Mary Ann Rivers

by The Story Guy

  I’m totally desperate, I know, but I wrap my arms around his middle and hold tight. He keeps his arms away from me, but eventually, holding him, I feel him tuck his chin over my head. Then he whispers, “You’re the sweetest girl, the best girl, I ever kissed, Carrie West,” and rubs his face into my hair like a child, breathing deep.

  This time, as I let him go, I make sure I walk away first.

  Monday, 1:43 a.m.

  I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing. You can touch me anywhere. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, but I will never miss a Wednesday. I’ll sit and I’ll wait like Greyfriar’s Bobby or Wilbur’s Charlotte or Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon. And darling, it’s getting cold, so have mercy. No picture necessary. I’d recognize you, see you, anywhere. I could fill my life with you.

  Justin took the picture for me. I made sure to look directly at the camera. So. Now, I’ll wait.

  Wednesday, 12:46 a.m.

  At least I get to see the first snowfall of the year.

  Friday, 8:10 p.m.

  “Let me help with these dishes,” I say. I have to break the silence somehow, because waiting to hear everyone’s verdict is getting unnerving. After my freezing-cold vigil at the park this week, I called both Justin and Shelley, certain I must be going crazy. But I couldn’t stop thinking about, to my surprise, Stacy. A woman with long, dark hair who would never be anything but a little sister. Loved, cared for, but her path was straight and clear.

  I’m certain that if Stacy had been given the choice, she would have wanted her own messy life with her own mistakes her burden alone. I bet she would have taken risks and filled her life to the brim. Maybe after she grew her hair long, she would have cut it short again, dyed it pink. I don’t know. No one ever will.

  Thinking about Stacy was an epiphany that I had choices. Full, lush choices. An embarrassment of them, compared to Stacy, compared to Brian.

  If I wanted, I could choose to make my life a place that Brian could step into. He didn’t have any room to move, but he still found that hour, once a week. I can choose to give that hour to him and make it the most expansive time in the universe. I could. If he wanted me to.

  I have a life to live.

  So now I’ve been fed and fussed over by Justin and Aaron, Shelley and Will, and it almost makes me feel guilty, all of this love in my direction. Because I’m not just thinking of Stacy, of course. Somewhere in the city tonight is a man barely holding himself together, even while the hours in front of him are filled with the endlessness of literally breathing for his sister, to keep her together.

  Aaron reaches back to the counter, grabbing a second bottle of wine. He takes the corkscrew from Justin. “You’ve met him?”

  Justin shakes his head. “I’ve seen him. Before I knew he was Brian, I realized he was the guy who came in with the Windsor Corner people, sometimes, for story hour. He’s always really patient with the whole day-care group, and his sister, if that matters.”

  “It does,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut, hard. I’m glad I’m facing the sink. They’ve already witnessed enough of my tears this evening, but at Aaron’s long moment of quiet, I turn around.

  “It does, Carrie.”

  Shelley holds her glass out to be filled. “I’ve seen Brian, too, without knowing he was, or would be, Carrie’s Brian.”

  Carrie’s Brian. If only I could. If only he were.

  Will looks at Shelley. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Shelley says to her wineglass. “I realized Brian’s the guy who the storytime volunteer, the one who reads for the adult day-care program, depends on to kind of make the hour work. The day-care workers use the time for a break, but the clients still need all this help, and so—”

  “Brian does it,” I finish.

  Shelley smiles. “Yeah, he does. It always kind of pissed me off, actually, because it didn’t seem right that this patron was doing more work than one of our volunteers, but I never found a way to step in. I also might have noticed that Brian was pretty hot.”

  “Hey!” Will pretends offense, but it’s obviously hard when Shelley smiles at him like that. He leans over and kisses her, and something in my chest gets big and aching.

  “But?” I say, trying to breathe easy, inviting the objections that seem to be floating around the table like candle smoke.

  “He might not be ready.” Justin looks in my eyes, letting me see his regret.

