How Not To Fall (23 page)

He's not listening yet. So I sit and chew and watch him read.

I'm on my third triangle when I find myself counting in my head. Tonight, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. That's it.

My mouth dries out, and I put down the sandwich. I carry the plates back to the cart. I drink some water.

Enjoy the present
was his hint about acceptance.

I'm standing, staring blankly at the cart, trying to enjoy the moment, when I hear Charles's teacher voice behind me. “Come here.”

As I turn and approach the bed, he says, “Lie on your back with your head at the foot of the bed and your hips over mine and your feet on the headboard.”

I sort out these instructions as I go, and find I'm lying with my feet on either side of his head so that he has a direct view of my whole body.

“Untie the robe.”

I do, looking up at him while I do it.

“Pull it open,” he says.

I do, still looking at him, running my hands over my shower-softened skin.

He takes one of my feet and puts it on the center of his chest. I curl my toes into the cotton of his shirt. He takes the other foot and begins kissing my toes, licking the tender underside of them, kissing and biting along the arch.

“Oh my god.” I flex on the bed at the warm, wet pleasure of his mouth. “That's really, um . . .”

As he transitions to the other foot, he comments, “I can see you getting wet.”

I put my hand on my vulva to feel what he means, but he says, “Don't touch yourself yet.” So I put my hands flat on the mattress, and he drapes his legs over them, holding them down. And he continues to suck and lick and bite my foot and toes, and my hips move restlessly over his. I can feel his erection growing under me, through his clothes and the robe.

“Could you come from this?” he asks.

“You know I can't come without touching my clit,” I say. This much has been evident to me since our very first night. I can get close—right to the edge—from almost anything he does to me, but until there's direct pressure, direct stimulation on my clit, I can't come. And he has used this knowledge to torture me often enough.

“Not true. You came when I touched your foot the night I tied you up,” he says.

“Well, but that was, like . . .”

How can his tongue on my toes be erotic? It is, desperately so.

“Like what?”

“You know,” I say, shy suddenly. I tip my knees together. “That was, like,
perfect
sex. You can't have sex like that all the time.”

“Let's have sex like that now.” He slides out from under me and off the bed. “Kneel on the bed.”

I turn over to my hands and knees and look at him. He's standing casually, leaning against the desk chair where I draped my suit before my shower.

“Up on your knees,” he corrects, and I rise up on my knees.

“Take off the robe.”

I quirk my lips. “You take it off.”

He shakes his head and says in his teacher voice, “Do as I tell you.”

My lips part, my lungs contract, and I do as he tells me.

For a long, long minute I watch him looking at me. Just the sensation of his gaze on me is making my heart beat faster. His face is serious, like he's studying me, like he's memorizing me.

Finally he approaches me and gestures me forward too. “Edge of the bed, and turn around,” he says. “More on the edge. There.”

I'm facing away from him, balanced with my feet and shins off the bed.

With his lips pressed against my ear, but so softly I have to strain to hear, he says, “Put the backs of your hands on the small of your back.”

I do.

“Thank you,” he says into my ear.

And he ties my wrists together with, I realize, my scarf. I am still, my heart pounding as he does it. I close my eyes to focus on the sensation of his hands and the silk.

With his lips against my ear again, he says, “Is that comfortable? Blood supply okay?”

I nod.

He laces the fingers of one hand into mine, his face still close to mine. “Annie, what will you say if you want me to stop?”

“Stop.”

“And slow down?”

“Wait.”

“And when I tell you to beg?”

“Please,” I whisper.

He runs his fingertips up my spine.

“You . . . are . . . breathtaking,” he says.

And then he's gone.... I turn to see where he went. He's undressing, his eyes hungry on me. He grins at me but shakes his head. “Turn round,” he says.

And then I feel his mouth and hands and tongue and stubble on my feet.

“Oh my god,” I moan. “Why does that feel so fucking good? Oh my
god
.” I drop my head and close my eyes, attending to nothing but the sensations on my feet. I point my arches and flex my toes, opening wide spaces for his tongue. “Fuck, I love that so much,” I say.

He doesn't answer, just continues the soft, warm, wet exploration of hands and mouth. When he puts my big toe in his mouth and sucks and rolls his tongue around it and scrapes his teeth along it, I gasp, and my head goes back. He does the same thing to each toe, with agonizing slowness, deliberateness. The toes of my left foot point and flex as he attends to my right and I battle to keep those toes relaxed for him. The effort has me breathing like I've just sprinted a mile.

