As she cried, she felt as if she was finally unloading all the confusion and hurt she’d brought with her. Her encounter with 22F hadn’t done that, nor had her experiences with the men she’d tried to use to rid herself of all her self-doubt. No man was going to be the solution to her problems; she needed to figure out for herself who she was and what she wanted, what she was going to do next.
Believing she was using Michael the same way she’d used all those other men, she sat up and shoved the hair out of her face roughly, looking at him as if she’d slapped him.
“I’m so sorry.” She shook her head slightly, pulling away from him. “I have to go. This isn’t fair to you. You don’t deserve this.”
She jumped from his lap and grabbed her dress, hurriedly yanked it over her head before fumbling with the zipper.
He stood.
“Vicki, what are you sorry about? You have no reason to apologize. I don’t understand—”
The look on his face said she was clearly confusing him. Well, his five minutes were up, and she was going to deal with her shit on her own. She had missed the whole point of the mission statement. It was up to her to create her reality, and if her reality sucked…well, then it was up to her to form a new one. She had to start with herself. And diving into another fling, another attempt to right herself by filling the void with a man, was not the way to do it.
Before he could finish his thought, she cut him off. “Thank you for this morning, for breakfast and for…well, for letting me fall apart. But I have to put myself back together. You were right about the void, Michael, but I have to fill it myself. I’m not dragging anyone else into my mess until I’ve figured it out.”
She ran before he could answer. Snatching her purse from the breakfast bar as she dashed past it, she did her best to get out the door and down the hall before he could pull on his pants. As she left him, she reminded him of his promise to leave her alone.
Vicki walked briskly once she turned the corner of the long hallway. The resort was shaped like a trapezoid with one side missing, so all the rooms had a view of the sea. She knew she was one floor down, but she took the long way and stayed on his floor all the way to the end of the walkway, wanting to be sure she’d see him from the stairwell on her floor if he was waiting at her door. She could just keep going down until she reached the lobby.
Beyond that, she wasn’t sure what she would have done if he had followed her. Some small part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t.
The first thing she did was pull the shades to her balcony. There would be no respite there for her again. She considered changing rooms but decided it would be better if she just went home. Facing her demons would take time, and she wanted to fight the battle on her home turf.
Her first call was to the airline, and she was energized just because she finally had an attitude to go with her plan. Earlier, when she’d been going to leave, she was just running from her problems again, believing they had followed her to Aruba. This time it was different.
Alan was going to be her first stop. She didn’t want him back. He’d probably done them both a favor by having the courage to leave. Not kicking him in the balls for cheating on her would take some willpower, but she wanted to talk through things with him. They needed to talk about the house. She could get an apartment, or go wherever she wanted to go to restart her career.
The kids would be next. They deserved to hear directly from her how sorry she was about everything, to know how much she loved them and was proud of them no matter what. Things were difficult, and they’d had to make a significant decision during an ugly and stressful time. They deserved to have their home back, and she and Alan would have to find a way to make it work for Kelly and Kevin. That was their responsibility as parents.
Before she could start thinking about job prospects and career choices, her plans were shattered. There were no available seats, even with an upgrade to first class, before her scheduled flight.
Fuck.
It might not have been the most mature and professional thing she’d done in a long time, but she threw herself on the bed and had a full-blown temper tantrum. Once she’d finished cursing into the pillow and flailing her feet, she bawled for a good twenty minutes.
There really is something cathartic about crying. I should do it more often.
The hot shower made her feel marginally better. She changed into walking shorts and a tank top after she’d cleaned up, eschewing sandals for flip-flops. It was time for a walk on the beach.
Just as she was about to walk out of the room, there was a knock on the door.
Her heart nearly hammered out of her chest. She’d managed, temporarily, to forget what had happened in front of the glass door that morning, but the knock brought it all back.
After conducting a rather lengthy internal debate, there was another knock. She approached the door quietly. If it’s him, I’m not answering. Peering through the peephole, she saw a tiny woman in a gray uniform. She was holding a small box.
Vicki opened the door, and the woman studied her with surprise. Although the shower had helped to calm her, it hadn’t done much to change the red-rimmed puffiness of her eyes. She knew she was a sight.
“Yes?”
The woman from housekeeping held out the box. “Miss Victoria Simpson?”
Puzzled, she nodded. “That’s me.”
“This package for you.” She raised the box a little higher, presumably for Vicki to take it.
“I didn’t order anything,” she answered, making no move to take the package.
Lifting it again, the woman looked at her beseechingly. “This package for you,” she repeated.
A lot of the hotel employees were from Venezuela, and Vicki decided this woman’s command of English wasn’t very good, and her own command of Spanish was nonexistent. Rather than try to debate the issue or refuse the package, she finally took it, figuring she could take it to the desk if it wasn’t really for her.
It was a simple white gift box, like the ones she’d seen people carrying when they left the gift shop, presumably with some trinket or another they’d bought as a souvenir. It even had the name of the hotel stamped on the top. It was barely large enough to hold a grapefruit, and it felt like it was empty.
