Her ToyBear

by Bonnie Burrows

  He came to stand beside her, and she carefully flipped through the products of the session they had just finished. They showed him standing, holding and draping the towel in various poses, and lying on the futon, this time all in color. Wesley went from one drawing to the other, smiling broadly and shaking his head. He reacted to them one after another: “This is good… This is great… This is so good… I can’t believe how good this is… You are so talented…” Every word of praise was a stroke of heat in Jennifer’s heart—among other places.

  She looked up into his beaming look of wide-eyed approval at the way she had rendered him. “You really like them?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m just…I’m so honored, that’s all. I can’t believe how I look, the way you draw me. I can’t believe this is how you see me. I mean, I work hard to keep myself in shape, and I’m proud of that. I like how I look when I stand in the mirror. But this…” he trailed off, shaking his head again.

  “I’ve just never seen myself like this before.” He looked down into her eyes, his gaze going deep as if he were diving into her soul. “I hope this doesn’t sound corny. This is like seeing myself for the first time. Seeing myself through your eyes, that’s what this is like. I’m just…honored, that’s all I can say. Thank you. I know this is a job, and it’s all professional and all that, but…really, Jennifer, thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” she said. And immediately felt awkward inside, having put it that way. He was right; their relationship was professional. It was just that her work had always been an act of pleasure as well as the practice of a profession. She had never before found it quite as pleasurable as she found it now.

  “For letting me see myself like this, just…thank you,” he said. The sincerity poured off him like the warmth of a summer’s day. “I guess I’d better get dressed now.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer softly replied, and let him go to his bag, which he had set on the floor a few steps away from the futon. Feeling oddly self-conscious for watching him dress, she turned away and pretended to continue to arrange her drawings and art supplies. But she kept watching him from the corner of her eye, and every time Wesley pulled on a piece of clothing, she felt something like a pang of disappointment and sadness inside.

  Jennifer saw Wesley to the front door of the penthouse after writing him a check for services rendered, as she always did when it was time for him to go, and they paused there to say a few last words before calling it a day. Smiling, she told him, “I think this was the best session we’ve had so far.”

  “Yeah, it was,” Wesley said. “I really loved what you did this time. I think it was your best stuff yet. And…and…,” he trailed off again, his words somehow failing him.

  “And what?” Jennifer asked.

  “And…,” but Wesley still could not seem to say anything more. So instead, he put his failed words into an action. On pure impulse, he leaned forward, put his lips on her cheek, and kissed her.

  Jennifer burst into a smile like a movie of a rose blooming in fast-forward. She gasped a little, and her face reddened. “Wesley…!” she said simply.

  Wesley looked at her with that same sincere warmth in his eyes. “You’re nice,” he said. “You’re…you’re just nice.”

  She gulped, feeling suddenly flustered. “So are you,” Jennifer said.

  “See you soon, okay?” said Wesley.

  “Very soon,” she agreed.

  And when Wesley was on the other side of the door and she had shut it behind him, Jennifer wrapped herself up in her own arms and walked as if in a trance across the living room to the sofa. There she sat and looked at the pink and purple of the twilight fading slowly into the indigo of night, and the lights of the city becoming a field of gold jewels in blackness. She thought of the young man who had sat in her studio, now making his way back to wherever he lived. And she wished for his safety out there in the dark—and his safe return to her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Michelle was impressed, to say the least. Looking over the drawings that Jennifer had done of Wesley, Michelle made so many “Oooh’s” and “Aaah’s” and moaning noises that Jennifer was sorry that neither of them smoked, else she would certainly have offered Michelle a cigarette when she was done.

  Falling back breathlessly against the sofa, the sketch pad with the color pieces resting in her lap, Michelle looked over at Jennifer on the Ottoman and said, “Honey, I told you to get yourself a model, and you went and hired a Greek god.”

  Jennifer nodded, her eyes resting on the contents of Michelle’s lap and the wonders that she had put on paper in her studio. “I agree,” she said. “He’s all that…and more.”

  “What more is he?” Michelle asked, tantalized.

  “It’s just that…well, while we worked…we talked. And he’s not just a face and a body.”

  “I’ll say!” Michelle cracked, opening up the pad again and taking another look at a couple of the drawings that Jennifer had not shown to the subject of her art. “You’re right, he is ‘all that.’ I’d say he’s at least eight inches of ‘that.’ Maybe nine.”

  Jennifer waved a hand in front of her as if to brush away this turn of the conversation. “No, no, I didn’t mean that.”

  “You didn’t? And tell me…why didn’t you show him these particular pieces, pardon the expression?”

  “Because,” said Jennifer, suddenly turning a bit defensive, “I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. What would it look like, Wesley seeing those drawings? What would he think? He’d think I was some sort of lonely, bitter divorcee, obsessed with the private parts of a handsome model because I wasn’t ‘getting any.’ Or he’d simply think I was creepy or perverted. Or even worse…he’d pity me. I wouldn’t blame him if he ended our working relationship then and there.”

