I met a boy.
c. 2005, Miriam M. Wynn
Francine, I've met someone. I should say, instead, that I met a boy. I don't know why I should tell you this except that you're a libertine, and you're far away, and you couldn't find a way to tell anyone I knew at all even if you wanted to.
Marcus would probably laugh if I told him, and he'd think I was only joking. And then, of course, if he knew the truth, he might hurt me for it. None of you has ever thought he was quite the villain I've described him as, but he is. He always has been.
I wonder what you're doing there, toiling away in the jungles of Malaysia . Is it worth it? You told me you went for love, but I think you went for martyrdom. You were always so dramatic, and you know – we both know – I've always envied you for it.
I think that's why I'm telling you this. Yes, that must be why.
All right. I must be brave, now. No one ever entered into a bargain with the devil and shirked the telling of it.
So, where to begin? I met a boy … yes, I met a boy.
* * *
“Darling, we'll be eating at John's tonight, wear something with a low neckline.”
“Why should I?” I've set the cup of tea down and am watching the water swirl, where I stirred it. I'm holding the spoon and forget about it, and drop it on the floor without thinking.
“Because you have fabulous breasts and I want everyone to know it. Stop fooling around, we'll be late.” Marcus has walked in to find me reaching for the spoon under the toe-kick of the cabinet, and he slaps my rear end while I do it.
He has a charm about him, always has. He used it like a weapon to woo me. He knows that I resent him for it, and that I'll never say so. It was my own fault, wasn't it? I was so eager to get away from my father and his demands, and I rushed right on into his instead.
But then, this is old hat. We all know how easily I let myself be misled. That's the whole point to this story, I think. The whole point …
So we drive together to do some shopping, which is really Marcus shopping, because he has tons of money and likes to flaunt it. I hadn't realized how mercenary he was until the day he picked out everything I would wear to our engagement party, our dinner rehearsal, our wedding day. He decides everything. If I change something, he will silently take it away from me, and present me with the item he originally chose. If I try to change it again, he will hold my wrist tightly, and he will lean in, and he will kiss me, very, very firmly. And we won't say a word. And I'll do just what he asked, without asking.
Marcus wants to buy a new sofa, and he is tired of my old Saab. I should be driving something with more personality, he insists. We go to the most expensive stores he can think of, and inside of each one he shakes his head, irritated. No one understands.
My smile is faint, and I slide my fingers over the suede of a chocolate sofa that reminds me of the chocolate of his eyes when he first told me that my skin smelled like sliced green apples ripening in the sun, and could he kiss me?
He had tasted like black pepper and the very sting of it had made me forget that I was still living with my parents and I didn't dare bring a man like him home. Because, he was a man, and I was most definitely a girl.
“Keep your eyes peeled, Danny,” he says, and I wake up, to see him fidgeting with a book of cloth samples, dissatisfied with each and every one. He wants a very specific couch, or he won't get one at all. It must be chocolate brown, with cream piping. Not white piping, but cream. It must have a specific depth to its cushions, and a particular angle to its seat. He doesn't want to have to climb out of the couch after he's in it, that's too much work.
I follow him around the store, nodding as the store clerk tries to impress him. I give him a sympathetic smile. I knew when we entered that there would be nothing at all here that would match.
There was one time where he took me in the kitchen, on our little butcher block, while I was crying. My mother had died, and I was a wreck. And I had thrown a tantrum, and refused to wear the black dress he had picked for me. It had a low neckline, and I hated that my breasts were his to display. It was as if we were in the middle ages, and my very womanhood belonged to him, my very existence was to please him, represent him, appease him. And I couldn't stand it, not on the day of her funeral.
He doesn't actually beat me. It's always … how can I put it? A promise that he won't be happy and I won't like what he does next. I never want to see what he'll do next. And, of course, he knows that.
We've been to eight stores and my feet are burning in the pumps that are a standard in my closet. He likes me to look pristine. I'm never allowed to look sloppy. If a hair is out of place he'll tuck it gently out of the way, and without a word, I will find the nearest bathroom and make amends.
I used to be fairly pristine, or pristine enough, when he met me. I hadn't dated more than a few times, and boys … I felt alien with them, uninterested in trying to understand them. They were basic, they wanted one thing, and I didn't want to give it.
I was a sophomore at Brown, and he was a visiting lecturer, returned from several years of teaching art history in Florence , to give intense, erotic performances in our lecture halls on Botticelli. I found him unbelievably exotic. He paid me no attention, and I only imagined his voice orating by itself for me and me alone.
I would have left it at that but somehow Lina brought me along to a small dialogue meant for some local patrons of my school. He laid eyes on me then, and I suppose he decided that I was worth having.
You always told me it was romantic. Lina loved to tell you how she put us together and I always wanted to tell her … to tell her I wish she hadn't. I can't deny that it was romantic, though. Marcus is second-generation Italian, after all. He's intense.
We don't find the couch, and we don't bother with the car; it's only on the boiler in his mind, and it'll become an issue later, when it really needs dealing with. For now, he'll let me drive my old Saab to work.
Work is the one freedom I have. I'm an assistant curator, in rare books and manuscripts, at the Hough Museum of Fine Art. It's not a large museum, so I have several little jobs to do, but it keeps me happy.
It's a Sunday dinner we're going to. Marcus is in the shower, and he emerges, naked, rubbing off vigorously with a towel. I am brushing my teeth at the foggy mirror, waiting my turn in my robe.
I rinse my mouth, and the moment I set the electric brush back on its pedestal, his hands are on my waist, and his lips are on my ear, and his body is pressed against mine, and I close my eyes.
“Open for me,” he murmurs, low into my ear, and his fingers are tugging away my sash, lifting my robe, finding my sex.
He comes inside easily, for it is his. He takes me slowly, surely, and I gasp, hands holding tight to the edge of the sink, for he is big, and the force of him is an awesome thing. It generally feels like a wave, too big to run from, so I just lie down in the face of it, and let it drown me.
We've been married nine years. A long time, but not so long, not compared to my father and mother. My father's still alive of course but there's a strange thing in the air now when I visit. Because he looks at me with something odd in his face. Like he disapproves of me, but we both know exactly why I married so young.
He never laid a finger to me, not that way. But now that I look back I realize his way of owning me was much the same as Marcus'.
In the car, his car which is a Mercedes-Benz and sleek and charcoal silver, we speed along in the rain-wet of early evening. It's dark out, because it's fall, and it's vaguely cold even though the heat is on. The seats are warmed, one of many options he's been sure to add. The leather still feels cold, though, black against the backs of my thighs which are in gartered stockings.
No one would ever know that, though, because I am wearing a suitably respectable-length black skirt, and above it, the blouse he also picked out. It's a light cashmere sweater, black, with a deep vee neckline. Above it he has placed a large, diamond solitaire. My earrings are diamond studs. They all match the platinum diamond engagement ring I wear along with my platinum wedding band. Inside of it is inscribed, May you be mine forever.
The first time we made love, I was eighteen and flighty in his arms like a bird. He'd been taking me to lovely places like the opera, fine dinners, and picnic trips to orchards and vineyards and beaches. He'd been kissing me, lightly at first, then more intensely, until he'd gotten me to a point where I clutched him back as tightly as he clutched me. Weekend after weekend, late night tryst after tryst, away from my parents and in his arms, he molded me into what he wanted.
