Ten

I was sitting at a sushi bar staring at my empty bowl of miso soup and my empty plate of tuna rolls trying to clear my brain. I was in a fog while everyone else was obviously there with dates or big parties having a quality Friday night.

I was alone. I had been visiting a friend in the hospital after an unplanned, medically necessary hysterectomy at 34. In one big swoop, she had fallen apart in my arms, just hours before, claiming that without her uterus she had ceased being a woman, lost all chances to ever have children and, therefore, wiped out any chance of ever finding a man who would love her.

When life shit like this happens, my friends call me because I'm the clown. I don't tell her that with time things are going to get better. I don't tell her anything at all. I listen, and then somehow I manage to make her laugh. Unlike her mother who nitpicks or her sister with the four kids who thinks she's helping her by talking about adoption, or the nice guy she met at the market. She's got me. I have no idea if I'll help or hurt when I'm around her, but I think that the biggest healing power of me being around is mostly because people know that no matter what happens to them, I will always be a bigger mess than they will.

Anyway, I was sitting at the sushi bar when my phone rang. I blinked at the caller ID for four rings, not believing what the computer chip was telling me. It was Lover. I hadn't spoken to him in six months. Our last night together had been soft and wonderful. It had seemed more on track and together than we had ever been. Before we parted, I swear the man looked torn, like he didn't want to go. But for some reason, after that incredible night, he hadn't e-mailed or even acknowledged me. I'm not sure what happened. I just knew that I was sending e-mail into the black hole for several months and not receiving any response at all. I took this as the ultimate signal to leave him alone and did so. Seeing his name now on my phone made my blood run cold. He could only be calling with bad news: someone was dead, someone lost their job, etc. and I'd had just about enough sad that day.

"Hello?" I asked just in case some wire got crossed, and it was actually someone else calling me.

"Why hello there," his tone was warm and happy like the six-month time period hadn't happened. "Where are you right now?" he asked.

"I'm sitting alone at the sushi bar we usually eat in Yorkville," I said. "Why?"

"It's pretty noisy there," he said.

"Do you want me to go outside?"

"No, no, no. That's not necessary."

"Do you need something?" I asked.

"I want you to look around the room and tell me who you find most attractive."

I frowned deeply. I had not had a day where I wanted to play games, and I was ready to just tell him to go to hell. "Lover, what the fuck?"

There was a moment of silence. "Just trust me."

I was angry. I had tried to ignore his absence knowing that I was doing my best not to be needy. But after six months, I had finally accepted that it was over and I had focused on my life. Now I was in town focusing on a friend's struggle. I sighed and looked around the room. You wouldn't think it would be hard at 8 p.m. to find three attractive people in a decent-sized restaurant in Toronto. But I used to play this game on the subway when I was younger and worked in New York City. It is amazingly hard. And when you do pick the people you find attractive, it's because you've watched them long enough to figure out why they're attractive not just because they have a decent face or a nice body.

I mean, there were a lot of beautiful people, but whom would I put at the top of my list just by looking at him or her. That was difficult.

"Okay, there's a couple in a booth in the window of the restaurant. She's around 45 and movie-star fit. She's sitting across from a guy who has to be 10 years younger than he is. And I'm pretty sure he's wondering how high a quarter would bounce if he dropped one on her aerobicized ass."

"Would you sleep with her?" he asked.

"No, she's not my type," I answered flatly. "I just wouldn't mind looking like her, or for that matter at her."

"Find three that are your type."

So, he wasn't just looking for pretty, he was looking for quality. I scanned the room again.

"I can find only one," I said letting out a sigh.

"You're too picky."

"What do you want? I have a vagina, not a penis. My parts are extremely selective."

"Fine, fine, fine. Girls good. Boys shallow. I get it. Describe."

I lower my voice because the person is close enough to hear me. "Single, at the end of the sushi bar. Skinny—"

"What color is her hair?"

"It's not a her; it's a him," I responded. I guess that surprised him because he didn't say anything.

