Read Online The One That Got Away by Carol Rosenfeld - Free Book Online

midnight.” I didn’t know what to do. “My apartment’s a mess,” I said.
    I met Jean outside my apartment building and we walked over to Riverside Park, shivering in the night air. There was no question of our actually going into the park, of course—it was dark out—so we sat on a park bench along Riverside Drive. Before long an elderly woman wearing a black Persian lamb pillbox hat joined us. She paid no attention to us, as she was engrossed in a bitter conversation with herself, but it was a bit hard for us to ignore her entirely.
    We went back to my apartment, which is one of those New York City dwelling spaces with windows that remain open throughout the year, as the heat blasting from the radiator turns the space into a sauna. Within minutes of coming through the door, we began removing unnecessary clothing. Since piles of paper and books occupied both chairs, we had to sit on my bed.
    Jean didn’t give me time to be nervous, because the second we sat down she put her arms around me and kissed me.
    I said, “I’ve never done this before.”
    â€œThat’s all right,” Jean replied. “I have.”
    Once we were entirely free of fabric Jean held my breasts and lowered her head. As I savored the luxury of her lips on my nipple, I gently placed my palms over her sweet, sand dollar breasts. Our skin, already misted with the sweat from the day, became slick with the sweat of sex. We didn’t say much, but when her hand slid down and her finger slid in, Jean smiled at me and whispered, “This is why I’m a dyke.”
    She stroked me with her thumb in a rhythm that was a pleasurable variation on my own familiar pattern. I lay quiescent, meditating on the motions of her fingers as though I might have to diagram them the following day. The sounds I heard seemed separate from me, although I knew I was the source of them. I thought about women in books who could come at a touch, a breath, a look, a word. Why was I always the tortoise and never the hare? But the tortoise won the race, eventually, so maybe that wasn’t a good metaphor. And what happened to the hare that made him the loser? I was thinking too much. I wondered how much time had passed, if Jean was bored, or would like to give her fingers a rest.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a little nervous. I can come when I’m by myself, but a lot of the time I use a vibrator.”
    Jean propped herself up on one elbow, leaning her head into her hand, and resting the damp fingertips of her other hand on the swell of my stomach. “We can use your vibrator if you want to,” she said.
    I shook my head. “I really want your fingers touching me, not a machine.” I put my hand over hers and moved it down again.
    A few minutes later I pushed Jean’s hand away and rolled on top of her. I circled each nipple several times with my tongue, then slid my hands to her hips and my head between her thighs.
    Later, I would lie to people who asked me if I’dpracticed safe sex, and tell them I did. But at this moment, my need was my world.
    I took Jean’s sighing and moaning as evidence that, even if I had no idea of what I was doing, I was doing something right.
    When Jean grew quiet I lifted myself up over her body, then lay down again, propping myself up on my elbows. I felt the way I feel at the end of my first day in a foreign country—a place familiar and strange at the same time. I was exhausted yet wakeful.
    As we lay heart to heart, her face softened into a kind of beauty that no one else saw—not her boss, the man at the corner newsstand, or the stranger on the bus. I wondered then if this happened every time, with every woman.

    If it had been up to me, I would have kept Jean in bed the whole week, but after all, it was her vacation.
    On the night we had dinner in a tiny Middle Eastern restaurant, we looked at each other so intensely our silence seemed