“You’d hate it,” he confirmed, taking two tumblers off a shelf. “None of my dishes match, my spice cupboard is all jacked up, and my dishwasher leaves spots.”
I shuddered dramatically, reaching up to close the cupboard door.
“Let me guess—it drives you crazy when someone leaves a cupboard door open.”
I said nothing and walked into the front room. (I don’t think I need to confess that he nailed that one.)
A minute later, he joined me in the front room, setting down two glasses of liquid amber before lowering himself onto the couch. “You’re cheating on me?” he asked, looking at the screen. “You can’t watch this without me.”
“What do you mean? You’ve already seen this series.”
“Yeah, I know, but once you start watching a series with someone, you can’t just keep going when they’re not there—it’s the rules!”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s absurd.”
“It’s not. Everyone knows this.”
Ignoring him, I reached for my whiskey and took a sip. “This is nice.”
“You mentioned that you like Irish whiskey that one day at Starbucks. This is my favorite one.”
I checked out the bottle. “Green Spot?”
“Yeah. You like it? I thought it would warm you up. I kept thinking about you being cold last night.”
“I do like it.” I sipped again. “And thank you for your concern. Whiskey is much better than turning up the heat. And it’s going to pair so nicely with my cake batter ice cream.” Moving a little closer to him, I set the tub between us. “Dig in.”
We drank and ate through an entire episode, and just drank through a second. At some point, I went upstairs and washed my face off, but only because Charlie complained that I got avocado in the ice cream. While I was up there, I wondered if I’d gone too far with the anti-attractive campaign. He hadn’t made one move, hadn’t cracked one dirty joke. I frowned at my reflection. Had I lost my appeal? On impulse, I dabbed a little concealer under my eyes and swiped some mascara on my pale lashes. Perfume would be overkill, but how about scented lotion? Under the sink I found some Kiss My Face lavender lotion and rubbed it into my hands and face. Then I pinched a little color into my cheeks and took down my hair. There. Better. I considered changing my clothes but thought that would be too obvious.
I wanted him to want me, but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted him to want me.
This was a tricky game.
When I came back downstairs, Charlie was about to pour more whiskey. “Whoa,” I said. “I don’t know if I should drink any more. I take it you don’t have to work tomorrow?”
“No, I’m off.” He looked at me. “You changed your hair.”
“Yeah. The bun was giving me a headache.” I flopped back onto the couch, arranging my legs just so, which would have been much more effective without the baggy sweatpants, but taking them off was probably a step too far. I heard the Wicked Witch’s cackly voice in my head: These things have to be done delicately. Yes. That would be my key word—delicately. I would delicately entice him with my delicate lavender scent. I would delicately parry his advances. And then perhaps I would indelicately bang him right here on the couch.
“Want to watch one more?” he asked.
I shrugged, fake-stifling a yawn, as if I didn’t care whether he stayed or went. “OK.”
As Charlie poured himself another couple fingers, I curled into the corner of the couch like I had last night and pulled the blanket off the back of it.
“You cold?”
“A little.”
“Here.” Charlie nestled into the other corner and opened one arm to me. “Come here.”
Feigning suspicion, I gave him an apprehensive look, and he rolled his eyes.
“Relax. I’m not going to feel you up, grandma. I’m just offering to cuddle.”
I sat up straight. “What? Mr. I Don’t Do Affection wants to cuddle? Stop the madness!”
He reached behind his back and threw a little beaded pillow at me. “Offer expired. You lose.”
“Oh, stop.” I hit play on the next episode and scooched over to him, curling up against his side like a cat, the blanket over my legs. Between the whiskey and our shared body heat, I was cozy warm in minutes. Well done, Erin.
At first he kept his arm along the back of the couch, but eventually he let it fall onto my shoulders. “Nice move,” I whispered.
He pulled my hair in response.
