Naked

  I set the bowl on the kitchen table to listen to her. From the dining room I heard laughter. “I can imagine.”

  Elle laughed gently. “Well, anyway, a Christmas ham I could do, but how do you brag about that to your boyfriend’s parents when they’re Jewish? I needed something to impress them. They’re not terribly religious, but they’d invited me for Passover, and I decided I was going to make matzo ball soup. Well, let me tell you something, Olivia, in the vast world of matzo balls, you have what’s called floaters and sinkers. And I made sinkers.”

  We laughed together. “What happened then?”

  “Oh, they ate them. Nobody complained. I was mortified, obviously, but Dan’s family just took me in and made it all part of their joke. Not in a bad way. They made me feel at home. It was just after that I decided I really could marry him, after all. So Passover’s special to me for that reason, even though I never have learned to make floaters.”

  “That’s a nice story. Now you have one of your own,” I told her.

  Elle looked surprised for a second before smiling again. “Yes. I guess we do! C’mon, these potatoes are as finished as they’ll get without burning. Ready to go in?”

  I got the guacamole and followed her into the dining room full of family and friends.

  Everything about me was buzzing, and it had nothing to do with the wine I’d had as part of dinner. I’d stayed much later than I’d planned, laughing and talking with my new friends. I’d asked to borrow a Haggadah to read at home, and Elle had given me a few books to read, too. I’d driven home humming “Dayenu.”

  Alex’s car was in the parking lot when I pulled in, but with my hands full of books and leftovers packaged in aluminum foil, I didn’t knock at his door on my way past. I tucked the food into my fridge and stacked the books by my bed, where I did most of my reading.

  My life had tilted and gone off balance. Everything about tonight had felt right in a way nothing had for a long time. The prayers had made sense. The story had spoken to me. I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it, just that suddenly a door had opened inside me the way we’d opened it to welcome the prophet Elijah.

  Something had shifted inside me, and for the first time, I thought I might have started to find my way.

  I drifted into the shower to let the steam and heat unkink the knots in my shoulders and neck as I thought about the evening. I was very glad I’d gone tonight.

  Mascara came away on my fingertips when I rubbed at my eyes, suddenly more tired now that I realized I had to get up in the morning to put a few hours of work in before I went to Foto Folks. I tipped my face to the spray and let it wash me clean. I didn’t bother to shave, just rinsed off the soap and got out to wrap a towel around me.

  I came out of the bathroom and screamed at the top of my lungs as a figure whirled to face me. “Shit! Alex!”

  His pink button-down lay open at his throat; his khaki pants were neatly pressed and belted at his waist. He’d slicked back his hair or had it cut, I couldn’t quite tell which. I saw his jacket slung over the back of my couch. I could smell the sharp tang of pot.

  I took a step back from it.

  “You’re home.” Alex didn’t sound high; he didn’t move like he was slow and dopey. He jittered, as a matter of fact.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I pressed a hand over my chest to feel the thunder of my heart inside. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Sorry.” He moved forward to kiss me. “I let myself in, heard the shower running. Figured I’d stay out here so you didn’t think I was getting all Norman Bates on you.”

  This close, all I could smell was cologne, and I wondered if I’d imagined the odor of marijuana. I looked into his eyes, which searched mine, but weren’t red-rimmed. His tongue slid over his lips and he kissed me again, and I tasted mint. Nothing more.

  “You scared me,” I repeated lamely.

  “Sorry.” He flicked the hem of the towel. “Sexy.”

  I clamped my arms tight to my sides to keep the towel from sliding down my breasts. I was waterlogged, exhausted, still spinning from the night and aware at the same time that Alex looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. “Let me go put something on.”

  “I like you like this.” He pulled me closer to search my mouth with his. His hand slid beneath the towel to find my skin warm and wet from the shower.

  I kissed him and could do nothing about his roaming fingers unless I wanted to risk dropping the towel. I squirmed, laughing. “Stop it! I have to go put something on!”

  “Why?”

  “Because…just because.”

  His smile seduced me. Opened my thighs. Made me let the towel slip down so the curves of my breasts showed, the hint of nipple. His hand drifted under the towel, up and down, moving so slowly and softly I couldn’t find it within me to protest.

  “Come have a glass of wine,” he murmured into my ear.

  “Alex, I have to work in the morning. And I’ve already had wine tonight.”

  “Me, too, but so what?” We moved in a small circle, dancing, my head on his shoulder. In my bare feet I had to stand on my toes to reach it. Now I pulled away to look at his face.

  “You did?”

  Something like a shadow flickered in his gaze. “Yeah. Couple of glasses.”

  “I thought you didn’t drink.”

  A crevasse a whole inch wide yawned between us. His hands had come to rest on my hips, and his fingers tightened there, bunching my towel. “I never said I didn’t drink.”

  “But you never…Forget it,” I told him. I scanned his face, the set of his mouth. “I thought you were at a meeting, that’s all.”

  “I was. A dinner meeting. And then I met up with some friends. We had drinks. Is that all right?”

  I wanted to step away, but his grip held me just tightly enough I’d have had to make it obvious I wanted out of his embrace. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised, that’s all. You hadn’t mentioned seeing friends in Philly.”

