October 7, 2020
Rebecca doesn't think Nathaniel will show, but he does and right on schedule. Six o'clock, as usual. It's just enough time for him to change out of his work clothes, choose a beverage of an alcoholic persuasion, and drive to her apartment. As usual, AJ lets him in, and, as usual, Nathaniel finds her in bed, curled up into a ball on top of the comforter, a throw pillow hugged to her chest.
If nothing else, at least her period is predictable. The painful side effects, unfortunately, are just as predictable, though they are lessened by Nathaniel's similarly predictable monthly visit.
"Hi."
"Hi yourself," she mumbles, her voice muffled by the pillow.
He leans against the door frame, a bottle of red wine in his hand, not crossing the threshold. Usually he opens with some teasing of her condition, but today he's quiet and waits for her to speak first.
"Wasn't sure if you'd come," she says.
"Why?"
Her mouth opens but no words come out.
You know why, she wants to say. You must know why. How could you not know why?
Mere days ago, they kissed. Fully kissed. Lips-on-lips, mouth-on-mouth kissed. Not on the cheek or her forehead. Not on the back of her hand or her temple or the inside of her wrist or all the places he's found to kiss her that can pass as platonic. Their only interactions since that day have been a handful of benign texts and a stilted exchange at the Rebetzel's counter. They've tiptoed around the incident, neither of them willing to break the seal and acknowledge what happened. Rebecca hasn't told a soul about it – not even Paula.
He fidgets with the bottle and his eyes dart around nervously. Is he thinking about the kiss too? As she squints up at him from the bed, she wonders if he's prompting her with that question. Does he want her to say it out loud?
After several moments of loaded silence, he says with a shrug, "Guess I'm a creature of habit."
He steps into the room and runs right into the baby-blue heating pad she chucked across the room in a fit of rage hours ago.
"What happened here?" he asks, poking the offending object with his toe.
"Broken," she groans, "I'm in hell."
"Aww," he coos, pouting his lips in a mock-pitying expression.
"Fuck you," she says with a laugh.
He chuckles, stepping over the heating pad to perch on the edge of her bed.
"You can't be mad at me, kid," he says, his voice all warmth and affection. He uses his free hand to brush away a strand of hair that's fallen across her forehead.
A slow smile spreads across her lips, his presence and his touch completely overshadowing her feigned annoyance.
"Why not?"
"Because," he says, smooth as silk, "I brought a bottle of that Napa cabernet you love. And I saw a commercial for some Bachelor or Bachelor-adjacent thing that we could watch."
Her eyebrow quirks up. "Really? Alright, you can stay, I guess."
"I thought so."
He rises from the bed and leaves her for the kitchen. As he's shuffling through the drawer for a corkscrew, she struggles to haul herself up against the headboard. It's not as comfortable as the fetal position when it comes to her pain, but she feels obligated to try to be a semi-functioning human. She grabs the laptop from the bed's edge and opens the lid, navigating to her bookmarked streaming site.
He returns moments later with two wine glasses expertly entwined between his fingers, corkscrew in the other hand. He nudges the door closed behind him with his hip and deposits the accoutrements on her night table.
As he pours the wine, a wave of a cramp crashes over her and she whines, "God, it feels like there are a thousand tiny miners with pickaxes hammering away at my uterus."
"That's . . . a visual. Hopefully this helps," he says, handing her a glass.
She gladly accepts it and sticks her nose inside. "Mmm, I do love this wine," she hums, inhaling its fruity yet floral scent. "Don't tell me how much it costs or I'll feel guilty."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
His glass is filled much higher than hers, which is unusual considering he's usually the one commenting on her heavy pouring hand. He taps his glass to hers and takes a drink. A long one. He drains most of the glass while she watches, eyes wide.
"You OK there? Usually you're the one telling me to slow down and sip and savor it, Rebecca," she says, putting on a scolding, masculine affectation.
He gazes into his glass for a moment, then says, completely ignoring her cartoonish impression of him, "It's been a long few days, I guess."
"Oh," she says, hoping he'll elaborate and wondering again if their kiss could be on his mind.
