Kyle washed up as Lauren tidied the mess, then she brought out the popcorn. She used a pot to make it on the stove, just as her grandmother did, and the boys were fascinated that she didn’t make it in the microwave.
Then they all settled in front of the television with snacks to watch an action hero save the world. It was fun and easy, and when Kyle reached across the gap between the two club chairs to seize her hand, Lauren smiled at him. He kissed her fingertips and mouthed the words “thank you,” which made her glow inside. She pulled her hand from his, though, knowing her limits.
“Not his girlfriend,” Jason muttered with scorn from his position on the floor. “As if.”
* * *
Lauren had saved the evening and his sanity. Kyle was profoundly grateful. At midnight, his mother didn’t appear, but he hadn’t really expected that she would. The second movie had ended, the boys were asleep on the rug in their pajamas and Lauren was dozing in the other chair. He looked out the window and tried not to think too much about how his life would change with his mother in the vicinity.
She’d be over all the time.
Kyle shuddered.
He turned off the television, then picked up Lauren and carried her to the bedroom. She murmured something incoherent and curled against him with contentment. He set her on the bed, then removed her shoes. He got a couple of blankets from the closet and returned to the boys, tucking them in and leaving them on that thick rug. He supposed that it wouldn’t kill them—he’d slept on plenty of floors in his lifetime.
Maybe he should get a couch.
Maybe not. They’d turn up more often if it was comfortable.
Perish the thought.
He turned off the lights and returned to the bedroom, pushing the door so it was partially closed. He wanted to hear the boys, but to have a little privacy, too. It was impossible to imagine that Dave and Olivia lived like this every, single day.
And that they’d chosen to do so.
The world was full of mysteries.
Kyle started to remove Lauren’s jeans and she stirred, giving him a sleepy smile.
“Okay if I stay?”
“I never expected anything else.”
“You probably expected more.”
He gave a theatrical sigh. “Honesty demands that I admit I was hoping for it.”
Lauren smiled and seemed to wake up a bit. She braced herself on her elbow and glanced at the door. “But audiences don’t work for me.”
“There is that. Want to take a rain check?”
She laughed a little. “No. You said I could name my price so I will.”
“I assumed...”
“And you assumed wrong.” Now there was an intriguing glint in her eyes, if not a challenge. She stood up and removed her jeans and shirt. She went to the closet and got the denim shirt, then took off her lingerie. He was cheated of a view by the shirt, but kept watching anyway. What was she up to? Lauren left the bra and panties on top of her other clothes and got back into the bed, wearing only his shirt. Kyle didn’t want to admit how much he liked that. She sat there, hugging her knees, her expression expectant. “I want you to answer a question instead.”
Kyle was surprised. “A question? When you could have amazing sex?”
Lauren laughed lightly and nodded. “I knew you’d be surprised.”
“It better be a really good question,” he said, undressing as he fought his disappointment. A question. He hoped it wasn’t the one he routinely dreaded about making a future together. He always knew the answer to that one, but didn’t want to have that conversation with Lauren.
“Why so many women?” she asked and he turned to look at her.
“Excuse me?”
“Why do you sleep with so many women, one after the other?”
Kyle blinked. “Why not?”
“No.” Lauren shook her head. “Not a glib answer. I want the truth. What’s the appeal?”
“I like women.” Kyle heard the question in his own response and knew Lauren did, too. “And I like sex. It’s simple.”
“No, I don’t think it’s that simple. The way I see it, there are six possibilities,” she said.
“Six,” Kyle echoed with fascination, and sat on the bed to watch her.
Lauren counted them off on her fingers. “First possibility is that you love variety and the only way to have the experience of thousands of women is to actually have thousands of women.”
“Good point. I do like variety.”
She shook her head. “But it seems to me that if that was your goal, you’d have a kind of a list and would be filling in omissions by this point. Maybe a spreadsheet. A mission to try every single kind of woman at least once.”
“What a mission!” Kyle pretended to faint at the idea and fell across the bed.
“This isn’t a joke,” Lauren said sternly. “I really want to know and you promised me whatever I wanted.”
“Okay. No joke.” He sat up and listened to her. He was closer to her than when he’d pretended to swoon, which had been part of his plan.
“Are the women you choose always different? Or are they of a certain type?”
“There is an ideal,” In the spirit of honesty that characterized their relationship, Kyle had to admit it. “I like variations on the theme.”
“So, it’s not all women you find attractive, but women who match your ideal feminine—which comes down to physical attributes, I’ll guess.” She gave him a look.
“This is a lot more than one question.”
“All subordinate questions are in pursuit of the greater answer. I think they’re allowed.”
“I didn’t realize you were making the rules.”
“I’m the one owed whatever I want,” she countered with a smile.
Kyle considered the question. “Okay, the women I choose do have a lot of physical similarities, but then, I meet most of them at F5. There are a lot of fit people there. The tall, slender woman with curves in the right places is pretty prevalent.”
