The Story Guy (Novella) (8 page)

I am filled with ebelskivers and loganberry jam and espressos with sambuca, which greatly enhances the feeling of Brian tracing idle patterns with his fingers over my shoulders and arms as I lean against him on a park bench, watching sailboats on the lake.

We had finally embraced in front of the restaurant before we ate, and he was as warm and solid and perfect-fit as I might have imagined. But The Windmill is a family place where even footsie is a little much, so the three hours we flirted over carbs was limited to eye-fucking and his blushy dimples. Perfect foreplay, in other words, for some extended open-air cuddling. Which I am hopeful will lead to some indoor and ardent clutching and fondling. And so on, until the moonlight is draping over our satiated and breathless bodies.

“What are you thinking about?” His voice vibrates in his chest against my back, and it’s heaven. I can’t help my grin, but he can’t see it with his chin tucked over my head like that.

“Moonlight.”

“Huh. And yet here we are, soaking in the lovely sunlight.”

“I like the sunlight. I like soaking in the sunlight with you.” I tilt my head up to him and he kisses my forehead.
Sigh
. “But moonlight has some compelling recommendations.”

“Oh yeah? Like no UV damage?”

Date Brian is very funny. “Hmm. I was thinking more of the clothing-optional benefit, but a lack of skin cancer works, too.” His arms tighten around me, and he turns me around to face him. His expression is very serious even as he reaches up to slide my glasses up my nose. His fingers trailing over my cheek and down my neck make me shiver as I try to guess what he’s thinking.

It’s hard to guess what he’s thinking unless he’s thinking about me. When he’s thinking about me, it’s easy to tell. He looks right into me, for one thing, the eye contact unwavering and more than a little vulnerable. And his face lightens and it’s as if he turns into one of those children’s slide viewers, the kind you hold up to the light and push the
lever to change the slide embedded in the cardboard disc. Except,
I’m
the light. Every new picture he shows me in that open gaze is beautiful. I feel myself look back into him and let him see more of me.

When he’s not thinking of me, like right now, his gaze travels far, far away. His face becomes serious or closed, and it’s impossible to catch his eye. And so far, he’s either with me, really with
me
, or he’s away at this place where he travels without friends. But I haven’t seen Brian be with
us
, to exist in a space made by the two of us together, except maybe during the two lunch hours we spent kissing. I really don’t want that to be the only way we might connect. And that scares me.

What am I doing with this man who can’t make himself available to me? I’m not so young that I don’t have the benefit of experiences with such men. I trace the threads in the placket of his shirt, looking at the dense, almost blue-black bristles roughening his neck and jaw. There are more than a few gray whiskers, too. He’s not so young, either. What if all I’ll have of this man is the way he kisses?

When I lean in to kiss his jaw, I realize that most of what I’ve really wanted, I have earned or asked for without fuss. This man, who tastes like the elderberry booze we brunched over and who touches me as though we’ve loved each other for years but it could be the last time, makes it seem that wanting something should make us afraid, or at least cautious. I can’t work out if it’s that I’ve never wanted anything I should be afraid of, or if he’s afraid of the wrong things.

I’ve asked for him and he hasn’t answered.

His mouth sinks into mine, so hot and slow, and here it is, what makes me want us, this ineffable rightness and bigness that turn the contentment and safety I’m so used to into loneliness.

Our bench is removed from the main trail around the lakefront, so I don’t hesitate to hook my leg around his hip, and he gratifyingly, decisively, grabs my hips with his big hands and shoves me into his lap. His hands on my body still seem almost taboo and he must think so, too, because he instantly glides his hands up to my shoulders, but his fingers furtively skim my spine.

“No,” I whisper into his lips moving over mine, “touch me.” I can feel his smile against my mouth.

“Like this?” he whispers back, squeezing the caps of my shoulders.

“No.” I arch my breasts into him, letting him feel my aching nipples that poke through my blouse. His breath hitches.

“Like this?” He circles his finger over the bare skin on the bump at the top of my spine.

“No.” And I catch that hand just under my collar and drag it between us, opening his palm over my breast. “Like this.”

