Triple Love Score

by Brandi Megan Granett

  Lucille brought over two more glasses of Guinness; he poured out the liquors and passed hers over. This time she didn’t need prompting.

  There are certainly rules about being with students outside of class and probably a few about inviting them into your home along with a bottle of Baileys you bought on the walk home. But after three Irish car bombs, Miranda certainly couldn’t remember them.

  “Don’t worry,” Ronan said. “I am a gentleman.”

  “A gentleman, what good is that?” Miranda asked.

  “That’s just the drink talking.”

  “Funny, I don’t hear it talking,” she said.

  Ronan chuckled. “You have clearly proven you’re not Irish.”

  “WASP. We aren’t supposed to drink this much or at least not admit to it.”

  She pulled out the Scrabble Board, not to show off her Internet meme-creating self, but to play.

  “Who’s your favorite poet?” she asked him.

  “You’ll laugh if I tell you,” he said. “They will take back my degree if they find out.”

  “I doubt that. Spill it.”

  “Shel Silverstein,” he said as he picked five more tiles out of the bag.

  Every time she put down a word, he quickly put down an even better one.

  “Shel Silverstein? Where the sidewalk ends, Silverstein?”

  “Yes, well, not the whole thing. The Unicorn. This band my mum liked, The Irish Rovers, had an album, The Unicorn. She used to play it all the time. She’d get this dreamy look on her face and dance me and my sisters around the room. I found out the band took the lead track from Silverstein.

  “But why that? There’re lots of songs in the world and not all of them come from a poem.”

  “But not all of them made my mum dance like that. It was the first time I realized that words could be something that make people happy. I wanted to find that person and be just like him.”

  Ronan handily doubled her score. Doing the poetry sculptures threw off her gift for two-letter Scrabble words with maximum score value placement. The drinks didn’t help. He kept pouring until she finally said, “Okay, I get it, you are Irish. I am not. The room is beginning to spin.”

  “That was the answer I was looking for.” And he picked her up and carried her into her bedroom.

  Whenever a scene like this played in her mind, she imagined a room in a bed and breakfast with a brass headboard and coordinating linens, gauzy curtains on the windows, a fire going.

  She never imagined a man carrying her to her three-week-old sheets, rumpled and unmade, on the same mattress she has had she since was nineteen with no headboard at all, just a squeaky metal frame that came free with the purchase of a box spring.

  In her fantasy, though, after being carried to the well-made bed, the man settled in, too, pressing himself against her, brushing aside her hair, kissing her gently as he unbuttoned her shirt or skirt or jeans. Her imagination always featured a lot of buttons and slow kissing. Kissing everywhere.

  However, reality didn’t match the vision here, either. Instead, Ronan set her down, then stood upright, slipping both his hands into his pockets.

  “Well, Prof,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving. See you in class on Tuesday.” He placed a fist over his heart, thumped it twice with a bowed head and left her there.

  She listened to the click of the lock and the door thudding shut. He locked it from the inside before leaving. Courteous. Gentlemanly. Gone.

  In the morning, only the headache and the bottle of Baileys in her recycling bin reminded her about the night before. She shrugged it off. A one-off. Something that could have been a mistake but wasn’t. She sighed heavily and looked through her medicine cabinet for aspirin. Maybe most of all she wanted a mistake, something to shake things up, make them different.

  C H A P T E R

  IN THE LONG DAYS BETWEEN their night at the bar and her Tuesday class, Miranda found herself replaying the evening in her mind. She laughed again at his admiration of Shel Silverstein and winced at memory of her hangover. Sometimes, well, maybe even more than sometimes, she reimagined the end of the evening, letting it come much closer to her fantasy with the buttons. But modesty and good sense prevailed, making her cheeks burn if her thoughts went a little too far. Still, she kept returning to the image of him standing over her next to the bed and to the question of what if.

  On Tuesday, she finally stood before the door to her classroom, and Miranda feared her body would similarly betray her. She didn’t want to think about Ronan that way. He was a student. Her student. But she couldn’t erase the images from her mind. And part of her didn’t want to—but she didn’t need anyone else to guess at that—most of all, Ronan.

  The full group sat arrayed around the table. Everyone back to their usual, pre-holiday places, eyes glued down to their phones. Ronan caught her eye, nodded slightly, and then returned to whatever flickering image passed over his tiny cell phone screen. She sighed inside. It was indeed no big deal. She ran through class breezily, letting them spend too much time harping on Clementine’s latest poem, a villanelle about Justin Bieber. They were riffing about other words that could rhyme with Usher.

  “What do you think?” Clementine wailed.

  Miranda refused to join in, waving her hands in front of her. “This is a student-led space. Listen to your peers, listen to your heart.”

  Clementine shrugged her shoulders and returned to taking notes of her classmates’ whimsical selections. The two hours chugged by, and Miranda barely needed to speak a word. Any awkwardness she feared between her and Ronan failed to materialize. Relief flooded Miranda. She smiled brightly at them as they gathered their things and left. She even waved, chorusing in a singsong voice, “See you all next week.”

