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I still find myself looking at him on the sly sometimes, even though I’m allowed to look at him all I want now. Now I could stare, ogle, leer, give him the old head-to-toe once over, and he’d just raise an eyebrow in amusement, give me that knowing smirk. Maybe blush a bit. But he certainly wouldn’t mind. Even still, I usually tend to admire him when he’s not paying attention. Old habits die hard, I guess.
Looking at him used to be a guilty pleasure, a forbidden luxury. Something I had to sneak in small doses and offer some kind of penance for later. Before – back when I was with Roy or Jim was with Karen – I used to catch myself looking at him more than I cared to admit then, more than I’ve even admitted to him, now. I’m sure the cameras caught me once in awhile, because that was their job: to notice things. But he rarely noticed. Back then I was as sneaky in my secret longing as I was resolute in my public choices. But I looked. Absolutely I did.
Most of the time my yearning went undetected, but I noticed how often I’d look up, gaze over, glance his way. Every time I did, especially before I broke up with Roy, it registered like one of Angela’s little Pam Pong hash marks. Every glance at him, every thought I wasn’t supposed to have, left a tally mark. I felt like a dog with the electric collar and invisible fence, who tries to wander off or roam further than he is allowed and gets stopped in his tracks by a sudden zap. A reminder. A reprimanding uh uh uh, that’s not where you’re supposed to be expressed in a less than subtle shock wave around his neck. That’s what my guilt felt like. I’d glance up at Jim, stare too long, start to think too much and then I’d suddenly realize what I was doing and ZAP. Back to reality. If I could pinpoint where the shock came from, I’d say the little metal collar around my ring finger. And I’d reluctantly return to where I had been trained to stay. Within my invisible fence.
But I did look at him and wonder what different parts of him would feel like. He’d be balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he entered an order into the computer, and his jaw would lift and tilt at an angle towards me, like a flower in the sunshine. I’d imagine his five o’clock shadow rough against my lips, the skin above on his cheek smooth and soft in comparison.
Back then I would feel the heat of his shoulder against mine during a meeting and I’d wonder if he felt that warm, that cozy through his shirt (and mine) in the middle of a meeting, what would he feel like skin to skin in bed?
When he was with Karen and I knew firsthand what his mouth felt like on mine (even if only for a moment), I’d watch him eat Jell-O or applesauce with progressively inappropriate interest. Because his mouth was now something I thought about much more than was healthy or sane. He’d lick that little plastic spoon and I’d wish I had been bold enough to kiss him again that night, to invite his tongue to touch mine, to taste him. I was sure his tongue would have felt the same as Roy’s did – a tongue is a tongue, after all. Wet, warm, soft. But I was also confident that he’d use his completely differently. I was sure, in a way that made me breathless and squirmy inside, that he’d use it the way he did everything: cleverly and gently and subtly.
I’d sometimes stare at his hand as it rested on the conference room table. I’d itch to trace along his knuckles, across the back of his hand to that bone in his wrist, where the light hair on his arm tapered off to smoother skin that was still somehow very different from the much paler skin on the back of my hand. I noticed he had a scar on his left hand – about the size of a paper clip, kind of ragged looking but faded, like whatever had caused it had happened long ago. I wanted to touch it, to see if it felt different, to ask him what had left the mark. I’d fight the urge to wrap my fingers around his wrist and see if they would touch on the other side, to take his hand and flip it over and touch my tongue to the paler, vulnerable skin where his pulse would beat against my lips. I wanted proof that he – the Jim I knew and missed – was still alive in there somewhere.
I’d wonder what his skin smelled like. Not his fabric softener or his cologne, but his actual skin. If I buried my face into his neck, would he smell like soap? Shaving cream? Sunshine? Hope?
I wondered how much hair he had on his chest, what it might feel like beneath my fingers. I wondered if his body was as hard as I remembered from the all too brief time I had let myself touch it. When my hands had grazed against his chest through his sweater that night, I had been timid. Instead of running them up and down, skimming the slopes of his body, pressing against his ribs and his stomach and that angle of muscle up his sides, I had let my hands drop into his, and then I had let him slip away completely.
