Tales from Brooklyn: Short Stories About Love (Actually Sex): Part 5

by T. J. Clarke

“You smell like peaches.”

Nan wraps her arms around my waist. Her head rests comfortably on my shoulder. Her breath is warm. I lean back into her embrace, feeling the shape of her breasts against my back.

“Peaches and black tea.”

She is standing on tiptoes now. Her lips reach for my earlobe, but her tongue gets there first. It’s my weak spot. Every time she rims her tongue along the edges of my ear, I go weak in the knees. I reach back to touch her. She slaps my hand away.

“Peaches and black tea and lychee.”

I close my eyes. Her lips trace a strange route along my shoulders, down my back, then up again, hugging close to my spine; each contact setting off tiny, watery explosions inside of me. I want to throw her on the bed. But her hands are clasped around my wrists, tighter than a crab’s grip, holding them close to my sides, commanding me to stand as I am.

From downstairs: “Mom! Your car’s here!”

“Peaches and black tea and lychee. And cumin.” She issues a final verdict, then sets me free.

After our disastrous dinner, I waited a week before deciding to call Nan again. I had convinced myself that she did the right thing. She was being a good mother by telling her child the truth about her life. I should have been grateful for her honesty. I composed, then practiced an apology to excuse my sulking. This was becoming a relationship. I researched restaurant reviews for an appropriate locale: Torrisi Italian Specialties. I wanted our conversation, my soliloquy, about openness, communication, the giving up of misguided notions to happen in a place that resembled us: charming, sophisticated but unpretentious, and sexy. We had reached a juncture. Then when I called to make a reservation-and was promptly informed that they don’t do such things-I was back on the edge of indecision.

But Nan had already beat me to the punch.

Nan Oyoung to vandthewhale 12:34 PM (2 hours ago)

V — ,

I have to go to a conference in Irvine this weekend. Devon is going to stay with our neighbors. Come by for a glass of Sancerre, say 3pm, before I fly?

NMO

Devon is standing outside by the time Nan and I get downstairs. Her suitcase is in the foyer, next to the card table on which she keeps her pocketbook and keys. Devon has headphones on. He taps out beats with his feet while playing the chords on an invisible guitar slung at the hips. When he sees us, he comes back inside to take her suitcase. Nan stops him. She cups his face in her palms and kisses his forehead. He blushes, but doesn’t say a word. As he walks to the curb, his shoulders sag momentarily, perhaps letting out a sigh, then quickly straightens again.

“He is a good boy.” Nan says with a smile on her face. “Stay and take him out to dinner tonight if you have the time. I think you two will like each other better when I am not around.”

I take Nan’s hand. “I think you are being overly optimistic.”

Devon has handed the suitcase to the taxi driver and is facing us again, looking like the same seventeen-year old boy who confronted me about my sex life.

“Three words: turkey leg sandwich.” Nan hands me two brass keys on a leather chain as she closes the front door behind her. “In case of emergencies.”

“You don’t give up easily, do you?” I pull her in for one more kiss. On the curb. In front of the taxi driver, Devon, and anyone else out here in the streets on a Friday night. Fuck the world.

Nan smiles. She hugs Devon again and gets into the taxi. I am wearing my heels. Devon and I stand shoulder to shoulder.

“So, what do you say to a turkey leg sandwich?”

T. J. Clarke is the pen name of a struggling writer. She lives in Brooklyn.