After Dark (21 page)

I sent my little missive into the universe.

Matt met me in the lobby. He hugged me and took soggy items off my hands: the manuscripts, my purse.

“More potboilers?” He eyed the stacks of paper.

“Eyes off, you.” I slapped his butt as I followed him up the stairs. Like a curious animal, he was forever getting into the manuscripts I brought home. He laughed at me for printing them, said I was following in the footsteps of Pam the Luddite, and disparaged every hopeful’s novel.

“Aw, come on. This one actually looks cool.
The Midnight
—”

“You’re a big bully.” I laughed and bumped our door shut, prying the papers from him. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say these new young writers threaten you.”

“Threaten me? Ha.” He yanked me into his arms. I gave him a giddy smile. “And if they’re new and young, what does that make me? Old and old?”

Young
and
old,
I thought, wrapping my arms around his neck. Like a child in a man’s body, sometimes. And I imagined he had sometimes seemed like a man when he was just a boy. Too sad and serious. I feathered kisses along his jaw.

“Mine,” I said.

“I can work with that.” He tugged at my wet hair so that I tipped back my head, and he kissed my mouth. “Poor thing, you really got stuck in that weather.”

“God, you have no idea…”

We made out for a full quarter-hour before I noticed the tent in the living room.

“Matt!” I snickered. He’d moved the coffee table and couch to accommodate the tent. It was new, or new to me—a tall gray and orange dome.

“Aha, she finally sees it.” He stalked over to the tent. Yes, it was definitely new. Matt wore his distinct “Do you like my new toy?” expression, and he circled the tent and folded his arms and studied it, signaling that I should also take a moment to admire it. I did.

“Wow … it’s nice.” I touched one of the poles. “So big. So…”
In our living room.

“Mm. I got it at REI. Had to throw it together, make sure nothing was missing.” He frowned at the mesh-and-polyester palace. “I thought we might take it for a spin this evening, but not in this weather.”

On cue, thunder crackled and boomed outside.

“Oh, babe.” I rubbed his back. “Lemme get into dry clothes and we’ll ‘take it for a spin’ right here, okay?” I kissed his cheek. “Happy Fourth.”

His eyes lit up like a child’s.

“Perfect,” he said, already halfway into the tent.

I peeled off my wet clothes and changed into my Shell Belle Couture chemise, an expensive little gift from Matt. I never bought such nice things for myself. The champagne silk complemented my pale skin and felt luxurious. The lace cups, well … I resisted the urge to grab a robe as I felt my nipples hardening. Matt liked the lace cups best of all.

In the bathroom, I untangled my hair with Moroccan oil and washed my face. On my skin, I left the scent of rainwater.

I returned to a living room devoid of pillows.

The tent flap was shut.

“Knock knock?” I said.

With a swift zinging sound, Matt unzipped the door from inside.

“Why, come in.” He was laughing. The tent was tall, but taller Matt stood stooped beneath the dome. All our pillows lay around his feet.

“Don’t mind if I do.” I took his hand and stepped inside.

He stared openly at my chest.

“Oh,” he said.

His expression grew somber. I wanted to burst out laughing.

God, his cuteness …

“Very swanky in here.” I sat cross-legged on a pillow and looked around. The tent was cozy, the inner flaps a vibrant orange, and adorable Matt had stocked a wall pouch with snacks and drinks: two cans of Coke and a bag of goldfish. In another flap, two books and a flashlight.

“I was just testing those pouches,” he mumbled, gesturing to the snacks. “Hi.” He shucked off his shirt—
yum
—and crawled to me. “Hi…”

“Hi,” I said, giggling. “Hello. Did I ruin storytime with lingerie?” I slid my fingers up his arms. Whisper of skin on skin. My hands curled over his shoulders.

“No.” He closed in on me, his body pressing mine back and down. He went for my neck with his teeth, like an animal. Bit the column of my throat. Licked away the hurt.

“Ah,” I gasped, arching under him. I pawed at his abs and pulled at the band of his lounge pants.

An electrical pop sounded in the condo and the room went dark.

Matt and I froze.

We laughed in unison, sitting up and holding one another.

Pure darkness. I clung to his torso.

“Well, this is a first,” I said. “Our first power outage.”

