Free Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page B

back in the middle of the night,” I said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œAll the lights are off. She’ll come in the morning.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    She still hadn’t managed to get her dress unzipped.
    There’s a skylight over the bed. And a streetlight on a hill above, so that even on nights with no moon I had a little glow of light to help me see her. We made love every possible way except with the lights on. That was out of the question for her.
    The rain beaded up on the skylight and reflected onto her face and her dress as she took off her half-slip. “What if he wakes up?”
    â€œWhy should he wake up?”
    â€œKids wake up.”
    She had raised two to maturity, so who was I to argue? “Tell you what,” I said. “As a concession to young minds, we’ll do it under the covers.”
    She came over and sat on the edge of my bed—faced away—offering me her zipper, though it took me a moment to get the hint. “That would be different,” she said. “For us that would be almost kinky. You want to unzip me?” She held her hair aside.
    Right. Of course. “I live to unzip you,” I said.
    I got up on my knees behind her and then sank down onto my haunches, so I was sitting on my heels. One knee on either side of her, close up against her back. I had to lean back a little to undo the zipper. Then I slipped the dress forward over her shoulders. Unhooked her bra. She leaned back and made a small, comfortable noise. My hands traced a path up her rib cage, finding her small breasts from underneath.
    I was naked, for two reasons. Because I’d known to expect her. And because that’s how I do bed, even alone. Well, three reasons. I’m not as adept as she is at peeling out of my clothes with grace.
    â€œThose banquets are so intolerably boring,” she said. “All I could think about was getting out of there and getting over here to you.”
    Then she attacked me. In a good way, I mean. She had a habit of sudden sexual aggression. She turned all the way around and threw me back down on the bed in one sudden motion. Which I would not have minded except that I ended up with one ankle pinned painfully underneath me, and the weight of my body being thrown back really twisted it hard. For a minute I was actually distracted by that pain.
    â€œOw?” she said. “Ow what?” I didn’t know I had said that. But she was straddling me at this point, both of her small, graceful hands wrapped around a key body part. We were both willing to accept “ow” as a good thing.
    That touch. The one I’d been waiting for, falling back on in my mind every 6.7 seconds for the past nine days. Hard to imagine there could be a downside to it. But there was. She hadn’t taken off her ring, and I could feel it.
    I know she always thought I made too much of that. But a guy has a right to feel the way he feels. I took hold of her left hand. Held it up between us. Removed it for her.
    â€œOh, that,” she said.
    â€œYeah. That.” I put it on the bedside table.
    â€œDo
not
put it there,” she said. By then I should have known better. “I’ll forget it. Damn it, Mitchell, what if I get home and don’t have it with me? What the hell am I supposed to say?”
    I don’t know. The truth?
    I picked it up and dropped it into her purse, which was conveniently located on the floor, right where the night-stand met the bed.
    She leaned over, peered off the edge of the bed into her purse like she was looking down a bottomless pit. “Great,” she said. “Now it’s in the Bermuda Triangle. It may never be seen again. Well, never mind. At least it goes home with me.”
    And with that she did something strangely un-Barb-like. She stretched her body the full length of mine and lay on top of me, up on her elbows just enough to look down at my face. She touched my cheek.
    Every now and then some