiting and accidents and interruptions had led to that—well, it had been worth all the mishaps. I gazed over at Marc, and the pink mark on his forehead still healing from the recent stitches. Most of the mishaps, I amended. The entire emergency visit in a bra thing was being omitted from all future versions of this story.
“Good morning,” came his rumbly morning voice, and my eyes moved down to see that his had opened, and he was smiling at me.
“It really is,” I agreed. The sun was extra shiny; I was quite certain. That was why the birds were even chirpier than normal. And I was absolutely ravenous. It was a shame we’d devoured all the steak last night, because some of that with some eggs would be just the protein boost we needed for a second round this morning. Although—I winced—Anastasia never seemed to be quite this sore after an aerobic sex workout.
This led me to two conclusions. One, I needed to practice more yoga. Two, Grey’s dick must have had nothing on Marc’s.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Coffee,” he agreed. I didn’t exactly leap from the bed (those sore quads and all), but I damn well did in my mind. In my mind, in fact, it was like Cinderella being dressed and serenaded by all the little creatures of the forest. Once in the kitchen, I spun around as I filled the reservoir and dumped in grounds. I was so happy. I was sublimely, perfectly happy. I was—oh fuck.
I was in love.
My perfect mood was shattered immediately. I was in love with a man that I’d just slept with in order to prepare him to sleep with other women. What was I thinking? Scarlet had warned me. Hell, I’d basically warned myself the previous night. Why else would I have been so jealous lately? Of course I’d been developing feelings. And of course I’d fall for him once we’d slept together.
After all, the whole thing about me only having slept with the two old boyfriends had another logical conclusion. I hadn’t sought out any other sexual partners because I was only interested in sleeping with people I cared for.
Where was my inner therapist before I’d let things get this far?
A cloud passed over the sun, and it seemed like a metaphor for my entire life. If I were still Cinderella, this would be about the time that the coach turned back into a pumpkin. Idiot, I thought to myself. I had thought before then that most of my bad ideas were not the ones that stuck. Like the time I thought perhaps I could launch a new comic called Supercomic, where the main character borrowed any power she needed any time she needed it. Lizzie reminded me about copyrights, and it didn’t even get as far as a rough sketch.
There was my plan to go back to college and get a degree in accounting. I hatched that one after paying my old neighbor Dean to do my taxes. It died a quick death when Lizzie reminded me that I went to art school to avoid math classes.
There was the occasional hangover, twice giving my number to cute guys that turned out to be a real creeps, and the time I ate a suspect leftover taco and gave myself a nice dose of food poisoning. You know, the normal kind of bad decisions. Not so, this. This was a whole new level of bad choice I’d made for myself.
This was the kind of thing that hung around. And I strongly suspected that heartache might take longer to get rid of than a little salmonella.
I was fretting so much I barely noticed Marc stumble into the kitchen until he spoke. “So we actually did it!” He held up his large hand, the hand that had brought me to the edges of the known universe last night, and awaited a high five.
“We did it!” I said brightly. I mean, I might have been in the depths of despair, but I wasn’t about to explain my twisted thought processes to him. Plus, super embarrassing to tell a guy you just banged the one time that you’re afraid you are deeply in love with him. The horror! No, the only way to get out of this one was to fake sick. I made a weird face at him and pointed at the coffeemaker.
“Dude, I think I might have a migraine coming on. I’m gonna go lay down for a while. Coffee’s ready whenever, though.” I’d never had a migraine in my life, but unless my treacherous posse of ladies showed up to out me, Marc would never know.
“Do you want anything? You can lay in my bed if you want.” Of course he wouldn’t make this easy. The problem with falling for a nice guy is that they’re nice. Note to self: only fall for douches who could make it easy to recover.
“Nah. Thanks though. I’m just going to grab a glass of water and try to sleep for a little longer.” I wondered if he’d notice if I snuck the Lucky Charms under my shirt, too. After all, a little man trouble doesn’t sway this girl’s appetite. It felt risky, though, so I resigned myself to waiting until he was in the shower to sneak food. Damn it.
Back in my room, I did try to go back to sleep for a little while. Too much was running through my head for me to get any actual rest, though. I opened my computer and closed it several times. Finally, I pulled out my Screwmates notebook. I needed to draw through my feelings. Or at least draw some better ones for myself. Or… well, hell. I just needed to draw. It was my safe space, my meditation. And I was not about to let a man put me behind on my self-imposed deadlines.
First, I drew the two main characters, Maddy and Markus, having dinner. Just like last night, Markus cooked a feast. Not quite like last night, Maddy swept the dishes off the table and banged him on it. Tastefully, of course. Well, that was certainly a keeper.
I ripped the page out and put it in my “to be inked” pile.
