How Not To Fall (7 page)

I follow him and find him, his hands braced on the edge of the counter, taking deep, slow breaths, and only now does it dawn on me that this really isn't fun for him at all. He looks like he's in physical pain. Oh. I was being mean. Shit.

“Charles, I'm sorry,” I say, leaning against the counter next to him. “I won't do anything anymore. And if you don't even want to talk on Friday, I'll understand.”

“Fucking ironic process,” he mutters, and he moves—it takes so little, and now his hands are on the counter on either side of me. I'm pinned here.

“This is insane,” he says mildly.

I nod seriously. “What's an ironic process?”

“I'll send you a reference,” he says, and he relaxes a little, smiling into my eyes, but this close to him, I'm warm and pulsing and dissatisfied. I don't want to smile. I want him to kiss me.

“Look,” he says, “I think it's pretty clear that your boss wants to fuck you, and not just in principle, so I'm going to ask for your help. Will you help me?”

I nod again, still watching his eyes.

“Nothing until Friday. No texting, no calling, no e-mail. I'm serious. Nothing more until you've turned in your last assignment and you're definitively off the payroll. No tormenting me. Is that understood, Miss Coffey?” Then his tone changes from stern to pleading. “It's only two bloody days.”

I say, “You know, when you put it that way, you only make me
want
to torment you.”

“And that, my siren, is the ironic process.”

His eyes. Pale blue with gray around the iris. I've never looked at his eyes this closely before.

“Then I shouldn't kiss you right now?” I say.

He exhales slowly and puts his forehead against mine, eyes closed. His nose bumps the side of my nose. Our glasses tap. “No, Annie,” he whispers. “No.”

And he kisses me. Full on. Lips, tongue. It's everything I wanted. I let out a noise, like a squeak or a whimper, and put my arms around his waist. I run my hands over his back, feel the muscles and warmth through his shirt. He grunts and moves his lips across my jaw to my ear and my throat, and now my knees are wobbly. I hold on to him, and his hands—oh, his hands move under the hem of my T-shirt, and as soon as his fingers touch my skin at my waist, we both shudder. My arms go around his neck, and my hands tangle in his hair as his mouth comes back to mine.

When he finally pulls away, he pulls all the way away, moving to the other side of the kitchen. He says, “That was disastrous. Get your things. I'll take you home.” He runs a hand through his hair and starts looking around the kitchen.

I can't move.

He finds his keys on top of the fridge and turns to find me still standing there like I'm made of stone. Stone that is thrumming with blood.

“Annie,” he commands in his teacher voice. “Get your stuff.”

I obey.

He drives me home without looking at me.

“Friday at five,” he says, eyes on his steering wheel. “Come over to mine?”

I turn my eyes to him with a half grin. “No tables and hot, spillable drinks?”

“Seems like we're past that now,” he says, and he gives me the barest glance, a flash of a look that sets off a hot swell inside me and makes my lips part.

I hesitate, almost lean over to kiss him, then think better of it. He's staring at his gearbox now, one hand on the shifter, one on the wheel.

“Bye,” I whisper.

He blinks and nods.

I get out of the car and notice once again that he doesn't drive away until my front door is open and I'm stepping inside.

“Annie's back!” Margaret calls in a pathetic voice when she hears me come in. “Did Charles drive you home?”

“Yup,” I say, passing through the kitchen and into the living room. She and Reshma are curled up on the living room futon, watching a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
DVD, still nursing hangovers.

“Did Momma Duck take good care of you?” she asks.

“Oh yes,” I say, and I lift her feet and then sit under them on the futon. Then I say, “Yeah, he, uh . . . He, like,
really
kissed me this morning.”

“
Really?
”

“Really.”

“He . . . ‘kissed' you?”

“No, no. He just kissed me, but it was . . .”

I catch them up on everything that happened, and Reshma says, “Dude, he wants you so bad.”

“I think he kinda does!” I say. “We definitely have A Big Sexy Thing. Still! Even though, apparently, I acted like a fool on the way to his apartment.”

