But she wouldn’t let him.
“No, oh, Craig, it’s so hard to say no. I want. But, no. Please. I’m not ready. If I were, it would be you, and it would be now. But—”
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I know.” He breathed the words into her mouth. “I just want to press against you. Just let me hold you. Can I touch you—”
“There. Yes. Oh my God. O—”
35
It was one of those October days during which it seemed like the middle of the night all day, and that, Shelly supposed, was why she was waking up so disoriented. That, and the bottle of wine.
Where was she? What time was it? Who was sleeping beside her?
Two bottles of wine?
They’d started drinking after lunch—some tuna filets in olive oil, some tomato slices. First, they’d split the expensive bottle of white, and then the cheap red stuff Shelly kept on hand for cooking. Had they finished both of them?
Truly, Shelly had no idea how much they’d had to drink, but she could still feel the wonderful muscle exhaustion of the sex. Of the hours of sex. Her lips were swollen with it, and she licked them, and there was the taste of it on her lips and tongue—salty, sweet. Her breasts felt heavy. Her nipples were still hard as little nails. Between her legs she felt bruised and wet.
How, exactly, had she come to be sleeping in this bed beside Shelly?
How, exactly, had they gotten from there to here?
A full moon was shining through the window (Shelly hadn’t bothered to pull the shades), and after she finally managed to open her eyes fully and to rub them into focus, she could see clearly and deliciously that Josie Reilly was asleep on her side, the sheet pulled up only to her naked hip, pale and white, her black hair spilling over Shelly’s rosebud pillowcases. In the corner something with green eyes blinked, and it took Shelly a breathless second to realize that it was Jeremy, standing stock-still, as if on high alert or turned to stone. Confused. Disapproving. Displaced. She remembered Josie saying in the sweetest, most apologetic voice, “Can you please get the cat off the bed? I really don’t like cats.”
Now, Josie Reilly sighed and opened her eyes, and smiled when she saw Shelly looking down at her. She reached up one elegant arm—the one with the silver vein of a bracelet around it—and placed her fingertips against Shelly’s throat before propping herself up slowly on one elbow and kissing the place she’d touched as she slid her hand from Shelly’s neck to her breast, and her lips moved up from Shelly’s neck to her lips.
It had been just past noon when Josie had stepped into Shelly’s house bearing two Starbucks cups, shivering in her soaked cashmere hoodie.
“Can I come in?” she’d asked, and Shelly had said, of course, of course, although she was incredibly annoyed to find Josie there, when she was supposed to be minding the office, and to have been woken up from her nap.
Josie’s cheeks were crimson, mottled, and there were tiny raindrops on her forehead. Shelly must not have been able to hide the annoyance on her face, because Josie had bitten her lip and then said, “Oops. Should I not have come over? I thought you might need some cheering up.”
“No,” Shelly said. “It’s fine. It’s… nice. Thank you, Josie. How thoughtful.” She took the cup Josie was holding out to her with one hand, and pulled her bathrobe closed around her chest with the other. “Come in. Sit down, and give me your hoodie. I’ll toss it in the dryer—on the delicate cycle.”
Josie blinked, looking pleased, and the raindrops fell from her eyelashes onto her cheeks. She handed her own Starbucks cup to Shelly so that she could unzip her hoodie.
“Thank you. I’m soaked.”
The zipper made a sound that made Shelly think of a comet—something traveling at an incredible speed, very far away—and then Josie Reilly was standing before her wearing what she knew girls now called “camis,” or “tanks,” but which, when Shelly was this girl’s age, had been lingerie. The kind of thing you might wear on your wedding night.
It was pale green, raw silk, hemmed with a paler green lace. It was also wet, and it clung to Josie’s breasts, making the perfect outline of them visible, no imagination needed. Her nipples were hard. There were goose bumps on her arms.
“Is it okay, I mean, if I hang out for a bit? I can’t go out like this.” She opened her arms as if to display herself fully in her camisole to Shelly, as if to invite her, incite her, to look at her body, and Shelly did—she couldn’t help but look—and then she looked at Josie’s face, and it was impossible not to interpret the expression on it as flirtation.
Flirtation verging on seductive invitation:
Her lips were pressed together. She was batting her eyelashes. A small smirk played at the corners of her lips. Her weight rested on one leg, and the hipbone of the other was bare, a blinding inch of pale exposed flesh.
Shelly’s breath felt ragged when she inhaled, and she raised her eyebrows, opening her mouth before exhaling and saying, holding up the hoodie, trying to sound casual, “I’ll take this downstairs.”
“Thanks, Shelly,” Josie said, and then, “Is it okay if I sit down? I don’t think I’m so wet I’ll ruin your couch or anything.”
“Of course,” Shelly said, and even to herself she sounded like someone in a trance, under a spell, like someone who had just stepped off a treadmill onto unshifting ground. She was almost surprised, when she got to the basement, to find the washer and dryer where they had always been. She pulled out the limp previous load of her own socks and panties, tossed them into the plastic basket waiting in the corner, and then ran her hand through the lint trap before putting Josie’s hoodie on the delicate cycle and turning back toward the stairs.
“I love your house,” Josie said.
She’d taken off her shoes and left them by the front door. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted silver, like her fingernails. She had one leg crossed over and under the other in a position that was impossibly dexterous and casual at the same time. Her elbow was propped up on the back of the couch, and her fingers were playing through her hair, lifting and pulling and twirling the black strands as, with her other hand, she lifted the Starbucks cup to her lips, sipped, licked them, and then said, looking around, “It’s so cool. Do you live alone?”
“Yes,” Shelly said. “Except for my cat.”
“Oh,” Josie said. “What’s its name?” She looked around, as though worried that Jeremy would show himself.
“Jeremy,” Shelly said.
“Why Jeremy?” Josie asked. “Isn’t that a little odd for a cat name?”
“I guess,” Shelly said.
She had, she realized, no clever story to tell about Jeremy’s name. She’d simply wanted to avoid giving the cat the kind of name all of her single, academic, lesbian friends had given theirs: Plato. Sexton. Amadeus. Sappho.
She’d pulled the name Jeremy out of thin air, thinking it had no baggage whatsoever, that she’d never known a single person named Jeremy. It was only months later that she remembered the one Jeremy she’d forgotten: a retarded boy who’d lived in her neighborhood, who’d fallen down a flight of stairs in his house and been killed.
“I’m not wild for cats,” Josie said. “I’m a dog person. Cats seem a little creepy. No offense.”
Shelly sat down in the chair across from Josie, pulling her robe over her knees as she did. She’d forgotten her Starbucks cup on the kitchen table, and by now it was probably cold. She thought she’d just leave it. She had no idea what treacly beverage Josie might have brought her today.