Once we were in the elevator, Jake slipped his hand up my thigh and thrust two fingers inside me, as if he couldn’t wait another second to make love to me. He took his fingers out and put them in his mouth. Weak with wanting him, I had trouble making my way down the hallway to his room. We were kissing before the hotel door clanged shut behind us. He picked me up and carried me to the bed. It was a fancy brass queen covered with a dozen pillows in crazy shapes—cubes, rolls, squares—piled up at the headboard. He pulled up my dress, spread my legs, and started licking my inner thighs as I writhed and moaned. He made his way up to my pussy with small licks. I started whimpering. I’d only been out of the TT for five minutes before he was inside me. My four-inch heels stayed on, as Jake moved my legs up over my head. He ran his hands along my calves as he made love to me, hard.
As he moved in me, I looked at his face, reading the feelings written there. I couldn’t look away for a second. His long eyelashes brushed his cheekbones. His chest was lean but muscular, with a few silver-black hairs sprinkled across it. His arms made a diamond shape around my head as he looked in my eyes. I saw and felt something new in his face, a sensation totally different from what I’d felt before with any man. He’s making love to me, I told myself. Was Jake falling in love with me? Or had he always been in love with me? Could I be the reason he’d had decades of unfulfilling relationships with women, and never married or had children?
The sex was hot as hell. But it was more than that. It was . . . deep, in all the profound ways I ached for. With words and his eyes, Jake made sure I liked every thing he did to me. His body shook with pleasure, he was so blissed out by the ways I touched, kissed, and sucked him.
Afterward, I lay cradled in his arms. We were both slightly sweaty, spent, relieved of hours of sexual anticipation, almost but not quite ready for more. He disentangled himself carefully and leaned up on his forearms to look at me.
“I love you, Leslie. I always have. I always wanted this with you.”
I answered by meeting his eyes with mine. I didn’t trust my voice.
I had never imagined Jake still felt so strongly about me. But I could feel love in his body, and in mine, validating our connection. Love was the only explanation for the way our bodies came together. The way I’d dreamed about, but failed to achieve, with Marty. How could this be unfolding so quickly? But since I’d known Jake for most of my life, this didn’t feel reckless or crazy. It felt like a key turning in a lock.
I never wanted to let him go. Ever.
But I had to. There was a concert at school that morning, the a cappella student-run club. Bella was singing a solo from Rent, the sweet, wise love song “Seasons of Love.”
So, in the dark of night, Jake walked me outside the hotel to the TT. The street was shadowy and empty. The cool sea air made me quiver in my lace dress. The Atlantic crashed in the background. He guided me into the TT in my ridiculous shoes. My pussy felt swollen and sore. I realized I’d never taken off my heels, a princess so brazen she kept her slippers on.
As we kissed good-bye one final time, me sitting in the driver’s seat, Jake bent over me, I put my arms around his neck. He smelled like Eau Sauvage and me.
My phone lit up on the passenger seat with the frosted white light of a new text. I didn’t even glance at it. I kissed Jake’s soft lips long and hard enough to leave a bruise.
As I zoomed west in the TT, the painted white stripes on the highway’s edge rolled by silently in the night as I headed back to Rittenhouse Square. The seventies Jefferson Starship song “Miracles” came on. I pushed repeat song on my iPhone car dock. If only you believe in miracles, so would I . . . Listening to Grace Slick’s throaty background vocals, I relived how it felt to be under Jake’s strong, warm body, with him inside me, on the hotel bed’s velvety sheets. I believed in miracles. Did Jake, too?
This was mind-blowing sex, and so much more. It felt like the first taste of everything I’d ever wanted in a relationship. On the heels of that buzz, a rush of fear scared the hell out of me. Could this feeling vanish at any moment?
