Chapter Text
Joel sat in the cab for a very long time after walking Winnie to the door. He could still smell her in his truck and that was doing nothing to help the current state of affairs he found himself in.
What the fuck was he thinking? He had already told himself over and over that his restraint only got stronger with practice, made him a better man for it, and all it took for that to disappear entirely was her legs on either side of his thighs, a sip too much of whiskey and her mouth on his.
And then, all too clearly, she had called him on it. That deep shame, not of her, but of the knowledge that he had been on the razors edge and let recklessness tip him over into the younger man he had been trying to distance himself from for the past 20 years. His untethered desire cropped up ugly in his chest. He had wanted to do right by her, had wanted to prove to her that she wasn’t some mid-life crisis he found himself tangled up in. He wanted to prove to himself that he wasn’t some kind of looming pervert who saw a pretty girl in close proximity and let his body lead before his mind could catch up.
And for Christ sake, he was friends with her daddy.
He tipped his head back until it hit the headrest and ran a hand over his face which, he realized a moment too late, was the wrong decision. The smell of her on his fingers overwhelmed him in an instant and he dropped his hand, memory flashing back to how she had looked at him when she had stuck his fingers in her mouth.
He looked back to her front porch, light still on, shadows swimming in darkness where he thought he could almost make out the figure of her. The snow was starting to obscure all the truck windows, and Joel was thankful for the brief cover it provided from the quiet neighborhood. She was going to be the death of him, he knew that much. Her in that green dress, the pink flush of her chest in the cold against the velvet, the way she had done up her eyes so that she captured him every time she looked at him. He thought about how his hand looked pressed against her clavicle, the skin of her neck pale against the sun warmed brown of his fingers. It made his mouth go dry.
He sat, felt the ache ebb in his body. He felt the restraint come back to him in pieces. The last, most reckless piece of him ached heavy between his legs, demanding the most of him. It took until the briefest amount of light peaked through the snow ladened clouds before he felt comfortable exiting the cab. The snow, which had accumulated over the course of the night and was still coming, crunched under his boots. Every noise that he made felt like an alarm blaring in his direction. The sound of the squeaky board on his front porch made him turn his head towards the window he knew was Winnie’s that looked out onto the side yard between their houses. There was a brief flutter of curtain, but he couldn’t be sure if it was from her cracked window or her.
She’ll catch a cold like that, was the first thought in his head, and he felt the corner of his mouth prick into a smile.
The house was quiet at his entrance. The sink dripping its metronome - something else that had cropped up over the past couple weeks that he needed to tend to. Every step he took echoed in the emptiness of the house, the quiet comforting and exhausting all in the same breath. Boots off at the foot of the bed, his jeans folded over the chair in his bedroom. He sat for a long moment on the edge of the mattress, feeling the phantom press of her hands on him. There were light red, half crescents of her nails that had bit into his chest and clavicle. He ran his fingers over them absently, feeling the heat return to his body. He had spent months trying to convince himself that some schoolboy part of him had returned with this. . . crush. That her easy kindness and dry humor was a comfort he had shut himself off from for too long, that part of him just craved kind eyes and a gentle touch no matter who it came from. But he hadn’t responded to the women in the neighborhood the same way he had to her, despite their best attempts. He wasn’t blind to the way Gail Patterson set her hungry gaze on him like a wolf to fresh blood when he first got to the neighborhood. He was hyper aware of the flirtation that slipped from the single women in the grocery stores when he reached the higher shelves to aid in their attempt to secure spicy brown mustard.
It was like she had cast a spell on him, with the way his eyes followed her when she walked past. Her presence rattled every nerve, made it hard to set his pulse steady. His mouth went dry when she smiled that lilting smile at him, when she put her hair into a smooth ponytail as she worked in the garden over the summer. The way he felt his palms sweat when she set her eyes to him - and looked right through him.
Joel rolled onto his back, throwing his arm behind his head as he stared at the dark ceiling. He ran his palm over the edge of his underwear, considered (in the haze of early morning) about pressing his offending fingers to his nose and breathing deeply as he pulled himself to completion. Then that ugly word - pervert - sprung to the front of his mind and he pressed his other hand hard to eyes until kaleidoscope patterns appeared. He pulled his hands back, choosing instead to slide underneath the sheets, unspent.
He had barely slid into the sheets before he drifted off, the smell of her insistent in his dreams.
>><<>><<
Winnie woke up to the sound of her phone buzzing insistently on her bedside table, skittering around like an angry, trapped bee. She didn’t quite remember how she made it to bed last night - she had spent too long in front of her front door, waiting for Joel to step out - but when she wiped her eyes her hand came back clean.
