Come See About Me (29 page)

His apartment’s
less than a two-minute drive from Abigail’s house and he’s still telling me
about his car in Dublin, some kind of Peugeot
which his brother-in-law and father have been taking
for a spin every now and then so the battery won’t die, when we pull into the
parking lot. But as soon as we get out of the car he takes one look at my face
and asks, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.
I guess I’m just a little nervous.” I press my lips together and taste
strawberry.

“Nervous?” Liam
repeats as we walk towards the door. He sounds puzzled, which makes me feel
more self-conscious. As he swipes us inside the building a contemplative
expression slips across his features. “I think it’s like I said in the very beginning,
Leah, you’re confused.” He pushes three and slouches against the elevator wall.
“You don’t really want this and I don’t want to try to convince you that you
do.”

No, because he
wants things to be simple, like he said yesterday on the phone. Not that I can
blame him considering his own situation, but is anything ever wholly
uncomplicated?

“I think I can
be nervous without it meaning that I don’t want to do this,” I tell him. “Don’t
you ever get nervous? Or, no, you’re a hotshot TV actor, there’s so much sex
you just take it for granted.” I’m both a little bit irritated, by what I
perceive as a lack of patience on his part, and a little bit joking.

Liam shakes his
head and bursts into an amused but sour grin. “Leah, nobody on this side of the
ocean has a clue who I am. Not a soul outside Ireland, except the people who’ve
gone to see
Philadelphia, Here I Come
these past few weeks, would even
be able to ID me if I robbed them on the subway.”

We’ve reached
Liam’s floor and step off the elevator and into the hall. “So if you think my
ego’s rampaging out of control you couldn’t be further from the truth,” he
continues. “And my track record with women has been, no exaggeration, a bloody
disaster”—he slides his key into the door and opens it—“which I’ve already
explained to you, and yeah, that’s made me cautious about you and every other
woman out there. I’m not taking
anything
for granted, believe me.”

Somehow we’re in
the middle of a disagreement and I wonder if either of us really knows why. I
stand in the entranceway of his apartment wondering if I should take my jacket
off or whether I’ll be leaving in another twenty seconds.

“But I just
don’t want an ounce more confusion in my life right now,” Liam adds, worry
lines crisscrossing his forehead. “And I like you—you seem like a really
genuine, really nice girl—but if you’re going to be a source of confusion, I
can’t have that.”

I exhale and
stare steadily into his eyes. He’s just as anxious as I am, but he’s worried
about different things. That I’ll screw him over in some way or demand too much
from him emotionally.

“I’m sorry,” he
says quickly, his head dipping and his eyes apologetic. “Of course you can be
nervous. But I don’t want to feel like this is a difficult thing for you to the
degree that it’s maybe the wrong thing.”

“Look, Liam, it
is
a little weird for me because you’re the only guy I’ve been with other than my
boyfriend.” I grab my arm, looping my right thumb and forefinger around my left
wrist. “But I’m not suddenly going to become obsessed with you and think we’re
going to get engaged or something, okay? I know this is just a temporary,
casual thing.”

“The only other
guy?” Liam repeats with added emphasis. His ultra blue eyes project dismay.

“Yeah.” I wish I
hadn’t mentioned that now. He really only needed to know that he was the first
since Bastien. “Is there somewhere I can put my coat or do you think this isn’t
going to work?” I can’t imagine us sleeping together now. The air is rife with
thick, jagged vibes.

“Sorry,” he says
again as he plunks his keys and wallet down on the kitchen counter. “I’ll take
it for you.”

I slip out of my
jacket and watch Liam hang it in the closet. “Do you still have that white wine
you offered me the last time I was here? Because I think I’d like some now.”

“I do,” he tells
me, his tone lightening. “I think I could use one as well.”

I follow him
into the kitchen, where he pours us each a glass. We take them into the living
room and drink them quickly, like high school kids knocking back beer at a keg
party, as I tell him about my visit with Yunhee. The second glasses are slower
and halfway through he leans closer to me and says, “I’m sorry about before. I
do want this to happen. I didn’t mean to put you off. I just wanted to know that
you were really into it too.” His gaze shifts to my top, following the V-neck
down to my breasts and lingering there a moment before looking me in the eye
again. “You were amazing on the pier that night. I’ve thought about you a lot.”

