Results May Vary (17 page)

Neil's face, when our eyes met briefly over Annie's head, showed a world of understanding. So much understanding I wished I hadn't looked at him at all.

You have a way of putting praises that makes it hard for me to walk afterward. My feet have a tendency not to touch the ground.

—William Maxwell to Sylvia Townsend Warner, April 5, 1961

After Neil took the girls to bed, I set to work clearing up after the meal. Perhaps it's the result of having spent so much time with Jonathan, but I've always felt that kitchens are three-dimensional portraits of the people they belong to. Like his office, Neil's kitchen was clean, but not particularly tidy: stray bags and boxes of food loitered at random along the counter, and the bananas in the colorful fruit bowl atop the microwave were edging past their prime. The food in the cabinets (I wasn't snooping, just trying to locate the right spots for dishes) had a very human balance between aspirationally healthy and realistically slightly less healthy, as did the fridge, which was full of vegetables, leftovers, and a well-used-looking bottle of chocolate syrup. A row of sturdy stainless canisters stood next to a fire-truck-red KitchenAid mixer; I had never known Neil to be a baker, so the mixer had to have been his wife's. There were touches of red all over the house, now that I noticed it. It must have been Eva's favorite color.

As I reached across the island to wipe up a stray patch of crumbs, I heard Neil's footsteps in the hall.

“Everybody down?” I said, turning to face him.

He smiled. “Annie's getting to be such a fighter. She used to be lights out, every time; now there's all these questions and observations.” He stopped when the appearance of the kitchen sank in. “You cleaned up! You didn't have to do that.”

“It was my pleasure. Thank you for the delicious meal.”

He looked crestfallen. “Oh, are you heading home, then?”

“What?” I stammered. “No, I mean, I hadn't planned to yet, but—”

“Aurgh.” He smeared his hands against his face, gave his head a quick shake like he had water in his ears. “I am so bad at this. I thought…you sounded like you were winding up to say you were going to hit the road. Anyway, please erase the last thirty seconds of conversation. Can I get you a drink? I think I might need one.”

A smile teased its way out of me. “Yes. Please. What are you pouring?”

“Come take a look,” he said over his shoulder, so I followed him to the bar cabinet. It was well stocked with bottles of different shapes and sizes, the gold lettering on some of them glinting in the light.
A single dad with a full bar?
I thought, until I realized. Liquor doesn't go bad. He had these before.
They
had these before. Just like
our
wine collection, which was now de facto
mine.
Was my life always going to be divided into a before and after?

In one corner, I spotted a bottle of tawny port. Adam hated the stuff; too sweet and syrupy. But I loved it after a winter meal, loved the rich caramel flavor and thicker texture. As I reached into the cabinet to grab it, the side of my breast brushed Neil's elbow. The little tingle was unexpected. And promising.

“What's that?” he asked, peering at the bottle.

“It's a dessert wine,” I said. “I love that you have no idea what's in your own liquor cabinet.”

“I'm not a big drinker. Somebody must have brought it as a gift. It's pretty, though,” he added, holding the glass I handed him up to the light.

“Well, cheers,” I said, clinking my glass softly against his.

We sipped the port, still standing in the day-bright lighting of his kitchen. Silence lingered, like a bad smell. And suddenly this whole thing felt stupid. Me, on this weird quasi-date with Neil from Development, who I'd never even noticed was attractive until a week ago. And yet here we were, both of us with our lives shattered, going through the motions because it's what some well-meaning fool had told us we should do.

“Listen, maybe—” I started talking at the exact second that he did. “What?”

“You go,” he said, smiling, but suddenly I didn't want to.

“No, you.”

“I was just going to say, do you want to head to the other room? The couch is more comfortable than the counter. To sit on, I mean,” he added, his cheeks darkening with a sudden flush.

Neil was a blusher? I'll be damned. “Sure,” I said.

