How Not To Fall (20 page)

This is not really helping.

“Okay, close enough,” I sigh. “I'm taking him home. I'll see you guys later.”

I shoo Charles to the front door, and we depart to the sounds of Reshma and Margaret making a genuine effort not to laugh anymore.

 

By the time we get back to his apartment . . . the mood is somehow broken.

So we make dinner—or Charles makes dinner, putting together some kind of tomato-y pasta thing and a salad, while I sit at the counter, watching him and drinking a glass of wine he's decanted for me.

When all the salad vegetables are chopped and the sauce is simmering and the noodles are boiling, he stands on his side of the kitchen and says, “How now, Ophelia, what's the matter?”

And so I sit back and say, “I have questions.”

“Ask them.”

“Well, first . . . you don't seem broken.”

“No, I don't,” he acknowledges. “The protective, deceptive gloss of privilege.”

I nod as if I understand that, and I ask, “Isn't it bad for a psychiatrist to have avoidant attachment?”

“I find it's an advantage.”

I nod as if I understand that, too. “Do your brother and sister have the same stuff? The same attachment stuff?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you want to know?”

He pauses, his mouth slightly open, until at last he says, “I don't know.”

I nod and take a sip of wine. I recall, idly, the total bafflement I experienced in the face of my first organic chemistry class. This feels like that.

I did eventually understand o-chem. It all just clicked one day.

Presumably, this will all click eventually too.

But for now, I give up, with a sigh and a shrug.

“Other questions?” Charles asks.

I tilt my head at him and ask shyly, “Did you miss me yesterday?”

He steps toward me, takes my face in his hands, and looks into my eyes for a moment with that sweet, heartrending smile, and then kisses the corner of my eyebrow. He kisses the crook of my jaw. The bottom edge of my lip.

When he starts to pull away, I stand up.

“Charles,” I whisper, and I put my arms around his neck. I capture his mouth with mine and thrust my tongue into his mouth.

His hands go under my shirt, to my back. What we started on the futon ignites now inside me, and I clutch at him. He makes a deep, helpless sound and kisses me, hoisting me off my feet and pinning me against the wall with his hips. I wrap my legs around him and he grinds against me, right against my clitoris. My breath catches. He pushes himself against me harder and his tongue thrusts into my mouth and I rock my pelvis against him and my fingers are kneading the muscles of his back.

Right when his hands start pulling at my clothes, the noodles boil over.

He lets me slide, still panting, down the wall, and goes to rescue dinner.

So we eat on the couch, our plates in our laps, and I shovel food in huge mountains into my face. I'm actually starving—I barely ate for two days, went on two runs, and have had All The Feels. I hear Charles laugh quietly, and I look up to find him watching me.

“Watching you eat is almost as satisfying as watching you come,” he says.

Eventually I lean back, giving a groan of overstuffed satisfaction. Charles takes the dishes into the kitchen and I sit there, eyes closed, digesting and listening to him putting things away. For the first time in two days, I've begun to feel satisfied and calm.

When he comes back, he has
Origin
in his hands.

He clears his throat and says, “Er, you left this.” He sits, and he puts the book in the middle of the couch, between us.

I make a “get ye back” gesture at it. “Can we talk about it later?” I plead. “I've already had too many feelings today.”

“Definitely,” he says, and I hear relief in his voice. “What shall we do instead?”

I sit up on the couch and look at him. “I want to take a shower, go to bed, find you there, have simple, undemanding sex with you, and then sleep for, like, ten hours.”

“Done,” he says. “Go.”

And that's what we do.

Because Charles is there with whatever I need, no matter what.

Almost whatever I need.

Whatever I need that he has to give.

 

We're lying together in the interval between sex and sleep. I'm watching the way the light of the streetlamp through the window shines and glints in the sparse, pale gold hair on his chest.

With my eyes on his chest, I say, “Do you still want me to have it? The book?”

“Yes. Annie, yes.”

I blink, genuinely puzzled. “I can't figure out why. Is it a consolation prize?”