“Yeah?” I say in
a voice like honey. “I’ve thought about you too.” Seeing the want in his face
makes me breathless. Maybe this will work after all.

“Good.” Liam’s
Irish accent is undiluted sex. This isn’t going to be as difficult as I said it
would; I’m a liar. “We’ll go slow. You don’t have to be nervous.”

He smoothes one
of his hands against my cheek and kisses my lower lip with what feels like
infinite patience. I try to kiss him back the same way but I’m already
beginning to feel feral. “Not too slow,” I advise, and he laughs and buries his
hands in my hair, the two of us growing fiercer on his couch—hands gripping
asses, breasts, cock, through layers of clothing. And then I’m straddling him,
tasting his tongue and riding his pelvis.

“We need condoms
this time,” I whisper.

“I know,” he
murmurs. “Give me a minute. I want to look at you.” His hands grasp the bottom
of my V-neck. I stretch my arms up into the air to help him as he yanks the top
up over my head and lets it drop to the carpet.

Liam’s fingers
cascade over the satin fabric of my bra. “This is nice.” He deftly snaps the
button on my jeans and pulls down the zippers to peek at the matching thong.
“You’re making it hard to go slow,” he says, smile inching onto his lips.

In what feels
like a single motion, he gathers me into his arms, hoists me up with him and
lies me down on the carpet on the opposite side of the coffee table. “Condoms,”
he grunts. “I’ll be back in a second.”

I grab his arm
before he can go and tell him I have some in my purse. Liam reaches for it next
to the couch, his legs on either side of me, keeping me pinned in place. He
hands me my bag and I dig out a handful of condoms, Liam freeing me so that I
can set them on the coffee table. I keep one in my hand as I strip off his
shirt. He’s smooth and sculpted like a runner, the dark circular tattoo on his
left shoulder standing out against a backdrop of pale skin.

I press two
fingers to the design and he says, “One of those things that seem like a genius
idea when you’re seventeen.”

“You don’t like
it anymore?” I ask, examining the mark, a black spiral surrounded by circular
Celtic edging.

“I think about
getting it removed sometimes, but even the best methods leave a faint sort of
remnant, so I reckon I’ll stick with it until they’ve perfected the technology;
then it’s history.” Liam glances contemptuously at his shoulder. “It’s supposed
to be a shield of strength and calm. If I’d been any more pretentious at
seventeen it would’ve been a Celtic armband or a dragon.”

I laugh and rip
open the condom, push my hands into his chest so he’ll lie down and then take
him, covered in latex, into my mouth like I didn’t have the guts to do last
time. He doesn’t object to the condom but tells me I’m cheating him out of a
perfect view and swiftly unhooks my bra and takes down my jeans. I quiver when
his hands grasp my breasts. Quiver when I finish him and when he slips off my
jeans and panties and finishes me.

“If that’s what
nervous looks like on you I’d give anything to see you in a relaxed state,”
Liam comments, the tip of his thumb dipping into my mouth and a self-satisfied
look in his eyes.

But that’s only
the beginning and later, when he’s pushing into me for the second time tonight,
curled up behind me on his bed, sucking my neck and his fingers playing between
my legs, I’m overcome with a euphoria that I know I won’t be able to stay away
from no matter how I’ll feel about this in the light of day when I’m alone and
missing Bastien.

“Holy
fuck
,”
Liam murmurs afterwards, his hands clamped to my breasts. “You’re amazing.” His
breath’s steaming hot in my ear. “Next time we won’t even make it to the couch
or the bedroom; I want to just bend you over the counter.”

He catches
himself a second late, realizing he’s gone too far and doesn’t know me well
enough to discern whether that’s an okay thing to say to me or not. I see all
that in his eyes as he strokes my hair and tells me how beautiful I am. I twist
to bury my face in his neck. I’m still trembly from coming so hard and when
I’ve recovered a little I lay my palm against his cheek, feeling closer to him
than is wise considering the situation. “You’re more beautiful than I am,” I
say truthfully.