Of course he knew exactly what he was doing. Doesn't every man?
He used the trick of soft and hard, the trick no girl can resist. When you tease my lips so gently, how can I not want you to kiss me harder? So that when you do, I can hardly tell you to stop, because I asked for more, tugging on your shirt like a little girl demanding a puppy of her own.
At his townhouse, which was sprawling and wood-floored and luminous, full of framed art and a fireplace that roared, he put me down on the Persian carpet and trailed his fingers all over me until I squirmed. Who knew how many girls he'd had across Europe and America , but I knew he'd had plenty. His dark brown eyes were passionate and intent, and he put his lips to my nipples like he had been born with the code to unlock any pair in the world.
I gave it up like the virgin I was, scared and excited. It hurt like the devil and we all know during you're not having any fun. But the way he looked at me when he took it was frightening, more frightening than the pain, it was a look that said he was taking more than just my body, and I held onto him so tightly that he pressed me down and murmured words in my ear I'd never forget.
“Let go, Danielle, my darling, I'll take care of everything.”
And in relief and confusion, I did.
At John Geary's brick and shutter ode to aristocratic Americana , his wife greets us at the door with spread arms, sparkling pearls, and the faint perfume of gardenia. She is thirty-five, generous with her friends, and charmingly in love with her husband.
Her husband, however, is not in love with her. He has slept with various other wives around town, but is so discreet his wife can easily forget it when he loops his arm around her waist and greets us, too.
Sandy blonde hair a little mussed where he combed his fingers through it, he is boisterous and fun, everything my husband is not.
“Marcus, man, come on in, we've got a full house tonight!”
He leans in, gives a strong-arm hug, bustles Marcus on, and takes me by the upper arms.
“Danielle, honey, you're gorgeous as usual.” He pulls me in for a light kiss and I allow it, smiling faintly at Marcus, who clears his throat.
“Jealous, eh?” Chuckles our host, and he stuffs his hands in his pockets and nudges Marcus into the back of the house.
“Hello, Pauline,” I say, reaching out to do the usual cheek-kisses of greeting, turning to shut the door after me. I hand her a small box, wrapped neatly in elegant paper.
“Oh, Danielle, you didn't!” Her blue eyes sparkle and she gives my arm an extra squeeze. She knows I always bring a gift, and that it's always different.
Inside the hallway, as she leads me to the other guests, I turn to check my hair in the mirror. Every curl is in place, my neck displayed as he likes it. He prefers my hair up, he says, because it shows my neck, which invites touching.
When we're in public, I am generally as charming as he is, and people find they're surprised I have a personality. It's because when they meet Marcus, or think of him, he is so huge in their minds he obliterates everything else. They know he has a wife, but who can think of her, or her identity, when he eclipses everything else?
I have known Pauline a long time, and our relationship is built on a recognition that our husbands are larger than life, and we are in the backdrop. So she appreciates my little gifts, and I appreciate her warm spirit. We are ignored together. We are used to it.
We emerge into the drawing room, which Pauline fashioned after an English mansion she visited on her honeymoon exploring the origin of her husband's lineage. It's filled with Regency furniture, warm rich woods and elegant detailing. I have long admired her decorating sense, antiquated though it is.
I stand in the center of the room and shake hands with each of her guests.
“Marcus, Danielle, I'd like you to meet—“
He takes us through two couples, the Srivers and the Cohens, a visiting friend from California , and one college student whose parents are family friends on Pauline's side.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, or some variation thereof, to each husband, each wife, to Grace Polanski of San Francisco, and to Nicolas Thierry, whose electric blue eyes sink into mine with a familiar pressure that makes me snatch my hand away.
We all give practiced smiles, settle down in various places around the room, and set to conversation.
I sit on the refined sofa on the far side of the room, at a ninety-degree angle to the fireplace, its back to the wall. Behind this sofa hangs a huge mirror, and a beautifully restored console against the wall, weighted down with tasteful décor and an exploding vase brimming over with blue irises and white freesias.
On the back of the sofa is my husband's hand, curled lightly, below which is my shoulder. I have not moved, except to stand in greeting and sit back down again, in my place. Marcus chats amiably with Kenneth Sriver, free hand sipping occasionally at his gin and tonic.
The funny thing about this room is that Pauline has another mirror, directly opposite me. It is the exact same mirror as the one behind me, and it's an epic tale, how she obtained each of them. She loves them both intensely, and I'm thinking this as I look up to see that, though he sits off in another corner, Nicolas Thierry's eyes are on my image in the mirror, and he is not doing anything to hide it.
Pauline sits down next to me with her glass of white wine, and touches my knee lightly. I turn my head to her, and smile back.
“So how've you been dear, it's been a while since we saw each other last.”
“Oh, the usual … work keeps me sneezing,” I said, and felt my eyes crinkle at her genuine laugh.
“Well, you need to get out more. Why don't you come over next weekend? We're hosting a wine tasting, courtesy of John, of course, it's his latest craze.”
“I do appreciate it, Pauline but …”
“Don't answer me now,” she says, lightly, tapping me kindly on the wrist. She stands, tossing her gaze up to the man behind me.
“But it couldn't hurt to change your pace, every now and then.”
I couldn't agree more, but I keep my mouth shut.
When he makes love to me, he is thorough. I am like a piece of land, and he is there to survey it. He leaves no stone unturned, no inch unmeasured, no pile of dirt unsifted.
It's not that he doesn't do his part to pleasure me, to ensure that I reach my orgasm, to ensure that our marriage bed is maintained. It's not that he doesn't have spontaneous moments, where he will surprise me with the setting of his desire.
What is it, then? Why should I complain about it? I don't know. And if I don't know, how can I complain? How can I leave, if there are no bruises, if I have friends, a job, the ability to leave? It's not that he would stop me. He would let me go, if I insisted. At least, I think he would. He isn't a crude man, that's the thing. He isn't simple. He wouldn't say, “I love you, so you're mine, and you can't leave.”
Maybe it's the same with Pauline. He is so much my life, so large, so much in every little part of it, even when I am away from him, that there is nowhere to go.
On the way to dinner, I bend down to pick up my dropped napkin, and John whisks Marcus off in front of the group, separating us. I look around for a moment, figuring that I might as well help clear up the room, as Pauline quickly snaps up a dish here and there of sampled hors d'oeuvres. And as I turn, I come face to face with Nicolas, who takes my free hand in his, places his empty glass into it, and slides his fingers away.
The sensation of them is a dry, rasping warmth, and then the glass, damp with the perspiration it collected sitting on a table somewhere. He has an extremely sarcastic look in his eyes, which are so thickly lashed they're outrageous.
“Thank you,” I find myself saying, realizing how stupid it is to thank him for handing me something to clean up. He should have offered to do some of the cleaning up himself.
“You're welcome,” is his reply, a slurring mire of mumbled language. He speaks like he's been dipped in black ink, and all of him seems very dark and deliberate. As a lover of words, of books, I find his murder of language awful.
It seems unnatural, in a bright, respectable setting like Pauline's drawing room.
So I don't say anything else, and I turn smartly on my heel and head off to follow Pauline. But I remember the look in his eyes, and am well aware that I remember that look from somewhere else.