Sara had warned me to be careful. She cautioned that the first serious relationship following a divorce can be more intense than the marriage itself, because after a divorce, you are raw and broken and filled with hope that the next time, you’re going to find lasting love to make up for the love you lost. She was right. This is what I’d been starving for with Marty for two decades. Less than a week had passed since my first night with Jake, but it felt like life had gone from a black-and-white TV show to Technicolor. The look on Jake’s face as he held me, the way his blue eyes turned gray as he looked into mine, kept me warm for the whole ride home. I could feel my heart opening to Jake. By any measure, this was happening too fast for my own good. But I knew Jake. I trusted him. He’d loved me since I was seventeen. And—this matters—I was starved for love and intimacy, as well as the delectable feeling of being desired. I was Cinderella, and my prince had tracked me down.
* * *
Three days later, the postman dropped off another chicken-scratch note. I opened it immediately and took it into the kitchen. I sat on my stool, drinking black coffee, eager for Jake’s romantic recap of our night in Atlantic City. But that’s not what I got.
Leslie, it’s funny, my life is pretty much an open book to you, and so are my feelings. We’ve both been really open with each other about our emotions, which has been great. Like now.
But I don’t actually know much of anything about the rest of your private life. I try to tell myself it’s none of my business. But when your phone lights up and there’s a message from someone you call “Crazy Boy” or some such name that I can’t help seeing, my mind goes to funny places.
Like, I start to wonder if it’s worth upending my entire life for you, if I’m just going to be another Gorgeous White Boy. I know that I won’t, hopefully. Obviously you’re a free woman. We’re still figuring things out between us, and I’m probably being an incredible hypocrite because I spend time with other women, and you’ve been very clear about your feelings, which is all that should matter, but these are some of the thoughts that go through my male brain.
I think I’m falling in love with you. It’s gut-wrenching. I’ve started down the road that leads from here to you to We, the first steps, but it’s a complicated one. We’ll get there. And beyond.
All my love, forever—
Jake
I stared at his note, stunned. Although I hadn’t looked at the text that night as Jake helped me into the TT, apparently he had. There was a sharpness to his words that made me recoil. Falling in love with me was . . . gut-wrenching? His note was simultaneously, and paradoxically, jealous, passionate, suspicious, and loving.
I put the letter down on the kitchen counter, puzzled. Jake seemed so confident, so experienced with women. So what if I got a text from another man? I’d kissed Crazy Boy, my phone nickname for Chris Bailey, once during my trip to North Carolina a month before. Okay, twice. But it was before I’d started seeing Jake. Why would he ruin our night in Atlantic City, and question my loyalty, especially when he was dating other women, and it was too soon to talk about seeing each other exclusively? And how on earth did Jake know to name himself Gorgeous White Boy, a moniker so similar to Gorgeous Yoga Man, the name that was still in my phone for Damon? I’d left my purse open when I went to the powder room before the drive home. Had Jake looked at my contacts while I was peeing?
The truth was, Jake had nothing to worry about. My five-boyfriend cupboard was bare. Mishka, Dylan, and Damon were gone. Marc was occasional at most. Chris, the one who’d sent me the text, was about to deploy to Afghanistan for twelve months, and could hardly be considered a threat. Jake and I had not made any kind of commitment to each other; we hadn’t even discussed it yet. We weren’t there, although I could feel us getting close. I was scared, and cautious, after what I’d been through in both marriages. If I rushed this, I’d ruin it, and lose a piece of my self-esteem and independence.
Cinderella never dealt with this.
Beneath the undercurrents of fear in his letter, I knew Jake was still that sweet boy I’d let undress me at seventeen. I trusted him. That’s all that mattered. Life is messy, right? Everyone has scars and vulnerabilities. Especially after almost fifty years on the planet. I could feel how much Jake cared for me, how much he craved the connection we’d reignited. Jake and I had been in each other’s lives for three decades. I had to believe that we’d be okay for three more.