“Always be prepared.” Matt groped around until he found the flashlight. He turned it on and hung it from the top of the tent. A cone of light shone over us.

His erection tented the front of his pants. I reached for it, my hand drawn to it. I gripped his head through the fabric. God, I loved seeing him turned on.

“I’m glad that happened.” He flexed into my hand. “Slowed me down.”

“Baby, you don’t have to slow down.”

“I know. I want to.” He caressed the undersides of my breasts and my nipples. The intricate lace of the cups scratched gently at my skin. I twitched and moaned.

He reached up and turned off the flashlight.

Darkness rushed back in.

It was better that way, never knowing what was coming. His hot, wet mouth on my nipple. His tongue between my legs. The weight of his dick along my chest.

Ah, he was something else, moving against me, and I thought of that “something else” I’d felt while reading his chapter.
I know that I’ll die with these memories in me
, he wrote. I understood something, there with him in the dark, my toes curled against the tent wall. Not the sadness of death, but the silver clarity of these moments, casting a lifelong memory.

Afterward, we lay in a tangle on the pillows.

Satisfaction burned away my bashfulness. I stroked Matt’s ass and he panted softly against my hair.

“So,” he murmured, “you like my tent?”

I laughed breathlessly.

“Very much. Close quarters, but we made it work.”

“Well”—he scooted down so that we lay face-to-face—“I know a girl who’s into small living spaces. Won’t take anything too grand.”

I huffed. “Your realtor lady is obviously favoring the higher end of our price range.”

“
Our
realtor lady, Marion. And I noticed that.”

“Maybe I’ll have a talk with her.”

“You do that, little bird.” He tapped my nose and I scrunched it. “You can always e-mail her. Still, let’s at least see the larger places. Room to grow…”

I rolled onto my back.
Room to grow
.

“You want children,” I said. Matt stayed quiet and I continued calmly, the awareness forming as I spoke. “What you sent me today, Chapter four. You said you pictured me as a child, playing on the lawn of my parents’ house. You said it made you feel … sadness. You want to give me a home. And you want children, don’t you? I mean, you really want them.”

I glanced at him.

He sat up, avoiding my gaze.

“You don’t have to tell me, then. I know. I just don’t know how important it is to you.”

“Don’t say you haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what I want. If you’d talked to me a few years ago, I would have said I never wanted to get married. You made me want marriage, though, and you make me want…” He shrugged.

“I
have
thought about it.” I sat up and forced him to look at me. “Matt, I’ve gone so far as to picture it. A little boy with your beautiful eyes. A girl with sandy curls. But I’m confused, too. I’m scared. I never really wanted kids. There’s so much to consider.”

His eyes widened.

“We have to be careful.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “We could be happy. Too happy.”

“Too happy?” I frowned.

“Yes, God. Don’t talk about them. A boy … a girl. Stop that.”

Whoa,
where was this coming from?

“I thought you—”

“You thought wrong,” he snapped, and I flinched. They were figments of my imagination—those small children, the boy and the girl—but when Matt said
, Don’t talk about them
, ferocity reared inside me. It was an instinct to protect … what didn’t even exist.

I stared at my hands, dazed. I didn’t want children. And now, mysteriously, part of me did. And I already loved the children that I wanted Matt to give me.

This new self-awareness stunned me into silence.

But suddenly Matt didn’t want children? He’d just said—

The power returned with a rising whirr. The AC chugged to life.

“Thank God,” Matt said. He grabbed his pants and kissed my shoulder. “I’ll fix the clocks.” He scrambled out of the tent.

Chapter 24

MATT

Hannah and I viewed homes with Marion twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

After Hannah got off work, we dined quickly and Marion picked us up in her Prius, the car and the woman always looking freshly polished. She was middle-aged and pleasant—not the pushy woman I expected, but a knowledgeable and confident realtor.

She avoided talk of my books, which I appreciated, but she had obviously done her research. To me, she often said, “This room would make an ideal office or library,” and to Hannah, “This area is great for newlyweds—private, but with so much to do nearby.”

We traipsed through three to five homes per day.

Ranch-style homes, two-family homes, suburban monstrosities, luxury townhouses.

