Intimate (13 page)

Finally, she
shifted and pulled back from him just a little. She must be very uncomfortable,
supported on her knees with her body twisted at a strange angle. “Caleb, I’m so
sorry I pushed you away. I was so upset and confused, but I never should have
made you leave. Don’t hate me, please.”

“Hate you?” he
asked, his voice unrecognizable. “Baby, you’re the most important person in the
world. Please tell me I didn’t destroy what we have by trying to push you into
something you don’t want.”

Her mouth
opened, but nothing came out. She tried again, but still couldn’t form any
words. Finally, giving up, she leaned over and pressed a soft kiss onto the
side of his jaw. “I don’t know how we’re going to work this out, but I’m not
willing to lose what we have.”

An
embarrassingly helpless sound escaped his throat, and he pulled Marissa against
him once more.

Finally, she
pulled back and smiled at him wetly. “Why were you sitting in the hall?”

“I, uh, thought
I needed a little rest before I walked all the way to the elevator.”

Making a noise
that was half-laugh, half-cry, she heaved herself to her feet and extended her
hand. “Come back in. We’ll see if we can figure this out.”

He took her
hand as she made a valiant attempt to pull him to his feet. They walked
silently back into the apartment and ended up on the couch together. Instead of
talking, she just curled up beside him, and they spent several minutes in what
was essentially an extended hug.

Caleb tried not
to think too much. She was warm and soft and strong against him, and she was
hugging him just as tightly as he was her.

For the first
time in his life, her naked need of him didn’t scare him, didn’t make him feel
ill or uncomfortable. Instead, it made him feel…needed. Valued. Loved.

When she tried
to detach herself from him at last, he didn’t let her.

Finally, she
murmured, “Caleb,” and pulled against him harder.

Suddenly
realizing what he was doing, he loosened his arms. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“I feel that
way too. But I feel ick in this dress, and I want to change clothes and wash my
face. I’ll be back in a minute, and we can try to talk things out.”

He nodded and
watched as she walked away, her hips swinging in her naturally sensual stride.

About five
minutes later, she came padding back into the living room, wearing sweats and a
freshly washed face, and carrying two large glasses of water.

He took his
gratefully, wondering how she’d known he needed it. He gulped the water down.

Folding her
legs up underneath her, Marissa settled on the sofa beside him. “So.”

“So,” Caleb
repeated.

“So you love me
the way I love you.”

This wasn’t at
all the way he’d been expecting her to begin, so he started off on the wrong
foot and said something foolish. “I didn’t think you even noticed when I said
that.”

 “Of course, I
noticed. You’ve never told me that before. I always kind of assumed you did,
though.”

All he could do
now was be honest and hope it was enough. “I do. I have for years. I’ve just never
said it.”

“I’m glad you
did say it. So, to reiterate, you love me the way I love you. But you also want
to have sex with me. But you’re not
in love
with me.” When he started to
object, she hurried on, “At least, you said no when I asked you earlier.”

“Yes, I did say
no, but I’m not sure about that. But yes to everything else.”

She was silent
for so long that his chest ached again. Almost certainly, she was trying to
find words to gently reaffirm that she could never return those particular
feelings.

“It’s okay, Marissa,”
he said at last, after several more sips of water. “It was arrogant of me to
assume that you felt the way I do but were just too scared to admit it. As long
as we can still be friends, I’ll work on getting over everything else.”

Her face
crumpled for a minute, but she managed to compose herself. “You see, it’s not
as simple as that. And that’s why I was so mean to you earlier, because I was
so scared and confused about what a mess this has turned into. I wish so much
that everything was clear—that either I wanted everything from you or that I
wanted a kind of brotherly friendship—but it’s so hard because I’m just a
chaotic jumble somewhere in between.”

An involuntary
flicker of hope sprung up inside him at this, although he tried to use his
common sense to crush it out. “You told me you didn’t ever want to have sex
with me,” he said, the sharp pain returning to his chest as he repeated her
words. “Marissa, I could tell you meant it. I understand. Some people just
aren’t sexually attracted to certain people. It happens.”

