Seven Pt. 02

TWO

It is early morning and the sun is creating a halo around my shades. After returning home the night before, I did my whole nighttime routine of washing my face, brushing my teeth, and moisturizing my face. However, instead of putting on pajamas, I simply took off my dress and underwear and got under the covers fully naked. Now, in the dim light, I found myself aware that my bare thighs were against one another.

I began to think of how the night before, Caleb touched my back to pull me in for a kiss and suddenly, my lower back felt a glowing warmth. When we were dancing together, sweat began to collect on his forehead and his white t-shirt began to wrap around his muscles. I remember playfully grabbing his shoulders to dance and feeling the moisture clinging to both the fabric and my hand. From what I had gathered, he was on the quieter side. Yet despite not being a good dancer, he danced with such an exuberant energy that I could not help but laugh and dance very sillily myself. In the moments I was able to get a whiff of him, I was surprised by how he smelt exactly like the first time I met him. There was no hint of cologne, but maybe some hints of some sort of citrus body wash combined with a natural slightly musty sweat odor. I began to press my thighs together and noticed that I was getting increasingly wet.

Images of me touching him kept running through my head. However, just like in real life, as if my head was unable to fill in the gaps, I could only see myself touching his shoulder or grazing his arm. So I kept trying to remember what his lips felt like and the feeling was so tender but yet so unfulfilling, that I nearly began to cry in frustration.

The truth is that up until now, I have only ever had sex with my ex-husband. We met when we were twelve, kissed for the first time at fifteen, started dating at sixteen, and were married by twenty-one. All of my romantic experiences happened with him, so much so, that whenever I thought of the word "love," I pictured him. After our separation, I no longer had a definition for the word.

I grew up thinking that love was THE goal in life. My father died when I was young and my mom tried to keep his memory alive by remaining ever loyal to him and recounting thousands of stories of domestic bliss. That is what I yearned for.

After our separation, a voice in my head asked me: "Well, how are you supposed to achieve domestic bliss by yourself?" And there was no other voice to answer the question.

Then I thought if I can't achieve domestic bliss, then I must spend most of my time out of the domestic. I began to go out a lot. At first, with friends who begrudgingly would accompany me more often than they would've liked to. And then, I began reconnecting with old college friends that were more into going out and drinking. A friend who I reconnected with and who I would go out with the most was Maddie. I only ever hung out with Maddie very casually while in college. She was studying psychology and was overall very talkative and social. We never shared any details of our lives with each other back in college, but there was something about the way she carried herself that made me feel comfortable. Maybe it was the way it seemed like she was always smiling with her eyes and never seemed to show she was judging you, at least not with her face.

Whenever we went out, she mostly danced with me, made out with a guy every once in a while, and always took me home after. The night after the divorce was finalized, we went out together. Normally, we would have a few drinks and dance for the rest of the night. That night, though, it felt like I was carrying an olympic-sized pool inside my chest in which every possible emotion-loneliness, anger, sadness, guilt, anxiety, fear, and confusion-was swimming around, causing waves and splashes that felt like punches. I wanted them to stop swimming and just stand still, so I sat at the bar and swallowed way too many drinks.

"Stop, Monica. Come on, let's go home," Maddie had told me.

We went home. I can't really remember how we got there. When we were there, I remember having lied down on the sofa as Maddie sat up on the other end. Lying down made me feel dizzy and soon I was running towards the toilet. It felt like the contents of that olympic-sized pool that were in my chest were pouring out of my mouth and into the toilet. It was uncontrollable. I felt Maddie holding back my hair and when it was all done, I sat down on the bathroom floor with my eyes closed.

"What is happening?" she asked, simply. I did not know how to answer that. I felt very disoriented. I kept my eyes shut and when she asked again, I simply kept shaking my head.

"I don't know... I don't know..." I said and I felt my eyes swelling up and the tears began to trace off the make-up on my face.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me." I sat there, kept my eyes closed, and tried to allow the darkness to consume me. If I did not open my eyes there was nothing to be afraid of and no one there with me.

