Exes and Ohs

by Beth Kendrick

  I fiddled with my purse strap and tried to think of conversational gambits to throw out there. “So…”

  He grinned. “Yeah.”

  “Is this a little awkward, or is it just me?”

  The bell dinged again to announce our floor. We both startled.

  “Oh, it’s not just you.”

  We stepped into a high-ceilinged hallway with thick walls and deep beige carpet. A vase filled with dozens of artfully arranged white tulips rested on a mahogany table. A rail-thin woman with tight tan skin swished past us, a shark in black Gucci.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets. “All right. Not to flaunt my suburban roots, but your building is scary.”

  He looked around as if noticing his surroundings for the first time, then shrugged. “I guess it’s a little pretentious, but it’s a good investment.”

  “A good investment?” I gave him a look. “Whatever happened to warm and cozy? Or do we have to go to your Malibu beach house for warm and cozy?”

  I waited.

  “Alex. That’s a joke.”

  He stared at the tulips, looking supremely uncomfortable.

  “Oh my God.” I collapsed against the hallway wall. “You do not have a Malibu beach house.”

  He jangled his keys. “It’s small. Very small. I just thought, you know, talk about your good investments…”

  “Oh my God. Who are you?”

  He looked straight into my eyes. “I’m just a guy who can play the numbers well. I’m not out there saving lives. That’s you.”

  “Are you kidding me with this?” I threw my hands up. “Well, I was going to seduce you with all my womanly wiles tonight, but now I can’t.”

  Oops. Did I say that out loud?

  He seemed stunned into speechlessness for a second, then rejoined the discussion with a vengeance. “You were? You can’t?”

  “I was! I can’t!” I admitted all without a trace of shame. I was too aggravated to be demure. “Now you’ll think I’m only after your fabulous Malibu investment property.”

  “No, I won’t! I swear I won’t!” He paused, then asked, not without some justification, “What are you after?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know. I should probably just go home now.”

  “Hold on.” He practically tore a ligament blocking my path back to the elevator. “Slow down. We were having a good time.”

  “I agree.” I sighed again. “But…remember the ex-fiancé? The cell phone in Le Conte Avenue? Well, my roommate keeps telling me that it’s too soon to rush into another relationship, and she may have a point…”

  He waited.

  “I’m just so tired of being smart and safe and sidelined. And I like you. So, to be perfectly honest, I was considering throwing caution to the wind. And, you know, moving too fast.” I studied the carpet. “Which is pretty presumptuous, considering, you know…I don’t even know if you’d even be interested in something like that.”

  “Oh, I’m interested. But I do have one question.”

  “What?”

  “Why are we having this discussion in my hallway?”

  “No clue.”

  He opened the door to apartment 5C and ushered me into the darkness. As the closing door eclipsed the last sliver of the white light from the hall, I heard an undercurrent of deep, sexy laughter in his voice.

  “So this ‘moving too fast’—what exactly does that entail?”

  I grinned. “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  4

  Plunged into darkness, my senses swirling, I tried to prepare for my new identity as a love-’em-and-leave-’em vamp. A woman of freedom and sensual sophistication and—God, was it ever dark in here.

  His fingers brushed against mine and I did a little bunny hop of surprise. Nicely done, Gwen. Very seductive. His warm, minty breath—apparently, he had popped an Altoid on the ride home—added to the heat in my cheeks.

  I licked my lips and waited. No matter how wide I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see his face. There was nothing to focus on.

  And then I felt his hand on my shoulder. His fingers slid over the soft leather of my coat and on to the paper-thin skin at the hollow between my collarbones. He slid his thumb beneath my chin and applied gentle pressure until my face tilted back. I held my breath. I opened my mouth.

  “Can we turn the light on?”

  All the faint rustlings of cotton and leather stilled. The warm energy flowing around us evaporated into thin, cool air.

  “What?” He said this practically into my mouth. I could feel the word hot against my lips. He was that close. I backed away and coughed.