His tongue rubs over mine as he rakes his hand over my breast, catching the nipple firmly against the end of his middle finger, making me gasp and lurch harder into his touch. An icy hot rush is starting from that exquisite point and moving outward fast.

“Is this what you want?” he whispers, his thumb and long middle finger rolling against me, through my shirt and bra, starting up restless throbs deep in my belly.

“Is this what you want?” he asks me again, the same question I keep asking myself, and brings his other hand down to apply the awesome torture to my other nipple.

“Yes.” And it is. This. Everything else. Anything else. I push against him, and he presses his big, warm hands down, down over my sides, over my hips, to settle into the curve of my lower back and bring me close. So close, I’m cradling him, the hot heartbeat thrumming over the wet silk of my underwear, his jeans snagging and frustrating.

“Yes,” I say again. It’s what I want. This man and his faraway gaze and rare dimples and gripping hands and voice so sad it called out over all the other sad men’s voices in the city’s most desperate corner. I think I’m wrong to want him, as if I am taking him away from where he knows he should be. I feel as though I’ve picked him out for myself, and with the tenacity and willfulness of a child, I’ve decided nothing else will do.

We rock against each other, as discreetly as we can given our semipublic spot. I feel lazy, like I could do this all day, even while we both start to unravel a little. Even while his thrusts against me have become more explicit and lingering. Even while we have to stop to breathe between every open kiss.

From far, far away, I hear something that I can’t quite identify but don’t want to hear.
“Buzzzz.”
Brian shifts away from me just a little, but it’s enough that I feel the need to chase after him, to scare away the cool air suddenly between us. There it is again,
“bzzzz.”

“Carrie.” He pulls back again. Breathing hard but disengaging, he reaches for his back pocket, where—

“Bzzz.”
It’s his phone. On vibrate. Recognizing the noise has made me come around enough that he has a chance to untangle his legs from mine. He positions me off his lap and back onto the hard bench without looking at me. He turns away with the phone already to his ear.

“Yes, hello. This is Brian Newburgh, Stacy Newburgh’s brother.” He is holding his other ear closed, completely turned away from me now.
Newburgh
. My face is hot with the realization we haven’t exchanged last names. Anonymous still. Without even the tenuous connection that allows those who lose touch the ability to look each other up. And who is calling that he needs to identify himself as his sister’s brother?

“Right. I understand. I am close. I know, I’m sorry, I was there all yesterday until the evening and I just thought—okay. Of course. Go ahead and tell the doctor that it’s okay, and I’ll be right there. That’s right, Brian Newburgh, and I’m named on the power-of-attorney and durable guardianship and conservatorship papers in her chart, her medical record number is 3324F20 and my social security number is 542-6—”

I don’t understand. The slats of the bench seep lake damp into my skirt while Brian turns into a stranger.
Doctor? Power of attorney?
I thought his sister was out last night. Is she ill? Brian had said she had health problems. Surely she’s not sick or hurt somewhere while her brother, her roommate, eats pancakes and makes out with a woman he barely knows, barely
wants
to know, it seems. I touch my face. It’s raw where Brian’s whiskers have rubbed against it. The sting isn’t pleasant. At all.

“Carrie?” His voice is far away.
Fitting
.

I don’t look at him. “Yeah?”

“I need to go.” He touches my shoulder, but without enough pressure to get me to turn to look at him. Then his touch drifts away.

“I don’t understand, Brian.” I look at him now. He’s scrubbing a hand over his short hair, and the look in his eyes is dull, the lines around them tight. But whatever it is he’s feeling, it can’t be worse than the sudden realization that the person in your arms, the person who might even have some purchase on your heart, won’t fully put his arms
around you. Won’t let you into his heart, not even enough to tell you his whole name.

“My sister’s in the hospital. That was—the hospital. They need me to go over and make some decisions and be with her.” His voice is low, and he is avoiding eye contact.

“I still don’t understand. You said—she was
out
. Just last night. Did she get hurt? When she went out? Why didn’t you call and reschedule us?” My voice is high and wavering in a way I hardly ever hear it, but I am so freaking
cold
. I am so fucking lost here. There doesn’t seem to be any hope of a map. There is nowhere to go from here that I can hope to see.

