Just Lunch

by Nia Forrester

  But the connection was stronger, and realer than I anticipated and the next morning I told him what I probably should have within an hour after we met. He was understandably ticked off, and for weeks we had no contact. It was during those weeks that I realized how much he had changed me, in less than twenty-four hours. Only later did I realize that maybe I had changed him a little as well.

  “He’s really protective of what he has with you, Danielle,” Freya says. “I think he doesn’t want to … I don’t know, spoil it.”

  “Spoil it?” I echo.

  “Yes. I don’t know how much he told you about him and Faith but …”

  “He told me some,” I say. I don’t want to reveal what he said, but I also don’t want to dissuade Freya from telling me more.

  “She was a nice girl,” Freya says.

  I didn’t expect her to start that way. Even though Rand told me his wife was a good person, I never completely believed that. All I remember of her was the Instagram persona. And truth is, I don’t know that I respected that about her—the need for attention, the conspicuous display of handbags, and shoes, designer clothes and cars, parties and sexually-suggestive poses in full makeup and tiny bikinis.

  “She really was,” Freya says again, as if she’s read the judgment in my silence. “And I don’t know how much Rand was into her, but she was definitely in love with him.”

  I feel a stab of something in my chest. I feel terrible for Faith suddenly. Because her story was tragic in the way Rand told it, but somehow less so, if she also, did not love him. Now, Freya is telling me she did, and I’m not sure I want to hear it.

  “But she was so … immature,” she continues. “And she didn’t know Rand. I mean, not at all. I think she actually thought the cooler she was, the more sought-after, the more … famous she was, he might begin to look at her and think, ‘wow, look what I have!’

  “And Rand … he just didn’t give a crap about any of that. And what’s worse, I think he found it all a little gross. A little … ridiculous. The more publicity she got, the more she courted it, the less he related to and wanted to get to know her. It was sad to watch. She was chasing all this public attention when really all she wanted was his attention. And in the meantime, the further he drifted away.”

  “That is sad,” I say.

  “Yeah. But I say all that to say that now that he’s pulling his life together, pulling things with you together, I think he wants to keep it completely under wraps, almost like if no one knows about it, it can’t be exploited.”

  I remember the story Rand told me, about the picture—one picture—that started everything with him and Faith. Of two young people, going to a Halloween party in goofy costumes, and how from that, the world constructed an entire narrative about who he and Faith were.

  “So, I shouldn’t have accepted that lunch invitation,” I say.

  “I don’t know, Danielle,” Freya says. “I guess that’s for you to answer. But tell Rand you talked to me. And when he gets back, have him give me a call.”

  Little Rocket is sleeping when I get back to the room, and Dani is lying next to him, her shoes off, her hand on the remote. Law & Order: Criminal Intent is playing on the television. At the doorway, I pause and take in the sight of her lying there, next to my son who is on his back, spread-eagled and with his mouth slightly open as he sleeps. I smile as Dani looks up, and she offers me a wan smile back.

  “Tried to keep him up to eat,” she says, her voice quiet. “But it was a losing battle. Did the garage call you?”

  “Yeah. They’re done with the car.”

  Great. So we can get on the road.”

  “I was thinking about that,” I say. “Maybe we’ll stay here. If you need to be back, Little Rocket and I can head to Bristol from here in the morning, and you could catch the train back home instead of coming with us. Since Freya and Garrett and the boys are coming tomorrow anyway, I’ll have some help getting the townhouse together.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  That’s not what I want. That’s the furthest thing in the world from what I want. Because if she leaves for home tomorrow morning, she’ll have that fucking date. And if he treats her right – and who wouldn’t because, shit, she’s like sunshine, this woman – she’ll want to see him again.

  “Just wanted to give you the option,” I say, instead of what I want to say.

  I bring the paper sacks with food over to the table near the window, and begin taking things out, and she joins me, helping to take out the cartons of Chinese food.

