Naked

“I love that book.”

He looked at me. “Me, too.”

“So, what, you’re not working at all? Just going wherever you want, whenever?”

“Sleeping on a series of couches.” Alex paused to bite some cheesecake. “I’m sort of a professional houseguest.”

“That sounds…” I laughed.

He laughed, too. “Shitty?”

“Sort of.”

He shrugged. “I’m good at making a pain of myself by abusing hospitality.”

“I don’t see that about you at all.” I thought of how he’d moved around Patrick’s kitchen, making himself at home, but not overstepping. “Besides, people wouldn’t invite you to stay if they didn’t like you.”

Alex dragged his fork through the cheesecake and kept his gaze there. “Sure. I guess so. But now I don’t have to worry about it anymore, right?”

Warmth eased over my cheeks at that, and I couldn’t keep my smile tucked away. “I guess not. I’ve got your first and last in my pocket, and it’s pretty much already spent.”

“I guess you’re not treating for dinner, then.” He reached to jab his fork through the last bite of my cheesecake, and while I might’ve stabbed out the eyes of anyone else who dared do such a thing, I could only laugh at him.

“No way. You invited me.”

I don’t think it’s possible to know someone in just a couple days, a few hours. I didn’t believe I knew him then, no matter what I’d seen or said. But at that moment, I believed I could know him. More than that, I believed I wanted to.

“That’s right, I did. The person who asks should always pay for the date.”

He looked up at me with those dark eyes, that soft, smirking mouth, and I once again found myself without words and wondering how he managed to strike me so stupid with nothing but a glance.

“C’mon,” Alex said as he got up from the table. “Let’s get out of here.”

And I followed.

The first clue I had that Alex had actually moved in was the different car in my parking lot. It wasn’t a new car, but whoa. Bright yellow Camaro with black accents? Not at all what I’d have picked for my new downstairs neighbor. It looked to be from the mid-to-late eighties, the only reason I could guess that close being that my brother, Bert, was something of a muscle car buff and would often wax poetic about a certain type.

I pulled in beside it and stepped out to look it over. The car itself was in fine but not pristine condition, the interior a little more worn. This wasn’t even a showpiece car. This was a butch, wheels a-rollin’, smoke-out-at-a-traffic-light sort of car.

I liked it.

It had been only a few days since we’d sealed the deal without the spit on our palms, and I’d put the cash Alex had paid me with to good use—toward groceries and some bills, and added a new photo printer I didn’t need but really wanted. I hadn’t seen him since Sunday, though he’d left a message on my voice mail telling me he’d be moving in sometime this week. Judging by the car and the boxes stacked up in the front entry, he’d made a good start.

His door opened as my foot hit the first stair, and I turned, setting the heavy printer box on the railing to rest my arms. “Hi.”

“Olivia.” Warm and gooey caramel, smooth and yummy, that was his voice. “Hey, can I give you a hand?”

I’d have said no but for the fact I’d been stupid and tried to carry not only my three bags of groceries but also the printer, and my arms were already shaking. “Yeah, that would be great. Can you grab—”

He’d already lifted the heavy box from my hands. “I got it. You go on ahead.”

I shifted the plastic bags in my two fists and led the way up the stairs to my own door, unlocked it and pushed it open. “Thanks. You can put the box over there on the dresser at the foot of the steps.”

I pointed to one of the dozen dressers I’d collected from thrift shops and used furniture stores. Patrick called it a fetish. I called it a practical use of space and an appreciation for recycling. The one I meant was long and low, about thigh-height on me. I’d covered it with a collage of articles and photos cut from the stash of photography magazines I no longer subscribed to. It fit just right against the wall under the metal spiral stairs leading up to the loft, and because of this was covered with all the junk I meant to take up there and consistently forgot.

Alex set the box next to a collection of hardback novels I’d picked up at a library sale and hadn’t had time yet to crack open. “Big Jackie Collins fan, huh?”

I laughed. “Hey. Some books are bad because they’re bad. Some books are good because they’re bad.”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “People, too.”

Before I could answer that he’d stepped back to look up through the spiral stairs, his hands on his hips. “What’s up there?”

“Just the loft.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.” I followed him up the winding stairs.

At the top, Alex let out a low, impressed whistle. “Sweet.”