He says nothing until I look up at him. When I'm meeting his eyes, the inner corners of his eyebrows lift and he says, “It is an inadequate token of my appreciation for the generosity of your heart and mind,” in a voice so sincere and warm, it pours through me like hot chocolate when you come in from the snow.

“That sounds to me like you'll miss me when I'm gone,” I whisper, fighting off the tears at the backs of my eyes.

“How should I respond to that? Would you like me to play the doting partner or the dominant lover or the casual fuck-buddy or . . . whatever it is I am?”

“Just be honest. No”—I correct myself—“be honest, and also keep the lid off the monster. That's the deal.”

Dully, he says, “In the name of honesty only then do I say: I'll be more relieved than I can express when you're gone.”

I am breathless at this, like he punched me in the gut. “Ouch.”

“Still want me to be honest?” The corner of his lower lip twitches downward.

“Dude.”

It's good, though. This single sentence—
I'll be relieved when you're gone—
shifts the puzzle pieces into place, and I see a pattern at last: He will let me have him, he will try to face the monster... until I leave. And when I leave, he can close himself back up. He can shove the monster back into the pit.

And until then, that twitch of his lower lip tells me, he will torture himself.

For me.

I move a little away from him to put my head on the pillow next to his. Lying nose to nose with him, I ask, “You're gonna try the thing I want? The Monster Deal?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“Because you'd do it for me without thinking, without even trying. And because ...” He pauses, twiddling the sheet over my shoulder. “I know you'll turn yourself inside out trying to practice the thing I want from you. The Acceptance Deal.”

I nod.

“I think you don't know how hard it will be for you,” he says, looking earnestly into my eyes.

I open my mouth to protest—but then I stop. How hard
do
I think it will be?

I think it will be easy. I've got the easy side of this deal. He's the one who has to face a monster. All I have to do is ... accept him, whether or not he faces the monster.

Even though I really, really want him to face the monster.

Even though I really, really believe that if he does that, he'll love me.

And not only do I really, really want him to love me, I really, really want to be worth all that effort, to him.

So acceptance will be easy as long as he's facing the monster.

But acceptance means without condition, without any “as long as.”

“I have no idea,” I admit. “But there aren't many things I've tried to do, that I really wanted to do, that I couldn't do eventually.” In fact, I can't think of even one thing I really wanted to do that I haven't succeeded at, eventually.

“Well.” He kisses my forehead and gets out of bed. He pulls the curtains closed and then returns to the bed, sitting on the side and holding my hand. “I want you to have the book, either way, but you don't have to decide now.”

“Okay.”

“I have some work I need to finish tonight. Would you like me to stay here until you're asleep?”

“Oh,” I say, only now realizing I had been assuming we'd be going to sleep together, realizing too how disappointed I am he hasn't assumed the same thing. “Um. I thought—”

He clears his throat. “Again, honesty: Most of the nights you've spent here, I've stayed until you've fallen asleep, and then I've gone into the living room to work for a few hours.”

“Oh.”

“I didn't mean not to tell you. It just didn't come up.”

I pout. “Like the family title.”

“And the elevator incident.”

“And that your specialty is psychiatry.”

“Psychosomatic medicine, if we're being precise about it.”

“Shit, I don't even know what that is. Who the hell
are
you?” I say, rolling to my back and throwing my arms out to my sides.

He lies down beside me on top of the covers and tucks me up next to him. He says, “ ‘I am large, I contain multitudes.' Same as you. Look, can I give you a hint?”

“A hint?”

“A hint about the Acceptance Deal.”

“Okay.”

“When you're finding it difficult, focus on the present. We have only these few days, only this one chance to share pleasure. Right now is what we have. Pay attention to what feels good right now, and let go of the past and the future.”

“See, that sounds pretty easy,” I sigh drowsily into his chest.

I feel his laugh more than I hear it. “I'm glad it sounds easy. I hope it is. Go to sleep, my harpy.”

He wraps his arms around me, and I feel I know exactly who he is, no matter what else I might still learn about him.

“A
nnie, try this.”

“Try this” turns out to be a route marked
5.10a,
a far more difficult route than I've ever climbed before.

