Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (11 page)

“Yeah,” Sam said and sat down on the couch. “I know.”

Seeing him sitting there where Olivia so often lay—so often that her favorite pillow was now a permanent fixture at the arm of the couch—made me realize I should probably have gone into psychotherapy rather than writing.

“We split. Cheer and I,” Sam said.

“That’s what her name was.”

He stared hard at me.

“Sorry,” I said, not sorry. Being left for another woman is not the kind of thing you get over easily. And it’s not the kind of thing I had an obligation to either forgive or forget.

“It must be so hard on you,” I added, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

Sam slapped his knees and made to get up, but he didn’t. He stayed put on my amateur-psychology-hour couch. I remember thinking that I should get one of those flat leather ones, or at least a chaise lounge. I doubted anyone overcame psychological impediments while occupying a couch with a dated floral pattern like this one.

“So,” I said. “Our son.”

“Oh. Yeah. He wants to have his birthday party at a batting cage.”

“And?”

Sam shrugged.

“
That’s
what you wanted to talk about? His
birthday
party?”

“Well…”

“His birthday’s not for, what…half a year!”

“I kinda just wanted to see you again. Not just, you know, from the car. Just wanted to talk.”

“I’m going to finish that coffee,” I said, and walked into the kitchen and emptied the carafe into my
Oxford Commas Rule
mug. I was supposed to get on the phone in a half hour with the editor for the Irldale book. Our son would be home in a few hours, and having Sam here just made me feel like I was suddenly thrown back to a couple year’s earlier, when things had truly sucked. I would have preferred talking outside on the landing where I kept a couple plastic chairs, but it was way too cold for that.

He was sitting in a chair when I came back into the living room. I wondered why. Too vulnerable on the couch?

“I lost my job,” he said. “Everyone, actually. Whole place folded.”

“Sam,” I said, truly affected this time. And I want you to know that I was sorry because I knew he was perfect for the job, and that another would be hard to come by in this economy. Only
then
, after about two seconds, did my mind flash the word
alimony
at me, sputtering like a neon sign on the brink.

Sam. Soon to be deadbeat dad.

“That blows,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

“When?”

“Last month.”

I sat near him on the end of the couch, moving Olivia’s pillow aside. I put my hand on his hand where it gripped the chair’s arm. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really.”

“Yeah. So. Anyway. I just wanted to tell you that I may be a little short. If I can’t find something in a few months…I don’t know.”

“I.O.U.?” I said, trying for a smile.

He smiled and it warmed me a little to see that familiar grin. I hadn’t seen it delivered to me for so long that I’d forgotten it had once been
familiar.
I asked if our son knew.

“Not yet,” Sam said.

“You should tell him. Tell him this weekend.”

Sam nodded.

“And you’ll find something. You’re smart. You’ve got the experience. You’re good with people.” And I found that all these things I was saying about him were true. “You’re just lousy with women,” I added.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, putting his other hand over mine, like one of those hand piles children make. I put my free hand over his.

“I wish I could make it up to you,” he said. “I really do.”

Now, pause a moment. Remember where I am: single mother, working hard, gratified to have a lover, but not having had an honest as-nature-intended fuck in I don’t know how long. Given that, can you blame me for the thought that fired off inside my brain and that spilled out of my mouth, unchecked?

“You can fuck me,” I said.

“I don’t want sympathy.”

I shook my head and withdrew my hands from our little cluster. “I’m not talking about pity sex. You can make it up to me, a little, by fucking me.”

Sam gave me a funny look. He said our son had told him I had a boyfriend. That startled me a bit—my son had only seen Terrance once, I thought, and that was while Terrance was leaving on a bicycle.

“Well,” I said. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I don’t see how that matters. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re a tease,” Sam said. He took off his cap and lifted a lock of his hair and pointed. “Remember?”

I smiled. When he’d told me he was leaving me for another woman, I’d hurled a dinner plate at him, Frisbee style. (Me and a girlfriend had been Frisbee nerds in junior high, fourth place in state finals. A skill that, unfortunately, has little crossover into tennis.) The plate had left a permanent indentation in his head, a place where collagen feared to return.