As good as the show was, my mind started to wander. This felt really comfortable. Charlie was being so nice, too nice. And he smelled good—like Autumn Orgasm still but now there was something new in the mix. Cologne, I realized. He’d put on cologne. It was subtle, masculine, a little woodsy. Winter woods, the kind where you can still sort of smell the dead leaves even though they’re covered with snow, and someone has a fire in their fireplace nearby and maybe they put pine cones in it. I glanced at my fireplace, which had never been used, because I didn’t know how to build a fire.
“Hey Charlie,” I said, “do you know how to build a fire?”
He chuckled, and I felt it in his chest. “Yes. Charlie can make fire.”
I slapped his stomach. And left my hand there. “Maybe we can buy some wood and you can show me. We had a gas fireplace at my parents’ house. But I like the smell of wood burning.”
“Sure. But I’ll warn you—it’s dirty. There’s a lot of ashes involved.”
“Erin can clean fire.” I mimicked his caveman voice.
He poked me in the side, making me giggle, and we went back to watching television—well, I assume he did. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. How warm he was, how hard and muscular his body was, the perfect combination of angles and curves. I wondered what he would be like during real sex, the kind you have with someone you love, the kind that’s slow and tender and without pretense. Would it feel the same? Would he whisper sweet things along with dirty ones? Would he hold me afterward? Sucking my lips between my teeth, I glanced down at his crotch, praying to God he wouldn’t notice, although this didn’t really seem like the type of prayer God should spend time on.
His zipper area looked a little rumpled but I didn’t see any telltale bulge of an erection. Maybe he wasn’t lying before and he really doesn’t find me attractive tonight. And what the hell are you doing anyway, imagining Charlie Dwyer making love to you? That will never happen.
But other kinds of things might happen.
I shifted my position, as if I was just stretching a little, and let my hand slip a little lower on his stomach.
“Nice move,” he whispered.
I pulled it away. Damn him!
But a moment later, he shifted his position too, lifting his hips a little and tugging on his jeans. Without moving a muscle, I let my eyes wander to his crotch again.
If I wasn’t mistaken, his pants looked a little tighter in the erection zone. I smiled, snuggling in a little closer. If he was getting hard, it was only a matter of time, right? Guys couldn’t just turn that off.
I forced myself to focus on Walter and Pinkman. But after a few minutes, I was so warm and comfortable that my eyes began to drift shut…
When I opened them, the room was dark, the TV was off, and I was stretched out on the couch, a blanket covering me from shoulders to toes. Groggy, I sat up, the events of the previous evening slowly filtering through a whiskey-flavored cloud of confusion. I sniffed and looked around.
No Charlie.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I noticed a piece of paper on the coffee table. No, not a piece of paper—the brown paper bag Charlie had brought the whiskey in. Frowning, I picked it up and reached over to switch on the lamp next to the couch.
A note was scrawled on one side in black ink: Didn’t want to wake you. Thanks for the blowjob, I’ll send you the pics. PS. You snore.
I coughed once in indignation. “I didn’t give you any blowjob!” I huffed. “And I don’t snore!” Flopping back against the couch, I read t
he note again before tossing it aside, irritated beyond reason and then irritated further that I was irritated. It wasn’t the note, either. It was the fact that Charlie had come over here, tempted me with his whiskey and his cologne and his cuddling, and then kept his word not to touch me. How dare he! Granny panties notwithstanding, I’d been hoping he would find me irresistible in the end. What was wrong with me?
Stomping into the kitchen, I made sure the back door was locked and set the alarm before thumping with heavy heels upstairs to the bathroom, and brushing my teeth with enough force to wear off the enamel. I spit and scowled at myself in the mirror. “What the hell? You either want him or you don’t. Figure it out.”
In bed, I punched my body pillow a few times and stuck my face in it. It seemed like it should be that easy—did I want him or not? But it was more complicated than that. I did want him. Sexually, I wanted him six days to Sunday. Sixty-nine days to Sunday, in fact, and I wasn’t even a sixty-nine kind of girl.
Confession: I was, of course I was. I’d just never acted like it in real life.
