“Are you okay?” you asked me for the second time that afternoon, placing a steadying hand on my back.
“Better than I’ve been in months,” I answered.
In the restroom, I kept thinking about how it felt when you held me, how distant I was from Darren, and how much hurt I’d kept bottled up these past months. I craved the kind of closeness I felt in your embrace. I closed my eyes and thought about your lips against mine. The warmth and pressure of them, the taste. I imagined giving myself over to you, completely, the way I used to, abandoning all control, letting you be in charge. I wanted that. I needed that. I’d been trying so hard to hold everything together, to hold myself together, and I was done. I needed someone else to take over. I needed you to take over.
When I got back to our couch, you’d already paid the bill.
“Want to go for a walk in the park?” you asked. “We can get some water from the bodega out there.”
“Sounds good,” I said, putting my hand out. You grabbed it and stood. That moment of skin-to-skin contact felt charged. You looked at me, and our eyes locked. My breathing slowed, unconsciously mirroring yours. You took a step closer to me.
“Gabe—” I started.
You let go of my hand. “I’m sorry,” you said, looking down. “I forgot myself.”
“Gabe,” I said again, trying to put a whole sentence’s worth of meaning in that one word.
You looked back at me, and this time neither one of us could break the connection. I reached out and touched your lips with my fingertips.
“We shouldn’t,” you said, holding my hand in both of yours.
And then I don’t know who leaned in first, if it was you or me or maybe we moved at the exact same time, but my mouth was against yours, and all of a sudden everything wrong in the world felt right.
You pulled me closer so our bodies were pressed together, thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach, chest to chest.
“Where’s your hotel?” I whispered.
“I’m staying at the Warwick on Sixth Avenue. But . . . Luce.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I wanted you in that moment.
I kissed you again and you moaned, slipping your hand into the back pocket of my jeans, just like you used to.
• • •
WHEN WE GOT to your hotel room, I think you asked me four times if I was sure this is what I wanted to do. I said yes every time. I was drunk, but I wasn’t incapacitated. I knew what I wanted. What I needed.
“Do you want to do this?” I finally asked.
“Of course!” you said. “But I don’t want you to regret it.”
I kissed you harder and concentrated on the taste of you. Gabe plus whiskey was a flavor I knew well.
“Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,” you whispered, like you couldn’t believe you were getting the chance to say my name again.
You grabbed for the hem of my T-shirt. I put my hand on yours, self-conscious all of a sudden.
“My body doesn’t look the same,” I whispered.
You pulled the T-shirt up and over my head.
“Your body is gorgeous,” you whispered back.
We wrestled each other out of our clothes and you lifted me up and tossed me onto the bed. A move you’d used on me eleven years before. I reached up and pulled you down with me, running my hands along the muscles of your back, feeling them contract under my fingers. The line from that E. E. Cummings poem kept running through my head. i like my body when it is with your body. I do, Gabe. I like my body better when I’m with you, I like myself better.
“There is no one like you,” you whispered as you slid into me. “There is nothing like this.”
I answered with an arch of my back and a moan. “No one,” I breathed. “Nothing.”
Afterward, we lay naked on top of the blanket, your body curled around mine the way it used to. Your hand was on my stomach. I thought about the first time we went to Faces & Names, the trip to your apartment afterward, your confessions in the dark.
“What if you came with me,” you said, “to Jerusalem.”
“What if we traveled down a rainbow highway and danced on the moon,” I answered.
“I’m serious,” you said, kissing my neck.
“This feels like déjà vu,” I answered. “Though now I could probably figure something out with my job. Working remotely. A satellite office. They wouldn’t want to lose me.”
Your teeth tugged my earlobe. “Brilliant beauty,” you said.
I flipped over to face you. “I can’t,” I told you. “You know I can’t. My kids are here, I can’t leave them, and there’s no way Darren would let me take them to Israel. Especially if it meant I’d be taking them to you.” I twined my hand with yours. “But if it were just me, I’d be there in a heartbeat.”
I still can’t believe I said that. That I was truly considering your offer after one afternoon in bed with you. Though it wasn’t one afternoon, was it? It was one afternoon thirteen years in the making. And I’d thought Darren was done with me, that he’d found somebody who ticked all the boxes in whatever new checklist he’d made.
You didn’t say anything more, then, just bent your head down and ran your tongue in a circle around my nipple. I felt you, hard, against my leg.
“Again?” I asked.
You took your mouth off my breast. “You make me feel like I’m twenty-three.”
“So again,” I said.
You kissed your way down my stomach in response.
• • •
IT WAS LIKE we were that binary star again, orbiting around each other, no planets or asteroids for light-years. I should’ve been thinking about my children or my husband, but I was thinking only about you and how you made me feel. How, with all the years between us, our connection felt deeper than it did when we were twenty-four. We’d both changed, but in ways that made us more compatible instead of less so. We talked about us, about staying in touch, about whether I’d be able to visit you in Jerusalem. You typed your new address into my phone.