Next up was the morning after. Even in the comic’s torrid alternate reality, I’d never had the two Other M’s wake up in bed together. They’d always gone back “home”, so to speak. But this time, I drew it differently. First one head pops out from under a wrinkled sheet, then the other. In this episode, Maddy asks Markus to be her boyfriend. First he accepts—then he heads back under the covers, if you know what I mean.
I stared at the page, blinking through the tears that had suddenly formed. That wasn’t the way it would happen in real life. In real life, he would say no. After all, he was leaving. This was just a sex thing. And then worst of all, he’d probably give me a hug. He’d be sympathetic.
And I would actually die of humiliation. Legitimately die. That was not going in the comic. I crumpled up the page and threw it on the floor.
Sketch, sketch, sketch. Erase, erase, erase. I worked for another half hour, and then looked over what I’d drawn. In this version of the episode, Markus tells Maddy he has something to show her. It’s a rocket ship, and not at all based on the shape of the magnificent rocket in Marc’s pants. Nope, not at all. Okay, fine, it’s a perfect replica. They hop inside and bang for several light years, finally landing in a world where there is no Paris.
Not even a Martian equivalent. In that episode, Markus asks her to go steady.
Go steady? Gross. My comic had suddenly gone 1960’s scifi. No way was that going to fly with my readers. I crumpled that one up and tossed it, too. I flopped back into my pillows and groaned, scrubbing my fists over my eyes. Just a sex thing, I reminded myself for the eight billionth time. Just a sex thing.
There was just no possible way to avoid the obvious. The comic would have to diverge sharply from real life.
That would be fi
ne, though, because basically no one but me knew I was writing fan-fiction about my own life and putting it online. Even the girls probably only looked at my site when I sent out newsletters. Which I was overdue for. It really was time I showed them what I’d been up to, seeing as they’d been encouraging me and all. I reminded myself yet again that I really needed to explain to those tattletales how it was not to be brought up with Marc. The humiliation I imagined in my pretend asking-out would have nothing on the shame of knowing real-life Marc saw all the things I wrote about Markus.
There was just no world, fictional or not, where I could pretend it was based on some other Marc I knew.
So instead I pulled out a fresh pencil, and got to work on an entirely made-up episode, one in which Maddy and Markus dress up. They put on Sexy Ninja costumes from “their” trip to the sex shop. If those had been available in real life, I sure as heck would have bought some. Instead, I merely lived vicariously as the two of them snuck around town and furtively fooled around.
They hit the sculpture garden at the Nelson. They marked the bushes at the Liberty Memorial—not a traditional place for straight couples, but what can I say? It was an homage to Marc’s World War One specialty. Finally, they did it in the backyard of their French neighbor. Whom I had just made up and added. And she was hideous. So, hah. All in all, I was fairly pleased with my final results. Also, I was goddamn starving. The inking could wait. I had bigger fish to fry. Which made me wonder if we had any fish sticks.
I couldn’t have them until I was a big girl, though. And being a big girl meant talking to Marc. And not telling the truth at all. You know, like a grown up.
Sometime during the drawing, it had occurred to me that even though I was going to have to learn to live without Marc, I wasn’t willing to become a shut-in while he was still here. The sex thing might be over, but the enjoyment of his company was still very much alive. And even though those feelings had become completely tied up in the Big L, I cherished our time together. If all I would ever have to look back on was this last couple weeks before his big trip, I wanted them to at least be memories of the two of us, not just me and my solitude.
I marched my ass into the kitchen, and got it all over with.
“Hey, are you feeling better?” Marc asked from the table, where he was still nursing some coffee and flipping through a book with a highlighter in hand. It didn’t look like he’d showered yet. A secret little thrill ran through me, knowing that I was still on his body. That neither of us had rinsed off the last thing that remained of us… however briefly us had existed.
“I am, yeah. Thanks.” I puttered around for a second, opening and closing the fridge, pouring myself a mug of now-cold coffee and tossing it in the microwave. “Actually, I’m feeling pretty amazing.”
“I have to agree with you,” he said, as the grin slowly spread across his mouth, making his eyes crinkle just a little at the corners.
“Yeah. It was good that we got it done, finally. So I guess we can move on with that out of our systems.” I dropped my eyes, not willing to see the expression of relief I was certain was written all over his face. “I’m pretty excited to move forward.”
By the time I worked up the nerve to turn back around with my cereal in hand, he was immersed in his book again.
“I mean…” I started again.
“Yes?” He looked up so eagerly it almost seemed like he hadn’t been reading at all.
“I mean you actually taught me a lot,” I admitted shyly. “I’m really glad we did that.” There was no harm in telling him it meant something to me, as long as I didn’t let him know that it actually meant everything.
“You should do really well now, I think.” By sheer force of will, I actually smiled at him as I said that. As I gave him my blessing to go forth and be fertile in the lavender fields of France. Or whatever it was that they did over there. I decided I hated France, and would no longer acknowledge its existence.
It was going to be freedom fries here, from now on.
