How Not To Fall (9 page)

I begin with the usual, “Not much to tell,” and then ask for more guidance. “The story of what aspect of my life? There're a few different stories.”

“What about the dancing? How did that start?”

“Oh! How that started is simple. When I learned to walk, I would always walk on my toes, which my parents decided meant I should take dance lessons, so when I was three, they signed me up for Baby Ballerina lessons at Joffrey, which is—”

“What? You were training with the Joffrey Ballet when you were three?”

“No no, not ‘training with,'” I say. “I took lessons, like lots of little girls do. And I liked it, so I kept taking lessons, and by the time I was ten, I started in the young dancers program, and then by the time I was twelve, I was dancing five days a week. I did the summer intensive when I was thirteen, and then I auditioned for the trainee program and got in, and then . . .” I pause and think.

“There was this moment when I was fifteen. I was in a guest instructor class taught by this really famous dancer, and she came over to me and gave me a correction—this really important correction, right? Like, I'm getting this life-changing correction from this amazing artist—and what she did was this.” I hold the fingers of my right hand in the fingers of my left hand and adjust the angles of my thumb, index, and middle fingers. “And I was like, ‘This is it. This is what it means to make art with your body.' And that was the moment when I knew . . . I didn't have the thing that dancers have. I could learn the technique, I could practice as hard as anyone, be as driven to be perfect as anyone, but it's not the way art expressed itself in me.

“I loved dancing,
loved
it. It was fascinating to me, and a glorious challenge. And I loved working hard. I loved being pushed and challenged and yelled at sometimes and hugged other times and told, ‘Look, you can get there, you just need to work really hard on these three things, and you'll get there.' I loved it, the
toughness
of it. And there I was, dancing eight hours a day and doing my academics basically as a hobby, right, and I was—”

I stop, with sudden, senseless tears in my eyes, as I remember the intensity of my loneliness then, my sense of being torn away from a member of my family—a member of my own body. I swallow them back and continue, “I was really missing the math and science I'd been obsessed with in junior high. And what I realized is that it was
science
that made me feel like
me
.” We've hiked up a big hill now, both of us a little out of breath. I pause and look at Charles. “Does that make any sense?”

Without answering, he waves us over to a fallen log, and we sit side by side at the top of the hill, overlooking the valley and the creek. “What then?”

“Well, I explained to my parents and then to my teachers, which was horrible, but they were all really understanding. Nobody was mean or judgmental—they actually helped me with transferring to Bronx Science. They understood. I mean, more than anything else to be a dancer, you have to
want
to be a dancer, it has to be your life, your identity, your art, your soul. And it wasn't my soul, it was only my body. My soul is science. My soul is . . . the biology of the brain.”

We sit there for a few minutes. I close my eyes and let the sunlight warm my eyelids. I inhale the sweet May breeze and listen to it in the trees.

I put my head on Charles's shoulder and say, “There's this one student in the ballet class I teach—you'll see her if you go to the recital, she stands out a mile. She has it. She's eleven, and she's an artist. She doesn't even know that's not how everyone experiences dancing. She thinks it's automatic that your personhood just comes out when you move your body. I've been encouraging her to get preprofessional training, hooking her up with a school in Indy. They can give her a scholarship. I've had a couple of moments of envying her, when I see how her entire being shines when she dances.”

I tilt my head up to face him. “But then I remember, I shine other ways.”

“You do indeed,” Charles says, and he puts his hand in my hair and pulls my face to his. He kisses me there at the top of the hill, in the sunshine and the breeze and the sweet smell of leaf litter. I fist my hands into his shirt and squeak with pleasure.

When he pulls away, I say, “I was afraid you would argue with me about when second base started.”

“I probably would have, if you'd given me a chance.”

“But then again, you proved this morning how little regard you have for the rules,” I grin.

He grins back and stands up and says, “I never touched you. Come on.”

We hike on, and he says, “So then, Indiana?”

“Yep, Indiana. I came here to work with Professor Smith, and I've been in her lab every semester but my very first one. And next, eight years of med school and research. It is weird as hell to think I'll be in school until I'm thirty. But that's what I get for being just ordinary smart and not a genius, like you.”

