It was because I was a comedy writer, and not because I was sexually fearless, that I was tempted to say, “Your penis?” Instead, I said, “Is it better than this?”
He laughed. “It’s in the kitchen.”
“Is it sourdough bread?”
“No, although I’ll make dinner if you’re hungry, like some salmon and a salad, or else Margit left some premade stuff for us.”
Who cares about dinner? I thought.
I said, “Is it an NDA for me to sign?”
He laughed. “Also no.” He placed a hand on the small of my back to steer me toward the bedroom door. “It’s kind of a present, but it isn’t key chains.”
Did he think I was a bad kisser? Was the kissing not supposed to have happened? Was the kissing supposed to have happened, but when it wasn’t some guy off a dating site, was it paced differently and the subsequent stuff didn’t occur as quickly? Was it weird that I didn’t know how this all worked even though I was thirty-eight years old, or did nobody know? Counting Martin Biersch, my ex-husband, two earlier guys in college, and the assortment of online serial hookups, I’d had sex with a total of nine men. If someone had told me of this figure when I was in high school, I’d have thought it sounded like an embarrassment of riches, but surely it was nothing compared to Noah’s number. Even a pop star who eschewed the term playboy had to be, by normal standards, a playboy.
Back in the kitchen, on the wood-topped island, I noticed a shiny black folder. He pulled a single sheet of paper from it, with printed words I couldn’t read, and said, “It’s something I made as a surprise. Not a song. More of an activity.”
“This is very intriguing.”
“You’ll know what it is pretty quickly. Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I need you to give me a noun.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. “A noun? Like a person, place, or thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Any particular kind of noun?”
He shook his head.
“Let’s see,” I said. “How about door?”
He used a ballpoint pen to write then said, “Verb ending in -ing?”
“This is like Mad Libs. Fidgeting.”
He looked sheepish. “It is Mad Libs. But personalized for you.” He began reading. “I just drove my door from Kansas City, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. As I drove, I was fidgeting about whether I’d—” He looked up from the page. “This is incredibly corny, huh?”
“Well, we’ve barely started. Don’t give away the punch line.”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“I’m happy to. Do you need an adjective?”
His brow furrowed. “I thought this was clever before you got here, but now it seems very contrived.”
“It’s fun,” I insisted.
“I want you to think coming here was a good idea,” he said, and there was a catch in my chest, less from swooning than from being startled. “I want you to think I’m not boring, even though I don’t work at TNO.”
I could tell that he wasn’t being sarcastic, or even flirty. He was being completely unguarded and sincere, and I tried to be equally sincere as I said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but no one has ever made anything like this for me. It’s so, like, premeditatedly sweet. And I want you to think my visit was a good idea. In your room just then—” I trailed off and looked at him uncertainly.
“No, that was awesome,” he said. “That was great. To be honest, I was afraid of going too fast and I just—I want to let you get settled here and get comfortable. I don’t want you to feel pressured.”
“I’m actually pretty comfortable.”
“Don’t get me wrong, that’s definitely what I want. But I worry that I’ve spooked you in the past.”
I could feel my forehead wrinkle. “When?”
“At the bar after the after-party.”
“Oh—I was really confused that night. I almost thought—well, I wondered if you were about to kiss me, but I couldn’t believe you’d want to.”
“I was planning on asking you out. Of course I wanted to kiss you, but I wouldn’t have done it there.”
It was slightly easier to summon my courage this time. I said, “Do you want to kiss me now?”
We were standing with a corner of the island between us, and he stepped around it, leaned his face into mine, and kissed my lips. “Does that answer your question?”
I smiled as I said, “Have I mentioned that I’m very comfortable right now? And not at all spooked?”
And then we were making out in the kitchen, and this time he was a tiny bit more familiar, the taste of his mouth and skin and the feel of his body, and I was a tiny bit more relaxed, and again it was overwhelming and exhilarating. And again, after a minute or two, he stepped back, this time with his hands holding my upper arms. He nodded down once with his chin and said, “See? I just—I don’t want to jump the gun or, like, freak you out.”
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.”