by Lisa Freed
All these things were still worrying me when I got home. My purse began to buzz. I dug into the bag, pulling out my phone, which was going crazy with a bunch of messages from Lance. Then I saw the man himself came striding down the road as I eased the SUV into the garage.
I was barely out of the door when he was at my side. “Teresa, where have you been? Why haven’t you responded to any of my messages or called me back?!” His indignant voice echoed loudly in the garage, causing me to cringe.
Suddenly I felt very guilty and I knew how he won his cases in court. I hadn’t done anything wrong and yet here I was about to stammer out an apology. “Sorry, sorry. I was dealing with a lot of issues at the rescue and I guess my phone was on silent.”
“That’s so inconsiderate of you,” he went on, pacing as I went to unlock the door leading into the house.
Once inside, I took notice of his clothes or rather lack of. Outside of the bedroom, I had never seen him so undressed. He had a long-sleeved, button-down shirt tossed over his shoulders, what looked like ratty grey drawstring athletic shorts on and his feet were stuffed into old sneakers, no socks. Even worse his burns were bad, both his face and what I could see of his chest.
That Victor! He was so irresponsible with a body that didn’t even belong to him. Then a major stab of guilt hit me. I had sat back and let Victor do this. Yes, I questioned him about sunscreen, but at no point did I ever step in and order him to apply it or at the least offer to rub it in myself. Victor would have gone for that.
“Teresa, what in the world happened to me?”
His pathetic voice was almost my undoing. How could I tell him that a ghost had possessed his body so he could sunbath, go dancing and boink my brains out? I couldn’t, so I had to lie, again. “You helped me at the rescue, we had lunch then we parted ways.”
“Really? I think I remember scooping litter then everything gets hazy. I woke up in horrible pain this morning and discovered this. He plucked the shirt off his shoulders exposing his beet red chest and shoulders.
I winced. “Have you put anything on it?
“In between messaging and calling you,” he paused giving me an accusatory look, “I’ve been taking cold showers. They’ve helped. But it’s the confusion that bothers me most.”
Shoot! Poor Lance. “Come on in, I have some aloe gel that might help with the sting.” Here we go again I thought.
He trudged along behind me into the house. Agnes ran up to him, putting her paws on his leg while crying a greeting. He ignored her. Poor Agnes looked hurt, stalking away from him with her tail swishing back and forth.
I directed him up to the master bathroom, where after I grabbed the Aloe from the fridge I found him sitting on the toilet with his shirt draped over his lap.
Digging in the vanity, I found a pair of gloves. He shivered at my first touch on his skin. I could feel the heat burning through the thin rubber.
“Thank you, Teresa. Sorry about coming down so hard on you earlier. This whole thing is so odd and I’m not dealing with it that well.”
He sounded so lost and confused, my heart ached. No more could I let Victor do this to him. Yet, how could I prevent it?
“You’ve never had this happen before?” I asked trying to get a better fix on things.
“Sunburn?” he said, misunderstanding. “Yes, but never this bad. The worst was as a teen on spring break. I get some sun when playing golf but I use sunscreen.”
“No, I meant the blackouts or whatever you want to call them.”
“Things have been foggy before when I’ve had a few too many,” he replied, a defensive whine now in his voice.
I knew Lance had a drinking problem, though he never seemed that out of control when he was with me. Though he could put away a lot of rum and cokes and still sound sober.
“Ouch!” he complained.
Unintentionally, I had tightened my grip on his shoulders digging into his sensitive skin. “Sorry!” I released him and went to smear some on his chest.
“Watch the nipples please.” He smiled and it was then I noticed how bloodshot his eyes were. The aloe had a pretty distinct smell to it, but so did booze and this close I realized Lance reeked of it.
“You’ve been drinking?”
“Self-medicating,” he retorted. “This hurts!”
“I know it does.” His drinking, the lack of my presence at Whisker Kisses, Victor, it was simply too much. I had to get Lance out of my house and then figure out how to dump him gently. If there was such a thing. “Lance, have you eaten anything today?”
“Some olives and cheese.”
Better than nothing but I knew it had to be after four by now. I should offer to make him something, help with my guilt over his burns at least. “Let’s get an early dinner,” I stated pulling the gloves off, flinging them into the trashcan on my way to the door.
“Netflix and chill?” he asked with a grin. Red-faced and all, he was still such an attractive man. I felt the old familiar pull and had to shake it off.
“Behave,” I said leaving the bathroom and heading downstairs.
Maverick was quick to appear from somewhere and follow me, Lance was much slower.
Down in the kitchen, I took inventory of what I had. Surprisingly little other than breakfast foods and I wasn’t in the mood for Fruit Loops. My bare fridge was another stark reminder. Dickmatized. I never thought it would happen to me.
Lance had come to stand behind me, his hands warm and heavy on my shoulders. Then he moved my hair aside to bare my neck for a kiss. My eyes closed. Yes, the sex was great, yes, I enjoyed the closeness, but what about everything else that annoyed me? I had to concentrate on that.
