Alex laughed without looking at me. His gaze scoured the ceiling. He swiped a hand across his forehead, pushing sweat-damp hair from his eyes. “I always have condoms.”
I settled deeper into the cushion, aware now of various sensations I hadn’t noticed when he was making me come. How tight my bra straps were. How tired I suddenly was. I yawned.
He looked at me then. “Sleepy?”
I sighed with another yawn and sat up, testing my emotions. Nothing about this felt casual. Just the opposite, in fact. It felt like it meant too much. This night, this man.
I feigned the yawn this time. “I’d better get going.”
I was up and off the futon and bending to look for my panties before Alex said anything.
“Wait. What? Wait a minute, Olivia.”
I stood in my boots and bra, my jeans in one hand, my panties in the other. Alex had moved to the edge of the futon, one foot on the floor, one hand reaching. The light from the hanging lamp in the corner caught him one way, the shifting glare from the TV in another, and once again I saw him painted with shadows.
“Stay,” Alex said.
I guess some creative people hear music, or poems or scraps of dialogue, in their heads. I take pictures. And in the span of those few seconds, that picture was taken.
Black boys, as the song says, are nutritious. White boys, the other song says, are so sexy. I’d dated my share of black, white, even Asian men and found the color of their skins to be what made the least difference between them. But one thing I found about white boys was that every single one of them loved my hair.
Alex wasn’t different. He ran his fingers over the long, twisted locks I usually wore pulled off my face and hanging down my back. Now, after our romp on the futon, they had fallen out of the hair band and tumbled over my shoulders. I drew them over his chest, his thighs. That beautiful cock, which stirred a little at my touch. I looked up at him through the shield of my hair and thought about taking him in my mouth.
He pushed my hair away from my face, his long fingers stroking my forehead. “You’re so gorgeous, you know that?”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “Mmm.”
Alex laughed and pulled me up to kiss my mouth. “Don’t make that noise like you don’t believe me. I hate it when people can’t take a compliment.”
“Fine. I’m gorgeous.” I ran my tongue along his jaw and nestled my face into the dip of his neck.
He wrapped my hair around his fingers, released it. Twisted it again. I looked at him with a raised brow. He laughed and let go.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I like your hair, too.” I ran my fingers through the softness, making sure to let it all fall over his face when I was finished caressing.
“Have you always worn it like that?”
I sat up. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
He sat up, too. Cross-legged and naked, we faced each other, our knees touching. Alex grabbed a pillow for his lap, and I took one as well.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
I laughed. “No, it’s fine. When I was a kid, my mom had no clue what to do with my hair. Natural hair wasn’t really in fashion, even though my mom was a pretty natural woman herself. I’m talking gypsy skirts and head scarves. Birkenstocks.”
“Patchouli?”
“You got it.” I laughed again, stretching. Comfortable with him. “Anyway, she finally started taking me to a special hair-dresser who dealt with black hair, and that was okay. We relaxed it for a while, when I was in high school. Then when I got to college I had sort of…not an epiphany, exactly. More like an identity crisis. I thought I’d try being black for a change—”
He looked so startled I had to laugh. “I’m adopted.”
“Oh. Ah. Oh?” He still looked a little confused.
“My parents are white.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Okay. I get it now.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, too, rubbing his knee with mine. “Anyway, when I went to college I figured it was time to explore this other identity. Not the one I was raised with. I joined a black sorority and the BCC, the Black Cultural Club.”
“How was that?”
I laughed again, this time ruefully. “Well, I made some great friends, but it was hard. I wasn’t black enough for a lot of them. Not the color of my skin and not the way I acted. It was tough, but I learned a lot about myself. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in college, though?”
“I didn’t go.”
“No?” Surprised, I looked into his eyes. “Not even community college?”
“Nope.”
“Wow.” That made his success more impressive, but it felt awkward to say so.
He shrugged. “I should’ve gone. Maybe I’d have learned something about myself.”
