How Not To Fall (16 page)

“I do,” Charles says gently. “He doesn't come to visit.”

I jump in. “I bet it was weird moving to Indiana. I only moved from the East Coast, and it felt like I was in another universe. There were times when I'd go to Starbucks instead of Soma, just because it looked a lot like the Starbucks at home.”

Dad follows my lead. “You did that, Anniebear? You shoulda said something, so your mom and dad could have mailed you some New York.”

We talk for another half hour, until Dad notices Mom's slow blinking and drags her off to bed—well, to the futon in the living room—with a “Nice to meet you, Charles,” and a kiss on the cheek for me.

Which leaves Charles and me at the kitchen table, alone together in the middle of the night.

“I'm afraid I've outstayed my welcome,” he says quietly, with a soft smile. “They are
really
nice people, Annie.”

“I know. Kiss me.”

He does. And then he murmurs, his lips at my temple, “Wednesday night . . . was . . . beyond words. Incredible. Astonishing. The most erotic thing I have ever experienced in my life.” He holds my face in his hands, his eyes on mine. He says in a voice so quiet, I have to listen hard to hear, “I'm not exaggerating, Annie. You wanted me to lose control, and I did. I've never known anything like it.”

I grin. “So we can do it again sometime?”

He makes a sound, half laugh, half punched-in-the-gut. “Yeah, we can do it again.”

I kiss him and smile. “Then I'll see you Monday.”

And I send him home.

 

My parents leave Monday afternoon. I have brunch with them at the Uptown that morning, and for the first time they bring up the subject I've been waiting for.

“Charles is nice,” my mom says over her eggs.

“He thinks you're nice too,” I answer.

“Do you think he might come visit you in Boston?”

“What? No, I don't know. Why would he?”

“Oh. I thought you were . . . That you and he were . . .”

“Well, we kind of are, but it's not, like . . . I mean, we like each other. We have A Thing. We're kind of exploring The Thing while we've got the chance. But that's all.”

“Oh,” my mom says in the high little voice she uses when she's trying not to give me advice.

“Honey,” Dad preempts. “She's a grown woman.” He's been teaching her to hold back on the advice, and she's gotten good at not actually saying the things . . . but not at acting like she doesn't have a thing to say. Dad says, “Anniebellie, you should do whatever makes you happy as long as you're safe. Are you . . . safe?”

I snort with laughter. “Of course!”

“I'm sorry,” Mom says. “I just remember how terrible I was at all the . . . social . . . things . . . when I was your age, and I get this feeling like I'm walking around under a tightrope, waiting with a net in case you fall.”

“I won't fall—I'm not even on a tightrope. I'm totally on the ground.” I check myself. “Well, maybe a balance beam. But I'm safe. Charles won't let me fall.”

“He's so much older than you,” my mother continues.

“Four years is hardly anything. It only seems like more because he's already done with school and I'm not.”

“No, you're
not
done with school,” my mother says seriously.

“Frannie, honey, let her be.”

“But what if—”

“What if what? What if she doesn't become a doctor?” he says placidly.

“I'm definitely gonna be a doctor—” I try to interject, but it's really not about that.

My dad continues, “She'd still be our Annabelle and she'd still be our favorite person in the world and we'd still trust her to make the right choice for herself and her life. Isn't that right?”

I kiss him on the cheek and say, “Thanks, Dad. You guys are my favorite people in the world too.”

He takes my hand and gets tears in his eyes. “Well, that sure is good to hear.”

“How did we end up with a kid this great?” Mom asks.

“We earned her,” Dad says with a sniff, and he returns to his eggs Benedict. “With every diaper and every dance lesson and every broken bone.”

“I only broke three bones, and they were all in my feet!” I protest.

“Only three,” my mother says, rolling her eyes.

We've already loaded up their rented car with about half my stuff, which they'll be storing for me for the next couple of months, so when we bike back from breakfast, all I have to do is wave them off from my front steps after lots of hugging and good-byes.

As soon as they're gone, I get my bag, I get on my bike, and I ride to Charles's.

I
wake to the sensation of his lips on the back of my hand.

I open my eyes to find him sitting on the floor next to the couch, where I'm lying with
Very Good, Jeeves!
on my sternum, my fingers wrapped around the spine. I had every intention of reading it when I lay down.

But now here he is and his eyes are smiling at me and I feel an arrhythmic pulse in my heartbeat that makes me take a breath.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey. Do you always sleep this much?” he says with a ridiculous grin.

“At the end of the semester, yeah. My body spends two weeks, making up for all the sleep I denied it for four months. Last December I flew back to New York, got right into bed, and slept for thirty-six hours.”

“Thirty-six hours straight?”

“I woke up once to pee and drink some water, and then went right back to sleep. And I only know about that because my parents told me—I don't remember it.”

“God.”

“I know,” I yawn. “But like you said, right? They don't give these honors degrees to just anyone.” I turn onto my side to look directly at him. “I'm awake now. Is it okay that I just came over like this?”

