Adriana and Emmy exchanged looks again and giggled.
‘Come on, Marcia,’ Adriana said, shimmying her way to a standing position while pulling on Leigh’s forearm. ‘We might just teach you to have some fun yet.’
if you think it’s too big, you don’t deserve it
‘Come to bed, baby. It’s almost one – don’t you think it’s time to call it a night?’ Russell pulled off his T-shirt and turned on his side to face Leigh, resting his head full of black curls on his right hand. He rubbed the sheets with his left hand and patted them a little, a gesture that was meant to be tempting, appealing, but that Leigh always found a little threatening.
‘I just have a few more pages. Is the light bothering you? I can move to the living room.’
He sighed and picked up his book, Strength Training Anatomy. ‘It’s not the light, sweetheart, and you know that. It’s the fact that we haven’t fallen asleep together in weeks. I just miss you.’
Her first thought was that he sounded like a whiny, petulant child; this was, after all, one of the most sought-after manuscripts of the year, and it was crucial that she have it read for the next morning’s acquisitions meeting. It had taken eight impossibly long years of dedicated hard work to finally – finally! – be within striking distance of senior editor (there were, after all, only six at Brook Harris, and she could potentially be the youngest one), and Russell seemed to think that after a year of dating he was entitled to commandeer her entire life. She wasn’t the one who had asked him to stay over tonight, who had just shown up on his doorstep on her way from her weekly poker game, long lashes all a-flutter and all Baby, I just had to see you.
Next thought: She was the most horrid, unappreciative, ungrateful bitch alive for even thinking such things about Russell. She certainly wasn’t this resentful a year ago. When he approached her at the book party Brook Harris was throwing in honor of Bill Parcells (who had just written a memoir of his years as the Cowboys’ coach), she recognized him instantly. Not that she ever watched ESPN – she didn’t – but with his boyish smile and dimples and reputation as one of the most desirable bachelors in Manhattan, she knew enough to be extra charming when he introduced himself. They’d talked for hours that night, first at the party and then over Amstels at Pete’s Tavern. He had been almost shockingly up-front about being sick of the dating scene in New York, how he was over dating models and actresses and was ready to meet, in his words, a ‘real girl,’ implying, of course, that Leigh was a perfect candidate. Naturally, she was honored by the attention: Who wouldn’t want Russell Perrin pursuing her? He fulfilled every single little box on every single checklist she’d drafted in the last ten years. He was, by all accounts, exactly the kind of man she hoped to find but never actually thought she would.
Now here she was, almost a year into a relationship with a gorgeous guy who also just happened to be sensitive, kind, caring, and madly in love with her, and all she felt was smothered. It was abundantly obvious to everyone else in Leigh’s life that she had finally met The One; why wasn’t it clearer to her? As if to drive this point home, Russell turned her face to his, looked into her eyes, and said, ‘Leigh, sweetheart. I love you so much.’
‘I love you, too,’ Leigh answered automatically, without a second’s hesitation, although a third-party observer – even a perfect stranger – might have questioned the sincerity behind her declaration. What were you supposed to do when someone you liked and respected very much, someone you wanted to get to know better, announced after two months of otherwise casual dating that he was head over heels in love with you? You did what any confrontation-averse person would do and said ‘I love you, too’ right back. Leigh figured she’d grow into those words eventually, be able to say them with more conviction once they got to know each other better. It upset her that a year later she was still waiting.
She forced herself to look up from the page and assumed a syrupy-sweet voice. ‘I know it’s been really hectic lately, but it’s like clockwork every year: The second the calendar hits June, everything turns chaotic. I promise it won’t last forever.’
Leigh held her breath and waited for him to explode (which so far had never happened), waited for Russell to tell her he wouldn’t tolerate being patronized and that he didn’t appreciate being spoken to like she was the parent and he was the toddler who had just mashed peanut butter into the carpet.