So I did take my makeup off. Good.
When she glanced at her caller ID, Josie’s name popped up bright.
“Hello?” she asked, voice croaking out of her throat like a frog.
“Okay,” Josie said, breathless. “I survived the worst first date this side of the equator and I’m here to give my testimony to the only person who can understand what I went through.”
Winnie smiled, yawning and throwing an arm over her face. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Don’t you ‘good morning’ me, Miss ‘I prefer to call my Best Friday only when it’s incredibly early or incredibly late’,” Josie barrelled on, and Winnie laughed, feeling her throat loosen. “This man opened with a handshake and then a bow. A BOW! I thought I’d been transported into a period drama set in a WeWork.”
Winnie made a sympathetic sound, pushing her hair away from her face. The house was mostly quiet, just the sound of a heat kicking on and her father’s congested snore from the other room. “Did he. . . curtsey after? You know, just to make sure his entire introduction was weirdly well-rounded?”
“He did not curtsy,” Josie said gravely. “He did, however, insist on ordering ‘for the table’ and then chose three items I’m allergic to and a fourth that I am morally opposed to.”
“Let me guess,” Winnie offered. “There was one with trout foam.”
“Worse, though I can’t imagine there is something much worse than that,” Josie offered. “An aggressively wet salad. Leaves drowning - I could hear them screaming. There was so much dressing it made my mouth pucker just looking at it. And then when I told him I had a shellfish allergy, he nodded and then IMMEDIATELY ordered oysters because ‘he’d always wanted to try them with a date.’”
Winnie snorted. “What did he think oysters were? Shellfish is literally in the name.”
“He told me it had a shell but it wasn’t fish. Because fish swim. I wish I was making this up.”
Winnie sat up in bed, fully awake now, desperately trying not to laugh loud enough to wake up her father. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and tucked her toes underneath her. “Please tell me there was a modicum of decent conversation.”
“He might have downloaded TED Talk’s before he got there. Because that’s how he spoke to me,” Josie answered, deadpan. “He explained intermittent fasting to me like he invented it himself. He asked if I’d ever considered ‘optimizing my morning routine’. Whatever the fuck that means. I told him I consider sleeping in on weekends an optimization.”
“Oh, honey.”
“I know. It gets worse.” There was a rustle, sound of footsteps on carpet moving to echoing tile, then the sound of a kettle snapping on. “He told me he’s ‘sapiosexual’. I told him: same, that’s why I’m leaving.”
Winnie let out a bark of a laugh before she could hold it back, then pressed a hand to her lips like she could swallow back the sound. “That did not happen. There’s no way. For my own mental health, I have to believe this is fake news.”
“It, my dear, unfortunately did. And no, no fake news, unless you want to pretend you’re Trump.”
Winnie grimaced, and shook her head though she knew Josie couldn’t see her. “I think I’d rather go through the last year of my life over and over like Groundhog Day.”
“I figured,” Josie answered, and then continued. “But I did leave. But not before the pièce de résistance: he bragged about his CBD startup and then asked if I could Venmo for half the dinner because, and I quote, ‘he believes in equity.’”
“That’s not equity. That’s being cheap. And an idiot.”
“Exactly, thank you. I told him I had to go to the bathroom and I sprinted out the door the moment he was out of eyeline. Also blocked his number. He could still be sitting there waiting for me to come back for all I care. All I know is that I have fresh bagels on the counter and a heated blanket on the couch both calling my name.”
Winnie leaned back against her headboard, smiling hard. Outside the window, Joel’s house was still dark. Winnie wondered how late he had gotten in last night after her half-asleep climb to her bedroom she barely remembered. She felt her stomach drop, but disguised it as a cough.
“It sounds like an entirely blissful morning after a rough night. Wish I was there!”
Her voice caught on the edge there, and Josie picked up on it in an instant.
“Sounds like you had a rough night, too.”
“I’m fine,” she answered, too quickly.
Josie sighed. “Don’t bullshit me.”
Winnie let out a high, offended note. “I’m not bullshitting you!”
“Sure sounds like it. I know you better than you know yourself.”
Winnie laughed, but heard the sound of it echoed hollow.
“I went to my office Christmas party with Joel last night.”
“I KNEW it!” Josie crowed. “That handsome Texan is going to be the end of us both.”
“It was really nice. Really nice in a way that became problematic.”
“Okay, so start at the beginning. I need the full thing to give my unbiased opinion.”
Winnie stared at the ceiling, watching the fan blade spin quietly.
