Vanilla

  I miss you.

  Well. That was nice. No lie, it lifted my heart a little. Made it go thump-thump. It also set my jaw and narrowed my eyes.

  I didn’t answer him. Not at first. I let half an hour go by, though I knew he would see that I got his message and read it. I got myself some ice cream and settled on the couch, my phone with its unanswered message weighting my pocket. I turned on the TV. Chose my show. And finally, because I hated when my messages went unanswered, I took out my phone and typed in an answer.

  Don’t.

  The fact the little D became an R immediately told me he’d been waiting for my answer, phone in hand. JohnSmith is Typing appeared at once, and that set my heart to thumping harder again. My throat closed a little, but I forced away any kind of emotion. No relief. Especially nothing so disgusting as gratitude.

  I’m sorry. I want to see you. Tonight? At our place.

  Our place. As if we’d ever had one, or anything, really, that could truly be called “ours.” I was cranky about it, all at once, when I knew I should not be. My relationship with Esteban had come with rules right from the start, most of which I had written and none I hadn’t negotiated or agreed upon. I was hurt and stung by his sudden ending of it, but that had been one of the rules—that either one of us, at any time, could decide to break it off. I’d simply assumed I would be the one to do it. I deserved the slap to my ego. A reminder that no matter how special you think someone thinks you are, it’s never really true.

  I’m busy, I typed.

  A minute passed. Then another. He’d read my message, I could see that, but he wasn’t typing a reply. I put my phone to the side, wishing I could feel justified in being a dick about all of this, but finding very little satisfaction. I tried to get lost in the TV show, one of my favorites and usually a guaranteed pleasure, but watching Brian refuse to admit he loved Justin, even though it was obvious throughout five seasons of hot sex and angst, only made me think about Esteban.

  I was lifting the phone to answer him when his message came through. One phrase, written in Spanish. Again, one of the few I knew without having to use a translator.

  Por favor.

  9

  I did not dress for him.

  I brushed my hair and my teeth and changed out of my pajama pants and into a pair of formfitting skinny jeans, paired with a slim-fit T-shirt. No bra, because I didn’t really need one. No garters, no stockings, no lace or satin. Plain cotton panties, bikini and not granny-sized but certainly not sexy. I slipped on a pair of rubber flip-flops that had seen better days, forgoing even sexy shoes.

  When Esteban opened the hotel room door, the sight of his face made me want to cry. His eyes were a little red, as if maybe he’d been fighting his own tears, and at the sight of me his entire expression showed his relief. I wanted to hug him close to me and stroke his hair and shh, shh him. To make him understand it was all going to be all right.

  Instead, I waited until he’d moved aside so I could go through the doorway without touching him. My heart again did that stupid thump-thump when I caught a whiff of him—soap and water, like he’d just finished a shower. I had to swallow hard. My fingers curled, fingernails pressing my palms. Facing away from him as I headed for the armchair, I closed my eyes for a moment to compose myself. Smooth my expression. This was all a game, but a serious game nonetheless, and I had to keep it that way or I would end up losing.

  I’d brought the book I’d been reading, a spooky gothic tale called Those Across the River. I was only a chapter or two into it, and truthfully I didn’t expect to get much farther into it tonight. I hadn’t brought any cuffs or rope or even a ribbon, no whip or flogger. But I had brought a prop.

  I settled into the chair and kicked off my flip-flops to tuck one foot beneath me. I opened my book and bent to read it, or at least to pretend I was. I said nothing to Esteban. I didn’t look at him. I knew he was looking at me, though. The weight of his gaze sent a shiver down my spine that I kept hidden. Tightened my nipples, though, and I couldn’t hide that. I ought to have worn a bra.

  He made a small noise as though he meant to speak, and without looking up at him, I flicked a hand. “At my feet.”

