Beverly Bird - Playing By The Rules

That realization made me sane again. I started to turn back into my own apartment, but then I saw his legs appear on the landing. The top part of him was chopped off by the next level of stairs.

“Sam?” I said, to be sure.

“What are you doing down there?” he demanded.

“I was coming to your apartment.”

“No need. I’m right here. So you can just stay where you are.”

Talk about one of us acting odd. “Okay.”

“Why were you coming to my apartment?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, though he couldn’t see it. “I was just…thinking.”

“That’s a very dangerous thing to do at this hour.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s only ten o’clock.”

“Yeah, but that makes it something like three in the morning in parts of Europe.”

“Okay. So what are you doing on the stairs at three in the morning in parts of Europe?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Then there was a very long, very quiet pause. “I guess I was thinking, too.”

Somehow, in that very moment, I knew I’d been right. He’d definitely been offended by what I’d said, unhappy about being classified as a male-type friend. “About time zones?” I asked, in case I was wrong.

“About us.”

I’d been expecting it, but I think my heart actually vaulted over its next beat anyway. “Are you drunk?” I asked. I’d ruled myself out—now I needed to make sure he was sober, too.

He took some time to think about it, and I imagined he was probably squinting at doors, too, just to be sure. “No,” he decided finally.

I inched toward the stairs, leaving my door open so I would hear Chloe if she woke up and called me. He headed down. We reached the bottom tread at the same time and I dropped to sit there, but he kept standing beside me.

“I was thinking that maybe we could give each other a kind of break for a while,” he said finally. “From dating. You know, we could do things together.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

He scowled down at me. “I don’t know. Just…uncomplicated things. Things that don’t involve pink drinks or timing devices like Frank Ethan’s watch. We could swear off chasing the opposite sex for a while if we keep each other company in the interim. We could assuage all those male-female urges without the issue getting too complicated.”

It wasn’t me who needed the break, I thought. Grace had been right. I’d pretty much been on a dating hiatus since I’d met him. But I decided that it might be prudent not to mention that, because there was a lot in this for me. I could put up a good front for Mill, I realized. If he thought I really was happily involved, maybe he would back down on this whole custody issue. I can rationalize anything, even the irrational.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” I said. “We’ll do things together for a while—uncomplicated things—while we swear off dating until such time as one or both of us feels up to plunging back into the pool?”

He looked relieved. “Yeah. That’s it exactly. So…what do you think?”

“Define uncomplicated first.”

“I don’t know. Dining, drinks, companionship. Sex.”

He shoved that last part in quickly, and my air stopped somewhere midway in my chest. Well, I thought, this would certainly put Grace’s opinions to rest once and for all. I could claw my heart out with him for a while and get it out of my system.

“That’s the whole point of this!” he said when I didn’t answer immediately. I thought he sounded stressed. “Without the sex, we’re right back out there bashing our heads against the wall looking for the whole enchilada! Damn it, male-type friends can have sex, too!”

Ah, I thought. Bingo. Am I perceptive or what? “Of course they can,” I said quickly.

“This would be a mutually gratifying situation,” he said. “Not a relationship.”

“We already have a relationship.”

“But we don’t have a relationship.”

I thought about it. “True.” I got to my feet. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“It sounds reasonable to me.” I was breathing again, but just barely.

“So when are we going to start this?” he asked.

“Tomorrow? It makes sense to begin with a brand-new day, doesn’t it? And we could each have tonight to change our minds.”

“Are you going to change your mind?”

“Probably not.”

“Neither will I.” He laughed. He sounded self-conscious. Then he started to turn up the stairs again and he paused. “I’m still good for that hot dog tomorrow if you want to get to the courthouse early. Maybe we should each bring a couple of…I don’t know…ground rules for this…this…” He trailed off completely this time, sounding lost.

“Nonrelationship?” I suggested.

“Arrangement.”

I nodded. It was as good a word as any I could think of. “You want bylaws?”

“They could be our arrangement bill-of-rights-and-wrongs,” he said.

“Should we write them down and affix our signatures?”

He laughed again, but his voice still didn’t sound quite right. “Sure, if you want.” Then he went upstairs.

I watched him go. When his legs disappeared around the landing, I came to the amazing discovery that I no longer possessed legs of my own. They’d gone hollow.

After a while, I wobbled back to my apartment. I checked on Chloe, still snoozing, barely moved. This is another parent thing, but I think it’s the same whether you’re single or with a mate. You check your young repeatedly while they sleep. I don’t know what exactly it is that we expect to have happen to them while we’re not actually looking at them. It’s just a compulsion, and maybe it’s a selfish one at that. Because in the back of your mind, you know that the only way you can really settle down and get some rest yourself—or write lists, as the case might be—is if your child is genuinely zonked for the duration of the night.

Since Chloe appeared to be sincerely zonked, I went to my briefcase, found a legal pad and a pen, and carried them back to my own bed with me. Impulsively I took the last of the wine and the shrimp, too. Two hours later I was surprised by how hard it was for me to come up with the ground rules Sam wanted.

Who needed guidelines? I thought. I figured we’d just pretty much stay the way we were, except we’d…do the sex thing. I’d get to touch him with impunity. I’d finally get to drive my fingers into that great, dark hair of his, touch it when it fell down over his forehead the way it did. I’d get him—and Grace’s theories—out of my system.

Still, I figured I needed to come up with my own bill of rights if only to keep in the spirit of things, so I spent much of the rest of the night on my list. I still wasn’t satisfied with it when I tucked my car into the municipal parking lot at twelve-thirty the following afternoon.

Sam was already standing on the corner beside the hotdog vendor. The spider monkey—or chimpanzee, or whatever it was—was perched on his shoulder. Sam should have looked ridiculous. Instead, something airy filled my legs at the sight of him.

I got out of my car and rooted in my trunk for my briefcase, wondering if this wobbly-leg business was going to be a new phenomenon while our arrangement was in place. I could only hope that it would go away as things wore on.

His back was to me and he didn’t see me approach. I was able to step up behind him before I spoke. “Boo.”

He turned. The monkey began chattering. It swiped an eerily human hand in my direction and I jumped back. I did not like the beast. However, like so many females, she was crazy about Sam.

“She has a crush on you,” I said.

It was an opinion I’d shared before, but this time Sam wiggled his brows at me. “Jealous?”