by Marr, Maggie
Chapter 31
I drive. I drive without a destination. Without a purpose. Air whips through the open car windows. Suddenly I know where I’m headed.
The scent of salt. The Pacific Coast Highway. The wash of the sunset as the sun sinks into the ocean. One possible destination. The place I need to be.
I pull onto the drive, and the blue convertible is still parked where it was when I left. I knock. No answer. I turn the doorknob. I look straight through the house, like I can at my condo, but the view is impossibly different. Past the wall of windows is not a view of cityscape, but instead the ocean and the sun with violent magenta and orange slicing the sky, and Tara.
She stands on the deck in a white sweater, her arms wrapped around her torso for warmth. She watches the sun setting, because who passes up this kind of light show?
From a distance, I watch too, but the beautiful display I watch isn’t the sinking of the sun, it’s Tara. A gentle wind lifts her hair and the light accentuates her profile, the curve of her neck, her full lips. Tara’s beauty eclipses the sunset.
When the sun slips into the sea, she turns to the sliders, and her eyes meet mine. Surprise in her gaze, followed by the type of smile you want to come home to, return to, see each and every day. The kind of smile that you can build a life around.
The type of smile I need to see.
* * *
“You came back.”
I press my hand to her cheek. The pad of my thumb strokes her bottom lip and she tilts her head toward my touch.
“I did.”
I came back as more than Wonderfuck, and she knows this. She knows, without me saying the words, that I’m here because I couldn’t stay away from her. Because I needed more time with her. I needed her. I need tonight like I need air to breathe.
She knows this.
But what she doesn’t know, the part that is unfair and that I won’t tell her, is that I absolutely won’t stay.
* * *
We make love. We don’t simply fuck, and after, as I lay with Tara in my arms, I realize that we’ve never just fucked. Not even the first time. I slip from her bed. The sun is rising. I put on my clothes.
“Leaving?”
“Not yet,” I say. I lean down and press my lips to her lips.
She knows that there are unspoken words hanging in the air. I turn and walk to the kitchen and make coffee. It’s not long before she enters with her hair wet. She wears an oversized white sweater, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks. She looks sexy because she isn’t trying to look sexy. I pour her a cup of coffee and she follows me into the living room, where I’ve already started a fire.
We sit on a big white couch in front of the fireplace.
“Don’t go.” Her feet are curled under her. I fight the urge to pull her close and hold her in my arms. I want to stay with her for today and tomorrow and quite possibly forever.
“I can’t stay.”
“But you can.” She sweeps her hand over her forehead. “Nothing prevents you from staying. From us being together, from us trying . . . why not?”
I look toward the wall of windows, at the deck, the ocean beyond, and the grey sky that hangs heavy with the clouds of June gloom. If the decision to stay were only that simple. But that decision, that risk, isn’t easy for me, and won’t ever be.
“Look”—she sighs and then takes a deep breath, as though steeling herself for the words she’s about to say—“I know what happened.” She closes her eyes and pulls in another deep breath, then opens them and peers at me. “Or I heard what happened, before I moved in . . . but . . . I trust you. I know even with this . . . this thing that you do . . . I know that you won’t do that to me. That what happened between you and . . .”
I freeze. My heart stops beating for an instant. Her words have trailed away. She thinks she knows, but she has no idea.
“What do you think happened between me and Susie?”
Her jaw drops open, her gaze fixed onto me. She must feel this abyss that is opening in my chest, know the horrible feeling that she may have made the wrong assumption based on the look on my face and my tone. The most horrible error, and yet, the same error almost all people make. I don’t disabuse them of what they believe to be true. Why bother?
“I . . . I mean . . .”—she swallows—“At first I didn’t know . . . but then when I discovered this alter ego thing and all the women . . . and the way . . . how she died. I . . . I . . . I thought—”
“You thought that I was fucking around.”