Sitting on the bed, she opened it.
Inside she found her bra and panties. And a note.
Vicki—
You’re the one who is owed an apology. I was careless this morning, and for that I am truly sorry. I hope you can forgive me.
Please don’t run away again. You’ve been running since you left New York, and it’s time to stop. I don’t want to fix your problems for you, but I think I can help you fix them yourself. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.
I will never lie to you. I promised to leave you alone, and I hope you understand that I don’t break that promise lightly. If I’d taken the time to explain things to you sufficiently this morning and you’d chosen to leave anyway, I wouldn’t be doing this, but I’m worried that I may have made things worse for you. You don’t deserve to be hurting because of something I did.
If you honestly never want to see me again, I can accept that. But if you’re scared and embarrassed about what happened between us, or if you’re afraid I’m just another one of the men you’ve been trying to use to find yourself, then come back to the bar tonight after dinner.
I’ll be there until 9.
Michael
Leaving the bra and panties where they lay on the bed, she shoved the folded note in her pocket and left the room. She needed a chance to clear her head. A chance to think.
Vicki sighed when she felt the warm sand under her feet. The farther she walked, the more she relaxed, not realizing the pressure the resort—and Michael’s presence in it—was weighing her down until she’d put some distance between them. Her mind was a jumble of tasks and emotions. A longing she couldn’t define made her want to find him that evening, to follow him into the dark place she sensed he wanted to
show her.
He hadn’t been too far off the mark when he’d zeroed in on her reading. The more stressful things had gotten at work, the more she’d tried to escape through fiction. Her murder mysteries and classics had given way to steamier romance novels, and lately she’d become almost addicted to straight-up erotica. In particular, she’d found some of the novels about BDSM to be the most interesting and exciting.
Alan probably didn’t believe she was only reading them; it was really no surprise he’d gone to the arms of another woman, since he hadn’t been in her arms in almost six months. Initially it was stress and the hours she was putting in at the office. Walking in the door at nine o’clock, picking at whatever was left from the dinner he’d made for himself and the kids, and crashing by eleven, only to start all over the next day at half past five, was certainly not conducive to a healthy sex life. But even when she had the occasional day off, one of them managed to be asleep before the other one even made it to bed. At first she was the one dragging herself to bed late. Since Kev had gone back to school, it had been Alan.
She wondered when the affair had started. The woman was familiar to her. The mother of one of Kevin’s friends, they’d just moved to town when Kevin started high school. Excited to finally not be the new kid, Kevin had fast become friends with Justin, and they’d been fairly tight ever since.
That also helped explain why Kevin would be so quick to move with his dad, but not why Alan would be so quick to move in with Carolyn. Unless it had been going on for much longer, and she’d just been a complete idiot. Her stomach hurt as she thought about the betrayal. They were married. That was supposed to mean something. Guilt waged with anger as she realized she’d mentally left the marriage herself; that his dick led him away might have been maddening, but her brain had been no kinder to Alan.
As she considered the cold detachment she felt about the situation, she accepted she’d need to file for divorce. She fully intended to offer the house to Alan when she got back. What if things with Carolyn didn’t work out? Her kids deserved some stability, and she would be damned if they’d get caught up in a relationship of Alan’s that might not last.
She needed to work. Calling an old friend of hers, an executive recruiter she’d known since college, she left a message telling her to ramp up the search with no geographic restrictions. What the hell…if she was going to start over, maybe a clean slate would be for the best.
Making mental lists, she continued down the beach until she reached the end of what she considered resort row. The sand was slightly less groomed, the beach narrower. She sat down to watch the horizon. As she descended, she heard the crinkle of the paper in her pocket. Reading Michael’s note again, she thought about all the things that had happened that morning.
Jesus, has it only been hours? It feels like days.
So she sat, thinking and reading until she saw a parallel between what she was doing with the note and what she’d been doing with Alan’s e-mail the night she’d met Michael. Wadding the paper messily, she shoved it back in her pocket and flopped back on the sand, closing her eyes against the harsh glare of the midday sun. The sun had moved a considerable distance across the sky when she opened them again, and she felt covered with sand from the ever-present trade winds Aruba was known for.
Stretching, she groaned as her body rebelled against her activities of the day. Slowly making her way back to the resort, she debated whether or not to go to the bar. There were fifty-seven reasons not to go, and quantifying “I’m drawn to him” against those fifty-seven reasons wasn’t working for her. Taking one step at a time, she resolved to shower and change, then to eat. She’d just play the rest by ear.
Her feigned nonchalance about the whole thing didn’t change her opinion on opening the curtains or sitting on the balcony. Once she had showered, she took a cab to Oranjestad for dinner, afraid she might run into him in the restaurant at the resort. She did a little window shopping since it was still early by vacation standards, finally choosing to dine at Que Pasa?, where she could sit outside and just have some appetizers and a couple of glasses of wine.
