by Penny Reid
Presently, I was naked and being spooned. Martin was spooning me. It felt very surreal and far-fetched, just like almost every other moment during this week. It was on the tip of my tongue to yell to no one in particular that I was snuggling with Martin Sandeke, as in: I AM SNUGGLING WITH MARTIN SANDEKE!
But instead I asked, all calm and cool, “So, tell me, do you prefer to be the spoon or the spooned?”
His lips were against my upper back, where my neck met my shoulders, and I felt his mouth curve into the barest smile. “I don’t know, I’ve never done this before.”
“What? Spooned?”
“Yeah.”
I allowed this to sink in. Once it did, I grinned into the dim cabin and said with no small amount of wonder, “Kaitlyn Parker has popped Martin Sandeke’s spooning cherry.”
I felt his smile grow just before he said, “It’s only fair. I hope to pop your forking cherry.”
I sucked in a shocked breath, but then burst out laughing, half-heartedly covering my face. After a moment he joined in, and I felt his chest shake with laughter.
It felt good, talking to him, joking with him. I couldn’t pinpoint when we’d grown to this level of comfort with each other, but it was a bit strange to think I’d let him touch my body with intimacy before I’d felt confident I could tease him about spooning.
We’d spent all day fooling around, then swimming, then eating, then talking, then fooling around some more. He liked me on my stomach, lying on the bed, his fingers between my spread legs, biting my back and sides and neck and bottom.
He also liked me straddling his face while he lay on the bed, his fingers digging into my hips and thighs while he tasted me.
He also liked me straddling his hips while we just made out like hormone-addled teenagers, necking, touching, and petting, learning each other’s sweet spots.
Despite how the day had started, I admitted to myself that it had quickly ascended to one of my favorite days of all time. I felt happy. So happy. Giddy, excited, joyful, thrilled, and carefree in a way I’d never felt before. Just lying with him was exhilarating. We were a team and I felt certain I could rely on him, and I wanted him to rely on me.
“That, sir,” I referred to his forking joke, “was hilarious and well timed. You win today’s Witty Wednesday contest.”
“I didn’t know we were having a contest, and I thought today was Wet-and-Wild Wednesday.”
“A Wednesday can be more than one thing, it doesn’t just have to be wet and wild. It can also be witty, or wistful, or worrisome. That’s the beauty of Wednesdays.”
“What did I win? What’s my prize?”
“Just the knowledge you’ve won, and that you have my respect.”
He squeezed me. “How many people have your respect?”
I thought about this, my lips twisting as my eyes narrowed. “Forty-seven…and a half.”
“Who is the half?”
“It’s not a half, it’s two three-fourths, and they belong to John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. I three-fourths respect them.”
“You respect historical figures?”
“Yes, after careful vetting.”
“Richard Nixon? Really?”
I nodded. “Yes. He did a lot to normalize our relationship with China. As well he pulled us out of Vietnam. But then…the whole power-hungry arrogance, lying, and being too much of a dweeb to wear makeup on TV stuff brings him down to three-fourths.”
“And JFK? What were his deficiencies?”
“I don’t like how he treated women, especially his wife. He didn’t practice what he preached and that made him slimy. Also, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and groupthink, ugh. Don’t even get me started.”
“Okay, I won’t get you started.” He squeezed me again.
“How about you? How many people do you respect?”
Martin sighed. I felt his exhale against my neck as it sent several of my hairs dancing over my shoulder, tickling me.
“Let’s see,” he stalled.
“Too many to count?”
“Five…no, four.”
“Four? Only four?”
“Yes.”
“Well, who—pray tell—are these pillars of humankind?”
“Unlike you, historical figures don’t have my respect, not actively anyway. If I’ve never met a person I can’t respect them.”
“You sound so serious.”
“It is serious.”
“Now I really want to know.” I shifted my legs and turned my head so I could peer at him over my shoulder.
“You, of course.”
I smiled, but then quickly suppressed it. “Of course.”
He still appeared serious as he continued, “Eric.”
“Your teammate?”
He nodded.
I turned my head back to my pillow, pleased to hear that Martin respected Eric since I was pretty sure Sam really, really liked Eric.
“And my business partner.”
“For the satellite venture capitalist thing in New York?”
“Yes.”
“Who is the fourth?”
“Your mother, Senator Parker.”
I frowned, blinked rapidly several times, my tone betraying my surprise. “My mother? You’ve met my mother?”
I felt him nod as his arms tightened around my torso.
“Martin, when did you meet my mother?”
“Three years ago, in Washington, DC.”
“What…how…when?” Unable to settle on a question, I turned completely around so I could see his face. “Okay, start from the beginning. What happened? How did you meet her?”
He shrugged like the fact he’d met my mother before he’d met me was not a big deal. “I was in DC with my father. We were at a restaurant having lunch with a team of telecom lobbyists, and your mother walked in with a few members of her staff.”
