As soon as I get off the train back in my neighborhood I call Shep.
“Hi.” His voice is hot chocolate.
“Any chance you’re still at my house?”
“Ummmm.”
“I’m taking that as a yes.”
“I like it here! I went home and grabbed my laptop and a change of clothes this morning. Are you almost home?”
“Just walking up the block. I’ll see you in a sec.”
It’s strange for someone to be home when I get there. My apartment feels in motion. There are Shep’s gigantic shoes haphazardly welcoming me home. A timer is beeping in the kitchen and one of the windows is propped open, letting a breeze cycle through the apartment.
And the most important detail? Shep taking bread out of the oven. He taps the seeded dome of the loaf and listens to the specific sound it makes. Then he sets it on top of the stove and turns to me, pulling oven mitts off.
“Hello,” he says.
I cross to the kitchen and wash my hands, looking around my apartment. There are apples in my fruit bowl that I didn’t put there. Water droplets sparkle on the leaves of my spider plant. The ultrasound that I keep magneted to the fridge has been straightened.
There, in my mind, is the daycare under WFA, and wooden blocks and teachers kneeling down and all the tears my kid will cry that I might not be there to see. Just imagine all the Shep-made bread that this kid might eat after school while I’m still tapping out emails at work. I dry my hands and turn to look at Shep, who is currently looking at me.
“Shep…” I start, and then immediately lose courage. But I think of the bicycle seat and I have to ask. “When you picture this…” My hands gesture vaguely around the kitchen, and then between him and the baby bump. “Are you picturing…co-parenting?”
His face changes and I’m suddenly feeling a little faint.
My hands are in his and he’s leading me to the couch. We sit almost on top of each other. Either his hands are shaking or mine are. I can’t tell.
“There’s a long answer and there’s a short answer,” Shep says, enveloping my hands in his hands. “Which do you want first?”
“Short. Then long.”
“Okay.” He lets out a long breath. “The short answer is that for a long time when I first found out you were having a baby, I mostly just thought about all the ways I could help you. But since I felt the baby kick, I’ve kind of…sort of…started to get excited about knowing the baby. I mean…it’s your kid, so you know it’s gonna be awesome. But…I’m not assuming anything. Sometimes hope can feel like pressure, you know? So I’ll be Uncle Shep or friend Shep or just Shep or whatever. I don’t need…a title. I just want to be here. For as much as I’m invited to be here for.”
“Okay,” I say after a long pause. Hope, he said just now. This baby isn’t bad news, he said to me all those months ago. “What’s the long answer?”
He paints a line down my arm, from my elbow to my wrist, his eyes stuck to his fingers, and I get the odd feeling like maybe he won’t answer me. “I know the last few days must have been a lot for you. First with me and then Ethan…”
I dip my head to catch his eye and there’s an expression there that he tries to wipe away but can’t.
“Eve…” he says slowly, his eyes still stuck to the path he’s tracking up and down my arm. “If things between you and me…if they feel different…now that Ethan is single…”
“What?” I’m on my feet, both hands on my hips, and he’s gaping up at me. I think I jumped up so fast I caught a little air. “Shep—”
“Can I say something?” He’s sitting, looking up at me, his knees on either side of mine, holding both my hands.
“Of course.”
He drops his forehead to my fingers and just holds, holds, holds there for the span of two or three breaths. When he looks up at me, he’s a changed man. His eyes wide, mouth slightly open, breathing hard. This is a man with something to say.
“Eve…there is no explaining what the last few months have meant to me. Every little moment. You with your mouth so full of food you can’t talk. You texting me random crap. Being able to just drop by and you opening the door, happy to see me. But the big stuff too. That night…”
I don’t even need him to go on. I know exactly which night he’s talking about. “That night,” I agree with a nod.
His eyes are distant; he’s back there in the lavender room with his hand under my shirt.
“Sharing that with you,” he says. “Falling asleep with you like that, it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to someone. And it was a door, that moment. Don’t you think? We opened that door and then all the other moments cascaded in. Eating dinner at your house, just the two of us. Flirting at the movie theater. Falling asleep in your bed. Unbraiding your hair. Apartment shopping. And then, and then, and then…the park. All of that was possible because this little person, right here”—he smooths a hand over my belly—“chose that exact moment to kick. It was the most special moment of my life.”