“Apparently?”

“I don't remember much. Flashes of singing and dancing and”—I cover my face with my hand—“stripping.”

“Oh man!” Margaret laughs. “It was so lucky he was there, though!”

“Uh,” I tell her, “it wasn't luck.” And I show her my texts. They both cackle with laughter, until Margaret's headache and nausea force her to be quiet.

And then I do go to class. Because I'm hungover and have A Big Sexy Thing with O Postdoc, My Postdoc, but I'm not immoral.

I
attend my last classes. I take my last exam. By Friday at two, I am off the payroll.

I spend the next two hours grooming, of course. I haven't shaved my legs for, like, a month, so it takes most of the two hours just to do that. Then I bike to his place and show up a little sweaty, but not too bad. I have removed all the books from my backpack and replaced them with a change of clothes, a bottle of lube, and a jumbo variety pack of condoms Margaret gave me. Ya know, the usual.

When Charles opens his apartment door, I'm standing there, heart thumping, fighting a nervous, dopey grin.

“Hey,” I say, watching his face.

“Hey,” he says, and his expression looks a lot like mine. His hair is damp. He's just shaved. He smells like soap.

He gestures me in, takes my bag, notes its lightness, and raises his eyebrows at me. “Symbolic,” he says. And he sets it on the floor. Then he takes me by the shoulders and steers me backward into the living room, where he sits me down on the couch. He sits in the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

“Now,” he says sternly. “You sit over there and I'll sit over here and we'll talk about this like civilized people.”

This is not what I was expecting. I kind of expected he would grab me and carry me into the bedroom, throw me down, and ravish me. I was expecting a total lack of “civilized.” My dopey grin slides into a pretty atrocious pout.

I say, “You do actually want to have sex with me, right? You're not just stalling because you don't want to hurt my feelings?” I can't help it. I have to ask. “Am I wrong about The Thing?”

He looks taken aback for a moment, and then a little embarrassed. Then he looks at me and says, “Look, before I answer that, I want to make sure it's perfectly clear and perfectly explicit between us that you are no longer a student and I am no longer your supervisor.”

“Right,” I agree, nodding seriously.

“I now hold no administrative power over you.”

“Correct,” I say.

“There is nothing to influence your decision making other than your own free choice.”

“Correct,” I repeat.

“All right. In that case,” he says steadily, “you ask, are you wrong about The Thing? My dear girl. My sweet termagant, my dear little shrew, have you met you? You are the subject of my fantasies and the object of my most intense desires. Miss Annabelle Coffey, I have been imagining you naked since the day last summer when you came into the lab soaked through with rain. Your hair was plastered to your face and throat, and there was a dangerous moment when I almost licked the rain off your collarbone before I remembered where I was.”

He says it calmly, looking right at me. His expression is mild, and he's just sitting there, knees crossed, in his chair.

As I'm sitting there with my jaw in my lap, he says, “Right. Let's do the practical stuff. Contraceptive?”

But I'm not over the rain thing yet. That was Call Me Charles Day. “That was almost a year ago,” I say.

“It was,” he says quietly. “I felt like a lecherous old man. I feel that way now, a bit, but I expect I'll get over it.”

I say, “I want you too. All that stuff you said, the ‘Have you met you?' That's how I feel about you.”

And he smiles shyly and says, “I know.”

He knows.

“Contraceptive?” he repeats gently.

I point at the implant in my upper arm. “All set,” I say.

“Excellent. STD and HIV tests?”

“Oh, um. I've never actually been tested for anything.”

“Never? For anything?”

“I've never had sex, so it didn't seem like a priority.”

There is a pause.

He raises one eyebrow, his face tense. “What specifically does ‘never had sex' mean? Never had oral sex? Anal sex? Penis-in-vagina sex?”

“All those things and a bunch of others. I guess I'm what would be called a ‘virgin.' ” I put it in quotes with my fingers and make a face.

“I beg your pardon?” he says.