I stretched out on my side, propping my head on my hand, and ran my fingers up the inside of his thigh. “I don’t know that I wouldn’t have learned it all, eventually. Anyway, that’s when I decided to go natural with my hair. In the long run, it was easier than fighting with it all the time. It was flattering. And…it connected me. It might sound stupid to say so.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He stretched out, too, so we were face-to-face again. “It makes sense. It’s enviable, actually.”
I laughed softly. “Sure.”
“It is.” Alex ran his fingers over my hair again, pulling a few of the locks forward, over my shoulder. “It suits you.”
It seemed like the most natural thing to kiss him then. His mouth opened under mine. His tongue stroked. This time when I let my hair trace a path over his body, I did take his cock in my mouth.
I sucked him slowly. He arched. I gave in to the smells and sounds of his desire. I lost myself in it. I found my clit with my fingertips and got myself off as I made him come. When he did, he twined his fingers in my hair, and I smiled even as I took him down the back of my throat.
Minutes later, his heartbeat slowed under my cheek. His breathing matched it soon after. He snored a little from deep in his throat. It was cute. He went boneless and relaxed under me, and before I knew it, I was out like a light.
I woke to the smells of bacon frying and coffee perking. I stretched under soft blankets and my hands encountered a mountain of pillows. I sat up, rubbing my eyes on a futon in the middle of Alex Kennedy’s living room. And I was naked.
I could see him, beyond the half-wall and arch, in the small, U-shaped kitchen. Well, I could see part of him. The cabinets hanging low over the countertop island that divided the kitchen from the dining area left a couple of feet open for pass-through viewing. I could see him from shoulders to thighs, a nice view of his briefs-clad ass and the apron strings dangling against it.
As for myself, the sheet I pulled up to cover my breasts might’ve made a nifty toga if I’d been talented enough to fold and twist it, but I didn’t have that skill. I scanned the floor for my clothes and saw a sock, a boot, my shirt. A flash of orange told me my panties were hiding just beneath the futon. I reached for them as Alex appeared the archway.
“Good morning.”
“Hi.”
He had a spatula in his hand and the apron I’d viewed from behind turned out to have the cartoon torso of a bikini-clad woman with huge tits imprinted on the front. “Hungry?”
A man who wore Hello Kitty pajamas wouldn’t balk at cross-gender bacon frying, but a surprised laugh burst out of me anyway. “Umm…”
He grinned and smoothed a hand down the apron’s front to fondle the big cartoon boobs. “Nice, huh?”
“You know, my current circle of male friends has skewed me so far that shouldn’t even have surprised me.” I got my panties and slid into them, but couldn’t find my bra. I could go topless, prance around in what my mom had always called gatkes. I had the scent of him all over me. I grabbed up my sweater anyway and slid it on over my bare skin. My nipples pebbled immediately against the soft fabric.
I caught his gaze as I used a couple of my locks to tie back t
he rest at the nape of my neck. His smile had frozen for a second, and if I’d looked at him a moment later I think I’d have missed his expression. “Alex?”
He waved the spatula. “Breakfast is ready, if you want it.”
We faced each other from across the room. The morning after. Here it was. I looked for a reason why I shouldn’t cross the distance between us and kiss him as if we’d been lovers for years. I didn’t find one.
“Morning,” he said against my mouth, and the hand not wielding the spatula rested comfortably on my ass, which he squeezed to pull me closer.
“I’m going to use your bathroom, okay?”
He gave me another small squeeze. The cartoon woman was getting an erection. “Sure.”
I didn’t shower, just used the toilet and sneaked a mouthful of his toothpaste to swish around in lieu of an actual brushing. I caught sight of my reflection and couldn’t stop the grin—my mascara might be a little smeared and my hair a little wild, but damn, didn’t I look satisfied?
