Romantic Comedy(67)
I understood, as I hadn’t before, that he meant because he had an erection; even before he’d said anything, I’d been able to feel it. And I’d been delighted. Looking at him, I thought that he was so handsome, but also so endearing. “You know what?” I said. “Let’s go back to your room and jump the gun.”
* * *
—
We did not end up eating the salmon. We didn’t end up eating at all until after midnight when we went out to the kitchen with him wearing nothing and me wearing only my black T-shirt, when we both ate a handful of cashews, split a banana, and chugged water from the same huge glass that he then carried back to the bedroom.
First we’d had fast, ravenous, pulling-off-each-other’s clothes, first-time-with-each-other sex that was also there’s-a-pandemic-happening-and-we-might-be-in-the-twilight-of-humankind sex. I didn’t expect to climax and certainly not while we were in the missionary position—for Christ’s sake, it was still light out at that point and I was sober—which may have been why I did. In fact, I did before he did, and as I moaned, with his right shoulder by my mouth and his mouth by my left ear, he said in a low, quiet voice, “Oh, Sally,” and then he pulled out and ejaculated all over my stomach and I thought about how Jessa, the older daughter of my mother’s best friend, had told me when I was thirteen that when you didn’t like a guy, the disgusting things about sex were disgusting, and when you did like a guy, the disgusting things about sex were sexy. I tugged Noah onto me, and he said, “Am I too heavy?” and I said, “You’re perfect,” and we both lay still for a long time, my arms wrapped around him, his full weight on me, his face pressed against my neck, his left hand fiddling with my hair. My mind wasn’t racing; I wasn’t nervous; there was nothing other than this that I wanted.
After some number of minutes—eight? Or twenty-five?—he rolled off me, onto his side, and pulled me so I was on my side, too, so we were facing each other and he looked at me from about three inches away with such intensity and affection that I had to avert my gaze; I couldn’t help it. But then I looked back at him and said, “You’re definitely worth driving twenty-six hours for. And definitely not boring, even though you don’t work at TNO.”
He laughed. “And you haven’t even tasted my pan-seared salmon yet.”
“By the way I have an IUD. In case next time you want to—” I paused and raised my eyebrows, aware again of the strangeness of how the most precise and succinct way of saying something could feel splendidly obscene. I continued, “In case next time you want to come inside me.”
“I’d love to come inside you next time.” He grinned. “I hope I didn’t make too much of a mess before.”
“It was a good kind of mess,” I said. “And I also have, uh, a clean bill of health. Sexually.”
“Good to know and same for me.”
He leaned in and kissed my mouth and the sex we had that time was slower and calmer before it reverted to clawing and devouring each other.
After the second time, before the third time, when it became apparent there was going to be a third time, he was on his back, and I was straddling him, and I didn’t care about the pooching of my stomach because I’d decided I was beautiful just as I was. Just kidding! Because it was getting dark and also because presumably sex hormones were coursing through me. He wasn’t yet inside me again though I could feel his erection, and I said, “Did you take Viagra?”
“Wow,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
“That wasn’t an insult. It was a compliment.”
“To which one of us?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Sorry that I’m really turned on by you. No, I didn’t take Viagra.”
Sincerely, I said, “I apologize if that was rude.”
It was hard to read his expression—he seemed to be analyzing or assessing me almost distantly, though there was also a new haze of closeness between us that no doubt arose from being naked together, our skin smelling like the other’s skin, our bodily fluids mixed on his sheets. Even if the knowledge wasn’t comprehensive, we abruptly knew each other much better, more thoroughly, than we had a few hours before.
“I think I can forgive you,” he said, “under the circumstances.” He thrust up once then stopped and said, “Is this okay? Do you need anything?”
“Like what? A vaccine? An overall deal with a studio?”
“I was thinking of lubricant.”
As with being gazed at tenderly, as with being given a personalized Mad Libs, I had never before been asked if I needed lubricant. And as when he’d inquired on my arrival if I needed a bathroom, I was touched by both his thoughtfulness and his lack of fear about the biology of the human body.
“I don’t right now,” I said. “But thank you.”
This time he looked at me when he was inside me and I was able to look back for about three seconds, which wasn’t nothing; and then I leaned forward, leaned into him, so our torsos were pressed together.
* * *
—
If life were a romantic comedy, I’d have awakened the next morning from a deep, restorative, and gracefully positioned slumber with sunlight streaming in through the windows and Noah standing by the bed holding a mug of coffee for me. Instead, I woke in darkness at 4:13 A.M., my heart hammering, lying on my side with my chin in a pool of my own drool, being spooned by Noah. And even this ostensibly sweet arrangement was compromised by the fact that in a best-case scenario I needed to fart, but I was pretty sure I needed to poop. And he was still naked, and I was still wearing nothing but my T-shirt. In contrast to comparable situations in the past, I felt gratefully not hungover. At the same time, everything that had seemed spontaneous the previous night—not showering upon arriving at his house, not brushing my teeth before going to sleep, him jizzing on my stomach—had caught up with me. I probably was still coated with Albuquerque Hampton Inn residue! Though I didn’t exactly feel gross because of Noah, I definitely felt gross adjacent to him, and aware of him behind me not as a smoking-hot person I might be falling in love with but as a rhythmically breathing lump inhabited by a human I didn’t really know that well.