He clears his throat. "I wired the money for the Sugar Face property today," he states.
Her eyes narrow, unconvinced. "I've never seen you flinch at any amount of money. Are you sure that's all it is?"
He takes another sip and pauses, as if he's collecting his thoughts before he speaks. "That's all," he finally says and reaches for the wine bottle to refill his glass.
To be fair, from her experience in commercial real estate, she knows the property has to be worth close to a million dollars. It may have even gone for more than a million if there were competing bidders. He hasn't told her if he paid in cash or financed the investment, but she does know he's funding it with his own money, not the firm's. Of course, she also can't forget the amount of pressure he puts on himself (not to mention the amount of pressure from his father) to be successful. It's something she understands all too well from growing up with a mother who pushed her so hard she developed an almost pathological need to overachieve. She can't exactly blame him for needing a stiff one and lets the subject drop.
"So what Bachelor crap are they peddling this week? Bachelor in Paradise? Bachelor Pad? Bachelor: Who Gave me an STD?" she asks.
"It worries me that I don't know which one of those are real. I don't know. It's some special event. Something dramatic, as always."
Nathaniel settles in next to her against the headboard, his arm brushing her shoulder.
She clicks play and the host is standing in a studio surrounded by bouquets of roses and an overabundance of lit candles. The studio audience is noticeably missing, hundreds of empty chairs in the background. He begins, "It's been six months since Kyle ended his relationship with Jenna and proposed to Brooke. A lot has happened since then, and tonight we'll find out all the details."
"What is this?" Rebecca asks, shifting to try to find a comfortable position, tucking a leg underneath her.
"You think I follow this stuff?"
The host continues, "All of America watched when bachelor Kyle got down on one knee and proposed to Brooke in what was one of the most romantic moments we've seen on The Bachelor in a long time. As you can see, we have no audience here tonight because what you're about to witness is potentially so dramatic –"
"Oh god," Nathaniel groans, rolling his eyes.
"– so emotionally difficult –"
"Jesus, did he kill her or something?" she quips.
"– we decided, out of respect for the parties involved, to keep the taping of tonight's special as intimate as possible."
Trying to alleviate some of her pain, Rebecca changes positions, raising her knees to her chest while cradling the wine glass against her. She leans against Nathaniel's side and he immediately wraps his arm around her shoulders, anchoring her.
"You OK?"
"Everything hurts and I'm dying," she whines.
"Speaking of dramatic," he says with a smirk, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
On screen, Kyle joins the host for a solo interview. "I came here to find someone like Brooke," Kyle says. "She is incredible, sweet, beautiful. Since the show ended, things have been different. We're not right for each other."
"Oh shit," Rebecca gasps and Nathaniel chuckles, low and rumbling, near her ear.
If nothing else, at least the show provides a distraction from her eviscerating pain. The stimulation of Nathaniel's closeness doesn't hurt either. His arm around her, strong and secure, his masculine scent, and the downy fabric of his t-shirt against her cheek are enough to help her forget the day she spent in bed in utter agony.
Kyle continues, "And as easy and as beautiful and wonderful as we all saw six months ago and how I lived it . . . since then the chemistry has been completely different. Over the last few weeks, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Jenna."
"Oh my god," Nathaniel mutters, surprised, into his wine glass. Rebecca lifts her head from his chest to give him a sidelong glance. "Didn't see that coming, I guess."
"I've tried for Brooke's sake, for our relationship's sake, but I can't. I'm doing all I can to make this work with Brooke, but I can't control how I'm feeling. They're real, honest, true feelings."
Nathaniel tips his head back and downs the remainder of his glass in one long gulp.
"Slow down, tiger," she snarks, borrowing a phase he's said to her many times in the past.
"I need one more. Top you off?" he asks when the show breaks for a series of advertisements. He disentangles his arm from around her and reaches for her glass.
"Uh, sure," she says with a dubious tilt of her head as she relinquishes her glass. "I guess that's three glasses for you and one for me then?"
His hand fumbles a little with the glass, a stark contrast from his usual finesse.
