by Lili Valente
“You’re a closure-needing person,” Brendan agrees, propping a booted foot on top of the bench between us. “But maybe it isn’t time for that right now.”
I cross my arms at my chest. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it isn’t time to put this behind you. Maybe you need to keep moving forward.”
I frown. “What?”
“Keep giving her lessons. Keep going until she’s comfortable,” Brendan says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I mean, I’ve never been in your position, but I would think it would pretty hard to teach someone how to be relaxed and confident in bed without actually getting them into bed.”
I snort. “Dude, I can’t do that. Libby’s not that kind of person. She’s not going to be on board with becoming fuck buddies.” And I’m not sure I’m on board with it, either. Yes, being with Libby this afternoon was hot as hell, but I don’t want to hurt her, and I’m not sure she’s capable of separating the physical from the emotional or keeping things in the sack “just friendly.” Breaking a girl’s heart is never fun, but breaking Libby’s would haunt me for a damned long time.
“How do you know?” Brendan asks. “You haven’t asked her.”
“Well, no, but…” I shake my head. “But I know Libby. She likes rules and lists and a place for everything and everything in its place.”
“So maybe the reason she was upset this afternoon was because you two hadn’t talked about the possibility of hands-on stuff beforehand. Maybe she would be okay with it if you made some rules, set some boundaries.”
“I seriously doubt that.” But a tiny voice inside me insists that he could have a point. Libby is the kind of person who likes to know what she’s getting into.
When we used to go skiing in high school, she would study the map and scope out the harder runs from the green trails before she would even get on a lift. And she’s the only person I’ve ever known who plans out her meals a month in advance to make sure she doesn’t end up throwing out leftovers. She’s anal-retentive, but in a cute way. And I’m not about to fault her for the food thing.
She spent a month student teaching in Bolivia while she was in college and had to stand in front of a classroom of hungry little kids every day. Since then, she can’t throw out so much as half a sleeve of crackers without thinking of those kids and their families, and how grateful they would be for one fifth of what we take for granted.
Libs has reasons for the things she takes seriously. And they aren’t always what a person might expect.
So maybe…
“But how can I talk about rules or boundaries if she won’t answer the phone?” I cast a glance toward the showers, where most of the team has already finished up. Nowicki will be back any second, and I need to have this heart-to-heart with Brendon finished before he does.
“Stage an intervention,” Brendan says with a shrug. “You know her. You can probably figure out where she’s going to be tomorrow. When you do, show up and make your pitch in person. Odds are she’ll stick around long enough to hear you out, or at least give you the chance to apologize.”
I nod, mulling it over. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”
“Do it,” Brendan says firmly. “You don’t give fifty percent on the ice. There’s no reason a friend should get fifty percent. If you’re going to help Libby, help her. If not, cut your losses and book an appointment with your shrink, ASAP.”
“Meditation expert,” I correct again as Brendan hitches his bag over his shoulder.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.” He smirks, making it clear he’s fucking with me. “Just fix it. None of us want to suffer through another practice like tonight. It was painful to be a part of.”
“I know.” I run a clawed hand through my sweat-damp hair. “I’ll take care of it, captain.”
“I’m not here as your captain. I’m here as your friend,” he says, his smile fading. “And because life’s too short to let good people slip through your fingers. I know Libby’s important to you. Don’t let one weird afternoon destroy something that’s taken years to build. Whether you keep going with the lessons or not, fight for her. Let her know she matters.”
“Will do,” I say, because he’s right. And because I know how personal stuff like this is for him.
He and Maryanne were as close as two people could be, but I know he still feels like there was too much left unsaid between them when she died. That’s why he and his little girl, Chloe, text pretty much constantly, even though she’s barely seven. He wants his daughter to know that she can talk to him about anything, anytime, anywhere, and he’ll always make time to listen.
“Thanks, man,” I add as he starts toward the exit, feeling grateful that I have friends who are older and wiser and invested in helping me not fuck up. “I appreciate the advice.”
“No problem.” Brendan points a finger my way. “But don’t tell Laura I thought you two were having a thing, okay?”
“Yeah, and don’t tell anyone about…” I trail off as Nowicki emerges from the shower and starts back toward his locker. “About you know who. If we do move forward, it will be on a top-secret basis.”
Brendan nods. “Got it.” He heads out, leaving me alone with Nowicki, who quickly reminds me why I’m not ready to be the older, wiser person in his life.
“I was thinking in the shower,” he says as he pops his locker. “You can’t invoke the family rule for people who aren’t actually family. So technically, there’s no reason I can’t ask Libby for her number the next time I see her.”
“No reason except that I will beat the ever-loving shit out of you,” I say pleasantly. “Don’t push me, Nowicki. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”
I head toward the shower, ignoring Nowicki’s laughter and wondering if the line I crossed with Libby is one of those lines, or if there’s a chance we can find a way forward as a different sort of friends.