  He didn’t move at first. He made another low noise, this time more like a groan. I kept my eyes on my book, though the words were swimming. My breath came a little faster as I waited for him to obey me. I didn’t really doubt that he would—but that was always the delicious bit, the anticipation. When he could refuse me, but would not.

  After a few seconds, Esteban folded himself onto his knees in front of me. Many times I’d had him assume that position, usually with his arms crossed at the wrist behind him, but today I could see from the corner of my eye that he’d settled his hands on his thighs. He bent his head, shoulders rising and falling with a deep sigh.

  We sat like that for a long time.

  I turned the pages of my book, though later I would not remember a single word I’d looked at. I was too aware of the soft huff of his breathing and the heat of him against my bare foot, so close but not touching him. My hands began to tremble, and at last, I put the book aside and looked at him. I didn’t say anything. I simply gestured.

  Esteban leaned, his arms going around my hips. He pressed his face to my belly. He started to say something.

  “Hush,” I said, and he quieted. My hand stroked over his hair. Then again. I found the back of his neck, the strong muscles there, and let my hand rest against his bare skin. He heaved another sigh and settled against me.

  We sat in more silence, more content this time. Every so often he would nudge against me as I petted his hair. The motion of it became hypnotic, and after a bit, we both fell asleep.

  I woke with a start to find him gone from me. The foot tucked beneath me had fallen asleep, too, pins and needles making me wince. The toilet flushed, and a moment later Esteban came out of the bathroom. When he saw me rubbing at my foot, he came to me at once to again kneel and take it in his hands. His strong fingers worked my bare toes, helping the blood flow until I was wriggling not because of the sting, but from his tickling.

  “Stop,” I said with a gasping laugh. “Enough!”

  He pressed my bare sole to his lips and kissed it then set it down gently. He pushed up on his knees to take my hands, and I let him. He looked into my eyes. “Thank you for coming to see me. I was sure you would not.”

  I could’ve kept playing at being stern and cruel, but it’s more exhausting to fake emotion sometimes than to simply feel it. I tugged his hands until he leaned close enough to me that I could hug him. I kissed his cheek and then pressed mine to his for a few seconds, feeling his breath on me.

  “I thought I would never see you again,” he said into my ear. “And I could not do it.”

  I didn’t ask him why he’d felt he had to. He would’ve answered me with honesty, and I simply did not want to hear it. Instead, I squeezed him and sat back.

  “No more about it,” I told him.

  Esteban’s expression turned a little sly. “You will punish me for disappointing you?”

  I blinked for a second before sitting back harder, letting go of his hands. Disappointment was not what I’d felt. Rejection, yes. Surprise. And now, thinking that perhaps he’d done all of this for the sake of getting a spanking or something stupid like that, angry.

  I pushed him away and stepped around him. I grabbed my book. By the time I turned around, Esteban was on his feet and blocking my way to the door.

  He took me by the upper arms. “Wait. I’m sorry. I said something wrong.”

  “Did you do this on purpose? Break it off so I would be angry with you? So I’d punish you?” I tried to yank myself out of his grasp, but I’d forgotten that although Esteban had willingly allowed me all this time to be in charge, he was still physically stronger than I was.

  He held me tight enough to hurt, though I knew he didn’t mean to. I didn’t struggle. I gave him a hard look, but he surprised me again. His grip softened, but he didn?
??t let go.

  “Querida,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was doing what I felt I had to do, until I realized I couldn’t do it.”

  I’d deliberately kept my gaze from him earlier as a way to punish him, but now I found I could not look at his face. This wasn’t love, but it was all we had. “We agreed. Either of us could end this at any time.”

  “But I hurt you in the way I did it, and I’m sorry.” He pulled me closer, step by reluctant step, until we were embracing.

  No man that I’d ever been with had apologized to me that way, and there’d been one who’d hurt me a lot worse than Esteban had. Repeatedly, and on purpose. I breathed in the soap-and-water scent of him as I tried to think of how to answer. Finally, there was really only one answer. I pulled away to look at him.