"You spill red wine on my comforter, you die," she warns.
"I'm fine," he asserts a little too emphatically.
"By the by, and completely unrelated to anything, how much have you eaten today? And disgusting green smoothies don't count."
"Not important," he says dismissively over his shoulder as he pours.
Rebecca presses the throw pillow to her abdomen, arranging and rearranging herself into several configurations to try to find a more comfortable position.
"What are you doing?" he asks as he observes her tossing and turning.
She grunts in frustration. "Ugh, sorry. I can't get comfortable. As you know, my heating pad broke. And I'm out of Advil but I was in too much pain to go to the store and I didn't want to ask AJ because then we have to have this whole snarky back-and-forth thing –"
"Do you want me to rub your shoulders or something?" he offers, "Would that help?"
It won't help, technically. Not with her cramps, at least. But it will loosen up her muscles and hopefully help her relax, and truthfully she has trouble refusing any opportunity to be closer to him.
"Sure, if you're offering," she says casually, as if she's not salivating at the thought of his hands on her.
"Come 'ere," he says, gesturing to the spot between his legs and setting his wine glass down on the table.
She shuffles over his leg so she's sitting between his knees, almost in his lap. At first, she doesn't make any contact, instead hovering within the valley of his legs. Her body hums with tension as she waits for him to touch her. His hands come to rest on her shoulders and he starts by kneading the base of her neck with his thumbs.
"So, um, how's the song-writing going?" he says, as if they're two people waiting for the same elevator making small talk. "You said your whole girl gang is gonna be there?"
She swallows hard. He's not being gentle, his thumbs digging deliciously hard into the tense muscles of her neck and back.
"Yeah, the girls are coming. Even Greg said he might be there. Makes me a little nervous, honestly."
"Really? I didn't think you got nervous anymore. You seem so comfortable up there."
She stifles a moan when his thumb presses into a knot in her right shoulder.
Letting out a shaky exhale, she says, "There are still things I have a hard time writing about."
Him. What she wants to say but wouldn't dare is that she has a hard time writing about him. The song she's performing on Friday had lyrics about Nathaniel in its first draft. In the second draft, she got cold feet and changed the lyrics so they were more vague, less obviously about Nathaniel. She deleted those too. Now, the song is scrubbed of all signs of him, leaving her feeling like a fraud. What kind of songwriter is she if she can't express what's in her heart?
The irony of it all is that she's not afraid of Nathaniel hearing her words. (The lyrics were tame to begin with, only alluding to romantic feelings without outright stating them.) No, what scares her is the others. What scares her is exposing her feelings in front of all the people she knows, particularly the people who were so adamant that she should be with Greg. Frankly, the thought of even implying her feelings for Nathaniel in front of everyone terrifies her. Every time she sang the lyrics out loud in her apartment, she imagined Valencia with her arms crossed, disappointed.
The show snaps her out of her thoughts. Brooke is now on-screen with Kyle, crying, "I wish more than anything, that last day, you would have just let me go instead of doing this to me."
It's hard to keep her attention on the screen when Nathaniel's fingers are playing her like a finely-tuned piano.
"This is rough," Nathaniel says, his eyes glued to the laptop, apparently not having as difficult of a time following along. "Breaking up with her on national television. I almost feel like I shouldn't be watching."
"Mmm hmm," she hums, closing her eyes and tilting her head to the side to give him better access to the side of her neck. He moves the collar of her shirt to the side, revealing her bare shoulder. She's not wearing a bra and she suspects this is why he hesitates before pressing his thumb deep into the muscle where her neck meets her shoulder.
She lets out a sigh and unabashedly leans into his hands.
"Good?"
She opens her eyes and in her periphery he's staring down at her, his lips parted. At that moment, a surge of a cramp hits and she winces reflexively and grabs her abdomen.
He stops massaging her shoulders and leans forward, trailing one of his hands so it lingers over her stomach.
"Show me where it hurts," he whispers and nudges her hand.
"Um," she breathes, taking his hand and guiding it to the trouble spot on her left side, "when I do this, it helps for some reason."
