The One in My Heart

by Sherry Thomas

  “Jesus,” said Daff.

  “There might have been some kind of drug cocktail involved,” Bennett told her gleefully. “And multiple women.”

  And a yacht in Saint-Tropez, no doubt.

  For some reason, all the women around the table stared at me as if I were responsible for Bennett’s excessive fucking.

  “Come on,” I said. “Did you really think the ultimate good girl would hook up with someone who wasn’t a freak?”

  Daff accepted her drink from the server. “I guess there’s that.”

  “Okay, back to the questionnaire,” ordered Carolyn. “What do you think of anal sex?”

  Daff promptly choked on the first sip of her drink: The question had been one of her contributions.

  “Depends on the anus,” said Bennett.

  “Good answer,” said Carolyn. “Have you ever been married?”

  “No.”

  “Incarcerated?”

  “No.”

  “Are you paying for all our drinks tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you rich?”

  “Yes.”

  “How rich?” asked Daff. “When Evangeline’s done with you, can I use you for a sugar daddy?”

  “Sorry, Daff, that’s not on the questionnaire,” decreed Carolyn. “Now, Bennett, have you performed oral sex on our Evangeline?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she returned the favor?”

  “No.”

  “Make the boy work, E,” said Lara. “Good for you.”

  I could probably fry an egg on my face. “That’s right, grasshopper. Watch and learn.”

  Carolyn continued. “What is Evangeline’s favorite position?”

  Hoist on the petard of another one of my questions.

  “She likes them all.”

  This had Daff whistling. “Oh, E. We never knew ya.”

  “Sorry for being undiscriminating,” I said.

  Bennett touched a strand of my hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I like you horny.”

  Carolyn and Lara hooted. Daff shook her head. “Wow, so you really are having sex again, E. Blows my mind.”

  “Okay.” Carolyn resumed her most brisk tone. “We’re almost done with the questionnaire. Bennett, where did you first meet Evangeline?”

  “At a sex party in Greenwich Village.”

  What the hell? “That is not true!” I protested.

  He had a dirty gleam in his eyes. “Prove it. Next question.”

  “When did you fall in love with her?”

  “It was love at first sight.”

  “Wait,” said Lara. “First sight of her vagina at medical school, or first sight of her in person?”

  “In person.”

  “At the sex party?”

  “Central Park. Last June. We wouldn’t meet at the sex party for another seven weeks.”

  It was just like him to mix together enough likely-seeming tidbits with complete nonsense, so that I couldn’t tell how much was truth and how much bullshit.

  “The penultimate question: Do you have your engagement ring all picked out?”

  Another one of my inane contributions.

  “Yes.”

  “Last one: When’s the wedding?”

  “August.”

  “Why August?” asked Lara.

  “‘Cause she’ll have passed tenure review and I’ll have finished with my fellowship. And we can have a nice long honeymoon before her schedule goes crazy again in September.”

  I eyed him up and down. “Talk about perfect timing.”

  He rubbed my arm through my sleeve. “Didn’t I say I’ll take care of everything, sweetheart?”

  “Okay, lovebirds, flirt on your own time,” said Carolyn. “Now we have to tally up the score.”

  There were scores?

  “What kind of scores can a man get around here?” asked Bennett, vastly amused.

  I had to give it to him: He was game and unflappable. A pretty high bar had been set for future victims of the Annual Boyfriend Roundup.

  “Well, it starts at ‘He’s just using you.’ And then there’s ‘Okay, but not great.’ After that, it’s ‘I’d bang him too.’ Above that, ‘A real keeper.’ And if you score any higher than that—”

  “It’s been a while. I can’t remember everything,” said Daff. “You can score higher than ‘A real keeper’?”

  “Uh-hmm.” Carolyn looked straight at my fake boyfriend. “You scored higher than a hundred percent. According to our scoring table, that means you’re an actor from an off-Broadway show, and this is a gig for you.”

