by Maggie Marr
“We grew up together. We were engaged. Our families were great friends and this was the perfect match. The perfect marriage. There would be big family holidays and grandkids and fabulous family ski trips and trips to the beach. Really, the whole thing looked grand. But here’s the kicker. Susie was a sex addict. Hundreds and hundreds of men. Women too. I didn’t know.”
I pause and roll my eyes to the ceiling. “How the fuck didn’t I know?”
My gaze lands on Vida again who is transfixed, her face frozen as though it takes all of her therapeutic prowess to simply listen to my tale.
“But I didn’t, and she finally told me, and I told her I still loved her and that she could go to rehab. Work her program. That I’d love her through it, and I did. And she was working her program and in recovery.”
I clasp my hands together. The muscle in my jaw tightens. “Six weeks before our wedding I took a business trip to Japan. I got back and Susie had relapsed. She was beyond upset. Wanted to call off the wedding, but I wouldn’t let her. I told her no. I told her that I wanted her in my life no matter what, and I did. And that me wanting her to be my wife would never change. That I would always want her no matter who she was or what she did or…who she”—I swallow and take a deep breath—“fucked. I simply wanted her. I wouldn’t let her go and I meant every word. She didn’t want to agree with me but finally, after hours, she said okay. So I come home from work one evening and….”
I’m back. I’m in the exact moment. I’m standing just inside my doorway. Susie stands on a table on my balcony. The night sky around her backlit by the high-rise lights. She looks like an angel, ethereal and gorgeous. She faces me and her blonde hair swirls around her face, caught by the wind. Her beautiful face. No fear. A smile. She takes one step back and…and…she’s gone…
My stomach clenches and I stand. I bolt for the door and I’m out of Vida’s office and down the hall. Bent over and unable to breathe. My guts twisting and pulling and knotting like my entire body will turn inside out.
***
“I’m sorry.”
I stand just inside the door to Vida’s office. A cold sweat clings to my skin. That night. Susie. The memories overwhelm me. Vida’s eyes harbor empathy. I’ve shaken loose her professional ability to remain distant.
I sit on the couch even though I don’t want to. I want this whole damn session to be finished. Telling her about my life, my past, my present, is tiresome and obviously nearly too much for me.
“How long ago?” Her voice nearly shakes and she clears her throat. “When did this happen?”
“Six years ago.” My voice is hoarse and high pitched. I clear my throat and lean back against the couch. We’ve got another twenty minutes. Fuck if I can make it. It would seem from Vida’s demeanor that I don’t get to go home just because I nearly puked my guts up discussing my dead fiancée.
“So this relationship with—”
“Tara.”
“Was this the first relationship you’d entered since your fiancée?”
“The first emotional relationship.” I reach for a glass of water and take a sip.
“So you’ve had other relationships?”
“Sexual ones.”
“About how many?”
Too much reality for one day. Fuck it. I’m in. What the actual fuck. Let’s see how much Vida can take.
“Since Susie’s death?”
Vida nods.
“Different women?”
She nods again.
“I don’t know maybe two or three—”
She nods, jots a note.
“Hundred.”
Vida stops writing. She swallows. She glances up from her paper at me. “And before Susie?”
“None. I mean Just her.”
“From?”
“From the time I was fifteen until the time she died.”
She lifts an eyebrow. From her look, I know I’m an unusual case. I fall outside the norms of human sexual behavior.
No shit.
I haven’t even told her the best part yet. I haven’t even told her about Wonderfuck and I’m uncertain I ever will.
“So sex is how you handle stress.”
“It was.”
“And now?”
“And now I can’t get hard unless I’m with Tara.”
“Can’t—”
“—get hard. My cock, my dick. It won’t work.”
“Unless you’re with Tara.”
I nod.
“And this started?”
“Around the same time she wrote her article about Wonderfuck.”
