The Rules List

I made the list on a Thursday night, sitting on my couch in my underwear eating cold pad thai out of the box, because that's just the kind of mood I was in by the end of that week. I'm twenty-four, I work the front desk at a dental office, and I had never actually been with a man, unless you count a few clumsy kisses in college when I was twenty-one, which I didn't, not really. So I got a legal pad from the junk drawer and wrote RULES at the top, underlined it twice, and numbered one through five like I was drafting a policy for the breakroom.

Rule one, no kissing. Rule two, no names during, because I figured names made it personal and personal made it messy. Rule three, my shirt stays on, which sounds silly but a girl has to hold the line somewhere. Rule four, no asking if I'm okay, because I hate being handled like I'm breakable, I get enough of that at work when old Mr. Delgado apologizes for gripping my hand during his cleaning. And rule five, no cuddling after, because I had read enough internet threads to know that's where feelings sneak in through the side door.

I looked the list over, felt extremely organized and grown-up about it, and then I texted Marissa, who used to work with this guy Ron before she switched to the bank, and asked her point blank if he was single and if he was the type to keep his mouth shut. She texted back a shrug emoji and then, three minutes later, a message that said honestly he's kind of perfect for whatever weird thing you're planning, which stung a little but was also fair.

* * *

The Ashland County farmers market on a late Saturday in October is mostly pumpkins, honey, and somebody's grandkids yelling near the cider press, and that's where I found him. Ron had the corner stall with the hand-painted sign that just said HONEY in block letters, no cute bees or puns, which already told me something about him. He was twenty-seven, broad in the shoulders in that way men get from actual work instead of a gym, and he was handing a jar across the table to a lady in a quilted vest while telling her the buckwheat batch was darker but better on biscuits.

I waited until the lady left, walked straight up, and said, "Hi. I'm Talia. Marissa's friend. I want to use you for practice."

He blinked at me, and then he laughed, this big easy laugh that came up from his chest, and set down the jar he was holding. "Practice for what, exactly?"

"You know what for. Don't make me say it in front of the honey."

"Well, we wouldn't want that," he said, grinning, wiping his hands on a rag. "You always this blunt, or am I special?"

"I rehearsed it in the car. I've been sitting in the car for twenty minutes rehearsing it."

"That's the best thing anyone's told me all season, and a guy bought eleven jars from me this morning." He glanced down the row of stalls, then back at me. "I close up at four. I'm not saying yes yet, I'm saying keep talking while I pack up, and we'll see."

So I talked, and I helped him stack crates, and by the time the tent was folded he had agreed, mostly, I think, because I sounded as though I had done a cost-benefit analysis, which I had, twice, with color-coded notes. He pointed me toward the far edge of the lot where his van was parked, a white thing with dents along the side and a mattress in the back half-hidden behind a tower of squash crates, and he said, "I'll be there in five, I just gotta tell Clayton I'm not staying for beers."

The van smelled like pumpkin and dust and, faintly, honey, and there was a sleeping bag rolled at one end and a string of those little battery lights looped around a cargo hook, which was somehow more charming than it had any right to be. I sat on the mattress edge with my list on my lap like I was about to run a meeting, and when he climbed in and pulled the door shut behind him, the afternoon light went amber through the windows.

"Okay," I said. "Rules. I'm reading them out loud so there's no confusion. One, no kissing. Two, no names during. Three, my shirt stays on. Four, you don't ask if I'm okay. Five, no cuddling after. You leave or I leave right after, no lingering."

Ron nodded along to each one, solemn as a juror, arms crossed. "Anything about, I don't know, my side of the equation?"

"I was getting there. Condom, obviously. And if I say stop, you stop, and we're done done, not pause done."

"Deal." He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it toward the sleeping bag. "And since we're doing paperwork, I'm single, nobody waiting on me anywhere, and I got tested in August. For what it's worth, this is the strangest negotiation I've ever done in a van, and I once traded a guy a pallet of gourds for a canoe."

"You got robbed on that."

"I absolutely did. The canoe had a hole in it." He sat down next to me, close enough that his knee touched mine, and looked at me in that patient way, giving me room to change my mind if I wanted it. "Last chance. You sure?"

