Page 24 of Grape Juice
“Answer it first...s’il te plaît.”
“We tried for a bit.” I pause to linger in a patch of fading sunlight and lift my chin up toward the sky. I like answering his questions. I like that he’s asking them. “But the reality is, human brains like to angle themselves toward a goal, I think. However watery and mysterious it is. If I didn’t want to get married and he did, we were just moving along this parallel trajectory, taking care of each other for what purpose? We’d already achieved this version of Real Thing. But then what? And honestly, for both of us, it was too tempting to think of romance only in absolutes: forever or not at all. If a commitment to eternity is the barometer for relationship success, then we were left with just one option: to reduce ourselves to nothing.”
“What did it feel like? To be alone?”
“A little bit like dying, mostly.” I force a laugh in the hopes of communicating the hyperbole. To make light ofthe feelings that I’d committed so much time to eradicating prior to arriving here. “Like I was severing off this whole, enormous piece of the world as I knew it. And, you know, I felt that loss like a phantom limb. There were Max-shaped holes in so many rooms I entered, so many tables where I sat down to eat.”
Henri scrapes his hand through his hair. “I’m scared of that. I’m in limbo now, you know? It’s not gone completely yet—Charlotte, I mean—but I’m scared of that feeling. Did you regret it after? Did you wanna take it all back?”
I wonder if I’ll ever stop hearing her name like some kind of thumbtack to the throat.
“I missed him a lot. But I think I missed him more than I loved him, in the end. So no, not regret.” I twist a piece of my hair around my pointer finger. “When I was in the throes of it, I thought a lot about how we don’t have a grieving ritual for breakups. There’s no funeral march, no memorial service, no paperwork, even. When it happens, we’re sort of without a proper place to store that genre of loss.”
I remember it all so well, better than I can remember plenty of things that happened a month ago: When I’d properly fallen in love—could use that turn of phrase without wincing—nothing could have prepared me for what it felt like to be submerged in the actual experience. It sated me in ways that resisted language. Then, over the years, it calcified into something sturdy and real. Something that carried weight. When he was gone, when I made him leave, it hurt in ways that were deafening, that weregarden variety, that were hopelessly cliché. Mostly, though, it just hurt. I was constantly resisting the rather obvious (and trite) truth about the version of me that followed: It hurt so badly, I’d actively avoided feeling anything of that caliber—anything like love—again.
“And now? How do you feel now?” Henri plays with a twig suspended from the curl of a vine.
“For a while, I felt a bit like a robot. But now, I feel human again. Some days more than others, sure.” I inhale and press my thumb into my palm as if applying pressure in the right spot could elicit bravery. “Not to be overly saccharine or whatever, but kissing you felt human.”
He looks up, surprise slapped across his face. We’ve safely avoided “us” territory until now. We look at each other silently for a beat. Then he places a hand on the back of my neck and kisses me gently on the cheek, just above the jaw. The place where his lips make contact heats as if from a chemical burn.
“Me too. I felt that way too,” he says with his hand still at my nape. He reaches to tuck a rogue piece of hair behind my ear. I can’t tell if the gesture is to reveal more of me or just a gentle impulse; I welcome it either way. “I liked it, and then I was mad at myself for liking it,” he says. “I think I’ve been leaving in half measures for a long time, and I feel shitty about that. Your way seems braver.”
He fumbles with his hands, then returns them to his pockets. “I like the sound of my own voice a little better when I’m talking to you. I haven’t felt that way in a while. Like you said, liking myself. I forgot what that felt like.”He strides ahead of me, hands on his hips, and then he turns on his heels to face me.
“Anyway, that’s what I told Antoine about you. About why I did it. Kiss you, I mean—which really isn’t some grave offense. Charlotte and I, we aresupposedto take this time to live different lives.” He pauses, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I think I just hadn’t quite considered that it wouldn’t only be a break. But here, with you... I can’t stop thinking that this is what romance is supposed to feel like—giddy at the prospect of all these mundane tasks. I’m not even thirty, and I was already resigned to going through the motions.” He traces a circle in the dirt with the toe of his boot, around and around, as if waiting for the soil to reveal some hidden message, perhaps a cue card. “What I mean is, I don’t know what to do with you.” The wordyoufrom his mouth is changed now, rounder and richer, and I like hearing it so much, I nearly resent him for it. The question of what to do with me was never supposed to carry weight. And yet, I can feel it—the heaviness.