  “Hopefully the smell of the food will wake him,” she says, glancing over at Little Rocket. “I’d hate for him to sleep into the night without eating first.”

  I look at her, but she isn’t even looking back at me, because she’s busying herself with the food. She didn’t even think about it before she said it, because it was a genuine emotion.

  She never seems to wish that Little Rocket was elsewhere, even though his presence means we have less time alone. That was always one of my fears, for when I might start seeing women again. When I was alone, and it was more than a year after Faith’s death, I would occasionally think about life with a woman in it. And the one thing that I feared was finding someone, and liking them, and then realizing that they viewed my kid as a burden, an imposition, or an interloper on her time with me.

  If that happened, I would have no choice. I would have to let that woman go. And then, I wondered, would that make me begin to think of Little Rocket as a burden, an imposition, an interloper. It was a stupid thing to wonder. I could never think of my son that way. I would be alone for the rest of my life—willingly—before I ever thought of him that way. But back then, when loneliness was like a physical pain, I can’t pretend I didn’t wonder.

  “I’m going to go get some ice,” she says when she fishes out the bottles of juice, I brought back along with our meal.

  “No, I’ll get it,” I tell her.

  “No, that’s not fair. You walked all the way to get the food, so I’ll get the …”

  As she’s about to slip past me, I grab her around the waist. “No,” I say. “It’s okay. I’ll get it.”

  With my arm around her, she goes really still, and I do too. I hear the soft intake of her breath. I smell a summery scent in her hair.

  “Dani …” When I say her name, she turns her head slightly and looks at me.

  I press my face into her hair, and inhale it, then lower my head further just as she lifts her chin. My mouth is on hers, and our tongues tangle and twist about each other. I swear to God, this woman does things to me I don’t think she could even begin to understand; things I don’t understand. Kissing her calms me, but it excites me at the same time. It makes me want to shove her against, or on top of something, anything, and just … take her, without any of the preliminaries that should go along with lovemaking. But it also makes me want to be gentle, go slow, and take her places that she’s never been before. And that’s part of it, the excitement of the knowledge that wherever I take her sexually, she has never been there before.

  It isn’t ego—or I don’t think it is—it’s pure, animal, possessiveness. This woman is mine, and has never been anyone else’s.

  She pulls away, just as I am kissing her neck. Because we both know exactly where that always leads.

  “Ice,” she says quietly.

  “I got you,” I say.

  I release her and head out into the hallway, grabbing the ice bucket and keycard as I go.

  When I get back, Little Rocket is up. Kind of. His eyes are half-shut and his hair is mussed.

  And he is sitting on Dani’s lap. Head lolled to one side, he blinks sleepily and lifts a hand in which he clutches a handful of fries.

  “Look who rejoined the land of the living,” Dani says, sounding amused.

  Little Rocket eats slowly, and still half-asleep, and when I join them at the table, he barely looks at me. I reach across the table and with my thumb and forefinger, nudge th
e tip of his nose. He fusses a little and bats my hand away and I look at Dani, and we exchange an incredulous smile. He is leaning against her fully now, nestled into the crook of her arm, like a kid cuddled up … cuddled up to his …

  I look away and focus on my plate of shrimp lo mein and spicy chicken. I turn up the television and pretend not to be stealing looks at Dani, holding my son like a mother.

  Little Rocket falls back asleep before he can get to his hot dogs and Dani puts him back on the bed. There is a circle of grease from the fries around his mouth, which she wipes away with a napkin before rejoining me at the table.

  “Looks like you have a new boyfriend,” I tell her.

  “Wasn’t aware I had an old one,” she says, not looking at me as she pours herself some juice.

  We are talking around the things that we both want to talk about.

  “Freya’s amazing with him,” I say. “But sometimes I just … I know he needs …” My throat clogs a little and I shake my head, taking a long, solid gulp of my juice, hoping to dislodge it.