  BENNETT WAS WASTED IN MEDICINE: No actor from a show, off-Broadway or on, could have played a better boyfriend. My friends clearly found him something of a unicorn, but he was a fun unicorn, and two hours passed in no time at all as we chatted and laughed.

  “So what color bridesmaid dresses for your wedding, E?” asked a tipsy Carolyn from the back of the cab. “I have—I shit you not—thirteen of them, and they cover the entire visible light spectrum.”

  “We’re doing a hipster ugly-bridesmaid-dress wedding,” said Bennett. “Come in the one you hate the most.”

  “Oh, God. I hate all of mine,” muttered Daff, who was drunker.

  “Another delivery run for you,” I said to Lara, always the still-sober one at the end of the night.

  She blew me a kiss. “I’ll get them home.”

  As their cab drove away, I turned to Bennett. “A Greenwich Village sex party? Really?”

  He was unrepentant. “Better than ‘I found her wandering the back lanes of Cos Cob and promptly took advantage of her.’”

  Our cab pulled up. We got in. Bennett told the driver, “Park and Seventy-third.”

  A frisson of excitement shot through me. “Why are we going to your place?”

  “Ten minutes ago you said you were hungry. I have ravioli.”

  The garish blue-green light from the TV screen installed between the two front seats shouldn’t have been flattering on anyone, yet the contours of his face were as beautifully lit as if a photographer’s assistant had been holding a reflector a few feet away. “I can have a snack at home.”

  “But I don’t want you to go home yet.”

  It was warm in the cab. He pulled off his ascot and my eyes were immediately riveted to that small vee of skin exposed by the opening of his shirt. “Then why didn’t you say so?”

  “What kind of straight shooter do you take me for? Someone as skittish as you needs to be manipulated into my apartment.”

  I looked back up at him, half smiling and all predatory. I think I may safely call him a shark, your son. Now the shark was circling me. By habit I clung to my raft—but a part of me, maybe most of me, longed to be devoured. “How are you going to do that? I could easily have this cab let you out and then drive me to my house.”

  He leaned a little closer. “Would you like to see the engagement ring I picked out?”

  Had I been dropped on my head, I couldn’t have been more stunned. “Wh-what? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you if you come up.”

  It’s a trap, shouted Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars.

  It’s bullshit, said my common sense.

  Who gives a fuck? countered the woman who couldn’t wait for the shark to drag her into the waves.

  When I didn’t answer, Bennett took my hand in his and traced a fingertip along the edge of my palm. I bit a corner of my lip, embarrassed by the heat that speared into the crook of my elbow. He grazed the pad of his thumb across the back of my hand. Inside my high heels, my toes curled.

  The urban canyon that was Park Avenue became quieter and emptier as we drove north. Our reflections were visible in the window of the cab, a man and a woman ostensibly behaving themselves: He looked down with the concentration of someone staring at his phone; my eyes appeared glazed, as if I already felt the lateness of the hour.

  Except I was anything but weary. My heart drummed. My nerves sizzled. I had to count so my breaths
wouldn’t come in too quick, too shallow. Bennett’s touch roamed along the lines of my palm, slowly climbing toward the tip of my index finger.

  The next thing I knew, his palm had cut into the vee between my index and middle fingers. I almost gasped at the suddenness and, well, invasiveness of the gesture.

  Did he hear my sharp, indrawn breath? Could he feel the tremors beneath my skin?

  As soon as we were in his private elevator, before the doors had even closed, we were already kissing. At the top we stumbled out. Somehow he managed to get us up a flight of stairs to his bedroom.

  He stripped off my coat. My clutch fell with a thump. Still kissing me, he pushed me down onto his bed. The impact of our bodies pressed together, shoulders to knees, made us both emit beastly sounds.

  He pulled my dress over my head and made quick work of my bra. His teeth sank into my shoulder, the flood of sensation swift and fierce. I gasped.

  “You are so fucking hot, Eva,” he whispered in my ear. “Last time I got home from work I had to get myself off twice before I could go to sleep—I kept imagining you in my bed and kept getting these raging erections.”

  The words were as great a turn-on as his touches. Greater—when we were apart again it would be the words echoing in my head, an audible arousal.

