CHA PTE R 25
TALKED TOO MUCH,” I SAY when we’re in the town car.“I “You didn’t,” he says.
“The whole parking arbitrage thing was absurd.” I’m
looking out the window.
“Kind of brilliant, actually.”
I smile at the window. “I know, it gives me so much joy.
Your dad was kind of tough.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I was expecting a little pushback but not a total takedown of the project. You got him with the ice cream thing. So well played.”
“Well, it’s the truth. A guy who’s got a town named after him should have a little respect for the past. So what happens next?”
“Kramer’s ready to move forward, so we will,” he says. “I have an avalanche of work coming my way. Then there are details for the lawyers to iron out, but we’re good. And—”
“What?” I say. I turn to him and he’s looking at me.
“Thank you. For tonight.” He looks down at his hands and then back up at me. “You just have this way of making everything easier. Like I think I might be easier when you’re around.”
I open my mouth to joke about him not being easy at all when the car stops in front of his house. It’s a three-story brick mansion with six steps up to a black door under a white
portico. The brass doorknob, I can tell from the curb, is an acorn.
I stop at the bottom of the steps. “Do you live here alone?” I ask. I could fit everyone I know in this house.
“Yes,” he says. “I grew up two blocks from here. My parents are still in that house, and Oscar and Busy are their neighbors. I’m the only one on this block. Big act of rebellion.” I look both ways down the tree-lined street. I imagine beautifully dressed little kids running down the sidewalks. It feels impossible that a child could get sick in a place like this.
Billy, the driver, follows us up the steps with our bags and leaves them in the dark foyer. Stewart flicks on a light and a wide staircase appears, carpeted in a navy-and-white geometric pattern. Beneath it is a round table, ebony, with a huge vase of lilies on it. Someone knew we were coming. The floors are light hardwood, wide planks and likely original to the house, but polished to a high shine. A living room is darkened to the left and to the right is a den, lined in
bookcases.
“Can I?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. He turns on the light, and it’s nothing like Eight Oaks or the traditional exterior of his house.
Everything is casual, from the beige jute rug to the low, deep black sofa, perfect for lying down and watching a game. An antique wooden coffee table is the most formal thing in the room, but it’s covered in books and crossword puzzles torn recklessly fromThe Boston Globe. A pair of reading glasses sits next to a ChapStick.
“It’s a little messy,” I say. Above a stone fireplace is an oil painting of a city block, blurred as if it’s melting into the pavement below. I walk toward it so that I can see the
brushstrokes. Something about it makes it seem like it’s alive.
“Helena cleans in here, but I ask her to leave my stuff.
This is kind of where I unwind.”
“To the extent you ever unwind,” I say, eyes still on the painting.
He comes up behind me. “Have you been sucked in?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s beautiful. But also so weird. It gives off a feeling like it’s…”
“Breathing,” he says. “I know. I bought it because I loved it, but also I had this feeling it was important for me to have.
It makes me think of how the things we build belong to their surroundings and they matter. They interact with us.”
I nod at the painting. “I bet Grant hates it,” I say.
He laughs. “He does. Good guess.”
We are standing too close. I am fighting the urge to lean back into him. What heaven it would be to be in Stewart’s arms, looking up at this masterpiece. I think of Naomi and remember why I can’t take theMona Lisa home to my bathroom, so I step away to admire his books. Classics and contemporary fiction. Business books, three about Warren Buffett. There’s a framed family photo and another of him in
a tuxedo with a chestnut-haired woman.
“Audrey?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“I guess Helena doesn’t read thePost either,” I say. In the photo he has a wineglass in one hand and his other in a pocket. He’s not touching her anywhere.
There’s a black-and-white photo of a couple on a sailboat. He has Stewart’s profile and the same intense gaze. She’s leaning in to him like she’s dying for a kiss.
“That’s my grandfather Oliver,” he says. “And my grandmother, Lucinda.”
I take the photo and run my finger over the glass. “What a photo,” I say.
“Yeah, they were truly in love. So good for each other, from what everyone says. She always had his back, and I think it helped him do everything he did. He died the week
after she did.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But also kind of nice.”
