My Guys

Copyright © 2016 by Tanya Chris (www.tanyachris.com)

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1536891676

ISBN-10: 1536891673

For my guy, who doesn’t squawk about the stuff I write

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Thank You!

Chapter 1

“God damn it,” I muttered, not for the first time.

“Something wrong over there?” one of the other woman asked. Laurie, I thought her name was—the tall one with the short red hair and aggressively long fingernails.

“This nail doesn’t want to come out.”

“I don’t know why we’re doing this anyway,” the prickly one I was pretty sure was named Patty complained. “It’s just busy work, if you ask me.”

I looked down at the length of two-by-four on the floor in front of me, nails bristling from it in every direction like it had been used as a practice piece for a Boy Scout troop’s introduction to wood working. It was my job to remove the nails from this piece of wood. Laurie, Patty, and—Vicki maybe?—each had their own piece of wood. In a pile near us lay another two or three dozen similarly-spiked but differently-sized pieces waiting their turn.

“Do you really think they re-use these?” I wondered out loud.

“We really do,” Phil said, appearing above us. “Aside from the green aspect of it, we’re very poor. We get our labor free but wood costs money. Are you guys bored?” Phil was the master carpenter. The master carpenter, it had been explained to us after the quick tour we’d been given of Central Playhouse, was in charge of getting the set built.

“Just frustrated,” I said. “I can’t get this one.” And every time the hammer slips I whack my hand on the floor, I thought but didn’t say. There was no sense in complaining about what was caused by my own ineptitude, but I wasn’t exactly having a good time.

Working on a set at a local community theater had sounded a lot more interesting when I’d signed up for this Let’s Meet event than it was turning out to be. I was stiff from sitting on the floor, the knuckles on my right hand were scraped from the repeated whacks, and I was covered in a fine layer of sawdust because there was a table saw positioned about three feet from my ear that had been running off and on all afternoon.

Phil sat down next to me and showed me how to use a block of wood to brace the back of the hammer. He wasn’t a bad looking guy—about my age with red hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. I looked hopefully at his left hand as he handed the hammer back to me and then shook my head in disgust, not so much at the ring but because I’d looked for it.

“Get some hobbies,” my sister Morgan had recommended. “Improve yourself. Meet people. Stop looking for some guy to fill the hole in your heart. Be your own hero.”

Morgan, safely ensconced in marriage and home and motherhood, read all the best advice columns. Although she needed no advice herself—clearly—she liked to see how the rest of the world was doing. The rest of world, apparently, needed to get out more.

“Try some of those Let’s Meet events,” she’d suggested. “My friend Shari went to one for classical music and met a very cute college professor.”

“You just told me to stop looking for a man,” I reminded her.

“If you follow your dream, the man will find you.”

Sage advice, Morgan. If I had any idea what my dream was, I’d follow it. Once upon a time I’d thought I had my dream. I’d married my best friend—my soul mate, my prince. I was going to be a wife, then a homeowner and, eventually, a mother. By day, I would file taxes and he would file briefs. By night, we’d cherish each other and those eventual children.

“I think you’ve got it,” Phil said, standing up. His advice had been a lot more practical than my sister’s. I couldn’t fill the hole in my life but I could now pull a long, thick nail from a hard piece of wood without smashing my knuckles.

“At least there are men here,” Laurie said once Phil had walked out of earshot.

So it wasn’t just the Let’s Meet events I went to. The week before I’d gone to one at a yoga studio. The group had consisted of eight women in tank tops and yoga pants and one guy, probably gay. There were a few other guys in the class we were attending. I’d managed to place my mat next to one of them—gray hair but not too old-looking and definitely fit.

From what I’d been able to see while I concentrated on not falling over, he hadn’t been in any danger of falling over. At the end of the class when we were getting into position for the final resting pose, I turned my head to him, my body wrung out and shimmering with sweat, the bangs I was trying to grow out damp against my forehead, and said, “Was it good for you, too?”

Which I’d thought was a pretty good line. He turned his head the other direction without a word and I spent the next five minutes of enforced relaxation replaying those two moments over and over in my mind: “Was it good for you, too?” Head turning away. “Was it good for you, too?” Head turning away.

When the teacher had released us at last, I’d flown to my car without checking where the group was planning to go for the inevitable post-event coffee. I couldn’t decide which to swear off—yoga or men. Then I remembered my husband, Alex, and decided: men.

“My God,” a man’s voice declared from behind me, startling me from my thoughts. “Do you see what I see?”

I looked up. I didn’t see anything very interesting so I turned instead to look at the guy who’d been shouting—a short, chubby kid, probably not much out of college, clutching the arm of a taller, chubbier kid next to him in mock drama.

“Why, I think it’s an actor,” the chubbier one said.

“All hail!”

I turned around again to see who they were hailing. He was tall—maybe a little more than six feet—and thin, just saved from being gangly by a certain confidence of movement. Twenty something. Brown hair waving down to the nape of his neck where it broke out in curls. Pale, like the outdoors was a place he didn’t go. Or perhaps his mother had succeeded in training him to use sunscreen.

“My Lordship,” shouted one of the jokers behind me. The guy in front of me made a gallant bow.

“Bring me ...” he intoned, filling his chest and throwing back his head so the curls danced, “... a beer.”

“A beer, a beer. Bring his Lordship a beer.” Moe and Curly put on a show, darting around in circles and generally bumping into each other and everyone else.

“Nate,” Phil called.

Nate turned and caught the can of beer Phil threw him, then wandered over to a group gathered around a fake fireplace, ignoring Moe and Curly who were being ignored by everyone except our Let’s Meet gang. We were staring.

“These are weird people,” Laurie said.

“I didn’t know they had beer,” Patty said. “Anyway, they didn’t offer us one.”

“It’s not even three o’clock,” Vicki said.

Patty rolled her eyes at me and we all went back to pulling nails in silence. Around us, the theater bustled with movement, laughter, and the occasional high-pitched squeal of the table saw.

“I wonder who he is,” I said, finally. My eyes refused to leave him alone.

“Nobody.”

I looked up to find a woman standing next to me. She was younger than I was, maybe late twenties, with a chestnut-brown pixie cut. She was looking at Nate, not me.

“He’s an actor, not even a very good one in my opinion.”

“What was all the fuss about?” I asked the obvious question, rather than the one that was forming—if you like him so little, why look at him so hard?

“Just a joke. Actors almost never come help build the set. You know—they’re above it or something. Sets just magically appear for their benefit.”

“The actors are here four or five nights a week, Deb. I suppose they have to do their laundry sometime.” That was Phil, cruising in to check on us again.

“Whatever.” Deb shrugged and walked away.

I worried she was going to walk into something if she didn’t look where she was going instead of at Nate.

“Doing better?” Phil asked me. I nodded. “Everyone OK here?” The other women nodded too. “Well, when you get tired of this, let me know. I’ve got some painting you can do.”

“Could I paint?” Patty asked. “I’d rather.”

“Absolutely. Come on, I’ll get you started.”

Patty followed Phil, then Vicki stood up and dashed after them. Painting did sound better. I looked at the pile of wood waiting to be stripped. It had hardly diminished at all. I sighed. We couldn’t all paint.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” Laurie said. She stood up and snagged her purse from the floor, then walked over and leaned down to my ear to say, “This blows.” I had a feeling she wouldn’t come back from her cigarette break. Well, I wasn’t giving up. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway. Just another long, empty Saturday leading to a longer, emptier Sunday. Why not pull nails?

I pushed my too-long bangs out of my eyes for the hundredth time and bent my head back to the cork-screwed nail I’d been working on. Also Morgan’s fault, those bangs.

“Change it up! Do something different! Remake yourself.”

“Maybe you should be a motivational speaker,” I’d told her.

“Do you think?” She’d been so flattered she hadn’t noticed I was being sarcastic. But, make fun of her advice as I might, there I was sitting on the floor of a theater with my bangs in my eyes. Her advice gave me some place to start, something to work on, something easier to address than what Alex had said the day our marriage ended: uninterested and uninteresting.

“Has anyone ever told you that sawdust is your color?” Nate descended beside me like an accordion collapsing, his long legs scissoring into a cross-legged position.

“Am I covered in it?”

“A dusting in your hair. Like glitter. It suits you.”

His eyes were the darkest blue and his lashes were the blackest black. He looked like Lord Byron, if I imagined what Lord Byron would look like—delicate features on creamy skin and above all—those eyes.

“I’m Nate.” He held out a hand to me.

“I’m sorry.” I’d totally been staring. “I’m Melissa.” I put my hand in his and he gave it a squeeze-shake.

“Melissa, huh?” He tilted his head, considering. “No, I don’t see it.”

“Yes, Melissa.”

“Missy? OK, don’t panic.” He held up a hand. “I see by the expression on your face that you are definitely not Missy.”

“As a baby,” I admitted. “It took a long time to grow out of.”

“OK, no going back now. Not Missy.” He pondered me. I used the opening to ponder him back. Apparently staring at a stranger was OK in the world of theater.

“Mel?”

I made a face.

“Oh, a girly girl, are you?”

“Not exactly. But not a Mel either.”

“Probably not. If you were, you’d have these nails out by now.” He reached across me to grab the hammer Patty had left. He smelled like spruce with a hint of cheap beer. “It’ll come to me, your name.”

“Not Melissa?”

He shook his head and started pulling nails from the other end of the board I was working on, humming to himself beneath his breath. Gold Dust Woman, I realized, smiling.

“Do you always rename people?”

“Most people’s names go along with them. I don’t believe you’re really Melissa.”

I laughed. He raised an eyebrow at me questioningly.

“An inside joke,” I said, shrugging it off.

“Who’s on the inside? You and you? That’s a lonely joke.”

“It’ll sound stupid.”

He didn’t say anything, waiting me out.

“All right, I just ... Maybe I’m not Melissa anymore. I’ve been trying to ... change things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’m here, for one.”

“Not a place you’d normally be?”

“Not here anyway. Maybe up there.” I waved at the tiered audience seating in front of us.

“What else?”

“I’m growing out my bangs.” I glared at them through my eyelashes in disgust. “That sounds lame.”

“No, I totally sympathize. I had to get a buzz cut for a part a couple of years ago.”

“You cut your hair?” I’d just met him and I was already attached to his hair.

“For a part. We actors must be willing to sacrifice everything for our craft.” He sat up very straight and lifted his chin to illustrate the nobility of his calling. “Or at least get a haircut.”

“Do actors really never help with the set?”

“Who said that?” He looked around. “Oh, that business with Pete and Repeat when I came in.”

“Pete and Repeat?”

Nate gestured towards Moe and Curly who were enacting a new comedy routine, one that involved balancing donuts on various body parts.

“Which one is Pete?”

“They both are, so we call the taller one Repeat. Pete tends to take the lead.”

“I don’t think I want to know what he’s going to do with that donut next.”

“Then I’d advise you to look away.”

I turned my attention back to the piece of wood I was holding. “Actually, it was Deb who said actors never help with the set.”

“Oh.”

I waited for him to elucidate, but he didn’t. “Is she an actor?”

“We all act sometimes, and we all help with the set sometimes. Never mind Deb. You were telling me about the brand new Lissa.”

“Lissa?”

“No, I guess not. Too close to Lisa, which is too ordinary. You’re not ordinary.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as un-ordinary.”

“Extraordinary. I don’t think un-ordinary is a word.”

“Well, I’ve certainly never thought of myself as extraordinary.”

“That was Melissa. The new you is extraordinary.” He smiled charmingly and for a moment I felt extraordinary. This was what I’d wanted, though I’d been trying very hard not to think of it—to have a man’s attention all to myself for a moment, to feel extraordinary, if only to one person.

“How old are you?” I asked, driven to outright frankness.

“Twenty-five. How old are you?”

“Too old to be comfortable answering that question.” I’d been hoping he was older than he looked, but he was every bit as young as he looked.

“You want me to guess?” He scrunched up his eyes and looked me up, down and sideways, even rising up onto to his knees to look over my shoulder at my backside. Then he sat back, closed his eyes, and pondered in silence before making his pronouncement: “Thirty-five.”

“Close.” To be exact, I was thirty-seven, but I saw no need to be exact. “How did you do that?”

“I figured you had to be at least ten years older than me or you wouldn’t be making a big deal of it. Then I figured that if I guessed too high you’d be insulted and never speak to me again, so the easy guess was exactly ten.”

“You’re wise beyond your years.”

“Among other things.” His gorgeous eyes looked dead into mine. The complete lack of a wink or smirk made it feel more like a promise than an innuendo. I dropped my eyes. Best case, someone completely unsuitable was flirting with me. Worst case, I was so desperate for a man’s attention that I was imagining that someone completely unsuitable was flirting with me. I tugged at a nail, wondering how stupid I looked.

“What else?”

I lifted my eyes.

“The new you.”

“Just trying to be open to whatever comes. Maybe I’ll find something I really like that I never knew about before.”

“Green eggs and ham.”

“Exactly.” I’d never known I could enjoy sitting on the floor stripping nails from old lumber, but there I was. I watched him deftly pull three nails in quick succession before throwing the piece of wood in his hands behind him and reaching for a new one.

“Next week I’m going rock climbing,” I told him. “It sounds terrifying, but maybe exciting too.”

“I’d try rock climbing. How about skydiving?”

“Not a chance.” I shook my head to emphasize the point.

“Not any chance?”

“None at all.”

“Would you, could you from a plane? Would you, could you in the rain?”

I laughed and shook my head again. “Not from a plane, not in the rain.”

“With a chute? In a suit?”

“How do you do that so fast? Are you a rapper?”

“Definitely not. Not with a mic, not on a bike. Improv training.”

“Improv? That’s where you’re making it up as you go along.” I shifted position, trying to get feeling back into my legs and to make it less obvious that I was watching him. “How do you train for something that you don’t know what it is?”

“You practice saying yes and being open to whatever comes next, sort of like you’re doing with your life right now.”

“Have you been acting long?”

“My mother would tell you I was born acting.” He flashed me another one of those smiles that made his eyes so vividly blue and then I couldn’t remember what we’d been talking about. I wrestled exaggeratedly with a nail to have a reason to look down.

“So why are you remaking your life? I hope you haven’t been given six months to live or something.”

“No, nothing so bad as that.”

“But bad?”

“I suppose people who are happy with their lives don’t remake them.” I felt the bubble of joy that had been forming around us lose some of its air.

“You weren’t happy?”

“Actually, I was.” I had thought that I was happy—or if not happy, certainly content—and I’d thought I could stay like that, forever and ever.

“And you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Do you want to talk about Deb?” The bubble popped.

“No, I do not.”

“Then let’s just leave the past in the past.”

“Who says I have a past with Deb?”

“Don’t you?” I looked up and met his eyes. They were surprisingly direct—cautious but not evasive. “You probably have other things to do.”

“Not done with this yet.”

I looked at the pile of wood, nearly gone. We’d been making good progress and not because of me. Without letting his end of the conversation flag, he worked quickly. Each nail only took one yank. I watched the grace of his movements, wishing I hadn’t been hostile.

“You’re good at that,” I said, making peace.

“Surprised?”

“You have a poet’s hands.”

“Look closer.” He held his hands out to me. The long, pale fingers were nicked and scraped, the square nails ragged. He flipped his hands over and I saw calluses at the base of every finger and a round scar like a puncture wound in the palm of one hand. I ran my thumb over the scar.

“A working poet,” I said.

He twisted his hand in mine so that our fingers interlaced. Which was the weirdest thing. So weird I couldn’t stop it from happening.

“Lissie,” he said.

“What?”

“Definitely Lissie.”

“Nate, you’re going to chase the new girl away before I even have a chance to introduce myself.” Standing over the two of us—and we were still holding hands I realized, shaking myself free—was a very large black woman with very blue eye shadow, very red lipstick, very blond, very short hair, and a clipboard. “Now you come up here because there’s no way I’m going down there.”

Dutifully I got to my feet. Nate did too. She probably wasn’t any older than I was, but it felt like Nate and I were misbehaving children who’d been caught out.

“I’m Rebekah. I’m the Stage Manager for this show.” She stuck out her hand and I shook it.

“Melissa,” I said.

“And where did you come from?”

“The internet. I mean, there was an event on Let’s Meet and I saw it on the internet, so I came.”

“Oh, they did that, did they? That was a good idea Carol had. Hey Carol,” she shouted across the theater, “that was a good idea you had.”

I recognized Carol as the one who’d taken us on our tour earlier. She gave Rebekah a thumbs up.

“Now,” Rebekah said, turning back to me, “you’d like to be a stage hand?”

“Um.”

“Sure you would. I’ll put you down for it.” She lifted her pen.

“I wasn’t expecting,” I said. “I mean, I’ve never worked on a show before. I came down today to help out a little, you know, see what it’s like.”

“Well, you can’t see what it’s like if you don’t find out what it’s like.”

“What would I be doing exactly?” I wondered if selling used cars was her day job.

“Move things around, help the actors with their props, maybe iron some costumes.”

“Be her bitch,” Nate said.

Rebekah gave him a hard look before turning back to me. He winked at me.

“What he means to say,” Rebekah explained carefully, “is you’d be my assistant. Very helpful to me, that would be. I can’t do it all, you know.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. Everyone was so dramatic here.

“I’m sure you can’t,” I said politely, “but—”

“But what now?”

“I’m just not sure—”

“Eat the green eggs,” Nate said. “They’re yummy.”

“But I don’t know what I’m doing. I might not be any good at it.”

“Right now we’ve got nobody doing it,” Rebekah said. “You think you can do better than nobody?”

“I guess so.”

“Great.” She touched her pen to her clipboard. “Melissa ...?”

“Lissie,” Nate corrected.

“Lissie what?”

“It’s Melissa,” I said.

“Not anymore.”

Chapter 2

I knew as soon as I walked in that it was a setup. Amy waited for me in the lobby, her hands clasped together nervously. Next to her was a guy—my date.

“Melissa!” Amy waved me over. The guy and I checked each other out. He had to be older than I was, judging by the lines around his eyes, but he had a healthy outdoorsy look and a friendly face.

“This is Bob,” Amy said. “I don’t know if you two know each other?”

I shook my head and held out my hand. “Hi, Bob.”

He took my hand but only nodded, then looked towards Amy.

“Melissa works with me,” Amy told him. “She was asking me about rock climbing the other day and I remembered how you were always asking me about climbing, so I thought ...” She trailed off. “Bob works in the IT department,” she told me. “He’s always super helpful whenever my computer is acting up. Bob’s like my own personal help desk.” She laughed. Bob and I smiled—at Amy, not each other.

Amy was the last person you’d expect to be an accountant. She had a tan year-round and what seemed like a permanent ponytail. She was always going hiking or biking or climbing, always just back from, or about to go off on, some kind of adventure. When I’d thought about being someone other than Melissa, it had occurred to me that maybe I’d like to be Amy, which was why I was standing in the lobby of Climb Time, our local climbing gym.

“So climbing,” Amy said. “Are you excited?”

I nodded.

“Let’s get your gear then.” She walked us over to the front desk and we went through a slow process of signing waivers and trying on shoes. My heart had been beating fast when I walked in, but by the time we got suited up and stepped into the climbing gym proper, I’d almost forgotten I was there to do something crazy.

The gym was a hollow shell—a vast, open room ringed by ropes. The walls were studded with climbing holds in a rainbow of hues. There were as many people as there were ropes, some on the ground, some on the wall, a few here and there swinging gently in space. The floor was soft. It sprang under my feet like a moon walk. There was music playing, something techno with a driving beat, and everywhere people talking—calling from floor to wall and back. It was almost as loud as the theater, minus the table saw’s screeching whine.

“Who’s first?” Amy asked, pulling one of the ropes towards her. Bob stepped right up to it and Amy helped guide the rope through his harness, tying it securely. She pulled the other end of the rope through a little metal contraption attached to her harness.

“You’re on belay,” she said, which she’d explained meant that she had the rope secure and would keep him safe. “Climb when ready.”

Bob looked at her doubtfully. He wasn’t a big man, but he was a lot bigger than Amy who was five-foot-nothing and probably only weighed a hundred pounds.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“The belay device does the work.” She tapped the metal contraption. “Trust me?”

He didn’t answer that question, but he did step up to the wall. I watched him climb. It didn’t seem so hard. Hand, hand, foot, foot—like climbing a ladder. The wall we were on went straight up, so it wouldn’t be exactly like climbing a ladder, but at least it didn’t bend back over our heads like some of them did.

I was distracted from Bob’s steady right, left, right, left by a guy climbing on one of those walls that bent backwards. He swung up it with feral grace, his movements unpredictable but smooth. Sometimes he faced the wall like Bob was doing, but sometimes he was sideways to it, hanging from a single arm, his legs pulling like an extra set of hands. His shirt was off, revealing back muscles that bunched and lengthened across the bronze expanse of his back. As I watched, he paused to shake the sweat from his eyes, then sprang upward.

I gasped when he fell and came swinging out over his belayer’s head, but he wasn’t concerned. He shook his head, annoyed with himself, and kept swinging—one toe lazily pushing off the wall like he was rocking a porch swing on a hot day. He looked down at his belayer, a thin girl with dirty-blonde hair a few shades lighter than his, and smiled a perfect white-toothed smile. Surfer dude goes climbing.

“Now what?” I heard Bob say. Reluctantly I took my eyes from the Adonis above me. Bob was at the top of the wall.

“Sit back and let go,” Amy directed. She lowered Bob back down to us. “You did great. Didn’t he do great, Melissa?”

“You made it look easy,” I said, even though he’d made it look boring.

Bob shrugged to indicate that it was no big deal. He untied himself from the rope and handed it to me without looking at me. OK, fine, I thought. I’m not interested in you either. I’m interested in the half-naked hunk.

Unlike Bob, I didn’t question whether Amy would keep me safe. All around us people were going up and down and falling off and getting back on and no one seemed to be in any danger. Obviously they knew what they were doing.

I stepped up to the wall and took the highest two holds I could reach in my hands, setting my feet on the lowest holds. Easy-peasy. I moved one hand higher and then the other one. Now my feet. Hand, hand, foot, foot. No problem.

No problem, that was, until I was about three quarters of the way up and found that the next hold was just beyond my grasp. I was stuck, my grip weakening. I didn’t want to fall off, not when Bob had made it all the way to the top, but Bob was four inches taller than I was. It seemed unfair.

What would surfer dude do? I asked myself. I turned sideways a little, letting my right hip brush the wall. Then I reached up again. Got it! I slapped a hand against the wall at the top and grinned at the ceiling. I’d done it.

“You’ve got good instincts,” Amy said when my feet touched the ground. “What did you think?”

“I think I want to do it again.”

She laughed. “We’ve got you hooked. Bob’s turn though.”

We continued alternating turns until Amy moved us to a new wall. “This will be harder,” she said. “Try to stay on the holds marked with blue tape.”

Bob fell off before he was halfway up. It was the first time either of us had fallen, but the fall itself was anti-climactic. He hung right where he’d been. He put his hands back on the wall and tried again but didn’t get much further before falling again.

Watching Bob struggle bored me so I wandered deeper into the gym, checking out the action on the walls as I passed. I’d never seen so many bulging back muscles. Even the women—especially the women—rippled beneath their tank tops.

Through a doorway in the back I found a whole other room I hadn’t seen yet. On one side was a wall that grew steeper as it went up until it curved right into the roof. I watched in wonder as a scrawny teenager wrestled his way across it upside down.

On the other side of the room was something different. At first glance it was another hold-covered wall, though not as tall, but beneath the wall was a padded mat which must have been meant to substitute for ropes because there weren’t any ropes. People climbed up the wall and when they reached the top they just ... jumped. I shook my head. Never, never, I thought. The padding looked cushy, and no one seemed to be any worse for their drop, but I couldn’t imagine having the nerve.

I had drifted pretty close to the mat when someone crashed into it from above, releasing a cloud of white dust. I screamed before I could stop myself.

“Are you OK?” The man scrambled to his knees and grabbed my arms. “Did I fall on you?”

“No, I just ...” I recognized him as the guy who’d swung out over our heads earlier. He still had his shirt off but he wasn’t wearing a harness anymore—nothing on but shorts and a pair of climbing shoes. His chest was hairless and damp with sweat. It wasn’t as well developed as his back, but he was smooth and hard, and beneath the lean chest was a glistening six pack. I swallowed and lifted my eyes to his.

He checked me out with a concerned frown. “I didn’t hit you?”

“No, really. I didn’t see you until you fell and it startled me, that’s all.”

He released my arms. “Were you going to boulder?”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Bouldering? Yeah. Bouldering is like climbing without a rope but not so high.”

“Why?”

“It’s fun, why else? Give it a try.”

Nervously—hadn’t I just agreed with myself that I wasn’t going to do this?—I stepped up onto the padding and walked over to the wall.

“You’re like a total beginner, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Right. So this isn’t the stuff for you.” He led me farther down the wall to an easier section. “Try this yellow one. Left hand here.”

One move at a time he talked me through following the taped path until my feet were about four feet off the ground. I looked down to guide my foot onto the next hold and froze. There was no rope. There was nothing holding me off the ground except me. This was exactly the position I hadn’t wanted to be in.

“Help,” I squeaked.

“You’re fine.”

“I’m going to fall off.”

“Maybe, but at least fall trying.”

I stepped my foot up and gradually inched my butt over it. Pushing with all the strength I could summon, I tried to stand up.

A second later I was lying on the mat on my back. A little ‘oof’ came out of me when I hit.

“OK?”

I smiled.

“You liked it, didn’t you?”

I had to admit I did. I also liked the view I had right at that moment—his bright, white smile floating amidst all that bronzed skin, jagged bangs falling over warm brown eyes.

“I’m Derek, by the way.”

“Lissie,” I said, using the name Nate had given me since Derek appeared to be about his age.

“OK, Lissie, try again.”

“I’ll just fall off again.”

“If you keep trying, eventually you won’t.”

Not sure I’d be doing this for someone without warm brown eyes and gleaming, rock-hard abs, I sat down in front of the starting holds and began again. And again. And again.

Damn, I thought, finding myself on the mat once more. At least falling off got easier, even if climbing didn’t. I sat up and tried to push my bangs back. My forearms throbbed.

“I can’t close my hands,” I told Derek.

“Pumped, huh?”

“That I fell off again?”

“No, pumped. That.” He gestured at my forearms which looked like sausages stuffed into too-small casings and cooked over a very hot fire. “We call that pumped, when your muscles are so swollen you can’t use them.”

“Oh. Then that’s what I am. I don’t think I can climb anymore.”

“They’ll go down.” He took one of my arms in his hands to massage it. “When your arms are above your heart for so long, the old worn-out blood can’t get out so that fresh blood can get in. That’s one of the good things about a chalk bag—it reminds you to lower your arms while you’re climbing.”

I twisted my head to look at the little bag dangling against my butt. Amy had fastened the belt around my waist and opened the drawstring at the top of the bag, but she hadn’t explained what it was for and I’d forgotten it was even there. Chalk. That explained the haze in the air and the white dust that puffed up around me every time I fell. I rubbed my damp hands against my pants. Chalk would have helped.

“Look at Jenny,” Derek said. I followed his finger to the tiny girl with the long blonde ponytail who’d been belaying him earlier. Jenny was on one of the steeper walls. She had her head bent back to look up at the holds above her, her ponytail dropping straight toward the ground like an exclamation point. I wasn’t sure why Derek was telling me to look at her. All I could see was that she was young and beautiful and perfectly shaped, with a climber’s back and a model’s legs.

“Watch how she shakes out while she chalks,” he said.

I tried to focus on what she was doing instead of how she looked as she dipped one hand into her chalk bag, then the other.

“Of course, it’s a fine line,” Derek said. “Hang around for too long and you’re burning strength, but a quick shakeout can be restful.”

“That didn’t look restful, that position she was in.”

He laughed. “Not for you just yet.”

“How long have you been climbing?”

“A few years.”

“That’s all? You’re really good, aren’t you?”

He shrugged it off. “I’m OK. I was always into sports, so I had eye-hand coordination and some muscle to work with.”

I looked down at the shirt I’d worn—a three-quarter length sleeve that was too warm but covered the flappy underarm wings I hadn’t expected to develop until my fifties. But there they were—fleshy bags of something very different from muscle.

“I don’t think I have any muscle to work with.”

“Yeah, women don’t usually have much upper body strength to start. No worries. Sometimes strength is just a substitute for technique anyway.”

I was going to need a lot of technique. “Well, thanks for the tips.”

“Anytime. I figure a lot of people helped me out when I started climbing, so I try to pay it forward.”

I stepped off the mat, meaning to walk back to the other room to find Amy, but right away I saw her walking towards me.

“There you are. I thought maybe you’d left.”

“I was—” I gestured at the wall. I’d forgotten the term Derek had used.

“Bouldering?”

“Right. Bouldering. Where’s Bob?”

“He left. He got pumped.”

Pumped. I knew that one.

“I’m kind of pumped too.” I showed her my arms which now looked merely tight, not gigantically swollen. “I wish I could belay you. I’d like to see you climb.”

Derek landed with a thud on the padding behind us and sprang quickly to his feet. “I’ll belay her. I just gotta grab my harness.” He bounced off the mat and headed for the doorway. We watched him walk away.

“Do you know him?” I asked Amy.

She nodded.

“He’s a friend or ... ?”

“A friend. Derek doesn’t do or as far I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s never been involved with anyone since I’ve known him. Man or woman, if that was your next question.”

“Why not?”

“Who knows? He was friendly when I first met him. Very helpful, very friendly. I thought maybe there was more to it, but no, not on his side anyway. God knows I was willing.”

“But he’s ...”

He was walking towards us, wearing a harness which I couldn’t help but notice accentuated a certain male part of him, and pulling a t-shirt over his head. He made my tongue thick.

“Younger than I am? Yeah. Doesn’t make him any uglier though, does it?” She grabbed the rope closest to us and tied into it. Once Derek was in position, she launched herself off the ground. I tried to watch her, not him.

“Amy said you helped her, too, when she started climbing.”

“Did I?” He frowned. “I don’t think I’d been climbing very long when she got here. I was probably showing off for the new girl.” His eyes followed Amy as his hands ran through the complicated motions of belaying as though they were second nature.

“You don’t seem like a show-off.”

“I try not to be, but when a new girl comes around all the guys act like baboons trying to mate, shaking their red butts and screeching. ”

No man had shaken his red butt at me yet. No man had so much as talked to me—not even Bob—except Derek, and Derek had been only friendly and helpful, just as Amy had said.

“Is that why you don’t wear a shirt? You’re showing off for the new girls?”

“I never thought of it that way. It’s cooler and ... less binding, I guess. It feels like my arms can move. Does it seem like showing off?”

“Well, it’s certainly something to look at.”

“Huh.” His eyes met mine and held, considering that carefully. “Thanks,” he said finally. He looked up at Amy who’d reached the top of the climb and lowered her down.

“That was impressive,” I told her. To see Amy in her office clothes at work you’d never guess there was so much strength lurking beneath them.

“Your turn,” she said to Derek.

He grabbed the rope next to us and tied in while she put him on belay. When he was finished with his knot, he looked at me uncertainly. It took me a moment to figure it out: this was the point where he’d normally take his shirt off. Well, I didn’t want to be the one to stop him.

I leaned into him and whispered, “Show me,” in his ear. He looked even less certain but he did reach up and pull his t-shirt over his head. Dropping the shirt on the ground next to his feet, he put his hands on the wall.

“Slumming?” Amy asked him.

“I was working my project earlier, and I don’t want to take a lot of time. It’s Lissie’s turn next.” He started climbing.

Amy raised an eyebrow at me. “Lissie?”

“Some of my friends call me Lissie. What did you mean about slumming?” I asked, changing the subject.

“He can climb a lot harder than that route he’s doing.”

He certainly didn’t look like he was having any trouble with it.

“How can you tell how hard it is?”

“By the number. See how the green route says ten? For him, that’s easy.”

“How hard were the ones I was doing?”

“Hmm, the beginner’s wall isn’t actually rated. Maybe four or five?”

Derek was already at the top of the wall so she started lowering him back down.”

“Your turn,” he said to me.

“Can I do one with a number?”

“There’s a six in the front room,” Amy said. “That’s the one that finished Bob off.”

I followed her into the other room, wondering if I’d made a mistake in asking. My forearms were no longer swollen, but they felt weak and painfully tired. I pushed my bangs out of my eyes. At least I had enough strength to move hair now.

At first the blue six didn’t seem any harder than the yellow one I’d climbed on the bouldering wall, probably even easier, but I was definitely tired. I tried to remember some of the pointers Derek had given me about keeping my arms straight and my hips against the wall. I wanted one success to finish the night with, but only halfway up I fell.

I was so angry at myself, I kicked the wall. Below me I heard laughter.

“That’s a climber,” Derek said.

I didn’t know what was so funny. I kicked the wall again and then tried to climb it instead of kick it, but I couldn’t get my hands to hold on long enough to even get started. Futilely, I kept trying again and falling again.

“Ready to come down?” Amy asked.

I nodded, defeated.

“You did great,” Derek said. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

“You’ll be back,” Amy predicted. “Sign up for the belay class before you leave and you can belay me next time.” She walked across the room to a rope on the other side, calling “See you at work,” back over her shoulder at me.

“Hey, it was nice meeting you,” Derek said. He looked at me curiously for a moment, then brushed the hair out of my eyes. “You should get a clip or something.”

He was right about that.

Chapter 3

My friend Donna already had a drink in front of her when I walked in.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said.

“No worries, I just got here.” She waved the bartender over. He was a big guy with a buzz cut and a lot of visible tattoos, out of place in this trendy downtown cocktail bar. I ordered a Cosmopolitan and tucked my pocketbook beneath the stainless steel foot rail. With the practicalities out of the way, I gave Donna a hug.

“You look great,” I told her. Donna always looked great—perfectly frosted blonde hair, manicured blood-red nails, and a body that screamed ‘I was just at the gym’ instead of ‘I’m nearly forty.’

“You look different.” She touched my hair.

“I’m trying to grow it out. What do you think?”

“It’s about time you did something different with it. I think you had that same hairstyle in high school.”

She wasn’t far from being wrong. I’d had some variation of a pageboy with bangs as long as I could remember, although the color had dimmed from bright blonde to dirty blonde to middling brown through the years.

“Alex hated when I changed anything.”

“Well, no one gives a fuck what he thinks anymore, do they? Anyway, men like long hair, longer the better. I’d get some highlights too.”

“In other words, make it look just like yours.”

“Hey, I’ve been out there. I know what works.”

Donna had been divorced longer than she’d ever been married. Like me, she’d gotten married right out of college, but five years later she and her husband split up and she’d been in and out of various relationships ever since. Through the years she’d tried every form of dating invented, from phone numbers printed in the back of a newspaper right up to apps that told her when someone nearby was interested in hooking up.

“Well, what I’ve got isn’t working,” I admitted. “I got set up the other day and the guy wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Come on, Melissa. You aren’t butt-ugly.”

“I’m telling you,” I said, remembering how Bob had turned automatically to Amy before saying anything. “I’m starting to feel invisible.”

“You could be more visible.” She eyed me critically. “What are you wearing?”

“Yoga pants.”

“Did you come from yoga?”

“No.”

Actually, I’d come from the theater. I’d been helping to build the set. The show opened next weekend and there was still so much to do.

“Then there you go.”

“OK,” I sighed. “Tell me what I should be doing. I signed up for an online dating service Wednesday—”

“Which one?”

“CoupleMe.”

“Hmm. OK, for CoupleMe you want to be sweet. Sincere but cute, not serious. Let me see your profile picture.”

I pulled up my profile on my phone and showed it to her. I’d used a picture from my niece’s kindergarten graduation last year taken in my sister’s garden. My hair looked shiny and clean and the sun gave it some natural highlights. I was wearing a long floral skirt and smiling, really smiling. I’d been happy that day. Alex and I had just agreed that I’d stop taking the pill, that it was time to start trying. Watching Lyla dancing around the garden as the princess-of-honor, I’d imagined it being my own daughter someday. Life was good and getting better.

“Nice smile,” Donna said, handing me back the phone, “but it’s a little dowdy. Don’t you have anything younger?”

“I’ll never be any younger than I was then.”

“Younger looking. What age did you put in?”

“Thirty-seven.” Exactly how old I was.

“I’d make it thirty-five. They’re going to figure you’re lying by a couple of years, so if you say thirty-seven they’ll assume forty.”

“And then what happens when you and the guy you lied to fall in love and want to live happily ever after?”

“I’ll let you know when that happens.”

“Then why even bother?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She looked suddenly tired. “I don’t really recommend it. Fuck ’em all anyway.” She waved down the bartender and pushed her glass at him.

“How are things with you? I’m sorry. I should have asked.”

“I’m tired,” she said, confirming my thought. “It’s a young woman’s game. You should stick with Alex. Hell, maybe I should have stuck with Shawn.”

“He cheated on me, Donna.”

“So forgive him.”

I shook my head. “It was more than just once, more than just that.”

“Men are scum. Even when you’re not married to them, they’re scum, but at least when you’re married to them, you’re married.” She looked ready to cry.

“God, what happened?”

“Sorry. I don’t meant to be a downer, what with you being new to the party and all.”

“Tell me.”

“Just the usual—thought it was working but I was delusional.” She paused. “Rick.”

“Tall with a blonde mustache?”

“That’s him.”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize it had gotten serious.”

“It hadn’t. So what did Alex do? Besides cheat, I mean.”

I looked down into my drink which was nearly gone. I finished it and pushed the glass away from me. The bartender came over and picked it up and tilted his head questioningly. I nodded.

Donna was waiting for me to answer, but I had no idea what to say. The memory of that afternoon was too painful to relive on a barstool.

It was Sunday morning. Alex had come in from the gym, or so I’d thought. He’d gone straight into the shower and I’d waited for him. The ovulation test had said it was a good day, and so I waited. When he came out of the shower, I went up to him. Funny how after all those years together I still didn’t know how to initiate sex.

I went up to him and stood close while he finished toweling off. He fished a fresh pair of boxers out of his drawer and dropped the towel. I was still standing there, too close, and when he went to step into the boxers he bumped into me and looked up, annoyed, like he’d just realized I was there and couldn’t understand why.

“Let me guess,” he said. “The stick says we should have sex.”

‘The stick’ was what he called the ovulation test. I knew he was tired of the stick scheduling our sex life, but we’d tried for six months free-form before I started testing.

“It’s a good day,” I said.

“So let’s fuck. Is that it?”

Fuck wasn’t a word we used.

“If you want to,” I said.

“What if I don’t?”

“Oh. OK.”

See, I didn’t understand. He always wanted to have sex, and I tried to be a good wife, tried to oblige, so I didn’t understand why it would be a hardship to have sex right then when it was a good time. I left him to finish dressing, moving into the living room because I felt alone, even though I didn’t understand why yet.

“Melissa,” he said, finally coming to where I was. The expression on his face scared me. I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. “I’m not sure we should try to have a baby anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure— I’m not sure we should be married anymore.”

And then he’d told me.

“Did I drink all that?” I asked Donna, noticing my glass was only half full.

“Steadily.”

I set the glass down at arm’s reach.

“Let’s talk about something more fun.” I told her about going to the climbing gym, glossing over both Bob and Derek.

“So you think you’ll do it again?”

“Absolutely. I know I can do better next time. I can definitely climb that six at least. Amy said the one I was doing on the bouldering wall was way harder than that, even if it was short.”

“But so what if you can? I mean, you don’t get a prize or anything.”

“No reason, I guess. What did that guy who climbed Mount Everest say? Because it’s there?”

“Are you going to climb Mount Everest?” Donna asked, horrified.

“I don’t think so. Not tomorrow anyway.”

“God, Melissa, you’re going to turn into some hippie outdoor freak and stop washing your hair or shaving your legs.”

I pushed my bangs back and wondered when I’d last shaved my legs. No one was looking at them these days.

“It was fun,” I told her. “Not a life-changing event.” I decided not to tell her that I was signed up to take the belay class tomorrow and switched to talking about the theater instead. Theater was more her speed.

“So you’re going to be in a play?” she asked when I explained about helping out with the set and getting roped into being a stage hand.

“No, not in it—helping with it, like moving furniture during intermission.”

“If it was me, I’d rather be in it.”

“You should totally do that—be in a play.”

She pursed her lips, considering. “And there were men there?”

“Lots of them.”

“Probably gay though.”

“Not all of them. Married, some of them.”

“Just as bad.”

“There was one, though—” Immediately I wondered why I’d said anything. I stalled by taking a sip of my drink.

“Oh ho,” she pounced. “Come on, Melissa, cough it up.”

“It’s not like that.” I really shouldn’t have said anything. “He’s young.”

“How young?”

“Twenty-five.”

Donna whistled.

“It’s not like that,” I repeated. “He’s just an interesting guy, that’s all.”

“That is so not all.” Donna raised her hands up in claws and snapped her jaw like she was taking a big bite out of something.

“What the hell was that?”

“Cougar.”

“I’m not— Oh God, I shouldn’t have said anything.” The truth was, I’d been obsessing about Nate just a little, so naturally I’d said something.

I’d been back to the theater to help out several times since the afternoon I met him. I’d thought he’d be there. That wasn’t why I went back, I told myself, but I’d thought he’d be there. I’d painted and cleaned and done whatever they’d asked me to do. I’d gotten to know some people, even well enough to be offered a beer at three in the afternoon the last time I was there, but Nate hadn’t shown up. The time we’d spent pulling nails on the floor together was encapsulated in a Nate-envelope in my mind, waiting to be re-opened. I hadn’t even heard his name, except once.

I was standing with a paint brush in my hand, looking for the next thing I could paint with the trim color, when a voice above me said, “Little help?”

I looked up to find Deb on a ladder right behind me.

“Can you hand me up a twofer?” she asked.

“Um.”

“In that pile.” She nodded her head towards the audience seating.

She was sitting on the very top step of the ladder, where I was pretty sure there was a label telling you not to do that, holding one of those big lighting instruments. She had a leg on each side of the ladder, and the hand that wasn’t keeping the lighting instrument steady on the pipe over her head was using a wrench to tighten it in place.

I ditched the paint brush and brought one of the things—a short piece of cable with two heads—over and lifted it up towards her.

“Can you bring it up?” she asked.

After surveying the situation, I decided that I wouldn’t be risking my own life very much to climb up a couple of rungs. After all, I was a rock climber now. I wasn’t as sure about the position she was in, but she didn’t seem to be worried about it. She took the twofer from me without looking down and attached it with quick, sure motions. I hung out to watch. I had no idea what she was doing, but it was more interesting than painting or pulling nails.

“Thanks.” She swung her legs around so she was facing me. “I’m Deb.”

“I’m Lissie.”

“Melissa, right?”

“Yes, but everyone here calls me Lissie.”

“Because Nate said so?”

I didn’t answer, not sure what I could say.

“Anyway, thanks for the twofer. I could use an assistant if you’re not doing anything.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon lifting things up to her, surprised to find her easy-going and good-humored if you kept off a certain topic. She hadn’t mentioned Nate again, but she hadn’t called me Lissie either. It left me more curious than ever about the relationship between Nate and Deb and how I fit into it.

Or how I didn’t fit into it, because there wasn’t a relationship between me and Nate. He’d paid me some attention—that was all—and I’d soaked it up because I was a pathetic, lonely woman nearing forty.

“Hey, sorry about the cougar crack,” Donna said, bringing me back to the present. “I was only kidding.”

“It’s not you,” I admitted. “I feel stupid even thinking about it.”

“No, don’t. Listen, you remember Rodrigo?”

“Spanish guy who was really good in bed?”

“Yeah, him. I never told you at the time, but he was younger.” She cleared her throat and took a drink. “College.”

“Like twenty? Twenty-two?”

She nodded. No wonder I’d never met him.

“That was— what?— like a year you were with him.”

“He was good,” she protested, laughing. “Really good.” She lowered her voice and leaned into me. “He was hung.”

I thought I could hear the drinks in her voice. I took another sip of my own and laughed with her.

“Younger guys are hot,” she said, still confidentially. “You don’t see men feeling bad about dating younger women, do you?”

I shook my head. I’d already noticed in my brief time on CoupleMe that I was more likely to be approached by men in their fifties than men my own age. If they could date fifteen years younger, why couldn’t I?

“And another thing,” she added. “They want you. Like really want you. They’re not just settling for you. You’ve heard that expression?”

“MILF?” I asked, wincing. It was exactly that expression that bothered me. I hated the thought of being a sexual stereotype. Was that what Nate was looking for? A notch on his fantasy belt?

“Well, I’m no one’s mother,” Donna said, “but I do like to fuck.” She nudged me in the side with her elbow. Her voice was loud enough to catch the bartender’s attention. She winked at him when he looked over and right away he was there to see if we needed another drink.

I declined, but Donna didn’t. I knew she’d probably spend the rest of the evening there and very likely go home with someone. Maybe the bartender, the way it was playing out.

“So what happened to Rodrigo?” I asked when we’d finally gotten rid of the bartender.

She frowned, the giggles drying up. “I made the usual mistake. I tried to turn it into a relationship. A guy that age is there to fuck you, not take you to your cousin’s wedding or bring you chicken soup when you’ve got the flu.” She sighed. “He was a good guy, you know? I thought I could make things work. What’s the big deal over a few years?”

That was what I’d been asking myself about Nate. Now I asked myself what I thought Nate wanted from me. Had I been romancing myself?

“Just go into it with your eyes open,” Donna said, knowing how my thoughts were running. “Enjoy it for what it is. After years of boring married sex, it’ll be nice to have something different—to have some enthusiasm for a change.”

Wasn’t that exactly what Alex had been saying when he’d called me uninterested and uninteresting? But sex wouldn’t be different with Nate, because Alex wasn’t the problem. I was.

“I’m not going to get involved,” I told Donna. “I’m not looking for casual sex.”

Of all the things I missed about Alex, of all the ways my heart was aching, sex hadn’t even crossed my mind. I missed being touched, sure. I missed a kiss goodbye, a hand on my hip, his warmth beside me in bed. I missed the smell of him on the sheets and the back of his head on the pillow next to mine. I missed texting someone when I was on my way home. I missed checking to see if his car was in the driveway when I got there. I missed smiling when I walked in the door, and being smiled at.

Had I been thinking that Nate would be that? A warm body next to mine—filling in for Alex, making me whole again? But Nate wouldn’t be that, not if all he was looking for was sex, and I missed Alex for so much more than a warm body.

For fourteen years he’d been my life, my home. There was so little left when Alex was gone that I thought, at first, that I was gone too, like he’d taken me with him when he moved out the way he’d taken the Keurig. I couldn’t remember how to make coffee before there was a Keurig and I couldn’t remember who I used to be before there was an Alex.

“Casual sex is exactly what you should be looking for,” Donna said, breaking into my thoughts. “Don’t go trying to replace Alex right away. It’s like grocery shopping when you’re hungry. You’ll buy anything.”

“So if I’m hungry, I should go to McDonald’s? Fast food sex?”

“Better than buying the cow.”

“I think we’re mixing our metaphors,” I said. We shared a laugh, jostling against each other in tipsy friendliness.

“Seriously,” I said when we were done laughing, “I know that—about not trying to replace him. I couldn’t if I tried.”

“He wasn’t all that.”

“He was to me.”

“See, that’s where you went wrong. Men have to be, like, one piece of you, not the whole pie. An interchangeable piece. Insert slot A in hole B.”

“Don’t be so jaded. You’ve been on the dating scene too long.”

“I may be kidding about them being interchangeable, but not about them being only one piece. Who is Melissa without a man?”

“You sound like my sister. And like every advice columnist out there. I get it. Why do you think I’m climbing rocks—well, plastic rocks— and painting sets?”

“I thought it was to meet men.”

“Well, it’s not. Not mainly. I’m expanding my horizons, developing new interests, and blah, blah, blah.” I swept an arm dramatically around the bar, nearly knocking over my drink which was empty anyway. Stupid drink.

“You always did follow directions,” Donna said, making my expanded horizons sound like another safe garden path.

“I can’t win.” I pouted at my empty glass.

“No, it’s good. Try something new, sure.” She put her hand on my shoulder and rubbed a little. “Hey, come with me to this Beltane thing. Something new, plus—no men.”

“What’s a Beltane thing?”

“It’s Wicca. White magic, feminine deity, Mother Earth. You know.”

“And you accused me of going hippie. It doesn’t sound like you.”

“It’s totally not me,” she agreed. “Or you. That’s why we should do it. This woman at the gym invited me. Here, look.” She searched through her pocketbook and pulled out a flyer printed on pink paper ringed with poorly drawn flowers. The flyer featured a bunch of bonny country lasses dancing around a maypole while down in the corner something more sinister was going on.

“Are they burning her?” I asked. The bonfire appeared to be consuming one of the lasses.

Donna squinted at the paper. “I think it’s just poor placement. OK, it’s not the most professional flyer but we’re talking about witches here. We’re not going to have them do our taxes.”

“It’s at the Community Center,” I pointed out. “I don’t see how they’re going to have a bonfire. Or a maypole for that matter.”

“Stop being so analytical.” Donna took the flyer from me and folded it back into her purse. “It’s a spiritual experience—women bonding together in celebration of their feminine power.”

“Sounds freaky.”

“Right, so let’s do it.”

I shrugged. Why not? With all the trouble men caused in my life, maybe it was about time to think of God as a woman. Although to be honest, I didn’t think of God at all on a day-to-day basis.

I’d been raised Catholic, but like many people I’d drifted away from it as an adult. Since my wedding, I’d been to church twice a year—Christmas and Easter—to placate my mother. But I remembered believing that God was with me the day I’d been married, that he was joining me to this man by the vow we made before him.

It hadn’t seemed wrong to set out on married life whole-heartedly, though it was a very secular life. I’d expected to go back to church when the children came, but life had gotten in the way of having children, just as it had gotten in the way of going to church. I’d drifted from one day to the next, too busy to notice, not prepared for the bottom to drop out. Now look where I was—no Alex, no children, no God.