Instead, he smiled. And not a smile filled with resentment or resignation; it was genuine, full of understanding, and impossibly apologetic. ‘I don’t mean to pressure you, baby. I know how much you love your job, and I want you to enjoy it while you can. Take your time and come to bed whenever you’re ready.’
‘While I can?’ Leigh’s head snapped up. ‘Are you really bringing that up again at one in the morning?’
‘No, sweetheart, I’m not bringing that up again. You’ve made it perfectly clear that San Francisco is not in your plans for right now – but I’d really like it if you weren’t so closed-minded about it. It would be an incredible opportunity, you know.’
‘For you,’ Leigh said, sulkily as a child.
‘For both of us.’
‘Russell, we haven’t even been together a year. I think it’s a little early to start talking about moving across the country together.’ The level of annoyance in her voice surprised them both.
‘It’s never too early when you love someone, Leigh,’ he said, his own voice even and steady. This very evenness, which had appealed to her so much in the beginning, could now infuriate her; his refusal to get mad, his complete mastery of his emotions, made her wonder if he ever even heard what she was saying.
‘Let’s not talk about it now, okay?’ she asked.
He sat up and slid to the end of the bed, closer to the corner where Leigh had placed her comfy reading chair and soft white-light reading lamp. The oversized down comforter – the one she’d spent weeks searching for, testing every brand on the market for softness and puffiness – slid to the floor and nearly knocked the bonsai tree off the nightstand. Russell didn’t appear to notice. ‘Why don’t I make you some tea?’ he asked.
Again Leigh felt like she needed to harness every ounce of willpower not to scream. She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want tea. She just wanted him to stop talking.
She took a deep breath, slowly, without being obvious about it. ‘Thanks, but I’m really fine. Just give me a few more minutes, okay?’
He gazed at her with an understanding smile before bounding out of bed and wrapping her in a bear hug. She felt her body stiffen; she couldn’t help it. Russell just hugged harder and sneaked his face into the crook of her neck, wedging it in just above her shoulder and under her chin. His five o’clock shadow scratched her skin and she squirmed.
‘Does it tickle?’ He laughed. ‘My dad’s always said I’d eventually have to shave twice a day, but I never wanted to believe him.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I’m going to get some water. Want some?’
‘Sure,’ Leigh said, although she didn’t. She turned her attention back to the manuscript and had worked her way through half a page when Russell called from the kitchen.
‘Where do you keep the honey?’
‘The what?’ she yelled back.
‘The honey. I’m making us tea and I want to make it with warm milk and honey. Do you have any?’
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s in the cabinet above the microwave.’
He returned moments later with a mug in each hand and a bag of Newman’s Own chocolate chip cookies between his teeth. ‘Take a break, baby. I promise I’ll leave you alone after a midnight snack.’
Midnight? Leigh thought. It’s one-thirty in the morning and I have to be up in five and a half hours. Not to mention that not everyone has the naturally toned body of an elite college athlete and can afford to chew cookies at all hours.
She bit into a cookie and remembered all the years in her early and mid-twenties that she had wanted this scene so badly: the
doting boyfriend, the romantic late-night picnic, the comfortable apartment filled with all the things she loved. Back then it had felt almost impossible or, at least, very far away; now she had it all, but the reality didn’t feel anything like the fantasy.
With cookies barely swallowed and tea still unfinished, Russell curled himself around a pillow and promptly fell into an intensely deep and restful sleep. Who slept like that? It never ceased to amaze Leigh. He claimed it came from a childhood surrounded by chaos, from learning to sleep through the clamor of two parents, two sisters, a live-in nanny, and three chatty beagles. Perhaps. But Leigh figured it had more to do with his clear conscience and his clean living and, if she was going to be really honest, with the fact that his life just wasn’t really all that stressful. How hard would it be to sleep like a baby if your daily routine included two hours of exercise (an hour of weights and an hour of cardio) and lacked caffeine, sugar, preservatives, white flour, and trans fats? If you taped a weekly thirty-minute show on a subject (sports) you loved innately just by virtue of being male, and had a team of writers and producers who put it all together for you to read? If you had healthy and productive relationships with both family and friends, all of whom loved and admired you for just being yourself? It was enough to make a person sick, or at the very least resentful, which, if she was being perfectly frank, it often made Leigh.