Vida’s eyes widen. Oh yeah, she’s read the story. She knows. Every woman in Los Angeles knows. The way my phone’s been blowing up, they all want a piece of what that story offered. She taps her pen against her pad of paper and her tongue brushes her bottom lip. “Are you saying that you’re—”
“I’m saying that the woman I’m involved with, the first woman I’ve been emotionally involved with since the death of my fiancée, wrote the story about Wonderfuck. I’m also saying that I’ve slept with several hundred women since the death of my fiancée, and until that story, I could sleep with any woman I wanted. And now, I can no longer fuck. I can’t masturbate. This”—I hold my hands in front of my crotch—“no longer functions unless I’m with Tara.”
“The woman who wrote the article.”
I nod.
“She knows about your lifestyle and she knows about Susie?”
I nod.
“Does she know?”
“About my malfunctioning cock?”
Vida nods.
“Yeah, she knows.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, what Tara doesn’t know is that I slept with her mother.”
Chapter Fourteen
Each time I visit Mom, the house Rachel and I grew up in looks less like a home and more like an empty shell. I plant Lily in the living room with Mom and two dolls.
“Rach?” I call. I don’t hear any response but when we left for ice cream she was headed to Dad’s study, one of the final places with loads of remnants of our childhood. Fading sunlight makes the hallway lonely. I turn into Dad’s office. Paneled wood, floor to ceiling book cases, huge dark-pained windows, and a giant mahogany desk create a very heavy, masculine look. Being called to enter this room used to scare the hell out of me. Still does.
I shiver.
Sitting at Dad’s desk, Rachel looks like a little girl playing grown up. She’s holding what looks like a photo in her hand. A shoebox is open on the desk.
“You okay?” She glances up.
Our gazes meet. Her eyes are red-rimmed and giant tears fill her eyes. What is in that photo? I walk around the desk and stand beside her. I press my hand to her shoulder and look down at the picture she holds.
My heart catches and skips a beat. There we are. All of us. Before. The happy before. I do the math in my head and this is…five, six, seven years ago? Rachel is pregnant, just barely showing, her hand beneath her belly and Dalton stands beside her smiling, with his arm around Rachel’s shoulder. Mom and Dad stand in the center. Mom’s eyes are so bright, so clear, so wickedly sharp, I’d forgotten how they looked when her mind worked. Dad, alive, and laughing and beside Mom is … My heart tightens and I have to remind myself to breathe.
Susie. My beautiful Susie. She is laughing and her whole face is absolutely lit up. I’m beside her with this giant stupid grin on my face, like someone – whoever is taking the picture – just told us a hilarious joke and they might’ve. This picture is alive, and there is joy and happiness and love and just so fucking much.
Rachel sniffles and drags the back of her hand beneath her nose. “What the fuck happened?” A tear drops from her eye. “And how did we not realize how good it was that day? I didn’t, did you? Did you have any idea how this…What was it? A Sunday maybe? A cookout in the backyard? I’m pregnant and Susie’s over and Dad’s grilling and it’s just a normal Sunday. How did we not know how lucky we were? How brilli
ant that day was?”
I put my hand on Rachel’s shoulder and I bend down and press my lips to her head. She’s right. She’s so fucking right. The people we desperately loved were all alive, and healthy, and happy, and filled with joy. It’s just a normal day and we didn’t even think about what we had, and who we were, and how good we had it. Or how lucky and blessed we were to experience that exact moment and how fucking quickly – with one foot over the edge into space – with the blink of an eye, so many of us would be gone.
Abso-fucking-lutely gone.
I don’t say it but I think it. Just Rachel and me. We’re still here, and we’ve got Lily. On a good day we have Mom too. But in the photo that Rachel holds we were the luckiest people in the world and we didn’t even know it at that time.
“We still have each other,” I say, and Rachel smiles. She places the photo on the top of the desk and looks back at the box. “This was in the bottom drawer of his desk.”
“The drawer that’s always locked?”
Rachel nods. She pulls out more pictures from the box. One of Mom and Dad, which looks to be when they were on their honeymoon. “Wow, you do look just like Dad, no wonder Mom gets confused.”
