Unsuitable Men (24 page)

“We have reservations,” he laughed, pulling back until she could no longer reach him. “Where’s your jacket?”

Tracy took a light jacket down from her coat-tree and turned to lock her doors.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Spice Coast,” Brendan said.

“Nice.”

They didn’t talk much during the drive, just made polite conversation that felt forced at times. It was difficult keeping both hands on the steering wheel with her sitting next to him. Brendan recalled when he used to drive with one hand resting on her inner thigh, and if he didn’t put it there almost immediately, she would reach over and do it for him.

“You look good,” he told her. “How’ve you been?”

“About as you would expect,” she said.

“Which is how?”

“Not so great and then better,” she said.

Brendan glanced over at her, surprised by her candor. She seemed different. Calmer.

“You could have called me,” he said.

“No, Brendan. I couldn’t have,” she said, shaking her head, and he knew what she meant.

It had been his move to make. After everything she’d told him, it was his move and now that she was sitting here in the car next to him, he couldn’t even think of why it had taken him so long to make it.

At Spice Coast, they ordered the best house specials and Brendan chose one of their most expensive Chilean wines to pair with their dinner. While they ate, they talked about Lounge Two-Twelve and Tracy’s work. Brendan told her about the new hours at the club and Tracy told him about a conference in Paris later in the winter that her boss was sending her to.

It was pleasant.

And he hated it, because it was nothing like the way they used to be with each other.

After the meal was done and he paid the tab, they walked out into the cool evening and Brendan felt the urge to hold her hand, but Tracy had stuffed them into the pockets of her jacket and was walking next to him, but not very close. Despite their warm greeting at her front door, a new distance had sprung up between them and as he drove her back home, Brendan felt his optimism about the future begin to fade.

Maybe he’d stayed away too long, and she just wasn’t feeling it anymore. Maybe it was for the best. Outside her townhouse, he found parking not too far away and was able to walk her up the steps to her door, waiting while she pulled out her keys. Finding them, Tracy unlocked the doors and turned to face him.

“Well,” she said, “that was . . . just awful.”

And they both started laughing at the same time.

“Yeah,” Brendan said. “It kind of was.”

“Come in?” she asked.

“Ahm, I don’t know,” he said, not sure she really wanted him to. Who invited the guy in after an ‘awful’ date?

Tracy grabbed one of his belt loops and yanked him inside, shutting and locking the doors behind him.

“Brendan,” she
said,
her voice reassuring. “It was awful because it’s not your kind of date. It’s not
our
kind of date. That’s all.”

“You think so?” he asked.

Tracy nodded. “You should have taken me for hot dogs, or to 34
th
Street for some street food.
That’s
our kind of date.”

He smiled. “I thought you hated when I took you on dates like that.”

“I only pretended to. I’d have gone anywhere you wanted to take me. I still would.”

He leaned in to kiss her and as if she couldn’t wait, she pulled him down to her. Their lips met again, this time in a slow, exploratory kiss. A kiss of re-acquaintance. When Brendan made it deeper, Tracy moaned. She actually moaned. Brendan felt a twitch in his pants, the start of his arousal and his
cue to go home. But when he tried to pull back, Tracy put a hand up and at the back of his neck, holding him to her, kissing him with even more eagerness.

“Stay with me,” she said into his neck.

“Shouldn’t we take it slow?
”
Brendan asked.

“No,” she said. “We shouldn’t.”

Tracy took his hand, and turning, led him up the stairs and into her bedroom. She turned to face him and shrugged her dress over her head so she was standing before him in her tights and boots, and a bra.

“I missed you touching me,” she said, looking up at him.

And that was all he needed to hear.

The sound of a garbage truck in the street below was what woke him. Brendan opened his eyes and saw that he was alone in bed among Tracy’s bed sheets that smelled of spring. He could vaguely hear movement and activity downstairs in the kitchen, and smell something cooking. She was making him breakfast; something else he had missed. And then out of nowhere, an image flashed in his mind, of Kelvin, in this very bed, as naked as he was now.

