“Years?!” he thrashes the water theatrically. “I can’t believe that.” He raises an eyebrow suspiciously. “OK, spill it. Why have you been single for so long? Are you a serial killer? A spy? A visitor from another planet collecting data to bring home to your species?”
“Maaaybe?” I giggle. “How do you feel about anal probing?”
He blushes beet-red and it’s outrageously cute.
“I might not be opposed. Under the right circumstances.”
“Noted,” I respond.
I submerge myself beneath the surface of the water once again, slicking my hair down my back. I can’t remember the last time I swam completely naked. Maybe not since I was a kid. Naked in a semi-public place? Probably never. It’s unnerving and exciting.
He paddles a few feet away, smiling broadly. The sinking sun illuminates his face in a coppery rose-gold. I swim closer, and he splashes me mischievously. I splash back. The mascara that Tasha methodically applied is probably running in rivulets down my face, but I don’t care.
I’ve never felt this kind of instant-connection with anyone before. I honestly didn’t think it was possible. This doesn’t feel like a typical first date, full of bumbling awkwardness and self-conscious posturing. It’s more like we’re kids on the playground rushing up to each other with open hearts that have never been bruised. “Will you play with me?” “Yes!” Best friends forever. Simple and pure. I don’t want this playdate to end.
I glide towards him and burrow myself in his arms. He smoothes down my wet hair and plants one small, unspeakably delicious kiss just above my left eyebrow.
“How long did you say you were in town for?” he asks softly.
“I didn’t say,” I respond, somewhat cryptically.
A beat passes, as if he’s waiting for me to elaborate. I don’t. Another beat.
The shrill sound of a child—giggling and glee-screaming—interrupts the silence. We hear child-sounds, grown-up banter, and footsteps crunching on the gravel path, probably less than fifty feet away. Ren instinctively moves to the side, shielding my naked body from potential public viewing.
“Um … clothes?” he asks.
I nod.
As if to signal, “Party’s over, kids, time to move along . . .” the sun begins its descent behind the horizon. A breeze kicks up and within seconds, it feels like the temperature plummets about ten degrees. The daylight is fading, casting tree-shaped shadows across the gravel—long and inky with pointed tips like arrowheads. I shiver. Goosebumps prickle the backs of my arms.
In one sweeping motion, my entire body is plucked from the water, and I realize, dumbfounded, that Ren is carrying me towards the shore. I’m not exactly a tiny woman, but apparently he’s strong enough to hoist me up in his arms with minimal effort. Not even a subtle grunt. I can feel his steely abs contracting as he moves, and I realize that this man could probably tear a phonebook in half if the spirit moved him to do so.
He releases me onto my tiptoes and whips a couple of towels out of his backpack.
Whoa. So prepared. What a Boy Scout.
Wrapping me snugly in one of the soft cloths, he towels off quickly and modestly turns away. He manages to remove his wet boxer-briefs and slip on his dry jeans without exposing himself to me. Which, I must admit, is a bit disappointing.
I follow his lead, switching into my dry sundress. We stuff our wet towels into his backpack and zip it shut, standing upright a split second before the family crunches into the clearing. The child beelines towards the water. The parents halt their conversation, taking in our sopping wet hair and flustered expressions, and give us a knowing glance.
We giggle and scurry past them, arm in arm, heading back towards the parking lot.
Ren swings the backpack straps over his shoulders and loops one arm around my waist. Leaning close, he whispers, “Your little kisses in the water were driving me insane. I want to kiss you back. Properly.”
“But not here?” I respond, matching his whisper. He shakes his head.
“If you’re comfortable with it, I was thinking … my place.” He quickly adds, “it’s not far,” as if geographic distance is somehow going to influence my decision. Ha ha ha. No.
I nod emphatically, no longer bothering to try to “play it cool” or mask my enthusiasm. Kissing. Yes. Now. Please and thank you.