* * *
I didn’t ask Jake to explain the contradictions in his letter. It felt rude, and somehow disloyal, to train a microscope on his raw emotions right then. A few days later, he mentioned on the phone that he was flying to his family’s house on Sanibel Island in Florida for three days. The ramshackle beach house had been in Jake’s family for over a century. We’d spent a dreamlike spring break there together my senior year. This time, Jake was going with his mom, sister, and two nieces. I thought he was about to invite me.
Then he said that another woman he was dating was going with him instead.
There was a long silence on the phone as I tried to absorb this news.
“Leslie, it’s nothing. Hannah means nothing to me compared to you. But she’d already bought her plane ticket and my family is expecting her. And you have those other men who send you texts. I can’t cancel at this late date . . .”
I put the phone down on my desk while I took a breath. I looked around my airy office and out the French doors to the mermaid by the hot tub. I felt like crawling through the phone to strangle him. Was he doing this on purpose because he thought I was still dating other men? Did he rationalize that somehow my getting a text from Crazy Boy justified his taking another woman on a trip with his family? To a place we’d been together? It wasn’t the same, at all.
My head hurt. My heart did, too. Was he trying to ruin our transcendent beginning? Was I overlooking warning signs because I’d known him for so long?
I stared into my gray computer screen. My distorted reflection stared back at me, my nose furrowed in confusion like a rabbit munching grass.
“Okay, Jake, okay.” That was all I felt safe saying. “I’ve gotta go now. Talk later.”
I hung up the phone and threw it onto my bed.
I put my head in my hands. We were in no-man’s-land. Was I ready to stop dating and make a commitment? Was he? I didn’t know how to figure this out when we lived in different cities, had compelling lives separate from each other, and when we both felt so naked and vulnerable. This was all unfolding awfully quickly, distorted by intensely strong emotions and white-hot sex. Part of me longed for the distraction of a few crazy but shallow texts from Mishka or Marc. Later that night, I turned to words to untangle myself and all the powerful feelings inside. I sent my letter via email to be sure he got it before he left for Florida.
Dear Jake—
I’m sorry that seeing that text hurt or unnerved you. I would never hurt you on purpose or lie to you. Ever.
You are not one among many. You are incredibly special to me.
However, if I didn’t have a few other fans, like Crazy Boy (who I’ve seen twice in the past two months, btw), I might be eating myself alive with insecurities. And I might be eating you alive too. Neither of which would be pretty.
Ironically, dabbling with a few other men who’ve told me all the wonderful things I didn’t hear in my marriage has helped me be available to you. Those experiences rebuilt my self-esteem. But none of these fans mean anything close to what you do.
At the right time, I’m happy to tell them all that they missed their chance. Permanently. But you have to be ready to commit to me too. Fair is fair, right?
I’m falling in love with you too. But only you can decide if you are ready.
Given all this, I think it’s best for you not to call or email me until you figure out whether you want to make a commitment to me, to be only with me, and to stop seeing your other girlfriends. Take your time. I’m not in a rush.
xoxo Leslie
Jake called and texted me every day he was in Sanibel. I refused to answer. I couldn’t stop imagining Jake and this woman, whom I imagined as a cross between Isabelle Adjani and Beyoncé, lounging in bed listening to the Sanibel waves, making French toast with his mom, or spilling her cleavage out of a string bikini while playing jacks with his nieces on the wide mahogany porch overlooking the banyan trees. Jake sent me a postcard of a pink dolphin, which I got two days into his trip; he must have snuck out to the ramshackle Sanibel post office the day he arrived. In his messy scrawl, which despite my hurt and anger made my heart flip over a few times, he’d written one of my favorite quotes, widely (and mistakenly) attributed to Joan Didion, but originally penned by the French philosopher and historian Philippe Ariès:
“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”
That was all that was written on the postcard besides my address. He didn’t sign his name. He didn’t need to.
* * *
The day he got home, Jake sent me a one-line text.
I want you and me to be a We.