Alex had set plates on the island and loaded them with scrambled eggs and bacon. The toaster dinged as I sat, and he pulled out slices of wheat toast. A stick of butter on a plate and a half-empty jar of peach preserves appeared as I sat in one of the wicker bar stools.
The kettle whistled and he lifted it to pour some hot water into my mug, then handed me a box of Earl Grey teabags.
“Wow, this is some service.” I breathed in the good breakfast smells with a happy sigh.
“I’ll be right back. You don’t have to wait.”
I dug into the food while Alex disappeared into one of the bedrooms, to come out a moment later wearing a pair of fleecy bottoms. Batman, this time. The apron, balled in one fist, got tossed onto the counter as he slid into the seat next to mine.
“Good?” he asked, watching me eat.
I nodded, mouth full. Our dangling feet nudged, then our knees. He was touching me on purpose, and it was okay because last night we’d been naked and sweaty and our mouths had been all over each other, and we hadn’t fucked, not technically, but we’d done just about everything else.
“Olivia?” His brow furrowed. “You okay?”
“Sure. You?”
Alex didn’t have an open face, one I could read easily. He needed a translation I didn’t know him well enough to make. When I looked at him, I saw a story. I saw a picture I wanted to take and capture and keep.
“Yes.”
I poked my fork into the leftover bits of scrambled egg. Then I took a deep, slow breath and steadied myself before I turned on the stool to face him. “Listen. About last night…”
He looked at me solemnly without speaking, his gaze shielded and shuttered. He chewed slowly and swallowed. I watched his throat work and thought of the taste of his skin. I thought about a shadowed room and him in silhouette, a man on his knees in front of him. I thought of the sound of a groan.
“I never actually had sex with Patrick. We dated for four years and we were going to get married, but we never actually slept together.” I cupped my hands around the barely warm mug and cleared my throat. This had to be said. I needed to tell him everything before anything went any further.
Alex nodded, but waited in silence for me to keep going.
“He told me it was because he wanted to wait. Because he was Catholic. And I believed him, because I loved him. He liked getting head from me, though. That was okay.” I laughed again and sank into the cushions, a hand over my face. “God. It’s all so obvious now, but then…I guess I just saw what I wanted to see.”
“Or maybe he didn’t want to admit anything else.”
“That, too.” I sighed. “Anyway, a couple weeks before we got married, I was putting away some laundry in his dresser drawer. I found a box of condoms.”
“Ouch.”
Even now, the memory turned my stomach. The betrayal of it. I knew right away they weren’t for me.
“Yeah. So I confronted him about it. I thought maybe he’d deny it, but he didn’t. I thought he’d tell me about some girl he worked with, something like that. I didn’t expect him to tell me he was fucking his way through the city’s gay population.”
“He came out to you, just like that?”
“Just like that. He said, ‘I’m a fag, Olivia, and I like fucking other men.’ He looked scared when he said it, but he did.”
Alex blinked and looked away for a second. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t believe him for about two seconds, and then it all made sense. It all fit. And I just…lost it. I cried. I threw the box of condoms at him. They spilled all over the floor, and he went down on his knees to pick them up. I remember that…how he got on his knees to gather them up like they were precious. As if I’d thrown down a bunch of jewels and he wanted to make sure he got every single one.”
I looked at Alex’s face. “Then I told him the wedding was off, that I was leaving him.”
Alex looked surprised, then not. “I thought he broke it off after he came out to you.”
Maybe Patrick had talked to him about it. I shook my head. “No. That’s what everyone thinks. But what really happened is Patrick begged me to still marry him. Told me his family would disown him, that we’d lose all the money on our deposits. He told me we had to get married. And I loved him, so…at first I said yes. I said I’d lie for him. That I’d live a lie for him.”
“But you didn’t marry him.”
