When I told George about the incident, he said I was insensitive. And he never paid me back the sixty bucks. Dog people.
I had a cat named Ginger when I was a kid. He was orange. I named him when I was three, before I knew Ginger was a girl’s name, according to most of the world. Anyway, when I was around eight, a raccoon attacked fierce Ginger. He came walking up our driveway with part of his intestines hanging out, dragging on the concrete. My dad said he’d be fine. No one believed my dad. Ginger somehow managed to climb into the rafters of our garage. I was 99 percent sure he was going there to die, but he didn’t. He spent seven days licking his wounds until he healed himself. Cats are awesome! We had a lot of respect for Ginger after that, even though he was kind of an asshole.
“Oh my god!” Adam slammed the refrigerator door closed and my attention was suddenly directed to him standing in the kitchen, shocked.
I set down Foxy Cleopatra. “What?” I began walking toward the refrigerator.
He stood in front of it, blocking it. “No! You can’t look in there.”
I started feeling sick to my stomach. “What, what is it?” Is it a human head?!
He slowly moved out of the way. “You’re gonna find out eventually.” He looked down at the ground as I reached for the handle. I was trembling. This was suddenly getting very strange.
I opened it and looked in. There was nothing unusual. Adam leaned in, near my ear, and whispered, “Champagne. We haven’t had Champagne tonight.”
“You scared me!” I shouted. I grabbed the bottle and pulled it out.
“What’d you think you’d find in there?”
“You don’t want to know.”
In the kitchen, we ate the giant maple bars and drank Champagne from the bottle.
We were hopped up on sugar and Adam seemed fidgety. “Bathroom break. I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Okay.” He handed me his phone. “Here, it’s hooked up to the speaker up there. You want to put some music on?”
“Sure.”
The picture on the screen saver was of Foxy. Maybe cat people are a little weird, too. Who just hands over their phone like that? He was hiding nothing from me, but he was still a mystery.
I picked Paul Simon, and “Obvious Child” came on. Adam yelled, “Good choice!” from the bathroom. He came out wearing only a white T-shirt and boxers. My mouth fell open in shock.
“What?” he said.
“What happened to your clothes?”
“I took them off.” He squinted, confused. “Why are you dressed like that? It’s the middle of the night.”
I paused for a minute, unsure of what he meant. “This is the same outfit I’ve been wearing all night. How should I be dressed?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Sorry, I bet that seemed weird. That was my lame attempt at a joke. Shall we get comfy?”
5. Stranger Things
“What the hell,” I said. I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my jeans, and pulled my shirt over my head. I was standing in a black lace bra and underwear set.
“Wow.”
“Wow?”
“Yeah, wow. By the way, have I told you how beautiful you are?”
I turned up the volume. “No!” I yelled over the loud music. “Tell me again, Adam!”
“You’re insanely beautiful!” he shouted. He pulled me toward him and I was yanking his T-shirt off. He had muscles. If you must have a one-night stand with a strange artist-man who paints murals in your neighborhood and seems kind of weird, muscles help. I moved my fingertips across the ridges on his stomach and up his arms to his defined biceps. He laughed.
“Ticklish?” I said.
He guided my hand to his mouth and pretended to bite my fingertips.
A second later we were dancing like lunatics in front of the big window and then we took turns sliding across the wood floor in our socks. We ate more Chinese food and drank more Champagne and spun each other around until we collapsed into a pile on his bed. Then we were kissing and it wasn’t slow anymore. It was frantic and passionate. We were tugging at each other and rolling from one side of his bed to the other. He was on top of me and I was yanking his boxers off with my toes, pulling them down his butt.
He jolted upright and grabbed my foot. “How are you doing that?” He inspected my feet. “Oh my god!” Holding my foot up, he said, “How are you doing that with these sausage toes?”
“Hey! I like my toes.”
“They’re adorable, but they look like they belong on a fat toddler.”
We were both laughing, but I felt vulnerable, so I sat up. “Let me see your feet.”
“I have beautiful feet,” he said and it was true. The bastard could have been a foot model.
“Damn you.”
“Come here, let me see those little Jimmy Deans.”
“Leave my toes alone!” I tried to scurry off the bed but he caught me. He was sitting on the edge, pulling my arm back. He spun me around and his face was level with my belly. He kissed it, slowly, while running one hand up the inside of my thigh. There was no more talking after that.
He pulled me to straddle him and then he gently unclasped my bra and began kissing my breasts. I arched my back and let my head fall. A moment later, we were completely naked, rolling back onto the bed. I tried to pull him on top of me, but he turned us over again so that I was on top of him. I leaned forward and clicked off the bedside lamp. The light from the street reflected off the ceiling, creating a cool glow in the large loft space.
Remember what I said about one-night stands being awkward? It wasn’t awkward with Adam. Usually teeth clash or heads bump or hands go the wrong way. It’s like when you’re walking down the street and you veer to the right to get out of the way of the person coming toward you, and then they veer to their left, mistakenly, and then a series of awkward jerky movements ensue, making you both feel like jackasses.
It was nothing like that.
At first we were just kissing; I was feeling a tad self-conscious about being naked on top of him. And then he was inside of me, coaxing me to move. “Sit back,” he whispered.
I sat up and let my hair fall down my back. He gripped my hips hard as I began to move above him. He met my movements with ease.
Blissfully, he watched as I moved. My self-consciousness slipped away. I closed my eyes. When I slowed the rhythm, he flipped us over. He hovered over me, full of strength. We were connected, so close, and he was kissing my neck and nibbling at my ear and then his mouth was on mine. He picked up the pace and I could feel my body tingling. I was coming apart, letting go with a stranger. I couldn’t believe how easy he made it all feel. Once there was no stopping it, my back arched off the bed, my neck went rigid, and one quiet “Oh” slipped from my mouth, almost painfully, before I felt myself pulsing all around him.
“Oh god,” he murmured, and then he thrust one last time and collapsed on top of me.
When I opened my eyes finally, he was holding himself above me, staring down.
“What?” I said.