Cheating on Myself (26 page)

“Ah,” Heather winked. “Slept with him, too?”

“No.” I’d thought about it plenty, but that didn’t quite fulfill the same need. “But I really like him. I think he’s a good guy.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “No problem. He invited me to Iowa for the weekend.”

“This weekend?” Heather started her slow walk toward the showers. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

“I know.”

“That’s significant.”

“I know.” I turned on the shower and rinsed off. “I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him.”

Heather glanced at me before taking my arm to shuffle out to the pool deck. “Why are you looking?”

“For flaws?”

“What’s the point? You’re going to find some. So why bother?”

“I’m not going to be stupid about this. I need to know how serious his issues are before I get in too deep.”

“If you’d known your ex was a selfish piece of shit, would you have hung around for twelve years?”

I thought about that while we made our way down the ramp into the pool. The truth was, if I’d looked hard enough, I probably would have realized how Erik and I would have ended up. Or would I? Maybe that’s why I was being so careful about Joe. I didn’t want to waste my time. Was it really worth leaving everything behind for an uncertain future?

“I didn’t know as much then as I know now,” I answered. “I’m not leaving one mistake for another.”

“So you’re already expecting him to be a mistake?” Heather scoffed. “Sounds promising. Invite me to the wedding.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Ugh. Smart old people pissed me off. “I mean, I’m not going into this with my eyes closed. When I met Erik, I was still looking for something. My parents were both gone, I needed a family, and he gave me the consistency and stability I’d been looking for. He held me together when things were really bad, and eventually I grew out of it. If I’d been in a better place, I might not have clung so hard to Erik when I first met him. I might not have lost sight of myself after a few months together.”

“What you’re telling me is, you’re
not
looking for anything now? This situation is somehow different?”

The cool pool water tickled my ankles, then rose up to my knees and hips, before I sunk down to my shoulders, letting myself float away from Heather. “I like to think I know myself now.”

Heather lifted her hands in the air, keeping as much of her body out of the water as possible. Or maybe she was cheering about what I’d said? It was unclear.

“If that’s true, then you must know yourself enough to know if this guy gets you going. Does he make you feel something? If he does, then maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to search for the flaws. Why don’t you just enjoy it?”

I looked around and saw the other nosy women in the pool were all nodding at me. Why did Heather have to be so irritatingly wise?

* * *

I had a boyfriend. A real, honest-to-goodness, banjo-playing boyfriend.

Joe and I had seen each other almost every night for the past week, and I was falling hard. I felt like one of the giddy little girls at the Dog Hounds concert I’d gone to with Pippa and Heidi—I was really, truly smitten, and I’d finally managed to shake the mental image of Joe in overalls. Now, when I daydreamed about him, I thought about how warm I felt when his flannel-clad arms were wrapped around me, or how his butt looked inside his loose jeans when he’d dance around my living room (which he did fairly often).

Even Anders had stopped making fun of him, and we’d had a couple of nights where we all sat around watching TV or making dinner or just talking. Lily was won over when he brought us both coffees one day, just because he was downtown and wanted to see my inspiring cube. The next day, he’d brought me a piece of red flannel fabric to pin up on one wall so it wouldn’t be so drab. He’d even helped me find a “Start Your Own Business” class I was going to take right after Christmas. I felt like Joe was becoming a part of my life—it finally felt like I had my friends and I had my boyfriend and I had my life, and they all fit together in a way that fit me.

The only thing missing? We still hadn’t slept together. I had come to grips with the idea of making love to someone new—and had told Erik I couldn’t see him, even in casual situations, for a while—but it just hadn’t happened yet. I was a little surprised, given Joe’s reputation, and I wondered why someone with a reputation as a player was so slow to start with me. I didn’t want to ask, since I was trying hard to stop poking around for flaws, but I really hoped we’d finally get there in Iowa. Every time I thought of the feel of his skin and the way his hands moved on me so softly and gently, like he was playing his guitar and making love to me with his hands, I wanted to beg him to spend the night. But I could wait, and when it finally happened, it would be right.