“Oh yes,” he says, and puts a hand on my shoulder to push me onto my back again. He presses one hand against the book, still resting on my sternum, and rests the other on the top of my head, and then he kisses me, our faces perpendicular. The kiss starts out soft and sweet, just a little more intimate than a hello kiss. But he lingers, his lips returning again and again to my mouth, like I'm the dessert he ordered that he's too full to eat but can't stop tasting.

“What are your plans for this evening?” he asks when he shifts to kissing my cheek and my ear and my neck.

“Well, I was kind of planning on having athletic sex with you for several hours, if that's okay.”

He laughs.

 

Several hours later, naked and sticky in bed, Charles whispers against my mouth, “Four. There.”

“There?” I ask with a lazy grin.

“One for each day it's been since you were here. I felt I'd been neglecting my duty.”

He lies beside me, and I curl up in his arms, wrapping my leg around him too, limp and depleted and soggy with pleasure.

“Missed you,” I say into his throat.

“Missed you, too,” he says, and then he sighs into my hair. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

“Huh?”

“Diana has given me a talking to.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. She said you told her we have A Thing, but it's ‘no big deal.'”

“Oh. Yeah. That happened.” Then I flush, suddenly less sleepy. “God, she didn't think anything happened before . . . I mean, you're not in trouble. She knows you wouldn't . . .”

He shakes his head. “No, she was clear that she trusted me. It was more that she's worried I might be a miserable bastard who will break your heart.”

“Really?”

“Really. So”—he shifts to look me in the eye—“let's get perfectly clear on some things, my harpy. I am your fucktoy for the month.”

“Right now I feel like
your
fucktoy,” I grin at him.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “Who's making whom come? I am at your service. I'll make you come, I'll give you any pleasure you like. I am entirely at your disposal to play with. And then we transition out of the parenthetical lover phase and into the permanent friend phase, yes?”

“Yes,” I agree, tucking my head into the crook of his shoulder. “We worked all this out already. No miserable bastards, no broken hearts. Of course!”

“Right. And . . . while we're getting clear on things . . .”

“Uh-huh?”

“I'm . . . I have a confession to make. I should have said it sooner.”

He stops.

I wait, but he says nothing.

I prompt, “Okay . . .”

“Er.” He clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. “That night when you passed out drunk here. Do you remember the lift?”

“Huh?” I say.

“I thought not. In the lift, you . . .” He pauses and gives an embarrassed half-laugh. “You were down to your knickers and that camisole thing, and you wrapped your arms round me and licked my neck and . . . I knew you were drunk, but . . .” He looks at me earnestly then. “I put my hands on the rail; I didn't touch you. But I didn't stop you, I knew I should stop you, but instead I kissed you back.”

“You did?” I'm grinning apologetically at this, though he looks serious and stern.

“And then”—he rubs his forehead and looks at the ceiling—“after I put you in bed, I lay there on the couch and . . . oh god.” He puts his palm over his whole face. “Christ, this is so embarrassing and awful. I imagined what it would have been like if I had fucked you in the lift.”

“Uh-huh . . . ?” I'm expecting more. I'm wondering now if this is leading up to something bad, because he looks so guilty, so serious . . . but he stops there.

“What else?” I prompt.

“What do you mean, ‘what else'? I'm saying I imagined . . . I lay on the couch, wanking to a fantasy of . . . to the thought of assaulting you. Isn't that enough?”

“I mean, did you, like, go into the bedroom and do anything to me while I was passed out?”

“God, Annie, no!”

“So that's it? Your big confession?”

He's still all wrapped up in his embarrassment. “I ought to have told you the next morning, but it was . . . You were—I just . . . Well, the right moment never appeared, and then . . .”

“And then we didn't talk to each other until—”

“Until the night you told me you were a virgin, and it just got lost in all the other . . . What are you smiling at? You don't seem to mind at all.”

“Of course not. Why would I mind? I trust you. If our places were swapped, wouldn't you trust me to have been respectful?”

“It's hardly the same.”

“Why not?”

I watch him struggle with himself until he finally stammers, “The fantasy—it doesn't . . . That's not . . .”

“Dude, I can't even describe all the crazy shit I've done to you in my imagination.”

“Rrrrrright,” he says, looking at me in fascination.

I say eagerly, “For a while there, my favorite fantasy was where I'd break into your apartment in the middle of the night and go down on you while you were asleep, and then when you were hard, I'd ride you, and you wouldn't wake up until I was already most of the way to orgasm.”

“And what would I do when I woke up?” he asks with that same fascinated look.

“All kinds of things!” I enthuse. “Most often I'd imagine you had wanted me terribly—I mean, of course, right?—but couldn't bring yourself to approach me, so you were, like,
so
into it right away, and we just fucked each other's brains out.”

“Okay,” he says, and I laugh because it sounds like he's agreeing to a deal.

“Other times you'd be so devastatingly turned on by the surprise, by how sexy I was when you had never noticed before, that you'd just watch me and touch me and say my name until we both came.”

“Mh.” He half-grins at me. “Did you really think I hadn't noticed?”

“That was before we had The Thing,” I dismiss. “Sometimes though—oh! Sometimes you'd be really mad at me, you know, like you'd want to
punish
me, and so you'd flip me onto my stomach and press me onto the bed with your hands on my shoulder blades, and fuck me really hard.”

