Triple Love Score (9 page)

“My middle name. Ellen.”

“Ellen. Nice lilt. Where’s it from?”

“I don’t know. My mom liked it. Why are we talking about this?”

“Mine is Andrew. Named after my father’s father. He died the week before I was born.” He kissed her; his tongue stroked lightly against her lips.

She pulled back from his embrace. “Wait, what? That’s terrible.”

“Him staying around would have been worse. Don’t stop.” He kissed her again, this time harder, more insistent.

“You didn’t answer me. Why are we talking about this?” she asked.

“We are getting to know each other. We are taking this slow.”

“I don’t want to take it slow,” she said, reaching for the top button of his jeans. She couldn’t stop herself. Some great hunger welled up inside her. She licked at his lips, letting her tongue slip into his mouth before he pulled away.

“But I do.” He picked up her hand and put it back into her own lap.

She felt herself pouting. It felt foolish, but so did she. She didn’t understand. “Why the big production of waiting by my car then? Why the kiss?”

“I couldn’t stop myself.”

“And now you can?”

“Barely, but yes. Talk to me, Miranda. Tell me something about you.”

“Are you serious?”

“You don’t want to talk to me?” he asked.

“Not really. Not now.” She stood up. She felt her composure returning. “Listen, I am not in the mood for talking. I am in the mood for other things, and I thought you were, too. If you’re not, then get out. I’ve had enough mixed signals in the last few weeks to last a lifetime. You are catching me at the tail end of a really long trip down that road, and I don’t want to double back there with you. You are a nice guy, a good poet, and an amazing kisser, and yes, an Irishman who can hold his liquor. But I need to be blunt. Put out or get out.” Miranda could see herself saying these words, hear her voice saying them, but she couldn’t believe that she had just said all of that. Out loud. To a student. A current student.

He didn’t say anything.

“Please just go. Thank you for the kiss. It was the highlight of my year. I shouldn’t say that because it means I’m pathetic, but truly, thank you. I’ll see you in class next week.”

“I’ll stay,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll stay. I’ll put out, as you so romantically requested.”

“What?”

“Are you deaf, woman? You just told me to put out or get out. I choose put out. Listen, I don’t do this often. I was only trying to do it right. If you don’t want right, that’s fine with me.”

“Good. Take off your pants. I’ll get us something to drink.”

When she came back to the living room with a bottle of white wine, he sat there, jeans on the floor, and his tight boxer briefs highlighting the muscles on his thighs. She set the bottle of wine down on the table and moved to stand in front of him. She pressed both palms against his thighs and stroked her hands upward. She lowered her face to kiss him. This time, she leaned in deep, letting her mouth cover his. He moved his hands to either side of her lower back, and with one deft motion, flipped her over onto the couch. She let him, eagerly wrapping her legs around him as he lowered his lips to her neck, to her breasts. She tugged off her shirt, then reached behind herself and unclasped her bra. He never let his lips move from her chest. Arching her back, a moan escaped her lips.

Without asking, he unbuttoned her jeans and pushed them down, taking her panties with them. He slipped from his own shorts. She shivered a little more from the cold, but quickly pushed herself up and against him. His penis, stiff and firm, pressed against her, so close to slipping in. She shifted her weight a little. He entered, and the air rushed out of his lungs.

He wrapped an arm around her body and held her tighter, their movements more concentrated, the connection of his body to hers more solid. On each movement out, his penis fluttered out of her, licking at her clitoris. The physical sensation overwhelmed her mind’s ability to fight it. The sensation drove through to her core until she finally shuddered underneath him. He felt her orgasm and quickened his pace. He buried his face in her hair, biting her neck as he erupted in climax.

She traced a finger over his shoulder, willing her breath to return to normal. Miranda didn’t know what to say. So she chose to let the silence sit between them. He shrank inside of her and finally slipped out. She shifted her body, moving some of his weight off her. He mumbled something into her ear. But it wasn’t words. Snoring. He fell asleep. Slipping herself sideways, she managed to free herself out from under him. He still wore his tee shirt. She stood, her pale skin glowing from the streetlight that flooded her living room. His eyes fluttered, almost waking, but then he settled into the space she had just occupied, his reddish blond hair curling in sweaty ringlets around his forehead.

