“It’s Porter.”
“Huh?” I pretended not to hear her. “The music must be too loud, what did you say?”
She shook her head and let me spin her around until we were dizzy and exhausted.
An hour later, we found ourselves sitting on my kitchen floor, eating grapes and cheese. She was leaning her back against the refrigerator with her legs out straight in front of her, and I was sitting the same way against the cabinets across from her.
She lobbed a grape up into the air and I caught it in my mouth.
“I have an idea. . .” she said.
“Tell me.”
“Let’s play a game. Do you have a blindfold?” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “It’s not what you think.”
I pulled a long, red dishtowel out of the drawer and tossed it to her. She leaned forward on her knees and proceeded to tie it around my head.
“I’m getting scared, Grace.”
“We’re gonna play, ‘Guess what I just put in your mouth.’ ”
“Sweet Jesus. That sounds like a game I’ll like.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
Too late.
I heard her tinkering around in the kitchen, and then a few minutes later she was sitting next to me again. “Okay, open up.” I felt a cold spoon hit my tongue. Something slid off of it and hit the back of my throat. It was confusing and disgusting and the texture gave me the chills. “Gross, what is this?”
“You have to guess; that’s the whole point of the game.”
“Grape jelly and soy sauce?”
She lifted the blindfold to reveal her ecstatic face. “It’s true! I thought that would be impossible.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be.”
“Wait, I have more.”
“No.”
“Just one more?” she whined.
“Fine.” I pulled the blindfold back down.
She scampered away and came back a moment later. “Open up, Matty.”
Her finger was in my mouth, and if that wasn’t sweet enough on its own, it was coated in Nutella. “Nutella à la Grace?”
She undid the blindfold, her face beaming.
“My turn,” I said. I tied the towel-blindfold around her eyes, stood up, and pretended to gather things from various drawers. I sat back down. “Ready?”
“Yep!” She opened her mouth and I kissed her, starting at her bottom lip and then moving to her neck and back to her mouth until our tongues were twisting and our hands were lost in each other’s hair.
We made out on my kitchen floor and then, suddenly, Grace cut it short.
“Walk me home?”
I pulled back, searching her face. “Of course. You know you’re welcome to stay if you’d like to. No funny business, I promise.”
“I have to get home.”
“Okay.” I held my hand out and helped her to her feet. She went to her purse, checked her phone, and then popped a mint into her mouth.
“Are you dating anyone?”
“I thought I was dating you?” she said.
“Right. We are dating. Very slowly.”
“Are you pressuring me, Matthias? You were more patient as a twenty-one-year-old. What happened?” There was amusement in her tone.
I laughed. “Well, I didn’t know what I was missing then. Now I do.”
We left my loft and I walked her home. When we got to the stoop of her brownstone, I turned to her. “Want to get dinner Friday?”
“I’d love to.” She leaned up and kissed me for a long time. “I had fun tonight.”
“Me too. It was the best PG experience I’ve had in a long time.”
“The explicit language, provocative dancing, finger sucking, and drug use are surely worth a PG-13 rating,” she said, before leaning up and pecking me on the cheek one last time.
“Night, Gracie.”
“Night, Matty.”
I walked home, got into bed, and fell asleep with a smile on my face.
ON FRIDAY, I made a reservation at a little Japanese place within walking distance of both of us. When I got to her brownstone to pick her up, she was waiting for me on her stoop, wearing a leather jacket and a dress that reminded me of the one she used to wear in college that drove me crazy.
“You look great.”
“You do, too.” She linked her arm in mine as we walked, and we talked about our week. We ate sushi, drank a lot of sake, and I fed her from my plate. After dinner, we ended up at a bar that had a band playing gospel and blues rock. There were periods that night when we said nothing to each other and just moved to the music and then there were times when we were laughing hysterically and yelling over the music.
By eleven, we were totally tipsy. When I kissed her outside the bar, she broke away first and pulled me down the street. “Where are we going now?”
She turned, grabbed my face hard, and kissed me again. “My bed, Matt. That’s where we’re going.”
My heart thumped wildly at the thought. “Good idea.”
I followed her up the steps to her front door, trying desperately to keep my cool and not look overly eager. When we entered her apartment, I had to squint through the darkness. I turned around and watched her silhouette, lit only from the streetlight coming through the window next to the front door. She threw her keys on the entry table, then her jacket. She kicked off her shoes, pulled her tights off, then lifted her dress from the hem, over her head, and threw that aside, too.