The Opposite of Love (20 page)

And then, as if realizing she was face to face with an encyclopedia of information on the subject, the girl launched into a barrage of questions about James and his likes and dislikes and wants and tastes and needs. She didn’t wait for answers in between questions, and frankly, Melanie had no intention of giving her any.

“Well, to be honest with you, I guess that’s why I climbed in bed with you.”

“What do you mean?” The girl was all rapt attention and willingness to learn.

“I thought maybe you knew about his girl-on-girl fantasy. He tells me about it all the time. Says he wants to watch me with one of my girlfriends, but the girls I date won’t go for it.”

Melanie waited for a response. She could see the wheels turning in the girl’s head, but not fast enough.

“Look, I’m really sorry if I freaked you out, but I came home and found you here and he’s in the shower so I just figured it was a rare opportunity to make his fantasy come true.” She softened her voice even more, “And you looked so pretty just lying there.”

Melanie reached out and pushed the girl’s hair behind her ear, testing the effect, and when there was no objection, she ran her hand over her shoulder and down her arm.

“Have you been with a woman before?” Melanie asked.

“Just kissed. Spring break kind of thing. I wouldn’t know… what to…you know…” The girl ducked her chin and closed her eyes. Melanie wondered if she was even twenty-five.

“I can show you, if it’s okay. Trust me, James will get a kick out of it when he comes out. He’ll never forget it.”

The girl said nothing, kept her eyes closed, and nodded.

Melanie concentrated on moving slowly, but she knew she didn’t have much time left. She kissed the girl on the mouth, licked and sucked her lips, rolled her onto her back. She moved slowly over her tight breasts and was sincere in her admiration. She pinched the nipple of the left with one hand and alternately licked and pulled with her lips on the nipple of the right. She pressed her hip gently against the girl’s sex and waited for her to relax into it, and when her hips started rolling slightly, Melanie moved her hand down.

She’d never tried to make a woman come before, so Melanie did everything she could remember feeling good to her. She teased a finger around the girl’s opening, then slid it in, and then another. She alternately fingered her and then spread her wetness over her clitoris. Melanie had been at it for ten minutes or so, but she wasn’t sure it was working. The girl was moaning a little, but lacked the enthusiasm Melanie was looking for. And she was running out of time.

“I have something—a toy—I’d like to use it if that’s ok.”

The girl opened her eyes and looked at Melanie, but didn’t respond.

“I use it myself, it’s really amazing. It’ll make you come, I promise.”

The shower turned off and both women glanced toward the bathroom door. Melanie looked back at the girl and smiled wickedly. “He’ll love it,” she whispered.

The girl nodded, then watched Melanie pull the dildo from the drawer in the nightstand. She seemed to relax when she saw that it wasn’t freakishly large or multi-pronged. Melanie went back to work on the girl’s clit and massaged the dildo into her. When it was halfway in, she turned it on. The girl moaned.

Melanie moved up and lay next to the girl, pulling her body toward her own so that the girl’s back was to the bathroom door. “Don’t react when he comes out,” Melanie whispered. “Just let him watch. Pretend he’s not even there.”

On each stroke, Melanie pushed the dildo farther into the girl until she was taking almost all of it. She kissed her mouth and trailed kisses to her earlobe and neck, lingering there so that she’d have a direct view of James when he came out of the bathroom.

The girl’s hips were rocking against the humming dildo when James opened the door and stepped into the room wearing only a towel around his waist. His eyes started on the girl’s ass, moved quickly up her back, and stopped on Melanie’s glare. He jumped just slightly, almost imperceptibly, but because she’d been looking for it, Melanie saw it, and she smiled.

She twisted the dial at the base of the vibrator all the way to the right and the girl went crazy, thrusting her hips forward and back, so that all Melanie had to do was hold the vibrator still while she took what she needed. Melanie pulled the girl tight against her with her free arm, and said, just loud enough for James to hear, “Come for me.”

For a full minute James just stood and watched while the girl humped the dildo and Melanie hummed encouragement in her ear.

The girl shrieked like a cat and her head flew back and then forward again, resting on Melanie’s breasts at the end of the first spasm. Her body tightened, became still and rigid, and Melanie could feel the twitching of her walls through the vibrator still in her hand. James’ eyes were glued to the girl’s clenched ass as she whimpered and moaned out the last of her orgasm.

