by Xenia Ruiz
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He leaned back on the headrest with exasperation. “Evileen,” he hissed.
“What did you call me?” I asked, surprised.
“Evileen,” he said, smiling.
“Who told—?”
“Simone.”
I poked his nose again, a little harder than before, and he grabbed me and pulled me to him. “Don’t do that,” he said, his voice getting deep with desire. “My whole face hurts.”
“You’re such a baby,” I teased. “Love.”
He smiled. “I see you’ve been talking to my mother.” He released me and opened the car door. “Let’s get out and walk,” he suggested.
“Are you crazy? It’s, like, thirty degrees out there. Without the wind chill factor.”
He closed the door and started walking backward, taunting me, “Come on, Evilee-een.”
Reluctantly, I got out of the car and followed. The wind was blowing like a storm was coming, sending huge waves crashing violently against the step-shaped revetments, and forming icy patches in random areas. I had read that plans were under way to replace the old damaged limestone steps with more durable concrete. Soon, the beach would be off-limits.
When I reached Adam, he pulled me to his side, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. As we walked, his opened cracked leather jacket flapped back in the wind while I buttoned the top button of my ankle-length wool coat and pulled my fleece headband down lower over my ears. Ordinarily, I would put my arms around his waist, but under the circumstances, I felt the less I touched him the better.
It was obvious he was not going to bring up the matter of our future, so I would have to. Even if we had both made our positions clear from the beginning about marriage and sex, I knew it was my fault for letting things get as far as they had. Deep down, I suspected he believed I would eventually give in. If he was truly convinced it would never happen, he would’ve called it quits long ago. Although in my heart I had always known all of this, it made me suddenly angry at Adam, but mostly at myself. Why couldn’t he just be honest and direct? Why couldn’t I? Once again I was looking to the wrong person for answers, for comfort. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, I thought remembering Psalm 144.
Abruptly, I stopped walking and sat down on the top stepstone. He sat behind me and enveloped his arms and legs around me, shielding me from the wind with his jacket. It felt wonderfully warm in his embrace, like I was shrouded in a cocoon, and temporarily, I felt protected from the imminent and inevitable ending. If only he knew how much I did want him, in every way. If only he could understand how very difficult it was to push him away when I wanted to do the opposite. If only things could stay the way they were, until…
“Adam, I’m not going to have sex with you,” I finally said bluntly.
“What?” He said this in disbelief, innocently, as if the thought had never even crossed his mind.
“You heard me,” I said louder over the wind.
He didn’t answer, and his arms and legs loosened their grip on my body, although not completely. In the back of my mind, I knew the main reason why we couldn’t stay together, the one reason I had been ignoring. Although he had accompanied me to church a few times, he hadn’t made any effort to give his life to Christ, let alone express the least bit of interest. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but one thing I knew for certain, I could not contemplate anything serious with a man who wasn’t saved.
Just then he whispered something in my ear, but because of my hair, my headband, and the wind, I couldn’t hear him. “What did you say?” I asked, lifting the headband from one ear.
“Te quiero,” he whispered.
“Don’t even try—”
“Te quiero,” he repeated, louder and clearer, with conviction. I struggled to turn around to face him, to ascertain his true intent, but he hugged me tighter, then burrowed—more like hid—his chin in my neck. “Don’t mirame,” he added.
If I hadn’t been so taken aback at his first declaration, I would have laughed at his novice erroneous attempt to say “don’t look at me.” As it was, I was too busy trying to make sense of the words, te quiero, which, depending on the context, could mean, “I want you,” “I care about you,” or “I love you.” His pronunciation was almost flawless, like he had been practicing it for some time. I knew he must have consulted a dictionary or someone who knew Spanish to know that he didn’t need the pronoun “Yo” for “I.” Someone like Luciano. I imagined him coaching Adam: Just tell her “Te quiero,” and while she’s thinking you mean “I love you,” you really mean “I want you,” and she’ll be all yours. It was much safer, less committed than saying Te Te amo, which solely meant “I love you.” Maybe he thought I would be touched that he had learned how to say the words in Spanish. Perhaps he thought I would be stupid enough to conclude that he meant the latter, that I would assume marriage would be the end result and sex would be permissible. And I would fall into his trap, his bed, at last.
God only knew how many women in his past he had said those same words to, in English, just to get them in bed. It wasn’t going to work with me. He should know that by now.
PART
TWO
CHAPTER 20
ADAM
IT IS MUCH easier to abstain from sex when you are alone, but it is a little harder when you are involved with a woman. It is more difficult when you find yourself caring for a woman who is celibate and has been for a while—determined to stay that way until marriage or who knows when.
But things really got complicated and confusing when that celibate woman finally gave in.
As my hands roamed over her soft, soft skin, her hands simultaneously and unabashedly explored mine. I cautiously began to unzip her velour jacket, pausing every few centimeters, waiting for her to stop me, because intermittently, I could feel her body tense up, then relax. One moment she would stop my hand, the next her hands traveled up and underneath my sweatshirt, setting off a chain reaction all over. Whether she really wanted me, or she was finally giving in to satisfy me, I wasn’t sure. I was usually good about reading body language, but from the beginning I knew Eva was governed by another entity. What’s more, I had the strangest feeling there was someone else in the room with us.