I followed him to the seating area at the other side of the loft, where he popped a cord into his iPod and then, as the opening notes of
Kind of Blue
slid out from the large speakers on either side of the room, he collapsed on the couch with a happy sigh. I sat down a reasonable distance away, attempting to look relaxed but not as if I was trying to come-hither him. If indeed it was even possible to come-hither someone while wearing an office-appropriate cowl-neck sweater.

“This is good,” he observed, waving his glass of port at me. “This is very, very good.”

“I brought the bottle with me,” I said, and he wordlessly extended his arm for a refill. Once I'd poured it for him, I did the same for myself. And now, I guessed, we talked? I had never really done this before. “Dated.” I could only fumble at how this worked. “So, you like Miles Davis?” I began.

He did. He also liked Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Lester Young, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, and just about every other classic jazz musician I'd ever heard of. And many more that I hadn't. Neil, it turned out,
loved
jazz. When he lived in Boston during grad school, he was good enough on the saxophone that he'd earned extra money sitting in as a session player with a couple of different bands. But he categorically refused to give me a demonstration.

“It'll wake up the girls,” he said. “You saw how long it took me to get Annie down!”

“I think you're chicken,” I insisted. We'd been gradually working our way through the tawny port, and I was more than a little buzzed.

He shook his head. “Some other time.”

“You better. You've been holding out on me this whole time! I had no idea you had anything in common with Bill Clinton.”

He laughed. “Well, I'd say you've got more than a little in common with Hillary,” he said.

“Publicly cheated on?” I muttered, because it's the first thing that came to mind.

He jackknifed up from the lazy sprawl he'd slid into. “Shit. No. Of course not. I meant like smart, successful. Impressive.”

And to my surprise, the sting was gone as soon as it came. Wiped away by his praise. Because I could tell from the way it came tumbling out of him, he meant it. And I felt very strongly that I would like to find out more. “You think I'm impressive?”

There it was again. That subtle color in his cheeks. It was unexpectedly bewitching. “You're great at your job. I think it's fantastic how much you care about the museum. I've always liked working with you.”

Somehow that line of conversation did not go exactly where I was hoping it would go.

He leaned toward me slightly. “Oh, and Caroline?”

“Yeah?”

“I have always thought you were beautiful.”

Oh, wow. This was happening. He eased toward me slowly, giving me time, giving both of us time. His dark lashes fluttered up and then down again, like moth wings. And then his lips settled over mine, lightly, and clung for an instant, and then lifted away.

Our eyes locked together, our faces only a few inches apart. The puzzled crease in his brow spelled the same disorientation I was feeling, and I gave him a tentative smile. “Good, bad, or weird?” I whispered.

He smiled back, a little sad. “Weird. But definitely not bad. I think…a little good. Might get better if we did it again.”

I nodded, and angled my face toward him. This time, my upper lip landed directly between his, and he sucked it toward him, ever so gently. Then I felt the quick, slick streak of his tongue glide along the slippery inside of my lip, and I gasped.

He pulled away, looking anxious. “Weird? Bad weird?”

“Good,” I panted. “I didn't…I don't think…I've never been kissed exactly like that before.”

“I can demonstrate again, if you would like,” he said seriously.

“Yes, please,” I whispered, and leaned into him for more.

And I didn't know if it was the half bottle of port that was seeping through my system, but suddenly I had caramel in my veins instead of blood. Sweet, smoky caramel. Neil was kissing me so deliberately, so thoroughly, and so expertly, that I was positive I was going to dissolve into his lap like melted butter. Adam had never kissed me like this, not even when we were teenagers and all we did was kiss; he was always firm, heavy, demanding. But this—Neil was making a leisurely meal out of me, as if I were some rare delicacy he wanted nothing other than to sample all night long. Every so often he would leave my lips to explore my eyelids, my cheeks, my ears, the underside of my jaw, but he did not once venture down my throat, and the deliberate restraint just heightened the pleasure of what he was doing. It was a long time later when we finally pulled apart for a breather.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Good wow.”

