Before the words had completely left his lips, she was nodding. Ryan braced himself for the wave of jealousy but found surprisingly little lapping against the shore of his mind.
“Do you want to fuck her?” Jennifer asked, awash with earnestness.
Ryan winced. The world, TV, movies, everything had taught him that this kind of question always led to bad things if answered honestly. An affirmative answer would lead to a “Why am I not attractive enough?” throw down, while a dissenting answer could go any number of other horrible directions, including, “Why must you always lie?” Never mind that he’d asked her the same question, and it hadn’t been a trap.
“Yes,” he said, finally. “Very much.”
Jennifer’s face betrayed nothing for a moment, then she smiled. “I think I do, too.” She buried her face in her pillow.
“Really?”
He heard the sound of her rubbing against her pillow as she nodded into it. In twelve years she’d not indicated any attraction toward women. He pondered it as an old kinetoscope spooled up in his mind, something he’d seen converted to a flip book, in the garage of a buddy when he was nine. Two women, curvy, nude, in a fluffy boudoir, nuzzled against each other’s ample breasts before beginning to swat at each other with pillows. Their bushy pubic hair stood out in vivid black against the fading rest of the image. Only in the kinetoscope of his mind, the two women were his wife and Paige, and after the pillow fight they collapsed on the bed, embracing.
“Ryan?”
He snapped back. She’d unburied her head but wasn’t looking him in the eye. “Yeah?”
“That’s okay, right?” she asked.
“What?”
“That I want Paige? That I want to,” she searched for the words for a long while, “do stuff with girls?”
“Oh! Yeah, of course.”
“You don’t think it’s weird?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He’d pulled her in and left a kiss on her forehead, drifting to sleep soon after.
Now, in the morning light, he rolled on his side to look at her again. Her sleep didn’t seem fitful. Perhaps she felt content for the first time in a long while. He brushed a lock of hair from her face. “Today is the day we hold our breath and jump.”
16
Jennifer scrolled down to Barbara Watkins’ name in her phone and took a deep breath through her nose. She exhaled slowly, glancing at Ryan, emptying the kitchen garbage can to give himself something to do while she did this part. She pressed the call button.
When the pleasantries were done, and thanks made for the party, the conversation stalled into awkward silence.
“Well, Noah and I are about to head—”
Jennifer interrupted, blurting out, “So, we were hoping to get Bruce and Paige’s phone number.”
Silence.
“Barbara?”
“Bruce and Paige’s phone number,” Barbara said.
“Yes,” Jennifer agreed.
“Why?”
She hadn’t expected to need a reason, and somehow, “Well they’re swingers and we want to be that too,” didn’t seem like the best tactic. “They were friendly. Seemed nice,” she offered. Then, a little defensively, added, “We liked them.”
“They are nice,” Barbara agreed, a bit begrudgingly. Another long pause. “Look, I just want to say one…” she trailed off.
Muffled, she heard Barbara say, “They want to talk to Bruce and Paige.”
Then from Noah, “Well if you don’t want them scooping up your friends, you should stop inviting them to things.”
“What did you want to say,” asked Jennifer into the phone, frowning. She wanted to point out that she and Ryan were grownups, for chrissakes. They could make their own decisions and choices. Had she wanted to, she could’ve probably just found Bruce and Paige under Shepard in the phone book. Though she did wonder if she still had a phone book. White Pages online, then. But more importantly, fucking grownups! “Barbara!” she said instead, firm.
A sigh on the phone.
“Do you not want us to hang out with them?” Jennifer needled. She knew what this was, Barbara being protective, but it wasn’t warranted. Or necessary.
Ryan stood at the hall door, staring, waiting, quarter-full garbage bag in hand.
“No, honey, it’s…” Again with the pauses. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry. Have a pen?”
As it happened, Jennifer did have a pen. After writing the number down, and saying a terse goodbye to Barbara, she stared at the yellow note with a phone number on it, stuck to the linoleum table top.
Now what?
Once Jennifer had started writing, Ryan had taken the bag out to the can in the garage. Now he stood in the kitchen doorway, hands in his pockets, uncertain. “What do we do?” he asked.
“Well,” she began, then paused. “I guess we call them up. Ask them out.” Neither of the sentences were questions, but she noticed her own voice going up at the ends, implying a question mark she hadn’t intended.
“Ask them out,” Ryan repeated. “Like a date.”
Jennifer felt a flush in her cheeks, feeling suddenly very exposed by all this. This was happening too quickly, after all, wasn’t it? They’d met a couple on Friday, and here on Sunday night they were planning to ask that couple out on a date! What did that even mean? “I think a date. I mean we don’t just call them up and tell them we want to fuck them, do we?” She grinned at Ryan, a loopy grin, one that revealed the absurdity of this all. One thing was certain, she liked saying fuck better than sex.
He sat across the table from her and also stared at the Post-it. “I think it would be in our best interests, and disagree with me if… well, if you disagree with me, to get together with them to talk. Probably should have drinks.”
“Lots of drinks,” Jennifer agreed.
“And just, sorta, ask them about… what they do.”
Jennifer thought she might be nodding too much.
“They might not even be interested,” he said.
She hadn’t considered that, the possibility that this couple was extremely flirty in general, that it was just how they “did” parties. The possibility that she and Ryan might get… rejected. “Well, shit.”
“What?”
“Now you made it like high school.”
“What’d I do?”
“Now I get to worry about rejection.” She slapped her hand on the table and scowled, folding her arms across her chest.
“Oh, honey.” He leaned toward her, both of his palms flat on the table top. “I wasn’t talking about them not being interested in you.” His emphasis spoke volumes, and she turned back toward him. Her husband looked pale, nervous, needed reassurance, needed to hear, “Of course she wants to fuck you.”
He looked surprised when she said it, and more surprised when Jennifer jumped up and sat on his lap. “Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
After a moment, and a kiss, Jennifer grabbed her phone, typed in the number from the note, and held her finger over the call button. She looked at Ryan, smirked, and asked, “Are we go for launch?”
He laughed. “We’re go, flight!”
She pressed the button, then immediately pressed the one next to it, and the tinny sound of a phone ringing filled the kitchen, echoing. Another ring. Another ring. This must be a home number. Jesus, what if they’re not home? Jennifer didn’t think she could handle having to leave a message, or waiting to hear back if—
“Hello?” asked Bruce’s voice.
Seconds ticked by. Neither of them said anything. Both stared at the phone.
“Hello?” This time the voice was more puzzled.
He’d hang up in a second. One of them had to say something. One of them had to grow a pair and just—