  I close my eyes to let go of the tension in my shoulders. “That’s the thing. It’s okay.” I open my eyes to watch Justin drape his arm over Aaron’s shoulders, Aaron reach up to hold his hand. Will smooth back Shelley’s hair, lingering at her neck. These gestures make me homesick, somehow.

  “I’ve decided. I’m waiting.”

  “Every Wednesday,” Justin says. To his credit, he does not look pitying.

  “Every Wednesday.”

  “And that’s enough?” Shelley asks.

  “No. I’m waiting because it’s not enough. What’s on the other side of the waiting is enough.”

  Aaron squeezes Justin’s hand. “You have no idea what’s on the other side of the waiting.”

  This time I shake my head. “Brian.”

  Shelley sighs and exchanges what is probably meaningful eye contact with Will, which I try not to let make me crazy. It’s clear they already think I’m crazy. But none of them has ever known me when I’ve decided what it is that I want. I haven’t known me when I’ve decided what it is I really want.

  “You could get to know him more and realize you were waiting on the wrong thing.” I appreciate Aaron’s sensible nature, it’s why I’m here, but it’s also what is, somehow, making my position seem stronger, brighter.

  “So, then, I’m waiting to get to know him more. All I have is time.”

  “Says the girl waiting for the boy who has no time at all.” Justin finally smiles.

  “Maybe waiting saves time up. Maybe we can use it later.” I smile back and push my wineglass in his direction to fill up.

  “To story guys,” toasts Justin.

  “And Wednesdays.” Our clinks mix up with uneasy laughter.

  Wednesday, 11:55 p.m.

  I have to hold my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming, because, ohGodohGod, he’s here. He just skidded around the row of water fountains on his bike and then kicked the bike away without locking it, and he’s running, running toward me.

  “Carrie!” I’m still just standing, my hands over my mouth. It’s possible I’m crying. He is nearly bent over, breathing hard. “Shit, Carrie,” he says, pulling with both hands on the back of his neck, “I was so afraid—fucking Christ—you wouldn’t be here. I am sorry, so sorry. I didn’t see—”

  “I told you I would wait, that I would be here.” I’m nearly as breathless as he is.

  “I know—but I would have come a week ago. I almost called you a hundred times since we talked at the library, but I just fucked that up, and things are not great, just not great at home—”

  “No, it’s okay, I said I would wait. I really meant it. Like, meant it. Brian.” I laugh, giddy, but also because it is all so true. “I’m not used to not getting what I want. I’ve never had to throw a tantrum, or give up, or anything. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I want this. I want you. And I don’t want Wednesdays-Only Brian, I want you, braids-his-sister’s-hair-fights-with-social-workers-BRFCA Brian. I want to steal two hours and eat pancakes, with you. I want to have a bad day and go home and have phone sex with you. I want to skip lunch and make out—”

  He yanks me in by the waist and drags his bottom lip against mine. “With me?” He whispers.

  “With you,” I whisper back, and laugh, until he just softens all around me, there’s no other word for it, as if everything on his shoulders has dissolved into fine crystals and blown away.

  When I push my hands into the short hairs on his nape, they’re damp and cool from his hard ride in the cold air to get to me, and it’s the per
fect sensual counterpoint to his unbelievably hot mouth.

  This time, he’s all here, and I’m all here. I can feel him, right here with me. He pulls back, sucking on my top lip and letting it go through his teeth, and looks right into me. I stand on tiptoe to push my hips into his, and he laughs and pushes back. “Goddammit, Carrie,” he says, gathering me closer, “you feel so good. You always feel so good.”

  And I say, “Come home with me.”

  “What do you mean?” he says, but I can feel his smile against my neck where he was licking against my pulse.

  “Come home with me, right now, and make love to me.” When I say this, my heart trips over itself, and it’s painful, but it’s the kind of pain that means something is happening. That I’m living inside of this moment against its farthest boundary.

  “You know, I didn’t get to finish what I wanted to say.”

  “Were you going to say that you took a superlong lunch?”

