Every Other Saturday (23 page)

He pushed her thighs a bit farther apart and felt her every muscle tense around him. “Okay?” he said.

“Um,
yeah
,” she said emphatically, both hands over her face.

Dave reached out his tongue to taste her and was rewarded with a gratifying gasp from behind Julia’s hands. He smiled, and then probed a little deeper, taking in the salty flavor of her, feeling her squirm. She moaned and pressed against him, and soon he found himself lost in her, his tongue licking and circling and pulsing with a mind of its own. He found the firm, warm spot that made her squirm the most, moan the loudest, and concentrated his attention there for a few seconds at a time, always pulling away. Finally her hands were on the sides of his head, tangled urgently in his hair, and Julia was begging him not to stop. “Oh. My. Fuck.
Please, Dave
.”

Surrounded by warmth and wetness, he licked and sucked at her slippery flesh until Julia’s hips bucked hard against his face and her words turned to incoherent cries. There was a flood of hot, wet warmth, which made him so crazy in turn he was worried he might lose it before his pants were even off. Her body shivered violently against him, and he gripped her full hips tighter to feel the full force of it. He had never enjoyed someone else’s orgasm nearly this much.

As she spasmed with pleasure, Dave crawled back up to lie next to her, kissing her and feeling her tremors run through him, too. When her body finally relaxed, Julia opened her eyes and looked at him. “You were right,” she said, quavering. “It is seafoam green.”

Dave laughed, but Julia sat up quickly and took his hand.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where?”

“Shower.” She gestured at her painted torso. “And condoms.”

Julia led him upstairs, and he followed her pale, naked body like a beacon. She turned the bathroom light on dim and started the shower running in a business-like way, as though she did this every day. “You don’t mind, do you? I want to get this off before it dries.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Though I’m a little insulted you want to get rid of the evidence so quickly.”

She smirked, but her eyes were dark and focused as she began to unbutton his jeans for him. “I was hoping you’d join me,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The intensity, he realized, wasn’t business-like; it was just Julia. Even though she was a little heavier than some women he knew, she was completely un-self-conscious being naked and covered in green paint, taking his jeans off in her bathroom. He was glad, too. He liked her this way. Maybe more than he should.

His mind was pulled sharply from any thought of his feelings or their appropriateness, however, when Julia pulled him into the shower with her. It was an oversize shower with stone tile walls and floor, with a huge shower head hanging right in the middle. They kissed and caressed each other under the heavy, hot rain, and Julia lathered her own breasts and belly with soap with one hand while stroking him lightly with the other. As he watched the green paint mix with lather and cascade down her body, he grew harder under her fingers than he had ever imagined possible. “And I thought putting it on you was sexy,” he said.

“Just wait.” Julia grinned at him, and then knelt in front of him in the water. In one movement, she grabbed his hips to pull him farther into the stream of hot water and took him into her mouth at the same time. Dave groaned. It was exquisite. Julia’s lovely mouth and rich full lips were like magic on his cock, and she alternated a deep, sucking pressure with running her tongue along the bottom of his length, so that he nearly passed out from the pleasure. Dave didn’t know whether it was three minutes or thirty, but in what seemed like very short order, he heard himself moaning Julia’s name and wrapping his fingers in her dark, wet hair as he finally exploded on Julia’s white, wet breasts, just as the shower was beginning to cool.

His knees wobbled when Julia turned her lovely pale back to him and handed him a loofah sponge. “Do you mind?”

He traced the sponge along her back, from the rose tattoo on the back of her neck, down to the Cheshire Cat and following the graceful curve of her spine to her plump, round ass. How could he possibly be getting hard again? He was exhausted and starving. And the water was getting cold.

She turned around and kissed him again, shuddering with gooseflesh under the icy water as she turned it off. They stepped out and she handed him a towel, soft and clean. He wanted food, and still wanted Julia. He couldn’t decide which of these appetites was stronger.

As though reading his mind, she said, “Hungry?”

“Starving.”