“Okay, so, office holiday party. I originally invited my dad but he somehow picked up the flu from a passenger and he was at peak fever for the holiday party. I was ready to go by myself when Joel showed up at the door in a dark jacket and flowers and looked at me like I had hung the stars.”
“Pure cinema,” Josie breathed. “Please proceed.”
“He was perfect, because of course he always is,” Winnie said, and the memory of him in the car when she told him where her mind had drifted to warming a spot in her heart. “Calm. Funny. Impressed the partners, especially Ms. Evans. Coworkers were throwing long winks across the floor at each other as we danced - and he was so careful with it. Slow. Present. We left as the party was dying down. It was snowing a little, and we sat in his truck outside my house. We didn’t go anywhere at first. And then I kissed him.”
“Thank god,” Josie answered, and the little smile it brought to Winnie’s face was genuine.
“He kissed back. It was good - so, so good. We were careful until we weren’t,” she answered, blush flooding her face, unwitnessed.
“There’s no such thing as too much information to your best friend, just so you know.”
Winnie bit her lip, covering her eyes with a hand like that would protect her from the words that were going to spill out of her mouth.
“I think I pushed him too far. I don’t know if it was the drinks - it’s what I want to blame it on, even though that’s a cop out - but before I knew it I was in his lap. And then he was kissing the side of my neck and I bit his lip and. . .”
“And?!”
“And, like horny teenagers, he fingered me in the front seat of his car.”
Josie squealed so loudly Winnie had to pull the phone away from her ear. “I can’t stand you. This is the content I want.”
“I said something dumb,” Winnie blurted, cutting herself off from the original memory before it made her too soft. “I joked ‘so much for restraint’. And it . . . it landed wrong.”
“How wrong?”
“He pulled back,” Winnie said, trying to keep her voice from hitching on the end like it so desperately wanted to. “Not angry. Just. . . ashamed. Like I’d said a mean thing he was already saying to himself. He still walked me to the door, kissed the inside of my wrist in his same porch ritual. But there was something behind his eyes I hadn’t seen before. Like he’d failed a promise he’d made to himself.”
Winnie had a hard time naming the feeling that sprung up in her chest because the truth made her breath go shallow.
“Okay,” Josie said, slowly, orienting. “Let me summary this. He’s been the king of going slowly, and you love that but it also drives you crazy. You want to chew through the leash. Last night, both of you let the leash out a little bit. You made a joke that functioned as a mirror, and he saw something he doesn’t like seeing. Then he retreated.”
“That’s about the shape of it, yeah,” Winnie admitted. “I didn’t mean it to target him. I meant it for myself - as a way to call attention in a lighthearted way to my own mistake in pushing him too far, and hoping he wouldn’t punish me for it. But his face. . .my god Josie, I could see him counting the ways he’d been someone he didn’t want to be. It made me want to apologize for wanting him.”
“Well, we’re not apologizing for wanting, so cross that off your list,” Josie said, crisp. “We can apologize for timing, tone, touch, but not for wanting. Wanting is not a crime. Tell me what he said.”
“He didn’t say anything about it. Just murmured ‘should get you inside’ and when I thanked him for the night, he said ‘anytime’. This was after the same porch ritual. And then he pulled out of my driveway and into his and I watched out the window for him to get out for. . . I don’t know, what felt like a million years. But he never got out of the car. I think I stumbled up to bed half asleep because I don’t remember it. Or remember taking my makeup off.”
Josie was quiet for a moment, and Winnie wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She was hoping for wisdom, all the same.
“The death knell to any relationship - platonic or not - is no communication. Or miscommunication. I think how easy it was to fall into you scared him. If past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior, he’s trying to figure out how to do right by you. And wants to have the right words to figure that out. You used a joke as a shield - and it didn’t land right. He felt shame, you felt fear. Doesn’t mean that you call it quits.”
“I can’t stop replaying the words in my head,” Winnie admitted. “It feels like a loose tooth I keep worrying, waiting for it to fall out. I can’t stop thinking about the way his eyes turned either when I said it - like a flinch. I don’t want to be that person with him.”
“You don’t have to be,” Josie answered. “Don’t let the joke be the last words. Replace them.”
“Like how?”
“Tell him the same thing you told me. Tell him that you made the joke as a way to keep yourself from spiraling, and you heard the way it landed for him. Tell him that you like his restraint because it means careful and intentional and that you care. But also, tell him you still want him, and tell him you’ll tell him when you want to speed things up or slow things down. The whole gist.”
Winnie sighed, frustration in herself bubbling to the surface. “Can I tell you the thing that I know sounds silly, but what I’m most scared of?”
