“Anything for you, Noah!” called Paige from the other end of the bar, tipping her glass. She reached down one long leg to run a single nail along her calf, perhaps scratching an itch. As she did, she leaned in closer to Ryan, filling his nostrils with the scent of, well, he didn’t know, but it didn’t smell like anything that would be bottled and sold as a scent. At once, he was certain this bouquet was simply how she smelled.
“Having fun?” she whispered to him, straightening back up.
Surprised by the overture, Ryan laughed to himself. His friends were quirky but genuine. The bluster and pomp that Noah put into everything rarely failed to elicit a smile, even if it was occasionally accompanied by a groan. And Sam, well, Sam was perhaps the one person in his life who always seemed more stressed out by the simple act of living than Ryan himself was. Was he having fun? “Always.” Then he did look Paige in the eye. The skin around her eyes crinkled as her mouth revealed a tiny smile.
“So what am I settling?” Paige asked Noah.
Perhaps to emphasize the importance of what he was about to ask, Noah set his drink on the bar and folded his hands. “We need a ruling down here, and when I saw you arrive I thought, who at this party would be better suited to answer this question than you?”
“Good Lord, Noah, that prelude.” Paige laughed.
Sam sighed entirely too loudly to be anything but for show.
“Anal.” Noah let the word hang in the room, loud enough to catch the attention of a few other party-goers who Ryan didn’t recognize. The men stood, staring quizzically in Noah’s direction, holding steady with their pool cues. After a moment, the one on the left sunk the seven ball. “Should we hem, and haw, and—”
Ryan interrupted Noah’s bravado, and brought the volume of the discussion back down to earlier levels. “Not hemming and hawing, Noah.” He turned to Paige. “He doesn’t think we should warn—”
“Like we’re attacking or—”
Ryan continued despite Noah’s attempt to explain himself. “—our wives that we’re going to try to—”
“That we’re going to stick it in, Paige.” Noah slapped the bar hard enough that his over-filled glass of Scotch splashed droplets onto the bar.
Ryan sighed and turned his face fully to Paige, her eyebrows sloping outward, lips pursed. “Yes,” he told her, pained.
“So,” she stood, touching Ryan’s knee as she did, and approached Noah. Sam turned his body away from what it looked like might be a confrontation. “You just jam it in there?”
Duck and cover, eh, Sam? Thought Ryan. “He tries,” he called after Paige.
“And fails,” mumbled Sam.
“Maybe Barbara just doesn’t want your dick in her ass.” Paige’s smirk grew, and she punctuated with a tip of her glass toward Noah.
Sam, emboldened, suggested “That’s something to consider, isn’t it?”
“So your conceit,” continued Paige, “is that women don’t like anal sex, and because of that you need to trick them by surprising them with that excruciating first push? Without proper lubrication I’ll assume as well, and no, Noah, spit doesn’t count as lube.”
Sam nodded, the way he likely had in the schoolyard seeing someone picking on his personal bully. “Nice summary.”
“She’s on to closing statements,” said Ryan, “then we, the jury, may retire.”
“That’s a bit simpler than I’d intended.” Some of Noah’s bluster was gone, but he continued, perhaps hoping to save a bit of face and convince the prosecutor of his innocence. “But, yeah, sorta. I do use Astroglide, though.”
Paige nodded, looking at the men at the bar, each in turn. She winked at Ryan.
He turned his focus inward. The touch, the leaning forward so he could smell her hair, the smile in her eyes. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that this beautiful woman was flirting with him.
Did he know better?
“Well, Noah,” she began, putting her hand on Noah’s shoulder, “a good number of women who manage to get past that push actually love the sensation of anal sex, and by forcing the issue, you’re likely ensuring that she’ll never get past the clenching stage.”
The emboldened Sam was back. “See, Noah, have you thought about the clenching stage?”
Noah nodded at her, pursing his lips. “And you, Paige?”
She playfully poked at his nose. “I’ll never tell… you.” With that she scrunched her nose and grabbed Ryan’s hand. “C’mon, Ryan, you’ve outgrown this conversation.”
“You know, I thought that might have happened.”
“Bye, boys.” With a wink, she pulled him upstairs.
7
Jennifer slid her toes across the leather couch closer and closer to Bruce’s leg. She knew she was in dangerous territory here but did it anyway. He was in the middle of a fabulous story, of which she’d long since lost the main thread, but she still made a point to laugh when he looked at her with that grin. The signpost warning that the bridge is out was miles back. The velvety haze of red wine drunk had arrived, and Bruce kept refilling her glass. The one in front of her, a Barbaresco, was deep red, almost black in the dim light of the great room.
“To continue our tour of Italy,” he’d said as he gingerly handed it to her. “You will let me know when you’ve had enough of my unquenchable need to hear myself talk, yes?” She’d nodded, perhaps with a bit too much enthusiasm. Since then, she’d kept her movements to a minimum.
The current story involved Bruce and Paige’s children. Jennifer felt certain it was a positive story, that he wasn’t complaining about his family, but couldn’t recall more than that. Once thing was for sure, “You must be exhausted.”
Bruce flicked his eyes in her direction, a quizzical look in them. “No, no. I’ve got a nice buzz going on. And you’re a delightful conversational companion.”
She giggled. “No! I mean, in general. ’Cuz of…” she stammered, realizing that she’d already forgotten the names of the children. “Your kids. Kids are tough.”
“Do you have any?”
“Me?” Jennifer made a pssht sound and then immediately regretted it, sure she’d launched some saliva in Bruce’s direction. She tried to recover while keeping her visual search for wet spots on his pants on the down-low. “No, I just infer that they are. We’ve, Ryan and me, I mean, we’ve always waited for that moment to come, down the road. The one where you’re all, ‘I want to be a parent.’”
“I remember that moment. You’ve never felt it?”
“No. So many of our friends did, and we’d hold the babies and just feel… nothing.” Jennifer recalled when Sam and Patti had brought their infant to one of the Watkins’ brunches. Perhaps no more than three months old at the time, little Dorothy had been all giggles and bubble blowing for about ten minutes, as everybody cooed and goochie gooed over the child. The tiniest pang had come, perhaps, but more an “I wonder” than “I want,” and that pang had vanished almost immediately thereafter when Dorothy tired of the grownups and decided to raise some holy hell. The crying started, which begot sobbing, which begot wailing, which begot screaming, which begot the Mortons making a hasty retreat from the brunch and not returning to an event for nearly a year, when they’d finally realized that babysitters might serve an actual function.
“So I figure leave the babies to the baby… wanting people.” Jennifer grimaced and shook her head. “Not the most eloquent.”
“Perhaps not. Yet a valid sentiment that so few actually seem to subscribe to, and so often ignoring that instinct makes one miserable. Kids are indeed tough, even as they get older, maybe especially as they get older.”