“I did mean
what I said. I don’t want to have sex with you, but it’s not because I’m not
attracted to you.” She glanced down, as if she were suddenly shy. “I’ve just
realized it recently, but I
am
attracted to you. Surely you could tell
when…when we were dancing.”

The hope was
rising again, but he tried to remain reasonable this time. “I thought maybe you
were, but…” He had no idea what to say next.

“I have a few
confessions of my own to make,” she said at last, her voice strained and thin.
“I wasn’t entirely honest with you earlier. My feelings
have
been
changing for you lately.”

“Really?” he
breathed—all of his desperate hope now palpable in the one word.

Marissa reached
out to touch his arm. “Caleb, please don’t get too excited. I don’t think this
is what you’re going to want to hear. My feelings for you have been changing,
or at least intensifying. I’ve always felt sort of like this, but it’s been
growing stronger and stronger in the last few weeks.” She took a deep breath,
but couldn’t look him in the eye. “I want to be with you all the time. I want to
be close to you. Physically, I mean.”

Caleb hadn’t
realized it was possible to feel so much despair and so much hope in the space
of the same thirty minutes. “That sounds exactly like how I feel.”

“No, it’s not.
Because I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“Have you
thought about having sex with me?” he asked, keeping his voice undemanding.

“I have. I
really have. And I sometimes feel sexual…urges when I’m around you.” She
blushed yet again as she made this admission. “But when I try to imagine
actually having sex with you, it makes me feel…sick.” She shuddered, as if
she’d just conjured up the unpleasant picture in her mind.

He raised a
hand to cover his eyes, so he could hide their expression. It had taken a lot
of courage for her to say that, and he didn’t want her to regret it. Even
though it felt like his heart had been carved up and handed back to him.

“I’m sorry, Caleb.”
Evidently, she knew how he was feeling, even though he’d tried to keep it from
her. “I know how much that must hurt you, but it’s true.”

They were
silent for several minutes, as they both processed what had been said.

He tried to
talk himself into accepting reality, but that foolish bit of hope refused to be
snuffed out. “Maybe you could try to explain what goes through your mind when
you think about having sex with me.”

She took a few
sips of water and mumbled, barely able to get the words out, “When I imagine
the…the preliminaries, it’s good. But then I try to imagine us in bed, and it’s
just awful.”

For some
reason, Caleb found this piece of information encouraging. “So it’s not
me
that’s the problem. It’s sex.”

“Yeah. It’s
sex. Sex has always been the problem. Don’t look so relieved. Nothing has
changed.”

But it had
changed. He was starting to understand something he hadn’t before. “What
happened when you were a kid?”

Her head jerked
up. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me what
happened.”

“We’ve been
over this. There was nothing traumatic, and it’s nothing you need to know.”

She’d always
been so competent, so together in every other aspect of her life—far more
together than he’d ever been—that it was hard to remember that her issues with
sex ran deep, defined all of her choices.

Of course, she
wasn’t going to fall into bed with him. She wasn’t just being spineless or
indecisive. No matter what she liked to say, she didn’t just find sex
distasteful. She hadn’t made a free choice not to have it in her life.

It terrified
her. She was traumatized. She’d hidden it from him mostly, but he suddenly
remembered how broken she’d been that night back in college.

“Baby, please
tell me what happened. I do need to know.”

She looked away
from him, obviously trying to keep control of her emotions.

He tried again.
“Don’t you think you’ll feel better if you tell me?”

“It’s not about
me feeling better.”

“Then what—”

“I’m not going
to tell you, Caleb. Don’t ask me again.”

He could hear
real fear in her voice. He experienced a simmering fury—far deeper than any
anger he’d felt for James earlier—directed at whomever had hurt her so
profoundly as a child. He wanted to press her for details, so he could take
some sort of action against the culprit, but he was done with being blind and
insensitive and hurting her in the process. “Okay. I won’t. Are you all right?”

She nodded and
turned back toward him, her shoulders relaxing. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know
what to do about all this.”

Caleb finally
did know.