“It’ll be fun,” Donna said. “If it’s stupid, we’ll have fun laughing at them. You gonna have another drink?” She waved at the bartender and he wasted no time getting over to us.

“Not for me. I have an early morning.”

Donna didn’t ask why. Her eyes were on the man in front of us.

Chapter 4

It had been a very long week, something the theater folks called Hell Week. If I’d known what I was signing up for, I probably wouldn’t have. Apparently the week before opening night there was a rehearsal every single night, not just for the actors, who were used to being there all the time, but for the crew, too. That meant me.

On Sunday, Rebekah let me watch the show. Seeing the set under the stage lights, I felt proud of having helped build it. From the audience, it looked like the inside of someone’s house—kitchen, dining room and staircase—but if you went around the back it was nothing but unfinished plywood. The grand staircase only went up five steps before you had to climb down a ladder on the other side.

Nate played a seventeen-year-old twit. Well, that was basically what he was—sulky, insecure, unappreciative, and argumentative. He did it so well I found myself wondering if I’d really liked him as much as I remembered. He was less attractive physically than I remembered too. In a defeated slouch with a sideways baseball hat and giant sneakers, looking ridiculous in a pair of skinny jeans and a petulant sneer, he was the very image of my friend Marley’s adolescent son. Even his beautiful eyes were hooded and dull. Maybe I’d been imagining his boyish appeal. This was boyish non-appeal.

I didn’t like the character very much, but Nate played him well. Equally as good was Pete, who played his older brother. Off stage, Nate was taller than Pete by at least six inches. On stage, I had no trouble believing that Pete was a big, mean bully, even if Nate’s character did bring it on by being so annoyingly whiny.

That first night, there were still a lot of rough spots. Sometimes the actors looked lost, frozen in place like they were waiting for salvation to appear. Eventually someone would say something and the action would continue, but I could tell it wasn’t right. Other times, the director stopped the action in the middle of a scene, like when Pete pretended to hit Nate and Nate pretended to fall down.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Tony interrupted. “That was a fucking joke.”

Nate got back up to his feet and he and Pete tried the scene again.

“You’ve got to hit him,” Tony screeched. “I’m four fucking feet away from you. Repeat!”

Repeat took Pete’s place on stage. Nate said his line again—“If you hit me, I’ll tell Mom”—and Repeat hauled off and hit him. I was half out of my seat with a gasp when Nate went flying into the dining room table.

“Yes,” Tony said. “Like that.”

Nate stood up smiling, so I knew Repeat hadn’t really hit him, but even from four feet—four fucking feet, as Tony had said—it had been convincing. Repeat conferred with Pete, then Pete tried again, and although it wasn’t nearly as good as when Repeat did it, Tony let them move forward.

“Damned show’s supposed to be two hours long,” Rebekah said when they finally finished.

“Is every night going to be like this?” I asked. It was almost eleven and I’d been there since five.

“They don’t call it Hell Week for nothing.”

I must have looked unhappy because she backtracked quickly.

“But no, not as bad as this, no. The show’s only two hours long. Don’t quit on me.”

“I won’t,” I said, but only because quitting was cowardly. It didn’t mean I’d ever do it again.

“For now, go on home. Tony’s got to tell everyone what they did wrong, and in tedious detail if I know Tony, but you go ahead. Come back tomorrow at six, OK?”

I told her I would and gathered my stuff up and headed for the back door.

“Lissie,” Nate called, bounding up to me. He surprised me with a hug. “What did you think?” He was still wearing those ridiculous skinny jeans, but otherwise the Nate I remembered was back. His dark blue eyes shone brightly beneath the full lashes and his grin was charming and easy.

“You were really good. I didn’t like you at all.”

He grinned wider. “What did you think of the fight?”

“It sort of scared me.”

“I know. I heard you. I hope we can get Pete to hit me like that.” He rubbed his jaw.

“He didn’t really hit you!” Concerned, I lifted my hand to his face.

“No, not really. He didn’t even touch me. I just like your reaction.”

I dropped my hand and frowned at him.

“Notes!” Rebekah screamed, making me jump.

“What does that mean?” I asked Nate.

He grimaced. “It means it’s time to go listen to Tony bitch at us.”

“Oh. Rebekah said I could skip that part.”

“Lucky you. See you tomorrow though, right?”

When I said yes, he pulled me in for another hug. “I’m glad,” he said into my ear. Then he let me go and bounced away towards the auditorium where the actors were gathering. When you were twenty-five, you had that kind of energy at eleven o’clock at night.

Monday and Tuesday weren’t much easier than Sunday. I began to think Rebekah had been leading me on, but then Wednesday the show was pretty close to two hours long. Of course, there was setup time before, and intermission time during, and cleanup time after. They were still long nights. By Thursday I was tired and cranky.

“Some people take Tech Week off from work,” Nate told me when he caught me yawning. I’d learned that Tech Week was the proper name for Hell Week, but I preferred Hell Week as being more accurate.

“Do you?” I asked him.

“No, I do too many shows. Can’t afford to always be taking a week off.” He plunked himself down next to me on the green room sofa and ran a finger along my arm.

He kept touching me for some reason, for any reason. He kept hugging me hello, hugging me goodbye. He kept talking to me, sitting next to me, finding me, at least as much as the demands of his role allowed. Nate might take most things lightly, but the show he did not.

I yawned again, wanting to lean up against him and close my eyes.

“Almost over.” He put an arm around me and pulled me into him, as though he’d read my mind. I resisted, automatically checking for Deb who I knew wouldn’t approve.

“Lay back a minute,” he said. He tucked his head over mine.

I let myself relax. I even closed my eyes. In fact, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Rebekah was calling for the actors to take their places and Nate was easing me off of him.

Friday, I called in sick to work and slept until ten. I felt guilty making the call but not sorry I’d done it because it meant I could enjoy opening night and the party that followed.

By midnight, the party was fading from rowdy to cozy. I sat on the floor, half-listening to the conversation around me, thinking I should either get a new beer or go home. I’d been nursing the bottle in my hand so long it was flat and warm, but standing up felt like too much trouble. I tried to remember the last time I’d been awake past midnight, probably a New Year’s Eve some number of years ago, certainly not a recent one. I put the bottle down and pressed a hand against the floor to push myself up.

“Not leaving already?” Nate asked, throwing himself down on the floor next to me.

“Working on it.”

“Early yet.” He laid his long frame down and put his head in my lap, snuggling an arm under my thigh to plump it up into a better pillow. “And I need you.”

“For what?” I looked down at his poetic profile, the long lashes fanning against the pale skin beneath his eyes. I stroked his hair back from his face, the better to see it.

“For this.”

I looked around. No one was watching us. Half the people in the room were engaged in their own public displays of affection and the other half were ignoring them. I had no idea why he was in my lap, but I decided to enjoy it while he was there.

Ever since I’d seen those curls at the nape of his neck I’d been wanting to run my fingers through them. I tangled my fingers in the coiled mass, then brushed upward, letting my nails scratch lightly against his scalp. His hair was softer than I’d expected, silky like a toddler’s.

“Mmm. Just like that.” Nate sank deeper into my touch.

“Rain,” Pete said, making a sudden appearance above us. Apparently he’d been out in it because he shook himself like a cocker spaniel, splattering us.

Nate rolled his head upward and opened his eyes to look at Pete. “You had to tell us that, why?”

“You rode your bike, didn’t you?

“Mmm,” Nate agreed. He rolled back into his previous position and closed his eyes again. “Wasn’t planning on riding it home.”

“How are you getting home?”

“Lissie’s taking me.”

“I am?”

He rolled towards me. “Will you?” He opened his eyes extra wide in a convincing manner.

“Sure. I hear it’s raining.”

“Great.” He hopped up and reached a hand back down to me. “Let’s go.”

He took my hand and moved purposefully towards the back door, back-slapping and waving to people as he went but not stopping. I felt like I was in a luge, racing unavoidably downhill on a predetermined track. He pushed the door open, still tugging me behind him. We paused under the overhang. It was, in fact, raining.

“Where’s your bike?” I asked.

“It’s in the workshop. I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Where’s your car?”

“Way over there.” I pointed to a blue Maxima halfway across the parking lot.

“I suppose I could do something gallant like offer to go get it.”

“It being my car, I suppose I should be the hero,” I countered.

“Then I guess we’re in it together.” He dropped my hand and broke for the car in a run.

I jumped to follow him. The rain was steady but not hard or cold. It made me want to laugh, running across the dark wet pavement, splashing through puddles and feeling the fat raindrops land cool in my hair.

“Well, that woke me up,” Nate said once we were both buckled in.

I started the car. “You’ll have to tell me where I’m going. Or easier if you tell the lady.” I handed him my GPS and he programmed an address into it.

“Please proceed to highlighted route,” the lady said.

“Left out of the parking lot,” Nate clarified. We drove in a silence broken only by the lady’s commands.

“Is that why you needed me?” I asked, voicing the nagging disappointment in my head. “To drive you home?”

“No, I was attention-seeking. I expected to ride home.”

“In the rain?”

“The rain was unexpected, but convenient.”

“Convenient?”

“I’m still attention-seeking.” He flashed a quick grin.

“Arriving at destination,” the lady interrupted. “On right.”

I pulled over and put the car in park.

“Well.” My hands were wet with rain or sweat. I rubbed them against my pants.

Nate took off his seatbelt, but he didn’t open the door. I turned towards him and he smiled like that was what he’d been waiting for. He stroked his hand through my damp hair to the back of my neck, pulling me gently closer to him as he leaned slowly into me.

Good God, he’s going to kiss me, I thought, rather obviously, right before he did.

His lips touched mine and held briefly before pulling slowly away. I wanted to lick my lips to capture the taste of him, but he pressed forward again. This time his lips clung longer, moving against mine before sliding away. My hands crept into his hair to pull him closer.

Again his lips moved against mine, using more pressure. I opened my mouth to him, but he didn’t take it. Instead he skimmed his way to my chin, tilting my head up to brush his lips beneath it. I took a deep breath. This was not the way I’d been kissed before.

Returning to my mouth, he started those slow, lightly-suctioned, half-open kisses again. Through the haze that had me paralyzed, I returned like for like. Our mouths were making love to each other—lips grasping, stroking, clinging, a single kiss holding for endless moments and then another following, a subtle shift of position, a new angle, a new spot. My head was light and empty, no room for thought as I matched him, mirrored him, absorbed him.

“Lissie.” He groaned in frustration, leaning his forehead against mine.

I tilted my head up and our lips met again.

“Lissie.” He shook his head from side to side so that our foreheads rolled against each other, making me laugh. He laughed too and let me go, leaning back against his door, putting space between us. We looked at each other across the streetlamp-lit car. The windows were fogged on the inside, runnels of rain streaking the outside.

“Flashback,” I said. “I haven’t steamed up car windows in a long time.”

“Good memories?”

“They are now. At the time, it all seemed very serious.”

“Protecting your virginity.”

“Don’t laugh. We still had that concept when I was a teenager.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen and in the back of a car.”

Nate looked at the backseat.

“I think they made cars bigger then,” I said, laughing at his expression. “Or we were just really determined.”

“Come be determined with me.” He reached over and took my hand.

“I’m not having sex with you in the back of the car, Nate.”

“Not unless you want to.”

I shook my head because it was easier to lie that way.

“Well, maybe that’s a relief. I’m not sure I could manage it. I think the lucky guy must have been shorter than I am.”

“Much.”

“Still, we can re-create the scene of the crime.” With surprisingly little effort, he wiggled into the backseat, then reached forward to drag me through after him. I giggled, squirming my way much less gracefully through the narrow opening and into his arms.

“Much better,” he said, sighing.

Now the kisses were deeper. His tongue wandered into my mouth, though never very deep or for very long before he tore his lips from mine with that gentle, pulling suction I was coming to crave.

One arm was around my shoulders keeping me firmly against him. The other hand ran everywhere along my body—now trailing under my chin, now sliding down my thigh, now stroking the skin of my lower back beneath my shirt.

My hands were on his face. I felt like I should be doing something that contributed more to our mutual endeavor but I couldn’t let go of his face, couldn’t allow him to stop kissing me in that way that made my head so deliciously light and empty.

He sat up, taking me with him, propping me up as I swayed towards him until I could support myself. Not rushing, not taking his eyes from mine, he undid the buttons on my shirt and pushed it off my shoulders. When I left it like that, my arms pinned awkwardly against my body, he laughed.

“Are you really so stupefied?”

“I think I am.” I considered shrugging the shirt back on, but his eyes were irresistible. I wanted those eyes to be looking at me. I worked the shirt down my arms and dropped it on the floor.

Just as slowly as he had before, he reached a hand behind me and popped the clasp on my bra. This time I knew that he was waiting for me, waiting for me to agree to this undressing. I pulled the bra free and dropped it on top of my shirt.

His right hand lifted to my breast, fingers curling along the underside, thumb brushing across my nipple. With my eyes closed, I wasn’t expecting the wet tongue that circled my nipple. He turned me, lowering me to the seat beneath him. Pressing me back against it, he addressed himself rather seriously to my nipples, alternating between them until my breathing filled the car. Again I felt like I should be doing something, something more than lying there.

“Nate,” I said.

He came to me, sliding his body up along mine until our heads were level and then Oh, God, his erection scraped hard against my pubic bone. My hands dug into his shoulders and a sound, something like a whimper, escaped me.

Nate froze. He lifted his weight from me. For a moment, no one moved. Then, deliberately, he slid his erection along my pubic bone again. This time the sound I made was more than a whimper.

Nate collapsed on top of me. “God, Lissie,” he said into my ear. He ground himself against me, forcing a gasping moan from me. His hands moved to the waistband of my pants and started tugging. I wanted this so bad. In a car. On a public street. With a twenty-five year old. Who was still fully dressed, for God’s sake. I hadn’t even taken his shirt off.

“No, Nate. No. Wait. No.”

I was telling myself no. He’d stopped with the first one. He moved off of me. With his body no longer dissolving mine into senselessness, I was able to pull myself away. I sat up, still shaking my head no.

“Shhh, Lissie. It’s OK.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” He pulled me down towards him but backwards, so that his arm was around me and my head rested against his shoulder.

We lay quietly together, looking up at the roof of the car as though we could see through it to the night beyond. The rain pattered cozily, the steamy windows screened us. He kissed the top of my head.

“Why the freak out?”

“I don’t want to have sex with you in the back of this car. I don’t want to have sex with you at all.” Feeling defensive, I sat up, the hysteria bubbling up again. “I barely know you. You’re more than ten years younger than I am. I haven’t had sex with anyone except my husband since I was your age. There are diseases and rules and ...” I ran out of steam.

“You don’t want to have sex with me at all?”

I couldn’t tell if he was doubtful or wounded.

“OK, that was a lie. Every nerve in my body wants to have sex with you this very minute, in this car, or in a box with a fox, or wherever we happen to be.”

“But you don’t want to want to.”

I nodded.

“OK, so we won’t. New rule—the pants stay on.” He didn’t sound the least bit concerned.

“You’re not mad? Or disappointed? Or something?”

“I’m horny as hell, if that counts as ‘something,’ but horny is a good thing, never a bad thing. Now come back down here and make me horny some more.”

I stretched my body on top of his, or at least as much as I could in our cramped quarters. Determined this time to participate, I nuzzled my nose against his neck.

“Mmm”

“Do you like to be kissed there?” I asked.

“I like to be kissed everywhere.”

“I’ll start here.” I tried to mimic what he’d done to my mouth, and then to my nipples, on his neck—those slowly sensuous, worshipful movements that paralyzed my limbs and reason while accelerating my heart rate.

“Mmm,” he said again, squirming beneath me. “Careful of leaving marks, though. I have to think of my adoring public.”

I shifted to the other side, moving up under his ear.

“That’s nice too,” he said casually, the tone belied by his cock pressing insistently up against me and his hands, a little too tight on my shoulders.

I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing to him, not on what he was doing to me, and I was managing pretty well until he shifted his hands to my ass and used them to press my pelvis tightly against his.

I moaned into the ear I’d been licking.

“Best yet,” he said, rocking me against him so that I moaned again. Then he was pushing at my shoulders, pressing me away from him. I resisted, not wanting to lose contact, but he guided my legs so that I was kneeling across him, my pussy squarely straddling the hardest part of him.

My clit throbbed towards him. I hadn’t been this turned on since perhaps the last time I’d made out in a car. I’d forgotten just how good dry humping felt. Not to the guy, perhaps, but—

“Oh!”

He’d taken my hips and pulled them forward and down, arching my pubic bone and clit along his cock in a move that left me breath enough for only that—saying oh.

He did it again. A warm, pulsing throb of pleasure engulfed me. As the wave receded, he did it again. In the moment of time he gave me between strokes, I saw him—his face serious, his eyes open, watching me like I was the only thing in the world.

He did it again. I was going to come if he kept it up.

“Nate!”

“Close your eyes, Lissie. Sweetheart. Close your eyes for me and let me.” His voice was the only soft part of him. His eyes steady, his cock hard, his hands firm. Even as he told me to close my eyes he rocked me forward again and the breath burst from me.

I closed my eyes. I felt the rhythm as he repeated it and then I took it from him. My hips told his hands how to move me, and his hands obeyed.

“Oh!” I said one last time as the orgasm erupted through me.

He continued to drag me across him, eliciting aftershocks. Once, twice, three times—each fresh rush of pleasure announced by my whispering squeak—and then I fell against him, nothing left.

His arms came around me and his cheek nuzzled mine. Softly, I wafted back to earth.

“I have to go in,” he said when my breathing was something like normal.

“But—”

His erection still pressed against my groin.

“We have a show tomorrow night and I’ve got some serious jerking off to do.” He sat us up and reached to the floor for my shirt.

“But—” I said, taking it from him but making no move to put it on yet.

“You’ll always be safe with me, Lissie. The pants stay on tonight.”

“But—”

“I hope I haven’t permanently destroyed your ability to form coherent sentences, because I do like talking to you as well.”

I shook my head. The humor helped. “I feel like I should do something for you,” I managed to get out finally.

“Oh, you have. I’m going to have a seriously good wank tonight. In fact, I’m kind of eager to get to it.”

I laughed. “Go then.” I waved my hand at the door.

“You’re OK?”

I nodded.

He took my head between his hands and kissed me hard, opening his mouth fully and twisting his tongue rashly against mine. I could feel his desperation in the lack of finesse.

“See you tomorrow,” he said as he disappeared into the night.

I sat, still stunned, still naked from the waist up, and still horny. If he’d been there ... but he wasn’t. Taking a reassuring look at the steamy windows, I slid one hand into my pants and found my clit, swollen and slippery.

With Nate’s eyes watching in my mind, I brought myself to a second orgasm, and then a third, before putting on my shirt, crawling into the front seat, and driving myself home.

Chapter 5

Nate came to find me the next evening, which was exactly what I needed him to do. I’d spent the day worrying about seeing him again, whether it would be awkward or he’d be regretful and distant. I hadn’t forgotten what Donna had told me—that it was only sex to him and not to expect hearts and flowers. Truth was, I had no idea what to expect. I hadn’t dated in more than fourteen years, and I wasn’t sure I could call this dating anyway.

I was on stage, putting away the dishes that Nate would use to set the dining room table during the big family dinner scene, when he came in.

“Hi.” He leaned in for a kiss. When I didn’t tilt my head up to him, he put a finger under my chin and did it for me.

I glanced around nervously. I was still waiting for someone to care. Nate plunked himself down at the table and rested his head on his arms.

“Tired?”

“Exhausted. You weren’t so easy to get out of my head last night. It took a few tries.”

“Sorry.”

He leapt up and grabbed me around the waist from behind, swinging me in a circle while I squealed. I held tightly to the dinner plates I’d been transferring from dish pan to hutch.

“Nate!”

He put me down but turned me towards him, the plates pressed between us.

“You’re not sorry,” he said. “Admit you’re not sorry.”

“I’m not sorry,” I admitted. “Not even a little.” The idea of him masturbating to my memory was surprisingly erotic.

“Good. I want to make you make that noise again.” He put his hands on my hips and pulled me in tighter, like he was thinking about doing it right that minute. Then he shook his head. “But not tonight or I’m never going to make it to the matinee tomorrow. And right now I’ve got to get into makeup.”

He rubbed his nose against mine, then walked across the stage towards the green room. I watched him go, feeling like a teenager with a crush on the dreamiest boy at school.

Finished with the dishes, I turned my attention to the groceries.

“Food scenes are the worst,” Rebekah said as she handed me a bag of food to restock the on-stage refrigerator with.

This was my first show, but I already agreed with her. Every night we had to load up the refrigerator with food and the china hutch with dishes, then after the show we washed the dishes, scrubbed the counters, and swept the floor. Never mind that the actors had to practically prepare a Thanksgiving dinner on stage. Mary got the worst of it—peeling and chopping throughout the first act. Nate set the table in the first act, then cleared it in the second act. I just wished there was a dish washing scene.

I could be doing this at home, I thought, considering the state of my own kitchen counters and how empty my refrigerator was. I didn’t cook anymore. My appetite had taken a nosedive the day Alex moved out. When I cooked, I made enough food for two people and only ate enough for half a one, so instead of cooking I foraged and pilfered and left trails of packaging and crumbs that lingered for days.

On the plus side, those extra ten pounds I’d been forever swearing I was going to diet away had gone wherever my appetite went.

I had a feeling Nate didn’t clear the table at his house any more often than I washed down the counters at mine. From the size of the place I’d dropped him off in front of, I figured he must live with his parents. And was probably spoiled rotten, just as a guess. He had the easy confidence of someone who’d never been told no in his entire life.

The lights started doing odd things. I looked up at the light booth and waved to Deb who was doing her pre-show check. That meant the doors would be opening soon. I gave the set a final once-over, then went backstage to let Rebekah know we were ready.

Once the house was open, there wasn’t much for me to do until the show started, so I let myself drift over to the makeup area where I knew Nate would be sitting shirtless at one of the well-lit tables. People had their routines backstage. At any given point in the evening, the same people would be sitting in the same places, often having the same conversations.

My spot at this point in the evening was in an armchair tucked behind the door to the makeup room from which I could see the reflection of Nate’s reflection in the makeup mirror across from his. I took out my phone and pretended to be absorbed in it. Today I had a notification from CoupleMe. Someone was showing a flicker of interest.

I pulled up his profile and wrinkled my nose at it. Grandchildren, for God’s sake. His primary hobby was his grandchildren. I looked over my phone into the mirror. Nate was doing his eyes, staring intently at himself as he applied mascara.

Like he needs mascara, I thought. I could see his lashes from two mirrors away.

Returning to my phone, I clicked ‘No Thanks’ on Grandpa’s profile. CoupleMe immediately brought up several other suggestions and there he was: Alex. Checking over my shoulder first, as though he might be able to see me, I clicked on him. Forty, male, athletic, six foot two. Mostly true. He was only six feet but Donna had told me that men added to their height the way women subtracted from their age.

I recognized the picture. The woman, visible only as a shoulder overlapping his, was me. I couldn’t bring myself to read more—his likes and dislikes, his hobbies and turn-ons. Then I realized that he could be seeing my profile, reading those things about me. I went frantically through the motions of disabling my account. Of course he was online. Of course. He’d probably been online before—

Nate was watching me. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. I raised my eyes to the mirror and found his. He crooked a finger at me, beckoning me to him. I walked around the door into the makeup room, over to his table. The other tables were empty, people having finished and moved on. I stood behind him—the only place there was room for me to stand in the crowded, jumbled room—and met his eyes in the mirror.

“How did you know I was there?” I asked.

“You’re always there.”

“I didn’t know you knew that.”

“I like being watched. More than I should.”

His back wasn’t as muscular as Derek’s but I didn’t mind looking at it. He had a boyish torso—lean to the point of scrawny and completely hairless except for a thin trail of fuzz leading from his belly button down to the low slung jeans.

I summoned the courage to put my hands on his shoulders and was immediately rewarded with his smile. My stomach settled. I traced a finger along the side of his neck where my mouth had been the night before.

“No damage?”

“Nothing I couldn’t cover up.”

His makeup looked finished, the eyes being the last step. I knew he should be changing into his costume—that was the next stop on the Nate Stalking Tour—but I didn’t want him to move now that my hands were on him. I lowered my thumbs to his shoulder blades and rubbed his back, trying to make it seem casual.

“Unfair,” Nate said. “You know I have to stand up now.”

“Yeah.” I ran my hands up into his hair, fluffing the curls out to better frame his face, then leaned down to smell his scalp, a combination of baby’s head and evergreen.

“You’re making that very hard to do.”

I caught his eye and grinned.

“That’s better.” He stood up, facing me. “What happened?”

I shook my head, the grin leaving my face.

He sighed. “OK. I don’t have time now anyway. If I’m not in costume in ten minutes, Rebekah will have my ass. After the show, though.”

He was definitely behind schedule, I realized back in the green room. The couch from which I normally watched the door to the men’s dressing room while Nate changed was occupied. Wayne and Mary were there, sitting next to each other companionably like real life spouses, waiting for their cue to go on. Rebekah hovered over them doing a personal props check. When she’d finished with them, she raised her voice and called the ten minute warning loud enough for the whole backstage to hear.

“Thank you, ten,” I called back in chorus with the rest of the cast and crew. I moved to my ten minute spot by Rebekah’s podium to put on my headset. The room was quieting in anticipation as people finished their pre-show chores and started to get into character in their own head spaces.

Rebekah was calling for the house lights to be dimmed before Nate came out of the dressing room tugging on his baseball hat. She scowled at him, but her voice didn’t change. The smoothly-delivered patter of a practiced stage manager flowed even as she waved him over. I watched her run down her Nate checklist silently while the back-and-forth continued over the headsets, then she gave him a pat on the rump and pushed him towards the stage door where Wayne and Mary had already taken their places.

“Break a leg,” I mouthed at him before Rebekah opened the door and ushered them through it into the dark auditorium.

The green room was silent for a moment and then over the speakers we heard Nate whine, “But you know I don’t like it with the little marshmallows. Why does it always have to be Josh’s way?” and the show had begun.

During the show, we never spoke. Nate was on stage almost the entire time and when he wasn’t, he was frantically applying makeup to represent the black eye his brother had given him.

In between scenes, I was the one on stage. In the near dark I removed and added props to set the stage for the next scene. Nate and I passed each other silently in the blue-lighted, narrow walkways behind the set.

After the show, my time wasn’t my own. While Nate and the other actors met their public or recapped the night’s performance, I had work to do: dishes, counters, floors, everything tidied and ready for the next performance. Rebekah was always the last one out, but I wasn’t far ahead of her.

“Thanks, Lissie,” she called after me when I said good night.

The theater was nearly deserted, only Rebekah and Carol conferring near the door to the auditorium and Deb shutting down equipment up in the light booth. I went to the coat rack to grab the light jacket I’d worn, taking a look around for Nate. I found him outside the stage door talking to Pete and Repeat.

“Not even one, dude?” Repeat shook his head in disbelief.

“Losing his shit,” Pete agreed.

“Next weekend,” Nate said. “I gotta get some sleep tonight.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Repeat said.

“It’s gotta be a girl,” Pete told him. “No way Nate is blowing off drinks to get some sleep. He’s getting some wanh wanh tonight, that’s what he’s getting.” He made a ridiculous trombone noise accompanied by a worse gesture.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Repeat repeated, mournfully shaking his head. “Even for a girl.”

“Come on, Lissie,” Nate said when he noticed me standing there. “I’ll walk you to your car.” He put his arm around me and steered me away from them.

“Hey, give her one for me,” Pete yelled after him.

“They’re not talking about you,” Nate said when we were far enough away that they couldn’t hear us.

“I know that.”

I did know that. It was painfully obvious that while they could believe—even hope—that Nate would be getting lucky tonight, it was beyond their imagination that he might be getting lucky with me. Because a) I was too old and ugly for anyone to wanh wanh with and b) Nate’s touching, flirting, attention was just Nate and didn’t mean a God damned thing to anyone except me.

I shrugged his arm off. I unlocked my car and opened the door, willing myself to get into it without another word.

“So who then?” I asked, turning on him. “Who do they think you’re going to make disgusting trombone noises with tonight?” I slammed the door, but I was still on the wrong side of it.

“I don’t think they had anyone particular in mind.”

They were coming towards us now, heading for Pete’s truck. I watched them get in and drive away, joking with each other the whole time, while the hurt simmered in my heart.

“I should go,” I said, but I didn’t go. In the dim light of the parking lot I couldn’t see the blue in Nate’s eyes, but I could see the confusion on his face. We stood there, looking anywhere except at each other, until I realized that I was waiting for him to apologize or explain, to make me feel better about it, about all of it: Alex’s profile and Donna’s comments and Pete and Repeat’s sexist humor. And that he wasn’t going to do that.

“Nate?”

He looked at me then.

“What are we doing? What is this?”

“Fun?”

“Is that it?”

“I guess so.” He sighed. “It’s a little early for this talk, isn’t it?”

“Maybe for your generation. My generation doesn’t start with sex and move on to dating if the sex works out.”

“Not such a bad way to do it,” he joked. When I didn’t respond he sighed again. “It’s not a generational thing. I have the same trouble with women my own age.”

“What trouble is that?”

“Exclusivity. Commitment. Relationship with a capital R. I don’t see the point.” He leaned his back against my car, tilting his head to look at the sky. “I can’t do it.”

“You’ve tried?”

“Not really, never had a desire.”

We both looked at the sky for a bit.

“I like women, Lissie. I like all women, and some women I like a lot. I want to be open to it, to possibility.”

I felt like he was ripping into me. I realized only then that I really had thought, or expected, or maybe just wanted ... but shit.

“It’s not like I fuck everything that moves,” he continued, “even if they’d let me. Some women you just talk to, and some you touch here and there, like a foreshadowing. Some are fantasies because the reality would suck. And then some ... some are like you. With you, I want more.”

But not that much more, I thought.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I can do that.” All I could think was: Alex. All I could think was: it’s happening again. We hadn’t even had sex yet, and I was already not enough.

Nate took my hand and laced his fingers through it, like an anchor, bringing me back to the here and now. Deb came out of the stage door and started walking across the parking lot towards us.

“Goodnight, Melissa,” she said as she passed us on the way to her car. Nate got a head bob.

“Why does she hate you?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that I don’t know?”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“I don’t usually leave women I’ve slept with that angry at me.”

“Would you sleep with her?”

He turned his head towards where she’d been, as though he could still see her there. “She could have me in a minute. Something about frosty bitch face really gets me going.”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. I didn’t think he knew.

“If not her, then who? That you’ve slept with here.”

“A gentleman would never kiss and tell.”

“Fine, I’ll ask Deb.”

He snorted. “She’s probably got it catalogued, all right.”

“Enough for a whole catalogue?”

Nate turned towards me and ran his hand over my hair, pushing back my bangs. “Lissie, why do this?”

“I want to know who my competition is. Younger women? Other women my age?”

“I do like older women.”

“Why?”

“With the exception of you,” he laughed shortly, “they’re usually more amenable to an open relationship.”

Desperate, I thought. With the exception of me, and not even with the exception of me, older women were usually more desperate.

“And interesting,” he added. “I don’t want to push the stereotype, but women my age can be pretty self-absorbed.”

“Not enough about you.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s probably fair.”

It wasn’t fair. He was an admitted attention-seeker, yes. He liked to be watched, yes. He was a born actor, yes. But he was also the most attentive, giving, considerate almost-lover I’d ever had.

“No, that’s not fair.” I squeezed his hand to let him know I was sorry.

“What about you?” he asked. “There was a word you used last night that stuck in my head.”

I looked at him quizzically.

“Husband. You said ‘my husband’ last night. Do you have a husband, Lissie?”

I nodded. Asked outright, I couldn’t lie about it.

“And that’s what you don’t want to talk about?”

I nodded again. He was quiet, but he didn’t let go of my hand.

“I guess I’m not in a position to complain,” he said after a minute. “But tell me he’s not going to show up with a shotgun.”

“He’s not in a position to complain either. We’re separated.”

“How long?”

“A couple of months.”

“How long were you married?”

“Fourteen years.”

“That must be tough.”

The night was getting colder. I shivered. He pulled me into his arms. He wasn’t even wearing a coat, but he was warm the way men were warm. I let myself be warmed by him. It was comforting to stand like that with a man’s arms around me, feeling the warmth of a man. He kissed the top of my head.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“To my marriage?”

“I was thinking of earlier when you got upset at your phone, but I guess either.”

It was easier to explain the phone so I did, my head tucked into his chest so I didn’t have to look at him. He didn’t say anything for a minute. I felt like I could imagine what he was thinking: my husband was on an online dating site, I was on an online dating site, and I’d just blown up at Nate for not being committed enough.

“I’m sorry about before. I was mad at Alex, not you.”

“It had to happen, him dating again. I understand why it hurts, but it had to happen sometime.”

I buried my nose in his chest, smelling him—stage makeup, a little sweat, and spruce.

“It’s not just now,” I said. “He ... before too.” I could feel the tears welling up.

Nate wrapped his arms tighter around me. “He was cheating on you?”

I nodded into his chest, trying to hold the tears back, but I couldn’t. It was the warmth that did me in, to be held, and to feel, if only a little, loved. He rocked me silently, his cheek resting on the top of my head, until I stopped crying. Then he tilted me back away from him and ran his thumb across my cheek.

“Alex is an asshole.”

I laughed.

“No, really. Cheating is an asshole move. I’d never cheat on you. Maybe it seems like a fine line, but cheating is lying, and I won’t lie to you.”

It did seem like a fine line. He wouldn’t cheat because he wouldn’t promise. Nothing promised, nothing reneged.

“I’m tired,” I said.

“Yeah, we were planning an early night, weren’t we?” He pulled me in close and kissed me until I could feel the press of his erection against my stomach.

“I don’t know if I can like that,” I said, “just casually.”

“It’s easier than you think.”

For him, maybe.

“If you decide you can—and I hope you do, but if you decide you can’t, then you can’t—but if you decide you can, then there’s something I’d like from you.”

Something he’d like from me? Was he angling for bizarre sex acts already? We hadn’t even had sex the regular way yet.

“Now you look scared. It’s not so scary, I hope.”

“What?”

“I’d like to be able to touch you in public without you flinching. It makes me feel like a secret you’re trying to keep.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t considered that aspect at all.

“You’re embarrassed.”

“Not of you. You’re the hottest guy in the show.”

“That’s saying very little.”

“You’re my dreamboat,” I said, taking his face in my hands. “Be careful what you wish for. If I stop being shy in public you’ll have me pawing at you all the time.”

“That sounds incredibly good.” He bent down and kissed me some more until we were both breathing heavily. “It’s just shyness?”

“Shyness and not wanting to be ‘that woman,’” I said, thinking of Donna’s cougar impersonation but refusing to say the word out loud.

“That woman who seduces the innocent boy and initiates him into the depraved joys of the flesh?”

I had to laugh. “You’re not a very innocent boy, are you?”

“I’m sure there are still some things I could learn.”

I doubted it.

“And maybe a few things I could teach you,” he added.

Now that, I believed. My repertoire was limited. Uninteresting, you could even say.

“Hey,” Nate said. “You know I like attention?”

“Yes,” I agreed, not sure where he was going.

“So when you’re with me, think of me. You just got that Alex look on your face again.”

“Sorry.” I was sorry too. I would much rather think about Nate. “You were telling me how much you could teach me,” I said, trying to get back into the spirit of it.

“Maybe it’s more like an exploration. Things we learn together.”

“I like that.” I turned my face up to his and he kissed me some more, pressing me back against the car so that his erection ground into me, turning my mind to mush. He broke the kiss and took a step back.

“I hope you decide you can,” he said, “but maybe you’d better decide with a clear head, and if I stick around much longer I’m not going to have the strength to let you do that. Good night, Lissie.”

I got in my car and drove home, more confused than I’d been the night before and a lot less satisfied.

Chapter 6

While waiting for the customer in front of me to finish checking in, I examined Climb Time’s pricing structure. So far I’d been paying the daily fee, but if I climbed more than once a week, the monthly membership was cheaper. The week before I hadn’t climbed at all due to stupid Tech Week, but the week before that I’d climbed twice, three times if you counted the belay class.

Most of my classmates had come with their own partner, so I was automatically paired up with the other solo woman. Katrina was about fifty with short hair she’d allowed to grey naturally. She was intimidatingly muscular. She told me she was a fitness competitor. I’d never even known fitness was a contest.

Gary taught the class. He was the gym manager, the guy who’d signed me up to take the class, and the guy who checked people in at the front desk. It was a small shop. Perhaps Gary had been a climber when he was younger, but now he was middle-aged and round around the middle. He wore wire glasses that reminded me of John Lennon and had facial hair that hadn’t been popular since the seventies. For class, he was assisted by a scrawny, pimply kid of no more than fifteen named Kyle.

“Now I know you’re wondering how Kyle is going to belay me.” Gary had said. “You’re thinking I outweigh him by fifty pounds, but you’re wrong. It’s at least seventy.” We all laughed. “Why is this safe?”

“The belay device?” I asked.

“That’s right. Kyle doesn’t have to hold my weight. The belay device does that. The belayer’s job is to hold the rope. Watch.”

When Gary started to climb, I realized I’d been wrong about him. He didn’t used to be a climber; he still was. He ascended the wall as easily as if it were a staircase—until he abruptly let go. Even though I’d seen a belay device work before, I cut my eyes to Kyle. He had a firm grip on the rope but he didn’t look strained by it.

“That’s the belay device,” Gary said. “Now let’s show you how to use it.”

That was when he’d told us to form pairs and Katrina and I had ended up together.

I’d been back twice since the class, now a fully-certified climber with belay privileges, but then Tech Week had intervened. I hoped I still remembered what I was doing.

“Lissie!” Gary said when the customer in front of me left and I stepped up. “You came back.” He smiled warmly when I asked for the monthly membership instead of a day pass. “How’s that harness working out for you?”

“I haven’t even had a chance to try it yet.”

“Let me know if you need any help putting it on.” He handed me back my credit card, holding it longer than he needed to until I looked up at him. As I walked into the changing area, I had the sense he was still watching me. He probably didn’t trust me on my own yet.

I put on my new harness and left my street shoes in one of the cubbies, then wandered into the gym, scanning the room for someone I knew. I’d arranged to meet Katrina, but she was habitually late.

“Hey.”

I turned my head and saw Jenny next to me.

“Sorry, I forget your name.”

“Lissie.”

“Right, sorry. I’m Jenny. Hey, you want to climb?”

My self-consciousness said no, but my mind couldn’t think of a logical reason to back that up. “I could give you a belay.”

“Cool.” She led the way over to a rope and started to tie in. “So, you came back.”

“Why does everyone say that?”

“Do we? I guess a lot of people don’t come back. Maybe climbing sounds like more fun than it is.”

“I think it’s more fun than it sounds like.”

“Me too.”

She climbed up the route fast, which meant now it was my turn. I picked out a rope with a route I’d been working on the last time I was there. It was a seven. I’d graduated from sixes to sevens and had even climbed one or two eights all the way to the top, but this particular seven was on one of the steeper walls, and I hadn’t gotten very high on it before.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, pre-emptively apologizing.

“This is your project?” She could tell I didn’t understand, so she clarified. “The route you’re working on.”

I nodded, remembering Derek using the word project before. She probably thought a seven was a ridiculous project.

“Then you don’t want to start with it. You should give your muscles a chance to warm up first. Here, do this one over here.” She moved over a rope. “I know they both say seven, but this one’s a lot easier.”

She wasn’t judging, I realized. Only I was judging. I climbed the easier seven. It really was a lot easier. When I got back down, Derek was standing next to her.

“Hey,” he said. “You—”

“Don’t say I came back.”

Jenny laughed.

“I was going to say that you bought your own gear,” Derek said, “but since you two seem to have your own inside joke, never mind.”

I belayed Derek while Jenny stood next to me. We both watched him. I watched him because I didn’t have the coordination to belay with the casual nonchalance that Derek and Jenny had. I still needed to concentrate on the climber. Jenny watched him either because he was a nice thing to look at or because there wasn’t much else to watch. I wasn’t sure which. So far I hadn’t seen anything pass between them that could be interpreted as romantic, even if you were trying to stretch the point.

“How long have you been climbing?” I asked when the silence got heavy.

Jenny shrugged. “Year, year and a half.”

“Everyone’s so good.” There was no way I’d be climbing like she could in a year.

She shrugged again. “Everyone could be better.”

Derek came down and she went up. Everyone did a few more warm-ups before I noticed that Derek and Jenny were taking longer to climb their routes, having to pause in places to shake out, and breathing heavily when they lowered back down. I figured that meant it was time for me to try my ‘project’ so I moved over to the rope with my nemesis seven.

“Go get it,” Jenny said, putting me on belay.

The route was overhanging, which meant that it sloped back towards me as it went up. The holds at the start were big, almost like handles. I could sink a hand in and pull with all my strength to reach the next one. But about ten feet up, there was a closed-off hold. Even when I pulled with all my strength, I couldn’t hang on. I tried a few times, feeling my muscles weaken with each attempt.

“Lissie,” Jenny called so that I would look down at her. “Like this.” She mimed a sequence of moves, showing me how she’d turn her body.

I tried it her way but my arms were soft and rubbery and wouldn’t cooperate. I tried again with even worse results. I was so close to the ground she could have reached up and touched my foot. Stuck there, on my project—the seven. Derek and Jenny climbed tens to warm up.

“Can I come down?” I asked.

Jenny let me down and I untied quickly, racing the tears. I rushed out of the gym, not knowing where I was headed. I couldn’t go far in rock shoes with my car keys still inside, but I needed privacy.

There was a line of shrubs next to the gym door. I ducked behind them, crawling beneath the low hanging branches until I was squatting against the building. Only then did I allow the sobs to burst from my chest.

The gym door opened. I stiffened when I saw Derek walk through it. He looked around the parking lot, then bent his head, ducked under the branches, and slid in next to me.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. Speaking made it impossible to hold back the sobs, so my words came out between them. “I’m making a big scene.”

“I’ve seen bigger.”

“In the gym?”

“Oh yeah.”

I struggled to bring my crying under control. “I thought I was out of sight under here.”

“You were. I guessed.”

“How?”

He laughed, a sort of sad huffing sound. “I’ve been here, done this.”

“You’ve hidden under the bushes to cry? Really?”

“I can be pretty hard on myself, too.” He patted my knee consolingly. “If you’re going to be a climber, you’re going to fall off a lot of routes. Like, not just today. Every day.”

“But not a seven.”

“I’ll tell you something I read on the internet once. This guy—his name was Mad Dog, so take it with a grain of salt—he said ‘I climb as hard as anyone. I just do it on easier routes.’”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “I don’t get it. What does it mean?”

“Well, how I took it is that we’re not competing with each other, only with ourselves. I climb as hard as I can. You climb as hard as you can. We’re both climbing the same hard, even if the routes have different ratings.”

“I guess so.”

“I saw you climb a seven the other day.”

“I’ve done a bunch of them.”

“Some people would avoid the one seven they’re having trouble with.”

“Should I?” It sounded like a good idea right about then.

“Hah! No. I was saying some people would do it, not recommending it. If you want to get better, you have to climb the stuff you can’t climb.”

“You’re very philosophical, grasshopper.”

“I didn’t want to spend my climbing time sitting under a bush, so I had to find another way to look at it. My mind said failure, you know?”

I nodded. I did know.

Between the branches I saw Katrina walking towards the door from the parking lot. I put a hand on Derek’s arm to warn him into silence. When she was gone, I slid my hand up so that it wrapped around his bicep. I hugged his arm into me, leaning against his shoulder.

“Are we staying here?” Derek asked, shifting so we fit together better.

“Maybe for a few minutes. I feel stupid walking back in there.”

“No one cares as much as you do, but there’s no hurry.” He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

I sighed, settling in to him. I felt comfortable with Derek. With Nate I felt like I wasn’t keeping up, as though he knew where we were going and was pushing me to get there. Derek exuded no sexual tension, only warmth. He assumed the friend role by default. Within that zone of safety, I could push my own boundaries.

“What made you start climbing?” he asked.

“It’ll sound stupid.”

He opened his eyes slightly and shifted them in my direction. I could see the rust brown of his irises under the lighter-colored lashes.

“Maybe not stupid, but cliché,” I clarified. “I’m getting divorced. I’m trying to find myself. Mid-life crisis, whatever.” I had lifted my hand from his arm to make air quotes around “find myself” and was too self-conscious to put it back. I dropped it to the ground between us. He reached down with his own hand and took it as I went on. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with rock climbing. Now I’m still getting divorced, still in a mid-life crisis, but I’m also a crazy person who cries over a bunch of plastic lumps on a gym wall.”

“How old are you? I can’t really tell.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what to make of that so I left it. We sat in silence for a while again, still holding hands. The lights flickered on in the parking lot. I shivered from the dropping temperature. The foolishness of hiding under a bush holding hands with a much younger man while people came and went through the door only a few feet from us struck me, but I still didn’t want to go inside.

“How did you get started climbing?” I asked him.

He took his hand from mine and wiped it on his shorts. “Something similar. We seem to have a lot in common.”

“How so?”

“Actually, she brought me here in the first place. Then, after, I came back.”

I tried to work through that and failed. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning.”

“In the beginning there was Emily, and it was good. We dated all through high school. The summer before college we came here for the first time. She wanted to try it out, but then she didn’t like it that much, I guess. We only came a couple of times. I don’t even remember if I liked it or not, but, later, when we broke up, I—”

He stopped, his eyes still closed but no longer in relaxation. They were closed against something he didn’t want to see. I put a hand on his thigh, just below the leg loop of his harness, and leaned in so he could feel me next to him.

“I needed something to take my mind off it,” he continued. “I remembered this place and ...” He shrugged. “It turns out I like it.”

“You still miss her.”

“I never knew anything but her.”

I wanted to ask him what had happened but didn’t want to answer the same question myself. Instead I slid closer to him along the wall, leaving my hand on his thigh but burrowing my shoulder into his armpit so that he had little choice other than to put his arm around me. I scooted down until my head rested on his shoulder.

“Jenny?” I asked.

“A good friend, a good partner.”

“She’s very good looking.”

I felt his shoulder move beneath my head.

“What did Emily look like?”

“Don’t read into this.”

I waited.

“She looks a lot like Jenny, but it wasn’t about how Emily looked. Emily was Emily. Jenny’s not going to replace her.”

“That’s how I feel about Alex, too.” I drew a pattern on his thigh with my finger. “People want me to date, but ...”

“Yeah.”

“It’s been three years for you, though. That doesn’t seem healthy for a guy your age.”

“It’s not like I wouldn’t like to be with someone else. Hey, let’s go back in, huh? This is fucking maudlin.”

He was right. I’d come outside crying about climbing and there we were, both on the verge of crying over our exes. I sat up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks.”

He crawled out of the bushes and reached a hand back to help me out. Just as I was popping out from under, the door opened and there was Katrina.

“Oh, you’re here.” She glared at me, her eyes half-curious and half-hateful.

“Sorry. I was just coming in.”

“Don’t bother on my account.” She pushed past me, heading for the parking lot.

I gave Derek an apologetic shrug and went after her. “Hey,” I said, catching her at her car.

She jerked the driver’s side door open and threw her harness into the car. “I thought we were going to climb together.”

“I was in there earlier. You could’ve climbed with someone else. You didn’t have to wait for me.”

“There’s no one in there.”

“Jenny’s in there. You met her last week, remember?”

“Oh sure. The girl with the blonde ponytail down to her ass who climbs twelves, and me. We’ll partner right up.”

“She was climbing with me earlier.”

“Yeah and you and Derek play house in the shrubbery. I didn’t know you were such the in-crowd, Lissie.”

I exhaled slowly. I got it. “Sometimes I feel out of place, too. They’re actually pretty nice—Jenny, Derek, all of them.”

“They’re hotshot kids.”

“Yeah, but nice ones.”

Katrina’s shoulders lowered. “Climbing needs age groups. In the fitness competitions, I’m competing against women my own age. It gives me a fighting chance.”

I thought about that quote Derek had told me but couldn’t remember it well enough to do it justice, so I explained why I’d been hiding under the bushes instead.

Katrina smiled. “So I’m not the only crazy one.”

“Not as long as I’m around.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here anyway,” she said. “I do pretty good in those competitions. I thought climbing would be good cross-training for my upper body but it’s like starting over. Everyone’s better than me.”

“You know where I was yesterday? At an audition. Talk about everyone being better than you.”

“Like for a play? That’s cool.”

“Not cool. Terrifying. My friend Donna wanted to try out, so I figured I would too. Turns out I’m the worst actor ever. I sounded like a political robo-caller except shakier. I could hear how bad I was, like hearing yourself sing off-key, and there everyone was, watching me.” Including Nate.

Katrina eyed me, considering. “I think I could act. I like performing.”

“I think you can climb. I think we both can. Come on, I’ll give you a belay.”

She retrieved her harness and we walked back into the gym together where we took turns belaying each other.

“You going to try that seven again?” Derek asked me when we found ourselves next to each other.

“Maybe.” I wanted another stab at it but didn’t want to embarrass myself with another scene.

“Let me show you something first. Katrina and Jenny can climb together.” He picked up his shirt.

“Whoa, there, Cowboy,” I said, stopping him. “Don’t get all hasty. I might need the inspiration.”

Derek dropped the shirt. The corners of his mouth tugged upwards but he didn’t meet my eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder until he did.

“Do I embarrass you when I say things like that?”

“Not really. Surprise me, more like.”

“I guess you can’t read minds or you’d be hearing a lot of it.”

He dropped his eyes and I laughed.

“See?” he said.

It crossed my mind that I was good for him. Or else I was a lecherous cougar. Either way, he made it easy to objectify him. Nate would be soaking up my compliments faster than I could spoon them out. Derek let them lie there, glistening between us.