The more we saw, the less we knew what we wanted, and the longer Marion’s listing e-mails grew. I pitied her—and us. That July was insufferably hot and we attacked house-shopping like a New Year’s resolution: at first with great energy and excitement, by the second week with diminishing zeal, and toward the end of the month with forbidding faces, dragging steps.

Marion pulled into a neighborhood just outside Denver.

“No,” I snarled. “Too suburban. Head to the next.”

She took us to a country home with a stunning view of the mountains.

“I don’t want to see it,” Hannah grumbled. “I’m not living in the sticks.”

We argued. We returned home late, disillusioned and depressed. We wanted out of the condo—once, our sweet little nest—and we picked on it and everything.
If we had one extra room—one!—I wouldn’t have to put away my fucking weights every day. Well, how do you think I feel about my yoga stuff? All I can hear is the fucking street. Then go live in your tent!

Back and forth. More homes, nothing suitable. My Monday-morning sessions with Mike became one-hour rants about the state of housing in Colorado. Hannah left for work early and stayed late. I imagined her savoring the solitude of her office—a room of her own, which I couldn’t seem to give her.

Our story continued.
Untitled
, a novel by Hannah Catalano and Matt Sky. We threw ourselves into it, making progress with words where we couldn’t with homes. Four, sometimes five chapters a week, fired back and forth in frustrated volleys.

One evening over dinner, Hannah announced that Chrissy was twelve weeks pregnant.

“Wait…” She counted on her fingers. “Thirteen.”

“Mm.” I plowed my rice into a pile.

“She really wants to keep the baby. She quit smoking and everything.”

“Ah.” I rolled an olive around the rice.

“I guess pretty soon they’ll be able to find out the gender.”

“Yeah.” I speared the olive on my fork.

I’d also quit smoking, though no one seemed to notice, and I was acutely aware of Chrissy’s thirteen weeks to the day. I found myself Googleing strange things throughout the month.
When does pregnancy start to show? How long does morning sickness last? When can ultrasound determine gender?

“If you don’t want to talk about this, you can say so.”

“Have you seen her?” I continued playing with my dinner, prolonging the meal. Dinner and sex were our last bastions of togetherness. And sleep. Just the necessities. Otherwise I was writing out my frustrations or searching the Internet for our nonexistent dream home, and Hannah was doing the same.

“No. We’ve talked a few times. Um…” She cleared her throat. “They did that prenatal DNA test thing. So that was confirmed.”

“Ah … good to know.”

“Yup. Not that she wasn’t sure, but, double sure now. And he’s back—”

“You can say his name.” I frowned.

“Sorry. Seth is back east. Now that everything’s confirmed, and Mom and Dad know, he’s moving her into a place of her own. One of the Beauvallon condos, apparently.”

“Oh. Those are … incredibly nice.” My shoulders fell. I felt a plummeting sense of inadequacy. Nate had a family and a home. Seth had a pregnant girlfriend and he was providing for her. I lived in a hovel and wanted a family and couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.

I flattened my rice tower.

Cue the self-pity.

“I was thinking of helping her move in, since we’ll be close.”

“Yeah.” My mind spun unhappily, churning up bitterness. Maybe it was time for a new car. That Mercedes I’d been wanting …

“That was sort of a question.”

“What?” I glanced at Hannah.

“I mean, I want you to be okay with the ways I help Chrissy, like we discussed.”

“Oh.” I waved a hand and began to clear the table. Cooking was Hannah’s department; cleanup was mine. “Sure, help her move. Whatever you want.”

I stood at the sink, static.

She slipped up and hugged me from behind.

“Thank you.” She kissed my shoulder blade. “Her mood’s been getting more stable. Our talks have been nice.”

“Mm.”

Another invisible strike against me. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, repair my relationship with Seth. Meanwhile, my fianc
é
e was a model of mercy and love.

Her fingers grazed my abdomen. I moved a plate to the dishwasher.

“Baby, I made some plans for us this weekend.”

“Oh?” I tried to sound upbeat. Hannah’s last weekend plan had been a
Godfather
movie marathon. She knew I loved those movies. All I remembered, though, was Marlon Brando drawling that “a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.” And I wouldn’t talk about starting a family because fear locked me up every time I tried to think about it. And if I couldn’t think about it, much less talk about it, I wasn’t a real man. Clearly.