Joe and I drove to Iowa in his car on Thanksgiving morning, just the two of us, with all the band’s gear piled into the back of his station wagon with the seats down. The other guys from the band were leaving early Friday morning, and driving back the same night, after the gig. They had families, and Joe had agreed to go down early and get things set up and ready so they could hustle in and out, and be back in time for the long weekend with their families.

While we drove, Joe told me his parents lived in Florida and both his sisters were still in Detroit. His grandmother lived in Minneapolis, and that was part of what had drawn him to Minnesota in the first place. It sounded like he was closer to her than to anyone else in the family.

“Don’t you spend Thanksgiving together?” I asked, watching Joe tap a rhythm on his knee with his fingers under the steering wheel. I reached over and took his hand in mine, and he looked over at me briefly, just to smile.

“Sometimes,” he said. “She’s busy. And she understands the band thing. She gets it’s a business, and that it makes me happy. My sisters still take every opportunity to give me grief about my ex—they feel like I really screwed up when I left my practice and my wife and ‘regressed.’”

“They’re not big on the band, huh?”

“Not many people are,” he said. “I’m a thirty-four-year-old, overall-wearing, small-time children’s musician. Some might say I threw away a perfectly good life for nothing much at all.”

“But your face is on billboards,” I teased. “That’s worth something.”

“I actually hate those billboards,” he said. “Frank had a friend who sold outdoor advertising, and he had all these leftover units at the end of last year, so he gave them to us free. We just had to produce the boards, and they gave us the space. So Theo’s wife designed them, we printed them at Kinko’s, and that’s how my face came to be on billboards. Am I more attractive to you because my face is a face of fame?”

I laughed. He had a phony, billboard-quality smile on his face. “You should go for bus stop benches next. Somehow, the realtors have really cornered that market.” He squeezed my hand, then I pulled it away and ran my fingers up his leg. I heard him suck in a breath and he glanced at me sideways.

“Driving,” he reminded me, his voice a warning.

“I know,” I said, and my fingers trailed lazily back down his leg.

“How much longer is this drive?” he asked with just a hint of whine. His voice had grown low and husky, and I felt his body stiffen under my hand. “Maybe we’ve gone far enough for today?”

I laughed, and kept tickling my fingers across his leg, up his stomach. I moved up to his face and touched his jawline, rubbing my thumb against the tiny bit of stubble that always seemed to be there. My hand found its way to his hair, and I teased at the curls, twisting into them, feeling their silkiness against my fingers. I watched his profile as he watched the road, and I knew it was going to be a long hour before we would be at our hotel.

“Can you stop at this rest stop?” I asked suddenly, spotting a green sign and the off-ramp. “Just for a sec?”

He bit his lip and jerked the car toward the off-ramp, ignoring the signs pointing cars to the left and trucks to the right. He followed signs for the truck parking, and pulled into the empty lot. He put the car in park, and took a deep breath before looking at me. I could see the fire in his eyes, and I literally dove over the center console to kiss him and wrap my hands around his neck. There was nothing comfortable about my position, but I wanted to touch him so badly and I couldn’t wait until we were there. It had to be now, or I’d explode.

The car was still on and the heat vents were blowing warm air against my back while Joe’s breath warmed my neck.
Such Great Heights
by The Postal Service was on the radio, and my boyfriend’s hands were on me and I was happier than I’d been in years. I closed my eyes and my butt began to go numb so I couldn’t feel the rough edges of the center console digging into my jeans under me. All I could feel was Joe’s mouth on mine, and his hand reaching behind me to pull me closer. His hand was inside my shirt, pressing into my back. I leaned into him, and readjusted so I was sort of sitting on his lap, sideways, and he held me close so my elbow wouldn’t press against the steering wheel. His hand had moved, and suddenly it was against my stomach, climbing upward. Somehow, my bra had come undone and his hand was on my breast, while his mouth pressed into mine.

He reached down and pulled at the lever that released his seat back, and we both thudded back against it. I brought one leg over him, and sat straddling him while we kissed in the rest stop parking lot. I could feel him hard under me, and I wanted him right then and there. I reached down and started to unbutton his pants, but he took my hands in his and brought them back up.

