Results May Vary

by Bethany Chase

  Jesus. This was my life now?

  The evening of the date—Saturday night, like a proper date—I was still wrapped in my towel, trying to remember which direction the chick on YouTube had said I was supposed to apply my eye shadow, when Neil called.

  “Hey,” he said. “I am incredibly sorry to do this, but my sitter just bailed at the last minute. Would you be up for coming over here for dinner? I’ll run out with the troops and grab some stuff to cook.”

  As his voice rumbled pleasantly in my ear, I was acutely aware that I was wearing nothing but a towel. Neil had a very nice voice. Neil had a very, very lovely voice indeed.

  “Caroline?”

  “Oh, um, sure,” I stammered, warmth suffusing my body.

  “If you’d rather reschedule, I completely understand. Just say the word.”

  I felt a spurt of anxiety at the thought of meeting his children. I hadn’t thought I’d meet them so soon. Hadn’t really thought about meeting them at all, actually.

  “I don’t mind, but…are you sure?”

  “Well, yeah, I invited you over. You’re my friend. I’m allowed to have a friend over who is a woman, right?”

  It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but he sounded unconvinced. “You are. But—”

  “It’s okay. Don’t sweat it. Let’s reschedule for some other time.”

  But the thing was, I’d been looking forward to seeing him. “No,” I said, with awkward force. “I’ll come. Same time?”

  “Sure,” he said, sounding relieved. He cared! He was glad I hadn’t canceled!

  “Okay. Send me the address and I’ll see you in a little while.”

  •

  Neil and his daughters lived in a large loft apartment on the top floor of one of the buildings on the main historic street in North Adams, a short drive from the museum. When he opened the door for me, smiling, I felt a flash of awkwardness—this was Neil from Development, greeting me in his home in jeans and a plaid flannel button-down, while children’s voices chimed behind him and the scent of cooking filled the air—but he gave me an easy kiss on the cheek and reached out his arms for my coat.

  “Guys, come greet our guest,” he called, and the voices stopped. But no children were forthcoming.

  Neil rolled his eyes and led the way from the foyer. “Manners are always a work in progress, I’m afraid.”

  When we reached the kitchen, two small faces were turned to me, alight with interest. The girls were beautiful children, with big, curious eyes. Clara, the five-year-old, had Neil’s striking eyes and watchful expression; Annie, almost three, looked more like her mother. I knew this not just by process of elimination; photos of the whole family sprawled along the wall leading to the front door. Eva Crenshaw had had eyes the color of Guinness, a head full of exuberant curls, and a warm, joyful smile. Unthinkable that someone so vibrant could have been wiped out so quickly.

  I knew exactly what had happened; it was one of those stories that gnawed at you, even if the people involved were strangers. She’d started feeling unwell on a Wednesday, went to the hospital Friday. Lapsed into a coma on Saturday, and by Monday she was gone. An infection. Incomprehensible. Horrifying. I remembered signing the sympathy card for Neil, crowding my name in alongside our other co-workers’. Every signature was written with kind wishes, but they were only people’s names—none of us had been able to offer any thoughts beyond the message in Hallmark script that limped across the center of the card. Because there was nothing. Just absolutely nothing you could say.

  I remembered something else, too: coming home from work that day, and walking straight to Adam’s office so I could hug him. It’s what you do when tragedy lands close enough to brush you with its breeze; you gather your loved one close, so you can feel the thump of their heart and the sturdiness of their body while you drown in gratitude. I clutched Adam like that, and he clutched me back when I told him why.

  And now look.

  “Guys, this is my friend Caroline,” said Neil. “She works at the museum with me.” I swallowed a smile at his refusal to refer to himself as third-person “Daddy.”

  “Do you guys like art?” I asked, reasonably confident that this would elicit a response. All kids liked art.

  Annie nodded, but Clara’s expression did not change.

  “Do you like painting, Annie? I like painting, too.”

