Playing House

by Ruby Lang

  He looked up at her, catching her eye, and that was what did it. Her head fell back, her body lifted itself into him and turned itself up and over and out into the air.

  When she could breathe again, she looked down at him, still low between her legs, watching her, smiling. “Come up here,” she whispered.

  The old mattress creaked, dipped hard as he crawled up on his elbows. “This is like being a teenager. And having secret sex in an abandoned house,” she said, pulling his shirt off.

  She was perhaps a little too brisk with the way she removed his remaining clothing—or maybe it was her tone. Because despite his obvious arousal, he hesitated. He said, “You don’t have to. I can finish off if you don’t—”

  But she wanted to. Maybe not quite with the urgency that she’d felt before—she usually took time to recover her desire—and certainly not with the desperation he felt, if she could judge by his face, the panting escaping his lips. But that was intriguing, too. She liked the way he was watching her as she pulled down his jeans, making sure, as she did, to slide her hands along the firm thighs, tracing the long swoop of muscle, pausing to tug slightly on the hair of his legs and to look at his ankles, his instep, the solid slabs of his feet—and back up, slowly, of course, to his cock. She liked his cock, too—enough that when she put her hand on it—decisively, the way she thought he’d like it, she felt a surprising tingle. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on this. “Are you sure you want to?” she asked him.

  “I do, I really do.”

  He was watching her take charge, letting her do what she wanted with him, even though at this point, he was gritting his teeth and muttering as she swung herself off the mattress and found a box of condoms that she’d put in her room just this morning.

  “Fuck,” he said, once, very clearly, as she smoothed the condom over him.

  He rolled up slightly, pulled her head down and kissed her fiercely, and she was surprised to feel the low flame of excitement start to burn in her again. She carefully straddled him, the mattress dipping fiercely under the two points of her knees, and as she lowered herself down, he rose up to meet her again.

  * * *

  Oliver was cooking in Fay’s kitchen. Fay was solidly asleep—so deep under that he’d checked her fridge, decided to leave a note, grabbed her keys. He had time to go out and find a grocery store, dither over ingredients, come back, unpack, and wash a couple of pots. And when he went to check on her, she was still snoozing, openmouthed, under the comforter where he’d left her.

  The night had cooled down considerably and Fay’s fan had done its work, pushing the night air into the apartment.

  Oliver chopped up vegetables and tofu for a stir-fry. When he finished cooking, he looked at it, waiting for a moment, feeling a little foolish. Should he wake her up? Should he just eat in her kitchen without her and leave her a portion? What made him assume that she wanted him to stick around?

  The beauty of the stir-fry seemed to mock him. He’d bought two kinds of peppers—red and yellow—for God’s sake. He’d impulse purchased a mango on a stick that had been carved in the shape of a rose. Two kinds of peppers for dinner and a mango flower for dessert was probably a sign that he already cared too much. He’d even made rice on a stove top—he could not remember the last time he’d made it in a pot and had to pay attention to it. Even in college, he’d had a tiny rice cooker. The Huang kids had never gotten fancy new sheets and towels when they’d moved into the dorms—they’d always just nabbed them from their beds at home—but Ma Huang had gotten all of them shiny mini rice cookers.

  Well, he’d done without, and the meal had turned out well. It was nice to feel like he’d accomplished something. He’d made something beautiful. He was just about to put the lid back on the food when Fay padded into the kitchen. “You cooked!”

  And she grabbed him and kissed him and held his face, looking into his eyes; that was enough for Oliver to know that he’d done the right thing.

  “I also brought you a mango rose.”

  Why not just spill everything now?

  “What?”

  He backed away to go to the fridge, but she clung to him. So they opened it together. Inside, on a paper plate, was a mango flower that he’d bought from a street vendor who’d been packing up to leave. “A rose is a rose,” he said. “Unless it’s a fruit.”

  His presentation left something to be desired but she kissed him again more slowly this time, and despite the fact that he was hungry and he’d just spent the last five minutes wondering if he should flee, he didn’t want to be anywhere else. Except maybe in the bed again.

  His hand slid up under bare thigh and she sighed. “We should eat,” she murmured against his mouth.

  “Where are the forks?” he said, tightening his hold on her ass.

  He kissed her again.

  “I don’t know. Where did you find the plate?”

  They both took a deep breath and let go of each other.

  In a few minutes, Fay dug up some bowls and disposable chopsticks. They set up a box in the living room, put the food in the middle, and sat down cross-legged to eat.

  “Is this peanut sauce? This is so good,” Fay said, groaning.

  Oliver, feeling slightly less limber after their mattress athletics, was trying to settle himself into a comfortable position. “My mom’s always talking about how men should be useful for a change. It seemed pretty useful for me to learn how to cook.”

  “Did she teach you this recipe?”

  He laughed. “No. Plus, her comments don’t usually result in—what do you call it?—constructive criticism or advice. I found some version of it on a blog somewhere and make it all the time.”

  “Asian moms. The more they criticize, the more they love.”