"He's wearing a maroon sweater over a deeper maroon shirt with the collar open. He's got his head down in a book. There's a little crook to his nose and a faint sprinkling of freckles. His hair is a little spiked up and he's got a pair of thin, dark framed glasses on."

"Why do you like him," he asked quietly.

"It's the quiet ones you have to be careful of," I responded joking. Then I added. "I like the warmth of his chocolate brown eyes as he pours over the prose in front of him. It's like he's getting reacquainted with an old friend."

The man looked up from his book, so I averted my eyes back to the notepad I had in front of me where, earlier, I was madly scribbling a list of items to do while I looked after my friend's nearby flat. I wanted to make it perfect for her before she got home.

"Do you want to talk with him?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want what I think of him in my head to be ruined by the reality."

There were no actual lines to read between there. I was being completely reflective of our own situation. It was all aggressive aggravation. But Lover didn't bite the line.

"Are you done with your dinner?" he asked.

"Yes, they're just really slow in giving me back my credit card," I said.

"Great, when you get it back. Get up and leave something obvious behind," he said.

"Why?"

"Just, trust me."

I signed the credit card receipt and packed up my notebook, but left a leather journal of short stories I was working on about Lover on the bar. If it got lost, I was going to consider this my cleansing ritual. I had pretended to be looking for things in my bag and left it behind.

When I was out the door, I finally said to him: "Done. But unless you have something to tell me about the last six months, that's the last instruction I'm taking from you."

"Maybe it is. But I want you to call me if whatever you left at the counter gets returned to you."

I was angry, when I didn't feel I had a right to be. He wasn't my boyfriend. He wasn't my spouse. I climbed up the stairs from the restaurant and started walking down the block. I stopped at the street corner waiting for the backlog of cars that were cruising by checking out the outdoor seating to see if anyone famous was there this weekend.

There was a Ferrari, a BMW, a Mercedes, a Z350... really flashy cars. I was obsessing in my head over Lover when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned around to see the man from the sushi bar. He held my leather journal in his hand, but I could tell he had opened it because the tie to keep it closed was flapping around freely. He was taller than I had imagined, around six feet. His arms and legs were long and thin, but had nicely squared shoulders.

"Excuse me," he said smiling. "You left this behind."

Great, he was freaking Irish, accent and everything. I could feel my pulse pick up. "Oh, uh, thank you," I stammered pretending to be surprised. I took the journal from him and closed the tie. "You opened it," I declared softly.

"I swear it wasn't me. The waitress did it, but I offered to run and try to catch you," he offered. "But, I'd be lying if I said that when she handed it to me I didn't flip through it and read 10-15 seconds of it."

I blushed.

"I'm so sorry," he offered. "I just -- my head was expecting to find a name somewhere in case I couldn't find you. But all I found was, what I'm guessing, is fiction."

I turned beet red.

"Or maybe you're just more exploratory than your peaceful demeanor would have me believe," he said lifting his eyebrows, smiling sheepishly and rubbing his right hand on the back of his neck as he considered that the brief tidbit of what he read might be true.

"Which one did you spend your few seconds on," I asked.

"A scene in a church," he replied.

I shut my eyes and shook my head. "Well, thank you for returning it to me."

He smiled this amazing smile at me. "Are you walking this way?" he asked pointing across the street.

"Yes," I said wondering where this was going.

"It's getting late. Why don't I walk you?" he asked.

I looked into his eyes cautiously. It was something Lover would have offered and I still had no idea what was happening here. But he seemed genuine, so I said yes.

On the 10-minute walk to the apartment, we talked about his history. He had moved to Toronto at 15 with his mother after his father had died. His grandparents had immigrated here a long time ago, but his mother had returned to Ireland when she had married. I just let him talk. It was a nice change of pace. With my spouse and with Lover, I was always the one who babbled.

When we got to the building, I stopped walking. "This is me," I said.

He looked up at the front door and exclaimed, "I have a co-worker who lives in this building. She's a brilliant woman, just brilliant."

"My friend Erin had surgery, so I'm watching her cat for a few days until her mother feels comfortable not staying at the hotel near the hospital."