We’re standing there looking at each other, and the air gets heavy between us. I want to kiss him as much as Lucinda wanted to kiss Oliver. I want to snatch him up and keep him like a diamond among all my common things.
“Can I have a glass of water?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. He starts to say something else but doesn’t, and I follow him into the foyer, past the stairs, down a long hallway, to a wide-open kitchen that must run the entirety of the back of the house. It’s sleek and modern but with copper where you’d expect stainless steel and cream- colored cabinetry where you’d expect white. I have never dreamed of a kitchen, but for the rest of my life I will dream of this one.
He pours water from a jug in the fridge and asks, “Can I get you anything else? Tea?” He’s opening and closing cupboards, looking for where Helena keeps his tea. I’m watching him do it, looking behind things and then crossing the room to look somewhere else. And my heart is doing something it’s never done before. This objectively handsome and good guy is going to break his own brain to get me a cup of tea, and I am falling for him. I am going to cross this room and wind my arms around his neck and pull him toward me.
And it’s going to end really, really badly.
“I don’t actually need tea, but thank you,” I say. My voice has gone an octave higher and I’m talking too fast. I need to get out of here. “I forgot I promised Gus I’d stop by my place and pick up his Red Sox sweatshirt while I was here. So I’m just going to Uber there. And then I can meet you in the morning?” I make a circle in the air with my finger to suggest a helicopter.
He closes a cabinet and turns to me. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing. I just need to go by my apartment, and I might as well stay there.” I pull out my phone and open the Uber app, and damn if it isn’t $87 to get to my place right now. I
look up to find him watching me.
“Did I do something?”
“Of course not.” Nothing besides opening six different cupboards to find me some tea. Honestly, how dare you. “I just need to,” and I gesture to the front door with my head.
“Fine, but I’ll take you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
“You’d rather pay a hundred bucks than get in my car?”
“No, but,” I start. He’s already grabbed his keys. I follow him into the two-car garage that’s just off the kitchen. Inside is only one car, a Jaguar. I don’t say anything about renting out the extra spot. Everything about that luxury car and the extra luxury of that empty parking space reminds me of how futile my crush on Stewart Whitfield is. Our lives are just too different.
The Jaguar is a 1961, he tells me, as we pull out onto the road. “It’s an E-Type, best one they ever made. Want me to tell you about it until you want to poke your eyes out with a fork?”
I give him a tight smile and turn back toward the window.
I don’t want to joke around. I want to get home and away
from the pull of him. The physical need to touch him and the emotional need to tell him how moved I am by his desire to make me tea. His passion for permanence, his fear of chaos.
I’m moved by every single thing about this man, and I need to stop it. I feel tears prick the back of my eyes for something I cannot have. “It’s a beautiful car,” I say to the window.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Just tired,” I lie.
We are silent for the twenty-minute drive to Brighton. I think back to how easy it was in the limo in Providence, practicing holding hands like it was nothing. Everything’s changed now. I feel like any touching at all in private would lead to my dress puddled around my ankles.
We stop in front of my place, and I turn to him. “Well, thank you. And for tonight. Text me in the morning and let me know when to meet you.”
“I really want to come in,” he says, looking straight ahead.
My stomach drops. I really want him to come in. And not because I think he’ll be impressed with the original avocado tiles in my little kitchen, but because I want to show him this
part of myself. The life I’ve built.
“Why?” I ask.
“I’d love to see it, where you and Gus live. Your real life.”
“But why?” I ask again. I mean it in the smallest sense, as in why does he care what my home looks like, and also the biggest possible sense—why is he spending so much time with me outside of our arrangement? Why is he infiltrating my heart in this terrifying way?
“Because you’re important to me,” he says.
“Because I know how to pull you out of a panic attack?” I ask.
“That’s only part of it.” He turns to me, and he looks like he has a lot to say about the rest of it. And I want to hear every word, every single detail of why I’m important to him.
I’d ask for a stenographer to sit in the backseat to record it all, but if I stay in this car for one more minute, I’m going to kiss him. Equally likely—if I bring him into my house, I’m
going to kiss him.