  “I just…sorry. I can’t see.”

  He pulled away and flipped the light switch. Stark white fluorescence blazed down. I caught a glimpse of gleaming gray marble countertops and stainless steel kitchen fixtures at the end of the wide beige hall.

  “Thanks.” I closed my eyes against the blinding flood of brightness.

  Alex, understandably, was now sounding confused. “Listen, maybe we should—”

  I took a deep breath, stepped back up to the plate, and kissed him. Just wrapped myself around him like a reticulated python and went for it.

  I kissed him to prove that I could still enjoy a kiss. I kissed him because I wanted to reawaken the graying, numb parts of my soul. But most of all, worst of all, I kissed him because somewhere tonight, Dennis was kissing Lisa the popcorn goddess and I refused to be the scorned woman who had to stay home listening to Alanis Morissette.

  I was sick and tired of the constant undercurrents of regret and self-reproach that had washed through me every day since the man I loved explained that he could not love me back. My life had to get back on track, even if my heart could not.

  For one breathtaking minute, everything fell into place. His hands slid around my waist. Deliberation flared into desire.

  He was a great kisser, just the right mix of confidence and patience. And there was a subtle, mellow undertone, inexplicably reminiscent of red wine.

  Oh God. I was comparing male saliva to Merlot. So much for staying emotionally distant.

  Our hands were roaming all over each other. The heavy burdens of anger and suspicion I’d carried with me for the past six months fell away. I felt alive and impassioned in a way I hadn’t since…

  I shoved away from Alex’s embrace and backed up to the wall, icy with sudden claustrophobia.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I just…I can’t. It’s not you, it’s me.” I tugged down my shirt hem. “Or I guess, really, it’s what I’m not.”

  He nodded cautiously. “And what are you not?”

  “Ready for this stuff.” I studied the slabs of gray slate tiling the floor. Then I rubbed my forehead, too embarrassed to look him in the eye. “I know you must be confused. I mean, here I am, hurling myself at you one second, and then going all frigid and Victorian. Giving psychologists a bad name. You’re confused, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m a little confused.” But he did not sound even remotely hostile or annoyed.

  “I’m just not ready to go down this road again. If I were, you would definitely be my first choice, but I…” I swallowed. “And you…”

  “Shouldn’t be kissing women I can’t get serious with,” he finished. “No matter how gorgeous and charming they are.”

  I crossed my arms. “There’s no need to exaggerate.”

  “I’m not.” He smiled.

  “Well…” I broke eye contact but didn’t know where to look and ended up scanning the room like a paranoid schizophrenic. “This is very bizarre. I’m sorry to be such a—”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who asked you up here with ulterior motives.” When he grinned like that, he looked like a one-man travel brochure for Martha’s Vineyard vacations. “But I know that you’re not ready for anything serious. I’m not, either, unless—”

  “Unless you find that paragon of womanhood who wants to settle down back at the ranch. Which isn’t me.” I sighe
d. “I know. But it’s a shame.”

  “A damn shame.” He led me down the hall to the kitchen, opened the stainless steel refrigerator, and grabbed two bottles of water. “What if we just take it slow?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Meaning…?”

  “Exactly what I said. We’ll take it slow, see how it goes. Hang until we figure out what we want to do.”

  “Hang?”

  “Yeah. Like basketball. When you’re taking it to the hoop for the dunk. You hang.”

  “Uh-huh.” Maybe I should give him Cesca’s number. “And may I assume that ‘hanging’ does not involve hasty commitment or false promises?”

  “You may.”

  I tucked my hair behind my ear, blushing as I remembered the searing sweetness of that kiss. “Then I guess you can put me down for some hanging. What harm could it do?” I sighed, straightening the straps of my tank top. “But, God, sometimes I wish I could just approach the physical stuff like a guy.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Like an alley cat in heat.”

  “That’s nice.” He collected two tumblers from the cabinet and placed them on the counter next to the water bottles.