“I love the spontaneity, Stella,” he murmured. “But let’s not do this here.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Here.” Even in my hazy, sex-obsessed stupor, I knew this would
not
have been the place I would have planned to make love to Joe for the first time, but there was something about him that made me throw my rules out and rethink everything. I wanted him, and I wanted him now, and I wasn’t going to wait. I couldn’t wait. I’d waited long enough, and this felt right. Somewhat uncomfortable, and my leg was half asleep, but still it felt good.

“Not here,” he said again, chuckling, his voice a whisper. “I’ve been waiting to do it right, and I don’t want to screw it up by making love to you in the car. You deserve better.” He pulled me against him and kissed my ear, sending shivers across the top of my neck. “Let me wait. Please.”

I looked at him, and saw that he meant it. His eyes were pleading, and I could tell it had taken insane amounts of self-control for him to stop things when he had.

“Okay,” I said, biting my lip. He reached his finger up and pushed a curl out of my eyes with his thumb. “What if I told you I put sex-at-a-rest-stop on my list?” I asked, leaning down to kiss him quickly, one more time. “Would you really make me stop?”

“You have sex-at-a-rest-stop on your list?” Joe asked, his eyes sparkling. “Really?”

“I’m not telling,” I shrugged.

“I don’t buy it. You wrote that list when you were fifteen. I highly doubt that’s going to make your list of life goals as a fifteen-year-old… sex in rest stops wasn’t a big feature of John Hughes or Hugh Grant movies.”

I lay against his chest and listened as his heartbeat slowed. He was so soft and warm under me, and I wished we could just teleport to Iowa so I could lay right where I was for the rest of the drive. We stayed like that for a while, with his arms wrapped around me and mine twisting into his hair, until I started to fall asleep and I realized I could very easily crush him if I stayed where I was for an entire nap. I could see the headlines—maybe it would even be on one of those big, electronic billboards—telling everyone that the much-beloved lead singer of the Dog Hounds was crushed to death by his girlfriend in a rest stop parking lot. That would not be good press. Pippa and Heidi would hate me. So I climbed off and settled back into my own seat. Joe brought his seat back up and looked over at me.

“Ready?”

“Can we drive a little faster?” I asked hopefully. “I’m ready to be out of the car. Let’s get there already.”

For much of the rest of the drive, we talked about stupid stuff—anything to distract us from the sex waiting at the end of our drive. Movies (we were both big chickens when it came to horror films), music (he was a proud Britney Spears fan… I promised to have another listen, with an open mind—though I knew he couldn’t change my mind even if it made him dance adorably around the room), and family. He told me about his sisters, who sounded a lot like me, and his parents, who lived in a retirement community in Florida.

“I’ve always kind of wanted to live in a retirement community,” I admitted.

“You really are a planner,” he teased. “You’re already thinking about retirement?”

“No,” I said. “I mean now. Like, I’d kind of like to live in a retirement community now. I think I’d enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by friends and people who would be there for you if anything were to go wrong. I’m sure there would always be someone up for a game of cards, and it just seems like the kind of place where you would never be lonely.”

“You want to live in a retirement community as a thirty-four-year-old unmarried woman?”

“Well, not
immediately
. But it’s something I wish wasn’t frowned upon.”

“Who frowns upon it?”

“People,” I said, though I’d never actually discussed this idea with anyone. I was just certain people would think it was weird if I were to move in with a bunch of seventy-year-olds. “But I think it would be great. I like playing cards. I’d like having someone shovel and rake for me. It would be really relaxing. I don’t have any grandparents of my own, and with my parents gone, I’ve just always craved that feeling of being looked after.” I thought about Laurel, and how her “caring” had always been more judging, but at least it had felt like I had someone thinking about me.

“Don’t the ladies at your water aerobics class sort of do that for you?”

Of course—Heather and Barbara and the other women at the Y. I had recovered from my back injury well enough that I could surely be doing some other form of exercise by now, but I’d continued to go because the women there had grown on me. I liked the way they seemed to have their eye on what I was doing, and were going to make sure I didn’t screw anything up too badly.