She found her shirt and jeans and panties, collecting each item carefully and quietly, not willing to wake him up

She turned the water up in the shower as hot as it would go. She scrubbed extra hard and let the scorching hot water cascade down around her. Lines from Sharon Olds’ poem came to her, and she spoke them aloud using her best poetry reading voice.

“Sex Without Love, is it?” Ronan said from the door to the bathroom. “One catnap and you write me off entirely?”

Startled, she dropped the soap. “It’s just a poem,” she said.

“Come now. You know better than anyone it’s never just a poem.”

“It can be if you are just reading it.” She swatted at her skin, eager to get the soap off and her clothes back on.

“But you aren’t just reading it. You are reciting it. From memory. After making love to me.”

“But I didn’t write it. And we didn’t make love.”

“We didn’t?”

“No, we had sex. There is no love.”

“How do you know there is no love?”

She pulled open the shower curtain and grabbed at her towel. This was not a conversation to have naked. “Listen, there just can’t possibly be love yet. We’ve known each other for what fourteen weeks? And only really exchanged one conversation before today, and that was while drinking.” Miranda slipped past him and into her bedroom. He followed, taking up a position on her bed, as she rifled through her drawers trying to find clean sweat pants or something, anything that she could get on quickly. She felt his eyes like laser beams on her.

“Are you in love with someone else?”

“No,” she said. Miranda turned to face him. “Why would you say that? I haven’t dated anyone in two years. Since I moved here.”

“I didn’t ask if you were dating anyone else.” He scooted back and sat up like someone waiting for a servant to bring in breakfast. He tucked his feet under the quilt she kept folded at the foot of the bed. Her grandmother had made the quilt for her mother’s hope chest. She fought the urge to snatch it away and put it away in the closet, someplace safe, where no one could touch it.

“Well, I’m not in love. Not really.”

“Not really?”

“No, well, it’s complicated.”

“Now we are getting somewhere. Can you stop foraging around and sit down with me for a minute? I really do want to get to know you. Remember, I was the one who said let’s take it slow.”

Miranda sighed, finally finding the right pair of yoga pants. She pulled them on and picked up a tee shirt from the floor bedside her bed.

He patted the place next to him. “Come on,” he said.

Unsure what else to do, she climbed in next to him.

“What’s his name?” Ronan asked.

“Scott. But it’s not like that.”

“Like what?”

“Love or anything. We never dated. Our parents are friends. And now he has a daughter, this awesome little girl. He says it’s complicated, but he didn’t explain. I just always thought—”

“Thought you might be meant for each other?”

“Yeah. Pathetic, right? Fairy tale stuff.”

“Normal, I’d say. My childhood girl’s name is Lucinda. She was my grandmother’s neighbor. We spent every summer together until she got sent to girls’ camp for the summer holidays. We still send letters. Only hers include pictures of her kids and husband now and mine are postcards from places in America I pretend to visit.”

“You pretend?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I started out not pretending, but compared to what she has going on at home, I don’t have much to say. Wrote a poem today. Tried to write a poem today. Didn’t write a poem today. Variations on a theme.”

“I hear you. So is this what you meant about taking it slow?” She let herself settle against him.

“Pretty much. Listen, I like you. I have since the first day of class. I was trying to wait out the term, but when I saw you at the liquor store in the snow, I took it as a sign.”

“I never noticed.”

“Good. I didn’t want to be that guy. Some moony teacher’s pet.”

“Too bad, I think I’d like that. You could bring me apples.”

“They have laws against that now.” They both laughed. He brushed her hair away from his shoulder. He picked up a lock and kissed it. Then moved his lips to her shoulder and kissed that. Then her neck.