Downstairs, the large open space and elevated ceilings dwarfed my few pieces of furniture. But I’d made this space up here comfy and cozy with a jumble of thrift store and salvage pieces—a curving sectional that had come from a hotel lobby, a low coffee table and dozens of cushions. The floor-to-ceiling windows that let in so much light below were bisected a few inches from the ceiling by the loft’s floor, and I’d hung sheer colored scarves and strings of beads in front of them. A cheap paper lantern from IKEA dangled in a corner.

“I read up here.” It wasn’t really big enough to do much else.

Alex ducked reflexively as he stepped to the loft’s center. He wasn’t in danger of bumping his head, but the ceiling was so low up here it felt possible. Grinning over his shoulder at me, he sank onto the sectional and bounced a little, then put his hands behind his head and his feet on the table.

“Awesome.” He looked at the pile of books stacked on the floor next to the sofa. “More Jackie?”

“Probably.” I tilted my head sideways to check out the titles. Lots of science fiction, some romance, a couple of mysteries. “I think there’s a little bit of everything there.”

Alex lifted the book from the top of the pile. “Robert R. McCammon?”

“Swan Song. Have you read it?”

He shook his head. “No. Should I?”

“It’s scary,” I told him. “You can borrow it, if you want.”

Grinning, he tucked the book into his fist and stood. “Thanks.”

Alex was tall but not big, not broad, more lean than anything. Yet he took up an awful lot of space. He stretched up one arm and placed his hand flat on the ceiling, and the lines of his body shifted. A hip went down, a knee bent. Once again I pictured him in a catalog. He had a face that could convince people they wanted stuff they couldn’t afford and didn’t need.

“Well, I’d better get back,” he said after a spare few seconds.

“Lots of unpacking?” I asked over my shoulder as he followed me down the stairs.

“Umm…no.” He laughed. “I don’t have a lot of stuff.”

“But you got a new ride. I saw it out back.”

Alex laughed again. “Yeah. Fucking Bumblebee. What can I say? I got my first hard-on for the Transformers.”

“Better that than Rainbow Brite, I guess. Or the Smurfs.”

We laughed together and he looked around my apartment again. The layout of my place was a little different than his, with more open space and higher ceilings, plus the loft. It was brighter, too.

“Nice place.”

“Thanks. I can’t take much credit for it. I bought it already made into apartments. Hey, would you like some hot tea? I just got some chai.”

“That would be great.”

I left him to make himself at home while I heated the water and put away my groceries. I had no doubt he would, and though I was more one to guard my privacy, that was surprisingly okay with me. By the time I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of steaming chai, he’d made the tour around my apartment.

“You took all these?” Alex reached for the mug without looking at me, his gaze fixed on the photos I’d hung in stark glass frames without mats.

“Yes.”

We studied them together. I warmed my hands on my mug. He sipped. He said nothing for so many minutes I began to feel nervous, as though I wanted to speak. Had to speak. I bit my tongue, determined not to ask him what he thought.

“This one.” He pointed to a shot of me and Patrick at the far end. “You didn’t take this one.”

“Oh. No.” I’d hung it there because it was a favorite, a candid shot of us in happy times. Our hands were linked, my head on his shoulder. We looked like a normal couple.

Alex sipped more chai.

“I should take it down, I guess.” I made no move to do so.

He looked at me then. “Why?”

“Well…because…it’s a lie.” It wasn’t what I’d expected to say, but once the words came out they felt right. “That picture isn’t real. It was never real.”

Alex handed me his mug and I took it automatically. When he lifted the frame off its hook I made an unexpected noise of protest. He gave me a look and took the single step up onto the level where my dining table was. He put the photo facedown on it.

“Now, it’s down.” He reached for his mug and I handed it to him. “Feel any better?”

“No.” But I laughed a little. “Thanks.”

“Hey, do you have any plans for tonight? I know it’s Friday. You probably have something going on.”

I had to work the early shift at Foto Folks the next morning. “Actually, I don’t.”

“I rented some movies. And, like a d-bag, didn’t remember I don’t have a TV yet.”

“Ah. So you’re going to use me for mine, is that it?”

“I’d be ashamed to say yes, but it’s the truth.”