We practically skip back to the car. He gets the engine roaring in seconds. I rest my left hand on his right thigh as he reverses and peels out of the lot. I roll down my window to let the breeze flood over us. Even without the presence of the sun, the air feels warm, like an embrace.
“Why did you reply back to me?” I ask, smiling through damp tendrils of hair that won’t stay out of my face. I’m fishing for compliments and utterly aware of it.
“On the dating site, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
He turns left on 42nd Avenue and we pass the car wash, the light rail station, the liquor store. So many familiar landmarks. How is it possible, in this relentlessly neighborly city where everybody knows everybody plus everybody’s brother and grandma, too, that we’ve never crossed paths before? Not even once?
“Well, you’re absolutely beautiful,” he begins. “Initially, I liked your photo. I’m sorry if that makes me shallow or whatever, but it’s true.”
“It doesn’t,” I reply. “I liked your photo, too.” Uh yeah. I sure did.
“And I was seriously impressed when you messaged me with a poem. Nobody’s ever done that before. Actually, women typically don’t message me at all. They usually wait for me to make the first move. So, when you wrote to me like that, I was intrigued. Honestly, it made my day.”
Right on Park Ave. We pass a used guitar shop, a Buddhist meditation center, a few churches, and the Midtown Greenway. Cyclists signal politely, dipping down onto the enclosed Greenway path where cars are not permitted. My mind flashes back sixteen, maybe seventeen years ago when my parents let me bike the entire length of the Greenway—without supervision—for the very first time. Five-and-a-half miles, end-to-end.
It was a crisp autumn morning, and I flew like a bird on my used Schwinn, hair whipping out from under the edges of my helmet. It was one of the first times I felt like a real “grown-up.” Unattended. Liberated. Completely free. Of course, that was before the complications of actual grown-up life—job applications, bills, taxes, death, disease—cascaded into my world. That was back when choosing a hair scrunchie to match my nail polish color was the most difficult decision of my day.
I smile inwardly, lost in an imaginary conversation with my fifteen-year-old self. “Enjoy this moment,” I would tell her, if I could. “Because you will never feel this exact feeling again. Your first solo-ride down the Greenway happens exactly once. Your first kiss, your first job, all of it … your life happens exactly once. Try to keep your eyes open. Stay awake.”
We’re moving towards East 26th Street, and my intuition tells me he’s going to hang a left at the intersection. The city landscape is embedded in my bones. Even with my eyes closed, I’d know we’re moving towards the Whittier neighborhood. Ground zero for hipsters and undergrad art students paying $40,000 a year to learn graphic design and stop motion animation. Is that where he lives?
It feels liberating to not know … anything. We could be heading into Whittier, or Lowry Hill, or maybe even across the river into Saint Paul. He’s behind the wheel, and there is nothing for me to do. It’s strangely exciting.
“Do you want to hear another poem?” I ask.
He nods. “Absolutely. What you got for me?”
“Another one by Hafiz.”
It’s a short one about a leaf that floats skyward to kiss the sun and dissolves into bliss. I recite it from memory.
“Another one,” he urges, giving my hand a prolonged squeeze as we pause for a red light. “One more.”
I rake through
my memories. I can’t recall any others by Hafiz, the poet he mentioned on his dating profile, so I veer in a different direction.
I have all that I need
My work, this cup of coffee,
My world is heavy with blessings
I have no right to want,
and want and want and want . . .
And yet, small things sharpen my hunger
An embrace at the airport,
Meals perfectly portioned for two,
The story she tells breathlessly,
about the ring he chose for her to wear
He calls her, she answers,
he’s on his way home
and does she need anything from the store?
“No, nothing, sweetheart, except you.
Come home. I love you.”
These are the small things that agonize me
These are the small things that make me voracious and wild, blind with longing, hasty and stupid
I have so much. I shouldn’t want,
and want and want and want
This is what I tell myself in a bed that is too big
in a room that is too quiet
in a life that is heavy with blessings
I have all that I need
I repeat
I have all that I need
We stop outside a yellow brick apartment building with a criss-cross pattern of ivy crawling up the walls. He pulls the car into park and shuts off the ignition.
