This was difficult since I didn’t do this. Ever. I felt something, I went with it.
Like being pissed, in pain and in a room with a Mike Haines, my adolescent crush, a man who was far more beautiful at forty-three than he’d been at seventeen and eighteen and when I’d been a total bitch to him the last time I talked to him and he was twenty-one. Finding myself in his arms, I wanted to kiss him. I wanted it badly. So I kissed him.
I felt it, I went with it.
This did not always work for me. I didn’t keep track but I figured I was around fifty-fifty. Sometimes, things went south. Sometimes, I hit a home run. I kept doing it because it was me. I also kept doing it because hitting a home run made it worth surviving the times things went south.
What I knew, staring at the ceiling, was that I wanted Mike to be a home run.
I didn’t want this because he was my adolescent crush. I didn’t want this because over the years I thought of him often and did it fondly. I didn’t want this because Mike was a phenomenal lover. I didn’t want this because it sucked huge my brother had died suddenly at the age of forty-four, he was my best friend and I had no stinking clue how to live my life without him. I didn’t want this because my brother who was my best friend wanted it for me.
I just wanted it.
I heard the lock click on the door, my head turned on the pillow and I watched Mike walk in.
No. That wasn’t right.
I caught a glimpse of Mike carrying a pizza box held aloft in one hand, his fingers wrapped around the handle of a six pack of bottled beer in the other hand. He was wearing a pair of jeans that looked freaking great on him. He was also wearing a brown sweater flecked with cream and gray bits with a tall collar that stood up around his muscular neck and had a couple of undone buttons at the throat that looked freaking great on him. He was further wearing a brown leather jacket that looked freaking great on him. And last, his hair had been mussed, probably changing, he hadn’t sorted it and that looked unbelievably freaking great on him. So I sat up in bed and twisted his way to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
He walked to the bed, his eyes on me and didn’t say a word as he dumped the pizza box on it. Then he kept silent as he moved to the nightstand and put the beer there. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a bottle opener and dropped it with a clatter next to the beer.
I was thinking he was smart to remember to bring a bottle opener because the hotel wasn’t The Ritz but I was guessing they probably would frown on us using the edges of their furniture to force off beer caps as he shrugged off his leather jacket and threw it at the end of the bed.
Then he looked at me, crossed his arms on his chest and asked, “So?”
He totally wasn’t dicking around.
“Welp,” I started. “I figure you had time to think too but as for me, you want to, you’re spending the night.”
He studied me.
Then, softly, he asked, “Sure?”
I drew in breath.
Then I nodded and whispered, “I’m sure.”
When I did, he returned bizarrely, “How do you feel about cold pizza?”
I tipped my head to the side in confusion and asked, “Sorry?”
Before I knew what he was about, he picked up the pizza box, dropped it on the floor, leaned into me, put his hands in my pits, plucked me right out of bed and into his arms. Then he twisted and dropped, landing on his back with me on top of him. I was recovering from this, not, mind you, successfully when he rolled me to my back with him on top of me.
His face all I could see, his hands moving on me, he whispered, “Cold pizza. You got a problem with that?”
“No,” I whispered back.
“Right,” he murmured.
Then he kissed me before he did a bunch of other stuff to me while the pizza sat on the floor and got cold.
*
“Pottery?”
“Yep, vases and bowls and shit like that. I mean it’s mine. It’s gorgeous. I love it. I put a lot into it. I totally get off on it in a way that when I say that I mean, when I’m working, I lose time. I can start at noon and the next thing I know, it’s midnight. But still, I think it’s totally whacked that someone pays two hundred dollars for a medium-sized vase,” I shrugged, “but there it is.”
Mike had on nothing but his jeans. His back was to the headboard. His eyes were on me.
I again had on nothing but my tee and panties. My body was cocked at the hips, my calves lying across his thighs, the rest of me lying across the bed. I was on my side, up on a forearm with a pillow scrunched under me.
I had a beer resting in the crook of my hips. We had the pizza box between us. And we now knew each other pretty thoroughly biblically so we were getting to the other good stuff.
“Damn, honey, your shit must be good,” he said softly as I took a bite of pizza.
I chewed, swallowed and grinned. Then I stated, “I think so.” Then I took another bite.
“I’m impressed,” he replied.