Mary Ann Rivers Read online

  I want to trace it, too, but I sit on my hands. “So you must ride a lot?”

  “I live close to downtown, so it’s how I get pretty much everywhere. My vehicle is impractical to keep fueled for commuting, or to park.” He stands up, and I know there is no way to keep him any longer. When I stand, I notice he left his phone on the picnic table. I grab it to hand over, and he sees and starts to reach for it, and then I am overcome by a dangerous compulsion to complicate.

  “Just a sec—I’ll sneak myself in here.” I hold the phone close to my chest and quickly find his contact list to add my name. His hand is still outreached, and his expression is worried, but it’s done. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

  I don’t mention his surprisingly short contact list. I don’t think there are more than four or five other numbers.

  I give him his phone, and our fingers touch. I think he’s going to withdraw, but he leans over and kisses my forehead. His mouth lingers, and then I feel the tips of his fingers brush softly down my forearm, all the way over the palm of my hand, where he traces something I don’t catch, or a random pattern. Before I can step into him again, he turns to unlock his bike and tips its scratched-up frame to his thigh. I can feel the phantom shivers of his touch all over.

  Then he straddles his bike, clicks on his helmet, and takes off, peddling faster and harder than I think is necessary.

  Friday, 7:56 p.m.

  Not a good day. Today is a day that, when I let myself into my studio apartment, the antique Iranian wool rug that reaches almost baseboard to baseboard and the comfy corduroy couch and the art all over the walls and the windows that go all the way up to the cove in the ceiling don’t give me the cozies. They give me the lonelies. There isn’t even a woman-of-a-certain-age cat to slide out of a windowsill and greet me. Not even a goldfish to swish its tail and surface for flakes. There isn’t even a fucking plant. Why don’t I have a plant?

  I turn on the stereo, but the music is irritating. Peeking behind the sandalwood screen I use to divide my sleeping area, I see I didn’t make the bed. Which is also irritating. When I rummage around my teeny galley kitchen, all I find is yucky take-out leftovers and a quarter-bottle of amaretto, which I don’t even remember buying, let alone drinking three-quarters of. No real food, no wine. No cats. No plants. No good music, no housekeeper. It’s like the saddest version of Goodnight Moon ever.

  Work has been a nightmare since yesterday, when the city handed down some upsetting funding realities. No one can answer how these “realities” will affect auxiliary programs, such as tutoring services—the very ones that last year the city touted for increasing inner-city graduation rates, not to mention the ones that pay 30 percent of my salary.

  I left the meeting totally gutted, feeling unmoored and hopeless. Shelley had caught up with me in the conference room, where I was staring at a huge stack of boxes of donated tutoring materials that had just been delivered.

  “Hey, Carrie, chin up.” Shelley squeezed me around the waist, weirdly perky.

  “Why are you so cheerful? Part of your job’s on the line, too.”

  Shelley shrugged, her vintage-y earrings tangling in her dark hair. “I don’t know. I mean, sure, it really sucks, but I’ve already been thinking about talking to the director about easing into three-quarters time.”

  “What? Really? Why?”

  Shelley squeezed me again. “Well. It’s just that I’ve been getting a lot more involved with the urban homesteaders’ collective, teaching cheese classes here and there, going to more classes. Getting really involved with all these new people in the group. And Will’s bike garage is doing really well and he wants to expand a bit, which takes up time. And … well.” She looked at me and away again, her expression unknowable and frustrating. “Will and I have started talking.”

  I searched her face, having no idea what she was talking about. “Help me out here, Shelley.”

  “You know.” She smiled. “Babies. And shit.”

  I guffawed, but it sounded kind of choked. My stomach felt like it was floating on the outside of my body. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Auntie Carrie. Maybe.”

  I looked at the tower of boxes as if it had some answers. Shelley and babies. Babies and Shelley. “That’s—awesome, Shel.”

  She laughed. “Try not to knock me over with your enthusiasm.”

  “No, it’s—awesome.”