“Am I a genius?” he says in surprise.

I stop and look at him. “Are you kidding?”

He just blinks at me.

I roll my eyes. “When we trade off and you tell me
your
life story, I'll be sure to point out all the things that prove you're a genius.”

“Okay, Miss ‘My Soul Is the Biology of the Brain.'” He leads me across the ridge for another half a mile, and then we begin the descent, which switchbacks sharply down the hill.

“Being a nerd is not the same as being a genius,” I correct him.

“Is it the same as being a pedant?” he asks, turning his head to grin back at me.

B
ack at his apartment, Charles's respect for his own rules is disintegrating.

“That's definitely third base,” I pant.

“Your knickers are still on,” he says, continuing to lick and suck at the cotton. I'm spread on his bed, and he's between my legs. He's shirtless, but I'm down to my underwear.

And soon he's nudging the fabric to one side with his nose, and his tongue is unambiguously touching my labia. I grip the mattress above my head as my knees lock and my abdomen convulses.

“Definitely,
definitely
third base,” I say again.

“Tell me to stop then,” he says, and with the very tips of his fingers he pulls the crotch of my panties entirely to the side. He puts his lips and tongue on my clit, and I clutch my legs around his head, lifting my pelvis to meet his touch. He moans against me and puts his hands at the tops of my thighs, his fingers gripping and pulling down my panties.

“Okay, we can make a deal,” I say, having no interest in stopping him. “Whatever time you spend at third base today is time you aren't allowed third base tomorrow. How about that?”

“Deal,” he says, muffled by my vulva. When I look down, I find his eyes on me.

He loses about forty minutes this way, in which time we discover that how I like to be licked is steady, hard flicks of his tongue right on my clit. He does lots of other things too, many of them extremely pleasant, but when he does the steady, hard flicking, my arousal spikes instantly. He does not use this information to make me come right away, though. Oh no. He starts and stops, taking me to the edge and back three times before he finally lets me come in sharp, jabbing contractions, my thighs clutching around his ears.

All of this has been his answer to my question, “Are you slowing us down because you're not that interested in sleeping with me but don't want to tell me that?” We got home from the hike, and I asked the question because I couldn't not ask. And so he took me to bed. And now I'm lying here, panting and glowing, still covered in mud to my knees from our hike, my underwear twisted and wet. He's dirty and sweaty and wearing way too many clothes.

“That is my very favorite thing in the world,” he says, coming up to lie beside me afterward. He kisses me with a mouth that tastes like me, and I pull away, torn between pleasure and surprise.

“Really?” I ask. “That's okay?”

“Very okay,” he says, and kisses me again, his tongue deep in my mouth. But then he stops and says, “Unless you don't want to.”

“No, I like it. I just never thought, like . . .” I kiss him, sucking the taste of my own body from his lips, murmuring, “I like it.”

He says into my ear, “Are you sufficiently reassured of my desire for you?”

I turn to my side and kiss him, my tongue in his mouth. He tastes like me, and I love it. He slides his palm up my naked back as I slide my palm up his. Then I mutter, “Third base,” and start undoing his pants.

“Not until midnight,” he says, grabbing my fingers. He pulls my arms over my head, rolls on top of me, and pins my wrists to the bed.

“That's so not fair! You just—”

“I cheated,” he says as he kisses my throat. “I'm a cheat and a liar and a heartless bastard who'll make you come no matter what, even if it means double standards. What do you plan to do about it?”

What I do about it is say, “Ha!” and wrestle my wrist out of his grip and try to get my hands on his zipper again. He catches one hand again, and I rotate my wrists out of his fingers. I turn to my side and manage to pin one of his hands under my shoulder, so even when his free hand catches one of mine, I still have a hand free, and I undo his pants while he tugs at his arm, trying to get his hand back. We're laughing as we wrestle, but I'm serious, too: he started us at third base early, and now I want my turn. He pulls his arm out from under me, but not before I've got his pants open, so even when he rolls on top of me and traps both of my arms over my head again, I can wrap my legs around his hips and use my feet at his waistband to start pulling down his pants and his boxers.

