“Did you put on lip gloss?”
I forgot how up-front he was. Sometimes that was great. Now it caught me up so short, all I could do was blink. “Ah, yeah, my, ah, my lips were . . . chapped.” I had to change the subject before my face turned as pink as my mouth.
“So, how was Hawaii?”
“Beautiful. Expensive. Unbelievable surfing. You’d have loved hiking Mount Tantalus.” He ran his thumb over a two-inch pockmark outside the bathroom door. “But it was oddly . . . lonely.”
He was still eloquent, and open, with only a few words.
“I heard you were getting married?”
“Engaged. Briefly. I couldn’t go through with it. She was a great lady, totally amazing. But she wanted kids. To settle down. To live in Hawaii forever. That’s not me. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Hawaii and I’m crazy about kids. I saw how happy you were with yours. It was one of the best parts of this job. But I’m really a kid myself. I’m happy that way.”
Now, this kind of blunt I loved. I leaned back against the dining room wall.
“Dating anyone?”
“Not really.” He let the clipboard hang at his side. “God, it’s good to talk about this with you, Leslie. My married friends and my mom don’t get it. Do you mind?”
I shook my head. “No, Mishka, I like hearing all this.”
He turned to examine a gouge in the wall above an electrical outlet.
“It’s hard to date at my age. At this stage. Every woman seems to be hunting for the one. Since Lisa and I called it off, I decided to be frank on the first date that I don’t want marriage or kids. Women like that I’m honest. But they’re clearly disappointed, ’cause ‘just dating’ is not their agenda. I don’t go on a lot of second dates.”
He turned red and looked down at his boots. Wow. Once again, I wished I’d thought more about dating from a man’s perspective. Maybe it was as hard for them as it was for us.
“How’s . . . um . . . your husband?” It seemed obvious that he wanted to change the subject. “The Phantom?”
“Marty?” I blinked. Is that what the construction workers had all called him? Were our problems so obvious?
Mishka nodded, his smile at once all-knowing and mysterious, like the Chesire cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“We got divorced about a year ago.” I scrunched my face, inadvertently, because it felt dishonest to try to capture our complicated dead end flippantly. Plus, I was embarrassed. Divorce seems like such a public failure, even though it feels more complex to me privately. Finding the right words isn’t merely difficult, it’s a fool’s errand. The only people who can fathom the gory details of a failed marriage are people trapped in unhappy unions themselves. Friends who had never gotten hitched seem to accept divorce the most blithely.
Mishka was one of those. He looked at me and shrugged.
“It never seemed like you were really married, anyway.”
No kidding, I felt like saying. But I didn’t.
“That made it easier to nurse that crush I had on you forever.”
I wanted to hide my head like a self-conscious kid.
“You didn’t know?”
“What?” I pretended. “I had no idea.”
Mishka looked at me like he knew I was fudging but didn’t care. He kept talking.
“The first time I knew I was crazy about you was one Sunday afternoon. Probably four years ago. You were all here watching some football game. Marty was heading out on a business trip or something, going straight to the airport. I stopped by to take some measurements for that new basement door we were installing. You had on black yoga pants, kinda like the ones you have on now. God, those pants!”
Moms should buy stock in Athleta and lululemon.
He paused. He looked around for another gash to examine. There weren’t any.
“You’re such a MILF. I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this. But what the hell. I saw you hugging him good-bye at the front door. Something about that hug—you held him so long—made me think I wanted someone to hug me like that. Exactly like that. Then I figured out it wasn’t someone I wanted. It was you I wanted. To hug me like that, like you really meant it.”
My body heated up with that glow you feel in front of a bonfire. Mishka envied Marty, the man I loved, the father of my children, the man who didn’t even like the way I hugged him anymore? Mishka wanted that same hug. That woman. That wife. Me. I stood in the hallway now, stunned by Mishka’s transparency, more emotion than Marty shared with me during our entire last decade together.
“Can I take you out to dinner?” Mishka continued. “To talk more? I’d love that.”
