If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (2 page)

He led me upstairs and I studied him from the back. He looked good: a little thinner than the last time I’d seen him, and
his wavy light brown hair hadn’t been cut for a while, but both things suited him. The guy could still pass for a college
student even though he was over thirty.

The last time we’d gone out for drinks together, we had both been carded.

We entered his apartment. It looked exactly the same as it had six months ago, when I’d last been there: an IKEA sofa, a couple
of framed generic prints on the wall, a large-screen HD
TV. Not much else. “So you already have another job lined up?” I asked, turning toward him as he closed the door behind us.

Ryan nodded. “Yep. With Jonathan Bluestein.” I must have looked pretty blank, because he added, “He directed that movie I
worked on a few years ago,
Coach Class.
I’m not sure you ever saw it.” He didn’t bother to wait for my response. “Anyway, I leave for Turkey sometime early or mid-December
for a three-month shoot.”

“Really? Turkey? Wow.” I tried not to sound disappointed. I thought he’d be in town longer than that. “You’ll miss Christmas.”

“Yeah and it’s so meaningful to me,” he said. “What with my not being religious or having kids. I care as much about missing
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.” There was a slight, possibly awkward pause. “Take off your shoes, stay awhile,” he said then
with a sly grin. “You want something to drink?”

“It’s not even noon yet.”

“I’m still on European time.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not. I’ll have a glass of water, though.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge, which
was empty except for a bottle of wine, a few take-out packets of soy sauce and hot mustard, and a six-pack of Evian water.
“Do you
ever
eat at home?” I asked as he handed me one of the waters.

“Never.”

We went back into the other room and sat next to each other on the sofa, a little stiff and awkward the way we always were
when we hadn’t seen each other for a while, and he told me about the shoot he’d just been on, which had taken him first to
Paris and then to London.

“You’re so freakin’ lucky,” I said. “I want your life.”

“You can’t have it. I still use it.” He flicked at my hair.
“What’s going on with this? I remember when you first did this green stripe thing, but now it’s looking kind of faded and
putrid. And then there’s some red dye over on this side—”

I moved my head away from his touch irritably. “I don’t know. I’m just growing it out, I guess.”

“Then dye it all back to normal,” he said. “It just looks like a mess. And then there’s the piercings and the tattoos…”

I self-consciously reached up and touched the ring in my eyebrow and the stud in my nose.

He shook his head. “Honestly, Rickie, when are you going to clean yourself up? Let yourself look like a pretty girl for once?”

I crossed my arms. “So you’re saying I’m
not
pretty?”

“You’re pretty,” he said and, leaning forward, carefully uncrossed my arms like he was peeling a banana.

That was enough of a cue for me: I fell back against the sofa cushions, eagerly pulling him down on top of me. This is what
I had come to see him for, after all.

I was twenty-five years old and rarely had the opportunity to have sex. Lust ruled my body. I couldn’t even look at a men’s
jeans ad without getting aroused. So, once the dam had burst, I started grabbing at Ryan like some kind of crazed
thing
, eagerly sliding my hands over his chest and then tearing off my own shirt to offer up my small breasts to his touch.

Everything he did felt so good I could have screamed—my whole body, all of my skin, every inch of me responded to the slightest
touch from his fingers. When we finally moved to his bed, both of us stripping off our jeans a little frantically before climbing
up, I pushed him down and straddled him and he laughed and let me do whatever I wanted until he was breathing pretty hard
and then he rolled me over onto my back and took charge.

I wondered at some point whether I was the last woman
he’d slept with or if there had been another—or others—since then, some Parisian girl, or maybe a British one. I told myself
it didn’t matter. But I couldn’t put the question completely out of my mind.

Afterwards, we lay side by side, catching our breath.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said eventually.

“Never,” Ryan said. “We have to never stop meeting like this. Promise me that when you’re married and all settled down with
like ten or twelve kids, you’ll still meet me like this.”

“You don’t think my husband will object?”

“Nah. He’ll be grateful. How could one man ever keep up with you, Rickie?”