But I’d do it with Charlie. In a heartbeat. And were there other numbers? I’d do those too.
Why was that? Why should I want to do things with him that I’d never done with my exes, for whom I’d had genuine feelings? (I sometimes thank God for this. Bad enough I gave a future priest a few blowjobs. Wonder how many Hail Marys he had to say for those.) Was it because I wasn’t afraid of what he thought of me? Because I wasn’t worried about being his—or my—idea of the perfect girl? Because I hadn’t seen his mother in twenty years?
Maybe it was. I turned onto my side and wrapped my arms and legs around the pillow. Maybe my attraction to Charlie made more sense than I’d realized. Maybe sex with him was more intense, more fun, more satisfying than anything I’d ever experienced precisely because we weren’t right for each other. I didn’t have to hold back because A) I wasn’t at all worried about having to make a commitment; B) I wasn’t concerned about sitting across from his mother at Christmas dinner knowing I’d been sitting on her son’s face the night before; and C) I didn’t mind that Charlie bossed me around during sex, made demands, and wouldn’t take no for an answer—in fact, I loved it, because he knew what I secretly wanted without even having to say anything. It was like magic! And if he was closed off emotionally, I didn’t have to care.
In other words, I wasn’t my mother. I didn’t have to worry about Charlie’s darker side because I wasn’t going to have any future with him. That was freeing, perhaps even freeing enough to allow me to fool around with him some more. We weren’t hurting anyone, right? We were two consenting adults. And as long as we understood one another, what was the harm? Good girls could have good sex with a good friend, couldn’t they?
I squeezed the pillow tighter and shut my eyes. All right then. No more granny panties.
I wanted him to want me again, but delicately hadn’t done it.
Maybe it was time for direct.
#
The next morning, I slept in, waking when my phone buzzed with a text around ten. Before I looked at it, I swore to myself if it was Charlie I was not going to respond to it right away. He needed to chase me a little.
But it was Mia.
Can you guys come over?
Coco replied first. Test???
I have one, but I’m scared, Mia answered. Come over, I’ll tell you why.
I’ll be there in half an hour, I told her.
Coco said the same, and I jumped out of bed. My heart was racing—I don’t know how I knew that test was going to be positive, but I just knew. I couldn’t help smiling as I got dressed. Mia was going to have a baby. Coco was getting married. And as for me?
I had something to get excited about too.
Lucas answered the door. “Hey, Erin. How are you?”
“Good.” I grinned at him like an idiot. I know something you don’t know.
“They’re upstairs whispering about something. Want to take a cup of coffee up?”
“Sure, thanks.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he poured me a cup from a carafe on the counter and took the cream from the fridge.
“Cream and sugar, right?”
“Right.”
“Sugar’s in the bowl on the counter. Here you go.” He handed me the cream, and after doctoring my coffee with plenty of white stuff, I took a spoon from the silverware drawer and gave it a stir. “So what’s going on up there?” he asked.
I stared into my cup, swirling the spoon much longer than necessary. “Oh nothing. Coco wanted to get together. Probably just wedding stuff.”
“That’s what Mia said.”
I smiled, although he couldn’t see it. “I can’t believe it’s less than a month away.”
“I know. For a wedding planner, it’s probably torture to have to put things together so fast.”
“Better Coco than Mia. She’d have freaked out at the thought of doing things last-minute, although Coco’s wedding is a much different kind of affair.” I put the spoon in the sink and the cream back in the fridge.
“Right. Although Mia is pretty distracted by something these days—not freaking out, but just not herself. I’m worried about her.”
“Really?” I leaned back against the counter and casually picked up my cup. “I haven’t noticed anything.”
Lucas frowned as he lowered himself onto a counter stool. “Oh. Well, maybe I’m just imagining things. There’s been a lot going on, we’ve been really busy at the bar…thanks again for filling in.”
“Anytime. Seriously.” I smiled at him.“Well, I better get up there.”
