Authors: M.Q. Barber
She looked down the hallway to the bedrooms. The door to the last room, hers and Karen’s, was closed. Her new neighbor was doing her a huge favor to be here at all.
He stood unmoving by the door, either disgusted by the apartment or mindful of her warning not to touch anything.
“Sorry. Two minutes, I swear.”
She scurried down the hall and banged on the door.
“Duffy! You in there?”
Silence. She leaned closer. No, not silence. The screech of bedsprings. Great. Well, she wasn’t waiting all fucking day.
Alice shoved the door half-open.
Duffy knelt behind Karen on the bed, fucking her doggy-style.
Karen dragged her head up from her arms. “What the–”
Alice jangled the keys, attracting their attention like she might wave a chew toy for a dog.
“Yo, Duffy. Keys.” She tossed them, underhand, and he swiped them out of the air without missing a beat. Good sense of rhythm. Benefits of fucking a musician? Alice shook her head and smirked. “Van’s out front. Meter’s good for thirty minutes.”
Karen laughed. “More than long enough for studly here.”
Duffy leaned down, his chest covering Karen’s back. “Just for that, I’ll make it
three
.”
“Thanks for the loan.” Alice stepped back, pulling the door with her. “See ya.”
Shit. Henry had stepped farther into the living room, with a perfect view down the hall. A view that thirty seconds ago had included Karen and Duffy fucking. Way to make a terrible impression on her neighbor.
Fuck if she’d apologize. Sex wasn’t anything shameful. She crossed the space between, about to apologize anyway, because her relaxed boundaries didn’t mean Henry needed the image of strangers fucking shoved in his head, but he spoke first.
“Ready to make your last exit?”
She scrutinized his face. If her behavior or her ex-roommate’s had bothered him, it didn’t show. Courteous neutrality.
I’ll see your courtesy and raise you a smile, Henry.
“You bet. Thanks for coming along. Saves me a long subway ride.”
Henry snapped his arm out, elbow crooked, and bent toward her. “Shall we, then?”
She stared at him, a single chuckle escaping, and called a goodbye to Miles before wrapping her hand around Henry’s arm. “Lead the way, my good man.”
Duffy’s excited shout followed them out the door. Three minutes. Poor Karen.
Chapter 2
Alice blamed Henry for her uncharacteristic distraction at work all day. If his dinner plans hadn’t reminded her of the anniversary, she wouldn’t be devoting so much mental space to walking through the last year on memory lane.
She’d been distracted, in those first few weeks, by trying to puzzle out the status of her neighbors’ relationship. When she teased Jay about what a cute couple he and Henry made, he hammed it up with boyish charm.
“It’s not Henry, Alice, it’s me. I make every couple cute.” Jay slung his arm around her. “Adorable, right? Wait, where’s a mirror?”
When she asked Henry how long he and Jay had been
together
, he was matter of fact.
“Jay moved in nearly three years ago, Alice. He’s quite tolerable as a roommate, despite his unseemly boisterousness.”
Jay’s crab-walking across the roof deck at the time made discerning whether Henry was being dryly sarcastic and twitting him or making a definitive statement about his roommate difficult, if not impossible. A roommate proving something about balancing beer bottles on his abdominal muscles. The precise reason why escaped her, but she wasn’t about to ask since the show was free.
She scored a closer look at their apartment when they invited her over for dinner and a movie a few weeks later. Beautiful paintings lined the left side of the hall, including one of a sculpted back she was almost certain was Jay’s. The sort to make a girl want to reach out and touch.
Three doors came before the bathroom, the first closed and the second open on a chaotic mess. Jay’s bedroom, definitely.
The third matched her impression of Henry’s taste. Classy. Den-like. Dark, heavy furniture dominated by an enormous bed. Hello, brandy and cigars. Hello, Henry’s deep voice and heavy stare. Hello, fantastic orgasms on high-quality sheets.
Whoa. She stifled a laugh at her outlandish thoughts and hurried into the bathroom before Henry caught her staring into his bedroom.
But after she crawled under the covers on her futon that night, vibrator in hand, it was Henry’s bed behind her eyelids when she came.
Fuck. I need to get laid.
* * * *
The months passed. She finally got laid in December thanks to a bar trivia night out with a couple of coworkers. Not either of the coworkers, God no, but the smart guy at the next table who joined their team. Brandon. Mediocre sex, but human contact won priority over her vibrator, at least for two months. After that, he was more trouble than he was worth. Keeping a lackluster boyfriend through Valentine’s Day was begging for problems. She gave him a nice it’s-not-you-it’s-me blowjob as a going away present. Blowjobs made breakups easier for guys to swallow than speeches did, in her experience.
Seven months of fantasizing hadn’t yet answered the question dogging her. Single again, and she didn’t know if Henry or Jay would be open to some fun. If they were committed to each other the way they seemed to be, dropping a hint might lose her their friendship, and she didn’t make lasting friends easily.
“I want to fuck them.” She shoved her covers down with her toes. Post-masturbation sweat, a radiator running hot and a heavy comforter were a little much, even in February. “Either of them. Both of them. Because they are sexy and sweet and not knowing is killing me, and I’m too polite to ask. Because if they haven’t flat-out said they’re a couple by now, either they aren’t or they’re in the closet and it’s none of my business. Except in my fantasies.”
She let loose a frustrated growl.
