by Brea Brown
I stand up, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans, straightening my tunic top, and trying to wet my lips with my dry tongue. I grab my bottle of water and take a long drink, closing my eyes and wishing I could magically transport myself and Sandberg back to the hotel, back in time, to before I took those stupid pills. I picture myself picking up the phone and calling Jude, telling him I’m too tired to do anything tonight. Then falling into the itchy bed and sleeping for a day or two.
There’s a tugging on the bottle in my hand. I open my eyes to see Jude pulling gently on it. I let go of it with both my mouth and my hand. As soon as he sets it on the table next to us, he takes my face in his hands and kisses me. I can feel the condensation from the bottle on his fingers, leaving tiny drops on my cheek as he moves his hands into the back of my hair.
My heart feels like it’s literally about to explode. It can’t handle all this stimulation.
“Oh!” I breathe into his mouth, doing something resembling the pee-pee dance.
He pulls away to avoid injury as our faces bump against each other. “What?” he asks, looking concerned.
“I can’t stand still!” I whine. “It’s like someone’s sending tiny electric shocks to my muscles.”
He sighs. “Come on. I think I have something upstairs that can help.” He leads me by the hand up the metal staircase. As long as I stay in motion, I don’t feel like I’m going to fly apart.
In the loft, he goes into the bathroom. I hear water running, and when he comes out, he offers me the glass. “Drink this,” he orders. I do. “And you need to drink another one in thirty minutes.” Taking the glass from me, he sets it on the bedside table. “Until then…” He takes one step and pulls me against him, kissing me so deeply and firmly, I have to hold onto him to keep from falling backwards.
But he keeps pushing, until I realize that’s his intent: to make me fall backwards, onto the bed. Okay.
“Nice bed,” I approve. “Is it new?”
Breathlessly, he replies, “Yes. It’s a virgin bed.” Then he kisses my neck and yanks on my shirt.
Soon, we’re naked on top of the snow white duvet. And now my emotions are running away from me. “I’m so sorry!” I whisper forcefully, choking back tears.
“Shhh.” He pulls back and brushes my hair away from my face. “No worries. Just… this.” He enters me slowly, keeping his eyes on mine. “I love you.”
“Okay,” I reply dumbly, still trying not to bawl. The incessant, involuntary blinking is actually helping in that department.
“And I’ve missed you. So much.”
I wrap my legs around his waist. “Me too. You, I mean. I’ve missed you.”
He smiles and presses his lips against mine as he moves above me. “Is this active enough for you?”
Honestly, I answer, “I’d rather be on top right now. I’m feeling a little claustrophobic.”
“Oh-ho! Be my guest.”
We quickly re-arrange ourselves, and after we’re together again, it hits me: I’m making love to Jude in England. On a white bed. In a maisonette. Surrounded by books. Listening to Snow Patrol. It’s so identical to one of my fantasies that it makes me dizzy. “God!” I moan, grabbing fistfuls of his hair.
“Aggghhh!” he utters below me. I take it as encouragement and move faster. But as soon as I’ve climaxed, he sits up halfway, propping himself on his elbows, and says, “Ah, Libby? I’m rather… uncomfortable. Could you? That is, maybe you can… let go of my head?”
“Oh!” I dismount and collapse onto my back. “Sorry. I, uh… wow.”
He rubs his head. “No worries. It’ll grow back, perhaps.”
We laugh at my crazed behavior. Then he goes back to kissing me, placing one every inch or so on my body. “Saucy minx,” he mutters against my breast.
We’re back!
33
Good news: I’m no longer manic. Bad news: I’m still awake. Worse news: I still haven’t told Jude what brought me back to him. Or what started the whole nightmare.
But he’s sleeping so peacefully. I don’t want to wake him up only to have such a horrible discussion. I can see, however, how this could become just like telling him about my parents and the accident. I can put it off and put it off and put it off until it becomes a huge problem in our relationship. And I’m not willing to do that. My deadline for telling all is before I sleep again. Which could be a while, granted, but hopefully it will happen before the weekend is over.
