Naked (25 page)

“I like this one.” Sarah pointed at the brochure I’d pulled from my bag. She was on a break from her job and I was on my way to work at the mall. “I like the graphics.”

“I like that one, too.” I studied the front of it, then flipped it over. “I’ve got some nice stock shots I can use for the back, but if you’re free this week, I’d like to take some more. Sarah?”

She wasn’t listening. Her eyes, thickly framed today with black glittery liner, widened. She looked past me, toward the entrance and the long line of people waiting to order.

“Shit,” she said in a low, very non-Sarah voice.

I started to turn to see what had her so spooked, but she hissed at me to freeze.

“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded.

Her mouth thinned and she ducked her head, then put her elbows on the table to press her face into her palms. “Fuck.”

“Sarah, what’s wrong?” I twisted in my seat though she’d told me not to, but still couldn’t tell what had upset her.

She looked up at me. “It’s him.”

“Him, who?”

She frowned and shifted her chair behind the pillar, blocking her view. Or the view of her—I wasn’t sure. “Some dude I’ve been seeing. Not important. Maybe he’ll leave.”

“The one on your Connex page?”

“Not anymore.”

“Damn, girl, you’ve been holding out on me.”

Her smiled seemed more natural this time, though still a little strained. “You’ve been a little busy, muffin. I didn’t want to harsh your buzz. Besides, there’s nothing to tell. You know me. One guy, another guy, whatever.”

I made a face. “That’s so not you.”

Sarah dated a lot, and freely, and it was true she wasn’t always serious. She was…friendly. Sarah loved easily and it wasn’t always romantic. She wasn’t a prude, but she didn’t bed-hop, either.

“His name is Jack,” she told me.

The way her voice caught on that single syllable told me a lot.

“Aw, honey. What happened?”

She shrugged fiercely and wiped at her eyes. “Nothing. That’s the problem. Nothing is happening.”

A wide-hipped woman in a flowing dress, her makeup too
thick, her jewelry too flashy, passed us with a much younger man behind her. His baseball cap hid his hair and his long-sleeved shirt covered any tattoos, but the way Sarah looked told me everything. He stopped at our table, a dead, full stop as though someone had suddenly nailed his feet to the ground.

“Sarah.” Longing dripped from his voice, but she pretended she didn’t hear.

His gaze caught mine for a second, both of us embarrassed, and he moved on as though he hadn’t spoken. I saw him talk to the woman, his hand on her back and her greedy gaze devouring him. She didn’t look our way, but nodded and got up to move to the other side of the room, behind a wall so we couldn’t see.

“Do you want to leave?” I asked.

Sarah stabbed her salad again. “No. I’m not letting that fucker ruin my lunch.”

I was sure he’d already ruined it, but didn’t say so. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Jack,” Sarah said, “is a whore.”

“Oh, my God.” I remembered our conversation from a few months back. “You weren’t kidding?”

“No. He fucks women for money.”

“Oh. Wow.” I had nothing more to say about that.

Sarah drank angrily and tore a hunk of bread into increasingly tiny pieces. “At first, you know, I was like, whatever. It’s just a job, right? God knows I’m no virgin or anything. I’ve fucked dudes for reasons other than love.”

“Well…I think everyone does, sometimes.”

She shook her head and stared at the mess on her plate. “And I don’t care that he did it, Liv. I really don’t. I just care that he keeps doing it.”

Her voice broke, and I wanted to pet her. Sarah was the hugger, and she needed one now. I had to settle for taking her hand and squeezing it.

“I’m sorry.”

She squeezed back, then withdrew it to wipe the crumbs from her palms. She looked up at me. Her smeared mascara made her look even more tired.

“I know a lot of women who wouldn’t be able to get past that he did it at all, you know?”

I thought of the first time I saw Alex. “Yes. Boy, do I ever know.”

She nodded, her expression serious. “Yeah. You do. So I can…not forgive, because I don’t think he did wrong. But I can put whatever he did before me aside, because you know, it was before. And it’s not everything he is. But…I can’t be with him if he still does it. You know?”

I thought of the airline steward’s hopeful eyes and Alex’s bad joke about the cream for the coffee. “I understand, absolutely.”