  “Don’t do it again.”

  10

  I was never afraid to love you. No matter how deep I fell, how hard I loved, there was no question in my mind that when we were together, everything felt right. When I held out my hand, you took it.

  I wish you hadn’t let it go.

  * * *

  Three in the morning, another message I sent knowing I’d get no reply. I chose instead to bang myself against that wall again. To slam my fingers in the door, as Alicia said. And why? I could’ve spent a lifetime and a million dollars in therapy trying to figure out why I held on so tight to what no longer gave me anything but constant heartache. It was stupid; it was pointless; it was worthless.

  I did it anyway.

  11

  “I can’t believe you’re still doing this.” My mother’s lip curled. “Pictures like that? And I had to find out from Connex of all places. Some stranger inviting me to a show that’s got you hanging up there on the wall with your tuchus out for the entire world to see? What an embarrassment!”

  “I didn’t know he tagged me in the pictures. But I’m not embarrassed.” I leaned to drag a pita chip through the bowl of hummus. I didn’t love that Scott’s invitation had sent my mother into a tizzy, but hell, I was an adult.

  My mother’s twisted mouth thinned. Her chin went up. “I don’t understand you, Elise. I raised you so much better. I didn’t think you were still doing all that...stuff. With all those men.”

  “Ma,” I said with a sigh, pretending she was talking about the pictures and not anything else, “it’s an art show. They’re pictures, that’s all. I could be doing a lot of worse things, couldn’t I?”

  She crossed her arms. “Why can’t you just find a nice guy and settle down?”

  “Don’t come if you don’t want to see them. Nobody’s going to force you to look.” I ignored her question, which had been asked many times and never had an answer.

  “They’re all over your whatdoyoucallit. Your Connex page.”

  My brows went up. Those pictures were ancient. “So unfriend me.”

  “All my friends can see. Joan Simon told me she was invited, too. What’s he doing, soliciting everyone to come see your naked pictures?”

  I gave her a sideways look. I could not, off the top of my head, name any of her friends who’d been granted access to my Connex page, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d accepted everyone who wanted to be my “friend” early on. Now I didn’t friend anyone.

  “Not just me. There are lots of naked pictures of lots of people.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Perfect.”

  “It’s art.”

  “It’s unnatural,” she said finally and waited for me to reply. Probably for me to reassure her that they were only photos. That I didn’t actually do “those things.”

  I couldn’t. I’d never told my mother I was kinky, but I’d never denied it, either. I don’t think there are many people who enjoy discussing their sex lives with their parents, and people who get off on things not considered “normal” probably have an even harder time. I’d gone to my mother when I was about fourteen with some questions about sex, positions in particular, that I’d read about in one of the books she tried to keep hidden in the back of the bookcase. The woman on top position had intrigued me, but I’d been unable to figure out how, exactly, that worked. At fourteen I’d seen a penis—my brother’s, which hardly counted, but at least I was a little bit more informed than most of my friends about what one looked like. Alicia had shown me some pictures in her dad’s nudie mags of people fucking, but they’d all been doing it with the guy on top. I wanted to know how it worked the other way around.

  My mother had told me then what she’d just told me now. It’s unnatural for a woman to want to be on top. She’d said it when I was fourteen and again at twenty-two, the first time she’d seen my “filthy” pictures, and several other times since. Yet, that was how I liked it, how I’d always liked it since I’d first discovered it was possible. It was how I would always like it.

  “I’m just saying,” my mother continued, because of course she had to get in the last word.

  “It’s also a little creepy that you keep harping on it,” I said sharply and got up to get another glass of water. “I thought we were here to help Susan with some Bar Mitzvah stuff, not talk about my private life. Where’s Jill anyway?”

