Coffee in Common (11 page)

Priya shot him a sly grin.

"I never said I haven't experienced sexual pleasure." She raised her arm a little, then rotated her hand and wiggled her fingers. "I only said I've never been with a man."

Paul clutched his head and staggered against the doorframe.

"No no, no!" he said in mock anguish. "Why did you tell me that? Now I won't be able to sleep all night thinking about it."

7:10 PM

Jillian spread her mat next to Jenna's.

"Where's Liz."

Without waiting for an answer, she began her warm-up routine.

"She had to work late. Said she'll meet us here if she finishes in time and if not, she'll meet us at Legal's."

Jillian was surprised to see the class nearly full. A virus had been making the rounds in New England and for the past few weeks, nearly half the class had been missing.

"How did the phone call go with the coffee guy?" Jenna was eager to hear the details.

Jillian's answer was a coy smile.

"Come on, you know you want to tell."

Actually, Jillian was dying to tell, but she knew she'd be telling everyone about Paul later.

"Sorry, you'll just have to wait until dinner later when I tell everyone else. Besides, you should be warming up."

Jenna scrunched her lips into a pout as she started to stretch.

"Will you at least tell me when you two are getting together?"

"Tomorrow. I'm not sure of the time yet. He said to call him tonight when I get home."

"That late? Or are you planning to leave early?"

"No, I told him he might be asleep by the time I got home and you know what he said?"

Jenna cocked an ear.

"He said he couldn't think of a better way to be awakened than by the sound of my voice."

Jillian sniffed at seeing Jenna's eyes roll skyward. "Well
I
thought it was sweet."

"I bet you did," Jenna replied, then leered at Jillian. "But I'll bet
I
can think of a few
other
ways he'd prefer to be woken up."

"You're awful!"

Jillian felt her cheeks getting hot, and then hotter as the things Jenna meant, and then others, flashed across her mind's eye. In seconds, her face looked sunburned and Jenna laughed at her friend's embarrassment.

Just then, the instructor, Maureen, asked everyone to take their places. She started the class as she always did, with some breathing exercises.

Jillian tried her best to concentrate on her breathing but found Jenna's suggestive remark had planted itself firmly in the forefront of her consciousness. The thoughts excited her at a time when she should be relaxing, clearing her mind of worldly things, and focusing on her center. She was so distracted by mental images of herself and Paul that she didn't hear Maureen call for everyone to assume the first asana.

"Jilli!" Jenna whispered, then whispered again, accompanying it with a poke that succeeded in breaking through her reverie. "Hero."

When her eyes snapped opened, Jillian found she was the only one still standing.

"Well," Maureen said, catching her eye, "it's good to see one of my students has mastered the art of total concentration. Now if only we knew what she was concentrating on."

As she said that, she touched her cheek, glanced at Jenna, and winked to let Jillian know she'd noticed her blushing and understood why, which caused the poor girl's face to reach a shade of scarlet Maureen had never seen before.

Jillian spent the next forty-five minutes struggling to focus on what she was supposed to be doing. She cursed her friend half-a-dozen times, twice out loud, much to the amusement of Jenna and several of the people around them.

Finally, the class was over. As she rolled up her mat, Maureen approached.

"I'm pretty sure you didn't get your money's worth tonight, and I wanted to apologize for embarrassing you earlier. Sometimes my mouth runs faster than my brain."

"No, it wasn't you."

"Perhaps it was the guy Jenna was teasing you about?"

Maureen caught the surprise in Jillian's face. "Good acoustics in here. Not so much side-to-side, but great from front to back and back to front. I've never been able to figure out why. This guy must be pretty special to get you that worked up."

"I think maybe he is. I can't stop thinking about him."

She offered a condensed version of the past two days.

"And you two are going out tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

Maureen grinned. "It sounds to me like Paul's going to get
very
lucky tomorrow night."

Jillian pretended offense. "I am not that kind of girl."