My voice is dead. Empty. I’m not angry. I’m not hurt. I’m not even surprised. Because this is what nearly everyone believes to be the truth about the tragedy of my life. Even Susie’s family and friends believe that I must have been unfaithful. That I did something horrible, unforgivable, something that caused Susie’s death.
But that’s not what happened.
It’s completely not.
“I didn’t fuck around on Susie.” My tone is devoid of feeling, because once your heart is ripped from your chest, how could you ever possibly feel?
Only Rachel knows the truth. Rachel and me and Mom—when her memory still fired—and Mom only because she overheard us. I’ve never had the heart to tell anyone else what happened between Susie and me. Never wanted to before now. Never felt the need. And even now, when I want to tell Tara the truth, somehow telling her, letting Tara know what happened, feels like a betrayal of the woman I loved.
“She . . . she had an addiction.” My heart folds in on itself. “I found out. She went to see a therapist, because I loved her and she loved me and there’d been . . . there’d been over a hundred other men.”
“Oh my God.” Tara can barely breathe. She can barely understand the words I’m saying. In her eyes, the truth of what I’m saying fights with the fiction she’s constructed in her mind and labeled as the truth.
“It’s a disease. Like drug addiction, alcoholism, overeating—it’s a disease and I wanted her to recover, but she relapsed. I was away on business, just before our wedding. I was in Japan and she relapsed and she told me. I was hurt and I was angry, but I never said we were over. But I think seeing how hurt I was, and knowing that I’d never let her go, that I’d always be there for her, that I loved her . . . with this fierce and undying love, knowing that . . . I think that’s why she did what she did.”
I stop speaking. Every word is true. I have Susie’s letter. Part of me wants to burn the paper that has the words that Susie left me, another part can never let that letter go.
“I . . . I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t,” I say.
There was nothing I could’ve done to cure Susie, to fix her. I could no more stop her from being who she was than stop the waves from kissing the shore. This is the truth of my reality and the loneliness of my existence, and as close as Tara got to breaching the wall I’ve built around my life, I still can’t let Tara into my heart, because that mind-numbing, soul-searing pain of loss and deception and impotence is beyond my capability to survive a second time.
“I’m sorry.” I stand.
She stands beside me. She dips her head and then looks back up at me. She swallows. In her eyes is the reflection of my pain.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry . . . I—” I know she wouldn’t intentionally hurt me. No, that’s not in Tara’s makeup. “Please . . . I just . . . my feelings for you are—”
“I know.” I press my fingertips beneath her chin. “I have them too, for you.”
The sadness in her eyes at my admission is nearly too much for me to endure. Instead of feeling the pain, I do what comes naturally for me now, I do what makes the pain go away. I lean forward and kiss her.
This is the time that will remain in my memory alongside my other times with Tara. This time has the sweet melancholy that whispers between two people when their love affair comes to an end.
“Please,” she says, a whisper on her lips, and I comply. In this open living room with the waves dancing on the shore, I lower
her back onto the couch and lift her sweater up and over her head. My hand grasps her breast and my mouth, hungry for the taste of her, pulls in her rosebud nipple.
A soft moan. I roll her nipple over my tongue, and my hand slides over her belly to yank at her sweatpants. Hot and sexual and bathed in a desire for each other, we are fierce and full of need. I pull her sweatpants over her hips. I release her nipple and run my lips down the hot flesh of her nearly naked body. I’m between her legs, and she’s wet. Her desire is glorious and glistening. I spread her thighs with my hands and lean forward to pull her clit into my mouth.
Her hips tilt upward and her hands grasp my hair and pull. With my tongue I lick out the same letters I’ve spelled since the first time we were together, but this time, I add three more words.
“Please, please.” She pulls me up to her. “I want you inside me.”
I pull my pants down over my hips. This desire is a living thing deep inside me. This isn’t wonderfucking anymore, this isn’t a random woman I’ll shuffle into my memory with all the rest. This is Tara. I’ll remember her for the rest of my life. She’ll be the redemption that I turned my back on, because in my soul I know I’m far too damaged for even love to redeem.