Sarah smiled. “I know you do.”

“So why didn’t you talk to me about this before, dumb-ass? God, how long has this been going on?” I studied her. “You look like shit, by the way. I didn’t want to say so before, but since we’re being all honest and stuff—”

“Fuck you, Olivia,” Sarah said, but she was laughing. Some color had come back to her cheeks. She actually ate a bite of bread. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to weigh you down. I didn’t want to talk about it because I just…Shit. It’s different with him, that’s all.”

She looked very sad and very small. “Or at least, I thought it could be.”

Sarah had seen me through many a bad date and derailed relationship, but I’d never seen her this way before. “I’m sorry.”

She heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s okay. I’ll get over him, just to piss him off.”

We laughed. When we left, I looked for a glimpse of the man who’d tried to break my friend’s heart, but he must’ve left from a different door.

My mother arrived the next week with several grocery bags full of food, and not only so she’d have something to eat. She’d brought me plastic containers lovingly stuffed and labeled, a year’s worth of dinners to shove in my freezer. I burst into tears when she handed me a container of homemade chicken broth, the same she’d always made for me during college to take back to school.

My mom hugged me and rubbed my back the way she’d always done. She’d brought her own plates and silverware, but didn’t say a word about my microwave or oven not being kosher enough to heat up the food she’d brought. She stayed for three days.

I don’t know why I was surprised she got along so well with Alex. I knew how charming he could be. I came home from work every day expecting to find him in his place downstairs, where he was sleeping during my mom’s visit, and her wearing a judgmental frown. I waited for the lectures. But my mom loved him.

I walked through the door one night after getting off the early shift, thinking of suggesting we go to the movies or something, since it was her last night there. I came into the
kitchen to find my mom and Alex bent over a vat of bubbling chicken stock.

“It’s the seltzer,” my mom was explaining. “That gives it the lift. Oh, Livvy, hon. Come here and be our taste tester.”

She held up a spoon of broth with a giant matzo ball teetering on it. She blew to cool it, then held it out. I looked at Alex, who was smirking with pride and leaning against the counter. “Did you make these?”

“He did,” my mom said. “I helped just a little. But he’s a good cook, that one.”

“I know.” I took the spoon and bit into the matzo ball, which was perfectly soft and had just the right hint of spices. “Mmm, definitely a floater.”

“What do you know of floaters?” my mom teased. “Grab some bowls. Let’s eat this soup before it gets cold.”

We ate soup and played round after round of cards. Then my mom excused herself to take her nightly shower, advising us with a wink she’d be in there for a while.

“Is that so we don’t bang on the door?” Alex asked.

I laughed as we cleaned up the kitchen. “No. It’s so we can canoodle.”

“Ah.” Disregarding the mess, he pulled me into his arms. “I didn’t know anyone did that anymore.”

I kissed his chin and then bit it lightly. “We don’t have time for a quickie.”

“It’s been three days,” he murmured into my ear, his hands roaming. “A quickie’s all it would be.”

A hiss of breath, a kiss, a touch. It was like that with us. A flame. I leaned into him. I heard the pipes squeal as my mom turned on the shower. I did entertain the idea of dropping to my knees and giving him a quick blow job, but just for that
moment being hugged up against him was so sweet, so perfect, I didn’t want to move.

“I want to go home,” Alex said against my hair.

“Now? Okay.” I nestled closer. “Wait until she gets out of the shower?”

“No, Olivia. Not downstairs.” His hands moved in circles on my back. “I mean home, to Ohio.”

I pulled away. “To your family?”

He lifted my hand with the ring on it and tipped it back and forth to catch the light. “Yeah. I think I should introduce you, don’t you?”

My heart turned in my chest. “Yeah. I guess I should meet them before we get married.”

He laughed without sounding happy. “Memorial Day weekend? We could drive up Friday, come back on Tuesday.”

I didn’t want to say no right away, but calculated the time off in my head while I stalled him with a kiss. Alex knew what I was doing. He let me kiss him, then pulled back enough to say, “When’s the last time you took a vacation?”

“Oh, so a visit to meet your family is a vacation?”

Alex bit down on a grin. “Well, it’ll be a trip, I can guarantee that.”

