Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Len pressed his hand to my back to get my attention. I looked up to see him and his concern visible through his downturned mouth and the crinkles at the sides of his eyes.

  “You okay?” he whispered. “You look far away.”

  “Just thinking about some stuff.”

  “Not tonight, fearless. Tonight, is for fun, which means you put all that other stuff out of your head.”

  I supposed I could do that, though, something continued to niggle at the back of my mind. I’d have to think more on it later.

  The hostess ran a finger down the built-in tablet screen and pressed on his reservation. A moment later, a server, this one a woman, greeted us.

  “Hello. Welcome to Ceibo. I’m Lydia and I’ll be your server tonight.”

  We followed Lydia to a table tucked in the back corner. The room was dark with real and painted-on-the-wall palm trees. The painted palms surrounded a twilight beach scene and they played the sound of water lapping the shore. Deep blue lights strung around the room twinkled and gave the appearance of the nighttime sky.

  Ambiance. The man knew how to pick a restaurant.

  If this was how he treated a fake girlfriend, imagine how he treated the real ones.

  We ordered cocktails first off. Mine, a Campari, citrus, peachy dream in a glass that went down way too fast and easy. Our server brought a second out for me before our appetizer came out. It was grilled cheese—like not the sandwich but an actual slab of cheese that had been grilled. They had us spread it on crusty chimichurri bread.

  Len and I gorged ourselves on Argentinian flavors. And for dessert we ordered this—goodness—almost a tiramisu but made with dulce de leche, Argentinian chocolate and yerba mate.

  No words existed for how good the meal tasted, and the conversation between Len and me flowed freely. Mostly a recap of our fun at the zoo and stories from some of his travels. We kept it light. Fun. And then it happened. I was maybe three bites from finishing my dessert when I heard it.

  “Kami?”

  I ignored her.

  She persisted. “Kami, oh god, I thought that was you.” Dierdre, the traitor, walked up to our table uninvited and acted like I hadn’t called her out—well, Len posing as me hadn’t called her out in that text.

  There was a man I didn’t recognize with her, not Rex, the last guy she’d been dating before I cut her out of my life.

  “And who is this?” she asked, ogling and appraising Len.

  He held his hand out for her to shake. I glowered. Her stupid hand might contaminate him with her backstabbing betrayal.

  “I’m Lennon.”

  I squeezed my hands into tight balls on my lap as she leaned in a bit too close, oblivious to her date standing there, flashing her cleavage.

  “Lennon,” she said. “I like it. I’m Deirdre. Kami and I have been friends for years.”

  Len looked at me and then back at Deirdre. My heartbeat sped up even as I sat waiting to see what he was going to with that information.

  “Deirdre?” he asked. “The Deirdre?”

  She smiled cockily, as if him knowing about her made her special somehow, that is until he metaphorically went right for her throat with teeth bared.

  “The Deirdre who made friends with her cheating ex’s new bi-otch behind her back and never bothered to tell her the man was a cheating bastard?” Then he looked to me. “Sorry. I don’t have a replacement for bastard.”

  Her mouth dropped open. I covered mine.

  Len wasn’t done. “You call that friendship? That was a biotch move that had nothing to do with friendship. It takes a pretty low-class person to pull that on a friend.”

  He just called Deirdre a biotch and low-class. I looked to her date to see if this night was going to end in fisticuffs. The date stood to the side laughing.

  Deirdre wasn’t.

  “I see the priss has you censoring—”

  “She doesn’t have me do anything.” He cut her off. “I do it because she doesn’t like it, and I care about her. That, you see, is what friendship is.”

  Why couldn’t he be real? Because that—that was so believable. It meant a lot for him to stick up for me and—what the heck—I stood up and walked around the table, bumping Deirdre out of the way, to bend down and kiss him. Nothing pornish, but enough to relay my thankfulness.