“Sure,” I say. “Come in.”
We climb the front steps, past the staircase that leads to the Gilroys’ top-floor apartment, and to mine on the ground floor. There’s no mail because Kim and Layla have been bringing it in, but my R ED SO X FANS O NLY welcome mat has a few grocery store circulars and home repair advertisements.
Stewart picks them up and follows me inside.
In front of us is my rectangular kitchen table with the four caned chairs Gus and I refinished when he was eight.
Above the table is the corkboard that contains our life. The schedule for the baseball camp he didn’t end up doing. Our June calendar only sparsely filled in. I can’t read it from here, but I know it says things likeregistration for fall ball opens andfree swim at the Y. Nowhere does it sayfall for Stewart Whitfield.
To our right is my kitchen, straight out of a 1970s sitcom, with my lemon-yellow tea kettle bright on the stove. To the left are two denim couches in the shape of an L and a coffee table made of two tree stumps and a found piece of glass, another project of Gus’s and mine. A TV, an Xbox controller left on the worn red rug. On an end table by a tulip-shaped lamp is a stack of sticky-sweet year-end cards from my students. In the corner, Fern is thriving.
I drop my keys on the table by the mail and turn to him.
“This is it,” I say.
“It’s a great place,” he says. “Who’s taking care of that fern?” he asks. He hasn’t taken a step since he closed the front door.
“The Bad Teachers. My teaching friends. They’re not bad, it’s just what we call our group text. To be funny.” I’m rambling and some part of me worries that if I stop talking, I’ll jump into his arms. “I call her Fern. Gus calls her
Sideshow Bob.”
“What does that mean?” he asks.
My shoulders relax with this chance to tease him. “You don’t watchThe Simpsons, do you?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t watch much of anything.”
“Well, Damion dresses like Smithers, Mr. Burns’s assistant, which you’d think was funny if you did.” I walk past him and throw open the green-and-white checked curtains on the front window. “Doesn’t look like much, but when the sun comes in here in the morning, the light through the needles
of that white pine is spectacular.”
“I’d love to see that,” he says.
And it hangs there. He’s holding my gaze and my heart is racing. What would it do to me to spend the night here with Stewart, those hands all over me, and wake up and drink tea with him in this, my favorite spot? The tea is the worst part of this terrible idea—his hands all over me is one thing, but the hope of the next day and the next day and all the days I’d want with him is quite another.
“Can I?” he asks, gesturing to the short hallway that
leads to our bedrooms.
“Sure,” I say, heart in my throat.
I follow him into Gus’s room, bed hastily made by me a lifetime ago. Stewart scans Gus’s desk and the shelf of baseball and hockey trophies above it. He turns to take in the quilt covering Gus’s bed and is suitably impressed.
“Don’t tell me you made this,” he says.
“I did,” I say. “I kept all his T-shirts and jerseys from the million sports he played starting in preschool and sewed them into this. Only way I could feel like I got my money’s worth.”
“It’s amazing,” he says. “He’ll keep this forever.”
“I actually have a whole bin of new ones since sixth grade, so I’ll do a second installment at some point.”
He nods at his own thought, and I want to know what it was. “What?” I ask. “Your face did a thing.”
He shrugs. “You’re a great mother. That’s what I was thinking, but then I thought it sounded weird to say, because what do I know.” That compliment is too big for me. I let it fall on the ground between us rather than take it in.
“Oh,” I say. “Thank you. I think I do want tea.” I turn toward the door. “Would you like some?”
“Sure,” he says, and follows me to the kitchen.
I fill up the kettle and turn on the burner. It clicks a few times before it catches. I pull two mugs from the shelf: one R ED SO X, one W O R LD’S BEST MO M. I can feel him behind me. I take a breath and turn around. I look up and his gaze is heavy on me.
“Thank you again for tonight,” he says. “I liked having you in my corner.”
“Good,” I say. “That’s good. You’re getting your money’s worth.”
“You put your hand on my leg at dinner.”
“Was that too much? Seemed kind of natural in the moment.”