I read, and reread, his words, my heart rocking in my chest. I knew what it meant. I was scared of merging into a “we.” I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to my solo life. But in relationships, you don’t order perfect timing like a Domino’s Pizza. Falling in love felt different this time, because I felt so differently, because I was in a relationship with someone kind and open like myself. This was Jake, a man I respected and knew inside and out. We’d take it slow, because we lived in separate cities. Saying yes terrified me, but saying no would have broken me.
A few months before, if Damon or Mishka or Dylan had suggested such a thing, I’d have been close to retching. I’d thought the last thing I wanted was to be vulnerable to a man again. But Jake’s words made me feel like I had warm honey in my veins instead of blood.
This time, I called Jake back.
* * *
Birthdays rock. My fiftieth? Not so much.
I sat in my office, scrolling through Facebook as a writing break. I had several acquaintances, mostly college friends, whose birthdays were clustered around mine. One after another had posted photos about their huge fiftieth bash, sometimes accompanied by wise reflections on their “first half century.” All of these celebrants had been married for decades, as I had been. As I had thought I always would be. My friends seemed to look back on their lives with deathbed pride, as if most of the journey’s highlights were now in the rearview mirror. My focus on the future felt wholly alien compared with their perspective. I wasn’t going to ignore this milestone, but my instinct was to keep it low-key. When they trumpeted their age across social media, I couldn’t help but cringe, thinking, What twenty-nine-year-olds are going to date you if they know you’re fifty? Instead I liked their posts and kept my opinions to myself.
My internal birthday pep talk came easily: I was lucky to have my health, my kids, work I loved, and a floor of economic security. I didn’t feel old. I felt younger and more excited about life than I had in at least a decade. However, fifty was undeniably older than I’d ever been, no matter how many “boyfriends” I’d screwed in the prior six months, and no matter how young they were. The only thing worse than openly celebrating five decades of life etched across my face, and body, was every single birthday coming after this one. Sixty? Good grief. Thank God I had a decade to get used to the idea.
I couldn’t deny that part of my optimism stemmed from the fact that Jake and I had been together since he’d come back from Florida. He came to see me the day after we finally spoke. He told me it was over with that girlfriend, Hannah. Forever. He wanted me and only me. I believed him. I told my kids we were dating, tense about their reaction, since I’d never introduced a boyfriend to them before, but neither one even shrugged the first morning he came down for breakfast, obviously having spent the night. He trusted me enough to leave his dog, Jennie, with me for a night while he went on
a research trip to Canada. She was so arthritic that she couldn’t walk up and down stairs, and it took her five to six minutes to turn in a circle and lie down on her bed. Watching her struggle, I wondered if Jake was being selfish, even heartless, to keep her alive given the amount of pain she was enduring. Plus her habit of pooping in the house, all over my Persian rugs, alarmed me. She’d defecated on my grandmother’s hundred-year-old runner in the master bedroom, while Jake and I were making love two feet away. It was hilarious and entirely disgusting.
“Isn’t sixteen old enough to be housebroken?” I’d asked Jake afterward.
“Are you kidding?” he’d answered. “She used to be so much worse.”
What could possibly be more appalling than lovemaking interrupted by a pile of steaming doo-doo on an antique hand-knotted Kashan?
A week before my birthday, he sent me another card written in his uh . . . unique handwriting.
Dear Leslie,
I could tell at 16 what an amazing woman you would turn out to be at almost “L” (as the Romans would write it), and I fell in love with you almost immediately—and now I’m wondering why I didn’t pursue you all my life.
Never doubt for a second that you are one kick-ass babe: incredible mind, deep wisdom, magnificent beauty (those eyes!), and a rockin’ body. You are kind, generous, and so erotic. I’m so happy to have reconnected with you like this, right now. It’s perfect.
Love, Jake
Jake, Timmy, and I stayed in the hot tub one cool Indian summer night until our fingers shriveled. We sat crunching salty blue chips on the deck by the fire table. Jake leaned up against the brick wall on one side of the grill, drinking a beer. The slate was still warm from the afternoon sun.
The Naked Truth Page 19