He returned the smile, but it was more polite than genuine. I could tell he was worried. How sweet to have a guy that’s genuinely concerned for your feelings. But then I reminded myself that I wasn’t worried about feelings. Fuck feelings, I thought. Hard. In the nostril. With a cactus.
I felt better after that.
Upstairs, I found Coco in the master bedroom, fidgeting outside the closed bathroom door. “She didn’t wait for me?”
“We heard you knock. You were taking too long,” she complained. “She just went in.”
Setting my coffee cup on the dresser, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I think it’s going to be positive.”
“Me too,” she whispered back. Then she knocked on the bathroom door. “Mia? Can we come in?”
The door opened and Mia came out, still in her pink flannel pajamas. She walked over to the bed and got in, pulling the covers all the way over her head. “It’s on the counter. You look. I can’t.” Her voice was muffled by the blankets.
Coco and I exchanged a look.
“Why don’t you come with us?” I suggested. “You should be first to see the results.”
“No. I can’t handle it.”
Sighing, Coco went to the bed, grabbed the top of the bedding and threw it back, revealing Mia curled into a little pink flannel ball. “Get the hell out of bed and get in there. We’ll go with you.”
Reluctantly, Mia got to her feet and gave each of us a hand. “OK. But I’m closing my eyes.”
I squeezed her hand. “Why? Mia, you want this. You’ve always wanted this. If it’s positive, it’s a great thing! If it’s not, that’s OK too.”
“I do want it, but not right now. Lucas was just telling me this morning how busy he’s going to be in the next few months. He wants to open a bar in Chicago, which means he’ll be gone all the time. And then he said he wants to spend some time in Provence next summer because he’s thinking about buying a vineyard up north in the near future.” Only Mia could make buying a vineyard in northern Michigan sound like catching the pox. “I had no idea about any of this. I feel blindsided!”
“OK, OK, shhhh.” Coco put a hand on Mia’s shoulder. “Listen. I know you. And I know that what upsets you more than anything is not having a plan.”
“I had a plan,” Mia insisted, dropping my hand to swipe at her nose with her sleeve. “A bar in Chicago and a vineyard u
p north weren’t a part of it, and neither was a surprise pregnancy. But if it’s true, Lucas will blame me for not being able to do what he wants to do. He’ll think I did this on purpose.”
“Stop it right now.” I tugged her long wavy hair in a gesture I recognized as Charlie’s. “You’re being ridiculous, which is understandable if you’re pregnant because your emotions are all crazy. We told you last night—Lucas will not think that. He’s crazy about you, and he was just telling me downstairs that he knows something is worrying you and he’s concerned.”
She sniffed. “Is he? He’s so cute.”
“Yes. Now let’s go see what the test says, and then we can make a plan for telling him, OK?”
“OK. Hold me.”
Coco and I each took one of her arms, and we walked toward the bathroom. My pulse drummed and my stomach was flip-flopping madly, as if it were my pregnancy test, not Mia’s. I knew Coco must be feeling it too.
“Let’s close our eyes and look together,” she said. “Count of three.”
Closing our eyes, we babystepped into the bathroom and stood in front of the vanity. Mia counted us off.
“One. Two.” She took a deep breath. “Three.”
We opened our eyes.
“What the hell is that?” Coco said. “It looks like a divide sign.”
“It’s a sign that Lucas and I are going to be divided over this!” Mia wailed tearfully.
“Will you stop? It’s a plus,” I said. “It’s just faint. But it’s a plus, Mia. You’re pregnant.” Immediately, Coco and I began jumping up and down like rabid kangaroos. Poor Mia looked shell shocked.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” Coco stage whispered. “Mia, it’s positive! Congratulations!”
My throat was glued shut otherwise I’d have congratulated her too.
“It’s positive,” Mia said in a small voice. “It’s positive.”
“It is. How do you feel?” Coco studied her face. “Are you OK?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I need to sit down.” She backed up and sat on the edge of their tub. “OK.” Putting both hands over her stomach, she breathed slowly in and out. “This could be OK.”
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