Liam shakes his
head like I’m crazy, but in the most adorable way. “You’re one of those girls
who don’t think about how she looks. And so you don’t realize.”

“But you must
realize about yourself.” I turn over and prop myself up with my elbows so I’m
looking down into his eyes. “You must have half the women in Ireland between
fourteen and fifty lusting after you on that soap opera.”

Liam frowns like
the topic is beneath him. Then he tries to turn it into a joke. “What am I
doing wrong that the other half aren’t interested?”

I smile and run
my hand across his cheek again. “Your beard’s coming back. Do you shave right
before the show?”

“A couple of
hours beforehand. It grows in fast.”

“And your hair
too?” I slip my fingers into his short brown locks.

“The hair grows
quickly too. Give me a few months away from the barber and I could play Samson.
Hey”—he reaches for my other hand, folding his fingers between mine—“this is a
bit of an embarrassing oversight but I don’t know your last name.”

“It’s Fischer.
How about you?” He doesn’t have to know I cheated and already looked it up.

“Kellehan,” he
says. We exchange additional superficial stats about ourselves—ages, heights,
birthdays.

Liam’s
twenty-six, six-foot-two and was born on March tenth. He says twenty (my age)
is young and that before I told him I’d never slept with anyone aside from my
boyfriend he’d guessed I was twenty-two or twenty-three, a graduate student. “I
haven’t been with anyone who’s twenty since I was barely older than that
myself,” he tells me, revealing that his fiancée was six years older than him.

I don’t know
what the boundaries of this casual thing we’re engaged in are, but I chance it
and ask Liam how long he and his fiancée were together. He says they were
seeing each other for four years and engaged for one, and that he was so sure
about her that he knows he won’t ever really be able to feel certain like that
again.

My experience is
exactly the opposite, but still leads me to the same place. No matter what
happens and who I meet during the rest of my life, I’ll always know Bastien was
supposed to be the one. When I say that to Liam he flips onto his chest and
says, “You have a long life ahead of you. Who knows what might happen?”

“A lot could
happen, I know, but I don’t believe I could ever change that much that he
wouldn’t be the most perfect person for me. And I don’t mean that he was
perfect, because of course he wasn’t—I’m not idealizing him after the fact—but
I knew we were right even at the time. It’s just, things were meant to go a
certain way and they didn’t, because life isn’t fair.”

I wish I hadn’t
brought Bastien into the conversation while lying in Liam’s bed. I feel like I
cheapened what I was just holding up as perfection.

“I guess I
should probably go,” I add, and Liam rolls onto his side to grasp my waist,
with reassuring firmness, like he can read my mind.

“Life isn’t
fair,” he agrees. “You have to make of it what you can.”

That’s what I’m
doing now, I guess. Is that the same thing as settling?

“I know.” I run
my fingers nimbly through Liam’s hair so he won’t think I’m getting freaked out
about tonight. “I have to be in work just before noon tomorrow and I’ll
probably sleep better in my own bed.” Anyway, it’s probably not very casual to
sleep over, especially two nights in a row.

Liam nods and
plants a kiss in the valley between my breasts. “Okay, let’s go.”

We return to the
living room to pull on the clothes we’d abandoned there before he slid inside
me for the first time tonight. Then he drives me home and, sitting outside
Abigail’s house in the dark, I lean across the gearshift and kiss him with an
abandon that surprised me on the pier weeks ago and still surprises me now.

He cups my chin
in his hand and smiles. “So what are doing Wednesday night?”

The first kid that knocks on my
door on Halloween night, his father hanging back behind him, can’t be any older
than three. He’s wearing an orange astronaut jumpsuit with “flight commander”
patches sewn into the fabric and onto the front of his black baseball cap. He
has that look on his face that young children break out in when they’re not
sure whether they’re having fun or deathly frightened. It must be his first
Halloween trick or treating (or if not, he’s already forgotten last year’s) and
I’m probably one of his first houses of the night. I understand the
trepidation—how there can be such a fine line between having a good time and
being scared, that the division is nearly invisible.

Because of that,
and because he’s so cute in his little orange uniform, I give the boy two fun
size chocolate bars instead of one and say, in the same voice that I used on
Mr. Bonner yesterday, “I
love
your costume. It’s so cool.”