Cynda and the City Doctor: 50 Loving States, Missouri

I hear the soft knock and rustles of him rooting around for a condom. “Honestly, I didn’t ever get used to those tiny buzz saws you call cicadas during my fellowship year. Fortunately, I lived so high up, I couldn’t hear them at night.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “So how were you getting to sleep before we had to quarantine together.”

“You helped me then, too, actually,” he answers with a droll laugh. “You just didn’t know it.”

It takes a moment for the full meaning of his words to sink in. “Wait, you hated me enough to fire me, but then you’ve been out here masturbating to me?”

“My feelings when it comes to you are very complicated,” he confesses, covering my body. “More complicated than I want them to be.”

He’s rock hard, but his long length settles over my slit as opposed to pushing inside of me. This is a late night version of foreplay I’ve become familiar with over the past week. It basically involves Rhys lazily grinding on me until I’m more than ready for him to come inside.

Usually, I just lie there and enjoy the feeling of my body becoming more and more pliant underneath his. But tonight, his honest tone stirs something inside of me. Something that makes me confess, “Mine too. I think that was our problem from the start. It should have been simple fun, but it kept getting too complicated.”

He stills on top of me. And though we can’t see each other in the pitch black of the back house, it feels like he’s staring down at me.

It feels like he’s making a decision when he rocks up and pushes into me in one long stroke. I moan, wetter than I should be for someone who just woke up.

He fucks me slow and deep. From the front…from the back…then from the side as his fingers lazily circle my clit. He’s in no rush, but the fire builds anyway, crackling brighter and brighter until an orgasm engulfs the both of us.

For something that took a while to generate, it’s way more intense than I’m expecting. My legs kick out helplessly and he holds me tight against his chest as he empties into the condom. As if he thinks I’ll fly away without anything to anchor me to this reality.

Maybe he’s right.

We’re like the pandemic. Scary and confusing.

What are we doing?

That’s what I asked him two weeks ago. And that’s what I silently ask myself as I fall asleep all tangled up with Rhys. While the cicadas screech their discordant mating song in the background.

Yes, whatever this thing is with Rhys, it’s scary and confusing.

And maybe that’s why my eyes fill with tears the next morning when I see the streak of red on the toilet paper.

I’m not pregnant.

I should feel relieved. Even if my status with Rhys wasn’t a huge-ass “It’s Complicated,” now is the worst time to have a baby on the way.

For one, there’s a pandemic. Also, I have to figure out how to get the twins to Pittsburgh. And I have to find a new job since my current lover fired me from the last one.

Yeah, a baby is the last thing I need right now.

So why do I feel so sad?

“What’s wrong?” Rhys asks when I come out of the bathroom.

I hate that he can see my silly disappointment written across my face.

“Nothing,” I mumble, snatching up my phone. “I just need E to bring me over some tampons.”

“So we’re not pregnant,” Rhys says. His voice is flat. Unreadable.

“Nope,” I answer, back to Cynda as usual. Totally unbothered. “Thank goodness, right?”

I turn back to my phone to finish my text message to E. But my phone vibrates in my hand before I can.

I answer it right away when I see the incoming call is coming from the hospital.

“More good news,” I say when I get off. “I don’t have COVID either. All the bullets are officially dodged.”

Rhys got his all-clear yesterday. And now he hasn’t knocked me up. He should be happy. But he doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me with an expression I can’t translate.

An expression I don’t want to translate.

Suddenly the air feels pressurized in here. Like it’s pushing down on me. I need to get out.

“I guess that means I can go home now and get my own tampons,” I tell him.

I don’t wait for him to answer, just grab the suitcase I kept next to the side of my bed. Good thing I never made myself at home here. All I have to do is throw my dirties in the zip pocket, close it up, and I’m good to go. The relief finally comes. Not because I got my period and am COVID-free, but because those two things combined mean I can leave.

Get away from Rhys and this situation and all the feelings I shouldn’t be feeling right now.