Sex outside had been Miranda’s idea too. She’d jokingly suggested they take it to the balcony one night, thinking sex outside would be really cool. Henry had smiled and it had become an inside joke between the two of them for the rest of the summer. When the fall came, the night started to fall earlier by the hour, by 9 pm it was already as dark as it was going to be. They had been cuddling on the couch watching The Boondocks. Henry was running his fingertips over Miranda’s arms before dropping little kisses on her bare shoulder, his lips forging a pilgrimage up the slope of her neck then slowly back down again. Miranda swung her legs over Henrys lap and they’d started kissing. Softly, teasingly, urgently.
She’d asked if they should go upstairs. Henry had hesitated a mere moment before saying so softly that Miranda had to ask him to say it again, ‘How about outside?’ Her eyebrows had flexed and she’d asked, ‘Really’ and he’d looked at her gently, running his hands down the length of her torso. She didn’t know how to feel or what she felt at all. “The front or the back?” she’d wondered, referring to the wrap around style of the houses top floor balcony. “I don’t know” he’d answered “whatever you want. I could go get some blankets while you look and decide?” She’d untangled herself from Henry lap and got herself standing. While Henry disappeared upstairs, Miranda unlocked the front balcony door and stepped outside. The air was warm for a late October night, with a cool breeze blowing occasionally. The front balcony looked over the street, where amber light from the streetlights poked in to all the notches and flaws of the wood under her feet. Across the street and through the bare tree branches she could see a man in his apartment eating something from a bowl as he watched TV, his eyes fixed carefully on the source of the blue light cutting shapes in his face and the spoon quivered its way from food to mouth. Miranda shut the front balcony door and went to check out the back. The balcony here swung over top a back lane and starred directly in to the back of the apartments that shared the lane. The back balcony seemed far more open and exposed than the front, which had the advantage of trees and corners. Though the thought of that man across the street possibly getting up for more food alarmed her. Miranda could imagine reading the words in the mans spaghettio’s – and if she could see him that clearly, he could certainly see her and all the details of her imminent rendezvous. Henry returned from upstairs, behind an armload of quilts. He peeked over the top and asked, “So, what do you think?” “I don’t know” she’s answered, “the back I guess.” Henry turned off all the lights as he made his way to the back door. As each rooms furniture collapsed into the dark, Miranda remembered an old movie she had watched as a kid, where instead of turning off lights, people were described as ‘closing’ the lights, and how much more she liked the sound of that. She stood in the kitchen doorway as Henry lay a blanket out on the deck, peeling off her stockings as she waited, imagining it’d be too hard in the dark to slide them off gracefully, and how such a strain might ruin the moment. He’d brought down her favorite blanket, a thick black one whose immense size in comparison to any other blanket she’d ever wrapped herself in made her feel tiny and small. She dove between the two covers as Henry closed the door behind her, and she wondered whether or not to make a joke about making sure it wasn’t locked. Henry shimmied in beside her and they began kissing again. The bones and ridges of Miranda’s back poked in to the wood beneath the blanket as she moved. She couldn’t imagine which position would be most comfortable on such a surface. They couldn’t rock too much, and they both figured this out pretty quickly. Henry climbed himself on top and slowly, trying to stay beneath the teepee of the blanket, they removed their clothes. Miranda tried not to think that there could be people watching from their windows. Maybe one of the neighbors across the alley had gotten up during a commercial to get a glass of water. They’d picked a glass from the cupboard and were fumbling with the water temperature when they’d happened to look up and spot the weird mound of jostling blanket across the street. They’d shut off the water, or maybe closed it?, put down the glass and leaned closer to the window for a better look. There they’d squinted and moved their faces as close to the glass as possible without pressing in to it and squinted tighter. They started to wonder if what they were looking at was what they hoped they were looking at, when a precarious limb wandered out from beneath the protective covering and the moonlight had slid over it like light on a snowy slope. Then they’d yelped for their partner, still taking in the commercial, to come quickly and look at this! Then they’d stood there, they were still there, watching Henry and Miranda’s heads juggle a dark blanket in a dark night.
Back on the balcony, things were getting hot. Seriously hot. Miranda felt sweat starting to perk up along her hairline, and didn’t care much for how hot the air was becoming to breathe. She stretched an arm over her head and lifted the top of the massive blanket a few inches. The cool outside air rushed Miranda’s shoulders, reminding her of how sand from the beach always felt on her feet. She lifted her arm a little higher and the air swept over her body, each inch of her skin seeming to leap up towards it. Henry groaned quietly, obviously grateful for the refreshment too. He breathed deeply and started pushing more thoughtfully in to Miranda, who couldn’t suppress a little chuckle at the thought of Henry being turned on by air. “What’s so funny?” Henry asked, smiling. “Nothing,” Miranda had answered, before rolling in to louder gasps of laughter. “Hey, Henry” she’d whispered loudly, “were doing it on the balcony!” “Shhhh” he’d whispered back, smiling.
The next day the small of Miranda’s back ached. She called Henry from work to tell him about it, and he’d confessed that his knees were also killing him, “They’re dead”, he’d said. Miranda had smiled at their shared injuries from a night of as gentle-under-the-circumstances-sex as possible. “So maybe next time we’ll get a couple pillows.” Henry had suggested, “Yeah,” Miranda agreed, “And some knee pads.”
By the time Miranda came home late from work that night, she could already hear Henry breathing heavy sleep breaths from the bedroom. As she moved cautiously towards the kitchen, her eyes found a big basket by the back balcony door, complete with two sets of elbow and knee pads, a few new throw pillows for cushioning, and a rolled up yoga mat, all tied together with a ribbon. And on the door itself, a sign announcing “The Honeymoon Suite”.