I sipped from my mug as I pretended to think about it. “What did you rent?”

“The new Transformers movie. And Harold and Maude.”

“Yeah, wow, because those two are so similar,” I told him with a laugh. “But I haven’t seen the Transformers and it’s been years since I watched Harold and Maude. Sure. I’ll let you use my TV.”

“I’ll buy the pizza, how’s that?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We made arrangements to meet later, and Alex showed up at six o’clock with a large pizza from the place down the street in one hand, a bunch of DVDs in the other. I hadn’t done more than change my clothes into Friday-night-stay-at-home sweatpants and a T-shirt, but he’d showered and shaved, and wafted through my door on a delicious cloud of garlic and cologne. I wondered if I should’ve made more of an effort.

“Dinner by candlelight?” he asked as he set the pizza on my dining table.

“Oh…no. They’re not for ambience.” Lighting candles was something I did on Friday nights when I wasn’t out and about, a habit left over from my childhood, when my mom had made a point of lighting candles even if she’d done very little else to usher in the Sabbath. Big change from now, when her life revolved around it.

He gave me a quizzical look. “Are you Jewish?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed—a world traveler would probably have encountered some Jews somewhere along the way. “Not really. Sort of.”

“Oookay.”

I laughed, self-conscious. “It’s complicated.”

“Fair enough. It’s not any of my business.” He glanced at the candles. “They’re pretty, though.”

“Thanks.” My mother had given me the candlesticks. I don’t think she knew I used them. At least I’d never told her. “What can I get you to drink?”

Moving right along. Alex got the hint. “Water’s good.”

“You sure? I have some red wine. In a bottle even, not from a box.”

He made an impressed face. “Fancy. But no, thanks.”

“Do you mind if I have some?”

My question seemed to surprise him. “No, of course not. It’s your house.”

He’d been gracious enough not to push me on the religion issue; I gave him the same treatment about the drinking. We piled slices of pizza on our plates and ate in front of the television while the Transformers blew up a lot of stuff and Harold fell in love with Maude. We laughed a lot and talked over the movies. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, but our feet met in the middle, nudging every so often.

It was the nicest night I’d had in a long time, and I told him so.

“Get out of here.” Alex flipped a hand at me.

“I’m serious!”

“Well. Good. I’m glad.”

A few glasses of red wine had left me mellow and languid. “It’s nice, just hanging out with you, Alex. No pressure. None of that stupid back and forth stuff.”

He was silent for a few seconds as the credits rolled. “Thanks. It’s nice hanging out with you, too.”

I yawned under cover of my hand. “But it’s late, and I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Work?”

“Yeah. Think of me while you’re still snuggled down under the blankets in the morning.”

He laughed and got up, held out a hand to help me up, too. “Oh. I’m sure I will.”

Our fingers had linked, but now he let me go. I watched as he popped open the DVD player to take out the disc, and slipped it into the paper rental sleeve. He caught me looking as he turned.

“We should do this again,” I said. “It was fun.”

I wasn’t drunk, but I was tired and more than a bit fuzzy. I couldn’t quite read his smile or the expression in his eyes—something was there that looked like amusement. Something beneath that, too deep to decipher.

“Yeah. I’d like that. Good night, Olivia.” Alex didn’t move toward the door.

This was the point of the night where, with another man, I’d have been tipping my face up for a kiss. Hell, this was the part of the night where I’d already have decided if he was going to spend the night or be kicked out. Instead, we both laughed at the same time. Alex stepped away. Whatever tension I’d imagined—and it had to be imagined—faded.

“Good night, Olivia. See you.”

“Night,” I called after him as he let himself out the door. “Catch you later.”

The door clicked shut behind him. I gathered the trash and put the leftover pizza in the fridge, then padded into my bathroom for a hot shower so I wouldn’t have to wake up so early the next morning. Usually the steam and water relax me enough so that I’m boneless by the time I come out, ready immediately for sleep, but not this night.

My soap-slick hands slid over my skin. Nipples tight. An ache between my legs. I wasn’t making myself come with Alex’s face in mind, his long, lean body…the sound of his moan. I wasn’t sliding my hands over my breasts and thighs and belly pretending they belonged to him. I was absolutely not lying in darkness on my bed with my legs spread, a finger in my cunt and another on my clit, working my body into ecstasy while I pretended it was him.

