Page 9

Katrina

As Elijah puts the key into the door of his apartment, Katrina expects one of two things: a trendy bachelor pad designed to impress women, or a messy bachelor pad designed to impress no one.

Instead, he welcomes her into a space that could only be described as warm.

It’s lived in, but tastefully. Her eyes go right to an unlit candle on the coffee table.

It’s not just for decoration—the wax is sunken in.

She tries to picture this gorgeous man at home by himself, lighting a candle, and she has to suppress a giggle.

“My humble abode,” he says, stretching his arms out to the side.

His arms are incredibly long, like his legs. He is all limbs.

“It’s ... nice,” she says, meaning it.

He laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

“Most people can’t,” she says. “But this time I’m not. Promise.”

The furniture looks like it’s from Pottery Barn.

Does this thirty-year-old man shop at Pottery Barn?

There is a bookcase. She’s too far from it to scan the titles.

There is a framed photo on one of the shelves, but she can’t see that either.

The kitchen is directly off the living area.

There are dirty dishes in the sink, so he is, in fact, human.

A half-full bottle of red wine is corked on the counter.

Did he share it with someone else? Is she one of many women he brings back to his place?

“I don’t ever do this,” he says, as if reading her mind, a terrifying prospect.

“This?” she asks, coy.

“I don’t ever invite women back to my apartment,” he says. “Actually, I hardly ever meet women at bars, at least not ones worth talking to.”

She squints her eyes at him. “I find that hard to believe.”

He shrugs. “I’m picky, I guess.”

“Well, I never do this either.”

Now he squints at her. “I find that hard to believe.”

She barks a laugh. Does he think she’s someone who prowls for men? A bona fide cougar?

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, again clairvoyant. “I just meant you’re beautiful, so I’m sure all kinds of men want to talk to you.”

Is she blushing? Jesus, when was the last time she blushed ?

And when was the last time someone called her beautiful ?

Everything in her wants to talk him out of his opinion: Oh, stop; beautiful is a bit of an overstatement.

But she refrains. Confidence is sexy, according to all the internet articles.

“You want to sit?” he asks.

They sit on the couch, their thighs touching the way they were at the bar. She doesn’t want another drink, but when he asks if she wants a glass of wine, she says yes just so she can hold the glass and have something to do.

For a while, they stick to their plan of just talking. They act as if they are just two people who met for conversational purposes. This charade is thrilling in a way, a sort of foreplay.

“How long have you lived here?” she asks, taking in more of the space. There’s a door cracked open across from the kitchen. The bathroom, she presumes. There’s another door, also cracked open, beyond that one. The bedroom.

“About a year. I was living with my mom before that.”

“I’m not sure you should be admitting that to me.”

He laughs. “I don’t have any shame. It’s the best way to save money. And my mom is pretty cool.”

Definitely a mama’s boy. It’s more endearing than cringeworthy.

They each sip their wine. She’s wondering what’s going to happen next. What does she want to happen next? When it comes to considering her desires, she’s rusty.

“I find it hard to believe you don’t have a girlfriend,” she says. “I mean, you have candles.”

He laughs again. He makes her feel like a comedienne. A sexy comedienne.

“I happen to like candles,” he says. “Who doesn’t appreciate some good ambiance?”

“Wait ... you’re not gay, are you?”

“Come on now. A straight dude can be into ambiance.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met such a guy.”

“You’re missing out, then.”

He’s right about that.

“Anyway,” he says. “I did have a girlfriend. We broke it off last year.”

“Who ended it?”

“You go right for the jugular, don’t you?”

“I don’t like to waste my time.”

“It was mutual,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Of course it was.”

“What? It was mutual. She took a residency in Illinois. Different paths, that’s all.”

“Residency?”

“She wants to be a pediatrician.”

“Of course she does.”

Even his girlfriends sound saintlike.

“What about you? You don’t have a boyfriend?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

She’s not lying. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She has a husband.

“And with the last one, was there something wrong with you or something wrong with him?” he asks.

She thinks of her husband, who, right about now, is probably lying in bed in his holey briefs, watching SportsCenter .

“Definitely something wrong with him,” she says.

“Because there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Obviously.”

She sets her glass on the coffee table. She decides she’s just going to go for it. She’s going to kiss this man who is basically a stranger because he seems kind and not like a serial killer. And he is beautiful.

“I have a question,” she says, turning to him on the couch.

“I hope I have an answer.”

She leans in toward him. “Can I kiss you?”

He smiles, possibly the widest smile she’s seen from him tonight. His teeth are bright white in the dim lighting. He sets his glass on the coffee table next to hers.

“You’re in luck,” he says. “I do have an answer.”

She tries to appear seductive even though she feels completely terrified. That voice inside is pestering her: What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

“And?”

“You may kiss me,” he says. “In fact, I would very much enjoy that.”

She wills her face to move closer to his, and just as their lips are about to touch, she closes her eyes. She is dizzy, from the drinks or from the exhilaration, she isn’t sure which.

