The Story Guy (Novella) (4 page)

“Sure.” I try to ignore what we both know I was going to ask. “Wednesday.”

“Don’t forget your umbrella.” His bike is already unchained.

“No, of course not. Will I need it next week?”

His grin is real this time. “I couldn’t mistake you now. Not when I’ll be thinking about you all the time.”

We are moving away from each other exactly
not
like two people who had just enjoyed each other’s tongue in their mouth.

I smile and wave, but I’m not sure he sees me.
So why, Brian, are we waiting a week?

Sunday, 7:12 p.m.

The controlled chaos of kids needing help to get materials for their school projects due Monday limited the torture on Thursday and Friday and Saturday to the evenings after work.

I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing and kept catching myself staring into the middle distance with my fingertips on my partially open mouth. When my stomach wasn’t rolling from barely dampened excitement, I was filling it with food, tea, coffee, expensive treats, and in the evenings, wine—everything tasted so perfect and hyperdelicious.

After throwing a handful of salt into boiling pasta water one evening, I licked my fingers and actually
moaned
. The taste of myself plus the tang of the salt was almost like the velvet salinity of Brian’s tongue.

I am worried about my good sense.

So tonight, after a lo-o-ng Saturday spent first working, then gorging myself and eventually furiously masturbating fully naked and on top of the covers, something I haven’t indulged in for years, I am working my way down my contact list of friends, pleading my desperate case to be taken out.

“I wish I could, Carrie. I’m pretty interested in what’s gotten into you lately.” Shelley’s voice is lazy with a few too many beers, courtesy of some event with Will’s family.

“Nothing’s gotten into me,” I snort and then giggle, because this feels like a lie and a regret.

“Jesus. I wish I weren’t drunk. I can tell you have six ways of crazy to spill. Will’s family’s home brew gets me every goddamn time.”

“I’d head over to you, but I can guess how your evening’s going to end.”

Shelley laughs loudly, swamped in her own happiness, and for once I don’t feel the heart sliver sting.

I hit pay dirt with my wise-beyond-his-years intern, Justin.

“Where do you want to go? I can’t pick you up, because Aaron has the car.”

“Aaron always has the car.”

“Probably because it’s Aaron’s car and he’s the one who knows how to drive. Which is convenient, since he also runs all the errands and does the shopping.”

“Remind me why he keeps you?”

Justin is pointedly silent until I start giggling.

“Why don’t I just meet you at that bar next door to your building?” he asks.

“Because that’s what we always do, and I’m restless.”

“Oh-kay. Any suggestions? Keep in mind that I’m already humoring you.”

“Let’s go to that Jamaican place around the corner from you.”

“Cluck You Chicken? Are you serious? The health department probably uses that restaurant for training exercises.”

“Somebody told me it was good, and I’m hungry and restless, and I won’t tell you what I’ve done unless you buy me jerk chicken.”

“You better have done something very, very bad.”

An hour later, Justin and I are deep into a platter of smoky, spicy chicken and a pitcher of icy beer. I’ve hardly said a word—partly because the food is so perfect, and partly because of the way Justin keeps looking at me, his eyes bright with a laser of speculation.

“Put down that chicken bone. What did you do?”

“What did I do?”

“Or who?”

“Who did I what?”

“
Carrier
.”

I take a deep breath. I can’t even look at him. He’s years younger than me and likely many times savvier.

“You know MetroLink?” I peek at him and he just raises an eyebrow. “I like to read the personals there.”

“Sure. They’re hilarious. I frequently drunken-check the ‘Missed Connections’ section after making a fool of myself out on the town. Wait—are you posting personals?”

“God, no!” But the blush comes racing up so fast it feels like the ends of my chin
and nose are actually on fire.

“Oh shit, Carrie, you should see your face.” He leans over, resting the back of a hand against my forehead as if he’s checking my temperature, then he whispers, “Have you started turning tricks on MetroLink?”

“Oh, fuck you, Justin.”

“That’s ‘cluck you.’ And come
on
. What are you trying to tell me?”

“I answered an ad.” I say this to the platter of chicken.

