Jules asked if the skirt was too much while standing in our bedroom with one foot inside it.
That is the kind of question that sounds simple until you have been with someone for four years.
If we had been going to dinner in Long Beach, I would have said no before he finished the sentence. If we had been meeting our friends, I would have told him the black one looked better with the boots. If we had been home, I probably would not have answered at all. I would have walked over, put my hands on his waist, and made it very clear what I thought.
But we were packing for my sister’s wedding.
So I hesitated.
Only for a second.
Jules noticed anyway.
He was twenty-eight. I was thirty-three. He worked in wardrobe for a touring theater company and could read a room from the way people hung their coats. He could also read me from the way I breathed before answering a question.
He looked down at the skirt.
“Right,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You didn’t mean anything. You just took a very informative pause.”
“Jules.”
He stepped into the skirt and pulled it up. Black pleats, mid-thigh, heavy enough to move cleanly instead of fluttering. He had a cream silk shirt laid across the bed beside it and low black boots on the floor.
The whole outfit looked expensive because Jules understood proportion and because I had no idea how much any of it had actually cost.
He turned toward the mirror.
“My sister won’t care,” I said.
“I know.”
“My mom won’t care.”
“I know.”
“My dad might need a minute.”
“I know.”
“My aunt Linda is—”
“Adrian.” He met my eyes in the mirror. “I’m not worried about your aunt.”
That shut me up.
He smoothed one pleat with his palm.
“I know how to deal with people looking at me,” he said. “I’ve had practice.”
“I know.”
“What I don’t know is whether I’m going to spend the whole weekend watching you watch them look at me.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
That was worse because it was accurate.
For four years I had thought of myself as good at this.
Good at Jules.
Good at us.
The first time he wore eyeliner to meet my friends, I kissed him before we left the apartment. The first time he told me he liked being called pretty, I said it until he made me stop because I had started using it while asking him to take out the trash. When he came home from work furious because a costume vendor had called him “young lady” and then acted offended when corrected, I listened instead of trying to solve it.
I knew the vocabulary. I knew what not to make a joke out of.
I had confused that with courage.
“Do you want to wear it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then wear it.”
He turned around.
“That’s not the question.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to wear it?”
There are questions where honesty is kindness and questions where honesty is just cowardice wearing a clean shirt.
I looked at him.
The skirt sat high on his waist. His legs were bare. He had not put the silk shirt on yet, so he was standing in front of me in a ribbed tank, black skirt, and the soft gray socks he wore around the apartment.
I wanted him in it so badly the answer should have embarrassed me.
“Yes,” I said. “I want you to wear it.”
His shoulders dropped half an inch.
“Okay.”
“And I am worried about my family being weird.”
“I know.”
“And I hate that those two things are happening in my head at the same time.”
“I know.”
“And I am more worried about me making you smaller to keep them comfortable than I am about them being uncomfortable.”
That made him look at me properly.
“Okay,” he said again, but differently.
I stood.
“I don’t want you editing yourself all weekend because I am pre-editing everybody else’s reaction.”
“That is an extremely Adrian sentence.”
“I work in civil engineering. We believe in unnecessary load calculations.”
“You really do.”
I put my hands on his waist.
“Wear the skirt.”
He leaned into me.
“Still not permission.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“Would you like my opinion as your boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“You look incredible.”
“Better.”
He kissed me.
Then he stepped back and pointed at the suitcase.
“Fold the shirt correctly.”
I had apparently passed the emotional exam and moved on to practical labor.
That felt right.
My sister Mia was getting married at a hotel outside Palm Springs that had white stucco walls, three separate courtyards, and enough desert landscaping to make me wonder how much water guilt cost per room.
We drove out Friday afternoon.
Jules wore jeans in the car because he was not insane, and because the skirt was packed in a garment bag he had made me hang from the hook behind my seat.
Every twenty minutes he checked that it had not fallen.
“It is still there,” I said near Riverside.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You looked.”
“I am allowed to look at my own garment bag.”
“You look at it like it has a pulse.”
“It wrinkles, Adrian.”
“So do I.”
“Yes, but nobody is photographing you from twelve angles at rehearsal dinner.”
I glanced at him.
He was looking out the window, but smiling.
The tension from the bedroom had not disappeared. It had changed shape. That was one of the things I liked about being with Jules. We did not solve discomfort by pretending it had stopped existing. We moved it around until we could both sit down.
At a gas station he bought gummy worms and a bottled coffee.
At another he took over driving because I had started swearing at traffic.
By the time we reached the hotel, the mountains had gone purple around the edges.
Mia met us in the lobby wearing bike shorts, a veil, and the expression of someone who had answered forty-seven text messages since breakfast.
She hugged me first.
Then she hugged Jules longer.
“Thank God,” she said into his shoulder. “A person with taste.”
“I brought emergency fashion tape.”