Then, leaving his warm palm over the arch of my right foot, he moves his mouth to the left, and we do it all over again.

“Oh, ffffffffuck youuuuuu,” I groan, and I hear him laugh softly, feel it as his teeth scrape across my big toe. “Oh my god. Oh my god, Charles.” It doesn't make any sense. Each toe is as sensitive as my clit, and he's sucking and licking and nibbling on each, and it makes me desperate beyond anything else he does to me.

As he sucks my toes, I begin trying things to make myself come. I imagine touching my clit . . . but that only makes things worse, since I can't actually touch it. I rock my pelvis, my abdomen tight. No better. I bring my knees together, press my thighs together, and move my hips.

“Knees apart,” Charles says.

I groan and separate my knees, and he slides a hand between my thighs, never coming too close to my labia. “Wider than that,” he says. He's standing behind me now, his mouth near my ear. With a whimper of protest, I separate my knees more.

“Just a little more,” he says.

I give him a little more and then bend my knees, lowering myself onto his hand, searching out his palm.

“Ah,” he scolds. “No.”

“Please, Charles,” I say desperately. “Let me come. I'm ready to come. Please touch my clit.”

“No,” he says, and he bites my earlobe, which makes me pant, but it doesn't make me come. “And I didn't tell you to beg.”

“Dude, I fucking hate you,” I say.

“Good,” he says. “Put your shoulders on the bed.”

I lower myself to my shoulders, the side of my face pressed into the hotel sheets. I feel his fingers on me, slick with lube but maddeningly far from my clit. Then he slides into me, fucking me hard and fast, his one hand roaming lightly over my skin, my back, my ass, my arms, my thighs, touching me everywhere but my clit. His other hand holds my foot in a warm, firm grip. I groan hoarsely into the mattress, biting at the sheets.

I pull at the scarf, trying to free my hands so I can touch my agonized clit, but then he stops.

“No, you don't.” He turns me to my back and spreads my legs wide.

“Please.” With my legs wide open and my arms pinned under me, my pelvis is rocking desperately. “
Please.
”

“You can have no idea what seeing you like this does to me,” he whispers. “No idea.” He kneels at the end of the bed and begins a slow—
slow
—path of kisses along the inside of my open thigh, starting at my knee. His lips and his tongue and his stubble make an agonizing combination, but he's moving closer and closer to my clit.

“Yes,” I grind out.

He gets about halfway up my left thigh, and then switches to my right thigh, beginning again at my knee and working a slow, wet trail of kisses up, slowly up, again about halfway up my thigh.

And then he does it again on my left thigh, beginning at my knee.

“
Fuck you,
” I say, but he doesn't answer. He makes it about three quarters of the way up my thigh this time before switching to the right, where again he starts at my knee, licking and kissing and abrading the inside of my thigh until he's about three quarters of the way to my vulva. My whole body is lifting off the bed in waves now. I'm making fierce, gruff noises in my throat. I'm grimacing with the desperateness of my arousal.

A third time, he starts at my knee, and this time his hands are moving over my belly and breasts as my body continues to lift off the mattress in rolling waves of pleasure. His lips travel up my thigh, and he gets so close, I can feel his breath on my pussy. His mouth hovers there, and I lift myself up to him, try to press my vulva against his lips—but he pulls away.

“If you do that again, I'll stop,” he says firmly. “Be still now.”

“Oh my god, I fucking hate you, Charles.” But I lie still. My arms are aching now, and my legs are trembling. My feet are visibly shaking. He begins once more up my right thigh from my knee, kissing and licking with a slow deliberateness that angers me, even as it tantalizes me. When at last his mouth is at the top of my thigh, he just barely touches his parted lips to my vulva. My breath shudders, but I stay still as much as I can, struggling to breathe slowly against the desperate contractions of my belly.

“Good,” he says, and I feel the lightest brush of his lips on my clit. “Now beg.”

“Please,” I say instantly. “Please let me come. Please, Charles, please put your mouth on my clit and let me come. Please lick my clit. Please.”

“And what will you do for me?” he says softly, and again I feel his breath, his lips.

“I'll come for you,” I sigh. “I'll come for you. Please let me come for you.”

He moves away, and I whimper desperately. And then he's pulling my foot in close to my vulva with one hand, his mouth on the arch, licking and kissing and sucking at the tender skin . . . and then his other hand brushes like a cat's tail over my labia.

