Small Change

  I started basic, with such gems as, “What’s your story,” and “So, tell me about yourself,” then moved on to the horrific classics, “What kind of music do you like,” and “Are you a fan of movies?”

  “Christ,” I told Christopher, “even your fake answers to boring date questions are charming. You must have lots of practice with small talk.”

  He shot me a look over his easel that might have meant, Are you trying to ask if I go out on a lot of dates? But he said, “Well, you just have to decide if you’re into talking to them or not. If not, then those questions suck. But if you might be, then they’re just jumping-off points and you can say whatever you want. It’s not a test or anything.”

  “You’ve dated only women?”

  Christopher nodded.

  “I think generalizations are, generally, bullshit.” I winked at him. “But having gone on dates with both men and women, I’ve found the experience to be really different. Part of that is down to me, not the people, of course.”

  I gave myself a mental eye roll because there was no way to talk about gender and dating without making the kind of generalizations I found useless and damaging, but sometimes getting stuff out in the open for conversation was more important than getting it exactly right on the first try.

  “Yeah, different how?”

  “Well, mostly, it’s a kind of feeling. Like, when I’ve gone out with women it’s felt a lot more like what you said—that it’s not a test. It’s trying to see if you have a connection. The questions are just invitations into conversation, and if you have a good vibe, it takes off from there. The feeling I get in the same situations when I’ve gone out with men is that they often come in with a set of questions that they ask no matter what the answers I give are. So it’s not that it’s a test, but it’s a kind of…script of what is discussed on dates that exists before they ever meet me.”

  Christopher nodded. “I think sometimes there’s the assumption for men that you have a role to play, to make the date go smoothly, or to…like, plan something that will make a good story in the retelling, you know?”

  “Yeah, totally. Well, and lots of that is about queerness or straightness too. Like, when I’ve gone out with women, we’re both queer, and there’s a lot shit about dating that’s heteronormative, and so it doesn’t apply. Whereas when I’ve gone out with dudes, they’ve mostly been straight, so it’s not just gender, it’s also identification. So I could totally see them thinking they had a role to play, and then that meant casting me in the other role, in their minds. Only, of course, I don’t fit that role.”

  “So, you identify as queer, yeah?” Christopher confirmed, and I nodded. “This might be silly,” he said. “Or maybe not cool to ask, I don’t know. But will you tell me if you feel like I’m doing a thing where I cast you in a role you don’t think is right?”

  I looked at him, a splotch of green paint on the collar of his clean shirt, his hair sticking up a little from where his jacket mussed it as he was taking it off. Would I tell him? It was hard to know. Hard to know if in the moment it happened I would feel open to discussing it, or if I’d feel resentful or angry or hurt and so explaining it to him would be the last thing I was willing or able to do.

  “I’ll try,” I said. “But it’s hard to know how I’ll feel if that happens.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Christopher said and nodded seriously.

  We were all painting the same thing, in theory, guided by the finished canvas the instructor had brought in, though people’s efforts varied wildly in terms of similarity to the model. The paints were cheap acrylics, the brushes junky plastic, but I started mixing my colors and improvising on the scene. It was actually a ton of fun to be painting something I didn’t have to think about. Since I didn’t need to look at the sample canvas to work on my mountain stream landscape, I’d turned my easel so I was facing Christopher and it was easier to talk with him while I painted.

  I mixed red wine into the white paint to daub the undersides of my clouds, making them pregnant with reflected light. I added a waterfall and some darker clouds looming in the corner, like any moment the peaceful idyll could be drenched by a thunderstorm. I pulled out some of the bristles to give the brush a finer point and added a chipmunk perched on a tree branch, its nose lifted to the sky, as if it, alone in the scene, was fully aware of the potential impending storm. Using the end of the brush, I scraped and gathered the paint to lend texture to the water, dabbing pure white on with the side of my finger where the waterfall churned against the brown rocks.

  Then, halfway up the mountain, next to the stream I’d turned into a waterfall, I added a campfire, its yellow-orange flames a hot spot in a mostly cool canvas. I snaked smoke up to the top of the canvas and, so small it was barely visible, I added a pair of boots sitting next to the fire.

  “So what about ridiculous questions you’ve gotten on first dates?” I asked Christopher.

  “Um, well, there was this one lady, and we’d only been chatting for a couple of minutes when she got all serious-looking and asked me how much money I made in a typical year. And it was weird because we’d met at the bar where I was bartending, so it’s not like she could’ve thought I made much money at all. But the way she asked it was so strange that I wondered if I’d missed something. So I answered, and she looked surprised, and finally, after like five minutes of clearly talking about different things I realized that she’d thought I owned the bar for some reason, and she was some kind of real estate developer. I’d thought she asked me out on a date, and the whole time she’d thought we were having a business meeting.” I cracked up at that and Christopher’s face pinked. He shook his head. “Yeah, she was embarrassed but I was mortified because it kind of looked like I was all, ‘well of course when people want to meet me it must be for a date.’”

  “So what happened?”

  “Oh, I apologized and she was like, ‘Okay, well, I can never go to that bar again,’ and I told her that, no, she should come in that weekend and I’d give her a drink on the house, so she did. And it was totally fine. She started coming in pretty regularly after that.”