He lets out a shaky breath. His eyes are lion bright—summer sunshine bright—and I’m captured. Unmoving. Pinned to the dartboard. “If you can’t tell…” he says. “If it’s not totally obvious…I’ll say it because I’ve really, really needed to say it for a long time…but, Eve, I love you more deeply than I’ve ever loved anyone else. I’m bananas for you. So in love I…”
He cuts off and drops his forehead to my fingers again. I want to scream with relief, with joy. I’ve gone hot and cold and everything in between. His hands open and close over mine, his head still tipped down. I have the feeling he’s really going through it down there. He’s gripping and pressing and grabbing at the shoreline with nothing but his fingertips. I squeeze his hands back because I feel like if I don’t, he might just blow away, out to sea.
“I need you to know,” he says. “I needed to tell you so that you were never confused. Or had to wonder. And I needed to say it out loud for myself.”
My heart picks up like a wagon gaining speed downhill. Why is this weirdly starting to sound like a goodbye? “Shep—”
“But like I said, if things feel different because Ethan is single now, I honestly am not expecting anything from you. I just wanted to tell you, at least once.”
I let out a fierce, barking laugh that’s about ninety percent shock. Because the only man I think I’ve ever truly loved has just informed me that he loves me more deeply than he’s ever loved anyone else and then encouraged me to explore a future with another man. “Shep, you can’t possibly think—”
But couldn’t he? Ethan is the father of my child. He’s kind and successful and he and I had enough of a connection and attraction to sleep together. I sobbed when I found out he had a girlfriend and—most importantly—I haven’t told Shep how I feel yet.
“Hold on.” I’m holding two hands up and taking a deep breath. “I’m not about to let you let me down gently in the name of”—I gesticulate at the general moment—“whatever this is. Hell no. No. Ethan interrupted sex last night but he is not going to interrupt the moment you tell me that you’re so in love with me dot dot dot. I wanna know the dot dot dot, all right? So, no. No to that. You know what? I’m going to take us back in time by a few minutes, okay? Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do. I just got home and walked through the door and you were sitting on the couch waiting for me. Okay?”
“Uh.” Shep is looking at me like he can’t quite focus on me, his eyes blown, and his breaths still shaky. But what’s he gonna say? No? “Okay.”
I clap my hands once and then turn a circle. It doesn’t seem like enough so I turn another circle.
“Um,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“I’m obviously taking us back in time.”
“Oh. Is that how that works?”
“Duh.” I’m still slowly revolving. “Time travel is super easy. I don’t know why more people don’t use it.”
I stop turning and face him. “Hi. I’m home from work,” I say.
“Hello,” he says. Still nervous, still willing to play my ridiculous game.
I step forwards and laboriously climb onto his lap. “This was smoother in my imagination,” I say as I scooch and scrape my legs up either side of his thighs, inch by inch. His hands automatically clasp behind my back. “Anyhow,” I say, eye level with him, my fingers curled under the collar of his T-shirt, the backs of my knuckles pressing into his skin. “I love you too and I was really hoping you’d be my boyfriend.”
He’s gone solid. A block of ice doesn’t have shit on Shep. I grant him a few shocked seconds and then I give his collar a yank. “Shep.”
Life comes to his eyelids and they start butterflying. “I’m sorry,” he says on choppy air. “I’m sorry, would you say that again?”
“Is it really that much of a surprise?”
“Eve. Say it again.”
“Boyfriend and girlfriend. You and me. Sitting in a tree, et cetera, et cetera. Did I leave anything out?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, right. I love you.”
His hands come unclamped behind my back and travel up my spine, one trailing the other. Over my shoulders, up the sides of my throat, and then my jaw is being cupped. It’s a firm touch. The touch of someone who’s just been told he’s loved. His kiss is soft, softer, softest. Our mouths open against each other and Shep is everywhere. Everything. I’m so warm, tingling down to my fingertips, aching where I press against his belt buckle.
“Shep,” I gasp when he moves to kiss the hinge of my jaw. My head lolls to one side and everything is just blurry colors and a strong arm bracing me behind my back. He comes back to my mouth and I have never been kissed like this. My mouth is a flower and he is gently, thoroughly trying to get at the nectar in the center. His stubble leaves a delicious scrape in its wake when he moves back to my throat. I’m tipping back and he’s holding me as he walks his mouth down to my collarbone. He takes a soft bite, kisses it better, noses my collar to one side. It’s not enough skin for him, so he grabs my sleeve at the elbow and gives it a firm tug. He kisses my bra strap and follows it down to my armpit. He huffs my scent and groans.
