“Why not?” Lucas asked.
“Well, by this reasoning, a lady’s got to put all her cards on the table. She’s got to say up front, ‘I like you.’ And then our gentleman”—Sofia spoke this word with obvious disdain—“so as not to be a total asshole, has to return the gesture. Even if he’s not interested. So the lady could easily walk away believing that he’s interested in her when, in fact, the opposite is true.”
“Except in this scenario, the woman would know the customs of the time. She’d know better than to assume anything. I’d say she’s got the upper hand. If you’d ignored me, I’d have no remedy!”
“But I didn’t ignore you.” She stepped toward him until their bodies were almost touching.
In that moment, all of Lucas’s concern about Carmen—not to mention the fact that he had not yet laid hands on the book he’d come here to collect—flew straight out of his mind.
CHAPTER 13
The afternoon, past its apex, was now tumbling toward dusk. They’d walked for a long time in Central Park and had drinks at a small café on Madison Avenue. Then, after an interminably long subway ride to Brooklyn, entered Sofia’s spacious one-bedroom overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. Lucas sipped a gin and tonic in silence, admiring the view, and when he glanced back Sofia was standing in the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame. Silently, he stood up and walked toward her. In a rush, their shirts had come off and they tumbled onto the bed. It was a sleek, utilitarian object—vaguely Japanese—and low-set. Even as their limbs tangled, Lucas’s thoughts turned to Carmen’s cloud bed, a place into which a person could sink and cocoon. Sofia’s bed was hard, the sheets pulled taut, an intentional buffer against comfort.
But forget Carmen and her apartment! He reached for the clasp of Sofia’s bra and she let him remove it. But when he slid his hands toward her waist, she pulled them back up. Lucas was a little perplexed; Sofia did not seem like the kind of person to take things slow. Soon she rolled away and stretched out on the bed.
“Time for a break,” she said. Lucas looked at her quizzically, but her smile was so warm that he immediately felt at ease. Maybe he was getting her too excited. Maybe that’s why she wanted to slow down.
“This is an amazing apartment,” he said, turning his head toward the bedroom window, nearly the length and width of the wall. The bridge looked especially emblematic, with its American flag silhouetted against the sky. Like a postcard. Beyond it stretched the East River and the jigsaw puzzle of Lower Manhattan.
Sofia yawned. “I’ve been here for almost ten years. It’s a good thing I bought it when I did.”
“You own this? Jesus. I can barely afford the cubbyhole that Tyler and I are renting. He calls it the body fridge. Though we only have one air-conditioning unit, so it’s actually just the opposite.”
Sofia pointed to vents near the ceiling. “Central air,” she said apologetically.
“Wow,” Lucas breathed. “What I wouldn’t give…”
“Well, it’s my parents’ money. It’s got to be good for something.”
“My mother would have a heart attack if she heard you talk about money—or your parents—that way.”
Sofia shrugged. “Well, they’re dead.”
“Oh God, Sofia.” Lucas sat up quickly. “I’m so sorry I said that.”
She shook her head dismissively. “You didn’t know. And since you’re wondering, it was a small-jet crash when I was three.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything then.” Sofia sat up. As she did so, the sheet covering her breasts slipped away. He was turned on but also discomfited by his arousal—given the conversation.
“Stop looking at me like that, Lucas. I’m not a charity case.” She flicked his arm.
“How would you like me to look? You’re naked, and we’re talking about your parents’ plane crash.”
“Well, definitely not like I’m some pauper-orphan. Because clearly”—she motioned to the bedroom—“I’m not a pauper.”
“Sorry,” Lucas said. “From now on I’ll only look at you like you’re an orphan.”
Sofia stared at him, her mouth open. Then she grabbed a pillow and smacked him. “You just made a joke about my dead parents!” She smacked him again, this time laughing.
Lucas shielded his face, unable to suppress his grin. “I know. That’s fucked up, right? But I knew you’d find it funny.”