Tonight it succeeded only in making Leigh desperately want a cigarette. No matter that she’d quit nearly a year ago, right when she and Russell started dating; not a day went by that she didn’t desperately yearn for a nice long drag. Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to hold something between their fingers. That was all well and good, but there was nothing quite like actually smoking it: Leigh loved inhaling. To pull with your lips on that filter and feel the smoke drift across your tongue, down your throat, and directly into your lungs was to be transported momentarily to nirvana. She remembered – every day – how it felt after the first inhale, just as the nicotine was hitting her bloodstream. A few seconds of both tranquillity and alertness, together, in exactly the right amounts. Then the slow exhale – forceful enough so that the smoke didn’t merely seep from your mouth but not so energetic that it disrupted the moment – would complete the blissful experience.
Leigh wasn’t an idiot, though, and certainly knew all the nasty drawbacks of her beloved habit. Emphysema. Lung cancer. Heart disease. High blood pressure. Having to endure graphic photos of blackened lungs in magazines and terrifying commercials of gravelly voiced people with tracheotomies. The yellowed teeth and the wrinkles and the smoky hair and the stained top knuckle on her right middle finger. Her mother’s constant harping. Her doctor’s dire predictions. The maddening Just-in-Case-You-Haven’t-Heard voice total strangers used when they sidled up to her outside her office building to enumerate smoking’s many dangers. And then Russell! Mr. My Body Is a Temple would never, ever date a smoker, and he’d made that perfectly clear from day one. It was enough to make even the most devoted smoker call uncle, and after eight years of pack-a-day enjoyment, Leigh finally caved. It had required superhuman effort and an ability to endure torturous cravings for weeks on end, but she had persevered. So far she hadn’t managed to rid herself of nicotine entirely – some might say she had succeeded only in transferring her tenacious addiction from cigarettes to nicotine gum – but that was neither here nor there. The gum wasn’t going to kill her in the immediate future, she hoped, and if it did, well, so be it.
She popped an extra piece for good measure and set aside the manuscript. It usually wasn’t too difficult to get engaged by a hot book that multiple publishing houses were clamoring for, but this one felt like drudgery. Would the American public really want to read another eight-hundred-page historical fiction tome about an ex-president from the last century? It was enough already. All she wanted to do was curl up with a good beach read and get lost in something that wasn’t so deadly boring. She would’ve given anything for it to be a No Human Contact Monday Night. Sapped of energy and in no mood to read another word about a campaign that had taken place over a hundred years earlier, Leigh tossed aside the manuscript and pulled her MacBook onto her lap.
Often one of her friends was on IM at two in the morning, but tonight all was quiet. Leigh clicked through her favorite Web sites quickly, efficiently, her eyes scanning the pages for information. On cnn.com, an alligator attack in South Florida. On Yahoo!, a video demonstrating how to make a watermelon basket using only a chef’s knife and a nontoxic marker. On gofugyourself.com a funny bit about Tom Cruise’s bangs and the Flowbee. On neimanmarcus.com an announcement regarding upgraded shipping on all leather accessories. Click, click, click, click. She scanned the most recent bestseller list on Publishers Weekly, clicked to support free mammograms at The Breast Cancer Site, and checked that her direct deposit went through at chase.com. She briefly considered checking the symptoms for obsessive-compulsive disorder at WebMD but resisted. Finally feeling weary if not entirely exhausted, Leigh carefully washed her face using the correct upward circular motions and swapped her sweats for a pair of soft cotton shorts. She watched Russell’s face as she climbed in next to him, inching her way slowly under the comforter, determined not to wake him. He remained motionless. She switched off the light and managed to flip onto her side without disturbing him, but just as her mind started to slow and her limbs began to relax into the cool sheets, she felt his body press against hers. His aroused body. He enveloped her in his arms and pushed his pelvis against her lower back.
