Intrusion (7 page)

I know that I should be disturbed.

So how come I'm not? How come I just want to run to him? He stands when he sees me and raises a hand, as though he isn't sure if he should be this person. He can't tell if it's okay to be waiting for me in the freezing darkness, and doesn't want to press the issue. But I want him to press the issue.

I want to be wanted like this—I deserve to be wanted like this—without worrying about what it might mean. No jumping at shadows, no terror of too much need from someone else. Only a kind of relief that I can live like this and be okay. More than okay, in truth—when I take a step forward and beckon him over he crosses the street to me, and I swear I swoon in ways I've never swooned before.

He has the collar of his great coat turned up. His hands are in his pockets and his gaze is just this side of hesitant and when he gets to me he says, “Any time you want me to go away, just say and I'll go without question.”

Is it any wonder I want to put my arms around him? Anyone would want to put arms around him. There are monks in Tibet screaming at me to do just that, but instead I simply tell him that I would never want him away from me as forcefully as I can. I make my words the hug I want to give, and just hope that he can feel it.

I think he can. Every time I say a word that lets him further in, he gets that blissful look all over his face. One side of his mouth curls up; his eyes fill with a soft light. And most important, he relaxes enough to suggest things, little things, loving things that we can do together. “I thought we could take a walk across the fields, see the sun rise, walk your dog,” he says, and I agree wordlessly.

I have to agree wordlessly. He just asked me to do something from a ridiculously romantic movie about things I've no experience of. I can hardly form a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. I just get Trudy and follow him to the fields behind his house—the ones that are dotted with tiny pools of rainwater that glint in the first rays from the sun. The ones that are so thick with grass and wildflowers you could paste them on a postcard.

And I'm walking through them with a man, an amazing man, a man who looks so unbelievably good bathed in breaking sunlight I could cry. I have to look away from him for a second, but it doesn't really help when I do. Now all I can feel is the space between his bare hand and mine, so heavy with the hint of the thing we should do.

We're supposed to lace our fingers together now. We both know we are. We stand in silence watching Trudy bound through the grass, everything so beautiful and so ripe for some kind of affectionate gesture, and that space between us
crackles
. I'm almost afraid to look down in case I see his fingers twitching with a need to close the gap, but worse is the idea that they won't be.

Maybe it's just me.

I think it's just me. If he wanted to hold my hand, surely he would. The tension is so unbearable that he has to know it's okay to do. I can tell he knows—and yet nothing actually happens. And naturally the longer nothing happens the more intense this feeling gets. It starts out as a tiny flicker, then gradually builds into a bright flame, before finally finishing in some kind of terrible inferno.

By the time we make our way back to the house, my entire body is ablaze. All I can think of is my hand, as though my hand has suddenly grown a vagina. Every nerve ending is right there on the surface of my skin, and they all want me to just take hold of him. I even start imagining how rough or smooth his palm would be, in a way usually reserved for my innermost and deepest sex fantasies.

But I can cope with it, I swear to God I can.

I'm absolutely sure that I am fine with all of this.

Until the movie theater, that is.

W
E GO TO
a ramshackle place just off Main Street, showing a movie we each were startled to learn the other loved—him startled because it was a little before my time and me startled because of the violence. He should hate the violence, I know, yet somehow he agrees when I list it in my top ten of all time. He tells me he has dreams about Clarice Starling coming to save him, and I'm so startled he would cast himself as the girl in the well that for a moment I can't say anything.

I'm too busy imagining myself with a gun drawn, telling him that everything is going to be okay now.
Just stay quiet, the other agents are on their way
, I see myself saying, and by the time I come back to the conversation he's already halfway through plans to see it at the Tennenbaum. “I haven't been to the movies in years,” he says in this wistful sort of voice, and after that I can hardly say no.

But once we've sat in that sultry darkness, I sort of wish I had.

For a start, the film is much sexier than I remember it being. The conversations between Lecter and Starling take on an oddly seductive note that I'm sure wasn't there before—though if I'm honest, it might not be there now. My radar for this sort of thing has just been fine-tuned; I'm so aware of everything even remotely erotic that I see it in a serial killer casually chatting to a rookie agent.

And then there are the seats in here. Were they so close together before? I'm absolutely certain they weren't, when I last visited with the guy from accounting. At the very least the seats had arms, yet somehow they don't seem to now. There is nothing between us but empty air, and that empty air is starting to crackle again before Clarice has even gotten to the disembodied head in a jar.

God knows where I will be by the time the third act hits. My whole body feels alive to his every move, even though his moves are all utterly tiny and insignificant. He scratches his elbow. He shifts a little in his seat. He checks his watch.

Oh, and he also
presses his leg right into mine
.

There I am waiting for another miniscule movement, and suddenly I have the entire length of his right thigh pushing into my left one. I can feel the seam of his jeans and the place where muscle gives way to bone, and absolutely none of it feels like an accident. If it was an accident, would he keep the limb there long after we've both acknowledged that this is going on? Would he keep staring straight at the screen as though nothing has happened?

I glance at him for some kind of confirmation, and I know he feels me doing it. Yet he won't look in my direction. And he doesn't move away. Quite the contrary—after one long agonizing minute of this new kind of contact, he shifts his leg up and down in a way that only makes things worse. It presses his thigh so tightly to mine I probably couldn't get a penny between us, and when he does so something else happens.

My skirt ruffles up.

My skirt ruffles
almost all the way up
. Another inch and he could probably see panties, if he happened to glance down. Suddenly I can feel denim against the bare and far-too-sensitive skin of my thigh, and I have almost no idea what to do with the sensation. My body wants to process it as exciting and arousing, but my brain keeps reminding me that I'm not supposed to. He doesn't want me to.