“I can’t believe you just said that,” he says into my skin.
“Yup. Oh, boy.” I’m clinging to his shoulders as he tips me back and nuzzles my chest through my shirt. One of his hands has slid up my side and lingers, a perfect L shape, under my breast. I wiggle, wanting so badly for him to put me out of my misery already.
Oh no. What if Shep wants to go slow? What if he wants to woo me little by little? What if he’s seconds away from straightening my shirt and respectfully tucking me into bed?
“Can I see you naked again?” he asks, his voice almost too low to hear, dragged over concrete, up a mountain, across the ocean, twenty-five years of waiting in that voice. “I mean, can I get you naked? Bath? Shower? Bed? Floor? Couch? I don’t care. I just…”
He’s trailed off, his eyelids falling lower and lower after each suggestion until by the end, I can barely see any of his lion brown.
“Yes. Bed? I know it’s not the most risqué locale, but—”
He’s set me on my feet, stood up, and then started leading me by the hand towards the bedroom. He pauses, turns, and starts kissing me again. I’m a human magnet. He’s fully bent down to reach me and we scramble together, making out and side-stepping and bam apparently smacking Shep’s elbow into the doorframe.
“Are you okay?” I ask, breaking free from the kiss.
“Huh? What?” And then we’re kissing and stumbling again. He’s never cared less about his elbows. He sets me up on the edge of the bed and plants a fist on either side of my hips. This kiss twists us, makes us dizzy. I pull away for a moment and attempt to get some oxygen to my brain.
“All right?” he asks, gruff and low, doing that thing where his eyes dip and chase mine just to keep looking at me. He’s all shoulders and short hair and leaning into my space.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone more,” I whisper. My trembling fingers attempt to untuck his shirt. “Clothes are terrible. Oh no. I’m nervous. Let’s do this. Fast.”
He’s laughing, pressing his nose along mine, staring at me from a centimeter’s distance. “Eve,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“The first person I ever wanted to sleep with was you. You pretty much are sex to me. So if you don’t mind…If it’s not too much trouble, maybe I’ll just enjoy myself a little, and if you need me to go faster, you can just tell me, okay?”
Well, who am I to argue?
“Oh, okay,” is my brilliant response.
He’s laughing again and I’m being divested of my clothes. Everything is unbuckled and sliding and tossed away. I’m sat up and laid down and lifted and rolled. It takes long minutes because he has to stop in each place to kiss and press and nuzzle. I’m down to my bra and underwear, on my knees, facing away from him on the bed and he seems to have a particular affection for the dimples above my ass. He’s on a day trip up my back, each rung of my ribs is making his acquaintance. I’m wiggling, heated, melting, making little noises. I feel his teeth at the clasp of my bra. He scrapes it against my skin and I make another noise. Maybe he’s a genius because he correctly interprets it as a different kind of pleasure. He lifts the clasp away from my skin and gives me a very comprehensive back scratch. I’m a cat, arching and purring and he’s laughing.
I look over my shoulder. “Speed up,” I demand.
He nods and immediately obliges, unclasping my bra. I toss it away and his hands slide around my front, taking two warm handfuls of my breasts and we both groan. He kisses at the spot where my throat meets my shoulder and kneads and pets me and I swear, my underwear have never been more useless. I can feel my own heat, wet between my legs and I’m starting to actually ache for him.
I turn around and thank God my bed is high enough to put me almost at eye level with him this way. I yank again at his shirt and he lifts his arms, letting me tear it off over his head. He makes to move towards me again but I stop him with one palm in the air. His eyes are pinned to my chest, his mouth half open, his rib cage expanding with deep breaths.
I can finally understand why he wanted to go slow. Because look at all this body before me. I test his strength under my palms. He’s sturdy, unmoving. Chest hair and hot skin. He didn’t wear a belt today (how obliging), so I unbuckle his jeans and push them down, sending them to hell for all I care. And he’s there in green boxer briefs that bulge to one side, straining away from his leg. He toes off his socks and chases me with his eyes. I reach forwards and guide his arms open, making him stand in a T, and lean forwards to bite his biceps. I kiss my way up his arm, over the rounded muscle of his shoulder and into his neck.
