“Shhh,” he cooed. “Rest, knowing how sorry I am for snapping at you. You didn’t do anything.”
There was a chill in the air and his chest was warm and hard. I put my arms around his neck, tucking my nose against his soft musky skin as I curled against his torso. He sighed, holding me as tightly as I was holding him.
When he got me to the bed, I didn’t want him to go, and I was just sleepy enough to tell him as much.
“Stay here,” I said.
“In the bed with you?” he asked, whispering like the question was a secret.
I nodded.
When he hesitated, I instinctually gave him a logical reason for my request. “It’s cold. Keep me warm.”
It was only after he consented, curling up behind me, the heat of his body covering mine from head to toe, that I realized, I’d known full well that logic was the best way to manipulate Ben.
Ben
In the darkness of my childhood bedroom, I held Jess, trying to focus on her request to ‘keep her warm,’ but it was complicated. My body wasn’t interested in warmth. It was interested in consumption. I wanted to crush her to my chest and hold her there so she could never get away, which was insane. I focused on the peacefulness she brought me. I listened to her snore lightly. I smelled the sweet scent of her powdery skin. I felt her chest rise and fall with every breath. And something in me shifted. Some part of me that had spent my life isolated and alone cracked open and spilled out, desperate to never to be alone again.
After I stormed out of the dining room, I walked. I traveled ferociously over the dark roads around my parents’ home, retracing routes that had calmed the beast in me as a young man, wondering why I was so haunted by the paintings in my childhood studio. Why did my father’s passion for them and Jess’s passion for them bring out such anger in me? Why did Jess have the power to enrage me and push me and also bring me to my knees with desire? And then I stopped walking. I stood still in the middle of the street, staring into space, and let a new reality wash over me. I realized that more than I was angry at Jess, I was terrified by what she was telling me.
Had I built a cage around the part of myself that was raw? The part of me that was bold and brash like her? Had I cut myself off from the deepest, darkest parts of my soul? Despite my incessant arguing with my father, I knew that art was as Jess defined, both technique and emotion, skill and passion. Had I become so rigid in my attempts to find structure and peace that I lost sight of the human chaos that makes us ethereal? And if so, why? Why was I so painfully incapable of spontaneity? Why did this woman, this pretty, curvy, spirited thing call to me like a muse, breaking down the walls that no one else seemed to be able to scale? I couldn’t explain it. Not one bit. But I knew I didn’t want it to end.
I didn’t want Jess to be my rent-a-date. I wanted her to be everything. I wanted her to be mine. So I stopped walking and ran instead. I ran straight back to the house to tell her I was sorry and try to explain that I was developing feelings for her. I felt emboldened by my choice to act on my feelings. I was taking control in a way I never had before, willing to risk the safety of my ego for the greater good. Idiotically, I felt almost embarrassingly heroic. And then, panting after running nearly a mile in my driving shoes, I saw her, fast asleep on my parents’ stoop, looking so soft and so fragile in the cold night air. And I faltered. My feelings would have to wait. I couldn’t wake her. So I carried her to the studio, got into bed with her, relished the moments close to her skin, and eventually closed my eyes and slept.
When I woke, she was gone. Groggy but panicked, I flew out of bed. I knew she was drowsy when she invited me into the bed with her, so I was terrified that she woke up and possibly having forgotten her request was horrified to find me in the bed. If she’d forgotten it was her idea in the first place, then I looked like an absolute pervert who snuck into sleeping women’s beds. In nothing but a white cotton undershirt and my boxer briefs, I plowed up the hill and through the back door of my parents’ home.
“Ma,” I called out frantically. “Ma, have you seen Jess?”
“Yes!” she hollered back, bringing me instant relief. “We’re all in the kitchen.”
Taking a deep breath to release the tension I’d concocted over the possibility that she’d run home, I strode in standing tall, trying not to look like I’d just had a full-blown panic attack.
Jess was sitting in the window seat next to my father and they were deeply engrossed in something on his iPad. My mother was leaning against the counter next to the coffee pot, holding a mug near her lips and blowing on the liquid in the cup as if that would make the heat disperse. In general, the kitchen was a homey affair. It was all exposed wood and natural stone. The counters were a deep gray and the cabinets were white but rustic. The far wall was all windows, so the room was flooded with light and my mother made sure that there were always plants and flowers in the space.
“Good morning,” I said, clearing my throat to shake off the last vestiges of nervousness.
Jess looked up at me and smiled and then as if remembering her role, she hopped up, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms around my middle.
“Morning, babe,” she said sweetly. Slightly awkward but happy, I hugged her back and planted a little kiss on the crown of her head. Her hair smelled like soap and flowers and I wanted to bury my face in it. My eyes closed for a second as I lingered in the intoxicating scent. And then I leaned back a bit, hoping she hadn’t noticed me sniffing her like a weirdo. Tilting her head up to look at me, she asked, “Did you sleep well?”
I nodded, and then I caught my mother in my peripheral vision, a dopey grin on her face. Releasing Jess from a full-body hug so that I was just standing there with one arm draped over her shoulders, I addressed my mother. “What’s that smile all about?”
With that grin plastered across her cheeks, she shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. You hungry, kiddo? I got eggs and pancakes.”
“Yes. One hundred percent yes, please.” My mom made great pancakes.
Turning to open the fridge and begin gathering the ingredients, my mom asked, “What about you, Jess? You want a big ol’ breakfast?”
“Yes, ma’am. I love breakfast,” Jess said, slipping out from under my arm and making her way back over to the table where my dad was still engrossed in his iPad.
When she settled down next to him, he said, “These are incredible.”
“What are you looking at?” I asked, taking the seat across from my father and Jess.
“Jess’s photography,” my father answered. “She is truly talented.”
“I want to see,” I said and with a quizzical look on his face, my father went to pass me the tablet. Only Jess intervened.