 Maureen clucked ruefully and patted Jillian on the shoulder. "Of course you are, honey. We're all that kind of girl for the right guy."

8:05 PM

Rob shuffled uncomfortably down the hall, following Lisa who was fishing for keys in her purse. They'd been making out in the elevator and now Rob's constrained, but very visible excitement required him to move carefully to avoid inflicting pain upon himself.

As the door clicked shut behind them, Lisa flowed into his arms, her lips anxious and demanding. The time for soft, gentle kisses had passed quickly away in the elevator. Now, their lips ground together with a hungry urgency, their tongues twining in a dance that served to further inflame their passions.

His lips kissed their way across her cheek, moving toward the spot on her neck that always elicited a shiver of pleasure.

Thank you, Lord, thank you. It feels so good to hold her again.

He felt himself shudder.

I can't believe how close I came to losing her.

"Mmmmmm."

His lips had reached the spot and her body grew softer against his.

Lisa felt his arousal throbbing against her thigh and sensed herself growing moist in anticipation.

They'd returned to her apartment to discuss their future together, but a simple kiss as the elevator doors closed had become an aching need for both by the time the doors reopened.

She felt his hand slide between them, then under her thin shirt and silky bra to caress her breast. Again she moaned with pleasure as he toyed with her. His lips returned to hers while his hand stimulated the hard softness beneath his fingers. His tongue pressed urgently between her lips. Then, suddenly, he stiffened and pulled away.

"What's wrong?" she asked breathlessly.

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

"We're doing it again," he said softly, his voice quaking from the effort of suppressing his need for her.

She looked up at him, into his eyes.

"We're doing it again," he repeated, and then, in answer to her unspoken question, "We're putting the pleasure first."

He couldn't believe he was actually stopping them but felt her arms encircle him and squeeze as she nodded.

"You're right. You're right. After all I said, after all I blamed you for things, I couldn't even control myself for an hour or two. One kiss and all I wanted was to have you inside me again."

"That's true. But in your defense, you
were
kissing
me
, and how could
any
mere mortal be expected to control herself when tasting the lips of a love god."

She smiled, but it died quickly.

"Is this what our life will be together. Uncontrolled passion all the time?"

"I sure hope so."

He broke the embrace and led her by the hand to the sofa.

"Or, maybe not all the time. But enough of the time."

They sat quietly, her head resting on his shoulder, his arm holding her close.

After a minute, he said, "I don't ever want to lose the way you make me feel when we're together. It's all that keeps me going when we're apart. Just knowing that I'll see you again in a few hours keeps me smiling all day. And the thought of touching you…well…there are times during the day that an image of you will pop into my head, an image of you in the shower, or lying in bed, or walking across the room in your underwear, and I'll get so hot I can't concentrate on my work. Lord help me if I ever have to stand up during one of those episodes."

She laughed softly and smacked him lightly on his thigh. "Is that all you think of me?"

"No baby. You didn't let me finish.

"There are other times, when something will remind me of you, of something you said, something you did that made me feel proud of you, and for a few seconds, the whole world fades away and all I can see in my mind is your face smiling at me. And let me tell you it can lead to some embarrassing moments when it happens during a meeting."

Again he heard her soft laugh, but this time felt her hand caress his chest.

"And then there are the times I think of you for no reason at all other than I love you so much.
That
only happens a few
dozen
times a day."

Lisa lifted her head from his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. Her eyes were moist as she told him how much she loved him, too.

"But things have to change, Rob."

"I know. And they have. That's why I stopped us before. Do you think I would have done that, could have done that, three weeks ago? Right then I wanted you naked more than almost anything in the world. The one thing I want more, though, is to never, ever have to live without you again."

Lisa disengaged herself and sat up. She turned on the sofa to face him, searching his eyes as she crossed her legs and leaned back on the armrest.

