The Promise of Lace (7 page)

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No, no.” He grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles. “I
just…It’s sort of…it’s hard to explain, but there’s nothing wrong. It’s not a
bad thing.”

Well. Now I was worried. What was he hiding?

“Okay.
If you’re sure.
But… is this
some big huge secret?”

He bit his lip.
“Not exactly.
Maybe
I could um… maybe I could tell you about it on our second date?”

He ran his thumb over my knuckles. And I went through
several thoughts very quickly.

1. This was really suspicious.

2. That was such an intense
orgasm that my legs were still shaking.

3. He seemed like a really
nice guy and I really liked him.

4. On a scale of “Embarrassing
Birthmark” to “I can only get hard by thinking about killing puppies with my
bare hands” how bad a secret could this possibly be?

“Yeah,” I kissed him again. “You can tell me on our second
date.”

Chapter Six

“So…what the Hell could it be?” Hailey demanded. We were all
out to brunch again. If this kept up I’d have to either stop ordering waffles
or start going to yoga more often. At least this was another nice place and not
the art school dive we had accidentally gone to before.

“I don’t know!” I sighed. “I mean… we had fun. He clearly
wanted to do more than just, you know…
go
downtown
.”

Noah chewed his enormous mouthful of bacon and eggs.
“Speaking as the guy here, I have to wonder about a guy who would lie to get
out
of sex.”

“I didn’t say he lied. I said that he had a rule about not
having sex on the first date. He was very upfront about that.”

“Still.
Kinda strange since it sounds like he
was putting some serious effort into keeping to that rule and you weren’t doing
anything to help him.”

“Maybe he
is
gay,”
Hailey suggested.

“He went down on me for like 20 minutes. I think we can
cross ‘gay’ off the list.” I shook my head and dug my fork into my eggs.

“Maybe he’s trans,” Noah suggested.

“I could feel it through his jeans,” I told him.

“Trans guys can get it up,” Noah said. “My buddy Donald is
trans
and he says he can be up and running no problem. It’s
just a little… smaller. And there’s still a vagina behind it. Maybe he needed
more time before he showed off the dual genital issue.”

I shook my head. “Dieter was packing in a way that had to be
all original equipment.”

“Maybe he’s got something and he didn’t want you to see his
big, pus dripping chancre,” Hailey suggested in a hushed voice. I made a face
of disgust at her.

Noah shot her a look.
“Yeah.
I need
that image while I’m eating.” He shoved another big bite of bacon into his
mouth and chewed with evident exasperation, then washed it down with a gulp of
Bloody Mary.

All this seriousness was bumming me out. “Maybe he’s a spy?”

“No,” Hailey shook her head. “Spies always nail the girl.
Look at James Bond.”

“Solid point,” I conceded. “This is going to drive me nuts.”

“I guess it’s always going to be a mystery,” Noah shrugged.

I set down my mimosa glass and toyed with it for a moment
before saying, “He said he’ll tell me on our second date.”

Hailey choked on her drink. “You’re going out with him
again?”

I looked up from my glass.
“Yeah.
Were you not listening to the story? We went out, we had fun and then, again,
he went down on me for
twenty minutes
.
My knees were still knocking together when I walked him to the door. Why
wouldn’t I go out with him again?”

Hailey and Noah exchanged a look. Hailey nodded at him.
“Because you never give guys a second chance,” he said, looking gently
incredulous.
Like he was reminding me of my own address.
Or my birthday.
Some totally basic
fact about myself that I should have known.

“You once broke up with a guy because you were sick of the
traffic between your place and his,” Hailey corroborated.

“We had three separate blizzards where it snowed over a foot
and a half that winter,” I defended myself. “The highway between our places was
littered with spin offs and he was all ‘hey baby, wanna come have some cocoa’
and didn’t think ‘I don’t feel like dying in a fiery car wreck tonight’ was a
legitimate reason to stay home. And he never even
offered
to travel the highway of death back to my place.”

Noah nodded.
“Alright.
Fair enough.”

“You started dating him before the snow fell,” Hailey
challenged.

“Yeah.
And every old lady in the world was
driving on the streets between my place and his at all hours of the day. I was
never on that road going more than ten miles an hour, even for the week we were
dating where there wasn’t any snow.
Besides.
His place
always smelled like feet.”

“What about Thorn?” Hailey asked.

I searched my memory, did not come up with a ‘Thorn’.

“Thorn?
Gellert the Mighty
?…
son of Kendrick the Giant Killer?” Noah prodded.
“Thorn.
You met him at the Social? I really liked that dude.”

The light bulb finally went on.
“Thorn the
Live Action Role Play guy who spent all of his weekends in a tent in Shakopee
playing castles and monsters?”

“You liked him too,” Hailey wheedled. “You said he was sweet
and well read. You even thought the
LARPing
was
cute.”

“The
LARPing
, as a hobby, was
cute,” I said. “The fact that he and his friends talked to each other at all
times as though the game was still going on and referred to each other by names
that made it sound like they had escaped from Lord of the Rings and were
running rampant all over Minnesota? Not cute.”

“So… you dumped him.”

I rolled my eyes. “But I
like
this one. I can go out on a second date with him. See what the big secret
is.”

“And dump him
after
you find out?” Noah asked, with a cheeky smile.

“You do… tend to go through guys,” Hailey said gently.

I sighed, finished off my mimosa and took another bite of my
eggs, chewing way more than was strictly needed while I thought of a reply. Did
I let a lot of guys fall by the wayside? Yeah. But I didn’t need a relationship
for the sake of having a relationship. I didn’t need to deal with shit tons of
crazy just so that I could have a boyfriend.