I nodded inanely, like a tourist confronting Al Roker’s mic outside the Today show. Was this actually happening?
“Sure. But, Mishka, do you date moms you work for? What if someone sees us?”
Mishka paused and looked down at his hands in his jean pockets. His hair fell into his face.
“Yeah, you’re right.” He looked back at me, holding my gaze. “If Bill and the guys find out, they’ll tease me for weeks. Not good for business to date moms who hire me. Well, actually—”
The smile lines took over his face. His eyes almost disappeared, turning into half-moons above his cheeks.
“I’ve got a better idea. Leslie, how about I cook you dinner? I learned some great Hawaiian recipes. I’m actually a good cook, for a single guy, especially a bachelor surfer from Tyler, Texas, with a weird Russian name.”
“Um, sure.” The kids would be with Marty next week. “How about Thursday?”
He wrote down his home address on the back of his new business card.
It was a date.
* * *
But first, I had to fly to North Carolina for a domestic violence awareness police officer training course. And to have one of my two Chris Bailey dinners. I fell asleep on the plane and awoke as if from a fever dream. What was it going to be like to see him again?
I’d invited him to my luncheon keynote, and he showed up just before my speech, handsome and formal in his Marine uniform, sitting quietly and very still at the head table next to me. His eyes were as blue as I remembered. He watched me during my speech, listening to me explain the complex psychological reasons victims stay in abusive relationships. I was busy for thirty minutes after the luncheon, answering questions one-on-one. Chris slipped out, texting me afterward. Leslie—I’m honored you invited me. I enjoyed it very much. Pick you up at your hotel at 5?
Excited but not knowing what to expect, I came out of the air-conditioned Holiday Inn lobby into the Carolina twilight. I’d changed into jeans and cowboy boots. Wearing a blue shirt that made his eyes stand out, Chris stood under the portico holding two helmets. Next to him leaned a gleaming red and black Harley-Davidson Road King.
“Evening,” he said. He paused, as if about to add ma’am.
“Nice bike,” I answered. “And thanks for coming today, Chris. I’m looking forward to the ride. And dinner.”
I climbed onto the bike behind him and laced my arms around his waist. His abs were hard as molded plastic. His back muscles felt as thick as a horse’s. His neck smelled of Dial soap. Chris revved the motor, and the Harley made the pavement feel like glass as we glided out of the parking lot onto a winding Carolina blacktop. For thirty minutes, Chris steered the bike past farmland. The road dipped and rose on gentle hills as the grassy fields changed into thick Carolina pines. The air cooled as the sun set and night fell. I breathed in the smell of fresh-cut grass and Chris’s shoulder blades.
Chris slowed the bike at a low-slung roadside restaurant with swinging wooden-slat doors. We sat at a booth inside, near the doors. Conversation came easily. We talked of his family in Augusta. His efforts to teach his teenaged daughter to shoot squirrels. His days training in Hawaii and Fort Benning. The road trip to Niagara Falls he wanted to take on the Harley.
“You can stop for a night in Philly,” I said, smiling. Chris smiled back at me, his eyes lighting up.
“Or two.”
For the ride home, he played a country mix on the Harley’s stereo. Outside the hotel entrance, I handed him back his helmet. I shook my hair. We stood looking at each other, not saying a word. It felt like a scene in a romantic movie.
“Can I kiss you, Leslie?” Chris asked. Again, I felt like he had to stop himself from saying ma’am. I laughed.
“Of course.”
His lips were warm and soft, like his hand had felt when he shook mine back in the Philadelphia Airport. He put his hand on the back of my head and stroked my hair. We kissed twice in the warm night, standing outside the Holiday Inn, the heat radiating off the asphalt and the Harley engine. And because Chris Bailey was a southern gentleman, that was it.