I haven’t had a fuck buddy in a long time, but God I would really like to be Libby’s. I need the orgasm she deprived me of this afternoon. I need to make her come, to see her cheeks flush pink as she gives in and lets go. I want to get her off with my fingers, to feel her desire wet and sticky on my skin as I take her over the edge. I want my mouth between her legs, licking and sucking and fucking her with my tongue until she explodes. I want to memorize the taste of her, the smell of her, the way her soft curves press against me as she wraps her legs around my hips as I guide my—
“Not now, Cruise,” I mutter as I head to the end of the row of shower spigots, talking myself back from a semi. I’m not going to walk around the locker room with a hard-on like a fucking creep.
I’m going to think calm, cool, sexless thoughts until I’m out the door. Then I will go home, soothe my ravaged soul with beer and pizza, and prepare to spend my day off convincing Libby that our lessons don’t have to end in disaster.
They can end in satisfaction, pleasure, and more orgasms than she can possibly imagine.
Chapter Eleven
Libby
*
From the texts of Justin Cruise and
Libby Collins
Justin: Hey, it’s me again. Can we talk today? Please, Libs, I think we should talk this through, don’t you? We’ll both feel better once we clear the air.
*
20 minutes later…
*
Justin: I know you’re home, Libby. Laura told me you skipped your Sunday morning bike ride to work on your lesson plans.
And no, I didn’t tell Laura anything. I was very subtle while getting my information. Laura has no clue what’s going on, but unfortunately, neither do I. Like I said yesterday, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings or scared you or made you feel like our friendship isn’t important to me.
It’s very important to me. YOU are very important to me.
So can we please meet up somewhere? Please?
Or at least talk on the phone?
*
15 minutes later…
*
>
Justin: How about texting, then?
Or email?
Morse code?
Smoke signals?
Tell me if I’m getting warmer…
*
10 minutes later…
*
Justin: Sorry about that last text. I’m not trying to make a joke of this, I promise. I’m taking this seriously and I feel like shit that I let you down.
I was so pissed at myself that I played like a rookie at practice last night. All I could think about was you and everything that went down and how terrible it felt to be fighting with you, or on your bad side, or whatever is happening right now.
I actually didn’t realize you had a bad side. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid making you angry for over a decade, and I would like to keep avoiding it because you’re one of my favorite people and one of my oldest friends and…
Shit, please talk to me, Libby. I’ll do anything.
I don’t want to lose you…
*
I stare at the phone as I board the bus headed toward the Hoyt Arboretum, one of my favorite peaceful places in the city. I’ve been looking forward to a twelve-mile hike through the festival of fall leaves all morning. I got up early to complete my lesson plans for the week and prep for a craft project my kids will be doing on Tuesday so I would have the luxury of staying in the woods as long as I needed in order to find my center.
Instead, my phone keeps reminding me of the man who threw me off said center, the friend who, in one afternoon, rocked me to the core of my being and made me question everything I’ve ever assumed to be true about myself.
Until yesterday, I’d been sure that I was the type of person who couldn’t experience desire without love coming along for the ride. And though I do love Justin, I’m not in love with him. He’s my goofy, impulsive, comfortable old friend. I would do anything for him, but I don’t want to get married and have his babies.
No, I just want to get him naked and ride him the way I did on my couch. Except this time, I don’t want either of us to be wearing clothes, and I want that long, thick ridge I felt behind the fly of Justin’s jeans to be buried deep inside of me. I want casual sex and more of the incredible, wild, out of control way Jus made me feel, and no amount of thinking about Roger and how perfect we are for each other has been able to put this fire out.
In fact, I spent half the night twisting and turning in bed, tormented by the dirtiest dreams I’ve had in my entire life.
Dreams in which Justin pinned my wrists to my mattress and whispered filthy things in my ear while he made love to me hard and fast and deep until I came so hard it felt like I would die from the intensity of it all.
But of course, it hadn’t been “making love.” It had been banging, pure and simple.
And dirty. And hot. So, so hot…
My phone vibrates again, and I look down to see another text—
*
Justin: What if I wrote you a poem?
Would you talk to me if I wrote you a poem?
*
I can’t help but smile at that one. A poem.
This from the guy I know hasn’t read anything besides Sports Illustrated and the occasional hockey player autobiography in years. I’m half tempted to text back—yes, write me a poem, Cruise, and make it rhyme—just to see what he comes up with, but I’m not ready yet.
I know we have to get past this—Justin and I have too much history to stop talking for a year just because he nearly made me have my first non-self-administered orgasm—but I can’t imagine looking him in the eye right now. I would blush so hard I would catch fire, and end up a pile of cinders at his feet. I’ve never been in a situation like this, and I don’t know how to handle it any more than I know how to handle chatting up a stranger on a blind date or casually and organically leaving first base and sliding into second.
You certainly had no trouble yesterday. You were rounding second and heading for third without a hitch.
Heck, if you’d given Justin another half hour, he would have taken care of your virginity problem and you would no longer be in possession of Portland’s oldest hymen. Which would probably be great for your self-confidence. Admit it—it would be a lot easier to date without knowing that you’re going to have to break the news about your ancient V-card to Mr. New Guy sooner or later.
It would be easier, but the thought of having sex with Justin makes me feel like I’ve swallowed the entire contents of the arboretum’s butterfly garden.