"Can you please leave?" I asked her. I sensed a bit of hesitation but then I heard her hand slap the ground and her footsteps go towards the bathroom door. Once I was sure she was gone, I walked to bed and lied down, smelling of fermented vomit and with the sequins of my dress poking at my skin.

-----

For the past few weeks, I have been loving Saturdays, most likely because it is summer and I can go outdoors. Today I planned to go explore some gardens with Maddie and have a picnic. The gardens were beautiful and under that mid-summer sun, the scenery looked like an overexposed photograph of bleeding-red roses, green pastures, and white fences holding up weeping plants. We settled down on our big blanket in the middle of the field to have our picnic.

Eating with Maddie has always been very entertaining for me. She undertakes meal-planning as if it were a plan of attack. She packed us sandwiches, various fruits, a small cheese board, and brought along some packaged boba. And as she digs her nails into the orange, I can tell she's very happy with my reaction to the food.

"How was your week?" I ask her.

"It was good. Um... Do you remember Lina?"

"Yeah! The girl you met at your book club?" I remembered she told me about Lina, a 30-something-year-old woman who actually lived about two blocks away from her, but that she did not meet until they both attended a book club meeting in the city.

"Yes, we actually met up for coffee the other morning and I was talking to her and mentioned a little bit about you and she suggested that next time we hangout, maybe you could come along? I mean, if you're down?" she asked me a bit hesitantly.

"Yeah, sure. Just let me know when."

We spent that afternoon eating and laying on our backs gossiping, and then after packing up the blanket and food, doing a hike around the woodlands near the gardens. When I went to my car to head back home, I rested my back on the seat and felt a bit of a sting on my shoulders. By the time I arrived back home in the late afternoon, my whole back felt like it was on fire. I took a look at myself in the mirror by my main entrance and saw red against white on my shoulders. The straps on my shirt felt like they were ropes tightened around me.

I went to change into a tube top and some cotton loose pants. I settled on the couch and began to scroll on my phone and then:

"Hey!" It was Caleb. And before I could answer another message: "would you like to go out for dinner?"

Going out to dinner would require me to take a shower, which would sting, and put on different clothes on which would sting even more, so I replied: "I would love to but I got this horrible sunburn. Can we do it another day? Maybe tomorrow?"

He didn't reply right away. I grabbed my book from the coffee table and began to read. Then, a few minutes later, a buzz.

"I can help. Be right there." He texted me.

I put down my book and rushed to my bedroom. I looked at my face in the mirror, it was incredibly irritated. I thought of putting some make-up on it but then thought that it would only make it worse. I felt myself skipping breaths and feeling an urge to pee. I sat on the toilet and a little bit of pee came out. I wiped myself and still felt the same way. I splashed myself with cold water, one, two, three times. I patted my face with a towel and did one, two, three slow breaths.

Then suddenly, a knock on my door. Gentle. Was it my door? A louder knock. I went to get it. When I opened the door, Caleb was standing with a reusable grocery bag. When I saw him, clean-shaven with the sun behind him, with his thick eyebrows lifting up just a little to show his big eyes, I no longer had the urge to pee. I was breathing slowly and I smiled at him.

He was smiling even before I did. We stood in silence for a little bit and then he said "hi."

"Hi," I said. "Come in, what is that in the bag?" He walks in and closes the door behind him. He doesn't reply right away but immediately sits down on my couch. He opens the bag to show a big container of yogurt. "For a snack?" I ask.

"No, no. Whenever I've had a sunburn, I rub yogurt on myself. It really helps it cool down and you'll feel better after it, I promise."

"Hm, okay. Um... can you help put it on my back? That's where it hurts most." He nods his head. I tie my hair up into a loose bun and turn around so that I'm still sitting on the couch but my back is facing him. I hear the plastic lid come off the container and his hand reaching into what sounds to be a very thick and creamy yogurt.

"Full fat," he states simply. "Helps out the most." He put his hand on my middle-upper back with the cold yogurt. It startles me a bit so I arch my back at first and then relax. He begins to rub it from the center towards the right side of my back and then again from the center towards the left. It has such a cooling and relieving sensation that I feel myself getting goosebumps on my arms.

"That feels nice," I say quietly. He grabs more yogurt and begins to rub from my shoulders down to my elbows. I begin to laugh a little.

