Slick

I closed my eyes and rolled my head back, holding her forearm with both hands. I could feel her breath against my skin. She planted a quick, innocent kiss on my jaw, then rested her lips on my cheek. She kissed the same spot several times, rapidly, as if she were drilling her way into me. It was sweet and strange and almost painful in its potency. Wincing, I squeezed her wrists.

“God, I need this…”

Abruptly, the drilling kisses stopped. She pulled her right arm free of my grip. I could hear the sound of slow keystrokes.

Finally, I opened my eyes and looked at the screen.

<i get scared.>

I pecked the keys with my right index finger. <so do i.>

<i’m a coward. i’m a cynic. and i’m a complete wreck right now.>

<so am i.>

She held me tighter, kissing the side of my face. She smelled like lime. She must have worn a facial cream to bed and then washed it off. It smelled wonderful.

Jean signed her affections with a quick kiss and then pulled away from me. She straightened herself out and returned to her seat.

<Sorry,> she wrote. <I would have loved to stay where I was but this place closes in fifteen minutes and I have a lot of my own explaining to do.>

<You moved out.>

She sighed. <We moved out.>

<Just tell me I wasn’t a factor in that decision.>

<You weren’t. You couldn’t have been.>

<Why not?>

She grimaced sheepishly. <Because we moved out three months ago.>

All I could do was blink at her as I put the pieces together.

She shrugged. <I told you you weren’t a marital issue.>

<You wanted me to believe you were still married.>

<I AM still married. But it’s over. I want out and so does Neil, but the legal process has been a living hell. We meet at least three times a week in a vain attempt to separate his debts from mine. We always end up crying, cursing, and saying horrible things to each other. Well, mostly I say the horrible things. I know just how to cut him down into little cubes. I’m not proud of it.>

God. With that razor-sharp mind of hers, she could shred a man to pieces. And at the rate we were going, it would only be a matter of months, weeks, days, before she’d crack the flaws in my defenses. Soon enough, she’d have the power to break me with just one tap of the chisel.

<But then he knows my weakness,> she continued. <He takes her out every Saturday night and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. He poisons Madison against me. Even her father wasn’t low enough to do that.>

The rage on her face made her an entirely different woman to me. Selfishly, I was relieved to be an innocent bystander, but the dark voice inside wondered how long it would take for me to earn my own share. Nine days was all it took to bring the hatred out of Harmony, and she wasn’t one who hated easily.

On reading my expression, Jean breathed out a quiet groan. <This is why I didn’t tell you. It’s an ugly part of my life. I didn’t need someone new to complain to. I needed someone to distract me. Someone to laugh with, joke with, flirt with. And on that front, my dear, you have been a godsend to me.>

She briefly held up her left hand, flashing me her white-gold wedding band.

<So to keep things from escalating, I used the marriage as a preemptive defense. I do it all the time. I chat online with a lot of people. It’s my television. I love it, but the downside is that half the time, the other person wants to escalate. Men and women both. Personally, I don’t get it. I don’t know what they all see in me.>

<I do.>

She rolled her eyes. <Yes. I know that NOW. But you did a damn good job convincing me otherwise. You were sitting right here telling me how we didn’t have anything profound…>

<It was bullshit,> I confessed. <I just didn’t want to fall into a married woman.>

<And I didn’t want to fall into another man. Not now. Not when I’m still trying to get rid of the last one. But damn it…>

She shook her head at me, drowning me in her warm chagrin. <I’m not sure I ever had a platonic thought about you.>

I matched her look. <You did a damn good job convincing me otherwise.>

<I know.>

<You were sitting right here telling me how great it was that we only wanted to get to know each other’s minds.>

<Utter bullshit,> she replied with a tight smirk. <I was picturing you naked the whole time.>

I let out a cracked laugh. <What’s wrong with us?>

<We’re both scared,> she wrote. <We’re both scarred and jaded. And to make matters worse, we’re both currently embroiled in our own separate nightmares.>

My head started throbbing again. I looked down at the keyboard.

<I hate to say this but you and that kid of yours are holding me together.>

<You’re holding us together,> she wrote back. <Do you know how long it’s been since she’s let me run my fingers through her hair?>

I glanced up again. <She never told me about Neil either.>

<Of course not. I’d be amazed if she did.>

<I don’t get it. Why?>

<Because you’re an escape for her too. She was too young to remember the first divorce, but this one’s hitting her hard. She’s going through hell and she blames me for it. She thinks I’m some kind of gorgon who eats the hearts of men. Why do you think she’s been trying to keep me twelve miles away from you? Why do you think I had to sneak out of the apartment tonight like I was the teenager?>

<That’s silly that she would think that about you.>

<She’s thirteen. It’s her prerogative to think silly things.>

<I guess you and I should know better.>

Jean shrugged hopelessly. <Yeah. We should. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m scared of you. I’m scared of you breaking my heart, or cutting me down into little cubes, or taking my daughter as an emotional hostage if things ever got bad between us. That’s why I had to bring you out here tonight. I had to find out once and for all if you were secretly an asshole.>

<I’m not.>

<You’re not,> she replied wearily. < I’m running out of ways to distrust you.>

Now I looked at the manuscript, the provocative sticky note on top. I didn’t like the way Harmony’s name looked in Jean’s handwriting. The lettering was elegant and artful, everything that Jean was and every thing that Harmony wasn’t.

She followed my gaze. <You really care about her, don’t you?>

<Yes. But I’m done with her.>

<No you’re not.>

<No,> I admitted. <I’m not.>

She reached an arm across the table. <Then let me be your distraction.>

I took her hand. For once I was way ahead of her.

________________

She didn’t care that I was coming down with something. I didn’t care that her car was a mess. If we wanted this to be a proper love scene, we would have gone to an upscale hotel suite with a roaring fireplace, a bottle of Chablis in a tin ice bucket, and Annie Lennox’s “Why?” playing in the background as we tumbled stylishly on the thousand-dollar carpet.

Jean and I were too clever to pursue the cinematic cliché. We were too clever to be good at sex anyway. We were both lousy lovers, by our own admission, and we were too clever to see intercourse as the salve to our current ills.

So we regressed. We stole away to the back of her SUV like a pair of fumbling virgins. In the light of the lamppost, in a handicapped spot near the sea end of Wilshire, we embraced, we kissed, we ran our hands all over each other with nervous excitement. We explored each other carefully. When my left hand moved up her shirt, all the way to the swell of her nipple, she let out a soft gasp, as if no one had ever touched her there before. When she gently nibbled my ear, I almost cried, as if I’d been waiting for years to have a girl do that to me.