He is close to me now, close enough that I can smell the sweet glaze of his spiced deodorant, his skin, his sweat. The tenuousness of his restraint. I think about the thinness of the space between us, I contemplate how permeable plain old air is, and then I lean in and kiss him.
This time feels different. That delicate boundary crossed already. We are no longer toeing a line or probing at a thing. I want him achingly as he presses against me and kisses me deeper, more assuredly. I can no longer tastethe glancing notes of trepidation that raced through his mouth in the cellar.
His hand settles on the small of my back, urging me toward him, flattening me against him; I weave my fingers through the hair at the base of his skull, pulling as if it were possible to bring him any closer to me. He bites my bottom lip, slides his tongue farther toward the back of my throat, as if he’s passed tasting.
He slides the fingers of his other hand up the leg of the loose, forgiving fabric of my shorts. His forefinger feathers back and forth, toying with the edge of my underwear. I hold him more firmly, shift my mouth to kiss his neck.Keep going, I try to tell him without saying the words.Don’t stop.I’m afraid of breaking the spell. I’m afraid other bits of logic will slip into my consciousness.Don’t stopis the only phrase I can hear.Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
Henri slides two fingers beneath my underwear and inside of me, and I feel so lethally turned on, my skin hurts.Turned onhas never seemed so correct a term. Like I’m surging with high-octane energy. Something with enough force to electrocute—to shock.
Slowly, Henri moves his hands to my waist and takes a few panting breaths. I find his eyes, and he looks stricken, stunned. He cradles the back of my head and lowers me to the ground, positioning himself over me, arms on either side of my shoulders. I feel the textured ground beneath me, the combination of divots, rocks, roots.Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
“Are you OK?” he whispers, biting my lip.
“Yes. Are you?”
He nods and lurches forward so quickly, his tongue collides with the wall of my teeth. We both laugh—the absurdity of our wanting, the near-youthful exuberance—and he slides his hand up my shirt, running his fingers along the terrain of my rib cage. I pull at his belt, pawing at the latch, and he reaches down to unbuckle it himself, kicking his pants off. Something about his bare legs against the earth looks innocent—white briefs, the Calvin Klein logo circling his waistband.
Then he presses against me, and my head dips back at the hardness of him. I feel a flash of jealousy that his form can so quickly offer that kind of promise, can grow and swell and shapeshift. I nudge at the waistband of my shorts, and he pulls them from my hips, along with my underwear. He props himself up as he tugs his own underwear down to his knees. My eyes jump from his dick to his bicep to the line of his thigh, my brain trying to make a memory of his body. I arch my hips, and a soft, needy whimper escapes against my will. Henri is staring down at me, and his swollen lips part in response to the sound. I place a finger between them, then wrap my free hand around his dick, bringing it closer to me.
“Should I... protection?” he asks, verbally fumbling.
“IUD,” I say, and his brow furrows. I grin. An English term he doesn’t know. “Contraceptif. I’m OK.”
I coax him inside me. Two sharp intakes of break, in unison, then: He is thrusting upward, upward, upward, and I am no longer thinking. It’s just him pulsing, beatingwithin me as though he’s connected somehow to my own circulatory system. My fingers curl involuntarily, useless. He urges himself forward, and my vision goes white. I have the distinct and preposterous sensation that just maybe, the right man inside me could be enough to make me believe in something spiritual, something divine.
His fingers move between my legs, and I grasp at the dirt for purchase. “Henri,” I gasp without meaning to. “Alice,” he exhales back, and I feel each of my muscles bracing for release, then all of me shuddering with pleasure. A flood of relief—a reprieve from the tension that has been building, and building, and building.
I palm Henri’s back, and he drops to his elbows, nuzzling his head against my neck. “Henri,” I say, meaning to. “Alice,” he gasps as he comes.
He hovers over me as we both come back to ourselves, the vines. He rolls to his side, his chest heaving, and I collect more pieces of him: the ridge of his sternum, the hair across his chest. He glides two fingers between my legs, feeling the dew of his own cum where it lingers on my skin. He lifts his fingers to my mouth. “Taste,” he whispers, and I close my lips around them.