I just look at Charles.

“It's balance-y,” he says.” I think you'll like it.”

I don't just like it; I flash it. I mean, I go right up it on the first try, without falling or having to take a sit even once. It's difficult, the handholds small and the footholds positively minute—in one place there isn't even a foothold; you just have to stand on the wall—but I do it. And the whole group—Tara, Charles, all of them, cheer for me as he lowers me back to the ground.

“You're getting stronger,” Charles says as I undo the figure-eight knot.

I grin at him. “I'm getting better at using the strength I have.”

“Six of one,” he says. “Right, miss, tonight's the night for your ego. Watch this.”

We swap ropes, I tie in to the anchor rope, and I belay him on the same route.

He struggles mightily.

“Balance-y,” he calls down. “I'm better at the brute-force routes.”

“You gotta get your feet up, man,” Tara calls.

I turn to look at her. “What does ‘get your feet up' mean?”

“Bugger!”

“GAHH!” While my eyes are turned away, Charles slips off the wall and I'm pulled off my feet.

“Sorry!” I call, dangling between the top rope and the anchor.

“No problem,” he calls back, rubbing the elbow that got knocked in his fall.

I dropped him.

He has never dropped me. Not once. Not even close.

Instead he showed me a route I could do that he couldn't.

And I dropped him.

“I'm really sorry,” I call again.

“No problem,” he repeats.

 

“Sorry,” I say again when we get home and he's cleaning off his bleeding, grimy elbow. “I shouldn't have taken my eyes off you.”

“No problem. No harm done.”

I wonder how a bloody elbow counts as “no harm,” but I can't bring myself to ask out loud. Instead I say, more obliquely, “I don't think you're letting the monster out very much right now.”

“Okay,” he says, dabbing at his elbow. “Suppose I do that, and my hypothesis is the correct one? The monster's not a depressed eight-year-old but a vicious man, full-grown, who's been rock climbing for half his life and swinging a cricket bat for the other half?”

“Whatever. Fine. What's the worst that could happen?”

“The worst? I could kill you.”

“You would never do that.”

“Are we having an argument now? I only ask because I'd like to finish with this first.” He gestures with his elbow, on which he's pressing a wet cloth.

“It's not an argument,” I argue. “It's a discussion.”

“Right. Well, toddle over to the sofa, and I'll join you for our discussion just as soon as I've put a bandage on this.”

I do. And he does. Once he's done with his first aid, he sits at his end of the sofa and says, “You were saying I would never kill you.
I
never would, no. But my father would, and that's what we're talking about.”

I roll my eyes. “You're exaggerating.”

Charles scratches his nose and says lightly, “He put my mother in hospital for two weeks when she was pregnant. That was the first miscarriage. She thinks I don't know about it, but he told me.”

I look at him, my mouth open, not believing him, not wanting to believe him. “Why would he tell you?”

“He was complaining about her inability to sustain a pregnancy. I was twelve.”

“What?” I whisper, stunned.

“I'm sure he's raped her too, multiple times. And I'm sure she's not the only one.”

I'm sitting there, the blood draining from my face. I feel cold and prickly, nauseated.

“I'm telling you this because you asked what was the worst that could happen if the monster got loose. This, by the way, this right now, is me genuinely trying the Monster Deal. I would never tell you these things otherwise.”

I nod and think about this, actually having a discussion now, rather than an argument. At last I say, “I thought it would be noisier. Yelling.”

“I don't have to yell to be scary,” he says easily.

“Is not being scary the point of the pit and whatever?”

“Not hurting the other person is the point. The Monster Deal asks me to do things I know will cause you to suffer, and to trust that you are strong enough to withstand it.”

“Huh,” I say. “A wall is a wall is a wall.”

“What's that?”

“I had this professor who used to say that. ‘A wall is a wall is a wall.' You built a wall to keep the monster in so you wouldn't hurt people, but that same wall keeps people out, keeps them from being nice to you. You're trapped behind the wall with the monster.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “And fool that I am, I've spent the last month teaching you to climb.”