She wrapped a second towel over her hair and led him out of the bathroom, still holding one hand. “Julia.” He stopped her in a sudden rush of emotion.

“Hmmm?”

“I love…your tattoos.”

“Thanks,” she said brightly, and went on. They went down to the kitchen in their towels as though every bit of this were normal and appropriate. As though there would not be a sticky mess to clean up the next day.

Julia woke early to the intense and forgotten feeling of not being alone. Before she had opened her eyes to greet the dawn, she could sense it fading in behind her eyelids and she could feel the presence of a man in her bed. Even though she was turned away from him and they weren’t touching, she could hear his breathing, soft and regular, and felt the drape of the sheet down her naked back and knew Dave was awake. The exposed skin of her back prickled in awareness of his gaze on her. She did not turn toward him. Not yet.

Before conscious thought and conversation could intrude, she wanted to preserve the peaceful surface of the morning, like the calm on the surface of a lake before it is rippled by the first morning wind. Eyes closed tight, she did a silent inventory, wiggling her toes first, and then noticing the pleasant soreness in her muscles—
every
muscle, she realized. Her shoulders and arms were sore from painting, mostly. But the rest of her—her abs, thighs, and calves, and a more poignant ache between her legs—bore the pleasant pain of memory.

Dave stirred behind her, tracing her upper arm with one light finger to wake her. “No,” she murmured. She wasn’t ready. She needed five more minutes in this hazy netherworld, before reality streamed in through the window and they had to face it.

He gave her three minutes. They didn’t speak; she did not turn. She knew if she looked at his face in the morning light, the spell would be broken. Dave just rested his hand on her arm and Julia watched the bedside clock. At 6:58, he kissed the back of her neck and got quietly out of bed and into the shower. Julia had the sense he didn’t want to break the spell either.

Lying in bed alone, however, had no magic. Julia shrugged into her robe, and took the jeans and polo she would wear to the store to the kids’ bathroom in the hallway. She showered quickly, using Brandon’s Spiderman bubble bath as soap and tying her hair up with one of Mia’s pink ponytail elastics. By the time she emerged, Dave was downstairs, cleaning up the living room.

“It actually looks like we got very little on the carpet.” He didn’t look up at her. “A couple of little spots, but I poured some mineral spirits on them, so they should come out.”

“That’s…impressive.” She wasn’t sure what to do here. Hug him? Kiss him? Offer him coffee?

Dave collected the paper towels, painter’s tape, and dried brushes from around the room. “You can probably salvage the open paint can.” The tips of his ears turned pink as he picked up the wayward lid. “It doesn’t look too dried out.”

“Thanks.” She spotted her panties—balled up and covered in green paint—and felt her stomach churn. She picked them up as covertly as possible and took them to the kitchen trash, realizing as she did that she was ravenous again. After their shower the night before, she and Dave had made a meal of cheese sticks and animal crackers, and shared a single-serving spaghetti marinara from her freezer. It had seemed terribly romantic at the time, especially considering it became a prelude to Julia dragging Dave back upstairs to the bedroom—not that he’d been unwilling to be dragged.

She shook off these reflections. Last night was over, whatever it was, and she had not the faintest idea what was going to happen next. She returned to the living room, where Dave had industriously begun the task of pulling painter’s tape from the wall. Clearly, he was looking for any busywork to avoid facing her.

“Are you hungry?” she said. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah.” Finally he did look at her, and grinned. “I worked off that gourmet dinner of yours about seven hours ago.”

Julia forced herself to maintain eye contact. “Back to Waffle House?”

“As long as you don’t storm out on me again. Experience tells me that waffles piss you off.”

“Waffles are soothing,” she said. “
You
piss me off.”

# # #

“So, who is it tonight?” The words came out in a shaky rush. She didn’t want to be this needy, to bring up the subject right away, but she had to ask. She kept her eyes fixated firmly on the hash brown section of the menu, as though her choice of how to prepare greasy shredded potatoes were a high-stakes decision.