“I want to see you again, like this,” you said, running your hand down my naked body.
My skin goose-bumped, from my shoulders down to my ankles. My nipples stiffened. I rolled over and wrapped my arm around your chest. “Me too,” I said. “But I can’t figure out how we can make that work.”
“If he’s cheating on you, you should leave him,” you said, your chin resting on the top of my head. “You should be with me.”
I kissed your neck and sighed. Lying next to you was intoxicating—I felt the euphoria of that Gabe high; the addiction was back. I’d have to go back to day one, kick the habit all over again. Except I didn’t want to. “It’s not that easy,” I said. “But I’ll see if I can figure out a reason to travel to Jerusalem for work . . . Maybe London? That’s more plausible. Could you meet me there?”
“Lucy,” you said, your arm tightening around my back, “I’ll meet you anywhere. I never thought I’d have a second chance with you; I’m not going to screw it up. You’re my light. You always have been.”
“I know,” I said quietly, absorbing your words. “But I’m responsible for other people now. That’s partly why I haven’t said anything to Darren about this other woman. What would it do to Violet and Liam if I left their dad? You and your mom were so hurt when your dad left.”
You were quiet for a while, and then you said, “But what will it do to you if you stay with him?”
I pulled myself closer to you. “They’re more important than I am,” I said. “But maybe Darren will make the first move. Let’s see what the universe has in store.”
“Take the current when it serves?” you said.
I smiled at the reference. “It always comes back to Shakespeare with us, doesn’t it?”
“‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, / I s
ummon up remembrance of things past,’” you said. “I have a book of his sonnets that fits in my backpack. I’ve read Shakespeare in every hellhole this world has to offer, and that’s my favorite line. It always makes me think of you, no matter where I am.”
I was in your thrall again, Gabe, because even though so much of you had changed, so much of you hadn’t. And that part of you—the part that quoted Shakespeare at the drop of a hat—made me feel young and hopeful and infinite. I thought for a moment about asking you to stay. I wondered if your answer would be different than it was ten years before. But I was afraid that it wouldn’t be. And that my question would ruin the beauty of our afternoon.
“I’ll let you figure things out,” you said. “I’ll give you some space.”
“That’s probably best,” I said, wishing it weren’t.
You grabbed my hand. “But know I’ll be thinking about you,” you said.
“Me too,” I whispered.
We shared one final kiss, and I took the subway home, still orbiting around you in my mind.
lxix
There are so many kinds of secrets. The sweet ones you want to savor like candy, the grenades that have the potential to destroy your world, and the exciting ones that are more fun the more you share them. Even though our secret was a grenade, it still felt sweet to me. I went home and took a shower, thinking about your touch, your words, your body against mine. I put on an old Columbia sweatshirt that I’d worn when we lived together and a pair of leggings. Instead of turning to my computer to answer e-mail, I pulled out a worn copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I hadn’t read it since college. I’m not even sure how it escaped getting sold back to the Strand for so many years, but I was glad it had. I skipped right to chapter fifteen—John Thomas and Lady Jane. Do you remember that chapter? It’s the one where Lady Chatterley and Mellors escape together into the garden shed and weave flowers into each other’s pubic hair. I found the scene so sexy in college. I still do.
For the next hour I read about Connie and Mellors and Hilda and Venice. I thought about how our afternoon together was like the night Connie and Mellors spent together before she traveled to Italy.
Then I heard Darren’s key in the lock.
“Mommy!” Violet came racing into the apartment.
“Mommy, Mommy!” Liam came racing after her.
They both jumped onto the couch with me and I kissed their hair.
“Daddy told a secret,” Liam informed me.
“Shh,” Violet said. “A secret means we can’t tell, Liam. Remember? It’s been a secret for a long time and we’re not even supposed to know.”
The name Linda flashed into my mind again. He couldn’t have told them anything about her, could he?
Darren dropped the kids’ bag of stuff in the entrance to the living room. “Well, they kept that quiet for all of thirty seconds.”
“We didn’t tell, Daddy,” Violet said. “Pinky promise, right Liam?”
Liam held out his little pinky.
Darren groaned. Then he disappeared up the stairs.
“Hey, wait!” I called after him. “Do I get to know this secret or not?”
“You do!” he said. “I’m just getting something to show you.”
“How was your day?” I forced myself to ask the kids.
“Grandma and Grandpa took us to their park,” Violet said. “You remember it, right? It’s smaller than our park, but has a maze with really tall walls.”
“I do,” I told her. “And it has seesaws.”
She nodded.
“We did seesaws,” Liam said.
“But he’s littler, so Daddy needed to help so I wasn’t stuck on the bottom.” Violet jumped off the couch. “I’m going to check on my dolls.”
“Checking on my Legos,” Liam said, jumping after her.
I followed them up the stairs to find Darren. He was in the study, the room that he always reminded me would become a bedroom for a third kid if we had one, and had booted up his laptop.
