Coco was looking at Jesse’s face as he jabbed repeatedly at his scrambled eggs with a fork, and already there was an uneasy feeling somewhere at the back of her mind.
Rick, on the other hand, was in a good mood. He had been happily swigging gin since early morning. But the very sight of the gin bottle made Coco feel sick after their heavy session the night before, so she was drinking iced water from a large pitcher instead.
“Ah, come on, look at her face. You can’t tell me she ain’t cute. I just can’t stop kissing her. And she’s so damn sexy, I can’t keep my hands off of her,” said Rick to his son, then kissing Coco again.
The smell of the alcohol on his breath made her feel sick and she barely managed to keep herself from retching.
Jesse looked at his father contemptuously and threw his fork down on his plate. He hadn’t touched his vegetables at all. He stood up from the table, and turned to Coco.
“I don’t eat vegetables for breakfast, okay? You got it?”
Coco was too stunned to reply. Jesse picked up his jacket and headed for the door.
“Hey, Dad. Don’t worry about me—I’ll get lunch at Alex’s place okay? You just have fun.”
The door slammed shut behind him, and Coco was left alone with Rick in the kitchen. She was relieved that Jesse had gone. She looked over at Rick, sitting at the table. He suddenly looked down shyly, downed his gin, then stood up and went into the next room. Feeling sexy, Coco went into the bedroom and got undressed, then slipped under the sheets wearing nothing but a tiny pair of panties, and waited for him. She knew that he wouldn’t be far behind, that he would follow her into the bedroom and want to continue where they had left off the night before.
This was the moment Coco enjoyed most after spending the night with a man for the first time: when you sober up the next morning and you’re over the initial excitement. It’s only then that you start weighing up whether you can actually get along with each other or not. And it is only when you are released from the extraordinary power of sexual curiosity that you can begin to properly appreciate each other’s body.
Coco looked herself over in the mirror. She brushed her hair back from her face with satisfaction. Yesterday’s makeup was almost completely gone, but she knew she was at the age when she looked most attractive without it. She buried her face in the pillow, and some of the lipstick smeared on it from the night before came off on her cheek.
She posed herself seductively on the bed and waited for Rick, but Rick didn’t appear, and after a while she started to get a cramp in her leg because of the unnatural position she was in. Eventually she got tired of waiting, and crept out of bed and peered around the door, only to find Rick standing in front of the washing machine, a glass of gin in his hand, watching his clothes spin round and round in the drum.
Coco let her breath out in exasperation. She considered herself to be an expert when it came to men, but there was no chapter in her version of the Sex Bible titled “Guys Who Wash Their Clothes After Sex.” The way it was supposed to be was that the first time she spent the night with a man, they would wake up the next morning, get some breakfast, and then he’d drag her back to bed again, staring deeply into her eyes as they made love, gently whispering his undying devotion and corny phrases about how they were made for each other.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked.
Rick dropped his glass with a startled yelp and turned around to face her.
“Did I surprise you?”
“A little…” he said hesitantly,
“Do you enjoy doing the laundry?” she asked, as she stooped to pick up the pieces of broken glass from the floor.
“Sure, a-a-a little…”
Rick was stuck for words, and for some reason, he reached in the washing machine, pulled out his wet shirts, and started wringing them out by hand.
Maybe he’s embarrassed, she thought to herself. How old had he said he was? With an eleven-year-old kid, he must surely be in his late thirties at least. So what could be wrong with him? It was too late to start being embarrassed after they’d already slept together.
“Come on,” she said, taking his hand and nodding toward the bedroom door. She led him into the bedroom and slipped under the covers.
Rick closed the window blinds and started taking off his clothes.
His hands were cold from the wet shirts, and as he began to caress the back of her neck, she could still smell the soap on them. Rick had been out of bed for a while so his body was colder than hers, but as he began to warm up, he gradually started to conform to her Sex Bible rules.
Rick and Coco had met each other for the first time the night before While their friends had been partying wildly in the club, the two of them had spent most of the evening talking quietly together and ex-changing intense looks.
Rick paid her lots of compliments, but that was nothing new to Coco—she was used to guys coming on to her. W h e n he left her at the bar to go to the toilet, he kept turning back as if worried that someone else might move in on her in his absence, and that was what attracted her to him. When he got back moments later—he had obviously rushed—he looked so pleased to find she was still there waiting for him.
Drinking seemed to ease Rick s nerves. Coco, on the other hand, was quite at home with this kind of situation; it was such a normal part of her everyday life that she even began to let her mind wander a little, wondering what sort of tired line he would come up with to try to get her back to his place when it was time to go home. But it was more out of curiosity than any sense of excitement. She was just taking it easy, savoring the start of yet another new love affair.
Rick drank like it was going out of fashion, and Coco found herself keeping pace with him. She used the opportunity to find out more about him so she could decide whether or not she was going to spend the night with him. While teasing and joking, she skillfully slipped in all sorts of personal questions.
Coco soon discovered that Rick wasn’t married. Well, that was a good thing, because she had no desire to sleep with married men. Not because she didn’t want to be a home wrecker: Coco just wasn’t interested in other women’s castoffs. Married men were so unimaginative in bed. There was no passion. It was always just sex by the numbers. Nothing made her skin crawl like a married man telling her he “couldn’t live without her.”
Rick could tell that Coco liked him and it was obvious that he was thrilled to have such a beautiful woman all to himself. And that made Coco feel good, too.
As they talked, he tickled her now and then, and she squealed excitedly like a little girl.
“If you come back to my place,” he told her, “I’ll tickle you from head to toe—with my tongue.”
That gave her some idea of the kind of lover he might be, and at that point she decided she would probably spend the night with him.
Then, when he tried telling her he was younger than he really was, she could tell it was a lie, and it put her off. It was the sort of thing she would expect from a woman, not a man, so she changed her mind. She didn’t want to waste her time. Experience had taught her that there was no point in starting an affair if it wasn’t going to be good.
Let’s get out of here and go to my place,” he finally said, as if the matter had already been settled.
“Maybe next time,” she replied flatly.
His face fell and he looked down at the floor, dejected. Coco could see that he was crushed, and she felt bad. She tried to console him by telling him that she didn’t sleep with anyone on the first date.
Yeah, right, she thought to herself.
But Rick fell for it.
He seemed to resign himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be taking her home, and dropped the topic of sex and started talking about his son, Jesse, instead.