  This was way more my sister’s type of gig than mine. I didn’t care about the color scheme or types of napkins or any of that stuff, but I figured I’d better be there as a buffer. If Susan and I had a neutrally pleasant relationship, she and my mom had what I’d consider a “temporary cease-fire” sort. My sister, Jill, seemed to have no idea that Susan actively loathed her, but then Jill assumed the world revolved around her, and the idea that someone could actually not like her never entered her mind.

  “Jill had a school board meeting, and Susan is late,” my mother said.

  I looked at the clock. It was already close to eight. I didn’t really want to hang out here all night, not with a forty-five-minute drive back home. My mom would try to insist I stay over. I’d have to not-so-politely decline. She would pout. I would snap. Susan would roll her eyes.

  “What time was she supposed—”

  “I’m here. Sorry, sorry.” Susan, eyes bright, cheeks a little flushed, bustled into my mother’s kitchen with a brimming accordion folder.

  They squared off like cowboys in an old Western, but neither of them drew. After a moment, my mother grudgingly offered coffee, which Susan politely declined. The pair of them looked at me like I had anything to say about it, but I only shrugged, and they both went into the dining room to lay out menus and brochures from different locations.

  The first disagreement happened over kosher catering. Never mind I’d gone out to dinner with my mother plenty of times and watched her devour a Cobb salad like it wasn’t riddled with pig, but Susan would send her order back if it arrived with unexpected bacon. Or that neither of them actually kept a kosher kitchen with separate pots and pans and the like. My mother wanted to be able to invite and impress her friends. My sister-in-law wanted a nice place to have a party and have some good food. We didn’t live in an area where kosher catering was a common thing.

  Under other circumstances I’d have popped some corn and settled back to watch the show, but tonight I was already tired because I’d been up at three in the morning being a dumbass and messaging a man who always read my messages but never answered me. I didn’t have the patience to listen to them quibble over hors d’oeuvres. It wasn’t my event, nor my money. My phone hummed from my pocket, and I drew it out, surprised to find a message from Esteban. I was also pleased, though. More than I wanted to admit.

  “I won’t be serving shrimp cocktail,” Susan said stiffly. “There will be a pasta station and a mashed potato bar, which William requested. We’ll have grilled chicken skewers, too. I don’t see why this has to be an issue.”

  “I simply think that you should serve food your guests will be able to eat,” my mother said with a sniff.

  Susan’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone I invite will be fine with the food.”

  “You’re having it at William Penn Inn,
right?” I asked absently, reading Esteban’s short but descriptive list of things he wanted to do for and to me. He’d started off with “I humbly request the honor” and ended it with “If it pleases you,” and though the wording was campy and silly, I had no doubts he was sincere in his offerings.

  Both of them shut up and turned to me.

  “There were so many other choices,” my mother muttered.

  Susan made a contemplative noise. “That’s where Evan and I had our wedding reception. We discussed this already.”

  “I know,” I said, looking up with a grin at what my lover had sent me, not for either of them. “I was there, remember? Bright yellow dress, puffy sleeves? Groomsman stepped on the hem and ripped it straight off the waist seam just before we walked down the aisle?”

  I’d been trying to make light. Susan didn’t laugh. My mother’s mouth twisted again.

  “It’s a great location,” I told them. “I just went to a thing there a few months ago. They had a huge vegetarian buffet with hummus and grilled portobellos and stuff. You can do vegetarian meals for people who really care about it being kosher, which honestly, won’t be that many. Nobody has to eat the grilled chicken if they don’t want to. Just make it at a different station.”

  “Well, maybe you don’t care what people think of this family,” my mother said, “but I do!”

  Susan scribbled something on her notepad, then excused herself to use the bathroom. My mother glared at me. I dragged myself away from my increasingly dirty messages to shrug at her.

  “What? It’s not your event, Ma.”

  “I want to be able to invite my friends and not be embarrassed!”

  “You can want what you want,” I told her, repeating one of her most-often-used phrases from my childhood, “but you get what you get.”

  My phone tickled me through the pocket of my jeans again, and I bent back to it while my mother got up to putter around the kitchen.