First of all, I’ve always wanted my first time to be something special and magical, shared with someone I love as more than a friend. Secondly, there’s the very real chance that Justin and I won’t come out whole on the other side of something like that. I could lose his friendship, and I don’t like to think about my life without Jus in it. Not only does he share my geeky love of crafts and make the cutest Christmas ornaments for my tree every year, but he makes me laugh when no one else can. He plays it cool most of the time, but Justin has a soft heart, and he gets me in a way not even Laura or my parents always do.
When a school shooting of innocent babies the same age as my kindergarten kids sent me into a downward spiral of grief and rage a few years ago, Jus was the one who sat with me and let me cry without trying to fix me.
He seemed to realize that I couldn’t be fixed, at least not right away. I needed time to grieve the loss of something even bigger than those priceless, precious lives. I needed to grieve the loss of my own innocence, my belief that my country would pull together and do something in the face of such brutal, senseless violence instead of dismissing the tragedy as the cost of doing business in a country more in love with guns than children. Justin gave me that time, and when the moment was right he introduced me to a friend who volunteers for a group working to improve gun safety and helped me get involved.
It’s just a single example of the ways in which his friendship has made my world a better place, and I know that I do the same for him. That kind of relationship is priceless and not worth risking for a few orgasms, even if they are as incredible as I imagine they would be.
I’m about to text Justin and tell him that I think it’s best if we pretend yesterday never happened—and beg him to give me a few days to recover from my embarrassment before we do our best to return to normal—when my phone vibrates again.
*
Justin: A Poem for Libby:
If you were a note I’d hold you until I ran out of breath
If you were an addict I’d help you get treatment for meth.
If you were a joke you’d always make me grin, and
If you were a fart I wouldn’t hold you in.
(Or maybe I would hold you in, so we could be together and talk through this until we’re good again. This is assuming we could talk if you were made of gas and lived in my intestines. Please don’t hate me for this terrible poem and disgusting imagery. The end.)
*
I laugh out loud—loudly out loud—earning myself a curious look from the tweens furiously texting in the seat across from mine. I recognize the “what could someone as old and boring as that lady be laughing about” expression on their faces, and that seals the deal.
I am not old and boring. I’m not even twenty-five! I’ve got my entire life stretching out in front of me, and I want that life to have fun, sexy, surprising things in it. And that’s not going to happen if I keep hiding and running away.
Holding on to the flash of courage, I quickly type—Headed to the arboretum for a walk. Meet me by the meditation chapel in half an hour?—and hit send.
A moment later Justin responds with: Be there in fifteen. Thanks, Libby. See you soon, beautiful.
Beautiful…
The word makes me wrinkle my nose and sends a fluttery feeling through my midsection at the same time. It reminds me of yesterday, when Justin insisted that I was beautiful, not just pretty. He has never said anything like that before. Part of becoming friends when I was a scrawny thirteen-year-old with braces and
he was a drop-dead gorgeous high school sex god is that looks never entered the picture for us.
Yes, I was always aware that Jus was pretty to look at, but I was equally aware that it didn’t matter. He was too old, too good-looking, too popular and perfect for me to think of him in that way. Even as we grew older, the mental moat around the idea of Justin as an attractive member of the opposite sex remained. My thoughts didn’t even try to cross it. Like I said to myself yesterday—he’s a shark and I’m a goldfish. Neither is necessarily better than the other, they simply exist in different worlds, different universes.
But with that one word—beautiful—Justin dropped the drawbridge down over the moat, leaving me wondering…
Was yesterday more than an impulsive kiss that went way too far?
What if Justin has feelings? For me? What the heck am I going to do about it? How am I going to tell one of my best friends, someone I treasure with all my heart, that I don’t feel that way about him? That for me, the attraction is purely physical, with no romantic daydreams involved?
For a moment, I consider texting him back and telling him not to come, or jumping off the bus at the next stop and ghosting on him the way I did yesterday, but I force myself stay in my seat.
If Justin has feelings for me, the kindest thing I can do is let him down as swiftly and gently as possible. It’s time to put on my big-girl panties and deal with the insanity that my stupid “sex education” plan put in motion, even if it means hurting a person I never, ever want to cause any pain.
Chapter Twelve
Justin
The Hoyt Arboretum is only a few minutes from my apartment. During the summer, I run these trails—through the cool redwoods and up the gorge to the old mill where there are stairs to pound up and down until I’m breathless—at least once or twice a week. Once the season starts, I’m usually too busy to squeeze in another run outside of practice, but damn, have I been missing out.
As I head up the trail toward the meditation chapel, an open A-frame structure made of redwood planks, with a sweet view of the forest rolling down the hill below it, the colors take my breath away. The rest of Portland in the fall isn’t anything to turn your nose up at, but the hundreds of rare trees planted and nurtured in this reserve have transformed the forest into something magical. Vivid orange, red, and yellow leaves set the tree tops on fire as they mingle in the canopy. It reminds me of a Chinese New Year celebration, the colors mixing together overhead until they’re like silk dragon kites rippling in the breeze.