Melanie glanced at the front of James’ towel to see whether he was turned on; if he was, he was hiding it well. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. Melanie studied his face, trying to decide if the look of disgust was forced or authentic. She withdrew the dildo and released the girl to lie back, and it was only a moment before the girl opened her eyes and looked to James, only to find that look on his face.

“Are you pleased with yourself, Melanie?” he asked.

The girl looked from James to Melanie, obviously confused.

“Mmm hmm,” Melanie hummed. She stretched her arms over her head and lengthened herself like a cat in the sun.

“Do I even have to ask whose idea this was?” His tone was sour and authoritative, as though he was scolding a teenager. The girl responded like one. She sat up and glared at Melanie, waiting for her to take the blame.

“It was yours, James,” Melanie said. She smiled at James and winked at the girl who let out a grunt of protest at the conspiratorial gesture. Melanie sat up on the edge of the bed and began to dress. James tossed his towel on a chair and Melanie glanced at his flaccid member. It looked smaller, as though it had actually shriveled a bit. The bandage was gone from his leg and there was only a patch of gauze taped to the front and back of his thigh. He went over to the dresser, pulled a pair of boxers from a drawer and put them on.

“Get them all, while you’re at it,” Melanie said.

“Someone wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” The girl seemed to be aware that her presence in the room was becoming obscured in the face of something that didn’t involve her.

James ignored the girl. “What do you mean, get them all?” he asked.

“Your clothes. Please take all your things with you when you go. Or I can donate them if you don’t want them.”

The mission having been accomplished so successfully, her sense of indifference was back. This was how it ended, and while a mere technicality, it was good. It was appropriate. It was satisfying. And there was nothing left to do but perhaps have some dinner. Maybe a glass of wine.

While everyone else got dressed, the girl remained in the bed and pulled the sheet up to cover herself.

“Excuse me! Hello!” she wailed. “Is someone gonna tell me what the fuck this is?”

Melanie looked at her and sighed. “James, would you mind explaining whatever it is that needs explaining? Only please do it after you leave. I’ve had a long flight.” Her gaze never left the girl.

“Ashley, will you get dressed and wait for me out front?” James asked, glancing only briefly at the girl.

“I’m not going any-fucking-where until somebody fucking tells me—”

The shrieking was interrupted by the flourish of the sheet as Melanie snatched it clean off the girl and the bed, balled it up and tossed it into a corner of the room. With Melanie staring at her nakedness and the purple dildo lying next to her, the girl changed her mind and decided to get dressed.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Melanie said. “But please be quick, I need a bath.” She lifted the tips of her fingers to her nose, sniffed, and scowled. Then she went downstairs and poured herself a glass of wine.

I do not know the answers to any of these questions. I only know I am trying to learn to love the questions themselves. They are all I have.

—Erica Jong,
“Any Woman’s Blues”

Chapter Thirteen

Standing at the breakfast bar, she alternately swirled the liquid in the glass and watched the dark legs slither down the sides.

James possessed a skill, to be sure, and she found a certain reverence for that. He had developed it the way any skill is developed, through practice and patience and a desire to improve. And having tried it herself on the girl—and even without the obstacle of distrust that exists automatically from a woman toward man who is trying to bed her—Melanie felt that she had only succeeded through sheer superiority of intellect. But then again, in order to manipulate someone, you must be able to outsmart them, so that was part of it. That was the part that she discovered she was capable of, but with surprisingly little gratification.

It was the rest of it at which James was an expert, having spent so much time, so much thought on it. But she hadn’t been able to see the reason for it—the lying, the deception, the professions of things that didn’t exist and the dragging people into places they would never have thought to go, both inside and outside of themselves. It was on the flight back from Mexico that she realized why James did what he did. It was only when that clarity finally presented itself that she saw his goal for what it was.

He wasn’t good at love. He wasn’t even vaguely familiar with it. Love was being honest even when it was difficult. Love was loyalty—not simply fidelity, but a deep desire to protect someone from harm, from pain. Love was acceptance of a person as-is, unconditionally. What he gave, and what he took, was the opposite of love.