“I’m really not such a major nympho,” I said. “I only seem like one because I get it so seldom. I mean, this is it for me
until you come back to town again.”

“I’m here for a little while this time. There’ll be time for more.”

“Good.” I curled up against him so I could nuzzle at his neck.

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” Ryan asked, pushing me away so he could look at my face. “Every time I come back to town,
I think, ‘This time Rickie will be with someone.’ ”

“Are you relieved or disappointed when I’m not?”

“Do you really have to ask?” He pushed my overgrown hair back over my shoulder and studied the effect. “From a purely selfish
standpoint, I’m thrilled you’re available. But as your sort-of-not-really older brother, I worry about you.”

“Don’t. I’m fine. And please don’t refer to yourself as my brother when we’re still in bed together.”

“You should be doing more with your life,” he said. “That’s how you meet people. When are you going to go back to school?”

“I take classes online.” Only one easy course at a time, but I always kept myself enrolled so I could tell people I was working
on getting my bachelor’s degree. Otherwise, they acted all judgmental—like Ryan was right now.

Unfortunately, he had heard that line too many times. “Oh, please. That doesn’t get you out and meeting people. If you’re
not going to get serious about your education, then you should get a job. How long are you going to keep mooching off your
parents, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How long are you going to keep living like a college student and running away to other countries
to avoid making any long-term decisions about your life?”

“Ten more years,” he said calmly. “At least.”

“You’ll be over forty by then.”

“So? And you still haven’t answered my question. Do you think about the future at all, Rickie?”

I rolled onto my back and glared at the ceiling. “Leave me alone, will you?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Don’t need help,” I said. “Sex. I need sex.” I sat up and made a grab for him. He caught my hand in his.

“Give me a few more minutes,” he said. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Let me recharge.”

“Now that’s romantic,” I said and sat back against the headboard with a pout.

“So how’s Melanie doing?” he asked, playing with my hand a little. “She okay?”

“Not really. I could kill your brother.”

He dropped my hand. “It’s hardly all his fault.”

“He cheated on her,” I said. “With that stupid actress. How is that not all his fault?”

“She didn’t have to throw him out so quickly. She could
have given him another chance. People sometimes do things that they regret. They don’t deserve to have their lives ruined
because of one bad moment.”

I pulled the blanket up over my body and pinned it across my chest with my arms. “You probably don’t know this because you’ve
been away and Gabriel’s not going to rush to tell you, but he’s been going around publicly with that woman and totally throwing
it in poor Mel’s face that he’s in love with someone younger and prettier. He doesn’t give a shit about saving the marriage.”

“You’re wrong,” Ryan said. “Melanie broke his heart when she threw him out.”

“
He
cheated on
her
.”

“She could have forgiven him.”

“Some things are unforgivable.”

“Nothing’s unforgivable.”

I scowled. “That’s what cheaters always say.”

“I’ve never cheated on anyone in my life.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t cheat when you don’t commit.”

He gave an indifferent shrug. “Maybe. But my point still stands: your sister could have saved the marriage if she’d wanted
to.”

“God, I hate men!” I slid out of the bed and reached down for my underpants, which were still caught in my jeans. “You can
behave like total assholes and then find a way to pin the blame on everyone but you.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Ryan said. “And why are you getting dressed already?”

I turned to him, wearing only my underwear. “Because Melanie is the only truly decent person I know, and your brother screwed
her over and broke her heart and you’re defending him.”

He put his hands up. “I’m sorry. Look, I don’t want to fight with you, Rickie.”

“I know,” I said dully. “You want to have sex with me.”

“Right. Is that so bad?”

I considered for a moment and then I sighed. “Nah. That’s why I’m here.” I crawled back into the bed next to him. “But let’s
not talk about them anymore, okay? We’re not going to agree on this one and it makes me too angry.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said. He held out his arms and I moved into them and against his chest. He gently rubbed my arm and my shoulder,
and then his hand slid down to cover my left breast. He cupped it in his hand while his thumb lightly played with the nipple
until I made a little involuntary noise of pleasure. “There,” he said. “Now are we back in sync?”