I shrugged my shoulders, pulling away from him and putting some much-needed distance between us. “Dinner,” I reminded him.
His eyes took in the open and mostly empty fridge behind me. “Looks like we’re calling out for pizza.” After taking a bright red and black take-out flyer from the side of the fridge he turned, walking into the living room.
I overheard him ordering it in the other room, half-extra cheese, half mushrooms. He remembered that I hated mushrooms at least. Despite his many flaws, I had to be appreciative of that. I joined him in the living room, settling on the couch a few inches away from him.
He scooted closer and moved to wrap his right arm across my shoulders, but his softly hissed outrush of air indicated that he found out very quickly how much his sunburned skin disagreed with that idea. There was going to be no cuddling. He compromised by rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb in slow circles.
When the doorbell rang, I sprang up to get it then stopped. “I don’t have any cash.”
“My wallet is on the sofa table,” he said while searching through the movies on Netflix.
I walked behind the couch to the narrow walnut sofa table where I found his wallet tossed next to my decorative glass shell full of sea glass. Opening it, I couldn’t resist sneaking a peek at his license again. Penrose Lancelot Hamilton. His mother’s interesting name choices still had me chewing the insides of my cheeks to prevent the laughter from coming out.
What I didn’t expect was the picture in the clear flip part across from the license holder. A picture of Lance and some tanned, blonde-haired goddess posed together in dorky golf clothes, their matching white and green golf bags and wedding bands screaming for everyone to see that they were a couple.
The doorbell dinged in rapid fire succession reminding me that the pizza delivery person was eager to be on their way and didn’t care about the huge bombshell I had just exposed.
I grabbed the entire wallet, walked to the door and opened it. A young guy stood there, his finger ready to lay on the bell again. He removed it quickly, flashing me a guilty smile.
“Hey, half extra-cheese, half mushroom, that will be fourteen even.”
Lance didn’t have any small bills so I gave the guy a twenty, practically snatched the warm box from his hands and closed the door in his grinning face. I
dumped the pizza on the coffee table in front of Lance, his attention was still on the TV.
“Great, let’s eat,” he said.
“Can you explain this?” I asked as I shoved the picture in his face. Okay, I might have yelled but I think considering what I had just discovered I was entitled to be loud.
His gaze finally left the screen and touched on the picture briefly. “That’s Bridget, my ex-wife,” he said casually. “Hey about the live action version of the Jungle Book?
He was so calm, so matter of fact that I wanted to scream, so I did. “Ex-wife?! Why did I never hear about her before? Why is it only after I found this picture? When were you gonna share that important little life fact with me?”
“She’s an ex, we’ve never talked about our ex’s. Why should we? They’re exes for a reason, right?” he tried to joke but his grin died when his quip didn’t get so much as a twitch out of my lips.
“Teresa, this isn’t a big deal. We were married for maybe seventeen months tops and that was over five years ago.”
I flopped down on the couch next to him. “It’s just something I think you should have told me.”
This felt all wrong. Why was this bugging me so much? People had exes just like he said. And I was planning to break things off with him anyway. This was a huge opening for that. But I didn’t take it. Instead, I hugged my arms around my middle and stared at the cooling pizza on the table.
“Listen, I’m sorry. Relationships aren’t my strong suit, apparently. If it’s that important to you I’ll answer anything you want to know.” He paused then gave me his killer grin. “You’re way hotter in bed.”
“Eww!” I sputtered, my eyes flying to his face. “I did not need to know that! And I would never have asked.” And it’s true. What person in their right mind actually would ask for a ranking of their partner’s former sexual partners and where they stood in there? A smart man would lie because who would tell you that you sucked compared to girlfriend number three and then still expect to get laid? But there were always dumb guys out there that would be brutally honest. Besides no matter what you could never believe them and it was far better not to even think about it.
Lance apparently fell into the clueless category.
“I thought you wanted me to be honest?” he protested. His eyes then flicked to the pizza. “Okay if we eat while we talk?”
I sighed. “Sure.” Getting up, I fetched some plates, napkins and bottles of cold soda.
Lance dished out the pizza while I opened the drinks. Then we both sat back and enjoyed a few bites before Lance launched into his next bit of shocking backstory.
“Guess I really should have told you that I’m divorced. No kids but twice divorced.”
A bit of cheese slid down my windpipe and I gasped.
“Yeah, I guess it is a little shocking, but it’s so commonplace today. Neither of my marriages lasted long. I don’t really even think about my exes or those times in my life anymore. It’s almost as if they happened to a different person. I suppose that’s another reason why I didn’t feel it important enough to mention.”
Lance was talking, what he was saying I haven’t a clue as I struggled to dislodge the cheese and breathe again. I kept hitting at my chest and finally got the cheese shooting back up into my mouth again. I spat it into my napkin. Lance was still talking.
I stared hard at him, unbelieving this was his level of self-absorption. Wow.
“So, you’re not going to spring anything else on me?”
