Happiness for Beginners (8 page)

“Oh my God,” I said. “You do get straight A's.”

“Told ya,” he said. “I've wanted to do this since the first second I saw you, by the way. All I wanted was to walk up to you and do exactly this.”

“You mean, as I was walking down the aisle? To get married?”

He nodded.

“That would have been awkward,” I said.

But he was serious. “I've always regretted that I didn't just do it.”

“You're too young to regret anything.”

“Trust me,” he said. “I'm not.”

Then, he was kissing me again, and in that moment, school was officially over. I didn't have anything to teach this kid. I hadn't been kissed like this in years. Or ever.

Jake nudged me back onto the bed, and I let him, laughing a little as we tried to keep kissing as we worked our way down onto the mattress. I relaxed against the pillows, kissing him back, just as breathless and just as lost. He worked over to the crook of my neck, using his teeth for contrast like the Ivy League overachiever he was. My whole body seemed to gulp every sensation down.

Through the blur, I heard myself say, “You lied to me.”

He lifted up. “What?”

I looked at him. His hair was less damp now, but mussed and falling forward. His eyes were glassy. “You told me you didn't know how to kiss,” I said. “You told me you were terrible.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.” Then he went back to my neck, making almost unbearable swirling eddies.

“I knew you were lying.”

He knew I knew. He didn't even try to pretend. “I'm actually pretty good.”

Was I angry that he'd lied to me?
Hell, no.

He went on, talking into my shoulder, his voice slightly muffled. “You'd never do it for fun. You'd never do it for a dare. You'd certainly never do it because you wanted to.” He worked his way back up my throat, then, and up along the curve under my chin. At last, he lifted his head. “It had to be charity. I knew you'd do it for charity.”

He wasn't wrong. “You're much sneakier than I gave you credit for,” I said.

He was back at my neck. “Only when I have to be.”

“You didn't have to be,” I said. “You just chose to be.”

He lifted his head. “I had to be.”

Before I could ask what that might mean, he kissed me again, until everything in my entire life seemed out of focus except for this one delicious thing. He went on, “I just wanted you. Every time I saw you, or heard about you, or saw your photo in Duncan's room.”

“And now that you've got me here, how does it feel?”

“Too good to be true,” he said. A second later he added, “And it's pure agony.”

I didn't know what that meant, but I knew this: He did have me. If he was playing me, I was played. If this was just a teenage conquest of his friend's big sister, I was conquered. It was partly the kissing sneak-attack that had me all dazed. But it was mostly the fully earnest expression on his face. If he was acting, he was the greatest actor in the world.

Agony,
he'd said. I didn't want him to feel agony. I wanted him to feel every good thing that I did.

I reached up and hooked my hands behind his neck and pulled his mouth down to mine. I wasn't playing professor anymore. I was just me, the real me, kissing him and trying to do the very best job I could. I started doing to his neck exactly what he'd done to mine. Which I knew, for sure, was the opposite of agony.

The next time he lifted his head, he seemed like he couldn't believe his eyes.

“I'm glad you tricked me into kissing you,” I said.

“Me, too,” he said.

“I haven't had this much fun in ages.”

“Me neither.”

“But you must have lots of girlfriends.”

“Not lately,” he said with a head shake. “Not interested.”

Then I asked a question that I never would have dared to if I weren't so drunk on kisses—and if he hadn't just spent the past half hour convincing me that I already knew the answer. “But you're interested in me?”

“Yes,” he said. “But you're grandfathered in.”

“Jake,” I said, “I really like you. How did that happen?”

His eyes roamed my face in the most grateful way. “I have no idea.”

He looked at me like he was memorizing every tiny detail—the way, I imagined, a painter must look at a subject. It was pure aphrodisiac. Then an idea occurred to me: I hadn't been with anybody since Mike in all the years we'd been married, and in the years we'd dated before that, and in this whole, unbelievably long year I'd been
not married
. I suddenly wanted like crazy to be with someone, and for that someone to be Jake. I didn't care that he'd been too young to vote in the last presidential election, and I didn't care that he was Duncan's friend. I didn't care about anything at all in that moment except getting a better helping of whatever this was.

I slid a hand down and felt around for the tie on his pajamas.

He broke from the kiss to look down at me. “What are you doing?”

I looked up. “Untying your pants.”

He shook his head. “You can't do that,” he said. “If you get that started, I'm not sure I can stop.”

“Why would you have to stop?” I asked. I'd found the knot at his waist and began working to untie it.

“Helen,” he said, “we can't.” He put his hand over my hand.

“Sure, we can.”

“Helen. Helen—” he said. “Don't. I really did trick you. There was no way you were going to win that Scrabble game. I was on a
team
. I played in
tournaments
.”

“Should I mock you about that now or later?”

“The point is, you'd lost before we began.”

“So?”

“I had devious intentions. Even the whole idea of Scrabble. I knew you couldn't resist that game. Duncan told me. That's the whole reason I brought it.”

“Okay, that is devious,” I said. “But you did give me an out.” I kissed him again.

“I'm trying to do the right thing, here.”

“Don't do the right thing,” I murmured into his neck just as I worked the pajama knot free. “I don't want you to do the right thing.”

That's when he pressed down and kissed me so fiercely I almost lost my breath. I thought we had been kissing before, but at this moment, I realized we hadn't even started. Right thing, wrong thing. None of it mattered. I was dissolving into the moment, turning into nothing but touch and motion. Whatever had been holding him back was gone, and now we were caught in a gale-force sweep of longing. That was it. The decision was made. We were going to do the wrong thing, and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.

Until the phone rang.

My phone. Right on the bedside table, inches away.

We froze, locked gazes, and waited for it to stop.

It stopped. But then it started up again. We waited that one out, too, stock-still except for our breathing.