Thinking of last night, how Tracy looked, sounded, how she tasted was marred by thoughts of Kelvin experiencing the same. Kelvin and countless other dudes. Well, not
countless
, he told himself. There had to be a finite number. And that quickly, he was obsessed with knowing exactly what that number was.

Getting out of bed, Brendan went into the bathroom and washed his face and brushed his teeth with Tracy’s toothbrush. She used his all the time back at his place—or used to—so that was hardly taboo for them, but everything felt different here, at the scene of the crime so to speak. He couldn’t stand thinking of any man, let alone a man like Kelvin, in his woman’s space, much less in her body. His woman. She wasn’t yet. Not officially. But he was about to clear that up right now.

Tracy was wearing only a t-shirt and looked up when he came in dressed only in boxers. She was standing at the stove and transferring an omelet to a plate.

“Perfect timing,” she said sliding the plate toward him.

“Thanks.” Brendan took the plate and found a drawer with eating utensils. He didn’t know where things were here, because they’d always stayed at his place.

That was something else he was going to change. He would stay here more, and he would bring and leave all kinds of shit. When he was done, no one who might come here would be under the impression that Tracy was in any way whatsoever available.

“You going to work?” he asked curiously. “You don’t look like you’re in too much of a hurry.”

“I thought I might call in sick,” she said without looking him in the eye. “And that maybe you’d want to do the same.”

“I don’t have to call anyone. I just won’t go in.”

Tracy looked up at him and smiled. “So we’ll hang out today?”

“Uh huh,” Brendan started eating.

The omelet was good, so he ate with increased enthusiasm. Noting this, Tracy slid him the second one as well when it was done and cracked more eggs to make her own.

“So what should we do today?” she asked.

“Take some of your stuff over to my place. Take some of my stuff here,” he said without hesitation.

Tracy stared at him for a moment and he knew he wasn’t misinterpreting the look on her face; it was elation.

“Okay,” she nodded. “We can get you a key made for here. Is my key to the
apartment .
. ?”

“Is it what?”

“Still good.”

“Of course it’s still good. Why would
it .
. ?“ Brendan put down his fork and went around the kitchen island to wrap his arms around her from behind. “You think I would have changed the locks?”

She shrugged.

“Baby, no. Every day I
wished
you’d use that key. I’d never lock you out.”

Brendan had even agreed to the placemats. Tracy walked through the familiar space of his kitchen, putting away the food they’d bought, stashing away a few things here and there that they’d picked up in Target including brand new white placemats that were impractical as hell. But they were the only ones Brendan liked, so she’d given in, still amazed at how changed her life was in the less than 72 hours since he’d called.

Just as she was beginning to believe she might be able to get on with it, that maybe she could do this, her cell phone rang and the barking dog ringtone had just about stopped her heart. This reminded her—she would have to change that ringtone. Nothing about it had anything to do with who Brendan was. And as of today,
who
he was, officially, no playing around,
was
her man.

After last night—when she decided that she wanted him, no matter the aftermath, even if he left the next morning and never called her again—she was prepared for him to get skittish and weird on her but instead he came downstairs and readily agreed to take the day off. Then he announced that they would be spending it moving into each other’s places. And if that were still too ambiguous, on the drive into Manhattan he’d grabbed her thigh, running a hand back and forth on it.

There can’t be anyone else
, he said.
No one between us.

The relief was overwhelming. That was the only remaining thing she’d been worried about. Whether he would think she still wanted to play the field, whether he would want to resume that crazy, wrongheaded arrangement they had before. But his words put that to rest and she’d been fine since then.

If Brendan said it, he meant it. She knew that, without the ambiguity that had existed before, she would get a handle on her possessiveness, feel more confident about dealing with the women who approached him.

Her only remaining worry, which was not a worry so much as a chore, would be telling Dr. Greer. Dr. Greer had been Russell’s idea. She was someone he said he’d spoken to when he was “going through changes” and he credited her with helping him love his life, love
himself
even. The idea of loving herself sounded so foreign a concept that Tracy was intrigued.

