His anger is dark, complex and layered, just like mine. But unlike me, he lets it surface, in his music, in his impulses, and in his body when he fucks instead of making love. Maybe that was why it was a turn on? I fight my anger, I struggle to keep it contained, but last night my anger ran with his through my flesh and it was a sensory right sort of thing.
I stare at him. So what’s up today, Alan? Are we going to continue talking? Are we going to continue having angry fucks? Or are you just going to lie there staring at me as though everything is fine, perfectly normal in this alternate universe of not normal.
“Do you want to go on a date-date today?” Alan asks.
Oh crap, how did he remember that? Date-date. How lame.
He starts to move my hair from my face. “I owe you a date-date.”
So, it’s going to be door number three: act like everything is fine. What do I do? Do I roll with it? What did Jesse say? Guys hate conflict. Act normal and so will he. But is that what I want? To act normal and just leave it all alone?
I don’t answer.
He climbs from the bed, naked, and completely comfortable in whatever we’re doing now.
I sit up in bed against the pillows.
Alan is sorting through his clothes on the floor. “Are you hungry?”
Normal conversation in not normal context. I take a deep breath, willing myself calm.
“I’m starving. We didn’t eat yesterday.”
He gives me a look that makes me quicken all through my flesh.
“Do you have any clothes here other than the shorts and UGGs? Maybe jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and some kind of closed toe shoe?”
Why is he asking me this? “I don’t know. I’ll have to look. Rene left a lot of junk.”
He makes a face and continues to rummage through his things.
I frown. “How did you get into the apartment yesterday?”
“I have a key.”
You do, do you? I stare.
“You left the extra key on the entry table.” He is distracted and looking for something. “Not smart, Chrissie. Anyone could have just come in here, a delivery person, taken it, and then where would you be?”
It’s not worth pointing out, but just anyone did take it and look at where I am. With you, Alan, sore after a night of angry fucking.
I watch Alan disappear into the bathroom. I hear the shower turn on. He doesn’t ask, he takes my hand and pulls me into the shower with him.
As I stand beneath the warm streams, his damp body pressed against my back, his gentle hands wash me from behind. “Did you ever finish Ivanoff?”
Oh, Alan, why are you so weird? I shake my head. “You could always give me the Cliff Notes really fast.”
He smiles. His chin rests on my shoulder and he continues washing me, and his voice, so sexy, makes it arousing to do this, even listening to a brief synopsis of Chekhov.
By the time we’re toweling off, I’m kind of wishing he’d just take me back to bed. Sexy Alan was a turn-on, even reciting Chekhov, but it’s probably not a good idea. I’m sorer than I thought and I could feel it when he touched me there, even lightly while washing me.
I make a face at him, since he used my toothbrush without asking, and I pat my face dry with a towel.
He is already fully dressed when I join him in the bedroom.
I’m pulling on my panties and bra. “You know, you can only be useful in my study of literature if you tell me how the play ends.”
Alan is sitting on the bed waiting for me, as I rummage through Rene’s clothing. I look at him, and for some reason the complete lack of emotion on his face turns me cold.
“Ivanoff runs off stage and shoots himself in the head.”
Oh Alan, what’s going on with you? Why did you bring up Ivanoff today?
* * *
After Alan makes me breakfast, I set off to try and accommodate his clothing specifications. No matter how I try, I can’t make any of Rene’s clothes work. She is a lot taller than I am and has a leaner, less curvy build. We can share tops, an occasional skirt, but that’s about it. Jeans, never an option. And shoes, not even worth trying, since Rene definitely doesn’t have any that are closed toe.
I go down the hallway to Jack’s bedroom and into my parents’ closet. Lena’s things are still hanging here, in perfect order, where they have been since that day she left New York for California permanently. A lump swells in my throat as I stare at her neatly arranged wardrobe. Twelve years and Jack hasn’t cleaned out her things. I never gave a thought to it, but it is all still here.
Alan comes into sharp focus in my mind, as I rummage through the cedar-lined drawers. I am lost in him. I have become lost in him so quickly, so quickly that he could end us in a humiliatingly public way and then I would spend the night in angry fucking wanting to please him.
I shake my head to push away my thoughts. Jeans. Closed toe shoes. I have only a few options with my mother’s clothing. Lena was not the casual type, and what she has left behind in the casual department was New York chic in 1977. The only positive is that we are nearly the same size, though Mom was taller.
I settle on a cute pair of dark, denim overalls that I can make work by rolling the cuffs. The long sleeve shirt is a baggy beach-type thermal of Jack’s. The shoes are bucks-up buckskin ankle high hiking boots that never saw a trail or dirt. They are spotless twelve years later and I wonder why Lena even has them.
A camping trip? A hike? Something planned to please Jack, but never done. Yes, that was my mother. She definitely knew how to please him without ever doing anything she didn’t want to do. Mom was highly competent at being female and in loving Jack.
I stare at myself in the mirror. Today, I look like an incompetent girl. All I need is braids. How lame is this outfit?
Crossing into my bedroom, I hold my arms wide. “Well, what do you think? Have I managed the wardrobe specifications? And what’s up with that, anyway? Who cares what I wear?”
Alan smiles. He kisses me. “You will.”
“I will, will I?” I notice he is carrying Jack’s old leather bomber jacket atop his own leather jacket that I didn’t even notice him wearing yesterday when he arrived.
“Tie back your hair,” he orders, waits, and then tosses a bandana at me. “And put this on. It will help.”
“Help what?”
“Hurry up, Chrissie. We need to roll.”
* * *
In the parking garage, I freeze and just stare at him. It took Alan three hours to go six blocks and he did it on motorcycle? These clothes now make sense.
“I am not getting on that thing,” I protest, pulling my hand free from his.
Alan ignores me. He zips up Jack’s bomber jacket, tugs my collar high and pulls up the bandana until my nostrils and mouth are tucked in.
“I am not riding on that. Where are we going?”
He swings his leg over, turns the ignition and primes the engine with gas. He points. “Get up behind me. Put your feet there. Whatever you do, don’t let go of my body.”
I hate motorcycles. I’m more afraid of them than airplanes, and jeez, he’s got me sitting on the back of one.
Alan laughs. “Don’t worry. Neither of us is twenty-seven.”
I raise my eyebrows. An obscure literary reference they don’t teach in California, most probably, but I don’t get the joke.
“The great ones die at twenty-seven,” he explains glibly. “Hendrix. Joplin. If we are both around after we’re twenty-seven, we’ll both know what we are.”
I could have done without it being cryptic. Don’t mock death, Alan, it’s not funny. I snuggle into him closer. I press my cheek against his back and hold him tight.
“Good girl.”
“But why the motorcycle, Alan? Where’s Colin. Can’t you do something normal like drive a car?”