“I was also worried about being around you. I haven’t been very… well behaved with you in the past. Plus, I was nervous. I wanted to prove that I could do it without chemical assistance,” admitted Reilly, searching Drew’s eyes and body language for signs that the topic made her uncomfortable. “Are you okay with me telling you this?”
“I’m glad you told me,” said Drew. She placed two glasses next to the wine bottle that Reilly had just opened and wrapped her arms around Reilly’s neck. “I’m not much of a drinker. Most of the time I can take it or leave it. But I do like a nice glass of wine with dinner sometimes. So, you pour and I’ll serve up the food. Dinner’s ready.”
Drew kissed her one more time and they went to the table, where the delicious aroma of lasagna and fresh baked bread made Reilly’s stomach growl in anticipation.
As they sat down to eat, Reilly realized that they had broached a few things that she had been worried about discussing with Drew. And none of them had resulted in rejection. The evening was going well on several different levels.
“This is delicious,” moaned Reilly after her first bite.
“Thanks. It’s my mom’s recipe,” said Drew with a bright smile.
“I can’t remember the last time I had a home cooked meal,” said Reilly.
“And I can’t remember the last time I cooked one,” said Drew. “Cooking for one isn’t very fun, so I eat out a lot.”
“I know that feeling,” agreed Reilly. “Besides the fact that I can’t cook.”
Drew smiled at her and took another bite. They were quiet as they ate and watched each other, and Reilly started thinking about satisfying another hunger when dinner was done.
“I have to ask,” began Reilly as she paused in her eating to take a sip of her wine. Her eyes danced as she gazed over the rim at Drew.
“Yes?” Drew asked, mirroring Reilly’s posture.
Reilly smiled and put her glass down.
“Do you often greet your guests on the porch in a towel?”
Drew laughed.
“Only my special guests,” she said as she put her glass down. “You know, the UPS woman, the landscaping guys, my towel service—”
“I think I need to join the service industry then,” deadpanned Reilly.
Drew laughed and Reilly’s heart melted when she saw a shy smile replace the gleam in Drew’s eyes.
“I was coming in from the studio. I was so nervous about you coming over that I went out there to burn off a little energy. I was a little… preoccupied about some of those kisses you gave me last night.” Drew paused and her eyes darkened, making Reilly squeeze her legs together. “Anyhow, I took a shower out there and forgot to bring a change of clothes with me. I was trying to sneak back to the house, and there you were, so pretty in the light. I had to pass you to get into the house, and, well, I just—”
“Had to seduce me?” teased Reilly, finishing Drew’s sentence.
“I don’t think I so much seduced you as it was that I couldn’t stop myself from touching you,” said Drew, her face changing from bashful to serious.
Reilly had a hard time swallowing her wine. Drew’s eyes were boring into her and she wanted to go to her.
“I know the feeling,” said Reilly, absently trailing her fingers over the lip of her glass.
“Do you?” asked Drew, staring so deeply into Reilly’s eyes that Reilly finally understood the meaning of hypnotic pull.
“I do,” replied Reilly. “There’s something about you that I can’t resist. I couldn’t wait to see you today, so I ditched my last meeting and came over early. I’m never early.”
“Ah. I thought I was just running behind.”
“I almost came back last night.”
“I wanted you to come back last night. I stood on the porch watching you walk away, and I wished for it. And then I went into the house and I wished for it. I climbed into my bed and I wished for it.”
Reilly thought about Drew in her bed wishing for her to return and Reilly imagined Drew doing what she had done when she had been in her own bed thinking about going back.
“Why did you send me away, then?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” replied Drew. Drew’s eyes flitted away, and Reilly felt like she was holding something back. “When we were in the car, and Alison was there, and I didn’t have your kisses to short circuit my brain, I started to think that maybe we shouldn’t—”
“But we did,” said Reilly. She felt her sex clench at the memory of what they had just done.
