Rosie parked a bit down from a streetlight so that the car was not totally dark. It wasn’t light, was less than dim, but she could see Bill and Bill knew this because he could see her. They sat next to each other, not yet close, still with enough distance so that someone could have sat between them.
“Been here before?” Bill asked.
“No,” Rosie said. “I’ve seen it, passed by it. Haven’t been here in the way you’re asking.”
“How am I asking?” Bill asked.
“Like you want to know how many guys I’ve made out with here.”
“And?”
“You’re it. I’m not loose, you know. You might think so because I’m hot for you. But I don’t go with every Tom, Dick or Harry, never even been with a cook.”
“How’d I get so lucky?”
“Truth?”
“Nothing but.”
“You’re pretty.”
Bill saw Rosie look away after she said what she did. Then she turned back.
“I’m all red in the face,” she said. “If it were light in here, you’d see that.”
“It was hard to say, huh?”
“I feel naked.”
“You almost are,” Bill said.
“Well, you can hurt me,” Rosie said. “I mean, that’s it. I laid my feelings all out there. I see you and I get wet. I see you and I see a giant all-day sucker, the kind they sell at carnivals. Isn’t anything, and I mean anything, I wouldn’t do with you.”
Rosie moved herself closer to the driver’s door, away from him, almost hugged the door, looked out the window to the street.
“If you’re gonna reject me and hurt my feelings, do it now and we’ll be done with it. You don’t even have to say anything. You can just get out quietly. Entrance to the highway’s back where we turned. Make a right and a right and a right and you’ll be by it.”
Bill sat a moment. He looked at her, at what he could see of her in the dimness from the obscured streetlamp. She was sexy. She was gorgeous. She was willing and available. It should have been an easy decision. On one level it was a no-brainer. But then for him, for Bill Wynn, for who he was and where he’d been, it was a moment of angst, anxiety and guilt. It was a simple decision that had to be turned into an existential choice.
Not hearing him say anything and not hearing the door open, Rosie turned toward him a bit, not much, just a little.
“What?” she asked.
“Come here,” Bill said.
“What?” she said again.
“I said come here,” Bill repeated.
Rosie was tentative and when they were close he saw that her eyes were tearing and several teardrops were rolling down her cheeks. First thing, his first touch to her was to wipe away those tears. Then softly he kissed her cheeks where they’d been.
“I’m married,” he said. “Still pretty much a newlywed.”
“I’ll never get in the way of that,” Rosie said. “I swear.”
They kissed then. The first few kisses were soft and exploratory. Then they got more and more intimate. Then Bill discovered some of the things Rosie like most, the things that drove her to a different sort of tears, the tears every woman hopes someone will take her to.
Déjà vu. She straddled him in the front seat pretty much like Beverly had straddled him on the staircase earlier in the day. This time there was nothing between them and there was no going back. What was done was done.
“I’m fixed,” she said when it was over.
“Good thing,” Bill said. “If you weren’t it’d be too bad because I couldn’t contain myself. Anyway I only tried halfheartedly.”
Something inside Bill didn’t want him to contain himself. He had a pretty good idea what that was, maybe. Maybe not. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to start examining why he always went two steps forward and then two steps back. Sometimes it felt like more than two steps back.
