After the Fall by Kylie Ladd

hadn’t even thought about getting married, yet now I had a fiancée and she had an engagement ring. I was impressed by Kate’s choice, but something irked me too. For more than three years I’d loved this girl, slept and laughed and fought with her. I thought I knew her, every intricate, irrational facet, and yet I would have gotten it wrong if I’d chosen her ring. It wasn’t just that, though. Why couldn’t she have waited for me to come shopping with her, or even to propose, for that matter? Why did it all have to be so impetuous?

KATE
•
    “Seventeen,” I told him, after some quick mental calculation. There was silence. Outside, a light rain started to fall on the slate roof of Cary’s house.
    “Seventeen?” he asked. Though it was too dark to see I felt him sit up in bed. “Are you sure?”
    “Well, eighteen now, I suppose,” I replied, wishing we were at my place. We’d been going out for about three months, but almost invariably ended up staying at his house, which was bigger and had more food in the fridge. My own roof was tin. I loved lying under it at night when the rain was falling, the staccato patter of small drops and gurgle of water in the congested gutters lulling me to sleep. Cary’s roof was mute, and I imagine the spouting was cleaned regularly.
    “And I’m number eighteen?” he persisted.
    “Eighteen you are.” I giggled, sleepy despite the lack of aqueous sound effects. “Does that get you the key to the door? Or do I keep that for number twenty-one?”
    “Kate!” he protested, reaching for the light. I tried to stop him, but wasn’t quick enough. Unrelenting glare filled the room.
    I covered my eyes, though not before I’d seen the aghast expression on his face.
    “What?”
    “Eighteen! That’s a whole bloody football team.”
    “So it is.” I was struck by the image, imagining my ex-lovers lined up for a team photograph, arms oiled and crossed, shoulders dipped menacingly toward the camera. The thought made me smile. “I wonder what position you’d be? You’re not really the full-forward type … maybe a wing. Can you run?”
    “Don’t sound so pleased, for God’s sake.”
    “Why not?” I asked, cuddling into him with my eyes still tightly shut.
    “It just seems an unseemly number of … partners, that’s all.”
    “Well, you asked. How many have you had then?” Suddenly curious, I peeped up through my fingers.
    “Not that many, that’s for sure,” he said petulantly, staring straight ahead.
    “How many?”
    “Enough,” he mumbled.
    “How many?”
    “Five,” he said, then looked over at me as if he’d just revealed he had AIDS or liked country music.
    “Five’s okay,” I said, covering my eyes again. “Turn out the light.”
    “Okay? It’s not even a third of your total.”
    “It’s enough for a basketball team. Besides, you seem to know what you’re doing.” I meant the comment as a joke, a compliment, but his face flushed and for a second I feared he was taking me seriously.
    “Still,” I went on quickly, “there’s a lot you can learn, so let’s get started.”
    I rolled over on top of him and kissed the faint freckles lurking above the bridge of his nose.
    “Hey,” he protested, “I’m not finished talking.”
    “I am, though,” I said, turning off the light. Cary tried to stop me but instead knocked over a stack of journals piled on his bedside table. They clattered to the floor, bringing the lamp down with them. With a great show of self-restraint he didn’t even jump up to retrieve them. Not immediately, anyway.
    I’m still not quite sure what bothered Cary more: the actual number of my lovers or the fact that I’d had more than him. I hate that question anyway. What does it matter, as long as you’re both healthy and taking precautions and not messed up in the head about the whole thing? Still, when Cary asked I wasn’t as wary as I should have been. I really liked him—really, really liked him—and so I wanted