“And you respect her because…she ordered the hamburger instead of a salad?” I squinted at him, trying to understand how one brief encounter with my mother three years ago could garner his respect, how she could become one in a short list of four.
“My father stopped her as she walked past, suggested that she join us for lunch.” Martin’s gaze moved to a place over my shoulder, his eyes unfocused as he recalled the scene. “It was the first time I’d seen my father be polite to anyone. And she looked at him like he was scum.” The side of his mouth ticked upward at the memory.
“What did she say? Did she have lunch with you?”
He shook his head and smiled softly. “No. She said, ‘No, thank you,’ and tried to walk away; but he stepped in her path and pushed her about it. Then she said, ‘I’d rather eat glass than suffer through one second of your corrupt and tedious company.’”
Martin’s smile grew as his eyes shifted back to mine.
“Holy rude comeback, Batman!” I exclaimed on an exhale.
“I know. And she was fierce, in control, cold even. She made him look small and insignificant by comparison.” He said this like he admired her, how she’d cut down his father. “After lunch I found out who she was, looked up her voting record, and then it all made sense.”
“How so?”
“Because she’s the chairwoman of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in the senate. She’s sponsored or co-sponsored every pro-consumer and anti-Big Telecom bill that’s been drafted in the last ten years.”
I felt the need to defend her. “That’s because telecom companies in the US hold a monopoly and enter into informal non-compete agreements with each other to keep prices artificially high, which means no one can ever get Sandeke Telecom, or Brighthouse, or Version to actually provide competitive rates let alone appropriate customer service. Is it too much to ask for reasonable Internet speeds that cost less than $100 a month? Or a service call window that doesn’t span eight hours? Who has time for that?!”
Martin chuckled, grabbing my wrists; I hadn’t realized it but I’d started gesturing with my hands to demonstrate my frustration.<
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“I know, I know. I agree,” he said, trying to pacify me, rubbing the inside of my arms and kissing me softly. “Your mother does good work in Washington.”
She did. I knew she did. She was amazing and I loved that my superhero mother was on his short list. He had exceptionally good taste.
Regardless of our agreement on her awesomeness, I squinted at him again, pursing my lips. “It feels weird talking about my mother while I’m in bed with you.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
I blurted the first thing that came to mind, “What was Martin Sandeke like as a kid?”
He lifted an eyebrow in response. “Talking about your mother is weird, but talking about me as a kid isn’t?”
“Just answer the question.”
Martin considered me for a moment before responding. “I was…quiet.”
“So you were a watcher.”
“A watcher?”
“You were one of those creepy kids who watched the other kids play.”
“I wasn’t creepy.”
“I was. I was a creepy watcher. I watched the other kids play—quite creepily—and tried to make sense of their games. Mostly the girls. They seemed to do a lot of fighting with each other. And crying. And making up. And whispering.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No.” I remembered how it had hurt at first, being snubbed when I was seven and eight and eleven and sixteen, but then my mother told me I shouldn’t waste energy on average people because they would never amount to anything beyond ordinary. “You don’t need to befriend them in order to lead them,” she’d said.
I continued, pushing away the memory. “They didn’t let me play their reindeer games, mostly because I was creepy, but also because I was always trying to make them stop fighting. I tried to make lasting peace. But encouraging harmony between little girls is like trying to negotiate a Middle East peace treaty.”
Martin exhaled a laugh and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and shoulder. “I wanted everyone to get along and they just wanted to be dramatic. But that was okay. Their rebuffs allowed me to perfect the art of hiding at a very young age.”
“Why did you hide? Did they make fun of you?”
I shook my head. “No. They ignored me. I think I hid because hiding made it my choice. You can’t be ignored if no one can see you.” I was talking from a stream of consciousness, having never really thought about why I hid before. The revelation of my motivations made me feel acutely uncomfortable, so I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “What were you really like as a kid? Other than quiet?”
“Stubborn.”
“Ha! I’m shocked.” Then I added under my breath, “I’m lying. I’m not shocked.”
Martin pinched my rib, just enough to make me squirm. “I was quiet, stubborn, and shy.”
“Shy?” I settled into the mattress, my cheek on his arm, and frowned at this last adjective. “I cannot imagine you being shy.”
“Why? Because I’m so outgoing now?”
I thought about this—a shy Martin—as my eyes searched his, thought about his behavior for as long as I’d known him.
He’d barely spoken to me as my lab partner, though he’d apparently been thinking about me for quite a while. I remembered the time he’d asked for my phone number last semester and how he wouldn’t look me in the eye while he spoke. At the time I thought it was arrogance. I recalled that at the party last Friday he’d been upstairs playing pool instead of downstairs getting drunk and engaging in merriment.
This prompted me to think and ask at the same time, “Martin, do you like parties?”
His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
My eyes widened, and I proclaimed, “You don’t like parties! You sneak!”
He caught my wrists before I could do anything—like tickle him or pull away or smack his shoulder—and he brought my hands to his bare chest.
“No. I don’t like parties.”
“Then why did you make me go?”