“Oh, you get me.” She chuckled. “How cute.”
Now it was Lucas’s turn to take up arms. He threw the pillow at her chest and then they were playfully batting each other. Soon they were stripping off the rest of their clothes and tumbling together, naked, exposed to the Manhattan skyline.
* * *
Later, they lay side by side, watching the city wink at them through the darkness.
“That was fun,” Lucas said. He turned on his side and ran his finger down Sofia’s long neck and across the edge of her shoulder. Sex with her had been very different from sex with Carmen. Now that he had a fresh point of comparison, he understood that what he’d taken for the columnist’s experience was actually an obsession with control. She’d directed the action, precisely so that it suited her notions of what should happen—when and how. Of course she hadn’t liked his eagerness and passion. That would have required her to relax. But she was an uptight, Type A lover.
Lucas sat up abruptly and started fumbling in his pant pocket for his phone. That was a good observation, the “Type A lover” thing. Just the kind of theme that should go into his column.
“What’s going on?” Sofia asked.
“Work thing,” he mumbled, his thumbs flashing.
“Uh-huh.” Sofa sat up and folded her legs beneath her. She observed him coolly, and when he didn’t look up she said, “I’m fairly certain that The Gentleman’s Guide to American Manners would frown upon a young man, sitting naked beside one lover, taking notes about another one.”
Lucas’s thumbs froze. Maybe he could pretend she hadn’t said anything.
“What was that thing you told me at my cousin’s restaurant? ‘Always be genuine. Don’t let anyone punish you for being yourself.’” Lucas glanced up to find Sofia observing him with wry amusement. “You’ve got to be more careful, my friend.” She tsked her finger. “It’s risky, quoting from your own column in casual conversation. You’re lucky Tyler didn’t notice. I’m actually pretty surprised he didn’t.”
Lucas tried to put the pieces together. Be genuine. Don’t let anyone punish you for being yourself. Did that sound like him? Did he say that? Oh. Oh yes. He’d written almost those exact words in his initial rebuttal as Mr. Nice Guy, and then, like a cocksure dumbass in love with his own words, he blurted it out and—
Should he play dumb? Call it a coincidence? Say he’d read the column so many times that it got stuck in his head? No way she’d believe that. Because here she was, watching him squirm, grinning slightly and, of course, naked. It was all too much. She’d caught Noser’s big scoop. She was going to out him.
“I am so screwed.” Lucas pushed his fingers into his eyes. He felt like throwing up—a careening, stomach-twisting sensation of helplessness that was all too familiar. It dredged up memories of Mel, asking again and again why, after four years, then five, he wasn’t 100 percent certain about their future together. There’d been so many of these unbearable nights, with him saying he loved her and her, crying, telling him that “love” wasn’t the same as “in love.” It had gotten to the point that the very sound of a woman blowing her nose trigged a Pavlovian response in Lucas: the desire to run. To get as far as he could from their relationship and, most of all, from his own emotional impotence.
“Sofia, please don’t tell anyone. If Jays realizes who I am … my job, my career…” He was starting to feel short of breath. How could he have been so careless?
“OK,” she said, like it was nothing.
“No, Sofia, I mean it.”
“So do I, Lucas. Why would I want to hu
rt you?”
Lucas nodded, doubtful. “So you’re not mad?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“Because I lied to you.”
Sofia lay back, her legs folded Indian-style. Lucas’s eyes traveled from her pubic bone up her stomach and across her breasts, which now lay flat against her chest. He could see the dark points of her nipples, her long, graceful neck. She arched her back, stretching. As he watched her, his mouth hung open just a little. Good God, even now, in the depths of panic, he wanted to press himself on top of her.
She finished her stretch and sat up, her hair a mess around her face. “I’m not your girlfriend.” She smiled. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Mel would have gone apeshit.”
“Your ex?”
He nodded.
“Well, I am most certainly not her. But I am curious. Were you writing about me? Can I see?”