“I’m serious,” I said, checking the clock. “We have a few hours. You come early and I’m going to go after every dime of child support and alimony. You follow every direction I give you, we’ll let your check slide this mo…this week.”

“Jesus,” Sam said. “What’s happened to you? This is a different Elly.”

“I hate Elly,” I said. “It’s Eloise. The tease.”

“I’ll say.”

“Is that an erection already?” I asked.

He looked down.

“I’m not joking about the alimony and child support,” I said. “You pace yourself.”

Now of course it’s never a good thing to hook up with your ex, not in the long run. But life—while it’s all about the long run—never lets us see that far forward. We’re here; death is out there someplace. And in between is just plans we make half-heartedly since we know they’re unlikely to come to pass. And so, in the moment, tired of Terrance’s nutso quasi-celibacy and those lifeless dildos and overactive vibrators, and my head still oversexed from my voyeuristic Wednesday at the Drake’s, the prospect of having a man with a dick, a cock, a schlong (even if it wasn’t particularly large) seemed like a no brainer.

First though, there was something to borrow from a neighbor, though not quite as innocuous as eggs, sugar, or a stick of butter. I ducked Sam’s attempt at a kiss—scolded him, in fact—and instructed him to undress and wait in the bedroom.

The cold outside chilled me, but inside I was hot.

Olivia came to the door. “It’s not lunch already?”

“No. I’m going to have to cancel,” I said. “And ask for a favor. A pill.”

“Pill?”

“The kind you give to Mr. Drake.”

“Oh, the Schlong-maker?”

“I wish you’d stop calling it that,” I said.

“Terrance doesn’t have a problem in that department, does he?”

“It’s someone else. My ex.”

“Ah,” Olivia said. “Him.
Sam
. Well, that doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“Well,” I said. “You guys, you inspired me a bit. I thought a pill might, you know…”

“Get you a little more time.”

“Exactly. Thank you,” I said.

“Flattery gets you everywhere.”

Olivia left me standing in the sunroom that was chilly now with the sun low on the horizon and hiding behind a copse of trees. When she came back she put a single pill in the palm of my hand. White, like aspirin.

“Have fun,” she said.

Back in the apartment I found Sam sitting cross-legged in the center of my bed, clothed.

“C’mon now,” I said. “You’re not backing down?”

“Just waiting for you.” He tried to make it sound sultry, but it was hollow. This whole thing was hollow. And I didn’t care.

I went into the kitchen and took down a juice glass, filled it with water, and dropped in the pill. I crushed it with the tines of a fork and soon it was gone. I took a sip. Awful. God-awful. This wasn’t going to work. I scoured the fridge and found a gone-flat bottle of soda, poured it into a tall glass and added the contents of the original glass. I tasted my concoction and it wasn’t quite as bad. Passable.

Back in the bedroom I watched Sam take off his shirt. “Good,” I said, then took a drink of the Staxyn-laced soda and handed the glass to him.

“You’re going to do everything I say,” I said.

He took the drink and smiled, but that disappeared once the taste hit him. He grimaced.

“Drink up,” I said.

“It’s flat.”

“Everything. I. Say,” I said. “Remember? You’re the one who wants to make it up to me. Don’t like it, there’s the door.” And just then I wished I hadn’t said that. Hadn’t given him an out. I was getting a little caught up in the new power arrangement with Sam and didn’t want to end up with a frustrated afternoon.

He smiled. “Okay, okay.” He drank the soda down like a champ. Licked his lips even.

I glanced at the clock. Less than thirty minutes Olivia had said. And then, I thought, hours and hours. But only if he stayed here. My brain flashed me another idea. I left Sam there and went into the bathroom. I went into turbo mode and made myself up just a little. I took off my clothes and put on my robe, then returned to the bedroom holding a chair from the dining table set—dark, heavy, part of a set we’d bought together at a time when we thought we’d be together until our last days. At least I’d thought that. I sat down on the chair clutching my robe together.

He greeted me with a smile.

“Okay,” I said. “Shirt’s gone. Good. Get going on the pants. No. Stop. Not like that. Strip.”

“C’mon on.”