“No. We cleaned up the mess, put away the laundry and then…” I swallowed hard, remembering. The smell of cologne. The taste of Patrick’s tears. “He kissed me. And he put his hands on me. He tried to make love to me. He said he wanted to prove to me that he could be a good husband, too. But I couldn’t look at him that way, Alex. I couldn’t have his hands on me. What he’d done…all I could think was that he’d said he loved me more than anything, and yet he’d lied to me all along. Himself, too, maybe, for a long time. But mostly to me.”
Alex rubbed my shoulder, his fingers squeezing gently. “I’m sorry, Olivia. It was a shitty thing for him to do.”
I put my hand on top of his, but not to remove it. I squeezed back. “Yes. It was. And it was even shittier when he told everyone I’d cheated on him.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone the truth?”
“I’d promised him I wouldn’t. I thought that was fair, that he should come out to them himself. And I’d have been there for him, probably, if I hadn’t been so angry…”
“It wasn’t your job to hold his hand.” Alex sounded angry himself.
“I know that now. But I’d have done it. Instead, he told everyone it was because of me. No wedding. No marriage. And he didn’t come out to any of them for close to a year. By that time I’d come to terms with it, or so I thought. And by that time…
“By that time I’d been pregnant with Pippa, carrying a child I knew I couldn’t raise, for a couple who would, and wanted to. My mother had disowned me, not because of the pregnancy, but because I was giving up the baby she thought I should keep.
“Well, by then a lot had happened. I’d heard from some friends that he’d finally come out. So one day, I called him up and asked him to meet me for dinner, which he did. We talked. We sort of…fell on each other’s neck and sobbed, I guess. He’d always been my best friend, you know? It’s hard to be in love with your best friend when you know it can never be more than that.”
“Sure. I know.” Alex squeezed my hand again and dropped his to his lap.
Now was the time to tell him what I’d seen on the porch and what Patrick had told me. I drew in a slow breath but didn’t quite find the courage to do it. Alex leaned forward and for several long seconds did not brush his lips over mine. When he did, I felt the touch in every inch of me. Yeah, it’s cliché, but it was true.
His hand cupped the back of my neck, his strong fingers pressing just right at the base of my skull. I shivered, my eyes closing in anticipation of a deeper kiss, which he didn’t give me. I licked my mouth and tasted him.
/> “Alex…I have to tell you something.”
He pulled away and let me go. “Okay.”
And once again I didn’t tell him the truth. Blame my body, which he’d played so well. Blame my heart, that stupid thing, which thought it could handle this. “I think you really need to get some condoms.”
Alex blinked. Then he laughed. “I thought you were going to say…Never mind.”
I touched his knee to get him to look at me. “What?”
He shrugged and drank his coffee. “I just thought you were going to tell me it was a mistake. Or something like that.”
It might have been, but it had been such a damn long time since I’d gone to bed with anyone that I wasn’t going to ruin it with regret. The almost-sex had been great. I had no reason to think full-on fucking wouldn’t be equally fabulous.
I stroked his knee a little higher, up to his thigh. “Do you think it was a mistake?”
He twisted my hair around his finger for a moment before letting his hand fall to his side. “No.”
“Good.” I took another breath, feeling lighter. “Alex, look…I’m not sure what this is or what will happen, but I don’t like to spend time wishing I didn’t do things after I’ve already done them. There’s no point in that.”
He nodded after half a second. “Agreed.”
“Good.” I leaned close, not quite kissing him but offering my mouth if he wanted to take it. “So what do you say we go buy some condoms?”
Chapter
08
It’s a law of nature that when you’re buying something embarrassing you will run into someone you know. Tampons, yeast-infection cream…condoms. Add a post-orgasm glow, clothes that had clearly been worn two days in a row and what I was sure was the smell of illicit sex hanging over me, and there was no way I was getting out of Wal-Mart undetected.
Today it was Father Matthew from St. Paul’s. He had a cart full of cold-care products and a very red nose when he passed me in the aisle, heading toward the pharmacy. It had been months and months since I’d gone to church, and I’d never been a full member there, but of course the condoms in my hand meant he recognized me right away.