She pushes his fingers slightly underneath the waistband of her leggings into the skin of her abdomen. He kneads the spot, mimicking the way she pressed into it and, god, it's so much better than her own hands, it's criminal. Like an intrusive thought, it reminds her of the first time they had sex, when he spooned her from behind and slipped his hand between her legs, whispering into her ear, "Show me how to touch you."
She shivers at the memory, all her nerve-endings suddenly at attention.
Dropping his other arm so he's fully enveloping her, he rests his hand on the other side of her abdomen and whispers, "I know it's not as good as a heating pad, but you do always say my body's like a furnace."
"Guess it's finally good for something," she jokes nervously.
Despite what he says, she knows it's not just the temperature of his hands that's causing her to heat up. They're crossing a line. This is not something friends do. This is intimate. And not stay-up-all-night-and-tell-secrets or braid-each-other's-hair intimate.
She's not sure when it happened, but Jenna is on-screen and Brooke long gone.
Jenna is saying to the host, "Those kinds of feelings don't just disappear because you don't see them." She's as tall and lithe and beautiful as Rebecca remembers, her golden hair swept back in a flawless updo.
"Lean back and relax," Nathaniel whispers in her ear, his breath hot and boozy on her neck.
She rolls her shoulders and lets her body meld to his, her back flush against his chest with his nose buried in her hair somewhere behind her ear.
". . . Brooke was out here earlier, and I ended things with her because I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. My heart hasn't let go. My head hasn't let go," Kyle says, his voice merely background noise at this point.
Nathaniel begins kissing the exposed skin of her shoulder. Feather-light, tentative, testing the waters. Her heart pounds with excitement and she suddenly becomes hyper aware of every place their bodies connect.
The rational part of her brain is yelling at her to stop and think about what they're doing. What are they doing? A few days ago they shared an innocent kiss and now he's on her bed, his hands literally down her pants. Are they friends? Are they more? What does more mean exactly and is she ready for it? And how drunk is he? Are they going to kiss again? Have sex?
While her mind may be a scrambled mess, her body is singing. He feels warm and cozy and solid and big and male and all around her, surrounding her. Trailing kisses from her shoulder up to her neck, he somehow keeps getting closer and closer until there's no empty space between them. She's overwhelmed by how damn good his lips feel on her, the heavenly masculine smell of him up close, and the sight of his large hands dangerously close to a place she's dreamed about him touching.
Just as her eyes are fluttering closed, about to give in completely to the physical sensations, he abruptly stops kissing her and sucks in a breath.
"Sorry, I can't –" he rasps.
Oh no. Her eyes fly open and she shifts in his arms to try to gauge his expression, worried she did something wrong.
"I can't . . . I don't want to fight this anymore," he whispers, his eyeline dropping to her mouth.
"Kiss me."
All it takes is for him to lean forward slightly and he's kissing her, his hand raising to cup her jaw and draw her close. As soon as their lips meet, she's lost. She covers the hand on her face with her own to prove to herself it's real, he's real, and this is really happening. Then, she skims her fingers up his arm to his shoulder, to the back of his neck. She urges him on with the press of her fingertips on the back of his neck. He opens his mouth wide, eager and hungry.
He tastes dark, spicy, bitter, with a hint of sweetness underneath. And like Nathaniel, the Nathaniel she remembers. She may not be able to discern flavor notes of wine the way Nathaniel can – it all just tastes like wine to her – but she can taste every nuance of him. She's thirsty for him, wants to get drunk on him.
Impatient and needy, she turns in his arms and straddles him. She's all awkward, scrambling limbs as she climbs on top of him and pushes him down onto the bed, her lips never leaving his. He goes willingly, keeping both his hands steady around her waist to guide her. Once he's reclined and she's settled into his lap, she fully pounces. She kisses him hard, harder than she's ever kissed anyone. She kisses him like, at any moment, he might disappear and it will all have been some cruel, ephemeral fantasy. Her thumbs press into his cheeks, leaving little Rebecca-sized indents. He kisses her with equal fervor and matches her movements beat-by-beat. His hands settle at her hips, his thumbs stroking the sensitive inner part of her thighs.