“A virgin?” I say, like it's a question. “It's a medically meaningless idea, it's all just patriarchy and—”

“Yes”—he holds up a hand and closes his eyes—“I'm a feminist too, we needn't rehearse the arguments about purity as a virtue meaningful only in the context of male ownership of women.”

(
You see why I like this guy?
He says it like it's just
understood
that any reasonable person would identify as a feminist. I didn't identify that way until, like, two years ago, but with him, feminism is taken as read. Ah-mazing.)

And then he says, “Oh god,” and he leans back in his chair and looks at the ceiling. “I had no idea I was so medieval.” He's laughing now, a silent chuckle, both hands over his face.

“What?”

“Apparently, I'm a terrible human being,” he says through his palms. Then he takes a great big sigh and straightens a little in his chair, gripping his hands together in his lap. “The idea of deflowering you has given me a raging hard-on and filled my brain with the most shamefully barbaric thoughts. There's a bit of self-knowledge I wouldn't have bet on.” He's looking out the window, where the sun has just begun to set.

“Really?” I'm grinning, terribly pleased for no reason. It's not like I earned that hard-on, I mean, all I did was not have any sex yet, but still!

“All right, don't get too excited,” he says with a grin of his own. “We're going to sit here—you, me, and my erection—until we talk all this through.”

“Okay,” I say. It occurs to me that I could go over there and
touch it
. I could put my hand on his crotch and feel what an erection is like. I can sort of see it bulging in his pants. I suck my lips between my teeth and stay put. But then I can't help saying, “First, maybe tell me just
one
of the barbaric thoughts.”

“Annie, oh, Annie,” he sighs, as he covers his eyes with one hand. “I . . . oh, I want to tie you spread eagle to my bed and make you come a hundred times with my hands and tongue before I finally fuck you when you're so exhausted from coming that you can barely move. I'm a Neanderthal.”

“Okay,” I say in a voice just above a whisper.

“Pardon?” he says, looking at me now.

“That. What you said. Tie me up. Make me come. Fuck me. That. Yes. Can we do that now? But then I wanna do stuff to you, too, okay?”

“God”—he wipes his hands down his face—“I am trying to be a responsible adult. I am trying, and you see what she does to me?”

I am both sorry and pleased by this.

“Where were we?” he continues. “Sexual histories. Right. Walk me through your sexual history, such as it is, if you would be so kind.”

Reluctantly, I let go of the fantasy. “Well, I had a boyfriend in high school. We made out a bunch, and one time I had an orgasm while we were lying down together on the bed, kissing and sorta humping, you know, like teenagers do. We had all our clothes on and everything though. And pretty shortly after that I kinda got sick of him and dumped him.”

“Mh-hm.” Charles is looking a little strained.

“And then in my sophomore year here, I had this other boyfriend, and we got as far as taking off our shirts, and he touched my breasts. I liked that pretty well, but I had no interest in going any further, so he broke up with me. Which I thought was pretty lame of him, because he was smart and funny and I liked him, apart from that,” I add, frowning.

“Right, I see. And then?”

And then Charles joined the lab, and I've been jilling off regularly to fantasies of him ever since.
But I don't say that. I say, “And then you. Wednesday. And that's it.”

“That's it,” he repeats. “That's it?”

I nod and shrug. “I've been busy with other things. And you? What's your history?”

“Er,” he says, “slightly . . . or, I should say
somewhat
more extensive than that.”

“Okay. Go.”

“Right. Er, I had a couple of nonpenetrative encounters with boys at school,” he starts, “and rapidly realized this was really something I was more interested in doing with girls. I had my first girlfriend when I got to university, and we were together for something over two years before she left me for another fellow. She's married to him now, got two kids. After that, bit of a wild spell, I'm afraid. A number of partners whose names I either never knew or else quickly forgot. Went through
a lot
of condoms. Then, let's see . . . I got over that phase, got every test I could, turned out to be fine, had another girlfriend for about a year and a half, and that relationship ended when I came here.”

“Did that relationship end . . . um . . . by mutual agreement?”