  A few turned back and looked at her with slight scowls on their faces.

  Her fears were unfounded. It’s not like anything could come of her and Ronan. But still, she remembered the electricity that had passed through her as he guided her to the barstool. That little zap felt so good, so right that the rules didn’t matter. But they do matter, they lurk behind every small touch, every smile. Rare is the relationship unbound by some sort of custom. “Wait until she’s at least twenty-one indeed,” Miranda startled herself by saying aloud.

  She took out her phone and emailed herself the word electricity. If someone put down city, first, you could get electricity down in a Scrabble game. She liked her sculptures to follow the rules—everything must make a word, and you can’t use more than seven letters at a time. At least she would do that. It would give her something to do tonight. Something that would make someone out there in the in the world of the Internet notice her. Like her. Even if only through a click on a little thumbs up.

  Her mind toyed with possible combinations for electricity or maybe just electric. Did the board have two “y” tiles? Could she somehow get body on the board? She walked with her eyes fixed upward; not on the sky, but inward, the way a person does when trying to do multiplication with carrying over in their heads. She pictured the Scrabble board just above eye-level as if space and time had another dimension hovering right above her. She walked on autopilot to her regular parking spot, nearly tripping over the last curb, rearranging the tiles in her head the whole time.

  “Be careful, mind you,” Ronan said.

  Miranda snap-ped from her reverie. He stood leaning against the hood of her car.

  “I was just about to give up.”

  “Give up what?” Miranda asked.

  “Waiting on you. I just wanted to make sure we were okay.”

  “We?”

  “You know, you. Me. After the other night. I left you in a state,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. Well. Thanks. I’m all good. It was nice of you to lock up and all.”

  “I didn’t trust myself not to.”

  “Not to what?” she asked.

  “Let myself back in. Leaving was hard enough.” He stood up and took two steps to cover the space between them. “Can
I come over?” he whispered into her ear.

  This time the electricity passed from his voice to her neck and down her arms and up her spine in the most delicious shiver. Suddenly, she couldn’t imagine why anything that felt like that would be wrong. She handed him the keys to her car. She didn’t trust herself to drive.

  He knew the way to her apartment without even asking for directions. The snow still hadn’t melted, and many streets still lay under a coat of dirty, packed-down snow. He kept both hands on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead. They did not speak. She listened to his breath between gasps of the engine; she watched it escape his mouth in little puffs of cold smoke. The car heater wasn’t on. She didn’t feel the cold, though; her skin burned.

  He pulled the car into her neighbor’s spot. For a moment, she thought about correcting him, then just hopped from the car and walked to the door. He passed her the keys, and in a miracle, she found the key on the first try and popped the door open. He followed her quickly inside, pulling the door shut with such force that it rattled the framed Matisse print that hung next to the front door.

  “Have you been drinking today?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “I wanted to make sure this is all free will.” He put a hand behind her neck and pulled her in close for the longest and deepest kiss of her life. He tasted like cinnamon and coffee. He tilted his head in just the right way and moved his fingers up through her hair. She placed her hands on either side of his waist, pulling him closer to her. She felt his need stiffen against her.

  He pulled his lips away from hers, bringing his mouth to her ear. “I want to go slow,” he said. He picked up her hand and led her to the couch, her own couch, as if this wasn’t her place but his. He sat and motioned for her to sit next to him. She pressed against him, leaning her head up to kiss him again. He returned her kiss lightly. “Tell me something,” he said. “Tell me your middle name.”

  “My middle name. Ellen.”

  “Ellen. Nice lilt. Where’s it from?”

  “I don’t know. My mom liked it. Why are we talking about this?”

  “Mine is Andrew. Named after my father’s father. He died the week before I was born.” He kissed her; his tongue stroked lightly against her lips.

  She pulled back from his embrace. “Wait, what? That’s terrible.”

  “Him staying around would have been worse. Don’t stop.” He kissed her again, this time harder, more insistent.

  “You didn’t answer me. Why are we talking about this?” she asked.

  “We are getting to know each other. We are taking this slow.”

  “I don’t want to take it slow,” she said, reaching for the top button of his jeans. She couldn’t stop herself. Some great hunger welled up inside her. She licked at his lips, letting her tongue slip into his mouth before he pulled away.

  “But I do.” He picked up her hand and put it back into her own lap.

  She felt herself pouting. It felt foolish, but so did she. She didn’t understand. “Why the big production of waiting by my car then? Why the kiss?”

  “I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “And now you can?”

  “Barely, but yes. Talk to me, Miranda. Tell me something about you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You don’t want to talk to me?” he asked.

  “Not really. Not now.” She stood up. She felt her composure returning. “Listen, I am not in the mood for talking. I am in the mood for other things, and I thought you were, too. If you’re not, then get out. I’ve had enough mixed signals in the last few weeks to last a lifetime. You are catching me at the tail end of a really long trip down that road, and I don’t want to double back there with you. You are a nice guy, a good poet, and an amazing kisser, and yes, an Irishman who can hold his liquor. But I need to be blunt. Put out or get out.” Miranda could see herself saying these words, hear her voice saying them, but she couldn’t believe that she had just said all of that. Out loud. To a student. A current student.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Please just go. Thank you for the kiss. It was the highlight of my year. I shouldn’t say that because it means I’m pathetic, but truly, thank you. I’ll see you in class next week.”