In the background, the host asks Kyle, "Are you still in love with Jenna?"
"Yes," Kyle says resolutely.
Rebecca reaches out blindly and slams the laptop shut, shoving it toward the foot of the bed.
She slips her tongue into his mouth and he moans, the sound vibrating against her lips and ripping through her like an electrical current straight to her core.
Between kisses, he mumbles something unintelligible against her lips.
"Hmm?" she hums and breaks the kiss, leaning back so she can see his face. As she sinks back into his lap, the friction causes him to let out a strangled, hissing sound. He trails his hand up to her neck and caresses the column of her throat.
"I said I miss you," he whispers, his words slurring.
She squishes her eyebrows together. "What? I see you all the time."
"Like this," he says, his hips bucking slightly as he rubs his thumb down her neck, "I miss you like this. I miss this."
His eyes turn watery and he tugs at the back of her neck, bringing her mouth back down to his. He rolls her over onto her back, sinking down between her legs. His solid weight on top of her is everything she's been longing for, dreaming of, and wanting, wanting, wanting.
I want you, she thinks. I want you. I want you. I want you.
The three words hum through her veins, fill up all her cells, get breathed in and out with every inhale and exhale. It's all she can think. It's all she knows.
I want you.
She presses her fingernails hard into the skin of his back, wishing she could imprint herself on him. The feral, cavewoman part of her wants to mark him, own him, so he can never put his lips on anyone else ever again.
I want you.
He ducks his head and kisses a ticklish spot just below her ear and she says it, breathes it into the air, giving the words life, "I want you."
When she says it, he stops moving for a moment, then nuzzles her neck and rasps, "I want to go down on you."
She breathes, "Nathaniel –"
"I want to make you feel so good."
He does that – tells her what he wants to do before he does it. It's one of the many things she loved about having sex with him. There was never any unwanted surprises and every whispered promise in her ear exponentially heightened the anticipation for what was to come.
He resumes kissing her, rubbing his hard-on against her thigh as proof he wants to make good on his words. She whimpers and shifts her hips, trying to connect her clit with something, anything to relieve the deep pang of arousal building at her center.
One of his hands leaves her waist to skim up and under her shirt. His fingertips blaze a trail of fire over the skin of her stomach up to her chest. He cups her bare breast and she breaks the kiss, gasping, "Oh god."
He smiles and playfully nudges her nose with his own. "You're so soft," he whispers, running his thumb over her nipple.
They're going to have sex. Now. Sex. Nathaniel. Sex. It's happening. It's not some fantastic, libidinal dream. He's here, in her bed, kissing her, touching her.
Her mind races as she mentally speeds through what's about to happen. Given his tipsy state, she hopes that he remembers she has her period. He's never had a problem with it before, but there are certain logistics to be considered. At some point, she has to take out her menstrual cup. Should she do it now? After he goes down on her? The last thing she wants is to interrupt the moment, a moment she's been dreaming about for months. And then, what if they have sex? She gave all of her condoms to AJ after the big, three-way breakup to force herself into celibacy while she focused on her songwriting.
"Do you have a condom?" she blurts out.
Nathaniel's mouth drops open. "Uh . . . no. I didn't . . . I haven't been keeping one on me."
"Oh," she exhales, panic starting to set in.
"You're on birth control."
"I know, but . . . have you been tested lately? When's the last time you got tested?"
He props himself on his forearms, his eyes searching hers. His pupils are blown wide with arousal, his cheeks flush. He shakes his head slightly, as if trying to regain control of his brain, "Um, I don't know. I don't remember. Probably the last time you asked me to. Whenever that was."
Another cramp rears its ugly head and she bites her lip, her face twisting up in agony.
"Shit," she mutters.
"Are you still in pain?"
Rebecca drags her hand across her forehead, her head swimming. This is not how it was supposed to happen. She's not supposed to be in pain and out of condoms and on her period with a full menstrual cup inside her. He's not supposed to be on his third glass of wine on an empty stomach, probably so drunk the memory of the night will be hazy.