"I'm sure. I've been sure since Thursday."

And then, because I am apparently a liar and a fraud and a woman with no respect for her own paperwork, I grabbed his shirt and kissed him, hard, right on the mouth, rule one dying about four seconds after I read it aloud.

He made a surprised sound against my lips, and then his hand came up to the side of my jaw and he kissed me back, slow and warm, and my whole plan started coming apart like wet paper. His mouth tasted like cider, because of course he'd been drinking the sample cups all afternoon, and I felt myself making this small noise into him that I would never admit to making. When I finally pulled back I was breathing like I'd jogged to the van instead of driving.

"That," he said, "was rule one."

"I know."

"You wrote it down. On paper. I watched you point at it."

"I'm aware of what I did, Ron, thank you." I set the list face-down on the mattress, which felt symbolic, and my hands were actually shaking a little, not from fear, more like stage fright turning into the good kind of nerves. "It's just, your mouth was right there, and I have exactly a few clumsy kisses of data from college, and I needed a bigger sample size for science."

"Uh huh." He was smiling, that slow grin again, and he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with two fingers, careful, as if to see if I would flinch. "Rule two, no names. You just broke that one too."

"That one's still in effect going forward. Consider the kiss a separate incident."

"Sure. A separate incident." He leaned in a little, not quite touching me, giving me the last inch to close if I wanted it, which I appreciated even as my pulse hammered. "You want to keep going with the other three rules, or should I assume the whole document is void?"

I thought about it for maybe a second and a half, honest, and then I said, "Three and five are still good," which told him exactly as much as it needed to, and his eyebrows went up, and then his hand slid from my jaw down to my waist and he pulled me in for a second kiss, and this one went on longer, his lips soft and unhurried while mine were anything but, my fingers curling into his collar because I needed something to hold onto.

When we broke apart he was breathing harder too, which made me feel absurdly victorious, like I'd won something at last, which is a whole thing with me, ask anyone at my office about the stapler tournament. His thumb was tracing little circles at my hip through my shirt, and the van was warm and golden and the cider press clattered somewhere far away, and I remember thinking, very clearly, that rule three was about to have the worst day of its life.

"So," he said, voice lower now, "still feeling clinical?"

"Shut up and take your shirt off."

He pulled his shirt off over his head, and I'll be honest with myself forever, I stared. He had one of those chests that looked like it came from actual work and not a gym, a little hair down the middle, and a faded sunburn line at the collar where his tee sat all summer at the market. "You're staring," he said, looking pleased about it. "Good. That's allowed. I encourage that."

"I'm assessing," I said. "There's a difference."

"Sure there is."

So here's the part where I confess something, because this whole story falls apart without it. I had never done any of this beyond those college kisses. Not once beyond that, not with anybody, twenty-four years old and completely green, and my whole plan had been to walk in acting like I knew things, and here I was sitting in a dented white van with a man I'd known for six hours, and instead of feeling like a fraud I felt like I was finally about to play in the actual tournament instead of watching from the parking lot. I wanted it so bad my teeth almost hurt.

"I want to try things," I told him, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. "In an orderly fashion. I want to be in charge of the order."

"Works for me," Ron said. "You're the boss. I'm just the vendor."

"Stop making market jokes!"

"Never."

He reached over and slid the legal pad out from under my knee, where it had been doing important structural work, and set it aside, and then he kissed me again, and his hand came up under the hem of my shirt to rest flat against my stomach, warm and still, not moving anywhere, just there. "This okay?" he murmured against my mouth.

"Yes," I said. "That's fine. That's within the rules."

"Rules three and five."

"Three and five."

His hand stayed at my waist for a while, just breathing with me, and then he pulled back and looked at me with this careful question in his face. "Can I taste you?" he asked, plain as asking for the time. "I'd like to. If you want. If not, we skip it, no discussion."

And there it was, the thing I'd rehearsed in the car for twenty minutes and never once got right in my head, the thing I'd skipped past on the legal pad because I couldn't figure out how to write it down in my own handwriting. My brain did that dental-office thing where you smile at someone while your insides are sprinting. "Okay," I said. "Yes. But I'm keeping my shirt on, and I'm keeping my eyes open