“Yes, we definitely did,” said Drew in a low voice that made Reilly shiver. “It was inevitable.”
“Do you feel it, too?” asked Reilly, talking about the electricity she felt when Drew was near.
“Yes. I felt it the first time I saw you.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I felt it. And then you kissed me.”
“I was such a jerk,” Reilly admitted, ashamed at how she had acted, but relieved to get it out in the open. Jerk or not, that kiss had haunted her all this time.
“But a sweet jerk. Not like Sylvia.”
“Sylvie,” laughed Reilly, remembering the conversation that had made her cringe so long ago in the bathroom.
“You’re nothing like her.”
“I used to be,” said Reilly.
“I don’t think so. And I admit that I don’t have much to go on, but what I’ve experienced with you, is that you’re nothing like her. She’s a…”
Drew paused to search for a word and Reilly tried to help.
“Player?”
“A predator,” said Drew.
Reilly frowned. She’d never thought of Sylvie in those terms.
Concern fell over Drew’s face and she leaned forward.
“Oh. I’ve stepped over a line, haven’t I? I’m sorry. That was insensitive. I’ve never asked you about how you two ended.”
“She dumped me just after… what happened,” explained Reilly.
“She dumped you?” asked Drew, sounding incredulous.
Reilly hesitated. They were on the edge of talking about what had happened. She wasn’t sure that she could bear to know what Drew really felt about her past, but she was already in a place where rejection would feel like death. Not knowing could be worse.
“Yes. She was embarrassed about what I did. She couldn’t be with me because of it. It was too much for her,” admitted Reilly. She thought about the last time she had seen Sylvie, that day in her mother’s living room when Sylvie had told her that she couldn’t be with her. Reilly had been close to killing herself that morning. She had decided not to when she realized that she had lost everything because of her selfishness, and that it was time for her to take responsibility for it.
Drew was silent and Reilly could feel a question in her eyes. She wished that she had changed the subject several minutes earlier.
“She couldn’t stand the public scrutiny?” Drew finally asked.
“We never discussed the details. Maybe some of it was because of that. But I think that she saw me as a monster. And I don’t blame her.”
“She made you feel like that?” asked Drew. She sounded angry. “She did that to you, when you were going through all of that?”
“I don’t blame her,” repeated Reilly.
“You should,” countered Drew, picking up a crumb from the table.
“I should what?” asked Reilly. She didn’t understand.
“You should blame her. She should have supported you,” replied Drew, shifting her gaze to Reilly.
“I don’t… didn’t… deserve that, Drew,” said Reilly. She was surprised at Drew’s response.
“Why wouldn’t you deserve that?” asked Drew.
“I’ve taken responsibility for what I did. I couldn’t ask her to do that for me. It’s my own load to carry.”
Drew searched Reilly’s eyes. Reilly fought the urge to look away, but the intense gray eyes held hers. Drew reached over the table and took one of Reilly’s hands.
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“Oh, Reilly. Have you gone all this time thinking that people shouldn’t love you because of what you’ve done?”
Reilly pulled her eyes away from Drew’s and concentrated on their intertwined fingers. Fear welled up in her heart. She didn’t want to lose Drew so soon, but she needed Drew to know who she really was.
“That’s how it works, Drew.”
“That is not how it works, Reilly. People make mistakes. Love should not be based on perfection.”
“But actions define people, Drew,” said Reilly. It was tempting to let Drew believe that she deserved to be loved no matter what, but she knew that some mistakes set some people apart from others in ways that couldn’t be ignored. She met Drew’s eyes again. “I killed someone.”
“Oh god, Reilly,” said Drew, tears welling up in her eyes. “And I believe that you have regretted that and everything that led up to that with all of your heart. I also know that you would change it if you could, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would,” said Reilly and her voice cracked. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for it.”