She grasps my cock and strokes down and back up along my shaft. The heat tightens and darkens. It curls through my feet and up over my calves and thighs. Desire thickens in my back. Her beautiful body is before me, her face, her eyes. I lean forward and press her to the couch. In one slow, strong, stroke, I am deep inside her sex.
Bliss. Complete and utter bliss.
Only Tara. Her mouth opens and a moan slips from her lips. She grasps my ass and pulls me deeper into her body. I thrust and pull back.
Yes, oh yes.
Her bottom lips pulls beneath her top teeth and I know she’s close. I lean forward and kiss her. My mouth opening her mouth. My tongue sweeping and teasing and taunting.
“Please, Jake, please,” she whispers, and I’m lost.
Consumed with my need and my pleasure, I slide in and out of her body. With each stroke, her sex tightens around my shaft. Pleasure erupts, and I come hard and fast.
A roar, deep and guttural, filled with loss and want and desire and need, rips through my throat and out of my body, and I know. I know in this instant that I’ve fallen in love.
Tara’s body trembles beneath mine. Finally, after we’ve lain there for moments that seem like hours, and my heart has stilled, and my breath is caught, I look at her and I kiss her with a deep softness. I pull myself from her body. Then without another word, without looking back, I leave her alone in the afterglow of our sex.
Without even saying good-bye.
* * *
I can’t go home. I can’t go anywhere that belongs to my heart, because my heart is dead. Shredded. I thought my heart was ripped out of my chest when Susie died, but I was wrong.
My heart died on what was meant to be my six-year anniversary. My heart died when Lily looked at me with a mixture of sadness and fear. My heart disintegrated when I left Tara, alone, and in tears.
Jake is dead.
Only Wonderfuck remains.
So I go to Wonderfuck’s favorite home.
I go to The London. I walk past Pierre, the concierge who knows me, knows the room that is mine. I haven’t texted him details about a woman, I haven’t made my usual requests, I haven’t done any of the things I normally do when I’m wonderfucking.
I walk into my suite and faces flash through my mind. Faces with names that have been a balm on my wound for the last five and a half years. Six months of mourning Susie, and then the resurrection of me. Rebuilt as someone else entirely. Rebuilt into a man who only wants to give and receive pleasure.
There isn’t anything left but Wonderfuck.
I stare out the window at Los Angeles, at the city that has forever been my home. Can I permanently say good-bye to Jake? Could I walk away from Mom, from Rachel, from Lily? Would their lives be better without me in them? Let Rachel do what she does best, which is lead the family and make plans, without my interference.
I can’t see Tara again.
I text my realtor. I don’t want to go back to the condo.
My Wonderfuck phone vibrates. I’ve been ignoring its beeps and buzzes for weeks now. I press the “off” button and lay it on the table beside the bed. I take off my clothes, I shower, I crawl between the covers, and I sleep. I sleep the sleep of the dead.
Chapter 32
You are a complete asshole.”
I rub my chopsticks together and place them on the soy sauce dish. Our server hands me a hot washcloth. I wipe my hands and hand it back.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Don’t be pedantic. You know this’ll take more than one pathetic ‘I’m sorry.’”
“How’s Lily?”
“Confused. She wants to talk to you, but I told her you were away on business.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“What was I supposed to tell her? That you’re an asshole who called me a bitch and then disappeared?”
Ouch. I deserved that. And more.
“I texted.”
“Only because I threatened to call the police if you didn’t respond.” Rachel pours soy sauce into her dish. “She’s my daughter, and if I’m too angry to talk to you then I’m not letting Lily talk to you. I’m not that good of an actor. Better we get past this and then when we’re hunky-dory, you can come back from your business trip.”
We order, and once our server leaves I look at Rachel. She’s tired, but per her usual, looking as though she can hold everything together by sheer force of will.