S
o it was decided. I made the arrangements to take the days off, finished up all the work I had for my personal clients, and rebooked the few portrait and modeling sessions I had. It meant working a lot of hours for a couple weeks, but Alex didn’t complain about not seeing me as much.

He was quiet about a lot of things. Preoccupied. I chalked it up to the impending visit, since I knew his relationship with his family wasn’t very good. I tried asking him about it.

“You’ll understand when you meet them,” he said.

“I’d like to understand at least a little before that. So I can be prepared.”

We were on the couch, spooning while we watched some random series of home improvement programs. I couldn’t see his face, but his arms tightened around me. His breath blew hot on the back of my neck.

“Let’s just say this mask of sophistication I wear didn’t come about naturally.”

I snuggled a little closer. “Does anyone’s?”

He chuffed against the back of my neck. “My dad’s a drunk who doesn’t drink anymore. My mom’s a doormat. My sisters, God bless ’em, were the sorts of girls who had their names written on bathroom walls. Well, fuck, I guess I had mine written on some, too.”

“In high school?”

That finally earned a laugh. “No doubt.”

We were quiet for a minute while we watched some perky, bubble-breasted brunette describe how she’d made “original art” from a collection of milk jugs, a pair of candlesticks and an old throw rug.

“You know I will still love you no matter what your family’s like,” I said as the show mercifully cut to commercial.

He squeezed me. “I hope so.”

I shifted to face him. “I mean it, Alex. I don’t care if your family’s awful. I’m glad you’re taking me to meet them.”

His brow furrowed and he looked as though he meant to say something, then changed his mind. He shook his head a little.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

For the first time, it seemed as though he was hiding something from me. I studied him. I stroked the hair back from his face. “You can tell me.”

“Nothing,” he said again. “It’s nothing.”

And because he’d never given me reason to do anything else, I believed him.

Sandusky was a long-ass drive from Annville. We made it in nine hours, pulling into town about three in the afternoon. My legs were stiff and I had to pee like crazy, and my stomach was rumbling because all we’d had to eat was a couple of doughnuts from a rest stop.

We didn’t go straight to his parents’ house the way I thought we would. First we went to check in at the large old hotel located right on Lake Erie in the heart of Cedar Point Amusement Park. Alex had made the arrangements, and I was surprised at his choice, but he only grinned as we took our bags up to the suite overlooking the water.

“If you’re going to do the park, you really have to stay onsite,” he said.

I cocked an ear to listen for the rumble of a roller coaster. “Are we doing the park?”

“You don’t think I brought you all the way not to ride the tallest and fastest roller coasters in the country, do you?”

I laughed. “I guess not.”

He stretched out on the bed and beckoned me with a come-hither pout. “Let’s try out this mattress.”

“Don’t we have to go to your parents’ house?”

“Not until Sunday.”

I crossed to the bed, but didn’t let him pull me down. Both of us knew my resistance was more for show than anything. I crossed my arms. “I don’t really want to ride a coaster with your love juice oozing down my thighs.”

Alex made a face. “You are soooo classy.”

“I’m serious.”

He sighed and looked put-upon. “Can I just eat you out until you come all over my face?”

“So long as you wash it right after,” I told him sternly.

I loved the glint in his eyes. “It’s a deal.”

“I might even suck your dick at the same time,” I offered archly.

He fell back onto the pillows, both hands clutched over his heart. “Yessss!”

“Hold that thought, tiger. I’m going to use the bathroom and freshen up a little.”

“Hurry,” he said, with a leer so blatant it should’ve been silly but wasn’t.

“Yeah, yeah. Give a girl a minute or two.”

“I’m counting.”

Laughing, I went to the bathroom and availed myself of the facilities, then grabbed a washcloth to do a quick freshening. A nine-hour car ride hadn’t done much for my sense of sexy. Over the sound of the water running, I heard the distinctive jangle of Alex’s iPhone—he was the only man I knew who used sound clips from
The Wizard of Oz
as his ring tone. And, considering most of the men I knew, that was saying a lot.

He cut Glinda off in midtrill. Through the cracked-open bathroom door, I heard the low murmur of his voice, then a laugh. Also low. Deep. A sexy laugh.

