I was clenching inside around him as he stilled, clenching my hands on his shoulders, holding him tightly with my legs around his hips. I would never let him go. Brooks rested his forehead on the pillow and I turned my face into his neck, feeling the fast beat of his heart. He turned and kissed my forehead then looked at me and smiled, dimple and all. “You know what they say about all good things,” he told me. He was panting a little, flushed.
I couldn’t speak.
“All good things come to those who wait,” he explained. “And you came, too.”
I thought maybe I smiled but I wasn’t fully in control of my mouth.
“Lanie?” His eyebrows drew together. “Are you ok?”
I had never been better, in my whole life. I nodded. Brooks slowly drew himself off me and lay on his side, facing me. He held out his arms and I snuggled against him. “Was that what you were expecting?” he asked, kissing my hair. He turned on his back and pulled me closer.
“No,” I answered. I had found my voice. “I thought about it a lot but it was much, much better.”
“Good. I thought about that, too. For the past few weeks, it seems like it was the only thing I was thinking about. And whenever you came downstairs in your pajamas, I thought about it even more.”
“Really?” I ran my fingers over his chest. I wanted to touch every part of him. “You find my PJs sexy?”
“You in your wetsuit was very cute, too. Those little shorts you wear sometimes when we run. Also, I like that dress, the blue one you wear to work? Your jeans. When you wear t-shirts. When you’re barefoot.” He stopped. “You know what? I think I like you all ways. The pajamas make me feel like, I don’t know, like you’re mine. Because I’m the one who gets to see you like that.” His big hand clapped against my naked butt. “And like this.” He squeezed. “This makes me feel like you’re all mine.”
“I am,” I told him, and my breath caught in my throat. “I always have been.”
“Peanut.” He picked up his head and turned us back on our sides, so he could look at me in the face. “Is that right?” I nodded, not able to look at him, and he put his fingers under my chin to tilt my eyes to his. “All this time? Why didn’t I know that? Why didn’t I see that?”
I moved my shoulders a little, my jaw clenching. “I think you haven’t been looking at me the right way.”
Brooks was quiet for a moment. “It was Scarlett’s engagement party,” he said, suddenly. “You walked in and took charge of my brat sister. You were so generous with her…I thought what an amazing woman you were, what you had turned into, instead of the girl I had known before. And I wanted to kill your mother for making you think differently.”
“I am a woman. Yours.” I blushed and I couldn’t look at him.
He tilted up my chin again. “Mine.” He kissed me and his hand went to my breast. “It just took me a while to open my eyes to it.”
We were still in bed a few hours later, when a small, infuriated dog let us know that we had slighted her long enough, by huffing up the stairs with Brooks’ chewed shoe in her mouth.
∞
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Brooks leaned down and kissed me again.
“I’m ok here on my own.” I leaned up and kissed him, too. “But I’ll miss you.” He took my hips and pulled me to him. Before I knew it, I was up against the wall of the foyer, Brooks’ hands everywhere, mine undoing his zipper. Then I managed to stop myself. “You’re going to be late.” His fingers moved my underwear out of the way to touch me there. “Oh, yes…no, you’re going to be late for your meeting.” My head fell back and he kissed my neck.
“Give me just a second,” he muttered, and he didn’t leave until he’d stroked me to another orgasm. “Ok,” he said, eyes bright, breathing hard himself. “Now I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
I waved limply as he went to the door, came back to kiss me one more time, then finally left. Oh, God. I didn’t know if I’d be able to walk for the rest of the day. If this was what being suspended from my job was going to entail, I could definitely roll with it.
I managed to get to the couch and that was when my phone rang: my mother. I looked at it and didn’t answer, but a second later, she sent a text, then called again. This time, I picked up.
“Yes?” I asked angrily. “May I help you?”
“Lanie?” She sounded disbelieving. “It’s me!”
“I know. What do you want?” She hadn’t seemed to notice that I had been ignoring her because she had taken away the money from Brooks’ business, but now I was going to tell her. Because now, I was telling people things.
She ignored my anger. “Can you take a five-minute break from the ABCs? I have to talk to you.”
“I’m home right now, but I’m not available for you, because I’m really mad—”
“Kristian and I are separating. I’m on my way over,” she announced.
I dropped the phone but then picked it back up to tell her that I’d see her soon.
My mom swept into the small living room like a tornado. She carried a leather portfolio, and her hands were shaking and clenching it. I hadn’t seen her so angry since her Bentley had gotten a scratch when she left it with a valet in San Francisco. “Look!” She pulled out a piece of paper from the portfolio and threw it on the couch next to me.
“A traffic ticket?” I studied the paper. “What are these pictures?” They were of Kristian’s little car, the Scemo, from the front and back, and one of the driver. They were grainy and it was hard to see…it looked like Kristian, and there was something else in the front seat, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“They’re pictures from a red-light camera. Kristian’s latest citation in his Scemo,” she said.
I squinted at the shot of the car’s interior. “What is this?”