  “No. Well, I did, but that’s not it.”

  “Tell me, but tell me while we walk to my car.”

  Brian laughs, and we walk past his bike, which he locks up. Then he wraps an arm around my shoulders while we walk to the library garage. “I wanted to say that I didn’t see your personal ad. Your grand gesture. At least, not until this morning.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean it, I wanted to call you—I think I might have at some point gotten the courage or the desperation to—but you know how I’ve been trying to catch up at work?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m behind on email. And this morning I got to an email from a colleague. I told you about her.”

  Realization dawns. “The one you started all the lunchtime kissing with.”

  “Yeah. And in her email there was a link.”

  “To my ad.”

  “To your ad, Estragon.”

  “I always related more to Vladimir.”

  He stops me as I am getting out my keys and turns me toward him. His eyes are twinkly, and I have never seen his eyes twinkly. It’s a good look for him, twinkly. “Thanks for waiting, Carrie.”

  Something is tight right under my throat, and it’s making it hard to swallow and my vision is kind of blurry. “Yeah, well. I’m still waiting. Get out of my dreams, baby, and get into my car.”

  He folds himself into my sensible compact, and we randomly laugh the entire mile back to my building. I am starting to feel all nervous, which is ridiculous for the role of the seducer, but he smells really good and is so cute in his long dress coat and tie and silvery wire-rim glasses. I’m not sure what I am going to do with him first.

  When I unlock the door and step inside, it turns out I didn’t have to worry about a thing, because Brian—well, he’s got this one. His hand is at the small of my back, pulling my blouse out from my skirt almost before my coat is off. As soon as I feel his skin against mine, his deliberate touch gliding up my back, I am gone. Just gone.

  I can hardly catch my breath as he teases the rest of the hem up and away. He unties the silky bow at the neck with a sharp pull, and even as it unknots with a soft snick he has his other hand under the shirt, releasing the hooks of my bra. My skin is so tight, and he is looking right into my eyes, his expression nearly grim, except his eyes are so hot and his throat is working over hard swallows.

  He leans in, so close, and breathes in, slowly, at my neck. “Brian,” I think, but I’m really saying his name out loud, my whisper mixing up with the sounds of his hands over my rustling blouse.

  “Yeah,” he whispers back, but his voice trails off, his focus entirely on my body. When he takes my blouse and bra together up over my head, he moans, softly. And then my hands are caught in the tight wrist cuffs neither of us thought to unfasten, but instead of starting over, he just leans down, my arms trapped over my head in my shirt, and takes one of my nipples into his mouth.

  Oh. Oh, holy shit. When he pulls gently with his teeth, sucking hard at the same time, just like that, a big, bounding pulse starts up in my low, low back. Lower. That hard beat in my clit is out of time with my heart, which isn’t synced up with the pulse driving through my ears, and I’m breathing so hard I’m sucking in the thin white silk of the blouse in my mouth where it’s tented over my head.

  His mouth is hot and wet and just as he devours a nipple, the soft skin under one breast, he licks up to my neck and then travels to the other breast, the other achingly pointed nipple. Frustrated, I clumsily unbutton my cuffs and pull off the shirt, and without hesitation, he takes my mouth again. His tongue is deep, teasing over the ticklish palate behind my teeth, running over the inner part of my lower lip. I’m breathless, and I’m topless, and he still has his coat on.

  “Hey,” I choke out, because his hands are grabbing on to my ass, his fingertips meeting in the middle sinking deep and rubbing deeper, even through the layers of wool and satin. It’s completely dirty, just the filthiest ass grab I’ve ever experienced, and it’s gorgeous. It’s even better because it’s combined with a long, wet kiss to my inner elbow and the feeling of his searing-hot erection pushing into my hip in slow circles.

  I try again, through the pink haze. “Brian?”

  “Yeah,” he whispers against my skin.

  “Take your clothes off.”