"All wrong. This is all wrong." she says quietly to herself.
Nathaniel blinks slowly, his face falling. "Oh," he exhales, "Sorry." He slowly rolls off of her and backs up against the headboard, scrubbing his hand over his face.
She bolts up to a sitting position. "I just," she starts, frantically smoothing her hair into place, "Shouldn't we stop and think –"
He throws his legs over the side of the bed and stands, sucking in a deep breath. "I get it," he says, the edge in his tone taking her by surprise, "I'm gonna go to the –"
Unsteady on his feet, he sways as he walks out of the bedroom.
"Nathaniel –" she calls after him, exasperated just before she hears the bathroom door click shut.
"Fuck," she whispers and buries her face in both her hands, "Fuck. What is wrong with me?"
Her heart races as she succumbs to a barrage of looping thoughts, which only intensify the longer Nathaniel is in the bathroom. He's been gone for a long time. Maybe he's throwing up or passed out. Maybe he's masturbating or waiting for his erection to die down. Or maybe he feels rejected and is drowning in the same uncertainty she is. Maybe he left the apartment all together and she didn't hear him leave.
Would he leave? The only thing she knows for sure is that she does not want him to leave her like this. There's already way too much ambiguity between them, and she knows she will be up all night wondering what he's thinking and what he's doing and where they stand if he leaves.
The toilet flushes and she sighs with relief.
He returns to the bedroom a few moments later, stumbling a bit over his own feet. He stands at the edge of her bed with his forehead furrowed looking conflicted, lost.
"I don't think I can drive," he says.
"Stay. Please stay," she says, humiliated by how desperate she sounds.
He looks at the door then back again at her.
"You don't have to take the couch," she says, reading his thoughts.
"Um," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, squinting through the fog of alcohol, "OK."
She draws back the comforter and he climbs into the bed. He lies down next to her on his back, and she leans over and turns off the light. She stares up at the ceiling, eyes wide open, her breathing shallow and shaky. Her body feels paralyzed with fear. In the light of morning will he think this was a mistake? Does he reciprocate her feelings or were his actions tonight the result of a tempting mixture of alcohol and months of suppressed physical urges? There's so much she wants to say, but wouldn't even know where to begin.
"Nathaniel," she whispers to the ceiling, "I want this, but you're drunk and I have these truly heinous cramps. I guess I've wanted this so long that I wanted it to be perfect. Maybe that's dumb, I don't know. Is that dumb?"
He's silent, so silent it's unnerving. She turns on her side to face him.
"Nathaniel –"
She stops short when she sees his face slack, mouth slightly open, his breathing heavy. It will have to wait until the morning. After watching him for a few minutes, she tucks herself into his side, resting her hand on his stomach. Nathaniel shifts in his sleep and mumbles some quiet nonsense, wrapping his arm instinctively around her shoulders. She cuddles in close, resting her head on his chest to listen to his thrumming heartbeat.
Every nagging doubt and insecurity swirl around in her head as she tries to fall asleep. Of course the fear that he may not reciprocate her feelings has been on her mind for quite some time. But part of her also fears the possibilities even if he did love her back. Their past relationship – affair, whatever you want to call it – was bad. And wrong. They hurt each other (and other people) in the process. Are they both truly different now or would they revert back into unhealthy patterns? If they tried again, would they crash and burn?
As she gazes up at him sleeping, peaceful and oblivious to her internal struggles, she realizes all she wants is for him to be happy. He's carved out a life for himself that brings him joy. That was no easy feat, she knows. He's come a long way and the last thing she wants is for their relationship to disrupt the life he's created or undo all his hard-earned growth.
She rubs her hand over his chest and whispers, "I love you," into his t-shirt.
Tomorrow, they'll talk. When he's sober and they're both hours separated from this horrendous thwarted attempt at sex, she'll make sure they finally have an honest conversation. She vows to herself, as she lets her breathing sync with his, that she'll do the right thing for the both of them, whatever it may be.