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I wrap my hands around his, keeping his palm on my chest. The one thing I’ve learned is to trust myself. To know that I am enough.
“Good,” he says with a quiet nod and a small smile. With my hand in his, Jesse pulls me into the backyard to be with the people we love.
Epilogue
Jesse
Six Months Later
Lulu teaches late on Tuesdays. Normally, I wait for her, since my last class ends at six. I get in some study time at the library or grab a coffee with George at one of the coffee shops around campus.
Tonight, Lulu drove her own car to work and I came home early. I tidy. Wipe down the mirrors in my little home gym, pick up the hair elastics and socks she’s left there. Feed the cat and freshen her water and clean her litter. I change the sheets on the bed, shower. Open the chest at the end of the bed and find the things I need. When she moved in before she left for Lancaster, she brought everything.
“Are you sure?” she’d asked. “My parents won’t mind if I leave stuff in the apartment. We can do this slowly.”
“I’m sure,” I’d said. I wanted this place to be home when I picked her up from the airport. I wanted to bring her home and have all of her comforts at the ready. Clothes, books, a small DVD collection of rom-coms, her mugs, her favorite spoon. The plastic bin of sex toys that we rehomed to the chest at the end of my bed to combine our collection.
“It’s fast,” George had said, after she’d left, but I was still hanging some of her photos and prints on the walls.
I don’t know if I can explain it to him or anyone else, even myself, but both of us feel it. Even if we haven’t known each other that long, weknoweach other. I know that she can’t have more than one cup of coffee in the morning or her hands start to shake, that she reads her students’ essays out loud under her breath, and she will only use one brand of tampon. I know that she still can’t view that movie we sat down to watch together without putting her hands down my pants. Or hers. I know she still questions herself, how to deal with people at work, if she’s talking too much. She knows me, too. That I listen to country music when I work out and I won’t drive more than five miles above the speed limit. She knows when to give me a gentle push and say yes to time with my former coworkers from the fire department and when to let me stay home, my head in her lap, her fingers in my growing hair.
And anything we don’t know, we’ll learn. We’re always ready to learn each other.
“Jess?” she calls from the front door. Her keys clink in the plate by the door. I center the toys on the clean bedspread. Water still clings to my back from the shower. I stand, then sit on the edge of the bed again. She knew, she agreed. She was the one who asked, for fuck’s sake, but I’m still nervous.
No. Not nervous. I’m excited, horny. Vulnerable. This will be a first for us. And after, I have plans to ensure it won’t be a last.
She finds me there on the end of our bed. My elbows on my knees, staring at the reason why I should have said yes to her offer to paint my toenails last night. Lulu walks quietly into the room. She sets her bag down by the door. Her feet are bare as they stop in front of me, her polish red and shining in the dim bedroom light.
“How was class?” I ask. She’s in the process of taking her hair out of the high bun on top of her head. She pulls her T-shirt dress off without preamble, standing in front of me in a pair of plain white panties and a blue bra with small white flowers.
“Hold, please.” She unhooks her bra and drops it on the floor on top of the dress. “Thank god.” She sighs. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
My hands migrate to her hips, like they’re called there, rub up and down her rib cage. “Nothing,” I say to her boobs. She palms my face, laughing. Bends over me to kiss me. She tastes like the strawberry candies she has on her desk at work. “Have you eaten yet?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says too quickly. She grimaces when it’s clear I don’t believe her. “I snacked.”
“Do you want to eat first?”
“Later.” She cups my face. It’s her touch that calms me, the anxious energy bleeding out by my fingers, my toes curling into the rug beneath the bed. She kisses me again, quick, light. Without thought. It’s one of my favorite kinds of kisses. It means I know she’ll do it again. I savor each one.
“How do you want to do it?” she asks.
We got very good at FaceTime and phone sex the four weeks she was in Lancaster. Sexting and selfies each put in a hidden folder in our phones. Sometimes we’d pretend it was like before. We were touching ourselves wishing it was the other, not because we were thousands of miles apart but because it was forbidden. It made the short time apart a little more bearable. We still do it now that she’s home. Touch ourselves on the couch, the bed, get each other off in the kitchen, in the truck, but never kiss. Use toys, or breath, or friction to fuck and it’s wild, a little messy, crude. I love it. But it’s not for tonight.
“I want to touch you,” I say. “Everywhere. I want to kiss you.”
She goes to shower and I crawl to the top of the bed, grabbing the lube as I go. My dick is already half-hard and I push the waistband of my briefs down. The faucet squeaks behind the closed door of the bathroom, the water splashes against the porcelain tub. I cup my balls as I imagine Lulu wiggling out of her underwear, the way her breasts sway and bounce as she moves. The metal ring of the shower curtain being pulled back sends a zip up my spine. I can see in my mind the way her skin turns pink under the water. The paths the water will take as it works its way down her body. I’ve watched the rivulets as they fall over her collarbone, as the path forks around her breasts, drips over her belly and into her pubic hair. I picture the suds, can smell her lavender soap, see the lather she makes between her hands with the bar of handmade soap that she brought back in bulk from England.
By the time she turns the water off, my cock is hard in my hand, slick from the pre-come beading at the tip. She steps out of the bathroom a few moments later. Her hair is back up in a bun to keep it dry, short wisps around her ears and at the back of her neck curling from the heat of the shower. Steam follows her out, moody and dramatic as she steps onto the rug, leans one knee onto the bed. She’s flushed, just like I imagined. She pulls her hair down and it brushes her pebbled nipples. Even though she’s wearing far fewer clothes, she reminds me of the first time I saw her. The smile on her face is the same, open and unwavering.
“You started without me.”
“I’m prepping,” I counter.
She crawls up the bed, pausing to press her lips to my knee, my thigh. She drags her fingers through my leg hair, nuzzles her nose through the hair on my stomach and chest, but avoids my cock, which only makes me squeeze myself harder. I move lower on the bed, letting my legs fall open as she straddles me. Lulu wraps her hands around me, one at my base, one at the head. She leans over me, spitting. We don’t need the lube. The bottle is full and my dick is slick with it. But it gets me hot.
That’s what friends with benefits, then phone sex, gifted us: learning exactly what the other person liked, and didn’t. We got to communicate in ways we never would have when being friends was more important than anything else. It’s what makes it so easy for me to say now, “I want to do it like this.”
