Page 45 of That's Not a Thing

Aaron feels me stiffen and pulls back, the mild ambient light from the city night casting him in a soft blue glow.

“What? What is it?” He’s whispering, which somehow feels exactly appropriate in the moment.

“Wesley.”

Aaron glances toward the closed door and then looks back at me.

“He’s right across the hall,” I explain. “We’re making a racket. It’s just weird if he hears.”

“Don’t worry. The door is closed, and he’s sleeping. It’s fine,” he says, lowering his face back toward mine.

I turn away, and Aaron sighs loudly. “Look,” he says, “the guy could be living with us for months, or longer. We can’t put a moratorium on sex for that whole time.”

As with so many other details, I hadn’t really thought this part through before Wes moved in. It’s true he could be living with us for a long time and spending an increasing amount of time in the apartment or in bed. I guess Aaron has a point.

“Fine, but can we just make an effort to be a little quiet? At least on his first night?”

“You got it,” Aaron says, as he rushes my mouth again, now fiddling with the button of my jeans. He pushes my pants toward the floor, and I step out of them without breaking our kiss.

Then he’s steering me toward our bed, his hands exploring my body as we go. As the backs of my legs connect with our white down duvet, he pulls away again, this time lifting off his own shirt and tossing it to the floor, then getting to work on his pants. It’s too dark to see all the details, but I can still make out the shape of him, and I am arrested, as usual, by the utter perfection of his physique—the width of his shoulders, the angle at which his sides dive toward a V at his waist.

I pull him down on top of me, anxious to feel his warm skin against mine so he can make me forget that my dying ex-fiancé is just across the hall, make me forget that I have any feelings of conflict, that I am anything less than 100 percent loyal to this beautiful man above me.

Aaron climbs on top of me and rearranges us so that my head is on a pillow. And then he is jamming into me with such force that I again wonder whether he is trying to mark me, to prove that I belong to him. The headboard begins banging against the wall. I try to move down on the bed a little to limit this unmistakable sound of sex, which I imagine is reverberating through the entire apartment and perhaps beyond. But Aaron holds me in place, possibly oblivious to my efforts in his current haze or, more probably, totally on purpose, so that Wesley can hear us, so that he knows, in no uncertain terms, that I belong to Aaron, not him. By the sound of it, Aaron is currently fucking my brains out, and, speaking as a participant in the action, I wish I could say that were true, that my brains weren’t working overtime inside my head, that I could stop thinking for even a moment, stop focusing on Wesley.

I feel the urge to push Aaron off me, mortified that Wesley could be listening to this, but, in spite of everything, I am also enjoying the feel of Aaron pounding into me. I can feel myself building toward something, and I don’t actually want to stop. Even when my head is not in the game, Aaron’s efforts seem to overwhelm my body. When I finally find my release, I fight the urge to cry out in pleasure, biting down on Aaron’s shoulder instead. That seems to put him over the edge and he, too, reaches his climax, releasing a deep guttural moan —a growl really—that’s significantly louder than any of the sex noises he usually makes. If I had any question about Aaron’s intention of trying to be heard, the volume of his battle cry has just provided a definitive answer. This sex was as much about putting on a show for Wesley as it would have been if he’d been sitting in the room, watching us.

While I’m totally mortified, I’m also kind of touched that Aaron feels so possessive of me, that I matter enough to make him this jealous.

“Well, I think you definitely made your point there.” I push at him gently so I can roll out from under him.

“What point? That we should do that again and make a baby?” He flips onto his back and pulls me toward him so that my head is resting on his chest.

“Yeah, no.” I stop, wondering if I should just let it go. He is housing Wesley only out of his love for me. If this loud, exhibitionist banging session was what he needed to feel a little more comfortable with the arrangement, then maybe I should just cut him some slack. It’s possible that my judgment is being clouded by a post-orgasmic fog, but I don’t want to fight with him.

“I will be very happy to make a baby with you,” I tell him as I snuggle a little closer and settle in for sleep, “in, like, two to ten years.”

He kisses the top of my head and then reaches to pull the covers over us. It occurs to me that there’s a good chance that Wesley will be dead before we ever have a child. I don’t know what’s harder for me to picture: a world with my child in it, or a world without Wes.

Chapter Nineteen

June 2017

I’m using Aaron’s car to drive out to New Jersey, navigating my way through the modest Sunday traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, when I get a call from Lana.

“Hey,” I say, as I press the button on the steering wheel to answer. “Hello?” I say it a second time and then a third as I wait for the phone to establish its connection to the hands-free speaker.

“Guess what?” Lana finally says, excitement in her voice.

“What?” I play along as I flip on my turn signal and move right to exit the highway.

“Spencer called and asked me to dinner.” Spencer is Aaron’s physician friend, the one I asked Aaron to bring to Mother’s Day at my parents’ because I didn’t have the energy to convince Lana that her plans to taunt Reese were naive or ill-advised or shortsighted or all of the above.

“Oh. Wow. Are you going?”

“I don’t think so,” she says, “even though he is super cute. It was just good that Reese heard the message Spencer left me when I accidentally played my voicemails on speakerphone.” I imagine her making air quotes around the wordaccidentally.

“What’d he say?” I ask, worried that Lana is making life too complicated for herself. Not that I am one to speak. Glass houses and all.