* * *
I stood outside the front door to Mishka’s building, peering up at the windows, wondering which were his. The address was in South Philly, kitty-corner to Creperie Beau Monde, one of my favorite restaurants, in an old brick apartment complex of lofts carved out of a former lightbulb factory. It was five minutes after seven. I hadn’t heard from him since last Friday afternoon at my house. I wasn’t entirely sure we were still on for dinner. Which didn’t matter, since I was too excited to register something as banal as hunger.
I rang the buzzer in the arched brick entryway.
“Yes?” I heard his scratchy voice coming out of the rectangular black slot by the door.
“It’s . . . ah . . . me,” I half shouted into the intercom. For some reason, I was afraid to say my name.
“Leslie? All right! I’ll buzz you in.”
I rode a creaky freight elevator up to the top floor.
Mishka stood waiting in front of the elevator, which opened directly into his loft. He smiled when I stepped out.
“Thanks for coming, Leslie. Come on in.”
He had on faded jeans and a soft white button-down shirt. His long hair was still damp, brushing his shoulders. I caught a whiff of him as I walked into his foyer. He smelled like shampoo, and his apartment smelled like paint and sawdust.
His apartment was a breezy one-bedroom with a galley kitchen lined in exposed brick. There were power tools and paint cans everywhere. Windows everywhere, too. You could see the Ben Franklin Bridge from an open living room window. Two cats strode possessively toward me as I was taking off my jean jacket. Underneath I had on jeans, a sleeveless black silk blouse, and short black suede mules. Wearing yoga pants seemed too obvious.
His two cats sniffed me suspiciously, circling me like passport security inspectors deciding whether to let me into their country.
“Don’t mind them,” Mishka said. “My mom lent them to me so I wouldn’t be lonely.”
“Is it working?”
“Kinda,” Mishka retorted. “But it’s better now that you’re here. I hope you like risotto with grilled pineapple.”
He pointed to a large spiky pineapple on the butcher block counter by the fridge.
“Does anyone not like risotto?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.
I looked around, wondering where to sit. We regarded each other awkwardly. I’d never seen Mishka anywhere except in my own house. Being alone with him here felt like entering a secret tower to which I had the only key.
“Can I get you a glass of water? That’s all you drink, right?”
“Good memory. Sure. Thanks.”
I stood there like a doofus. I put my hands in my pockets.
Mishka came back into the small living room holding a glass of water tinkling with ice cubes. I took a big sip and then smiled crookedly at him, uncertain what to do next.
“How’s work?” I asked.
“How are the kids?” he asked at the same time.
We both laughed clumsily. Then came a long moment of even more tongue-tied silence. He looked out of place in his own kitchen doorway. He glanced out the window. The cat at his feet meowed.
Damn it, I said to myself. You didn’t come here to stand around making shallow conversation.
I put down the glass on a desk littered with bills and loose stamps. I went up to him. Before he could stop me, or I could stop myself, I laced my hands around the back of his neck. I looked into his eyes and pushed my hips against his. He put his hands on my waist. I felt small in his arms.
“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” I said, leaning back into his hands so I could see his face. He didn’t move. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I moved closer to him and buried my face in his chest. God, he smelled great. I could feel his heart beating, slow and steady.
I took a deep breath and looked up at him. He seemed immobilized. I kissed him softly, letting my mouth fall slightly open. He kissed me back and then let out a full-body sigh. “Oh my God, Leslie. Me too.”
We kissed. His lips were soft, like a nectarine, his cheeks rough with stubble. A good combination. Pressed against him, my body felt like pavement softening in the hot sun. We moved to the couch. Briefly. Soon we were on the floor on his striped wool Navajo rug. He lay on me gently, kissing me, his forearms cradling my head. I loved having his weight on me. It felt like there was a baseball bat under his jeans.
“Do you want to go into the bedroom, Leslie?” he asked quietly, shaking his brown hair out of his face, as if he was afraid I might say no.
I whispered yes.