I’m sitting up in bed, taking stock of my body. My eyesight has returned to normal—no more jittering eyeballs; my heart has stopped racing—at least it only races when I’m doing something to warrant it; I can keep my limbs still for relatively long periods of time, which I’m sure is a big relief to Jude who’s been trying to sleep next to a spaz (of course, I offered to go away, but he wouldn’t hear it); and I’m no longer swinging between euphoria and despair, giggles and sobs. Good thing, too. I need to be in total control of myself when I tell him what I need to tell him. And I need to be prepared for it to go badly.
He stirs behind me, but he’s only been asleep a few hours, so I’m not expecting it when he sits up and presses his chest against my back, kissing my shoulder. “How’re you feeling? When was the last time you drank some water?”
I glance over my shoulder at him. He’s tousled and scruffy and warm. No sex for you, Elizabeth Lynn Foster, until you tell him, I order myself firmly.
“I’m fine,” I say in response to his query. “I think the worst is over.”
“Do you have the headache yet?” he asks.
I wince. “No. Is that yet to come?”
“Maybe you won’t get it,” he says unconvincingly.
That settles it. The conversation has to happen before the dreaded headache hits. I can’t handle both at once.
Turning, I sit cross-legged and face him. “I have to tell you something,” I say solemnly, fashioning the sheet into a strapless toga.
“Blimey. That sounds scary,” he says half-kiddingly. “But this time I’ll let you finish before jumping to any conclusions that could get me into trouble.”
I smile weakly at his attempt at levity. Taking a deep breath, I say, “For five of the past six months, I’ve believed something really terrible about you.” When he simply tilts his head and wrinkles his brow, I continue, but I have to look away from him. I focus my attention on the bedspread. “But before I tell you, please try to understand where I was coming from. We’d had that horrible fight about… well, you know. And you wouldn’t tell me what the big secret at work was, so I was pretty tender when it came to trust issues and you.”
I glance up to see his reaction to this. He merely nods, as if encouraging me to go on. I can’t tell at all what he’s thinking. Typical.
I sigh. “So… when Leslie told me that you and she had been intimate…” He flinches, and his mouth drops open, but he doesn’t say anything, so I go on. “And she had details that only someone who had seen you naked or had had sex with you would know, I believed her.”
“Leslie?” he cries. “Me and Leslie?”
“Yeah.”
“She told you that I slept with her? When?”
“The day of the announcement.”
“No, I mean, when did she say this happened? Did she say I’d cheated on you?” He looks as sick as I feel.
“Oh.” I blink. “No. She said it was when you first came to town. Before we started dating.”
“And you said she told you things… That is, however would Leslie know what I look like naked?”
Quickly, hardly breathing, I tell him about the “proof” she gave me and how I eventually found out she got the details from our emails. Closing my eyes again, I say, “I know. It’s so stupid and improbable now that I know it’s a lie, but at the time… She couldn’t have timed her little joke any better—or worse, depending on how you look at it.”
“This is no joke!” he comes close to shouting, startling my eyes open. “This is… is… something that co
uld have had dire consequences. Did have dire consequences. For months!”
“I know, but look: we’re together again. I found out the truth—”
“And how is that? By coming to me straight away and asking me if it was true? No. You chose to believe I would…” he shivers rather than says it. “With Leslie?” He scoots and rests his back against the headboard. “I wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole!”
He pulls the sheet higher up his body and crosses his arms over his chest. Sullenly, he says, “I can’t believe you chose to believe her rather than say, ‘Jude, did you ever get a leg over on that walking STD Leslie?’ I mean, I think I deserved at least that much from you, a chance to defend myself!”
While I’m trying to think of a good reason why I didn’t just ask him, he’s still thinking out loud about the timeline of events. “And when I tried to convince you to take me back, before I left to come here, you wouldn’t, because of her lies?”
“Yes.” It’s barely a whisper.
“What a fucking waste,” he mutters, staring into space.
