Ain’t Misbehaving

anxious, suddenly?

“Have you drowned in there?” Mitch called out mildly.

“Nope.” Tossing down the washcloth, she hurriedly whipped Mitch’s brush through her hair and bounced out of the bathroom, her smile ready and her heart quaking.

Mitch only needed one look. “I shook you up?” he asked quietly.

“Of course not.”

“And badly? Come here, you.” He raised an arm at the same time that he shifted to a sitting position and set down the paper.

Dressed in old cords and a sweatshirt far older than hers and still barefoot on this lazy morning, he still had a special alertness in his eyes that unsettled her as he grabbed her hand and pulled her down beside him. Before she could dissemble, he’d gently brushed back the hair from her forehead and tilted up her chin so there was no hiding from him. Leaning over, he first kissed her forehead, then the very tip of her nose. “I happen to like the idea of your things hanging next to mine in the closet. Don’t tell me that idea terrifies you?”

His voice was deliberately gentle, teasing. “Hardly,” Kay said with equal lightness, but she couldn’t stop the little catch in her voice.

“Toothpaste would be cheaper if we could buy two tubes at a time.” His lips touched down on her chin.

“Think of that.”

“We could fight about all kinds of things. Drawer space. How many rooms we’re going to do in red. Whether we’re ever going to let you eat blueberry muffins in bed again. Who’s going to clean up after I cook. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Unfortunately, it did. She nuzzled her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder so he would stop tantalizing her with those itty-bitty kisses and tried to frame a coherent reply. He didn’t give her the chance.

“I’m not going to let you go, you know,” he murmured. “You didn’t think I just wanted an affair, Kay?”

She shook her head, closing her eyes as she felt the gentle stroke of his hand down her shoulder and arm. The touch wasn’t sexual but soothing, protective. The nagging anxiety in her head made no sense; she couldn’t even name it. Mitch sounded as sure as she felt. She wanted desperately to believe that his feelings were just that strong, but his proposal had followed too close on the heels of their first lovemaking. For Mitch, that lovemaking had been the first time ever, even if he didn’t know she had figured that out. Sexual feelings often carried that sweet label of love with them…and just as often one set of feelings could be confused with the other. “We haven’t known each other very long,” she ventured quietly.

“That one won’t go, love. People change. I expect to still be getting to know you fifty years from now.” When she parted her lips, Mitch raised a firm fingertip to them. “You want time,” he said softly.

She nodded unhappily, miserable at the thought that she was hurting him. She didn’t want time-she wanted to give him time…but she couldn’t tell him that.

“So you’ll have your time. A little of it, Kay.” His dark eyes seared hers. “I already know that time is the most precious commodity there is. Don’t waste a second of it, Kay. You can never have it again.”

“Mitch-”

He stood up abruptly, turning away from her. Something had changed in Kay’s feelings; he didn’t know what it was. She’d shown no hesitation in pursuing the relationship…until now.

Until they’d made love. Dammit. Had he failed her?

Chapter Thirteen

“Oh, yeah? So how exactly are you supposed to tell when it’s love and when it’s just sex, anyway?”

Why, Kay thought wryly, did her ninth graders have to ask the really big questions today? It was the last day before Christmas holidays; now her ninth graders had decided to get into it?

“If you want a pat answer to that one, I don’t have it,” Kay admitted. She had divided the class into discussion groups, and she’d made the unfortunate mistake of pausing by her six most inquisitive girls. Sprawled on the floor, festooned with pinned-on holly and Christmas bells, the ninth graders looked too young to be asking such questions. “No one’s ever been able to come up with an exact list of symptoms of being in love.”

“But you said experimenting with sex just for sex’s sake was a sure way to get hurt,” Janey objected. A freckle-faced girl with a long ponytail, she habitually squinted and only wore her glasses during tests.

“I did.”

“So we were talking about really caring for somebody. How’s that wrong then, as long as you really care?”

Kay crouched down, the group moving to make room for her in their circle. “There is never anything wrong with your feelings,” she said gently. “We talked about that, and it matters that you understand and believe it. And I wasn’t trying to make a rule for you as to what you should or shouldn’t do with your boyfriend-or boyfriends. Your values are the ones that are going to have to determine that. I was suggesting that you see the difference between sexual feelings and love feelings. They can be related but they’re not the same.”

“Janey, you keep asking the same dumb questions,” Roberta said in a bored voice. “When are you going to get the picture? Sex is a big high. So is the free fall when you jump off a cliff. Landing is the cruncher, so don’t get carried away by the first big thrill.”

“I don’t remember putting it quite that way,” Kay said wryly.

“You didn’t have to,” Roberta said, leaning back with a yawn, all Miss Experience. “I never thought sex was all it was cracked up to be, anyway. I mean, why risk getting pregnant for a five-minute rush at a drive-in movie with a payoff of a Coke at McDonald’s afterward? No thanks.”

Janey’s eyes widened. “Have you really-?”

“We’re talking about values, ”Kay interjected rapidly. “Being sure that the pleasure of being physically close to someone isn’t all we’re really feeling when we call it love. Sexual feelings are so powerful at times that they can be confused with love. If you take your time, and know your partner well, you have a much better chance of being sure of your feelings. Now, does that help, Janey?”

Janey hesitated.

“She wants you to give her permission to go one more step with Jeff,” Roberta said wearily. “Miss Sanders isn’t going to do that, you fool. She just said that if you don’t feel sure about your own feelings, you should lay off until you do. In other words, tell him to get his hands up five inches or take a hike.”

“Roberta.”

“Sorry,” Roberta said unrepentantly. “I’ve liked this class, Miss Sanders,” she added. “You’re terrific, but sometimes you have to talk a little straighter. I mean, her boyfriend’s telling her to-” Kay’s hand clamped across Roberta’s mouth “-or get off the pot. And you’ve tried to tell her a dozen times that he doesn’t have the right to push. In other words, she should tell him to stick it up his-” Again, Kay’s hand sealed Roberta’s mouth.

The sound of the bell had never been so welcome to Kay’s ears.

When she left the school building, Kay noted speckles of white fluff in the air, but the snow really wasn’t trying very hard. A big, lukewarm, watery sun peeked out from behind a few gray clouds, and the sidewalks were wet.

Restlessness stole into her bloodstream, and refused to leave. The kids had been infected with it, except for that last class. Everyone was filled with that sense of anticipation that dominated the holidays. Expectations and anxieties and hopes, and suddenly the world turned high-strung.

Walking it off seemed the best answer. Mitch was out of town for the day. At home she had nothing more interesting to do than clean; being Kay, she had already bought most of her presents by Thanksgiving. That would have left the tree still to do, but Mitch had taken care of that three days before.

A fleeting smile touched her features, and then died. Mitch was serious about wanting to marry her. She was desperately serious about wanting to spend the rest of her life with him. She had no doubts whatsoever about her own feelings. When you found a man who shared the important things, a man who was a giver, who was intelligent and warm and gentle and exhaustingly creative when the lights were out…you latched on to him, and you didn’t let