Wreathed (17 page)

Chapter 20

Adam, to his credit, had picked a decent restaurant. It was a seafood place overlooking the Manasquan River in Point Pleasant Beach, just a few blocks from the boardwalk. It would have been packed in the summer, but it was still late March, and winter was still hanging around like somebody owed it money. We watched the boats move up and down the channel as a cold rain pelted against the window. There was candlelight, calamari, and chardonnay. Adam was wearing a sport jacket and a clean shirt and it looked like he had gotten a haircut. I had put on a nice floral dress, with a white cardigan over it. Everything was in place for a wonderful romantic evening, and I would have been perfectly happy and content if I hadn’t been bored out of my skull.

I didn’t want to talk about gadgets or sports. He didn’t want to talk about reality television or politics. Neither of us wanted to talk about our jobs or our families, and we didn’t know anyone in common that we could gossip about. We finished our appetizers and sat there and stared at each other, both of us hoping that the other person could find something for us to talk about.

“We should have gone to see a movie first,” Adam said. “That way, we could talk about the movie.”

“They have a movie theater at the mall in Bridgewater where they serve dinner during the movie,” I said. “You go and watch the movie and eat at the same time. My sister and her husband do that when they can get a babysitter. It’s more efficient that way.”

“There’s something to be said for efficiency, I guess.”

“The problem is that sometimes the food isn’t good, and sometimes the movie isn’t good, and then when that happens you’re kind of stuck.”

“That’s not good,” he said. “But at least we won’t have to worry about that here. The food’s good. I used to eat here every weekend for a couple of months.”

“Seems like a long way to drive,” I said. “Unless you’re really into fresh seafood.”

“A friend of mine from college inherited a couple of rental properties down here. This whole area got hit pretty hard during Sandy, and the houses he owned had some water damage, so he decided to do a full renovation. He knew I had a lot of experience, so he called me to check and see if I’d be interested in helping him get the houses fixed so he could rent them again over the summer. I would drive up on Saturday mornings, and we’d spend the day working, and then we’d come here for dinner.”

“So what all did you do?” I asked. I have only an academic interest in house renovation, but I watch the occasional real estate reality TV show and it was something to talk about.

“We had to remove the flooring,” he said. “That was the first step. Everything was soaked. We ripped out the carpet, which was a huge job, mostly because it stank. We put in new hardwood and kept it that way, because it would be easier to deal with if there was ever another storm. The deck was a total loss, although we kind of lucked out on it because we were able to reutilize a lot of the scrap lumber once it had all dried out. I sanded it down and used it for wainscoting on the staircase. It was a really cool effect, too.”

“That’s a good idea.” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Uncle Sheldon actually came up with it.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s funny, because I’ve been forced into doing all this nonsense with the estate. You’d think all of that would remind me of him, but it hasn’t. I hadn’t thought about him at all until just now, thinking about us working together on that house.”

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” I said.

He smiled. “It’s all right.”

He told me about the work that he and his friend and Uncle Sheldon had done with the kitchen, and the bathrooms, and the perils attendant to installing window air conditioning units on upstairs floors. That reminded me of the time my father had tried to install a new hot water heater by himself, and that reminded him of a cast-iron bathtub he had tried to install in a house up in Syracuse, and then our entrees arrived and we didn’t have to talk much after that. The restaurant was right about the seafood being fresh, and Adam was right about it being good.

“Are you sure you don’t want coffee?” Adam asked.

“Very sure,” I said.

“The desserts are not really that great. Either that, or I’m not hungry.”

“Me neither.”

“If the weather was just a little nicer, we could go out on the boardwalk and stroll for a little while. Maybe get some ice cream or something.”

“I would like that,” I said. “If it wasn’t for the weather. It’s supposed to be nice next weekend, though.”

We had a nice recovery on what had been shaping up to be an unproductive second date. I didn’t have the desperate feeling I had last time, where I thought Adam was slipping away from me and that I’d never see him again. Being with him was starting to feel comfortable and right, the way it had been when we first met. I was looking forward to our next date, whatever that turned out to be.

