“Come in from the left,” Iliana instructed.
Merritt performed a rusty side approach. Iliana clasped her arm, pulled her off-balance. Merritt dropped to the ground, rolled, and regained her stance. They repeated the move a few more times. Iliana’s long blond braid swung around her back, but of course no practitioner of aikido would ever yank it.
“Faster,” Iliana said. She threw Merritt again.
Finally, she lunged at Merritt. It was an easy opening. Merritt was supposed to use Iliana’s momentum to bring her to the floor, but she missed her chance. Iliana countered and flipped Merritt over her arm in a complete, airborne rotation. For a second Merritt saw the cloudy skylights overhead, and then she was back on her feet, her arms loosely raised because Iliana would never hurt her. She would challenge her. She would lay Merritt down on the ground with a flick of her wrist. But Iliana would always protect her as she fell.
They sparred for half an hour, and Merritt felt her muscles loosen and her body stretch. She tried to clear Avery from her mind. She tried to live in a place where there was only weight and counterweight. Fulcrum and arc. Fall and rise. The spirit of aki. Finally, they finished. Iliana bowed to Merritt.
“Now are you ready to hear reason?” Iliana sat down on the mat.
Merritt sat next to her, then flopped on her back. “What kind of reason?”
Iliana flopped down with Merritt, their heads almost touching. “I think you’re hiding from her. Right now. You’re telling yourself you don’t need her. You want to get back to the shop. You’re afraid to ask her how she feels, and you’re afraid to tell her how you feel.”
“I’m being realistic. I’m accepting change in the world. Isn’t that what you are always telling your students to do? Let the chi move through you? Don’t hold too tightly to things of this world?”
“Running away from the opponent you fear is not harnessing your chi.”
“I’m not running from Avery, and I’m not afraid of her.”
“I know,” Iliana said again. “You’re afraid of yourself.”
Chapter 28
On their last night together, Avery arrived at Merritt’s apartment around eight, letting herself in with the key Merritt had given her. Merritt was standing in the small, open kitchen, staring at a pile of ingredients. There was something wrapped in butcher paper, a wheel of brie, peaches, and an inordinate amount of kale, a kind of kale mountain. A few of the leaves had drifted to the floor, but that was okay because there were about two shopping bags full on the counter.
“What are you doing?” Avery asked.
“I think I’m in over my head.”
Avery walked across the room and put her arms around Merritt’s waist, leaning her head against her shoulder. She could feel Merritt’s heart beating.
“I wanted to cook,” Merritt said.
“Sure.” It wasn’t exactly how Avery had pictured their last night together, but it was sweet. She’d imagined tears, hers probably. Not Merritt’s. But it would be nice to cook a meal first.
“I’ve tried to make kale before, but I never could,” Merritt said.
“Cook it?”
“Buy it.”
“You couldn’t buy kale in Portland? Was it picking it out?” Avery teased gently. “Or carrying it to your truck? Because they’ll take it out to your truck for you.”
“It’s stupid, and I don’t actually cook. Let’s just order in.”
Merritt was changing the subject, but Avery wasn’t sure how to coax the deep story of kale out of her.
“You bought this,” Avery said. “You wanted this epic amount of kale. I don’t know how to knit. But I’m not totally lost in domestic stuff. I’ll show you. And you don’t have to cook it, you know. You can eat it raw.”
* * *
Dinner was quiet, and Merritt ate slowly. She appeared to savor each bite, although Avery doubted her brie-tilapia on a bed of peach kale was really a culinary success. And all through dinner Avery thought, I’ll ask. I’ll tell her. She wanted more. She wanted time with Merritt. The only way she might get it would be to put her desires on the table as surely as she had placed a plate in front of Merritt.
“I’m glad I got to see you doing aikido with your friends the other day,” Avery said. “I like to see you in your world.” There was a painful tug at her heart that said, Maybe I’m not. Maybe she would rather live in the privacy of Merritt’s apartment where there were no other women, no friends who might warn Merritt off sleeping with a closeted television star, nothing to suggest that Merritt had a complete life before Avery arrived and would have a complete life after Avery left. Avery could still see the pretty, dark-haired woman at the last-Thursday festival leaning toward Merritt. Avery took a deep breath. She’d waited all summer, and now summer was measured in hours instead of days.