  “I didn’t know I needed your permission to have a couple of drinks or to have friends, Olivia.”

  I leaned in again to take a long, deep sniff. Then I did step away. “I thought I smelled pot, before.”

  Alex didn’t look guilty, but he sure as hell looked something. “I smoked a joint.”

  “You drank and smoked pot and drove all the way home?”

  “I smoked the joint downstairs while I was waiting for you,” he said too casually.

  I thought of New Year’s Eve, the night I’d come home to find him holding a cigarette. The first time we’d kissed. “I didn’t think you smoked.”

  “I quit cigarettes, but a joint’s not…Hey, hey,” he said as I stepped away. “One small joint, and only half of it. It was some old shit I had floating around, not even any good.”

  I clutched the towel, hitching it higher, and shook my head. “Wow. Just…wow.”

  I turned and headed for my bedroom to pull on a T-shirt and pair of sleep pants. Alex followed, too close on my heels. I wouldn’t look at him.

  “I didn’t know you cared,” he said when I didn’t turn.

  I used my towel to squeeze the water from my hair, gently, so as not to fray the locks. Then I grabbed up a bottle of oil from my dresser to rub through them. I wasn’t sure how I meant to answer him, only that whatever words were lying in wait down deep in my throat tasted bitter on the back of my tongue.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but didn’t sound it.

  I turned then. “It’s not that I care, exactly. Lots of people drink, Alex. Lots of them smoke pot now and then. But you never have. And I have to wonder, why now? Why tonight? I have to wonder what the hell is going on with you lately?”

  This struck him hard enough to make him flinch. “Olivia—”

  I held up a hand. “No. Don’t even give me a bunch of bullshit for an answer. I’m not hearing it.”

  “How do you know it’s bullshit, if you won’t let me tell you?” His quirked smi
le wasn’t warming me this time. I couldn’t read his eyes. We were back to the beginning of things, and I hated it.

  I stared him down, and he didn’t falter. The buzz from earlier had faded and left behind foolishness. How could I have thought one dinner, a few hours, could change me? How could I have thought I might know who I am?

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” I told him quietly, and busied myself with the array of pots and jars of creams on top of my dresser. I opened one and rubbed a dollop into my skin.

  “I don’t want to fight with you, either.”

  “It’s late, and I’m tired. I think maybe you should go home.”

  A balloon of silence inflated between us.

  “Shit. This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I thought you’d come home, we’d have a glass of wine…”

  I sniffed and kept my attention on the cream I was rubbing into my skin. “I told you, I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “I’m not fighting!” He sounded exasperated.

  I breathed deep to find the smell of marijuana, not sure if I was imagining it. It wasn’t the drugs or the booze that had come between us, but the difference in him. Maybe the difference in me.

  “Olivia. Would you look at me? Please?”

  I didn’t get it, at first. The small velvet box, the hopeful look. Alex sank to one knee in front of me, the box held in one palm while he opened it. Something shiny glittered inside, bright enough to send me back against the dresser, so hard I rattled everything on top of it.

  “Olivia Mackey, will you marry me?”

  “What?”

  He got up, moved closer. The ring flashed so brilliantly in my bedroom’s dim lighting I knew it had to be a diamond. Of course it was—who got engaged with something different? Alex was offering me a diamond ring and the chance to become his wife, and all I could do was stare.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked again.

  I looked at his face, thinking I would say no. That no matter how fast this had happened or how deep into him I’d fallen, marriage was not the next step. That I’d taken a ring once before, and the promise along with it, and it had ended very badly.

  But things were different with Alex.

  “I don’t know what to say…”

  “Say yes, Olivia.” Alex pulled the ring from its velvet cushion and held my hand. “Say yes.”

  I looked into his eyes and saw everything inside his gaze. Fear. Hope. Pride and love. Heat there, too, familiar and welcome. He smiled and held the ring over my fingertip, but didn’t push it down.

  I thought of all the reasons to say no, and none of them were any good. So I let him slide that gorgeous band of platinum and diamond to the base of my finger, where the metal warmed quickly to the temperature of my skin.

  And I said yes.

  Chapter

  17

  Alex let out a breath and kissed me, hard. I’d seen the look in his eyes before I closed mine for the kiss; he was relieved. I pushed him back gently so I could get a better look at the ring.

  “You thought I’d say no?” I asked quietly as I tilted my hand back and forth to make the diamond sparkle. I glanced at him.

  Alex rumpled his hair, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”

  I had to hug and kiss him again for that honesty. “But you asked me anyway!”

  He put his arms around me and we rocked back and forth in our usual slow dance. “Of course I did.”

  “Why did you think I’d say no?”

  He looked down into my face. “Because I figured there was no way in hell I would ever be so lucky as to have you say yes.”

  “Oh, Alex.” I wanted to scoff, but his gaze told me he was dead serious. “Why would you ever think that?”

  He didn’t answer, just kissed me again. I opened my mouth and waited for him to feel different, taste new. I could feel the ring on my finger, a weight where there’d been none. The stone slid to the side and pressed against my other finger, not hurting. Just there. Unable to be ignored.