It's a look men get, when they want something, and think that they can get it. It involves many things. Obstinacy. Cruelty. Greed. Blind relentlessness.
Odd, that a boy should be able to wear that look.
* * *
Your letter made me laugh. Of course you'd encourage me to be a disreputable woman.
So Malaysia is hot, well I could have guessed that. Why do you chase after someone who so clearly mistreats you? It'd be one thing if he stayed around to do it. But you like danger and I suppose chasing after tigers in the jungle is much the same as chasing after the man who chases them. Just be careful and remember that there are other men to chase after who'd give their right arm to have you.
Do you remember Nathan, in New York ? That was a hot summer and I remember how he dragged himself into near-madness for you. And you just laughed and let him. I'd be too sorry to do it, not that I'm saying you're a bad person for it. You were honest with him up front, that he could have you only if and when you felt like it, and never anytime else.
What makes a person lose themselves like that? God, I ask that question and I suppose I've done the same thing.
But I still don't know why. Is it that we actually like the pain of something futile? That seems so useless, so stupid. What are we getting out of that kind of pain? I can't even guess.
* * *
At dinner my husband puts his hand underneath the table, draws the silk of my skirt up, and traces circles on my upper thigh. Casually as he eats, he lifts his hidden hand to grasp his cutlery, or his glass, finishes what he's doing, and returns to my thigh.
He does this kind of thing often, as though I'm a cat. I offer basic conversation to the table at large, daydreaming through the soup, the salad. When we reach the entrée, Pauline asks for my help in the kitchen, and relieved, I tug my skirt down and follow after her.
“Do you realize that boy has been staring at you all evening?” She asks, voice low and amused.
“What?” I place the used plates neatly in the sink, piling the silverware beside them.
“Nicolas. He's been staring at you – really obviously – and you haven't even noticed?”
I feel my skin warm up and I put my hand to my neck, swallowing.
“I – no, I didn't. Is it really awful? Should I … should I say something?”
“Oh, I think it's harmless, but it could be worthwhile to drop a hint to him sometime tonight. We don't want Marcus to maul him.” She snorts delicately, a sound I've never heard her make. I stare at her open mouthed, and she grins.
“Oh please, Danielle. He's obviously territorial. Better safe than sorry!” She adds this last brightly before picking up the tray of plates, and heads back out into the dining room.
Marcus was very deliberate about training my body to enjoy sex. He made love to me regularly after taking my virginity, and it became natural for us to return home after a meal, or a movie, or a play, or a party, and head up to his bedroom, where I would undress for him, and proceed to his bed.
In it, I learned what pleased him. He liked me prone, with my eyes open and watching him. He liked my mouth to take him as he directed it, and not on its own volition. He liked me to beg for him, and so he would arouse me expertly until I couldn't think any more, and was forced to. He liked my sex neatly trimmed, my nails manicured and without color. He liked my hair long, and uncolored, and untreated.
For some reason I thought that our wedding night, a few years after I had graduated college and my father had grimly given me away, would be different. My mother had earnestly warned me about what to expect from a man, oblivious to what I had been doing, on so many nights along the years, in his bed. I had kissed her fiercely and told her to stop crying, because in her naïveté she had never been hurt by anything my father had ever done, and she was clueless as to why I was so eager to leave home.
I suppose on my wedding night I was ready for love to take my heart, split it wide, and justify everything I had ever done with Marcus, before we had said our vows. I could have sworn I would feel something , when my father placed my hand on his forearm, and he turned to look down at me, powerful and handsome in his black suit with his white flower in the lapel.
But all I could find, searching in his eyes, was a certain future. One that he would steer, one that I had agreed to. My heart was not bursting with anything but a calm so deep it seemed I was made of ice, and here was the man who had carved me into a blushing bride.
Now that I am aware of Nicolas' staring, I find my eyes darting all over the table to avoid it. Conversation keeps on as if nothing is wrong, but Pauline throws me a knowing glance and Marcus leans into my ear, lightly brushing a loose curl at the back of my neck.
“This young man has some nerve,” he murmurs, and I look up at him quickly, hoping there won't be trouble. The look he gives back is affronted, and I realize this boy will get into trouble if he keeps pissing Marcus off.
“I'll talk to him, after dinner,” I assure him, and he nods, a short bob of his head that assumes the business is done with. He goes back to stroking my knee, and I carry on.
After dinner, of course, brings the need for actually facing my task. I brush my hands down the front of my skirt, nervous, and approach him, carrying a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries and a glass of champagne.
“Nicolas,” I say, warily, and I present him with my gifts. His stubborn gaze doesn't move from my face, but he takes them.
“Your husband's pretty intense,” he says inappropriately, and I lick my lips, willing myself not to look behind me. I know Marcus is watching.
“Yes, well …” I watch him set the plate down, take a swig of his champagne, and place it out of the way.
“So are you,” I finish. “Aren't you going to taste the strawberries? They're delicious.”
He looks back at me as if it were an afterthought. “Are they? I'm not interested in strawberries.”
This begs a certain response, but I don't want to give it.
“Well, Nicolas, it's been … a pleasure talking to you. I do hope you take care and … wish you the best of luck in school.”
“Danielle,” he says, suddenly, in a very low voice but the tone is intimate and my mouth falls open. I close it quickly, dropping my eyes from his, which are a dark, burning blue that makes me uncomfortable.
“Yes, Nicolas?” I keep using his full name so he'll understand formality, rules, social constraints.
“Why does a man like him have a woman like you?”
I have no answer for that, so I reach out dumbly, picking up the plate of spurned strawberries.
“You're so bottomless all I want to do is fill you.”
“Good lord, watch your mouth,” I gasp, amazed to have even said it, but more amazed he's gone as far as he has.
“That was a complement, Mrs. Russo.”
“I appreciate it, but honestly, I'm married, and you're a child. So, please stop staring at me openly in public, and behave yourself,” I say, brave enough to look him in the eye as I say it. The look on his face tells me his ego's been offended, but I ignore it, and after giving him a sharp nod, I make my way back to Marcus.
He places his hand on my waist, takes a strawberry, and eats it with gusto. Nicolas watches with no expression on his face.
On our wedding night, there was neither tenderness nor cruelty. Marcus neatly removed all my clothing, placed me on the bed, parted my thighs, slid his fingers into me, and when I was ready, he followed after them.
The orgasm, when it came, was familiar and tiring, and I lay in his arms and stared up at the ceiling in our hotel in Florence expecting to feel something different. Usually, I fell asleep after I came, but that night I was wide awake, and I slipped out of the bed. I went out onto the balcony, staring out at the city, and breathed the sweet summer air in.
It wasn't that my body didn't enjoy him. He was well kept, firm, with dark olive skin and dark brown hair that rubbed against my flesh in a way that pleased me. When he breathed, thrusting inside of me, the sound filled my mind and my breathing matched his, and when he came, the sensation of his body tightening, the groans that left him, the way he squeezed me tightly to him, all of it made me feel good, made me sigh and stretch and welcome him. And when he left my body, to hold me in his arms as he fell into sleep, I didn't feel dirty, or uncared for.
But I didn't ever fear he wouldn't be there. But it seemed awful, to want to have that fear.
“Can you believe that kid? I ought to say something to John, but I won't.” Marcus takes off his shoes and begins dressing for bed.