Miranda paused. This should be harder. She should stop it and control herself some. But this was exactly the kind of roller coaster she longed for. It may not be a trip to Ibiza or Belize or even Bermuda, but it felt damn good and very, very bad all at the same time. She kissed him back, pulling up his tee shirt and throwing it on the floor. He responded in kind, lifting hers off her quickly, nipping at each of her nipples with sharp little bites that made them stand at attention. She quivered with anticipation as he then fingered her nipples, tugging and twisting them until they swelled with desire. Then he slid his hands lower, under her yoga pants, tugging them down. She wiggled to free herself from them. He wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her against him in one rapid movement. He stroked her pubic hair, flirting with her clitoris with each downward motion, each time, going lower and lower. She felt herself flush. He finally moved his hand to have his thumb circling her clitoris and two fingers stroking the inside of her vagina. From this position, all she could do was hold his back and run her fingers through his hair. He moved his fingers faster and faster until she thought she couldn’t control it any more, then he lay back, pulling off his shorts and guiding her on top of him. He slipped in easily, plunging himself deeply into her. She sat on top of him, grinding slowly, watching his eyes fight to stay open. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her body flat against his. His chest hair tickled her nipples, sending sparks throughout her body.

She felt him tense and shudder.

“This is so much better than apples,” she said, just as she climaxed again.

This time they both fell asleep.

Noise from the upstairs neighbors finally woke them. “Do we sound like that?” Ronan asked, pointing at the ceiling and the obvious source of the bedspring noise.

“I don’t know. We should try it again sometime.”

“See, I’m growing on you. You said again.”

“I did,” she said.

“I still want to get to know you more.”

“What else is there to know?”

“What do you keep in your refrigerator?” he asked.

“What would that tell you?”

“It would tell me what I am going to eat right now.”

She scrambled eggs and made coffee. He buttered the toast. They sat in the living room without any lights on and ate without talking. They finished the plates and then made another round. “So tell me a story, Ronan,” Miranda said.

“About what?”

“How did you wind up here?”

“Here? I stood by your car for a really long time, and then you invited me home, and we made love twice, and naturally we were hungry and so we ate in the living room because your dining room table is a little crowded with papers.”

“We didn’t make love.”

“Are we going to have that conversation again?”

“We will if you keep saying love. This can’t be love. But that isn’t what I meant. I meant here, in the States.”

“Nothing exciting. I followed a girl.”

“A girl? Now I can ask you, do you still love her?”

“Yes,” he said.

Miranda felt her stomach flip a little.

“My sister,” he said. “She was following some bloke, and my mother paid for my application to graduate school if I went, too. Chaperone kind of.”

“What graduate school? You’re in my undergraduate section.”

“There is more to me than meets the eye, Miranda. I wanted the structure of a workshop while I finish my thesis. I audit your class. It’s on the website.”

She never looked at her roster on the college website. She figured if someone wanted to sit in on her class without paying for it, who would it hurt? Who steals poetry classes? “Oh,” she said. Then she brightened. “So you aren’t my student?”

“I am not. See we should have talked first. It might have saved you some anxiety.”

“I didn’t have anxiety.”

“Really? I saw the way you scurried for your clothes.”

“You still hungry?” she asked.

“Changing the subject. But, ah, anyway. I need to go.”

“It’s like two in the morning.”

“Graduate student—this is when I get my best writing done. And after today I have a lot to write about.”

Miranda felt herself blanche.

“Don’t worry, non-guilty, non-anxious parties will remain nameless. I’m serious, Miranda, you don’t seem to want to hear that, but I am. I don’t just do this sort of thing.”

“Neither do I.”

“Good.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, bending down to retrieve his jeans from the floor where they had fallen so many hours ago. He slipped them on, found his hoodie, and left, again locking the door on his way out. Miranda stared at the door. She couldn’t tell if she was hoping for a knock and for him to come back and spend the rest of the night. She couldn’t tell if she wanted him to come back the next day. All she could tell was that she was confused. And tired. Very tired. She closed her eyes, but her mind wouldn’t let anything settle. Instead, she picked up the phone and dialed Danielle, her best friend from high school. With the time difference between New York and Turkey, Danielle was the perfect person to call in the middle of the night.