“Oh. Okay.” He taps his index finger against the laminate table. “It must have been a good date to have you worked up like this. It’s not a big deal how you got the date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” I say. Then I tell him everything.

“You’re right, that’s not a date. That’s a hook-up in the park, like what my gay ancestors had to do for love.”

“Ancestors?”

“Whatever. So. Just kissing?”

“I asked him out after.”

“After you snogged?”

“Right.” I suddenly feel tired and bloated, and I rest my forehead against the edge of the table.

“Like, directly after? Your lips unlocked, and you said, ‘Hey, let’s get a burger, kissing fetish guy’?”

I take a deep breath, and on my exhale, the last four days of anticipation and intensity and magic leak out, stale and foggy. “Not exactly.” I sit up. Justin looks confused and concerned. “It was this—
great
kiss. And there was something. And also, a lack of something. No warning bells. Just all good somethings. So I basically said that we wouldn’t have to wait until next Wednesday.”

“And he?”

“He bailed. In a nice way, not being a jerk at all, but the lights went off in his eyes and he rode away.”

“On his bike.”

“Yeah.” I expect Justin’s shrug, his worldly reassurance that the whole thing was
weird and it sucks and that I should order another pitcher and forget about it. I realize it’s why I was glad he could come out with me. While he loves Aaron, they’re both very—
secular
. They’re young, but very grown-up.

They’re romance atheists. I need a romance atheist to de-evangelize me.

“How did you set this up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you contacted him through the MetroLink mail, and then—”

“IM.”

“So do that.”

“Message him?” Justin is looking into some imaginary distance over my right shoulder, stroking his ridiculous handlebar mustache. He looks back at me and grins.

“Yeah, message him. Go home and message him.” He pushes away from the table and reaches his hand toward me to pull me out. “Do that. Take an antacid, too, because this chicken is going to repeat.”

“You’re supposed to be talking me off my middle-aged lady ledge.” We leave and start walking toward his building, and he hooks his arm through mine.

“I know, but I just bet something interesting will happen if you try to talk to him without the whole date thing. Sure, maybe he is just a normal-seeming guy with a weird sex thing and it’s all bad news, and I recommend staying kind of disengaged until you find out, but he may be a story guy.”

“A story guy?”

“Yeah, a good guy with a bad story doing something stupid.”

“Explain to me why a story guy is better than a pervert.”

“Story guys are like life highlighters. Your life is all these big blocks of gray text, and then a story guy comes in with a big ol’ paragraph of neon pink so that when you flip back through your life, you can stop and remember all the important and interesting places.”

I stop walking, my middle suddenly insubstantial. “Justin, what the hell? You’re always the sensible one.”

He laughs. “I
am
sensible, but I’ve had a couple of story guys and I’m just saying, it’s nice to have those, here and there, both for the way they make everything glittery for
a while and to make you appreciate the one you end up making a story with.”

We’re at his door. “So message him, huh?”

“Yep. Get that story, Ace.”

Justin whistles as he walks inside.

Sunday, 1:08 a.m.

lieberries: GearTattoo?

I’ve been on for about twenty minutes, with my Brian signal shining. His screen name has remained dark on my contact list. I have the trappings of disengagement—a glass of wine, sweatpants, a novel I’ve been meaning to read—but I am so engaged I’d be more comfortable if my finger were stuck in a wall socket.

Just as I reach over to my laptop to turn on music so I stop hearing phantom IM chimes, his name turns green. I stare at the screen so hard, my eyes start to water. I jump when the chime bongs for real.

GearTattoo: Carrie?

I force myself to do a seven-second yoga breath.

lieberries: Hey Brian—fancy meeting you here.

I wince but hit Reply anyway.

I have no wit left.

No wit, no sense, no breath.

GearTattoo: Insomnia? Shelving the vampire books during a library night shift?

I am crazy, but instead of picking up the baton of a sweet and thinky exchange, I focus on neon-pink paragraphs.

lieberries: Or fantasizing about the way this guy I met up with kissed me—so much I can’t sleep.

Yikes
.