“I'd punish you with fucking?” He looks bewildered.

I shrug and grin at him a little shyly. “I dunno. It was hot.”

“Right, okay. Punishment fuck. Noted.”

“Anyway, other times you'd—” I stop, embarrassed now. I bite my lips between my teeth.

“What?” he nudges, grinning at my embarrassment.

“Well, there was this one time, anyway, when I imagined you weren't asleep at all, but you heard me come in and you pretended to be asleep so you could just see what I'd do. And I went down on you and rode you and came on you and you pretended to be asleep the whole time, and I slipped out, thinking you would never know what had happened. And then the next day at the lab you acted like you didn't remember anything and then—” I stop again and glance at him. “I can't say it.”

He just raises his eyebrows.

So I wince against the awkward, take a deep breath, and confess: “And then that night, you came to our apartment while I was asleep and fucked me, I woke up with you inside me, and when I made a noise, you whispered that I had to stay asleep or else you'd tell someone what I did to you. And you'd come every night after that, and I'd pretend to sleep through it.” I feel so ridiculous but also a little proud. “I told you I'd done crazy shit in my imagination.”

He moves over me and pins me to the bed. With his lips against my ear, he says, “Miss Annabelle Coffey. I had no idea you had such a filthy imagination. You're a dirty-minded little girl and the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.”

I squirm against him and bite his nipple, and he yelps delightfully.

We spend the evening in bed, not fucking, but playing—with mouths and tongues and palms and lightly scraping fingernails. He doesn't make me come again, I don't make him come again; we just share the raw pleasure of our skins. We talk about what we like, what we want to do in the next few weeks, what we're not interested in doing. I tell him things I like about his body, and he tells me things he likes about mine. We forget to eat until after midnight, when my stomach makes a noise so hilariously unerotic that Charles hauls me into the living room in my panties and his blue Oxford, and drops me on the couch, where I lie, listening to him make sandwiches in the kitchen.

He comes in with a tray, looking adorable in his stripy pajama pants, and he pauses when he sees me lying there. He blinks once, puts the tray down, and kneels on the couch, straddling my hips.

“Unbutton it,” he says softly.

I do, slowly, grinning up at him.

“Show me how you touch yourself,” he says.

I do. I tuck a hand under my panties and press the other against my lower abdomen. I keep my eyes on him, but he says, “Do you have your eyes open when you masturbate?”

“Not usually.”

“Then close your eyes.”

I do.

“Do you fantasize when you masturbate?”

“I do.”

“Tell me your fantasy.”

“Dude,
this
is my fantasy.”

“Then tell me this.”

“Um. I'm lying on your couch, and you're kneeling over me, watching me masturbate in your blue shirt. Hmmm, in my fantasy version you're naked and hard and masturbating with me—”

I feel him move off the couch, and I open my eyes to watch him pull off his clothes. He comes back, kneels over me, and starts stroking himself, his other hand gripping the back of the couch.

“What else?” he says.

I close my eyes again. “Um—” And I stop, my breath catching, because the actual fact of his watching me this way has pushed my arousal up, and my hips have started moving of their own volition.

“Tell me,” he insists.

“Uh, you . . . mh. I don't know, basically this is the hottest thing I can imagine right now, you watching me this way. I want to watch you too. Can I watch you?”

“Yes.”

I open my eyes to find his eyes focused intensely on my face, his hand on his cock.

He says, “Tell me what you see.”

“God, you are fucking beautiful,” I say. “You're—ungh—you're tall and strong and so much smarter than me and you're looking at me like you—ungh—like you want . . .” I close my eyes and throw my head back, mouth open.

“Don't try to come yet,” he instructs. “Look at me. What else?”

I open my eyes—they only want to open halfway—and I tell him, “Your body is—you're so beautiful. I love how strong you are, the muscles in your forearms. I love how strong your hands are on my body. When you touch me, it's like, I don't know. It's like I lose all control over myself. I've wanted you for so long, and now you're here, I can't believe you're here, that you want me, that you're watching me this way, and all my body wants to do is come over and over. I'm ready to come, Charles.”

“Not yet,” he growls, and leans over me. He says fiercely into my ear, “Turn over.”

I do, my hand still rubbing my clit.

He yanks my panties down around my thighs, pins me by my hair to the couch, and slides his cock into me with a satisfied little grunt. He rests his entire body over mine, sinking me into the cushions, and he starts to fuck me, so slowly, so slowly, the fingers of one hand tangled in my hair and the fingers of the other tucked under us, pressed against my hand on my clit.

“You wanted me to want you? I've wanted you,” he says, his voice low, his breath on my ear. “I sat at your thesis defense, imagining you laid out on the table for me to lick and fuck. I imagined dragging you into my office and pinning you against the wall and fucking you without a word, without even kissing you.” Though his voice is urgent, his words hurried and slurred, he's still moving slowly, desperately slowly, inside me. “The day you came to practice your defense and you kissed me. You remember that day?”

“Yes.” I feel like he's drugging me. Still fucking me so slowly.