Avery leaned forward, her hands extended on the table. “What do we do now?” she asked.
Merritt took her hands. “We go to bed?”
“I mean the other now. I mean tomorrow. I want more time with you.”
There. She had said it.
“I want more time with you too,” Merritt said, but it sounded impossible, the way people said, I wish I had known my father or I’d like to be twenty-one again. “Alistair took me out behind the proverbial woodshed to have a talk. Did he tell you?”
Oh, that was it! Avery thought. Alistair had been trying to scare off her lover while offering her gender-appropriate puzzle books. For a moment she felt real anger. He should have told her!
“No. What did he say?”
“He said if I cared about you, I’d back off. You could lose your show over this.”
“I told you that.”
“But I didn’t know how much it meant to you before. King and Crown is your family. This is your life. When I’m with you—” Merritt squeezed Avery’s hands. She looked pained. “All my exes say I’m cold.”
“You’re not cold,” Avery said.
“That’s why they leave. And for the first time, I think maybe I won’t make the same mistakes. But, Avery, maybe I’ll make worse ones. The girls I’ve dated say I hurt them. I never see it coming. I never think I will. What if I do it again?”
“How will you hurt me?”
“I could ruin King and Crown.”
“I want to tell you something,” Avery said, “that I never talk about, not even with Alistair. Come sit with me.”
She stood up and led Merritt to the couch. It struck her again how bleak the apartment was, like every piece of furniture had been chosen because it wasn’t good enough for someplace else.
“I want you to know why I never see my mother,” Avery said when they were seated. “We only talk on the phone, and I don’t visit. People think it’s just because she’s a bitch, which she is, but she’s my mom, and sometimes I miss her. But there’s this one moment. She and my dad,” Avery went on slowly, “were about as opposite as you could get. I don’t know how they had me. When I told my father I was gay, he was thrilled that I was gay. He wanted me to subvert the cultural norm. Although come to think of it, he probably just liked it because he knew it would piss off my mother. Then I told my mom. I remember the exact moment. I’d flown back to L.A. We were sitting outside this little restaurant with white tablecloths, white plates, and white flowers. I’d met Alistair. I wanted the show. I said, I’m gay, and my mom shushed me. Then she told me it was fine…morally. I asked her if I could come out and still have a career. She said they’d probably overlook the gay thing if I was really talented, but I wasn’t.”
“That’s a terrible thing for your mother to say, and it’s not true.”
Avery loved the outrage in Merritt’s face.
“You know I wanted to do real films when I was younger?”
“I remember,” Merritt said. “You wanted to win an award at Sundance.”
They sat side by side, staring at the closed curtains that hid Burnside and the city beyond. It was the perfect summer night, and they should have ha
d the curtains open and the breeze blowing through the apartment. That would almost make up for the bad furniture.
“My mom told me I could only start my career once,” Avery said, “but I could always come out. The thing is, she lied. Once I started my career, I couldn’t come out. If I’d come out at eighteen, I could have been Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or something like that. But if I go back now, everything I’ve done is a fraud. My mom has closeted clients, and she should have told me what it was like for them. She never said, ‘This is what you’ll lose.’”
“You mean that you might lose the show?”
“That I’d lose part of myself.”
Quickly, as though Avery might suddenly get up and leave, Merritt wrapped her arms around her. Merritt was so tall, it was an awkward position, like a child who was too big to be carried climbing into someone’s arms. Avery never wanted to let her go.
“What is it?” Avery asked.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
Avery squeezed Merritt tightly.
“I’m scared.” Merritt was silent for a long time. “I’ve been alone for so long. It feels like my fate. Iliana says that’s not a thing. I’m not doomed. But every time it’s harder, and when I date a girl, it’s like we’re replaying this story. She doesn’t even know she’s a part of it, but I can see the whole thing from the beginning. And I try so hard to be the kind of person who doesn’t deserve that, who opens up, who has faith in the universe, like Iliana is always saying. But in the end, I always feel like the stuff in Hellenic Hardware, something that you can let go. So I try to let other people go first.”
