“Oh, I told Dancey where to stick it!” I exclaim and report my violation of the prime directive at the ICSLP lunch. “I don’t care. He can’t deny me tenure because I wouldn’t host a conference with his pet.”
“No. But don’t defy him too often, is my advice.”
“What about you? When you were thirty?” I ignore his warning. “What was your STFU-factor? Probably lower than mine, because you’re a man.”
“Yeah, maybe. Although I wasn’t brought up to speak my mind. Less than you, probably. Hang on, can I remember my thirtieth birthday? Oh, Lord…”
I don’t know whether the groan means that it’s so long ago he can hardly remember or that the memory is unwelcome.
“I’d just got married. I got married shortly before I turned thirty.”
The realization hits him, and I can tell the groan was genuine. I want to groan, too. On a night like this, a decade ago, Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland did drive home and had wild, uninhibited sex all night. And then, presumably, there were many nights when they drove home in near-silence.
“You must have thought then that it was a good idea to marry Amanda. Sorry!” I glance at him and suck in my lips. “I’m drunk. Don’t listen to me. Don’t answer that!”
He drives on in silence.
“I was quite frightened as a young man,” he says after a long pause. “And consequently, full of bravado, and anger.” He glances over and smiles. “You wouldn’t have liked me.”
“Wouldn’t I?” A minimal answer, not to distract him.
“No, I was insufferable. I didn’t understand at the time that there is a good way of feeling safe with someone and a bad way. Amanda and I had a sort of…pact to pretend that the demons weren’t there. The monsters. So we felt safe with each other. And then the monsters pounced.” He sighs and laughs grimly. “You’re drunk, and I’m meandering. I do apologize!”
“No, no…” If I’m impatient with him, it’s because he is giving this madly fascinating information when I’m not able to process it adequately. “What became of them? Of the monsters?”
“Oh—I’ve chased the ringleaders out of town, and as for the ones that stayed, well, these days I know where they live.” He laughs again, less sardonically. “And this is where you live!”
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. “Thank you, Giles, that was—it was irresponsible of me to drink when I had the car.”
“Hardly the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever done.”
“Well, no.”
We’re looking at each other in the dim light shining in from the Walshes’ porch, and we’re thinking the same thing.
“I’m not going to do the most irresponsible thing—ever,” I manage to say.
“Now what would that be?”
He actually wants me to say it. Then I will say it.
“Ask you in for coffee.”
“I wouldn’t come in, either. You know I couldn’t. Not in this world.”
His answer gives me a pang, but I nod. I know that he means it kindly, but of course the rejection is like a blade through my heart. I wish I could brush it off with a joke, but I can’t trust my voice not to betray how pitiful I feel. It doesn’t get any more pitiful than having to bite down the declaration that I don’t want tenure, I don’t want a career, I want this man naked in my bed! And if I can’t have that, can he not at least kiss me to make it better?
He moves. His wax jacket is noisy in the silence of the car; he is undoing his seat belt. Good God, does he mean to come in with me, after all? But he leans across, cups my face between his hands, and kisses me.
It is not meant to be a sexy kiss. His lips are firm and soft and warm on the corner of my mouth, and they linger; it is not quite a friendly kiss, either.
“It’s too dangerous,” he whispers. His thumb brushes across my lower lip, across my cheek; his eyes follow its movement. He is so close I can see the black pupils in his light eyes. Feel his voice on my skin. I clasp his wrists to keep his hands in place, and kiss him back.
Properly.
I had forgotten what it feels like to kiss someone like this. To feel the incomparable softness of another person’s lips and tongue, to gauge his kissing style, to begin to communicate in this intensely private manner. It is the tugging ache in my womb that makes me pull back. This