“I told him to behave himself, so I think he got the hint.”
“Unbelievable!” he replies, and dressed, he climbs into bed. He plucks up his latest novel and begins reading while I brush out my russet hair, wild and wavy as my mother's. Every time I comb it I remember her, and how good it always smelled.
Two weeks later I walk into Pauline's drawing room, set up creatively like a wine-tasting room at any vineyard, and revel in being alone. Taking Pauline's hint that his territorial nature was a little too obvious, Marcus graciously succumbed to my request to attend her party. I stand sipping on a merlot, smelling the bouquet and laughing at Pauline make a face, and realize it's been a long time since I socialized without my husband nearby.
“You look positively bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Danielle, and I think I know why.” She gives me a meaningful lift of her eyebrow and heads off to chat with a handful of people from her realty office, her husband nowhere in sight.
I marvel how she and I change into individual beings, when our husbands are not in the room.
In addition to her realty officemates, there are a couple of her friends from the historical architecture society, others from her reading group, and still others from the neighborhood. She is far more social than I have ever been, and I envy her ability to throw parties and run them as if she were born to do it.
I realize the main plate of crackers is growing low, so I pick it up and slip out of the room.
As I step into the hallway, Nicolas Thierry ambles down the hall with his hands in his pockets, stops in his tracks, and looks back at me. My heart skips, very suddenly, something I've never felt it do before.
“Good evening, Nicolas,” is all I can think of to say, and I keep walking, away from him, toward the kitchen. I hope, fervently, he'll go off to wherever he was going and leave me alone.
“Good evening, Mrs. Russo,” he says, and he stands in the kitchen archway, watching me as I set the plate down, looking in the cabinets for the crackers.
“Up there,” he points, and I nod, opening up a cabinet and pulling them down. I make as much noise as possible getting them out of the packaging and onto the plate, and he continues to lean against the door, relaxed for all the world as if I hadn't warned him to leave me alone.
The inevitable finally happens: the plate is full of various cracker types, I've put the rest of the box away, and I've got nothing left to do but try to get by him.
I put my hand on the counter and look up at him. His black hair is thick and cut in the messy irreverent style boys cut it in these days, and his slender lips are a dull red, turned down in a natural pout.
“How old are you?” I find myself asking. I slowly reach out to pick up the plate, hoping he'll move without my asking.
“Nineteen.” He keeps leaning against the archway, slightly rumpled in his long-sleeved sweater over button-up shirt ensemble, below them a pair of jeans with the hems unraveling, and flat, white-rimmed sneakers that need replacing.
“How old are you?” he asks back, and I give him a raised, glad he's gotten realistic.
“Thirty-three.”
He nods, thinking it over, eyes dropping to my right hand, which is clutching the plate. His gaze moves to my left hand.
“How long have you been married?”
I lift the plate with both hands, turning to him, maintaining my stance. Why should I be scared of him? I'm the adult.
“Nine years,” I answer, and I begin walking resolutely toward him, preparing for battle.
But, thank God, Pauline comes bustling down the hall.
“Get out of the way, Nick, I'm carrying way too many glasses!” She exclaims, and as easily as he took up residence in my way, he moves out of it, hanging back in the hallway as if he wants to try something else.
Thankfully, he doesn't, and Pauline starts, realizing I'm the one he's been talking to.
“Are you alright, Danielle?” she asks, and I think it must have been something in my face, but I have no idea what it is.
“I'm fine, Pauline, just refilling the cracker plate.”
“Oh, you're a dear, give that to Nick and help me clean up these glasses, will you?”
Amused at her trick, I come to him, present him with the plate, and just as I start to pull away, his free hand takes my wrist, blocked from Pauline's view by my body. He says nothing, but his grip is hot and I pull away, turning back and hurrying to her side, keeping my head down and nodding as she cheerfully updates me on the party gossip.
The party over, the kitchen and drawing room spotless, I hug Pauline goodbye and slip outside down her front steps. My car is parked in her curved driveway, nearer to the street than the other cars had been, and sits alone in the shadows by the high hedges that separate it from the neighbor's yard.
The moon is shadowed by fall clouds, and seeing my breath on the air, I inhale deeply, walking slowly to the car. Reaching to touch the handle, I hear the scrape of a shoe against the brick drive, and turn at the sound, sucking in my breath.
Nicolas, covered loosely in a wool coat, reaches out, pushing his body against mine so I fall back hard against the glass of the driver's side window in the darkness of the bushes. He presses his hands down on my wrists.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” I exclaim, and he leans forward.
“Be quiet,” he hisses, face angry, and I stare at him. His cheeks are glowing in the moonlight.
“Why should I? You're attacking me like a rapist.” Realizing what it looks like, a shadow crosses his face and he quickly releases me, and steps back. I clutch my purse and jacket to me.
“Mrs. Russo,” he begins, and I raise my hand.
“Stop right there. I already told you … I am married. ”
“So? You don't love him.”
I laugh, shocked.
“How on earth would you know whether I love my husband or not?”
“He treats you like a piece of property.”
In the silence I become aware of the sound of his breathing, harsh and sullen, and the obstinate look on his face, full of youthful arrogance and something far more dangerous. He wants me, so badly that he is not hiding it, and he may be too young to hide it. Before, the staring had simply seemed rude and random, but now it's very clear what's behind it.
“Whether he does or not, the question is, do I want you ?”
I seem to shake him with that, and his brows crease down hard together, sharply angled black stalks. There is a gleam to his skin, to the full flesh of his cheeks. It reminds me of my skin as a girl, when I hadn't dreamed of anything but old books and ancient castle libraries.
“That didn't occur to you, did it? You men are all the same. You think because you want something, you should have it.” I shrug my shoulders, straighten myself out, and step out from between him and the car door.
“All I want –“ He reaches out, hand going for my arm, but I pull it away, wary. He finishes weakly.
“I just want to know you.”
“You want to have me. There's a difference.”
“I'm not like him.” He says it like an oath.
“Aren't you?”
Our breaths mingle, twin puffs of carbon dioxide condensing in the air, and it is not lost on me how beautiful he is, how innocent and selfish and young, and I wonder what I would have done as a girl his age, faced with all that hunger. I probably would have given in to it. He is large and thick in his warm wool jacket, he is at least a few inches taller than me, and I'm in heels. I could reach out, slip into that jacket with him, burrow myself into his youth and maleness, find out what he tastes like.
Instead, I stick my key in the door and unlock it.
“Nicolas, you're a … you seem like a nice boy. But it's really … it's really mean of you to do this, you know? It's just flat out disrespectful …”
I feel his fingers, sudden and light, trailing my jaw, and I freeze. But they do nothing else, sliding only lightly against my skin, and I turn to look at him, and the look on his face is lost and intense, dark in the shadows and full of so much longing that I forget how to breathe.
“I want to touch you, Danielle, the way he touches you seems so wrong,” he breathes, and I stare at him intently, waiting for him to finish. “You're a person, God you're beautiful, and I just want to …”
His arms slide down, around me, and it makes no sense to me, how I am in them, and his breath fans against my face, hotly slips up into the cold crevices against my neck, and his mouth, young and firm, finds mine, and he tastes sweet and hot and his tongue, slick and moist, moves against mine so surely I fall back against the car again.