  “That’s the theory at least. The reality always feels much more complicated. Is yours like that?”

  “Yes and no. The reality is complicated. I’m an only child, so both of my parents tend to focus on me a lot even now that I’m in my midthirties. It’s intense—and it wasn’t always great during the divorce. I needed some time apart from talking about it with them. In a way, it’s good that they live across the country.”

  Oliver huffed a laugh.

  She added, “I just realized that I hardly know anything about your family. How can this be? We’ve been acquainted for years.”

  “Because we always end up talking about planning. Or our planning friends.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, we are dedicated to our work to a very uncool extent.”

  Oliver looked down. “Sure.”

  It may have been a good time to get the fact that her firm had been thinking of interviewing him out in the open. They hadn’t responded to his email earlier this week, and Oliver was almost relieved that they didn’t seem interested anymore. But maybe it would be the moment to broach the subject of jobs. Fay would most likely have some ideas about where to look, who was hiring people with knowledge of preservation planning, even if her firm clearly wasn’t. She’d probably have all sorts of good advice for him, from who to talk with to which commas to take out of his CV.

  No, now was a terrible time. He should have brought it up before, but he hadn’t been using his brain. And right now, right at this moment, he was with a woman who made him happy. They were eating food. They were comfortable in each other’s presence. He didn’t want to talk about his personal failings—not this kind, not when she admired him and was pleased with him and the things he could do. Maybe it was selfish, but he didn’t want his so-called problem to be the thing they talked about for the rest of the night. Because it could easily become that. He could see how he would slip into the role of one of her projects. Because she was energetic, and she was a natural rescuer of people and places.

  He didn’t want to become her project. He wanted her just to like him, to like being around him.

  H
e knew, too, that it was a double-edged sword. He couldn’t share with her how much he was looking forward to his upcoming gig. How despite the stress of expectations from his family, his upbringing that told him moving from job to job made him unreliable, he was enjoying working for himself. It was even grimly satisfying to have to stay on top of his finances. But she’d said they shouldn’t talk about work, which was funny considering that it had drawn them together, that her passion and absorption with it had made him want to listen to her, to know her.

  No job talk. Well, now—now they had something else together.

  Fay hadn’t noticed Oliver’s preoccupation. “I just think it’s so funny. I mean, I always thought you were handsome. Renata—you remember my friend Renata—talks about your cheekbones a lot.”

  “Just that particular part?”

  “They are striking. But this is a new way of thinking about you. I’m surprised by it.”

  “Well, I’m the middle child,” he said. “With a rheumatologist older sister, and a younger brother who captains the captains of industry for a midtown hedge fund, I’m the underachiever making obscure improvements around the city.”

  Her smile grew. “My parents don’t know how to tell people what my job is so they switch to English. Our Fay is a PARTNER in a FIRM in NEW YORK MANHATTAN. And then everyone assumes I’m a lawyer. I don’t even bother to try to correct them anymore.”

  Oliver had to laugh. “There is nothing slower and more painful than trying to explain to your elderly relatives what your job is and why you’ve decided to do it. I’ll say, No, I don’t actually construct bike lanes or low-cost housing. I help communities decide if they put them there, and they’ll stare at me. It’s like I have the power to stop time—I just try to define land-use planner in Mandarin and everything freezes.”

  “If only there were some way to turn its time-defying powers into a skincare line.”

  “We’d make millions.”

  “We could quit our jobs and never have to explain what we do for a living again.”

  “I know that would give me a glow.”

  “You and your cheekbones would become the face of our product. You know, this explains a lot about why you look the way you do.”

  “Is that why I’m here? Because I’m a pretty face?”

  “I like other parts of you, too.”

  “True, my cheekbones are pretty, but they don’t cook.”

  “You’re different than I imagined. I don’t know why people don’t appreciate you.”

  Her eyes were soft. And he felt oddly even more vulnerable at that moment because a warm, competent person he cared about—who he was beginning to care about a lot—appreciated him. Maybe he should say more. “There’s a lot I’m not good at—” he began.

  “Shh. Let’s concentrate on the positive, shall we?”

  She stood up in one fluid movement and flung off her shirt.

  To be fair, he didn’t forget what he was going to say next. But neither of them were quite in the mood to talk.

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday

  Fay was happy that week.

  It wasn’t that she’d necessarily been unhappy before. Her life didn’t lack for jokes and friends and good conversations and absorbing work. Even when she’d been in the middle of the divorce and seething, or spending hours on FaceTime with Renata, she’d still managed to laugh.

  But there was a difference—it was like the difference between breathing when she had a mildly annoying cold and then one day, taking in a big lungful of oxygen and realizing the airways were clear. This was what it meant to feel well.

  She took in a breath and enjoyed it.

  And she and Oliver weren’t texting each other constantly, but she knew he was thinking of her as often as she thought of him. Sometimes, Oliver just sent her a picture with a small comment—yesterday it was a photo of one of the last functioning telephone booths in the city. The other day, it was a photo of the historic church that had been rezoned for condominiums but was now going to be opened as a children’s museum. Sometimes, when she felt especially giddy, she’d read the four or five informative words he’d sent as a caption aloud to herself as if he’d been sending her poetry.