“Those little stinkers,” he said, as he clicked open a few windows. “I hadn’t been planning to tell you until I’d had all the work done, but they heard me talking to my dad about it. I was trying to time it with our anniversary. Can you believe it’s almost ten years?”
“Eight,” I answered. “We’ll be married eight years in November.”
Darren smiled. “Ten since the first time we met.” Then he turned the computer so the screen faced me. “I bought the house.”
My brain was having trouble processing what he was saying. “You what?”
“That’s the secret!” he said. “I’ve been stalking this house since the summer after Violet was born. I wanted to buy the place where we met. And I finally convinced them to sell in January.”
I was still struggling to unravel what was going on. Darren stood up and took my hand.
“I know things haven’t been the best this past year or so,” he said, “but we were so happy last summer out in East Hampton, and I thought with this house . . .”
Tears pooled in my eyes. “Oh, Darren,” I said, squeezing his hand. He really did still love me, he did still want us to work. I hadn’t been sure until that moment. But it made his affair even more confusing. Why would he be doing that while he was planning this?
He squeezed my hand back. “I’ve been secretly communicating with the Realtor, a really lovely older woman named Linda, since the fall. The weekend I said I was golfing with my friends in March, I actually went out there and closed on the house.”
The Realtor? I felt sick.
For all those months I let myself believe he was cheating on me. I created a new image of who Darren was, what he wanted, how he’d betrayed me; I thought I’d understood what was happening. I’d thought I understood him in a way he’d never understood me. But I didn’t. Not at all.
“And it’s being renovated as we speak,” he said. “The place was pretty trashed when I saw it. So did I surprise you? Did you suspect anything?”
I thought about the Darren I first fell in love with—the one who’d made me laugh so hard my cheeks hurt, the one who’d turned storm clouds into sunshine. Even though I couldn’t remember the last time we’d laughed until there were tears in our eyes, that Darren was still there, and I’d ignored him. I’d chosen to focus on what was wrong instead of what was right. And all the while he was trying to buy the house where we first met. He was trying to fix things. But he was doing it in the exact way I’d asked him not to, over and over. He’d cut me out of a big decision again.
It was all too overwhelming. I started to cry.
“You like it?” he asked. “Are those happy tears?”
“It’s beautiful,” I answered, wiping my eyes. The guilt threatened to swallow me whole. The shame.
Darren wrapped his arms around me. “Only the best for you,” he whispered into my hair. Then he kicked the door shut and kissed me with a passion I hadn’t felt from him in a long time.
I kissed him back, and for the second time in five hours, a man was taking off my shirt. For the second time, a man had his mouth on my breast. For the second time, I felt a man hard against my leg. But this time, even though my body responded, I felt numb.
• • •
“I HATED KEEPING SECRETS from you,” Darren said after, as he put my sweatshirt back on me. “But your reaction was totally worth it. Maybe next weekend we could head out there and get reacquainted with the house.”
“Great idea,” I said, making sure that my eyes were dry, that there was a smile on my face. “I love it.”
He kissed me again, and then opened the door, yelling for the kids. “Mommy knows about our new secret house! Who wants pizza for dinner to celebrate?”
I didn’t think I’d be able to eat a bite.
lxx
On Monday morning, at work, I tried to put everything out
of my mind—you, that hotel room, Darren, the beach house—and concentrate on the new show I was developing. It didn’t have a name yet, but the idea was to invite famous musicians to write songs introducing kids to different aspects of government. The pilot was going to be about monarchies, and we were in talks with Elton John to compose the songs for that episode. The concept had actually come out of something Violet had said to me last Election Day—she wanted to know who I was going to vote for to be princess.
But I couldn’t focus on the call I needed to make to Elton John’s manager or the notes I was typing up on the proposed script. I needed to talk to someone about what had happened—with you and me, with Darren and me—but I felt so ashamed. I knew my brother would still love me, that Kate would still be my best friend, but I didn’t want them to change their opinion of me, even a little, when I showed them what I was capable of. And I thought they might. If I were in their position, my opinion would probably change.
Julia might understand, though. Ever since she and I went to your gallery show together, she asked about you. And since she wasn’t married, maybe she wouldn’t be as disturbed by all of it as I imagined Kate or Jason would be. I called her at her office.
“Hey!” she said when she picked up. “I was going to call you today. I have news.”
I stretched my phone cord and looked out the window. “Good news?”
“Great news,” she said. “I gave my notice this morning.”
“You got a new job?” I asked. Julia had been looking for the last few months, but art director positions were few and far between, especially because she didn’t want to leave children’s books.
“I did.” I could hear her smiling over the phone. “You’re talking to the newest art director of Little Golden Books at Random House. I start in three weeks!”
“Congratulations!” I said. “That’s fantastic. Violet loves those Little Golden Books. We have like twenty of them.”
The Light We Lost Page 21