“I knew there was a reason I invited you.”
“I thought it was because I’m sleeping with your brother.”
“That got you a plus-one. The tape got you family status.”
I carried the bags upstairs.
Nobody mentioned the skirt because Jules was still wearing jeans.
My nervous system noticed this and tried to call it evidence.
I told it to shut up.
The rehearsal dinner started at seven.
At 6:22 I was tying my shoes when Jules came out of the bathroom.
Black pleated skirt.
Cream silk shirt, sleeves loose at the wrist.
Small gold hoops.
Boots.
A little liner around his eyes, less than he wore on a normal Saturday night.
He had not dressed to provoke anybody.
That almost made my earlier hesitation worse.
He had dressed like himself at a nice dinner.
“Say something,” he said.
I stood.
“The boots were the right call.”
He stared.
“I’m kidding.”
“Adrian.”
I crossed the room and stopped in front of him.
“You look beautiful.”
The word hit him.
It always did.
Pretty made him grin. Hot made him perform. Beautiful made him quiet.
I touched the side of his face.
“You look like you,” I said. “You look like the version of you I get at home, except with shoes I am apparently not allowed to scuff.”
“Correct.”
“And if I start monitoring the room instead of being here with you, tell me.”
“I will.”
“Meanly, if necessary.”
“I already planned to.”
He smiled.
Then he held out his hand.
I took it.
We went downstairs.
The first person who saw us was my cousin Nate.
He looked at Jules.
He looked at the skirt.
He said, “Dude, where did you get that shirt?”
Jules blinked.
“Vintage store in Pasadena.”
“Can I pull off silk?”
“No.”
Nate nodded. “Respect.”
Then he walked away.
Jules looked at me.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to ask if your family trained for this conversation.”
“They trained by being Southern Californian and self-involved.”
We made it another twenty feet before Aunt Linda saw us.
There was the look.
Not horror. Nothing cinematic. Just the half-second inventory people do when something does not fit the categories they expected.
I felt my body respond before my brain did.
Shoulders tight.
Jaw tight.
Hand loosening around Jules’s.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
I tightened my hand again.
Aunt Linda smiled.
“Jules,” she said. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that silk?”
“Rayon pretending very hard.”
“I knew it. Real silk wrinkles if you breathe near it.”
And then she started talking about table linens.
That was it.
Four years of low-grade fear and the first actual confrontation was fabric composition.
I almost laughed.
Jules squeezed my hand once.
Not I told you so.
More like stay here.
So I stayed.
Dinner happened under string lights.
My father needed the promised minute. I watched him look at Jules, look away, look back, then ask if the theater tour was still going through Denver.
Jules answered like nothing had happened.
My mother asked Jules to fix the flower pinned to her dress.
Mia dragged him into three separate photographs.
Nobody died.
At one point I realized Jules was across the courtyard talking to my grandmother, and I was not watching.
That was the whole miracle.
I was eating a piece of bread and talking to Nate about freeway drainage and not calculating the angle of anyone’s eyes.
I had become boring again.
It felt incredible.
After dessert, Mia tapped a spoon against her glass.
“I would like everyone to know,” she announced, “that tomorrow is about me.”
Her fiancé, Elena, raised one hand.
“And Elena.”
Mia considered.
“Fine. Mostly me.”
Everyone laughed.
Then she thanked us for coming, thanked our parents, thanked the people who had flown in, and said something about how a wedding was just a formal excuse to ask everybody you loved to stand in the same place at the same time.
Jules looked at me.
I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it too.
Same place.
Same time.
No editing.
I put my hand on his knee under the table.
He covered it with his.
Back upstairs, Jules kicked off his boots in the hallway.
“You cannot be barefoot in a hotel hallway,” I said.
“I survived your aunt. I can survive carpet fungus.”
“My aunt complimented your rayon.”
“Exactly. I am invincible.”
The elevator doors opened.
We got inside alone.
Jules leaned against the mirrored wall and looked at me.
“How’d you do?”
“Badly for the first thirty seconds.”
“Correct.”
“Better after.”
“Also correct.”
“I am sorry.”
He considered me.
“For the pause?”
“For making you wonder whether I wanted you less because somebody else might understand you badly.”
His face softened.
“That was a good sentence.”
“I had three hours in the car.”
“Still counts.”
The elevator started moving.
He looked down at our hands.
“You know what I actually wanted?”
“What?”
“I wanted to wear a skirt to dinner with your family and have it become boring.”
I nodded.
“Did it?”
“Mostly.”
“Your grandmother asked if I sew.”
“She thinks everyone who dresses well sews.”
“I told her I can hem.”
“Now you’re making her a table runner.”
“Apparently.”
The elevator chimed.
Jules did not move.
Neither did I.
The doors started to close again.
I caught them with my hand.
“Room,” I said.
“Eventually.”