I burst like a supernova, like a bolt of lightning has split me open. A thought passes vaguely through my mind that our neighbors must think something is wrong; I'm making noises like he's killing me. But I can't stop. I don't want to stop. I only want to let the full flood wash through me.

He kisses my foot and strokes my vulva until the throbbing eases to sporadic jolts, then he puts his mouth on my clit, sucks and flicks his tongue in just the way my body has taught him to, and all at once a second wave hits me, a peak and a cascade of contractions that almost hurt in their intensity. I wrap my legs around him, my arms still trapped under me.

“
Fffffffffuck,
god, oh my god, Charles, I can't—it's too—I can't, please.”

He lifts his head and says, “Shall I stop?”

“Yes.”

So he comes up and lies beside me, folds me into his arms, holds me, kisses me, calls me sweetheart, and all at once I'm crying quietly against his chest.

“It's all right,” he says, and he holds me closer, undoing the knot at my wrists. “Sweetheart, it's all right.” As soon as my hands are free, I put them around his neck, moving delicately against the stiffness.

“I don't hate you,” I whisper.

“I know,” he whispers back.

“I'm in love with you,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “It's all right.”

“I don't know how I'm going to leave on Tuesday,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “Don't think about it. Just be here with me right now.”

“I am. I'm here. I'm here.” I hold him as close as I can and I say, “I'm such an idiot.”

“Me too,” he says, and he kisses my forehead.

We lie wrapped around each other for long minutes.

I don't remember getting under the covers or falling asleep or Charles getting out of bed, but when I open my eyes, I find myself warm under blankets, and the room is dark except for the glow of Charles's computer at the desk and the reflection of his screen on his glasses.

Into the silence, I say, “Charles.”

He turns my way. “Mh.”

“Tomorrow after the last session, I want to take you to this place I heard about. Will you go?”

“Anywhere you like,” he says softly.

“I love you.”

“I know, Annie.”

And I sigh and relax back into sleep. Because he always tells me the truth.

I
t's just a few blocks from the hotel. We stroll through the narrow park, and Charles reads each row of letters, bowed like shock-waves traveling away from the nearby college campus.

“Who are the names?” he asks, pointing at the markers. “Where are we?”

I try the French, pronouncing it sort of like it's Spanish, since that's all I know.

He looks at me, puzzled. “The nose for fourteen whats?”

“The nave for fourteen queens,” I say.

“Ah,” he says. “
Nef pour quatorze reines
.”

“Yes. What's a nave?”

“It's the part of a church where you sit. And who are the fourteen queens?”

“Most of them were students at the École Polytechnique, mostly right around my age. In 1989 a guy went on a shooting spree and killed them. Most of them were women who wanted to be engineers,” I say. “And they died for it.”

“Jesus,” Charles says.

We sit together on a park bench. I say, “I thought there might be something here that would help me understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why people do horrible things?” I shrug. “The nature of evil, I guess? But what this shows me is how much people loved these women.”

Charles nods and says, “Fear. The nature of evil is fear.”

I look at him and nod too, as if I understand. “Everyone feels fear, though. Not everyone—”

“Hits his wife and tells her it's her fault?”

I nod again, and consider what else it takes. Eventually I say, “It doesn't seem to matter whether a person has money or an education or social status or anything. The world just seems to . . . break some people.”

“Though most people in the world don't have any of those things, and nothing can break them.”

“So fear,” I conclude, “plus fragility.”

“Mh,” Charles says.

We sit together in the darkening evening, and I think about how hard I was on Charles the night we fought, how hard I pushed him, how he looked at me with fear in his face and then collapsed against the wall. I watch now as the breeze ruffles his hair delicately against his temple.

“What do you fear, my termagant?” Charles asks the grass.

I think carefully for a few minutes, discarding my earliest thoughts—I only fear what I'm not certain I could survive, and I'm pretty certain I can survive most things—before I say, “Two things, at least. I'm afraid of not living up to my potential.”

“Ah,” he says. “Alas, fearing something like that is the perfect way to create the thing itself. Trust me, I know.”

“And I'm afraid of hurting you,” I say, and he looks at me, stunned. “Also, heights,” I feel compelled to add, for full honesty. “What do you fear?”