“What?” Dave said. Then, “Oh. Tonight. Um, I don’t know if I’m going.”

Julia looked at him, heart pounding so loud she was sure he could hear it. He was considering canceling his J-Date thing for her. She could feel herself flush with pleasure, and certainly the idea that Dave would be out with someone else tonight had been irritating her all morning, but… Wow, that was big. Was she ready for this? She tried to sound casual. “You’re not?”

“I haven’t decided, but…I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right.”

“Because of me?”

“Well, yeah. I know we are friends and everything, but I’d still feel like an asshole going out with someone else the next day, after…everything that happened between us.”

So it was just tonight’s date he was thinking of canceling. Not because he didn’t want to date anyone else, but because it didn’t seem
proper
. Awesome. Julia felt like she’d been stabbed in the heart with a fork. Even worse because she’d known better, dammit.

Dave put his menu back on the table and nodded at the waitress as she scurried by, saying she would be right with them. “I know you think I’m a callous ass, but I’m really not.”

“Clearly.”

Her tone got his attention. He leaned forward. “I care about you, Julia—”

Oh, no way she was going to listen to a breakup speech. Not after one night. No way in hell. “Dave, don’t worry about it. You’re not hurting my feelings. You should go tonight.”

“I should?”

“Of course. You have your whole experiment set up and your fans are expecting a date blog next week. You can’t ruin it because of me.”

“I don’t mind skipping this one, Julia. I feel weird about it.”

“What about next Saturday, then? And the one after that? You can’t derail your whole dating life because of one crazy night.”

He covered her hands with his and pulled them to the middle of the table. Julia hadn’t noticed until that moment that they had been balled into fists. It was an effort not to yank them away from him. “It was a crazy night,” he said in a low voice. “In the very best way.”

“It was fun for me, too,” she said dismissively. “But it was what it was, right?”

He shrugged. “I thought what it was was pretty great. That’s a whole side of you I never imagined was there.”

The waitress took their orders and called them out to the grill. Dave stirred his coffee in silence and Julia poured creamer packets into hers. Breathing deeply, she began to see the rational side that was her only hope.

“If you didn’t go tonight, I’d feel responsible for your blog not going well. That would be a lot of pressure on us—I mean, on one random night between friends—wouldn’t it?”

Dave seemed to consider this. “Yeah, I guess it would,” he said slowly.

The waitress plopped down two omelet plates in front of them. They both looked at their plates, but neither of them moved to eat. “Everything okay?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Dave said. When she left, he said, “We are friends, aren’t we?”

“I think so, yeah. I hope so?”

“On my end, absolutely. I never thought I’d say this about a woman, but you’ve been the person I can talk to the most lately.”

Julia nodded. “Me, too. You’ve been…great. During this whole thing.” That she understood completely, and the idea that she and Dave might not be friends seemed suddenly terrifying. She’d just have to get over last night. Pretend it never happened.

“We’re both adults, not a couple of sappy teenagers. And last night was just…what it was. Right?”

“Yeah, absolutely. Just a couple of buddies painting a room.” He smirked.

Julia felt heat rise in her face and looked down at her untouched omelet. She fiddled with the knife, rubbing a dish spot with her thumb.

She dug around for her confidence, pouring as much as she could spare into her voice. “You should go tonight. You have this whole thing laid out, on your blog. It’s not like I’m going to be your January Woman anyway. I’m not even Jewish.”

“That’s…true.” He moved his hash browns around with his fork.

Does his family know he eats ham in his hash browns?
Julia thought.

He raised an eyebrow and her body shuddered with a wisp of memory from the night before. “You wouldn’t want to be, anyway. Right?”

And there it was. The question she had faithfully kept at bay for weeks, dismissing it as absurd and unattainable by turns. Even last night. If she had allowed this question to muddy the waters, she would have thrown him out as soon as the first paint splattered.

He needed her to say no; she could see that. His anxiety for her agreement was palpable across the fake wood table. And there was no good reason to say yes. “We’d be terrible together,” she blurted. “No offense.”