  “Everyone will hear about this,” she threatened behind us, but who even cared? I kind of hoped she did spread the word. Especially since I’d be gone for six months soon, which meant I wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout from when Len broke up with me. I could post fewer and fewer pictures of us together until our relationship faded into obscurity.

  Thanks to Dierdre, I had the perfect out.

  As I was so happy about this revelation, I continued to kiss Len. When we broke apart, Deirdre and her date had left and Lydia, our server, waited off to the side with our check. In an instant, once I realized we’d been making out in public, my skin heated with embarrassment.

  “I uh… can’t believe I did that,” I said in sort of a mutter. Yes, the mutter of a shocked woman.

  “Baby, that was phenomenal. You have my permission to do that anytime you want.” And he wrapped one arm around me while taking the check. “Thanks,” he said to the server.

  Never letting me go, which meant pulling my butt onto his lap, Len reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He set it on the table, flipped it open, and slid a card out. Sliding the card into the leather check holder, he handed it back to Lydia, who turned to cash us out.

  A text pinged my phone while we waited for Len’s card to be returned. I fished the phone from my purse to check it.

  Brian. Oh, for crying out loud, when Deirdre said she’d tell everybody, I figured she’d at least wait until after appetizers.

  I could not deal with him tonight.

  Ten:

  I ambled out of the bedroom, drawn by the rich aroma of dark roast Columbian brew. Something I bet most people wouldn’t guess about Len was that he made coffee like nobody’s business. In a real relationship, he’d be elected official coffee brewer.

  “Hey, baby. Come have a seat.” He handed me off an overly large mug of the magic brown liquid as I passed him on my way to the bar. During the handoff, he pressed a sweet kiss to my temple.

  How did he manage to be so sweet and perfect and able to keep up the pretense even when we weren’t in public?

  Breakfast fare for this morning turned out to be lox and bagels, with the spread on individual plates laid across the bar top. The toaster popped and he pulled two piping-hot bagel halves, buttered them, set them on a plate for me, and slid it over.

  Cream cheese, lox, onion, tomato, and capers for each of us later, he sat next to me and I could tell he had something on his mind. It was weird. Len, in the time I’d known him—especially in the time I’d really gotten to know him—never held back. I didn’t think he could hold back if he tried.

  “What?” I mumbled around a mouthful, and I picked up a couple of the capers that had rolled off, sticking them in the soft, pulpy part of the tomato to keep them in place.

  “We’re leaving in a month,” he said.

  “Yes.” I drew out the word. “I’m quite aware of that.”

  “Then we’ll be gone for six months.”

  “Again, not new information.”

  “I think we should pack you up today and move you in here.”

  My mouth dropped open. I set my bagel I’d picked up for another bite back down on the plate. Ran my tongue along my teeth to make sure I wouldn’t spit food out when I yelled at him, and then I yelled at him. “What the heck?”

  It might have been a slight overreaction, but I contest what the heck?

  “Move in with you?”

  “Now.” He patted the air. “Hear me out. Why should you pay six months of rent and utilities when you won’t be home? That’s wasting money. Plus, isn’t that where you were living when you and the ex were together?”

  I shook my head yes
.

  “I thought you were trying for a fresh start.”

  “I am.”

  He shot me this well? look. As if what he proposed was the obvious next step in my get Kami back life plan.

  “You’ll be paying rent here for the six months we’re gone.” Yes. That was a good argument.

  “I own this place. Outright.” His face darkened. “Bought it with the money I got when… never mind. Anyway, I only pay taxes, utilities, and association fees. Heck of a lot less than you pay in rent.”

  “Where will I live when we get back?”

  “Kam, baby, we’ll find you a better place. But if we’re going to get you moved out, you have to get your notice put in today so they don’t charge you another month’s rent.”

  “I don’t know the policy. I’d have to check on how much notice I’m supposed to give.”

  “Okay.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Even if they charge you another month, it’s smarter to move you out now rather than at the end of the month when we’re trying to get all the last-minutes done.”