“I was going to show you something,” he reminded me.

“By all means.” I refrained from making a comment about him showing me his chest.

“This is a fulcrum,” he said, putting my left hand onto a hold. “You remember physics?”

“Not super well. That was a long time ago.”

“A pivot point, the point you’re going to rotate around.” He put a hand on my left arm. “This stays rigid like a teeter totter. You can’t teeter totter on a wet noodle. Now this”—he tapped my right leg—“supplies the power and this”—he tapped my left leg—“is the counter-balance.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Never mind the physics of it. Here are the mechanics: everything stays rigid, especially your abs.”

I risked a glance at my non-rigid abs.

“Try it,” he said.

I sank down nearly to the ground and straightened up, feeling the way my body rotated around my left hand in a controlled fashion. “Do that?”

“Exactly that.”

Over on rope number nine I had better luck than I’d had earlier, my rigid body swinging smoothly to the next hold, no longer as far away as I’d thought.

Chapter 7

Alex.

The first thing I saw when I walked into my mother’s living room was Alex.

I hadn’t seen him—not in person—since that day. I’d made him leave that very night. I didn’t know what he’d been expecting when he told me he’d cheated on me, but apparently not to be thrown out. He’d argued, protested, complained, and cajoled but I’d used the only weapon I had left—tears—and finally he’d packed an overnight bag and left.

When he did come back from time to time to pick something up or drop something off, I made sure I wasn’t there. When he called, I let it go to voice mail, returning his calls by text. Passive aggressive, yes. He thought I was trying to punish him, but I was only trying to survive.

Now my mother had invited the enemy in. I backed out of the living room, hoping he hadn’t noticed me, and returned to the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?” She had her head in the oven checking on dinner—my birthday dinner. It would be pot roast, of course, with little bits of cauliflower and carrots all around it. Only my mother ever made pot roast anymore. It was delicious.

“Why is Alex here?”

“I invited him. It’s your birthday.” She emptied the water from a pot of boiling potatoes and set the pot back on the stove.

“That might be a good reason not to invite him, under the circumstances.”

“Melissa. I know you two are having a difficult time, but I’m not going to leave your husband out of your own birthday dinner. It would be rude.”

“You’d think he’d have the sense to stay away even if you did invite him,” I muttered.

My mother didn’t respond. The hand mixer clattered against the pot as she whipped up the potatoes. Annoyed with her as I might be, I loved her mashed potatoes.

“Happy Birthday!” Morgan screeched, bursting through the kitchen door, her arms full of wine and Tyler. She shifted Tyler and gave me a hug with the other arm.

“Happy Buffday,” Tyler said.

I gave Tyler his own hug before his mother set him down. He ran immediately to his grandmother who was measuring more milk into the potatoes.

“Go find Grandpa.” She gave him a kiss, then a push on his rump. He half-ran, half-stumbled through to the living room.

“Where’s the rest?” Mom asked.

“John’s picking Lyla up from day care today. They should be here soon.”

“Good, because dinner’s almost ready.”

“Mom,” Morgan protested. “It’s not even six o’clock. You’re such a senior citizen.”

I left them to poke at each other, wandering back towards the doorway to the living room. I peeked inside, testing my toe in the water. To the left of the doorway, Alex sat on the far end of the couch. My father with Tyler snuggled up beside him sat on the end closest to me. It was a double recliner couch, but only my dad reclined.

In front of them was Dad’s massive television, tuned, as always, to ESPN. Somebody was analyzing something, mesmerizing my father and boring Alex. He kept glancing around the room, his fingers tapping on his thigh impatiently.

My brother slouched in the easy chair across from them, not facing the television. His eyes were on his phone. Though only seven years separated us, Samuel behaved like a different generation than me.

He’s older than Nate, I thought, older than Derek. I tried to figure out what made him seem younger and decided that it was probably my guilty conscience wanting to pretend Nate and Derek were especially mature for their age.

“Hey, Melissa,” Samuel said, lifting his attention momentarily from his phone and noticing me in the doorway. “Happy Birthday.”

Alex’s head jerked around to find me.

“Happy Birthday, honey,” my father echoed, his eyes not straying from the old athlete offering up his insight on the television.

“Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Sam.” I lifted my chin at Alex who had stood but not otherwise moved. He came over to me then.

“Melissa.” He leaned in to kiss me. I turned my face and let him kiss my cheek. “Happy Birthday.”

“Thanks for coming.” My parents had raised me to be polite, but I made sure my true feelings were evident in my tone.

“How could I miss it?” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned back to check me out. “You look good.”

So did he, but I didn’t say so.

“I’ve been trying to call you.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Really? I thought you’d been avoiding me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, although it was true. The other was true too. I had been busy. Between the theater and climbing I hadn’t had much time to miss Alex lately. Now, with him right in front of me, the force of how much I missed him hit me like it was a fresh loss.

“How’s my girl?” my father asked with oblivious cheerfulness. Must be a commercial.

“I’m good, Dad.” Brushing past Alex, I bent down and kissed my father on the cheek. Tyler climbed into his lap, knowing the commercial break meant three minutes of attention.

“Do the horse one,” he commanded.

My father did “the horse one,” a move I remembered from my own childhood that involved jostling with sound effects culminating in the rider being dumped on the ground. I watched them, not forgetting that Alex was right behind me.

“What are you doing with your hair?”

I pushed my bangs back self-consciously but didn’t turn around. “Growing it out.”

“It’s nice.”

I turned around then. He was closer to me than I’d expected.

“You need a haircut too.” I resisted the urge to touch the hair growing over his ears. He’d always needed me to tell him that. He didn’t see it himself.

“I know this isn’t the place, but maybe we could talk after?”

“Donna and I have plans after.”

“Sometime then. Please?”

“Sometime.”

Tyler squealed behind me, giving me an excuse to turn. The aging athlete’s face popped up on the screen. Seeing the shutters come down over my father, I picked Tyler up from his lap and handed him to Alex, telling him that Uncle Alex would play horse with him. Then I escaped back into the kitchen.

My mother had her head in the oven again. Morgan sat at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in her hand. I went to the cupboard and got myself a wine glass.

“Too many men in there,” I said as I tipped her bottle into my glass.

“I can’t believe Mom did that.”

“You know why.”

My mother couldn’t quite brag that no one in our family had ever gotten divorced because Uncle Edward and Aunt Diane had divorced when I was ten, but Uncle Edward had died almost immediately thereafter, which my mother saw as both karma and redemption. Her sister wasn’t divorced. She was widowed—which was how Aunt Diane had behaved, to the point of putting her rings back on and wearing a veil to the funeral.

None of my cousins were divorced. Yet. I considered the possibility that they were all waiting for someone else to go first.

“I can hear you,” my mother sang out. “And you know I just want you to be happy.”

“Happily married,” Morgan said, agreeing with my assessment.

“Happy,” my mother insisted. She brought a cutting board and a colander of freshly washed vegetables to the table and sat down with us. “When Melissa married Alex, she did it because he made her happy, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, sighing lightly.

“So you don’t just give up, is all I’m saying.”

“I didn’t.”

My mother didn’t know about Alex cheating. I didn’t think she needed to. She liked Alex. My whole family did. He was a likable man. I wondered what she’d say if she did know. Probably that God commanded us to forgive.

“Maybe he wants to try again,” she said. “Some counseling maybe.” When I didn’t respond, she picked up a knife and started slicing vegetables for the salad.

“I can help with that,” I offered. I couldn’t go with Alex to counseling, I certainly couldn’t talk to my mother about where our relationship had gone wrong—uninterested and uninteresting—but I could chop onions.

“You can pour me a glass of wine.”

“Tell Mom what you’ve been up to,” Morgan suggested as I poured us all some wine.

“Donna and I auditioned for a play.”

“No!” Morgan said. “I thought you were just helping out backstage. Oh my God, that’s so exciting.”

“I’m helping out backstage for this play, but we auditioned for the next play.

“I don’t know any of this,” my mother said, her hands expertly sectioning a cucumber.

I told her about helping to build the set and about being a stage hand. “And then on Monday they had auditions for the next show—which is this weird science fiction detective story—and Donna wanted to try out so I went with her. I chickened out, but Donna’s going to do it.”

“I can’t believe you chickened out,” Morgan said. “I wanted to see you in a play.”

“You can see Donna.”

“And the rock climbing,” Morgan said. “Tell her about the rock climbing.”

I glared at Morgan. I hadn’t been planning to tell my mother about the rock climbing. “It’s nothing, Mom. Pretend rock climbing at a gym. Pretend rocks.”

“Still doesn’t sound safe.”

“It’s safe.” I definitely didn’t mention anything about Derek offering to take me climbing outside.

The kitchen door opened. It was John, Morgan’s husband, with Lyla, their six year old.

“Aunt Melissa!” she squealed, making a beeline for me as soon as she was in the door. She ran into my arms and I hugged her tight. “It’s your birthday!”

“I know.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“Not yet.”

“Not forever.” She looked at me as though asking me to speed up time for her or perhaps exchange birthdays.

“Happy Birthday,” her father said, leaning down to kiss me.

“Thanks, John.”

“I could use some of that.” He gestured to the wine bottle.

“Then I hope you brought another one.” Morgan held the bottle up to the light so we could see it was empty.

“I brought some,” Alex said from the doorway to the living room. He thrust what was clearly a wine bottle wrapped in paper with a ribbon tied around its neck into my hands. I tore off the paper and pretended to act surprised to find wine inside. John brought over two more wine glasses and Morgan poured each of the men a glass.

“To Melissa,” John said.

“Melissa,” they all echoed, clinking their glasses together.

“Dinner in five minutes,” my mother said, breaking up the party. “Someone go tell your father.”

John carried his glass into the living room and Alex trailed after him. Lyla tried to crawl into my lap so I boosted her up.

“Can I use your phone, Aunt Melissa?”

“She’s obsessed,” Morgan said. “I can’t even use mine anymore.”

I dug my phone out of my pocket and handed it over.

“Expect fingerprints,” Morgan warned.

“They wipe off.” I watched Lyla expertly flip through screens like she had a purpose.

The phone binged.

“What are you doing to Aunt Melissa’s phone?”

“Texting. I’m saying LOL. See?” She showed the screen to her mother.

“Who’s Nate Abbott?” Morgan asked.

“What?” I grabbed the phone. Nate couldn’t be texting me. I hadn’t given him my phone number. I certainly hadn’t programmed his name into my phone.

“Facebook,” I muttered, seeing the familiar notification screen. Rebekah had friended me on Monday and the ripples were expanding outward. Nate had just sent me a friend request, making the phone bing. I was relieved that Lyla had not, in fact, texted him LOL. I pressed the accept button. Whatever else might be going on, I could call him a friend.

“So who is he?”

“Someone from the theater.” I pushed Lyla off my lap, set the phone to vibrate, and stuck it back in my pocket.

“A special sort of someone?”

I shook my head emphatically.

“Well, you sure grabbed that phone fast enough.”

“I don’t know him well enough to text him LOL.” I hoped the explanation would satisfy her. I didn’t want to talk to Morgan about Nate. I couldn’t even think about Nate without getting confused.

Since our conversation in the parking lot, he’d pulled back from me, giving me that clear mind he’d said I needed to make a decision. He still talked to me, still flirted even, but he didn’t touch.

I missed the physical connection, but I couldn’t bring myself to begin an uncommitted sexual relationship with a twenty-five-year-old in cold blood. Every time we said goodbye, I waited for him to talk me into it, to seduce me into it. And every time, he didn’t.

“Dinner,” my mother yelled, saving me from further discussion on the subject. As I rose to move to the dining room, I felt the phone vibrate against my hip. I ignored it. I picked up my wine glass and then, on second thought, picked up the bottle to go with it.

Dinner was a fun, noisy mix of conversation, admonition to the children, and compliments to the chef. Alex fit right in, as he always had.

“I haven’t eaten this well in a while,” he said when the pot roast and wine were gone.

“And whose fault is that?” my mother asked pointedly. The table got quiet.

“My own,” he answered. “I admit that.” He looked straight at me.

“Can we not talk about this?” I said to my mother.

“Did I bring it up?”

“Yes.” I picked up my father’s dish and stacked it on top of mine, then grabbed Alex’s from the other side of me, refusing to look at him.

I carried the dishes to the kitchen and smacked them down on the counter, wincing at the sound. I didn’t really want to break my mother’s best china, but I did want her to be on my side. Blinking back tears from my eyes, I wished for an ally and remembered my phone’s vibration.

I pulled out the phone, hoping for a distraction, and there it was—a Facebook message from Nate. My eye was drawn first to his profile picture. It was almost too small to decipher on my phone’s screen but I thought I recognized one of the photos from the show: Nate caught mid-fall during the fight scene. Then I read the message.

“Finally found you,” he’d written, followed by a smiley face.

I poked the little box below his message to make the keyboard pop up and typed in “Hi.” Witty. I hesitated over the send button, trying to think of a better response. My mom bustled in with the rest of the dishes stacked in her arms. I pushed send and put the phone away guiltily.

“You see?” my mother said as she rinsed dishes. “He’s sorry and he wants to work it out.”

I took the plates she handed me and loaded them into the dishwasher. “What if I don’t want to work it out?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to? This is your marriage, Melissa. Fifteen years in August. You don’t throw all that away.”

“He hurt me, Mom. Aren’t you mad at him?” I wanted her to be mad at him.

“Well, I’m not happy with him.” She pressed her lips together and kept rinsing. “I don’t know what he did, but I can imagine a few things. You think your father never hurt me?”

“Dad never—”

“Cheated on me? So it is that. I thought maybe. No, your father never cheated on me, so far as I know.”

“He wouldn’t.”

She laughed. “He’d have to step away from the television, so, these days, probably not. But before the heart attack he got around fine and the ladies loved him. Who knows?”

I shook my head, refusing to consider the idea. I felt my phone vibrate against me and yearned to be talking to Nate about almost anything rather than to my mother about my father. My parents’ sex life was not a pleasant topic for contemplation. If I imagined them having sex, which I didn’t, it was the most tame, sedate, conventionally dull sex I could envision—the very picture of uninteresting. And yet my father loved my mother, had remained loyal to her. Why couldn’t Alex have been that way with me?

Slotting dishes mechanically into the rack, I felt my stomach clench as my mind replayed the conversation Alex and I had had. First, his confession: he’d had sex with another woman, more than one other woman. He didn’t want to get into details, he’d said, but different women, not a special woman, just women. He’d been doing it for more than a year, since before we’d started trying to make a baby, at first just once and hating himself for it and then with increasing frequency and decreasing guilt. Until today—that day—me wanting him to perform and he couldn’t perform because he’d just been with someone.

On a Sunday morning while I was at the grocery store buying his special brand of granola that was the only kind he’d eat, he’d been fucking—yes, fucking—another woman and not, in fact, running on a treadmill at the gym.

“I can’t keep living a double life,” he said. “It’s tearing me up.”

It was tearing me up too, now that I knew. With my mind still trying to process, to understand, to catch at what I’d somehow missed, I grabbed at the regret in his voice.

“So you’ll stop?”

“I can’t stop. I’ve tried. I can stop lying to you about it, but I can’t stop doing it.”

“I don’t understand. Are you saying you’re a sex addict?”

“No! God, Melissa, wanting to have sex is not sick.” He put his hands on his temples and sank down on the couch next to me. “See, this is the problem.”

“But we do have sex.”

“Rushed, routine sex. And not because you want to.”

“Just now—”

“Because you want to have a baby, not because you want to have sex with me. Do you think I can’t tell the difference?”

“Because I’m not grabbing at your ass all the time? We’re not teenagers, Alex.”

“You’re not. Maybe I still am. And there are women out there who are still interested in grabbing my ass. Trust me on this.” He sighed and leaned back against the couch. When he spoke again his voice was less angry, more certain. “I can’t go the rest of my life with a partner who’s uninterested in sex, who’s uninterested in me. I can’t do it.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Melissa. That’s what makes this hard.”

That was when I started to cry. He ignored me, caught in his misery as I was caught in mine.

“You could have talked to me first,” I choked out between sobs. “If things were bad, I didn’t know.”

“If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that.”

I tried to pretend I didn’t know what he meant, but one scene after another was surfacing from the depths of my memory—my hands stopping his as they moved down my body; the resistance in my shoulders when he tried to push me down his; my harried look when he kissed me during the day, flinching away from him because I knew where it would lead; the heavy sigh when his hands reached out to me under the covers.

“It’s been that way for years. Beyond years. This baby thing was the first time you approached me for sex since Costa Rica.”

Our trip to Costa Rica had been ten years ago. I remembered the night he was referring to. I’d had a few too many cocktails at dinner because they were free and I was on vacation. The cocktails had made me loopy and loose and I’d come on to my own husband like a barroom hussy, wanting his hands on me. The next day I’d felt stupid and hung over. And apparently that was the best sex we’d had in ten years.

“Do you know how that’s made me feel?” he asked.

“Maybe how I’m feeling right now.”

“Maybe.” He sat up and took one of my hands in his. “It feels good to finally tell you this. I haven’t liked being dishonest with you, no matter what you might think. I do love you. I just need the other, too. More than I’ve been able to make you understand.”

“I could’ve tried harder.” Right then, I’d have done anything to make him stay with me. It was only later that my pride would flinch at this, would ask me why I was feeling so guilty when he was the one who’d cheated.

“You have tried. You’re just not interested, and even when we do it, it’s not ... interesting.” That was when he said it, the words that still repeated in my head like a sick mantra: “Uninterested and uninteresting.” He gave a short laugh like a cough and shook his head and repeated it. “Uninterested and uninteresting. Sort of says it all.”

“Daddy wouldn’t,” I mumbled, re-surfacing. Daddy wouldn’t expect Mom to be some sort of burlesque act, to play the whore on demand. Daddy wouldn’t go elsewhere when she didn’t.

“Your father is infallible—I get it—but to me he’s a husband, and a husband is a long way from infallible. Whether he ever cheated on me or not, I can’t say for sure, but he’s hurt me. And I’ve hurt him.” She dried her hands on a dish towel and started pulling dessert plates from the cupboards. “I remember telling you the day you got married that a marriage takes work. Did you forget?”

“No.”

She waited me out.

“I don’t think I can forgive him,” I said at last. His last few voice mails had made it clear that he wanted to at least talk before we gave up on the marriage completely. That was why I’d been ducking him. On the one hand, it would be easy—forgive, forget, get my life back. On the other hand, it was impossible—the forgiving or the forgetting, and I’d never, ever have that life back.

I clung to the feel of my phone vibrating against me like it was hope. I didn’t have to take Alex back. I had alternatives now. I had a new life now. Morgan had been right about that.

“You can try to forgive him. That’s how you were raised.” My mother picked up a two-tiered chocolate cake and gestured for me to precede her to the dining room.

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

“It’s not a birthday cake without you.”

“I need a minute, Mom.”

She didn’t argue anymore, giving me a kiss on the cheek as she walked past me with the cake. The moment she left I was grabbing for my phone.

“Too long between shows,” Nate had written. “Miss you.”

A pang of longing shot through me. I missed him too. I poised my thumbs over the phone, trying to craft a response. I’d about settled on “miss you too” despite the inanity when another message popped up.

“See me?”

“Can’t tonight,” I answered quickly.

“Date?”

“With Donna.”

Nate and Donna had met at the auditions. I hadn’t enjoyed either’s reaction. Donna had been all wink and drool, undecided whether to tease me about my relationship with him or forge her own, while Nate had been friendly in a way that reminded me he’d been friendly to me too. They were going to do a show together, be in rehearsals night after night.

“You two together sounds like a wild night,” Nate responded with a winky face.

“I can’t talk now,” I typed. “At my mom’s for dinner.”

“K” with a sad face.

I smiled at his sad face, feeling better enough from the short exchange that I was ready to face the crowd in the dining room again. My family sang Happy Birthday to me in a mix of keys, the kids loudest of all. Then I blew out the candles and cut the cake while my sister passed it around.

“Knock, knock,” Donna shouted from the kitchen.

“Come in, come in,” I shouted back.

She blew in like a thunderstorm, loud and suddenly bright, hugging everyone, even Alex, although he got a sort of “hmph” first.

“Any of that left?” she asked, pointing to the wine bottle on the table.

John picked it up and turned it upside down.

“Then it’s a good thing I brought my own.” She reached into her pocketbook and brought out a bottle.

“You know your pocketbook is too big when you can fit a wine bottle in it,” Alex said.

Donna swung the bag at his head and he ducked with a laugh. The two of them had always gotten along. Even though I knew Donna was on my side, it hurt to see her laughing with him like nothing had changed.

Alex opened the bottle and filled the glass my mother brought in, then topped off his own and Morgan’s glasses. He wagged the bottle at me and I shook my head. I planned to drive Donna to the Beltane celebration, expecting that this wasn’t her first drink of the night.

“Where are you girls going tonight?” Alex asked. He sounded more than idly curious. Donna’s idea of going out was cruising for men. It gave me an inward smile of satisfaction to realize that the idea bothered him.

“A celebration of sisterhood,” Donna said. “We’re going to worship at the feet of the female deity.” Yeah, she’d been drinking.

“This is a pagan thing?” my mother asked, frowning.

“It’s a May Day thing.” My birthday was May 1st and so was Beltane. I’d researched it online the night before. “Down at the Community Center.”

“For ladies only,” Donna added.

“I know what you call it when a bunch of women get together,” my father said. Everyone stopped and looked at him. “Trouble, that’s what you call it.” He got up, carrying his cake plate with him towards the kitchen. My mother followed him, shaking her head.

“Sounds interesting,” Alex said.

I could tell he was relieved. I wanted to pull out my phone and rub Nate in his face. As though Nate had heard me, my phone buzzed. I smiled and reached for it.

“Later?” Nate had messaged me.

“When I get home,” I answered. It gave me something to look forward to. The Beltane celebration loomed eerily in front of me. I didn’t know if it would be terrifyingly different or hokey and dull.

Nate responded with a phone number and the word ‘call’ followed by a question mark.

“K,” I answered, smiling at my phone affectionately. I saved the number under his name in my contacts, making it official. When I looked up only Donna and Alex remained in the dining room.

“Something good?” Alex asked, the jealous tinge back in his voice.

“Theater business.”

Alex cocked his head questioningly and I realized that he knew nothing about my life anymore, the way that I knew nothing about his. Once we’d known each other minute by minute: when the elastic wore out on his boxers, how long I’d be at the grocery store, what time his alarm clock was set for, the day I was expecting my next period. Now there were gaps big enough to cover weeks, even months of events.

“Did you know Donna is going to act on stage?” I asked, deflecting. It worked. He turned his head towards her.

“I play a sexy secretary.”

“The script just said secretary.”

“I’m sure you’ll make a very sexy secretary,” Alex said. The way he smiled at her had me wondering. He caught my glare and leaned away from her, looking at me as if to ask if I was crazy. I sighed. I was crazy. Before the betrayal, Donna’s cleavage and fluttering eyelashes were just quirks of Donna. Now I’d mentally hooked her up with both Nate and Alex in the space of a couple of hours.

I’d had the delusion that it was safe, as someone’s wife, to not worry about being sexy because that competition was over for me. I’d won it by getting married. But that was a delusion, all right. I wasn’t out of the competition. I was losing it.

“We should get going,” I told Donna.

“You’ll call me?” Alex asked.

“When I can.” Which left that door wide open.

While Alex and Donna were saying their goodbyes, I went into the kitchen to give my mother a last hug.

“I’m worried about you,” she said as she pulled back from our embrace. “Rock climbing, pagan festivals, theater people.” She said the last like they were the worst. I thought about Nate and smiled. She wasn’t wrong.

“Just having fun, Mom. I promise not to convert to Wicca.”

“If you can go to that Butane thing you can come to church with me. You didn’t even come for Easter.”

“Beltane.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll come to church with you.”

“Sunday?”

“Not this Sunday.”

She pursed her lips at me.

“I have to be at the theater this Sunday.”

She pursed harder.

“Next Sunday, Mom. Promise.”

“And you’ll try with Alex? Not for the church or for me. For you.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “We’ll talk about it.”

“That’s my girl.” She hugged me again, then hugged Donna who was toting the remains of her bottle of wine along with her.

Alex watched us from the doorway, his forehead scrunched in that way that meant he was getting a headache.

“You should take something before it gets worse,” I told him.

“I don’t have anything with me.”