All right, so I was. It was impossible not to. He was beautiful and sexy and the closest I’d had to a date in months. That was by choice, since plenty of men asked me out but very few impressed me. And he wasn’t into women. I’d seen evidence of that with my own eyes, even if Patrick hadn’t warned me off him.

Yet my body gave it up for him, my mind swirling with thoughts of how wrong it was. How stupid and useless. My mind knew better, but my pussy didn’t care. I slid fingers deep inside my hot, slick flesh and felt the clamp and grip of my internal muscles as I spasmed. My clit throbbed, pressure building while I tapped a fingertip in a slow beating rhythm on top. Teasing. Holding off.

Until at last I thought once more of his voice, my memory conveniently merging the sound of his groan with my name, and the way he said “fuck me.” In my head it had become a command, not an exclamation of surprise. And as I surged up and over and down into the spiral of heat and pleasure, I wished he would say it to me for real.

Chapter Four

“I haven’t seen you in forever.” Patrick frowned. “You never return my calls and I sent you about four dozen pings at Connex and you ignored me there, too.”

I fiddled with my camera settings and took a few shots of nothing just to test them. “I’ve been busy with work. I haven’t even logged in to Connex lately. What sorts of pings?”

“I invited you to our New Year’s party. Teddy thinks I’m crazy for having another party so soon after the last one. But what can I say? I like parties. Besides, I don’t want to go out anyplace around here for New Year’s Eve and nobody invited us anywhere.” Patrick shrugged. “You’ll come.”

“What if I have plans? Turn to the left a little. Hold up the cup. Look like, c’mon, Patrick, look like you’re enjoying it.” I peered through my lens to frame the shot I was supposed to use in an ad for a local café. “I’ve seen you look more enthused about watching Lawrence Welk reruns.”

“What do you want me to do, look like I’m getting ready to fuck the mug?” Patrick frowned and lifted the cup higher and forced an entirely false grin onto his handsome mouth. “Is this better? How’s this, Olivia? Ooh, coffee, I’m so horny for you…”

I snapped a couple of shots just to annoy him with later, when he saw how ridiculous he looked. “Quit being a jerk. C’mon, I need this for tomorrow.”

“Nothing like running behind schedule.” Patrick licked the mug.

I snapped another shot and thought I might frame that one as a gift. “It’s a last-minute job, and I can’t afford to turn them down.”

He shot me a glance, then put his pout into place. “How’s this?”

“A little less constipated, but yes. Good.” Finally I got something that would work. It wasn’t art, but it would do. Patrick put the mug down while I transferred the pictures to my computer.

“You’ll come, right? And dinner on Friday. You haven’t been over since the party.” He flipped through the large album of photos I’d chosen as my best, to show off to potential clients. “Oh, I like this one. Why don’t you do more of these, Livvy? They’re so good.”

I glanced at the picture, a nude I’d taken at a photography workshop I’d gone to the year before. “Because I’m not an erotic photographer and I don’t have much use for nudes.”

“She’s pretty.”

I gave him a look. “Yes. She is. She’s a model.”

He flipped a few more pages. “I like this one, too.”

A landscape. Nothing special. I could add text to it and play with the dimensions to use in brochures or Web sites. I shrugged.

“You don’t take compliments very well.”

I laughed and began toying with the pictures I’d taken of him. “I want to make my living doing this, Patrick. I don’t have any grand ideas of becoming a famous artiste. The work’s good. Yes. I get it. I’m not setting up shop at the street fair to sell my prints, okay?”

“You could have a gallery show. Your work is good, as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen hanging up downtown. You know I have a friend of a friend—”

“Stop,” I told him firmly. “Patrick, I love you, but I’m not having a gallery show. And besides, I know people, too, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t get something going if I wanted to.”

“So why don’t you?” He leaned against the large wooden chest of drawers I’d salvaged from the back alley.

I thought about warning him he’d get his designer jeans dirty rubbing up against the old wood, but decided against it. As fussy as Patrick could be, he liked to pretend sometimes he wasn’t, especially when we were alone and sort of reverted to the way we’d been as a couple. When he’d had to be what he felt was “manly.”