And then he’s hugging me and kissing me and I’m hugging him and kissing him and it’s so much heat, so much skin. We’re slipping and dragging against each other. And holding and lacing fingers. He’s stepping back and looping his fingers in the band of my underwear.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yes. Full disclosure, grooming down there is a lot harder when I can’t see over the bump,” I tell him. “It’s not the neatest it’s ever been. Maybe just think of it as…artsy?”
He laughs and takes a shaky breath and drags my underwear away, inch by inch, down my legs.
He surveys me down there and groans into two hands he’s pushing into his face. Then his fists are on either side of my hips and he’s kissing my mouth. “Hi,” he says against my lips. “Can I go down on you?”
I’m one big head nod.
His knees hit the floor and there’s stubble against the inside of my knee. He’s all lips up my thigh and placing my knees over his shoulders. I squeeze him. What a wonderful way to hug someone. He seems to agree, his fingers hugging me back where he grips me at my ass. I’m leaning back on my hands and the bump precludes my view, which is a shame, but it means I get to just close my eyes and feel, which is not a shame.
He opens me with his thumbs and kisses me hello. I hiss and jump and he immediately gentles. “Very sensitive,” I whisper, and he rewards my honesty with a soft circle of his tongue. He wants to be everywhere at once and his tongue and lips begin a luxurious tour. I wish I could say that I got to enjoy that for an extended period of time, but after approximately twenty seconds of soft, exploratory circles and one preliminary suck, I’m a stiff rush of color, gasping his name and digging my heels into his back. I drop my head back and make an anguished noise because it feels so good I’m a melted candle now, it feels so good the world is pixelated, it feels so good all I can say is his name and internally beg God for oxygen.
He lifts his head, breathing hard and staring up at me. “Did you just come? Already?” He’s blinking.
“I’m just a very horny mess right now,” I tell him, gasping.
He’s scratching at the back of his head. “I—wow. That’s like, a superpower or something.”
“Yes. I’m magic. Put a condom on, please.”
He’s on his feet and disappearing out of my bedroom and into the bathroom. I hear the crinkle of a plastic bag and then he’s striding back in, tearing open a box of condoms and ripping one open.
The second, the very second, he’s close enough to the bed, I slip my fingers in the band of his underwear and tug him towards me. He’s strong and warm and he’s got these hip bones that just end me. Whoever designed Shep was like, How about we make him so sturdy that some lucky lady can pin her entire life to him? We push his underwear down together, him standing in front of me and my legs open on either side of his knees.
It might not be a surprise, but I’ve never seen him naked before. And you never know what to really expect from a man during the big reveal but this is just perfection. His hands flex at his sides while I take a minute to get acquainted. Smooth skin, piping hot and sliding, I press my cheek into him, turn my head and steal a kiss. His fingers find my hair that’s fallen in front of my eyes and he tucks it back behind my ear. I bump the tip with closed lips, lift my eyes to him, and push him through the barrier of my closed mouth, keep pressure, take as much of him as I can. He makes a wounded sound and cradles the back of my neck. It’s all so lovely, I do it again and this time he can’t seem to help but push forwards, one knee on the bed and his hand at the back of my head.
“Eve,” he whispers, thrusting just a tiny bit before he pulls out of my mouth and fumbles with the condom. He positions it and we both slide it down into place. I scramble back on the bed and turn over onto all fours. I look back over my shoulder to see him staring at me.
His eyes are burning so bright I have to look away, plant my forehead on the bed, and just breathe. The bed dips with his weight and then he’s over the top of me, a complete shelter, his elbows on either side of mine, his chest to my back and his chin nestling in to the crook of my neck.
“I love you so much,” he whispers. He kisses my cheek, smells my hair, gently squeezes me down into a full-body hug. I can feel him hot and hard against my ass, but by all accounts this embrace is strictly affectionate. I turn my head and twist so our mouths can meet. “I’ll never love anyone the way I love you,” he says, his tongue a warm, tasting press against mine. “Being with you is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted.”
I tear away from the kiss and push up from my elbows onto my hands. Either I’ve just gained superhuman strength or he gets the memo, because he pushes up too. I feel him behind me, his hands smoothing over my hips. He finds me with his fingers first. A soft trace. I melt and push back.
“Please,” I say over my shoulder.