“But the initial attraction is physical?”
Kyle was impatient. “Isn’t all initial attraction physical?”
“People who believe in love at first sight would argue that.”
“I don’t believe in it,” he said, a little too vehemently.
Lauren didn’t appear to notice. “Why am I not surprised?” she said mildly. “Okay, I don’t think variety in itself is a goal. You’d have a list with items like ‘I haven’t had a blonde with glasses and large breasts,’ and you don’t. Unless you haven’t told me about it?” She gave him a questioning glance.
Kyle shook his head, feeling disgruntled. “No list, much less a spreadsheet.”
She held up two fingers. “Option two: you fear rejection. So, you choose someone, have sex, then exit the relationship first, to ensure that you aren’t the one who gets dumped.”
“Wrong,” Kyle said flatly. “I don’t exit the relationship because there is no relationship. There is sex. And I end it because the woman inevitably wants a relationship and I don’t. I have no fear of rejection.”
“Just because you pre-empt doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. Who would reject me?” He shook his head adamantly when Lauren smiled. “I have the opposite problem. Trust me on that. What’s third?”
“A fear of entrapment.”
“What does that even mean?”
“That you don’t want to snared into doing something or perpetuating something for the duration or even for a period of time. Maybe it’s actually a need for control. You want to actively choose your partner ever time, not be bound to a default partner.”
“Everything is best the first time,” Kyle said.
“And people change. So, when two people commit, it’s for better or worse, whether they get married or not. Someone might gain weight, or lose it. Both will age. Either might have a change of attitude, like becoming bitter or disheartened. By keeping to a single encounter with any wo
man, you miss all that.”
“And I’m supposed to regret that?”
“Well, you also miss out on real intimacy, but we talked about that before.” She raised her brows. “Fear of entrapment?”
“No, because there are no permanent bonds, not really. Mark just proved that.”
“Touché,” she said lightly, just when he was thinking he might have stepped right in it. “And the flip side? Need for control?”
“No. I can go with the flow as well as anyone.”
“On to number four, then. Maybe it’s the intimacy you fear.”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Really? Is that why you keep all your secrets locked up so tightly?”
“That’s a fondness for privacy. It’s different.”
“Maybe, but you might be moving past it anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to the living room. “Overnight guests. Isn’t that a first?”
“Yes,” Kyle admitted.
“And me, too, back for the fourth time and staying overnight. I think your island has been invaded, Kyle.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “What’s five?”
“You’re not going to answer me about intimacy?”
“If this is multiple choice, I get to see all the options before I choose.”
“Fair enough. Number five. Maybe your taste for honesty doesn’t play well over the long term and you know it. Maybe something happened before to convince you of that and this is all a reaction.”
“How could honesty be a problem?”
Lauren smiled and made air quotes. “‘Does this dress make me look fat?’”
Kyle laughed. “Okay, sometimes honesty can get a guy in deep shit.”
“So, maybe you met a woman, or a sequence of them, who got tired of your honesty over time.”
“I like number five. It has potential as a theory. Unfortunately, that never happened to me.” Kyle held her gaze. “Nobody throws me back. Come on. Give me number six.”
Lauren sighed. “It’s the painfully predictable one.”
“I can take it.”
“You just haven’t met the right woman yet.”
The silence hung between them, filling the room with her expectation.
Kyle took a breath and a chance. “Or maybe number seven. I have met her, but I know I can’t make her happy. Maybe she is the ideal feminine and the others are just pale echoes of her splendor.”
“Surrogates.”
“Who can be made happy for a few hours at a time, which is better than nothing.”
Lauren swallowed. “But how do you know that you can’t make her happy? Have you tried?”
“No, not really. I just know who I am and what I am and how I am. That doesn’t fit with who she is and what she wants and how she is.”
“Maybe you don’t know as much about her as you think you do.”
Kyle winced because this was starting to sound like the conversation he didn’t want to have. “Maybe I actually know better than she knows herself.”
“Maybe you do,” Lauren agreed. “So, did something make you the way you are, or were you born that way?”
“Genetics or environment?”
“Something like that.”
Kyle hesitated. He’d never confessed this truth to anyone, but it was the truth and Lauren was asking for it. He felt that he could tell her anything and not be judged, or found wanting, and he wanted to share this with her.
He got into the bed and sat beside her, leaning back against the headboard.
“You aren’t going to tell me,” she guessed.
“I am going to tell you,” he countered and saw her surprise. “One secret just for you.”
“Ooo, I do feel special,” she teased and he smiled briefly.
“My mom was supposed to come at midnight to help with the boys. It’s after one a.m. You’ll notice that she neither showed up nor called.”
Lauren straightened in alarm. “Do you think something’s wrong?”
“No. I think she’s having fun and she forgot. Or she remembered her promise and decided not to keep it. It’s what she does. She went on a date tonight with a guy she met online.”