GearTattoo: Ah. Did you know that your mouth, your skin, is so soft? All week, every time I’ve thought about it, my hands feel like they’re buzzing. I love your hair. I love that it’s short and so when I put my fingers through it, I can feel your whole nape bust out in goose pimples.

Predictably, goose bumps explode over the entire length of my spine.

lieberries: You taste so good. You smell so good.

I backspace over as many letters as I keep. I am shaking.

GearTattoo: On Fridays, the cafeteria where I work brings in this farm-to-table caterer that serves all local food and on Friday, she had this … I don’t know what to call it, like a tart, maybe. There was half a sticky plum on a sweet and salty cookie and when I bit into it, it was you. I couldn’t concentrate the rest of the afternoon.

I am certain no one has pitched quite that level of woo in my direction, ever. I am breathing in shallow pants, and my face is burning and tight. And there is a throb. The kind that kicks straight up through the middle.

lieberries: Why aren’t you sleeping?

GearTattoo: I don’t ever sleep very much.

lieberries: So you’re an insomniac, too?

GearTattoo: No—I could sleep, but it’s complicated. I have a second-shift thing that I do.

Thing?
A job?

lieberries: But “it’s complicated” means you’re not going to talk about it?

It’s taking a long time for Brian to chime back and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.

GearTattoo: I’m sorry.

It’s starting to look like Justin is right. Story guy. But I’m a librarian. I can work from the outside in.

lieberries: So you’ve done this before. Who was your first?

GearTattoo: I can’t … I’m not a one-night-stand guy. I’m not wired to enjoy that. It seems weird, I know, because what we did isn’t that far away on the map from a one-night stand. There is always this moment, when you take a woman home just to take a woman home, some moment right before it could get awesome but you don’t know yet if it will, that you, or maybe not you, but me, gets all still inside. Quiet. And for me, that moment always seems like it lasts forever. And it’s enough time for me to live some kind of life from that moment to the end of time and back again. With this woman I’ve taken home or gone home with, with my one-night stand, someone who isn’t mine, but for that one crazy long heartbeat, I want to be mine.

Now it’s my turn to move my hands away from my keyboard. Because what letters could I line up, in their tidy and codified rows, that mean enough against his confession? I’ve felt the same as he writes here; it lights up a part of my brain I didn’t think anyone else completely understood. I mean, already, our long minutes of “kissing
only” have stopped time for me, made every moment since about how he held my face and neck under the pergola, how his mouth moved along mine, how the small breeze worked its way between us and felt so cool because our bodies were so hot.

And I understand, too, the impulse to protect myself from regret by finding a way to step away from this feeling. The problem is that stepping away from Brian, leaving him standing under that pergola on Wednesday, is no longer enough to leave behind how he made me feel in that hour. I could leave him there, we could part as strangers, but
God
, I know that I would look for him. He would live in my peripheral vision, a ghost nudging me to turn and look behind me, only to find a spot that is emptier than empty.

GearTattoo: Carrie? Jesus, I hope I didn’t freak you out. I totally freaked you out, right?

lieberries: No. I was just thinking that what you said there, wrote there, is kind of awesome. It’s a version of why I haven’t been dating a lot. I mean, just avoiding those moments where I can convince myself it might work that happen before the inevitable reality that it never will. Your ad somehow convinced me there might be a workaround … but I don’t know if it’s possible, Brian. That kiss. If I’m by myself in thinking that our kissing was a convincing sort of argument …

All the blood in my body has risen to the surface and is burning my skin. My glasses slip down my nose as I stare at the screen, and I push them up lest his response go blurry for even a second.

GearTattoo: No, you’re not. But, you asked me who was first?

lieberries: Yes.

GearTattoo: She’s how I know there isn’t room right now, not at all, maybe not ever, for a relationship. There is this something else in my life I have to be 100 percent available for. I have this friend at work … she was complaining one day that she was thinking of getting a date, any date, just for the end-of-date kiss. She didn’t want to date just then, but missed kissing. I found myself, all of a sudden, offering her just the kiss, not the date. I didn’t want to date, either. So we started eating lunch together, once or twice a week,
except we didn’t eat, we—you know.