“Because I liked the idea of showing you off as my date.”
My nose wrinkled. “That makes no sense.”
“I didn’t say it made sense, it just is.”
Now my eyes crinkled. “But you left me when we arrived.”
“We’ve already been over this. I left to show you I wasn’t going to…what did you call it? Pee on you? I looked for you twenty minutes later and couldn’t find you. You went and hid in the laundry room. Instead of showing you off as my date, I spent half the night trying to find you.”
“Is that why you were so pissed when you found me?”
“No. I was pissed before I found you, because I thought you might have gone off with someone else. I was relieved when I found you, but then pissed because you preferred to read a book over being with me.”
“Poor, poor Martin.” As much as I could with him holding my wrists, I petted his chest. “I will kiss your ego and make it better.”
He lifted a single eyebrow. “I don’t want you to kiss it.”
I flattened my lips and blinked at him once, very slowly. “Are you always thinking about sex?”
“Yes.”
I snorted.
“More accurately, sex with you.”
I stilled, and watched him as he watched me. Before, when he’d joked about popping my forking cherry, it had felt like a joke. But now...not so much.
I didn’t think I was ready for that, not yet. We’d been together less than a week. I’d given him my trust less than three days ago. This might have been dating boot camp, but I was still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of passion. Having sex with Martin before it was making love to Martin would be a bad idea.
I didn’t want to confuse one with the other.
“Martin, I don’t—”
“I know. You’re not ready yet.” He nodded, his eyes darting between mine, his body shifting closer in a deliciously lithe movement as one of his hands released my wrist and smoothed down the length of my body, from my shoulder to my hip.
Then, making me both smile and scowl, he added, “Maybe tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 8
Transition Metals and Coordination Chemistry
Thursday morning dawned and I found myself one half of a tangled mass of limbs. In Martin’s defense, I was totally crowding his side of the bed. I was basically sprawled on top of him.
Aaaaand, I was still naked.
Diffused sunlight filtered through the undersea portals; I had no idea what time it was. I disentangled myself from Martin, careful not to wake him, and went about getting dressed and making breakfast. Then I took a cup of coffee up to the deck and studied for my upcoming math test, feeling all warm and fuzzy and happy with life in general, especially and specifically because of the sexy boy downstairs.
Martin joined me sometime later, bringing me a new, hot cup of coffee. Wordlessly, he gave me a toe-curling kiss good morning—even though it was already afternoon—and, looking smug and satisfied by my breathlessness, took the chair across from mine. He opened his laptop and began working on something or other¸ likely something serious and important and poised to make him millions.
We didn’t talk. We sat together in companionable silence. It was…really great. Comfortable and easy. Every once in a while I’d catch him watching me and he would smile his pleased smile when our eyes met, but he’d never look away.
I began to daydream about what life would be like if I did agree to move in with Martin, and that was dangerous because smart Kaitlyn knew it was too hasty. But silly, prematurely falling in love Kaitlyn wanted to doodle our names together on notebooks and take cooking classes together on weekends.
Maybe he would come see me play my jam sessions on Sunday nights. Maybe I’d take the train and meet him in New York for lunch on days when I didn’t have class. Maybe I’d write songs for him and about him. Maybe we’d sleep together every night, having fun and taking comfort in each other’s bodies. Maybe he’d sleep naked too a
t some point.
But I was only nineteen, and college wasn’t a networking conference for me. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I suspected that music was going to have to be a major part of it—not because I believed I was a prodigious talent, but because something had shifted within me on Tuesday night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Whether I was good or magnificent or merely adequate didn’t matter. I recognized music as a passion, one that I’d been repressing. Of course, I hadn’t given the matter—the how and when—enough thought yet. I still had a great deal to sort through.
The idea of falling in love with Martin—if I hadn’t already—before I had my head on straight about what I wanted to do and who I was made me feel uneasy. He was always going to be the alpha of his pack, as he didn’t know any other way. I didn’t want to get lost, lose myself before I’d been found, in his flock of admirers.
I was staring at him, lost in my ruminations, and didn’t realize I was staring until he asked, “Hey, everything okay?”
I blinked him back into focus, and shook my head to clear it. “Uh, yeah. Fine.”
He studied me, looked like he wanted to ask or say something. Eventually he did. “What do you think, Kaitlyn?”
“About what?” I gave him a friendly smile as I closed my notebook. I couldn’t study anymore; there was no use pretending.
“About us.”
I flinched involuntarily because his question was almost eerily attuned to my current musings; I wondered tangentially if—in addition to everything else—Martin Sandeke was a mind-reader.
I looked away from him and studied the horizon. It was another beautiful day.
“I think we’re having a lot of fun.”
He was quiet and I felt his eyes on me. The silence didn’t feel quite so comfortable anymore.
Then, very softly, he asked, “What’s going on in your head?”
Out of nowhere and as a consequence of nothing, I said, “I’m afraid of letting everyone down.”
He paused for a beat then asked, “What do you mean?”