But Not We Can't

When they decide to have the party, neither one of them thinks that maybe it will rain and everyone will have to stay inside. But it does rain, and so Jolie and Mack and their guests pack into the house, and it smells stuffy like wet wool and yeasty like beer.

Nothing happens until much later, even though Mack invited Hannah, whom Jolie knew he’d slept with the year before, and Hannah planned to stay over since she’d driven from so far, along with the other guests that drank too much to find their car keys. Of course Jolie complains, especially after another and another martini, the fruity kind but with more vodka than sugar. But these complaints are more flirty than vicious, seeing as how they are made to Nick, a young twenty-something guy who just joined the force with Mack and who didn’t talk much, especially to her.

But your eyes are so pretty, she tells him, running into him by the bar cart where she shakes herself another martini. She leans in close, but nothing is still happening.

Later, even later than her leaning into his pretty blue eyes, Jolie is falling over, trying to sleep under the folding table they set up inside for the food, long gone. I’m not respectable enough to be standing up here talking to you, she means to say, but it comes out as a moan, and Nick catches her and keeps her up talking to him. To let her sober up, Nick reminds himself, eyeing Mack, who fell asleep on the couch. And didn’t Mack say they were divorcing anyway, he reasons, eyeing Jolie, who fell again into his pretty blue eyes.

And when she pulls him through the dining room, where they step over Hannah and one of the other police officers (single, at least, she notes, even through her stumbling) sharing a thin blanket on the floor, and into the office, where she sits him in the office chair and sits in his lap while she insists on checking her sister’s email, since she is impressed that she can remember the password, even if she can barely pronounce her sister’s name.

See, she says, turning toward him, leaning into his pretty blue eyes, and in the dark with only the glowing of the computer screen to light up the room and with Hannah (that slut) lying outside the doorway, Nick looks like Mack, with his strong shoulders and law enforcement crew cut, which is enough of a reason to lean far enough into his eyes to kiss him, and suddenly it is forty minutes later and her lips are still on his, only now his hand is up inside her shirt and her fingers are tracing the zipper of his pants.

The chair creaks loudly.

The floor, they say and slide onto the carpet Mack had installed a few months ago, and instead of closing the door they whisper shhh to each other, and when she says things like, That feels good, or Don’t stop, or Pretty pretty eyes, he can’t hear her but he smiles at her anyway. And soon her dress is up at her waist and his face is buried between her legs and she tells him no, that it’s going to make her beg him to fuck her, but he sucks the words out of her, and when he crawls up her to kiss her sticky-sweet on the mouth she says, Fuck me. I’ve never, he tells her, and she doesn’t really believe him, because she can feel him up against her. He reaches down to guide him into her.

We shouldn’t, she says.

But you didn’t say we can’t, he says.

But we shouldn’t, she says.

But not we can’t, he says, as he pushes inside her, and he still looks like Mack but the weight of Nick’s chest is heavier and his hair is coarser and it scratches her. More rug burn on my front than on my back, she says, but he only smiles at her and concentrates on lasting longer, which doesn’t work because it’s coming, he’s coming, but at least he’s pulled out. Hi, she says. Hi, he says. Her stomach is wet and sticky.

Jolie sleeps on the floor of the office, and Nick sleeps on the floor of the living room, next to the couch where Mack had passed out. Mack is the first one up, and Jolie wakes up smelling the coffee he’s made, which she will drink but not he. She walks into the laundry room, right outside the office, and pulls on one of her husband’s t-shirts and a pair of his boxers from the dryer, taking off the dress right there in the open. She puts it, not thinking, into the dryer with the clean clothes.

When she walks into the kitchen and her husband is standing there, he says, you didn’t sleep in the bed. Neither did you, she says, and she crawls under the blanket he’d slept under on the couch, right above where Nick is sleeping.

Hannah comes into the kitchen then, with the other officer, and talks loudly (that slut), and Nick wakes up and sits up, leaning against the couch where she is not sleeping but thinking that she’d like to. He reaches back and tickles her feet. She pulls her legs away. I’ll move if you want to sit up here, she says, and he gets up and sits next to her but they don’t look at each other.

When Nick goes to leave, she offers to move Hannah’s car, which blocks Nick’s in the driveway. You remember how much of last night, he says. Everything, I think, she says. Well, I’ll see you around, he says. Thanks for coming, she says. And he drives away, and she goes back inside to drink her husband’s coffee.