“You want me?” he asks, his eyelids low, his body so goddamn big, his fingers stroking me like all he wants is to give me everything.
“Please-yes-now,” I say. “Please-I-want-you. Please-sex.” Not eloquent but he’s a quick study.
He’s a slow, edgeless press, blunt and overwhelming. I’m so wet, so achy, so ready, but still, he meets resistance. He pulls back, dips his hips, and presses again. I wiggle against him. The first angle is always the trickiest and it’s been a really long time since I’ve had sex. I bring my hand to where we meet and massage myself open for him. His fingers are there too, slipping against mine, and together we liquefy me. Centimeter by centimeter he pushes in and then we’re there, ass to pelvis, he’s fully inside and I can’t help but grin over my shoulder at him.
We did it! I think triumphantly, happily. But then I see the look on his face.
He thinks I’m sex? Nah. That look, right there, that’s sex. That’s a man who is willing to destroy himself over lust. His fingers grip my hips and he pushes forwards, his head dropping back to suck at air. He bumps me forwards, I push him back. We find our rhythm and it’s slower than I might have thought, neither of us wanting to pull very far away.
I’ve always felt vulnerable, vaguely porny, in this position before. But right now? Right now it is so…comforting. He’s got me. He’s just got me. His hands are hugging me everywhere, warming me, greeting me, reveling in me. Everything about him is asking to be close and then closer to me. There are his hands sliding sweetly over my back, his fingers gripping my shoulders. There’s my hair, brushed out of my face, his legs firm and strong behind mine. There he is, nudging me so deep I bite the blanket. And then he folds forwards and there is his breath in my ear. He carefully keeps his weight off me but his voice is desperate for me, his rhythm picking up. Our fingers thread, his tongue in my mouth. He says my name into my skin and I feel every letter.
Things intensify, heat and friction, but my body can’t hold this position forever.
“On our sides?” I say to him. And he immediately sits up and pulls out. I want to yowl at the loss but I’m quickly appeased when he arranges me on my side, my head down by the foot of the bed, and spoons me from behind. This time when he pushes inside, we fit perfectly, like I was waiting for him, and we both curse and tighten and gasp. He’s got both arms around me, my hair must be in his face, but he doesn’t seem to care. He picks up the same grinding rhythm and I see every air molecule. I take his hand from my breast and guide it between my legs. Our fingers tangle, slip and slide and I’m tightening, winding up, close to letting go.
“More. Friction. Please,” I gasp.
He plants one big foot on my wall over my pillows, bracing us, and damn that is just so wonderful. I stare at that foot. The grip of his toes, the tendons straining. His hairy leg, his big hand gripping my breast, his other hand between my legs, his breath in my ear. And then he’s saying my name and swearing and yes, fuck, so good, fuuuuuuuuuu and he loses it. He pump-pump holds. Pump-pump holds. Shaking and gripping me and his ecstasy is inside me and I’m high off it.
He falls still but I’m so, so close, so I tell him so, and he immediately animates again. He’s still inside me, still pretty hard, his fingers working, his hips moving slightly, and then I’m there too. It’s an aching, dizzying orgasm that originates from the deepest place he’s hitting me. It spirals out, straightening my entire body, pointing my toes, digging my fingernails into his hip.
When I collapse down, my muscles unwinding, there are kisses against my shoulder, firm fingers between my legs, and then him holding the condom while he pulls away.
“Mrhghehgoaroahdohfigls,” I say, making perfect sense.
“Mm-hmm,” he agrees, and rolls out of the bed.
I lie on my side and count threads in the blanket. Time passes. Seconds? Minutes? Shep is back.
“I need a shower,” I groan.
“Sure,” he says easily. “But first…” There’s a glass of ice water and I drink deeply. Then there’s a heavily buttered slice of fresh bread, still warm. I’m licking butter from my fingers when a raspberry is pressed into my mouth.
“Where’d you get these?” I ask. The taste is tart and sweet and I’m honestly not sure my body can handle any more carnal pleasures.
He shrugs. “I know you like them.”
I scowl at him. “One of these days I’m going to wake you up with a blowjob and feed you honeydew off toothpicks and give you foot rubs and make you ravioli for lunch with raspberry lemonade and totally and completely befuddle and spoil you and see how you like it.”
He laughs. “Yes. Karma’s a bitch.”