He counters with an, “Oh, you sneaky,” and rolling onto his back, me over top of him, and pinning my arms behind me, at my hips.

“Well then,” he pants, smiling. “What's your plan now, Coffey?”

My own smile fades, and I kiss him, rolling my hips against his. All that's between our two bodies is the thin cotton of our underwear—and mine's still tangled and halfway off. Charles keeps my arms trapped behind me, but he lets me move against him, lets me rub myself along the length of his erection. I move my lips to his throat and determinedly suck bruises into his skin.

“Jesus,” he breathes, and I laugh, even as I press my clitoris against him. He makes an
unghf
noise and grips my wrists behind my back with one hand while he uses his other hand to feel my ass moving over him. His fingers grip into my butt cheek, tugging me wide open. I struggle to pull my arms free so I can touch him, his face, his shoulders, his chest, but he keeps me trapped. And somehow not being able to do what I want to do just arouses me more, as if the wanting is itself the most powerful pleasure.

“Charles,” I whimper into his throat, still rocking my pelvis against his, still struggling with my arms. Would he let me go if I asked? I feel sure he would. So I don't ask. “Why do I want to come again so soon? How are you doing this to me?”

I feel the sound he makes in his throat, against my lips. The vibration travels all through me and I start to come, pressing my body hard against his. With my arms still pinned together, I rub myself against him, and he searches out my mouth and kisses me hard, pushing back against me, his cock throbbing noticeably. He comes, saturating both his boxers and my panties with semen.

“We've got to get out of the flat,” he huffs, as I laugh in glorious self-satisfaction. And then, not pausing, he rolls me back to the mattress and puts his face between my legs, licking and sucking and even biting at the soaked cotton of my underwear. I'm still pulsing with residual throbs of orgasm, laughing with the quiet delight of making him come.

“Take them off,” I whimper. “Just take them off.” I push at them myself, but Charles comes up next to me and grips his hands into the fabric, tugging upward instead of downward.

“Why do you get to break the rules?” I complain as he pulls the fabric side to side against my vulva.

“Because I'm bigger than you,” he says. “And I have better behavioral inhibition.”

“But I don't even
want
to control myself!” And I'm not. I'm rolling my body against the pressure he has created with my panties.

“Which is why I can break the rules. You let me. I don't let you.”

“But
why
don't you let me?”

“Because look at you. Just look at you. Why would I want anything but to make you come any way I can find?” He kisses and licks my breasts, still pulling and tugging the crotch of my panties. “Tell me what you want to do,” he says through the kisses, “and I'll consider it.”

“I want to go down on you,” I squeak. “I want your cock in my mouth.” I can say one sentence at a time, the tension in my body is growing. His mouth on my breasts, and the rhythmic pull on my panties are shortening my breath, filling me up. “I want you to lick me while I suck your cock.... I want to straddle you and . . . put your cock inside me and fuck you while you . . . while you spread my ass cheeks with your hands. I want . . . oh my god, Charles, I want . . . Oh god, I want . . . Please I want . . .” I come again, unable to tell him what I want, apart from the compulsive chanting of “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck” with each throb as he bites my nipples.

When my body relaxes against him, he kisses me so, so, so, so sweetly and says, “You'll have all those things, my termagant. All you need do is wait.”

“I don't want to wait, fuck me right now.”

“No, sweetheart.”

I groan and put my forehead on his chest. “Then we need to get out of here.”

 

Instead of getting out of here, we shower—separately (“No, if I get in there with you, I'll just fuck you.” “I
know!
Please?” “Behave”) —I put on lots of clothes, and we have Chinese food delivered. The plan is to watch a movie, but I need us to have a reckoning first. Sitting at the opposite end of the couch from Charles, through a mouthful of crab Rangoon I say, “Tell me again why we're going around the bases.”

“Is that your circumspect way of asking why I'm putting you off?”

“Yes.”

He stabs his chopsticks into his food. “How do I explain it?” he says. He thinks as he chews his chicken and broccoli. When he swallows he says, “I did have every intention of shagging you blind last night. But then you told me how little experience you had, and I . . . I couldn't just toss you onto my bed and give you one. I . . . It's rather difficult to explain, I suppose.”