  I pushed his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders and kissed him below his jawline, an openmouthed nibble that had his hand tighten on my arm.

  “You know what I want?” His voice turned raspy. “I want to fuck you before I go to work. And I want to fuck you right after I come back home.”

  I might have ripped apart his vest. I definitely heard shirt studs pinging into the headboard. Keep talking. Keep telling me how much you want me.

  And don’t ever stop.

  “I want to see you naked against a wall again. I want to see the way you look at me. You have such hungry eyes.”

  I quaked—I didn’t want to hear about my all-too-visible yearnings. I kissed him, every inch of skin I could reach, as my hand slipped into his waistband and wrapped around him.

  He discarded the rest of his clothes and peeled off my panties. We were now skin-to-skin everywhere. He kissed me, deeply, thoroughly. I whimpered in the back of my throat—the kiss was as erotic as anything he had ever done to me.

  “When I have to take care of myself I imagine all the things I’d do to you,” he murmured against my lips. “And I think of all the sounds you’d make, from that first catch of your breath, to your screams when you come.”

  I didn’t know how much more I could take. This was getting too intimate, and I was again feeling all too transparent. I closed my eyes and plunged my fingers into his hair. “Why don’t you make me scream again? Do it. Fuck me balls-deep.”

  It was his turn to breathe harshly.

  I nipped his shoulder, as he had done with mine. “You know I like it—every position, everything you do to me.”

  His response was a low growl of such arousal that my own already tattered breath grew even more agitated. He pushed off me. I thought he was getting the condom, but he only repositioned himself to go down on me.

  I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be the only one undone, the only one moaning and thrashing with pleasure. I begged him to fuck me. But he didn’t, not until I’d come several times. Only then did he bury himself in me, making me whimper and tremble.

  He bit my earlobe. “Do you know what I really want?”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “I want to fuck you bareback. Every inch of me, feeling every inch of you.”

  Damn him. Those words made me peak again—violently. At least he joined me this time, his orgasm equally untrammeled.

  SO THIS WAS WHAT IT was like to be in bed with him, I thought when I could think again. This was what it was like when the shark had had his way with me.

  He stroked my hair. We were on our sides, facing each other, and I had the unsettling sensation that though his face was nearly invisible—the windows were behind him—perhaps he was seeing mine all too clearly.

  “Where’s my engagement ring?” My voice held a hint of disapproval, like that of a teacher speaking to a student who couldn’t produce his homework at the beginning of class.

  “Give me a sec,” he said, his words drowsy. “You melted my spine and I can’t get out of bed right now.”

  “There is no ring, is there? You tricked me into coming here.”

  “Would I lie to you?” he mumbled. “Two minutes.”

  Half a minute later he was already asleep.

  BENNETT’S APARTMENT, LIKE HIS COUNTRY house, was spare and elegant. Uncluttered. Zelda and I weren’t hoarders, exactly, but we had bulging shelves in every room and walls full of framed photographs.

  His homes, on the other hand, offered little glimpse into his personal life. The black-and-white botanical prints I passed as I came down the stairs had probably been selected by an interior designer, as well as the candelabra on top of the fireplace, its curves chrome and minimalist.

  The opacity of the apartment echoed the opacity of its owner, of whom I knew so much and yet so little.

  I sat down on the arm of a padded chair in the living room, feeling alone. The fault was my own: I’d always been anxious to distance myself from him after fantastic sex, for fear that if I didn’t, I’d become too involved for my own good.

  But I’d crossed that line long ago, hadn’t I? Still, I’d slipped out like a thief in the night, instead of staying where I was. Where I wanted to be, warmly ensconced in that illusion of intimacy.

  The stair light came on. Bennett descended in a white T-shirt and a pair of blue-and-grey-plaid lounge pants. “There you are. For a moment I thought you’d absconded. Are you still hungry?”

  The way he filled out the T-shirt. The way the loose lounge pants hung from his narrow hips. The way he stood, his hand on the newel post at the bottom of the steps, his head cocked slightly, the expression on his face halfway between contemplation and inquisitiveness.