Mishka held my hand as I followed him down a short hallway into his darkened room. I sat on his bed and he took off my mules as if he’d spent a summer working in the Nordstrom women’s shoe department. He stopped undressing me to massage each of my feet, cracking my toes with his strong fingers, and slowly pressing his thumbs deep into the center of each sole. I didn’t know a foot massage could be erotic. I wanted those fingers everywhere on my body.
I wasn’t paying much attention to the bedroom decor, trust me. But I couldn’t help noticing an entire wall covered with pictures of individual Dallas Cowboys and their iconic gray and blue starred helmets. There were at least twenty-five framed pictures, stretching from a few feet off the floor to the ceiling.
“The Cowboys?” I asked.
“Love them. I put the pictures up so women see stars in here.”
Such a dumb joke, I couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed, too, a joyous sound, as if he couldn’t believe I was there in his bedroom, letting him undress me.
He slowly undid the buttons on my blouse. He slipped his hands up my back and undid my bra. He slipped the shirt off my shoulders and pulled the bra clasps toward me, loosening the shoulder straps, so that everything fell to his wooden floor in one smooth movement.
“Ahhh,” was all he said, looking at my breasts. It was more of a groan than a word.
He undid the button on my jeans. He unzipped them and cupped his palm over the front of my pussy. He slipped the jeans off my hips more easily than I could have myself. Construction workers really know how to use their hands, obviously. He left on my white lace thong, which was already soaked through.
He pulled two pillows to the edge of his bed. Then he gently turned me over and slid the pillows under my belly, so that my ass was in the air and my thighs were spread on his bed. He did all of this excruciatingly slowly, intentionally, sliding his hands over my bare skin.
I felt like begging him to hurry.
“I want you inside me,” I implored, looking over my bare shoulder at him. I hoped the words sounded slightly more genteel than Fuck me now.
He ran his palms over the soft skin of my hips.
“First, I need to do what I’ve been dreaming about for years,” he said, pulling aside the thong with his warm, calloused hand. A jolt of desire ripped through me as his thumb touched the delicate outer lips of my pussy. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.” He bent his head between my legs. His tongue was soft and warm.
It was worth the wait.
* * *
Wow, that happened fast. Loved every minute. But I don’t want you to think I was expecting ALL THAT when I asked you to dinner . . . :)
I drove h
ome from my date with Mishka—although little about this qualified as the kind of formal “date” I’d been on in my twenties—after we finally devoured the grilled pineapple risotto at midnight. I got his text while stopped for the light at a deserted intersection. I wrote him back as I sat in my driveway, still stunned and blissed out. Actually, I’d been waiting five years for that to happen. I loved it too.
The following Monday, I hired Mishka to patch and paint the downstairs walls, and then, to turn my basement, which had been a massive kids’ rec room with a separate street entrance, into an apartment I could rent out for extra income. Keeping our home physically intact felt like the one source of stability I could provide my kids postdivorce. But on a writer’s salary, shelling out for the house’s upkeep would be hard. The maintenance and taxes alone outstripped my income. Rental payments would cover most of that.
“Forget about tenants,” Mishka teased the day he started the project, sweaty and covered in paint flecks, sawdust like pieces of yellow confetti stuck in the ends of his long dark blond hair. “I’m gonna marry you and move in.”
It didn’t sound like he was joking.
“No other basement in Rittenhouse Square comes with these kinds of benefits,” he said, smoothing his hands over my hips and pulling me close to him.
Almost every day at my house, he came upstairs to my bedroom during his lunch break.
“I’ve been masturbating to you for years,” he confessed the second time he came up. “In Hawaii. Back home. Everywhere I went.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, unable to hide my delight.
“Oh, you have no idea. Everything you do is erotic to me.”
Mishka couldn’t take his eyes off me when we were together, which made me feel like I had a one-hundred-dollar bill in my pocket. When I was with him, that is. I rarely heard from him in between. It was true, what he said: despite our lights-out sexual connection, he had no interest in any sort of commitment. After he finished the basement, I didn’t hear from him for two, almost three weeks.
The Naked Truth Page 14