“You’re so soft,” I whispered, unable to stop the words.
I pulled off the silk scarf holding back her hair, and I massaged her scalp, taking my time kissing her face, her lips—relishing the taste of her. Even though my nose was still sore, I could smell the intoxicating scent of her rose oil and the strawberries-and-cream conditioner. The light from the streetlamp seeped through the windows, illuminating her face, but she wasn’t looking at me. Outside a storm was raging, the snow blowing sideways in thick panes and making visibility nil. It was the perfect night to stay under the covers, the perfect setting for us to be together at last. I tried to make eye contact in an effort to connect with her, but her eyes were transfixed, staring past me as if someone were standing behind me, causing me to turn and glance over my shoulder. I thought perhaps Luciano had come back, then I remembered he had returned the spare key a long time ago.
At the lakefront, when Eva told me I could forget about having sex with her, she surprised me, especially after she added that if I expected sex, we had come to the end of the road—just as I worked up the nerve to tell her I was in love with her. So what could I say, but simply and indifferently, “Okay, whatever you say.” Then, two weeks later, there she was at my place, stating in so many words that she had changed her mind. It took everything within me not to go off on her. What kind of sick game are you playing? I wanted to scream at her. But as she stood in the living room, wearing a new velour sweat suit and gym shoes in my favorite color, cobalt blue, I didn’t think “easy access”; I thought, “beautiful.” I was wearing a sweat suit too, though it was gray fleece and frayed, but clean. I kind of knew she was complying for my sake, to prove that she wanted m
e as much as I wanted her. But even though most men wouldn’t have cared if the sex was unrequited, I felt like garbage, because that’s the kind of man I am.
I tried to send her home; I told her not to do me any favors, and at one point I even shoved her gently toward the door, but she persisted. She was the one who threw herself at me, I told the little voice of conscience that had been bugging me lately. But I knew I had to acknowledge my role in awakening the dormant craving in her.
Now as I found myself kissing her heart-shaped tattoo-looking birthmark, trying to divert her attention to me, I began to sense her freezing up again. I was losing her.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice barely audible.
Her voice, so close to my ear, made the hairs all over my body stand at attention. I sprang up, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached hesitantly into the nightstand drawer for a condom before she could change her mind; I couldn’t hold back any longer. It had been so long. I wanted to explain that the inability to control myself wasn’t something that happened often, but then I remembered what happened with Sondra the last time I was with her, and I began to lose my nerve. I felt awkward and insecure, like I was sixteen again.
With one quick sweep, I pulled off my sweatshirt but kept my back to her and waited. I sensed she was having second thoughts and decided to let her call the shots. If she didn’t touch me, I would take it as a sign that she wasn’t ready; if she did, she was ready but wanted me to take the lead. At that moment, I closed my eyes and hoped the incident with Sondra wouldn’t be repeated. I thought about praying that it didn’t, but I felt suddenly guilty for using prayers for such a selfish request. The fear of a reoccurrence of that past event prepared me for the disappointment to come if Eva changed her mind. I wouldn’t be mad at her.
I flinched when she began caressing my back, because I had expected the opposite. Then she pulled the elastic band from my hair, freeing my locks. I turned around, and without looking at her, buried my face in her neck and hair, avoiding her lips because I knew if our lips touched, it would be over sooner.
Even though she welcomed me into her embrace, she kept her eyes shut tightly, burrowing her head into my chest. I smoothed back her hair, massaged her temples, and tried to pry her eyes open. Then I kissed her right temple, the site of her tormenting migraines, my lips lingering, wishing I could take away her pain forever. I wanted to tell her I loved her but I knew saying it in bed was forbidden in the unwritten manual of making love. The weekend before we ended things at the lakefront, I had been debating the best way to say the words. Then one night while flicking through the channels, I came upon an old black-and-white Spanish movie in which a woman was resisting a man until he uttered the words, “Te quiero.” The English captioning had read: I love you. In Spanish, it had sounded more dramatic, romantic, less trite than it did in English. As the woman’s eyes softened she melted in the man’s arms, and despite the melodramatic mannerisms and exaggerated kiss common in old movies, it was effective.
“Open your eyes,” I whispered. “Open your ojos. Mirame.”
She looked at me timidly, and we stared at each other, our breathing measured, then escalating in sync. Tongue-tied, I tried to convey my devotion with my eyes, hoping she would read me correctly, hoping she could see that it wasn’t about lust—that what I was feeling for her was real. Do you understand what I want to say? I thought, trying to transmit the words through the air. She reached up and read me with her fingers, tracing my eyebrows, nose, and lips, as if my face were braille. Even if she were blind and deaf, she couldn’t deny that I cared about her.