  “He’s amazing,” Dani says. “And he’s fine, Rand. He’s going to be fine.”

  She is trying to reassure me and I appreciate it. But there is no convincing me that Little Rocket doesn’t need a mother. A loving father is no substitute for that. One parent, no matter how good—and I am not that good—is no substitute for two.

  “When I was at USC, there were a whole bunch of fathers who used to come out to watch their sons,” I say. “Most came only once in a while, but there was this one guy, Alton. Alton Kershaw. His father came to every single game, home or away.”

  Dani says nothing, but she pauses eating and gives me her full attention.

  “I mean, it didn’t matter where it was, or what the weather, his father was there. Every single game. One time we had a game in Colorado. Bad weather. Not too many people in the stands …And I remember thinking, ‘I bet even Mr. Kershaw won’t make this game.’ Because the weather was so crappy. And I said that to Alton, I don’t know why. But he was like, ‘nah, he’ll be here.’ He just was so sure, y’know? He didn’t even look worried.”

  At that, Dani does speak. “And was he there?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She waits, looking me directly in the eyes.

  “After Faith died, and Little Rocket came home, I thought about Mr. Kershaw. I don’t know where Alton’s mother was. I never even asked if he had one, because his father made her seem almost beside the point, y’know what I mean?”

  Dani nods.

  “She could have been at home, watching the game on television. Maybe he didn’t have a mother. But at the time I never even thought about her because his father was so … present. So, when Faith died, I thought about Mr. Kershaw, and decided that that was the kind of father I needed to be for my son. So that his mother would be beside the point.”

  What I don’t tell her, is that not only haven’t I succeeded, but that I now realize that a mother—at least for my son—will never be beside the point.

  After we’re done eating, we both get on the bed and watch television, marathon episodes of Law & Order. Little Rocket sleeps between us on his back and we are both on our sides, facing each other, though looking at TV. Dani’s arm is outstretched above her head, and she rests her cheek on it. I do the same, and move my outstretched arm so that I can reach her hand with mine. The tips of our fingers touch, and then enmesh with each other. We don’t speak.

  Outside, gradually, the sky goes gray, and then dark. Dani gets up to shower and returns with a towel wrapped around her. Knowing what’s beneath the towel makes me hard, but there is a little boy in the bed who will sleep between us.

  When I go take my shower, hoping it will send my mind in a different direction, it helps, but only a little. I get out and Dani is standing at the sink, still in her towel, and brushing her teeth. Stepping out of the tub and drying off, I watch her, and she smiles at my reflection in the mirror.

  “You,” she says, her voice slow and deliberate, “are so effin’ hot, it’s disgusting.”

  I burst into laughter, because that is the furthest thing in the world from what I expected her to say. It breaks the heaviness of the mood that had been hanging between us since the moment she admitted she had a date with whoever-the-fuck-he-is.

  “You’re effin’ hot, too,” I say, advancing toward her.

  “Yeah, okay,” she says. She snorts and spits her toothpaste into the sink and rinses.

  I cage her against the sink between my arms, outstretched and braced on either side of her. I run my hands along her thighs, over her hips and then cup her ass with both hands.

  “You are,” I insist.

  With one hand about her waist, I lift her a little, pull her toward me so her hips are cocked backward and she is leaning slightly forward. I slide my thigh between hers and spread her legs a little. In the mirror, Dani is watching my face, trying to decipher my plans for her; trying to figure out what I might do next. I can see that she is excited, and curious.

  Whenever I touch her, she is soft and compliant. She lets me move her, and touch her, and stimulate her at will. There is nothing she refuses; she behaves as though her body is mine, and so I truly, honestly, feel that it is. It’s mine, and I am not giving it up.

  Thinking that makes me harder than I already am. I wrench the towel from about her, and let it fall to the floor.

  “Rand,” she says, breathless in her panic. “Rocket …”

  “Won’t wake up if you’re quiet,” I say.