  She laughed again. “So you said.” She screwed her faced into a stern expression, which on Shelley just looked kind of like she was trying not to laugh. “I know you love this job, honey, but my point in telling you this is that there are lots of other things to love.”

  I cleared my throat. Hard. “I know that. I love lots of stuff. And people.”

  “Oh, Carrie. Of course you do. You’re amazing. I just mean—” She looked up at the ceiling. Looked back at me. “How was lunch Wednesday?”

  I laughed, the threat of tears totally shattered. “No comment.”

  “Oh my God! No comment! I can’t remember the last time you had no comment.”

  “I know.” Though I hadn’t heard a word or gotten a computer nudge from my no comment since we nearly went up in flames together on Wednesday.

  “I’m with Justin. I think this—thing—is good for you.”

  “Yeah?” I pressed my hand against my belly, trying to soothe the lurch.

  Shelley hip-bumped me. “Yeah. Now get out of here. Go home.”

  But now, I’m home, and I am lonely. Hungry. My retreat feels stale and empty. Story Boy has been radio silent, not surprisingly, and thinking about his kisses shoves a big, fat ache against the worry.

  I am definitely getting a goldfish this weekend.

  My phone lights up and buzzes from inside my Reading Is Sexy work tote. Fishing for it, I am certain that it’s Shelley, checking on me to make sure I’m not sitting around my apartment alone, obsessing about everyone canning green beans and making babies without me.

  Part of my mood can be attributed to undischarged snark.

  But when I pull out my phone, it’s a local number, unknown to me. Surely not—

  “Hello?” So breathless, jeez.

  “Carrie?” Him. Him!

  “You called—I actually can’t believe it.”

  “Well, I’ve been on IM for a while, and you weren’t showing, and—”

  “You have? I’ve been working late.”

  “Are you home now? If this isn’t a good time …” He sounds too anxious to let him go. He sounds amazing.

  “No—it’s fine. Perfect, actually. I just got home and was really crabby, but you’ve fixed that.” He really has. Tight budgets, empty rooms … I curl up into the corner of my sofa, which is suddenly cozy again. Even the colors in the rug warmed up and got friendly.

  “I have? Well. You’re welcome.”

  I laugh, because I can hear the almost-laugh of relief in his voice. “What are you doing? To what do I owe this completely unexpected pleasure?”

  “I just—suddenly found my evening free, which doesn’t happen often. And I was pacing around my house, half getting ready for a long bike ride, and realized all I wanted was to hear your voice.” He clears his throat. It sounds like he breathed out hard, too. Like he’s nervous, like maybe he’s wanted to do this all along.

  Maybe he rides away so fast because he’s afraid he’ll stay. And why would that be so scary?

  “Here it is, my voice.”

  “Yeah.” I can hear him take a long inhale. “There it is. Tell me where you are.”

  The sound of his voice, right in my ear, is almost overwhelming. It feels forbidden, I think. Which it is. He wasn’t supposed to permit this. His voice vibrating against my face through the phone is out of bounds. “Like I said, I just got home.”

  “Right, but what can you see from where you are?” I hear a little rustling squeak through the line, as if he has settled into a chair or sofa.

  H
e’s not going anywhere; it’s as if we’re connected by a long, taut string knotted into the bottoms of our tin cans, stretching over all the dark front stoops and backyards between us.

  “I can see everything.” Yes. I can.

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah, I live in a studio. I’m on the sofa, and from here I can see the tiny galley kitchen, and the door to the tinier bathroom, and all my stuff, and the screen I keep my bed behind.”

  “Are you messy or neat?” His voice is low and easier than I’ve ever heard it. I like unexpectedly free Brian.

  “I was just beating myself up before you called about my unmade bed and fridge full of inedible takeout. But it’s a small apartment, and I’ve lived here a long time, so everything has its place. Where are you?”

  “Couch. The room’s dark, deliberately, so I can’t see the mess. My housekeeping skills miss a lot more than the bed linens and refrigerator.”

  “Ah. Typical bachelor’s pad?”