She loved
many
things about herself for sure—the way she looked primarily. The kind of friend she was, the kind of godmother (though not lately) and the kind of employee. But she couldn’t honestly say
she loved who she
was
at her core. And how could she? After all she’d done? The men; all of that was basically self-abuse she now realized. Not the actions of someone who had self-love.

So she’d gone to see Dr. Greer and found to her surprise that it helped to talk things through, to take responsibility for her actions. To own them and to forgive herself for them. Another of the reasons she’d gone to see the doctor was that she secretly hoped that it would make her see somehow that her persistent feelings for Brendan weren’t what they appeared to be. Yup, she’d been hoping for a Brendan Cure. But there was none to be found, at least not in her sessions with Dr. Greer. If anything, they made her love him more, because it brought into sharp focus how much he had valued her even when she hadn’t valued herself.

Still, she was concerned because during one session when she’d admitted to having no interest whatsoever in men, Dr. Greer had shrugged, explaining that Tracy didn’t quite trust them yet, and would have to reconfigure her idea of what men were, and that that would take time.

In any event, I don’t see that it would be advisable for you to be in a dating situation just yet
, Dr. Greer had said.
So we have time to work on it.

And now she wasn’t just in a “dating situation” she was practically overnight in a full-blown, committed relationship. Still, “not advisable” didn’t mean forbidden or anything. And she was happy, happier than she’d been in longer than she could remember, so that had to count for something.

Didn’t it?

Always, it happened when he least expected it. They didn’t even have to be around other men. Tracy could be standing at the stove making dinner for them, or digging through the dresser looking for one of her nightshirts, or just talking on the phone. And suddenly Brendan would be awash with anger, thinking about the men—the nameless men who she had allowed to put their hands on her, their mouths; who she had touched, on whom she had put
her
mouth. That last one; that was the worst.

Well almost the worst. He also wondered whether there were things she did with these men that she hadn’t done with him, illicit things, and deeply intimate things. That was the one very specific question that preoccupied him no matter how many times he tried to drive it away. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to let it go until he asked, but he didn’t know how to ask either.

And it wasn’t exactly true to say that the anger came only when he least expected it. It came at other times too. Like when they went to Lounge Two-Twelve. Tracy came with him more often than not now, even if all she did was hang out in his office in the back, away from the noise and music. But when she stayed out front in the main club, he found it hard to concentrate on anything other than where she was and who she was speaking to. And that by itself was a full-time job because dudes were always trying to talk to her.

It used to be that he didn’t sweat any of that, because he knew she was with him, however incomplete their understanding of what they were to each other. It was ironic that now that he had her full and unambiguous attention, he would be plagued by uncertainty like this. Funny thing was, she didn’t court male attention at all anymore, but that only seemed to make it worse. Men tried harder to get her because of it. If he had a dime for the number of times men sent over drinks while she sat at the bar, just making conversation with Gabrielle, or the occasions when he had to make his presence and claim over her known, because some persistent dude wanted to dance or engage her in unwelcome conversation.

So now, just as he was walking into the apartment, feeling himself grow more and
more tense
at the thought of the Friday night crush in the club, he made up his mind. She couldn’t come to the
Lounge anymore. It was too stressful. All that remained was breaking the news to her. Friday nights at Two-Twelve had become kind of a ritual for them. She expected to go and right now was probably in the bedroom, getting a post-work nap, resting up for the night that usually ended only when they returned home around four a.m.

She wasn’t sleeping, but was sprawled across the bed wearing one of his shirts again, her long shapely legs exposed, only two buttons fastened so he could see the curve of her breasts, glimpse a dark plum-colored nipple. When you were a jealous man, your woman’s beauty felt like a personal affront, almost like an act of aggression.

“Hey there.”
S
he looked up from the magazine she was flipping through. “How was your day?”