  Michelle gave serious thought to that and added, “Or…he’d think you were a cougar.”

  “Oh, God.” Jennifer buried her head in one hand. Of all the words that could have entered the discussion, did it have to be that one? She looked back up at Michelle with a pained expression. “Oh, God, what a cliché. The older woman, lusting and letching after hot younger men. I’m not that type. I don’t do that.”

  “You’ve never been in the position to be that type,” Michelle pointed out. “At least not until now. You were married and faithful to your husband—which is more than we can say for him.”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m becoming a ‘cougar’? Remember, this wasn’t my idea to start with. I would never have gone looking for a model if you hadn’t brought it up.”

  “I’m suggesting,” said Michelle, as tactfully as she knew how, “that if it wasn’t on your mind somewhere in there,” and she made a circling gesture at Jennifer’s head with her finger, “you wouldn’t have done close-ups of something besides his face. I’m just saying.”

  Jennifer opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She just looked off.

  Michelle closed the sketch pad again and leaned forward, putting it on the coffee table with the others. “Honey,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong with having thoughts like that. You’re divorced, not dead. And you’ve got a live subject in front of you now, who looks like this boy looks. I’d be worried if you didn’t think about him that way.”

  Jennifer said, “But we’ve had a very clear understanding about what our relationship is. It’s artist and model, and that’s all. It’s just…like I said, we’ve been talking as well as working together, and I’m getting to know him as a person. He’s a very sweet young man. He’s ambitious—he knows what he wants out of life, and he knows how to get it. And he’s had something of a life already. He’s been with girls—I think quite a few girls, though he’s too nice to talk about how many. And he’s even had a serious relationship.”

  “Oh, he has…?”

  “Yes. He’s had the proverbial ‘girl back home.’ And he loved her. They couldn’t make it work between them, and it broke both their hearts. You should see him when he
talks about her. He has this look about him, as if he’s remembering something that made him sad. He has a mind, and he has real, deep feelings. And…” she stopped herself from finishing her thought aloud.

  Her stopping only made Michelle want to hear more. She leaned over toward Jennifer, intently. “And what?”

  Jennifer sighed, then went on. “When he left last night, we were over there at the door, still talking, and he said he thinks I’m…nice.”

  “Well, you see! He likes you, too.”

  “But there was more. You know, I’m stupid for even bringing it up. I’m sure it was just a gesture on his part. He was just being his very sweet young self; I know it was nothing. It’s just that he…”

  “He what? What did he do?”

  Hesitantly, Jennifer replied, “He sort of…kissed me a little.”

  Michelle’s eyes widened and bulged. “He kissed you ‘a little’? How ‘little’ did he kiss you, Jennifer?”

  Waving it off again, Jennifer answered, “Just a little, that’s all. Just a little…peck on the cheek. It was nothing, like a kiss you’d give to a friend.”

  Michelle grinned, impressed: “Oh…ho, ho, ho, ho…!”

  “Don’t start with ‘ho, ho, ho, ho!’ It wasn’t a ‘ho, ho, ho, ho’!”

  “Was it at least a ‘ho, ho, ho’?”

  “It wasn’t a ‘ho’ at all. For goodness sakes, Michelle, I am twenty years older than this boy…this young man. I’m a nice older lady who pays him to let her draw pictures of him. Pictures that he happens to like very much and happens to think are wonderful. I’m a business and professional opportunity.”

  “How often do young boys—excuse me, young men—kiss their business opportunities at the door? Assuming they’re being paid to model and not do anything else, that is?”

  “It wasn’t that kind of kiss,” Jennifer insisted.

  “What if it turned into that kind of kiss?” Michelle asked.

  “It wouldn’t have!” Jennifer protested.

  “What if it did?” Michelle pressed. “Really, what if, just suppose, right after he gave you that one little kiss and you decided you both liked it, he’d kissed you again—this time, not like a boy kisses a friend? What if it was more like the way he’d kiss somebody that he was more interested in than that? The kind of kiss that makes you want to maybe sway back a bit when he leans into it? And what if he put his arms around you and held you tight? And then…”

  Jennifer stopped her right there. “Michelle, I think you’ve been watching too many of the things that you cast people to act in. Honestly…”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought the very same things,” Michelle said, not letting go. “You couldn’t possibly have spent all that time looking at Wesley nude, drawing him the way you did, drawing close-ups of his man parts, and then had him kiss you at the door, and not have thought about what I was just talking about and what you just stopped me from bringing up. No way, Jen. It must have danced across your mind. It must still be dancing.”

