--thank you for waiting oh so long and patiently for the 7th chapter. I hope it is worth the wait. If you want to cut to the sex part, go to the last page...but isn't the fun in the "build up?"
We walked to Della's, since it was a nice day. There was only a slight breeze—enough to make my skirt not too warm, not too short that the wind would catch it. Things probably needed a little airing out down there anyway. I couldn't help thinking I smelled of sex. Adam walked on one side of me, and kind of meandered so that he might somehow bump into my area of personal space, but Mason was on the other, and he had his had his hand on the slope of my back, so that I stayed close to him.
As we walked, Mason and Adam exchanged conversation, professor-type things, administrative-type things, things that I could care less about. While they talked and we all walked, I looked around at the sky, the buildings, and felt Mason's body, so definite, shadowing mine. What was it going to be like once I was officially moved into his house? How exactly did he live? And was it wise for me to go there? What would I find out about him while I was there? Would I wake up one day and find out he didn't want me there anymore, and be stuck out on the street? I stayed relatively quiet, and --despite my thoughts-- very content until we arrived at Della's.
Della's is a nice little place not far from campus which is usually too expensive for the average student. It was where grad students would sometimes hang out, or undergrads would take their dates there if they wanted to impress them. An upscale, yuppyish deli, that's what it was.
We found seats, in the corner of the room, a booth that could sit five people, with a chair on the other side of it. The waiter came over, wearing simple black pants and a white shirt. His hair was pulled back and swept up into a tiny ponytail.
"I'll have the "Deep Sea Sushi," Adam said, after Mason and I had given our orders. He gave the menus to the waiter, and then looked back to Mason, "So what's on for the summer, Mason?"
"Work. Lots of work. Ayilah's going to help me catalog," Mason replied, looking my way with a smile. "Then it's out to show and sell. What about you and Kyon?"
"Kyon and I, we are no longer. We're pretty much less than friends," Adam said sadly.
He then talked about his former girlfriend, Kyon, who happened to be an adjunct professor of English at another college in the city. Adam had met her at a conference and took up with her while he was still married to his wife, Roseanne. When Roseanne came home to find Adam tied to the bedposts, naked, and Kyon prancing around him in totally naked except for a pair of black boots, his marriage swiftly ended.
"Nothing like getting caught," Adam said with a smirk.
"Well unlike Roseanne, you have the distinct aberration of wanting to linger and watch," Mason replied.
"I apologize," Adam replied. "You were just having so much fun. I enjoy watching two people in the thick of things, so to speak."
I wanted to say something, but I didn't. With all the words darting so quickly between the two of them, I suddenly felt like the lowly undergrad again.
Caught in the nostalgia, Adam left out the events and reason why Kyon left him. When Mason asked, Adam merely said, "Suffice it to say I'll be working on my book alone."
"That seems to happen to you a lot," Mason smirked, "you need a new plan."
"Well, your plan looks pretty good to me," Adam said, with a smile, then shifted in his seat to face me. "So you're an art major?" Adam asked, trying not to sound presumptuous.
"Was," I replied. "Art History. And English."
"A double major? Well, then, you must be very gifted student," Adam replied, with an unnerving tone in his voice.
"Graduated," Mason piped in. "She isn't a student."
Mason and Adam's eyes met. "Good thing," Adam chuckled. "...Could've been quite a report to the dean. Not sure if I should've left some things in or out..."
"Out would have been fine," Mason replied, laughing softly, then mockingly whispered an aside, "Don't mind him; he's lecherous, but relatively harmless." "And," he added, giving Adam a stern look, "Just because she majored in English, doesn't mean she'll help you with your book."
"Oh, I wasn't thinking any such thing...but now that you mention it..."
Mason gave Adam a look that I couldn't tell was seriously reprimanding or lighthearted. There was definitely a history with these two, but I wasn't feeling particularly up to trying to figure out what it was. It seemed Adam just kind of imposed himself. I didn't want to spend time with him. I wanted to spend time with Mason.
When our food arrived, delivered by the waiter with the wispy, meager ponytail, it had arrived just in time. I really didn't know how to participate in the conversation between these two men, and it made me feel like the "odd one out". I could tell they were both dwelling on the afternoon's previous activities between Mason and I and I didn't like Adam's participation in it, even in conversation. A third party just made it...weird-- weird, and a bit sordid.
Fortunately for me and my insecurities, we ate without much conversation at all, but one thing from that meal stood out in particular. All of our entrée's were laid out beautifully, but mine tasted blander than it looked. Maybe I didn't have as much of an appetite as I thought. Adam's must've been incredibly hungry, because he ate with more vigor than I'd ever seen anyone eat. It wasn't that he was sloppy. Just consistent. Eating must've been the one thing that shut him up.
I must have been watching him eat more than I was eating myself because he caught my eye and asked, with warmth and sincerity, "Would you like to try some?"
"Oh, no... No. This is fine," I replied, looking down at my plate and rubbing my napkin between my fingertips.
"Really. Try some. It's delicious," he said, and he grabbed one slithery piece of tuna and, before I could object, reached across the table and put it to my lips. It was damp, and didn't smell fishy. Mason had paused from his meal and said to me, "Go ahead, hon. Try it." Maybe it was that Mason had called me "hon". Maybe it was that I felt all eyes were on me—one young black woman with two white men, one a bit older than the other, now with the older one holding a piece of raw fish to her lips, and about to refuse it.
I parted my lips. It seemed like it was in slow motion.
"Hold out your tongue," Adam said, in what sounded like a demand, a joke, and common sense all in one. So I did.
His fingers reached into my mouth, dropped the piece of tuna on my tongue, and I closed my lips, not realizing they were closing around his fingers. But he did. He slid his fingers out slowly, then raised his eyebrows in approval. "There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" He raised his fingers to his lips, which was all I saw of him at that moment, sharply defined upper lip and a slight puffy fullness to the middle of his lower lip, and a taper to the ends of his bottom lip that made his expression always to appear to be that of the Cheshire cat. He sucked on his fingers audibly while looking at me with his gray-green eyes. I felt dizzy. I lowered my eyes. "Eating raw fish can be very satisfying," he said, returning to his food as if nothing were happening.
Later that evening, Adam and "the incident" safely behind us, Mason and I were sitting on the floor of the room that was to be mine, where I could my personal belongings. There was even a bed in there, I guess for if I ever wanted to sleep alone.
"So what did you think of Adam?" Mason asked. While I was folding clothes and putting them in the drawers of an old dresser, he was taking books out of boxes, setting them up on the shelves—and putting way too much thought into what should go where every time he saw a book about art.
"He's...he's different," I replied. "Actually, he's like an English professor. He looks normal, but he's weird."
"I guess us art professors are much more normal," Mason replied, with noted sarcasm.
"No. Art professors look weird and are weird," I said, laughing.
"Careful," he said, smiling. He eyed a text book before he put it on the shelf, then changed his mind. "You don't need this one," he said, and threw it back into the box. "It's shit." I didn't bother to see what book he was referring to, but I turned to him.
"I find it weird that someone would actually watch while other people have sex," I said, taking more clothes out from a rubber bin to fold and put away in the drawer. "I mean it's not like watching a movie. There's just something not right about that."
Mason shrugged as he analyzed another book. "It's his shtick. He's done it for years."
"Really?"
"Well it's not the first time he's been watching when I've fucked someone," Mason replied.
