Somehow, without knowing how we got here, Nick and I got naked. It was extremely surprising to be naked with the father of my daughter Emi’s new best friend, but I wasn’t embarrassed. In fact, she was very excited, even desperate.
Nick’s beard was soft and tickling as he kissed me, on my neck and on my breasts. His hands were on me: on my back, my waist…
His body wasn’t as muscular as my ex-boyfriend Eliot’s, but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. He could feel Nick’s excitement; Now he was on top of me, fluidly, almost as if we were in water, and spreading my legs.
It was so light. I needed more pressure, so I put his hand between my legs. That felt so good! Any harder and it would explode.
And as I did so, I regained consciousness. It was my own hand between my legs. I was in my own bed, alone. Oh my god, I had just had a sex dream about Gracie’s dad! What was I thinking?
Seven-year-old Emi had moved to a new group of friends. I liked her new best friend, Gracie, more than her old one; Gracie didn’t performatively cry about something. I also liked his father, Nick. He has long been separated from Gracie’s mother and a devoted father. He was also friendly. After arranging the girls’ first playdate, he texted me to ask how I was managing raising three kids while he struggled with one.
After four years of social isolation at pick-up time, feeling like everyone had friends but me, here was Nick: fun, open, happy to share too much. Our friendship went from zero to drinking wine in a few days.
My other attempts at making friends hadn’t gone so well. There was the successful mom who I invited out for drinks, only for her to spend the entire time on a work call.
Annabel Bond remembers a dream she had about the father of one of her daughter’s friends.
Another mother rejected my many requests to walk the dog, even though I saw her in the same park, at the same time, walking her dog alone.
Nick was different. He talked a lot and about everything. He told me about his difficult relationship with his father; I talked about my difficult relationship with my ex. I noticed his hands as he waved them, his comfortable shoes, his anorak.
I told him I went to the gym; He told me he was a runner. At 50, he was a year older than me and still looked good.
Although I didn’t like it. Or did I? Now he wasn’t so sure. The morning after the dream, I checked the Internet to see what it meant.
I learned that I didn’t necessarily want to take Nick’s anorak away. Dreaming about sex with a friend could also mean that I wanted the qualities that Nick possessed for myself. Maybe I’d like some of his quiet charisma and his ability to make new friends.
Or perhaps the dream pointed to a desire for connection that wasn’t necessarily sexual. And if it was oral sex, I was told online, it could be a metaphor for an intimate conversation in real life, because the mouth was the main participant.
The next time Nick came over, I tried to remember if we’d had fantasy oral sex and I blushed. I looked at their hands while we were chopping vegetables together for the girls’ dinner and imagined them touching me. I realized how much I had missed having a man to make pasta with.
It would be perfect if I could like it. How great would it be to lean forward and kiss him?
But did he like me? I wondered. It’s unusual for a man to become platonic friends with a single woman, as every When Harry Met Sally fan knows. But Nick had a lot of mom friends and he didn’t give me any sexy vibes.
In fact, when I was complaining about unwanted men hitting on me, he stopped me and said, “I hope you don’t think that’s what I’m doing.”
‘Of course not!’ I responded, laughing too heartily. But I did, a little. Didn’t you find her attractive then? But why would I want Nick to like me when I wasn’t even sure if I liked him? Everything was extremely confusing.
I certainly didn’t like him as much as Eliot, my younger ex-boyfriend, for whom my heart still ached.
Anyway, a friend on the playground is better than a lover; longer lasting (she still couldn’t look Louis, the only father at school she had kissed, in the eyes, even though two terms had passed). Still, my subconscious insisted on taking Nick’s clothes off. If I was lucky, we might even have a dream date tonight. . .
- Annabel Bond is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.