“None taken. And you hate sports.”

“Mostly, yeah. I don’t mind baseball.”

“Really?”

“Well, Brandon plays baseball. It’s easy to follow. Not like football.”

“Football isn’t hard to follow. Two teams, one ball, a goal at each end. What’s hard about that?” He took a bite of hash browns.

She pointed her fork at him, relaxing into the debate. “What you just described is soccer. Football has all those weird rules and scoring: six points for this, one point for that, three points, four points, yards, penalties, who can keep up?”

“You can’t get four points in football.”

Julia took a bite of raisin toast and shrugged. “You can in soccer. Four goals, four points. Easy.”

“So you like soccer, then?”

“Not really. I was just presenting an example of something easier to follow than football.”

He laughed. “Right, okay.”

The waitress came by and refilled their coffees. It was not particularly good coffee, but Julia took a sizable gulp anyway. Between the store and tonight’s wedding, she had a good fifteen hours of work ahead of her. Not to mention cleaning the carpet in her living room. They ate in silence for several minutes, both focused on their plates.

“Random question,” Dave said suddenly. “Did you ever think about converting? With…Adam?”

“Of course I thought about it.” Julia could hear the defensive tone in her voice, and felt bad about it, but this was a sore spot with her.

“Why didn’t you? I’m just curious.”

“You make it sound like a simple question.”

“It’s not?”

“No, Dave. The whole emotional and spiritual history that went into my decision not to convert to Judaism when I married my ex-husband is not a simple question.”

“Oh,” he said, hands thrown up. “You’re right. None of my business. Sorry.”

Julia forked another bite of omelet, staring at its bright yellow, thousand-calorie glory. “It’s just a sore subject.”

“Consider the subject dropped. You have strong feelings—I completely respect that.”

Julia chewed, considering. She should let it rest, she knew, because nothing good could come of a religious discussion between them. Not now. They had almost survived the awkward morning after. In ten minutes, she’d be alone and on her way to work, and everything would be back to normal. Not nearly enough time to cover this huge subject, which she definitely did not want to discuss with this man. This man, possibly less than any other.

“It’s not that I’m some kind of super-Christian,” she said, the need to be understood defeating her better judgment. “I’ve never been that religious. And I don’t have anything against Judaism. My kids are Jewish.”

“As we’ve established.” With a wry smile, Dave picked up the grease-stained check from the top of the napkin dispenser. “How do they even decode these checks? They’re more complicated than, like, football.”

He was gently changing the subject by ribbing her, but for some reason she wasn’t ready to let his original question go. “I’ve actually developed a real affection for the Jewish faith. I’m just not sure it’s
my
faith.”

“I understand completely.” He gestured at her plate. “Did you want to finish? I’ve got time, but I know you need to open the store.”

She waved away the rest of the omelet, grabbing the last piece of raisin toast before standing up. She held it in her mouth—probably unladylike—and shrugged into her jacket, thinking of all the things she could say to Dave about her relationship with Judaism. How Adam had pressured her, lightly at first, and then with increasing fervor as their relationship became more serious. How his family had bullied and then shamed her during their engagement, refusing to speak to either Adam or Julia for months. Only her promise that their future children could be fully Jewish—a solution presented by Adam’s rabbi—had swayed his parents and made their marriage possible. It had been icy formality and forced politeness ever since.

The truth was, Julia wouldn’t have minded conversion for itself. She loved all the Jewish rituals, and her loose attachment to her family’s Catholicism had more or less broken when her father passed away. Aside from Christmas Eve with Caroline, she hadn’t been in a non-Jewish religious service in years. But something about taking that plunge, immersing herself in the mikveh and leaving everything of who she was behind, felt like giving Adam too much of herself. And she had been right, hadn’t she, not to trust her ex with the whole her? He had betrayed what she had given him; imagine how shattered she would be now if she had given him even more of herself, her faith. No, it was unthinkable.