The notes he’d made described everything that was wrong with Carmen’s style of lovemaking in contrast to all that was right about Sofia’s. He handed her the phone. “What do you think?” he asked after a minute. It occurred to him that almost immediately his fears of career ruination had morphed into a desire for professional validation.
“It’s sweet of you to praise me like that.”
“OK.…” He waited for her to say more. Surely she was taken with the deftness of his argument—about how Carmen couldn’t derive pleasure without dictating his every move, whereas Sofia had no physical blueprint. She’d organically allowed their bodies to fall into sync, so much so that they’d even come together.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I can order something.”
“Wait—that’s all you have to say?”
She gave him a devastating look, like he was a puppy, happy and oblivious, trotting across a dangerous intersection.
“What, Sofia? Spit it out.”
“I like you a lot, Luke. I think you’re handsome and funny. You have a lovely body.”
“But—”
“There was nothing organic about our sex just now.”
“I don’t understand. You were faking it?”
“The orgasm? No, that was real.”
“OK, so what’s the problem?”
“Well, the thing is, I gave myself the orgasm.”
Lucas slid back from her on the bed, as though the distance of a few inches would lessen the coming blow.
“Look,” she said, “men generally don’t know what they’re doing. It’s not their fault—it’s hard to know a woman’s body, especially the first time. But if I wasn’t able to make sex pleasurable on my own, I’d be having a lot of disappointing sex.”
“So you’re saying that I’m bad.”
“Not bad exactly, but … after we started making out, I actually wasn’t sure that I wanted to sleep with you. Because the kissing was—it was like we were dancing and you kept stepping on my toes.” She gave him a look: I’m sorry, but it’s true.
“And?” he said.
“But we were having so much fun, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ Only it was just kind of … so-so. I’m sorry, Luke. I’m no fan of Carmen’s, but she wasn’t entirely wrong.”
Lucas stood up. “Excuse me,” he said coldly, and went into the bathroom. He sat down on the toilet and buried his head in his hands. Then he got up and stood in front of the mirror. Could he really be that bad? Could anyone actually be that bad at sex? All his life, he’d figured sex was like pizza: At its worst, it’s still pretty good. At least, Mel had never complained about his performance. If anything, he’d been the disappointed one. She treated oral sex like a necessary, mildly unpleasant task, like washing the dishes or vacuuming. And she always wanted to have sex the same way, lying on her stomach. The lack of variation frustrated him. Not that he’d ever said anything about it. He’d worried about offending or angering her. And anyway, hey, it was sex. At least he was having it.
Sofia knocked on the door. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d want the truth.”
Mel never complained to Lucas about sex, so for six years he’d taken her silence as a sign of satisfaction. It never occurred to him that her silence might be the same as his own. Which meant that he and Mel had likely been underwhelming and disappointing each other for years. At best they were prudish and at worst cowards. Prudish cowards. Maybe if they’d been more honest with each other, things would have ended differently, or not at all. Lucas looked out the bathroom window at the flickering city. How many couples were breaking up right now? How many people were untangling their limbs and turning away from each other, frustrated? How much heartache could be avoided if people would only say what they were really thinking?
Lucas opened the bathroom door. Sofia had wrapped herself in a silky, Asiany kind of robe. “I had no business saying those—” she started to apologize. But Lucas cut her off.
“Will you help me?”
She looked at him quizzically.
“The other day, Tyler said this thing to me—about how Nice Guy could use help. He was joking, but…”
A slow smile spread across Sofia’s face. “You want me to be your sex coach?”
“I mean, that’s kind of an embarrassing way to put it.” He nodded at the bed. “It’s a weird thing to ask. I’ll totally understand if you—”
“I love this idea!” she exclaimed, and threw her arms around his neck. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“You’re sure?”