  Then I drop to my knees, and from behind, I lick and taste and stroke her clit, my fingers digging hard into the cheeks of her ass. Dani has let her head fall down between her arms, and her arms are extended now, and she grips the edge of the sink, crying and keening, moaning. She is wet, and slippery and tastes like heaven on earth.

  I pull back, stand and grab her by the hips, hoisting her a little roughly slightly upward so I can enter her. When I do, she cries out and says my name over and over again.

  Slamming into her, I lean forward and with one hand reach up to hold and knead her breasts, to twist her nipples. My other arm, I now wrap tightly around her waist, so all the movement is in my pelvis, as I punish her with thrusts that I’m not even sure she can comfortably take.

  With each stroke, I feel myself grow wilder, and more uncontrolled. But she isn’t uncomfortable, because she is throwing her hips back toward me, straining to look over her shoulder to meet my gaze; and hers is just as wild as I feel.

  “Don’t you let him … don’t let … him fuckin’ touch you …” I hear myself saying. I sound angry. “Don’t you let … anyone fuckin’ touch you …”

  My words are punctuated by her moans, my grunts. I can feel my stomach tighten and I grab her harder.

  “You hear me?” I demand. My voice is louder now. Loud enough to be heard in the bedroom, even with the television on. “No one … no one touches you but me.”

  “No. Just you … just you … ju …” Danielle is groaning now, and it is so loud, she grapples for one of the hand towels nearby, and stuffs it in her mouth. I put a hand over it, as an extra precaution but I’m coming too, and the sounds I fail to drown out, are my own.

  ~10~

  We pull into Bristol around eight-twenty in the morning when my eyes are only partway open, and Little Rocket is still asleep. The city looks less of a city than it does a suburb; and as we drive in, I see several direction signs referring to ESPN and its various campuses, and one large sign declaring Bristol as the ‘Home of ESPN’. There are rolling hills in the distance, but there isn’t much of a town here, so everything, even on a Saturday morning is quiet and almost bucolic.

  Rand is quiet as well, and has been for the entire drive.

  We left the hotel a little after six a.m., Rand toting his son, and most of our bags over his shoulders. When I reached for one to help him carry the load, he shrugged me off and said he was fine, so I let him alone, and followed him out to
the SUV, which he had gone down a few minutes earlier, to pull up in front of the hotel.

  I watched as he put Little Rocket into the car seat, and my eyes followed the muscles of his shoulders and back when he hoisted everything else into the rear. When he was done, he turned, and looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to ask what I was waiting for, then opened the front passenger door for me so I could get in.

  I have the distinct impression he is annoyed with me about something, and I can’t pretend I don’t know what that might be. Though there was sex the night before, it hasn’t erased everything that’s happening underneath. I still have that uncanceled lunch date to contend with.

  I am sleepy now, still, because last night we spent a lot of time in that bathroom. When finally, we made our way back to the bedroom, it was only after taking another shower. We slept on either side of Little Rocket and I felt low-key guilty because I was next to that innocent, beatific little kid after having just had carnal knowledge of his father.

  In the darkness of the room, Rand reached across his son and tugged my hand toward him, so that we had Little Rocket cocooned between us. Something about that made my eyes fill with tears, and I turned my face toward the pillow to absorb them in case they fell.

  I don’t know now why I was feeling weepy, and decide it is more than likely because my period is only a week away.

  I sit up and pay more attention as Rand drives through what looks like the downtown area. Bristol looks like a place that might be on the verge of revitalization, or the edge of decay. It is tough to tell which one, because there are new buildings, and shopping, and then not too far away, some not so new, not so vibrant. We drive through the center and then about fifteen outside of it, to a gated townhome community where Rand uses a fob to open the gates at the guard-post.

  The townhouses are your standard issue, red brick construction with garages on some and others without. Most have balconies or decks, and all are well-kept, with window boxes displaying flowers, or colorful welcome mats, and potted plants at the front doors.