“Do it.” I laughed when he started to, but caught myself. “Sorry. Keep going.” His strip tease was awful, of course, but I enjoyed watching him try. He had, I was both disappointed and glad to see, not let himself go completely. It had probably been his girlfriend, or the thought of her leaving him, that had kept him in maintenance mode. The underwear was not far from a G-string.

“I’m not the only one who’s changed,” I said.

He looked down. “I’ve been meaning to get new ones. I hate these. It’s all I have. She insisted.”

I nodded as his thumbs went to his underwear. “Slowly.”

The drink still had a good twenty minutes to kick in, though his vascular system was functioning perfectly well on its own so far.

“Give me a side view,” I said.

He complied.

Now, I know there are some of you ladies out there who are genuinely thrilled by a penis. (Hi, M.M. and J.S.!) I, though, and I think quite a few women, are not, if we’re honest. I mean, it’s a weird appendage. Maybe if it was something we saw all the time it wouldn’t seem so strange. Everything is strange of course, like the ears, or the nose. Stare at one of those suckers long enough and you can’t believe we go walking around in public with those things protruding from our heads. They’re crazy-strange. But because we see them every day, they’re normal. Maybe if I joined a nudist colony the thing wouldn’t seem so weird. Nevertheless, I enjoyed making him turn this way and that. His penis, like all penises after all, is something you grow to appreciate for its unique characteristics, its pneumatics, for instance.

“Stroke it,” I said, words—you may believe me dear reader—I have never said to Sam or any man, ever, until that moment.

He did, half-heartedly. “You can do better than that,” I said.

“
I’m
naked,” he said. “What about you?”

“Socks,” I said. “You still got your socks on.”

He pulled them off and stood there beside the bed. He took a step forward.

“That’s far enough. Go back to stroking.”

“It’s dry.”

“You can spit, can’t you,” I said. Yes, another new phrase out of these lips. It seemed suddenly so clear that the difference between my old sexual self and this new one was simply a new set of vocabulary, or perhaps more accurately, a lack of hesitation in letting those words sound out my wants.

He reached for the empty glass and managed to grab a few more drops that had settled down to the bottom. I couldn’t help but grin.

“What’s so funny?”

You,
I wanted to say aloud, but instead I said, “Nothing. I’m having a ball.”

“Glad this amuses you.”

“No talking. Spit. Stroke.”

He complied, his face with that stupid grin I realized I had missed. Not him, but just the way he could grin.

Now, I’d always wondered how exactly men masturbated. I mean, it wasn’t ever a burning desire or anything, just a curiosity. How fast did they do it? How long did it take? I hadn’t, until that moment, considered having him finish himself off, but with another ten or fifteen minutes until the drug kicked in, I had time to spare.

“How long do you want me to do this?” he asked.
Mind-reader.

“All the way,” I said.

“Really? This is kinda humiliating.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

He laughed. “I know.”

“And it’s turning me on,” I said.

“Really?”

“No,” I lied.

I lowered the robe from around my shoulders so he could see my breasts, such as they are. I ran my fingertips across my nipples in a way I didn’t used to do until Terrance came into the picture. He had this way of getting them erect in no time flat. Besides, if I was going to see how Sam masturbated, then it seemed only fair that I reciprocated: he standing a few paces away, me here on the chair that was once going to seat a dozen Thanksgivings.

“I’m so turned…” he began.

“Shh. Just do it.”

In my mind I was thinking this could take him another five or ten minutes. My hand reached down below.

“Where?” he said, looking around.

“Where what? Oh, jeez.
Already?
” I asked.

“I’ve been holding off.”

Either that was fast, or it’d been a while since his girlfriend had left, or a long time since he’d jacked himself off. Either way, the whole thing happened too fast for me to appreciate.

“Hands back on your dick,” I said, when he put his hands down.

“I’m about to cum,” he protested.

“So?” And this time it was my turn to smile.

He stepped forward, aiming the damn thing at me.

“What?” I said. “No.” I got out of the chair just as he came, and that in itself was quite a sight. (Not my getting out of the way, but him.) Picture a good six feet of arcing ejaculate. I know: gross. But still something impressive about it. It landed on the back of the chair, the seat, and then the carpet.