  Jennifer frowned, wanting to accept neither the idea nor how much she liked it. “Michelle, I’m old enough to be his…older friend who knows better than this. He’s used to girls his own age, not divorced women halfway through their forties. The way he looks, with that body, he has choices in his life that have nothing to do with me. It’s just a preposterous idea.”

  Michelle put up her hands, finally conceding. “Okay, have it your way. Just tell me one thing, then. Would you have gone to bed with him if he had kissed you that way, and can you honestly say you’ve never thought about it?”

  “That’s two things.”

  “Well?”

  “Well…it was just a peck on the cheek. But it was a very nice peck on the cheek.”

  “And something more than pecking would have been even nicer. I’m just saying.”

  “I know. You’re just saying. But it’s out of the question. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I’m an artist, he’s my model, and I’m…not his age. That’s all. Wesley and I are just who we are.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Yes, I say so.”

  And that was the end of that conversation. Michelle stayed for a while longer, and they talked about other things, mostly Michelle’s job. And after a while, Michelle left for her own apartment again, and they said nothing more of Wesley Horne and his working relationship with Jennifer, nor of anything else that the relationship might become.

  However, Michelle had said openly the things that Jennifer herself could not deny she had thought. And once said, those things could not be unsaid. And once spoken, thoughts like that have a way of turning into other ideas.

  Which is what made Jennifer start to think of things she might do for Wesley to show him how much she appreciated him.

  _______________

  Wesley was at Diamond Gym, walking through the weight room near the end of the shift, when he got the call. He was clad in tank top, sweat pants, and boxing shoes, his mind strictly on work. He was watching the guys on the weights and the machines, checking out their progress and looking for anyone who might be having trouble or need help, when his phone, tucked into a pocket on a Velcro band around his bicep, vibrated. He plucked it from the pocket and smiled when he saw Jennifer’s name on the caller ID. At once, he took the call.

  “Hey, Jennifer,” he said through a smile. “I’m still at work. Can you hold on a sec?”

  “Of course,” came Jennifer’s voice from the other end.

  Wesley put her on Hold and found one of the other trainers who was just coming on shift and got him to take over, then quickly went into the office and shut the door. He then took her off Hold and said through another smile, “Hey again. Um…we’re not scheduled for tonight. What’s up? You don’t have to cancel tomorrow, do you?” He picked up a bottle of water from the table, unscrewed the top, and began to take little swallows while talking.

  “Absolutely not,” she replied. “I was just wondering if you’d be interested in…a little change to our usual plan tomorrow night.”

  His brow arched. Settling into the chair behind the desk, he was intrigued. “A change? What, you want me to bring something special to wear or something?”

  He couldn’t see Jennifer breaking out into a reflexive frown on the other end. Something special to wear? Really—to WEAR? Dear boy, why would I want you wearing anything? But she said, “Oh, nothing like that; everything’s just fine the way you’ve been working all along. I just wondered… Our session is for the afternoon. So, would you happen to have anything going on in the evening?”

  “In the evening? Um…no, I didn’t plan anything for tomorrow night. I was probably gonna just go out with some buddies as usual. Why, what’s up? You having a party? You going someplace?”

  “No, I’m not going anywhere, and there’s no party,” Jennifer said. “But…what if, after the session, you stayed for dinner?”

  Up until now, Wesley had been leaning back casually in the chair. At this question, he sat upright, startled. “Dinner?”

  “Yes—dinner. I thought I might make us something, and perhaps you’d like to stay.”

  Totally unprepared for any such idea, Wesley at first was at a loss for words. “Dinner. Wow. Really. Dinner. Um…you don’t have to do anything like that.”

  “I know it wasn’t part of the arrangement,” she said, “but it’s just something I’d like to do. I only cook for myself these days. I thought it might be nice to share dinner with someone else. I promise, I’m not just some socialite who doesn’t know her way around a kitchen. Really, I actually can cook.”

  “Um, yeah, I’m sure you can. It’s just…I wasn’t expecting anything like that.”

  “Do you like fish?” she asked.

  Even more intrigued now, he said, “Yeah, I love fish.”

  “Have you ever had trout almondine?”

  The question caught Wesley in the middle of a swallow. It went down the wrong pipe, and suddenly, he loudly sputtered. Doub
led over in the chair, he started to cough with sharp and very audible hacks. He scrambled to put the bottle of water back on the desk and was barely able to hang on to the phone. With reddened face and sputtering mouth, he heard Jennifer ask over the phone, “Wesley? Are you all right?”

  Wesley nodded, a gesture which of course she could not hear, while bringing himself upright in the chair. In the midst of gasping and coughing, he blurted out, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine; I just swallowed something wrong.” Cough, hack, gag. “Did…did you say trout?”

  “Yes, trout almondine. Or we could have grilled salmon if you prefer.”

  Recovering his breath, Wesley shook his head, which of course she also could not hear. “No, no, trout’s great. I love trout. I haven’t had a good trout in a while.”