"Okay, your back is all done. Do you have a towel or something? To put it against your back so you can relax against things?"

"Um, yeah. I'll be right back." I go fetch a towel from my bathroom. He helps me put it on my back and then I rest my back against the couch.

"Do you also want it on your face? It looks pretty red too." I nod my head and he grabs more yogurt and very gently pats it on my nose and cheeks. Then, slowly starts to rub it on my forehead. As he does this, he swallows very hard. When he starts to spread it to my chin, I look him in the eyes and I see that they are looking right back at me and then down to my lips. He keeps doing this a few times as he uselessly continues to spread the yogurt on my chin.

"Do you want to kiss me?" I ask him.

"Yeah," he responds.

"Then, why don't you do it?"

When I say this, I can't believe that I am saying it. I don't think I had ever been so forward, not even with my ex-husband when we were married. Caleb gently grabs my chin with his thumb and index finger and lifts up my chin just a tiny bit. I close my eyes and our lips lock. His lips are soft and I touch them just enough, again. Incredibly infuriating.

"Can you do that again?"

He grabs my cheek this time, getting his entire palm full of yogurt, and kisses me longer this time. But just like last time, he does it slowly, with a few pecks in-between. He drops the towel off my shoulders and pulls me in by my waist. He is leaning against the sofa and I have my left leg in between his open legs. We continue kissing and he is rubbing his palm from the middle of my back, down my butt, and under it. He continues kissing me gently and rubbing my back and butt. I feel a warmth all over me. Not like the stinging warmth of a sunburn, but rather like the warmth I felt when I was relaxing on the blanket under that mid-summer sun.

He stops for a second and starts to sit up.

"So what do you want to do, considering you probably don't want to go out?" he asks me.

"Um, I don't know - I don't know if you'd like any of my ideas." I smile a little awkwardly.

"Well, what do you like to do? That we can do inside, of course. What would you have here to do?"

It hits me for a second that we don't really know much about one another. I was day-dreaming of him but all we ever talked about the previous night was very surface level.

"I have board games, ummm, books... but I guess books are really just for one. Umm... I have canvas and watercolors, puzzles, origami paper..." I try to think of more ideas.

"Let's paint - do you know how to do it? I like to draw and stuff, but I'm not really very good at it."

"Yeah, I kind of know how, I'm not great at it. Mostly draw sometimes, but I think painting's more fun, let me get the stuff."

We set up my dining table with tapped newspaper and settle down across from one another to paint. He decides to paint my face, he paints a base of a peach-colored face with blots of reds and then dabs on the yogurt-whites all over the face. When he is done, he turns the canvas around to show me, starts to laugh, and says:

"It's called Peaches and Cream." I stand up very quickly, laughing,and playfully hit his shoulder. "How's yours looking?"

"Ummm... it's not done yet. Give me more time." I continue painting, making sure to capture the slight green within his brown eyes. I start to notice little things about his face-the way it is kind of short but a little wide. His jaw is very sharp but his eyes and eyelashes are very soft-looking. And then I focus again on his lips. That is one of the first things I noticed when I met him and he gave me a tight-lipped smile. His lips are very thin. My mother always told me to beware of men with thin lips and I usually have been. Really, what made me open up to him were his eyes. If his lips signaled dishonesty, his eyes were a window to his soul. Two sayings that probably don't really mean anything.

I do some final touches on the painting and then turn it around. He smiles gently and says: "Wow, I look good!" He lifts his eyebrows and says teasingly, "I really mean, you made me look really good."

"Mhm, yes. I'm sure that's what you meant."

--

After he leaves that day, I take a shower so I can take off all the yogurt. Afterwards, I realize that the yogurt did relieve a lot of the stinging from the sunburn. I go put away the painting I made of him with the rest of my paintings in my gym room's closet. When I do, I notice the painting of the little boy that I bought from Jamie. It is covered with a sheet, but I catch a glimpse of the boys' eye. I pull it out and uncover it. I had put it away and hidden it but was reminded again of its beauty and the calm it makes me feel. I pull it out completely and hang it up again. It's so beautiful, I can't believe I would have hidden it.