“But,” I point out, remembering why I didn’t ask him about it, “if I had asked you, and you had denied it, it would have just confirmed my suspicions that you were a bastard. Her proof was so overwhelming and incontrovertible that I would only have been asking you in order to hear a confession. And when you denied it—as you rightly would have—I would have written you off as a lying man-whore! Her plan was simple but genius.”
“You would have taken her word over mine?”
“It wasn’t just her word, Jude. It was details. A lot of details. Your rugby scar, your favorite positions, your ticklish feet… Again, I’m so sorry! But, honestly, I don’t know how I would have done anything differently. You and I were broken up. I didn’t feel comfortable asking you about something that supposedly happened before we ever got together.”
His response is to put his hands over his eyes and say in a voice so cold it gives me goosebumps, “That fucking bitch. You have no idea the misery I’ve endured every. Fucking. Day. There hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t think I couldn’t get out of bed. Because I thought I had lost you, and I couldn’t figure out why. I just knew it was probably permanent. And now I find it wasn’t my fault at all. Not a bit of it.”
He removes his hands, revealing red eyes.
“I should have told you sooner,” I suddenly realize. “I’ve been sitting on this information for a month, dreading how angry you’d be at me, trying to come up with the perfect way to break it to you, making all these extravagant plans. It was selfish. I should have just told you!”
“Yeah,” he says huskily, blinking at me. “Maybe. Although…” He brushes his foot against my leg under the covers. “I could tell recently that something had changed. I almost had… hope. I suppose I didn’t really need to know why you seemed to care again, since I never knew why you stopped.”
Now I join him at the head of the bed. He puts his arm around me as I burrow next to him. “I never stopped caring. Never. But I thought I knew the truth. And it was devastating.”
“I have every right to be furious with you,” he declares bullishly, as if I’ve been saying otherwise. But he grabs my hand and rubs the back of it with his thumb.
“I agree. I’d be livid, if the roles were switched.”
“If you had asked me about Leslie, I would have at least known to confront her about her lies. And make her tell you the truth.” He barely skims his fingers against my upper arm.
I shiver. “You’re right. That would have saved us both a lot of heartache. I was just too proud to bring it up to you. Please don’t be mad at me. For long. I understand if you are right now.”
“I’m not angry with you,” he replies, seeming surprised by the statement. “But I’d like to hop on a flight and murder Leslie.”
“Then you’d go to prison. We can’t have that.”
“Then you’d better find a way to restrain me here.”
“Don’t make me pull your hair again.”
Laughing, groping, and murmuring, we disappear under the covers.
34
Lisa,
I seem to remember promising you an update (it must have been one of my weaker moments). You said it didn’t have to be long, so here goes: flight was fine; talk was fine; yes I did. Several times. Tell Zoe I said hi. I’ll send you guys some postcards from my travels.
Libby
35
Some stray pieces of foil-wrapped hard candies elude me under the table in the middle of the conference/break room. Finally, I give up trying to be graceful about it and crawl under there to retrieve them. I guess I could leave all this for Talia to clean up on Monday, her first solo day as the office’s admin, but it would seriously piss me off if someone did that to me. Plus, I have nothing better to do while I wait for Jude to finish up his latest phone call with Gary (I swear the man has a crush on my boyfriend). And the candy’s under here—along with a few scattered scraps of confetti—because of my going away party, so it’s only fair that I clean it up.
“Now that’s an enticing sight,” Jude says, his voice dangerously close to my raised rear end.
“Get away!” I screech laughingly after bumping my head and trying to pull my skirt further over my butt.
Instead of honoring my request, he moves in closer, laughing and poking his finger past my hand. “I see London, I see France…”
I kick back with one foot, almost catching him in the face with one of my stilettos.
“Oi! Oi!” he cries, but he crawls out backwards and sits on his heels.
I scramble through to the other side of the table, candy and confetti in hand, and pop to my feet. “You’re a pervert,” I accuse playfully, pitching one of the candies at his head.