  “I love you,” I told him, and meant it.

  However it had happened, it was the truth. And, overwhelmed by too much discovery in one night, I started to cry. Alex didn’t look alarmed. He used his thumbs to brush away the tears slipping down my cheeks. He kissed the corner of my mouth where they’d accumulated. Licked them away. He didn’t ask me why I wept, and I didn’t feel I had to explain.

  I took a deep breath and blinked away the blur so I could focus on his shirt buttons. One, two, three. He stood patiently as I opened his shirt and slid my hands up and over his warm, bare flesh. He shivered, though my hands weren’t cold. His nipples tightened and tempted my mouth. I licked each one and listened to him sigh.

  I undid his belt and the zipper. I got on my knees in front of him and slid his trousers over his hips. The front of his briefs bulged, and I pushed them down, too. His cock came free of the soft fabric and I took it at the base to hold it still while I slid my mouth over it. When he groaned, I smiled and twisted to look up at him.

  He was gazing down at me. His hand caressed my hair. When I opened myself to take him in deeper, Alex’s eyes fluttered closed for a second before opening again. He licked his mouth. I sucked gently and felt the throb and pulse of his cock on my tongue.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d sucked him, but it felt different this time. The floor beneath my knees, the weight of his balls in my palm, even the length and girth of him were all different, like a photo that’s been cropped to emphasize a different aspect.

  I stroked him with my hand a few times, then got up and took him to my bed, where I laid him back and straddled him. He still wore his shirt, open all the way, and I still had on my T-shirt. It rode up my thighs as I brushed my clit over his erection. I hadn’t trimmed my bush in a few days, and the thick, springy curls tickled us both, adding to the pleasure. He put his hands on my hips.

  I reached over and past him to my nightstand, where I’d left my orgasm-worthy new camera. “I think we should take a photo to commemorate the event.”

  He laughed as his hands stroked up my thighs and over my ass. “Of course.”

  I angled the camera, holding up my arm, as I lay my head next to his on the pillow, our bodies still aligned. Out of focus, our heads chopped off, our mouths fused, one shot after another. I didn’t bother to look at them as I took them. I held the hand with the ring over my face, and the flash glared off the diamond like lightning. I held it beneath the glare of my bedside lamp and it shot rainbows onto the ceiling. I took pictures of that, too, or tried.

  I gave him the camera and it became his eyes as I rode him, his cock deep inside me. I pulled my shirt over my head to be totally naked with him. I put my hand over the lens, then, and pushed the camera aside so I could see him, and Alex could see me with nothing between us.

  He pushed inside me and his hands moved over me to find all the places he already knew, but as with everything else tonight, his touch skating over my nakedness felt different. His palms on my nipples made me cry out when they never had; his thumb’s sweet pressure on my clit sent new tension through my every muscle.

  It took me a long time to come, but not too long. Seconds became minutes, strung together until I lost track of them. On top of him, I moved slowly, my head bent so my hair fell over my face. My palms were on his chest, and his heart throbbed under my palm.

  I rocked on his cock and his hands helped me move, but didn’t urge me to go faster or hold me to slow down. Light caught the diamond on my finger and that’s what I was looking at when the first trembling spasm of pleasure swept over me. My fingers clutched, and he moaned at the slight gouge of my nails into his flesh.

  The sound tipped me harder. My orgasm rippled through me so I shook with it. My thighs clenched his sides and my pussy clutched at his cock. His hips lifted then, pounding into me harder, and sweet pleasure rose again until I had to fall forward, exhausted.

  Later, when I rolled off him and we lay side by side, staring at the
dancing colors my ring made on my ceiling, I took up the camera and scrolled through the pictures we’d taken.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “This is so not how I’d like to remember I looked.”

  Face stripped of makeup, hair all over the place. My only consolation was that in most of the shots my face was blurred, or turned. Alex looked perfect, of course. He always did.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said without even glancing at the photos. “And it worked out okay. Believe me, I’d pictured it all going a little bit…smoother.”

  I turned on my side to look at him, tucking a hand beneath my cheek on the pillow. I put the other hand, the one with the ring, on his chest and watched it rise and fall with his breath. “You had it all planned out, huh?”

  He nodded. “I was going to give you a glass of wine first. And flowers. I have flowers out there for you.”

  He shifted to look at me. “Best laid plans, huh?”

  I thought of that picture-perfect proposal, but didn’t regret missing out on it. Good sex and all the excitement were pressing my eyes to close, but I struggled to keep them open. “I never guessed this was coming.”

  He reached to brush my hair from my face, and let his fingertip linger on my forehead, then slide down the curve of my temple to my cheek and jaw before dropping it to my hip. “I know.”

  A yawn split my laugh. “The ring is so beautiful.”

  “I bought it in Philadelphia from a jeweler friend I know.”

  I blinked and traced a heart on his chest. “So you didn’t have a business meeting tonight?”

  “Nope.”

  I narrowed my eyes a little, thinking that a lie could sometimes be forgiven. I touched his face, and he kissed my palm. I thought I had something more to say, something profound, but I was asleep before I could say it.