I dug into the bottom of my bag and found the tin box I kept his headache medicine in. I handed it to him, then left before he could hand it back. I didn’t need it anymore.

~~~

It was late before I got home. I crawled into bed with my phone, debating whether or not to follow through on my promise to call Nate. I ran my thumb over the tiny photo next to his name as though I could touch him through the screen. Knowing that I’d hate being left hanging if the tables were turned, I pressed the call button.

“Hello?” His voice was thick with sleep.

“Hi.”

“Lissie?”

“Yeah, sorry. You were sleeping weren’t you? I just called ’cause I said I would, but we don’t have to talk. It’s late.”

“No, wait. Don’t hang up. I think I was dreaming about you.” He chuckled softly, a deep throaty sound. “I couldn’t figure out why you were on the phone when you were right here.”

“I woke you up.”

“I’m glad you did. Nice dream though. Mmm.”

A picture formed in my mind of Nate stretching naked beneath the covers. He gave a contented sigh.

“Tell me about your night. Did you and Donna have fun?”

“It was weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We went to this Wiccan thing, some kind of May Day festival. There was a maypole and a bonfire. Well, there was a thing that was supposed to be a maypole but it was only eight feet high on a narrow base, so it kept tipping over when we tried to walk around it—finally someone had to sit on it to keep it steady—and the bonfire was a circle of fake candles which they jumped over except for one lady who landed right in the middle and snapped the flames off of some of them. Good thing it wasn’t a real fire, I guess.”

Nate laughed. “Did you jump?”

“Yes, and Donna too. We both made it. We were the only women there not wearing long skirts, so that made it easier. I guess we didn’t get the dress code memo.”

Nate laughed again.

“It sounds funny now, but it was very serious to them and there was one part where they turned off the lights and there was just the circle of candles and one of the women recited this verse about fertility and nature and—oh, I can’t explain it but you could see why they were into it.”

“Sure. Women taking back power from the patriarchy.”

“I was raised Catholic.”

“Very patriarchal,” he said. “It’s religions like that that make people turn to Wicca.”

“I guess I never thought of it that way. Ideally religion is God, right? When I was going and believing, it was God. Now when I go it’s just familiar words.”

“You go to church?”

“When my mother makes me.” It was a ridiculous statement for a thirty-seven—no, thirty-eight—year old woman to make.

“Now that I know you’re a good Catholic girl it explains a few things.”

“Is anyone a good Catholic girl anymore?”

“Not in my experience.”

I could imagine Nate smiling at the thought of all the Catholic girls he’d had his way with. Wasn’t there a Billy Joel song about that?

“What about you?” I asked. “Were you raised in a church?” I slid down under the covers.

“No. My mom’s Jewish and my dad was Catholic so they compromised by giving up completely.”

I laughed. Then the way he’d worded it hit me.

“Is your Dad dead?”

“Yeah, he died when I was about ten. How about you?”

“Both my parents are still alive.” It struck me how little we knew about each other. “I was over there earlier, when you texted.”

“Family dinner?”

“For my birthday. I didn’t meant to tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because now I’m one more year older than you are.”

“Makes you one year sexier. Anyway, it’s not for long. My birthday’s May 30th.”

I tried to make a mental note of it but my brain felt foggy. “We should go to sleep,” I said. “I have work tomorrow.”

“Me too, but I’m glad you called. I’m glad I found you. I was thinking about it being closing weekend this weekend and it made me edgy, like the show’s going to end and you’ll disappear.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’d been hoping,” he started, but he didn’t finish it.

“There’s Donna,” I said.

“Donna?”

“She’s going to be your secretary in the next show. Out with the old and in with the new.”

“Lissie.” He said it like he was shaking his head or rolling his eyes or maybe doing both at the same time. “Donna has nothing to do with what’s between you and me.”

“No,” I half-agreed. Me, then Donna? Me and Donna? If not me, then Donna? I didn’t know how his head worked.

“OK, you’re not ready to make any decisions and I promised not to pressure you. I should go back to my dreams.”

“Sorry.”

“We still have a few days to figure it out. And now I have your phone number. Better than a glass slipper.” That was my Prince Charming. “Night, Lissie.”

“Nate?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you naked?”

“Are you asking me what I’m wearing?”

“If you don’t want to answer, it’s OK. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Maybe I’m debating how much you get without giving me anything back.”

“I’m wearing pajamas.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I’m thinking about it,” I said. “I’m ... picturing it.”

“In that case, you can picture me naked. Sweet dreams, sweetheart.”

Scrunching down under the covers, I thought back over the long night—from seeing Alex to Nate’s husky voice wishing me sweet dreams. In between I’d attended a pagan festival, though it was hard to apply the word ‘pagan’ to that assemblage of middle-aged women in earth mother dresses with flowers in their hair. The celebration had had none of the sexuality I’d expected and much more sweetness. For all that had seemed cheesy or gone wrong in their staging, no one had taken charge of anything or patronized anyone. The spirit had been overwhelmingly gracious.

“It’s what a world without men could be,” I’d said to Donna as we left, my inner goddess awakening.

“It’s all harmony until you want to get laid,” she’d answered. “Throw a man in there and see how fast sisterhood goes out the window.”

Was it a female desire to fight off other women that made me shy away from Nate’s proposal? For what purpose would I need to possess him wholly? As children, we learned to share our toys.

Then that thought—of Nate as a toy—made me angry. I wasn’t a virgin the day I got married, and Alex wasn’t my first lover, but I hadn’t taken sex lightly either. There had always been sufficient grounds to justify a possible future. Even that first time—his name was Scott and he’d talked me into going all the way in the backseat of his mother’s Buick after we’d dated for nearly six months—I’d had a hazy image of walking down the aisle towards him someday.

Cultural shifts of seismic proportions had occurred since I’d been in high school, but even then I’d known myself to be on the prudish side of normal. Now my hesitance played out as a sexual hang-up. Alex wouldn’t be surprised that I was too uptight to sleep with Nate. I doubted he’d dither over sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old—the fewer strings, the better.

If I used Nate as a toy—an entertaining, pleasant, ego-boosting pastime—well, wasn’t that how he was asking to be treated? I couldn’t cheapen what was being given away.

I fell asleep with my phone in my hands and Nate on my mind.

Chapter 8

Closing night—the last time I’d be washing dishes from a make-believe Thanksgiving dinner in a bathroom sink. As soon as we were done cleaning up, we’d be heading to Mary’s for a cast party and tomorrow we’d tear down the set and they’d start all over again, only I wouldn’t be here.

Before I’d finished with the dishwashing, Nate came in, shirtless and wearing his own jeans. He pushed the door almost shut behind him.

“Do you need the bathroom? I can give you a minute.” I wondered if Nate was uninhibited enough to whip out his dick and urinate in front of me. Probably he was.

“I don’t need privacy, just need to get into the medicine cabinet.” He opened the door of the cabinet into the space the bathroom door had been occupying. I heard the clatter of male hands fumbling through an organized cabinet, creating chaos.

“Do you have a headache?”

“No, I need an alcohol wipe or something.”

I stopped scrubbing and turned to look at him. “Did you get hurt? What happened?”

“Pete clipped me.”

“I thought it sounded more real tonight.” I took his head between my hands, running my eyes over his jaw. “You look OK.”

“He barely brushed me, but it threw me off. I must have fallen wrong.” He turned his head so I could see the other side. Along his temple was a raw-looking scrape.

“What did you hit?”

“The table, I guess. I didn’t feel it—too much adrenalin. I saw the scrape when I went to put the makeup on for the bruise. I figured it added to the effect, so I left it.” His fingers probed at the edges of the wound.

“Don’t touch it. You’ll get it dirtier. It’s full of makeup already.” I found some peroxide and a tube of anti-bacterial ointment in the cabinet. “Sit down. You’re too tall to reach up there.”

Nate sat on the toilet and I ministered to him, cleaning the scrape and then applying the ointment.

“I don’t know if I’ll get a bandage to stick there,” I said when I was finished.

“I don’t need a bandage.” He reached his hand towards the clean wound and I smacked it away.

“You do if you’re going to keep poking at it.”

“I’ll be good.” He lowered his hand. “I wish this had happened earlier in the run. I could’ve used it.”

“Yes, it’s a shame you didn’t get hurt earlier. Maybe we should have had Pete break your jaw. Think how good that would’ve looked.”

“Lissie, you do care,” he said in an aw-shucks way, mocking me.

“You know I care. Now let me finish these dishes.”

“Yes, Mom.” He stood up and took the single step that brought him to the door. He was going to walk out of my life. Tonight, tomorrow, then the show was over and so were Nate and I. He and Donna would do the next show together, and she wouldn’t say no when he asked.

With a single lunge I was on him, pushing him against the door, my momentum clicking it shut behind him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him towards me, my lips reaching for his.

Nate didn’t hesitate, didn’t make me wait to know that he wanted me there in his arms. He pulled me closer to him, leaning against the door so that I leaned against him, his hands running down my back to my hips to bring our pelvises in closer contact.

I’d kissed him with ferocity and he matched it. I felt the same hunger he’d shown me opening night right before he got out of the car—something beyond his normal control. His cock sprang to hardness in an instant. He pulled me into it, making me gasp against his mouth.

My hands were running across his shoulders, his chest, relishing his hot naked skin. His nipples beaded. Mine tightened in response. I reached for the button on his jeans. Nate caught my hands in his.

“Lissie.” He shook his head no.

“Yes,” I said. I’d made up my mind. I wanted him. For however long I got to keep him, I wanted him.

I threw myself back into him, reaching my arms and mouth up to hold him to me. I rolled my groin back and forth across his. This time he was the one who moaned. I went for the button.

“Not like this.” He held me off from him, looking me over with heavy eyes. “Not on a bathroom floor with twenty people outside the door listening to us. At least, not for our first time.” He gave me a wicked grin as my breathing slowed. “We can work up to that.”

He rotated us so that my back was against the door.

“That’s better. It’s not safe to turn you loose but I don’t want to let you go.” Without allowing his body to touch mine, he leaned in and kissed me—the slow, seductive kisses he’d trained me to crave, the ones that paralyzed me.

I let him take me into that state of dreaminess they induced.

“I want more room than this,” he said, following his words with a kiss. “And something soft to lie you down on.” He nibbled on my ear. “And much, much more time.” He came back to my lips.

I clung to them, falling into them, falling into him.

“And I want to know this is what you want.” He stopped kissing me, leaning his forehead against mine, letting me catch my breath.

“I want you.”

“Very sure?”

I nodded.

He stepped into me, flowing our bodies together so no air could come between us, his mouth on mine sealing out everything except him. We strained to get closer. His hands ran down my back to my ass, tilting my pelvis into him, offering up my clit to his cock. I grabbed for the button.

“OK, that one was my fault.” He backed away from me and raised his hands. “I was anticipating.”

“So was I. Why do you keep stopping me?”

“More room, more time, something less gross to lie on than a bathroom floor. Remember?”

I huffed out my breath. “Fine. Let’s go to my place.”

“Not so fast.”

“Fast? This has been playing out for weeks. Let’s just do it already.”

“Lissie ...”

“What?”

“We’re in no rush. Anticipation is half the fun. Well, no, not half, because the rest of it is pretty fucking fun, but it’s some of the fun. How about tomorrow, after the set strike?”

“What’s wrong with tonight? You need to put on special underwear or something?” I wanted to do it now, while I was brave enough.

“It’s closing night. It’s your very first closing night. We’re going to go to Mary’s and get a little drunk and enjoy it. Tomorrow, in broad daylight, sober, without getting all worked up first, you’re going to tell me you want this.” He came closer to me so that he was not quite touching me the whole way down our lengths. “And then,” he said, “I’m going to give it to you.” He brushed a light kiss against my lips and reached behind me to open the door.

I went to the sink and picked up the sponge, tempted to throw it at him, but he was already gone.

The party was in full swing by the time I got there. I lingered near the front door, a plate of brownies in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, looking for Mary or anyone who appeared to be in charge.

“Are those brownies?” Repeat asked, taking the plate from me.

“No, they’re square turds,” Pete said, helping Repeat remove the plastic wrap. “Only thing better than a turd is a square turd.” He popped one into his mouth whole. Repeat flicked me a thumbs up as he and Pete walked off with the plate.

Well, that took care of the brownies. Next was the wine. To my left was the dining room, the table covered in food. Beyond that I could see a kitchen—the most likely place to find a corkscrew.

The kitchen was packed. Who were all these people? I wedged myself in amongst them.

“Looking for this?” Deb asked from behind me. Ah, the corkscrew. “I’ve got a bottle open. Have some of mine and you can put that in the fridge.”

Luckily she was leaning against the refrigerator or I’d have had to find that too. She grabbed a plastic cup from a stack and poured us both a healthy helping of wine.

“High class,” she said with a tap of her red plastic cup against mine.

“Whatever works.” I took a drink and looked around the room.

“I think he’s in the living room. Someone put on the video from the show, so all the narcissists will be frozen to the screen for the evening.”

I didn’t bother to pretend I hadn’t been looking for Nate. “Are you working on the next show?”

“Yeah, looks like.”

“The lights again?” I shifted out of the way of someone trying to get into the refrigerator. There was no place to stand without being in the way.

“Looks like,” Deb said again. “Not enough lighting designers. Not any lighting designers. Just me.”

“You can’t do every show.”

“Tell me about it.” She tipped the bottle into her glass and put it back on the counter behind her. “There used to be three of us, which was about right. Then one guy moved out of state and the other guy got burnt-out from doing every other show, so now there’s just me—doing every show.”

“Can’t you get some more lighting designers?”

“You know we don’t pay anybody, right?”

“I guess so.” I knew they didn’t pay me.

“Yeah, so the actors, they get their need for adoration filled, but it’s harder to find people who want to hang lights for the sheer love of it. Or wash dishes, for that matter.”

“It was fun being part of the show,” I said, “but the dishes? Yeah.”

I thought about Rebekah stage managing show after show, taking care of everyone and everything with no more thanks than a chorus of “thank you, ten” when she called the time. I didn’t want to graduate from stage hand to stage manager.

“Lighting seems more fun than dishes, though.”

“It is. It’s actually really creative and kind of scientific at the same time. Sometimes I’m awed by the effects I create, not that anyone else notices them, which is another reason I miss having other lighting designers around. No one even knows when I’ve done something cool.”

“Ah, so you do have an ego.” I couldn’t help taking a poke at her, since she was always poking at Nate.

“I guess I do.”

“Well, I don’t know much about lighting, or theater for that matter, but I did think it was cool at the end of the show when the moonlight was coming in the window and Wayne and Mary were sitting on the couch with just that one lamp lit. The cool moonlight was like the outside world and the warm lamplight was like their love.”

She beamed at me. “You have a good eye. That was definitely the best part of the show lighting-wise. Thanks for noticing.” She added some wine to both our cups. The bottle was nearly empty.

“Hey,” she said. “You could be a lighting designer.”

“No, I couldn’t.” I’d enjoyed helping her out that one day, but I’d been mystified by how many different types of equipment there were and how they all fit together.

“You’re smart, you’ve got a good eye. I can teach you.”

I frowned, considering. I knew I wanted to stay involved with Central Playhouse, even aside from wanting to stay involved with Nate. I was obviously not an actor, and I didn’t want to make a career out of washing dishes.

“Be my assistant for Space Detective,” she said. “You don’t have to know anything—just follow me around and see if you like it.”

Green eggs, I told myself. They hadn’t failed me yet.

“OK.” I held out my hand to her. “You’ve got an assistant.”

She shook my hand, grinning. “I’m so psyched. You’re a great addition to the theater, Lissie.”

“You just called me Lissie.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you can’t beat him, join him.”

“Speaking of him, I’m going to go find him.” I’d had enough wine to grow tired of being discreet and I wasn’t fooling anyone anyway.

In the living room, a good portion of the cast was grouped around a wide-screen television watching themselves. There weren’t many non-actors in the room, which explained why the kitchen was so crowded. Nate sprawled on an extra-wide easy chair with an absorbed expression on his face. I crossed over to him, standing by the side of his chair until he noticed me there. He smiled and reached an arm up and I let myself be pulled into his lap.

The lights in the room were low to facilitate viewing. The half dozen or so others stared unblinkingly ahead. Even Pete and Repeat were quiet. Now I knew how to get a group of actors to shut up—let them look at themselves.

I hadn’t seen the show since Tech Week. I was surprised at how it had changed, had grown and evened out since then. Hearing it over the speakers and catching glimpses through the set walls while waiting for scene changes was a pale substitute for seeing the whole picture from the audience’s point of view.

I wasn’t sorry to see the last of those skinny jeans on Nate, although on stage he ceased to be Nate. His character in the new show—a rough-talking, emotionless cop—couldn’t be more different from the whiny teen I was watching now. Sometimes I worried that the Nate who wooed me was another role he played, like someone else wrote the lines he delivered.

“You’re really good, aren’t you?” I said during one of the scene-change breaks as my eyes strained to pick myself out of the darkness the camera had recorded.

He beamed at me, pulling my head down for a kiss.

“How do you do it?”

“A little talent and a lot of practice.”

“I’d never be that good, no matter how much I practiced.”

Nate tilted his head at me.

“It’s OK, you can say it. I was awful.”

“You weren’t a natural,” he said cautiously.

“Shh,” Pete said. The fight scene had started. On screen, Pete came down the fake stairs, approaching Nate menacingly.

Nate’s head turned towards the television when he heard his own voice.

“I’m going to be a lighting designer,” I said in his ear.

He turned back to me.

“Deb said she’d teach me.”

“I don’t know if I should be glad you’re going to be around or worried that you’ll be working with Deb.”

“Shh, already,” Repeat said.

Nate frowned at the back of Repeat’s head but his eyes shifted towards the screen. I took a swallow from my cup o’ wine, then put it down on the floor so my hands would be free. I snuggled in closer, wrapping my arm across his torso. Testing myself and him, I breathed into his ear. His lips found mine. I slid more fully into his lap.

“Get a room,” Pete said, without turning around.

“That’s what I said,” I whispered into Nate’s ear.

“Shh,” Repeat hissed.

“Enough,” Nate said. He lifted me onto my feet. “I can think of better things to do than ego-stroking in the dark with a couple of dudes. It’s a party.”

Pete waved a hand at him. “Buh-bye.”

Shaking his head, Nate led me from the room.

“Am I that bad?” He leaned against one of the walls in the entryway and pulled me into his body.

“You seemed pretty interested in yourself.”

“I’m more interested in you.” He bent down to kiss me, but I leaned back to prevent him.

“Who writes your lines?” I asked, echoing the thought I’d had earlier. He was much too good to be true.

He smirked at me. “I know what women want. I’ve read Twilight.”

Caught by surprise, I laughed. “I haven’t. Is it really what women want?”

“It’s that or Fifty Shades of Grey. Would you rather be spanked?”

I shook my head. “I’ll take the vampire.”

He went for my neck, catching my throat between his teeth. I squealed. Then abruptly he released me, his gaze shifting over my shoulder.

“Hey, Deb.” His hands slipped from my hips.

I stepped aside, moving so I faced her. “Are you leaving?”

She nodded. Her face was blank, not smiling, not even at me. I had the sense that although she’d teased me about Nate, she’d hadn’t expected to find me in his arms.

“Good night,” I offered. A pang of guilt struck me when she slipped out the door without responding. I looked up at Nate questioningly. For a moment, his face was as frozen as hers had been, but it didn’t take long for the actor in him to recover.

He smiled easily and pulled me back into his arms. “Now where were we?”

Chapter 9

Nate was right. In the bright light of a nice Sunday in May, no alcohol in my system, no Nate-induced throbbing between my thighs, wearing dusty work clothes and feeling parched from the wine the night before, it wasn’t easy to invite him to have sex with me.

He kept one eye on me while we worked, as though I might try to slip away, but he needn’t have worried. I was determined to be brave. Whatever might happen, it had to be better than having a constant debate raging in my head. To do or not to do? After today it would to be to-done.

I watched Nate too, not because I was afraid he’d get away from me but because I loved watching him. I loved to see his head tilt back in a whole-body laugh or his quick grin flash, brightening his face which could appear both wicked and sweet at the same time.

He was good with tools, as I already knew. The claw on his hammer flashed as he separated trim from walls with efficient jerks. The pile of trim—nails bristling from it like claws—grew behind him.

It would be somebody else’s job to clean the nails from the trim for this show. I was helping Deb strip the lighting equipment from the ceiling. She’d greeted me with a smile, like nothing had happened the night before. Handing me a wrench from her own tool bag, she’d dragged out a ladder and put me straight to work.

I found I didn’t mind the heights. Twelve feet didn’t seem like much anymore, and a ladder wasn’t steep compared to a climbing wall. There were no burning forearms to contend with, although the lights were heavy and awkward.

When Deb and I were done, I lingered near the stage door waiting for Nate to approach me. Tucking his hammer into a loop on his tool belt, he sauntered over to me and leaned a forearm on the wall behind me.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Are you?”

I nodded.

Deliberately, he leaned down, clearly communicating his intent to kiss me—no wine, no darkness, just a yes or no question. I lifted my chin. He touched his lips softly to mine, then smiled against my mouth.

“I’ll follow you,” he said.

I drove with half my mind while the other half played a movie of Nate and I in bed together—a very x‑rated movie. I remembered the feel of his cock under me rubbing against my clit, the warm silky skin of his neck beneath my mouth, his lips on my nipple, patient and firm.

The way he’d brought me to orgasm so easily, as though he knew my body better than I did, had been a revelation. It wasn’t the first time I’d rubbed myself up against a boy in a car, but it was the first time I’d come that way.

If I was being completely honest, I’d never come from another person’s body part before ever—not a cock, not a finger, not a mouth. If I was being completely honest, I had faked every orgasm I’d ever had with Alex, and not just with Alex. I was well-practiced at faking by the time I met Alex. From that very first boy in the back of the Buick who’d whined as I sat reeling—still dressed from the waist up, my no-longer virgin vagina aching unpleasantly—that he hadn’t been able to hold off long enough to make me come because it was taking me too long, through the college years and on to my wedding night, I’d faked what I couldn’t find.

I’d thought only I could make myself come, that I must be built differently from other women in some way that made my body parts not line up correctly with a man’s, but I’d never been with Nate, had I?

Everywhere he touched me, I responded. Every kiss was another strand in the web he wove around me, binding me helplessly to his will. I imagined him taking me to a new level of sexual experience where the physical pleasure of orgasm combined with the emotional warmth of joining to another person, where what I’d read in romance novels finally came true.

My mind flipped through a sequence of pictures—his head at my breast, his cock between my thighs, his mouth against mine, him spearing into me, our moving together united by passion, my body arching in waves of ecstasy, Nate moaning words of admiration and love in my ear, a very satisfied post-coital snuggle.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I was wet and ready. Nate pulled in behind me and I ran to him, dragging him laughing from his car into my arms. The hell with the neighbors, I thought, as he bent his head to mine. Let them wonder. I kissed Nate, my excitement ramping even higher.

Why had I been waiting? I knew in my heart that once we consummated our relationship, the difficulties would be behind us. I’d pushed him too fast for a commitment, but he’d come around in time. And with Nate I’d be interested in sex. Very, very interested.

I broke the kiss, anxious to get him inside so we could play out my fantasy. I pulled him into the house, through the foyer, up the stairs, and into my bedroom.

Our bedroom.

Mine and Alex’s.

I stopped just over the threshold of the room with Nate behind me. He reached his arms around me and kissed my neck.

“Mmm, eager.”

My eyes were on the bed. Alex and I had slept on this bed together for fourteen years. In fact, we really needed a new mattress. I wished I’d thought to buy one before bringing Nate over, though bed or no bed ... I glanced around the room cataloguing Alex’s things where he’d left them: his alarm clock on his nightstand, his change jar on his dresser.

“Lissie?” Nate said, turning me to face him squarely. “You’ve got Alex eyes. Think about me, remember?”

“It’s the room.”

“We can go somewhere else.”

“No, this is fine.” I put my hands on his face. “Kiss me. I can’t think of him when you kiss me.”

He kissed me then, slowly, absorbingly, until Alex’s ghost was banished and my arms were tangled around Nate’s neck. His erection swelled against me reassuringly. I let him lead the way as he stripped me—first my shirt, then my bra. Each uncovered section of flesh received his attention.

He sat me down on the side of the bed and knelt in front of me, using the position to bring his mouth to a nipple. I tugged at his shirt and he lifted his head long enough to let me pull it off him. Then he returned to my breast, sucking and teasing at my nipples, using his mouth on one and his hand on the other. My nipples pulsed with sensation. I couldn’t decide which was better, hand or mouth. His mouth was warm and gentle, but his fingers were strong and rough. It was alternating between the two, I decided, that made it so magic.

His hands moved to the waistband of my pants. I let him draw them down, glad I’d worn nice underwear, although my panties were trailing down my legs with my pants. Nate didn’t even look at them as he pushed the whole bundle of cloth off to the side along with my shoes.

He leaned forward to bring his mouth to my pussy and I stiffened. I’d taken a shower before going to the theater, but then I’d been up and down those ladders. I knew I didn’t smell good, plus I’d never enjoyed this particular activity much. I couldn’t bear to be the center of attention that way. The expectation of my enjoyment was too heavy a burden. I pulled at Nate’s arms, trying to tug him away from his intention.

“Let me take off your pants.” I yanked at his arms.

He stood up so his crotch was about eye level. I unfastened that button I’d been trying so hard to unfasten the night before.

“Finally,” I joked, trying to bring back the laughter.

He smiled at me as I undid his zipper and pulled down his jeans. His cock stuck straight out at me, straining to escape through the fly of his boxers. I ran my hand along it, stroking it through the material before he had those off too. Now there was nothing but naked me and naked Nate with naked Nate’s naked cock staring me straight in the face.

I knew what he’d be expecting, so I put my mouth on the head, tilting my eyes to look up at him. He stroked my hair, waiting. I moved my mouth up and down his shaft, my hand firmly gripping the base to hold it steady. Nate’s hand tightened in my hair. He moaned a little, then yelped.

“Gentle,” he said, stroking my hair again.

I returned to my task, trying to be more gentle but unsure where I’d gone wrong. This was my standard blowjob technique and no one had complained before.

After what seemed like enough time, I pulled his dick from my mouth. I sat up and leaned back, waiting for him to take charge again, but when he started to kneel, I grabbed his arms and pulled him on top of me.

“I want you in me,” I said, aiming for sexy rather than controlling. I was ready for my orgasm now, for that pleasure he was sure to bring me which no one ever had before.

Nate scowled at me. “We’re just getting started.”

“I’m ready. I want you. I want this.” I pushed my hips up against his, pressing that hard cock against my pubic bone where I wanted it. I ground myself against him, letting him feel my wet readiness. Nate rolled off me.

“Where are you going?”

“Condom.” He found his jeans on the floor and removed a box of condoms from one of the pockets.

“I didn’t think of that.” I watched him open a foil packet and apply the condom to his dick with practiced assurance. Had I ever used a condom before? With Scott that first time, there’d been a wink, a prayer, and a sincere attempt to pull out in time. Before long I’d gone on the pill. Even between boyfriends it had been easier to keep my prescription filled than to stop only to start again.

With the condom on, Nate rolled onto his back on the bed. “Come here.” He tried to pull me on top of him.

“Not that way.” It was another center-of-attention, too-self-conscious thing, being on top.

“Like this?” He set himself on top of me with his weight on his elbows.

I nodded, still eager, though not nearly as ready. The preliminaries were dragging on forever.

“OK, then.” He slid into me slowly, then started to move. I moved with him, waiting for the passion to overtake me. It didn’t. The motion felt nice, pleasant, even arousing in a tickly way, but it wasn’t building to any kind of crescendo. I opened my eyes. Nate was watching me intently.

I closed my eyes and moaned. I pushed myself against him harder and moaned again.

“Yes, yes,” I said, pulling at his hips to force him to pick up the pace. “Oh God, oh God.” I raised the pitch of my voice, letting my fingernails dig into his skin. I tilted my head back and gave a particularly loud groan, signaling that I was done.

When I loosened my hold on his hips, Nate slowed his pace. He shifted his weight back towards his knees and brought a hand between our bodies, his fingers finding my clit. Although I tried to kick my feet into his ass to urge him forward into a faster pace again, he kept fiddling with my clit, pressuring me. I faked a second orgasm.

Nate stopped moving. Had he come? I didn’t think he’d come. I felt his erection softening within me even before he withdrew it.

That was it. No fireworks, no thunder, not for either of us. Uninterested and uninteresting. It was no different with Nate because the problem was me. Hadn’t I known that already?

I was crying before I could stop myself.

“Hey now,” Nate said. “Don’t do that.” He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow to look at me.

I turned away from him, curling into an unhappy ball, the sobs choking me. “You hated it.”

“You didn’t like it either.”

“Yes, I did.” I cried harder to make my point.

“No, you didn’t.” He flopped onto his back with an exasperated sigh. “And if you can’t admit it, then we can’t fix it.”

I cried for a while longer, but he made no move to comfort me.

“You got some place I can put this thing?”

I looked at him over my shoulder. He had the condom off and was dangling it in front of him. I shook my head, a fresh wave of misery flooding my chest. I went back to my fetal position, letting the tears flow into my hands cupped around my face.

Eventually I couldn’t breathe through my nose. I went into the bathroom for a tissue. When I got back to the bedroom, my eyes red and my nose running, I was surprised to find Nate where I’d left him on the bed. He had his arms behind his head, looking at the ceiling. Looking absolutely miserable at the ceiling.

I got a robe from the closet. It had been hard enough to be naked in front of him when our hands and minds were occupied. Now it was impossible. I wished that he’d snuck off while I was in the bathroom the way I’d expected him to.

I sat down on the side of the bed, no idea where we should go next or how to get there. Nate’s stubborn silence baffled me. I could see he felt as edgy as I did, despite the feigned casualness of his posture, from the way his eyes didn’t blink, as though his own tears weren’t much farther away than mine.

He was very pointedly not looking at me, not tilting his head in my direction, not glancing now and then my way. He didn’t stretch out his hand to take mine, didn’t turn his body towards me, didn’t smile up at me. Minutes wore on and he neither spoke nor moved. What was he waiting for?

“OK,” I admitted.

He looked at me then. “OK what?”

I took a very deep breath and confessed what I never had to anyone, not even to Donna on our drunkest nights of girl talk: “I was faking it.”

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so he was next to me, and put his arm around me. He kissed my temple. I felt the tears return, but softer.

“You hate me now,” I said.

“I’m proud of you now,” he answered. He kissed my forehead again. I curled into him and let him comfort me.

“Why?” he asked when I started sniffling the tears dry.

“I can’t do it. I’ve never been able to.”

“That’s not true. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not true. That night in the car—that was real, right?”

I nodded against his chest.

“Good. I have nice memories of that night.”

I smiled. I had nice memories too.

“OK, so we know you can.”

“Not with a man,” I clarified.

“That’s a little insulting.”

I peeked up at him to confirm the smile I heard in his voice. “You know what I mean. I can’t do it the right way.”

“Lissie, there’s no right way.” He stroked his hand down my hair, brushing back my bangs so he could see my eyes. “There are only ways that work for you and ways that don’t. Today we learned that straight-up missionary position does not.”

“How did you know?”

He shrugged, making his chest move beneath my head. “I know that most women need something more than a dick moving in and out of them. It was highly unlikely you were coming that easily, that quickly. I hadn’t earned it.”

“So how come no one else ever figured it out?”

“People believe what they want to believe, I guess, and I’d seen the real thing, so I had something to compare to.”

I was glad we’d had that at least, that one night. I didn’t know if we’d ever have more. “What do we do now? We can’t just have sex with our clothes on in the back of a car.”

“Yes, we can, if that’s the only way to get you off. I have some other ideas, though.” He smirked down at me. I was glad to see the spark back in his eyes. “How about we try it my way this time?”

“Um.” I’d gotten a glimpse of his way when he’d knelt before me.

“You owe me,” he said. “Not an orgasm—that happens or not. You owe me honesty. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“OK, then honestly, why can’t I go down on you?”

I hesitated, embarrassed to even put into words the embarrassment I felt. “Because I feel like you’d only be doing it so I’d like it, and I wouldn’t like it anyway.”

“Because when you were going down on me, you were only doing it because I’d like it?”

I nodded.

“OK, we’ll work on that later. Here’s what’s important now—I’d like it very much.”

I shot him a doubtful glance.

“And,” he continued. “I think you’d like it too, if you weren’t working so hard at pretending to like it.” He pulled me onto his lap so I was straddling him and kissed me.

My first reaction was to tense up, fearful of what came next, but I couldn’t stay tense, not with his lips tugging gently at mine. I grew warm in his arms. I untied the belt to my robe and shrugged it off my shoulders. Nate made a sound of appreciation against my mouth and moved his hands up to my waist. I felt his penis grow chubby against my bottom.

He rotated us, laying me back against the bed, dropping to his knees between my legs.

“Nate,” I squealed, the panic returning.

“Mmm,” he murmured. “Did you know I could smell you in the car that night, right through your pants?”

“No.” I drew back from him.

“Yes,” he said, his hands clamping down on my thighs, not allowing me to get very far away. “It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t get closer to your pussy then. Don’t take it away from me now.” He leaned in and nuzzled his nose right into me. “You smell like sex in a bottle, just the way I remember.”

He stopped talking then, his mouth pressing into me, the whole wet warmth of it melding into my own wet warmth.

“Mmm,” he said again, the vibration teasing me. “You taste better than you smell.” His tongue curled up and around my clit once, making me jump. He was licking all around me softly, his nose bumping against my clit, his tongue coming up beneath it.

I wanted to enjoy it, I really did, but the fear kept coursing through me.

“Nate?” I asked, trying to squirm away.

“Stay still,” he said. “I’m working here.”

“I want to ask you something.” I propped myself up on my elbows to look at him.

He lifted his head. I saw my slimy wetness covering his face from chin to nose and winced.

“Do you really like it?” I asked him. “Swear?”

He linked his hands with mine and yanked so that I was sitting upright. Looking down at him, I saw what he intended me to see—his hard cock jutting out between his legs.

“OK?” he asked me.

“OK,” I said, convinced by the hard—literally—evidence in front of me. I lay back down and willed myself to relax. If it made Nate happy, if it made Nate horny, I could let him lick me for a while.

Finally given free access to my pussy, Nate dove into it with gusto. What had been slow, gentle licks around the edges became more focused pressure directly on my clit. His mouth surrounded it—lips, tongue, even lightly applied teeth all working together to create a medley of sensation.

If I could have vocalized a complaint about oral sex in the past, it would have been one of insufficiency. My own fingers were broad and firmly applied. My partners’ tongues had felt distantly light yet ferociously sharp, like pinpricks of pleasure. Whereas Nate was—

“Oh!”

Nate was ... mashing was the only word I could conjure up just then. Nate was mashing his face into me—steady wet pressure surrounding his broad driving tongue, his upper lip grinding down against his lower lip, my clit caught between them in a delightful vice, held helpless.

“Nate,” I breathed out. I tried to pull away, confused and overwhelmed. His hands tightened on my thighs, anchoring me in place. I whimpered, momentarily desperate to escape.

Surrender, surrender, his mouth insisted. His fingers were restless against my thighs. I could feel his passion through them, urging me forward.

Too much, I thought. As if he heard me, he backed off, sliding his tongue lower so that it lapped at the opening to my pussy. Automatically my pelvis tilted, trying to realign his tongue with my clit. He lifted his chin, fastening his mouth over me again and in a heartbeat all hesitation left me.

I needed what he was offering. I put my hands on his head, pulling him into me, pressing forward, holding him captive to my pussy as he eagerly ate it.

I came—pushing, pushing, pushing into him and then, the sensation too intense as my orgasm peaked, trying to pull away. Still, he didn’t allow it, adding a light suction to the frenzy of heat and wet and motion. A second wave of orgasm broke over me, higher than the first. From a distance I heard my own incoherent voice. Needing somehow even more contact I pressed into him again, riding the wave until it broke.

Damp with sweat, although I hadn’t moved more than inches, I melted into the bed. Nate was still between my legs, his mouth lower and slower. I pulled at his arms to bring him up to me.

“Done already?” he asked. “Sure?”

Now that he mentioned it, I wasn’t at all sure, but I sat up anyway, just to check. Yep, still hard. He lifted his head and grinned at me—a pussy-eating grin. He glowed with satisfaction and glistened with my juices. I lay back down.

“More, please.” I threaded my hands through his hair and pulled him into me.

When he started nibbling, I sighed with contentment and wiggled my hips to move them forward. This time he was rougher, faster, making me gasp and grind. I didn’t fight it. I threw myself against him, giving myself up entirely to the sensation, knowing that what was pleasing me was pleasing him. I came harder, a second wave following the first wave, and a third wave crashing through them both, obliterating everything except the feel of Nate’s mouth on me.

“More?” Nate asked, mumbling it into me.

I hesitated. “Wouldn’t you like to ... ?”

“Actually, I really would.” He sat up and wiped his face with the back of his hand, which didn’t even start to take care of the problem. I laughed and caught some of my juices flowing off his chin in my hand.

“I’ve made a mess of you.” I felt buoyantly joyous, not a self-conscious thought in my mind.

“God, you’re sexy. Will you get on top of me?”

A self-conscious thought tried to sneak its way in.

“Please?”

I nodded, pushing the thought away. Whatever Nate wanted, I would try to give him.

He sat next to me on the bed, applying a fresh condom, then tugged me over him. I put a hand on his cock and guided him into me. Leaning forward to brace my hands on either side of his head, I started lifting myself up and down his shaft. Nate watched my face. He cupped a breast, rubbing the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“So beautiful.” He pulled me down and I reveled in the slow, sensuous kiss, still sliding my body along his. I wouldn’t come this way, but I didn’t need to, and I knew better than to pretend I had. It was enough that he was enjoying it.

Nate broke the kiss and pushed me away from him so I was upright. His eyes ranged over me. I tried to be OK with it. I wasn’t twenty-five anymore and I hadn’t had a porn star-quality body even when I was, but Nate’s eyes were warm and generous.

“Let me,” he said, stilling my hips. He tilted his pelvis up into mine and pulled me forward, like he had that day in the car. I squeaked in surprise.

Genius, I thought, as I rode him to another orgasm, not as intense but sweeter for his being inside me. When I’d finished shuddering, he flipped us.

This time I could tell it was about him, not me. I relaxed, watching his face as he let his own instincts drive him. His eyes were open but unfocused, his mouth grim with intent. He dropped his head, his hair falling around his face. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as the pace of his thrusts increased.

“Mm,” I said, appreciating the sight, the feel, the sound of Nate above me. I ran my hands down his arms and back up them, savoring the flexed muscles beneath my hands.

With a gasp, he buried his cock to the hilt. His wide, wild eyes closed and his whole body shook, then softened. He lowered himself on top of me. I pressed my lips to his neck, adoring him.

After a few moments he picked his head up, looking down at me with a satisfied smile. “My way is better.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

He kissed me sweetly, drawing away to rub his nose against mine, and then kissing me again. With a sigh he rolled off of me, his hand holding the condom at the base. He slid it off his dick and tied a knot in it, then tossed it on the nightstand where it landed like a miniature water balloon. It lay plump and full next to the first condom, a limp rag. His way was much better.

“You’re not circumcised.”

His dick had shriveled into an unexpected shape.

“You’re just noticing?”

“It didn’t look different before.”

“When it’s hard, the head comes out of the foreskin.” He pulled back the foreskin and the head of his penis sprang out like a bald gopher head popping up out of its hole. I laughed. He quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Are you laughing at my dick?”

“It’s so cute.” I played with his dick, making the head pop in and out, giggling every time. Nate lay on his back with his arms behind his head, comfortable for real this time, letting me have my fun.

My head was full of bubbles, like I’d been drinking champagne. Everything was sparkling. The sun poured in through the windows, lighting us like blessed beings touched by God. Nate’s pale skin shone in it. His teeth gleamed in a permanent smile.

I enjoyed the freedom to touch without restriction. My hands ran everywhere. Nate purred, snuggling into me, asking for more.

Such an angel, I thought, with his head cradled to my breast, my fingers combing through his hair. His smile grew sweet and sleepy.

“You’re used to being spoiled, aren’t you?” I asked him.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Are you an only child?”

“The baby. I have three older sisters.”

“No wonder. Do they live at home with you?”

“No, it’s just me and my mom at home now.”

“And she spoils you, too.”

He didn’t answer, only smiled.

I went back to stroking his head, one more woman spoiling him.

Chapter 10

I felt so unholy. Nate had been in rehearsal all week so we’d made up for it Friday night, not to mention most of the day and night Saturday. If it wasn’t for his insistence on going home at night to sleep in his own bed, we’d probably still be at it and I wouldn’t have made it to church that morning. Nate claimed he slept at home because he worried about his mother, but more likely she made him breakfast.

Despite the shower I’d taken that morning, I felt unclean in a sinfully good way. I couldn’t keep from smiling as inappropriate memories flashed through my mind. I’d warned Nate that if I ever got past my shyness he wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off of him, but it was myself I was shocking, not him. Nate accepted my greedy demands as normal, if amusing.

My mother sat next to me in the pew taking my cheerfulness as proof that church was the right place for me to be. I tried to curtail my memory. Bless me father for I have sinned, I thought, causing a fresh smile to burst out. Man, had I sinned. And sinned and sinned and sinned.

“You’re in a good mood this morning,” my mother said.

“I had a nice date last light.”

She scrunched her face at me disapprovingly. “Did you go to confession?”

“No, Mom.” I couldn’t imagine confessing Nate. I’d confessed pre-marital sex in the past—I knew the floor wouldn’t open and demons fly out to drag me down into their fiery pit—but I didn’t want to confess Nate. I didn’t feel guilty about Nate. I felt as though, maybe, God had sent Nate to me.

“Have you talked to Alex?”

“Sort of.”

“What, sort of? You did or you didn’t.”

Alex had dropped by unexpectedly earlier in the week. I hadn’t called him like I’d promised I would, so when I saw his car in the driveway, I figured he’d gotten tired of waiting and was pushing the issue.

Resigned, I walked into the house and called his name. He didn’t answer so I continued through the house until I found him in our bedroom standing over his nightstand on which were arrayed two water balloon condoms and one limp rag condom. Oops.

He turned to me, an expression of shock and horror on his face, probably similar to the one that had been on my face the day he’d dropped his own bomb. He gestured to the condoms, speechless. I shrugged, not having an answer other than the obvious. Without a word, he brushed past me, out of the bedroom and out of the house.

“I saw him,” I told my mother. It wasn’t a lie.

“Good. I’m proud of you.”

In my mind, I winced. I was sorry to disappoint my mother but not sorry to avoid a reconciliation talk with Alex. This last week I’d enjoyed being single.

At the gym I’d seen Derek—polite, friendly, gorgeous Derek. I’d expected to feel less drawn to him following Sunday’s romp with Nate. Historically I’d always been a one-man woman. If I was crazy about Nate—and I was—then the whole world would be Nate to me, as though other men were cardboard cutouts without depth or color. But the exact opposite happened.

When I spotted Derek hanging from one arm, the other arm reaching back to his chalk bag, his bare chest rotated into view, my mouth got dry and my pussy got wet. Before, he’d been off-limits—look but don’t touch. Now, with a Nate-notch on my belt, Derek moved from impossible to possible.

It would serve Nate right if I did have sex with Derek, since he was as committedly non-committal now as he’d been before we had sex. Trouble was, Derek wasn’t likely to pursue me the way Nate had, and I’d never pursued anyone before. I didn’t have the first idea how to go about it. I wondered if I could lure him back under the bush with me.

I shifted on the pew next to my mother, fanning myself with my hand. Nate had absolutely ruined my mind. Even at work I couldn’t focus on anything other than sex for longer than ten minutes. I felt like a teenager.

Or no, maybe I felt like a woman approaching middle age. Didn’t they say that about us, that we were at our sexual peak? Because I couldn’t remember being this obsessed with sex as a teenager. Obsessed with some boy, perhaps, but not obsessed with sex. Certainly not obsessed with sex with multiple boys, God help me.

God help me, I offered up in prayer. I didn’t know where He was leading me but I felt led. There was an inevitability about what had been happening beyond my ability to control it. God loved me and wanted me to be happy.

I squirmed on the pew again hoping the dampness in my panties wasn’t going to make a spot on the back of my dress. I really needed to think about something else.

My mother gave me a look. “You got ants in your pants?”

“Why do they have to make these pews so hard?” I asked, deflecting her. Then the word ‘hard’ made me giggle to myself like a thirteen-year-old girl.

“Because we’re here to contemplate God, not relax.”

I sighed. Only my mother would answer that question literally

Donna had cackled triumphantly when I’d told her about Nate. Of course she had. Why would I even tell her? Because I was warning her away from Nate, that was why.

I’d swung by the theater one night even though I had no reason to be there. I just wanted to see him. I poked my nose into the auditorium, not sure of my reception. Rehearsal hadn’t started and people were milling around. No one seemed concerned that I was there, so I went up to Donna. She showed me her highlighted copy of the script.

“Nineteen lines.” She flipped through pages to illustrate. “That’s it. Meanwhile, I have to be here every night because I’m on stage the whole time. On stage, not talking. It’s the stupidest.”

“Stage time is where it’s at,” Nate said, coming up to us. “I’ve seen minor characters steal the whole show without a word. You have to make the character into someone real and then be that person the whole time, not just when you have lines.”

“The sexy secretary,” I suggested, reminding Donna of what she’d said at my birthday party.

“Oh yeah?” Nate raised an eyebrow at her.

“I was kidding,” Donna said defensively.

“No, you could totally do that. Be sexy the whole show. Make it your part.”

Donna considered, her eyes turning to her script. Nate took the opportunity to kiss me, briefly but seriously.

“Friday,” he said. He walked away, leaving Donna staring at me.

“Are you going to ... .?”

“We already have.”

That was when she’d laughed and started chanting in a sing-song voice: “Melissa’s getting laid, Melissa’s getting laid.”

I lifted my chin like she wasn’t getting to me at all.

“Good thing you sealed the deal,” she said when she’d tired of her game at last. “Look at that ass.”

I followed her eyes to Nate’s ass. I didn’t tell her that I had non-exclusive rights to his person. Instead I said, “Get your eyes off my ass.” She only laughed and said, “Doesn’t hurt to look,” but I knew she’d gotten my message. Even if Nate didn’t know better, Donna now did.

“Did you and Alex agree to some counseling, I hope,” my mother whispered, bringing me back to the dimly lit church and the hard pew.

“We didn’t really discuss it.”

“I wish you would, Melissa. I wish you’d at least discuss it.”

“Mom,” I said, speaking more loudly than I’d intended, “not now. I don’t want to talk to Alex. I don’t want to talk about Alex. Not now. OK?”

She shook her head and turned away from me, a hurt look in her eyes. The procession started, saving me from responding to that look. I stood automatically.

As the service progressed through a series of familiar rituals, my mind drifted back and forth between Nate, Derek, and Alex until the priest began his homily on the subject of false idols. I tried to remember what came after the homily. Communion? No, Profession of Faith, then Communion.

“We look to other people—parents, spouses, employers—as though they have the power in our lives, when we should be looking to God for that power.”

The word spouse caught my attention.

“Your father, your mother, your employer, your husband, your wife, your children, your neighbors, your friends—these are not your God. These are people, like you, meant to be servants of God. In all things, we must look to God first. Only God can command us.”

The priest took a breath while the congregation rustled impatiently. When he started talking again, he transitioned to the subject of television personalities, and my attention drifted away.

Whether it was more accurate to describe Alex as my world—like Morgan had—or as my God—as the priest was suggesting—I couldn’t decide, but it was becoming clear to me that he’d been too much. Maybe there was good reason to pursue Derek: to keep myself from obsessing so hard over Nate. Maybe God had sent me Derek too.

I smiled, my thoughts flickering back to exactly what I’d do with Derek if I caught him.

The priest finished and everyone rose. I fumbled my way through the Nicene Creed, knowing my mother would notice, then followed her up the aisle to receive Communion. When the service was over, I faced her nervously, but she wasn’t one to hold a grudge.

“I’m glad you came, Melissa. None of my children come to church with me anymore.”

“I’m glad I came too,” I said. “I should come more often.”

My mother beamed at me. I gave her a hug and walked to my car with a bounce in my step, wondering if Nate had time before rehearsal to drop by.

Chapter 11

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” I asked Nate when he called after rehearsal on Wednesday.

He didn’t call often. Some nights I sat up in bed reading with my phone laid carefully next to me until much too late before giving up. Some nights I got a quick text: sweet dreams or night Lissie or thinking of you, which sounded romantic except that if he meant it romantically, he’d call instead of texting, wouldn’t he? I was pretty sure it meant he was about to jerk off.

When I got the thinking of you text, I would sigh and try to feel flattered. I wished he’d come over after rehearsals, but there was the mother thing and the getting-up-early thing. Nate worked for his uncle doing drywall. It was physical, dusty work that for some reason started very early in the morning. My job felt so civilized and sanitary.

He’d called tonight because we were planning to see each other tomorrow—a mid-week rarity—because he had the night off from rehearsal, a lucky coincidence since it happened to be his birthday.

“Hmm?” I added when he didn’t answer right away.

“I’m trying to think of a non-dirty answer.”

“Dirty ones are OK, too.”

“Good, ’cause we’ll get to that after.”

“After what though?”

The ‘what’ turned out to be climbing. He’d told me the day we met that he’d be interested in trying it. Excited to be the experienced one for a change, I brought Nate into the gym and introduced him to Gary.

“Where do you know Lissie from?” Gary asked, suiting Nate up.

“The theater.”

“I didn’t know you were an actress.” Gary turned his attention back to me.

“My secret double life.” I didn’t bother to correct his assumption that I acted. It was what non-theater people always assumed.

“Maybe I could come see you in a show.”

“Actually, Nate’s the star of the next show.”

Gary looked like he was a lot less interested in seeing Nate in a show. He finished Nate’s paperwork and reminded me that I was responsible for him. I led Nate into the main room, turning to catch his expression when he saw it.

He nodded a few times, his eyes flitting from one wall to another and coming to rest on the massive overhanging wall directly across from us.

“Can you climb up that?”

“Not yet. I can climb that one.” I pointed to the right wall which also overhung but more gently. He nodded appreciatively.

I introduced Nate to Jenny and Katrina, wanting to say ‘my boyfriend’ but sticking to ‘friend’ instead. The way Nate looked at Jenny especially made me want to put my stamp on him. I’d gotten so used to climbing with her that I’d forgotten she was a tiny, beautiful blond girl ten years younger than I was.

Nate’s eyes followed her up a climb, watching the arc of her ponytail as it swung back and forth across her back.

“Let’s climb something over here.” I moved towards a wall that was both less steep and farther away from Jenny.

Nate climbed quickly but awkwardly. His height helped him, and he had good strength in his biceps from the drywall work, but his grace on stage didn’t translate onto a climbing wall. Of course, he was a beginner. I couldn’t expect him to flow up a climb like Derek did.

The thought of Derek made me look around until I found him with Kyle across the room. He must have just come down because his shirt was off. He picked it up and then, spotting me, waved. My hands were busy belaying so I smiled back. When he dropped his shirt on the floor instead of putting it on, I smiled harder.

“Lissie?” Nate was at the top waiting for me to tell him what to do next.

I explained how he should sit back in his harness and then lowered him to the ground.

“So who is he?” Nate asked when he touched down.

“Who?” Like I didn’t know.

Nate didn’t clarify, just stood patiently while I finished untying him.

“His name’s Derek. He’s been kind of a mentor to me.”

“Good looking guy. About my age, right?”

I nodded.

A smile broke out on Nate’s face. “Diving in with both feet, huh?”

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s not like that yet or it’s not like that ever?”

“He hasn’t shown any interest.”

“You don’t think so? Because I’m looking right at him and I’d say you’re wrong.”

I spun towards where I’d last seen Derek standing. He quickly turned his head up and away to where Kyle climbed above him.

“Maybe I can help you out a little,” Nate said. “Look at me.” He smiled put a hand up to my face and leaned in to kiss me.

“Nate,” I warned.

“If you could see his face.” He dropped his hand without following through on his threat to kiss me and took a step back, smirking. “What’s next?”

I led him to another rope and handed him the end of it. This route was a little harder.

“Hey,” Derek said, appearing at my elbow when Nate was five or six feet off the ground. “If you want, some of us are going on a trip next weekend to New Hampshire.”

“Climbing?”

My first time climbing real rock had been Saturday. Amy had taken me and Katrina to a local spot for the afternoon. We’d learned how to rappel down from the top and several new knots. Real rock had a different feel— much smoother than the heavily textured holds in the gym—and the places for our feet were tiny ripples, not big projections. I’d found myself exhausted from overgripping only halfway up the first route. The routes were longer too, the rock looming over my head, mocking my efforts to climb it.

I’d loved it though, couldn’t wait to get back to it. The whole day had been an amazing adventure, but was I ready for a weekend trip to another state?

Derek filled me in on the details. He and Jenny and four other climbers were leaving Friday night and coming back Sunday evening. They’d camp at a campground near the climbing area—pit toilets, no showers.

I winced at the mention of pit toilets. My last memory of using a pit toilet wasn’t a good one. Out hiking with my dad one day when I was about eight, I’d desperately needed to pee. Just before I sat down on the white plastic seat covering that gaping, smelly hole, a spider ambled out of the hole, across the seat, down the wooden bench, and across the floor towards me.

I’d stomped on it defensively, but even with the spider flat dead I couldn’t bring myself to bare my butt above the hole he’d crawled out of. My need to pee warred with my fear of having a spider crawl into my hooch until my dad banged on the door to ask if I’d fallen in. Eventually I’d gone behind the outhouse to squat against the wall while my father stood guard.

Shaking off the picture of myself squatting against the outside of an outhouse while Derek stood guard, I looked up at Nate. He was almost at the top, stuck at a spot his height couldn’t get him out of.

“Try putting your right foot where your left foot is,” Derek called up.

Nate looked down to see who was talking to him, then put his right foot where his left foot had been and immediately fell off.

“Sorry,” Derek said. “Maybe that’s the short person beta.” He winked at me and walked away.

Nate found his own way to the top eventually. “What’s beta?” he asked as he untied his knot back on the ground.

“Climber-speak for advice.”

“You believe me now?”

“Derek’s a really helpful guy. He gives advice to everyone.”

“Bad advice?”

I shrugged him off. Derek hadn’t given Nate bad advice intentionally. What worked for one climber didn’t always work for another.

Nate’s arms were tired and he wanted to see me climb, so we intercepted Jenny and Katrina. Katrina belayed me while Jenny and Nate chatted. Nate was definitely giving her the full-wattage smile. He hadn’t even watched me climb.

Since Nate and Jenny were absorbed in conversation, Katrina and I switched places so I could belay her.

“Did you hear about that trip?” I asked her.

“Yeah, you going to go?”

“Thinking about it. You?”

“Thinking about it.”

“We’re intimidated, right?” I knew Katrina and I were at about the same place in our climbing. We were improving all the time, but we couldn’t keep up with people like Derek and Jenny. In the gym, everyone climbed at their own level, but outside we’d have to stick together.

“I’ll go if you do,” Katrina said. “I can’t stay both nights though. I have to be back here for a competition Sunday.”

“That works for me. Less intimidating. I don’t know about camping though. I don’t have a tent or anything.” What I really meant was that I wanted indoor plumbing, but unfortunately Katrina jumped on the tent part.

“I have a tent that will sleep two. You don’t even need a sleeping bag probably, not in June. Just bring a couple of blankets.”

“You’re going?” Jenny asked. “That’s great.”

“You’re sure we’re not going to be in the way, me and Katrina?”

“We’re sure,” Derek said, coming up to us.

I introduced Derek to Nate. They shook hands, Derek solemnly and Nate with a big grin.

“Can I get a belay?” Derek asked Jenny, cutting off further conversation.

She nodded and they walked down the wall to the seriously steep section. He tied in, took off his shirt, and shot me a look over his shoulder before launching into an impressive display of acrobatic strength.

“Definitely interested,” Nate stressed.

~~~

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked Nate as he stripped me.

“Not as much as I’m going to enjoy this.” He finished with my clothes and started on his own with some assistance from me.

“Would you do it again?”

“Sure, maybe.” He pushed me back onto my bed. I sat down but didn’t lay back into what was fast becoming my favorite position.

“You didn’t like it?”

“Not like you do. I already have my thing. My two things. Now let me get to my second thing. It’s my birthday, after all.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but I let him get to it. It was his birthday, after all. Some time later I had the breath to talk again.

“Why do you like doing that so much?” I stroked his head where it lay on my chest, his hair damp with sweat and his face sticky against my skin.

“Because you do.”

“That contradicts your all-about-Nate philosophy.”

“You think it’s not about me? Making you come like that?” He sat up a bit, leaning on an elbow. “It’s performance art. Orgasms are like applause.”

“Is that why you’re so good at it?”

He rolled over onto his back. “When you play to an audience, you have to sense them, their mood, whether they’re with you or not. I love that about live theater. When it’s flowing, I carry them with me, and they carry me with them. It’s electric.” He linked his hand with mine and brought it to his chest. “It’s like that when I go down on you, when I’m doing it right. I’m feeling what you’re feeling and feeding it back to you.”

“And it’s electric.” I rolled onto my side so I could see him better. “How did you learn to do it?”

“Plenty of technique tips on the internet. Some good, some bad,” he added wryly.

I sensed there was a story there but he continued without going into it.

“The feedback loop, though—that’s just paying attention, being there with you. Every woman is different. I can’t learn Lissie from anyone except Lissie.”

He’d learned me good. As intense as our first afternoon together had been, each subsequent encounter intensified. Tonight I’d been so dazed and spent when he’d risen from his knees and slid onto the bed with me that I had only vague memories of what position we’d fucked in. He hadn’t even tried to make me come again. He’d taken his own pleasure before the aftershocks of my last orgasm had faded completely.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t gone down on him since my aborted attempt that first day. Whenever I moved in that direction, feeling it was only fair, he stopped me. Had I been so bad?

I traced a hand across his stomach, watching as his eyes shut and a dreamy smile washed onto his face. He wasn’t ticklish anywhere, never stopped me from any touch once the sex was over. He loved being touched. Loved it.

Even now, his cock was half-hard, rising up as the result of my meandering caresses. More purposefully, I ran my hand down his side, continuing down his leg as far as I could reach, then moving back up his inner thigh until my hand cupped his balls.

His dick hardened before my eyes, the head bursting out of its foreskin. I ran a finger up the length and then circled it around the head.

His hand grabbed my wrist. I looked up at him.

“Careful.” He let go of my wrist and pushed my hair back out of my eyes, smiling at me reassuringly. “The head is very sensitive. It doesn’t get as much incidental contact as a guy who’s circumcised.”

I pulled my hand away, chagrined. “Is that why you won’t let me give you a blowjob?”

He shook his head, his expression clouding.

“Then why?”

“Want me to show you a trick?” he asked, not answering my question.

I nodded warily, and he guided my hand back to his dick.

“Remember when you were having fun popping the head in and out?”

I nodded again, with a smile this time. I remembered the funny bald-headed animal coming out of its burrow.

“If you do that now, you’ll get a different response.”

I tilted my head at him and he nodded encouragement.

“Gentle,” he reminded me.

The head was already out so I had to start by putting the animal back in its burrow. I pulled up on the foreskin, watching it swallow the head until only the very tip remained, then I pushed it back down, smiling to see the head pop free.

It still seemed funny to me, but as I repeated the motion, Nate sighed. I glanced up at his face. His eyes were closed, the dreamy smile back.

I shifted my hand so that it covered more of his cock. Keeping my grip light, I continued rolling his foreskin up and back, enjoying the soft noises Nate made now and then. When his hips thrust up to meet my hand, I tightened my grip and moved faster. Nate groaned loudly and the sound went through me like electricity and I knew.

I swung myself between his legs, grabbing his cock in both hands, positioning my mouth over him.

“Lissie,” he objected.

“I want to.”

He thrust his hips up towards my mouth and I took him inside me and I knew that I’d never done this before, had no idea what I was doing, and that it was OK. He was with me. There was a difference between the jerk he made when my teeth accidentally grazed the head of his cock and the jerk he made when I swirled my tongue around it, a difference between the sound he made when something I did was merely pleasant and the sound he made when something I did sent pleasure pulsing through him.

His thighs tensed around me, his balls drew up to meet my hand. There was an increase in hardness beneath my tongue, a rush of blood coursing upwards, a pulsing in his veins. I felt his orgasm before he did, felt it run from root to tip, felt the explosion in my mouth precede the one in his body.

I didn’t want to take his cock out of my mouth, but when his body jerked in the way that signified pain not pleasure, I relinquished it, resting my head on his thigh. He reached down and pulled me up to him. He kissed me deeply, like he wanted to drown in me.

“Best birthday present ever.”

Chapter 12

The first thing I did when I walked into my parent’s backyard was check for Alex. I didn’t expect him, not after the condom incident, but I was relieved nonetheless when I didn’t spot him. Instead I saw Lyla heading straight for my legs. I braced myself and the salad I was carrying for impact just before she crashed into me.

“What did you bring, Aunt Melissa? Can I carry it?”

“It’s a salad.” I got a scowl-face in response. “Do you still want to carry it?” When she nodded I handed it to her, cautiously making sure she had it in both hands before I let go. “Bring it to Grandma.”

Lyla dashed off, making me wince. Oh well, it was just a green salad. No one wanted to eat lettuce at a Memorial Day barbecue anyway, not when my mother would have homemade baked beans and macaroni and cheese and Samuel would be grilling up bratwurst and burgers all afternoon.

John was the one manning the grill at the moment. I waved to him and crossed the yard to the picnic table parked in the shade where Morgan sat facing outward with Tyler between her legs. I kissed Morgan and Tyler and plunked down next to them. Morgan had a beer at her elbow. Tyler was playing with trucks in the dirt at her feet.

“Heads up,” Morgan said. “Mom invited Alex again.”

I took a second look around.

“No, he’s not here yet, but she invited him. I asked her.”

“I don’t think he’ll come. He’s angry with me.”

“For what?”

“He thinks he owns me.”

“Mom said you had a date.”

“You know I’m doing the online dating thing.” That was almost a lie. My profile had only been online for a few days before I deleted it, and I’d never met anyone from CoupleMe in person.

“Luckily for you, you told her at church, which, thanks by the way. Now I get to hear that Melissa can go to church, so why can’t I?”

“You do go to church.”

Morgan and John went to a kid-friendly, non-denominational church in their neighborhood.

“Doesn’t count,” Morgan said. She picked up a bowl of pretzels and offered it to me before diving into it herself.

“Do you like your church?”

“I do. We do. Raising a daughter, well, there were things the Catholic church was going to say to her that we didn’t agree with. Not that anyone wants to think about their baby growing up and having sex, but when she does—which she will—I don’t want her to think there’s something wrong with her. We all do it. I don’t know anyone who got married a virgin.”

I shook my head, not able to call to mind a single friend who’d lived up to the church’s expectations.

“And I’d rather she used protection,” Morgan continued. “When I think about how little I knew about safe sex, it’s a miracle I didn’t end up on one of those fifteen and pregnant shows.”

“Were you fifteen?” Not my little sister. “I was seventeen so—”

“So we ditched our v-cards about the same time.” Morgan laughed. “Yeah, we never talked about those kinds of things, did we?”

“No.”

“Maybe Lyla will be able to talk about it.” She spotted Lyla running full speed across the lawn towards us, her dark hair streaming behind her. “But not quite yet.”

Lyla jumped into my lap, grabbing for the bowl of pretzels her mother was still holding.

“Maybe I should check your church out. Mass is so familiar I almost don’t hear it. I think I daydreamed through the whole thing.”

“Ours is very spiritual, sort of New Agey—loving, inclusive. You’ll like it.”

“I’ll come. Not sure when, though. Next weekend I’m going to New Hampshire on a climbing trip and then the next couple of weekends after that I have to work on lights with Deb, and then it’ll be Tech Sunday ...” I ticked through Sundays in my mind.

Morgan laughed. “You did get a life, didn’t you? I hope you can still fit us in there somewhere.”

“I’m here today, aren’t I?”

Truth was, I was a bit aggravated about being there today. Derek and some of his bouldering buddies were away for the long Memorial Day weekend. I hadn’t been invited on that trip. Nate was at his own family’s barbecue. I hadn’t been invited there either. Nor had I invited him here because how would I explain him if he came, which he wouldn’t. When Nate and I were together, we were intensely intimate, but when we were apart, we were apart. Our lives didn’t spill over into each other’s.

“There’s Donna.” Morgan waved at Donna as she came around the corner of the house holding a tray.

“How’re rehearsals going?” I asked Donna when she’d dropped off the tray and fetched herself a beer.

“Great. That suggestion Nate made really helped. I’m having a lot of fun with it now.”

“Nate, the guy on your phone?” Morgan asked.

“Nate, her boy toy.”

“Donna!”

“Oh, was that a secret?”

I frowned at Donna. There was no chance Morgan wasn’t going to pick that up and run with it. She was looking at me expectantly.

“He’s just a guy.”

“I guessed that much.”

“It’s nothing serious.” I looked at Donna. “You were right about that.”

“Experience.”

“He’s a natural on stage,” I told Morgan. “He’s been mentoring you?” I asked Donna, trying to steer the conversation in that direction.

“You could call it that.”

I blinked at her, jealousy rising up into my throat. Donna laughed.

“You see?” she said to Morgan.

“I see,” Morgan said.

“It’s nothing serious,” I repeated.

“Can I be in the play, Aunt Melissa?” Lyla asked.

“Not this one, honey. Donna’s going to be in it.”

“And Nate,” Donna said, winking.

“We’ll have to go see it,” Morgan said. “We’ll make it a girls’ night out, me and Mom. I bet Mom would love to meet Nate. I know I would.”

“I’d be happy to introduce you.” I wasn’t ashamed of Nate. He was a perfectly pleasant man far past the age of consent, and if I wanted to have casual sex, I’d have casual sex. I deserved it.

“I’m going to go see Dad.” I stalked off, leaving the two of them laughing behind me. I continued past my mother, who had somehow ended up with grill duty while John and Samuel threw a football around, into the house.

My father was in the living room in his usual position—reclined. A baseball game played on the television. The room was dim, the light from the windows not reaching his end of the couch. He startled when I sat down next to him.

“Melissa?”

“Hi Dad. Did I wake you?”

“I wasn’t sleeping, just watching the game.” He reached a hand out and patted mine. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Everyone’s here. Come outside with us. It’s a beautiful day.” I thought about Derek climbing somewhere with his shirt off, the sun turning his golden body a darker shade of brown.

“In a bit,” my father said, making no move to move. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

I told him about the trip next weekend. My father didn’t rattle as easily as my mother and kept confidences a lot better than Donna.

“You always liked to climb trees. You’d go all the way to the top of that old oak tree and poke your head out through the leaves. You looked so free and happy.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m glad you found it again.”

“Come try it.”

“I wish you’d asked me that ten years ago. Sounds like an adventure.”

“It’s not too late to try it now. I see people your age at the gym all the time.”

“Now, Melissa, you know I couldn’t. Makes me puff to walk down the driveway to get the paper when the girl doesn’t bring it up to the porch like she’s supposed to.”

“If you walked down to the end of the driveway more often, it wouldn’t.”

“I have to think of my heart.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking of. Does your doctor say you should sit on the couch all the time?” I angled my body towards his, trying to see his face in the dim light. My father had taken me on every fun adventure I’d ever had as a kid. He was the one who’d sent me up the tree in the first place.

“The gym’s really safe. I’d keep you safe. Come with me one day. Please, Dad?”

“Well, let me think on that, little girl. The doctor does say I should get some exercise.”

“Exactly.”

“I said I’d think about it. Now, don’t nag me. It’s bad for my heart.” He handed me an empty beer can. “Bring your old man another beer, would you?”

I sighed and went to the kitchen. There, leaning against the door to the driveway, was Alex. He was dressed for a cookout—khaki shorts and a green polo shirt I’d bought him because it brought out the green flecks in his eyes—but he hadn’t made it past the kitchen.

The green flecks couldn’t brighten his brown eyes today. Despite what appeared to be a dye job to remove the traces of grey from his hair, he looked ten years older than the last time I’d seen him. I stifled the urge to go to him and draw him into my arms and rub his back until his shoulders loosened. Alex wasn’t mine to soothe anymore.

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No, your mother did.”

“She doesn’t speak for me,” I said, exasperated—with her, with him, with the situation.

Alex turned and put his hand on the door knob but didn’t open the door. Neither of us broke the silence for what felt like minutes. Then he leaned his forehead against the door with a bang.

“For God’s sake, Alex. What did you expect? We’re getting divorced.”

“Are we?”

“Isn’t that what we agreed? You said yourself you didn’t think we should be married anymore.”

My father wandered in from the living room. “Well, I wondered what happened to that beer.”

I opened the door to the refrigerator and yanked out a beer and handed it to him. I watched him walk back to the living room, wishing I could follow him—walk away from this conversation like he had.

“I guess I hadn’t given up,” Alex said when my father was out of sight. “Until ...”

“So you cheat on me, that’s not enough for a divorce, but if I sleep with someone else, having every right to do it—‍”

“If you’d slept with me—”

“I did sleep with you.”

“Out of obligation. Did you sleep with him out of obligation? With resignation? Did you just lie there, Melissa?”

“It’s none of your business what we did.”

“Do you have any idea how much that hurts? That you’d willingly do with someone else what you wouldn’t with me?”

“Sorry you got hurt, Alex,” I said sarcastically. “You did this.”

“You could have prevented it.”

“No, you could have.”

“You made me feel like less than a man.” His voice cracked.

My heart tugged towards him. This was the man I’d have done anything for three months ago. His pain was my pain, his wounds, my wounds. It went against my own soul’s desire to be the one causing him harm.

Uninteresting and uninterested, my ego whispered. I’d made him feel like less of a man? He’d made me feel like no kind of a woman.

“Why?” he asked. He turned to me, reaching out a hand. “Just why?”

“Maybe it was you,” I said, ripping at the bandage, wanting it all the way off—no turning back. “Maybe you just weren’t very good.”

I watched the expressions play across his face—shock, then shame, then hate.

“Get a lawyer,” he said, before he turned and walked out.

Chapter 13

Katrina picked me up after work, pulling into my driveway with an excited squeal of brakes.

“I’m so fucking revved,” she said as we threw my bags into the back of her car.

I’d been to the sporting goods store and practically bought the place out—sleeping bag, sleeping pad, headlamp, plus a duffel to pack them all in. It would have been cheaper to stay at a hotel.

It was nearing midnight before we pulled into the campground. I was expecting a big fire with people sitting around it drinking beer and telling ghost stories, or maybe climbing stories, but the double site we were sharing was quiet. Scattered across the dark ground were the darker humps of our friends’ tents.

Katrina and I picked out an empty section of ground and tried to erect her tent.

“I remember this being really easy,” she said in a loud whisper, dropping a pole in frustration. The tent flopped to the ground. We looked at each other by headlamp-light, then looked at the puddle of nylon that was refusing to become a tent.

“Maybe if we could see,” I whispered back. I was about to suggest that we find a hotel room for the night—what I wanted anyway—when a guy I barely recognized emerged from one of the dark lumps. In five minutes he had our tent up and was stomping back to his own.

“I told you it was easy,” Katrina said, pushing her bag inside.