This time, his fingers on my wrist are gentle, and they guide my hands to the inside of his jacket where I didn't dare go a minute ago, and inside of it I find his waist, and the belt loops on his jeans, and I tug on them.
He makes a raw sound, that echoes up into my throat, and kisses me harder. I don't know where I am anymore, he feels that good, and the kissing becomes deep, perversely deep, and in my brain flashes the image of Marcus, in bed, at home.
“Stop, stop.” I fumble, pushing him away, wiping at my mouth, trying not to look at his face, which is so naked I can't bear it and I hope that no one heard or saw us and start trying to find my way inside the car.
“Wait a minute,” he begins, but I pull away, plop inside, and I slam the door shut, but not before hearing the way his breath catches, as if I have wounded him.
Resolute, determined, I start the car, and refuse to look at him, and refuse all the way home to look in the rear-view mirror.
* * *
I know you're not the type to ever opt for marriage so maybe this makes no sense to you and you're wondering why I don't just leave him. You wonder how I could even give up my last name for his, how I could allow him to dress me and define me as I have.
I don't even know, really. I think I was in love with him, but it was a strange kind of love, like he put blinders on me and led me down one path because that was all I could see. If I'd known there were other paths …
But of course, I knew in theory there were. But when someone convinces you there aren't any, how do you really know? I know I'm not stupid. I know I'm not an idiot. But when I met Marcus he told me the world was him and … I don't know how but he tricked me into believing it.
Or maybe I wanted to believe it. How else do you allow yourself to be tricked? Maybe he read something in me that I didn't know was so obvious, and he just gave me what I wanted. Because it's not like I'm depressed or unhappy or in pain. Am I really suffering? I am so terribly aware of it and I do nothing about it. So I must have wanted it …
It's just a circle. I sit and wonder how I got here, and don't know how. I wonder why I'm not trying to leave, and don't feel any motivation to. Is it just safe? Do I not care? Do I really love him, and this is why?
I wonder if we had children if it would change anything. But I think that I'm glad we don't because if we did … imagine my children seeing the way he treats me. Or would he hide that, keep it hidden behind our bedroom door?
I honestly think he doesn't want children because they would take my time and attention. And he's the only one allowed to have that.
* * *
In the bathtub in the dark, I listen to the silence and the sound of bubbles bristling and am glad Marcus is asleep.
I'd sat in the driveway in the car for a while before I'd been able to stop shaking. The look on Nicolas' face won't leave me, his mouth a wide, open cry in the dark, but no words coming from them, as I ran away. I feel as if I've betrayed someone, and what's scaring me is that I'm not sure who I really feel I've betrayed.
I know that, in reality, it's the man sleeping in the other room. But in the dark of the bathroom, the moon finally emerging to paint the tiles in a ghostly gray, I hear the noise that Nicolas made.
The water has become lukewarm. I pull up the drain switch, and step out, hurrying into the bath towel and finally my robe, staring up eventually at the window. It reminds me of how pale his skin looked, in the shadows of the hedges.
It takes several days, but I manage to control my daydreams enough to focus on work and only slip into thinking about what happened in Pauline's driveway when I'm alone. But I make a mistake.
In those moments, driving to work, or doing the laundry, I am hit by a sensory memory of his belt loops tangled in my fingers, his groin pressed against mine, and his mouth, sliding, pushing, reaching, deep down into me. And the scent of him is forgotten, with days having passed, but the sensation of that moment isn't. It shakes me, and my nipples, hard, remind me of how intensely he made me feel.
I have never felt like that with Marcus. And I am now frightened that I know.
I'm at work, carefully cleaning a sixteenth-century Catholic monastery manuscript, when Elaine, our intern, pops her head around the corner.
“You've got a visitor in your office with some questions on the exhibit,” she says, and I nod absently.
Eventually making my way to face the public, a part of my job I tend to wish wasn't necessary, I open my door and find Nicolas standing in front of my wall of framed prints, pictures, and certifications, with his shoulders hunched.
I shut the door quickly and wait for him to turn. He seems taller than I remember.
“What are you doing here?” Is the first thing I ask, and his face, which was guarded when he first turned, becomes placid.
“I've been thinking. You said that all men were the same. I want to prove I'm not.”
“You're a boy, not a man.” I take a wide berth around him and the side of the room he's on, taking refuge behind my desk. I sit down, lean back, and watch him.
“Shouldn't you be in class, or writing a paper or something?”
He's turned to face me, and he bites his lip, looking back at me intently. I concentrate on fixing my eyes on his and not letting them travel to the light dusting of hair along his jaw, unshaven.
“The thing about college is it's flexible. I'm on the Dean's list. Don't worry about it.”
There's an air about him I don't like, and I cross my legs at the knees, waiting.
“Well? You had questions?”
“You know I didn't come to ask any about that. I'm here to study you .”
I blink, and give him a wry look.
“While I appreciate the gesture, I don't intend to repeat what happened the other night. That was—“
“Going to happen again. And again. And the way you kissed me back, I know you want me to, so don't lie.”
I have no answer for that, so I don't say anything for a minute. The silence sits, so heavy I can hear the clock Marcus gave me for an anniversary, ticking away on my leather blotter.
“We could sit here all day, Nicolas.”
“Okay.”
I snort, shuffle my papers around, and when he really doesn't move at all, I give a long sigh.
“I'm going to keep saying no. You should just … head back to school and torture some other poor girl. Someone spunky and unmarried.”
The look he gives me is so dark I shut my mouth.
“Torture?” he asks. His voice is scathing. I stay silent.
Very deliberately, he walks around the desk, stands at the side of it, and looks right down into my eyes. I swallow. His eyes are a problem. They are so huge, so frightening. They stir things in me I can't even name.
“Please, Nicolas, just … why are you doing this? Why can't you just respect my answer?”
He kneels at my side, puts his hands on the arms of my chair, and turns me to face him. I feel the trembling start, the same trembling I'd had at the car, and try to stop.
His eyes, wide and framed by the black lashes I remembered by shadow, stay intently on mine as he speaks, softly.
“Because your answer, no matter how much you tell me otherwise, is yes. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Then let me live with the one I'm telling you out loud. Teach me a lesson. Leave me the way I am.”
He doesn't answer. He puts a hand to my cheek, and strokes it. I gaze back at him, not having anything else in my brain to defend myself with.
“Part your legs, Danielle,” he says.
“Wh-what?”
He doesn't bother with any more words. He puts his hands on my knees and pushes them apart. I start to pull away, to push away, but he does not let me go, and he comes between them, and up, and his mouth, relentless, oh so deliciously stubborn, finds mine.
“I'm going to make love to you,” the words fall from somewhere low in his throat and land somewhere in between my eyes, and I close them, confused, and his tongue begins driving the point home. All this wanting, all his wanting, I have never felt this before.
His hands roam, tug, and I am gasping, because he is like a force of nature, tearing through my office and into my body, and the moment my hands grab his shoulders I realize I am not going to stop.
I tug on his jacket, I tug on his hair. His mouth licks at my ear, at my neck, he pulls my hair from its clip, he buries his face in my chest, he keeps yanking at all the things that keep me from him and the moment my lips touch his neck I sob. He smells like trees and wind and youth and sweat and sex and bed.