So why is he rubbing his leg against mine?

Because that is
definitely
what he seems to be doing. He has exposed an expanse of skin, and is currently stroking that skin in the most casual way possible. His leg just sort of rocks in this slow, maddening circle, until that one point of contact is pretty much all I can think about. All thoughts of being restrained and respectful of his wishes fly right out the window, and I can't blame them.

The whole thing just feels too good. It feels good in a way nothing has ever felt good before. I thought I could cope because sex has never really meant that much to me, but somehow it means absolutely everything in this moment. It consumes my body, from the neck down. My nipples have stiffened, even though it's hardly cold in here and he isn't touching me anywhere rude. And as for that void between my legs. . .

It definitely isn't a void anymore. Everything there feels heavy and swollen, as though every drop of blood inside me has rushed to that one place. My panties are suddenly tight, to the point where moving seems impossible. When I shift just a little the material nearly suffocates me, and in a way that makes me feel far too hot all over.

If the movie doesn't end soon, I'm going to wind up doing something very bad. I can already feel the bad thing blooming inside me, like a fevered infection. Pretty soon I might try putting a hand on his knee or a hand on his thigh, or maybe I might do it higher—Oh God, what if I do it higher? I cannot under any circumstances let that happen.

I bite my fist just to stop it coming on, and when the film finally blessedly finishes, I practically run out into the lobby.

But the weird thing is—it barely seems to help at all.

The fresh air feels good against my overheated skin, true enough. And the relief of not having him so close to me is a wonderful thing. For a moment I even bask in it a little, sure that I got away with my crafty feelings of overwhelming excitement. Then I turn and see him coming through the doors, face as flushed as mine feels, perspiration gleaming on his forehead and in that little groove just above his collarbone, eyelids as heavy as if he just awoke from some heated dream. . .

And it all just floods through me again. Only this time, I don't have the darkness to cover me. The lobby is practically lit by floodlights. My T-shirt is probably see-through under that glare, and even if it isn't my stiff nipples will still be visible. My lips won't close, and I'm reluctant to move in case it somehow gives away the fact that it feels kind of good when I do, and all of this gets worse when I realize that he maybe feels the same way.

He looks so dazed. He seems unable to form words.

“It was good to do that,” he finally says, but I have no idea if he means watching the movie or touching my leg. It could be that he doesn't know, either. As he leads me out of the lobby I feel his hand just ghost against the small of my back—like he'd love to put his arm around me, but isn't sure how. And when we walk down Main Street and over to Grover Close, I get that sensation in my hand again. That urge to close the gap between his and mine, ever crackling between us.

But nothing beats what happens once we get to my door. He walks me up to it, just as he always does when we part. However, instead of leaving me there he takes a step inside.
He takes a step inside without being invited
, and the thrill of that is something else, I tell you what. It almost beats the leg and the hand, even though I'm not entirely sure why.

Because it promises something bigger? I think that might be the case. This is kind of our third date, really. This is the part where people do something other than just talk and watch movies and walk in the sunlight. At the very least, our farewell needs to be a little more than the previous casual good-byes.

It's just that I don't know what more to give. I think about briefly rubbing his shoulder, but that doesn't seem quite right. For a start, rubbing someone's shoulder isn't really a thing. It might look weird. Most likely he'll turn his head and watch me doing it with those overanalyzing eyes, as though I'm an alien sent from Mars who doesn't know how to interact with human beings.

So I consider something bigger—like hugging. Hugging seems much more normal and traditional in this sort of situation, and yet when I start imagining the whole thing it kind of falls apart. I would have to put my arms under his arms and around his body. My breasts might brush his chest. My
nipples
might brush his chest. He could very well react by freezing into a statue of himself, which seems way worse than just making curious eyes at me.

Is it any wonder that I settle on a handshake? Sticking out one trembling clenched fist is easy, by comparison. And for a second, he even responds as though he understands and thinks this is appropriate. His doesn't laugh at my barely unfurled fingers or refuse in some other embarrassing way. His hand reaches for mine, without question.

And then stops about an inch from me.

Oh Christ, why is he stopping an inch from me?
No, please no
, I think, as his hand draws back toward the relative safety of his body. But that hand keeps going. I follow its progress with something like bitterness, doing my best to be okay with that and utterly failing on every level. Is that really where we have to draw the line? Not even a handshake?

I must have misread the incident in the cinema. He probably had an itch to scratch, and I was just a convenient tool. How else to explain this? Or what he tells me next?

“I'm sorry, I should have been clearer,” he says, but really he doesn't have to. He was perfectly clear. He said no sexual contact, and a handshake apparently counts. I should respect that—I do respect that, I swear. I can respect it, no matter how much my heart sinks or my eyes sting at a rejection that isn't a rejection at all.

I can do without. I'm sure I can do without, all the way up to the point where he says words that make my heart soar up, up toward the sun that shines right out of him.

“Kissing is perfectly okay with me,” he murmurs, and then, oh God, then he takes my face in his two good hands, roughened by all the patient and careful fixing he does and so tender I could cry, and starts to lean down to me. Slowly at first, and in these hesitant bursts that nearly make my heart explode, before finally, Lord; finally, yes, finally.

He closes that gap between us.

His lips press to mine, so soft I can barely feel them. Yet somehow, I feel them everywhere. That closemouthed bit of pressure tingles outward from that one place, all the way down to the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes. I think my hair stands on end, and when he pulls away it doesn't go back down again.

No part of me will ever go back down again. I feel dazed in the aftermath, cast adrift on a sensation that shouldn't have happened. For a long moment I can only stand there in stunned silence, sort of afraid to open my eyes in case the spell is broken.