He doesn't answer at first. He looks everywhere but at me. He says, “I think people don't fear heights. They fear the fall—and not even that. They fear the consequence of the fall.” Then he folds and unfolds his hands in his lap and finally says, “I fear I have already failed my most essential test.”

“Your mom,” I say, and he nods, still not looking at me.

“And I fear losing your respect.”

A month ago—a week ago—I might have said,
Well, fearing something like that is the perfect way to create the thing itself,
or offered a list of all the people who are fragile. To prove I'm smart. To make sure he sees the same thing I see. But I don't need to prove anything with Charles. And I know he sees what I see. So I just lace my fingers between his.

I tilt my head against his shoulder and ask, “What made your senior year hard?”

“Mh?” He's still looking at the grass.

“Back in April you said your senior year was hard. You alternated between data analysis and weeping.”

“Ah.” He clears his throat, opens his mouth, hesitates . . . and then says, “My mother came to visit me. She was depressed. Eventually I got it out of her that she had miscarried—again, though she thought I didn't know about the first one. She was over forty, but she was twenty-two weeks along, and everything was fine. It was a girl. Mum was calling her Marianne.

“She didn't tell me what my father did. I think he might have pushed her down the stairs or hit her and she fell down the stairs or . . . I don't know. She told me she fell. She told me it was her fault. I knew better by then.” His hand is gripping and regrip-ping mine.

“What's it like to miscarry that far along?”

“It's like giving birth,” he says. “The heart had stopped beating. She went to hospital, and they induced labor. She wanted a funeral, but he—my father—wouldn't let her. So she came to visit me instead.”

What do you say to a story like that?
I'm sorry? That's too bad? Wow, your father really is a total horror show?
We just sit in silence together for a long time.

I sit up and begin, “I was nine . . . ,” This is a story I avoid telling, generally. No one in Indiana really understands, so why would a guy from England?

But then I realize: yes. I've found something I don't share. So I'll share it.

So I start again. “I was nine in 2001, and we lived in Greenwich Village, which is—”

“Oh my god,” Charles says. He gets it instantly.

“I was in school at the time. It was this amazing sunny day. Blue sky. We were doing fractions. We . . . My parents, I mean, they're doctors, right? They came and got me from school and walked me back to the apartment, and by then everything was gray and the air was dusty, everything was covered in ash. The air tasted like ash and burning. I didn't know what was going on. They left me with Miss Rocío, our housekeeper. She had brought her kids with her. They taught me the names of colors in Spanish. Mom and Dad didn't get home until late, but they came to kiss me good night. They smelled like smoke. When it turned out there wasn't that much need for doctors at the hospital, they just went right to ground zero, but . . . When they got home, they hugged me and kissed me and tried to answer my questions, but it's just one of those things, you know, where there aren't any answers.”

“The fundamental unreliability of the universe,” Charles says quietly. “What will we do if the sun never comes out again.”

I look at him, taken aback. “Oh yeah. I didn't . . . I guess that's how it started.”

He sandwiches my hand between his two, and we sit, silent, as the sun begins to go down. And it dawns on me that it doesn't matter if he can't love me the way I need him to; I don't love him because of the way he loves me. I love him because our inner worlds map onto each other. When he shows me more of himself, he is illuminating a new place inside me, and when I give him more of myself, I am showing him a hidden place inside himself.

It's not about him giving me what I need no matter what. It's about him
being
what I need, no matter what. Because he's a mirror, and he shows me the version of myself I most want to be. And I think maybe I do the same for him.

And that's what will hold us together, whatever comes next.

I shiver a little with the chill of the evening, and at last Charles looks at me. We stand up at the same time and walk back to the hotel slowly, our fingers laced together.

We make love that night, lost in the sensation of each other's skin against our own, in the pleasure of two bodies brushing up against each other with affection and a celebration of life. In the dark, I feel like I can read his mind—read his heart—through the tension in his muscles, the flexion of his tendons and joints. So it's no surprise to me at all when, in the quiet rest before sleep, he says brokenly into the darkness, “Annie.”

“Hm?”

“You're not wrong.” And he kisses my hair.

“I love you too,” I say. And I kiss his mouth, and he kisses me back, brushing his palm over my forehead, over my cheek, over my hair.

 

Taxi, airport, plane, airport, car. Some people enjoy traveling; I've never been one of them. I've always hated flying, especially—though I've suddenly realized why that might be true. Duh. Planes.

Anyway, we have two more nights together.