“It was,” he says. “Everything about being with you feels natural. Everything but not touching you.” He takes my hand, and I close my eyes for a second. Just to feel it.
I lean back against the stove. “Are you trying to say you
want to kiss me again?”
“Obviously.”
I smile. “Just once?”
“Till you tell me to stop.”
We look at each other while he waits for my response.
Stewart is a pleasure I am denying myself because he’s a daydream I’ll have to wake up from. But he wants me, that is undeniable. Neither of us is acting.
“Tell me what you said under the helicopter, and you can kiss me one more time,” I say.
He smiles. He wants to pay me a compliment as much as he wants to kiss me. I smile back and I wait.
“I said you take my breath away, more every time I see you.”
My heart takes that in. I can feel it soften and expand. To hell with it, I think. This daydream is worth whatever comes after. “Thank you,” I say, and I lean in to kiss him. I take it slowly, kissing his top lip and then his bottom. He’s letting me taste him without touching me at all, but when I cover his mouth with mine and wind my hands up into his hair, he grabs me by the hips and pulls me to him. We are instantly wrapped up in each other—mouths and arms and breath—as if that is where gravity would take us if we both just let go. My dress has come off my shoulder, and he’s trailing kisses there while I’m untucking his shirt.
He takes my hands and stops me. “Is this still part of that one kiss?”
I nod. There’s a reality where this kiss lasts until the end of August. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
His mouth is on mine again and the kiss is endless. I’ve undone all of his buttons and am exploring his chest and his stomach with the tips of my fingers. I can feel him reacting to
my touch, a hitch in his breath and his hips pressing into me.
I stop kissing him and he bites his lip with worry.
“I’ll show you my bedroom,” I say, as if we’re still on a tour.
I turn the fire off under the kettle, lead him to my room, and turn on the lights. I am delighted to see that I took care making my own bed on the day we raced out of here. I’ve folded the white top sheet down over the pale pink comforter. Both pillows are fluffed and welcoming. I feel a hesitancy off Stewart, as if he’s not completely sure what’s happening here. It sends a thrill through me because I am.
“It’s pretty,” he says, squeezing my hand. He drags me with him to my bookshelves and scans all the photos of Gus and me. He picks up one of us in Red Sox gear, Gus sitting on my shoulders holding an ice cream cone that’s about to topple into my hair. He picks up a Little League trophy.
“1998? Is this yours?”
“It is,” I say. “I wasn’t bad.”
He smiles at me. “I bet.” He takes my other hand and asks, “Dolly, what’s happening here?”
I meet his gaze, and I know that we are in a delicate place. Each of us wants to take a step we’re unsure of.
“Unzip my dress,” I say. He hesitates, but then turns me around and unzips it slowly, tracing each inch of skin with his fingers until it’s in a puddle on the floor just like I imagined. I step out of it and turn around. I’m in my bra and underwear —my own, beige from the annual sale at Macy’s. Busy didn’t think I’d need lingerie. I push his shirt off his shoulders and step toward him. He runs his hands along my waist, over the cotton of my underwear, and loops his thumbs inside, like he’s one cowboy-swift motion away from dropping them to the ground. I run my hands down his chest and rest them on
his belt buckle without taking my eyes off his. He smiles just a bit, like it’s a question.
I pull him onto the bed with me. We land on our sides, facing each other, and he runs a hand along my side and over my hip. His mouth is close enough to mine that he smiles when my breathing goes shallow. But he doesn’t say anything, he just waits. I touch his face, the high ridge of his cheek and the small scar in his eyebrow that I’m seeing for the first time, and he leans in to my hand. He’s clean shaven on account of the Kramer dinner but he won’t be in the morning. I’m going to wake up with him here with his bed head and his sex smell. I lean in to kiss him and he rolls onto me.
He kisses me, slowly, and I get to savor it. His lips soft against mine, the way he tastes me like I’m chocolate. My hands grip his face, his mouth is on my neck, and my body is screaming for more of him. I push up into him and he whispers, “Dolly,” running his hands down the sides of my thighs. I fumble with his belt until he rolls off me and handles it himself. I feel a chill from having his body that far from me.
