“I don’t right now,” I said. “But thank you.”
This time he looked at me when he was inside me and I was able to look back for about three seconds, which wasn’t nothing; and then I leaned forward, leaned into him, so our torsos were pressed together.
* * *
—
If life were a romantic comedy, I’d have awakened the next morning from a deep, restorative, and gracefully positioned slumber with sunlight streaming in through the windows and Noah standing by the bed holding a mug of coffee for me. Instead, I woke in darkness at 4:13 A.M., my heart hammering, lying on my side with my chin in a pool of my own drool, being spooned by Noah. And even this ostensibly sweet arrangement was compromised by the fact that in a best-case scenario I needed to fart, but I was pretty sure I needed to poop. And he was still naked, and I was still wearing nothing but my T-shirt. In contrast to comparable situations in the past, I felt gratefully not hungover. At the same time, everything that had seemed spontaneous the previous night—not showering upon arriving at his house, not brushing my teeth before going to sleep, him jizzing on my stomach—had caught up with me. I probably was still coated with Albuquerque Hampton Inn residue! Though I didn’t exactly feel gross because of Noah, I definitely felt gross adjacent to him, and aware of him behind me not as a smoking-hot person I might be falling in love with but as a rhythmically breathing lump inhabited by a human I didn’t really know that well.
I could see the time on the cylindrical silver clock on Noah’s nightstand, which I lay closer to than he did. What an ugly object, I thought as I tried to determine a strategy for extricating myself. The master bathroom was about twenty feet away and the door was open, and I could go in there, turn on the shower to cover the noise of facing my destiny on the toilet, take a real shower to conceal the fact that I’d just faced my destiny on the toilet, and emerge clean. But where were my clothes and toothbrush and hairbrush? Still in my car? They had to be. And it was very plausible that the house’s security alarm was armed, either because Noah had set it the night before or because it was automated. Then I thought, one of the guest rooms. Any of the guest rooms. Any bathroom not right off Noah’s bedroom.
All this time, Noah’s left arm had been slung over my left side, and, as lightly as possible, I nudged it off. Then I inched forward, to the edge of the mattress, swung my legs down, and quickly stood. Immediately, my new freedom released a surge of adrenaline. The articles of clothing scattered on the rug were indistinguishable in the dark room, and the first thing I picked up was, I was pretty sure, his boxer briefs. The second thing seemed to be his shirt. In the bed, he stirred, and I thought Fuck and hurried from the room.
I followed a short hall to the entry hall; crossed it; entered the guest wing; walked to the farthest of the three bedrooms; entered its bathroom; sat on the toilet; peed for a very long time; pooped; immediately felt 60 percent better; remembered I had no underwear on, let alone pants, to pull up; washed and dried my hands; then stood there, unsure what to do next. It occurred to me that, as at the homes of rich people I’d visited in the past, there might be spare toiletries in the cabinet behind the mirror or under the sink. But the mirror was just a mirror, without any cabinet, and under the sink all I found were a toilet brush, a plunger, and an unopened package of six rolls of toilet paper. In lieu of a toothbrush, I used my index finger and water, and as I did, I noticed the puffy tangle behind my head of triple-orgasm hair. I washed and dried my hands a second time and attempted to run my fingers through the tangles with little success, and as I did I fully apprehended the absurdity of the situation. My phone was in Noah’s room, in the pocket of my discarded jeans. My laptop was in the car. I was wearing nothing from the waist down. If I were a different person, presumably this was when I’d have returned to Noah’s room, climbed in his bed, snuggled against him, and gone back to sleep. Instead I walked pantsless into the kitchen, pulling my T-shirt over my nether regions, hoping there really was no closed-circuit TV, helped myself to a tangerine in a bowl of citrus on the island, then—as quietly as possible—opened seven cabinets before finding the one with side-by-side compost and trash bins. I saw on the microwave clock that it was 4:31. I walked back to the guest room adjacent to the bathroom I’d besmirched, climbed under the covers, and began crafting the sentences I’d use to express to Noah that I really appreciated his hospitality but that staying in a hotel seemed to make more sense after all. Would I say that I felt overwhelmed, or was that obvious? Would I specify that while I knew there were people who could handle an amorphous and open-ended trip in the context of an amorphous and open-ended relationship, I wasn’t one of them? Relationship, of course, was the wrong word. Tryst? Fling? Rendezvous? I frantically revised my hypothetical script for at least an hour before, improbably, falling asleep. When I awakened, sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and Noah was standing by the bed holding a mug of coffee for me. But before I realized it was him, I only knew that I was in a strange room with a strange man, and I yelped.
“Sally, it’s me,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What time is it?”
“Nine forty-five.” He passed me the mug then sat on the edge of the mattress. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, blue shorts, ankle socks, and sneakers. The perfect golden hair on his perfect arms and legs was visible, and his face was kind and handsome. “I guessed at how much oat milk you put in, so if it’s wrong, we can start over.”
“I hope it’s okay I came in here. I just thought—” The words that a few hours before had seemed necessary—amorphous and open-ended, relationship, tryst—were eluding me. Instead, I felt very happy to see Noah, while also wondering if my eyes were visibly crusty or my lips were visibly scummy.
“Yeah, of course.” His voice was friendly and utterly unfazed. “It’s always weird sleeping in a new place for the first time. And I apologize that we didn’t get you more settled last night, but I guess we were distracted.” He smiled affably. “Your bags are all in the hall. I brought them in from the car. And your clothes are there.” He nodded to the left, and I saw that on the white armchair, in a tidy pile, were my folded jeans and folded bra. “I think your phone is in the pocket,” he said.