“You’re the only male role model in Lily’s life. You don’t get to act like an ass to me or to Mom in front of Lily. Is that rule clear?”
“It wasn’t intentional.”
“Being an asshole to me or doing it in front of Lily?”
“The second one.”
“Right. Okay, fair enough. Adults disagree and I’m okay with that, but Jake, you really went in hard, and only because you didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”
She’s right, and while I generally hate it when big-sister-Rachel is right and little- brother-me is wrong, in this case she is exceedingly right. I’ve had two weeks to cool off, and I’ve actually begun to miss my big sister and my niece. I don’t tell her I’ve been to see Mom. Because I’m betting she knows.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, making no excuses for my behavior. “I’ll try to do better.” It’s the second sentence that thaws Rachel. I actually see the beginning of a smile laced with kindness.
“Thank you for the apology.”
And I know I’m forgiven. She could make me pay for my mistake, but that’s not who Rachel is as a human or as a judge. Not as a mother, a sister, or a daughter. She’s all about trying to build kindness and being empathetic.
The server drops our drinks and edamame at the table.
“Now why is your place for sale?”
I pluck an edamame pod from the bowl between us. “Because I can’t live there any longer.”
“You didn’t want to leave before.”
“And now it’s different.”
“Is it your neighbor? The one you were dating?
“We weren’t dating.”
“Okay, fucking. The one you were fucking.”
I toss the empty pod into the other bowl. “It’s more than that.” I tell her about going home and reliving the moment Susie jumped from the balcony. “I haven’t been back. I don’t want to go back.”
“Where’ve you been staying?”
I don’t want to tell her, because telling her makes my other life seem too close.
“A hotel.” I leave out the details and she doesn’t ask.
Two platters of sushi arrive. I lift a piece of yellowtail with my chopsticks and place it on my plate.
“We need to discuss Mom.” Rachel wears her serious I’m-a-judge face that tells people they better listen the fuc
k up. “Things aren’t getting better, and her doctor wants her to go into an assisted living facility. She recommended a specific one for Mom.”
I lean back in my chair. I’m not winning this battle, unless a miracle Alzheimer’s cure appears on the scene.
“They don’t have a spot for Mom right now, but they want us to come and look at it, and I want you to go with me.”
“That sounds like hell.”
“It’s not what I want either. I can make all these decisions alone, but it’s not fair, okay? I know part of you wants me to just do it, all of it, but then I’m the one who has to live with the decisions when you come and tell me I’ve made them all wrong. I’m not good with that. I’m not putting her in a place unless we both agree on it. It’s simple as that.”
Rachel is right. I’d absolutely prefer for her to make the decisions about Mom and where Mom goes, but she’s also right that forcing her make all the decisions isn’t fair.
“Set it up. I’ll be there.’
Rachel nods and dips a piece of sushi into the soy sauce. “Now what’s going on with the neighbor? Why is her place on the market too?”
My heart stalls. I look up from the piece of sashimi I just picked up. “What’re you talking about?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I haven’t been back since that night . . . the night when . . .” I pause, because Rachel doesn’t know everything about that night. About how I’d gone back to Malibu to see Tara and then left her crying on the couch. “I didn’t know. Haven’t talked to her.”
“Are you okay?” She squints at me. “You look . . . I don’t know, a little sick?”
I feel sick. My chest is tight and my stomach is sour. “Yeah. No. I don’t know.” The idea of not knowing where Tara lives . . . that throws me. I keep picturing her in her bedroom, with her laptop and Jango, and this fantasy I’ve created about what her life will continue to be, whether I’m in it or not, has just been smashed by the reality that soon I won’t even know where Tara lives.
Rachel checks her phone. “Shit. I didn’t realize how late it is. I have to get Lily from violin.” She stands. “Next weekend. I’ll send you the details. And call Lily. Later today. Come by tomorrow to see her.”