His lips are even better to kiss than she’d imagined. They are, dare she say, pillowy . She has never kissed pillowy lips before. In college, she and her roommate Jessie kissed once, just for shits and giggles, and Jessie’s lips were somewhat pillowy, but nothing like Elijah’s.

Their tongues touch and then slip inside each other’s mouths. Suddenly, everything down there comes alive. She has long mistaken dormancy for death.

Soon, she is on top of him on the couch, straddling his middle. His hands slip under her shirt, touch her bare skin. There are instantaneous goose bumps. When was the last time she got instantaneous goose bumps?

“Do you want to go to the bedroom?” he asks.

She knows if they go to the bedroom, they will sleep together.

She will officially be an adulteress. She will have this secret to keep from her husband.

She will have to live with the guilt. Will there be guilt?

In this moment, after two whiskeys and a glass of wine, she does not anticipate any guilt.

“Yes,” she says.

They do that thing that lovers do in movies—they stumble to the bedroom, he walking backward, she falling into his front, their feet tripping over each other.

They attempt to keep their mouths attached as they go, their teeth bumping.

They laugh. When they get to his bed, they fall back.

The room is small, with just space for his bed—a queen—and a dresser and nightstand (with a candle).

She unbuttons her own pants and then his.

Soon they are naked except for their underwear, these thin layers of clothing all that remain between her and someone she never thought she’d be.

He is hard against her, and large. Well, larger than her husband, who she’s always assumed is about average.

She’s only slept with three men in her whole life. Her sample size is small.

She shimmies out of her completely unsexy cotton underwear and tugs on the waistband of his boxers.

Soon his boxers are on the floor next to her unsexy cotton panties, and she is staring at him in all his naked glory.

If she were to tell a friend about him, she would use the word Adonis.

She would say he looked like he was carved from clay.

But she won’t tell friends about him because she absolutely cannot tell anyone about this.

She finds herself kissing his chest and then moving downward. She can remember the last time she gave a blow job—on her husband’s birthday, terribly cliché—but she can’t remember the last time she wanted to. She wants to now. She wants. Now.

He moans, and she feels more successful than she has in ages.

When his body starts to twitch, she knows he’s close.

He pushes her off him and says, “Your turn.” Then he moves his lips down her body and starts licking her there.

It feels so good she giggles . She’s always thought she isn’t an oral sex type of person.

With her husband, it has always felt like he let a goldfish loose in her labia.

For a few moments, she is so consumed with pleasure that she forgets that this part of her body was made for any other function besides this.

She forgets that children have come from this vagina.

Her children! She has temporarily forgotten their existence, a glorious but horrifying amnesia.

Thought of them threatens to take her out of this unprecedented moment, but then Elijah does something with his tongue, and she is right back where she wants to be.

“Oh my god,” she says, because she is truly astonished.

She pulls on the curls of his hair, and he lifts his face, a dopey smile on it.

“Can you get inside me already?” she says.

He laughs and reaches into his nightstand. She’d forgotten about this step—the condom! They still make those things? she thinks irrationally.

He is inside her no more than three seconds before she decides this is, by far, the best sex of her life.

She wraps her legs around him as he rocks into her.

She comes once, then twice. He flips over so she is on top, and then she comes a third time.

He comes with her that third time—simultaneous orgasms, something she previously thought mythical.

When anyone mentioned having them, she always thought they were lying.

She rolls off him, and they are lying side by side, sweaty, breathing heavily.

“That was good,” he says, removing the condom.

“Um, yes,” she says. “It was.”

“Really good.”

She pushes up onto an elbow, looks at him. “It was, right? I mean, is it always that good? For you, I mean?”

He laughs. “That was particularly good.”

“Right.”

She lies flat again.

“You okay?” he asks. She can hear the smile in his voice.

“Very much okay.”

He sits up, reaches for the comforter that they’ve kicked to the end of the bed, and pulls it up over their naked bodies. Then he turns on his side and wraps an arm around her middle.

“Would you be mad if I was a typical man and fell asleep?” he asks.

She sits up, his arm still on her middle.

“No, no. But I should go,” she says, lifting his arm.

His closed eyes blink open.

“What? Really?”

She didn’t anticipate that he’d want her to stay.

He kisses her thigh.

“Stay,” he says.

“I can’t.”

But technically, she can. Her husband is not expecting her home until tomorrow.

“Please?” he says.

“Wow, you’ve really perfected that puppy-dog thing.”

“Is it working?” he asks.

Her body wants to stay. That much is clear. Her mind doesn’t know what it wants. Her mind doesn’t know how to want, period. Her mind has operated in accordance with should s for years now.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll stay.”

He nuzzles into her neck, says, “That’s what I like to hear.”

Then he falls asleep with his head on her chest, his fingers interlocked with hers, and she worries he wants more from this than she can possibly give.