I froze at the sink, my fingers wet and soapy, and water clinging to my eyelashes. I blinked to clear them, and turned off the water. I could hear his voice, but only pieces of words. He wasn’t talking to his parents; I could tell that much. There was no denying the dip and cadence of his words or the implication in them.

I stood at the door, listening without opening it. I knew
better and did it anyway. You never hear anything good when you listen at doors.

“Fuck you, man,” Alex said. “No, fuck you twice. Fuck you with something hard and sandpapery. Right. Whatever. Yeah, I know it has. Yeah. Well, good. It’ll be good.”

For other women with other boyfriends, the simple “man” would’ve been enough to chase away any fears…but of course, it only created some for me. My hand slipped on the door and it opened. Alex looked up.

“Yeah, we’ll be there,” he said, sounding subtly different with me as his audience. Or maybe my imagination put that butch accent in his tone. “Yep. See you then.”

He slid his finger across the phone’s face to disconnect the call. “That was Jamie, my best friend from high school.”

“Oh?”

I guess there are always moments when you realize for the first time you don’t really know the person you love. Something beyond the giggly checklist you go through in the beginning of a relationship—favorite color, favorite food, shoe size. When you first realize you could know all those things and a lot more and still not truly have a clue about the person you’ve decided you don’t ever want to live without.

“Yeah.” Alex hesitated, maybe realizing he’d never mentioned this friend before. “I haven’t seen him in a few years.”

“He’s still here in town?”

“Yeah. He invited us over for a barbecue on Monday. I told him we’d go.”

“Sure, of course. I’d like to meet your friend.”

“Awesome.” Alex tossed the phone onto the bed and headed for me with a familiar grin. “Now…about that business with the oral sex…”

We didn’t make it into the park for another couple of hours. We spent Saturday at the park, too. We rode every ride, sometimes twice, and ate our fill of amusement park junk food. I hadn’t seen Alex act the part of tour guide before, but it was clear he was proud and excited to show off to me the machinery he’d worked on and the bathrooms he’d scrubbed back in the days of his teenage employment at the park. He was different here, the way I guess we all are when put back into a place we’ve left.

And he had stories to tell. It was the most expansive Alex had ever been about his past, and I gobbled up every scrap he offered. Realizing there was so much I didn’t know made me all the more determined to learn all I could.

We walked hand in hand on the midway, lost a roll of quarters in the arcade. Had our pictures taken in the photo booth, me laughing on his lap. Kissing. He won me a stupendously crappy stuffed frog with great goggle eyes and a crown.

“Should I kiss it?” I said.

“I’m the only prince you’ll ever need, baby.”

It was a very good day.

Early Sunday, when it was still dark, I woke to the muffled sound of something nasty happening in the bathroom. I sat up in bed and felt the empty spot beside me. I heard the toilet flush and the water in the shower turn on. It ran for a long time, so long I was just about to get up and check on him, when it turned off. Alex came into the dark room a few minutes after that and slipped into bed next to me, naked.

“Are you okay?”

“Too many loopty-loop rides and ice cream.” He sounded a little hoarse and exhausted. “I’ll be okay.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

We’d made love the night before and he’d been fine. I turned to press the back of my hand to his forehead, checking for heat. My own stomach turned at the thought of a virus shared with a kiss.

“Do you feel better?”

Surprisingly, he croaked laughter. “I’ll be okay, babe. Really. I promise. I just need to get some sleep.”

I yawned, not knowing the time other than it was early. “How long have you been up?”

“I haven’t slept.”

“Oh, honey.” I shifted in the sheets. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Another croak masqueraded as a laugh. “I’ll be okay. I think I can sleep, now. A good yark always does that for me.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”

He turned on his side, away from me. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry you don’t feel good. Sure I can’t get you anything?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Really. Just…” He hesitated and cleared his throat. “My stomach’s just shot to shit, that’s all.”

I got it, then. “Your parents?”

His body shook a little, from a shiver or a nod, I couldn’t tell. “Yeah. Fuck.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have to go.”

“Yeah,” Alex said soberly into the darkness. “We do.”