  “I made those,” she said, pointing to the wall over the dining table, which was adorned with framed artwork that had unmistakably been authored by the girls.

  “No you didn’t, not all of them,” said Clara.

  “Which ones are yours, Clara?”

  Scrunching her little mouth, she pointed. “The blue one.”

  “That’s beautiful,” I said. “You both make beautiful paintings.”

  “I made more,” said Annie. “I can show you.” She made as if to hop down from her stool, but Neil stilled her with a gesture.

  “We’re going to eat soon, honey. You can show Caroline your paintings after dinner.”

  I hadn’t been sure what to expect, what with the unscheduled unfamiliar children and all, but as the evening wore on I found myself thoroughly enjoying both the company of the girls and the glimpse at Neil’s way with them. He didn’t baby them, but talked to them like they were little adults, responding seriously to their questions and comments despite what must have occasionally been an overpowering desire to laugh. Unsurprisingly, they were bright and precocious children.

  “All right, team,” said Neil, getting up from the table. “Put your plates in the dishwasher, and then it’s bath time and sleepy land for you. Care, I’m sorry, do you mind flying solo for a little while?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Good night, ladies. It was nice to meet you.”

  Unprompted, Annie suddenly cast herself at me and wrapped her sturdy little arms around my legs. “G’night,” she mumbled into my thigh.

  “Good night, sweetie,” I said, laying my hand on her head as a dart of something sweet and sharp shot through me. Adam and I had talked about kids. We had talked about it a lot. But somehow he had never quite showed the necessary interest to shift our gear from talking to doing. I had been thinking he would speed up eventually.

  Neil’s face, when our eyes met briefly over Annie’s head, showed a world of understanding. So much understanding I wished I hadn’t looked at him at all.

  19

  •

  You have a way of putting praises that makes it hard for me to walk afterward. My feet have a tendency not to touch the ground.

  —William Maxwell to Sylvia Townsend Warner, April 5, 1961

  After Neil took the girls to bed, I set to work clearing up after the meal. Perhaps it’s the result of having spent so much time with Jonathan, but I’ve always felt that kitchens are three-dimensional portraits of the people they belong to. Like his office, Neil’s kitchen was clean, but not particularly tidy: stray bags and boxes of food loitered at random along the counter, and the bananas in the colorful fruit bowl atop the microwave were edging past their prime. The food in the cabinets (I wasn’t snooping, just trying to locate the right spots for dishes) had a very human balance between aspirationally healthy and realistically slightly less healthy, as did the fridge, which was full of vegetables, leftovers, and a well-used-looking bottle of chocolate syrup. A row of sturdy stainless canisters stood next to a fire-truck-red KitchenAid mixer; I had never known Neil to be a baker, so the mixer had to have been his wife’s. There were touches of red all over the house, now that I noticed it. It must have been Eva’s favorite color.

  As I reached across the island to wipe up a stray patch of crumbs, I heard Neil’s footsteps in the hall.

  “Everybody down?” I said, turning to face him.

  He smiled. “Annie’s getting to be such a fighter. She used to be lights out, every time; now there’s all these questions and observations.” He stopped when the appearance of the kitchen sank in. “You cleaned up! You didn’t have to do that.”r />
  “It was my pleasure. Thank you for the delicious meal.”

  He looked crestfallen. “Oh, are you heading home, then?”

  “What?” I stammered. “No, I mean, I hadn’t planned to yet, but—”

  “Aurgh.” He smeared his hands against his face, gave his head a quick shake like he had water in his ears. “I am so bad at this. I thought…you sounded like you were winding up to say you were going to hit the road. Anyway, please erase the last thirty seconds of conversation. Can I get you a drink? I think I might need one.”

  A smile teased its way out of me. “Yes. Please. What are you pouring?”