“Because I don’t want to.” I shrugged again.

“You should do it anyway.”

Now I turned to look at him full-on. “You know, you can leave anytime.”

Patrick-my-boyfriend would never have flipped me the finger. Patrick-my-boyfriend had insisted on using tools and playing sports. He’d farted and burped a lot more back then. I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy he’d let go of that.

“You don’t go that way, remember?” I said with a glance at his middle finger.

He snorted and stood up. “You’ll come to dinner.”

The past two Fridays I’d spent watching movies with Alex. “I might have plans.”

“What on earth could you be doing on a Friday night that would be better than games and food and drinks at my house?” He paused. “Do you have a date?”

“I love how you make that sound like science fiction.” I sighed, giving up trying to work on the pictures with him there. “As a matter of fact, my tenant and I are probably going to be watching the entire BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. The Colin Firth version.”

Patrick gasped and recoiled. “What? You…with him? But…”

He looked so shocked and hurt I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. “He’s never seen it.”

“Liv!”

“Patrick!” I mocked.

He shook his head, frowning, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “I knew you renting to him was going to be bad.”

“What’s bad about it?”

Alex had been great. He took the big garbage cans out to the Dumpster in back, had cooked dinner for me twice the week before, and hung out watching old movies with me. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t play his music too loud. He also liked to do yoga, shirtless, and that was a bonus. I’d found myself unable to sleep for thinking of him, but I didn’t want Patrick to know that. I sounded a little too gushy, too perky, but my focus was on the computer screen and not my tone of voice. Patrick’s silence alerted me to my faux pas, and I turned to look at him.

“Don’t be like that,” I told him.

“Well, you haven’t called me, like, in a week,” he said. “I thought you were going to come over to watch Supernatural on the big screen. You know Teddy bought the Blu-rays.”

“I’ve had to work, Patrick. I can’t just throw all that aside all the time.” I tried to sound gentle and it came out annoyed. Probably because I was annoyed.

Patrick just glared. He was jealous. This realization punched an incredulous laugh out of me. He hadn’t been jealous of the past three guys I’d dated, but he was jealous of this?

“Oh, Patrick.”

We knew each other well enough that some things didn’t need to be spelled out. He frowned and kicked at the floor. “I guess you’ll be spending Christmas with him, then?”

“Instead of you?”

He crossed his arms and looked dour.

“I do have a family, Patrick. My dad’s invited me home with him and Marjorie. And my brothers have, too.”

“And you’re going to go?”

“I think so. I don’t see them that much.” My brothers had invited me for past holidays and I’d declined, not wanting to make a trip either to Wyoming or Illinois in the winter. I believed them both when they said they’d miss me, but I was also sure they weren’t heartbroken. We’d all grown up. They had families. Kids. Our family had never been as close as some and never as distant as others. What we had worked, at least for us.

“What about your mom?”

“My mother doesn’t celebrate Christmas, remember?” I gave him my full attention, and a scowl. It had certainly been a bit of an issue when we were dating. Not as much as the eventual revelation that he preferred sausage to tacos, but it had caused some tension.

“I can’t believe you’re blowing me off for someone else.”

“Get out.” I pointed at the door, but not before Patrick danced closer, just out of reach, to smack his lips at me. I didn’t want to smile or laugh, but I had to. “Out! I have work to do! Isn’t Teddy waiting for you?”

“Teddy’s always waiting for me.”

“And I’m sure he has dinner all ready for you when you get home, too. Don’t be late, hanging around here. Go on. Go.” I shooed him. Patrick grabbed at my hand but missed.

I liked him this way, acting silly as he had when we’d been together long ago, before sex got in the way and he thought he had to be something he wasn’t. He was different now. We both were. But Patrick was really different with his new friends, his new partner. It might have been the “real” him, but this silliness was part of him, too. Time had passed, wounds had healed. In many ways Patrick and I were closer than we’d ever been as a couple. I knew in every part of me that mattered that if we’d gone ahead and done it, married, we’d have been miserable and divorced—or worse, miserable and not divorced—in less than a year. I was happy my Patrick had found his place in the world with someone who loved him the way he deserved and wanted to be loved, and I didn’t mope around wringing my hands, wishing for my prince to come. Or I tried not to.