And, because I'm a fucking idiot, we spend this one fighting.

“Some part of this has to be my fault!” I shout. I can hardly remember how the argument started, but blood is pounding in my ears, and I am desperate for Charles to criticize me, correct me, yell at me, anything. But he won't. He sits at his end of the sofa, and he listens empathically and takes all the blame. I yell, “Just tell me what I've done wrong! If I could see my own mistakes, I wouldn't need you to point them out to me!”

“You've done nothing wrong. I'm—”

“What, I'm perfect and you're the fuckup? That is the most infuriating part about this! There has to be
something
I can do differently, some part of this I can change and control, instead of just accepting things the way they are!”

“Instead of accepting
me
the way I am,” he says with an edge of frustration—at last. He makes a frustrated sound and gets up, his hands on his head. With his back to me, he takes several deep breaths and then rubs his hands over his face.

I stand up and follow him. “You can't make things better by accepting them the way they are,” I insist. I'm trembling with helpless frustration, my hands fisting and unfisting, my jaw clenched in fury.

“Well, you're wrong about that,” he says, turning to face me.

“I'm not. You have to be dissatisfied, you have to
work
and
fight
and
push
.” I step forward. He steps back.

“You don't.”

“Yes, you do! How can you say that? How can you just
stand there?”
I step forward again, gesturing at his relaxed posture, his calm face. He steps back and puts his hands into his pockets. I'm mortifyingly aware of the difference in our postures. I can hear my own breath, fast and shallow, and I can feel my eyebrows raised, my eyes wide and desperate. I feel the clock ticking, and it fills me with wild panic—and yet he's acting like he's coaching me through a little academic puzzle.

“Is criticizing you really how I show you I care?” he says.

“
Yes!
” I shriek. “Tell me what's wrong so I can
fix it!
” I step forward.

He steps back and raises his eyebrows at me. Quietly and slowly, he says, “Then I tell you now you're angrier than is helpful, and I'd like you to calm down a bit.”

“ ‘Calm down'?” I shout. “That's how I can fix things?
By caring less?
” I step forward, my hands fisted so hard, my nails are digging impotently into my palms. There isn't any time, and he won't help me. How do I make him help me? He has to
help me
.

He steps back and looks at the floor. “That's not what I said—”

“Yes, it is!”

And I shove him, once, hard, both hands on his shoulders.

Charles staggers backward two steps under the force of my push and holds his hands up by his shoulders. He isn't looking at me. He's breathing hard through his nose.

I clap my hands over my mouth, appalled at myself. “I'm sorry, Charles.”

“I know. It's all right.”

“Oh my god.”

“Don't worry about it. Just go.”

“Go?”

“Please, Annie.”

“But I—”

“
For god's sake,
” he says through his teeth, and then he puts his hands over his face. I see his fingers trembling.

So I go. I walk out the door, close it behind me, and sit in the hallway, my arms wrapped around my head.

I hear Charles moving. I hear water run through the pipes. Is he making coffee? No, it must be the shower. He's taking a shower.

I sit there in the hall, ashamed, crying as quietly as I can manage. After about twenty minutes he texts me—my phone bleeps.

And then the door opens.

“Heard your phone out here,” Charles says. His hair is wet over his forehead, and he's smiling a little. “Do you want to come in?”

I nod and rise and go in, and as soon as the door is closed, I throw my arms around his waist and burst into noisy tears and apologies. He puts his arms around me and tells me it's all right, I'm all right, we're all right, everything will be fine. It's all nonsense. I will never be fine again.

“I love you so much,” I say. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's all right.”

“I hurt you.”

“I'm all right.”

“I pushed you.”

At this, he actually laughs, “My harpy, you've been pushing me since the day you kissed me.”

“I mean I physically pushed you!”

“I know what you mean, sweetheart, and it doesn't matter.”

“How can it not matter?”

He steps back and holds my face in his hands. “Will you ever do it again, to me or anyone else?”

“Oh my god, no!”

“And that's why it doesn't matter.”

I put my arms around him again. “I love you. I'm sorry. I love you so much.”

“I know, Annie. It's all right.”

“And I get the monster thing better now.”

He kisses the top of my head. And he starts laughing lightly.

I squeeze him. “How can you laugh?”

“It's just so awful and ridiculous,” he says through a chuckle. “Here we are, with hardly any time together left, and we can't even enjoy it for what it is, because we're so wrapped up in what it's not.”