He took the front of my shirt and kissed me.
Four years together, and he could still make an elevator feel like a bad idea in the best possible way.
When he pulled back, I touched my forehead to his.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“The wedding?”
“The wedding.”
He smiled.
“Wait until you see the suit.”
I groaned.
“There is another outfit?”
“There are always more outfits.”
He stepped into the hallway, boots hooked on two fingers, and walked to our door like he had a runway under him. I followed him. This time I did not look around first.
The keycard took three tries. He laughed at me the whole time.
Inside, he dropped the boots, turned around, and put his back against the door so it clicked shut behind him.
“So,” he said. “Boring.”
“Extremely.”
“Your aunt thinks I’m lovely.”
“You are lovely.”
“Adrian.” He reached down and took a pinch of pleat between two fingers and lifted it an inch. “I’ve been wearing this for four hours in front of your entire family. You’ve had your hand on my knee since the crème brûlée. Are you going to do something about it, or are you going to fold my shirt correctly?”
I went to my knees on the hotel carpet.
He made a small surprised sound. He had expected me to kiss him. I had expected that too, until I was looking at his bare legs and the hem sitting just above where I wanted my mouth.
I put my hands on the backs of his thighs and slid them up under the skirt. Warm skin. The pleats fell over my wrists. He was wearing the black briefs he saved for nights he planned on, and he was already hard in them.
“You planned this,” I said.
“I plan everything. I work in wardrobe.”
I mouthed him through the cotton until he swore and let his head knock back against the door. Then I pulled the briefs down to his knees, left the skirt exactly where it was, and ducked under the hem.
It is a very specific thing, sucking your boyfriend’s cock under a skirt he wore to your sister’s rehearsal dinner. The fabric fell over my head and shoulders. Everything went dim and warm and smelled like him and the hotel soap and whatever he’d sprayed on his wrists at 6:20. I took him slow, the whole length, the way he likes it, flat of my tongue on the underside, and I felt both of his hands land on top of my head through the skirt.
“Oh my God,” Jules said, to the ceiling. “Oh my God, you’re under there.”
I hummed. His knees buckled a little.
I kept going until his thighs were shaking against my palms and his breathing had gone ragged. Then he pulled the skirt up with both hands, looked down at me, and said, “Bed. Now. I want you to fuck me in this.”
“You said it wrinkles.”
“I will steam it. Bed.”
He climbed onto the bed on his knees, facing the headboard, and looked back at me over his shoulder. The silk shirt hung loose. The skirt fell over the curve of his ass. He had never looked less like he needed anybody’s permission.
“Lube’s in my toiletry bag,” he said. “Side pocket. Next to the fashion tape.”
“Of course it is.”
I found it. I got my belt open and my shirt off and knelt behind him on the mattress, and I flipped the skirt up over the small of his back with one hand.
“Leave it on,” he said.
“I wasn’t taking it off.”
I worked him open with two slick fingers, slow, my other hand flat on his spine. He pushed back on them almost immediately, impatient, the way he gets. When I added a third he dropped down onto his forearms and made a sound into the comforter that I am confident the people in 412 heard.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Now. Please.”
I pushed into him and we both stopped breathing for a second.
Four years and it still does that. The tight, slick give of him, and the way his back arches like his body is saying finally for him. I held still until he rocked back on me, and then I started moving.
I fucked him slow at first, holding the pleats bunched in one fist at his hip, watching the black fabric shift every time I bottomed out. Then he said “harder,” and I gave him harder, and the headboard started knocking the wall in a rhythm that was absolutely going to come up at brunch.
“Tell me,” he said, breathless. “Say it.”
I knew what he wanted. I leaned down over his back until my mouth was by his ear.
“You were the most beautiful person in that courtyard,” I said. “Every single person looked at you. I loved it. I want to fuck you in this every time we go anywhere.”
He came apart. He reached under himself and stroked his cock twice and came on the hotel comforter with his face pressed into a pillow, moaning my name into it, clenching around me so hard I lost the rhythm completely. I came a few strokes later, buried in him, both hands on his hips and the skirt crushed between my fingers.
We lay there wrecked for a while. The air conditioner kicked on. Somebody’s TV laughed through the wall.
Jules rolled onto his back. The skirt was a disaster. One pleat had been permanently redesigned.
“That’s going to need steaming,” I said.
“That’s going to need a priest.”
“You said it wrinkles.”
“I said a lot of things.” He looked at the ceiling. “Did I mention there’s a second outfit?”
“You did.”
“It has a slit.”
I put a pillow over my face. He laughed and took it away and kissed me, and then he got up, naked from the waist up and wrecked from the waist down, and hung the skirt carefully on the bathroom door handle next to the shower so the steam could get to it.
“Fold your shirt,” he said. “Correctly.”
I did. Badly. He fixed it in the morning before the wedding, and he wore the slit.