“Good,” he said sliding off his shoes. “You?”

“So-so. Want me to make you a sandwich or something?”

“Nah,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Maybe a little later.”

He shed his shirt and pants, draping them across a chair and crawled up next to her, reaching for the television remote and switching it on, not caring much what was on.

“You know you don’t have to come to the club
every
Friday, right?” he said, trying to keep his tone measured.

“I don’t mind,” she said without looking up.

He waited a couple of beats. “You don’t seem to have that much of a good time when you go.”

“I like watching you work,” she said, shrugging. “So it’s fine.”

“No. It’s not,” Brendan said finally.

At this, Tracy put down her magazine and gave him her full attention. She said nothing, but searched his face, trying to read him.

“I don’t have time to . . . be with you all night,” he said clumsily. He’d almost said “to
watch
you.”

But it didn’t matter what word he chose. She understood completely.

“Why do you think you have to?” she asked slowly.

“You know why.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

Fuck. Was he going to have to spell it out?

“Do you not trust me or something, Brendan?” she asked quietly.

He thought about it for a moment. No, that wasn’t it. He did trust her. Some people would say it was dumb of him, but he did.  So it begged the question: what
exactly
was his fucking problem?

“I do trust you,” he said finally.

“But you don’t want me to come to the Lounge because . . .”

“I don’t like dudes pushing up on you, okay? I don’t like seeing it, I don’t like knowing
it’s
happening, I don’t even like you being around them.
Is that clear enough for you?”

Tracy looked taken aback, but only slightly. He knew she’d noticed the change in him, the new hyper-vigilance he had where she was concerned. The same hyper-vigilance she no longer had with him being around other women. While she’d found a new sense of security in their relationship, he’d developed the opposite.

“Yes,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet. “That’s clear.”

“So you’ll stay here tonight then?”

She nodded, but her brows were furrowed, troubled.

“Good,” he said, sighing.

“Tonight?” she said. “Or every night?”

He should have known it was too easy. Tracy was too smart to have missed the underlying significance of his request. But he’d been hoping that he could just get past this one Friday and tackle the next one when it came, and the next, and the next . . .

“Let’s just . . . tonight, okay?” he lied. “Just tonight. Shawn’s there tonight anyway so it’s going to be hectic . . .”

“Okay,” she said.

She picked up her magazine again but it was clear she didn’t buy it and was placating him. The enormous pink elephant sauntered into the room and sat at the foot of the bed, but they both—for the moment—decided to ignore it.

“Where’s your woman at?” Shawn asked.

The Lounge was packed because they’d advertised Shawn’s appearance to boost patronage. People didn’t go out as much once the temperature dropped, so they were planning something for every week now, some kind of star attraction; and as a kick-off, it was easy enough for Shawn to haul himself away from the condo for a few hours to smile and take pictures.

“Home.”

“Good for you,” Shawn said. “You sure you can stand it? The separation for six whole hours?”

Brendan shook his head, saying nothing.

“You know I had to, right?” Shawn grinned. “The way you used to ride me about my shit.”

Yup. He remembered. Shawn’s singular obsession at one time had been whether or not his wife was noticed, admired, wanted, talked to, touched by some man other than him. It had seemed to Brendan at the time like a unique kind of madness. And in Shawn’s case, it had been madness, he told himself now. Because Riley had never done some of the shit Tracy admitted she’d done. Riley had never been a . . .

Brendan raised his hand, summoning one of the bartenders, doubling up on his drink, driving away the ugly word that for one moment had sprung to mind to describe the woman he loved.

Tracy felt his weight on the bed next to her in the dark first, and then she smelled him.
Whoa
. He had the strong odor of a distillery. Probably the smell of alcohol seemed much worse, she told herself, because she hadn’t been in the club tonight. Brendan reached for her, fumbling in the pitch blackness of the room and Tracy slid back toward him pulling his arm about her waist.

“You awake?” he slurred.