“Are you saying you’re trying to let me go?”
Merritt pulled away. “I started trying the day you left Vale.”
“Did it work?”
Merritt shook her head with a tender smile that warmed Avery’s heart. “I want what Lei-Ling and Iliana have.”
“To get married? Let’s go. Right now. We’ll get DX to fly us to Reno or Vegas. I’ll wear a wig. DX is crazy-good with costumes. She’ll make me look like Elvis.”
As soon as the words flew out of Avery’s mouth, she stopped. Had she just asked Merritt to marry her? She had wanted to make Merritt laugh. She had wanted to lift the mist of sadness from Merritt’s eyes. But if Merritt had read a different intention into Avery’s words, Avery had just catapulted herself into a marriage proposal. And in that second, Avery knew that if Merritt took it as a wild declaration of love and said yes, Avery wouldn’t correct her. She would kiss Merritt and say, I’m sorry I don’t have a ring. After all, Avery had never gotten a tattoo, never smoked pot, never had sex in the woods, never bought a sports car with Bitcoin…and she wasn’t satisfied with her life. Maybe DX was right and she needed to take a risk. She’d think about tomorrow tomorrow. It was exhilarating.
“I want you to take me to the oldest brick house in America,” Merritt said. “It’s in Cincinnati.”
The oldest brick house in America was a bit of a letdown after thinking that she would throw caution to the wind like a virgin on prom night. Still, it was also true that Merritt asked for the oldest brick house with the downcast gaze of someone asking for the rings of Saturn. Maybe the oldest brick house was a declaration of love to a hardware store owner.
“I want a life where we cook together,” Merritt went on. “I’ll learn. I promise. I don’t want you to dump me over Instagram.”
“Do people do that?”
“I guess Instagram is hard. It’s more Twitter.” Merritt looked at Avery, her eyes dark.
Avery tucked Merritt’s hair behind her ear so she could see her face. Her hair had finally grown long enough to stay tucked. Merritt looked pale and too thin, even though Dr. Miter would probably use her cheekbones as models.
“I would never dump you on Instagram.”
Avery heard DX saying, You say I’m sorry I haven’t been clear. I want you to own me like the moon owns the sun. If she didn’t fight for Merritt now, she would have to answer to DX. DX who’d probably view Avery’s failure as a reason to build up her confidence, like those ropes courses where corporations took their middle managers. Only DX’s ropes course might be a basket hung on a vine suspended over a four-hundred-foot Amazonian chasm with snakes in it. Or maybe they’d just cross the Sahara on camel. But it wasn’t really DX she was worried about. She owed it to the eighteen-year-old girl who had written I will! on a piece of paper she tucked into the pad of her bra and then didn’t.
“DX told me to take you on vacation to Taha’a. She says they have vanilla plantations, and it’s so beautiful we’d eat the sand, but if you want to go to the oldest brick house in America, that’s almost as good and we could cook together and be a real couple. You and me. Everything could go wrong, but let’s give it a shot. I want you to call me every night and text me pictures of your breakfast or your breasts or some crazy thing you’ve brought into the shop.”
Merritt’s smile was still tentative. There was still a shadow in her eyes, but she said, “Do you want to know what I brought into the shop? What got shipped to my shop? I’ll text you a picture.”
Merritt picked up her phone and disappeared into her bedroom. A moment later Avery’s phone chimed. The photograph said everything about Avery’s friendship with DX. Merritt returned a moment later with an ebony black box. She opened it up and took out a red card embossed with gold ink.
“‘Dear Merritt,’” Merritt read. “‘Avery really is a sweet girl when she gets out of her own way. She says she knows where the clit is, but I’m saying fifty-fifty on that one.’”
Avery didn’t have to ask for the name of the sender.