  “I don’t hear any angry denials.”

  He poured the water and handed me a glass. “You know, some men are capable of thinking beyond their…testosterone.”

  I laughed. “Name one.”

  “Well.” He stalled by taking a looong sip of water. “The pope, probably.”

  “Eighty-five, bound by holy writ, and arthritic. You can do better.”

  “How about…Henry David Thoreau?”

  “A recluse who composed lengthy odes to bean fields?”

  “You asked for examples. Those are my examples. Life is short—do you really want to keep arguing about wussy men or do you want to watch some Northern Exposure?”

  I checked the chrome-rimmed clock over the sink. Eleven-thirty. “I should be getting home soon, but I can stick around for the first episode.”

  “Fair enough.” He topped off my water and led me to the buttery black leather sofa in the next room.

  Four hours later, both of us were drowsing in front of the TV, empty shells of our former selves, unable to tear ourselves away. This was what happened when people who were too busy to watch television finally got some free time, a DVD player, and a remote. Total OD.

  “I’m leaving after this one, I swear to God,” I said after episode two.

  We decided to order pizza halfway through episode three.

  “I should really get you home,” Alex said as the credits rolled after episode five.

  We looked at each other. “Just one more.”

  I yawned.

  “We can stop anytime we want to. We don’t have a problem.”

  The piercing shafts of late morning sunlight finally woke me. Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I wasn’t in my own bed. For one thing, I knew how to close the curtains, and for another, my bed didn’t reek of pizza and leather.

  I shoved my hair off my forehead and rubbed my forehead as I waited for total recall, which materialized about a fifth of a second later.

  Yes, I was still in Alex’s living room. Sprawled out on his insanely expensive sofa, which I had, in all probability, drooled on. My sassy little outfit now felt constricting and vaguely damp.

  I groaned and opened my eyes to find that I was curled up under the ugliest blanket in the Western Hemisphere. Thin and soft, it was emblazoned with bold black and white horizontal stripes. The visual effect was positively dizzying. Perhaps he had stolen it directly from Sing Sing.

  Rolling my head toward the TV of My Undoing, I spied the note folded on the dark wood coffee table. I recognized the decisive handwriting on the yellow Post-it as Alex’s.

  Out hunting and gathering. Back momentarily.

  Great. He had already seen me in all my slumbering, open-mouthed, mascara-smeared splendor.

  It would not do to have him come back and find me still sprawled out with ratty hair and bleary eyes. Time for a little damage control in the bathroom.

  The guest bathroom had precisely the tidy, empty feel one might expect in an apartment inhabited by a lone workaholic who buys a to-die-for condo for the investment value and then hires a cleaning service. The white porcelain gleamed, the gray towels were folded in thirds over sleek steel rods, and a pile of untouched blue soap shells nested in a hammered silver bowl by the sink. Attractive yet simple. Unlike, say, the reflection in the mirror.

  I tried to console myself with the thought that the sadist who’d decorated this place had made a pact with the devil of fluorescent lighting, but the fact was, I looked like hell. Apparently, the creators of the Northern Exposure DVD had left off the yellow warning sticker reading: “Be advised: viewing contents all in one sitting will result in looking like anemic junkie.” My hair hung in limp brown hanks. The left half of my face was creased and blotchy from the sofa cushions. And even the aforementioned mascara smears couldn’t hide the purple bags under my eyes. My clothes hadn’t fared much better. The tank top was twisted and wrinkled—a trampled white flag of surrender.

  Who would have thought that my long and colorful dating career would come to this? All the agony of the morning after without any of the ecstasy of the night before.

  I did what I could with the available tools (cold water, soap, and the unopened packages under the sink containing toothbrushes, dental floss, and toothpaste) and was scrounging around for any variation of Vaseline or moisturizer when I heard the front door open.