“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”
“I’m worried he’ll realized that I’m a problem not worth diving into. A little too messy, a little too insecure. It’s potential rejection that’s screwing with my head.”
“If he felt that way, he wouldn’t have kissed the inside of your wrist. That’s intimacy.”
“You think?”
“Of course,” Josie offered, and Winnie listened to the sound of her friend sliding under her heated blanket. “That’s not running away. That’s a man trying to figure out how to tell his baser instincts to relax so that his brain can catch up.”
“Hmm,” Winnie murmured, flicking through her notifications, finding them full of spam from her e-mail and absent of any text messages from Joel.
“Also, because I can hear it in your voice from here, if he got in as late as it sounds like he did last night, give him till noon to text you. He may only just be putting his brain back together.”
Winnie let a tight smile linger, pressing her phone back towards her ear.
“I hate how well you know me sometimes.”
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Josie answered, and Winnie could hear her smile through the phone. “But seriously. Send him a text and tell him how much you liked last night, apologize for the words you didn’t mean to say, and ask if you can go on a walk later. Whatever feels right.”
“You’re right. As usual,” Winnie answered. “Except in blind dates. What was that guy’s name?”
“Brett,” Josie said. “And that should have been my first red flag.”
“Ooof. Do you remember that Brett that Elena told us about from when she dated him out of college?”
“The one who literally ripped off his shirt, crying, when she went to his house to break up with him? I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to. That’s all that kept replaying in my head as I drank my rum and coke and he prattled on about bitcoin.”
“Bitcoin should have been your second red flag.”
“Truth.”
It was quiet a moment, and then Josie filled it with: “Go on - text your future husband. I want to hear all about it later when you two have made up.”
Winnie let the word skitter through her head like a rock on a frozen pond, and then let it go. The concept warmed something in her, filled the ache where her heart had beat out of rhythm all morning and settled it even.
“I will. After I make myself breakfast and tend to my invalid.”
“Tell your father that I miss him and that I have a wedding in a couple weeks I need a date to - specifically, a date that can dance.”
Winnie laughed. “You’re messed up. And I love you.”
“Love you more!”
“Josie?”
“Yeah?”
“Come visit next weekend?”
Winnie heard the excited inhale over the phone.
“I thought you’d never ask. I’ll pack my best scarf.”
When Winnie finally got off the phone with her, she put on fuzzy flannels and padded down the hall to the bathroom - light on, door cracked. Her father was in there, shaving the beard that had cropped up during his sickness with careful strokes. Winnie took that to be a good sign.
“How you feelin’, Big Man?” she asked.
Her father looked over at her, twinkle in his eye. “Still got a lingering cough, but my fever broke.”
“Got an appetite for some bacon and eggs?”
“Only if you’re cookin’! I thought I was going to wither away the past couple of days with all the soup you were feeding me.”
“You know what they say - feed a cold, starve a fever. Now that your fever’s broke, I can ease you into real food. Unless, of course, you’d still like it blended down for you.”
Her father laughed, his belly jumping as he did so, and then his laugh ended with a cough forceful enough that Winnie would have worried if she couldn’t still hear the humor in it.
While she waited for the bacon to cook she typed a few messages to Joel, and then deleted them until she decided brave was better than nothing at all: Last night was wonderful. My joke about restraint was a shield for myself I didn’t need for you. I’m okay if you are. Walk later?
And then, because sometimes the truth deserved a little flirting: P.S.: you looked dangerously good in that jacket.
Winnie set her phone down, face down, almost afraid that if she looked at it too long it would reflect the words ‘desperate’ and ‘rejection’ in the same thread back to her through the black screen. She barely had her hands off of it when it vibrated in turn, revealing Joel’s name.
I’m okay. Thank you for saying that. Walk later. And you were dangerous first.
Winnie set her phone down again, take a moment to digest his words as the bacon spit out at her from the pan, and then smiled. The anxiety softened into a dull ache that was easily ignored through three pieces of bacon and over easy eggs. She plated both hers and her father’s breakfast just as he came down the stairs, looking and smelling much better than he had over the last couple of days.
“How was last night?” he asked as she sat with him at the table, nursing a still hot cup of coffee.
“It was great. Joel impressed my coworkers and didn’t let any eager young associates get near.”
Her dad smiled, scooping up some runny yolk with a tail end of bacon.
“Knew I could count on that man,” he answered. Then added, as a potent afterthought: “You really ought to find yourself someone who treats you like him. Like Joel. The flowers were a nice touch last night.”
Winnie looked up at him without answering, heat flushing to her face. She wondered, briefly, if he suspected any truth in his words. She had found someone like Joel. She hoped despite the test of restraint last night, that she could still keep him.