“Well, I need you to explain it,” I insist somewhat peevishly. “Because right now when you say no, when you put me off, it makes me worry you're not really interested in me.”

He laughs a little and shakes his head at his chicken. “If my relentless pawing and my inveterate rule breaking are not enough to persuade you that I am, as you so delicately understate it, ‘interested' in you, I hardly know what would be enough. Look . . .” But then he stops and pokes at his food again.

“What?” I prod.

He hesitates, but at last, his eyes still on his plate, he says, “Years from now—maybe months from now—after you have more experience, you'll look back on this with a different perspective. And if you were just a girl I picked up somewhere, it wouldn't matter, I suppose. But you're you. I
like
you. I want us to be friends after you leave, and so I want you to feel, months from now, years from now, that I . . . well, to feel that I set a high standard.”

He looks up at me, a crooked grin on his face, and adds, “If that sounds too condescending, let me admit that partly, too, it's simply ego. I want to compare favorably to your future partners.”

“So”—I tilt my head, trying to understand—“we're going around the bases now because you think that in the future I'll be glad we did, even though right now I find it dissatisfying and anxiety-inducing?”

He frowns, looking back at his chicken. “Obviously, I'd rather you didn't find it dissatisfying and anxiety-inducing, and if there is something I can do about that, I shall do it gladly, but yes. That's the idea.”

“Oh.” I pause, thinking as I trade the tray of crab Rangoon for the carton of chicken mei fun. At last I say, “When you say I can't do things to you, and when you won't do things I ask for, then I think . . . you don't so much like me, like, in the sexy way.”

“I see.” He nods and chews. “So the problem seems to be that I'm slowing us down to protect my ego at the cost of yours.”

“Is it my ego that your saying no to me makes me feel rejected?” I think I'm managing to keep my pouting on the inside, but I'm not sure.

“Is it mine that I want your good opinion in the future?” he challenges. “Think about it this way: I like you so much as a friend that I'm willing to delay slightly the glory of being with you ‘in the sexy way' in order to make sure that when the sex ends, the friend is still there.”

“But—”

“Repeat what I just said back to me,” he says in his teacher voice.

“You're delaying because that's how you think we're most likely still to be friends after I leave Indiana.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” I pause and think. “So it has nothing to do with not being attracted to me?”

“On the contrary.”

“And you do actually want to have sex with me?”

He raises an eyebrow and smiles in the direction of his plate. “Annie, the
only
thing I want more than your body is your friendship.”

“I'm not very pretty,” I say with sudden, stupid tears in my eyes.

Now he looks at me. “Are you joking?”

“No.”

“You can't be serious.” He looks genuinely puzzled.

“Of course I'm serious. I mean, it's fine, it's okay, I'm lucky in a lot of ways, and I'm not saying I'm, like, a hideous freak or anything. I'm just not what guys are attracted to. Like, no breasts and a weird face.” I stop and battle valiantly against tears, but a few of them escape. “I'm not being self-critical. I'm going by the evidence. Not many guys have been attracted to me, so I can only conclude it's because I'm not actually all that attractive. I mean, it took you a year to notice me.”

“You were a student in my lab; the fact that I
did
notice you is what's compelling in that story, not that it didn't happen the first year.”

I wipe my eyes with the heels of my palms and say, “I'm being so stupid. It's just . . . I want to be liked in the sexy way, and hardly anyone ever has. I mean, there was that guy in my sophomore year, but he, like,
only
liked me in the sexy way. I guess you're the first guy who likes me both ways, maybe, and it's weird. I don't know how to . . . It's just a lot of feelings all at the same time.”

Charles puts his food on the coffee table. “When I was a student, I would have avoided you like the plague.”

“That's great, Charles, thanks. I feel better.” I sniff and laugh.

He moves closer to me on the couch, puts a hand on my foot, and looks at me. “Because you'd have been wildly out of my league. Brilliant, funny, gorgeous, sweet as hell, so completely sane, emotionally generous. You'd have terrified me.”