I already knew what his hair felt like – surprisingly soft, thick. I knew what his mouth tasted like after a few gin and tonics. I knew his lips were soft, gentle, urgent, pleading. I knew some things about him, but I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know what parts of him might surprise me…
When we finally started dating, I felt like I was on a discovery expedition. I had been shy at first, for sure. I’ve never been all that comfortable in my own skin, never particularly happy about being naked. So when we undressed each other for the first time I was grateful the lights were out. Even though I wanted so badly to see him, I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to see me. But the next morning I woke up to find him propped on one elbow, watching me.
“What’re you doing?” I tried to sound casual, unconcerned, but I pulled the sheet up higher, even though I hadn’t really been uncovered in the first place. I registered how his bicep muscle bulged a bit under the weight of his head resting on his hand. I noticed that I could see, for the first time ever, the hair peeking out from under his arm. The fact that that made me blush after having his tongue and fingers and self inside of me the night before is funny to think about now.
“Nothing,” he answered, but his eyes roamed over my shoulders and he leaned down to kiss my collar bone.
He watched me openly – while I slept, while I changed, while I showered, while we made love – but I was still in the habit of sneaking looks at him, of studying him on the sly. He’d bend down to look for a shoe under the bed and I’d enjoy the way his shirt would stretch across his back. When he raised his arms above his head to put a dish back in a high cabinet I couldn’t reach, I’d covertly watch his t-shirt rise up to reveal a narrow strip of irresistible skin above his jeans.
Even though studying him is no longer forbidden, no longer something I have to repent for, I still feel the rush of doing something illegal when I do. But when we are in bed together, when I have the excuse of his slow, deep kisses and his warm breath on my skin making me delirious, when I can’t see with my eyes anyway because it’s night and my glasses are abandoned on the bedside table, I explore with my other senses. I reverently touch all the spots I’ve always wanted to touch, as if I’m afraid he might change his mind and go back to Stamford and I need to store up the knowledge for the future. I learned a thing or two about regret that first night he kissed me, so now I run my hands over every inch of his skin trying to memorize him. He is smooth and hot and tight, just like I imagined. I explore some areas with my mouth – his earlobe, his jaw, his chest, and lower, to the part of him that I had tried so hard not to wonder about. I breathe him and taste him, enjoying his soapy smell when he’s clean, his salty taste when he’s not.
*****
This morning he gets up early and goes for a run while I lounge lazily in bed, figuring I got enough of a work out with him last night to erase the need for a run. Or at least to give me an excuse. I doze off after he kisses me goodbye and wake a half hour later when I hear him come in again. I can tell he’s trying to be quiet because when he trips on the bag he drags back and forth between our apartments, his “shit” is whispered. He slips into the bathroom and I hear the shower go on, hear him singing something quietly, something that had probably been playing on his ipod during his run. I think about getting up, sliding in there with him, but the bed is comfortable and I like eavesdropping, listening to him sing.
The door to the bathroom is open, and when he gets out of the shower I realize that, if I were to put on my glasses, I’d be able to see him in the bathroom mirror from where I am in bed. Perfect. I feel safe, somehow, watching him like that. It’s indirect, like watching a solar eclipse by its shadow in a homemade cardboard box device, or watching yourself on a store surveillance monitor, trying to locate the camera while staring at your backside on the screen. I feel sort of invisible, like if he can’t see my eyes, he won’t know I’m watching him.
He apparently thinks I’m still sleeping and goes about his post shower ritual. He brushes his teeth again, even though I know he brushed them before his run because when he kissed me goodbye his mouth was minty and cool. He finger combs his hair and puts on deodorant. He rubs some kind of after shave lotion on his face. He turns his back to the mirror when he tosses his sweaty running clothes in the hamper. His back – God I love his back. Surprisingly broad and tanner now in late summer than when I first saw it early in the spring. I like the way his muscles move beneath his skin, the way I don’t have to wonder anymore what it feels like to run my hands up it while he’s on top of me.
“You’re awake,” he says, his voice making me jump. Busted. I forgot that when his back is to the mirror, his eyes are facing the bedroom.