I threw mine in too and then looked around. I needed to use that outhouse I’d been dreading before I tried to go to sleep. A wretched feeling of homesickness washed over me. Katrina would be the first person I’d slept next to since Alex.

~~~

Over breakfast at a local diner the next morning, I got to know Roy, the guy who’d put up our tent, and his wife Pam plus the other two members of our party, Conrad and Leon. Roy and Pam were in their mid-forties and had been climbing, and married, since their twenties. They’d been everywhere and climbed everything and done it as a team. Conrad and Leon were graduate students at the local university.

The group kept up an unbroken string of conversation, mostly centering on past trips to this climbing area—who had climbed what before, who was climbing what today. I wasn’t following it. I grimaced across the table at Katrina who looked just as lost.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you guys set up,” Jenny said, catching my expression.

I already felt like a burden and we hadn’t even started climbing yet.

We piled back into the cars and drove to the crag. From there we had a steep walk up carrying our packs. I trailed along at the back of the crowd, struggling to keep up, my heart threatening to burst through my chest. Gym climbing hadn’t prepared me for this.

After what felt like miles of straight uphill, everyone threw down their packs. Derek and the others conferred while I sat gasping on the ground. No one else even looked sweaty, not even Katrina.

Derek grabbed me and brought me over to the rock.

“We’re going to do this eight,” he said, gesturing up towards the top of the cliff.

“How do we get up there?” I didn’t see a way to hike around to the top like there’d been at the cliff Amy had taken us to.

“I’m going to lead it.” He saw that I was confused and explained that he was going to climb the route first and bring the rope up with him. Then, when he lowered back down, the rope would be set up like the ropes at the gym were so Katrina and I could climb on it.

“But that’s not safe for you, is it?”

“Not as safe,” he said, “but safe enough. First of all, this is dead easy. For me.”

Right. Eight wasn’t dead easy to me.

“So I’m not going to fall off, but if I did, the bolts would catch me.” He pointed up at the rock again and this time my eyes picked out what they hadn’t before—little round pieces of metal protruding from the rock every eight feet or so. I visually followed them up the cliff until they met at a two-piece anchor similar to what was at the top of a gym climb.

“I’ll clip into the bolts as I get to them. If I fall, you’ll catch me, just like in the gym, but I might fall a little farther.”

He showed me how to feed out slack as he climbed upward. At the gym, my job was to keep all the slack out of the rope, so leaving slack in was counterintuitive, but before he left the ground, Derek reminded me that if I didn’t give him slack, he couldn’t move.

I kept second-guessing myself about how much was the right amount. First I’d give him too much slack and then I’d panic and take it back in. About halfway up, he tried to pull up the rope to clip to the next bolt and didn’t have enough slack to do it. He looked down at me, patient but stern, while I quickly fed out some more.

“Better too much than too little,” he said as though he were saying it for the first time, not the third.

“Leave the ropes up when you’re done,” he said when he was back on the ground next to me. “We’ll come back to deal with them. And don’t touch anything at the top.”

He and Jenny picked up their packs and left us, disappearing around the corner in the direction Conrad and Leon had gone.

Katrina and I looked at each other.

“Jenny said that one’s easier,” Katrina said, pointing at the route that Jenny had led. “You want to start there?”

She and I had each climbed each route twice and the morning was gone before Derek and Jenny came back.

We’d done pretty well. By the last climb, I’d gained some confidence in my ability to step on the sharp ripples and dig my fingers into the small holes. Derek and Jenny re-climbed the routes to clean the anchors they’d set up, then rappelled back down, pulling our ropes down after them.

While we ate lunch, I peppered Derek with questions about this new concept of leading. He arranged a complicated three-dimensional scenario, featuring pine cones as climbers and a piece of cord as the rope, to try to explain how far the leader would fall based on where they were in relation to the last bolt they’d clipped.

“What do you do for a living?” I finally asked him.

“I’m a mechanical engineer, why?”

Jenny burst out laughing. “He’s such a geek. Everything with him is physics or math.”

“I get math,” I said. “I’m an accountant.”

“OK. In simple mathematical terms, it’s twice the distance to the last bolt plus slack.”

“So slack does matter.”

“Only if you fall. And if lack of slack makes you fall ...”

“Then you don’t come out ahead,” I finished. “I get it.”

“Let’s go try again. There’s a pair of nines around the corner.”

“Nine?” Katrina questioned.

“Hey, you guys had no trouble with the eight, right?” Derek stood up, stuffing his trash into his pack. We all shouldered our packs and followed him around the corner where we repeated the morning’s activities.

“Still not going to fall off,” Derek said, getting ready to start climbing.

“I know. Slack.”

He grinned at me and took off. The formula he’d given—twice the distance to the last bolt plus slack—did help me understand where he was at. Every time he climbed past a bolt, I experienced rising panic as the fall distance grew greater and greater, then a moment of relief when he clipped the next bolt, shortly destroyed as he kept climbing.

“That was easier when I didn’t understand it as well,” I said when he was safely on the ground again.

“You did better this time.”

“It was easier to watch,” I clarified, but I was glad to hear I’d done better. He hadn’t had to stop and wait for me to feed him slack even once.

Derek and Jenny left us again. I’d lost track of where everyone else was. We hadn’t seen them since lunch, although there were climbers everywhere we looked. This new spot was especially crowded. It looked like the gym, except it was brighter and all the holds were grey.

Katrina could only get to the top of one of the nines, but I climbed both of them, enjoying the sharp texture beneath my fingers and the way I could put my foot almost anywhere I wanted it to go.

Pam and Roy came up to us while we were trying to figure out what to do next. Katrina and I had each climbed—or tried to climb—each of the two routes twice. Katrina didn’t want to try the one she was having trouble with again, and I was growing bored and restless, but we were stuck until Derek and Jenny came back.

“That’s bullshit,” Pam said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re here to learn, right?”

I nodded.

“So you need to learn how to take down a route. Derek’s not doing you any favors coddling you. Is he always going to be there?”

I shook my head.

“Get the ropes down and Roy and I will put them up somewhere else for you, but you’re going to get the ropes down yourselves.”

I gaped at her. I had no idea what Derek had done at the top when he’d cleaned the last route. I should have been paying more attention.

“Don’t worry,” Roy said. “We’re going to talk you through it.” He shot his wife a harsh look. “You’re scaring the newbs, honey.”

“Damn straight.” She winked at me.

Pam walked me through the process of cleaning our gear off and rappelling back to the ground step by step. It turned out not to be too complicated. Katrina and I already knew how to rappel thanks to Amy, and the rest was common sense.

“Thanks,” I said to Pam. “I want to do as much as I can to help.”

“People are too easy on women, even women climbers. We can do everything the guys can do, right?”

“What do you want to do next?” Roy asked. He was coiling Katrina’s rope around his neck. Pam frowned at him and handed the end of my rope to me.

“I’d like to try a ten.” Trying to follow Roy’s example, I made a loose messy bundle out of my rope.

“I was thinking more like an eight,” Katrina said.

“So one eight and one ten.” Pam thought for a minute. “Roy, why don’t you and Katrina do that one in the corner at the far end. I’ll bring Lissie over to Derek and Jenny. They can set something up for her over there.”

She led me on a short hike uphill to a steeper section of rock where Derek and Jenny were lounging against their packs on the ground in the shade.

“Lissie wants to try a ten,” Pam said. “I was thinking about leading Lover’s Leap.”

She didn’t mean that she was going to leap from the top of a cliff. Lover’s Leap was the name of the route. I’d learned that every line up the cliff had its own name and rating so you could tell them apart and know what you were getting into.

Jenny jumped up. “I’ll belay you on it. Derek can pack all this shit up.”

She and Pam headed down the cliff while I surveyed the mess left behind. I noticed a rope lying in a pile and grabbed an end to coil it.

“Lissie?” Derek said when I was halfway through. “You’re making a mess of that.”

Roy’s coils had been neat and even. Mine were tangled and haphazard. Derek stood up and took the rope off my neck, dropping it to the ground to start over. He grabbed an end and started coiling it around his own neck so that the loops of rope made tidy circles around his nipples.

“Don’t do it for me.” I peeled my eyes away from his torso. “Show me how to do it.”

Derek dropped the rope to the ground again and we started coiling it for a third time, this time around my neck. He didn’t speak the instructions. He acted them out on me, his hands brushing my body as they led mine through the motions. When we were finished, he lifted my hair gently from under the rope, then stepped back and smiled.

Once we had everything stuffed into our packs, he led me to Lover’s Leap where Pam was about three quarters of the way up. She looked stuck and nervous, but Derek didn’t stop to watch her. Derek was watching someone else.

I followed his eyes to the woman climbing on our left. She was thirty feet off the ground underneath a massive projection of rock. Her body was nearly horizontal, stretched to full extension as she reached a hand over the lip of the roof. Her feet cut loose, that single hand taking her full weight as she swung a leg over the roof to join it.

As though this were a natural thing to do, she rocked onto the foot at her waist, reaching her other hand far over her head to grab a hold so small I hadn’t even seen it. She stood the rest of the way up into a relaxed stance, then gave her belayer a thumbs up.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Amanda,” Derek answered without shifting his eyes from the woman.

“It’s Foul Play,” Jenny said. “A twelve. Amanda is the who, not the what.”

“She’s very good, isn’t she? Does she climb at our gym?” I couldn’t remember anyone who looked like her.

She appeared to be tall for a woman and broad through the shoulders. Like Jenny, she was wearing a tank top, so I could see her arms and shoulders in detail. Jenny’s muscles rippled beneath her skin with delicate grace when she climbed. Amanda’s bulged like Derek’s. Her arms were lean and hard, no flaps of fat-filled skin waving beneath them.

“Not our gym,” Jenny said. “I think she’s from Pennsylvania, but we see her on the rock or at bouldering competitions sometimes. Derek has a crush on her.”

Derek flicked his eyes towards Jenny with annoyance, but only briefly. They immediately returned to Amanda. She was too high to watch easily, so I checked on Pam. She was in the same spot she’d been ten minutes ago.

Jenny rolled her eyes at me, but her voice when she called up to Pam reflected only patience. “How’re you doing up there?”

“I’m going to go for it,” Pam said with a deep breath. She took the same step up I’d already seen her take a half dozen times, but then she took another step and another. As she got farther from the bolt, I became more nervous, but Pam seemed to grow calmer. She made a few more moves with growing confidence and then she was at the next bolt, clipping into it with a little whoop. She finished the route quickly from there.

“I’m going to go find Roy and Katrina,” she said after untying from the rope. “Eight sounds about right for the rest of the day. It’s way too hot for that balancey shit.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by the word ‘balancey’ but I knew what she meant by the word ‘hot.’ I wished I’d worn a tank top like Jenny and Amanda had. I’d brought about six changes of clothes for our single day of climbing, dithering between them as I packed, but that morning I’d chosen a sports bra and t-shirt. The t-shirt now clung to me damply, begging to be removed, but I couldn’t bring myself to bare both my chicken arms and my non-rigid abs.

“Go ahead,” Jenny said to me, gesturing at the climber’s end of the rope Pam had just untied from. “You wanted to try a ten. Give it a shot.”

While I was tying in, Derek’s eyes were following Amanda’s descent. As soon as she hit the ground, he walked over to her. She smiled a wide, buck-toothed smile at him. Her short auburn hair stood out from a headband in a mass of curls and her face was sprinkled with freckles. She was at least two inches taller than he was and nearly as broad. She couldn’t have looked less like Jenny.

He beamed at her, his shoulders pulled back and his chest expanded.

“He really does, doesn’t he?” I said under my breath to Jenny.

“I don’t know if it’s a climbing crush or a crush-crush, but he’s been gaga since the first time he saw her. She climbs better than he does,” she added, as if that explained everything.

I started climbing, eager to see how this ten felt. I made good progress, congratulating myself, until I reached the spot where Pam had been stuck. Naturally, there was a reason she’d been stuck there.

How did she do this? I asked myself, taking the same step up and down I’d watched her taking. The next step was so tentative, the holds my fingers clung to so sharp but so small, and there were no pointy ripples for my feet, only smooth hollows. Telling myself that it was now or never, I made that next step up, my toe pressing into one of the smooth hollows.

Suddenly I knew what the word ‘balancey’ meant. It meant that I was standing up using balance alone. My hands glided over the wall of rock but found nothing to latch on to. My foot threatened to pop free of the hollow. Only the fact that the wall tilted ever so slightly away from me made it feasible. Finding myself fully erect, my weight balanced on that tentative foot, I realized that it wasn’t over, that I needed to do that same move three or four more times before I’d reach the next spot of white chalk that visually signaled a good hold.

My legs grew shaky from the effort of doing one-leg presses and I fell. I looked down at the last bolt. If I’d been leading, like Pam had, I’d have taken a long fall, but for me it was no more dramatic than falling in the gym. I hung on the rope until my legs felt less rubbery, then I finished the route.

“You want me to clean this?” I called down from the top, eager to show off my new skills.

“Go ahead,” Jenny said. “I think we’re done for the day.”

Back at the car, we found Pam and Roy and Katrina. Conrad and Leon were still climbing.

“They’re hard core,” Roy said. “Me, I’m ready for a beer.” He pulled his t-shirt away from his body. “They said don’t wait.”

“We should hit the road,” Katrina told me. “I need to get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

“You guys are leaving?” Jenny asked.

We explained about Katrina’s competition tomorrow and then Derek asked why I was leaving.

“We’re in the same car. And the same tent.”

Originally I’d been glad to have an excuse to leave after one day. Now, I was sorry to go. I’d had so much fun. I’d climbed a ten—even if I had fallen off of it—and I’d learned how to clean an anchor and coil a rope. Who knew what I could do with a second day?

“Any of us can drive you home,” Derek said, “and there’s room in my tent. Jenny brought her pup tent.”

“Because you encroach,” Jenny responded. “Be warned, Lissie—you’ll wake up in the morning with your face smashed against the side of the tent and Derek using half your sleeping bag.”

Since that sounded kind of nice, I decided to stay.

Chapter 14

Back at the campground after a long dinner and a couple of drinks, everyone headed straight to bed. With my headlamp clipped to a hook in the ceiling of Derek’s tent so that it cast ambient light, I smoothed out my pad and sleeping bag next to his. I wished I’d brought something cuter to sleep in than flannel pajamas bottoms and an oversized t-shirt. I also wished I could take a shower. After a hot day of hiking and climbing, I was sticky and smelly.

I found a handwipe in my pocketbook and used its woefully inadequate surface area to swipe at a few of the more offending spots.

“OK if I come in?” Derek asked, his voice coming from directly outside the tent.

I unzipped the flap and scooted away from it to give him room. He maneuvered around me to the far side of our small shared space and turned off his headlamp, tucking it into a side pocket.

“Do you need a minute?” I asked, moving towards the door.

“Nah.” He pulled his shirt off over his head and slid into his sleeping bag. A few moments of contortion later he pulled his shorts out from under the bag and threw them to the foot of the tent. “I’m good.”

I assumed he had boxers on, but I couldn’t tell. His unzipped sleeping bag covered him from the navel down—his stomach, chest and shoulders tantalizingly bare above it. I crawled into my own bag, unzipping it slightly. The temperature had cooled when the sun went down, but it was still a pleasantly warm night for early June.

We faced each other, no more than a couple of inches separating our sleeping areas. I wondered if I’d get any sleep. I put my hands into my bag before they got away from me.

“You’re so tan already,” I observed, my words going where my mind had been—to his body.

“I’m part Asian. This is as light as I get.”

“I didn’t know that.” My mind pictured that sweet caramel color extending the rest of the way down his body.

“My mom. She’s a mix of all kinds of stuff.”

“I bet she’s beautiful.”

“And smart and strong and a lot of other things.”

“What about your dad?”

“My dad’s crazy about her,” he said, as if his father could have no higher calling.

“So loyalty runs in your family.”

Derek sighed and rolled over onto his back, the sleeping bag shifting further down on his stomach so that the taut pit of his navel was clear against the hard background of his abs. I wanted to stick my tongue in it.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject.”

“It’s stupid to be loyal to someone who’s not loyal to you.” He put one of his arms behind his head and the sleeping bag shifted again. “Did you have fun today?”

“I really did, and I learned a lot too.”

“I should have been teaching you more, like Pam said. I know it’s not right to do it all for you.”

“I guess it’s a man thing—thinking women need help more than they do.”

“It’s not that,” he insisted, rolling back towards me. “I don’t think that. I told you my mother is smart and strong. She never raised me to think women weren’t capable of taking care of themselves. I just like to.”

“Like to what?”

“Take care of you.” He lifted a hand and used it to brush back my hair, the hand lingering for a moment as our eyes met. Then he dropped it and rolled over onto his back again, staring up at the nylon over our heads.

I rolled onto my own back, confused. Did he literally mean me or women in general? Derek never hesitated to be helpful to anyone, but there was a subtle difference in the way he helped me compared to the way he helped Katrina—as though he were personally concerned with my well-being.

Nate claimed that Derek had more-than-friendly feelings towards me, but just now, when it had seemed both inevitable and appropriate that he would kiss me, he hadn’t.

“Is Emily like that?” I asked. “Like your Mom? Strong?”

“Yes.” He reached up and tapped my headlamp, making it swing over our heads, the light shifting shadows across the floor. “Oedipal or whatever, I know.”

“Nothing wrong with your mother being a good role model.”

Alex incorporated some of the best traits of my father, like his quiet strength and his practical intelligence.

“If Emily wasn’t like that, we’d never have gotten together. She asked me out—one of those Sadie Hawkins dances. There was no way I could have asked her out. She was the most beautiful girl in school.”

He sat up, the sleeping bag falling away. Beneath it his green-and-blue-plaid boxers peeped out, the waist band low on his hips. He rummaged through the pile of clothes at the foot of his sleeping bag and pulled out a wallet. Flipping it open, he extracted a photo and held it out to me.

A younger Derek, his hair longer in front so that it hung down into his eyes, his shoulders slighter beneath the fitted black dinner jacket, had his arm around an all-American girl with blonde hair tumbling in waves past her shoulders. Emily looked at the camera with cool blue eyes and a light smile. Derek looked at Emily.

“Our first date.”

“She looks like an angel.”

“Not an angel. A lot of things, but not that.” He took the photo from me and tucked it back into his wallet. “I shouldn’t still be carrying this.”

“You loved her. Even as early as that picture.”

He didn’t disagree with me.

“Did she deserve it?”

“I thought so.”

“What happened?” It was the question I’d wanted to ask before but hadn’t

He sighed and rearranged himself back into his sleeping bag, propping his head up on his arms behind him. “Maybe we were just too young. We started dating sophomore year in high school. When we graduated, I went away to school. Emily stayed at home. Community college. Her grades were good, but finances were a problem,” he clarified, as though he was afraid I’d think less of her.

“I came home almost every weekend to see her and things were fine. I missed her during the week, but we talked every day and I knew it was temporary. Once we graduated, I figured ... Anyway, after two years at the community college she went away, to Colorado.”

“Why so far?”

“It was the right school for her. I understood that. It was just ...”

“Far.”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and grew silent. I could see that the next part of the story hurt.

“We saw each other at Christmas break and I knew right away something was wrong. I was ecstatic to see her and she was only—” he shrugged “—pleased. And uncomfortable.” He paused and I knew what was coming. “She finally told me she’d had sex with someone. Got drunk and it just happened, she said. We’d been apart too much, she’d been too lonely, she hadn’t meant to, everyone else was doing it.” He lapsed into silence. His eyes flicked back and forth across the ceiling of the tent as though he were searching her face for answers.

“So you broke up with her?”

“No.” He collected his thoughts with a deep breath. “I wanted to, I even started to, but I couldn’t. But I couldn’t forget it either. That whole winter break, I couldn’t get it out of my head so that we could enjoy the time together. Then she went back to school and it was worse—not knowing every night if it was happening again, and thinking, I mean, I’m pretty sure that it was. We talked less often and the less we talked the more suspicious I got. She came home for Spring Break and I could hardly look at her. Part of me just wanted to—” He broke off, clenching his fists, rage crossing his features. “She said it would be better if I did, if I could hit her or hurt her or ...” He relaxed his fists, his face softening. “I couldn’t do that, not hurt her.”

“So then you broke up with her.”

He shook his head. “She broke up with me. She couldn’t stand it anymore. I don’t blame her.”

“You don’t?”

“Not anymore. I should have forgiven her, should have let it go, let her go for the next two years. We were young. I wasn’t her first, but how many people these days go straight from high school to marriage? I could have given her some space in college. Maybe I could have had her back after.”

“Was she your first?”

He nodded.

“How about since then?” I asked. “Is she still the only ...?”

“I wish she was.” A tinge of self-loathing colored his voice. “After her, things went to shit. She said everyone was doing it, so I did it. Got drunk, got laid. It was easy.”

I imagined it was. Derek was adorable with a hard body and nice manners. Put him in the middle of a group of drunk college girls and you’d have a whole laundry basket full of wet panties. But Derek didn’t sound pleased with himself the way Nate would have. He sounded disgusted.

“It totally fucked me for school though,” he said after a minute. “Drinking, not sleeping, hating myself, trying to avoid the girls I’d slept with because I couldn’t look them in the eye. I flunked a class and had to drop others, didn’t even register for some requirements because I knew they’d be hard. My mom was pissed. I reined in the drinking, but then ... then I couldn’t do what had to be done.”

“Approach them?”

“Seal the deal. I could talk to them, but it didn’t go anywhere. I’d get a phone number and never use it. One night this girl did it for me—dragged me back to her place. I was practically sober and she was only a little drunk, not bad-looking, definitely willing. I couldn’t do it.”

“You didn’t want to?”

“No, couldn’t. It didn’t work.” He waved a hand down his chest towards his groin to indicate the it that hadn’t worked. “I couldn’t fuck a stranger, not sober.” He fell silent, his need to share winding down. “So the upshot is that it took me five years to graduate and I haven’t had sex since.” He rolled his head towards me and smiled like he’d just remembered I was there. “Sorry. TMI.”

I didn’t answer, just shook my head. He reached up to my headlamp still swinging from the ceiling and turned it off. I felt his arm drop, so close to mine that static buzzed between us. I threaded my fingers through his.

Derek fell asleep the way men do, as though a switch had been flipped. In his sleep he rolled towards me, his fingers still laced with mine.

It wasn’t so easy for me to nod off with his story circling in my mind. One thing was certain. If I wanted Derek, I’d have to make the first move. Either that or get him drunk.

I rolled towards him, bending my elbow so our arms twined, and let myself drift off to sleep.

I woke to find my face pressed against the side wall of the tent, partway off my sleeping pad with my hip digging painfully into the cold, hard ground. Derek was curled on his side facing me. I cautiously rotated around until I was facing him, my nose brushing his.

“Hey.”

He opened his eyes into mine. Confusion flickered across his face, quickly replaced by a smile.

“Hey.” His eyes shifted to the tent behind me. He looked over his shoulder at the empty space behind him and grimaced, then scooted back onto his own sleeping pad. “Sorry.”

“It’s time to get up anyway.” I could hear rustling and whispering outside our tent.

Derek yawned and sat up. He pulled out a clean pair of shorts from his duffle and wrestled them on under cover of his sleeping bag. He paused for a moment in the doorway to put on his sandals. The sandals, board shorts, and tousled hair completed his surfer boy look. I ran a hand down his back.

“Right,” Derek said, leaning over me to grab a shirt, although that hadn’t been my intention.

Alone in the tent, I swiped a fresh layer of deodorant over yesterday’s sweat, then changed into capris and a tank top. The hell with my flabby underarms—today I was going to be cool.

I added a long-sleeved shirt for warmth until the day heated up, then pulled my hair into a stubby ponytail on top of my head. The Pebbles look was the only one my bangs were long enough to pull off.

Derek came back just as I finished dressing and I left him to pack up the tent while I made a trip to my favorite camping amenity. Using an outhouse was starting to seem like a small price to pay to have the things I wanted—climbing, camping, Derek.

After breakfast and that all-important cup of coffee, we headed to the crag. Derek took me, splitting off from the others.

“Where’s Jenny going?” I asked, following his back up the stone steps leading towards the rock face.

“With Conrad and Leon. They’re going to do some hard stuff at one of the other crags.”

“Don’t you want to do the hard stuff?”

“We’ll catch up with them later. Right now, I’m going to teach you to lead.”

“Oh.”

Learning new things was good. Being independent was good. But I wasn’t sure about leading. Leading was dangerous. And hard.

“Nothing hard,” Derek said, knowing without turning around where my head had gone. He brought me to the spot we’d started in the day before and threw his pack at the base of the easier route.

“This is only a seven,” I pointed out. Yesterday I’d climbed that one ten.

“Like I said: nothing hard.”

I’d climbed the route easily the day before. It definitely wasn’t hard, but knowing that the rope wouldn’t catch me immediately if I fell made it feel a lot harder. When I got to the point where I needed to climb past the first bolt, I froze.

“Do you see the next bolt?” Derek asked.

“Yes.”

“Just climb to it. One bolt at a time.”

“What happens if I fall?”

“You’ll go for a little ride. It’s fun.”

“I won’t die?”

“Not on my watch,” he said, his voice amused but certain.

I struggled with moves that ought to be easy, applying too much pressure, passing over small holds that were perfectly good for bigger holds that were too far away, clinging with my hands when I could have balanced my weight over my feet. My perch on the rock was tenuous. It felt like a breeze could shake me off. All my attention narrowed down to the rock—the rock in front of my face, the rock against my hands, the rock beneath my feet.

“Clip the bolt, Lissie,” Derek said from a long ways away.

“What?”

“The bolt. It’s just to your left.”

I cautiously turned my head to the left, adjusting the focus of my eyes to take in a larger area. Yes, there it was. I clipped it, relief surging through my nervous system. What had been a difficult posture to maintain moments before was now casual. I leaned my forehead against the wall, enjoying the chill.

“Nice,” Derek said. “Now just do that again. See the next bolt?”

I looked up, spotted it, and nodded.

“Don’t lose sight of it. I can’t always see them from down here.”

I nodded again and started climbing, more purposefully this time. If I kept moving, I could get to the next bolt before the paralyzing fear of being too far away from the last one had a chance to sink in.

Near the top, I reached a spot I remembered from the day before. There was a long reach up to the next good hold—not a hard move, just a long one. The last bolt I’d clipped was at the same level as my waist. No harm could come to me now. But if I stood way up to grab that next hold, I’d be a few feet higher. And if I didn’t catch it and I fell ...

“You’ve got this,” Derek said, noticing my hesitation.

I could reach the next hold. I was pretty sure of that. I just wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

“What if I want to come down now?”

“Then you’d lower off and I’d finish the route and clean our gear.”

“You wouldn’t be mad?”

“Me? Of course not. Would you?”

“Be mad at you?”

“At yourself.”

The answer to that was yes. I looked up at the good hold and then I looked past it to the next bolt. I’d used a pit toilet. What couldn’t I do?

I stood way up and caught the big hold. Yes.

With confidence surging back into my arms, I finished the route. I clipped into the anchor at the top with a whoop of victory. As Derek lowered me to the ground, my nerves tingled with adrenalin. I’d never felt more alive. I threw my arms around him.

“Congratulations.” His hands slipped down my back to hold me tighter against him. The urge to press my mouth against his raced through me. His eyes softened; his gaze moved to my lips.

From behind us came the sound of feet heavy from the weight of loaded packs crashing through the underbrush. I separated myself from Derek as a group of climbers traversed the path behind us, their eyes angled up towards the rock.

“Thanks for teaching me how to lead,” I said when they’d passed. “That was amazing.”

“You’re amazing.” He tugged at my top knot with a rueful smile, then turned away. “Now let me see if I can climb this route you led.”

Chapter 15

Derek pulled up in front of my house and shifted into park.

“Will you come in?” I asked him. “I need a shower, and I need you. In that order.”

He turned off the car—an unspoken yes. I got out and walked around to the trunk and in an instant he was beside me, pulling my bags from the trunk and shouldering both of them despite my protests.

“You can drop those here. There’s a bathroom in there if you need a minute.” I gestured towards the door to our right. “Come upstairs when you’re done.”

I left him standing in the foyer, the bags still across his shoulders. I went upstairs and used the toilet in the master bathroom—ah, indoor plumbing—then opened the door so he’d know he was welcome and turned on the water.

Once it was the right temperature, I looked around and found him leaning against the wall outside the bathroom. I took him by the hand and drew him in.

Remembering what he’d told me about that last girl in college—how he hadn’t been able to perform—I wondered if it’d been a mistake to come on to him, but it was too late for second thoughts now.

I lifted his shirt over his head—his bare chest nothing new between us—then ran my hands over that chest, across his shoulders and down his back. Looking wasn’t new, but touching was.

I stepped in closer, brushed my nose lightly against his neck, felt his shudder.

With my hands on the bow fastening the laces of his board shorts, I paused. His eyes were lowered, his hands lay passive at his sides. I pulled on a strand and watched the bow unravel. Moving with deliberation, I separated his fly, letting my fingers brush the cock beneath the laces. It wasn’t hard, but it was growing.

When I pushed his shorts down, taking the boxers beneath them down at the same time, he finally moved. He leaned over to loosen the straps on his sandals, then stepped out of sandals, shorts, and boxers all at once. He stood before me fully naked, shell-shocked but not trying to shield himself. I took a moment to enjoy the sight of nothing but Derek, my eyes lingering on his cock, now almost fully hard.

“Mmm,” I said, appreciating its smooth symmetry. It jumped to full attention, as though it knew I was calling to it. I reached behind him and ran a hand all the way down his back to cup his ass. Then, because he’d reacted to it the first time, I skimmed my nose along his neck again. He inhaled sharply and his hands came up to my arms. I licked his earlobe, felt his hands tighten.

“Shower,” I reminded myself.

I yanked my tank top over my head and dropped my capris and panties. Before I could step over the tub, Derek lifted me into it as though I weighed no more than Lyla, then came in after me.

It was an inefficient shower. We dallied, fondling each other with the excuse of soap. When I picked up the shampoo bottle, he took it from me, pouring some into his hand and lathering it into my hair. His fingers massaged my scalp. He turned me into the shower spray, one arm supporting me along my back, the other rinsing the suds. I wondered if Emily had taught him to do this—all that blonde hair.

He turned back to the array of bottles along the shower shelf, picking them up and sniffing at them until he found my conditioner.

“This is you. I could smell it on you last night.”

“I probably smelled like sweat last night.”

“You smelled delicious.”

He worked the conditioner through my hair. I relaxed into him. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting when I set out to seduce him, but it wasn’t this.

When he’d rinsed out the conditioner, I couldn’t think of any reason to stay in the shower except to stall. I tamped down my nerves and turned off the water. His eyes shot to mine, showing me he had nerves of his own, but his cock, which had been hard since I’d released the laces shielding it, didn’t balk.

He stepped out of the tub, then reached back to lift me out of it the way he’d lifted me into it. I took two towels from the cupboard and handed him one, but he spent more time drying me than himself, softly patting me from top to bottom, even kneeling to rub each leg and foot. Sitting back up, he landed eye-level with my pussy, stopping there. He took a deep breath through his nose.

Both aroused and self-conscious, I put my hands on his arms and pulled him up until we were eye to eye, holding each other, his hands on my hips.

“I have to comb out my hair,” I said, very non-sexily.

He let go of me immediately, but it took me another moment to let go of him. Nerves were warring with desire, both insisting I press forward. I jittered my way through my post-shower routine as quickly as I could.

When I turned, he was watching me, leaning against the wall outside the bathroom like he had been twenty minutes ago but now naked and hard. I took a step toward him and he met me partway, sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the bathroom.

He put me on my feet in the bedroom, drawing the towel from me and dropping it on the floor. Simultaneously, we took a step closer to each other, our bodies bumping, his erection pressing against my stomach. I put my hands on his face and pulled it to mine.

He exploded. Up to that point he’d been gentle, even timid, but when my mouth touched his, something in him snapped free. His tongue was in my mouth, urging mine to open wider. His hands were on my ass, dragging me up and into him.

I tried to slow the kiss down, accustomed now to Nate’s teasing, languorous seduction, but Derek wasn’t Nate. Nate tasted, sipped, savored. Derek was starving. He tore into me with savage wolf bites, wanting it all right now.

I only realized that he’d been walking us back towards the bed a moment before we fell into it. Side by side when we landed, we rolled with his passion so that first I was over him and then I was under him. He pulled away enough to get a hand between us, going straight for my pussy, his shoulders jerking when he felt my wetness.

He broke the kiss and burrowed his face into my throat, his breath ragged. “God,” he choked out. “You don’t know ...”

I wiggled my way out from under him. He flung a hand out to grab me as I crawled across the bed, catching my ankle. I laughed.

“Not going anywhere,” I said. I opened the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a box of condoms. Removing one, I held it out to him. He frowned at it, then sat up and took it.

“We don’t have to put that on right now.” My hand reached for his cock. In all that frenzied motion, I’d barely touched him.

Derek watched as I slid my hand up and down his shaft, trying to mimic the rhythm Nate had taught me.

While Alex was circumcised and Nate wasn’t—meaning their flaccid penises looked nothing alike—their erections were of a similar size. I’d only had a few lovers before Alex, but I’d come to think of that size as normal. Which would make Derek something else. Not so big as to be intimidating, his cock was nevertheless impressive—round, hard, smooth, the head projecting formidably beyond the shaft. I hoped the condom was going to fit.

Derek seemed happy enough with my stroking—he’d stopped watching, laying back against the bed with his eyes closed and his expression somewhere between tortured and content—but I felt awkward, as I always did when trying to give a hand job, so I decided to move on to what had become my strength. I shifted around his body until my mouth was positioned for the first long swallow.

He jumped. Levitated, almost. I smiled around his cock and kept sucking, trailing saliva up and down his shaft. He grabbed me by the arms and hauled me up to him, flipping me over onto my back. My eyes flew open, my breath leaving me in a whoosh of surprise. What the hell?

“I’ve got about fifteen seconds of that in me.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m trying to keep this under control.”

I shook my head, startled but not scared. His passion was a powerful aphrodisiac. I was hungry to feel it inside me.

I tapped the condom he still grasped with tightly-curled fingers. He opened the packet and rolled the condom down over his cock, then rolled onto me, framing my head with his elbows and dipping down to brush his mouth along my neck.

“Sorry,” he whispered as he entered me. He slid easily through my wetness despite the extra length and girth. Before I could ask him why he was apologizing, he showed me.

Abandoning tenderness and timidity, he fucked me furiously, but briefly. His neck arched backwards as he came, a single strangled cry bursting from him, his chest pressing mine into the bed.

He lowered his head onto my shoulder. “I can do better than that. Give me ten minutes.”

I wiggled. Nate would have taken the hint and had his head between my thighs, but Derek only pulled out. None of this had gone at all the way I’d planned.

He rolled off of me and removed the condom, holding it out like it was a questionably dead snake. I took it from him and tied a knot in it like I’d seen Nate do and tossed it in onto the nightstand. I really needed to get a waste basket for my bedroom.

“You and Emily didn’t use condoms,” I guessed.

“The first time, maybe. She was on the pill. You’re not?”

“No.” I squelched the painful memory of the decision Alex and I had made to stop using birth control. “Even if I were, there are other considerations.”

“Well, I haven’t had sex in three years. I think I just proved that.”

“I have,” I said. “I do. I am.”

“Like when?”

“Like Thursday.”

“Who ... ?” he trailed off, shaking his head.

I’d fucked up. Nate had at least made clear the terms of our relationship before we’d consummated it. I’d engaged with Derek without warning him of the rules of engagement. Nate had cleared me to sleep with Derek. Derek had agreed to nothing of the kind.

I was appalled by my insensitivity, but dwelling on it wouldn’t help Derek.

“I’m sorry. I should have said this before.” I took his hand and he let me. “I’m really attracted to you, and I wanted to act on it, but I’m not looking for a serious relationship right now. Or even a monogamous one. I thought, you being so much younger than I am, that you might want the same thing I did. You’d be free to—”

“Fuck around like you’re fucking around?” He yanked his hand out of my grasp. “Yeah, I’m going to run right out and do that, just like I’ve been not doing it for three years.”

“OK, that’s a fair point.” I tried to remember why this had all made sense in my head before. Or maybe it hadn’t made sense.

“Maybe I just wanted you,” I admitted. “I told myself it would help you, free you from the inertia you’ve been stuck in, but maybe I wasn’t considering you at all.”

“I was stuck.” Some of his anger seemed to drop away. He took my hand up again, remaining silent as my pulse ticked off the seconds.

“Today,” he said, speaking so softly I had to shift closer to hear him, “when you first ... I was so ... excited? Terrified?” He shook his head. “I don’t know the word for it. I couldn’t breathe and my heart wasn’t racing—it just froze.”

He fell silent again, his thumb stroking across the back of my hand the only movement between us.

“I wouldn’t have ever ...” He looked up at me, his dark eyes bright but unbearably sad. “Thanks.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips, then stood.

“No!” I grabbed him around the waist and swung him with more strength than I knew I had back onto the bed. “No, don’t leave.” I kissed him on the face, the chest, anywhere I could reach while holding him down. “Please, Derek. Please?”

“Please what?”

I frantically searched for the key to talking him into giving me a second chance. Not ego—he wasn’t Nate. Not sex—he’d proven he could go without. What was Derek’s Achilles heel?

“You said you could do better.”

He flinched and looked away.

“Show me.” I injected a touch of wistful disappointment into my voice—poor Lissie, left hanging.

“You don’t need me. You have—”

“I need you. Right now. You.” Between words I nibbled and nosed at his ear, hearing his breathing deepen. “Don’t leave me like this.”

I brought his hand to my thigh, letting his fingers find the wetness that had trickled its way down my leg. He followed the trail upwards, curling his fingers into my pussy like it was the one good hold on a slippery route.

“Make me come, Derek. Show me how good it can be.”

He rolled me over. His eyes were fierce, his cock straining up against me. Too fast again, I thought. I put my hands on his shoulders, pressing him lower.

Nervous. He looked so nervous as he brought his mouth to a nipple, his hand returning to my pussy. His tongue licked at my breast like it was a melting ice cream cone while his fingers stroked in circles that ranged from feather-light to over-aggressive without ever quite hitting the mark.

I jerked my hips, trying to guide him in the right rhythm. He glanced up at me, checking to see if it was working. I found myself slipping into my old ways of faking what I wasn’t feeling.

Damn it, Nate, I thought. You made it all seem so easy.

Feeling my wetness recede beneath his awkward movements, I sat up, pulling him with me. I smiled at him like I was feeling a lot of things I wasn’t feeling and took a deep breath.

He was still beautiful— kneeling naked with that bold cock extending out in front of him, a little drop of clear, sweet pre-come glistening at the tip. I leaned down and licked it up, turning my head to smile at him. He brushed my hair back from my face.

I spent a few minutes going down on him for both our sakes. With my eyes closed and his cock in my mouth, the sensuality of the moment filled me until my pussy started running again. He might not have talented fingers, but he did have this golden dick which I’d only gotten a sample of earlier.

“Way past fifteen seconds,” Derek said. “Come here before I run out of control again.”

I was less wet and he was less desperate, so the slide was slower. He pressed all the way in—deeper, I was sure, than he had the first time. So, so deep.

He bent his head to kiss me, his tongue hard and hungry against mine. Then, rising to his knees, he leaned back and lifted my legs and began to move. This wasn’t a position that normally did it for me, but Derek was having an unexpected effect.

“God.” I closed my eyes, my head dropping back involuntarily. “God. Derek.”

“Mm,” he answered, moving faster.

“Jesus, God.” My body fractured beneath the strength of his strokes. Never had sex felt like this. My hands clawed at the bedspread, my back arched up, my eyes rolled towards the wall behind me, seeing nothing. Wave after wave of near-orgasmic pleasure slammed into me without separation or mercy.

“I can’t,” I mumbled. It wasn’t just the bigger cock brushing against every inner inch. It was that angle, the way it ground his pubic bone against mine.

“More, more,” I corrected when he slowed his pace. “More, more, more,” I repeated until he leaned back impossibly further. I screamed when I came. His hands gripped my hips as he came with me.

More, more, more, I thought, my head still shaking left to right against the bed. More, God. His body on top of mine was a dead, heavy weight against which I had to force myself not to grind my clit.

“Better?” he asked, rising up on his elbows to look at me, his voice and expression smug.

“Good enough.” I lost the battle I’d been having with myself and pressed my hips up into his. “Can you do better?”

“I might need more than ten minutes.” He sat up and swung his legs off the bed to remove the condom.

“Take all the time you need to get it right.” I brushed a hand along his back, feeling the muscles passive now beneath his skin. “Maybe I could be your new project.”

He dropped the used condom on the nightstand. “You want to keep this up?”

I scrambled to sit up, hugging him from behind. “Yes. Yes! Did you think I only wanted you for a night?”

“The way you were talking ...”

“Because there’s someone else doesn’t mean I don’t want you.”

“How does that work?”

“It’s like this—we’re friends, right?”

He nodded.

“But you’re not my only friend. We’re climbing partners, but you’re not my only climbing partner. We’re lovers—”

“But I’m not your only lover,” he finished. “I get it.”

“You wouldn’t really want me to be your girlfriend. Do you want to bring me home to Mom and Dad? Take me out on double dates with your friends?”

He grimaced. “If I say no, I sound like an asshole.”

“You don’t have to say no, because I’m not asking to be your girlfriend.”

Any other guy would be jumping at what I was offering, right? I had to find the only sexually conservative twenty-five-year-old climber in the history of sex and climbing.

“So just this?” He gestured at the condoms.

“This and everything we already had.”

“This was nice.” He came to me, pulling me down onto the bed so I lay against his side. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. I didn’t like drunken sex with strangers, but ...” He sighed. “I seem to be sober, and you’re not a stranger, and I liked this very much.”

“So did I, especially that last time.”

“I thought you liked it.” He grinned like any healthy red-blooded American male who’d made someone scream with pleasure would.

“So we’re OK?”

“It’s that guy, isn’t it? The one you brought to the gym that day. I saw how he was touching you.”

“Nate, yes.”

“Don’t need to know his name.”

“You already knew it.”

He shrugged.

“I think I told you that I’m separated. You don’t need to know my husband’s name if you don’t want to.”

“You sleeping with him too?”

“Definitely not.”

“Any others?”

“I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“Oh, really? That felt on purpose.” He didn’t sound angry. His hand stroked my stomach lightly, his cheek nuzzled against the top of my head.

“Well, yes, that I did on purpose, but getting involved with two guys in the first place was more of an accident. I like him. I like you.”

And I can’t have either of you for real, I thought.

“If you want me, you can have me,” Derek kissed the top of my head. “How can I say no?”

Chapter 16

My eyes were gritty, my shoulders sagged. It had been a long day at work following a late night. Derek hadn’t left until two or three and even then my mind had refused to settle into sleep.

I kicked off my heels as soon as I walked through the door, tossing my pocketbook on the table in the entryway. Pulling free the clips that held my hair off my face, I headed upstairs to change. My plans for the evening included a bubble bath, a romance novel, and an early night.

The doorbell rang behind me. I paused mid-step and considered ignoring it. Jehovah’s Witnesses? Someone who happened to be in the neighborhood repaving driveways and would do mine for half price while they were there? Shirley from across the street with flyers for the annual block party? Whoever it was, I wasn’t interested. As I resumed my trudge up the stairs, the bell rang again.

With a sigh I turned and headed back to the door, my quads screaming with every step down. All that walking uphill with a pack that I’d done that weekend had translated into pain when walking downhill today.

I opened the door, a frown already in place for whoever was keeping me from my bubble bath. On my porch stood a man in brown slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a tie that was too short and too fat for the last twenty years.

“Melissa Wells?”

I agreed warily, waiting for the sales pitch to follow. Without another word, he handed me a manila envelope and turned and left.

I carried the envelope into the living room where sunlight streamed in through the picture window. Inside were a handful of pages stapled together, the first page of which was titled Summons. I was being sued. Confused, I flipped to the next page. Divorce Complaint.

Alex had filed papers. He was suing me for divorce.

I sat down, my hand groping blindly for the arm of the couch to guide me as my eyes scanned the other pages—five sheets of paper that laid out the end of my marriage. A divorce is being sought because, the form asked. Alex had checked the box labelled This marriage has broken down irretrievably. My marriage had broken down irretrievably.

I leaned back into the couch, its overstuffed cushioning swallowing me like a hug. I pulled my feet up and wrapped my arms around my legs, resting my cheek on my knees. Outside, someone was mowing their lawn, the buzz of the motor approaching and then receding.

Our lawn service came on Tuesdays during the day, every Tuesday like clockwork. Good people. One of Alex’s co-workers had recommended them, the one with the tattoo curling up out of the neck of his dress shirt. Odd for a lawyer to have a visible tattoo. Sometimes people got them when they were young and came to regret them. I didn’t have any tattoos. Alex either. Nate either, which was unusual at his age, maybe because he’d have to cover them on stage, or maybe due to a characteristic lack of commitment. Derek had a dragon wrapping around his left calf and some sort of Asian character on his right shoulder. I’d have to ask him what it meant. I supposed I’d see him climbing tomorrow. We hadn’t really discussed next steps.

Next steps.

My stomach growled. I picked my head up and looked out the window. The sun was setting; a dim orange dusted the horizon. The lawn mower had stopped. I lowered my feet to the floor and felt blood rush back into my legs. I turned on the lamp on the end table next to me. The light reflected off the papers I’d let drop there. I looked away from them, back to the setting sun. It took a long time for the sun to set, not like a light snapping off—a patient, progressive settling.

“I’m not sure we should be married anymore,” Alex had said, standing next to that same window. The sun streaming through it had sparkled in his still-damp hair. It had been three days before his birthday, four days before Valentine’s Day. I’d already bought the presents, wrapped them, stashed them—a high-tech running watch for his birthday and his favorite socks for Valentine’s Day. The gifts lingered unopened in the back of my closet still, one in blue paper, one in red.

I’d sat here—this cushion of the couch, the one that was mine when we watched movies together, Alex on his end of the couch, me on mine, perhaps a bowl of popcorn balanced on the cushion between us. I’d sat here—this cushion of the couch—and Alex had said he wasn’t sure we should be married anymore. That was the day the divorce started, not today.

My stomach gurgled more insistently. I went into the kitchen and opened doors randomly and was confronted by dusty cabinets and a cavernously empty refrigerator. Grocery shopping was a mundane chore, easily overlooked in the excitement of seduction.

In the freezer I found a frozen dinner left over from a previous diet attempt. Five and a half minutes later I was shoveling two hundred and fifty calories of spongy spaghetti and spongier squash into my mouth with an enthusiasm born of hunger. Having disposed of that, I browsed through the cabinets a second time and located a dusty box of protein bars—one of Alex’s former health kicks. After two bars, my stomach was no longer the part of me that hurt the worst.

Wishing there was wine in the house, I made myself a cup of tea and carried it up to the bathroom for that bubble bath I’d been looking forward to, my feet dragging on the stairs. As I waited for the tub to fill, I stripped, catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror.

My cheeks and nose glowed red from the weekend sun. My bangs had grown long enough to tuck behind my ears. My face revealed my weight loss through a narrower chin and more sharply defined cheek bones, and when I lifted an arm to reach towards my face in the mirror, a slight ridge of muscle raised along my shoulder. A healthy, fulfilled Melissa looked back at me with sad eyes.

Maybe Nate would come over, I thought. I ran back down the stairs, not bothering to grab a robe, my thighs complaining about the quickness of my steps. I found my phone and pulled up Nate’s number. When his voice mail recording kicked in, I hung up. Nate wouldn’t listen to a voice mail, but he’d see I called.

I sank into the hot water, the phone close enough to reach but out of danger. I leaned my head back against the spa pillow Alex had bought me for Christmas a few years ago. We’d always intended to redo the bathroom someday so that I could have a real spa. The pillow was meant to bridge the gap until then. Children, a spa. I’d put off someday too late.

Where are you Nate? I need you.

The phone rumbled against the tile floor, wind chimes playing. I picked it up and read his message: “Rehearsal. Call after.”

I tried to appreciate that he’d taken the time to acknowledge my call, but words on a screen couldn’t begin to ease the ache. I needed physical presence, a man’s arms. A hug. I needed a hug.

I wrapped my arms around myself, my hands feeling the unaccustomed strength of my own biceps.

Derek, I thought. I sat up and grabbed for my phone. My thumb reached for the Contacts icon to look up his number even as I realized I didn’t have it. I’d slept with a man whose phone number I didn’t know. Whose last name I didn’t know, if it came to that. Only Katrina and I had linked to each other on Facebook. The others were no more than first names and climbing resumes to me.

I picked up my tea and closed my eyes. Derek would come if only I could summon him. I summoned him mentally, fixing my mind on the image of him kneeling naked beside the tub, rubbing my feet, his serious brown eyes looking up into mine.

The phone rang. I scrambled for it. Nate. Maybe Derek—he’d figure out how to find me. I accepted the call faster than my mind could process the name on the screen.

“Hey,” I said, pushing warmth into my voice.

“Hi,” Alex said warily.

“Oh.”

“Not who you thought it was, I guess.”

“I didn’t look,” I admitted.

“I thought we should talk.”

I sighed. Might as well get it over with. The tub hadn’t been working anyway.

“I’ll call you back in five minutes.” I’d be damned if I was going to discuss our divorce naked in a bubble bath.

“Melissa.”

“I will,” I insisted. “I need five minutes.” I hung up on him before he could argue.

Out of the tub, dried and cozy in pajamas, I wished for the second time that there was wine in the house and made a second cup of consolation tea. I curled up in one of the easy chairs—intentionally avoiding the fateful couch cushion—and called Alex.

“Thank you,” he said when he answered.

“I’m sorry I’ve been ducking you.”

“I’m sorry I had papers served on you without warning.”

“Well, you did tell me to get a lawyer.”

“Yeah.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I didn’t want to get a lawyer. I didn’t want to fight Alex.

“I don’t really want you to get a lawyer,” Alex said. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“I don’t want to fight you either.”

“I was mad about ... the condoms. Not mad. Jealous.”

“You—”

“I know, Melissa.” His voice was heavy and tired. “I know. I was still jealous, OK?”

“OK.” I wished we could comfort each other the way we always had after a fight—Alex would draw me into him, his broad chest covering mine, his cheek resting on the crown of my head. I’d wrap my arms around him, my hands reaching up to spread over his shoulder blades, my cheek against his collar bone.

I comforted him as best I could by phone. “I’m sorry about what I said the other day. I was angry, so I was mean.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t deny that I’d been mean. “Did you ... ? No, never mind.”

I let it drop. Whatever he’d been about to ask was best left unanswered. There was nothing about Nate or Derek I could honestly tell him that would lessen his jealousy or soothe his ego.

“We need to figure some things out,” Alex said after a moment. “Financially.”

In all this time, nothing had changed. My paycheck went into my bank account and Alex’s went into his. Automatic transfers moved money from our individual accounts into a joint account and other automatic transfers paid the common bills—mortgage, utilities, landscaping. For four months I’d been the only one living here, but we’d both been paying the bills.

“I can’t keep paying double rent,” he said.

“I don’t even know where you’re living.”

“I have a studio on the other side of town. Small, ugly, and loud, with no off-street parking. I figured it’d do for the short term, but this isn’t going to be short term, is it?”

“I guess not.”

“I’d like to upgrade, and even this place is tough with half my paycheck going into the joint account.”

As a couple, Alex and I led a financially comfortable life. We’d married the summer after our graduations—mine from undergrad and Alex’s from law school. Although we carried masses of student loan debt between us, our starting salaries made even those early years reasonable, and things had only improved from there.

After a few years, we’d bought this house. No starter house for us. This one had everything we needed to raise our two point five children: a fenced-in yard in a safe neighborhood, four bedrooms, and a finished basement for a playroom.

“I can’t afford this place myself,” I said, working through some quick math. As a couple, we were well-off. Individually, the situation was trickier.

“I know. That’s why I haven’t changed anything up to now.”

“I’ve got to move.”

“We don’t have to decide anything tonight. I’m sorry. If there was a way to keep you there ...”

“But there’s not. Not on my own salary alone.”

“Look, don’t do anything drastic yet. What I’m proposing is we use savings to pay the mortgage until the divorce is final. It’s fair that our joint money pays the mortgage because when we sell the house, we’ll split the profit.”

“I guess so.” I hadn’t thought that far ahead—an actual divorce, the actual splitting of assets—mine and his as separate piles. “I mean, technically, you’ve always paid more into the joint account.”

“That’s what a marriage is, Melissa. What we own, we own together. Let’s keep it simple. We’ll split the house and the savings. You keep your 401k and your car and I’ll keep mine, and that’s about it, I guess. It really is simple,” he concluded, sounding as surprised as I felt.

I ticked off our shared life on my fingers: one house, one joint savings account, one joint checking account. Divide down the middle and walk away.

“Like you said, we don’t have to figure it all out tonight.” My head hurt and my tea was cold again. “That’s fine about keeping your paycheck. It’s fair. I’ll move some of the savings into the checking account tomorrow to make sure we’re covered.”

“Thanks. It’ll be nice to get out of this dump. I’ll start looking at options.”

“I will, too.”

“No hurry. It doesn’t make any sense for you to move out until we’re ready to sell. Unless you’ve got some place to go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know. If there’s some guy you’re looking to move in with. Then I could stay in the house.”

“There’s no guy I’m moving in with. Why don’t you move in with one of your women?”

“I’m not seeing anyone seriously.”

“Well, neither am I.”

I heard him sigh through the phone.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I pictured his sorry face: eyes closed, forehead lined with scowl grooves, his mouth a grim line. “Jealousy again. I know you think I deserve for this to be hard, but it’s hard.”

“It’s hard for me, too.”

“Then why are we doing this?”

“You’re asking me why? You’re the one who said we should get divorced. You’re the one who filed papers.”

“Maybe I’m hoping you’ll say no, try to talk me out of it. Maybe I want you to fight, for God’s sake.”

“Fight your lovers for you, Alex? A sexy cat fight over you, is that what you were hoping for? Fingernails and lipstick and dresses getting ripped like Jerry fucking Springer?”

“No.” His voice was flat, the enthusiasm drained out of it.

“Then what?”

“Never mind.” He breathed heavily into the phone. “Look, you know you have to file a response to the summons, right?”

“I can read.”

“OK, well, if you need help or anything ...”

He might be a lawyer, but he wasn’t my lawyer. I looked at the clock. Rehearsal should be out by now. Nate would be calling any minute.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’m expecting a call.”

We exchanged curt goodbyes and hung up. I ran my thumb over the screen of my phone, waiting for it to ring. When it didn’t, I took it upstairs to my bedroom.

With all our pillows piled behind me, I picked up the book I’d been reading—a new romance novel from one of my favorite authors. I would have been enjoying it if the hero weren’t so annoyingly reminiscent of Alex. Every time the author described his tall, wide-shouldered frame, an image of Alex popped into my head. The guy was even named Alec, as though to taunt me.

The heroine had long, swinging blonde hair and perfect C-cup breasts and might as well have been named Emily, although her name was actually Bree.

Alec was cooking Bree dinner because he was an enlightened man with skills. Alex had made me dinner once too, mostly as an excuse to get me into his apartment.

Alec made Bree homemade pasta with sautéed vegetables. Alex had burnt some pork chops and served them with frozen not-quite-heated-through french fries.

Alec set the table with scented candles. Alex and I ate in a haze of greasy, pork-scented smoke.

Alec fed Bree bites of chocolate torte off his own fork. Alex accidentally upset the card table we were eating at, spilling the remains of my pork chop into my lap, saving me from having to eat it.

Then he’d brought out one of his sweatsuits for me to change into and I’d snuggled into him on his futon which was still, at that point, set up like a couch, feeling warm and comfortable and desirable even in an over-large man’s sweatsuit because his eyes told me I was.

We’d finished the bottle of wine I’d brought—thank God I hadn’t left that part of the date up to him—sitting right up next to each other, hips jammed together, my knees curled up into his thighs, watching each other over the rims of our juice glasses, like Alec and Bree watched each other over the rims of Wedgwood crystal.

When the wine was gone, I’d said that perhaps I should go and he’d taken my glass and put it on the ugly box-like thing that served as a coffee table—much as Alec took Bree’s glass and put it on the mahogany side board—and he kissed me. It wasn’t our first kiss, but it was our last as non-lovers. I’d known when I’d agreed to dinner where the date would end—in the unfurled futon.

Bree was more resistant. She would only let Alec kiss her for so long before her eyes started spitting fire, which was something her eyes did a lot. Bree wasn’t worried that if she didn’t put out, she’d lose this guy who was smart and funny and good looking with a bright future. Bree had some sort of reason for not wanting to be with this guy who was smart and funny and good looking with a bright future, which I’d lost track of. There was always a reason or there wouldn’t be a book, but I’d had no reason, no reason at all, to not want to be with Alex. He was smart and he was funny and he was good looking and he did have a bright future.

When my friends and I had played Dream Date—conniving to concoct the perfect man out of pink-backed pieces of cardboard—it was Alex I’d built over and over. He was even tall, a fact I rationally knew to be of no importance whatsoever, but there it was. And his eyes were a dreamy hazel green and his smile was an even white and his hair curled up at the edges when he went too long between haircuts. And he loved me.

He loved me with an all-consuming desire like Alec loved Bree. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do without me. His eyes gazed yearningly into mine, his lips murmured passionate words into my ear, his strong arms trembled with barely-controlled restraint against my back as he pressed me to him.

I hadn’t known fuck-all about love, I thought, tossing the book away from me. I’d known what a man was like on the hunt because these books had described it for me and called it love. I’d known what it was like to have a man desire you, and to desire him because he desired you and because he was perfect and you wanted perfect, wanted someone to write “happily ever after” on your life story and close the book before you could turn the page.

What sucked about losing Alex, because it did suck. It really sucked. What sucked about losing Alex wasn’t losing the Alex who’d seduced me on his futon after a few glasses of wine. It was losing the Alex I’d come to know since then, the Alex who was so much more than Alec because he didn’t stop after two hundred and fifty pages and couldn’t be assembled from interchangeable pieces of shellacked paperboard.

My phone chimed from underneath the book I’d thrown on top of it. Nate.

“Sorry went late. C u thurs”

He hadn’t even called to say it. I was involved with two guys and the best they could deliver when I needed consolation was a semi-literate text message. Alex had been more comforting than that. At least, in his practical way, he’d tried.

Chapter 17

By the time I saw Nate on Thursday, my anger at him for not coming over Monday had dissipated. He had Derek to thank for that. When I got to the gym Tuesday night, Derek was sitting on the front step, his phone in his hand. His face brightened when he saw me.

“I don’t have your number,” he said.

“I know.” I sat next to him and fished out my own phone so we could exchange numbers.

“I would have called.”

“Thanks.” I tilted my chin up to him, expecting a kiss.

He pulled his chin back, glancing around. “I don’t know if ...”

“I understand,” I said, by which I meant that I now understood how Nate felt when I did the same thing to him. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t advertise.” My mood, which had gone up when he’d been so eager for my for phone number, dipped.

“You want to climb, right? If we start kissing, I won’t want to climb.” He stood up and opened the door for me. “Now that I have your number, we can talk about where to climb so we’re not stuck in here on a beautiful day like today.” The door swung shut and the gloom of interior lighting settled around us.

Later he followed me home and restored my bedroom to a place I wanted to be, leaving only when I physically pushed him out. When I paused in shutting the door to catch a last glimpse of him, he stepped back towards me and I had to shut it right in his face to stop him. I’d leaned against the closed door, wondering if he was leaning on the other side.

So when Nate approached me at rehearsal Thursday, I turned my face up to his without any reproach and enjoyed the brief but deep kiss.

“Do you know how long it’s been?” he asked, rubbing his chin against mine, his arms still wrapped around me.

Longer for you than for me, I thought.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Donna said, bouncing up to hug me. “How was the climbing trip?”

“Very nice.” I peered up at Nate from under my eyelashes.

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

“What?” Donna asked.

“Nothing. Nate thinks he can read minds.”

“I can read your mind, sweetheart. You’re not a very good actress, remember?” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll let you girls catch up.”

“What was that all about?”

I debated answering her. On the one hand, what was known couldn’t be unknown, and Donna would be insufferable with the knowledge. On the other hand, it was hardly worth sleeping with two different twenty-five-year-olds if you couldn’t tell somebody about it.

“Have I ever mentioned Derek?”

“I think so. Climbing dude.”

“Hot, young climbing dude.”

“Lissie!” Donna had picked up my theater nickname. “Did you mix a little horizontal mambo into your vertical adventure?”

I nodded.

“What about Nate?”

“What about him? He didn’t want an exclusive arrangement, so: non-exclusive.”

Donna laughed and pulled me in for another hug. “You go, girl. That’ll show him.”

“I don’t think he really cares.”

Since he’d walked away, my eyes had been following him. Not once had he turned back towards me. Now he was sitting on top of his character’s desk talking, of all people, to Deb. She was standing in front of him holding a bundle of papers in front of her chest like a shield, but she was talking back. They wore the same very slight smile—polite but tentative.

“So how’s the show?” I turned intentionally away from Deb and Nate.

“I think it’s pretty good, but who am I to judge? Wait until you see my costume. It’s like 1950 meets 2150—this adorable silver suit with lapels like wings and the steepest heels. I’ll tower over everyone. Wayne says maybe in 2150 secretaries have all the power. Nate is fantastic, by the way. He’s like Humphrey Bogart squared. If you decide you’re done with him—”

“I’m not.”

“I’m only kidding. Actually ...”

“Hmm?” I realized my gaze had drifted back to Nate and Deb. What could they be talking about? I turned my head back to Donna.

“Maybe Wayne.”

“You and Wayne?” I remembered Wayne as the father in the last show—a beaten-down man lost in the face of his wife’s decline—but he was directing this show.

“Maybe,” she said. “Taking things slow for a change.”

Good advice I hadn’t been following. I looked around the room and found Wayne in the audience seating, a pad balanced on his knee. Around him stood a cluster of actors listening. I’d seen him in his street clothes before but had never paid him much attention. He was a bit older than me and Donna, but not as old as he’d appeared in stage makeup.

As I watched him, his eyes flicked up and found Donna. He smiled and waved her over. She squeezed my arm and went to him.

A few minutes later, the stage manager called the actors up on the stage for warm-ups and Deb came over to sit with me in the audience.

“Nate had some good ideas about the lights for the end of Act I,” she said. She showed me the sequence in her copy of the script. “See where the segue into the fifth dimension happens? Wayne wants some kind of lighting effect there. Nate says his character causes the shift, which I didn’t pick up from the script. What he suggests is we hit him hard right on the forehead—with light I mean—and then he does this swooping thing—” she mocked a sort of sideways throwing motion “—and we roll the lighting effect—a color change, I’m thinking—across the stage. Like he threw it.”

“We can do that?”

“I think so.” She picked up the light plot we’d been working on—a large sheet of graph paper on which was laid out the set with our planned lighting design drawn in on top. “We’ll have to be really exact with the timing—us and Nate—but he’s easy to work with that way.”

“How about that light on his forehead?” I asked. “You haven’t shown me anything that would make a beam that small.”

“We might have to put you in the audience with a flashlight.”

I gaped at her and she laughed.

“Only kidding. I think I have something in the light booth that’ll work but we’re going to have to be very precise with it. Luckily Nate knows how to hit a mark.” Suddenly Nate was her hero. “If there’s a spotlight, you can bet he’ll be in it.”

Or perhaps not.

Wayne called the rehearsal to order. Deb and I watched with our heads together, comparing our design for each scene to the actors’ actual places and movements.

“I think we’re in good shape,” Deb said when the rehearsal ended. “Tomorrow we’ll hang that forehead light and re-cable these instruments for the color shift so they’re all on separate dimmers.” She looked up at the ceiling then back down to the stage. “I think it’ll work.” She mimicked the swoosh movement that Nate made at the end of the first act. “Tell him I said it’s a good idea.”

“You can tell him.”

“Nah, I’m out of here. Best part about not being an actor is you don’t have to stick around for notes. Unless you’re dating an actor.” She smiled snarkily and left. I sat down to wait for Nate.

“You impressed Deb,” I told him as we walked out to the parking lot half an hour later.

“And not you?”

“I don’t know enough about lights to be impressed yet, but I’m impressed that you impressed Deb.” We stopped in front of my car.

“Never mind Deb. I’ve got my mind on other things.” He pulled my hips against his. I was startled to find him already erect. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I told you it had been a long time.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t last night?”

“Different.” He nuzzled into my neck. “Take me home before I do indecent things to you in the parking lot.”

I led the way to my house, wondering as I drove what had him so worked up. As soon as we got into the house he pushed me up the stairs and relentlessly down the hall to the bedroom.

“Is this about Deb?” I asked as he pulled my shirt over my head.

“Not about Deb.” He pulled my bra over my head too, not bothering to unfasten it.

“Then what?”

“Derek.”

“Derek?” I obeyed the push of his hand against my chest and sat back on the bed.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Nate!” I stopped his hands on my hips, forcing him to look up at me. “What?”

“It’s hot.” He knelt between my legs and kissed me slowly and deeply—his method of persuasion. “Tell me.”

“We had sex.”

“Details. While I go down on you.” He tugged at my pants again and I let him draw them down along with my panties. He put his nose between my legs and rubbed the bridge of it against my clit. “Tell me.”

“You want me to talk dirty to you?”

“Mm-hmmm,” he agreed, his nose buried deep into my slit now.

“Well, he’s very well hung.”

“Mmm?”

“Yeah.” I sighed in memory and because Nate was only nibbling at me lightly. “Beautiful cock. Round and thick with this giant head on it, like a big meatball on top of a stick of salami.” I giggled at the image.

“Does it feel different?”

I considered my answer carefully, then decided the hell with it. This was Nate and he’d asked for it. “It was amazing.”

“Tell me.”

“Stop talking.” I pushed his face into me. I waited until he picked up some rhythm and then I did my best—between moaning and embarrassment and just a little worrying about Nate’s ego—to describe how Derek’s cock made me feel.

Every time we fucked, he gained more control. The last time, he’d been able to push past my ability to take any more. I’d finally opened my eyes, the fog blown away by emotional exhaustion.

Derek’s thighs were along my sides, his butt on the bed between them, his body leaning away from mine as his arms around my legs pulled me relentlessly against him. He watched me from beneath his eyelids, intent.

“Enough,” I’d croaked. A triumphant smile had flashed across his face and almost immediately he’d come, his body dropping back even farther as his grip on my legs faltered.

“He made you say enough?” Nate asked, pulling me by the arms so I was lying on the bed next him. He picked my hand up and put it on his erection.

“You make me say enough all the time.”

“Not by fucking you.”

“For what it’s worth, his oral technique is lousy.” I no longer bothered to steer Derek in that direction.

“Oh yeah? That’s too bad.”

“Don’t you want to be good at something?”

“I am good at something. Tell me I’m not.”

I shook my head.

“It’s not a competition.” He wiggled his hips at me to suggest that I get on with the matter at hand. “Recovered yet?”

“OK, OK. Such a task master.” I smiled as I rotated into position to go down on him.

I licked him all over from balls to tip, getting his cock nice and wet. Nate put his arms behind his head and tilted his pelvis up at me, settling in to enjoy the ride. Taking him deeper into my mouth, I began the rhythm that I knew he liked, mixing it up now and then with more long licks or a circle around the head. Before long I felt the bubbling rush along his shaft that meant he was almost there.

“Wait.” His hands came down to hold my head still.

I looked up at him, his cock halfway out of my mouth.

“Feel it?”

I nodded.

“No hurry.” He took his hands off my head. “Draw it out.”

I’d never thought of not making him come before, but I could see the potential. I returned to my sucking, slowing it down, adding in more detours, using less rhythm. When I felt the rush rise up again, I slowed down even further. He groaned as if in agony, a lovely sound. I teased, keeping my mouth on the tip of his cock, letting my fingers trace lightly down his shaft. The slower I moved, the more he moved. His hands were in my hair, stroking blindly.

“Lissie, Lissie.” He gave another tortured moan when I moved quickly for three strokes before stopping entirely. “Sweet God.”

When I couldn’t move any slower, when his climax was inevitable, I drove him to it hard. He exploded in my mouth with a scream, his hands fisting in my hair, burying himself in me. After a moment he sagged back against the bed.

“Enough,” he said, laughing weakly. I sat up cross-legged between his legs and enjoyed my view. He was as sweaty as he usually made me, and his eyes looked as unfocused as I usually felt. I rubbed my hand along his thigh and he twitched again.

“Recovered yet?” I asked, turned on by his reaction.

“Definitely not.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me while his dick softened between us.

“Now?”

Chuckling, he rolled me over and slid down my body until his head was between my legs. I threaded a hand through his damp hair as he dug in.

Later, as I stroked Nate’s head on my chest, he brought up Derek again. “You could give him some guidance, you know, with his technique. You don’t have to accept it as bad.”

“I wouldn’t know how. I don’t know what you’re doing down there. I’m not that conscious.”

“You know what feels good and what doesn’t. Tell him.”

I didn’t answer, trying to imagine a conversation along those lines.

“If you don’t, it’s your own fault. At least tell me you’re not faking again.”

“Mm.”

“Lissie.” Nate brought a hand up to my breast. He rubbed the nipple idly with his thumb, silent for a moment. “Never mind,” he said at last. “It’s none of my business. Just remember, you get the sex you deserve.”

Chapter 18

After another long tech week, I was glad to be climbing again, and to see Derek again. The show had come off beautifully, an appreciative audience filling the seats opening night, laughing in all the right places.

I’d watched plenty of plays before coming to Central Playhouse, but I’d never given a thought to what the lights were doing. They went on and off, was about how much I knew. Watching our show, I could only see two things—lighting and Nate. When Nate pushed the action into the fifth dimension, and our light change swept across the stage with perfect precision, it was the climax of the show for me.

The experience was worth the time it had taken, but my body missed climbing and Derek.

“I doubt it’s going to rain at all,” Derek said in the gym parking lot, turning a sour face up towards the overcast but dry sky.

“Hello to you, too.”

“Hey.” He turned from me and walked towards the gym, leaving me to scramble behind him. We’d talked several times during the two weeks since I’d last seen him, but only briefly. The nights were late enough, and on some of them Nate had come home with me. He’d even fallen asleep beside me one night, though he was gone before I woke up in the morning.

“I get the feeling you’re angry,” I said when I caught up to Derek at the door.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, tossing his bangs back. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of me.” He opened the door and gestured for me to go in first.

The rainy forecast had packed the gym. The lobby was crowded with people waiting to sign in.

“Hey, Lissie,” Gary said when it was my turn. “I wondered where you’d been.”

I told him a little about the show I’d been working on.

“Maybe I’ll come see it. We’ll get a gang together. You’d go, right, Derek?”

Derek, who’d been scowling from the moment Gary greeted me, looked away in answer. Gary shrugged. I shrugged back. I stepped aside so Derek could scan his card while I gave Gary the details about show dates and times.

“I don’t know what Gary ever did to you,” I said when we were clear of him.

“He’s always hitting on you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Derek made a face at me.

“You know, I was looking forward to seeing you, but maybe I should climb with someone else if you’re going to be an ass all evening. “

He glared at me with sharp hostility, then slowly exhaled.

“Give me a minute.” He dropped his harness and disappeared.

I stayed where I was, wondering how long I was supposed to do that. Where had he gone? I dropped my harness next to his and went looking for him. It didn’t take me long to figure out where he was.

“Hi,” he said when I crawled in next to him under the bush. He put a hand on my cheek and leaned in to kiss me, first with sweet longing and then with increasing hunger.

“I’m sorry about being an ass,” he said when he broke the kiss.

“It’s OK.”

“I missed you.”

“That’s a lousy way to show it.”

“I know.” He kissed me some more, his arms coming all the way around me and beneath me, lifting, trying to get me into his lap.

“Derek!” I pushed against this chest. “How far do you think we’re going to go under a bush?”

He banged his head back against the wall in frustration, hard enough that it must have hurt. He reached a hand up to rub it and we both laughed.

“What are you doing under here?”

“Getting my head on straight. Sometimes I need a minute to center myself.”

“OK now?”

He nodded and we crawled out from under the bush and went back into the gym.

“Field trip!” Katrina squealed when she caught sight of me. “Gary says we’re going to see your show. Totally psyched. Then you’ve got to come to one of my competitions. Deal?”

“Sure. Who else is coming?”

“Everyone,” Katrina waved her arm around the gym. “Gary’s arranging it.”

Gary must have been busy because all night long people were asking me about it, and every time someone asked, Derek’s mood worsened. My glow from the kisses under the bush faded in the face of his rotten attitude.

When I’d had enough—my arms aching because I hadn’t climbed in two weeks and my smile strained by trying to pretend everything was normal—I took off my harness and told him I was leaving. He took his off, too.

“Does that mean you’re coming with me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Don’t come then.”

Derek dropped his head, standing silently in front of me, one hand clutching his harness, the other opening and closing, making his forearm tighten.

“Can I?” he asked at last.

“Derek—” I shook my head. “Come on, let’s go home.”

The last time Derek was at my place, the last time I’d seen him, I was racing the clock. Alex and I had been working our way through a set of do-it-yourself-divorce forms he’d downloaded off the internet. I was anxious to get rid of him before Derek stopped by after climbing, but Alex wasn’t cooperating.

“You know what this reminds me of?” he’d asked.

I shook my head, glancing out the dining room window at the rosy hue forming on the horizon. Derek would be packing up his gear.

“Doing the mortgage paperwork. That was the last time I filled out this many forms.”

We’d done the mortgage paperwork ourselves too, at a different dining room table, one covered in pits and scars and stains that his parents had unearthed from their garage when we first moved in together. We’d made a good team then, and we made a good team now. It wasn’t difficulty with the paperwork that was making the process take so long. It was Alex’s insistence on traveling down memory lane with every line item. Remember when we decided this or bought that?

Remember, remember, remember. I didn’t want to remember. Remembering what was meant accepting that it wasn’t anymore.

I’d been impatient with Alex’s dawdling that night because I was eager to spend time with Derek. I was a lot less eager about spending time with him tonight, given the mood he was in.

“A beer or something?” I asked, leading him into the living room.

When he shook his head, I sat down on my usual couch cushion and waited while he jiggled with nervous energy nearby.

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to see that show.”

“I guess you don’t have to.”

“Two weeks,” he said. “I’m just supposed to wait?”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I could have found some time. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal to you.”

“You found time to see him, I bet.”

“Nate?”

He scowled at me. “Yes, Nate.” He pronounced the name as if its rhyming with ‘hate’ was more than a coincidence.

“Is that what this is about?”

“No.”

“I think it is.”

“Two weeks, you didn’t have time to see me once, but you had plenty of time to see Nate.” That twist on his name again.

“Yes, I saw Nate. He was at the theater. I was at the theater. I saw him.”

“And fucked him.”

“Yes, and fucked him. And worked like a dog and stayed up way too late every night and did some things I’m pretty proud of—scary, new, amazing things—and helped create something with a bunch of other people working to create something, and filed some divorce papers, and went to work every day, and in my spare time, I fucked Nate.”

He was quiet then and I was quiet too, our anger freezing to the snapping point in the coldness of our silence.

“Derek.” I paused, not happy about what I was going to say, not sure I had the strength to say it. I sucked in my breath and let the words out with it. “Maybe this is a bad idea. You and me. This situation. It’s making you very unhappy.”

“No.”

“It is. I’m sorry. It’d be easier on you if—”

“No!” He paced back and forth across my living room—quick, sharp steps to nowhere. “Don’t do this, Lissie.”

“I feel like I’m just going to keep hurting you.”

“Don’t. Please.” He came back to me in a rush and knelt on the floor in front of me. “Don’t say that. Don’t do this. Please. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad at you. I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”

He buried his head in my lap, his arms wrapping around my legs. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it anymore. I won’t be jealous. I promise.”

“Derek, baby, I’m not Emily. This won’t bring her back. You don’t have to do this.”

“Please.”

I couldn’t do it, couldn’t bear to break his heart—not like that. Even though I knew it wasn’t me he was trying to keep, he needed this chance to prove he could.

“Look at me.”

He picked up his head, his eyes wet with unshed tears. I ran my hand through his hair, stroking him, calming him.

“Remember that day I threw my shoe at you, trying to be funny, and I accidentally hit you in the eye with it?”

He nodded.

“It must have really hurt, right? You had a bruise here for a week.” I traced my thumb under his eye. “You never made a noise—swore you couldn’t even feel it. You remember that?”

He nodded again, his eyes never leaving my face.

“You did that for me, pretended it didn’t hurt. You can do this for me, too. You can be brave for me.”

He nodded a third time.

“Show me.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, they were clearer, the tears gone.

“How was the show?” he asked, his voice only a little strained.

“It was really good. We had a full house opening night and they loved it. Makes all the work seem worth it.”

“Tell me about the lights. I don’t know anything about theater lighting.”

I told him about the lights while he knelt at my feet. As I talked, his shoulders relaxed and he loosened the grip he had on my legs. When he smiled at something I said, I leaned forward and kissed him.

“Take me to bed. I’ve missed you.”

He stood and lifted me like he had that first day, carrying me up the stairs and into my room and laying me gently down on the bed. We lay on our sides face to face, kissing while we undressed around and through the clothes we tugged and shifted off each other.

When we were naked, he knelt beside me and ran his hands up and down my body, his eyes following them. I reached up to pull him down to me, but he caught my hands in his.

“Let me.” He began kissing his way down my body.

Uh oh, I thought. Here we go. How was I supposed to do this? When was I supposed to this? Should I correct him with his head between my legs? Bark instructions at him? Wait for a time when we weren’t having sex and bring it up all casually, like “Hey, did you know what you’re doing orally doesn’t work for me at all?” Could I communicate through wiggles and hand gestures? Because the words were horrible.

He nudged my legs apart with his head. I teetered between excitement and despair. His tongue was against me, poking at my clit.

Ask me, I begged him mentally. Please ask me what I want, so I can tell you. Don’t make me start the conversation.

I put my hand on his head and tried to push it down and in. I titled my hips. Briefly, there was alignment, but as soon as I relaxed, his head moved and my hips moved and everything was wrong again. I groaned in frustration. Derek picked up his head. I caved. Tonight was not the night. Now was not the time.

“You drive me crazy,” I said. “Come here.” I drew him into me, concentrating on the things we did well together—my tongue in his ear, his cock in my pussy.

Nate is wrong, I thought. I don’t have to fix Derek. I can enjoy him the way he is.

When we were done and I lay nestled against him, my head on his shoulder, blissfully content, he was quiet beneath me. My hand rubbed his chest as the silence drew out.

“Can I ask you something?”

I wished he wouldn’t.

“Do you not like it or do I not do it right?”

“Not like what?” Feigning ignorance.

“You know. The, um, oral thing.”

“I like it.”

“So then I don’t do it right.”

“I didn’t say that.” I scrambled to sit up. This was exactly what I’d been trying to avoid. Damn Nate for a troublemaker. “Nate says—”

“Nate?” The same anger flashed in his eyes.

“Stop it.”

He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He opened them again.

“What does Nate say?” This time he said ‘Nate’ like any person would say it, like it was just a name. I rewarded him with a smile and a kiss, though his response was lukewarm.

“He says that every woman is different, and what you learned for one woman might not work for another, so it’s not that you’re bad at it. You just maybe need to get to know me better.”

He tilted his head at me, considering.

“Like a route,” I said. “You can’t climb one route with another route’s beta, right?”

“OK. What’s your beta?”

“Well, since you ask ...” I grinned at him. “I did want to give you some tips, but I was afraid of hurting your feelings. I mean, it’s not that important. I love, love, love when you fuck me. And kissing you and touching you and just looking at you. You’re beautiful.” I leaned in and kissed him again. This time he kissed me back. “You don’t have to go down on me.”

“I want to. I just don’t know how. It’s not you. Emily never liked it either.”

“Nate would say that was Emily’s fault.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And now I knew what he meant. Here was Derek, defeated by an unspoken unawareness that he was falling short. Eager to do better, but without any guidance, he could only blame himself. I was failing him. As Emily had failed him. As I’d failed Alex. Shit.

“My fault.” I left Emily out of it. “You can’t know what I don’t tell you.”

“So tell me.”

I lay back into him so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes and did my best to tell him.

Chapter 19

“My mom and sister are here tonight,” I warned Nate during intermission. I’d seen them before the show. As  the light designer, I was free to mingle with the audience while Nate was safely trapped backstage in his futuristic Zoot suit. But after the show ... I was concerned.

“Cool,” Nate eyed himself in the makeup mirror. He was practicing debonair grins, trying to find one that didn’t make me giggle.

“Do you think we could be, um, discreet? I know we have a deal—”

“Mothers are excluded from that deal.”

“They are?”

“Definitely.” He tried another smirk, provoking another giggle. Donna found his Errol Flynn expressions dashing. Maybe I knew him too well.

“Well, that’s a relief. Thank you.” I tried to rub his back, but the enormous shoulder pads in his costume made it feel like I was massaging a Styrofoam pillow. “Will your mom come see the show?”

“She was here opening night. She always comes opening night.”

“Why didn’t you introduce me to her?” I’d certainly been planning to introduce Nate to my family. I just didn’t want him kissing me in front of them.

“Mothers are excluded.”

“Nate Abbott. You’re embarrassed.”

He shrugged.

“You are. You’re ashamed for your mother to know what you’ve been up to.” I’d finally found out where Nate drew the line. “I’m going to keep my eye out for her next opening night.”

“You want me to embarrass you in front of your mom tonight?”

“I’m not sure I’m as worried about it as you are.”

Nate gave me a sickly smile. Rebekah called places before he could respond, and I headed up to the light booth while he got in his place by the stage door.

So when I spotted Nate across the stage after the show, I hesitated to wave him over. My mother and Morgan had given me and Donna big hugs and heaps of praise. Donna had had her moment in the spotlight, showcasing how she made the lapels on her suit flap like wings by pressing a button in her pocket, and I’d made a stab at explaining what I’d been doing up in the light booth all night.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your leading man?” Morgan asked.

Donna, always eager to instigate drama, called him over before I could make up my mind. He shook hands with my mother and sister, standing closer to me than was necessary and flashing them his normal smile rather than one of those staged suave ones.

“You should be in the movies,” my mother told him.

“You were really very good,” Morgan agreed.

“I like your family,” Nate said. He put his arm around my shoulders casually, baiting me. “You enjoyed the show?”

“It was a little strange,” my mother said.

“But funny,” Morgan added.

“We’ll take that. What did you think of Melissa’s lights?”

“They don’t really understand the lights,” I said.

“Me neither. As long as you can see me, that’s all I care about.”

“You were very clear,” my mother confirmed.

“Well, then I guess she did a good job. I’ve got to go get this makeup off. Nice to meet you guys.”

“He seems nice.” My mother watched him walk away. “He has beautiful eyes, doesn’t he?”

I sighed. Of course Nate would charm even her.

Donna suggested we all go out for a drink. My mother begged off, but Morgan said she’d come if someone would drive her home. I agreed with reservations. I had an idea what kind of third degree was coming.

“We’re going out,” I told Nate after I’d shut down the light board.

“OK. Where to?” He was sitting on one of the backstage couches putting on his street shoes, his face clean and his Zoot suit hung up in its place on the costume rack.

“Not you and I. Me and Morgan and Donna.”

“Ah, you don’t want me there. I get it.”

“If you’re there, how can we talk about you?”

“Are you going to talk about me?” He smiled broadly.

“Not if I can help it, but I probably can’t.”

He pulled me into his lap and nuzzled his face into my neck, putting his hands in my hair and his lips on mine. He kissed me for a few minutes, driving up my heart rate and his, then kissed me some more until I felt sorry for everyone else in the green room.

“Call me when you’re on your way home. Maybe I’ll go out with Pete and Repeat.”

“You’ll make their night.”

As it happened, we all ended up at the same bar. Nate left us alone, only now and then casting a glance in our direction.

“Adorable,” Morgan said once we were settled with our Cosmopolitans at a high top. “Mom’s right—those eyes. And he’s obviously crazy about you. He can’t stop looking at you.”

“He’s trying to figure out if we’re talking about him.”

“Well, I guess we are. Here’s to hot young men.” Morgan lifted her glass towards Donna’s. They clinked as I frowned.

“What’s she all pissy about?” Morgan asked Donna. “She’s the one who’s sleeping with him.”

“She likes to pretend she isn’t,” Donna said. “She disapproves of herself. Drink up, Lissie. It’ll relax you.”

I drank up. There was nothing about having my lover and my sister in the same bar that was relaxing, but the Cosmo slid sweetly down my throat.

“Is it good?” Morgan asked me, leaning forward across the table.

“It’s pretty stiff.”

Morgan and Donna burst into laughter.

“She meant the sex,” Donna said when their laughter tapered off. “Not the drink.”

Morgan giggled and took another sip of her Cosmo. “The drinks are stiff. Is Nate?”

They laughed again, their heads tapping against each other. I caught Nate looking and returned his stare until he looked away.

“How are you two drunk already?” I asked.

“We’re not drunk,” Donna said. “We’re having fun, unlike you. Drink up.”

I took another drink, figuring I couldn’t beat them and might as well join them.

“Soooo?”

“It’s good,” I said. “The sex is very good.” I met Nate’s eyes across the room and felt the heat rise to my face.

“Better than Alex?”

“How’s your sex life, Morgan?”

She pulled back, sitting up straighter, the grin leaving her face. “Boring, if you must know. That’s why we’re talking about yours.”

“No, let’s talk about yours,” I said. “I want to know something. Will you tell me? Honestly. Will you tell me honestly?”

They looked at each other. “I think we need another round,” Donna said. “Bottoms up.”

Her drink was already empty. Morgan and I emptied ours under her watchful eye, then I went up with Donna to fetch a fresh round. The theater table was rowdy behind us—nothing louder than a bunch of actors after a show.

“All right,” Donna said when we’d each taken a good-sized sip of our second drink. “Shoot.”

“Have you ever faked it?” I went straight to the point.

“You go first,” Morgan said, punting to Donna.

“Sure,” she said. “Who hasn’t?”

“Did you with Shawn?”

“Not with Shawn. Sex wasn’t our trouble. Our trouble was that we hated each other, but the sex was fantastic. But since then? Sometimes it’s not worth the bother. Like, I know it’s not going to work and I just want him to quit.”

“Me too,” Morgan said. “I mean, not all the time.” She took a big gulp of her drink.

“With John?”

“With who else? Yes, John. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that I don’t care that much. It’s not worth it to me most of the time to get into it. It takes so much effort.”

When Nate and I had sex—or when Derek and I had sex—it was an all-night event: foreplay, sex, after-play turning into foreplay again. It was exciting, but how long could you keep it up? Alex and I had had a routine that didn’t exceed fifteen minutes.

“Do you fake it?” Morgan asked me.

“Not with Nate.”

“But with Alex?”

“Yes. Always.”

“Always?” Donna squealed, her voice disapproving. “He’s got a rocking body.”

“Donna, that’s her husband you’re talking about.”

“Ex-husband,” Donna said.

“Husband,” I corrected. “Papers just got filed. Anyway, his body’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Except we’ve established he’s not hard to look at. So what’s the issue?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I sipped at my drink.

“You slept together before you got married, right?” Donna looked at me incredulously.

I nodded. Another sip.

“And you married him? Without ever? Ever?”

“It didn’t seem important. It wasn’t his fault. I loved him.”

“Well, sure,” Morgan said.

“Then whose fault was it?” Donna asked.

“Mine?”

Donna rolled her eyes and turned away from me, tipping her drink up to her mouth, emptying it.

“It’s not like he didn’t try. I never gave him a chance. I was never honest.”

“Well,” Donna said.

“You have to be honest,” Morgan said, “if he’s trying.”

“You just said you fake it with John.”

“Sometimes, I said. Only because I’m too tired to bother, not because I couldn’t.”

“So I’m the only loser, the only one who fucked it up this bad.”

“No one’s saying that,” Donna said. “What we’re saying is ... what we’re saying is that we need more drinks. Because these are empty.”

“We’ve already had two.”

“Exactly.” She teetered off to the bar with our empty glasses.

“Is that what happened with Alex?” Morgan asked. “Sex?”

“Kind of.” As always, the tears gathered in my eyes. “The sex wasn’t working out and so he ...”

“Well. That’s not right. Of course.” She pulled a package of tissues out of her purse and thrust it at me. “Here.” She watched while I dabbed at my eyes, trying not to spoil the mascara I’d put on for our girls’ night out. “Men do need to feel ... what’s the word? Potent.”

I sniffled.

“Obviously you know how to make Nate feel potent. I’ve never seen anyone swagger around more potently. Sit up, he’s coming over.”

Nate had two of our drinks while Donna balanced the third in both hands.

“She looked like she needed help,” Nate said to explain his presence at our table. “And you all look like you need a ride home, especially once you finish these.”

“I’m fine,” Donna said. “I’m going to take my drink over there.” She carried it carefully away, heading for the theater table.

“Well, she’s not my worry,” Nate said. “You’re my worry.” He slid into the empty seat and put an arm around my shoulders, hugging me into him. “And you’ve been talking about Alex.”

I nodded.

“I thought you were going to talk about me.”

“We did that, too.”

“Well, I hope it was Alex who made you cry, not me.”

“I’m fine.”

“Meaning shove off.” He put a finger under my chin and tilted it up for a kiss.

“Hey.”

“Sisters are part of the deal.” He kissed me. “Now don’t go driving off anywhere without me.” He pushed my drink in front of me and sauntered away.

“He does care about you,” Morgan said. “I’m glad. I mean, you can fuck whoever you want, but it’s nicer when it’s someone who cares about you.”

“Yeah.” I sipped carefully from the rim of my drink, trying not to spill any.

Morgan toyed with hers. “So you and Alex,” she said. “You didn’t have chemistry maybe.”

Alex’s mouth on mine, his hands sliding up my back beneath my shirt, my breath coming in gasps.

“Sex isn’t everything anyway.”

Alex’s naked body on top of me, touching me everywhere, his lips against my neck, my head arched back to give him access.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

His cock filling me, my hips thrusting up to meet it.

“Sometimes it just takes the right guy to push your buttons.”

Climax hovering out of reach, needing something more, needing more time.

“You’ll find it.”

Needing, not asking, not trying, quitting.

“Melissa?”

“Sorry, what?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Wishing I’d done things differently.”

“Alex seemed like a really good guy. No one thought you were making a mistake when you married him.”

“Not that. Marrying him wasn’t the mistake.” I took a big gulp of my drink even though I already felt unsteady. If Nate was going to drive me home, I might as well make the most of it.

“Melissa?”

“Hey, you don’t get to get out very often. You should be having fun. Come meet the gang.” I picked up my drink and Morgan’s hand and dragged her over to the theater table.

Chapter 20

He came. When the noisy group of climbers burst through the doors of the theater, full of energy and laughter, there in the back was a much quieter Derek.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said into his ear as I hugged him. “You OK?”

“OK enough.”

I hugged the rest of the group and then led them into the auditorium, making sure they found good seats. Backstage, I considered asking Nate for a Derek exception to our deal but decided not to. Since my little chat with Donna and Morgan, I’d been trying harder not to censor my life.

After the show, I accepted congratulations from my friends and introduced everyone to Donna. Noticing that Derek’s eyes were following Nate around the theater, I figured I might as well get it over with and waved him over.

“Hey, Jenny, right?”

Of course Nate would remember Jenny. Her hair was down tonight—a glowing fall of blonde silk—and she was wearing makeup and a skirt. She was stunning. Nate shook her hand.

“And Katrina, Gary.”

OK, so he had a good memory for names and faces, not just faces framed in blonde hair.

“Hey, Derek. Glad you could make it.”

Derek shook Nate’s hand with a cool smile, acknowledging the former acquaintance.

“You haven’t been back to the gym,” he observed. “Didn’t like it?”

“Rehearsals. Maybe now the show is over, I can get back there, but what I’d really like to do is climb outside. Sounds way more fun.”

“It is,” Jenny said. “If it’s not raining, we’re almost always outside. You can come with us sometime.”

“You’d need your own gear,” Derek said. “No rentals outside.”

“We can work something out,” Gary offered, “For a friend of Lissie’s. Swing by the gym before you go and I’ll hook you up.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Derek scowl at Gary, whether because this was another example of Gary ‘flirting’ with me or because Gary was enabling Nate to climb with us, I couldn’t tell.

“How about you, Donna,” Jenny asked. “You going to try too?”

“Not me. You people are crazy. How can you stand being up in the air like that?”

“How can you stand being in front of an audience like that?”

“I guess only Nate’s got the guts to do both,” Donna said. “Hey, you guys want to come to the closing night party?”

The climbers discussed the idea without much enthusiasm. Some of them were getting up early to climb and others protested that it was already past their bedtime.

“This is why climbers aren’t theater people,” Donna said finally. “You’re all morning people.”

“And you’re all night owls,” Gary said.

“What does that make Lissie?”

“Tired.”

“Let me get my makeup off then,” Nate said, “so we can get to the party before you crash.” He swooped in for a quick kiss, then waved goodbye to the crowd and walked off towards the green room.

“Are you guys together?” Jenny asked me, her eyes still tracking Nate.

“Kind of. I mean, he’s available if you’re interested.” I was walking a fine line staking a claim to Nate with Derek standing right there. His fists were clenched at his sides, the expression on his face a cross between fury and nausea.

“Just curious.” Jenny continued to look beyond me in the direction Nate had gone. Derek turned his back on us and moved towards the exit.

“Hey,” I called, catching up to him. “You want to come over tonight?”

“You’ve got a party to go to. Besides, it’s Nate’s night.”

“I’ll talk to him. He wouldn’t mind.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t,” Derek said with an unpleasant smile, his gaze fixed on something behind me.

I turned and saw Nate and Jenny together across the room. She leaned against the set with her foot on the wall behind her and her head turned up to his. He had his phone out and was entering something into it. It wasn’t hard to guess what.

“You want to come over or not?” I tried to meet Derek’s eyes but couldn’t quite manage it. He reached for me, then dropped his arms. Nate came up to us, tucking his phone into his pocket.

“Anyway,” Derek said. “Jenny’s waiting .” He nodded to Nate, and then to me, and left.

“I need to turn off the light board,” I told Nate.

What I really needed was a moment alone. I wheeled away from him, heading for the light booth. I was annoyed to find Deb up there shutting down the equipment. I stood watching her, wishing she’d leave, the silence dragging out.

“Going to the party?” she asked finally.

“Not sure.”

“Yeah, he can have that effect on you. “ She flipped off the last switch and turned around to look at me. “Sorry. None of my business. I saw ...” She gestured towards the window at the front of the booth that overlooked the stage where we’d been standing.

“Look,” I said, “Nate is free to do whatever he wants.”

“He always has been.”

“What did he do to you?”

“Nothing. He’s never done anything to me. I’ve never let him do anything to me. Why do you let him?”

“He’s never done anything to me either. I mean, not anything bad. He’s never done anything bad to me.”

“No? When you walked in here you looked like someone had punched you in the stomach and you’d like to punch him back.”

A cross between fury and nausea. I knew that face. But if Derek could be brave, I could too.

“I’m OK.” I sighed out a long breath. “It’s ridiculous, really. I’m the one who’s screwing around with someone else. Nate was probably just flirting. I don’t even know if he knows he’s doing it.”

“Wait. You’re what?”

“Yeah, that guy I was talking to?”

“The seriously cute one who looked like he wanted to crush Nate’s windpipe?”

I nodded.

“Lissie,” she breathed, “you’re my hero.”

