“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” he says, but the grin on his face is anything but apologetic.
His comment, spoken quietly, still has the effect of an airhorn. By addressing the elephant in the room—the scandalous fact that Julian appears to be at least a few years younger than me—Shiv has ripped the bandage off a taboo topic and made it fair game. The looks Julian gets change, going from curious or admiring to smug or dismissive, and I become a deviant. It doesn’t help that the night has progressed, and everyone is one too many glasses in. One woman, whom I recognize as an executive from one of the device companies, makes a comment about Julian’s obviousstamina. An interventionist I’ve worked on papers with from a different Chicago institution refers to him as myboytoyas if he isn’t standing right there. It’s ugly and intrusive, how suddenly the entirety of our relationship gets reduced to the sex that we’ve only really had once, how I can practically see people imagining the mechanics of our coupling when they greet us.
The double standard infuriates me. Of course I’d noticed how often women like Olivia and Leila are reduced to being their partner’s accessories instead of autonomous individuals with depth of their own, but there’s a level of acceptance for their relationships that isn’t afforded to Julian and me, despite our smaller age gap and similarstages in life. A beautiful young woman is the just reward for a successful older man. A beautiful young man with a successful older woman? Clearly a perversion.
Julian takes the barbs with thinly veiled amusement. I tilt my head and tell the device executive outright that asking about my boyfriend’s prowess is deeply inappropriate, and she turns scarlet, blathers on about “just being curious” and how “things haven’t been the same since my divorce” before fleeing the scene. When, annoyed, I inform the interventionist that myboytoyis actually an extremely successful angel investor, Julian interjects with a question about a biotech company that is developing a new design for percutaneous valve replacement that makes him raise his eyebrows, impressed.
“He’s a smart one,” Doug, the interventionist in question, tells me when their conversation winds down. Then to Julian, “What are you, one of those Silicon Valley wunderkinds?”
“He’s a genius, yes,” I say snippily. “Speaks over six languages, creates grants and opportunities for local creatives, invests in and mentors up-and-coming entrepreneurs on a global scale. He does what we all hope to do, which is make the world a better and more interesting place simply by being in it.”
“Must be why he’s with you.” Doug is slurring, giving Julian what appears to be an attempt at a conspiratorial wink. “I always preferred an older woman myself. More established. Cuts you a little more slack about the time you’re spending building yourself. And they’re so much more grateful, if you know what I mean.” In case we didn’t, he adds, “Absolutely crazy in the sack too. I’ve got some stories from when I was younger—”
“So sorry, Doug, but I just realized that my date is empty-handed,” Julian interrupts, attempting to soothe my ire with a gentle press to the small of my back.
Doug laughs, the drink in his hand—far from his first, I’m sure—tilting precariously. He doesn’t seem to notice, or take offense to, Julian’s clear dismissal or my mounting indignation.
“Can’t have that!” he says good-naturedly, waving us away.
Julian trails behind me as I stomp toward the bar, his pace leisurely.
“I’m sorry about that,” I tell him, still fuming. “Unfortunately folks in my field aren’t known for their tact.”
Julian tilts his head to regard me as if he might find something new to observe from this angle.
“I’ve noticed,” he admits. “But it’s fine. I’m having a good time.”
“Really?” I ask, incredulous. “You enjoy getting increasingly more invasive questions about our sex life?”
“I enjoy learning about your work,” Julian counters. “Seeing you in your element. Watching other young women approach you to express the ways that you’ve inspired them. I’ve gotten to know you some, but this was one piece of your life that I hadn’t yet seen.” He winds an arm around my waist and draws me close. “Also, I get to dance with you again.”
In my fury, I haven’t noticed that we’ve wandered onto the small, crowded dance floor. The live band is playing Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much,” and while half of the guests are standing and milling around, a few are rocking to the music. Julian draws my arms around his neck and guides me into a sway, and my worries melt like day-old snow under a noontime sun.
“We have to keep it PG, Jules,” I warn him, my cheeks warming as I recall what happened the last time we shared a dance floor.
In response, Julian spins me away, then pulls me in so that my back is to his front.
“What, are you worried I might teach your colleagues a littlething or two?” he says into my ear before spinning me, giggling, back around.
We dance chastely but with abandon, without regard for skill or thought about the audience, laughing, working up a sweat. The band has chosen a repertoire of mostly eighties jams, and we sing along out loud and intentionally out of tune, barely a drop of alcohol between us to drive our energy. It spreads, infectious, until soon the whole floor is full of interventional cardiologists and industry professionals ripping off their blazers and loosening their ties to make merry. Across the floor, I spot an ecstatic Shiv fist-pumping into the air; he flashes me a thumbs-up.
Five songs later, I’m sweaty, parched, and desperate to pee. I bounce to my tiptoes to give Julian a quick kiss.
“I’ve got to go to the ladies’,” I tell him.
“I’ll get us water,” he says. “Don’t get lost out there.”
The bathroom is tucked away behind the stage, and I twist between dancing couples and high tables laden with forgotten plates and stacked glasses until I reach it. I catch my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I’ve always conceived of myself as looking younger than I am: my brown skin, shining with sweat, only wrinkles when I smile, and the fine lines at the corners of my eyes are barely perceivable up close. My grays are the biggest giveaway; they course halfway down my locs, denser at the root than at my black tips. Julian is undeniably a young man, but I wonder if dyeing my hair would lessen the visible age gap. Maybe a little Botox could help too, some filler under the hollows of my eyes…
Someone behind me giggles. I look over my shoulder to find a pretty woman standing against the wall behind me, looking down at her phone. Our eyes meet in the mirror; she gives me a grin that feels like it’s at my expense.
I dry off my hands, perturbed. I’m being paranoid, probably. Definitely imagining things. Because for a second, I could almost swear that she’d just taken apicture.
I’m wandering the floor looking for Julian again when I hear it again; the unmistakable sound of a camera shutter, a flash of light, followed by a torrent of giggles.
“I can’t believethat’shis type,” a woman’s voice says.
I pivot. Three women stand behind me, crowding around a phone. I recognize the one in the middle: she’s the auburn-haired woman who approached Julian earlier. I read her immediately: she’s pretty and knows it, the kind of woman who believes that the combination of her slender build, youth, and white race should make her every man’s Helen of Troy. I wonder what company she works for; either way, she must have missed the “don’t alienate your clientele” lesson during orientation.