“Fine.
Maybe I let the occasional guy slip by
without putting a lot of effort into finding a reason to keep him around. But I
can find out what Dieter’s big secret is first.”

“Before you…” Hailey prompted. I scowled at her.

“Before I… calmly evaluate if whatever it is a deal breaker
or not, have a conversation regarding anything that I have reservations about,
and then make a mature and informed decision.”

“To dump him,” Noah finished for me.

I whacked him in the arm.

“Screw you guys.”

Chapter Seven

Dieter texted me a couple times over the next few days,
asking cute little hypothetical questions. His texts were interspersed with
Hailey’s, hypothesizing reasons why Dieter wouldn’t have wanted to have sex on
the first date, because apparently ‘he just fucking didn’t want to’ wasn’t a
good enough reason for her and Noah.

I had been thinking a lot about Hailey and Noah’s teasing
about my little… issue with commitment. It’s not like they weren’t right. It
took a lot for me to loosen up emotionally with a guy.

I didn’t
need
what
they had, but I respected it, and I hadn’t had it in years and sometimes… it
seemed appealing.
To just be comfortable and in love with
someone that way.
To want them enough to overlook annoying quirks like
wanting to be called “Son of
whoever
” or be willing to
drive behind the slowest Buick Lucerne in the world for what felt like hours
just to see them.

I was willing to give Dieter the chance to become that
person.

We texted for the rest of the day.
Dieter and I suggested books
back and forth. He’d talked me into
Fahrenheit
451
, but I hadn’t talked him into
Les
Miserables
yet. He mentioned
indie
films in one
text, and how he’d actually never been to one. I mentioned the theater in my
neighborhood that showed them and had a liquor license. There was something in
German that I couldn’t even pronounce showing that Friday.

I wanted to see him.

I met him outside my building. We’d both dressed up again.
He looked at me in that way
that made me want
to bite
my lip and hide my face. It wasn’t a look that made me feel like he wanted to
devour me or throw me over a table or anything. He just looked at me like I was
the only thing worth looking at. It was enough to turn any girl’s head.

We walked to the theater hand in hand. He offered to buy
drinks, but I insisted on picking up the tab this time.

The movie was pretty much what I’d thought it would be:
dark, but interesting, more violent than I’d expected, with very small
subtitles and an ambiguous ending. About halfway through, during a scene that I
was hoping was a dream sequence, Dieter pulled an old school pretend-to-yawn so
he could wrap his arm around me. I set my head on his shoulder.

It was a warm night, so we walked around the block a couple
times before I invited him backup to my place. I had run out of wine, so I
poured us both a glass of this god-awful strawberry daiquiri mix I’d had in the
fridge since the fourth of July. I dropped down on the couch next to him, and
slung my legs over his.

We sat together quietly for a few moments, him running his
fingers up and down my bare calf while we both sipped what tasted like Kool-Aid
with rubbing alcohol in it.

“I wasn’t sure you’d answer when I texted you,” he said
finally. “I wasn’t exactly… you know… smooth last weekend.”

I’d had a nice night and I was feeling warm and relaxed.
He’d been a little odd last time, but I was glad that he was here. Was I little
worried about this secret he was still holding onto? Yes. But he sent me little
messages that made me laugh during the day. He made me feel beautiful and desirable.
He gave head like he had two tongues. I liked him.

I leaned up and kissed him. “I guess you weren’t,” I agreed
quietly. “But I’m all about second chances.”

It hadn’t sounded like such a lie in my head.

“And that’s what’s awesome about you.” He slipped a hand
under my butt and pushed up. I used the lift to rock up and straddle him. I
leaned over and set my glass on my end table. Hands free now, I wrapped them
around his neck and pressed forward into a warm, comfortable kiss. He set his
forearm around my waist and pulled me closer to him. We both chuckled and broke
the kiss when we heard the stupid click of our cellphones hitting each other in
our pockets. We fished them out of our respective pockets and set them on the
nightstand, his face up and mine face down so we wouldn’t accidentally grab the
wrong ones later. Then we pressed back together as though technology hadn’t
just butted in to ruin everything.

I’d gotten off twice in the last week just
thinking
about the last time we’d been
in my apartment together and now, with his arms around me and his tongue gently
touching mine, I was already getting wet in anticipation. His hand stroked up
my back, up my neck and into my hair. I rocked down into his groin, just a
little bit. It was a suggestion, not a demand. He tilted out of the kiss and
started working his lips down my neck.

He unbuttoned my blouse and I shrugged it off my shoulders,
letting it drop onto the floor behind us. There would be an awkward moment when
I had to kick it out of the way when I unfolded my couch/bed so things could
keep going, but that moment was going to be a little awkward either way.
Sometimes I did consider living in a place that was big enough for my couch and
my bed to be two separate pieces of furniture, but I wasn’t going to give up
floor to ceiling windows for it.

My bra tonight was utilitarian. Nude colored.
Comfortable.
Just worn out enough where I was starting to
think that I should just throw it away. Dieter didn’t mention it. He just
started kissing the tops of my breasts like he had last time. I started
unbuttoning his shirt. He helped me work it off his arms and over the back of
the couch.

“When did you get this tattoo?” I asked, tracing my finger
over his shoulder. I could feel the way the ink raised his skin. It was
strange. I didn’t have any tattoos of my own. I hadn’t realized that they could
be felt that way.