It wasn’t long before her gasps and moans took me over the top. I could feel her body trembling beneath me, and soon after, my body’s tremor eclipsed and I pressed my face into her hair to smother my own sounds, but it was useless. I wanted to pour out everything inside me, every word I had held back, whisper her name over and over, but I was mute. All I could manage were unintelligible words that sounded like they belonged to an animal, a demon.
It had all happened so fast—we were still partially clothed and drenched in sweat. It wasn’t at all the way I had imagined, though it was all I had thought about for weeks. There had been no time to set the mood, no time to fill my place with her favorite flowers—orchids and amaryllises, her mother’s namesake. There was no time to play smooth background music, though I had contemplated playing India.Arie’s latest, “Talk to Her,” or Chapman’s classic, “All That You Have Is Your Soul.”
As I emerged from her hair, I brushed against her ear, which was wet. At first I thought it was perspiration, but when my lips traveled to her cheek and up to her eyes, I realized they were tears. The trembling I had mistaken for pleasure was actually sobbing.
“Eva, what is it?”
She didn’t answer and turned her face away, brushing at her tears quickly.
“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” As soon as I said the words, I knew they sounded ridiculous and pompous, and I regretted them. The only time a woman had cried in bed was the first time I had sex, but Tina had been a girl of fifteen, a virgin. Eva was far from being a virgin, but maybe after all her years of celibacy she had returned to that stage once again, not only spiritually but emotionally. I began to panic.
She shook her head. “I’m okay.” Then she started zipping up her jacket, so I got the message and went to the bathroom. When I returned, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunting for her socks and shoes in the dark. I turned on the bedside lamp.
“Don’t turn the light on,” she cried out.
I turned off the lamp. “What’re you doing? What’s the matter?”
“This was a mistake. I got to go. I’m sorry.” She was whispering as if someone were in the other room listening.
“Eva.” I grabbed a sock out of her hand, then the other. She went for her gym shoes. “Don’t go. Eva …” I pulled the shoes out of her reach. “Will you talk to me? Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying,” she said adamantly, swiping at her eyes. “I’m just … upset … and confused.”
I knelt in front of her and smoothed her hair away from her face, behind her ears. Her jaw was jutting out, and she looked like a little girl who had just lost her favorite doll. She shook her head so that her hair obscured her face again.
“Usually women say they’re thrilled after making love with me, or disappointed,” I said in jest. “This is the first time I heard upset and confused.” It sounded innocent enough in my head, then it hit me that it was the wrong time to mention former conquests. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … I wasn’t thinking. Why don’t you stay the night? It’s snowing like crazy.”
She stood up suddenly. “I got to go, Adam.”
“Don’t make me beg, Eva.” I sounded pathetic, but I didn’t care.
“I’m not trying to make … I just can’t stay …”
I surrendered her socks and shoes and she put them on quickly, then she walked around me and out of the bedroom. I followed, slipping into my sweatshirt along the way as she gathered her purse and coat. At the door, I made another attempt to get her to open up. I leaned against the door and rubbed my neck.
“You can sleep on the sofa bed,” I offered.
Just then the doorbell buzzed and we both jumped. I pressed the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Luciano.”
Eva looked anxiously at me and I put my hand on her arm to assure her I wasn’t going to let him in. “What do you want, man?”
“Let me in.”
“Can’t. I got company.”
“No, you don’t. C’mon, man. Let me in. It’s cold out here.”
I hesitated. I concluded that he had imposed on me enough.
“I got Maya with me,” Luciano then whispered into the intercom. “She’s in the car.” I saw Eva close her eyes and lean against the wall, her lips moving.
“I’m not lying. I got company.”
“Serious?”
“Serious
.”
“You really serious?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, man. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Alright. Sorry, man.”
“No prob, I understand. I’m just glad you finally got s—”
I cut him off just in time and scratched my neck self-consciously. “Sorry about that.”
A tear crept down her cheek and I cautiously reached out to wipe it away. She covered her eyes with a trembling hand and allowed me to pull her into my chest. I helped her to the sofa and we sat down as she sobbed into her scarf. After a little while, she recovered and wiped her face, sighing loudly. I waited for her to speak and when she didn’t, we sat in silence. One thing I had learned from being with her was that sometimes not saying anything was better than talking.
This was the part of a relationship I was never ready for, the emotions that followed. When I initially told Eva I was going to try this thing with her, I really didn’t think it all the way through. Mostly I didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t consider what it would mean to allow her into my life. I knew she wasn’t like any of the women I had ever been with; I knew she would require exceptional care. I didn’t go into this unknown territory as a challenge, confident that she would eventually give herself to me. I was shocked that she had given in, however, and even more confused about my reaction to her giving in. It was a strange feeling. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it immediately because the emotion was so unfamiliar. And then it came to me. Shame. I hadn’t felt like I had committed a sin in a long time. Somehow I felt like I had interfered between her and God.
“You ready to talk?” I finally asked.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“How do you know?”
“I thought I could get into bed with you and not think about anything but you, but I can’t. It should feel good and right, but it doesn’t.”
“I guess it’s my fault. I kind of sensed you didn’t want to …”
“You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to do. I walked to the bedroom with you.”