  He’s silent a beat too long, and my heart sends out a brief glaze of ice. “Something like that. My sister’s my roommate and she’s not home tonight.”

  “You live with your sister?” I feel we’re on the edge, the very edge.

  “Yeah. She doesn’t work and has some health problems, so I help her out.”

  And now he is silent, other than the fact that I can hear the period, extremely loud, at the end of his sentence. The phone gives me a little injection of bravery, however. “Are you guys close?”

  Another silent beat, and I’m about to stutter over it, but he says, “I’ve always been there for her—especially since our parents split up, and when I was in college, our dad died. Our mom lives in Tampa and we don’t talk with her much.”

  His voice suggested there were six stories in that story, though he was trying to act casual.

  “Is she older or younger?”

  “A few years younger. So why were you crabby?”

  Well. There is reticence, and then there is a bolted steel door. “Boring reasons. Library funding getting dry, friends having a life without you, spinster librarians with a fondness for personal ads getting lonely.”

  He laughs, finally, vibrating whatever that sex nerve is in your ear that connects to your pelvis. “Why so lonesome, Carrie the Lieberrian?”

  “It’s very sad. There are no bike-riding federal contract attorneys in my apartment.” If my phone had a cord, I would be twirling it around my finger right now.

  “That is sad. Did you look everywhere? Sometimes they hide.”

  “Is that right? Well, since you’re a bit of an expert, where do you suggest I start looking? This apartment, like I said, is very small.”

  “How about this. If a bike-riding federal contract attorney were in your apartment, where would you want to find him?”

  “Or her.”

  He snorts, which, if we are having the kind of phone call I think we’re about to be having, is kind of adorable. “Or her. But let’s assume I’m a better expert on the male variety of the BRFCA.”

  “Berfkuh? What does …? Oh. Har. You’re quick, you. And if you’re so quick, why are you making up acronyms right now? Unless you haven’t figured out that we’re kind of—” I suck in a breath, closing my eyes, shifting my legs against my chest on the sofa, willing him to understand what I mean. Surely he knows what I mean. Surely the only reason he would call me, if he doesn’t want to talk, never wants to talk, is to suspend his rules another way.

  “I think you should look next to you, because if I was the BRFCA in question, that’s where you’d find me.” His tone is unmistakable, low and soft.

  Every hair from my neck, right down my spine, all the way to the downy fuzz over my hips is standing on end. I was hoping, and his voice is perfect. Exactly perfect. “If I found you next to me, Brian, what would you do?” I whisper this, so he knows exactly what it is I want him to do.

  His sigh is all breath. “Touch you.”

  God. I love this. This little script everyone recites at the beginning of phone sex, because you don’t know if it will work or not, for sure, so you start somewhere safe. Just a few wishes, recited in the sweetest tones you can manage. So, “Touch me where?” I ask, on cue.

  “Oh Carrie,” he breathes in my ear, “there are so many places I want to touch you.”

  “Above the shoulder?”

  “No. Though I love your neck, and it’s worth exploring more. So if I were there, I would start at your nape right where those small dark curls point into the hollow, where I can feel your goose bumps against my tongue when I bite into you.”

  I am already breathing hard. And this is going to work, because if it’s not, my next line is so corny but so unmistakable: “What are you wearing?” I need to see him.

  “I told you I was thinking about going for a long ride, so I had stripped down to change into bike gear, but I called you instead.”

  “Brian—”

  “So I’m not wearing anything, except my briefs, which I promise you, right now, are not doing any good. In fact …” I hear a rustle. Fuck. “There. I’m next to you, Carrie, my mouth already on your soft nape, and when you feel me against you, behind you, kissing you there, all you can feel—”

  “—is your skin.” I don’t even recognize my voice. I reach back and turn off the floor lamp behind the sofa, and I close my eyes. “I feel all your skin against me. I can feel you, in the small of my back, pressed up against me.”