I thought I understood, though my heart went out to him that it had made him so nervous he was sick. It didn’t do much good for my peace of mind, either. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

I understood that, too. I rubbed his back in gentle circles and listened to the sound of his breathing finally get soft and slow as he fell asleep. Then I was the one with a churning stomach, staring at the blackness, unable to sleep.

“This is it.” Alex pulled the emergency brake, though we weren’t on a hill, and turned off the ignition.

We sat in front of a small but well-kept bungalow on Sandusky’s main street. It had a narrow driveway leading to a detached garage, a small front porch and a side door. Gray stone walls, door and window frames outlined with black. A black slate roof. The door had been painted red.

Alex made no move to get out of the car. I didn’t, either. I looked through the front windshield at the tiny house. The curtain at the front window twitched.

“Babe, we can’t sit here forever.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Yeah. I know. Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute,” I told him, and waited until he’d turned to me. I took his face in my hands and kissed his mouth. “It’s going to be fine.”

Alex looked grim. “I do love you, Olivia.”

“Good.” My smile couldn’t tempt one from him, but I tried.

He sighed. “Let’s go.”

We went to the side door. Just before he pushed it open, Alex grabbed my hand. Hard. I winced and tried to ease his grip, but he wasn’t watching me. He pushed open the door and we went into a small, cluttered kitchen filled with steam and the scent of good things baking.

A skinny woman with a head of blowsy, faded hair pulled
off her face with a stretch headband turned from the sink, where she’d been scrubbing at a pot. She wore a stretched-out, pale yellow shirt, the hem unraveled and untucked from a pair of baggy white walking shorts. Her hands were red and raw, her arms and face freckled and bare of makeup.

“A.J.!”

I saw where he got his wide grin, and his deep gray eyes, too, when the woman moved closer. Alex looked quite a lot like his mother, though I had a hard time believing he’d ever have allowed himself to look so haggard.

“Ma,” he said in a cool, distant voice nothing like her adoring tone. “This is Olivia.”

I stepped out from behind him with a smile on my face. I wasn’t expecting a warm embrace and was, in fact, hoping for nothing more intimate than a handshake. I didn’t even get that.

What made it worse was that she’d moved toward me, arms half-open, then stopped. “Oh…hello.”

I saw her gaze travel over my face and linger on my hair, pulled back today with the locks twisted into a braid. Then she glanced at my hand, caught tight in her son’s.

I’ve had my share of curious looks, especially from people who’ve met my parents first. Sometimes it’s been the other way around. I’ve been judged on the color of my skin before I ever opened my mouth, and not always by white people. But I’d never, until that moment, been so awkwardly and uncomfortably aware of another person’s reaction upon seeing me.

“Mother,” Alex said sharply. “This is Olivia. My fiancée.”

“Oh…yes, of course. Olivia.” Mrs. Kennedy, who still didn’t have a first name to me, put on a smile. She wiped her
hands over and over on the dish towel she grabbed up from the counter “Come in! Come in. Dinner’s going to be ready real soon. I’ll have to call your dad. He’s down in the basement. Come here, A.J., and give your mom a kiss.”

He moved dutifully forward. Her fingers scrabbled at him, striving to keep him close a moment longer. He pulled away gently. Her eyes skated over him, drinking in the sight with such painfully obvious pleasure I didn’t want to see it.

“You two go into the living room. Your sisters are there. With the kids. They’ll be so happy to see you. Let me go get your dad.”

“Okay.” Alex took my hand again. “C’mon, babe, let’s go say hi.”

I swallowed hard and lifted my chin, girding myself for more stunned looks, but Alex’s sisters, at least, didn’t seem as shocked as his mother. He had three, all much younger. Tanya, Johanna and Denise. All of them had multiple children, ranging in age from late teens to drooling toddler, and I got the impression there were other kids missing. Not a husband in sight, though Johanna and Denise both wore plain gold wedding bands.

Alex greeted his sisters with easier affection than he had his mother, and they in turn hugged the breath out of him and slapped him around a little in the way younger sisters can do to older brothers. I knew that from experience. I hung back, not wanting to interject myself into the flurry of their questions, but Alex turned and drew me forward, my hand in his. He didn’t abandon me.