He stopped as he rounded the corner to the kitchen. Perched on the counter, wearing an apron, a grin, and six-inch heels, was moi. Holding an apple pie on my lap.
“I have my heart set on something,” I told him. “But it isn’t a crowded restaurant. How could I get away with wearing only this?” I hopped down from the counter and turned around. Oh yeah, I was wearing the apron, and only the apron. And the shoes—don’t forget the shoes.
“Caroline. Wow,” he managed.
I grinned bigger. “I have pie.”
“You sure do.”
“Silly boy, I baked for you. Your very own hot apple pie. All you have to do is come over here and get it.” I broke off a piece of the crust and dragged it through the cinnamon sugar goo dripping down the side. Would he want pie or me first?
Turns out, he wanted both.
April
“See, now, I thought we were making progress. We watch baseball together, I sneak you peanut butter every now and again, and you go and do this? Why? Why do you continue to do this? And furthermore, why do I continue to allow this to happen?”
As I reached the top of the stairs, I overheard the conversation inside my apartment. Simon was home alone—maybe he was on the phone. Once inside, however, I peeked around the corner and found him sitting across the table from my cat, Clive, his Stanford sweatshirt between them. Clive had “marked his territory” on this very sweatshirt several times early on in our relationship, but it had been a while since he’d deemed it necessary to remind Simon who was the actual man of the house. We both thought Clive was over this particular peccadillo. Apparently not . . .
I stifled a laugh at how seriously Simon was staring at Clive, and how unseriously Clive seemed to be taking all this, batting at his tail as though it were unattached from his body. I backed down the hall silently, and then made a big show of rattling the doorknob to let them know I was home.
When I came into the dining room again, I found Simon reading the newspaper nonchalantly. He made no mention of the conversation he’d been having with my cat.
I allowed him that dignity, and pretended not to notice when I found the sweatshirt in the trash a few hours later.
May
A noise filled the bedroom, rending the night and pounding my eardrums. A great sawing, a loudness of indeterminate origin dragged me from my dreams of Clooney. I was sweltering, with a very warm body wrapped around me from the back and horrible noises pouring forth from his mouth, directly into my brain. I grappled for a cool spot on my pillow, his heat billowing toward me in waves as the snoring—oh my sweet Lord, the snoring—rattled my insides.
Even Clive had retreated to a safe perch on top of the dresser.
In a completely shit move reminiscent of schoolyard playgrounds, I drew back my legs and kicked the mass of sweaty, snoring boy that was filling my bed and ruining my sleep.
“Oof!” He woke with a start, inadvertently pressing more of his hot skin against mine. I peeled myself off the bed to stand over him, brandishing my pillow, which no longer contained even an ounce of coolness.
“Babe, what’re you doing? Did you kick me?” He curled back in on himself like a roly-poly.
“You have to stop!” I yelled.
“Stop? Stop what? Come on . . . come back to bed,” he mumbled, already slipping back into his dreams, where he seemed to be a lumberjack.
“Don’t you dare go back to sleep! No! More! Snoring!” I yelled, wild inside and out now. Being deprived of my sacred sleep turned me into a woman possessed.
“Snoring? Come on, it can’t be that bad—what the hell!”
I’d snatched his pillow away, dropping his head to the mattress.
“If I can’t sleep, no one will sleep! You are loud, and you are hot!” I shrieked.
“Well, the hot we knew, right?”
“Aaarrgghh!”
“Wait, are you PMS-ing?” he asked, almost immediately looking fearful as he realized his mistake.
Simon finished the night across the hall in his own apartment. I needed my sleep.
July
“Goddamn, Caroline, that was amazing.”
“Yes, yes it was,” I purred, stretching my legs around him, clutching him closer to me, feeling him still inside me. His breathing synched with mine, relaxing into me as I scratched at his scalp and made little patterns on his back with my fingertips. After a few minutes he raised up on one elbow, and I smoothed his hair back.
“You didn’t come, did you?”
“No, sweetie, but it was fantastic anyway.”
“Let me make it up to you,” he insisted, moving his hand in between us, surprised when I stopped him. “Babe?”