  Yes, I’m still hungry. For you.

  I rubbed the sole of my bare foot against the rug beneath the chair. “Does anyone become less hungry with time?”

  He switched on the lights of the living room, then crossed over to the kitchen. I heard him turn on the tap and fill a pot. “What were you doing, sitting there in the dark?”

  Thinking about you. And about what’s the matter with me. “I thought you fell asleep.”

  There came the soft but unmistakable whoosh of a gas stove being lit. “Please. Give a doctor on his one hundred and fiftieth year of training some credit for being able to wake up in two minutes when he’s promised to do so.”

  He came back into the living room and kissed me on my hair. “It’s very, very nice to make love to you, but exhausting it isn’t.”

  “Clearly I’m doing something wrong.”

  “You’re not doing me enough—that’s what you’re doing wrong. You should keep at it until you break me.”

  I exhaled slowly. He really, really knew how to turn me on with words. “So, how long will it take for the ravioli to be ready?”

  “After the water boils, a few minutes,” he answered, sitting down on the other arm of the chair.

  “That’ll work.”

  He leaned in toward me. I was instantly nervous, afraid that he might kiss me. So I reached out and set my fingertip against his pendant, which happened to be outside the T-shirt. “I’m curious. Is there a story behind this?”

  He glanced down for a moment. “Imogene bought it for me when our parents took us to Maui. I used to wear it all the time, including during my time in Spain.”

  The thought had never crossed my mind before, but suddenly I had the urge to see old photos of him, albums upon albums, both analog and digital.

  “My parents found out about Moira toward the end of that semester. They brought me back home. It was a bad summer, and it got even worse when they discovered that Moira had also come to the city and we were seeing each other behind the
ir backs.

  “I stopped talking to my parents. When they sent Imogene in their stead, I basically told her that she had to choose sides, and that if she wasn’t on my side then I had nothing else to say to her either. Ever. She sat on the edge of my bed for a long time and then got up and walked out.”

  He stopped for a few seconds. “When I was shipped off to England, I left the pendant behind. But four years ago it came in the mail, along with a phone number—Imogene had moved to Silicon Valley. We met for lunch that weekend. After that, it was like I told you—we saw each other every week. And once that happened I met my brother too, the next time he stopped on the West Coast.”

  “And you started wearing the pendant again?”

  “No, not yet. At the time it was just a sentimental relic—I put it in my nightstand drawer and went on with my residency. When we got together I never asked Imogene about our parents, and she didn’t really bring them up. But inevitably they were mentioned in passing. That way I learned bits and pieces of what they’d been doing.

  “Fourteen months ago I attended a medical conference in Chicago.”

  I remembered he’d told me that in all the years of their estrangement, he’d seen his parents only once, at O’Hare airport.

  Something beeped in the kitchen. He stood up. “That’s the timer for the water.”

  Without thinking I followed him into the kitchen. “And?”

  “I was about to board when I saw them walking down the concourse. It had been thirteen years since our last meeting….” He gently swept the ravioli into the pot and set the timer again. “You know how you get used to living one way and you keep going? Because you’re used to it. Because that’s the way things have been for a long, long time.”

  Oh, did I ever know it.

  “It was like that for me,” he went on. “I’d been an orphan, essentially, and I’d become okay with it. Even when the topic of my parents came up with my siblings, even when they headed home for the holidays and I didn’t, that was just how it was.

  “But then, fifteen feet from me, my parents stopped to look at flight information. My mom said something to my dad, he smiled at her, reached over, and tapped three times on the face of her watch. That’s their code for ‘I love you.’ They did that a lot in cars. When we were little, Imogene and I used to tease them mercilessly for it. Sometimes we’d belch together as soon as one of them did the watch tapping. Sometimes we’d shout, ‘Who farted?’ Prescott would try to stop himself from laughing, but he never really could. So my parents’ romantic moment always devolved into this fiasco of stupid kids giggling and elbowing one another in the back of the car.