Ready and Willing (9 page)

He holds out a hand to say I should get in. He joins me in the steam and the warm water, kisses me lightly. He takes my soap from the caddy and lathers his hands. I let him run them over my shoulders, up and down my back, over my breasts, my hips,
my
butt. He kneels and soaps my legs, then turns the bar in his hands until they’re coated in lather. He coaxes me to stand wider, and he washes me. His touch is gentle against my savaged, sensitized lips and clit, intimate as he soaps my curls. I know what he’s doing. I let him. I let him bathe me until he’s convinced that Rob’s gone, that he’s the only man here with me. I study Noah on his knees, so reverential. We both know what he’s doing is a violation of the entire point of recruiting two men for this job, but I don’t stop him. I don’t want to. I want this intimacy as badly as I thought I wanted anonymity.

As the bathing comes to an end, he stands. He rests his chin on my temple, sighs deeply,
clears
his throat as the water rinses the soap from our bodies. No words come, so I take over. I shut the taps off and grab him a towel, and we dry off together in the silence left in the water’s wake. When we’re done I walk back to my bedroom, and he follows. I tug the bedspread flat, trying to erase the wrinkles and lumps from earlier, the evidence.

We lie on our sides on the covers, facing each other with our knees linked.

“Tonight was the craziest thing I’ve done,
sexwise
,” Noah whispers. “I didn’t actually know I was capable of anything like that.”

I study his chest with its faint spray of soft hair. “It’s the dirtiest thing I’ve ever done too.
By
far
…
I hope you won’t feel creepy about it. I hope you won’t feel weird at your boxing studio now.”

I glance up as Noah makes a face, a familiar glimmer of the man I’ve come to know. “I’m a grown-up.”

I let him think a while longer, combing his wet hair with my fingers as I wait patiently for him to speak.

“I’m sorry about what I did,” he says.
“In the shower.
That wasn’t fair. I know that’s not what we’re all about.”

I purse my lips, eyes glued to his chin as I mull it over. “I think you and me are probably equally guilty when it comes to fucking up the politics of this experiment. And to be honest, I thought it was sweet that you did that.”

He angles his head and kisses me lightly, apologetically. The room still reeks of sex, the smell hanging potent around our clean bodies.

“You can still make it up to me, Noah.” I hope the tease comes off as gentle and innocuous as I’m intending. I drag my lips along his jaw, kiss his ear,
listen
to his breathing. He tenses—first with caution, then excitement. His mouth takes mine, tongue explicit and deep as the groans rumbling in his chest.

He rolls me onto my back, grabs the lube, and gets himself ready. He spreads me wide with his knees and slides in, just the faintest sting from the gel on my tender lips. Noah grunts and holds himself still, savoring something—maybe the fact that I’m all his now. That’s what I’m feeling, at any rate. I want to spoil him, make him feel as if he’s only man on the face of the Earth.

“I need you, Noah.”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to fuck me, give me all your cum. You’re the only one I want.”

He starts to thrust, going from controlled to frantic in less than a minute, arms locked tight around my back. I grin unseen over his shoulder, loving his strong body above mine, his deep grunts,
the
flex of his ass under my palms.

“Come on, Noah. Come for me.
Nice and hard.”

He answers with his hips, fucking me deep and graceless and greedy.

“Come on. Come on.”

“Fuck, Abby.”

“Shoot it deep.”

He hammers me hard, then freezes, holds, pushes his hips into mine so hard I feel the bite of bone on bone. I rub his back as his body melts and his breathing returns. He slides out and lies beside me, curls against my side as I hug my knees. I feel his lips on my shoulder, kissing idly for a couple minutes; then he’s out—asleep. I reach over and stroke his hair and cheek, smile at him.

Noah wakes just as I’m about to nod off. He makes an adorable noise, a soft, startled snore; then I see him blinking in the low light.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

We cuddle for ten minutes, exchange a few lazy kisses. Finally Noah clears his throat and breaks our silence.

“Hey, Abby…”

“Yeah?”

He kisses my shoulder, thinks for a moment. “How come you’re doing all this the way you are?
The conception?
And I don’t mean the sex.”

“What, then?”

“I mean, why me and him? Why strangers? Why…single? I know this’ll sound cheesy and probably a little patronizing…but I can’t imagine you couldn’t find a good guy and settle down and do this the…”

“Old-fashioned way?”

He shrugs and nods. “You’re pretty and smart and interesting, and you’ve got your life together. I’ve met you under the strangest circumstances imaginable, and you still don’t seem psycho at all.”

I laugh. “Even after tonight?”

He nods again.

“Well, thanks. I guess I just don’t want to wait. Even if I met the right guy tomorrow, I’d still need a long time to know if he’s
really
right. Right enough to be my kid’s father. And at the risk of sounding a bit desperate, I don’t think I can wait another two or four or more years.”

“Sure.”

“I ended a serious relationship this summer,” I say. “I’d been going out with my boyfriend for almost three years, and we weren’t even living together yet. I think I loved him, but I know it would’ve taken me
another
three years to figure out if he was The One or whatever. The traditional way is just…too damn slow.
For me, anyway, because I’m sort of cautious, believe it or not.
But my body’s still like, tick-tock, tick-tock,” I add, tapping my middle.
“Biological time bomb.
But I knew I didn’t want to settle down with the most convenient guy just because my ovaries started calling the shots. That probably makes me seem obnoxious and wishy-washy.”

“It sounds like he probably just wasn’t the right guy,” Noah says, “if you still had all that room for doubt.”

“That was pretty much my thinking in the end. But you know how it is when there’s nothing actually
wrong
with someone but they still aren’t quite right. It makes everything really confusing.”