It hurt so much to say it out loud, but at the same time, a great weight seemed to lift from her. Guilt that she was thinking about herself when she didn’t deserve it tried to sweep in, but she ignored it, greedily soaking up a little relief. In a way, the discussion they were having now was more intimate than the sex they’d had.
“That’s all anyone can do, Reilly. Some mistakes are bigger than others. And it takes time to put things back once they’ve been knocked out of balance. But you have to forgive yourself first. That’s the very first thing you have to do.”
“But I killed a man. I killed a husband and a father, and nothing I do will ever fix that,” whispered Reilly. She kept her eyes on Drew, though her eyes swam with tears.
“No. You’re right. You can’t fix that,” agreed Drew. “But you can forgive yourself. Accept that your actions have become part of who you are, but you can and should move past it. From what I know about you, what I feel in my heart is that you’re a fundamentally good person. You might be surprised at the forgiveness of others. Maybe his wife and kids will forgive you if you ask. But it won’t matter if you don’t forgive yourself.”
Reilly was silent for a moment as she took it in. If Drew could see past her sins, she should try to, too. She wondered if she was even capable of it. The judge and jury in her soul told her no. But Drew was telling her yes. It was so confusing. She shut her eyes and saw the faces of Matt Traynor’s family staring back at her.
“They have,” she said in a quiet voice.
“What do you mean?” asked Drew.
“His family has forgiven me. His wife, Lydia, came to the prison and told me that she forgave me,” said Reilly, opening her eyes to gauge Drew’s reaction.
“She did?”
Reilly felt the memory fill her mind like it was happening right then and there. She had never told anyone about that day, and the days after that. She had tucked them away and walled them off, not knowing what to do with them, how to feel about them. The words emerged from her mouth in a torrent.
“She came to the prison. When they told me who had requested to see me, I almost refused to meet her. I was afraid. Afraid of her words. Afraid of her eyes. Just afraid,” explained Reilly, who still remembered how none of the Traynor family would look at her during the trial. She stared into the middle distance of the room, seeing nothing but the gray visiting room of the prison, and how hot it had been the day that Lydia Traynor had come to visit her. At the time, she had still been numb. She’d known what she should have felt—fear, shame—but it had never made it through her skin. “I accepted the request, but when she showed up, I almost told the guard to send her away. If it wasn’t for the fact that I felt like I deserved to face anything she had to say, I would have sent her away. She surprised me, though. She asked me how I was doing. She asked if I needed anything. I couldn’t speak. I just started to cry. And she cried too. She told me about him, then. She told me about Matt. She told me what a good father her husband had been. She told me about the Little League team he had coached and his Sunday school class. She told me about the award he had just received at work for some sort of sales thing. She told me what his favorite cereal was and how he always put the shoe and sock on one foot, before he did the other, and that his daughters put theirs on the same way. She told me all about him.
“And then visiting hours were over and she had to leave. But she came back the next week and told me more things about him. She told me that he would never cut his toenails until she threatened to do it for him because they scratched her at night. And that he left fast food cups in the cup holders in the car, which drove her nuts. She said that their biggest arguments were over the fact that he couldn’t tell his mother to stop telling them how to discipline the kids. She told me that he could fly a kite even when there was no wind, and that he could fold the fitted sheets better than she could.”
Reilly paused for a moment, remembering. She thought how Lydia had sat on the other side of the table in the visiting room telling her these things and how tears had streamed down Lydia’s face, even while her bright eyes watched Reilly. And the stories had made Reilly feel like she knew him. The loss had hit her then. The loss of a man who had been so much more than just a jogger with one shoe missing. More than a man with a list of attributes that described him in an obituary. Pain lanced through her chest, remembering that day in the visitor’s room when she’d realized that Matt was not just a regret. Matt could have been her friend. The pain had felt like it would cut Reilly in half as she listened to Lydia draw the portrait of her husband’s life. But Reilly knew that Lydia needed to pass his history—their history—to her, and she took it. And how it still sat like a ten-ton rock in her chest, at first a burden and then, like a familiar ache, it had become a comfort to her.