“Kyle! Something could have happened to her!”
“It didn’t, but I’ll prove it to you.” He picked up his phone and called. His mom didn’t answer until the fifth ring.
“Kyle!” she exclaimed so loudly that Lauren must have heard her. “Don’t tell me that it’s midnight already?”
“You know it’s later than that, Mom.”
“But we’re just getting started. We’re going to go dancing...”
“It’s okay, Mom. I didn’t expect you to show up. My friend, though, was worried about you so I wanted to check in.”
“Your friend? Don’t tell me, Kyle, that you’re finally going to make me a grandmother!”
“You are a grandmother, Mom,” Kyle said wearily.
“Oh, I have to go, Kyle. I’ll tell you all about our evening in the morning.” Her voice faltered. “Unless there’s something wrong?” The tone of her voice practically warned him to say there wasn’t.
“Of course not. Go have fun, Mom. I’ll see you tomorrow probably.”
He hung up and chucked the phone back into its charger.
“So, you’re saying you were raised by someone who didn’t make commitments, and that’s why you don’t?”
“I’m saying that my mom has been married seven times with countless ‘true love’ liaisons in between. We moved all the time when I was a kid. All the time. Every fucking year. Sometimes more often than that. There was no one I could count on, until Dave was born.”
“Oh.”
“If she had just stayed put and had all the lovers she wanted, we might have had some stability in our lives. Instead, it was always true love and plans for marriage, and time for us to move and start over again. It was hell. It was ridiculous. She will never be happy with one man for more than sixty days, and so the whole romance thing is obviously a lie. There is no such thing as commitment or kept promises, and I’m not going to perpetuate a lie. I’m certainly never going to bring more kids into this world.”
“You feel pretty strongly about this,” Lauren noted. “You could just not have kids.”
“I could just not lie to myself, and not lie to whoever I’m with, and face the fact that I’m a lot like her.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s actually worse.” Kyle dared to meet her gaze. “No one is ever going to interest me for the duration, so I’ve made my strategy accordingly. I will not fuck up any kids.”
“Makes sense,” she admitted. He had a heartbeat to be relieved that she wasn’t going to try to talk him out of his view before her direct gaze collided with his. “So, what exactly am I doing here?”
Caught.
Kyle exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “No, I do know. I can’t resist you. Part of it is that you don’t try to change me.”
“I don’t think people really change.”
“No, I don’t, either. The fact remains that I am still interested in you and it’s been years since we met.” He held her gaze. “But don’t go thinking we can make a thing of it. Don’t go expecting more from me. I will fuck it up, Lor. It’s the way I am, and I don’t want to disappoint you.”
She nodded and to his relief, she didn’t cry. “Friends with benefits, then.”
“Something like that. If you want.” Whenever you want, he thought, but kept that to himself.
“You don’t watch a lot of chick flicks, do you?”
“No. Why?”
“Because every single one about friends with benefits ends with a wedding.” Lauren rolled over. “But I think in real life, it often ends another way.”
“How’s that?”
“With the friends no longer speaking to each other. Someone is going to get expectations. It’s just the way people are.” She sighed,
even as Kyle acknowledged that her logic matched his perfectly. “Let’s keep it simple and just be friends without benefits.”
He was disappointed but not surprised. “But tonight?”
“No. Never again. I went with the question, and you answered it better than I could ever have expected.”
“Friends with no benefits, then,” he concluded, feeling defeated.
“Other than being friends.” She smiled over her shoulder at him. “I’ve had my question answered, so you’ve paid the price.”
“Any time,” he said, feeling irritable again, and turned off the lights. Lauren had burrowed down into the bed and he reached for her, pulling her against his side. She resisted, just a little. “You’re cold. I’m being chivalrous and it’s not my best trick, so go easy on me and just play along.”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“Too late. I already have them. Lucky for you, I don’t believe in sneak attacks.”
“And you made a promise.”
“That, too.”
Lauren chuckled and eased back against him so that they were spooned together, then wriggled in a way that definitely aroused his interest. Kyle felt a curious blend of excitement and satisfaction. He could smell her skin and her hair and he liked the warmth of her body against his own. He held her close, feeling protective of her. He felt desire, certainly, but he also felt affection.
There wouldn’t be any sex and that wasn’t as dire as he might have thought.
Was this what the intimacy was like that she talked about? It wasn’t as thrilling as the first encounter, because there was less risk. But he did have a good hum in his veins, one that would be just fine to feel every day and night of his life.
But where did it say it would last that long? It was probably just another phase, a step toward the fading of interest that he believed to be inevitable.
The truth was that in this moment, Kyle didn’t want to think about it too much. He’d been wanting only Lauren but now that she was in his bed, he was satisfied to just hold her while she slept.
Maybe he was getting old.
“But here’s the thing, Kyle,” Lauren murmured softly when he thought she was falling asleep. “What happens next?”
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