It’s for a count of twenty, but I hear myself say, “You need to come back.” It’s such a small thing, saying what you want, and I’m not sure where it came from.
When he’s back, we are nothing but skin and sheets and breath. His fingers tease the insides of my legs, and I nearly black out. My body wants this more than it’s ever wanted anything, like I feel a burning where I want him to touch me.
We are both in a fever. A mumbling, extrasensory fever. I can’t remember the last time I had sex, and when he’s finally inside me, his hands steadying my hips, I melt the rest of the way into the fantasy that is Stewart Whitfield.
“That was a hell of a kiss,” he says after. I’m resting on his chest and look up to find him smiling at me. “I would
sound like a creep if I told you how often I’ve thought about doing that.”
“Then I’m a creep too,” I say, and run my hand down his chest. I do not want to wake from this dream, but because I anticipate the big bucket of ice-cold water coming my way, I ask. “Did you get it out of your system?”
He tilts my head up to him, and his expression is serious.
“Not even close.”
I WAKE UP naked in bed alone. For a second I think I’ve imagined the whole thing. The fire, thePost, Stewart, all of it. But then Stewart’s in the doorway in his underwear with two mugs of tea, and the dam breaks on my feelings. His expression is all business as he navigates our clothes on the floor to deliver the tea to my bedside table. I sit up and arrange the sheet like a strapless dress.
“There was no milk, but I found honey,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say.
He puts his mug down on his bedside table, and I wonder for the first time why I have two. There has never been a person on the other side of this bed. He climbs under the covers and lies on his side, watching me.
“How is it?” he asks.
“Good,” I say. “But you didn’t have to do that.”
“That night on the boat, I thought you looked so beautiful drinking your tea. The way your eyes dipped and you blew on it as you sipped.”
I smile into my tea. I can’t count how many times he told me I was beautiful last night. My lips, my neck, my feet. The way he’s looking at me right now makes me almost believe it.
“I’m not saying I was planning this, like a predator,” he says.
I laugh. “What a relief.” I put my tea down and lie on my side, facing him. He immediately pulls me into his arms, and I’m back in the dream.
“I just mean I was thinking that someone who saw you drink tea every morning would be lucky.” He brushes my hair off my cheek and tucks it behind my ear. “I’m lucky today.”
I reach up and touch his face. There’s a light stubble there now and it’s just for me. By the time he belongs to the world again, he’ll be clean shaven and he won’t be biting his
bottom lip the way he is now.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Whatever you want.”
What a thing to say. What a thing to believe. My heart aches for my younger self, who thought the princess got to keep the gentle man and the horse.
“Whatever you want,” he says again. His eyes are smiling at my face like it’s his favorite thing. “Except never doing this again, that’s not something I’m willing to agree to.”
My smile blooms, relief mostly.
“Tell me,” he says. His hand grazes my side and rests on my hip.
“I want this,” I say. The words come out jagged. I don’t know why that was so hard to say. I feel cracked open by having said it and he’s kissing me now, entering into that open space. I pull away. “But this feels very close,” I say.
“What does that mean? I want to be close.” He pulls my leg over his.
“Yes, but not just sex.” I look around my room and at the white curtains I sewed for the off-center window. “I’ve actually never had sex here, first of all. But that’s not it. This feels closer than sex, the way we were last night.” I stop
myself from explaining how I want to climb inside him and wrap myself around him all at once. That making love to him last night changed me in some fundamental way. I don’t think I can go back to giving someone a little bit of myself.
He takes my hand in his and raises it to his lips. “This definitely feels closer than sex. And if you told me you never wanted to do this again, I’d still want to see you every day.
That’s the strongest instinct I have, actually. To be close to you.”
I find that impossible to believe, though it’s exactly how I feel. I am terrified to trust myself here. I don’t know why ecstatic and terrified so often occupy the same space.
“Let’s stay close,” he says. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me, just a tiny kiss, the kind that says something different fromI want to keep your clothes off all day. He places a thumb on my bottom lip and smiles. “I’d be honored if you’d raise your expectations for me.”