“Yeah,” Noah says. “Those break-ups are the worst. When you don’t have a good reason for why you’re ending it.”

I nod my passionate agreement.
“So yeah.
That’s why I’m doing this the crazy way.”

“Makes sense to me.” Noah kisses my forehead, shifts his body. Something about the drag of his sweat-damp skin against mine ushers reality
in,
tightens me up as rational thought drives away the lazy tenderness.

“I think I have to ask you not to spend the night tonight.” I say this to his ear since I can’t seem to look him in the eye.
“Just because this whole evening was sort of…complicated.
I think I need to just be by myself, sit around in my pajamas, and you know, come down from it.”

“Sure.”

“But I promise I’m not upset you came over.”

He kisses my temple again. “It’s okay if you are. Don’t worry about my feelings. I’m tough.”

I nod, wishing it were that simple. Wishing it was anywhere
near
as simple as I’d envisioned.

Noah rolls away and gets up. I follow suit, and we get dressed, both wearing polite smiles, a vaguely uncomfortable energy strung heavily between us. My stomach growls as he’s tying his shoes. I glance at the coffee table at the three identical half-drunk glasses of wine. I glance at the bare tree branches outside in the streetlight. I feel guilty sending Noah out into the dark and cold after everything that’s gone on, but I know if he stays and spends the night, I’ll wake up tomorrow not knowing what he is to me anymore.

I have a thought, jog to my tiny office space, and scribble him a check, a desperate little attempt to reassert the rules of this fucked-up arrangement.

I get back as he’s shrugging his coat on. “Here,” I say.

Noah winces, opens his mouth, closes it,
stares
down at the check with a blank expression. I worry I’ve insulted him, but I need something about this night to go according to the plan. He folds the paper neatly and slips it into his pocket. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Enjoy the movie,” I add.

“Yeah.”
That one dispirited syllable tells me Noah’s not going to see
Mean Streets
tonight, maybe not ever again, now that it’s tangled up in the memory of the psychotic threesome he deigned to have with a sperm-hungry harpy and her other willing donor.

“See you later, Abby.”

I open the door and close it behind him, listen to him clomp down the steps. A car starts up outside, idles for a minute. I’m aching to go to the window and watch him drive away, but I don’t want him to look up and catch me. I hear an engine rev and ice crunch, listen to Noah pull out, heading back to Jamaica Plain and away from all the confusion I surely brought into his life—maybe regret, if the memory of this night greets him tomorrow with a hard slap as he wakes.

I rub my face, feeling about a hundred years old. I click on the TV so I’ll have more than just my cyclical internal monologue for company. I flip channels until I find a bad prime-time drama, consolidate the three glasses of wine into one, dig some leftovers out of the fridge and toss them in the microwave, embrace my spinsterhood. Flopping back down on the couch, I remind myself that this is about a baby, and that babies conceived during their selfish mothers’ impromptu threesomes aren’t any less deserving of love than ones from boring old happy marriages.

An ad for fabric softener comes on a while later, and I
wad
my napkin up and toss it at the perfect mother on the screen, swaddling her toddler in a fluffy towel. “She conceived you in a port-a-potty at the county fair,” I tell the child. “Your dad was a carnie. They were very much in love, but he died in a tragic Tilt-a-Whirl accident.”

The child ignores me, lost in the rapture of tumble-dried terrycloth. I zap the TV off and head to bed, praying I’ll wake up a different person.

I never knew how many kinds of pregnancy tests there are.

For ten minutes or more I stare at boxes in the crowded downtown drugstore near my work, blocking the family planning aisle with my fistfuls of Christmas shopping bags. Eventually I pick two: a cheaper one of the pink-line, blue-line variety, and a more expensive one with a digital read-out.

I grab a can of soup, knowing I’ll be in no mental shape to cook anything decent when I get home, no matter the outcome. The woman in the next line over casts tactlessly nosy looks at my purchases as I pay. I stick out my tongue at her back as she leaves, and the cashier laughs.

As I’m skirting the snowy Common to get on the red line, I’m so lost in my thoughts I practically knock Noah Aubrey down before he gets my attention.

“Oh God.
Sorry, Noah. I was worlds away.”

He smiles his nervous smile. We haven’t spoken since the night of the impromptu threesome, but I feel relieved by the simple fact that he intercepted me when he could just as easily have run off.

“How have you been?” he asks. “You excited for Christmas?” I know what he really wants to know—the exact same thing I do: am I knocked up yet?

“Yeah, I’m officially ready.” I waggle my many bags.
“You?”

He nods, chewing his lip. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.
Just thought I’d say hello.”

“You aren’t making me uncomfortable. I’m just… I’ve got pregnancy tests in my purse,” I say with a laugh. “They feel like nitroglycerin. I’m just eager to get home and…you know.”

He nods again, for longer than I’ve ever seen a person nod before; then he finally asks, “Do you want a ride? That’s a lot of bags to cram on the subway.”

I think for a minute, not knowing what the right answer is. I haven’t seen Noah in nearly two weeks, and if I’m completely honest, I’ve missed him, in spite of the strange way we parted. After a few seconds’ deliberation, I realize what I’m doing is already a hot mess, so blurring our boundaries for another twenty minutes probably can’t fuck things up much worse.

“Sure, Noah.
I’d love that.”

He takes a couple of my bags, and we reroute toward the underground garage. “Aren’t you on break?” I ask.

“Technically.
But I came in to view some student films.
Hence the shabby clothes.”
He gestures to his jeans and sneakers.

“I hate to break it to you, but all the cool professors wear jeans to class.”

He nods, smiling.
“Maybe.
But I’m still pretty new, so I have to trick my students into respecting me in whatever ways I can… What do
you
do, anyway? I can’t believe I never bothered to ask you that.”