“No,” he says. “No, Melissa wanted to stay together, even though I was going to be four thousand miles away. I couldn't face holding her hostage that way, and so I asked to end it. She acceded under protest.”

I nod at this information, a little uncomfortable. If I had been with Charles for a year and a half, and he up and left for a residency in middle-of-nowhere, USA, I'd be pretty brokenhearted.

“And since you've been in Indiana?”

He shakes his head. “I'm only here for four years; it seemed unwise to get into anything that could only end badly.”

I nod, pretending to be worldly, and say, “Can I ask about all those other things you mentioned? Oral sex . . . anal sex?”

“Ask away.”

“Well, ya know. Have you done those things?”

“Oral sex, yes, giving and receiving. Anal sex, yes, giving only, but I'm open to suggestions.” Then he grins at my widening eyes. “We can hold off on that, if you like.”

“We should probably stick to the basics, at least to begin with,” I agree, nodding. “My HPA axis already has enough to deal with.”

He tilts his head, still grinning. “You are like a puppy, you know, sometimes—you know how a puppy's feet are massive compared to the rest of her body? And she's adorable that way, of course, but you know that when she grows into them, she'll be a dazzling beauty?”

“I have big feet?” What? I do, but what?

He shakes his head at me, and there's that new smile again, the fond one I like so much. “I'm saying you have a big brain. A big, knobby-kneed, coltish brain that you're just beginning to grow into. It makes me wish I could jump ahead five years and meet you then, instead.” He bounces his fists on the arms of his chair and just looks at me for a second before he laces his fingers together in his lap and says, “Now then. Let's get a few things straight. You are leaving dear old Indiana . . . ?”

“June third, right after we get back from the conference.”

“The nature of this liaison is therefore necessarily of a short-term nature. Are you completely sure you'd like your first venture out to be along the lines of a summer fling?”

Yes, if it's with you, Your Hotness
. “Yes. A fling.”

“Very well. And the parameters of the fling. Shall it include or exclude concurrent partners?”

“Uh . . .” The question had never crossed my mind. I've had no interest in sleeping with anyone else, basically ever. “Just from a risk reduction standpoint, it seems like excluding them is a better idea. Even if one of us suddenly gets the hots for someone else. I mean, it's only four weeks. Surely, those other hots can wait?”

“I agree. So then: no concurrent partners. You and I will be exclusive sex partners until the third of June, when you will ride off into the sunset—”

“Sunrise,” I interrupt. “I have to drive, like, twelve hours that day.”

“Into the sunrise,” he says. “And I hope it goes without saying that I can scarcely imagine any possible future in which I would not be proud to get responsibly shit-faced with you at conferences or coauthor a chapter or attend your wedding. As far as I'm concerned, young Coffey, we are friends, we are colleagues, and only parenthetically are we lovers.”

Lovers. I look down at my hands and squinch my mouth against a smile.

“Is that agreed?” he prompts.

“Friends, colleagues, and parenthetical lovers,” I repeat. “Agreed.”

“Now, with regard to tonight, my termagant.” He comes over to the couch and sits down next to me and takes a deep breath, then sighs. He puts his hand on mine and says, “I suppose what I want to say is, there's a certain experience most people have before they get to the bit where one person puts their genitals inside the other person's genitals. There's deciding, moment by moment, whether you'd like to go further or simply stay where you are. There's all the bases to go round. I don't know much about baseball, but there are definitely four bases. And I have strong doubts about the wisdom of skipping over all that.”

I shrug. I don't know. I don't even know how I'm supposed to know. All I know is that my body has wanted to be next to his body for a long time, and the heat of his shoulder next to mine and his hand on mine is making my heart pound. I want to touch his skin and put my tongue in his mouth and feel his hands on my skin, and I want those things right now. Not once in my fantasies have we sat together and calmly shared our sexual histories. Not once has he paid attention to the fact that he's my first. Always, his desire to touch and be touched is the same as mine, demanding, immediate.

“You're not saying no?” I say, my eyes desperately searching his.