I take the picture from Rachel’s hand. Yep, we do look really similar.
“Except for the smile,” I say. “I definitely have Mom’s smile.”
Rachel glances at me. “Yep you do. Lucky bastard.”
I put the photo back onto the desk. “Anything interesting?”
Rachel shakes her head, no. And then she stops. “Unless you count this.” She lifts a picture from the bottom of the box.
Dad and another woman stand in front of the Eiffel tower. They’re kissing
“That isn’t Mom.”
Rachel shakes her head. “Nope, not Mom.”
“Looks like he has on a wedding ring. What color is her hair?”
Red.
“And there we understand Mom’s fixation with Kendall. That’s the woman that he left her for. Didn’t ever know they went to Paris together,” Rachel says.
“Not much is known about that time,” I say. “Other than Dad was out of town a lot.”
“Right,” Rachel says. She tosses the photo back in the box and pops on the lid “I think I’m finished for today.” She stands and walks over to the bookshelf where she plucks a tissue from a box. “Mom and Lily?”
“Had ice cream and are playing dolls.”
Rachel looks out the window. Daylight fades to night. “Think we’ll go home and relax.”
“No hot date?”
She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, “Never.”
“Do you want me to come over and watch Lily? I mean, do you need some time to yourself?”
“You’re kidding? You’re offering to watch your niece?”
“I’m always here to watch Lily.”
“Right, I know that I can always ask you and you’ll usually say yes, but I still have to ask.”
“That’s what most people do when they want things.”
“No, that’s what men do when they want things. Women like it when other people offer. It’s a kink in our DNA, and in the nearly six years that Lily has been alive I don’t remember you ever offering to watch her before today.”
Is that right? Quite possibly. I can be that self-involved. I know I can.
“I’m offering now.”
Rachel lifts an eyebrow and slips her phone from her pocket. “Okay. I can find some friends to do something with.” She glances up from her phone. “I’d love that.”
“Done. I’ll hang out here with Mom for a little bit. Be at your place in about an hour?”
“Perfect.” A smile slips onto her face. “Thank you. I could use the break.” She presses a kiss to my cheek.
“No problem.” Thankfully, I feel less like a self-involved asshole and more like a human being.
***
I close the book and place it on the nightstand beside Lily’s bed.
“Uncle Jake, I know what kind of puppy I want.”
“What kind?” I sit on the bed beside her. Her expression is serious, as though she’s pondered this important question for a long while.
“You know the dog that your friend Tara has?”
“Jango?”
“I want a puppy like Jango.”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure what that is, because I think Jango is a rescue dog. Tara adopted her from a shelter so we wouldn’t know for sure what kind of dog her mommy or daddy was.”
“That’s what I want to do,” Lily says, her gaze serious. “Mommy says that Jango looks like she’s part lab and part shepherd.”
“That sounds good.”
“So I want one of those.”
I lift the blanket and pull it up higher over her body.
“Has Mommy said yes yet?” she asks, a hopeful lilt in her voice. “You know my birthday is very soon.”
“Leave it to me,” I say. Knowing full well that convincing Rachel to let Lily have a dog will be harder than convincing a vegan to eat a cow.
“I love you Uncle Jake,” Lily mumbles, her eyes already closed and the sound of her voice indicting she’s drifting to dreamland.
“I love you too.” I lean forward and kiss her cheek. She’s an angel. An absolute and total angel. And if my angel wants a dog then I’ve got to find a way to get her one, even if that includes hiring a dog walker to come to Rachel’s two times a day. Scratch that. Big Sis seems irritable about me hiring people to take care of family. OK. Even if I have to come over here myself? Hmm..that changes the dynamic. Nope. Not doing that, but then I can’t expect Rachel to take on the responsibility either.
Damn. Like a light bulb moment, I see what’s up with Rachel and why she doesn’t want a dog. Yessirree, another creature in the house to take care of. Damn. Rachel does need more help.