“Oh God,” I breathe, “oh God,” and he pulls hard on my skirt, up around my waist and his hands, shaking, to find my thighs.
“Jesus Christ,” he pants, because he has found my garters, and my black silk underwear.
“Nicolas, Nicolas,” I whisper, squirming, hoping to run, but he knows what he's doing. He slips his fingers between my thighs, ignoring that I've shut them, and they brush my sex, then slip lower, then find me, then enter, and I shudder. Such a little thing, just one finger, but it means more is coming.
“I need to taste you, open, open for me,” he commands, garbled in his throat as though he's choking, and he yanks my legs apart, pulls the silk aside, and there, one leg up on the desk, the other up on the arm of the chair, I lose my fingers in his hair while he invades me with his tongue, hell-bent on making me come.
It goes on, and on, and I stare down, at his tousled black hair, at his eyebrows, stern as he works, at his lashes, pressed down against his flushed cheeks, and I begin shaking, bucking, covering my mouth with one hand as the orgasm starts coming, loud, big, searing, wild, uncontrollable and alien, a pleasure that hasn't been carefully granted but is being forced messily from me.
Frantic, I look down into his face as he looks up at me, electrocuting me with the dark knowledge in his blue, blue eyes. He reaches up and pushes his fingers into my mouth and I begin sucking, sucking, sucking hard, biting, choking on them as the last of it wrings me out and leaves me, panting, half fallen into his lap, spilling from the chair.
The moment it's over he pulls me down onto him and wraps me around him, holding me so tight I can't breathe, and I start to pull back.
“Don't move,” he says, voice ragged. His eyes are closed, his neck pressed into my shoulder. I pull away anyway, and press my fingers to his face, holding him. He looks angelic and demented, spent and beautiful, and I kiss his temple, panting there as I catch my breath.
“You see,” he says, after we've calmed and can think again. I remain silent, afraid to say anything.
“You see why I can't leave you alone?”
There is a sweet awkwardness in the way he puts my clothes back on, as if worshipping me. It's vulnerable and impenetrable, his expression resolute. I can't read it. I watch him put my skirt back in its place, carefully comb my damp hair out of my face.
“I can't do this. My husband will know.” I speak from the back of my throat, feeling a bit raw.
He doesn't answer. He straightens my collar, smoothes his hands down my calves, and stands. He reaches out and I move into his arms, marveling at how I fit into them, how safe I feel there.
He kisses my cheek, then my lips, and we stand for a while. I close my eyes, feeling the rhythm of our breathing, breathing in his smell. It's warm and alive, and I can't imagine being without it, and realize I'm going to have to be without it very, very soon.
“One day,” he eventually begins, letting me go reluctantly and watching as I wrap my arms around myself. “You're going to leave him. And until then, I'm going to work at making you change your mind.”
“You're out of your mind,” I say, begging him with my eyes to stop this. “Please, Nicolas, what you're asking, I can't do—“
“It's cruel of him to keep you like a pet. And maybe you like being kept—“ his eyes drop to my lips and I feel my skin turning warm, “but not the way he goes about it.”
“I … he's a good man. He and I … “
“You'll figure it out.” He gives me a lopsided smile, suddenly a boy again, and I feel strange and old. I sit back on the desk, reminded.
“I can't leave him for a child, you know.” I frown, staring down at my arms. The hair on them has risen, along with goose bumps.
“Who said I was a child?” His face turns serious beyond words, and unable to find a retort, I watch as he straightens his own clothes.
“Until next time,” he murmurs, leaning in, and I close my eyes against the sure, slow, delving of his mouth, so different from the methodic way in which Marcus kisses me. I taste myself, salty and alien.
He leaves me standing there, not knowing what I'll do.
* * *
It's an amazing thing. I don't know how he does it, but he makes me move and think and be completely different than I've ever been. You've mentioned taking younger lovers before and I'd thought that was something so far beyond my own … world. But his … fire. It was like he was on fire, and I was eaten up by it, caught on it. I was on fire, too.
I've never felt anything but swallowed up whole and spit out, by Marcus. As if he left nothing behind. He's never … looked at me the way this boy looks at me. Why would an immature creature be able to burn me up from the inside out when a grown man of Marcus' experience and knowledge can only … stamp me with himself?
The odd thing is I am still being possessed, and I am aware of it. So I find myself comparing the ways in which I'm owned. Marcus' way doesn't seem evil, or so terribly wrong, yet day after day I am aware that I don't want to be owned, just as Nicolas said, the way he owns me.
So how, then, to live? Do I want to be owned at all? Are you after your own way of being owned? Or are you truly trying to be free, chasing after a man who breaks your heart, and I'm here caught up in misogyny?
* * *
Marcus finally finds the perfect couch and he sits on it, trying it out in the showroom.
“Danny, hon, have a seat,” he directs, and I comply, as he wraps his arm around me, tugging slightly so that I lean in. The sales girl smiles at us, thinking we're cute. I gaze blankly out at the rest of the showroom, wishing this were over.
“Danny, you've been daydreaming,” he says, and I start, turning to look up at him. “What's on your mind?”
“Oh … we have a new exhibit coming up. I've got to start working on that soon.” He nods, but I feel his grip on my shoulder tighten, and I press my lips together, forcing myself to relax.
“Maybe you've been working too much … maybe you should cut back on your hours at the museum.” It isn't a question, or even a suggestion.
“Darling, I'm so sorry,” I murmur, turning and hugging him tightly. I press a kiss to his cheek, and pull my eyes away from the awkward sales girl. She puts her hands behind her back and waits. “I promise to pay better attention.”
This seems to placate him, and I let an inner sigh of relief loose as he eventually purchases the couch, leaning into the counter to flirt loosely with the sales girl as he arranges for its delivery.
Nicolas isn't rich, but he's got a job, and loving parents. He takes me to coffeehouses and pizza parlors, and I begin to remember the life I led before my husband, a life with a tighter budget and parents who were careful with money.
On one early afternoon, we've met across town, at the botanical gardens. Inside the huge sprawling glass structure, things are warmer and damper, and as we walk along the paths he takes my jacket from me, carrying it on his arm as he moves with me. We bump one another's elbows, hips, so casually it's like we've always done this. Banyan trees sprawl in one exhibit, bursting from woodchips and foliage, and I pause, admiring the tortured way they turn in on themselves. Insects are chirping loudly, almost deafening in the silence.
“Where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world?” he asks, brushing a curl out of my eye and kissing my bare skin above my nose. His arm has slid to hold my back, and I lean into it, staring at the fat leaves of the tropical plantlife.
“Mmm, anywhere?”
“Yes. Somewhere exotic?”
“I don't think I want exotic.”
He doesn't answer for a long minute, then leans forward to hang my jacket on the wood and glass botanical post that explains the origin of the plant display we're standing next to. He shrugs out of his jacket, and hangs it over mine, sticks his hands in his pockets, and looks up at the trees.
“Why not?”
I fidget, resettling my purse on my shoulder, and huff out a sigh. “I don't know. Exotic makes me think of far-away places, languages I don't speak, cultures I don't recognize.”
“So you'd rather play it safe?” He looks back at me over his shoulder and the look in his eyes is a little disturbing. I can't put my finger on it, and I frown.
