All the Waters of the Earth (Giving You ... #3) (24 page)

“Celia,” my mom said. “Mija, how was the drive?  Not too bad?”

“Not too bad.  Lucy, you feeling better?”  

“Mostly.  I’m not all the way back to normal.”

She turned and gave Rob a kiss, squeezing his cheeks, hugged my mom and dad, and then noticed Jake.  She put her hands on her hip, all sassy-Lucy.  But I guess it was sassy-Celia.  

“Who’s this, Lucy?”

“Nice manners.  This is Jake, my boyfriend.”

“How’d you get one of them to come to life?”

“Stop it!  He’s a real person.”

Jake stood up.  “I’m Jake Slausen.  Nice to meet you.”

“Celia Figueroa.”  Then she turned to me.  “Jesus, Lucy, I know you waited forever to find one, but how did you find this one?”

I rolled my eyes.  “Nice, real nice.  And he found me.”  And I proceeded to tell her about how he walked in on me in my bikini.  She laughed and pulled up a chair and had tacos with us.  Rob sat next to his grandfather, talking his ear off about Minecraft.  But I heard Rob tell my dad about how Carlos took him to a rock shop so they could look at all of the rocks that were in Minecraft, like lapis lazuli.  And that’s not what I expected Carlos to ever do.  Huh.  Meanwhile, my mom and sister peppered Jake with questions about art and photography and law.

“So what do you see in my sister?” asked Celia.  “She’s always got her head in the clouds, all these ideas in books.”

“Oh my God,” I said, and gave her a push.

“She seems pretty squared away to me,” Jake replied.  And I loved him for saying that because I’d worked hard my entire adult life to be pretty squared away for my kid.  He’d noticed.

I was glad to give Jake some glimpses of my family, because when he was with me, I was at home, and I thought the same was true for him.

A few weekends later, Roberto went to his dad’s, and Jake and I attended the final art class of this session. At the end of the class, after I’d dressed, I walked over to him at the easel, and he showed me what he’d drawn. With intricate, exquisite detail, he’d captured my body on paper—my small waist darting in from my booty, the strength of my legs, the tips of my nipples. Using a single line, he’d drawn my cheekbone, and with another, the under edge of my lower lip.

But the part of the paper where he hadn’t drawn anything also mattered. I’d heard the professor talking about negative space from time to time—the idea that the seemingly empty visual space around an object, not necessarily the object itself, could be drawn. Rather than fill up the paper with clutter, Jake drew the essentials, just what was needed to convey the subject—namely me—and no more. This left a lot of blank paper, but it felt vibrant, not barren.

He needed negative space in his life too. We all did. We often went through life trying to fill it up with work, activity, noise, and busy-ness. And while all of those things could be fun—I loved the activity—we also needed quiet time to write, create, and live our lives. I thought that’s what Jake had been doing—burying himself in his work and his busy-ness, so that he didn’t have to really live. And who could blame him for being fearful of really living his life? His childhood had been super scary. For so long, he’d avoided the fear, and side-stepped his life, by filling it up with work. This way, there’d been no room for living.  He slept, ate, exercised, and went to work, and filled up all of the space on the paper of his life.  No art to it.

Now, finally, he was starting to live, to not pack so much work into his days.  To instead trust that it was okay to be unscheduled. That was how I operated—I normally wrote when Rob was in school, but not on any particularly rigid schedule. With joy, I watched him start to get that roominess in his days, paring down his list of things to do to what was essential and allowing for free time on his calendar, so that he could live his life for real. So far, so good with keeping his vow to not work so much. He’d started coming home at six or seven o’clock, sometimes earlier. Since previously, his habit had been to come back at nine o’clock, this was major progress. I didn’t say a word about it. Inside, though, I was dancing.  
Yay
.

Things were looking brighter for me, too. Amelia had called me after New Year’s.  She’d successfully gotten Carlos’s paycheck docked for child support.  We had a hearing scheduled where we would hash it all out—the kiss in the courthouse, the trip to Las Vegas, the fight, all of it—but the court had ordered Carlos and me to a family law mediation process. This was where we met with a mediator and tried to negotiate a child custody settlement out of court. While I didn’t want to talk to Carlos, Amelia assured me that I would be in a separate room and I didn’t have to see him. Fine. That wasn’t for a few weeks, though. If we didn’t resolve it, then we would have a full-scale hearing. I was worried about the cost of all of this, and I hated having the uncertainty stress me out. So I’d go to the mediation.

Jake folded up his notepad and packed up his art supplies.  Still perched on his artist’s stool, he pulled me by my waist so that I stood between his muscular, jean-clad thighs. Then he looked at me, regarding me carefully. “I am so glad that I took this class. So fucking happy.” And he kissed me on the nose with a smile.

It was important that he was smiling. While his dad was still in the hospital, he was recovering. I knew that Jake went there at lunchtime every day. But he was at my house for dinner. And we were starting to call my house his home.