Clearing his
voice, he asked, very mildly, “Can I ask you one thing?” At her affirmative, he
continued, “If sex was no longer a problem for you, would you be interested in
a relationship with me? More than friendship, I mean.”

She searched
his face and then surprised him by almost smiling. “Haven’t I always said that
we should grow old together in a blissful platonic union?”

A low chuckle
escaped him. “I might have heard that a time or two. So that’s a yes?”

“But sex is
always going to be a problem for me.”

“I don’t think
it has to be. People get damaged in different ways. All the time. But they can
heal.”

“I don’t know
if I can heal. I really don’t.”

“I guess what I
want to know is if you’re even willing to give it a try.”

She locked
gazes with him, and he saw tears welling up in her eyes again. “I don’t know.
Part of me wants to, but I’m so scared. And it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“What wouldn’t
be fair to me?”

“Leading you on
like that. Starting some sort of relationship when I couldn’t promise that I’d
be able to get over this. I couldn’t guarantee that we could ever have sex. I
don’t want you to waste your time with me.”

“That’s my
decision to make,” he objected, feeling the warmth return to his chest. “If I’m
willing to take that risk, then you can’t use it as an excuse.”

She fidgeted in
her corner of the couch. “It’s been years since I’ve even tried to have sex.”

Caleb didn’t
fail to notice that she was no longer speaking in the hypothetical. She was
talking as if it really was going to happen. “I know that. We’ll go slow. I
wouldn’t expect anything else.”

“And no matter
what, we have to preserve our friendship because I just can’t lose you. Nothing
would be worth that.”

“I can’t lose
you either,” he admitted, feeling unexpectedly vulnerable underneath the swell
of growing anticipation.

She nodded as
if she’d made up her mind, and he realized with a throb of his heart that this
was actually happening.

Then her face
crumpled again. “Caleb, I’m scared.”

He wasn’t sure
what was the right thing to do at this moment—he’d never had any experience in
this sort of naked intimacy—so he did what the pulsing of his blood compelled
him to do. He reached over and pulled her against him once more. Wrapped his
arms tightly around her.

She clung to
his shirt and hid her face in his chest. “I’m just not sure about this. Are
you? Are you sure?”

He wasn’t sure
of anything. The weight of everything that had happened—that
was
happening—settled heavily in his gut. “I’m sure. I’m not sure about what will
happen, but I’m sure we need to try.”

“Okay,” she
whispered. “I trust you. We’ll try.”

His arms
tightened around her automatically, until he was almost crushing her. She
didn’t complain, didn’t try to pull away, so he didn’t loosen his arms.

He had
absolutely no words, but he didn’t seem to need any.

After a long
time, she finally raised her head, and Caleb made himself slacken his grip. She
gave him a hint of her ironic smile. “So, I think maybe I’ll set up some
appointments with my therapist. I haven’t been to see her in a while. She
always wanted me to deal with the sex thing head-on, but I kept refusing.”

Caleb smiled
back. “Sounds like a plan.”

“So how should
we begin this?” she asked.

What he wanted
was to kiss her and see where that led them. But she’d been serious about
taking it slowly, and he wasn’t about to ruin his one chance by pushing things
too quickly. “Maybe we could go out on Saturday night.”

“Like a date?”

He was really
glad to see she had gotten her spirit back. “Exactly. So what if it’s cheesy
and predictable? We should have a first date.”

“Okay,” she
agreed, looking close to happy. “It’s a date.”

They stared at
each other until she broke the gaze and glanced down. “Do you think we can do
this?”

He wanted to give
her encouraging absolutes, but he had none to give her. “I think so.”

“I guess that’s
all anyone can ever say about anything.” She shifted restlessly. “Do you think
you could stay with me for a while tonight, so I don’t get too scared and
chicken out?”

He suddenly
felt a little scared himself, only now realizing exactly what he was getting
himself into, how trapped he would be by this. “Of course,” he replied, trying
to sound confident. He pushed up the sleeves to his shirt in an attempt to cool
himself down. After arranging himself in a more comfortable position, he opened
his arms in invitation.