  “Come take a look,” he said over his shoulder, so I followed him to the bar cabinet. It was well stocked with bottles of different shapes and sizes, the gold lettering on some of them glinting in the light. A single dad with a full bar? I thought, until I realized. Liquor doesn’t go bad. He had these before. They had these before. Just like our wine collection, which was now de facto mine. Was my life always going to be divided into a before and after?

  In one corner, I spotted a bottle of tawny port. Adam hated the stuff; too sweet and syrupy. But I loved it after a winter meal, loved the rich caramel flavor and thicker texture. As I reached into the cabinet to grab it, the side of my breast brushed Neil’s elbow. The little tingle was unexpected. And promising.

  “What’s that?” he asked, peering at the bottle.

  “It’s a dessert wine,” I said. “I love that you have no idea what’s in your own liquor cabinet.”

  “I’m not a big drinker. Somebody must have brought it as a gift. It’s pretty, though,” he added, holding the glass I handed him up to the light.

  “Well, cheers,” I said, clinking my glass softly against his.

  We sipped the port, still standing in the day-bright lighting of his kitchen. Silence lingered, like a bad smell. And suddenly this whole thing felt stupid. Me, on this weird quasi-date with Neil from Development, who I’d never even noticed was attractive until a week ago. And yet here we were, both of us with our lives shattered, going through the motions because it’s what some well-meaning fool had told us we should do.

  “Listen, maybe—” I started talking at the exact second that he did. “What?”

  “You go,” he said, smiling, but suddenly I didn’t want to.

  “No, you.”

  “I was just going to say, do you want to head to the other room? The couch is more comfortable than the counter. To sit on, I mean,” he added, his cheeks darkening with a sudden flush.

  Neil was a blusher? I’ll be damned. “Sure,” I said.

  I followed him to the seating area at the other side of the loft, where he popped a cord into his iPod and then, as the opening notes of Kind of Blue slid out from the large speakers on either side of the room, he collapsed on the couch with a happy sigh. I sat down a reasonable distance away, attempting to look relaxed but not as if I was trying to come-hither him. If indeed it was even possible to come-hither someone while wearing an office-appropriate cowl-neck sweater.

  “This is good,” he observed, waving his glass of port at me. “This is very, very good.”

  “I brought the bottle with me,” I said, and he wordlessly extended his arm for a refill. Once I’d poured it for him, I did the same for myself. And now, I guessed, we talked? I had never really done this before. “Dated.” I could only fumble at how this worked. “So, you like Miles Davis?” I began.

  He did. He also liked Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Lester Young, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, and just about every other classic jazz musician I’d ever heard of. And many more that I hadn’t. Neil, it turned out, loved jazz. When he lived in Boston during grad school, he was good enough on the saxophone that he’d earned extra money sitting in as a session player with a couple of different bands. But he categorically refused to give me a demonstration.

  “It’ll wake up the girls,” he said. “You saw how long it took me to get Annie down!”

  “I think you’re chicken,” I insisted. We’d been gradually working our way through the tawny port, and I was more than a little buzzed.

  He shook his head. “Some other time.”

  “You better. You’ve been holding out on me this whole time! I had no idea you had anything in common with Bill Clinton.”

  He laughed. “Well, I’d say you’ve got more than a little in common with Hillary,” he said.

  “Publicly cheated on?” I muttered, because it’s the first thing that came to mind.

  He jackknifed up from the lazy sprawl he’d slid into. “Shit. No. Of course not. I meant like smart, successful. Impressive.”

  And to my surprise, the sting was gone as soon as it came. Wiped away by his praise. Because I could tell from the way it came tumbling out of him, he meant it. And I felt very strongly that I would like to find out more. “You think I’m impressive?”

  There it was again. That subtle color in his cheeks. It was unexpectedly bewitching. “You’re great at your job. I think it’s fantastic how much you care about the museum. I’ve always liked working with you.”

  Somehow that line of conversation did not go exactly where I was hoping it would go.

  He leaned toward me slightly. “Oh, and Caroline?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have always thought you were beautiful.”