  “I like the idea, Carrie, I so like the idea that I’m against you like that, with nothing on except you’re still wearing one of those pretty tops you like that would look so proper if only I couldn’t almost see your lacy bra—not quite see-through, though, no matter how much I squint. And the top is a little wrinkled now, and has come untucked from your skirt.”

  Holy shit. “Brian. You have done this before.”

  He laughs. But it’s all roughed up and whispery. “Once or twice. But mostly, I’ve been thinking about you for hours and hours, just like this. Contract attorneys have very good imaginations.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I would answer, but my mouth is full of your neck.”

  I drag my fingers over the back of my neck, almost expecting to encounter his lips. “Be careful. My blouse today buttons down the back. All the way down the back.”

  “So if I was right there, behind you, kissing your neck and shoulders and playing with your hair, I could slip my fingers down into your blouse and—”

  “Undo my blouse.” I can feel it. His long, square-tipped fingers sliding under the slinky collar——maybe the silk snags on a callus—working the buttonholes over the slippery pearl buttons. The top of my blouse would start to part and sag, and finally—

  “I would slide my hands around to your front, once it came apart, and at first, I would just hold your breasts in my hands, barely touching with my fingertips where the fullness of them spills over your bra.”

  I laugh, but the laugh is broken. “ ‘Spilling’ cleavage is very optimistic.”

  “Believe me, they’re full enough.” He goes quiet. I just barely hear his breath. “Touch them for me. Tell me what they’re like. Tell me everything you’re feeling.”

  Oh boy. I slowly pull my blouse up out of my waistband, skipping the buttons down my back and instead, sliding my free hand up and under.

  I feel strangely hesitant and shy, as if he’s really watching me. Every nerve ending in my body starts to switch on, one by one, field lights prepping for a night game. Thud. Thud. Thud.

  I slide my index finger under my bra and sweep it over my erect nipple. My shudder is full on and the sting goes deep. It’s amazing. Like my own body is a shiny new toy. I do it again, and the sting bleeds liquid warmth over my breast.

  “I can hear you shake,” he whispers. “What are you doing?”

  “My hand’s under my blouse, my bra. Very softly, I am brushing my finger over my nipple. It’s—so hard. So tight it almost hurts. I am barely touching it and I�
�m getting hot all over.”

  He groans, and I get inspired. I tell him, “Touch your nipples, too. Like I did for you at the picnic table in the park.”

  “Jesus Christ, Carrie. I’m sweating, hot. That feels good, but my cock is harder, please—”

  “Touch it, something, Brian.”

  “I am—there’s—pre-cum. I’m slippery. Carrie, God, Carrie, are you wet? Tell me.”

  I lay myself down on the couch, awkwardly pull both cups of my bra down, and press a palm into my nipple, hard. My hips are wiggling under their own power, and it is a relief when I hike my skirt up one-handed, the air cool against my soaking pantie gusset. I need him to tell me how, though. What to do, exactly. “I’ve pulled my skirt up, and I can tell I am so wet because the air over my wet panties is making me shiver. I want—”

  “If I were there, Carrie, I would need to feel how soft the skin on the inside of your thighs is, first, how hot it is at that place where your thigh curves into your pussy. I love that place. I would kiss it first, but then lick it, inhale you.”

  My hand is just at that place. His words are so surprisingly explicit and knowing, as if he really has been thinking about exactly this, over and over.

  I can smell myself, rich and warm. I mean to tell him, but his voice is so labored, it’s making my hips pump up against the shape of his voice in my imagination—round, warm, silky like fur. “How would you touch me, Brian?”

  “I’d stay over your panties, first, use them to tease you, back and forth, up and down. Are you touching yourself?” I am, just like he tells me he would. I can only make a noise of affirmation.

  “Then, I’d slip one finger under, see how ready you are for me, how soft you feel, how tiny the ringlets must be there.”

  He’s taken some kind of master class for phone sex. Or has the most beautiful imagination in the Midwest. Or self-denial hones the edge of desire like a leather strap. “Brian, I’m sliding off my underwear. I feel close, and I can’t tease myself much longer.”