“Depends,” I said. “Are you recharged?”

“Getting there,” he said with a grin. “Definitely getting there.”

“I’m hungry,” Ryan said a little while later. “You want to grab something?”

I sat up and looked at my watch, which was the only thing I was wearing at that particular moment. It was a good one, too,
a vintage Hamilton that my parents had given me for my twenty-fifth birthday. I had taken it as my mother’s not-so-subtle
way of suggesting I keep to a schedule. “I should get going.”

“What time is it?” he asked with a yawn. “I’m still so jet-lagged I never know whether it’s morning or night.”

“It’s past two-thirty. I have to pick Noah up from school at three.”

Ryan propped a pillow under his head. “How is the little guy doing, anyway?” he said in the affable but remote tone he always
used when the subject of Noah came up.

I leaned over the side of the bed to snatch up my clothes. “He’s fine.”

That satisfied him: it wasn’t like he really cared. “Great. Hey, there’s this new place about three blocks away I want to
try. I think it’s Lebanese. Something Middle Eastern, anyway. You sure you don’t have time to just run over for a few minutes?”

“I’m worried about traffic.”

“What would happen if you were a couple of minutes late? I mean, they don’t throw him out on the street, right?”

I shook my head. “He freaks if I’m late.”

“Too bad. I really wanted to try this place with you.”

I didn’t say anything, but I was bummed too. It would have been nice to have lazily gotten dressed and wandered out to that
restaurant and eaten there; we probably would have had the place to ourselves at this time of day. Instead I’d be fighting
traffic all the way back to the Westside just to sit in car pool for half an hour with my little car heating up in the sun
and people cutting me off with their enormous SUVs and Noah complaining as soon as he got in the car about something his teacher
or one of the other kids had said to him that had hurt his feelings and ruined his day, his week, his month, his year…

“Maybe we can have dinner one night next week,” Ryan said.

“I’ll have to check with my parents.” I made a face. “And beg them to babysit. You know how I love to owe them favors.”

He yawned again. “No wonder you don’t get out much.”

“Yeah.” I got off the bed and pulled on my pants. “Having a kid at nineteen really screws up your dating life,” I said, trying
to sound lighthearted about it.

“Well,” he said, closing his eyes sleepily, “you’ll always have me.”

O
n my way back down the stairs, I fished my cell phone out of my purse and saw, with a sick feeling of guilt, that I had missed
a couple of calls from Noah’s school. This couldn’t be good. I called back and was immediately forwarded to the nurse, who
informed me that I should come as soon as possible because Noah wasn’t feeling well. “Don’t worry, Mom,” she said in a carefully
cheerful voice that meant he was in the room with her. “He’s fine.” I resisted a familiar urge to point out I wasn’t her mom
and told her I’d be there as soon as I could.

The drive across town felt endless. Traffic was bad, and even when it cleared up for a few blocks, I’d get stuck behind someone
slow.

Car pool had already begun by the time I got to school. I parked out on the street and raced inside, taking the stairs three
at a time as I headed up to the administrative offices on the top floor, where the nurse’s office was. Noah was sitting on
the edge of her sofa, his shoulders hunched forward and his arms folded tight across his stomach like he had to protect it
from an incoming fist.

“Mom!” he said, raising his head as I ran over to him. “Where were you? We were calling and calling.” His face was pale and
he had dark circles under his eyes.

“You okay?” I asked. He shook his head. I knelt down on the floor next to him, holding my arms out, and he collapsed against
my shoulder. “What happened?”

“Caleb gave me a brownie,” he said into my neck.

“And you ate it?”

“He said it was gluten free.”

“Noah—”

“Really, Mom!” He sat up and looked at me with big, earnest eyes. “He asked me if I wanted a brownie and I said I’m not allowed
to eat it unless it’s gluten free and he said it was and that his mom got it specially for me. So I ate it and then my stomach
hurt and then I threw up and he started laughing and so did the other boys. They high-fived him.”