  Oh, wow. This was happening. He eased toward me slowly, giving me time, giving both of us time. His dark lashes fluttered up and then down again, like moth wings. And then his lips settled over mine, lightly, and clung for an instant, and then lifted away.

  Our eyes locked together, our faces only a few inches apart. The puzzled crease in his brow spelled the same disorientation I was feeling, and I gave him a tentative smile. “Good, bad, or weird?” I whispered.

  He smiled back, a little sad. “Weird. But definitely not bad. I think…a little good. Might get better if we did it again.”

  I nodded, and angled my face toward him. This time, my upper lip landed directly between his, and he sucked it toward him, ever so gently. Then I felt the quick, slick streak of his tongue glide along the slippery inside of my lip, and I gasped.

  He pulled away, looking anxious. “Weird? Bad weird?”

  “Good,” I panted. “I didn’t…I don’t think…I’ve never been kissed exactly like that before.”

  “I can demonstrate again, if you would like,” he said seriously.

  “Yes, please,” I whispered, and leaned into him for more.

  And I didn’t know if it was the half bottle of port that was seeping through my system, but suddenly I had caramel in my veins instead of blood. Sweet, smoky caramel. Neil was kissing me so deliberately, so thoroughly, and so expertly, that I was positive I was going to dissolve into his lap like melted butter. Adam had never kissed me like this, not even when we were teenagers and all we did was kiss; he was always firm, heavy, demanding. But this—Neil was making a leisurely meal out of me, as if I were some rare delicacy he wanted nothing other than to sample all night long. Every so often he would leave my lips to explore my eyelids, my cheeks, my ears, the underside of my jaw, but he did not once venture down my throat, and the deliberate restraint just heightened the pleasure of what he was doing. It was a long time later when we finally pulled apart for a breather.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good wow.”

  “So good,” he said, and cupped my head for another kiss. “I didn’t know how it would be. You’re the first person…since Eva. I honestly didn’t expect it to feel this good.”

  I shook my head. “I know. Me neither. But—” I cut myself off midsentence as he retreated. “No, everything is good. I was just going to say…do we care at all about the fact that we work together?”

  “Ah. No. Well, personally at least, I’m way too attracted to you to give even one-eighth of a shit.”

  “Me neither,” I said again, suddenly breathless at the fact that I was doin
g something I’d never imagined I would; something that, for that matter, people don’t generally recommend. I, Caroline Fairley, was dating my co-worker. “I mean, me too. I mean—”

  “I got it,” Neil said with a sexy little smile, and pulled me into him again.

  •

  At work, we were elaborately professional. Except for the text he sent me two days later that said, I would really like to drag you into the supply closet right now. And the one I sent him back that said, So why don’t you? And the fact that five minutes later, we were making out like teenagers between leftover boxes of old exhibit brochures. Our hands and mouths stayed completely PG, but the subtle pressure of his erection against me was making my head spin. It was so beautifully unmistakable that he wanted me.

  At one point, he raised his head. “Hey, Caroline.”

  “Hmm,” I said, nibbling my tingling lips.

  “Can we try again for a real date soon? I would like to take you out somewhere besides my living room.”

  “Or the supply closet.”

  “Or the supply closet, yes.”

  A smile stole across my face. “I would like that. Although I do also like your living room. You have a very comfortable sofa.”

  “You are welcome there anytime,” he said. But a few days later, we did manage the date.

  It was such a new thing. Sitting across a restaurant table from a man I didn’t know well, while the light from a single candle flickered over the pearly surface of my plate and the softly scuffed silverware, and made my glass of wine glow like a ruby. The two of us passed stories and questions and answers back and forth, back and forth. And with each tiny piece of him that I acquired, I felt almost as if I had a pencil in my hand and I was drawing him. I’d started with the general outline, and gradually I was shading in the details of his face, stroke by stroke. Defining the shapes of his features, rendering their contours more and more precise. I’d never been so aware of learning someone before.