  “God, fuck you,” I said, with no heat.

  “What?”

  I twisted my hair up and held it on top of my head for a minute because I was getting warm from the wine and all the bodies in the room. Christopher’s eyes tracked to my neck and then back to my face, and I smiled.

  “Oh, because. You’re ridiculous. You’re great with people and you genuinely like them, so you make them feel comfortable, and it’s just absurd. I bet you’re friends with all your exes, and when you see people you know from other moments in your life you, like, joyfully call out to them because you want to know how they’re doing.”

  “Well, what do you do?”

  “Me? I duck down behind the cereal aisle in the hopes that they won’t notice me because probably I didn’t like them when I knew them and I sure as hell don’t want to talk to them now!” Christopher’s grin was warm, and I muttered “Shut up,” and shoved at his arm. Only he didn’t move and I slid on my chair and glared at him.

  He reached over and dragged my chair closer to him. But he seemed to get distracted, mid-motion, because he murmured “Holy shit.”

  I realized he had gotten a glimpse of my painting when he leaned around to my chair. Also a glimpse of a whole lot of leg.

  Because my dress fit tight around my legs, I’d tugged it up so I could sit cross-legged in my chair and lean in to the canvas. Now it was hiked up high around my thighs and I had paint on my legs—spots of white, brown, and green overlaying the tattooed skin beneath. Whoops. I put my feet back on the ground so I didn’t fall off my seat, and moved my easel back in line with Christopher’s so he could see the canvas without leaning.

  When he turned to me he looked awed.

  “You sneaky minx,” he said. “You did that while you were just casually chatting with me?” He shook his head. “Damn.”

  He passed me his wine glass when he saw tha
t mine was full of paint. I smiled at him, and there it was again—that sense of sharing something that felt precious and rare.

  Now that I was next to him, I peeked at Christopher’s canvas. It might not have been the worst in the room—there was one lady who’d shown up drunk and only gotten more so, and on her canvas she’d simply painted Eff the D, and surrounded it with broken hearts and crude penises—but it was pretty close.

  “Clearly I’ve missed my calling, huh?” he said.

  “Oh, clearly.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “I engineered this date to make me look as bad as possible in comparison to you.” He grinned at me.

  I slid off my chair and bent to look more closely at his wreck of a mountain stream. He ran a palm up my spine to my neck and I bit my lip, glad he couldn’t see my face. It was an intimate gesture, appreciative and possessive, and it made me imagine how he’d touch me if the thin fabric of my dress weren’t between us.

  Would he trace the lines of my body—follow the shapes of muscle, bone, and flesh—or would he follow the lines of my ink instead?

  I eased over and perched on his knee, not resting my full weight on him, but sitting in front of his canvas. The second I did, he pulled me more firmly back, taking my weight on his legs like it was nothing, wrapping his arms around my waist and letting out a sigh.

  My skin heated, my pulse sped up, and I felt fidgety, like I couldn’t relax. I mean, it was basically impossible to relax sitting on someone’s lap, right? But as if he could feel me tensing up, Christopher put a palm firmly on each of my thighs above the knees. I let him take my weight, self-conscious suddenly, but he just rested his chin on my shoulder, and I relaxed into him. He breathed deeply, like he was savoring our position.

  “Is there any hope for it, doc?” he said softly.

  “Hmm. Scalpel?”

  He handed me his paintbrush, but I gestured for the one I’d doctored and he passed it to me.

  In the middle of his clumsy mountain stream, I painted a large shaggy-furred purple monster, half submerged, as if it were taking a leisurely soak. In one hand it held an enormous sandwich with one ragged bite torn out of it, and in the other it held a large to-go coffee cup that said “The Ginger” on it. I gave the monster a snapback that said MELT on it, and a maroon V-neck T-shirt that said Tattoo Bitch. Its mouth full of jagged teeth was smiling, bits of sandwich caught in its fur.

  I put my brush down and twisted to look at Christopher. He was flushed from the wine and his hair was even more messed up now, one lock falling forward over his eye. He’d rolled up his sleeves and there was paint on his hands. And I couldn’t stop staring at him, heat flushing through me. He looked fucking hot. Intent and present and so, so into me.

  His mouth looked vulnerable without the usual protection of his stubble. I could always trace the smattering of small golden freckles from one high cheekbone across his nose to the other side, but now that he was clean-shaven I saw that he had them on his chin too, a subtle constellation.

  His dark brows were drawn together slightly, and his eyes were intense. His breathing was slow but I could feel his muscles tensed beneath me. I wanted to reach out and touch his jaw but my hands were covered in paint and I couldn’t stand the thought of marring the face before me.

  He looked at the canvas and smiled.

  “I love it,” he said, breath caressing my neck. I shivered and then grinned. But before I could say anything he slid a hand around my hip and pulled me around so I was facing him. I threw my arms around his shoulders automatically, to keep from falling backward, but he kept one hand in the middle of my back and held my dress with the other so I didn’t end up flashing the room.

  Our eyes locked, our breath came faster, and both of our smiles were gone.