"But what can we do, Rob? What happened a little while ago has made me realize how unfair I was to you. We were the way we were because I let us be."

"Maybe. Or partly. But it was mostly me being afraid of what I knew in my heart I really wanted. We were having fun, Lisa, and I didn't know how to move beyond it. Remember that old song by the Eagles,
Life in the Fast Lane?
In a way, that was us. We were rushing down the freeway and I was too blind to see the exit. You tried to show me at least a half-dozen times, and each time I…"

"You're right," she said, interrupting. "You did what you did. But I let you. And when it got to be too much, I simply took the exit by myself rather than fight for what
I
really wanted."

There were tears in her eyes again. "If you hadn't done what you did today, I would have walked away from us, Robbie. I would have let myself blame you for everything and walked away. And I think I would have regretted it for the rest of my life."

The tears rolled silently down her cheeks. Rob reached over to wipe them away.

"Stop," he pleaded in a whisper. "Please don't cry. It doesn't matter who did what. That's all in the past. What matters is now, tomorrow, and all the other tomorrows after it. What really matters is us, that there is an us, and that we make sure they'll always be an us."

8:37 PM

When Jillian and Jenna arrived at the restaurant, everyone else was already seated.

Thursday night dinner with the girls had started several years ago, when Jillian, Jenna, and Liz were sophomores. At first, it had been the three of them and Mary Louise Beaumont, a genuine southern belle and friend of Jenna's. Over the years, women had drifted in and out of the weekly gathering which usually numbered eight to ten.

They took turns selecting the restaurant and this week, it was Gloria's turn. No one ever had to wonder what they'd be eating when it was Gloria's turn. She'd grown up on the coast of Maine and loved seafood of all kinds. Her favorite place in Boston was the Legal Seafood at Park Plaice. Gloria insisted the food at that Legal's was "a whale's tail better" than at any of their other locations around town, although no one else could taste any difference.

It appeared most of their friends been waiting for awhile. Gloria, Holly, Shandra, Marie, and Maggie were each working on their second drink while Liz and Marissa had only one half-full glass each in front of them.

All eyes turned to Jillian as she and Jenna approached the table. Before she could even remove her coat, she was peppered with questions about Paul. Obviously, Liz, Shandra, and Marie had been comparing notes and filling in the others.

"Please!"

She held up a hand as she took her seat.

"I just finished my yoga class and must remain focused on my center for a while. My thoughts have to remain relaxed and pure."

This elicited a round of raucous laughter from the whole table, but especially from Jenna.

"Girl, are you forgetting I was there with you. The thoughts you had were anything but pure and the only center you focused on was between your legs."

"Jenna!"

Jillian felt her face start to flush yet again as the laughter renewed.

"Don't play innocent with me, girl."

She proceeded to relate what had happened during yoga class.

"And then Jilli says ‘I am not that kind of girl' and Maureen pats her on the shoulder and says, ‘Of course you are, honey. We're all that kind of girl for the right guy.'"

Laughter rang out again from her audience.

"Well, she's right about that," Maggie said. "Of course, if a man can walk and brushes his teeth he's the right one for me."

Maggie was, by far, the most sexually liberated of the group. She was twenty-nine, soon-to-be-thirty, and considered
Sex and the City's
Samantha Jones a role model. She once confided that by the time she had turned twenty-four she'd lost count of the number of men she'd slept with.

Although she played well the part of the slut who'd screw every man in sight, she was actually quite choosy about who she let share her bed. So much so that she could honestly say she'd only had one bad experience in the fourteen years since giving her virginity to Billy Fontaine, the boy who had lived across the street.

 "Well I think it's the most romantic thing I've heard in a long time," said Holly.

She was twenty-six and the only married member of the group. Although happy in her relationship, a part of her missed the excitement of those chance meetings, first kisses, and new loves. She regularly lost herself in romance novels, much to the benefit of her husband, Jamal, who was always game for any fantasy his wife might want to act out.