 

A long time later I put my arms around his neck and roll on top of him.

With one hand on my butt, he finds his way inside me and then puts both arms around my waist, bracing me down. He kisses me and fucks me, and I feel more fragile than I ever have before. When I attempt to pull away from the kiss, to come up for air, he moves one of his hands to the back of my head and forces my head down beside his, my mouth on his neck, and I whimper into the heat.

“Fuck. Annie,” he grinds out from between his teeth.

My body is locked against his, my arms trapped under his neck. I soften my body and relax into his thrusts, letting my body bounce against his, at his will.

Very gradually, my relaxation transforms into arousal, arousal into desire, and, very gradually, with the push of his pelvis against my clit, desire into desperation. I'm hovering at the edge, hovering there, and I recognize at last that he's doing it on purpose, holding me at that edge. He knows my body, knows how to keep me there, suspended indefinitely.

As soon as I see the trick, I smile.

“Charles, I want to come now,” I say firmly into his neck.

“I know you do,” he grunts back.

“So let me, you jerk!” I laugh, and he grips me harder to him with a rough noise, and fucks me harder. I groan luxuriously into his neck.

“Beg me,” he says, still fucking me.

I laugh. “What? No way!”

And he stops. He just stops. He's breathing hard under me, his arms gripped like iron bands around me, but he's lying still inside me.

I squirm as much as I can against him, saying, “Hey!”

“Beg,” he commands.

“No!” I say, struggling more fiercely now. With effort, I pull my arms out from under his neck.

When I get them free, he grabs my wrists and wrestles me onto my back. I laugh as he does it, but when he pins my wrists to the mattress, next to my shoulders, and slides his cock back into me, he looks into my eyes, my neck arches back, and I'm not laughing anymore.

He says, “Beg.”

“No.”

He fucks into me hard, once.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes!”

“Beg me, and I'll let you.”

“No.”

And he slides hard into me, twice.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes, Charles,” I say in my most sex-kitten voice, but it does nothing.

“Beg.”

I whine instead, and he slams his cock in me three times. Hard. I grunt with each one.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes.”

“Beg me.”

I press my lips together.

Four times. Hard. Steady. I breathe, “Oh god,” after each one, as my arousal seems to cross threshold after threshold without ever approaching the final edge.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes.” A broken whisper this time.

“Then say it.” He fucks into me.

“Oh god, Charles.”

“Beg.” Again.

“I want—”

“Now.”

“Please, Charles.”

“Don't stop.”

It comes out of me in a soft, high chant, “Please make me come, make me come, please, Charles, please, Charles, let me come,” and he moves perfectly, perfectly, pressing and moving against my clit, moving inside me as I surrender and plead, until I can't breathe—but as soon as I stop, holding my breath with the approaching orgasm, he's still again.

“If you stop, I stop,” he says, gasping as much as I am.

“Please,” I whisper. It devolves into a desperate, wild, “Please. Please. Please,” with each focused thrust, and when I come, my whole body spasms, my arms and legs wrap themselves around him, and I lift myself entirely off the bed, closing all the distance between us. I'm clinging to him, dangling from him, thrusting myself against him, rolling and gripping and half-blind.

He drops off of his elbows and presses me into the mattress, silently thrusting those three hard, sharp thrusts of his orgasm.

“Ow, my bloody elbow,” he says as we lie there, panting. He kisses me cheerfully, rolls over, and laughs, while I feel shattered and raw.

It marks a change in the way Charles touches me. There is an exigency in him, and a demand. He asks more of me—more orgasms, more surrender—and I give it. There is an intensity, as well. Though he always begins tenderly, his touch escalates to real force, so that by the time I'm coming, he may slap my ass or my thigh or my breasts to a hot, stinging peak. Friday morning he finds bruises from his fingers on my arm. He kisses the marks and asks softly, “Hurt?”

“Nah.”

And it doesn't. It feels like he's trusting me to be strong enough to withstand the inevitable bruisings of wide-open connection, and I feel myself earning that trust.

I will not drop him again. Not if I can help it. Not even if he drops me.

Which he does.