Nope. Her first impression had been correct. He stunk of alcohol and was shit-faced. Shawn’s presence probably hadn’t helped matters much tonight, she thought. It was rare now that Shawn went out, and they’d probably made a boys’ night of it.

“Yeah,” she said. “You
reek
, Brendan.

He laughed, a little too loudly, and without real mirth. “Because I’m fucked up,” he said. “I am. Really. Really. Fucked.
Up
.”

“You want to take a shower?” she suggested. “It might make you . . .”

“Only if you take it with me,” he said, sitting up.

Tracy considered. She was exhausted and tomorrow Riley was going to yoga with her; one of their very first real overtures to being close again. But she knew that the quickest way to get Brendan clean and smelling like himself again was to get this shower out of the way.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

As he stood under the water, Brendan swayed and Tracy put a hand on his arm to steady him, standing out of the stream of water herself, struggling to keep her eyes open and failing. And when she opened them again, Brendan was watching her; his eyes were red and unfocused and he was allowing the water to run in rivulets over his face. Just standing there and watching.

After a moment he reached out and with just the tips of two fingers, ran his hand down the side of her face, over a breast, down her stomach and between her legs. Once there, he parted her with his fingers in a scissoring motion. Tracy closed her eyes, still loving the feeling of his touch, no matter how tired she may be, or how drunk he was.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, but his voice was almost sad. “So beautiful.”

Tracy leaned slightly against his fingers, closing her eyes again.

“How many, Tracy?”

Her eyes flew open. Immediately. She knew
immediately
what he was referring to. Her heartbeat, already accelerated from the excitement of him touching her began to gallop.

“Brendan . . .”

He removed his fingers. “How many?” he said again, his voice flat.

“Brendan, I don’t . . .”

“
Don’t tell me you don’t know!
” he said, his voice unexpectedly loud, causing her to jump. “Ballpark it. What’re we talking about? Ten? Twenty?
Thirty?
Fifty? One hundred and five? How
many
?”

Tracy turned away from him and opened the shower door, stepping out and grabbing a towel, wrapping it about herself and walking out into the dark bedroom. Brendan followed, leaving the water on and the shower door open.

“So ten was just high school for you, we know that, so after that how many?” he demanded, following her. “Okay, so how many per
year?”

Tracy flipped on the bedside lamp, sitting on the edge of the bed. Brendan was naked, wet and standing a few feet away looking down at her.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What did you do with them?”

“Almost everything.”

She felt numb. Looking at him was like looking into the eyes a stranger. He was like a man possessed, as though Brendan, her Brendan wasn’t even in there. And he wasn’t even being
mean
, just insistent. Like he
needed
to know. So she decided to answer him; whatever he asked she would answer.

“Everything like what?”

“
Everything
.”

“Things
we
haven’t done?” Brendan asked, his face looking pained. Their eyes locked and she knew specifically which act he was referring to. Her face darkened in shame.

“Things you’ve never asked me to do,” Tracy said, wearily.

She shouldn’t be surprised. They had never had this conversation. When they got back together it had been wonderful and romantic and almost effortless and that had gone on for a month now, but she should have known that that was not real life. Now it was time to face reality. And in real life, men did not easily forget that their girlfriend had fucked maybe dozens of guys before him.

“And what if I asked you to . . . do those things?” he said.

“I would do them,” she said without hesitation.

“And the things you didn’t do with them, if I asked you to do those things. . .”

She nodded. “If you wanted me to.”

Though that should have made him feel better, she could tell it didn’t. It might even have hurt him more.

“Why?”

She said nothing. It was written all over his face; he was wondering if it was because she had no self-respect, if she would do anything that anyone asked her. If she could speak at length without crying she would explain. She would tell him what she’d learned from going to Dr. Greer. With all those men, she hadn’t been doing things
for
them she was doing things
to
herself.

“
Why
?” he asked again.

“Because I love you,” she said.

Brendan looked at her, and she could see the heartbreak in his eyes. “That’s not how I need you to love me, Tracy.”