“Oh, yeah.” I feel myself blush, although I’m not quite sure why. It’s not like I’ve never seen him wrapped in a towel before, shirtless, still damp from the shower. Not like he’d be offended by me watching him. In fact, he looks rather amused. “I was just…” I can’t seem to finish the sentence. He knows perfectly well what I was doing.
He leans against the doorframe, his arms folded casually across his chest. The towel around his waist hangs low, so I can see a thin strip of paler skin that hasn’t seen the sun in years. Now that I’m looking, it’s like I can’t stop.
He just watches me with a small smile on his face. I try to look away, try to act interested in something else, but it’s nearly impossible. His hair is damp and messy and I want to plunge my fingers into it. I know all it will take is a tug on that towel and he could be hard and hot against me, smelling gloriously clean, doing things to me that aren’t.
But he stays where he is. Almost like a dare. Or an invitation.
“How was your run?” I ask, the hoarseness in my voice giving away my thoughts.
He shrugs, cocks his head a bit. “Hard.” He reaches one hand around to scratch his side. “Sweaty.”
I bite my lip. Hard. Sweaty. He says the words innocently enough, but they do crazy things to my insides.
He pushes himself away from the door frame, heading to the bag he tripped over and reaches down to pull out a pair of boxers. I act quickly, setting my glasses back on the nightstand before sliding out of bed and up behind him. I take the boxers from his hand and drop them back onto the bag. I reach my hands around him and press them flat against his stomach, sliding them up to his chest.
“Hey,” he says, sounding quietly surprised.
I press my cheek to his still damp back. He smells like my soap and yet still like him. His hands reach up and cover mine, pressing them flat against his body. I turn my face and kiss his shoulder blade. Then I slip my hands out from beneath his, down to the edge of the towel. I untuck the terry cloth from itself and the towel falls to the floor. My hands dip lower.
He leans his head back as I touch him, his breath catching.
“What’s gotten into you this morning?” he asks, not really expecting an answer.
I take his hand and pull him back towards bed. “Nothing yet.”
He laughs as I lie back on the mattress. “Wow.”
He stands there for a moment, completely naked, completely comfortable. I can’t see his details without my glasses – he’s a blurry mass of skin and a pattern of darker hair – and maybe that’s why I allow myself to look. Safety by nearsightedness. He lowers himself over me, his hands on either side of my head. I run my hands up his arms, feeling the muscles tight beneath my fingers.
“Were you reading one of your smutty novels while I was out?”
I smile and shake my head, pulling him down for a kiss. His tongue brushes mine, slides against my bottom lip. Gentle and slow and subtle, just like I knew it would be back when I had to wonder. His skin is hot and smooth, the hair on his chest soft beneath my fingers. I realize I now know the answers to a lot of the questions I once had.
He pulls me up, slips off my tank top. He drops down and rolls onto his side, pulling my body up against the length of his. He touches my face with the hand I used to stare at when it rested so innocently on the conference room table. I take it in mine, find the scar and kiss it, running my tongue gently along the lighter skin.
“How’d you get this?” I ask, wanting to know everything about him. Wanting to know more about him than any other woman has or ever will.
“Cub Scouts.” He kisses my neck. “Pinewood Derby.”
“I hadn’t realized Cub Scouts was so dangerous.” My breath catches when his tongue finds my ear, tracing the curve of it, his teeth brushing against my earlobe.
“I got a little cocky and thought I could use the saw by myself.”
“Ah, so you’ve always been super handy.”
“Shut it, Beesly.” His hand dips down between my legs and I gasp again. I smile, thinking he is actually super handy in a completely different way.
The sun filters through the curtains and the room fills with the sounds of our breathing, our whispers, our moans. When he finally slips into me I force myself to look up into his eyes. I’m often overwhelmed by what I see there, by the feeling that I could make someone look like that. I’m usually aware that I probably have the same look and turn away, feeling vulnerable and embarrassed. But today I feel powerful. Lucky. Grateful. Because I no longer have to watch from a distance.
I no longer have to just wonder. I know.
Story Notes:
Had one last steamy one-shot in me before my vacation. I'm not sure I've ever done first-person Pam before, so that was kind of fun. Posting in a bit of a hurry, but hopefully it's in pretty good shape. Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
Reviews are always, always welcome. Thanks for reading!
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