“So good,” he said, and cupped my head for another kiss. “I didn't know how it would be. You're the first person…since Eva. I honestly didn't expect it to feel this good.”

I shook my head. “I know. Me neither. But—” I cut myself off midsentence as he retreated. “No, everything is good. I was just going to say…do we care at all about the fact that we work together?”

“Ah. No. Well, personally at least, I'm way too attracted to you to give even one-eighth of a shit.”

“Me neither,” I said again, suddenly breathless at the fact that I was doing something I'd never imagined I would; something that, for that matter, people don't generally recommend. I, Caroline Fairley, was dating my co-worker. “I mean, me too. I mean—”

“I got it,” Neil said with a sexy little smile, and pulled me into him again.

At work, we were elaborately professional. Except for the text he sent me two days later that said,
I would really like to drag you into the supply closet right now.
And the one I sent him back that said,
So why don't you?
And the fact that five minutes later, we were making out like teenagers between leftover boxes of old exhibit brochures. Our hands and mouths stayed completely PG, but the subtle pressure of his erection against me was making my head spin. It was so beautifully unmistakable that he wanted me.

At one point, he raised his head. “Hey, Caroline.”

“Hmm,” I said, nibbling my tingling lips.

“Can we try again for a real date soon? I would like to take you out somewhere besides my living room.”

“Or the supply closet.”

“Or the supply closet, yes.”

A smile stole across my face. “I would like that. Although I do also like your living room. You have a very comfortable sofa.”

“You are welcome there anytime,” he said. But a few days later, we did manage the date.

It was such a new thing. Sitting across a restaurant table from a man I didn't know well, while the light from a single candle flickered over the pearly surface of my plate and the softly scuffed silverware, and made my glass of wine glow like a ruby. The two of us passed stories and questions and answers back and forth, back and forth. And with each tiny piece of him that I acquired, I felt almost as if I had a pencil in my hand and I was drawing him. I'd started with the general outline, and gradually I was shading in the details of his face, stroke by stroke. Defining the shapes of his features, rendering their contours more and more precise. I'd never been so aware of
learning
someone before.

And in the midst of all the learning, I was keeping a steady mental tally of everything I shared. Neil wasn't going to be my future, but I still wanted to present myself truthfully. And
fully.
And let him do with the information, better and worse, whatever he wished.

We quickly fell into alternating, every few days, between a date out and an evening at his place. By unspoken agreement, we were keeping everything light—including the physical aspect. But I found myself thinking, with increasing urgency, about what it would be like to sleep with him. If the quality of the kissing was any indication, then dear lordy, was I in for a treat. Suddenly it seemed insane to me that I had managed to spend all of those years with Adam without even so much as wondering what another person would feel like…because I was most definitely wondering now.

Neil was so much taller than Adam, for starters. Bigger in general, where Adam was slight. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from his body, but the chest and shoulders and arms I'd been feeling up through the Massachusetts-in-winter sweaters felt solid and nice. Between his spectacular kissing and his sly sense of humor, I was rapidly recalibrating my opinion of him from quiet, good-looking Neil from Development to “I had no idea you were this hot” Neil from Development. And I was very interested in my findings.

I was also curious what Neil might be thinking about
me.
This was one of the aspects of my situation for which I most fiercely resented Adam—my cluelessness about dating. Sex, I had down. Men, even, I felt to be fairly familiar territory: Sure, I'd only ever had a relationship with one of them, but it was a long relationship, and I tended to believe that many of the basic traits I understood about Adam were things that were also true of the rest of his gender. This belief was bolstered by years' worth of reports and complaints from my girlfriends about
their
men. And, of course, by spending half my own lifetime with a male best friend. Guys were just…guys.

But dating? As a social ritual? I had absolutely no idea where to begin, what to make of the whole dance of when to step forward and when to move back; what to say, and when to say it; and what, if you sensed that somebody didn't necessarily
want
to say something, you thought they might be trying to express via emotional semaphore instead.