I stand and walk out of Lily’s room. My phone buzzes and I pull it from my pocket.
‘How’s Lily?’
‘Asleep’, I text back.
‘Thank you!’
‘Have fun’, I text, and I hope she does. I hope that maybe for a couple of hours tonight she forgets all the responsibility that she has, the shit-ton of work she does, and how she takes care of Mom, Lily, and even me. I walk down the stairs to the family room and grab the remote. I turn on the TV and the doorbell rings.
Standing in the doorway is Kendall with her red hair and her ‘crazy-eyes’ as Tara calls them, but they don’t look so crazy. She carries a glass dish.
“Came by to drop this off to Rachel. Had no idea she wasn’t here.”
“She’s out to dinner.”
“I know where it goes. I’ll put it away.”
Before I can say no, she slides past me into the house and down the hall to the kitchen. She opens up the cabinet beside the stove and puts the glass Pyrex dish onto another one that is nearly identical. “So she left you here with Lily tonight?” she asks, all smiles. “It’s nice of you to babysit.”
She stands and puts both her hand into the back pockets of her jeans, which causes her very nicely-shaped breasts to pop out in front. She surveys the kitchen and the family room. “Want some company?” She steps forward. She’s near me now and her intent, her desire, what she wants from me, is pretty clear. Her breasts so close to my chest, her upper teeth tugging on her bottom lip, and her eyes half-lidded with that you-can-have-me-if-you-want-me look. I’m clear on what she’s after.
And nothing. My cock doesn’t even respond. I might as well be standing in my shower with ice-cold water dumping on my head.
“I uh….I can’t.” I take a step back.
That irritable look, like the one she gave first in the bathroom at the birthday party and then in my bedroom when she fellated me, crosses her face.
“Still seeing the reporter?”
“That’s not it. Ever since the article came out I can’t…well things don’t work the way they once did.”
She glances down at my crotch. “Are you kidding?
I shake my head, no. “I wish I were.”
“You can’t…you’re not….”
I nod. No need to fill her in on the detail of Tara. “I’ve tried, and well, there’s nothing going on.”
“Have you been to a doctor?”
“Not yet. But I am seeing a therapist.”
“My god.” Her fingertips press her lips. “That’s…that’s horrible.”
Are those fucking tears I see in her eyes?
“I mean you have such a gift, what you do to help women, how you helped me. My god.” She backs away from me like I’ve told her I have leprosy and it’s contagious.
“I uh…I hope it works out for you.”
“Me too,” I say, and follow her to the front door where she slips out and shuts the door behind her.
Until now, I’ve never been grateful that I couldn’t get hard.
Chapter Fifteen
“We’re doing this?” I pant out the words and throw my arm onto my forehead.
A giant grin pulls across Tara’s face. “Looks like we are.”
I suck in air trying to regain my breath. For nearly three weeks we’ve been back and forth between our two places with Jango trailing behind. Take out and movies and dinners and even a play at the Geffen. This, our thing, has become a relationship. A real relationship.
She turns toward me and lies on her side. Her hair mussed from our exertions this morning. My gaze lingers over the perfection that is her body. My wonderland. I take a deep breath and know that I am happier now than I’ve been in what feels like forever. I sigh and press a kiss to her nose. Fear creeps along my spine because there are still conversations to be had, things that need to be said, a past that needs to be dealt with, but I don’t want to believe anything can come between us.
“So my mom wants us to come for dinner.”
The past roars at me and I flop onto my back.
“Come on, she’s been asking since that day in Malibu, now that she knows we’re spending so much time together.”
I press my hand to my forehead. This. Now. This moment would be the perfect time to tell Tara about Wonderfuck and her mom. I have to tell her, don’t I? Is it possible that this could remain a little secret between Mrs. Jennings and myself? A part of my past that remains in my past? No. She has to know. Needs to know. I roll to my side and gaze into her eyes. They are a brilliant blue and filled with joy.