He didn’t want a soul mate. He didn’t want to be understood. There was nothing but his words to ever indicate that he did, and words were just the tools of his craft. He didn’t want equality or respect or nurturing or support. He only took what she offered once he compelled her to do so. He didn’t want to feel safe, not the way she thought, with her reassurances and professions of fidelity. He couldn’t have cared less if Melanie fucked the neighbor and his dog as long as he gave the command. She could do anything she wanted, anything at all, as long as he wanted her to do it. He didn’t want to know her, to learn about her and who she was. He wanted to change her into someone unrecognizable from her former self. And then he would have what he really wanted: control. Complete and absolute control.

Clearly he wasn’t turned on by watching two women have sex. And she’d always wondered why after all of his persuasiveness and professed affinity for anal sex, they’d only done it once. It was never about the act itself. It was about getting her to do something she wasn’t comfortable doing, and doing it solely for him.

Sadomasochism would have been too obvious for him, too easy. There would have been no satisfaction in being a top when your partner is perfectly willing to be a bottom. There’s no manipulation in it, no challenge. He needed someone to change, to mold, even to break, so that he could take full credit for what he created when he put it all back together.

He seemed shorter when he came into the kitchen, so much so that she had to look down at her feet to see if she was wearing heels, but she was barefoot. She sipped her merlot and sat down on a stool. She had thought she would feel at least some satisfaction in his fall, but there was none.

He stood silently across from her at the breakfast bar until he heard the front door of the house open and close.

“What the hell was all that about?” he asked.

His face was the same, could use a shave or go without and be handsome either way. The eyes were shiny. Just like always,
he
was shiny. But it was the same way stars are shiny. They’re distant and polished and remarkably clean. But this man, the one before her now, he was close enough to see. He was real to her in a way he had never been in the entire time she’d known him. And she could see that it was only the surface that shone.

“Well?” he said.

He was growing impatient. She hadn’t realized she was actually expected to reply.

The truth was that what she had done with the girl was the only thing she could think of that would take the ball out of his hands and let her play with it for a while. She wanted to show him that she could have the power if she chose to take it. Anyone could.

She shrugged. “Guess I just wanted to see what it was like.”

“To be with a woman?” His tone was hostile. It appeared that he thought he had a right to be upset, that the injustices were somehow equal, or perhaps even imbalanced, and that he was entitled to offense. He was scowling, leaning in over the breakfast bar, as if he had some ground to stand on. It didn’t matter though, and Melanie didn’t even have the inclination to be self-righteous. There were no fingers left to point.

“No,” she said. “I wanted to see what it was like to be you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Melanie just shook her head. She didn’t have the energy to explain the things she knew, and she really wished he’d just see that she knew and save them both the trouble.

“She doesn’t mean anything, you know that. I just got lonely while you were gone. I wish you had taken me with you.” There it was again, the blame game.

“Who are you?” Melanie asked.

“What do you mean, who am I? You know who I am.”

“What were you trying to accomplish? I’m still not sure I completely get that part.”

“What do you mean ‘accomplish’? What are you talking about? I love you, you know that.”

“What you do to me is not love. It isn’t anything like love. You want me to be someone I’m not. Regardless of what I started out as, you wanted to change me. To manipulate me. To control me. Can’t you at least see that I know that?”

She could see his mind working, see him trying to figure out what she knew, how much of it. His eyes were flicking back and forth, looking at her eyes, studying her face, probably looking for an opening from which to talk his way back toward familiar ground.

Because he had no answer, she had to wonder: Did he think that in each small success in controlling her he had somehow proven his prowess? His worth? And because thinking of it made her feel sorry for him, that was the last time she ever wondered about the things that happened in his head.

“Can’t we pretend this never happened?” he said. There was the ubiquitous clock, challenging the oh-so-human desire to grab the hands and wrench them backward. But in James’ case, he would only change the fact that he got caught. She knew that.

He reached out and put his hand on her arm, and she didn’t jump or pull away. She recognized it. It looked like it always had, but there was nothing left in it. He stroked her arm and the hand moved as if it was alive, but it had no energy, no electricity, no warmth, and she thought of the short story “The Hand” by Colette and how something once so desirable could become so foreign with just a slight change in perspective. She looked up at him, eyebrows raised, as if his gesture was forward and uncouth, and he pulled his hand away.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. His exasperation was unexpected. The question was so ridiculous it caught her off guard. She stared at him for a moment, her brow tight in concentration, and for the first time, she couldn’t think of a single thing.

“Nothing. Not where I’m concerned.”

He stared at her. He seemed confused by the absence of reprimand. He lowered his eyes to the counter between them.