By the time she finished dinner, it was almost eight. Catching a cab was easy, and she was back at the resort in less than twenty minutes. She had decided during dinner that she’d go back to her room. Michael might have been an interesting vacation diversion, but she had grown-up things to do, and a schoolgirl crush—how the hell does a forty-something-year-old woman feel drawn to someone, anyway?—was not something she had time for.
Crossing the lobby, she didn’t even look toward the lounge. In truth she was afraid if she did, her feet would take her where her brain had decided not to go.
From his balcony, he had seen her as she strode through the courtyard, skirted the pool area, and walked onto the beach. As much as he tried to ignore it, a flash of arousal had shot through him when she bent over to pick up the flip-flops she’d kicked off her feet.
She really does think better when she’s on the move, he thought to himself. He held out hope that she’d come back to him, but the fiercely determined look she wore when he saw her return from her walk on the beach said otherwise.
Still, he waited, nursing his hope as he nursed his scotch.
Michael was seated at the same table he’d occupied the night they’d finally connected. He watched her cross to the elevator, press the call button, and pass through the sliding doors. The set of her shoulders, the stiff and jerky movement of her arms, the very fact that she avoided looking at the entry to the bar as if it would turn her to salt… He knew she wouldn’t come.
He sipped his drink and casually studied the rest of the people in the bar. As much as he was disappointed by her decision, he would honor it.
He let her go.
Chapter Nine
The frigid temperatures of early winter in upstate New York had long since washed away the memories of her days on the beach and at poolside. Nothing, however, seemed to help rid her of the memories of her time with Michael Collins. The breakfast he’d arranged so carefully, the scary but erotic experience in his suite, even his last communication to her.
She had found the note, still crumpled in her pocket, when she’d sorted her laundry. She’d flattened it out on the top of the washing machine, read it again, and had been unable to throw it away. It sat on the top of her dresser, mocking her, calling her a coward for not going to meet him.
The mission statement had been retyped, printed, and tacked to the refrigerator, held up with the magnet she’d once bought as a joke for Alan while on a business trip: I didn’t say it was your fault. I just said I was going to blame you. Maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all. She’d had plenty of time to ponder the rocky course of their marriage in the months since he’d left her. Getting through the holidays had been difficult, and she’d spent more than a few nights in front of the cold, empty fireplace, wallowing in regret.
Alan had wanted her to join them all at his new house—one big happy extended dysfunctional family. She’d managed to suppress the urge to slap him on the forehead when he’d asked her. She’d finally understood his request to meet for coffee in a relatively public space once he’d posed the question; he must have suspected she wouldn’t be immediately receptive to the idea. When she’d offered her acceptance on the condition that his new girlfriend, and owner of said house, go elsewhere, he seemed to conclude Vicki hadn’t yet accepted his new relationship. Vicki felt she was making progress since she no longer cursed aloud when she saw the woman or drove past her house.
“Vick, I’m only thinking about how hard it will be on the kids to have to split their time between us. Aren’t you ready to move past this anger? You were always one for putting things in perspective, making the best of a situation—”
Before he could spout any more self-help platitudes, she’d raised a hand and took a deep breath.
“Don’t forget, sweetheart, you’ve had over a year to accept your new relationship. Me? It’s still new news to me. So you’
ll have to forgive me if I’m not ready to break bread with the woman who stole my family. Rejoice in the fact that I no longer want to break bones.”
He’d tried to guilt her out of her anger, but she’d glared at him long enough that he left without getting his wish. The kids survived Thanksgiving dinner with Alan and dessert with her. They’d survived Christmas Eve at her place and Christmas Day with Alan. It was only the first year. She knew she’d get better at it eventually, but she was resigned to a slow healing process. That space inside her still needed to be filled, but it seemed as if she was slowly making deposits at a faster pace than withdrawals lately.
The best Christmas gift of all had come from Kelly…
* * *
Once Kevin opened his presents, the new video game system he’d asked for was too enticing a draw to keep him sitting in the living room listening to holiday music by the tree. He retreated to the den to play. Vicki found herself curled on one end of the sofa while Kelly occupied the other.
“Can I ask you something, Mom?”
Her daughter had been a bit introspective of late, not her normal outgoing self. Although Vicki had tried to get her to open up a few times, there were too many similarities between them for her to delude herself. Kelly was going to talk to her when she felt good and ready, and not a moment before. In fact, pushing would probably make it take longer. It sucks when the apple is resting firmly against the base of the tree. She could only hope Kelly was finally ready to let her in.
“Of course you can, honey.” She drew a shallow breath and waited.
“When did you know? I mean, you thought Dad was the one once. Why’d you think that?”
Vicki leaned back on the couch and took a sip of her hot chocolate, wishing she’d spiked it with something.
“We loved each other. He was my best friend, and I couldn’t imagine a time that I didn’t want him to be a part of my life.” With all the time she’d spent focusing on the point in time when her marriage had begun to unravel, it took this bizarre inquiry from her daughter to make her think about when it had…raveled. “I wanted him to be the last person I talked to every day, and the first one I saw when I woke up.”
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