  “I’ll stay,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll stay. I’ll put out, as you so romantically requested.”

  “What?”

  “Are you deaf, woman? You just told me to put out or get out. I choose put out. Listen, I don’t do this often. I was only trying to do it right. If you don’t want right, that’s fine with me.”

  “Good. Take off your pants. I’ll get us something to drink.”

  When she came back to the living room with a bottle of white wine, he sat there, jeans on the floor, and his tight boxer briefs highlighting the muscles on his thighs. She set the bottle of wine down on the table and moved to stand in front of him. She pressed both palms against his thighs and stroked her hands upward. She lowered her face to kiss him. This time, she leaned in deep, letting her mouth cover his. He moved his hands to either side of her lower back, and with one deft motion, flipped her over onto the couch. She let him, eagerly wrapping her legs around him as he lowered his lips to her neck, to her breasts. She tugged off her shirt, then reached behind herself and unclasped her bra. He never let his lips move from her chest. Arching her back, a moan escaped her lips.

  Without asking, he unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down, taking her panties with them. He slipped from his own shorts. She shivered a little more from the cold, but quickly pushed herself up and against him. His penis, stiff and firm, pressed against her, so close to slipping in. She shifted her weight a little. He entered, and the air rushed out of his lungs.

  He wrapped an arm around her body and held her tighter, their movements more concentrated, the connection of his body to hers more solid. On each movement out, his penis fluttered out of her, licking at her clitoris. The physical sensation overwhelmed her mind’s ability to fight it. The sensation drove through to her core until she finally shuddered underneath him. He felt her orgasm and quickened his pace. He buried his face in her hair, biting her neck as he erupted in climax.

  She traced a finger over his shoulder, willing her breath to return to normal. Miranda didn’t know what to say. So she chose to let the silence sit between them. He shrank inside of her and finally slipped out. She shifted her body, moving some of his weight off her. He mumbled something into her ear. But it wasn’t words. Snoring. He fell asleep. Slipping herself sideways, she managed to free herself out from under him. He still wore his tee shirt. She stood, her pale skin glowing from the streetlight that flooded her living room. His eyes fluttered, almost waking, but then he settled into the space she had just occupied, his reddish blond hair curling in sweaty ringlets around his forehead.

  She found her shirt and jeans and panties, collecting each item carefully and quietly, not willing to wake him up

  She turned the water up in the shower as hot as it would go. She scrubbed extra hard and let the scorching hot water cascade down around her. Lines from Sharon Olds’ poem came to her, and she spoke them aloud using her best poetry reading voice.

  come to the

  still waters, and not love

  the one who came there with them, light

  rising slowly as steam off their joined

  skin?

  “Sex Without Love, is it?” Ronan said from the door to the bathroom. “One catnap and you write me off entirely?”

  Startled, she dropped the soap. “It’s just a poem,” she said.

  “Come now. You know better than anyone it’s never just a poem.”

  “It can be if you are just reading it.” She swatted at her skin, eager to get the soap off and her clothes back on.

  “But you aren’t just reading it. You are reciting it. From memory. After making love to me.”

  “But I didn’t write it. And we didn’t make love.”

  “We didn�
��t?”

  “No, we had sex. There is no love.”

  “How do you know there is no love?”

  She pulled open the shower curtain and grabbed at her towel. This was not a conversation to have naked. “Listen, there just can’t possibly be love yet. We’ve known each other for what fourteen weeks? And only really exchanged one conversation before today, and that was while drinking.” Miranda slipped past him and into her bedroom. He followed, taking up a position on her bed, as she rifled through her drawers trying to find clean sweat pants or something, anything that she could get on quickly. She felt his eyes like laser beams on her.

  “Are you in love with someone else?”

  “No,” she said. Miranda turned to face him. “Why would you say that? I haven’t dated anyone in two years. Since I moved here.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were dating anyone else.” He scooted back and sat up like someone waiting for a servant to bring in breakfast. He tucked his feet under the quilt she kept folded at the foot of the bed. Her grandmother had made the quilt for her mother’s hope chest. She fought the urge to snatch it away and put it away in the closet, someplace safe, where no one could touch it.

  “Well, I’m not in love. Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “No, well, it’s complicated.”

  “Now we are getting somewhere. Can you stop foraging around and sit down with me for a minute? I really do want to get to know you. Remember, I was the one who said let’s take it slow.”

  Miranda sighed, finally finding the right pair of yoga pants. She pulled them on and picked up a tee shirt from the floor bedside her bed.

  He patted the place next to him. “Come on,” he said.

  Unsure what else to do, she climbed in next to him.

  “What’s his name?” Ronan asked.

  “Scott. But it’s not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Love or anything. We never dated. Our parents are friends. And now he has a daughter, this awesome little girl. He says it’s complicated, but he didn’t explain. I just always thought—”