My mom threw herself down next to me and tapped the picture of the driver. “I couldn’t tell what was happening in this one either so I sent it out for enhancement.” Now she drew out a larger, glossy sheet from her folder. “This is what came back.”
It definitely was Kristian, with his head thrown back, eyes closed. “He’s driving with his eyes closed? Is that why you’re mad?”
My mom snorted and tapped lower. “That’s Nusha.”
“Is she…oh.” It was Nusha all right, and with the low profile of the Scemo’s racecar dashboard, you could clearly see where her mouth was and what was in it. They had really done a great job with enhancing this picture.
“She’s giving him a hand job!” my mom said indignantly.
Why were there so many issues with this terminology? “No, Mom, that’s a blow job.” She stared at me. “Not that it matters,” I conceded.
“And that’s not the worst.” She yanked out another sheaf of papers and threw them on the cushion. “Read that!”
“Is it a transcript? What is this?”
“I have all my phone conversations transcribed.” She rolled her eyes. “After the last time I got sued, over those metal shards in the ‘Santa Barbara Blues’ eye shadow line, I realized I had to be more careful.”
“Every conversation? Even with me? Mom…”
“Read!” She tapped where the paper was highlighted. “It’s me and Ava. She’s AF.”
I read.
AF: The pictures came back from the photo lab! From the red-light camera, they’re finally done. Mother fucker!
JM: Ava, why are you yelling? Why are you so angry?
AF: His dick is in her [unintelligible] mouth! That fucking son of a bitch! He just admitted that he’s been banging her for weeks. I knew it! He’s cheating on me!
JM: He’s cheating on you? What are you talking about? [unintelligible]
AF: And you’re so fucking stupid that you let him move his girlfriend into your house! You had me redecorate it for you, you dumb bitch! I’m going to twist off his balls, that [unintelligible]. No one cheats on me and gets away with it!
JM: What are you saying, Ava? Kristian? Kristian an
d Nusha?
AF: [unintelligible]
JM: You’re screwing my husband, too?
AF: We’ve been screwing since the day he moved to San Francisco, you stupid old twat. That’s what he calls you. That’s what we called you when we were in bed together, but now fuck you and fuck him, I quit!
My mouth was hanging open as I ran my finger down the page, reading the continued exchange of insults, but my mom yanked the transcript out of my hands. “Since he moved in with me. They’ve been together since he moved in with me!” She started raving about Ava, how she had been like a daughter to her, how fake she was, even her accent. “And it turns out she’s from New Jersey, not New York!” she finished, the final nail in the coffin. “It’s just so tacky.”
“Oh, shit,” I murmured. Here was why Ava had been a little disgruntled as of late, angry at my mother. My mom was married to Ava’s boyfriend.
“That’s all you can say?” my mom demanded.
“What do you want me to say, Mom? He’s an empty-headed, playboy idiot who lives off you like an egret on a cow!” She looked blank. My dad had been the bird guy. “He’s less than half your age. He used you and it was just…you were just…” My voice rose as I searched for the word. “A fool! He fooled you and everyone watching knew it.” There. I had said it.
“You knew he was cheating on me with Ava?” she demanded angrily.
“No, not with Ava, but I’m not very surprised that he was cheating. You think I don’t know anything, but I knew he was a useless dipshit. You moved him into your house and let him wrap you around his manicured little finger, and he played you. Everyone could see it. Even me.”
My mom suddenly sighed, and the anger seemed to whoosh out of her. She lay her head back on the couch, looking ten years older than the last time I had seen her. “Everyone could see it. But not me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, kind of ashamed at how I had been piling on. “I’m sorry he did this, and Ava did this. And the artist, and whoever else he was probably involved with.” Yeah, maybe I wasn’t making it better.
She closed her eyes for a moment. I waited to see if she would say anything about having bad judgement when it came to Kristian and making a mistake in marrying him so fast. Or maybe she felt silly that she was so obviously chasing after her youth, or maybe (possibly) she was now sorry that she kicked out her daughter for a woman who ended up giving her husband a blow job in a million-dollar Christmas gift. I waited.
“Men suck,” she said instead.
“Not all of them. Daddy didn’t.” Brooks didn’t, I wanted to add, but I didn’t want to discuss Brooks with her.
“No, he didn’t suck. It’s the handsome ones you have to watch.”
“Daddy was handsome,” I defended him.
“Your father didn’t need to be handsome. Because he had so much more than that. He was smart and witty. Caring, challenging. We had so much fun together and I loved him so much. Handsome men will get you nowhere but to divorce court. You have to be very, very careful.” She finally opened her eyes, and looked at me. “Unfortunately, Lanie, you and I are in the same boat.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” But I started to get nervous.
She sat up, very straight, her usual posture. “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did with the wrong man.”
“Mom—”
“I need to tell you something about Brooks. I see now that I made a very large error forcing this relationship with him, and I want to correct it.”
Forcing? No, I didn’t want to know. “Why don’t we go out and go for a walk?” I suggested, feeling desperate. “Remember how you wanted to take a walk with me when you came over before?”
