Page 71 of Canadian Boyfriend

We had sex.

Ha.

But not right away. Let me back up.

Gretchen and I shook off the philosophical chat and ate dinner and watched a movie while I tried—and failed—to stop thinking about Mike Martin. I still didn’t know why Gretchen wasn’t busting me about him, but whatever. She left, I went to bed, and I awoke at seven the next morning to texts from him.

Mike:Hi.

Mike:I’m leaving now.

Aurora:I thought you were staying for fancy brunch.

Mike:Changed my mind.

Hmm. Dare I entertain the extremely flattering thought that his early departure had something to do with me? While I wastrying to decide how to respond, more texts came in that settled the matter in a way that made me blush.

Mike:I’m going to lead-foot, so I should be there in about five-and-a-half hours.

Mike:Get ready.

He arrived in five hours and twenty-seven minutes. I heard his car pulling up the graveled drive and about jumped out of my skin. Should I go out to meet him? I was frozen in the mudroom, indecisive, when the door banged open.

He didn’t speak, just stalked toward me, dropping everything he was holding in quick succession—keys, phone, backpack. Plop, plop, plop, they hit the floor one after the other like little bombs being detonated.

The beard was gone since the Lumberjacks had ended their postseason run, but the dimple was not in sight. Because he was not smiling. He was looking at me like I was a vexing problem he was intent on solving. No, actually, he was looking at me like I was a sworn enemy he planned to wipe off the face of the Earth. In the best possible way.

He planted his hands on my cheeks and, with neither word nor ceremony, lowered his head and covered my mouth with his. He started walking, even as we kissed, which had the effect of walking me backward. We stopped when my back hit the wall near the staircase. As we had last winter, we kissed like feral teenagers, and it wasglorious.

But unlike last winter, I didn’t have that I-could-kiss-Mike-Martin-forever feeling. In fact, kissing him, as great as it was, was kind of agitating. Possibly that was due to the fact thatour bodies were plastered against each other, which was a new twist. The winter kissing had been an upper-body-only activity; this was… not that.

Something happened then that I couldn’t really explain, except by saying that we started communicating without words. I rubbed myself against him, he picked me up, I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he started up the stairs. We both knew what was happening.

But of course, Mike Martin, being Mike Martin, as he sat on his bed with me on his lap, did use words to double-check, after emitting a tortured groan when I rewrapped my legs around him in this new seated position. “It sort of seems like we’re moving beyond kissing. Is that OK?”

Was it? On the one hand: yes, it was very OK. I wanted this.

On the other… What? I had the tiniest niggle, like something was holding me back, but I couldn’t put thoughts to it, much less words.

So I decided not to overthink it. To run with the Mary-Margaret idea that it was OK to have fun, that letting in any outside notions of what I should or should not be doing wasn’t useful.

“Yes,” I said, and from there, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to tilt my head up so Mike Martin could scrape his teeth gently against my neck. And when his hands slid up under my T-shirt, tracing a line of sparks up my back, it wasn’t at all awkward to move things along by pulling away long enough to take the shirt off.

He made another of those almost dismayed-sounding groans. I laughed, partly from pure delight and partly because I was objectively amused. I was wearing the world’s ugliest bra. I’d assumed we were only going to be kissing, so I hadn’t given itany thought. I didn’t have a lot going on in the boob department, so I tended to wear bralettes. Most of them were cute, but this was a ratty old beige one I wore to teach in. It had a permanent sweat stain near one armpit. Leave it to me to wear my ugliest bra. Leave it to Mike Martin to admire it.

I decided to give him something more to admire and took off the bra. He closed his eyes as if pained, but his hands floated up and cupped my breasts.

I laughed again. I was a little bit high on the power I seemed to have, and laughing was begetting more laughing. I hadn’t ever laughed while having sex.

He cracked one eye open. “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know. This. Everything. That ugly bra.”

The other eye opened.

“You do know I’m laughing with you, not at you, right?” I said.

“I’m not laughing.” But he was grinning, and his eyes were doing the green-sparking thing. “You thought that bra was ugly?”

---