When the ringing started up a third time, I had to check. Three rings is always an emergency. Or, as it turns out, an ex-husband.

I reached out to pick it up in slow motion, and we both saw Mike's name on the little screen.

“Don't answer,” Jake whispered.

I shook my head. “I have to.”

He rolled onto his back in defeat.

I answered. The room was quiet. Dead quiet. I put the phone to my ear. “Mike?”

“Ellie?”

I hated it when he called me Ellie.

“Can I come over?”

I sat up to hunch over the phone.

“What's wrong?” I said. “I'm out of town.”

His voice had that tremble to it that he only got when he was overwhelmed. “I just took a swig of a Jack and Coke,” he said.

His favorite drink. “Why are you calling me? Why aren't you calling your sponsor?”

“I can't find him. He's not answering.”

I met Jake's eyes and gave him a shrug of apology. He looked away. “Hold on,” I said into the phone.

I stood up and straightened out my sleep shirt to compose myself. I could feel Jake's eyes on me as I walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. “How much of a swig?”

“I spit it out,” he said. “I was at a party and I saw a half-empty glass by the sink. Somebody else's half-gone, melted drink. I just picked it up and poured it in. But then I didn't swallow. I coughed it back out.”

I put down the toilet lid and sat on it. “That's great, though, Mike. You did great.”

“I don't feel great. I feel like hell.”

“Where are you?”

“Walking around. I had to get out.”

I leaned forward on my bare knees and tried to adjust to the change of scene. From the soft bed with Jake in a swirl of something that could only be described as
bliss
to the hard, cold, fluorescent bathroom alone in fifteen seconds. It was quite a shift. I didn't know what to tell Mike. I hadn't talked to him in months. “I think that's part of it,” I said at last. “That's the process.” I had no idea what the process was.

“Can't I come over for just a few minutes? I miss you.”

“I told you. I'm out of town. I'm driving to Wyoming.”

He paused. “Why?”

“It's a long story,” I said. “I'm going hiking.”

“Hiking?” he said. “Have you ever been hiking?”

“No,” I said. “That's the point. I'm doing something new.”

Mike let out a long sigh. “Helen. I can't believe how much I love hearing your voice.”

I softened at that. I believed him. “I'm sorry you're struggling so hard.”

And with that little tender moment, one of the truest ones to happen between the two of us in years, Mike did something he had never done even once the whole time we'd been married. He started to cry.

Once he started, he did not stop. He cried with abandon—with a fervor I had never heard from him. He cried like it was the first time he'd ever done it. Or like it might be the last. The force of it was paralyzing. I couldn't move under the weight of the deluge. By the time he was all cried out, I'd been stuck in that bathroom for over an hour.

What can I say? Next time your ex-husband finally decides to unleash every emotion he had pent up for six years of marriage, see how efficiently you shut him back down. Why did he pick this exact moment? Did he sense that I had somehow, just, at last, set off to become a new person beyond his grasp? Did some faint radar in his brain tell him I was about to give myself to someone else? The timing was absolutely uncanny. He couldn't have picked a better moment if he'd bugged the room.

*   *   *

Jake was back to reading his whale book when I finally came back out. He didn't look up.

“Must be a good one,” I said, gesturing.

“I'm underlining this time,” he said, holding up a pen.

I could so easily have crawled onto the bed beside him, put my mouth on his, and pulled us back into the maelstrom. We could have started up again where we left off. But an hour is a long time. Longer, even, if you're on the phone with your ex-husband. Or, in Jake's case, alone with your thoughts.

We'd both had a chance to think too much.

“So,” I said, standing too far away to solicit the answer I wanted. “Should we just, like, pick up where we left off?”

Jake kept his eyes on his book.

I studied him. “You don't want to,” I said.

“I do want to,” he said. “You have no idea.”

“Then what?”

“I should never have started this. I was being selfish.”

“So be selfish,” I said. “I don't care.”

“You should care,” he said. “You don't need another selfish man.”

Of course Duncan had told him all about Mike. “Okay,” I said. “It's been a rough year. Or six. Can't I do something fun now?”

“Not with me.”

“You're mad that I answered the phone.”

He shook his head. “No. I get why you did that.”

“He doesn't mean anything to me,” I said.

“Well,” Jake said, “he means something to you.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Of course. But I mean—” I paused. I wasn't quite sure how to phrase it. “I'm not still hung up on him.”

“I know. It's not that.”

“What is it then?”

“I think I've just had too much time to think.”

I paced to the window and back. “So now you're saying no? You've been flirting with me since Boston, and doing badass PR for yourself, and staring at me like I was some kind of mouthwatering dessert, and now you're just going to shut it all down?”

He was doing it again. Memorizing my face.

“Jake? Are you?”

“I have to,” he said.

“How fucked up are you?” I said.

But he was so serious. “You deserve someone better.”

“That's not what you were saying yesterday! That's not what you were saying an hour ago!” I knew plenty of guys like that. Guys who only wanted you when they couldn't have you. Hell, I'd married one.

“I don't know how to explain,” he said, sitting up.

“Wait—” I took a few steps backward. “Was this a joke?” I felt a stab of humiliation at the possibility. “Did Duncan dare you or something?” I looked around. “Were you, like, videotaping this for the Internet?”

“No!” he said. Then he rubbed his eyes. “I never thought it would work, okay? I thought you'd roll your eyes at me like you always do. I didn't think you'd actually kiss me, or lie back on the bed like that, or look up at me like I could mean something to you. I certainly did not anticipate that crazy sleep shirt of yours. And I sure as hell never imagined what kissing you would actually feel like.”

I paced around some more. Everything that had felt so exactly right a little while earlier was now the opposite. I went to the window again. There was nowhere else to go.