He stands up, tension in every line of his body. “No, it isn’t like that. Last night. Carrie, last night she was already there, in the hospital. It’s why I called you, why I could call you at all. Fuck—I just—” He looks up, pressing his hands against his cheekbones. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about after we ate. Why we’re close to the hospital. I was even thinking we might—” He shakes his head.

I watch him retreat into that place where he doesn’t even see me. I’m not angry. I can hardly believe it, but I’m not. I’m too empty to have something as hot as anger inside of me. I’m not frustrated, even. But I don’t hold any hope that I’m going to get any answer right now. The sudden loss of anticipation assures this hollow, washed-out, put-away feeling. I step toward him and watch myself put a hand on his waist. I want to see if the laws of this universe still apply, I think. To see if he’s even in my same dimension.

And as soon as I do, it’s as if I’ve broken a spell. He pulls me into a tight embrace the way he did in front of The Windmill. The feel of his sweater against my cheek, the hard chest underneath it pounding with his heartbeat, his sun-warmed smell—it hardly seems real, when just moments ago it was everything.

He leans in and buries his face into my neck. I think I might feel something hot and wet, but before I can process that, believe that it’s even possible that he could break open enough to cry, he squeezes me once, hard, and starts to move away, walking backward. I don’t let him say goodbye.

“Brian, I’m calling you later, okay?” My voice is unconvincing.

“Okay. Carrie, I just—”

“I’ll call you later. It’s okay, just go be with your sister.”

He looks at me a moment longer, but then turns and jogs away. The wind off the
lake has picked up, and the sun doesn’t quite manage to cut through the unexpectedly cold afternoon.

Saturday, 8:32 p.m.

I don’t want to leave a message. I really, really don’t. But I’d said I would call. And some kind of misplaced hope, or Midwestern niceness, means that I will. But after calling three times and listening to the hopeless ring tone, it seems like I have no choice. It has been such a long evening, avoiding my own thoughts.

“
This is Brian Newburgh. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you
.”

“Brian? This is Carrie. Carrie—West. Carrie West. Your Wednesdays-only that is more than Wednesday. I hope—I really, really hope your sister is okay. I’d like to talk to you. Please call me back anytime. I think we need to talk, but I understand if you need some time and just want to—well, hang out? Please call.”

So, there. I met an anonymous man in a park, twice, had almost anonymous phone sex with him (if you count anonymous as not knowing his last name at the time), then I bullied him into brunch, and finally, when he abandoned the date to rush to the bedside of a sister who is
hospitalized
, I begged him to call me back.

I need some perspective. I start to call Shelley, but hesitate. I think about someone else who claimed to have his share of story guys.

“Justin?”

“Hey, Carrie, you just caught me. I can talk and walk, but I’m meeting Aaron for a late dinner.”

I give him my updates, careful not to gloss anything over. “What am I working through here? I like my parents. I’m an only child. I suffer no trauma, hence no posttraumatic syndromes or stress. It’s true that I’ve been pretty lonely around the edges lately, but I’m not afraid of getting myself out there as needed. Have I had a personality change lately? Do you think I’m having a stroke?”

“Wow, Carrie. When I said you should go for Story Boy I didn’t realize he was a Russian novel.”

“This is crazy, right? I mean, I’m sure if I would have met him—I don’t know,
normally? In a regular way, let’s say—I’d have backed off early. But the novelty of his nutty Wednesday ad and—”

“I don’t know.” Justin’s voice is slow, thoughtful.

“What do you mean?”

“How does he make you feel?”

“Right now? Off balance. A little embarrassed. Worried. Like I don’t know myself.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Carrie, would you like to know this part of yourself?”

“Huh?”

“The part of yourself that opens herself up to a man based on nothing but a little intuition that there is goodness in him and that he kisses like the world’s ending. Do you want to know that part? Because you don’t have to. You’re right. Your life is a nice one—there are no guarantees, but it’s on the right path to stay a nice one. Brian is not on this path.”

I switch the phone to the other ear, as if that would help me hear the message better, somehow. My path is the nice one. The one filled with friends who will smile when I buy their children books for their birthdays. Who will take me out, sometimes, when I call on a random night because I can’t settle down. The path with peaceful holidays with my parents, and reasonable work promotions at reasonable times.