  It was better than poetry.

  She was staring at her screen once more when her coprincipal, Teddy, walked in. “Did you get my email?”

  She checked her inbox. “You sent this less than a minute ago.”

  “Yeah, so I finally have free time to interview for the manager position, and I wanted to see if you’d review these three, give me your opinion on them. We really need someone in place who can hit the ground running.”

  “Yes, Theodore, I am aware. Save the spiel for the interviewees. I’ll look these over.”

  She opened up the first CV as she spoke and saw the name at the top.

  Oliver Huang.

  Her Oliver.

  She ran her eyes quickly over the document. His phone number, the Columbia degree. Yes, it was definitely him. And of course, he knew she worked there. Her picture was on the website.

  She read more closely and saw that he was doing freelance consulting work—the last time he’d held a full-time position was with Greenblatt. She’d known he was at Greenblatt and heard they’d folded, but she’d assumed he’d gotten out, gone somewhere else. Why had she assumed that?

  He hadn’t mentioned any of this to her.

  How had two people so dedicated to work failed to actually discuss work for an entire week? They’d touched on mutual planning friends and abstractly talked about projects they worked on, and she’d surely mentioned the firm. So, how had they not discussed that Oliver was currently job hunting...at her firm?

  Well, she had deliberately put the brakes on talking about their day-to-day, hadn’t she? They’d been too busy pretending to be Olly and Darling.

  And now Teddy wanted her opinion.

  Fay didn’t know what to think. On one hand, she had to admit, just now seeing his name had been exciting—it had made her happy.

  On the other, why had he sent the CV to her firm? Did he expect her to give him a job?

  She took a deep breath and closed out the screen. Then she got up and paced around her office and tried to think clearly.

  She wouldn’t be Oliver’s direct boss if he got the job, but it was a tiny firm, and she was a partner. How would he feel about essentially working for her? Would he say he was fine with it? Maybe it wasn’t even ethical—she certainly would have to excuse herself from hiring if her own boyfriend was among the candidates.

  Would he be enthusiastic only to resent her in the future?

  Why hadn’t he said anything?

  She cast her mind over their conversations again and felt almost guilty. Had he mentioned work once? Had she put him off because she had trained herself not to talk about her job? And wasn’t that sad to realize that Jeremy could do that to her—was still doing that to her?

  The best thing now was to be direct.

  She took a deep breath and picked up her phone.

  * * *

  Usually, Oliver liked that Fay got right to the point.

  Usually.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you were looking for a job?”

  Before he could even take a breath to respond, she said, “Your CV appeared on my desk just now.”

  Oliver was still sweaty after a run in the park. But seeing her name had made him so eager to talk to her. He’d picked up the phone and rested it against his damp face. Now he paused to wipe his forehead with his T-shirt.

  It didn’t really do much.

  “This wasn’t a great way to find out,” Fay added.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know when to bring it up and if it was still relevant. I sent that CV almost half a year ago and when Teddy finally emailed last Sunday, it was only a vague note t
hat they were starting interviews. I didn’t hear anything back and even after a follow-up and... I assumed they weren’t really serious.”

  It was pathetic. He should have tried harder to work it into conversation. The truth was he hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t wanted anything to interfere with the perfect little world he’d been building with Fay.

  “Last Sunday? The day we met on the tour?”

  Sweat was now streaming down his forehead, stinging his eyes. But it was more from panic than physical pursuit now.

  “How could you not bring it up?”

  “I—I didn’t want it to be an issue between us—you weren’t the one hiring me.”

  “But it’s my firm. I’m one of the partners, Oliver! You must have thought they’d call you in. You must have—maybe you resented me. I thought we talked about everything.”

  “We didn’t really talk about that specifically. And I thought maybe you knew—had seen my résumé.”

  She was silent at that. He couldn’t blame her, it sounded weak even to his own ears.

  “At some point, I said something about work and you—well, I thought you didn’t want to talk about it. We chatted about friends. We pointed out features of the streets we were on and joked about what we’d do if we could live in the houses we’ve seen. We had conversations about our field, about city-building—not our actual day-to-day.” When she didn’t respond again, he said, his voice now stumbling out faster than usual, “You said ‘No job talk.’”

  Even as he spoke, he knew it seemed like he’d been trying to weasel out of a serious discussion—and since when were they on serious terms? But they were. He knew it, and that serious part of himself hadn’t wanted her to find out that he was an unemployed adult living with his younger brother, and that he had been in the running for a job in her firm. And that he really, really wanted a steady position.

  He was tired of thinking this way. He got enough of this from his family. Besides, was there something wrong with not having a job—something fundamentally wrong with him? He was working, and he liked the fact that his work was shorter term, God help him. The feedback was more immediate, his labor was important. He wasn’t terrible.