He looked surprised, even disappointed? Surely not. It’s truly staggering how the human heart can project its feelings onto someone else. Then he smiled back, and my momentary confusion passed.
“Last night was perfect,” he said. “I think we both learned a lot about minimalism when it comes to seduction. You’re going to do pretty well yourself, I think.”
Now was clearly not the time to enlighten him about my breakthrough, and how I’d discovered I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else any time soon. Things got quiet, and awkward. At least on my part. I ate a few bites of cereal, exaggerating my chewing so it didn’t make weird milky-smack-y noises in the quiet. Marc went back to his book, flipped a page. Highlighted a passage and dog-eared the page. That animal. I knew librarians that would slap him for that. I slurped some of the excess sugary milk from my bowl, staring at him all the while.
Flip. Highlight. Dog-ear.
“I have to say, though, we still suck pretty hard at wine. That won’t serve you well on your trip. I’m willing to, uh, read a book or two, if it’ll help.” At that, Marc’s eyes lit up.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” he asked.
“I just did?” But I knew what he meant. We wouldn’t be sleeping together again (farewell, multiple orgasms! I hardly knew ya.) but we weren’t done adventuring together. And even though it didn’t quite fill the empty hole that seemed to have taken up residence in my chest, it felt really nice to know that he was still excited to spend time with me. Although in some ways, I couldn’t blame him.
I had certainly brought the color into his beige existence.
And speaking of, I believed it was time to liven up the wall art. Surely now that I had shared Marc’s bed, in the sexy way, I was entitled to put my stamp elsewhere too. He had slammed his book shut as I dreamed of large prints over the Couch of Love, and hopped up.
“How about I fix us some snacks, and let’s spend today reading. Maybe tonight, when we’ve recovered, we can go get a single bottle of wine, and do a responsible tasting.” He looked thrilled, and I was hungry, so I nodded and collected a heavy tome from his stack of wine books.
A few minutes later, there was a plate of sandwiches on the Coffee Table of Doom, and I’ll be damned if that book wasn’t slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. It turned out that the way grapes grew actually did affect the taste. And here I had thought Marc made that up to convince me to read. But lo and behold. Dirt wasn’t just dirt, after all.
I snuck a glance over at him, completely absorbed in his own reading. I had made the right decision. Beyond loving him, I loved spending time with him. As much as it hurt to remember he wasn’t mine, it was a balm to feel this connected.
I might not have been acknowledging France anymore, but the French word terroir was now firmly part of my vocabulary. Assuming I pronounced it right, I planned to introduce it into many conversations to appear sophisticated and worldly.
The definition was something a little fuzzy, but it roughly meant “the taste of a place”.
And what a sexy thought, that the very essence of Tuscany ended up in the red you can have with pasta. That by simply opening a bottle, you had transported an entire country home with you. The sensations on your tongue here in the smack-center of the United States were exactly the same as the ones on the vintners’ on a sun-baked peninsula in the Mediterranean.
Unsexily, it turned out that shit like nitrogen actually was a big part of that.
Nothing is perfect.
The next chapter was about choosing the exact perfect time to pick the grapes. Sometimes, the sugar content becomes optimal at, like, two in the morning, and the village must turn out to pick those little globes of juice before they turn. If Marc had bothered to mention that wine books were basically race-against-the-clock thrillers, I would so not have fought him on this.
Somehow, the entire day managed to pass between stolen glances at him over our books. Besides a few refills on the Snack Tray, we spent the enti
re time in the living room, just poring over the information gleaned from the library. Who knew libraries were such a font of information? Kidding, kidding. Kind of.
The best part was how damn comfortable I still felt with him, even after confronting my own super-uncomfortable feelings. There was a lot of relief there, though. I mean, we had to live together. We were living together. If my dawning l-o-v-e was going to make waves, I’d sooner jump ship. But feeling like this, together but separate, enjoying our own books in a shared space—I wasn’t quite sure how to frame it, but it felt good. It felt like we could move forward.
That was all I really needed when it came down to it. Just to move forward. The sentimentality was so fresh, surely it wouldn’t seep into my pores the way a long-term affair would. So I was having an emotional response to a physical attraction, but it would fade. It would.
It would!
And then everything would be fine. Back to business. Back to normal. Absence rarely made the heart grow fonder if said absence was longer than about three or four weeks, I’d read once. And everything you read is definitely true. As long as you didn’t read it on the internet.
Anyways, he’d be gone for actual months. So a few weeks of pining, perhaps? A few weeks of winding down Screwmates, then, and wrapping up the series. By the time both of those things were done, I’d be completely over him. I would no longer remember how his slightly curly hair felt between my fingers. No clue how my skin tightened at the graze of his touch. I probably wouldn’t be able to pick the shade of his eyes out of a crayon box.
It was going to be the best thing that could possibly happen to us. “Us”. I had to stop using that word, for one thing.