Reilly told all of this to Drew. The words spilled from her and she had no control over them.
Then she was quiet for a moment as the memory receded.
“And when she was done telling me about him,” Reilly said, stopping to swallow the sob that rose in her throat, “she told me that she forgave me. She told me that it was hard, but that she forgave me.”
A few tears slid down Reilly’s cheeks then, as she sat at the table with Drew and she wiped at them, embarrassed. She didn’t deserve pity or forgiveness, and she didn’t want the tears to buy any of that for her.
Reilly didn’t tell Drew that Lydia Traynor had intentionally come all the way out there to tell her just that: that her forgiveness couldn’t be bought. She was there because Reilly had set up a trust fund for both of the girls and for Lydia, and Lydia hadn’t wanted any of it.
Reilly’s mother had been against it, too. Melissa had been convinced that Lydia would sue Reilly anyway, and that giving them money would be the same as admitting guilt. But Reilly had still done it. And Lydia hadn’t sued. Reilly wouldn’t have cared if she had, either. But, even as Reilly had been setting up the trusts, Lydia had sent a registered letter to Reilly, via their lawyers. The letter inferred that Reilly already had enough on her soul, and that no amount of money would bring back her husband, so she wouldn’t accept money as a payoff for having her daughters’ father stolen from them. Reilly had set up the trusts anyway. And, at first, Lydia had refused the money. That was why she had come to the prison—to tell her in person. But, instead, Lydia had ended up forgiving Reilly.
Reilly didn’t tell Drew any of that. It didn’t matter.
Reilly couldn’t forgive herself.
“She forgave you, Reilly. You should forgive yourself,” said Drew, accurately guessing Reilly’s thoughts.
“I’m not sure I can,” said Reilly staring at her wineglass, thinking that Matt Traynor would never have another nice meal. That thought pattern, listing the things that had been robbed from Matt Traynor, was as natural to Reilly as breathing now.
They sat in thoughtful silence. Reilly didn�
��t get the sense that Drew was using the time to figure out a different angle to get Reilly to accept her words. Drew simply seemed to be comfortable with silence. Reilly didn’t know many people like that, especially in Hollywood.
“Do your shoulders hurt?” asked Drew, after several minutes had passed.
Surprised by the randomness of the question, Reilly abandoned the scrutiny of her wineglass and looked up at Drew.
Drew must have seen the question in her eyes.
“You’re rubbing your shoulders.”
Reilly realized that she was kneading the muscles where her neck met her shoulders. She stopped.
“Thus the reason I need your yoga,” said Reilly, with a weak smile, trying to lift the mood.
“Thus the reason I am going to give you a massage,” responded Drew with a wink. She stood and pushed her chair back from the table.
“A massage, huh?” Reilly asked, her dark thoughts had retreated, but the mood they had created was still there.
“Come with me, beautiful lady,” said Drew. She walked around the table and extended her hand to Reilly.
Reilly took her hand, and Drew led them out of the dining room. They walked down a hall toward the back of the house, and Drew opened the first door but didn’t enter. Dim light from several tea light candles on a tall dresser illuminated a simple, low bed with a fluffy duvet and many pillows. The room was large and open. The gentle smell of an earthy fragrance wafted from the room. It was sensual, something that Reilly would have expected from Drew.
“My bedroom.”
Reilly took a step forward, craving to lie down on the bed, to sink into the circle of Drew’s arms, but Drew pulled her back.
“Soon,” Drew promised with a small smile that made Reilly’s insides flutter.
Drew turned to a door directly behind them and opened it.
“Doctor’s office.”
“We’re going to play doctor?” asked Reilly, raising an eyebrow, and glancing around the room.
“I’m going to play doctor, and you are going to play satisfied patient,” said Drew, walking into the room. Though the words were playful, her tone was not.
Life in High Def Page 26