~~~

“I think I understand why Deb doesn’t like you,” I told Nate when we got back to my house after the party. He angled his head at me like he was interested so I went on. “When you first met her, were you interested? Did you pursue her?”

He hesitated a moment. “Yeah.”

“And what happened?” I led the way up the stairs to my bedroom.

He shrugged. “Was I supposed to keep chasing after her if she didn’t want me to?”

“No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that while you were pursuing her, you were pursuing other people too.”

Nate sat down on my bed to take his shoes off. He looked tired. I went over to him and rubbed his forehead, brushing his hair back. He spread his legs and pulled me between his knees.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That women like to feel special. People like to feel special.”

“You’re special to me.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Isn’t it?”

I sat down on the bed next to him, feeling as tired as he looked. It was past one a.m. Fatigue lured me into the argument as though I hadn’t the strength to resist it.

“Do you have to do it in front of me?”

“You see the hypocrisy, right?”

“I didn’t choose for things to be this way. I would—”

“Would you?”

Would I? Would I go back to being a one-man woman if that one man were Nate? If I wanted only one man, Derek was willing to fill the role. Did that mean I wanted more than one man or did it mean I wanted a different man?

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Come here.” Nate put his arm around me. He kissed the top of my head. “I love you, Lissie.”

I pulled away to look at his face.

“No, don’t,” he said. “Don’t make anything of it. I just love you, that’s all.” He pulled me back into him, tucking me safely into his arms. “I just love you, just like this. Can that be OK?”

I wanted it to be OK, but it wasn’t.

Chapter 21

“Happy Anniversary.”

I lifted my glass towards the empty seat across from me. Knowing this date—Alex’s and my fifteenth anniversary—was coming, I’d planned a romantic candlelight dinner. For me and Nate.

It was Friday and Friday was Nate’s night, but earlier in the week he’d shrugged the night off in favor of some other plans he’d given me to understand I probably didn’t want to know more about.

My mother had invited me over, but my fear that she’d invite Alex as well was too realistic to ignore. Donna had a date with Wayne. Morgan had suggested that I come over and watch the kids while she and John went out since they were still married. In retrospect, it was the best offer I’d gotten and the one I should have taken.

Instead of playing Candy Land on the floor with Lyla and Tyler, I was alone with a bottle of wine and the first real meal I’d cooked since the day Alex moved out. Determined not to be a sad Sally, I’d gone ahead and made the menu I’d planned: sautéed shrimp and garlic, filet mignon, roasted fingerling potatoes, and asparagus. I’d carried my plate into the dining room, turned the pendant light down to its lowest setting, and completely failed to have a romantic evening with myself.

I cleared the dishes into the kitchen. Deciding to do something about the rest of the mess later, I refilled my wine glass, grabbed one of the éclairs I’d bought for dessert with my fingers, and carried them both into the living room. I snuggled into my corner of the couch and licked custard from my fingers as it oozed from the éclair with every bite—probably why people usually used a fork.

The sky outside was still bright with August evening sun. It wouldn’t be bedtime for hours. I toyed with the idea of calling Derek. He’d have been willing to sub in for Nate. Only the monstrous injustice of asking him to do that—fill in Nate gaps—had prevented me from asking.

Now, with the specter of long empty hours stretching before me, my resolve wavered. My finger hovered over the picture of his face on my favorites screen, then dove.

Sweet baby favorite, I thought, listening to the phone ring, then hmph, when I got his voice mail instead of his voice. No doubt Derek had ways to keep himself occupied on the weekend, not that I’d ever worried about it before.

I tried to remember what I used to do in the evening when Alex and I were married. We’d come home from work. One of us would cook; the other would clean up. And then what did we do with all those hours until bedtime? Not have sex, obviously.

Sometimes Alex had gone to the gym—or to get laid, as it turned out—but most nights we were on this couch. A little television, a little surfing, a lot of reading, and the occasional conversation about what I’d read or he’d seen, about who was doing what on Facebook or in the world, sharing opinions that were never far off from each other’s, sharing experiences that were never far off from the experiences we’d shared the night before. In retrospect, there might as well have been a neon sign flashing the word rut over our couch.

Bree’s Surrender lay on the end table where I’d left it the last time I’d dropped it. She and Alec had been on the verge of consummating their budding relationship, her clothes in disarray, the state of his clothes left to the reader’s imagination. I wondered why, if these books were written for women, there weren’t more descriptions of Alec’s chest than Bree’s. If Alec looked anything like the shirtless guy on the cover, his chest was worth a mention.

I picked up the book, finding the page I’d turned down to mark my place, more from habit than from any intention to return to it. I read a few lines, trying to immerse myself in the world of fantasy that had been my sex life since before I’d had sex—her panting breath, his masculine determination, their mutual, easily-attained and frequently-repeated bliss. With no experience or discussion, with no effort and the most minimal participation, Bree wallowed in Alec-induced ecstasy.

Long before meeting Alex, as an idealistic teenager, I’d drawn up the list of criteria my someday-husband would have to meet. I’d sealed the list and written “to my future self” on the envelope and stashed it in the box I referred to as my hope chest which included the napkins I’d embroidered in middle school and a set of Tupperware one of my aunts had inexplicably given me for a thirteenth birthday present.

The night before my wedding, I’d opened it. Expecting what, I wasn’t sure. Confirmation? A good laugh? The list had included a few of each. In addition to a bunch of cringe-worthy criteria like “good hair” and “drives a nice car,” there were a few that my adult self could support: funny, smart, nice to me. That was a good one—nice to me.

And then my shy teenage self, who’d yet to do more than kiss a boy (no tongue) but who for sure knew how to get herself off, had added this: can make me come. It was the last line on the list, written in all caps and embellished with an exclamation point.

On the eve of my marriage I’d sat there, running my thumb over the paper, feeling the indentation my pen had pressed into it with the forcefulness of that exclamation point, and told myself it wasn’t important. Like the car a guy drove, it was the requirement of a naïve, romantic child.

I could make myself come, if it were so important, although as the years went on I did it less and less often. My sex drive wilted through lack of use. Only the occasional romance novel exercised it. Bree and Alec, like hundreds before them, had sex on my behalf while I watched.

The day I married Alex, I relinquished the dream of the man who’d make me come the way that Alec made Bree come: instinctively, reliably, overwhelmingly, assuredly. I’d relinquished it because it seemed a child’s dream, but I hadn’t changed my goal to something more adult, like perhaps that my husband and I could write our own story.

My phone rang. I left Alec and Bree in a post-coital cocoon of happiness, from which they’d shortly emerge onto some new battlefield, and checked the screen. Seeing Alex’s name, I hesitated over it, then took a deep breath of courage and answered.

“I decided it was sadder to ignore it than to acknowledge it,” Alex said. “Happy Anniversary?”

“Our last one.”

“OK, maybe it’s sadder to acknowledge it.”

“Either way.”

We made some small talk—the divorce paperwork, his family, mine. I asked him how the running was going and he said he’d signed up for a marathon in late September. He asked me how the climbing was going and I told him I was taking a road trip for Labor Day, although I didn’t mention with whom.

“Well,” he said when we ran out of safe topics. “It was good to talk to you.”

“You too.” I pressed the end button, silence settling back around me. I picked up my book and rubbernecked as Alec and Bree made a mess out of the happiness they’d just found. At least Alex and I had done better than that. In the time we’d been together, we’d been nice to each other.

My phone rang again. Derek calling me back. He’d been at a movie with Leon.

“Where was Conrad?”

“He thinks comic book heroes are stupid. How come you’re not with Nate?”

“He had other plans.”

“You want me to come over? You sound sad.”

I looked at the clock. By the time Derek drove over here and we fooled around, probably twice, and I managed to push him out of the house because it was impossible to get a good night’s sleep in the same bed as him, it would end up being a very late night.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Today’s my anniversary, that’s all.”

“Do you wish you were still together?”

