Alex made a quiet exit from the room, his ass an inviting sight as he padded out into the hallway. Ah. The condom. How base and embarrassing it often was to have a guy deal with the aftermath of what had been hot and frenzied. Here it was just something to be done, like putting on shoes, or combing one’s hair. By the time he returned she had located her panties and sat on the edge of the bed, feeling a bit unmoored.
Joy resumed as he stood before her, completely nude and utterly self-composed.
“I’ve never—” they said in unison, making Josie burst into laughter. Alex smiled and reached down for his underwear, slipping into them. Symmetry.
His face was solemn as he said, “You, too? You mean you were a virgin until just now?”
She snorted, a decidedly unfeminine sound. Again, fifty different wisecracks flooded her. As he leaned in for a kiss, she decided that saying nothing was the best course.
He’d known that the sex would be amazing, and it had been. He knew that Josie would be playful, and fun, and adventurous in bed. Nothing they’d done had gone beyond vanilla, getting-to-know-you lovemaking. But what he hadn’t expected was how loving he would feel toward her, not just during the act, or as part of the act, but now, curled up behind her, chuckling at her joke, his entire body sunk into the soft, pliant flesh of her body. The rhythm of their joined laughter amplified by the combination of two becoming one. Being nude with her felt natural. With most women, sex was about relief; sometimes it was more than that, but mostly it was to relieve tension, to relieve awkwardness, to relieve and answer lingering questions. His longest-term relationship had been about a year and a half, back in undergrad. Lauren had given him something close to what he was feeling right now, and he’d given it back. The union had ended when he went off to UMass Medical School, and she had received a Fulbright to teach English in Indonesia. Nothing serious, and yet it hadn’t been casual. Now it seemed like play acting, like a child’s tea service compared to afternoon tea with a full set of silver at Buckingham Palace.
The scent of her, the way that Josie’s elbow bent to reach down and tug his hip, how they rested on top of the covers, dusk turning to dark, the klieg lights at the stadium across the street casting a strange glow. When their stomachs rumbled he realized how much he had shut out the world, how she had allowed him to be nothing more than Alex, at his core, sharing and exploring with her. Their joining hadn’t just been enjoyable, and he certainly hoped that he’d given as much as he’d received. In bed he subscribed to Dan Savage’s advice to be good, giving and game with partners, and it had done him well throughout the years. The Three Gs. Josie matched it and more.
Hungry, and well aware of the necessities of dispensing with the condom that both had effortlessly, seamlessly really, decided was part of everything, Alex stood and walked out quietly, assuming he could find her bathroom without assistance. He did, a little cubbyhole with a tiny tub, like so many bathrooms in Cambridge. One wall was painted in chalkboard texture, and decorated with a series of ridiculous sayings. It reminded him of a cheap bar’s bathroom, but in here it seemed homey, and his fingers itched to write something pithy with the stub of chalk on the windowsill.
Cleaned up, and still quite nude, he walked back into her bedroom to find her already dressing, his heart tugging a bit at the idea that they would put back on their disguises and stop being quite as real as they’d been for past few moments. This certainly wasn’t the end, though—in fact, it was still the beginning, if dinner was still an option. The way she stared at him made him reasonably certain that she wasn’t about to kick him out, but the feeling of comfort and combination with her faltered a bit, the edges fraying as he struggled to understand whether this meant as much to her as it did to him.
“I’ve never…” he said, as he slid on his boxer briefs regretfully, wanting to walk around in the nude with Josie in a similar state for the rest of his life, as unrealistic as that may be. When she said the same words, he laughed, though her laughter was louder. “You too? You mean you were a virgin until just now?” he said, deadpan. As he leaned in for a kiss, she stayed silent. He took her solemn look as an invitation to continue being real with her. Their lips met and the kiss lit him on fire, made his legs tense, and yes, he was hard again. Josie seemed to trigger that condition twenty times an hour when he was around her. She shifted just enough that her br**sts were soft and yielding against his chest, as he bent at the knees to press into her, to really kiss her in a way that he hoped would make her toes curl. Yet again their stomachs gurgled, like chirping birds desperate for a meal. He pulled back and she held three fingers up to his lips, mimicking his earlier gesture from a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime. Time had escaped him and for all he knew he was marking the minutes and the hours all wrong. She had that effect on him.
“Let’s get dressed and let’s eat.”
“How about we eat and then get undressed,” he said.
She laughed, reaching for her shirt and pulling it on, leaving the bra untouched.
A good sign, he thought, of things to come. By the time he’d pulled on his pants and his unbuttoned shirt, she was down the hall. He heard the sound of the refrigerator door opening, cupboards open and shut. As he reached her in the kitchen, she was in front of the stove, turning the stove up under the pot of water.
“More wine?” she asked, her hands slipping on the wine bottle, condensation having formed around it.
He’d brought it chilled, and now, based on the temperature as he took a sip of his poured wine, he could guess how long they’d been. Not long enough. Her nervousness began to rattle him. This was the awkward part, wasn’t it? Perhaps he should have waited, but he couldn’t, unhinged by her. Small talk seemed so trite, and yet it was a kind of social lubricant that made whatever needed to come next that much easier.
She took the lead. “So, what in the hell do we talk about after that?” she asked, nudging her head toward the door to the hallway to her room.
Disarmed, he burst out laughing and drank down half his glass of wine in one big gulp. “Is there a manual for this?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen one show up on my Kindle ,” she replied.
“Maybe there’s an app that we don’t know about.” He reached for her, grateful for her bluntness, and his eyes recognized in hers the same searching that he was feeling. They looked at each other for a good, long minute, neither flinching, or wincing, or breaking eye contact, just letting it deepen. Their bodies relaxing layer by layer, their souls really seeing each other.