“No, and you don’t even have to worry about the exes. As far as I know, Karen, that’s wife number one, we dated in college, is in Baltimore, remarried with kids. Bridget, I haven’t a clue where she ended up. Maybe down in Key West getting drunk and screwing cabana boys.”
Did I detect more than a whiff of bitterness there? I took a small, cautious bite of pizza, finding that despite my recent bout of choking, I hadn’t lost my appetite for it. Glancing up, I found Lance staring at me expectantly.
“Yes?” I asked after I had swallowed.
“Anything you would like to disclose?”
Like the fact that I’m a psychic? Or that my ghostly friend had taken over his body several times or that I was trying hard to come up with the most easy and painless way of breaking if off with him?
“Nope, no skeletons in my closet,” I lied with a smile. “You wanted to watch The Jungle Book? That sounds good to me.”
Lance regarded me for a moment then picked up the remote with a smile of his own and we watched the movie.
Or rather I did. He fell asleep not even halfway through. I finished watching until the end then tossed a blanket over him before retiring upstairs.
The next morning when I came down for breakfast he was gone. He had left me a short note thanking me for last night, saying this week would be busy for him and that he would call me soon. XXOO Lance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“So how do you feel about children?”
I choked. Gasping, wheezing, water spraying out of my mouth choked.
Lance was out of his seat in a flash, grabbing my arms and raising them high over my head.
Drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Mortified, with snot bubbling out of one nostril and tears filling my eyes I fought him.
“This helps clear the airways, you'll be okay.” He crooned gently though he kept an iron-grip on my forearms.
Surprisingly it did help and I stopped trying to pull my arms down.
“I'm fine,” I croaked out in a rusty voice, my throat feeling ripped and frayed inside like I had gargled with razors.
Lance patted at my face with the heavy cloth napkin, even wiping my nose for me.
Annoyed, I batted his hand away.
“Restroom.” I whispered, making my escape, and noticing that several diners looked away as I hurried past.
Once safely ensconced in the bathroom, I dared a peek in the mirror and wished I hadn't. I was a wreck. My eyes were black pools of running mascara, my nose was red and looked wet and the water I had spit out was all down my silk shirt. Why didn't I grab my purse before dashing in here?!
Actually, why was I even here? Work and Lance’s burns had kept him quite busy during the week and other than a few random text messages I hadn’t really heard from him until this morning when he asked me to meet him for dinner. I should have said no. I should have taken the coward’s approach and ended things by text message. But no, I had to be all polite and had decided in a public place was a safe approach. And it would have been if Lance had decided to bring up kids. What was I in for here?
Another fast glance in the mirror, paper towels and warm water could only do so much, eventually I had to give up and go back out to face Lance.
He stood as I made my way back to the table, holding my chair out for me and pushing it in once I was seated. There was definitely something to be said and appreciated about an older man, they had manners that their younger cohorts lacked.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes, much, thank you.”
Lance took a long gulp of his wine. When he looked at me again his eyes had a twinkle that I was beginning to recognize as his own twisted brand of self-deprecation.
“So not into kids, are you?”
“You scared the crap out of me!” There went my non-existent filter again.
“Still too early?”
“Way, way too early!” And not happening I wanted to add.
“Too late, I guess you know where I stand.”
Actually, I didn't. When people asked did that automatically mean they did want children? Or were they testing the waters to see if it was safe to admit they couldn't stand the little crumb-catchers?
And Lance as a daddy? Somehow, I couldn't picture him changing diapers and braiding hair.
“Okay, I can see by your expression you don't know or can't see it.” He slung back the rest of his drink. “I love kids and dearly hope to be a father someday.”
Whoa.
“You could say that.” He poured more wine into his glass from the almost depleted bottle. He was the only one drinking, I couldn't stand the stuff, and I was beginning to wonder if he would finish it. He had a problem with overindulgence, but the entire time we had been seeing each other he had remained sober. Well except for when he woke up with no memory of how he had gotten that dreadful sunburn last week. Had that pushed him over the edge and to take up his drinking habit again?
“Teresa, maybe I should have waited to have this conversation, our relationship has gotten me so far off-kilter from my normal that I just don't know what is going on anymore.”
That made two of us.
“Listen, I like where this, you and me, is going but I need to make some things clear upfront. I'm looking for love, forever, marriage, kids, the whole shebang.”
Deep. Way too deep for me. Maybe now was a good time to take up drinking? Actually, what it was was my perfect opening. Time to say thanks for the great sex and get out of here.
“Lance, I'm twenty-four, the idea of marriage hasn't even entered my mind,” I started.
“I know, way too early,” he interrupted. “I shouldn't have brought it up and yeah, I'm trying to get my foot out of my mouth. Can we hit rewind and forget the past ten minutes?”
“No, it's going to be in my head, no way to back this up.”
The color had faded from his face and the sparkle had died in his eyes as my words hit home.
“I goofed up, didn't I?” he muttered, swiping at his wine glass and finishing it in a rush. Not even bothering to refill this time he grabbed the bottle and brought it right to his mouth.
“Put the bottle down and stop it.” I didn't raise my voice, I didn't need to, my anger rang clearly in every word.