Naked

“So why don’t you?” He leaned against the large wooden chest of drawers I’d salvaged from the back alley.

I thought about warning him he’d get his designer jeans dirty rubbing up against the old wood, but decided against it. As fussy as Patrick could be, he liked to pretend sometimes he wasn’t, especially when we were alone and sort of reverted to the way we’d been as a couple. When he’d had to be what he felt was “manly.”

“Because I don’t want to.” I shrugged again.

“You should do it anyway.”

Now I turned to look at him full-on. “You know, you can leave anytime.”

Patrick-my-boyfriend would never have flipped me the finger. Patrick-my-boyfriend had insisted on using tools and playing sports. He’d farted and burped a lot more back then. I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy he’d let go of that.

“You don’t go that way, remember?” I said with a glance at his middle finger.

He snorted and stood up. “You’ll come to dinner.”

The past two Fridays I’d spent watching movies with Alex. “I might have plans.”

“What on earth could you be doing on a Friday night that would be better than games and food and drinks at my house?” He paused. “Do you have a date?”

“I love how you make that sound like science fiction.” I sighed, giving up trying to work on the pictures with him there. “As a matter of fact, my tenant and I are probably going to be watching the entire BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. The Colin Firth version.”

Patrick gasped and recoiled. “What? You…with him? But…”

He looked so shocked and hurt I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. “He’s never seen it.”

“Liv!”

“Patrick!” I mocked.

He shook his head, frowning, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “I knew you renting to him was going to be bad.”

“What’s bad about it?”

Alex had been great. He took the big garbage cans out to the Dumpster in back, had cooked dinner for me twice the week before, and hung out watching old movies with me. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t play his music too loud. He also liked to do yoga, shirtless, and that was a bonus. I’d found myself unable to sleep for thinking of him, but I didn’t want Patrick to know that. I sounded a little too gushy, too perky, but my focus was on the computer screen and not my tone of voice. Patrick’s silence alerted me to my faux pas, and I turned to look at him.

“Don’t be like that,” I told him.

“Well, you haven’t called me, like, in a week,” he said. “I thought you were going to come over to watch Supernatural on the big screen. You know Teddy bought the Blu-rays.”

“I’ve had to work, Patrick. I can’t just throw all that aside all the time.” I tried to sound gentle and it came out annoyed. Probably because I was annoyed.

Patrick just glared. He was jealous. This realization punched an incredulous laugh out of me. He hadn’t been jealous of the past three guys I’d dated, but he was jealous of this?

“Oh, Patrick.”

We knew each other well enough that some things didn’t need to be spelled out. He frowned and kicked at the floor. “I guess you’ll be spending Christmas with him, then?”

“Instead of you?”

He crossed his arms and looked dour.

“I do have a family, Patrick. My dad’s invited me home with him and Marjorie. And my brothers have, too.”

“And you’re going to go?”

“I think so. I don’t see them that much.” My brothers had invited me for past holidays and I’d declined, not wanting to make a trip either to Wyoming or Illinois in the winter. I believed them both when they said they’d miss me, but I was also sure they weren’t heartbroken. We’d all grown up. They had families. Kids. Our family had never been as close as some and never as distant as others. What we had worked, at least for us.

“What about your mom?”

“My mother doesn’t celebrate Christmas, remember?” I gave him my full attention, and a scowl. It had certainly been a bit of an issue when we were dating. Not as much as the eventual revelation that he preferred sausage to tacos, but it had caused some tension.

“I can’t believe you’re blowing me off for someone else.”

“Get out.” I pointed at the door, but not before Patrick danced closer, just out of reach, to smack his lips at me. I didn’t want to smile or laugh, but I had to. “Out! I have work to do! Isn’t Teddy waiting for you?”

“Teddy’s always waiting for me.”

“And I’m sure he has dinner all ready for you when you get home, too. Don’t be late, hanging around here. Go on. Go.” I shooed him. Patrick grabbed at my hand but missed.

I liked him this way, acting silly as he had when we’d been together long ago, before sex got in the way and he thought he had to be something he wasn’t. He was different now. We both were. But Patrick was really different with his new friends, his new partner. It might have been the “real” him, but this silliness was part of him, too. Time had passed, wounds had healed. In many ways Patrick and I were closer than we’d ever been as a couple. I knew in every part of me that mattered that if we’d gone ahead and done it, married, we’d have been miserable and divorced—or worse, miserable and not divorced—in less than a year. I was happy my Patrick had found his place in the world with someone who loved him the way he deserved and wanted to be loved, and I didn’t mope around wringing my hands, wishing for my prince to come. Or I tried not to.

Then I was feeling sad and nostalgic again and hating it. Part of it was the time of year, when I felt caught between my different worlds, anyway, but part of it would always just be…Patrick.

“Just don’t forget about me,” he said.

“Oh, Patrick. As if I ever could.” I stood to give him a hug and a kiss he didn’t deserve, but I couldn’t deny. “Now. Get out. I’m busy.”

“Call me,” he demanded.

“I will! I will. Now go!”

“Liv…”

“Yes, my dear one?” The words were sweet, my tone a little bitter.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Then he went out and closed the door behind him.

I turned to my computer and lost myself in work. It was better than being lost in anything else.

I wasn’t brought up stupid.

On the contrary, both my parents were part of the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll generation. Fans of the Grateful Dead. I had two much older brothers who hadn’t thought a lot about shielding me from the movies they watched or music they listened to. I knew about sex.

After my parents divorced, when I was five, my dad remarried almost immediately. His new wife, Marjorie, an enthusiastic member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, had brought with her my two stepsisters, Cindy and Stacy, both a year or so older than me. My mom stayed steadfastly single, rarely even dating. My parents were cordial to one another as they shared me, neither ever making me choose, and if there was always a little bit of tension with my dad over my place in his new household, it was made up for by my mother’s complete indulgence in me. We were best friends, my mom and I.

I had my first “real” boyfriend at fourteen, gave my first hand job a year later. Most of my friends had lost their virginity by the time we were sixteen, but I waited another year before I gave it up in my boyfriend’s basement at a graduation party for his older brother. I wasn’t scarred by screwing him, even though we broke up shortly after that. I knew enough to use a condom and was smart enough to go all the way with a guy who’d already proved himself adept at getting me off. It was as fine a first time as I could ask for.

My life changed my senior year of high school. My mom, who favored f lowing gypsy skirts and long, unbound hair, had always been a reader, but her choices of material had changed over the past year from Clive Barker and Margaret Atwood to thick, leather-bound copies of the Tanakh and journals on Jewish commentary. I knew about Judaism, though we’d never practiced anything more religious than spinning the dreidel. But now…well, they say there’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a convert. My mother, born and raised Jewish, wasn’t technically a convert, but she was definitely enthusiastic.