My maybe-gayboys don’t like to make things easy for a girl.
* * * *
When March rolled around, Jay clued her in about Henry’s upcoming birthday and invited her over for the occasion.
“You know, wine. Birthday singing. Cake. Store-bought, I’m not making it, so don’t worry.”
Texts flurried between them as she tried to decide on a gift when gift-buying wasn’t in her budget. She settled on a birthday card and a promise in the form of a floor plan sketched on heavy cardstock inside.
Henry looked perplexed but pleased upon opening it. His fingers ran along the edges of the inner card repeatedly as he turned it this way and that.
“This is the layout of the MFA building. You drew it?”
She tried not to let nerves get the better of her. Her offer wasn’t a present, exactly, but she didn’t know what kind of art supplies he used, he owned everything he needed in the kitchen, and God forbid she try to dress him. He dressed better than she did anyway. And she couldn’t afford those things. But her time, well, that she could give him.
“From a reference.” She’d studied the Museum of Fine Arts floor plan online. “Jay says you go there a lot.”
“I do.”
“By yourself.”
He’d also said Henry had a membership to get other people in free, too. She’d lived in Boston since starting college, more than eight years now, and hadn’t set foot inside.
“Yes.”
“But you like to teach, and I’ve never been.”
“Are you offering yourself up as my pupil, Alice?” Henry leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “For the entire day?”
“Dangerous, I know, but yes. I think it’ll be fun.” She shrugged as if his reaction didn’t matter. “But if you don’t want to–”
“On the contrary, I very much do want to. Shall we say next Saturday?”
She agreed, and Henry opened his present from Jay. A succession of gag gifts, each one worse than the last. A t-shirt with “Munch makes me want to Scream” on the front and an image of the famous painting on the back. Another read “Artists do it with a broad brush and a fine tip.” Jay and Alice were breathless with laughter by the time Henry reached the end and thanked Jay for his thoughtfulness in getting him fresh cleanup rags.
* * * *
The following Saturday, Alice fake-pouted at Henry on their way to the museum.
“You’re not wearing one of your gifts. Jay must be so disappointed.”
“Alas, they’re covered in paint.” Henry shook his head in mock sorrow. “A tragic, tragic accident.”
“Accident. Uh-huh.” She wondered what Jay had actually gotten Henry for his birthday.
They spent all day at the museum. Henry took her arm the moment they stepped inside and held her enraptured for the next six hours. They never made it past the European collection.
Every painting prompted a discussion, and they weren’t lectures from expert to novice. He asked detailed questions about her thoughts on composition and color and theme. Invited her to consider the intersection of their worlds, of engineering and artistry.
“Where do you find beauty, Alice?”
“Clean lines. Efficient output.” She narrowly missed his shoulder with her chin as she turned. “Not that I’m not enjoying this, because you make it fascinating.”
He patted her arm. “Yes, yes. Sops to my ego aside, tell me what beauty is to
you
. My aesthetic is in the form of things. The look, captured in a single moment. But for you?”
“I like it when things fit. Everything has a place, and it contributes to every other piece in the whole. The structure is disciplined and orderly. It has its own…music, I guess. Rhythm. And together they all work. And when it’s seamless, effortless, when they create or accomplish something together, when everything is in the perfect place, that’s beautiful.”
“It’s important to you they work smoothly together, then. Not merely the facsimile of it, the empty shell.” Henry nodded, his voice slightly distant. “Harmonious function. You find beauty in understanding where things belong. How they come together as one. Everything has a place. Hmm. And do you define that place, Alice?”
“At work? Sure, for whatever section of the problem I’m assigned to tackle. I work up my design and bring it to the team. The team leader helps us coordinate a way to bring those designs together. Harmonious function, like you said.”
“A hierarchy, then. You define a place for the objects, and your leader defines a place for you.”
“I guess so. Isn’t that what a boss is supposed to do?”
They’d gone a fair distance from defining beauty. She rolled her shoulders. Where was he going with this?
Henry chuckled. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had one.”
He guided her out of the gallery. “They’ll be closing soon. I hope I haven’t kept you too long today. It’s early yet, but perhaps you’d care for dinner out?”
A quick bit of mental math. Henry and Jay were the closest things she had to best friends. Splurging on one dinner wouldn’t break the bank, so long as they didn’t go overboard. It would just set back her budgeting schedule a smidge.
“You bet. Where am I taking you?”
He glanced at her with one eyebrow raised. “My treat, my dear.”
“No, this is your birthday present. If we’re going to dinner, I’m buying.” She was prepared to be stubborn. Recipients didn’t pay for their gifts.
“Ah, but this isn’t within the scope of your gift to me, Alice. This is the transparent ploy of a man feeling his age, enjoying the attentive company of an attractive younger woman and hoping to extend that time in a public setting to boost his own ego. Please, allow me to take you to dinner.”
They stepped out into the cloudy chill of early March. She fumbled to get her mittens on, and Henry tucked the ends of her scarf at her throat. His fingers, encased in dark brown driving gloves, smelled of leather as he raised the scarf over her nose.
She blinked, shivering from his touch rather than the cold, and forced a laugh. “Fine. Your treat. Do people ever tell you you’re honest to a fault, Henry?”
“Honesty is important to me, Alice. Lies can be dangerous, painful things, both for those who lie and those to whom they lie.”