“Can we just agree that this is what it is, and it will unfold however it unfolds?” he said. Her face clouded and he realized that she was taking it wrong; the words so noncommittal, the kind of thing ass**les say…Can we just take this step by step? He tried to explain what he really meant, which was, “Josie, what I mean is that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences that I’ve ever had with a woman. Not this,” he said, his hand pointing vaguely toward her bedroom, “this.” He squeezed her hips, pulling her tight against him, enjoying the feel of her hands against his bare back, sliding up under his open shirt. “This. Whatever you and I have, every second we’re together, is new territory for me.” His voice went raspy with emotion and a part of him screamed, Don’t do it, dude, don’t do it! You’re getting way in over your head! Another voice told the first voice to shut up, that if there were ever a time for candor, it was now.
Her eyes went wide and her expression seemed to flip through her entire repertoire of emotions. She finally settled on a relaxed, open look, that he knew intuitively was not part of her standard operating procedure for relating to men. “I don’t do this, Alex,” she said quietly. “I don’t have relationships with men. I have flings, I have casual friends-with-benefits-type things. I sleep around…did.” She held up one hand. “Did. Slept around. That should be past tense, shouldn’t it, when it’s been years? I date. I see ‘guys,’” she said, using quotation marks with her fingers to indicate some sort of self-conscious irony that he didn’t quite grasp. “What you’re proposing is that I show you who I really am, layer by layer, through wherever this takes me.”
“Yes,” he said simply. She got it; she knew exactly what he felt.
Her face became more serious, if that was possible, and she said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask me for a threesome?” Pause. “Joking!”
He pulled back and laughed at his own surprise and at her words.
”You’re asking for a hell of a lot from someone like me,” she continued.
“Someone like you?” he asked.
“I don’t do emotional openness,” she explained, “I do sex, I do fun, I do sarcasm, I do…”
“Your nails?”
“Yeah, my nails,” she said. “You like them?”
“Cute.” Her fingernails looked like lilac bushes, sprigs that matched the color of her shirt. “Then maybe it’s time you tried something new,” he said, pulling her close again. The struggle remained evident on her face; she wanted him and not just his body, he could tell. But something held her back. Whatever it was, it was so dramatic that her shield went up instantly when he talked about anything that took this from the surface to something deeper.
“You said that we needed to take this moment by moment and let it unfold, right?” she asked, stepping out of the embrace.
Turning away from her, he closed his eyes, not sure what to say. “Yes,” he said again, careful not to overwhelm her with more. Her hands shook as she stirred the boiling water, pouring the pasta in bit by bit. He was absolutely terrifying her, wasn’t he? It dawned on him that whatever he felt for her, she seemed to feel it, too.
When had this gotten so complicated? he wondered, staring at her arms as her elbow bent to stir the pasta, her face obscured by rising steam.. The conversation had gone deep and a bit dark, suddenly, as if he were pressuring her for something rather than offering. His insides flailed wildly, trying to capture some sense of composure; he was willing to do anything to go back to that moment of delight in her bedroom when he realized that he had, indeed, caught her. Hitting reboot on the entire conversation was probably the only smart idea here.
“I don’t want more from you than you…want to give.”
She smiled, an indecipherably bitter grin. “You were about to say ‘capable of,’ weren’t you?”
“No, actually,” he said, stopping the arm that stirred the pot and turning her toward him, “that wasn’t the word in mind.”
“What was, then?” she asked. On the surface, she was closed off, but he sensed that underneath she was fighting against whatever demons she had inside. He wanted to see those demons, expose them to the light, to his want, his acceptance, and—he couldn’t believe he was thinking the word love, but yes, love, so that the demons could be vanquished. Getting her to drop that shield was his only hope.
Inhaling slowly, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and breathed out her mouth. Yoga, she clearly engaged in yoga. The way her body moved, fluid and graceful as she made herself relax, made him appreciate her even more: the lines of her arms in motion, or her forearm in his hand, of how her neck sloped just right into her earlobe, the way the skin around her eyes told him twenty-seven different things in one look. And yet…she was not completely relaxing. Her muscles were still tense, a bit awkward, as if they weren’t certain which Josie they were supposed to be.
“When did this get complicated?” she asked, as if reading his mind.
“It’s always complicated.” He shrugged.
“Don’t say that,” she growled through gritted teeth.
He stepped back, a bit surprised by her ferocious retort. “Okay,” he said slowly, “then I won’t say that it’s always complicated. Do you want me to say that it’s never complicated?”
“I don’t know what I want you to say.”
The words were the most earnest thing that had come out of her mouth in the week that he had known her, and it gave him hope. His stomach chose to speak for him in that moment, growling, almost matching her tone a moment ago.
“The perfect response,” she said, resuming her cooking.
“You know how it goes, the way to a man’s heart and all that…”
“I thought the way to a man’s heart was through his groin?”
“Then you’ve got me already.”
“Good, ’cause I’m a lousy cook.”
“I doubt you’re lousy at anything.”
“Oh, trust me, Alex, once you get to know me you’ll learn that I’m lousy at lots of things.” She pulled the stock pot off the stove and drained the boiling water, clouds of steam covering her face and making her hair curl up at the ends. Her cheeks were pink and her face glistened from the moisture. The cloth of her cotton v-neck clung to the tops of her br**sts, her ni**les hard and tight. Without a bra her form showed better through the clothing, and he wished that they were in bed again. Already, already he was hard, dammit, his pants a miserable prison for his arousal. “What can I do to help?” he asked.