Funny, Nate had never asked me that. Donna had never asked me that. Morgan had never asked me that. Even my mother hadn’t asked me that. And Alex hadn’t asked me that.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Sometimes I wish it was different than it is. But it isn’t.”

“Just because something’s broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed, not if you try to fix it instead of trying to undo it. Life only goes forward, but wherever you are, there are different paths forward—if you’re willing to see them, if you’re willing to follow them.”

I didn’t know if I was willing. I knew I wasn’t willing now.

“Tell me more about the trip,” I said to change the subject. We were going somewhere new for me, where Derek said the rock was completely different than anything I’d climbed before. Derek talked to me about the rock and the routes, enthusiasm charging his voice, while I grew sleepy from sorrow and two glasses of wine.

“Night baby,” I told him when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I folded the corner of the page down on Bree’s Surrender and carried my wine glass to the dishwasher, then stumbled my way up the stairs to bed, grateful that Derek had landed on one of my paths forward.

Chapter 22

Watching Derek lead climb made me nervous. On the last trip, I’d belayed him on only very easy routes, routes he and I both knew he wouldn’t fall off of. We’d had Jenny with us then and she’d belayed him on the hard routes, the routes he climbed for his own challenge and not just to hang a rope up for me. There were fewer of us on this trip, so Derek and I were a definite partnership. If he climbed, I belayed.

But watching him made me nervous. His life was in my hands. I’d never caught a big fall and my hands fumbled at the quick movements needed to give him armfuls of slack when he was clipping the next bolt. I wished that I could stand back and watch his graceful flow up the rock, admire the bulging muscles and glistening skin, and have nothing to do with whether or not he was safe.

He was looking up at the next move. I could tell from the way he paused that he wasn’t confident he could make it. I checked on the loop of slack drooping between me and the rock. Nervously, I took some of it in.

He made a sudden lunging movement. I saw the slack disappear, fumbled to try to give him more, and then he was falling. His weight yanked against the belay device, pulling me up and off the ground. His feet tapped against the wall. He screamed.

“Are you OK?” I asked, panicked by the scream although it had sounded more like frustration than pain. I was swaying a few feet off the ground. My brake hand clenched tightly around the rope was the only thing keeping both of us in the air.

Derek glared down at me.

“Are you OK?” I repeated.

“Just lower me.”

“Are you sure? You don’t want to try again?”

He lifted his arms out to the side and gave me a disgusted look. I saw that he couldn’t touch the rock anywhere. The route he’d been on was so steep that he was dangling in space now, just as I was. I lowered us both to the ground.

“You short-roped me.” He untied his knot, his hands jerking at the rope.

I winced. Leaving him without enough slack was the one thing he’d told me not to do and I’d done it.

“I wasn’t sure you could make that move.”

“Maybe I could have, if you’d given me enough rope to do it.”

“I just wanted you to be safe.”

“If you hadn’t short-roped me, I might have made the move and then I’d have been safely on the wall.” He yanked his rock shoes off his feet, throwing them one at a time so they ricocheted off the rock.

“But what if you hadn’t?”

“Then I’d be exactly where I am now, only it wouldn’t be your fault.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just stay here.” He grabbed his shirt and stalked away, still in bare feet.

I sat down against the rock with my knees up. I leaned back and tried to look at the sky through the trees and my tears. This trip wasn’t going as planned. We’d taken a four day weekend for Labor Day, which I’d expected to be filled with fun, sun, and sex. So far I’d only gotten sun.

The night before in the tent, I’d run into a roadblock on the sex front. When we had sex, it tended to be loud. Derek didn’t want anyone knowing we had sex. Sleeping together: fine. Sleeping together: not fine.

I’d promised to stifle myself—it probably wasn’t strictly necessary to scream—but Derek hadn’t believed me. Or maybe he was mad because I’d seen Nate on Tuesday instead of him. Either way, the result was a tense night. Today was Derek’s birthday—the point of the trip—and it was shaping up to be just as sexless and even less fun.

Fifteen minutes later I was still sitting there, still blinking back tears, and now wondering if I’d been abandoned entirely, except that I had all of our gear, when Derek appeared from the opposite direction he’d left in.

“I’m sorry I talked to you that way.” He sat down next to me and picked up my hand.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you enough slack.”

“It’s a normal beginner mistake and no big deal.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me, not even a scratch. I’m not even sure you really did short-rope me and even if you did, I’m pretty sure that’s not why I fell. I fell because I couldn’t do the move. I’ve been trying to do that move for two years.”

“Is it important, to do that move?”

“It shouldn’t be.” He put his arm around me. I snuggled into his side, finding it more accommodating than the wall of rock.

“Why do we do that to ourselves?” I asked as I closed my eyes to better enjoy the feel of his strong arm and the masculine smell of exertion drifting up from his skin.

“For me, I guess it’s a form of self-loathing—feeling like I’m not good enough and if I can just do this or that, it’ll prove I am.”

“You don’t really loathe yourself, do you?”

“Not most of the time. In the overall scheme of things, I do all right. Right now, I’m more upset with myself for getting angry at you than for not doing that move.”

“Where do you go?” I asked. “When you leave me like that when you’re mad.”

“To meditate.”

My only experience with meditation was the yoga class I’d taken in my quest to find myself earlier in the year. The class had started with five minutes of silent meditation, during which I’d felt bored, restless, and uncomfortable. My predominant thought—although we weren’t supposed to be thinking at all, according to the teacher—was wondering how much time was left.

Derek, it seemed, had a regular meditation habit. I made him get into the Lotus position, cross-legged with his feet up on his thighs, to show me he could really do it like a genuine yogi. He really could.

“You look very Zen. Only one thing missing. Or one thing too many.”

“What’s that?”

“The shirt.” I pulled his shirt off over his head. “Better. You look like something out of a magazine.” My tongue longed to lick the gleaming, golden, hairless skin above and below the red board shorts. His eyes caught the spark in mine.

“Stay there,” I said. I put my hands on his knees and leaned into his neck.

Before I could fasten my mouth on him, I heard the crunch of approaching footsteps. Over his shoulder, I saw Conrad and Leon coming down the path towards us. I sat up, grimacing regret at Derek, and leaned back against the rock. Derek unwound his legs and moved so he was next to me.

And then he put his arm around me.

“Hey,” Conrad said. His eyes flickered over Derek’s arm and then shifted to the rope. “You got a rope on Predatory Instinct, huh?”

“Not to the top,” Derek said. “You want to have a go at it?” He ran his hand up and down my arm, squeezing me into him more closely.

“You going to try it again?”

“Yeah, like it or not.”

“You want a belay?”

“That’s OK. Lissie’s got me.” He kissed my forehead.

Conrad and Leon threw their packs down. Apparently, they were going to stick around and watch. Derek sighed and got to his feet, looking like climbing was the last thing he wanted to be doing right then.

“Don’t do it now, if you don’t want to,” Leon said. “We just need a break. We’ve been up at the Wave Wall getting spanked all morning. Figured it was time to watch someone else get spanked.”

He lowered himself to the ground and laid with his knees bent and his head propped up on his pack, his eyes closed against the sun. Conrad laid down next to him. Their arms brushed each other and their fingers tangled together.

Derek sat back down next to me. He drew me close to him and nuzzled his mouth against my neck. The sun caught us smiling at each other.

A few minutes of quiet drowsiness were interrupted by the arrival of another party. When Derek stiffened next to me, I opened my eyes.

Amanda. I hadn’t forgotten Derek’s climbing crush, Amanda. She and her partner—a tall, muscle-bound guy with short cropped hair—stopped and looked up at Derek’s rope still hanging from halfway up the route.

“I can get our rope out of the way if you want,” Derek said.

“Oh, hey. Derek, right?”

He nodded. I could feel his arm itching to pull away from me. Twice it twitched, bumping me from my resting place. With the third twitch, he removed it completely, his shoulder shifting away from mine.

“That your gear?” Amanda asked.

“You can use it. Maybe I can get some beta from you.”

“Having trouble with that move, are you?” She looked him over critically as if evaluating where his shortcoming might be. “It took me a while too.”

Derek got to his feet and pulled his rope down, coiling it out of her way. He remained standing, watching, while she led up with her own rope. She quickly reached the point where he’d stalled, then continued past it all the way to the top. It seemed like she was up and down again in mere minutes.

“So ... left, bump, bump, right?” he asked her when she’d finished untying.

She pantomimed the sequence with her hands. “I think that’s it.”

“I was trying to jump there. Left, dyno, right.”

“Nice, if you can do it. I’m not that great a jumper.”

“Guess I’m not either. I’ll try it your way.” He looked over at me, which I took as my cue to stand up and belay him.

Amanda pulled her rope down while Derek and I set ours up. I put him on belay fearfully. I was about to have a lot of witnesses, not only Conrad and Leon, who were sitting up now that Derek was getting ready to climb, but Amanda and her belayer, who appeared to be sticking around as well.

“It’ll be fine, Lissie,” Derek said. “Wish me luck.”

I grabbed his face and pressed my lips against his. He opened his mouth for me, sucking me into him.

“Now that’s how to wish someone luck,” Amanda’s partner said when we broke the kiss.

“You wish,” she responded, to which he flashed a look that clearly communicated that he did wish.

Derek seemed to stand an inch taller as he stepped up to the rock. He started climbing without even a backwards glance at me, signaling his confidence in himself and in my belaying. I followed his movements closely, being extra careful to make sure he had plenty of slack.

When he got to the place where he’d fallen before, he reached up with his left hand, testing the hold Amanda had used. He lowered his hand; his body tensed. I paid out an armful of slack, bracing against the impact as my eyes followed his jump. Conrad inhaled sharply behind me and then Derek caught himself on his right hand. His body swung off-kilter between his two hands and his feet flew out behind him. While we held our collective breath, he settled his feet back onto the rock and started climbing again.

As soon as he had both feet on the ground, he scrambled over to me. He lifted me up and swung me around in a circle that caused the ropes over our head to twist together. He kissed me, then reached behind me to shake hands with Leon and Conrad who’d come over to congratulate him.

“Didn’t like the hold?” Amanda asked.

“Knew I could stick the dyno,” Derek said with a shrug. He sat down to change his shoes while I dealt with the rope.

“Looks like I’m going to be moving to your area.” Amanda said. “I’ve got a teaching position starting in September. Maybe you can show me some of the local rock.”

“Of course, sure. Um, hey, have you met Lissie?”

“I don’t think so.”

I came over and shook her hand. “I’m just a beginner,” I said.

“Stick around this guy. Looks like he’ll teach you some things. You going to climb this, Frederick?” she asked the guy lurking behind us. He shook his head. “Then let’s get out of here.” She headed off with Frederick trailing along behind her. I felt sorry for Frederick.

“She’s intimidating,” I observed.

“Not just to you,” Conrad agreed. He turned his attention to Leon who was flat on his back with his arm over his eyes again. “You ready to climb yet, you lazy dog?” He poked Leon’s side with the toe of his shoe.

“Climb, climb, climb. That’s all we ever do. You’d think it was fun or something.” Leon staggered to his feet and hoisted his pack. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

Conrad shook his head at us and they tromped off through the underbrush.

“You feel good, don’t you?” I asked Derek when we were alone.

“I feel invincible.”

“You know what you need? What you deserve? Birthday sex. Congratulations sex.”

He glanced around doubtfully.

“No, not in the woods. How about a hotel? Let’s get a hotel tonight and celebrate. A hot shower? Some quality naked time?”

I ran a hand down his chest. He sucked his stomach in and grabbed my wrist to stop its downward movement, but he didn’t pull my hand away from him. I put my other hand in his hair and took a step closer to him.

“Hmm?” I asked against his lips.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Did you want to do any more climbing today?”

“Mm-mm,” he said, not letting my mouth leave his.

Chapter 23

The water was hot, at least, and the room looked clean, if well-used. It wasn’t an ideal spot for a romantic tryst, but it beat a tent with nosy neighbors.

We’d taken a steamy shower together and now Derek had me pulled against him so tight that my feet didn’t touch the floor. He walked us to the bed.

“There’s something I need to do.” He lowered himself between my legs so I’d understand what it was. “I need to do it until I get it right. Be patient with me?”

“You’re invincible.” I tangled my hand in his hair. “You can do anything you want to badly enough.”

“You have no idea how much I want to do this.”

He lowered his mouth to me. His movements against me were tentative and soft, but his focus was in the right area. He threw my legs over his shoulders much as he did when he was about to fuck me. A surge of lust went through me at the thought.

“Right there,” I said. “Right where you touch me when we fuck.”

He changed his angle slightly and drove his face into me, making me gasp. A little choked noise escaped him. I started to pull back, afraid I was smothering him, but his hands kept me firmly anchored.

Now I felt the eagerness that had been disguised by timidity. He ravished me with more passion than skill, but his enthusiasm coupled with a good amount of mental imagery—imagining how his cock would replace his tongue—brought me closer than I’d ever been with him.

There was still something missing, though, some kind of not-quite that Nate had. Hovering on the edge of orgasm, I couldn’t wring the exact details from my pleasure-soaked mind. I only knew that it wasn’t quite right.

Concern over how Derek would react if I didn’t come took the edge off. My arousal level dropped, and Derek could tell. He hesitated, slowing down, backing off. Fear was returning—to him and to me. I faked a moan to give him encouragement.

No.

No, I wouldn’t do that. I forced myself to relax, to accept the possibility that I wouldn’t come and that it would be OK. We’d try again another day. I took a deep breath and shifted my hips against him. We’d gotten out of alignment from my twisting.

“Hold me hard,” I told him. “Keep me this way.”

He curled his hands from my ass around my thighs, securing me tightly to him. The firmness of his grip anchored me. I ran my hands from his head down to his shoulders, enjoying the bunch of muscles across his back, the strength of him dedicated to pleasing me. The pleasure ramped up higher. My moans became real again.

So close. He could get me so close. I was wanting him to a-little-more-this-way or something-over-that-way, and then I thought: I’m the one who’s feeling it. Of course I knew exactly, and he couldn’t possibly.

Taking charge of the final push, I put my hands on the back of his head and held him still and moved against him. I lifted my hips, grinding them against his face, his tongue, angling and moving exactly-so until the sensation burst inside me. I held him still to me, pulling as much from the moment as I could before slumping back against the bed, drained.