He ducks, and it misses him by a long shot. “And you’re abusive! Elizabeth.”
“No hanky-panky in the office,” I remind him sternly, ignoring his pointed use of my real name, which he’s been obsessed with since seeing it on my passport when he finally snuck it out of my purse to get a peek at it. Hearing him call me the name no one has called me since my parents were killed actually bothers me a lot less than I’d thought it would. It almost sounds… right.
“But it’s your last day. And everyone else is long gone.” He stands and walks around the table, grabbing me around the waist before I can move out of his reach. “What would it hurt? Just a little slap and tickle. So we could say that we did.”
As he kisses my neck, I close my eyes, but I say weakly, “No… especially not in here. All it would take is for someone to dial into the videoconference, and it’d be instant porn in the Chicago office.” But I don’t push him away.
He freezes but keeps his lips pressed against my neck. “Hmm. Right.” Loosening his grip, he straightens and pats my butt. “Well, I s’pose I enjoy receiving a paycheck, so that won’t do.”
“Exactly.” I turn to face him, tapping the tip of his nose with my finger. “Thanks for my party. The piñata was a nice touch. Until Marvin crushed it to smithereens.”
“Yes, well, we encourage his youthful exuberance. Keeps us all on our toes.” Surreptitiously, he glances at the clock on the wall over my shoulder. “Speaking of your last day, I have a leaving present for you.”
My heart skips. “Oh? How fun!” I turn to lead the way to his office, where I assume the present is waiting, but he grabs my hand.
“Actually, it’s in here.” He reaches for and snatches the videoconference remote, punching in the numbers for the system in Chicago.
“Aw!” I groan. “I thought we were done with work!”
Before hitting the green button to connect the call, he raises an eyebrow at me. “You’ll like this; trust me.” He perches on the edge of the table and presses the button. After a few beeps, the videoconference room in Chicago appears before us, revealing Zoe and Lisa, sitting at the end of the conference table closest to the camera.
Lisa shouts, “Hey! There they are. Finally!
We’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes!”
“Apologies,” Jude says, sounding completely unapologetic. “Lost track of time here.”
“I’ll bet,” Lisa replies knowingly. “I wonder what we would have seen or heard if we had called you instead of waiting here patiently.”
Zoe waves her hand frantically. “Hi! Happy last day!”
“Hey, guys!” I bounce a little with excitement. “Oh, my gosh! It’s so good to see you!”
“I told you,” Jude mutters under his breath, then grins at me.
Lisa and I both try to talk at the same time, then stop and simultaneously say, “Oh, go ahead,” and laugh.
“This delay is the pits,” Lisa gripes. “Anyway, what I was going to say was, we didn’t want to miss your real last day. How’d it go? Talia sounds nice so far. But she has a big bra—I mean, big shoes to fill.”
This is high praise from Lisa, but I try not to get too serious or I know I’ll get choked up. “Yeah, yeah. I’m awesome. But she’ll do. My last day was a lot of fun. We had a big party.”
Zoe pipes up, “When do you start touring the rest of the U.K.?”
“Monday, bright and early.” I glance at Jude, who’s looking down at his leg, which is swinging casually from his perch on the edge of the table. “But we’re not talking about that in front of Jude.”
“You’ll be fine, you big baby,” Lisa cajoles. “Honestly. Men!”
“What about your cat?” Zoe asks, getting back to business. It feels like she has a mental list of questions she needs me to answer. I’m surprised she doesn’t have a notebook in front of her.
Amused, I answer, “Sandberg and Jude are going to be swinging bachelors for two weeks while I’m gone.”
Lisa gapes at the camera. “You trust him with your beloved cat?”
“Absolutely!”
“I’m more than capable, thank you,” he defends himself.
“I think I have to worry more about what Sandberg might do to Jude than the other way around. Lying on his face in the middle of the night, tripping him on the stairs… there are all kinds of ways Sandberg could get his revenge. He’s still pouting about his kinked tail, I think.”