His surly response surprises me. Very un-Alex.
I turn my head and ease off his shoulder, onto his upper arm, meeting his eyes. “You okay?”
He stares down at me and sighs. “No. I’m sorry I snapped.”
“I wouldn’t saysnapped,” I tell him. “Grumped, maybe?”
I turn so I’m sideways, and with how narrow Lauren’s hand-me-down midcentury sofa is, I have to wedge my leg over his so I don’t fall off. I try to keep my thigh as low as possible, barely brushing his knee. As far as possible from his groin. Cuddling with Alex like this is torture enough—wonderful, terrible torture. I’d stop doing it if I didn’t feel so desperate for the closeness, the comfort of touching and being held. I keep telling myself that I’d want this with anyone, that I’m just starved for intimate touch, for sex. But I know why I keep cuddling up to him, even when, after every time we break apart, I walk away from it keyed up and aching, every nerve a live wire—because I want to feel this close tohim.
And this is as close to physical intimacy as we can have. As close as it can get.
In part, I’m sure I’m suffering so badly because of how long it’s been since I’ve had an orgasm by anyone’s hand except my own. And also because the winter weather here istheworst; I need all the happy brain chemicals I can get, and cuddling offers those in spades.
For as lovely as I find Pittsburgh’s sunshine-while-sprinkling-rain fairy-tale springs, its grand tapestry of amber, bronze, and crimson foliage lanced by gold-sun autumns, even its summers, which, though often humid and riddled with storms, are growing on me, for how lush they turn the grass, the trees, the flowers; I cannot find a single thing to like about its winter. Bleak, gray, frigid, weeks of hardly any sunshine, months of icy wind and tiny icebergs of dirt-streaked grimy snow clinging to parking lots and sidewalks. To me, it is absolutely miserable. I have yet to meet a Pittsburgher who feels any differently, which makes me feel a bit better about my annual three-month-long bad attitude because of it.
But even though misery loves company, it doesn’t help me make it through any better. I have yet to get a straight answer out of anyone here on howtheymake it through any better. I’m starting to wonder if that’s because the answer isn’t necessarily something you share with a casual friend or the staff at the bookstore you’re visiting. I’m starting to think the answer lies in how many fall birthdays belong to my StoryTime attendees.
Each StoryTime, I ask if anyone has a birthday, so we can sing to them, and then I can read one of my rotation of birthday-themed children’s books. September through November, over half those kids’ hands shoot up.
In short, I think Pittsburghers of childbearing years and child-rearing inclination make it through winter by cuddling up and making babies.
The making-babies part is off the table for Alex and me. But the cuddling, I have been wholeheartedly leaning into.
Alex shifts a little underneath me, stretching to set his phone on windowsill behind him. “I grumped,” he admits.
“What’s got you grumping?” I ask.
He stares at me. “Well, it’s February, and we’re in Pittsburgh.”
“Good point.” I brush a clump of Argos fur off his shoulder. “Anything else?”
He shrugs, setting his fingers in my hair, brushing the curls off my face. “I’m… lonely.”
“Lonely?” I ask quietly, trying not to sound hurt.
Even though I am. What he’s said pokes an old wound, a deep one, a hurt I’m trying to heal with Sue in therapy, but that’s taking a lot longer than I’d like.
You’re not enough.
“Ted,” he says, peering down at me. “I don’t mean… emotionally. I’ve got you. My family. My buddies.”
I smile faintly. I met his “buddies” early in the new year, when Alex invited me over for the birthday party he was hosting for his friend Mike. They’re good guys, playful like Alex, friendly and warm, some of them married, some not, some of them in the food scene, others from his pickup basketball league, even some from high school.
“So if not emotionally,” I say. “You mean… physically?”
A swallow works down his throat. “Aren’t you?”
Suddenly, I am deeply aware of every part of our bodies that is touching. My leg on his, my pelvis against his hip. My breasts pressed into his ribs. Heat creeps up my cheeks. “Yes.”
He sighs, easing away from me slightly. “It’s getting distracting.”
I sit up, suddenly self-conscious and guilty. Maybe I’ve been torturing him with all this cuddling. Then again, he’s the one who asked for it, who set this precedent. But even then, just because hestarted it, that doesn’t mean he has to want to keep going. I can be the one who stops, or who at least offers to.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
Alex groans as he sits up, too, raking his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”
I bite my lip, warring with myself. The thought of nudging Alex toward finding someone new, someone who’d take my place, someone he’d shareeverythingwith, selfishly makes me feel ill. But the thought of seeing him miserable like this, just so I can keep his friendship, keep loving him in this way that’s safe and sure, makes me feel even sicker.