And I’d also taken another step. After I kissed him in front of Rob on Christmas, since he was around so much and since Rob knew him and liked him, he’d taken to spending the night at my house. The mom part of me wondered if I was going too fast with it, but it felt right—Rob knew he was my boyfriend. I still worried about how Rob would take it if Jake and I broke up.  Rob knew he’d be imminently moving, so I hoped that having him stay with us for now would be okay. Second-guessing myself as a parent was second-nature.

We left the art class and, instead of Jake going to work, as was his habit, we went to the hospital to check on his dad. After assuring himself that his dad was stable and recovering, we left and went to lunch. Then he looked at me, an unusual, impish, conspiratorial look on his face.

“Let’s go do something.”

“Sure,” I agreed easily. Spontaneity was a good thing and something that I didn’t often get as a single mom. The freedom that I had while Rob was with his dad was something that I could be grateful for, even if I had my problems with Carlos. I was still tired from being sick, but I was happy to go and play.

“I feel like I’m playing hooky. Yes, I know it’s Saturday,” he said in response to the
dude-are-you-serious?
look on my face, “but let’s go down to L.A. and go to the Getty.”

The huge Getty Museum perched on a hilltop, surveying all of Los Angeles, its fancy Italian stone warming the modern building. Jake’s eyes lit up as we took the monorail up to the museum. We wandered around the galleries, looking at a photography exhibit that interested him and then at the illuminated manuscripts, which interested me as a writer. I marveled at how someone took that much time to decorate a single page. When I wrote, I typed pages on my computer so quickly. Each page of an ancient, hand-written manuscript, decorated with ornate designs, must have taken days.  It made me think about how my words might matter more than the value I placed on an easily delete-able electronic document.  What if every word needed to have that kind of artistic weight?

As we walked through the galleries, I noticed the reverent way that Jake looked at art. He stopped, giving each piece attention, commenting on styles, subjects, artists, compositions. Totally in his element. I enjoyed seeing it. My style at a museum was more to go through quickly before heading to the gift shop. But I loved taking this slower pace with him. It was a form of negative space in our lives. Recharging at a museum for inspiration.

He got naughty too, when we were looking at the nudes—women with glorious curves lolling on chaise lounges, or in classical poses. “We need to get you back home, don’t we?” he said in my ear, coming up behind me.

“Why is that?”

“I think I need to see you naked.”

“That’s nothing new—you drew me today.”

He laughed.  “Okay, I want you naked, but bent over my bed, Lucy, that glorious ass all mine. I want to use my tie.  Then I want you on top.  All your beauty.  Mine.”

Uh huh. That. We could do that.

He continued. “Think your parents will watch Rob next weekend?”

“Yeah, they don’t mind.”

“Then we’re going to go away. I’ll take you up on my Christmas present.”

Yay
.

“So, as I recall,” said Jake thoughtfully, as he inserted the key into the hotel room door, “one of the items on your wish list—your list of things you write in your books—was sex in a hotel room. Correct?”

I nodded and grinned.

It was the following weekend. Jake’s dad had been discharged from the hospital and was now home, on a slow but steady recovery. Roberto had gone back to school after winter break. I was almost done with my first draft of my new book. And Jake? He’d told me that he’d given a few of his cases to other attorneys in his office, so that he could have free time. Free time!  After all, there was no law saying he had to single-handedly take care of all of the work in the office by himself. Instead of filling up his time with the office, he came to me.  He helped Rob construct a papier-mâché volcano for his science fair project, complete with red-painted lava and well-contoured landscaping.  And now he let me take him on vacation. 

One of the few times that he’d ever been away for fun.  So special.

I’d wanted to go to a place where we could drive away for the weekend, so we went to Palm Springs, which had lovely weather in winter. While, sure, it had the reputation of being a golfing paradise for the retirement set, it also had a thriving gay community, wonderful shops, and cool architecture. It was a whole lot of fun. 

Deciding that we needed to have the whole mid-century modern experience, I booked us into a boutique hotel near downtown—a converted 1950s apartment complex with a retro-style pool and patio, a kitschy pink-tiled bathroom, and a bedroom that even had a record player with Frank Sinatra records.

We set down our bags, took a quick look around, put on a record, and collided into each other. In seconds, we were tumbling out of our clothes. First, my wedge heel espadrilles were off. Next, his shirt, buttons undone and thrown to the side. Then, his shoes kicked off. He didn’t even bother to take his belt out of the loops, he just undid it, unfastened his pants, and they were off. My blousy lavender shirt? Off. My shorts? Off. And then I could feel him, his soft skin running under my fingers, his lips insistent, and his hands all over me.

With a flick, he released my lavender bra, pulled it off of me, and backed away from me, wearing only his boxers and socks. His eyes raced around my body, lingering on my nipples, my belly button. And then his socks were gone in a flash.

He did a little twirling motion with his fingers, wanting me to spin. As I was wearing just some little lavender panties, I knew that he would get a full view of my ample booty. So I stuck it out, smiled, turned slowly, and gave it to him, and I heard him groan.

“Dat. Ass. Lucy.”

When I finished turning, his erection was no longer within his boxers, because his boxers had disappeared. And my man stood there naked, wanting me, and I wanted him back.