“It's not a matter of being safe, it's knowing what I like, preferring the life I lead.”
“Which is a safe one. With a man who'll treat you the same way he always has, for the rest of your life.”
“It is my choice.”
He takes a step toward me, eyes narrowing a little. “The thing is, I don't think you want it safe. Or you wouldn't be here with me.”
“You didn't exactly give me a choice.”
“I'm not about to let you blame me for making you feel good. That takes two people. You were the one having an orgasm.”
This strikes me as crude, so I step back and look away. “You won't get an award for it.”
“I don't want one. I just want you to acknowledge that you want something that is right …” He eases forward, puts his hands on my shoulders, and turns me toward the display. “In front of you.”
“The exotic?”
From behind me, he presses his lips against my ear and breathes his answer.
“Yes.”
He knows how to move me. His hands push against my hips and he guides me forward, to the banyan trees and their cover. The lower limbs are low enough to sit on, and he pushes me back, knocking my purse from my hands.
“Nicolas, no,” I whisper, looking around, realizing where we are.
“Stop it.” His face is almost angry, and he methodically begins unbuttoning my blouse, then tugs it out of my skirt.
“We're in public, people will-“
“No one else is here,” is his terse answer, and I finally look up into his eyes. They are dark, hungry, and he locks eyes with me for a split second that makes me shudder. The hunger in him is bottomless, greedy, selfish.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and I blink. He eases over me, licks my lips lightly, and says it again. “Close your eyes.”
I close them. I feel him rustling against the leaves and dirt at our feet. He pushes my skirt up, giving up on taking it off. He pulls on my panties, takes hold of my wrists, turns me around, and I am on all fours.
“God, please,” I gasp, feeling the wood chips digging into my knees. Nicolas doesn't care. He's got both hands on my ass and he is digging deep into the flesh, so that I whimper, reaching blindly out to find myself crammed against the lower limb of the tree for balance.
All I can hear is our harsh breathing, the insects, sprinklers somewhere off the distance, nothing but him and me. I feel his fingers slide down, finding my sex, working in to find me dry.
“Spread your knees,” he mutters, and forcibly does it for me when I'm not fast enough. I cry out, but draw in my breath again when I feel his tongue, feather light, sliding into me from behind, wetting me in slippery light movements, up and down, up and down. It pushes a button, and I feel his hands gripping the backs of my thighs at the knee, and I suddenly push back hard, down onto his tongue.
“More,” he says, and I push harder, sobbing as his tongue begins to thrust, his nose rubbing against my ass, all of him trying to eat at all of me, and the pleasure starts to climb, faster than I'm used to, and I start shaking.
“ More ,” he hisses, and I frantically rise and fall against his seeking tongue and lips, until the orgasm starts, and then my pussy is naked and alone, and I open my eyes staring out at the tangled ropes and vines of the banyan tree, before I feel him again, hand at my sex, fingers cupping me, his mouth at my ear.
“Do you want me inside you, Danielle?” He's panting, and the sound makes me limp. I sag back against his hand, and he squeezes me so hard it hurts, so that I straighten up again.
“Tell me,” he insists, and I turn my head, trying to find his lips. He won't give them to me, pulls his jaw away, presses his lips to my temple instead. “What do you want? Do you want this?”
His fingers plunge inside, two at a time, and I moan, pushing down on them, but he holds still.
“Come on.” He growls it, impatient, refusing to give in. I hold still against his hand, willing him to give me more.
“Please,” is all I can think of to say. I can't think of anything more, my brain is gone, my nipples are hard, my pussy is spread over his hand and I can't think of anything but having more.
“Not enough. What do you want?” He is so angry, so forceful, so selfish, and I can only think of being his, squashed beneath all that hunger, eaten by it.
“You, Nicolas, please,” I finally whisper, and he gives me a horrible, deep groan and finally, a kiss.
It's wet, hard, and then he pulls away. I hear rustling, and then he is blissfully pressing against my rear end, hard and in a condom, hands on my thighs.
“Open for me, Danielle,” he breathes, and I open for him. He pushes inside, and he is big, and greedy, and I feel myself stretch for him, feel my insides gape for him, allowing him inside with a hunger I've never felt before.
The fucking is deep, fast, his balls slapping against my clit as I squat down, pressing my arms to the tree bark and groaning, slamming back to meet him. The orgasm comes fast, no longer interrupted, and I wail, closing my eyes and grinding back quickly until the delicious end, hovering in the air while he reaches his own orgasm.
He pounds, and pounds, and when it comes he shoves himself deep and finds my ear again, moaning so loud I feel aroused again, just to hear him suffer his little death so intensely.
We don't speak. What else is there to say? He is inside me, softening, but still harder than an older man would be. My sex is slippery, and my underwear is missing, and my body is sore, and I am so tender all over, inside and out. I clutch him inside me for as long as I can before he eases out, falling back to the ground beside me, pulling the condom off, and looking over at me.
His penis sits fatly between his thighs, above his blue boxers and faded jeans, the black hair of his groin rising up in a gentle swirl to his belly button and the wrinkle of his shirt and sweater. I stare at it, its thickness, its length. Circumcised and thickly veined, yet smooth and creamy. The tip is well defined. It's a piece of art.
I can't help myself. I crawl to him and slip my mouth around his tip and close my eyes at the hitch in his breath. Without looking, I find his every nook and cranny. He tastes like latex, but beneath it, like freshly washed male. I suck, and suck, and his hand finds the back of my head and guides me. He is hard soon enough, and his moans start up again, helpless and lost, and when I finally look up at him he gives me a look of such loss and need that I stop breathing.
And he comes, hot and sweet and thick, right down my throat, clutching my hair.
A few days later we're walking away from a matinee, headed for the ice cream parlor.
“If you could run somewhere now, where would you go?” He looks over at me, serious.
His hair is sticking out in every direction but it's adorable. I refuse to touch it, though my fingertips feel sensitized as if they were programmed to do just that.
“The beach. New Hampshire . My family used to own a bed and breakfast there.”
“That's as far as you'd go?”
“That's as far as I need to go. You've got the whole ocean in front you, nothing but the deep, blue sea.”
“I know this isn't the same as dinner at the Four Seasons,” he says, leaning in to wipe pizza sauce from my cheek and tugging my hand to his lips. I can't believe I'm in public eating with this boy, and wonder what will happen if someone who knows me ever mentions it to Marcus.
“It doesn't matter.”
I watch him devour his pizza slice in about three bites, and excuse himself to get another. He nearly catapults to the register. There is an energy that surrounds him like an aura of nerve and exultation, and when we go anywhere in public he walks beside me with his hands behind his back clasped tight as if it's taking all his willpower not to put them on me.
I find it easier to avoid touching him, used to precise moments of physical exchange between myself and my husband. Everything is efficient, deliberate, planned, and proper. Unless he gives me unspoken permission, I don't do it.
Here, this is a no-man's land of spontaneity and incomprehensible desire. I don't know what to do in it. Half the time I fumble. I feel like I maybe really am his age, and then feel stupid for thinking it.
Back at the table, he plops down, sets his pizza in place, dumps parmesan cheese on it, then locks his eyes on me in a fierce, penetrating look.
“Stop it,” he says. I blanch, feeling guilty.
“Stop what?” I nibble on my pizza and avoid his eyes.
