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.
I could see the time on the cylindrical silver clock on Noah’s nightstand, which I lay closer to than he did. What an ugly object, I thought as I tried to determine a strategy for extricating myself. The master bathroom was about twenty feet away and the door was open, and I could go in there, turn on the shower to cover the noise of facing my destiny on the toilet, take a real shower to conceal the fact that I’d just faced my destiny on the toilet, and emerge clean. But where were my clothes and toothbrush and hairbrush? Still in my car? They had to be. And it was very plausible that the house’s security alarm was armed, either because Noah had set it the night before or because it was automated. Then I thought, one of the guest rooms. Any of the guest rooms. Any bathroom not right off Noah’s bedroom.
All this time, Noah’s left arm had been slung over my left side, and, as lightly as possible, I nudged it off. Then I inched forward, to the edge of the mattress, swung my legs down, and quickly stood. Immediately, my new freedom released a surge of adrenaline. The articles of clothing scattered on the rug were indistinguishable in the dark room, and the first thing I picked up was, I was pretty sure, his boxer briefs. The second thing seemed to be his shirt. In the bed, he stirred, and I thought Fuck and hurried from the room.
I followed a short hall to the entry hall; crossed it; entered the guest wing; walked to the farthest of the three bedrooms; entered its bathroom; sat on the toilet; peed for a very long time; pooped; immediately felt 60 percent better; remembered I had no underwear on, let alone pants, to pull up; washed and dried my hands; then stood there, unsure what to do next. It occurred to me that, as at the homes of rich people I’d visited in the past, there might be spare toiletries in the cabinet behind the mirror or under the sink. But the mirror was just a mirror, without any cabinet, and under the sink all I found were a toilet brush, a plunger, and an unopened package of six rolls of toilet paper. In lieu of a toothbrush, I used my index finger and water, and as I did, I noticed the puffy tangle behind my head of triple-orgasm hair. I washed and dried my hands a second time and attempted to run my fingers through the tangles with little success, and as I did I fully apprehended the absurdity of the situation. My phone was in Noah’s room, in the pocket of my discarded jeans. My laptop was in the car. I was wearing nothing from the waist down. If I were a different person, presumably this was when I’d have returned to Noah’s room, climbed in his bed, snuggled against him, and gone back to sleep. Instead I walked pantsless into the kitchen, pulling my T-shirt over my nether regions, hoping there really was no closed-circuit TV, helped myself to a tangerine in a bowl of citrus on the island, then—as quietly as possible—opened seven cabinets before finding the one with side-by-side compost and trash bins. I saw on the microwave clock that it was 4:31. I walked back to the guest room adjacent to the bathroom I’d besmirched, climbed under the covers, and began crafting the sentences I’d use to express to Noah that I really appreciated his hospitality but that staying in a hotel seemed to make more sense after all. Would I say that I felt overwhelmed, or was that obvious? Would I specify that while I knew there were people who could handle an amorphous and open-ended trip in the context of an amorphous and open-ended relationship, I wasn’t one of them? Relationship, of course, was the wrong word. Tryst? Fling? Rendezvous? I frantically revised my hypothetical script for at least an hour before, improbably, falling asleep. When I awakened, sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and Noah was standing by the bed holding a mug of coffee for me. But before I realized it was him, I only knew that I was in a strange room with a strange man, and I yelped.