“Whoa,” Ren says, tucking the keys into his pocket. “I’ve never heard that one before. Who wrote it?” he asks.
“Me.”
He glances sideways at me, saying nothing, expressionless.
My previous confidence disintegrates. Immediately, I regret opening my mouth. It’s not a good poem. It’s pretty awful, actually. Like something you’d hear someone perform at an open mic night while you’re cringing through every line. It’s too vulnerable. Nobody wants to hear about a privileged woman’s pathetic, desperate hunger for love. This gets filed under “Things not to do on a first date: share your sappy, neurotic poetry with a man who previously wanted to kiss you but probably does not anymore.”
In a daze, I follow him into the apartment building, past the yellow brick exterior, through a dark blue door with a bronze handle. He walks down a carpeted hallway with peculiar flowered wallpaper, up a flight of stairs, then another, to the left, and down another hallway. I follow.
With each step, my heart pounds anxiously in my chest. I crossed the line. He thinks I’m desperate and clingy. Whatever romantic fervor we experienced earlier, I’m pretty sure it’s over.
He stops in front of another dark blue door with another bronze handle. Apartment #33.
A pair of well-worn hiking boots sit neatly outside the doorway on a woven mat, coated with dust from some recent adventure. I stare at them awkwardly, pretending to be highly interested in the shoelaces.
“It’s about you, right?” he asks. “The poem, I mean?”
“Yeah.” Wow, those laces. So … lacey.
I feel his hand slip behind me, cradling the small of my back with extreme tenderness. The gesture surprises me. Maybe I haven’t completely frightened him off just yet.
“Yeah, it’s about me. I’ve never really been in love. I’ve had relationships in the past, like pretty serious ones, but I can’t honestly say I’ve ever been in Love with a capital L. Every relationship I’ve ever had, there was this feeling like … you’re great, like really great, but you’re not … it. I would imagine the future, and I couldn’t envision them in it.”
Ren places a soft, knee-buckling kiss on the side of my neck. OK. He’s still with me. Not bolting for the hills yet. My confidence returns.
“I know it might be sappy and stupid, but like I said earlier, by the waterfall, all I’ve ever wanted is to find my soul mate. A real, serious, forever-and-ever kind of love. Like my parents had.”
“Nora,” Ren’s voice is so close, I can feel the reverberations against my skin. “It’s not sappy. And it’s not stupid. Everybody wants love. Everybody is hungry for that kind of connection. I’m hungry for it, too.”
I could be imagining it, but I think I detect the faintest hint of a growl in his tone, as if he’s hungry in … a lot of different ways.
If this were a predictable Blockbuster movie, this would be the part where he pins me to door, tearing away my clothes, covering my skin with frantic kisses, before carrying me over the threshold with one arm, laying me down on a bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire. (Which was miraculously ignited by … whom? The invisible butler?)
That doesn’t happen.
Instead, he quietly unlocks the door. We step inside, and he tosses his phone and keys into a ceramic dish. I take in the room. Gray couch. Black coffee table. Cheap, but nice, like IKEA probably. Yellow tea kettle. Framed poster print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Macbook Air charging on the kitchen counter. A couple of dishes in the sink. Your typical bachelor pad. Sparse, functional, with minimal ornamentation. Decently appointed, but not completely perfect, just like his car.
I can exhale here. I can relax. I like it.
He excuses himself to use the restroom. I sit down on the couch, flipping through last month’s issue of Wired magazine. I’m halfway through an article about the future of videoconferencing when I sense his presence behind me.
I feel his hands massaging my shoulders. Ommmmgdffgh. After spending the night in a semi-paralyzed coma on a hospital bed, his touch feels otherworldly. He finds a crunchy knot beneath my right shoulder blade and rubs steadily. I moan.