“You know what,” he responds sardonically. “Stop thinking about him when you're with me, I don't like it.”
“And how different is that from him?”
He leans back, puts his hands on his knees, and gives me a level glare. I return it, lifting my eyebrows.
“Fine. You can think what you want. But I know it makes you unhappy, he makes you unhappy. I don't want you unhappy when you're with me.”
It's sweet but foolish. How can I not be unhappy? His very existence with me is a pebble disrupting the smooth road of my life, one that will get removed eventually, by Marcus, me, or Nicolas himself.
“Eat your pizza,” I say, and he looks at me a long minute to underscore his request, and then goes back to inhaling his meal. I smile, watching his appetite, and remember his appetite with me on all fours in the botanical gardens.
“Why are you bothering with all this?” I sip on my soda and wait for his answer.
“With what?” He wipes the grease from his full, slender lips with a paper napkin, and my eyes watch intently, imagining my fingers against them.
“With eating and talking and coffee.”
He glances away, annoyance crossing his face, then looks back at me, dead-on.
“Because I want to get to know you. Everything about you.”
“You're claiming this isn't just about sex and infatuation.”
“Yes. And if that's how you feel about me, I'm not doing my job.”
“Job?” Startled, I narrow my eyes and lean in. “Are you seducing me out of pity? Or did someone set you to do this?”
“Why the hell would anyone set me after you?” He's openly amazed and I pull back, frowning. “All I meant was I'm on a mission to prove you wrong, and I'm not doing a good job of it if all I am to you is sex and a fling.”
“That's all I ought to be to you, at this point.”
“For fuck's sake,” he mutters, and he crumples up his napkin, tossing it to the table. “Are you always this difficult?”
“Actually, no. But you'd think I'd at least try to be if someone was trying to get me to commit adultery and leave my husband.”
He scowls at me and stands up, sticking out his hand.
“Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Stop talking and come on. ”
He drives us in his hand-me down Toyota to a park on his college campus, by a man-made lake. It's dusk out now, and there are only a couple of joggers off in the distance on the running path. We walk to the lake and stare out at it, and he takes my hand, so naturally and easily that I look down at it.
“What?”
“I've … no one's ever done that before.”
“Taken your hand?” His eyes are wide. Half the time he is just all incredulous little boy, the other half … sometimes I think he's worse than Marcus.
“Yes.”
“Unbelievable.” He holds my fingers more tightly.
“Well … they have but … not like this.”
“Ah.” We stare out at the ducks on the water and his arm slips around my waist. I push into him, seeking his warmth and smell, closing my eyes.
“Come here,” he whispers, and I blindly seek his lips, moaning as they come, firm, determined, burning and demanding, and this hunger is real and true, and this ownership is one I actually want.
“You're too young for me,” I say, somewhere, and he pulls me against him, hard.
“Stop fighting me,” he answers, frustrated, and I shake my head, mouth open beneath his.
“Come on,” comes another command, after a while, and he takes me by the hand toward the trees. I make out a picnic table in the fading light, and my breath comes more quickly as he takes us toward it.
I lean back so he can kiss me against it, but his hands take me and turn me around, and his body pins me to it, facing away.
“What-what are you doing?” He is being rough about it but impersonal, and it doesn't feel right.
His voice is hot and low in my ear, and I shudder at the way it slides into my brain, irresistible.
“I'm going to fuck you, Danielle,” he answers and little sobs begin falling from my throat as he tugs up my skirt, pushes me forward, and presses the crotch of his pants against my backside. He feels hard and ready and I realize in horror that I feel ready, too.
“Nicolas—“
“You could be a fling,” he whispers, and I hear the sound of his belt buckle coming open, the sound of his zipper, feel his hand pressing down against my back, holding me firmly to the rough table.
“Oh God, please,” I whimper, tears stinging my eyes, and I try to push back and away, but he presses down, mouth against my ear again, pushing past my fallen hair. I am filled with fear, even though he's been inside me before, this feels violent, different.
“I could just take you and get it done with, right? That's what you want this to be, right?”
I don't even have words, I just begin crying. He lifts off of me, grabs me by the wrists, but the moment he turns me back around I strike out, slapping him.
“Fuck you!” I hiss, pulling away, and I begin running.
“Danielle!” He yells, coming after me, but I ignore him, reaching the parking lot and the car. Chest heaving with the effort, I bend over, clutching my stomach and falling against the passenger side of the car, sobbing so hard I feel like I'm suffocating.
“Danielle,” he begins, coming up beside me, but I flinch away.
“Take me back,” I say, low in my chest, in a raw place that burns. I look up at him, knowing that my face says everything.
“I'm sorry—“ he begins, but I cut him off.
“Take me back !”
His mouth shuts and his jaw tightens, the line as sharp as the stabbing sensation in the middle of my stomach. He walks away, opens the driver side door, and gets in.
He has my work number. In the weeks after he met me in my office, he would call and we'd arrange to meet. He'd pick me up at a small bookstore on the opposite side of town, and we'd head out to spend a few hours together before he'd take me back, and I'd head home, presumably working late at the office.
My phone sits blissfully silent on my desk as the weeks pass, and November rolls around. I haven't seen him for over a month. Life goes on, and I fall back into it, the old habits, my life ordered around being pliant and pleasant.
At night, I climb into the bathtub and cry. I've always liked a bath alone in the dark and Marcus has never had a problem with it, so he doesn't notice anything odd about it.
In the tub, I try to understand why I cannot forget about him. He's been inside me. I've had him in my mouth. It should be out of my system. Or do I actually care about him, in which case, why do I care about him? I hardly know him. We're already past tense.
But in bed with Marcus, I have trouble. My orgasms have begun changing, and he notices. It's because when he's inside of me, and my eyes are closed, I replace the sound of him with Nicolas, whose voice is in my ear telling me to part my thighs and let him in. I begin to get frantic, and I struggle beneath him, forcefully aroused in a way I haven't been before, and I can't hide it.
“What are you doing?” asks Marcus, staring down at me as if I've gone crazy.
“I'm … I'm sorry …” I have no idea what to say, I hadn't realized I was doing anything different. “What's wrong?”
“You're so … noisy,” he says, and his eyes narrow.
I have to think quickly, or he'll figure out it's another man, and I don't know what he'll do then.
“I've been reading … um … improvement … books.” I lower my eyes, see his body joined with mine, and in my mind's eye flashes a vision of Nicolas buried tight and hot inside me. I feel the blush creep up my neck and flame my face.
“Since when?”
“Since… a couple months ago. My … coworkers, they've been passing one around, and—“
“Strangers shouldn't have the power to change you. I think it's time you left the museum.”
“What?” Shocked, I stare up at him, feeling my body begin to cool under his gaze. “But—I love my work,” I breathe. I never thought he'd actually force me to leave.
“And I love you,” he says, bending to resume what he'd started.
I lay beneath him silent and blank, until the deed is done.
I stand beside my empty desk, gazing at my empty walls. I'd given my notice two weeks ago, and everyone had been as surprised as I was.
I'd had no real explanation so I'd made one up.
“Marcus and I are ready to start planning a family,” I'd said feebly.
Now, the emptiness reminds me of the void Nicolas had mentioned, and I shake my head, hard. That is over.
i met a boy, part 2