  I leaned slowly closer and felt him groan as my breasts brushed his chest and my thigh rocked against the bulge in his jeans. His fingertips dug into my back like only sheer will was keeping his hand where it was.

  I wanted to ravage him. I wanted to kiss him so hard his lips bruised. Grab handfuls of his hair, his shirt, his skin, and drag him to me as close as he could get. I wanted to feel him around me, inside me, beneath me. I wanted to feel him fucking everywhere.

  But we were in a room full of people. So we just looked at each other and breathed the charged air between us.

  And when I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, a gentle touch to his jaw, he shuddered like I was touching him everywhere.

  “Come here,” I whispered, and tugged Christopher after me by the hand.

  “What about our stuff?”

  “We’ll come back for it.”

  I pulled him outside and into the alley off Strawberry Street that ran behind the fancy tapas restaurant. When I was sure we were alone, I pushed him against the wall and stood on my tiptoes, kissing him the way I’d wanted to inside. He moaned and bent a little so I had better access to his mouth. We kissed hotly, tongues sliding, and he slid one hand up my back and grabbed my ass with the other.

  I could feel his erection in his pants, and I was wet for him. I palmed his dick through his pants and his head dropped back against the wall, his heavy breaths pluming in the cold air. Good thing his solid body was throwing off heat. I pressed close and squeezed him, loving the promise of his strength, his hardness, his passion.

  “Thanks for taking me here,” I said. “It was really fun.”

  A startled laugh, and then he cupped my face. “Thanks for taking me here,” he said, eyes darting down to my hand working him.

  I ripped open the buttons on his jeans and stuck my hand down his pants, feeling the hard length of him, and nipped at his neck. I loved feeling him pulse in my hand, hips thrusting helplessly. I imagined what the strength of these thrusts would feel like if he were inside me, my head thrown back and his mouth at my neck.

  I jerked him hard, and he kissed me like the world was on fire, mouth consuming me, tongue stroking. He slid a hand up my thigh, pulling my leg up around his hip, and slid his other hand up my dress, running the tips of his fingers over the wet fabric of my underwear and sending shivers through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

  “Oh Jesus, you’re so wet.”

  “Mmm.”

  He slid his fingers inside my underwear, playing with my clit and then stroking inside me. In, out, swirl; in, out, swirl, until I was grinding against him, needing friction, heat pulsing through my core, my neck and face hot.

  It was awkward, and clumsy, and I was hot for every second of it.

  Laughter echoed through the air and we froze. It was the group of women who’d shown up drunk, it became clear, when one of them yelled “F the D!” and they all dissolved into giggles.

  “Oh my god.” I buried my face in Christopher’s chest and felt his laughter. He kept an arm around me as we waited to see if they’d pass. Finally, their shouts moved away. I pitied whatever bar they were about to enter.

  “F the D,” Christopher chuckled, then proceeded to blow my mind, fingers moving deftly inside me.

  “F the D,” I repeated, and gave his dick a particularly hard stroke for emphasis. His laughter turned to a groan, and we quickly forgot about everything but getting each other off.

  Our hips thrust, hands moved, mouths met and separated. I slid my thumb over the tip of Christopher’s cock and he came in my hand with a moan he muffled in my neck, heat pulsing over my fist and splattering the cobblestones below.

  He panted for a moment, cheeks flushed, then flipped us around, pressed me to the wall, and squatted, shoving a shoulder under my thigh. He licked into me avidly, and in about ten seconds I was writhing against him. He dragged the point of his tongue in circles around my clit, starbursts of pleasure exploding inside me, turning my legs to jelly and tightening the muscles in my ass and belly as I came on his mouth. I cried out and then swore as he licked me one more time, my delicate tissue overloaded with sensation.

  When he stood and dropped his fore
head on my shoulder, I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on to him, not quite ready to feel so separate from him yet. We stood that way for a minute or so, pounding hearts slowing, sweat drying, the cold finally creeping in.

  “Best date ever,” he whispered against my ear.

  ⌃ ⌃ ⌃

  Dude,

  I’m—I’m fucking smitten. Yeah, who says shit like that? I don’t know. Me, apparently. Ginger is weird and cool and I’m trying really hard not to screw it up by scaring her away. She’s skittish as hell, and legitimately really busy, and the combination means getting her alone requires some work.

  The thing is that when I was with Jen, there was this way that I could tell what she wanted from me. Ginger called it a script? It wasn’t fake because Jen really wanted those things—a dinner date, and flowers on our anniversary, and chocolates at Valentine’s Day. It was clear how to give her what she wanted, and I liked it. Loved it. I loved that I could make her happy.

  With Theresa—I don’t think you ever met Theresa because you were in London that year—things were fun, light. We both liked doing the same stuff, and it was like hanging out with a friend who I also got to have sex with. Low stakes, no worries, and it just kinda ran its course.

  Macy was kind of the same way, except we were way better friends than lovers. I don’t actually know if we were ever that into each other or if we were just horny, but whatever. When it ended, it was fine. Easy.

  I’ve just never felt like this about someone before. This kind of jolt whenever they’re around. Man, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve got no playbook and every move feels like a Hail Mary.