“I was thinking more about this weekend,” Adam said.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

“I think we should have sex.”

I heard him say the words, but it took me a moment to process the fact that he had said them. He had a bland look on his face, as though he’d said that he thought we should have some coffee after all. I finally decided that he was either joking, or pretending to be joking to see how I would respond.

“You mean right here? On the table?” I asked.

“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I’m not an exhibitionist. Unless you’re an exhibitionist, in which case maybe we could start small and work our way up.”

“So you were kidding me, then,” I said.

“I wasn’t kidding. I think we should have sex.”

“Why? Because it’s our second date?”

“That’s not why,” he said.

“Why, then?”

“Because it would be fun. Because it would be good for us. Because we can.”

This was not romantic. This was not seductive. This was preposterous, and presumptive, and worst of all, it was
working.
I was starting to feel a little lightheaded, and it wasn’t because of the chardonnay. I needed to slow this down a bit before I was swept away.

“Let’s just suppose,” I said. “Let’s just suppose for one second that this was something we should be doing, which it isn’t. Do you have some place in mind for us to go?”

“You remember me telling you that my friend had a beach house he rented out?” he said. “I still have the key. It’s not that far from here, and I know nobody’s using it. We could take your car and be there in five minutes.”

That dealt with that objection, and a cozy little beach house certainly had romantic possibilities. I was now fairly certain that Adam had planned all this ahead of time, but if I confronted him about it, he’d just grin and deny doing any such thing.

“I just want to hear one good reason why you think this is a good idea,” I said. “Convince me.”

Adam didn’t say anything. He looked at me, and there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. It was almost as though he was seeing me for the first time. I felt for a moment like he was a wolf and I was a raw bloody steak.

“Because you want to,” he said at last. “Don’t you?”

I could think of any number of good reasons to say no, and only one good reason to say yes. It was late. I did have to drive home at some point. The weather wasn’t great. I thought he was rushing things. I wasn’t sure how I felt. All I had to do was sit calmly and explain very gently to Adam that tonight wasn’t the best time.

“Yes,” I said.

I was surprised to hear myself say it, but I had said it, and I couldn’t take it back. I didn’t want to take it back. I wanted to have sex with Adam. If that was a deranged, desperate thing to want right then, it didn’t matter to me, not right then. I wanted to feel his touch, his warmness, his skin soft against mine. Compared to that desire, all the other reasons felt small and unimportant.

We left the restaurant and got in my car. I drove down the beach road until Adam told me where to turn and where I could park. He got out of the car first, and came around to the driver’s side to take my hand. The houses were all packed together, and I didn’t know which house belonged to his friend.

“It’s the one on the right,” he said. It was a tiny house, and not quite on the beachfront, but I wasn’t in any mood to pay any attention to trifles.

Adam found the right key on the third try. We went inside and I followed him up the stairs. I gave an appreciative glance to the rough wood on the wainscoting, in case he asked me about it later. He opened the door to the master bedroom and we went inside together.

It was freezing in there. It wasn’t just cold. It was penguin-exhibit cold. It was subarctic, with global warming a distant rumor.

“Well, this is not good,” he said. “I mean, it could be a little warmer in here.”

“It is ridiculously cold,” I said. “We can’t stay here.”

It was a beautiful room, decorated in blue pastels with a nautical motif. You could see a corner of the Atlantic out of the window. The bed looked inviting and had a thick, warm down comforter. But it didn’t have a fireplace, and therefore was uninhabitable for anyone this side of polar bears.

Adam walked over to the window air conditioning unit. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “This thing has probably been running all winter. Let me just turn it off. It’ll be fine.”

“It will not be fine. It is
never
going to be fine. You should check the bathroom for icebergs.”

“It’s not that bad,” he said.

“Not that bad?
Not that bad
? This is unacceptable.”

“Some people like having a cold room to sleep in, so they can be warm under the covers.”