He sat up, cross-legged between my knees. I opened my eyes to find him watching me, his cock thrusting up hard from between his legs. Nate would be stroking himself, but Derek waited. I reached up my arms to him and invited him into me.

~~~

“What made you change today?” I asked, my head in the crook of his shoulder. “How come all of a sudden you were OK with touching me in public?”

“It was a lousy way to treat you, and I’d already treated you lousy enough.”

“Well, thanks. It felt good to be acknowledged.”

“It wasn’t you, you know. It was him.”

“Him, Nate?”

“Not him personally, but— We’re not a couple. You’re not ... mine. People see you with me and they see you with him, and what are they thinking? It’s me not being good enough all over again.” His free hand fisted on his chest. “I made you come today, right? You don’t need him anymore. Why do you want him? Let’s just make it you and me.”

“Derek.”

He curled into me. “Lissie, I saw how you felt when he took Jenny’s phone number. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“What about Amanda?”

“What about Amanda? I’ve never had anything to do with Amanda.”

“You’d like to.”

“Maybe I used to, but I wouldn’t do that now—to you or to her. It wouldn’t be right to her either.”

“She’d be a lot more appropriate. Think about it. What would it be like if we were a couple? I’m thirty-eight. You’re twenty-five.”

“Twenty-six. Birthday today, remember? OK, I know when you asked about introducing you to my parents and stuff before I wasn’t sure, but that was only because I didn’t know you that well. If you were mine, I’d introduce you to them. I’d be honored to.”

“And what would they think?”

“Now you’re thinking that you’re not good enough.”

“I’m thinking your parents would think that. Never mind, this is getting out of hand. It’s not about your parents. It’s not about you not being good enough either. It’s not at all about that.”

“Then what’s it about? Tell me. Please.”

“Nate.”

“You like him better than me.” Derek rolled onto his back, looking up at the water-stained ceiling. “Or you just need two guys to keep you satisfied?”

“Neither. Shit.” I tried to compose my thoughts. “If I thought you and I had a future together, I’d let him go. And if I thought Nate and I had a future together, I’d let you go, although I’d miss either of you, both of you. This isn’t about forever and ever and babies and commitment, what we have.”

“Then what’s it about?”

I remembered what Nate had said when I’d asked him: fun. Not sure fun was the right word, I struggled.

“Connection, love, mutual pleasure. Fun.” Yes, OK, fun. “You’re a separate person from Nate. So separate, so different. It would be like choosing only ice cream or only potato chips. I feel like gorging myself on all of it.” I sighed, realizing how that sounded. “I’m being selfish. To you.”

“Only to me?”

“Nate doesn’t mind. He thinks it’s hot.”

“What’s hot?”

“You and me. He likes to hear about it.”

“You tell him about us? What do you tell him?”

“About your beautiful cock. About how you make me crazy with it.”

“Really?” He cocked his head to the side. “I guess you can tell him that.” He took my hand in his. “This is what you want, Lissie? He doesn’t make you sad?”

“He doesn’t make me sad. Sometimes I make myself sad.”

“Yeah, I know how that is.”

“Do I make you sad?”

“Not most of the time, and I can deal with the rest. You’re sure there can’t be more between us?”

“We have everything we need,” I said, evading the question. I drew his face forward for a kiss.

As his arms came around me, my mind drifted to Alex and what he and I had shared. I knew what Derek and Nate couldn’t yet—I knew what that something more was like.

I knew the sharing that went beyond a few moments of passion or a night’s sleep, the sharing that had nothing to do with a common interest like theater or climbing, the sharing that happened deeper beneath the surface, when two lives had a common end.

That was what I wanted. And this? This was only what I had.

But it didn’t suck.

Chapter 24

I twisted my hair up. My bangs had finally gotten long enough to pull into a real ponytail so I could keep them out of my eyes for important activities like climbing or going down on Nate.

“I’m like Pavlov’s dog,” Nate said. “Watching you put your hair up gets me hard.”

“You were already hard.” I finished securing the scrunchie and lowered my head to take a first lick.

“I missed you.”

“Mmm?” It had only been four days.

“Things are rough at home,” he said, referring to the fact that his youngest sister and her three kids had moved back home last week, an ugly divorce pending. “Sharing a room with Carrington is really cutting into my quality time with myself. I love the kid and all, but I love myself more, if you know what I mean.”

I laughed at the frustration in Nate’s voice. He grabbed my ponytail and tugged.

“You just like having me at your mercy.” He punctuated his point with a deep groan.

I enjoyed the way Nate could completely surrender to me, the thoroughness with which he soaked in and relished every sensation. I drew his arousal out, nowhere else to be on a lazy Saturday afternoon. When his hips stopped jerking, I slid his dick out of my mouth and sat up, my back stiff from lying between his legs with my neck cranked up for that long. I stretched my arms over my head.

Catching sight of myself in the mirror over the dresser, I turned to look. My reaching arms highlighted the muscles across my back where they bulged up over my shoulders.

“Do you think the muscle is sexy?” I asked Nate.

“Would you stop climbing if I said no?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“But is it?” I pulled my arms down into the classic body builder pose, squeezing my biceps as best I could. “You should see Katrina flex.”

Nate sat up behind me. With his eyes on mine in the mirror, he reached up and yanked the scrunchie free so that my hair tumbled down over my shoulders, then wrapped his arms around me so his hands cupped my breasts.

“What do you think?”

“I think I need a haircut.” I pushed the hair back behind my ears. “This is just a mop now.”

“I’ll call my sister. Maybe she can work you in today.” He released me and leaned over the side of the bed to find his jeans on the floor.

“Desi is a hair dresser?”

“No, Bella. I see enough of Desi at home lately. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Bella. She’s my favorite.” His eyes were on his phone as he composed a message.

“You’re not supposed to have favorites.” I rose to see if I could find something to wear amongst the pile of our clothes on the floor.

“Desi and Gwen are close enough in age that they were always a team. Bella and I were the outliers.”

“And she adored you.”

“What can I say? I’m adorable.” He stood to pull his jeans up over his hips and gave me his full-wattage smile, his blue eyes sweet beneath the boy-child lashes. His phone barked at him. He glanced at it quickly. “She says come by.”

I took some extra time, putting on makeup and jewelry while Nate watched. When I looked as good—and as young—as I figured I was going to look, we took his car to the strip mall where his sister’s salon was located. Nate introduced me to her.

“It’s Arabelle,” she corrected when he wandered off to say hello to some of the other staff. She was as slim as Nate and nearly as tall, her willowy figure crowned by a long fall of reddish-brown hair down her back. She had Nate’s eyes, made even more striking by artfully applied makeup.

“Not Arabella?”

“No, there’s no A at the end.” She was lifting strands of hair off my head like they were the limp streamers from last night’s party and then dropping them again, like it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to clean them up.

“Then why does Nate call you Bella?”

“Because he’s my annoying little brother and he knows it bugs me, but if you’d call me Arabelle, I’d appreciate it.” She led me to the sink and gestured for me to sit down.

“My name’s actually Melissa.”

“You want me to call you Melissa?” She tilted back my chair and dunked my head.

“No, I’ve gotten used to Lissie.”

“Well, he’s not your annoying little brother. He’s your ... ?”

“Friend?” With my head tilted awkwardly back and shampoo frothing around my eyes and ears, I felt somewhat disadvantaged. I couldn’t be sure, because she was so beautiful, but Arabelle appeared to be about my age.

“OK, we’ll call it that. He’s got no shortage of friends.”

When I didn’t respond, she finished the job in silence, then sat me up and wrapped a towel around my head.

“No judgment. We’d just like to see him with someone serious one of these days. Come on back to my chair.”

As she flipped through my hair again, pursing her lips at it in silence, my eyes searched for Nate in the mirror and found him in deep conversation with one of the other hair dressers across the room.

The woman was older than I was, her blonde hair sprayed into stiffness, a full application of makeup covering her tan face. She burst out laughing and wagged her finger at Nate, then stepped into him. Her hand cupped his ass familiarly. He put a hand in her hair and tugged her head back, then kissed her full on the lips, lingering over it.

“Another one of his friends,” Arabelle said, catching my eye in the mirror. “Irene and I own this place together. We’ve all known each other a long time.”

My eyes returned to Nate and Irene. I’d seen that expression on him before, one that reflected the satisfaction of intimate knowledge and the anticipation of more to come. I knew without question that I wasn’t watching flirtation, or even a revisiting of shared history.

In all this time, although I’d known the possibility existed that Nate could, if he chose, sleep with another woman, I’d been making the blind assumption that he hadn’t—hadn’t been choosing it, hadn’t been doing it. Between rehearsals and me—not to mention an extensive masturbation schedule—where would he even find the time? I could see now that he’d been finding it.

I was still watching Nate, and Arabelle was still watching me.

“You can never have too many friends,” I said. When Nate said he loved me, this was what he meant—he loved me like he loved Irene, like I loved Derek, like I loved him. Not like I loved Alex.

Arabelle finished rifling through my hair. She put a smock on me and picked up her scissors. “Any particular commands?”

“I’ll leave it up to you.” It was clear she thought I’d better.

“You have good color. Natural?”

“A lot of sun this summer.” And my Pebbles hairdo offering my hair up to it.

“Nice. People pay good money for that effect—the light tips.” She moved around me efficiently, her fingers flying. I was relieved to see that not too much was coming off the front. I was willing to live with whatever she gave me as long as the bangs didn’t return.

Nate joined us. He sat in the chair next to mine and started spinning it.

“How old are you?” Arabelle asked him.

“About this old.”

“Brat.” She gave him a look of exasperation mixed with fondness. “How’s life with Desdemona?”

Nate made a face at her. “Desi’s OK. It’s the three monster children.”

“They aren’t monsters. They’re just children.”

“You try sharing a room with one of them.”

“Poor Nate, having to share a room. You know, all three of us had to share a room growing up so Prince Nathaniel could have one to himself. It’s about time it was your turn.”

“Nathaniel?” I asked. He used Nate in the theater programs. I’d assumed it was Nathan if anything. “So Gwen is ...”

“Guinevere,” Arabelle confirmed.

What a family, I thought. I wondered if they were all this good looking.

“I may have to move out,” Nate said.

“Good idea. Time to grow up.”

Everyone was in flux. Just last week Derek had been complaining that he needed to find a new roommate, and in a few weeks Alex and I would have our mediation session and then our court date would be set. I had to think about moving too.

At least Alex was settled. He’d even been by to pick up the furniture he was taking as part of our settlement. Now there were big empty spaces around the house that mocked me every time I walked past them. He hadn’t taken anything from our bedroom, calling it “painful,” so I still slept on our old mattress and threw used condoms on top of his nightstand, but the other rooms looked like we were already half gone. Which I supposed we were.

I hadn’t even started looking for a new place yet. It wasn’t that I was attached to the house. It wasn’t that.

“Derek needs a roommate,” I joked to Nate, pulling myself back to the present.

“Oh yeah?”

“Who’s Derek?” Arabelle asked.

“A friend.” I met her eyes in the mirror, daring her to make something of it.

“That has potential,” Nate said.

“Your brother is a weird man,” I told Arabelle.

“Tell me about it. Flip forward.” She pushed my head down to blow me dry from underneath.

I retreated into the white noise. I built a fantasy world where Nate and Derek and I all lived together and I was the constant center of male attention.

I imagined Derek cooking me dinner and running my bath. I tried to imagine Nate doing something useful but couldn’t pull it off, so I just imagined him doing what he was best at. Then, because his sister had her hands very close to my throat, I stopped imagining that and instead imagined the three of us sitting down to the dinner Derek had cooked, Nate telling us how rehearsals were going and Derek planning our next climbing trip, me toying with a glass of wine between them. Could happily ever after look like that?

Arabelle flipped off the dryer and picked up the scissors again, tweaking here and there. I could already tell I loved it.

“First one’s free for Nate’s friends,” she said, pulling the smock off, “but make an appointment for six weeks. You have to keep it up.”

Chapter 25

I was on my hands and knees mopping the floor with every old towel and rag I’d been able to find when Alex knocked. I yelled at him to come in and kept mopping. Something had gone wrong with the dishwasher, resulting in the lake I was trying to absorb.

Alex surveyed the mess. “Did you get the water turned off?”

“Yeah.”

That had been Nate’s contribution. When I’d called in hysterics because there was water pumping across my kitchen floor, he’d talked me through shutting off the water main and then advised me to call a plumber. Derek had been even less helpful, merely admitting that he didn’t know anything about home maintenance and also advising a plumber.

It was nine o’clock at night and turning off the water main meant there was no water anywhere in the house. So, gritting my teeth as I did it, I’d called Alex. It was his house too, after all.

Alex got down on the ground and stuck his head under the sink. “It’s just a bad hose,” he said when he emerged. “Not a big deal to fix. I can bring a new hose tomorrow night.”

“Do I have to live without running water until then?”

“No, I can turn it off here.” He stuck his head back under the sink and then popped it out again. “Where did you turn it off?”

I showed him the knob I’d used down in the basement and he had me watch the sink while he turned the water back on.

“You won’t have water in the sink here,” he told me, as he walked back into the kitchen, “but everywhere else.”

Not sure of protocol, I offered him a drink. He glanced over his shoulder at his wet and dirty backside. Apparently I needed to clean under the sink.

“Most of your winter clothes are still upstairs,” I suggested. “You should probably take them anyway. You’ll need them soon enough.”

“Depressing thought,” he said, but he followed me upstairs.

Fortunately, his nightstand wasn’t doubling as a condom repository at the moment. I really needed to get that waste basket, though perhaps a waste basket filled with used condoms was no better a visual.

Alex took some clothes into the bathroom to change, and I found a garbage bag in the utility closet and began stuffing sweaters into it.

“You don’t have to do that.” He stood in the doorway in a long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms.

“We have to do all of it. I mean, it’s not much longer, is it?”

“I filed the final papers today. I should hear about the court date on Monday.”

“When will it be?”

“They seem to be running two to three weeks these days.”

“And then it’s done.” I’d crammed all of Alex’s sweaters into a single bag, making a giant black snowball so big I couldn’t get my arms around it. I stopped trying to pick it up and rolled it over to him. When I straightened up, I found myself face to face with him, the width of a garbage bag between us. He was shorter than Nate, taller than Derek. The angle of my neck adjusted to a familiar tilt.

“I like the haircut.”

He’d gotten his own hair cut too. Either he’d remembered or someone had reminded him. He brushed my hair off my shoulder, opening my face up to him. His hand came up to my chin.

“I’ve missed you.” He applied light pressure with his fingertips, persuading me towards him.

I blinked and stepped back. “Alex.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s not that. I’ve missed you, too.” I twined my fingers together and took a deep breath. “Alex, I’m sorry. I said something to you that wasn’t true, about it being because of you that I was sexually ... unresponsive. I apologized for saying it, but what I didn’t tell you—what I didn’t understand, but I do now—is that what I said wasn’t just mean. It was wrong. My being ... uninterested, uninteresting ... it wasn’t your fault.”

“Melissa.” He stepped over the trash bag to take my hand.

“No, let me say it.” I sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged him down next to me, keeping my hand in his for the strength it gave me. “I was never honest with you. I never told you what I liked or needed, so how could you have known? I stopped being interested in sex because it wasn’t good for me.”

I stole a quick glance at his face which betrayed no emotion.

“Maybe that’s worse for you to hear, I don’t know, but it’s not because you were a bad lover. Someone told me that you get the sex you deserve, and that’s me. I never told you what I wanted, so I never got what I wanted, and I blamed you. I’m sorry.”

Alex took his hand from mine and put it on his forehead, bending forward like he felt sick. “It’s not like I didn’t know it on some level. In the beginning, I thought it was OK, that you were enjoying it. But as time went on, well, I guess it was easier to pretend.”

“It was OK in the beginning. I mean, it was hopeful. It’s not like you weren’t trying or like I wasn’t turned on by you. I was. I hope you know that. I figured it would keep getting better. Somehow. Like magic. So I never said anything.”

“And I never asked.”

“And it didn’t get better. It just got routine.”

Until I became uninterested, and the sex became uninteresting, until Alex was put in the position of choosing between sex and love.

“I think you cheated on me because you loved me, because it was the only way you could think of to stay married to me, and I want you to know that I understand that now.”

Alex dragged me into his arms, crushing me to him.

“Oh God, Melissa. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He sobbed into my neck, great choking gasps of sorrow and relief.

“Shh, it’s OK. I forgive you. And you’ll forgive me?”

He nodded against me.

“And we won’t be mad anymore, OK?” I held him against me, rocking him in my arms until he stopped crying and lifted his face to mine. He kissed me softly once and then threw himself into me. It felt like our early kisses, like raw newness and endless possibility, and it felt like every kiss we’d ever shared—past and future intertwined to form the present. Alex murmured my name against my lips as his hands ran up and down my body.

“Alex.” This was a monumentally bad idea, wasn’t it?

“Show me,” he said. “Please, this one time. Show me.”

I let him pull my shirt over my head in a haze. Then, deciding, I knelt up on the bed and took his face into my hands and began kissing him. Kissing him—putting my passion and patience into it.

He struggled momentarily to right the balance, to assert his lead, and then he softened beneath my hands and began to follow me, relaxing into the kiss, letting me show him. Together we rolled onto the bed, pulling at each other’s clothes.

When he had me naked, I ran a hand down my body and dipped it into my pussy so that my fingers were wet and slippery. I brought them to his mouth. With astonished eyes he licked at them, then pulled my hand towards him, devouring it with rough, eager slurps, his eyes on mine.

“There’s more where that came from.”

“Really?”

“If you want to.”

He was between my legs so fast I giggled.

“Gentle,” I said, “but firm.”

I used my hand on the back of his head to bring us into better alignment.

“Tell me,” he kept popping up his head to say. “Tell me more.” Until finally I told him to hush and keep working and he did and it worked. It was a little orgasm, nothing like what Nate could do, but the first of mine we’d ever shared.

He raised himself up to me, grinning and wiping his chin, and I returned the favor for a while, showing off some of what I’d learned. I stopped short of making him come since Alex wasn’t twenty-five and we weren’t likely to get a second chance in ten minutes.

“Holy shit,” he said when I sat up to reach for the drawer where I kept the condoms. “Where have you been all my life, baby?”

I laughed and he laughed, but when I turned to him with the condom in my hand, his laughter died.

“We don’t need—”

“Under the circumstances, I think we do.”

“Melissa, I’m your husband.”

“We’ve both been with other partners, Alex. Multiple other partners.”

“Right. How could I forget that.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“This was a mistake.” He stood, his movements quick and jerky as he got dressed, his cock already soft before he tucked it into his boxers.

I stood before him, naked and confused. “You knew I’d been with other people.”

“Who’ve apparently taught you a few tricks.”

“Which you were enjoying.”

Alex was fully dressed, but I remained before him naked, refusing to hide anymore. He put his hands on his forehead in that characteristic gesture that foretold a headache.

“Thank you for the honesty. And the apology. And for this.” He waved his hand at the bed. “I’ll stop by tomorrow after work with the hose.” He walked around me without looking at me, heading out the door and down the hall to the stairway.

“I don’t get it,” I said from behind him.

He paused at the top of the stairs. “I can’t be one more of your guys, Melissa. I’m your husband. For another three weeks at least, I’m your husband.”

Chapter 26

“But it’s my night, right?” Derek stood next to his car rocking from heel to toe while we waited for Nate in the pullout across from the trailhead.

“You’re so rules-based,” I teased him.

“I’m an engineer. The universe is governed by rules.”

“Relationships are harder to govern than the universe.” My mind automatically went to Alex and what the hell I was supposed to do about that situation.

Nearly two weeks had passed since we’d last talked, although I’d received a terse text message with our court date. He’d come back, as promised, the night after our aborted attempt at sex with a new hose for the dishwasher. I’d found him waiting at the dining room table when I got home. I was thankful Derek and I had decided to use his roommate-free place for a quickie after the gym instead of spending the evening together at my place.

I sat down across from Alex, wondering why he’d waited up so late for me.

“I’m sorry,” he said when I looked at him expectantly. “Again. I can’t seem to be rational on the subject of you with other men. I don’t know how you’re handling it so well.”

“Practice.” I thought of the complicated life I’d been leading. “And a head start.” I threw that in to hurt him and saw that it did.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was kicking myself about fifteen minutes after I left here. I wish I had a do-over.” He bent his head and looked up at me through his lashes.

“It was probably just as well. What were we going to be, fuck-buddies?

“No.” He shook his head hard. “I’ve been thinking. Ever since that first day, I’ve been thinking. I’d like a do-over in general. Not just last night, but the whole thing. I made a mistake prioritizing sex over our marriage. I made a mistake thinking it was worth walking away from you over. I love you and I miss you and I’d like to try again.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “Please.”

I gripped his hand like it might get away. Alex back, my home back, my life back.

“I didn’t appreciate what I had,” he went on. “We had a good life together. I didn’t need sexual gymnastics. Now that I see the cost, I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

I shook my head. There was a quiet buzz building in there. “What cost?”

“Those other guys. This life you’re leading now—out until eleven o’clock. Climbing, theater. You’re never home. I drive by sometimes. OK, that sounds like stalking.” He smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. “I want my life back,” he said. “Our life.”

The buzz expanded, a hot jumble of thoughts begging to be heard all at once. His life back. Our life back. My life back. I shook my head, not able to articulate it.

“Melissa?”

“No,” I said. No, I was not Melissa.

When Alex left that night, things between us were less certain than ever. There was an offer on the table that wouldn’t lie as flat as I’d like it to. It kept jumping up at moments like this, inserting itself like a question mark into every interaction I had. I could save my marriage if I was willing to lose Lissie.

“But it is my night,” Derek said, bringing my attention back to him. “I don’t mind Nate climbing with us, if he has to, but does he have to paw you? On my night?”

I turned my attention fully to him, to his warm brown eyes beseeching mine with sweet earnestness. His shoulders were broad beneath the t-shirt he wore despite the crisp coolness of an early fall day. He still wore sandals too—they suited the constant footwear changes climbing demanded—but he had on a pair of jeans, slung low enough to reveal a hint of boxers where the waistband gapped across his hip bones.

“Do you know you’re beautiful?” I snaked a hand behind his head and put the other low on his back, wishing the t-shirt wasn’t between us.

“That’s not answering the question,” he said, but his eyes stopped their anxious shifting and focused on mine.

“I’ll tell you a secret about Nate. If you stop reacting every time he touches me, he’ll stop doing it as much.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

Hearing Nate’s car pull in behind me, I urged Derek’s head closer to mine and kissed him. When he tried to back away, I held him harder, kissing him until he stopped struggling and kissed me back. Then I released him and went to Nate—who raised his eyebrows at me with a smile—and gave him a quick kiss. I looked back over my shoulder at Derek.

“Hey, Nate,” he said. He stepped forward and held out a hand and Nate let go of my waist to take it. Mission accomplished.

As we hiked up to the crag together, we talked about the road trip we had planned for the following weekend. Nate only dabbled in climbing, but he enjoyed climbing outdoors better than in the gym and had asked if he could join us on one of our trips out of state. Reluctantly, Derek had agreed—the fact that weekends were typically “Nate’s night” not the least of his concerns.

The days were getting shorter and the evenings were getting cooler. Soon we’d all be back in the gym, but today the crag was festooned with so many ropes it looked like a gym wall.

Katrina waved us over. “I got something easy set up for warm-ups,” she said, gesturing to the rope behind her, “and for Nate.” She beamed at Nate who’d charmed her by asking a lot of questions about her fitness comps. “Jenny’s up top setting up an eleven. Most of the routes already have ropes on them.”

Derek looked around at the options. “People will let us climb on them. There’s Amanda.”

Like Derek, Amanda was dressed for a summer that was fast fading. She’d just lowered off a route that I knew to be one of the hardest at the crag and was in the process of untying. She ambled over once she was free.

“Hey, Derek. Hey, guys.” The “guys” were me and Katrina. Amanda’s recognition of someone as a person was directly tied to how hard they climbed.

“This is Nate,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” She skimmed her gaze down his body and back up again to his meeting-a-new-woman grin, then turned away from him to Derek. “Hey, is there anything else good here? Maybe something steeper?”

Derek beamed at her and led her farther down the cliff line, going so far as to touch her arm to urge her along.

I laughed at the expression on Nate’s face.

“Well, that was Amanda,” I said.

“And who is Amanda?”

“Derek’s wet dream.”

“Don’t worry about her not liking you,” Katrina told Nate. “She doesn’t like anyone.”

Amanda had arrived at our gym like a hurricane, full of power and fury, bringing awe and confusion. She climbed better than nearly everyone, certainly better than any of the women, but she hadn’t made many friends.

“Derek says she’s just shy,” I said, not particularly believing it. Derek was shy. Amanda was frightening.

Nate continued looking in Amanda’s direction, as though he were considering the challenge. For the first time, I had no worries about him succeeding.

Jenny rappelled in from the top, landing about twenty feet from us and breaking Nate’s fascination with Amanda. He went over to greet Jenny, while I put Katrina on belay. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Nate would be a better climber if he spent more time climbing and less time flirting.

Chapter 27

After our trial run at the crag, I felt confident that Nate and Derek could co-exist on our weekend trip to New Hampshire. Derek took Friday off and drove up early with Conrad and Leon to get in an extra day of climbing. Nate and I drove up Friday after work. We arrived late, but I managed to set up Katrina’s borrowed tent efficiently, having practiced by headlamp in the darkness of my basement.

Saturday was a cool day to be climbing—even Derek kept his shirt on—and as the sun went down, the temperature went down with it. We retreated to a restaurant for food, drink, and warmth, then lingered as long as it seemed fair to occupy two tables. Roy checked his phone for the forecast.

“Cold tonight,” he said.

“We already know that,” Amy said.

“No, really cold, like it might freeze.”

I shivered next to Nate. I was wearing two layers of fleece and we were inside.

“Should we bail?” Pam asked her husband.

“Nah, looks climbable tomorrow. Sunny and high forties. We just have to weather it out tonight.”

I swallowed the last sip of my wine and burrowed deeper into Nate. I could hear the wind through the window. I considered getting a hotel room, with more than one reason for that thought. We’d gotten in late enough the night before that we’d gone straight to sleep, but I knew Nate would want some action tonight, and I wasn’t sure how to handle that in the quiet stillness of a climber’s campground. It wouldn’t bother him to be overheard, no doubt—Derek, but not him.

Back at the campground, I unzipped my sleeping bag and arranged it next to Nate’s so that we could share body heat, then waited for him to return from his outhouse visit. Cold wind rushed into the tent with him.

Nate stripped and I followed suit reluctantly. We snuggled together, too cold to feel sexy. I couldn’t stop thinking about Derek, all alone in his tent on the other side of the campground.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, turning my backside to Nate. “I’m cold everywhere you’re not touching.”

“The tent will warm up.”

“You think so?” My nipples were cold, hard points. I put my palms over them, trying to keep the warmth in.

“It’s a small space. Just us breathing will warm it up eventually.”

“Well, breathe harder.” I turned around to face him again. We kissed, trying to make a spark.

“Hopeless.” I broke away. “I’m putting clothes on.”

“Don’t do that. I was just getting hard.”

“Too cold. My pussy’s frozen.” I pulled my fleece on as he probed my pussy with an icy finger. “Eek, quit.”

“Gimme a blowjob then.”

“It would be like sucking a popsicle.”

“Feel it.” He pulled my hand to his hard cock, which burned like a stick just pulled out of the fire.

“That does feel good,” I admitted. “OK, hang on.” I added a pair of sweat pants and some socks to the fleece, then crawled under the sleeping bag and started slowly slurping. It was warm and dark and kind of sexy under there.

“How do you think Derek’s doing?” Nate asked.

“Cold.”

“And lonely maybe. I feel bad. You’re sucking my dick and he’s freezing his ass off.”

I intentionally grazed the head of his cock, making him jump.

“So invite him over,” I joked. “The tent will be warmer with three of us.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Do you think he’d come?”

I pulled myself up to where I could see him. “No.”

“You could try.”

“Don’t you think I should finish this first?”

“It’ll wait.”

I didn’t understand. Nate wasn’t one to lose focus when it came to sex.

He pulled the sleeping bag off himself as I laced up my shoes. “It’s warming up already,” he said.

“Better put some clothes on if Derek’s coming in.”

“Don’t worry about me. Go get Derek.”

The other tents were dark and quiet. Everyone had gone to sleep, or was trying to.

“Derek?” I whispered. Derek unzipped the flap and poked his head out.

“Just in time. I’m freezing.” He dragged me roughly into the tent, then kissed me. His hands disappeared under my fleece and he made a humming noise of discovery when he realized I wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Eek, quit,” I said to one of my lovers for the second time that night. “Your hands are like ice.”

“I know. You have to warm me up before I get frostbite.” He nuzzled his mouth against my neck, nice and warm and wet.

“Derek.”

“What are you doing here anyway? Did you guys fight?”

“I came to invite you over. It’s so cold, and we can fit three people in that tent.”

“Nate doesn’t want me horning in.”

“It was his idea. Come on, no point in suffering. None of us are getting any sleep tonight if we don’t warm up.”

The problem was that we had three-season tents and the weather had unexpectedly moved into the fourth season.

“How about you sleep here with me? I’ll keep you warm.”

“You know I can’t. It’s Nate’s night. He’s being generous. Don’t throw it back in his face.”

“I guess not.” Derek was too considerate to deliberately hurt someone’s feelings, but I wasn’t sure his own feelings could tolerate the three of us in a tent together.

“I could use the extra body heat,” I prodded.

“Me too. I can’t sleep like this.” He must have been wearing his entire wardrobe, layers so thick he looked like he’d gained ten pounds. “Why do I feel like I’m going to regret this?” he asked, but he picked up his sleeping bag and pad. We walked back across the campground together to where Katrina’s tent glowed with a gentle, flickering light that meant Nate had lit the lantern.

Derek gave me a quick kiss. “Get it while I can,” he whispered.

“Knock, knock,” I said to Nate. I poked my head inside to make sure he wasn’t naked. He was wearing a shirt, at least, and was lying under my unzipped sleeping bag.

Derek and I crawled in.

“I’ve got it set up,” Nate said. “This is my bag on the bottom on top of the pads Here give me your stuff.”

He slid Derek’s pad under the bag on the far side and then unzipped Derek’s sleeping bag and added it like a second blanket on top of mine.

“I thought we’d all be in our own sleeping bags,” Derek said from a cross-legged position near the door.

“Way warmer this way. Lissie goes in the middle. We’re all toasty.”

It did sound cozy. A little weird, but cozy. I slid in next to Nate and patted the bag on my other side, asking Derek to lie down next to me. He pulled a layer off and got in.

“Nice.” I could feel the heat of the warm bodies on both sides of me. “We’re going to get hot.”

Derek peeled off another shirt and took off a layer from the bottom too. “Tell me about it.”

I pushed the sleeves up on my fleece. I was only wearing one layer and it was a warm one.

“Should we put out the lantern?” I asked.

“You’re not sleepy, are you?” Nate took off his shirt, leaving himself bare-chested. He snuggled in beside me, nestling his head against my fleece, making me even warmer.

“I’m hot,” I complained.

“I know. She is hot, isn’t she, Derek?”

Derek didn’t rise to the bait, but he did take off his t-shirt and push the top sleeping bag off his legs.

“Not funny,” I complained. “You guys are half-dressed on the outside and I’m bundled up in the middle.”

“A minute ago you were crying about being cold,” Nate teased.

I could feel his cool, bare legs tangling with mine which were getting damp inside my sweat pants. Then Derek reached beneath the bag to pull off his leggings and it was the final straw.

“Fine,” I said. “If you guys can get undressed I can too.” I sat up and whipped my fleece off over my head defiantly. I was halfway to pulling off my pants when I saw Nate’s smirk. This was what he wanted me to do. I hesitated.

“Well, don’t stop there. Come on, you’ve never kept your pants on before. Lissie doesn’t wear pajamas when she sleeps with you, does she, Derek?”

Derek just grunted and turned his back to us like he was trying to sleep. I knew he was regretting joining us, as predicted.

“Play nice, Nate.”

“It’s nothing either of us hasn’t seen before, and you’ll sleep better. Derek, you don’t mind if Lissie sleeps naked, do you?”

“Just keep your own shorts on.”

I reached a hand down to make sure he had shorts on. He winked at me and slid his hand to the waistband of my sweat pants. I smacked his hand away but figured I’d better take my pants off before he did it for me and made a scene.

I pulled them off and threw them over Derek’s body into the corner with all his discarded clothes. I slid down between them as Derek rolled over and looked across me at Nate.

“You got anything else lined up?”

Nate put his hand on my naked stomach, sliding the sleeping bag down so my chest lay exposed between them. Even though they were looking at each other and not my breasts, my nipples hardened.

“I guess this seems weird to you,” Nate said to Derek, “but you’ve seen her like this before. It’s no different because we’re both here. For instance, this doesn’t surprise you, does it?” He indicated the nipple closest to him, now hard and puckered.

“No.”

“And you know what’ll happen if I do this.” He leaned down and took it into his mouth, using his teeth lightly and flicking his tongue across the top.

I moaned.

“I love how responsive she is, don’t you?”

Derek nodded. He put his hand on my chest, above Nate’s and below my breasts, as if deciding.

“Do you think she’s wet?” Nate asked as his head dipped back down to my nipple.

“Starting anyway.”

“Check.”

I held my breath, not sure if I was waiting for Derek to touch me or hoping he’d refuse. Nate sucked hard on my nipple, eliciting another moan. Derek’s hand lifted from my chest and moved to the tuft of hair above my pussy, but he didn’t dip a finger down to test my wetness, not yet.

“Is she?”

“She will be.”

The weight of Derek’s palm against my pubic bone was driving me crazy. He leaned down and kissed me, his head brushing against Nate’s, then his hand moved—scraping down over my mound and through the wetness he knew would be there to plunge two fingers roughly inside me.

“I guess she is,” Nate said, referring to the noise I’d made.

Derek held his fingers up where Nate could see the strings of my arousal webbed between them.

“Nice. She makes you feel like a hero, doesn’t she?”

“I never knew I was such a stud until I met Lissie.”

“I hear you are, though. She says you’ve got a nice dick, really makes her scream.”

“Well.” Derek cleared his throat. “Well,” he said again. “I hear you’ve got great oral technique.”

“She said that?” Nate smiled down at me and gave my nipple a tweak.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t even compare.”

I hadn’t said that exactly—I wasn’t stupid—but Nate was good and Derek was hung and I apparently needed to learn to keep my mouth shut.

“You can always work on your technique,” Nate said. “Not much I can do about the size of my dick.”

“Not going to buy a vacuum pump?”

They laughed. Derek looked relaxed around Nate for the first time.

“I’d love to see it.” Nate, being Nate, took it too far.

“My dick?”

“Relax, dude, I don’t want to touch it. I’m curious. I keep hearing how much bigger it is.”

“It’s not that big, not like porn-star big.”

“Really? I’ve got this idea in my head that it’s huge.”

Nate was such a manipulator. Derek was big, but he wasn’t porn-star big, and I’d never said he was.

“Really, dude. It’s pretty normal, I think.” Derek hesitated, but I knew he’d cave. We all waited silently until he flipped the sleeping bag off of himself and pulled his penis out of his boxers. Almost immediately he tucked it away.

“Not to complain,” Nate said, “but it wasn’t hard. I’m not saying anything, only it doesn’t tell me much. You know what they say—it’s not the size; it’s the coefficient of expansion. Sorry. Old joke. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciated it. I really did.”

“You want to see it hard?”

“Maybe Lissie could ...”

“I don’t know if she could.”

“Performance anxiety. I totally understand. Like stage fright. Hey, don’t sweat it.”

“Do you think you could?” Derek’s competitive nature chafed.

“Get hard?” Nate laughed. “I am.” He pulled down his side of the sleeping bag and took off his shorts—no quick peek with Nate. “But it’s different for me. For one thing, I’m an exhibitionist. And for another, touching Lissie like this always gets me hard.” He moved his hand to my pussy, fingering me just out of sight where the sleeping bag still draped over my abdomen. “Doesn’t it you?”

“If it’s just me and her. I guess I’m the opposite of an exhibitionist.”

“A voyeur?”

“No!”

“Sorry, I’m kidding. Actually, I’m a voyeur too. I think they kind of go together.”

“That’s why you want to see my dick?”

“Maybe somewhat. I really did want to see how big it was though. Hey, look at mine.” He reached down and put a hand under his balls and lifted the entire apparatus in Derek’s direction. “Is yours a lot bigger?”

“Not a lot. It’s thicker, I guess.”

“Thicker’s good. Isn’t it, Lissie?”

“Yummy.” I wished Nate would take his hand off his own body and put it back on mine.

“It might be a little longer too. I don’t know.”

“It’s longer,” I said. I glanced at Nate, who was now languorously running his hand along his shaft, then at Derek. Derek looked pained, but I noticed something interesting—there was a bulge in the front of his boxers.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Nate said. “I’ll show you, then you show me.”

“Show me that? I’ve seen it, thanks.”

“No, not my dick. My oral sex technique. I’ll show you what I use to get Lissie screaming, then you show me what you use. Fair?”

“I don’t want to watch—”

“No, wait. I’m not actually going to go down on her. Hard to get two heads in there anyway. Here’s my idea: her nipples. We pretend the nipple is the clit. One for each of us. I show you a little, you try a little. What do you think?”

An interesting proposition. Derek and I had been working on his technique, but I wasn’t the best teacher. When it was good, I got foggy, and when it wasn’t good, I got cowardly about saying so.

“OK, I’ll try.”

“It’s a deal? Shake.” Nate held out his hand.

“Dude, I know where that hand has been.”

“We’ll kiss on it then. You go first.” Nate waved a hand towards me so that Derek would understand he wasn’t suggesting they kiss each other, and Derek leaned down and gave me a chaste peck on the lips. Then Nate gave me a deep, soul-wrenching kiss. As he finished, he trailed his mouth across my ear and I heard him whisper, “Thank you.”

“First,” Nate said, getting into position over me, “you can’t do this.” He stuck his tongue way out and licked the tip of my nipple several times. “That might work for a nipple, but a clit is more sensitive. It needs moisture. You want to get the whole mouth involved with the tongue licking, yes, but from inside the mouth so it all stays wet. Like this.” He put his mouth on my breast and sucked my nipple up into it, his tongue brushing against the underside.

“It’s hard to see because my mouth is surrounding the whole nipple, but that’s where you want to go with the clit. Keep it surrounded, keep it wet, make a lot of contact, and then you can use a lot of pressure. I’m not being gentle exactly.”

He put his mouth back on me and proved it. I went wild against the strong suction and heavy tongue action.

“You try.”

Nate moved his head away, a reassuring finger staying behind to roam across my brilliantly hard nipple as he gestured Derek forward. Derek leaned his head down to my other nipple and went straight for the kill. I screamed, not in a good way.

“I forgot to say you have to start slow and work your way up,” Nate said. “Try again.” He put his hand on Derek’s bare shoulder.

Derek’s muscles rippled, shrugging Nate off. “I can do it.”

This time his initial moves were so light I could barely feel them, but I gave an exaggerated moan and he gained confidence, quickly picking up Nate’s style and energy. Nate meanwhile was providing feedback and encouragement—vocal feedback to Derek, physical encouragement to me. He had his fingers in my pussy and was helping to create the sounds I was making.

“You’ve so got it. You’re driving her crazy and that’s only her nipple.”

I squirmed and squeaked as he slid his fingers over my clit at the same moment Derek started using suction.

“Please,” I said to neither one in particular.

“You’ve got her all riled up.” Nate discreetly removed his fingers to his own side of the sleeping bag.

Derek picked up his head and looked into my eyes. “Seems kind of cruel.”

“It is cruel,” I insisted.

“Think we should do something about it?” Nate moved his hand to the nipple Derek had just suckled, toying with its purple heat. I wished that Derek’s hand would take Nate’s place in my pussy, but the idea of going further obviously had Derek nervous.

“Maybe we should just stick to the original bargain.”

“You’re hard now?”

I could feel Derek against my thigh, so I knew before he pulled his boxers off that he was only semi-hard. Still, it was an impressive sight: Nate, hard as a rock, as always, on the one side, and Derek, halfway hard but huge with it, on the other.

“It’s nice,” Nate said.

“That’s not it,” I said.

“No?”

“It’s not all the way,” Derek admitted. “I’m still kind of nervous.”

“Payback.” I didn’t give Derek time to argue. I pushed him onto his back and dove in. I started with his ears because I knew he was helpless with a tongue in his ear. I licked and nibbled and breathed until he was wiggling and gasping beneath me.

I didn’t have to look to know that Nate was stroking himself behind me. I could hear the swish of nylon sleeping bag and the sucking wetness of pre-cum against foreskin.

Derek’s cock was hard before I got my mouth to it, but I didn’t let that stop me. I threw myself into bringing him as close to the brink as I could. Like I’d said: payback.

The breathing beneath me was echoed by the breathing beside me. Nate was at my elbow, closing in on us. I wondered how far he planned to go as I held Derek on the edge with my tongue. Derek threw his forearm over his eyes and mumbled something about being hard.

“Hmm?” I asked, purposely letting my lips vibrate against him.

“I’m hard!” There was a desperation in his voice so deep and beautiful that I relented. I slowly pulled his cock from my mouth, giving it one last laving of warm saliva. I held it at the root and showed it to Nate.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s amazing,” Nate whispered.

Derek’s eyes were closed, his breathing rough. He put his hand on my head and stroked my hair. I knew he was torn between stopping and going, so I put his dick back in my mouth and sucked while he thought about it.

“Lissie,” he said softly.

“Lissie?” someone said from outside the tent.

We all jumped. There was a mad scramble for position and sleeping bag and a suspicious amount of time passed before I said “yeah” back.

“We’re going to go to a hotel.” It was Pam. Now that I didn’t have a cock in my mouth, I recognized the voice.

“Um, OK.”

“We’re all freezing and no one can sleep.”

“OK.”

“Do you guys want to come? We’re going to get a couple of rooms and crash in our bags on the floor.”

“No, we’re warm enough.”

Pam didn’t respond for a moment. People were in camper shells, the backs of cars, other tents, and they were all bailing. It was below freezing out there.

“OK. Well, maybe we’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast then.”

“OK.” Anything to make her go away.

“Do you know where Derek is? He doesn’t seem to be in his tent.”

“Um, he’s in here.”

“Oh. No wonder you’re so warm.”

I heard her say something to someone outside the tent followed by whispering and giggling in the distance as the story passed from person to person.

The three of us lay silently side by side under the sleeping bag, which no longer felt too warm. No legs pressed against mine, no hands roamed across my body.

“Great,” Derek said finally. “Now everyone knows what we were up to.”

“No one knows what we were up to,” I said.

“And fuck ’em if they did,” Nate said.

“That’s easy for you to say. These are my friends.”

“My friends would think it was hot.”

“Your friends are theater people.”

“Yeah, I guess a lot of us are exhibitionists,” Nate agreed, ignoring the implied insult.

The sounds outside were fading as cars started up and pulled away, taking the bustling people who’d been deconstructing tents with them.

“Maybe we should turn off that lantern,” Derek said, his back to me once again.

Nate sat up and leaned over me. “Derek? Before we go to sleep, I just wanted to tell you that I really was enjoying that. So, thanks.”

“That’s OK.”

“Looked like you were enjoying yourself, too.”

Derek rolled over to face us. “Well, who wouldn’t be?”

“Yeah, she gives great head.” Nate sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d ...?”

“I’m not hard anymore.”

“Hey, me either.” Nate peeled back the sleeping bag, quick as ever to demonstrate. “That was a rude interruption.”

Surprisingly, Derek looked, and kept looking long enough for us to catch him at it.

“I forgot you weren’t circumcised. I mean, Lissie said you weren’t.”

“Yeah, my parents were in the middle of a holy war when I was born and my father refused to allow it, basically to spite my mother. I used to hate being different, but now that I don’t have to take gym anymore, I’m glad. I can do this.”

He started massaging the head with his foreskin. His cock sprang quickly to life. It was obvious he was enjoying himself, though how much was from the stroking and how much from the audience, I couldn’t tell.

“Feels good like that?” Derek put his hand beneath the sleeping bag. It brushed my thigh as he reached for his own cock.

“Oh, yeah. You do it, Lissie.”

I took over from Nate, pulling and pressing his foreskin, rolling it back and forth gently but firmly over his dripping head.

“Mmm, like heaven.” He closed his eyes and wiggled his hips against my motion. I snuck a peek at Derek and found him riveted.

“Sorry,” Nate said, opening his eyes again. “Lost myself for a minute there. So what do you do?”

“Just, you know.”

“Not really. You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never actually watched another guy jerk off.”

“You pull on it, like—” He took his hand off his dick and used it to make a cartoonish jerking motion in the air.

“Ouch.”

“Well, not so rough like that.” Derek looked frustrated. “Here, like this.” He pulled the covers off us, revealing his cock which was mostly hard. He made a few tentative movements. Embarrassment was clearly printed on his face. To my highly trained eye, he appeared to be getting softer, not harder.

“Let Lissie do it,” Nate said. ”One in each hand.”

I was still fondling Nate. Now I reached my other hand to Derek and started to stroke him too.

“You don’t think that’s hot?” Nate nodded his head towards the alignment of our naked groins splayed across the tent: Nate hard and handled, me wet and open, Derek growing rapidly beneath my busy fingers.

“A little.”

It wasn’t easy juggling two cocks, each one requiring a different technique and rhythm.

“I don’t have the same sense for him,” I told Nate. “It’s harder without the foreskin. I worry about being too rough.”

“So go down on him again.” Nate pressed me towards him. “Or better yet, fuck her for me.”

Derek’s head jerked. “Are you nuts?”

“Maybe, but I’m dying for it.”

“That’s what you’ve been angling for this whole time, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?

“Maybe I can’t explain,” Nate said, “but ever since Lissie told me what you do to her, I’ve been dying to see it. Think of it like this: it’s live porn with Lissie in it. We’ve got this entire campground to ourselves. We’re probably the only idiots for miles. No one can hear her scream. Fuck her really hard for me, please?”

“And then what? You’ll have sloppy seconds?”

“I don’t mind. We all use condoms anyway.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I could watch you.”

“Listen, you do your thing and then, if it doesn’t feel right, we’ll go to sleep. I don’t need anything. I’ll be jerking off to this for months, I promise you.”

“No, if I do, you do. I’m not going to hog her.”

“OK, so let’s do it. We’re all horny as hell. What’s stopping us?”

Nate was horny as hell. I was horny as hell. I looked at Derek’s cock, not far from my face. It was drooping, but there was also a drop of pre-cum lingering on the head. If he wasn’t horny as hell now, he had been and would be again. I sat up and reached for my overnight bag.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Nate asked. We’d come so close.

“I’ve only got one condom.” I scrambled to explain my lack of foresight. “Well, we’re only here for one night and I didn’t know we were going to be doing this—that’s for sure—and anyway,” I explained to Derek, “Nate really likes the oral, so sometimes we don’t even—too much information, right?”

“So we only have one condom,” Nate said. “We only need one. I already said I was fine.”

“It’s your night,” Derek insisted.

“And I choose to watch you with my night. Please, you don’t even have to finish. Just start, I’m begging you. I’ll jerk off. Carefully. Way over here.”

“Wait! My purse. I forgot about my emergency condom.” I dug through our pile of belongings for my purse and triumphantly pulled out a second condom.

“That’s our Lissie. Such a girl scout.” Nate leaned over and whispered, “Better get him warmed up again.”

I gave Derek the blow job of his life, starting hard to get him hard, then going light and easy to make him hungry for more.  He squirmed when I slowed down, then the squirming changed to muttering. His hands grew heavy on my head. He knew better than to try to control me, but the pressure told me what he needed. I didn’t give it to him.

Normally by now he would have caved—flipped me over and drilled me hard—but tonight it was going to take even more. I started alternating—some fast and then some slow—getting him close, then backing off, until the rage of his lust burst free.

He ripped me off his dick, pulling me up and over and onto my back. “You want me to fuck? I’ll fuck.”

I could barely hold him off to get the condom on.

“Do it quick,” he said between his teeth.

I had it on in record time. The moment I released his cock, he plunged it deep into me, all the way to the root with a thundering bang—the way I needed it, the way I loved it. I almost came right there. I was so turned on, and he was so huge and hard, that every stroke was pushing me over the next crest.

I lost track of Nate, lost track even of Derek. He asked nothing from me but to absorb. We were wild together, beyond what we had ever been, pushed to the edge by Nate’s silent presence and all the night’s teasing.

It was a fury that couldn’t last for long. He came inside me with a final, violent thrust, wrenching one more scream from me as he carelessly drove too deep.

He put his head against my neck and we breathed ragged breaths together, joined and drained.

“God, Lissie. That was so hot, so beautiful.” Nate pushed himself between me and Derek, kissing me all over, causing Derek to slide away from me as he encroached further.

“Sweetheart, I’m so hard. Touch me.”

He pulled my head down to his cock and I took it in, pouring my pleasure over him. He panted beneath me, on the edge of orgasm within moments. I backed off.

“No, don’t tease. Not tonight. I can’t stand anymore.”

I pushed him over the edge roughly, continuing to suck and lick as hard as I could until his moans turned to gasps and the last bit of semen had been swallowed. Then I gentled on him, my mouth warm and sweet against his softening dick.

When I let it pop free, he pulled me up for a kiss. He loved to kiss me after a blowjob, long and intimately, and tonight he was particularly needy.

When he was finished, I turned to Derek, worried that he felt left out. He had a blank expression and his dick lay limp between his legs. I leaned into him to kiss him, but he turned away.

“Don’t now.”

“Are you sorry?” Nate asked. “Please don’t say you’re sorry.”

“No, it was OK. Like you said—live porn. Was it everything you’d hoped for?”

“Unbelievable. Lissie?”

“I’m still horny.”

They looked at each other and laughed. “Believable,” they said together.

Nate reached down and paddled his fingers in my pussy. “This girl needs more.”

“You could show me the oral. For real this time.”

“You’d be OK with that?”

Derek shrugged. “Sure. Make her scream.”

No one asked if it was OK with me, but it was. The orgasm I’d had while Derek fucked me was only a warm-up. Going down on Nate, listening to his amazing response, had pushed me back into the red zone. I needed to come.

Nate settled between my thighs. He started with slow, long licks, building my excitement level and bathing my clit in my own juices. I silently urged him to get on with it.

When he wrapped his mouth around my clit and started a firm sucking pressure, I moaned in relief. Finally. Fucking felt great, but all the girth and length in the world couldn’t match the intense, focused pleasure of a mouth applied right where I needed it.

Nate used his tongue and lips to knead and tease me, taking me to ever higher levels, until my orgasm broke and I screamed, just like Derek had said I would. His hands held me steady as he kept licking through the waves of pleasure, pushing me higher and deeper into the orgasm until I peaked and the pleasure was suddenly too much.

Nate knew to be gentle once I was done coming. He pulled back from my clit and dove lower into my pussy, slurping at the juices running freely and raising, now and then, for another lick at my clit. Each lick made me shiver. Pleasure built slowly, until I was as consumed as I’d been before and more so.

Through the haze of my next impending orgasm I felt Derek’s hands on me. He rambled against my ear, oh God, and Lissie, and so hot, and come for me, come for us, and I did.

Nate was ruthless this time. I thought it might never end, that there might be no top to this peak, and then I was tumbling down the other side, hearing my own shuddering breath in the otherwise silent tent.

Nate went back to gentle laps at my pussy. His hands ran along my inner thighs and over my stomach to settle me before the next assault on my senses.

“How many times can she do that?” I heard Derek ask.

“Depends.” Nate’s mouth left my pussy. “She’s pretty wild tonight. A couple more maybe.”

“Well, don’t use her up.”

“Mmph,” I said. By which I meant, “no one is paying attention to me.”

“Hang on,” Nate told Derek. He bent back to me and pushed me quickly, brutally, up and over in a way that only he could, snapping me from aroused to almost painfully pleased in under a minute.

“That should hold her for a while. You wanted to try?”

“No, you go ahead. But maybe when you’re done, I could fuck her again. I’m kind of hard.”

“So I see. Sure. She’s usually good for more that way even when she can’t take any more this way.”

“I can’t take any more,” I mumbled, my clit still throbbing from my last climax.

“Yeah, right,” Nate said

Derek laughed against my ear. “One more, baby.”

“Nicely,” I pleaded. “Do me nicely.”

“Nice it is.” Nate went slowly this time, using his fingers inside me to create a delicious contrast—the sharp sweetness of his mouth sucking gently on my clit and the churning, all-body throbbing of his fingers stroking my G-spot. I lay as still as I could, letting him work, the pressure of Derek’s body helping mine feel anchored beneath the dreamy double onslaught.

As I began moaning helplessly, Derek’s mouth pressed against mine. He swallowed my moans, holding the pleasure between us. A current of electricity ran from Nate to me to Derek, and when I came it completed the circuit. My fingertips buzzed from the full-body shock of sweetness that swept through me, pitching me up into a star-filled sky and wafting me back down to a tent that glowed with lamplight and love.

Nate moved so he lay next to me and Derek shifted to give him some room. They leaned across me, watching my chest rise and fall as they talked, their arms draped across my abdomen together.

“Is she OK?” Derek asked.

“She will be.”

“I’ve never done this, made her like that.”

“You do something different. It’s all good. Right, Lissie?”

“Fuck me,” I said as the dreaminess wore off and the longing for pure, raw passion returned. I needed the last bit of horniness banged out of me.

“Fuck her,” Nate said. He picked up the condom I’d dropped earlier and passed it to Derek.

“It’s our last one.”

“Use it.” He guided my unresisting hand to his cock. I felt the heat and sensuously slippery foreskin against my palm and started stroking in a rhythm that needed no thought.

Somewhere above me, Derek put on a condom. I heard foil rattling, then felt his legs separate mine. He pressed inside me, lying against my body to maximize our contact, his hands on my arms as I continued to massage Nate nestled next to us.

Derek moved slowly until the heat took hold of us all, then slowness was forgotten.

When my thoughts grew coherent again, Derek was shuddering and Nate’s come was splashed across my face. He traced through it with a fingertip and slid the finger into my mouth. I sucked on it sleepily, then rolled my head towards Derek. He kissed me, his tongue swirling gently inside my come-flavored mouth. Slowly he drew back, lips lingering against mine, a smile playing about them.

“We’d better get to sleep if we’re going to be any use tomorrow,” he said.

“You think we’ll be able to climb?” Nate asked. He turned off the lantern.

“You never know.” Derek rolled over, pulling the sleeping bag over himself. “We might as well be ready. Besides, I’m exhausted.”

“Me too.” I spooned against Derek’s back. “And anyway, we’re out of condoms.”

As I drifted off to sleep, my arm across Derek’s stomach and Nate’s groin tucked snugly against my ass, I heard Nate whisper in my ear, “Next time, bring more.”

Chapter 28

“Sounds awkward,” Derek said, deflecting Nate once again.

“No, listen, we’d just be roommates, like any other roommates.”

I eavesdropped on them from the back seat, drowsy from a good day of climbing and what had been an eventful night. I leaned against the side of the car using somebody’s sleeping bag as a pillow and somebody else’s sleeping bag as a blanket, relaxed and content. My guys had gotten along well all day and although they were bantering back and forth now, Derek was driving home with us instead of with Conrad and Leon.

“I don’t want to live in the middle of an orgy,” he said.

“Of course not. I mean, not as a regular thing. Maybe once in a while.”

I opened my eyes and snuck a peek at Derek’s face but didn’t learn anything from it.

“You’d have your room and I’d have mine,” Nate continued. “Sex stays in the bedrooms and everyone sleeps in their own bed. That’s a definite.”

Nate had experienced first-hand the reality of sleeping with Derek when the three of us woke up on the same side of the tent. This time it was Nate with his face embedded in the nylon mesh while I enjoyed a naked flesh sandwich—a sweaty naked flesh sandwich.

“You’re lucky we were in a tent,” I told Nate. “It’s worse in a bed.”

“How’s it worse in a bed?”

“You can fall out. Sometimes I get out of the bed, walk around to the other side, and get back in. It’s like the song about the ten little monkeys.”

“I don’t want you there all the time when I’m with Lissie,” Derek said, returning to the real subject.

“There’s always Lissie’s place. I won’t horn in on you on your nights—promise—but if you need more privacy, go to Lissie’s.”

I wondered where my place would be. Alex and I had an appointment with a realtor on Thursday, immediately following our appointment with a judge on Wednesday.

“I’m more worried about your nights,” Derek said.

“I’ll go to Lissie’s. Unless, you know, you feel like doing the threesome thing some night.”

“On your night, right?”

“Right.”

“In your room.”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, but if it’s my night and I’m fucking Lissie in my room you’re going to be on the other side of the wall jerking off to it.”

Nate raised a hand, pleading no contest. I laughed under my breath.

“What about other women?” Derek asked.

“Like a foursome?”

“No! I meant you bringing home women besides Lissie.”

“So what if I do?”

“Lissie doesn’t like it.”

“That’s between me and Lissie. Look, we’re roommates, not relationship police.”

“Sounds awkward.”

It did sound like a situation that would require heavy negotiation, but it also sounded convenient, like one-stop shopping. I closed my eyes again, letting Nate and Derek’s conversation lull me closer to sleep. When their talk transitioned to mundane matters like how to divide up the utility bill, I knew that Nate had won. I wasn’t surprised.

We were nearly home. Derek gave Nate directions to his apartment so we could drop him off and Nate could tour the place. The determination with which Nate was campaigning to move into an apartment he’d never even seen told me more about his future plans than the answers he’d given Derek. Nate would wear Derek down until the place became a non-stop naked free-for-all. I couldn’t decide whether the thought made me excited or tired.

At least I’d have my own place to escape to, wherever that might be. And Nate would bring home other girls for him and Derek, and Derek would learn to enjoy casual sex, but no, Derek wanted Amanda. Derek could bring home Amanda, and he and Nate and Amanda could have a threesome, but, no, Derek wouldn’t like that. I’d bring over Alex, and Alex and Nate and Deb and Amanda could—

I woke up when the car stopped, shaking free from the confused orgy in my mind. While Derek showed Nate around his apartment, I crashed into the chaise lounge at the end of the sectional sofa where Derek and I snuggled when I came over. The chaise wasn’t wide enough for three people, not even with Nate’s scrawny hips. Someone would have to sit over there if the three of us watched television together, but then who was ever home?

The night before had been a fantasy—the warmth of two, multiplied by two. Reality went like this: negotiation and coordination, overnight bags missing one sock, slinking home in last night’s clothes, empty rooms whose occupants were out because they were busy driving back and forth—from my place to your place to gym to theater to work. Passing by each other, meeting each other, always asking “how’d it go last night, last week, the other day?” because we weren’t there last night, last week, the other day, because our lives didn’t run parallel; they glanced off each other at right angles.

Reality was not remembering who you’d told that story to, or what exactly it was about last night, last week, the other day you should be asking about, or asking when it was already too late because it was all yesterday’s news already. Reality was that when the dishwasher broke, it was your problem and no one else’s, and when you cried, you cried alone, because that was the night that was no one’s night.

“Lissie?” Nate called. “You ready to go?”

I got up and kissed Derek goodbye, lightly at first, and then not. “Bye, baby,” I said, kissing him over and over. He stood stiffly accepting it in front of Nate until I overwhelmed him and his arms came around me and he kissed me like he had that first time, like he was starving for me.

“Are you in a big hurry?” I asked Nate.

He shook his head, although I knew it was late and he worked early.

“Then let’s see how this would go.” I took Derek’s hand and led him into his bedroom, tugging firmly when he hesitated. I knew we needed this moment for just the two of us.

When we were finished, I left him there, the sheet brushing his hips, his chest bare, his bangs damp, the way I loved him best. I kissed him one last time, called him baby one last time, turned out the light and closed the door behind me.

Nate sat on the edge of the couch, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He looked up when I stood before him, his face wretched.

“This isn’t going to happen, is it?”

“I don’t know. I need to figure some things out.”

“Sometimes I hate that man.”

“Derek?”

“No, Alex.”

I should have known that Nate would know.

Chapter 29

The house was dark when I got home Tuesday night. I’d worked late, with no plans to be anywhere. My muscles needed a rest after a weekend of climbing, and Deb and I were waiting for the final set design before we could begin working on the lights for the next show. I should have been looking forward to a quiet evening, but when I pulled into the driveway and faced the dark windows, my stomach dropped. Tonight was my last night as Mrs. Alex Wells and I’d spend it alone.

Resigned, I gathered up my pocketbook and briefcase and sack of fast food and went into the house, flipping lights on as I went. So it’s dark when you get home, I thought. You turn on lights and then there’s light. Make your own light, Lissie.

I read Bree’s Surrender—long neglected—while I ate, not wanting to be alone with my thoughts. I had no trouble picking up the plot. They were nearly at the point of reconciliation, having been separated by cruel fate, a horrible misunderstanding, or some dumbass thing Alec had done—it hardly mattered which. They would naturally, and in approximately sixteen paragraphs, overcome that obstacle and Bree would, yes, surrender herself to the care and love of Alec for the rest of her life and he would, yes, care for her and love her for the rest of his life, and they’d live happily ever after despite not having gotten along for more than two consecutive pages the entire book.

I threw the book as hard as I could against the wall across from me. It bounced off the wall and back onto the table where it skidded across the surface, colliding with my wine glass and promptly knocking it over. Wine ran across the table and flowed into my lap.

Well there.

Come see me in fifteen years, Bree, I thought as I dabbed at my pajamas with a dish rag, when you’re drinking alone and eating food out of a paper bag the night before you and Alec divvy up your shared property and shake hands over a newly-minted divorce decree.

My phone rang, thank God. Donna.

“How’re you doing?” she asked.

“OK.” No use crying over spilled wine.

“Hey, why don’t we go out? Celebrate. Or mourn. Whichever you’re feeling.”

“Don’t you have rehearsal?”

“Not tonight. They’re doing Act I and I don’t even show up until halfway through Act II.”

I smiled at the exasperation in her voice. Last show, she’d been complaining about being on stage all the time.

“I don’t know if I feel like going out,” I said. “I’m already in pajamas.” Wet pajamas.

“For God’s sake, Lissie. It’s seven thirty. You’re the very picture of a depressed divorcee. If I didn’t know you were involved with two hot young things, I’d be worried about you.”

“I’m ...” I hesitated, not sure what I was.

“Lissie? Did something happen with Derek or Nate? Or Derek and Nate?”

I told her what had happened.

“So,” she said. “Summing up: you had a crazy, hot threesome which, I’m not even going to say how jealous I am about that, and now Nate and Derek are moving in together so the three of you can—”

“Live happily ever after,” I finished.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. Only, it’s not, is it?”

Donna was silent on the other end of the phone. “Ever-after wouldn’t last very long,” she said finally. “Those guys should be getting married, having kids.”

“So should I. I’m envious of what you’re building with Wayne.”

“I wouldn’t trade it. But then, I was always envious of what you had with Alex. I guess we can never know.”

I got Donna off the phone, declining all her offers of company. It was a night to be alone, to be finally alone. When I’d set out to find myself, I’d intended to find out what Melissa was like not with two men, but with none.

I would meditate on it. I went into to the living room and lit the candles that stood, ornamentally only, on our coffee table. I arranged some pillows nearby and turned out the lights. I lowered myself onto the pillows, working my way into a poor imitation of the position Derek assumed so easily.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing, but what came were thoughts of Derek—his lithe body wound into an upright posture, his face serene. Whatever turmoil might churn inside him, he pushed it away in those moments of meditation, connecting to a touchpoint deep within himself where there was peace.

Through his practice he had found the quiet strength to face his tormenting demons, had come not merely to accept with forbearance the role I’d thrust on him, but to grow within it. That he could welcome Nate into his home amazed and impressed me. Derek, driven by a fear of not being good enough, faced all other fears head on and vanquished them. He had taught me what it meant to fall trying.

But as well as he’d adjusted, this was not the life for Derek. He deserved the commitment he was able to provide and the orderly, rules-based existence he craved, though a good hard shake-up now and then would be important too.

The candles had a light scent of spruce. The aroma tickled my senses, reminding me of Nate, his head on my chest—the sleepy satisfied boy resting after play. It was his sense of fun, his openness and honesty, that had brought us all together.

Nate had taught me the value of honesty within a relationship, but I wondered what he was hiding from himself that made him want only what he asked for: easy affection, a quick thrill. He made me forget that I wanted something more with his deflective charm, the sharp but temporary focus on me and only me, the confident assurance of his touch claiming transitory ownership.

If I were going to choose between them ... Well, I had chosen between them, hadn’t I? Because if I’d chosen Derek, Derek would have let me. Life with Nate was only tolerable if there was a Derek to fall back on during those hours and days when the Nate door was shut to me. Life with Nate was only tolerable if the grating edge of unfaithfulness was soothed by soft strokes of devotion. Derek would make some girl very happy. Nate would make most women miserable.

In the middle, there was Alex—a man who loved me, though not so blindly, a man with confidence, though not so cocky. A man I knew, a man who’d known me. Still, just a man.

I never could meditate. I rose to my knees, scattered the pillows, and blew out the candles that screamed of Nate.

Kneeling, I asked God to show me my future, but he showed me my past: Alex slipping money to the beggars outside our honeymoon resort when he thought I wasn’t looking, because we’d been told not to encourage them, but he couldn’t resist the faces of the little boys; the two of us holding hands in this living room in front of the picture window, watching the sun set on our first night in our new home; Alex bringing me a cup of coffee in the waiting room at the hospital the night my father had his heart attack and then, seeing the silent plea in my eyes, ditching the coffee and sliding into the seat next to me to put his arm around me and hold me; Alex’s laughing face above mine the night I’d farted loudly during sex, the way he’d kept me pinned against him, refusing to let me run away and hide; Alex wearing the sweater I’d knit for him, saying it didn’t matter if one sleeve was longer than the other because he always pushed them up to his elbows anyway.

And lastly, though it was neither the beginning nor the end but perhaps the center: Alex’s face the moment before I said I do. It was a quietly serious face, worshipful though he wasn’t a religious man, with a trace of worry crinkling the corners of his eyes, as though I might not say it, as though I might not love him as much as he loved me.

My heart filled with the same combination of faith and hope I’d had that day. With God at my back, I’d made a promise to this man and with God at my back, I’d keep it.

Chapter 30

It didn’t occur to me that Alex might not be alone until he answered the door. He was wearing a pair of cutoff sweat pants without a shirt and his hair stood up in back.

“Were you sleeping?”

“Past our bedtime. Past mine, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I assume it couldn’t wait for tomorrow.”

“We’re getting divorced tomorrow. Unless—”

He backed away from the door and gestured for me to come in. The door opened into a little foyer with an archway into the living room to the left and a staircase to the right. I hadn’t imagined him in a place with more than one floor. The second story made it feel so permanent.

I followed him through the archway into the living room.

“Have you changed your mind?” he asked without turning to look at me.

“Maybe.”

He looked at me then, his expression both hopeful and wary. He moved to where I stood and took both of my hands in his.

“I won’t do it again,” he said. “I won’t cheat on you. I promise.”

He’d made that promise before, and broken it before, and could break it again, but I’d accepted and admitted my part in that and forgiven him his.

“That’s not why I’m here. I want to tell you some things about me—not apologize for them because I’m not sorry, but tell you about them. Then you can decide whether to accept me as I am now or not.”

“Sounds like I should make some tea.”

While he made tea, I prowled, cataloguing his belongings. Some I recognized, others I didn’t. The paintings were all new. The television was new—and gigantic. On a bookshelf that had come from our entryway stood the wedding photo that had been on our bedroom dresser.

Alex handed me a mug and waved me over to the sitting area. I sat down in a leather recliner that used to hang out in one of our spare bedrooms. I cradled the mug in my hands, letting the steam rise up into my face. Alex sat on a love seat he must have bought, and the silence stretched out.

“I want to tell you about Nate and Derek,” I said at last.

I told him about Nate and how he’d wrung my confession from me, how he’d shown me that sex was beautiful when it was honest, how he’d taught me that we got the sex we deserved.

More than Nate, I told him about theater, about the joy of shared creativity, about learning to stage manage from Rebekah and to design lights from Deb, about the pride of watching others watch your work, seeing them get pulled into the magic of the moment you’d created.

I told him about rock climbing, about those sudden surges when I surpassed what I’d been capable of a week or even a day before, about the physical satisfaction of finding a sequence that changed impossible to possible. I explained how it felt to look fear in the face and push it firmly aside—the total concentration, the rush of adrenalin, the odd peace of inevitability.

I told him about Derek and his quiet courage that never overcame fear, only kept pushing the edges of it farther and farther out.

Lastly I told him about the threesome, because I didn’t want it to be a secret between us. I told him how Derek and Nate were moving in together. I let him see the alternative, so he would understand what I chose when I chose him.

“And I accept all of that?” he said when I was done. He rose from the loveseat to move farther away from me.

“All of that is a fact. Unchangeable.”

“You’ve been happier without me.”

“No, not happier. I’ve been bigger without you, more expansive. I stopped growing when we got married, but that’s my fault, not yours. I won’t stop again.”

“So it continues, all of that?”

“Theater, yes. Climbing, yes. Threesomes, no. Unless you’re into it.”

The glare he gave me answered that question.

“And those guys will be there. You go climbing, that one is there. You go to the theater, the other one’s there, right?”

“Right. They’re good guys. Maybe you’ll get to know them someday.”

He shot me another look.

“Derek managed to get past it,” I reminded him.

“I don’t give a fuck what Derek managed to do.”

“At the end of the day, you trust me or you don’t.” I bit back the desire to point out that I wasn’t the one who’d been cheating. “Just like I’ll have to trust you.” But didn’t succeed completely.

Alex turned his back on me and ran his hand through his hair. I put my tea down on the coffee table, the ugly boxy thing that had been in Alex’s apartment when I met him and which I’d assumed we’d thrown out long ago. It must have been in the basement.

“Tell me your story,” I said. “I didn’t want the details before, but now I do. Before and since. Everything on the table.”

He paced wearily towards me and dropped onto the love seat, slumping forward onto his arms so that he looked drained and tense at the same time.

“Confession, huh?”

“It’s good for the soul.” I smiled at him like it would be easy and steeled myself because I knew it would be hard. A single shock of pain, I told myself.

“OK, fine. If you’re asking for it.” He glanced at me to verify that I was and then focused his eyes straight ahead on the dark television, like he was hearing the words rather than saying them.

“While we were married, there were five women altogether. The first four were one time each.”

“How did you find them?”

“The first one was an accident, almost. I would talk to her at the gym, maybe flirt, I don’t know, then one day she asked me if I wanted to get a drink, and I won’t say I didn’t know where it would lead because that’s ridiculous, but I didn’t know I knew it. I went, we drank. I texted you from the bar and said I had to stop in to see my father about something and then we went to a hotel next door and had sex. I never saw her again. I changed gyms.”

I remembered him changing gyms. Because the treadmills were newer, he’d told me. I pulled my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

“That first time, I don’t even know how it felt—the sex—if it was great or lousy. I was terrified and guilty and excited and relieved and I couldn’t tell you one thing about it, except that it happened.”

“And after that?”

“After that, it was on purpose. I found women online. I told them I wasn’t interested in a relationship and I thought that made it OK. I mean, OK how I was treating them,” he clarified, glancing over at me. “I knew it wasn’t OK how I was treating you. I never saw them more than once, so I wouldn’t get attached—that was the theory—and then with the last one, I broke that rule too.”

“You liked her?”

“Not especially.” He shrugged. “It’s a lot of work getting those things set up. It just seemed easier, you know. Bird in the hand.”

“Literally.”

We laughed, sharing the joke.

“Did you keep seeing her then? After we separated?”

“Not much. Like I said, she wasn’t anything special, just a willing woman. Did you know there’s a lot of them? Now that I’m available—” he made air quotes around available “—it’s almost too easy, and the easier it gets, the less it seems worth the effort. I don’t know if this will sound right, but the more sex I had, the more I missed you.”

“So there hasn’t been anyone special?”

“I haven’t fallen in love. Unlike you.”

“I do love them,” I admitted, “but not like I love you. I guess that’s something else Nate taught me. There’s love that you can have for as many people as you feel it for, and then there’s love that’s unique.”

I got out of the recliner and sat down next to Alex on the love seat. He made no move to touch me.

“You may not like that I’ve shared myself with them, but if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be able to say this to you.” Honesty, courage. I needed them both. “I love you uniquely. I don’t want our old life back, but I want my new life to include you.”

I waited for Alex to wrestle with his thoughts, knowing it wouldn’t have been easy for me to hear that he’d been emotionally involved with someone else. It might be a while before he’d come to see Nate and Derek as our marriage’s saviors, but I did.

“I’m willing to try,” he said at last. “I wish it could be the way it was before, but I say that and it doesn’t sound realistic. Time doesn’t run backwards.”

“Is it such a threat, my having some hobbies? You run.”

“You’re out every night now. You think ten o’clock is a reasonable hour to show up at someone’s house.” He smiled to show he was teasing about that last part. “I feel like we won’t spend time together,” he said more seriously. “I feel like I’ll miss you.”

“Not as much as you would if we were divorced. You could get involved in the theater, or try climbing.”

He shook his head.

“Then you could just listen. I’d like that—coming home and telling you about what I’ve been doing and hearing about what you’ve been doing. I want to share my life with you, but I can’t afford to have my life be all you. Climbing and theater make me feel alive; they make me feel horny. It wasn’t Nate and Derek making me horny—it was being, living, growing. I’m strong and I’m smart and I’m out there doing shit and it’s hot.”

“And it’s scary—the thought that I’m not all that, that you don’t need me.”

“If I didn’t need you, I wouldn’t be here.”

“It’ll never be the same.”

“It had better not be. If we do the same thing, we’ll end up in the same place. Think about it, Alex. You don’t want it to be the same. You want sex. Good sex.”

“Sex isn’t everything. I get that now.”

“OK, but it isn’t nothing, either. I get that now. I don’t want you to cheat on me again.”

“I promised you I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think you can promise that. Not alone, anyway. It’s going to take two of us. We have to work on keeping a spark in the relationship, and we have to agree to stay honest, which means I stop faking orgasms and you let me know if our sex life ever slips to the point that you’re considering cheating.”

“You’ll be the one bored now. How am I supposed to live up to having two guys at once?”

“One guy is all I need, one very special guy. Will you be my guy?”

He nodded, his smile tentative. I smiled back with more assurance. In his eyes I saw Derek’s hesitance and Nate’s neediness. I leaned into him and brushed my mouth along the curve of his neck. I remembered the purr-like moan he made from our early days. Why had I stopped making him make that noise? I’d been missing out.

Alex’s hand moved to my breast, his fingers finding my nipple unerringly. These were hands that knew my body. They didn’t need to be taught much.

“Come upstairs with me, Melissa,” he said, his voice deep.

I brought my mouth to his. “Call me Lissie.”

Epilogue

“Hey, Lissie. Hey, Amy.” Derek cruised past us on his way to the bouldering wall to warm up. I waved and smiled and returned my focus to Amy who was tied in and ready to leave the ground.

“So you two aren’t ... anymore?” she asked, her eyes following Derek.

I shook my head. “Just friends.”

A couple of weeks ago I’d waited for him outside the gym under our bush, fretting about the impact what I was going to say might have on him. I needn’t have worried. Derek squeezed my hand, which I’d given him to hold as I broke the news, and said he was glad for me.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Nate kind of tipped me off. He’s pissed he’s not going to be able to turn my apartment into a frat house with swinging orgies in every room.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Not about the apartment. Nate can keep his business in his room. About you?” He sighed. “It’s the right thing to do. He’s your husband. If you were ditching me for Nate, I’d be pissed.”

“Still competitive, I see.”

“I wouldn’t want any woman I cared about to be in a serious relationship with Nate. He’s an OK guy, but he’s a lousy boyfriend.”

“You’re a great boyfriend. I hope you’ll consider making some girl very lucky.”

He nodded. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’ll miss screwing around with you because, you know, sex, but there’s been someone on my mind lately.”

“Amanda.”

“Not naming any names, but I couldn’t approach her as long as we were together, so I’m not sorry really to see it end because maybe that’s the direction I’m meant to go. I needed a push.”

When it came to women, Derek would always need a push.

“I’m going to miss you,” I told him.

“What do you mean? You’re not going anywhere?” He sounded concerned for the first time.

“No, I’ll still climb, at least for now. Someday I’d like to have a baby.”

“They make harnesses for that.”

“For babies?”

“For pregnant women, and then for kids. Start her when she’s two or three. If she has her mama’s genes she’ll climb like a monkey. I’ll be her personal coach.”

“You’re the sweetest.” I hugged him hard and let him go.

Since that day, things had been easy between us. We climbed, we talked, he coached me. I even occasionally ogled his physique when he was climbing without a shirt on because there was nothing wrong with appreciating the male form.

Nate had come around too. Once he’d firmly made his argument for why two guys were better than one, he accepted my decision. When we saw each other at the theater now, he was flirtatious but not physical.

Deb had approached me and asked, much like Amy, if Nate and I were still “you know.” When I told her that we weren’t, she told me I should have known it would come out that way and I told her it had come out perfectly, which shut her up but didn’t stop her from looking daggers at Nate anytime he was looking, and just plain looking at him the rest of the time.

“Are you ever going to do something about that?” I asked Nate one day.

“Do you think it would be worth it?” he asked in return.

I hadn’t had an answer for him then and I didn’t have a better one now.

“So he’s available?” Amy stood at the foot of the wall, not climbing despite being tied in and on belay, apparently still thinking about Derek.

“He’s not taken yet,” I answered.

As if on cue, Amanda walked over to us, her face stormy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. Amy rolled her eyes at me and started climbing.

“Fucking shoe. I just broke a lace.” Amanda wore lace-up shoes, which was unusual.

“Maybe they have shoelaces in the gear shop.”

“I have some.” She opened her hand to reveal a new shoelace. “They just take forever to replace. Look at it.” She stuck her foot out at me.

The shoe featured an intricate lacing system—the laces running through more than a dozen eyelets on each side before winding around the sides and up the back.

“You know who’d help you with that? Derek.”

Amada looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would Derek help me lace my shoe?”

“He’s a helpful guy. Try him.”

“I’m not going to ask Derek to lace my shoe. I can lace my own fucking shoe.”

“Afraid he’ll say no?” I challenged.

Amanda stomped off towards the bouldering wall. As soon as he sensed her behind him, Derek dropped down onto the pads and turned to face her. She put her foot up onto the mat and held out the replacement shoelace. I wasn’t surprised when Derek took it.

I turned my attention to my own climbing agenda. I was in a hurry to get through my workout and get home. Alex and I had visited a clinic for a basic STD screen and we’d both gotten an all-clear call earlier. That made tonight unprotected-sex night. I wasn’t breaking out the stick just yet, but I was excited to be back on track for baby-making.

Donna had questioned whether we shouldn’t give our relationship more time to settle before we complicated it with a baby. I could hear she wasn’t completely sold on our reunion, but I was. Having Alex at home when I got back from the theater or the gym was like icing on the cake—not the whole cake, but the best part of it.

Alex had stopped fussing about the climbing once he saw my new physique and experienced firsthand the connection between adrenalin and arousal. I was always horniest on climbing nights. He was more cautious about the theater, as if he knew Nate was the more dangerous of the two.

With my mind on my husband and the evening to come, I didn’t think any more about Derek until I found myself belaying Amy next to Amanda belaying him.

“That was interesting,” she said when Derek and Amy were high enough to keep our conversation private. “Did you know what kind of reaction I’d get?”

“Not the reaction you expected?”

“Let’s just say that from the angle I had, there was more reaction than I was expecting.” She looked significantly at her crotch to indicate what kind of reaction she’d gotten. “What’s he got a foot fetish or something?”

“I don’t think it’s feet.” I was trying to avoid telling her outright that Derek didn’t just like her. He like liked her. We weren’t in the fourth grade.

“Aren’t you and Derek ... ?”

“Harmless history.”

“I wouldn’t have expected him to be my type, but perhaps I misjudged him.” She smiled at me, a first. “Thanks.”

“One suggestion—you might not want to wait for him to make the first move.”

Amanda smiled again, and this time her heart was in it. “No worries,” she said. “I’ve got it covered.”

Thank You!

Thank you for reading my book! I’d love to hear your feedback. Please consider leaving a review. You can also contact me via my website www.tanyachris.com or follow me on Twitter @tanyachrs

Want a little more Lissie and Nate? See After the Haircut for a hot outtake from My Guys. I thought this was just one sex scene too many, but is there really any such thing?

Please turn the page for information on my other available titles. Thanks for being a reader! The world needs more of us.

Tanya

P. S. for Kindle Unlimited readers: I’m a Kindle Unlimited reader too. I love KU because I’m a voracious reader. We KU users are great readers, but did you know we’re the worst at leaving reviews? Probably because we read so much and a lot of it is meh. But reviews are essential to how Amazon works, even the meh ones. Would you leave me a review?

Available on Amazon, the second book in the My Guys series
Mine

Amanda’s not loving life in her new home town. Her roommate is a weepy hermit, the rock climbing gym is substandard, and she hasn’t whipped anyone in months. So when an odd encounter leads her to believe that Derek—the good-looking, sweet-tempered climber every woman wants but no woman gets—is a submissive, she’s ready to take control and give him a night to remember.

There’s something special about Amanda, something that’s been calling to Derek ever since he met her, even if he doesn’t understand what it is. He’s yearning to give her everything she needs, until he finds out that what she needs is for him to submit. Derek is strong, smart, and well-adjusted. Why would he get down on his knees for a woman? And why is he just now realizing that that’s what he’s always wanted to do?

Derek may be new to BDSM, but Amanda’s new to relationships. Neither one of them knows whether a Domme with a grudge against the world and a man who’s surprised to learn he’s a submissive can make love work, but they both know what they want: someone to call Mine.

Available on Amazon, the third book in the My Guys series
You, Me & Her

Nate wasn’t made to be monogamous, a fact he never fails to disclose to his partners. No matter how much he loves the women he’s with, he sees potential in others. Does that make him a horrible person? His on-again, off-again lover and current co-star, Deb, certainly thinks so.

But his other co-star, Joshua, understands. Joshua, who’s fast becoming the best friend Nate ever had, doesn’t even mind when Nate hooks up with his wife, Sherry. Well, he does mind a little, but only because he has the hots for Nate himself.

Nate’s always known he’s polyamorous, but is he also bi? He loves being with Joshua. He loves being with Sherry. He definitely loves being with Joshua and Sherry together. Can he make the transition from loves-being-with to just-plain-loves? And even if he can, how does he fit into another couple’s relationship?

Meanwhile, the situation with Deb is growing ever more toxic, the future of their show is at stake, and not all of Nate’s friends are on board with the whole poly/bi thing. It’s a minefield Nate can only navigate with the help of one very special man.

Content warning for alcoholism. This book describes an open relationship that remains open after a romantic bond is formed. It’s not suitable for readers who consider open relationships to be cheating. This book includes both M/F and M/M on-page sex.

Available on Amazon from Tanya Chris

Did My Guys whet your appetite for threesomes? Three by Three explores the heat and variety that is the threesome.

Whether MFM, MMF, or MMM, these three short stories (plus bonus quickie!) will get your heart pounding and your blood boiling. Available from Amazon on Kindle only

Available on Kindle from Tanya Chris

Because She Said So is a collection of five short stories showcasing the eroticism of women in charge. Intended for mature audiences only. Available from Amazon on Kindle only.

In Richard's New Mistress, Richard waits for his first meeting with the mistress he hopes to serve. Can he convince her that he's worthy?

In Over the Edge, two strangers meet to fulfill a shared fantasy of clothed female/nude male (CFNM) exhibitionism.

In Yoga Warrior, a flexible man offers himself as a gift to the woman on the mat next to him, but he already belongs to another.

In Power Hungry, a woman plays politician by day, Domme by night. How will she balance her need for the younger man under her command with her drive to succeed in the political arena?

In You and Me, a woman erotically teases her lover until he breaks.

Available on Amazon from Tanya Chris

Maybe Charlie should have waited until he graduated high school before coming out, because since that revelation there’s been a growing distance between him and his friends. Charlie’s tough, though. He doesn’t mind eating lunch alone or watching his former gang interact with their new best buddy. What he does mind is seeing Drew Lavoitt suffer the same fate.

Drew didn’t come out. As far as he, or anyone else knows, he’s straight. What Drew did is accidentally hit and kill a little girl. Now the boy who was voted Most Popular, and who Charlie has maybe had a crush on since eighth grade, faces financial ruin, expulsion, and the fear that if he’s not everything, he’s not enough.

Popularity, wealth, acclaim—these things are easily lost. In each other’s arms, Drew and Charlie find something that can’t be taken from them. Together the two build a foundation on which they can re-create their lives.

When It All Falls Down is a full-length coming-of-age contemporary romance.

Available on Amazon from Tanya Chris

Will doesn’t know that his safe but unfulfilling life as a Call Center Supervisor is about to be turned upside down. Or that the man responsible is sitting next to him waiting for the same delayed flight. Adam Summers is confident, successful, gorgeous, and about to sign the contract that will cost Will his job. Corporate policy says they should keep their hands off each other, but they can’t. Is their growing affection worth the risk to Adam’s career? And what will Will’s future look like when their companies, and their lives, have merged?

Merge Ahead is a full-length, standalone MM romance. Available on Kindle and in paperback.