“Oh, I know,” she said. And like a dog, he brightened at the opportunity to please, to get back in her good graces. “The key to my house.”

He paused, looked at her with a sadness she hadn’t seen from him before. He looked sincerely hurt, but she knew better. He pulled his keys from his jeans pocket, unhooked hers and tossed it onto the counter where it clanged and then slid to a stop in front of her. When she said nothing, he turned and left the kitchen, and the house, shutting the front door so quietly behind him that she didn’t even feel him go.

“Always,” Derek said.

She called him that evening as promised, and this was how he answered the phone.

“Always?”

“Almost from the start. I knew when I met you at First Friday that I wanted you, wanted to be around you. And you let me.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I had enough. You gave me enough. Your time, your friendship, your trust, conversation, sex. I had what I needed. I didn’t want to jeopardize that by asking for more. Plus I knew I wasn’t your type.”

“And how did you know that?”

“You told me. The night we met. You said that you’d never been with a schoolteacher before.”

Melanie remembered saying something to that effect. She’d intended the comment to be flirtatious, not judgmental. Her own father had been a university professor, but realizing there was a food chain issue again, she didn’t bring it up for fear of further insulting him.

“I don’t think I meant what you think I meant. I didn’t say that I
wouldn’t
date a schoolteacher.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“But I never even thought that.”

“That’s the point, you never thought about it at all. You never considered me in that way.”

Melanie couldn’t argue with this. She’d known at the start that she wasn’t interested in someone like Derek. And if she hadn’t been so horny and tipsy, she might never have even slept with him. And if he’d asked her for anything of herself, she wouldn’t have been willing to give it. It was through his not asking that she was able to give freely. Besides her family, everyone else in her life wanted something from her and made no secret of it. Derek wanted her—just her—and had kept it to himself.

“Why did you push me to start a relationship with someone else?”

“Mel, you’re too smart to play dumb.”

“Indulge me.”

Derek sighed heavily. “Because I wanted you to be happy.”

“Why did you think you couldn’t be the one to make me happy?”

“I did think I could. But you didn’t.”

“That’s not necessarily true.” Melanie was feeling a little guilty about writing him off so quickly when she hadn’t even realized she’d done it.

“No? Then why didn’t you ever invite me into your life? You always visited mine—at my house, at First Friday—but you never invited me into your world. Never invited me to spend time with you and your friends. Your family. Mel, I’ve known you for four years and I’ve never been inside your house.”

And this much was true. She’d enjoyed the nature of their relationship and hadn’t wanted to change anything about it, so she never fantasized about him in any other way. She loved his friendship, his support, his… what was that other thing?

“Look, Mel, I could have gone a long time with the way things were, but you wanted to call me out on it, so you did. I couldn’t lie to you. I don’t know if it will change things between us, but I sincerely hope not.”

Melanie was quiet. In her mind she could see the light in his eyes when he answered the door to her, could feel the intensity of his kisses, the tenderness of the sex, the warmth and protectiveness of his arms wrapped around her, the easiness and comfort she felt when she was with him. And would all that change now that she knew how he really felt? Would she be able to see him the same way? Would he be able to be that way with her now that the secret was out, or would he close off and protect himself? And wasn’t it simply selfishness that allowed her to flit in and out of his world, taking what she needed? And could she still do that now, knowing that he wanted more but would never ask for it?

“Mel?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Can we just go back to the way things were?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think we can.”

He took her to Mon Ami Gabi because he knew it was her favorite. The steak melted in her mouth, and he shared a few bites of his risotto, which was equally fantastic. They split a slice of cheesecake after dinner, and when the check came, she tried to make a grab for it. He got to it first.

“Derek, come on. I know how much you make.”

“No you don’t,” he said, smiling. He pulled out his debit card and put it in the check-holder, keeping it in his lap until the waiter returned.

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“No you don’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“I sold two originals last week.”

“Oh, Derek. That’s fantastic,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Which ones?”

“Two of the California landscapes. Some dealer bought them for a client. Wouldn’t tell me who.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he said, and even in the dim lighting of the restaurant she could see that he was blushing.

“But my point is that I don’t need to be spoiled,” she said. “You don’t need to spend money on me.”

“You
deserve
to be spoiled, but that’s not what this is about. I was going to blow some cash celebrating tonight one way or the other.” He lowered his voice a little and squeezed her hand. “I’m just glad I get to celebrate with you.”