‘Hey there,’ he whispered in her ear, his breath still smelling of cookies.
She lay there limp, simultaneously praying he would fall back to sleep and hating herself for wishing that.
‘Leigh, baby, are you awake? I know I am.’ He gave another little push just in case she wasn’t sure what he meant.
‘I’m exhausted, Russ. It’s so late already, and I have to be up early for the meeting tomorrow.’ When did I start to sound like my mother? she wondered.
‘I promise you won’t have to do a thing.’
He pulled her closer and kissed her neck. She shivered, which he interpreted as delight, and ran his fingers over her goose bumps, which he took as a good sign. When they first started dating, she thought he was the best kisser on earth. She still remembered their first kiss – it had been positively transcendent. He took her home in a cab after the book party and the dive bar, and just before they reached her building, he pulled her toward him for one of the softest, most amazing kisses she’d ever experienced. He used the perfect combination of lips and tongue, the ideal pressure, the exact right amount of passion. And there was no doubt he had plenty of experience on which to draw, having been one of the most well-known and sought-after men she had ever met. Yet in the last few months, it had started to feel like she was kissing a stranger – and not in an exciting way. Instead of soft and warm, his mouth now often felt cold and damp and a little shocking on her skin. His tongue probed too voraciously; his lips always seemed either rigid or fleshy. Tonight, against the back of her neck, they felt like they were made out of papier-mâché before it properly hardened. Pulpy papier-mâché. Refrigerated, pulpy papier-mâché.
‘Russ.’ She sighed and clenched her eyes closed.
He stroked her hair and rubbed her shoulders, trying to relax her. ‘What, baby? Is this so awful?’
She didn’t tell him that each touch felt like a violation. Hadn’t the sex once been fantastic? Back when Russell was a bit elusive and flirty and seductive, and not quite so clingy or so determined to settle down with a more serious girl than all the flighty ones from his twenties? It all seemed like so long ago.
Before she realized what was happening, he worked her shorts down to her knees and pulled her even closer. His upper arms were huge, literally bulging under
her chin and inadvertently pressing against her throat. His chest threw off heat like a furnace and the hair on his thighs felt like sandpaper. And for the first time ever while in bed with Russell, she began to feel the familiar heart-attack symptoms begin.
‘Stop it!’ she breathed, her whisper louder than she planned. ‘I can’t do this now.’
His embrace slackened instantly and Leigh was instantly grateful that it was too dark to see his face.
‘Russ, I’m sorry. It’s just that—’
‘No worries, Leigh. Really, I understand.’ His voice sounded calm but distant. He rolled away from her and within minutes his breathing steadied to its deep-sleep rate.
Leigh finally fell asleep just before six, just as the lady above donned her various foot accoutrements and commenced the day’s clomping, but it wasn’t until the next morning’s meeting, at which she felt inarticulate and thick-tongued from exhaustion, that she remembered her final thought before drifting off. It was of dinner with the girls a couple of weeks earlier and their proclamations of change. Emmy was going to expand her experience by having lots of affairs and Adriana had made a resolution to give monogamy the old college try. For the ten days since then Leigh hadn’t been able to think of anything she was willing to contribute. Until now. Wouldn’t it be funny to announce that she was going to work up the nerve to end her flawed relationship even though she was utterly terrified of being alone and convinced she wouldn’t meet anyone who loved her half as much as Russell so obviously did? That she kept waiting and waiting to feel the way about Russell everyone thought she should, but that so far it hadn’t happened? Ha-ha. Hysterical, she thought to herself. They wouldn’t believe it for a second.
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