She fussed with my hair a little and then took my hands. “Lanie, you need to know the truth. I asked Brooks to move in with you.”
I shook my head. No. “What?”
“I wanted to help you move out of my guest house, and I thought I could help things along for you with him. You’ve always been so…slow around men. I thought I could just get you started.” She looked at me and paused for a moment. “A condition of me investing in his business was living with you and maybe…” She raised her eyebrows. “I thought maybe something would come of it.”
I jerked my hands away from hers. “What.”
“I thought it was best to let you know. Before things go any farther, and especially since he’s decided to move from California.”
“What.”
“You know, as upset as I am about Kristian, truth is better. Isn’t it? I’m glad I told you.”
That made one of us. Ignorance, as it turned out, had been bliss.
Chapter 15
My mom’s voice was droned on and on, about lawyers, pre-nuptial agreements, and repossessing the Scemo. I just sat there, not processing anything. What had she just said about Brooks?
“You made Brooks move in with me?” I interrupted her mid-sentence. Her hands were back at my hair, smoothing it, tucking it back. I shook them off angrily. “You made him pretend to like me?”
“No, no. I’m sure he really does like you. He was always so sweet to you when you were a little girl. I could always trust Brooks to pull you out of whatever trouble you got yourself into. I’m sure he likes you.” She nodded. “I had building security give Ava two minutes exactly to pack up her desk and then they threw her out onto the street. I’d love to see how she plans on getting another job.”
“Mom!” My throat was closing up with tears. “How could you do that to me?” How could he?
“Lanie, I was trying to help.”
I stood up. This was enough. I’d had enough! “I don’t need your help. I’m tired of your help making me feel like shit ten million percent of my life!”
“What?” Her face showed nothing but astonishment. “What do you mean by that? I don’t—”
“You do!” I yelled. “You do nothing but tell me what’s wrong with me, how my hair is ugly and my posture is bad, I wear terrible clothes and I don’t understand anything like business or all that art that I don’t even care about. You think my job is ridiculous and you wasted so much money on my education. Every chance you get, you’re telling me that something else should be fixed or changed, every single piece of me. And now you’re saying that I’m so awful, you have to buy me a boyfriend? What the hell is wrong with you?” I was crying but I thought she could understand my words around the gasps and sobs. “That’s not how you treat someone you’re supposed to love.”
My mom sat with her mouth open and I stared back at her. “Lanie,” she finally managed to say, “I think you’re a lovely girl, very bright! Sometimes I try to help you with your hair and your clothes—your makeup—when you don’t stand up straight—I wish you were interested in art and business—” She stopped and bit her lip, marring the lovely line of her lipstick, a shade I recognized from her “Mendocino Mornings” line. “I don’t think anything is wrong with you. There are just things you could…”
“Fix,” I supplied. “Change. Improve. Everything about me, all the time.”
“No—”
“Yes. You’re disappointed in me, in everything,” I said simply.
“Lanie, I do love you, very much. I only want to help.”
“I don’t want your kind of help anymore,” I told her.
Maisie, who had happily slept through all this emotional turmoil, picked up her head and barked, and then we all turned to the sound of the key in the lock of the front door.
“Brooks?” a voice called. Scarlett, in all her stylish glory, walked into the living room. In a life filled with doing everything right, one thing that she seemed not to have was perfect timing. “Whose car is blocking the driveway? And why is yours all bashed in?” she asked me, then turned to my mom in surprise. “Oh, hi, Juliette,” she said. “Are you visiting because Lanie got fired?”
“What?” My mom stared at me. She tilted her head. “I did wonder why you were home.”
“I didn’t get fired.
I got suspended but not because I did anything wrong.” I could already see the resigned acceptance of yet another of my failures mount on my mother’s face. “I told the administration about something I knew, something bad about a family, and it’s complicated.”
“Lanie told her boss that she saw a teacher banging a student, and they got mad and fired her,” Scarlett summed it up.
“I did not get fired!” I sniffed. “Why are you here, anyway?”
She was scrutinizing me, her pretty mouth puckered. “Lanie, you have snot all over your face.”
“I’m crying, Scarlett,” I told her. “I’m crying because I’m telling my mom how I really feel. And you know what? You can’t come in here unannounced. We have a lease and you have to give us notice!”
“How do you know that about leases?” my mom asked, astounded.
“Because I’m not an idiot! I can read! I can be a functioning adult!”
Scarlett walked forward and handed me a tissue from her purse. “Here. You should really wipe your nose.”
I balled up the tissue and threw it back at her. “I don’t want your damn tissue.” I was on a roll. “Don’t think that one piece of flimsy paper is going to make up for all the years that you treated me like shit. You thought it was fine to be my friend when you were bored on family trips, or when you needed my help somehow, but in front of your posse at school you called me Lay-Me, just like everyone else did!”
“What did you call her?” my mom asked Scarlett. “What does that mean?”
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