"Erin McLaughlin?" he asked surprised. When you meet a person, you understand that their name is Irish. But you really don't have it click until an Irish person pronounces it. I swear my nipples perked up. I wanted to make him say it over and over again.

"That's my friend," I said beaming.

"You're kidding," he said. "Small world. I was here for a Christmas party last year. I hope the surgery is nothing serious. I'm an editorial director in her office, so I work with her in finance periodically -- mostly when I'm in trouble for not sticking to my budget."

I laughed. I could see Erin knocking on doors at the large publishing company bitching at people about expense reports. It was so her thing. We used to joke when she sold ads for our college newspaper that she'd enjoy it if we got her some leather gloves and a baseball bat when she went after businesses that were behind in their ad payments.

When I made eye contact with him, I swear he was waiting for me to make a move. And truth be told, I had too many boys on my hands as it was. But this one seemed pretty fabulous. So I decided to share some of my wealth, if possible.

"Do me a favor, will you? She'll be back to work in a month or so. Take her some flowers. Take her to lunch. Just, do something out of the ordinary for her, will you?"

He cocked his head to the side. "She likes ice cream," he said.

"Yes. Yes, she does," I responded happily. Then I stuck out my hand to shake his. "Thank you for walking me back."

"Sure, good night," he said shaking my hand with his right but covering my hand with his left.

I watched him walked away and opened my cellphone to call Lover. I was in a much better mood now.

"Allo," he said.

"Hi," I said. "I got my item back."

"Who brought it to you?"

"The very nice bookworm, who happened to be Irish," I said.

"Ahh, you and accents. It's like Jamie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda all over again," he joked. "I just wanted you to remember that it's possible for you to have a good time, and it doesn't need to be with me."

"Truth be told, I'm in that place between good and bad with you," I said. "I don't know what to think."

"I read three months of your e-mail this morning," he said quietly. "I'm sorry about your friend. I'm sorry that I didn't respond sooner. I'm in town."

My mouth fell open. There was another tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to face Lover with his cellphone to his ear.

"Just because I'm lousy at keeping in touch, doesn't mean I don't want to see you," he said. "It doesn't mean I don't think of you or dream of you. It doesn't mean that there aren't days where I wouldn't mind hiding away at a cottage all weekend curled up against your bare skin. It just means that in order to focus on my everyday life, I sometimes have to shut you out of it. I don't like it. I know you hate it, but it can't be avoided."

I hung up my phone. "I thought you were done."

"I'm here aren't I?"

"But what does that mean?"

He said nothing.

"Things that are just about sex don't go on for as long as this," I said.

"No, they don't. You're right."

"So what is this?"

"This," he said leaning over and kissing me softly on the lips. "Is something that I have never known how to define."

"We're lovers."

"Yes."

"We're friends."

"Yes."

"So are we friends with benefits?"

"No."

I shook my head confused.

"Ma biche, let's go inside."

"Why?"

"Because we argue better with our clothes off," he said.

It had been so long since I'd made love. I was afraid I'd forgotten how. Things just weren't working out that way at home. I smiled and kissed him, and started unbuttoning his shirt. He didn't protest. I was starting a game of chicken.

I got to the bottom of his shirt and started undoing his belt right there on the sidewalk. It was a quiet evening, but there were still people walking down the street.

I undid the button on his jeans. He wasn't protesting, yet. I placed my hand flat on his lower abdomen and crawled my fingers down his pants. I felt his wiry pubic hair when his hand pulled mine away, and he led me up the stairs into the building.

We kissed at the elevator. We kissed on the elevator. I pushed him up against the side of the elevator door and pushed the floor number. He kissed me harder, and I undid the zipper on his jeans, kneeled and put his penis as far back in my mouth as I could and then eased up on it and licked and kissed the underside. I could hear the floors beeping. Who knew if we'd stop to let someone on.

Lover's hands wrapped around my head running his fingers through my long, long hair. I started to unbutton my white blouse, so that he could see the top of my breasts in the lacy material when he looked down to watch me work.