“Those people are fools and idiots. Is there another bedroom? Preferably one south of the Arctic Circle?”

“There’s only one other bedroom, and it is set up for kids. Bunk beds. Don’t worry. It’ll warm up before too long.”

“Can I take a moment and remind you exactly why you wanted to come here?”

He grinned that insufferable grin of his. “I remember.”

“This is an activity that is usually conducted
without clothes
. I am feeling distinctly underdressed at the moment. I could use a scarf. And a parka. And a set of hand warmers.”

“We could go downstairs. Get some coffee. Come back when the room is warm.”

“If we do that, I can’t promise I’m going to want to come back here,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to have sex with you, tonight. But if we wait too long, I am going to think of reasons not to do this, and there are reasons not to do this.”

“OK, then,” he said. “I have an idea.”

“Do tell.”

Adam found a wide, low armchair, which was upholstered in a green nubbly fabric. He picked it up effortlessly and carried it over to a far corner of the room. “The main vent is over here,” he said. “Come here. You can feel the heat coming up from the floor. And I turned the thermostat up to seventy-nine; it should be warmed up before too much longer.”

I followed him over to where he was standing. It felt marginally warmer there, like going from a glacier to a slightly smaller glacier at a lower elevation.

“What would you want to do?” I asked. “Just sit here and wait for the spring thaw?”

“You realize that we’re doing this all backward, right? I mean, we haven’t even kissed yet.”

“So?”

“So I was thinking that we should.”

He wreathed his arms around my body, encircling me. It was already feeling warmer. I gave him a long, low, wet lingering kiss.

“See, that’s what I mean,” he said. “We need to do things in the proper order.”

“Stop talking,” I said.

I straightened up a bit, and he responded just the way I wanted him to, by kissing my neck. He took his time, pressing his lips against my soft flesh, exploring with his tongue, then repeating the process. I felt my breaths get deeper and sharper as desire swept over me, wave on wave.

Adam slipped my cardigan off, and it fell to the floor. He found the zipper of my dress, lowering it just enough to find the bra underneath. He unfastened the bra with a practiced hand, and drew my body closer to his. I lowered my lips against him and kissed him again. His tongue felt smooth and warm in my mouth, like a bracing glass of wine.

I let him come up for air after a long moment. “Getting warmer?” he asked.

“Working on it.”

One of his hands was caressing my back, and the other one was beginning to explore my neckline. He was careful not to expose too much of my bare flesh to the cold air, for which I would have been grateful if I wasn’t so lost in the earthy smell of his cologne.

“It’s body heat, you know,” he said. “If you’re ever stuck in a snowbank, you just huddle up with someone.”

I straightened up to kiss his lips again, hoping to get him to shut up. He pressed his hand against my chest, moving it in slow, gentle circles.

“Shall we?” he said.

I glanced over at the bed, at its thick down comforter.

“It’s a risk,” I said. “But it’s one I’m willing to take.” My dress fell halfway down my body, taking my bra with it. The room was still ice-cold, but I was feeling a warmth course through me, and when he looked at me in that moment, I felt it blaze to my very fingertips.

“Let’s get in bed before I get frostbite,” I said.

Chapter 21

I woke up the next morning under that toasty comforter, warm, happy, sexually fulfilled, and utterly alone. Adam wasn’t in bed next to me. He wasn’t elsewhere in the room. I couldn’t hear any telltale morning sounds coming from the bathroom. Despite all the ups and downs, it had been a wonderful evening, ending in a deeply satisfying and thrilling way. I had expected the morning to be even better, and here I was, naked and alone.

There has to be a reasonable explanation
, I thought.
You don’t just get up and leave someone alone in a room without a reasonable explanation, or at least a note.
I looked around the room, and indeed, there did seem to be a scrap of white paper on the coffee table. The problem was that the only way I would be able to
read
the note would be to get out from under the comforter and expose my bare body to the elements. It was warmer than it had been, but there was every possibility that it was still ice-cold out there, and I had zero interest in testing the veracity of that possibility.