  When I peeked out into the foyer, I saw Alex heading toward the kitchen, loaded down with several white plastic grocery sacks and one brown paper shopping bag. He was decked out yet again in khakis, accompanied today by a black polo shirt and—wait a second, was he whistling? Had I just unwittingly spent the night under the roof of an inveterate morning person? God forbid.

  Three minutes later, I finally accepted the fact that splashing water on my cheeks was not going to magically transform me into a dewy-eyed Estée Lauder model. And the rich scent of freshly brewed coffee beckoned me to the kitchen.

  He hadn’t exaggerated with that “hunting and gathering” comment. He was unpacking strawberries, bagels, cream cheese, croissants, and orange juice from the grocery bags and systematically arranging everything on the marble counter.

  I observed from the doorway for a few seconds, shifting my weight from foot to foot and trying to find the right words to announce my presence. Finally, he looked up and smiled. The muscles in my neck and shoulders unknotted.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “I’m making breakfast, or trying to,” he said. “I don’t usually cook, but how hard can it be to toast a bagel?”

  “Famous last words.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Or, actually, do you have any Diet Coke?”

  He gave me a look. “I’m a straight male, living by myself in an apartment that I still haven’t gotten around to buying curtains for. What do you think the odds are of opening that refrigerator and finding ‘diet’ anything?”

  “It was worth a shot.”

  He handed me a big blue mug brimming with coffee and leaned back against the counter. “Isn’t it a little early for soda?”

  “It’s never too early for Diet Coke.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. How’d you sleep?”

  “Um.” I tried not to blush. “Great. How about you?”

  “Sorry about that blanket. It’s beat-up, I know. I have a bunch of other sheets and stuff, but I don’t actually know where. That was the only thing I could find on short notice.”

  “It’s very penitentiary chic.”

  He nodded toward the shopping bag. “I got that for you. I thought you might want to change.”

  “There’s clothes in here?” I pulled back a corner of the brown paper, consumed with curiosity yet terrified to see what the man who had purchased that migraine-inducing high-contrast blanket would consider ap
propriate breakfast attire.

  I sifted through some yellow tissue paper and pulled out a very simple, very modest, and very (expensively) well-cut white shift dress embroidered with pale blue flowers. As I unfolded the soft cotton, I realized that this was exactly the kind of thing a man with hopelessly retro ideals about courtship would choose. A modest, girly, A-line frock Tricia Nixon might have worn while shopping for poodle skirts and pinwheels.

  The dress reminded me once again that he and I were on opposite ends of the spectrum, romantically speaking. When he looked at me, he wasn’t seeing the woman I really was, he was seeing the woman he wanted me to be—fresh, unguarded, capable of great feats of nurturing and baking. My mind flashed for a moment to Harmony. Now there was a babe who could pull off this dress. Remembering her casual charm, flawless face, and Aphrodite curves, I wanted to wail in despair. Why could I never snag these men before their exes ruined them for all other women?

  I turned to him and smiled. “This is beautiful. But honestly, you didn’t have to. I mean…”

  He held up a hand to curb my protests. “I kept you up until four in the morning and you had to sleep on a couch with no pajamas. It was the least I could do.” He took a sip of coffee. “Go try it on.”

  I did want to get out of my sleep-rumpled clothes. And he had gone to a lot of trouble. So I headed back to the bathroom for the moment of truth. Men buying clothes for women was always a dicey proposition. Too small a size = big trouble. Too large a size = end of world. As I struggled out of my pants, I wondered what all this meant—the cell phone, the dress, Alex’s impossible dreams of a perfect wife and his paradoxical attraction to unsuitable, gun-shy me.

  Only one thing was certain: this was not going to end well.

  But we sure would have fun in the meantime.

  I zipped up the dress and admired myself in the mirror. The material swished down to my knees, the embroidery was delicate and light. It fit, almost. The only problem was the bodice, which was a little baggy. I realized with a sinking heart that, based on all available evidence, he was used to women who had more on top than I.

  Harmony and Alex. What a weird combination. Like pairing a macrobiotic papaya frappe with a steak.