“‘You will have a lot of work to do, but trust me. She’s worth it. Here’s a little something to get you two started. She’s probably never used a vibrator.’”
“I have used a vibrator.”
“‘And by the way,’” Merritt went on. “‘I don’t think she can really knit, so don’t hold your breath for that sweater. I’d say I’d kill you if you hurt her, but I don’t think you will. XXX [skull emoji], DX.’”
“I will kill her,” Avery said through her hands. “She has no boundaries. None.”
“I’ve tried it,” Merritt said. “It’s fabulous. Come on.” She pulled Avery’s hands away from her face. “I saw on your blog that a girl should always spend enough time with a gift to send a sincere thank-you card.”
* * *
When they were both naked and aroused, Merritt parted Avery’s sex with her fingers. “Close your eyes.”
Avery felt Merritt slip something inside her. A weight settled on her pubic bone and a subtle vibration caressed her inside. Merritt looked gorgeous and self-satisfied. She knelt over Avery and settled herself on top of the golden sex toy, pressing it between their bodies. In one hand, she held a pamphlet. The vibrations were delicious but faint.
Merritt read from the pamphlet. The sex toy—the Kinzan, it was called—was twenty-four-karat gold plate. Scientists had harnessed the power of ionic gold convergence.
“That’s not a thing,” Merritt said.
The rest of the paragraph read like an erotic novel. When seated properly, the Kinzan would place pressure on all points along the woman’s labia, clitoris, and the submerged, wishbone-like extension of the clitoris that extended back on either side of her mons.
“‘Woman aches for this kind of deep stimulation,’” Merritt read. “‘The gold base holds Kinzan in place while she writhes with pleasure and her clitoris throbs with vibronic frequency.’ That’s not a thing.”
But maybe it was.
“Turn it up,” Avery said. “It feels good.”
“You can’t turn it up.” Merritt’s laugh was low and sultry. “That’s the thing. It uses ‘advanced algorithms to amplify your sexual rhythms.’”
Merritt rocked her hips gently. Her motion seemed to focus the vibrations.
The Kinzan vibrated against Avery’s clit, and although the gold was heavy
and hard, it seemed perfectly sculpted to contour their bodies. Merritt held up the pamphlet, still rocking back and forth as she read.
“‘The ionic convergence of gold takes you to sexual enlightenment.’” Merritt gazed down at her with a droll smile, but her voice was taut. “Are you enlightened?”
Avery clasped Merritt’s thighs.
“‘The Kinzan…’” Merritt tried to read, but Avery reached between them and ran her fingers through Merritt’s pubic hair, opening the folds of her labia so Merritt’s clitoris touched the smooth gold surface.
Merritt’s response was a groan.
Avery rubbed Merritt’s clit, pushing it gently against the vibrating gold. Merritt closed her eyes. They hung here for a moment, each lost in their own gratification. It was the kind of moment that ought to feel lonely. There they were: getting off alone together. But Avery didn’t feel lonesome. She felt like she had the few times she’d done stage theater. It had been such a joy to watch her colleagues perform well, to nail their lines. She had wanted them to succeed, just like she wanted to watch Merritt rocking herself to climax.
Then Merritt leaned back, her hands resting on the bed behind her, her hips revolving in a slow, determined circle. Avery could see the hood of Merritt’s clit rubbing against the gold surface, and she loved it, and she loved the tension in Merritt’s face. A moment later Merritt’s body shook and she leaned over Avery, one hand braced on the bed, her arm a rope of muscle. So strong and so undone by pleasure. The sight was all Avery needed to push her over the edge.
“Tomorrow is Iliana and Lei-Ling’s wedding,” Merritt said when they were resting in each other’s arms. “I wish you could be there. They’re my life. They’re my family.”
“I’m sorry,” Avery whispered.
“You’ll be flying away.”
For a second Avery feared that Merritt would take back everything they had said. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to stay together. You know we’ll only mess it up.
But Merritt just said, “Text me a picture of the view from your airplane. Send me some clouds and say, ‘Wish you were here.’”
Worth the Wait Page 19