The seventh floor binged and the doors opened. He moved away and looked out into the hallway. "How far down the hall is it?" he asked as I wrapped my fist around his hard on.

"Second door on the right," I said kissing him. He held my wrist and pushed me up against the wall and kissed me closed mouth. "Key?" he asked.

I dug through my pocket and handed it to him. He dangled the cool metal over the top of my chest.

"I'm blaming fucking body chemistry for this whole damn thing," I said as I walked him to the door and let him open it.

"I don't know, you looked plenty into the bookworm," he responded. "I could have just as easily been him right now." There was a wicked smile on his face as he said it.

"He was extraordinarily attractive," I rebutted. "But clearly not dirty-minded enough. I'm pretty sure he couldn't keep up the way you do."

Lover laughed as he removed my shirt and unhooked my bra.

"I've missed these," he said staring at my chest as he pushed me toward the bathroom.

"Where are we going?"

"Shower."

"Why?"

"Easier to clean squirting orgasms up on tile rather than on your friend's sheets," he said. "Unless you want to venture to the terrace?"

"Maybe later," I responded pulling my pants and panties off. Lover yanked his clothes off in a hurry. His penis was pointed straight at me. I turned on the water so it would get warm as Lover picked me up and put me on top of the sink counter. He lowered himself and nudged my clit awake. The moment I was fully lubricated, he stood up and ploughed into me. I swear his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"How does your husband not do this with you every day?" he wondered out loud. It was the first time, he'd ever brought up my spouse. "How can he not lose himself in your warmth and energy? And how on earth can he not appreciate these breasts or your ass, or your most exciting asset, your brain."

"You missed me then?"

He moved in and out of me a few times and then looked into my eyes. "If you ever wanted anything from me, right now is the time to take advantage and ask."

I laughed openly.

"I'm serious. New car, Prada shoes, whatever you want."

We tumbled into the shower a few moments later. Lover had me against the wall. My legs were wrapped around his lower back and I was holding onto the horizontal assistance bar that some elderly former resident of the apartment must have had installed. It felt amazing. But tried as I could, I couldn't force something from my brain. Lover clearly wanted to be here. He wanted to be here to support me, but the whole other part of the year, it was like he couldn't be bothered. And as I came I realized he had tried, for once, to make the first move, and couldn't. He had tried to walk away first and failed. I opened my eyes and watched as he had his orgasm. His face tightened, his nostrils flared and as usual, Lover was right about the easy clean up. When he was done, he held me against the wall and let the water run down his back.

"Now can I make my request?"

He looked up smiling. "For you, anything -- well, within reason."

I kissed him gently and put my hands on the side of his face. My fingers ran through the graying temples that I had loved for so long.

"Let me go," I said quietly.

He pulled his head to one side and stared at me without saying anything.

My chin started to tremble.

"D—" It was the first syllable to my first name, which as long as I can remember, he never used.

"Let me go," I repeated.

He leaned in, kissed me and then let me down gently until my feet touched the tile. The water was hot, but I was trembling and suddenly cold.

He turned off the faucets and opened the shower door for me. I grabbed a towel off the rack and tossed it to him before wrapping myself in different one and walking into the living room. A few minutes later, he was dressed and I was in tank top and a pair of cotton pajama bottoms leaning against the wall that led to the doorway.

He kissed me full on the lips. I embraced him in a hug. And right before I released, he held me tighter and whispered in my ear, "You deserve better. Better than me, better than him. We both should have loved you better."

I pulled my head back and furrowed my eyebrows.

"You heard me," he said.

"I need you to say it to my face."

"I love you," he said clearly. His blue eyes were lit up with adoration. For the first time in a decade, I felt him bestow upon me the full power of his feelings for me. It was rather different than the fragmented bits and pieces he'd show from time to time.

I kissed him, chaste. Closed mouthed. It was a thank you and a good bye, and then he walked out of the apartment shutting the door quietly behind him. It was if he'd never been there at all.

My throat felt constricted. I couldn't breathe. After several seconds, I collapsed against the wall sobbing. It was the right decision. But my whole body convulsed with despair for making it.