  Right, so he had a point. A good one actually…

  “And you really don’t mind? Me staying here with you for the rest of the month? Because once I give up my apartment, if you get sick of me, you can’t kick me out.”

  “I won’t get sick of you.”

  “You might get—”

  “Kami, I won’t get sick of you. Now say you’ll move in here so we can get ready and get your stuff.”

  Getting rid of my apartment was kind of a big decision to make on the fly, but hadn’t I been trying to get back to the old me? Get back the girl who jumped in head first because you only live once?

  Fear was the only thing stopping me. And all that fear brought to this party was a cheating ex and a backstabbing friend.

  If I said yes, what would the pros be? Len’s company. We had a lot of fun together. His breakfasts. The man knew his way around the kitchen. His big, comfy bed. I tended to like to snuggle at night and these past few Len had been better than a body pillow. The sex. Okay. There, I said it. The sex. Len is, was, and probably forever shall be extraordinary in the booty department and he seemed to enjoy what I gave in return.

  I’d gone so long without it that I just didn’t feel ready to go back to a sexless life.

  Down with a sexless life, I shouted in my head. Then to my utter mortification, “Down with a sexless life,” I shouted out loud.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I wholeheartedly agree. Sexless life, bad. But what does that mean?”

  “It means that I’m putting in my notice.”

  “So I assume you plan to take advantage of me while you stay here? Because I’m totally down with that.”

  Embracing my boldness, because it was just that easy with him, I smiled. “Yes. Yes I am.”

  “We should kiss on it to seal the deal.”

  Kiss on it to seal the deal? We went at it like a couple of teenagers on a curfew time crunch. Then we cleaned up breakfast and he led me back to the shower, where it took us a bit longer than intended to get ready for the day.

  But eventually we made it out of the house.

  He dropped me off out front of the complex office. And left me to go give my notice while he left to buy boxes.

  I walked from the office over to my apartment and let myself in. I got hit with the weirdest sensation. Like, the space was familiar but didn’t really feel like my home any longer. No more Crazy Kami. Introducing onto-bigger-and-better-things Kami. Okay, that was kind of a mouthful. I needed to come up with a better new nickname to use when telling my former friends to suck it.

  My phone pinged stating that I had a new email. Freaking Brian again. No contact for over a year and now, when he thought I landed myself a new man, he decided to talk to me? No. Absolutely no. I swiped to the left on the message and hit delete. He could stuff his ‘good for you, Kam’ and ‘I’m proud of you, Kam’ right up his handsome-though-not-nearly-as-handsome-as-Len’s nose.

  By the time Len made it back to my apartment, I’d cleaned out my entire closet. Dresser drawers. Bathroom medicine cabinet. And I’d stripped the bed and tossed the bedding into baskets to be washed.

  He went to work on my kitchen while I packed all that stuff into the boxes he’d folded for me. As I had less stuff in my bedroom to pack than he did in the kitchen, I made my way out there to help.

  We worked for hours. At about half-past four, Dion and Brigeeta showed up with bottles of Prosecco and pureed peaches for bellinis along with platters of frou-frou finger foods such as stuffed mushroom caps and blini with crème fresh and caviar. Len had called Dion when he’d gone to get the boxes. Dion called Brigeeta. They came right after work.

  Dion’s newest fling owned a catering company and could pretty much be considered a culinary Einstein. I ate my body weight in delicious hors d’oeuvres and we all got snockered to the point that we laughed and fell on each other more than we packed my belongings.

  I was so going to miss working with these two for half-a-freaking-year.

  Brigeeta found my board game collection on the top shelf in my hall closet and pulled them down. We moved from drunken Pictionary to drunken Twister (or Twishter, as Dion pronounced it now that he’d made it to the slurring-his-words portion of the evening).

  Later that night Henri, the newest fling, showed up with leftovers from an event he’d catered earlier in the day. Creamed chicken and herbed potatoes. Haricot Verts, which is really a fancy name for French green beans, yeast rolls and triple chocolate cake.