  “Okay,” he says, and then steps back, only a little, leaving barely any space between us. He pins me in his stare, looking at my swollen breasts all scraped with little red trails of beard burn, my body all the way down to my feet. He smiles, just a little, and shrugs off his coat, then his jacket. I can smell his cotton-in-the-sun smell as those heavy articles pool on the floor, and then he is tugging off his tie, and my mouth is dry.

  The fingers on his buttons are fast, and when he pulls off his shirt, his body is so lean and hard that there are muscles that bunch over his ribs. He starts unbuckling his belt and I mime him, undoing the thin ribbon belt threaded on my skirt, shimmying out of the skirt and my woolly tights in one go. He stops, taking in me in my satiny panties, seeing, I’m sure, how they’ve gotten wet and clinging.

  I can see every ridge of his cock pushing against his dark briefs. He takes a deep breath. “Carrie, I don’t know.” His voice is low. All gravel. “I’m so worked up. It’s been so long. I want to make this good for us.” When he says this, he pushes a hand down, right over his hard-on, and presses in, his eyes fluttering closed. Facing each other, one of my shoulders just brushing his vulnerable skin where it dips under his bicep, I compulsively mirror him. I brush my fingers over my heavy-feeling clit and I am surprised by an involuntary push of my hips into my hands.

  Dropping to my knees feels exactly right, and when I kneel in front of him, I spread my thighs a little and rub my cheek into the soft knit covering his hardness and I can’t stop myself from pinching at my own nipples, just a little.

  It’s so easy to be consumed by this shamelessness with him. The way he kisses, let alone the way he touches me, is so sharply present that it is impossible to think about anything other than the one single second in front of me.

  With Brian, maybe all that we have is this single second in front of us.

  When I pull the wide elastic of his briefs over the shining head, he widens his stance and sifts his fingers through my hair. I want it in my mouth, and then it is, tender and hard at once, already streaming bitter wet salt. He smells like that clean sun smell, even here. His breathless groan makes me squeeze my thighs together, hard, and I pull his underwear completely down so I can slick my hands from my sucking mouth to the base.

  I meet his eyes, and I can’t help but smile around him because he looks so adorably wasted. When he smiles back, I pop off with a kiss and say, “I want you in my mouth until you come,” and I do. That’s what I want.

  His unsteady breath is so satisfying and before he can speak, I realize I also want to completely give myself over to this, to let him float into a space of utter decadence, so I stand up and I push him onto the sofa, following him down long enough t
o let him taste himself in my soft mouth, and our kiss is wet and sloppy and moaning.

  When I drop to my knees again, his burning eyes on me, I push his legs apart at the thighs. His gaze is easy to find, easy to hold because it is so beautiful and melting, and I make sure to hold it while I lick both my palms, slowly.

  “Jesus, Carrie.” And his head falls back when my slippery hands twist over his whole length. I’m going to swallow him. I’m going to pull him inside of me. I’m going to send him.

  My entire body seems like it’s simmering at the same syrupy consistency. Licking him, sucking at the fine texture of his skin at the head of his penis, following the full vessels underneath with my tongue—it’s all as easy as breathing.

  The harder he pants, the more searching and less careful his hands become over my face and lips and neck, the more my hips pump and my body undulates, the more of his length I can swallow and taste.

  When he’s nearly bucking, I’m arrested by a sharp throb signaling how close I am myself. I look up again, and he’s watching me, so I steady our eye contact as I release him from my mouth and hold him in my hand. Then I tease into my ruined panties and penetrate myself, my breath hitching at my two fingers, hitching again when I watch how dark his eyes get.

  When my hand is slick, I bring my shiny fingers to his tight balls and slide over them. His mouth is open, his tongue reaching, and he brings my fingers to his mouth, closing his eyes as he sucks in, his tongue swirling over and through them.

  And that’s what it takes. I pull my hand away so it can return to my sex, and I jerk his cock to my mouth, licking from where I painted him right to the tip. Pumping myself, sucking him deep, our orgasms are wet and sloppy, my cum spilling through my fingers, his cum spilling from my mouth.