With her arms still draped over him, she pulled away slightly. “I can help you,” she said. “I totally can.” And then more to herself, “Carmen won’t know what hit her. Oh, this is going to be so good.” She kissed him deeply, and the warmth of her mouth seemed to suffuse the whole of his face. She detached her mouth, turned from him, and began to pace, as though searching for the solution to a complicated problem. “We could say we’re ‘dating.’ I’d be the perfect cover; people would never suspect you.”
Lucas hadn’t expected Sofia to be so accommodating, and for a moment he wondered if there wasn’t something a little odd about her enthusiasm. But she’d said that she was passionate about sex. And she clearly liked him. Maybe she wanted an excuse to spend time with him. And was that so incredible? Why shouldn’t a witty, beautiful, cultured woman want to be with him—or even just “with” him?
“OK, coach,” he said. “When do we start?”
CHAPTER 14
A week later, Lucas and Carmen had their second on-the-record meeting. When Lucas arrived at the budget hotel that Jays had booked for them, Carmen was already there, sitting upright on the bed, notebook in hand. “Your column was very immature,” she said. “Now lie down.”
There was a suspicious stain on the comforter, but Lucas obeyed. And just like last time, Carmen set the rules, which were so rigid that Lucas wondered if she’d been charting their sexual acts on a spreadsheet. Worse, every few minutes Carmen would stop abruptly to write something in her notebook, leaving Lucas wet lipped, heart pounding, his body maddeningly abuzz.
Still, he felt more confident. He’d seen Sofia three times that week, for a grand total of seven “training sessions.” One night, they had sex at 8:30 P.M., then again at midnight, an unexpected blow job at 4:00 A.M. followed by sex again before work. He didn’t know his body was physically capable of all that stimulation. Even with Mel, he tended to withhold a little bit of himself during sex, because to focus on pleasure was to risk triggering an early orgasm. But now his body could barely recover. He didn’t have to worry about being overwhelmed with pleasure; it was nearly impossible, like being able to drink without fear of getting drunk. And this gave him a new kind of confidence that transcended Sofia’s bed. He’d had enough of Carmen calling all the shots.
“You can’t keep stopping,” he said, finally. “It doesn’t feel natural.”
Carmen laughed. “Nothing about this situation is natural.”
“I get that. But if we’re going to take this column on, shouldn’t we at least try to make the, uh, t
he activities feel as authentic as possible? I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I guess I’ve come to the conclusion that, well, maybe we could…” His newfound confidence was slipping.
“Spit it out, Lucas.”
Lucas swallowed. “Don’t you want people to take something away from what we write? You know, for their own relationships?”
Carmen tipped her chin back and laughed. She had a lovely throat. Significantly nicer than what came out of it. “Don’t pretend you have some lofty goal. You’re here because you want to fuck me and because you’re hoping to advance your career.”
“OK, sure. I want to write for the magazine. But that’s not the only reason I’m doing this. I’ve been in relationships”—he prayed that his use of the plural sounded plausible—“where you can live with a person for months, even years, and never really know what they want.” He flushed. “Sexually.”
“This is my point, Lucas. We’re not doing activities. We’re kissing, touching, fondling, groping, rubbing, sucking, and licking. But you’re so squeamish that you can’t even talk about sex in its most basic terms.” Carmen climbed off of his legs.
“That’s not true!” Lucas protested. “I’m just trying to take this partnership seriously, elevate it, turn it into something worthwhile.”
“Jesus! We’re not sexual altruists working for the greater good. This is about making people buy magazines. And do you know how?”
“Apparently not.”
“We’re creating a titillating, tidy little circle of judgment. I’m going to judge you. You’re going to judge me. And the good people of New York are going to judge both of us.”
Lucas opened his mouth to refute this but didn’t know where to begin.
“My column isn’t about giving advice. It’s about getting people off and turning them on. And that’s accomplished by providing an open invitation for them to judge you. Judgment is the world’s greatest aphrodisiac.”
This was not where he’d expected the conversation to go. “But why would you want to be involved in that?” he asked, flummoxed.
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