  This was what friendship was about. How could I have been so foolish about Dierdre? How could I have mistaken what she and I had for what I continued to have with these amazing people in my apartment tonight? When I got things wrong, I really got them wrong.

  Eventually, we’d all drunk way too much for any of us to drive home, so I unpacked blankets. Dion and Henri took the pullout sofa. I had an inflatable air mattress for Brigeeta and Len and I took the bedroom.

  We passed out pretty much on contact with the pillows. Again, I rolled into Len. I know because when I woke the next morning we were holding each other. And hungover. Or, at least, I was. This was the first time since we’d started spending the nights together that I’d woken up before him and he hadn’t pretended to be sleeping just to see what I’d do next.

  Carefully, I extracted myself from his arms and the bed, making my way into the living room. I expected to see my friends passed out like Len. Instead, they’d woken and decided to avoid any morning-after-party interactions and had already slipped out. Brigeeta’s air mattress was deflated, her blankets folded on top. Dion and Henri’s sofa bed transformed back into a regular old sofa.

  We were back to just me and Len.

  “Mmm… morning, baby.” Speak of the devil, Len appeared in the hallway at the mouth of the living room.

  “Good morning.”

  As I looked at him, I felt grateful to the universe for bringing him to me. Beautiful even more on the inside than the out, and the out was pretty darn beautiful, Len made me feel special. I really hoped we could remain friends at the end of this lunatic experiment.

  “Let’s go home, Kam. You have enough stuff there for now. I think after spending the day packing, we should have some more fun. What do you say?”

  “What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll integrate what you want around and store whatever stuff of yours or mine that we aren’t using right now. Each condo comes with an extra-large storage unit. We’ll make it fit.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  “Come here and kiss me first,” he said.

  I obliged.

  When we ended the lip-lock, he swatted my butt. “Get your shoes on. We’ll come back tomorrow with a truck to move this stuff out.”

  After popping a couple of ibuprofens from my purse, the ones from my apartment already having been packed, I slid on my shoes and waited by the door for Len to do a swee
p-through to determine how many more boxes we’d need.

  Then we headed home, where he let me shower first.

  As directed, I pulled on a pair of shorts and a cute scoop-neck T-shirt, and brought socks along with me. I didn’t quite know what to make of this because I had on my sandals. That was the directed part, to not wear a skirt or dress and bring socks. This meant Len had a definite idea of what he wanted us to do today.

  He dressed similarly. Even down to the socks.

  The last thing before leaving the condo, Len packed us snacks and water bottles.

  We stopped off for coffee and pastries because we both needed them and he knew me sufficiently well by this point. Then, oddly enough, he turned into the parking lot for Stride Sporting Goods. Why would he stop there?

  Well, I thought I’d wait in the car. Guess who was wrong?

  “C’mon, Kam. You have to come in for this.” He slid out, shut his door, and jogged around to open mine for me.

  Together we walked into the sports store and he directed us to the back, where they held a large selection of shoes.

  My eye caught on a cute pair of pink runners, though I didn’t have much time to look because he dragged me to a completely different section. One with boots. Hiking boots, to be exact. I’d never been a hiker, per se, but I knew hiking boots when I saw them.

  “Sit,” he ordered, but sort of pushed me down onto the hard bench thing they had in the center of the aisle so I didn’t have a choice. “Shoe size?” he asked.

  “Seven and a half,” I answered.

  He plucked an expensive-looking pair of boots from the shelf and bent down to my feet like a shoe salesman.

  “Need the socks, baby.”

  Those I’d stuffed in my purse. So I opened it and pulled the thick cotton out, handing it over to him. Len proceeded to unlatch my sandals and pull the socks on me, then he stuffed each foot into the boots.

  “Walk around, see what you think.” He stood when I did, hands to his hips, and watched me walk around the shoe aisle breaking in the boots.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Good. Wear them out.”