He slips beside me on the couch, still massaging my exposed back with firm, intentional motions. He has changed into a fresh T-shirt and sweatpants that look so soft and comfortable, my skin seethes with jealousy.
The shoulder massage turns into a neck massage. The neck massage turns into hands along my jaw, in my hair, tracing the outline of my face, beckoning me to turn around. Which I do. Because I can’t not.
He’s sitting comfortably, cross-legged, studying me with interest.
“So, maybe we could . . .” I venture hesitantly.
And then he kisses me.
The rest of my sentence is enveloped by his mouth. I don’t even know what I was planning to say anyway. But whatever it was, this is much better.
I climb into his lap, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. Our mouths, fingers, curves, and sharp edges interlock like we were molded for one another. I grasp at his hair. He moans into my throat, and I moan back into his.
It’s better than a romantic movie written by Nicholas Sparks, better than any novel or TV show I’ve ever seen, better than porn, yes, even that high-brow story-driven porn that’s directed by women for women. It’s the kind of kiss that makes you want to make very bad decisions very quickly. The kind of kiss that makes you feel like you’re levitating and plummeting simultaneously. The kind of kiss that makes you really grateful you paid nearly $10,000 for an extra twenty-four hours of human life. The kind of kiss that makes God high-five his favorite angels and say, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
I felt more, tasted more, experienced more, lived more in the thirty-two seconds of my first kiss with Ren than in the past thirty-two years of my life. It was a level of aliveness I didn’t know existed.
We migrate down a short hallway towards his bedroom, our lips continually locked the entire time. It’s a small room with a few pairs of sneakers, a bookshelf, a bed, and not much else. The mattress rests on a simple wooden platform, low to the ground, Japanese-style, with white sheets and a down comforter. The bedding is slightly mussed because he probably wasn’t expecting company today. Encircling me in his arms, he lays me down like I am made of precious materials.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs hypnotically, kissing me again and again.
I yank off his T-shirt and he hovers ove
r me, straddling me, but leaving ample space between our bodies, as if he’s worried about pushing too hard and too fast and frightening me away. Answering his unspoken question, I wrap my arms and legs around him, pulling his weight onto me, closing the gap between his skin and mine.
I wriggle out of my dress. His eyes devour me.
“This is my favorite part of you,” he says, grabbing a handful of my ass.
“Nope, I was wrong, actually … this,” he counters, kissing the crease where my hip meets my right thigh, sending me into a spasm of delicious shudders. “OK, I lied, this part is my favorite,” he says, this time kissing the side of my left breast. Then the right.
“Wait, no, maybe this.” He kisses the soft skin just below my belly button. “It’s just too hard to decide. You’re so goddamn pretty. Pretty and sweet and smart.”
I let him explore me like this, melting under every kiss, drunk on his attention.
“So … you kinda like me?” I ask.
“I love you,” he says.
The world goes silent in the wake of his declaration. My eyes widen. Both of us stare at each other with equally stunned expressions. Neither one of us knows what to do with this information.
“I love you,” he says again, more softly, cautiously, as if one wrong move might cause me to vanish from his bed completely—blown through the window like dust, like a ghost.
“I know this might sound crazy, Nora, but I feel like I’ve been looking for you my whole life. I can’t explain why, but I feel like we just … match. From that very first moment in the park, I felt it. I feel like we could build a life together starting right now. We could skip all the formalities, like you said earlier, and just be together. We could be happy. It could be easy. It would just … work.”
I say nothing, intoxicated by his words, silently urging him to continue.
“I feel so drawn to you. Like I belong to you. Like you’re already mine,” he continues, each word clear and strong. Then—maybe because I haven’t responded yet, maybe because he’s realizing that this is two hundred percent crazy—his confidence seems to falter. Like feet scrabbling and slipping on black ice. “I know we barely know each other,” he says quickly, as if interrupting his own thoughts, “. . . and I know that all of this is super fast, and I’m probably freaking you out, and . . .”
So This Is the End Page 6