Three
Jess
“Did I… wake you?” Jess asked, whispering. She was huddled in the corner, hugging her knees. Across the room, Grandma had rolled onto her side and let escape a soft moan.
Jake’s tone was baritone and gravely. Sleepy. She imagined what he must look like. Hair pushed down on one side. Face puffy and wrinkled with sleep. “Yeah, yeah,” he answered, clearing his throat. “But no, it’s okay. Just, hold on a sec. I’ve got to get my bearings. Or something.” She heard rustling on the other end of the line and then his voice took on a softer tone. “Jess, I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply, trying to calm the wild beating of her heart. She wasn’t sure what to say next. “I guess I didn’t think you’d answer,” she managed, finally.
“So you called to not talk to me?” he asked.
“I guess. Sort of,” she said. “I just… well… I thought you went home with…someone. With a woman.”
“What?” His laugh was incredulous. “No. I didn’t. Why would you get that idea?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who? Who said that?”
“Monica.”
“Oh, Monica.” Jake grunted. “I know she’s your sister, Jess, but I’m not sure she’s always your friend.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jess’s brows pulled in, and she frowned.
“The truth is, the bride’s sister spent a good part of the reception chugging Tuaca in the church bathroom, I guess, and she was pretty destroyed. She was falling all over herself, so, after looking for you and realizing you had left, I drove her home, in her car. Then I walked back to my hotel. Alone.” He paused then. “After seeing you…and getting shot down like I did… I needed to clear my head. I needed to walk.”
Jess chewed at her lip. She was silent, listening on some level to his words but mostly riding the soft waves of his voice. They were quiet and kind, like the shy and introverted man in her fantasies. Not the one who globetrotted or parasailed or whatever he said he did. She could imagine him now, sleepy-eyed and adorable, holding the phone close to his face and smiling into it. She clutched her knees tighter and tried to control the trembling that was rising once more, deep in the core of her.
“Jess? Are you still there?”
She took a deep breath. “I’m still here.”
“So… Would you come over?”
“Like in the morning?” Oh, Christ. She wagged her head. She’d been trying to sound nonchalant. Not eager. But, in the morning? Could she have sounded more desperate?
“No.” Jake’s tone was curt, abrupt. “Would you come over right now?”
Jess’s stomach dropped and her throat felt like it was closing up. She stuttered. “I…I think you have the wrong idea, Jake.” She wasn’t one of the ultra-beautiful girls from either coast, who would do his bidding in the middle of the night.
“No, Jess.” He laughed. “I think you have the wrong idea. I just…I can’t stand to hear your voice, after all these years, and not see you—and not be able to look into your eyes.”
“But I don’t… My intention was not to…”
“Seriously, Jess, I just want to see you. To reconnect. I won’t…I won’t even touch you. You have my word. No kiss-stealing or pushing you up against anything.”
As he said the words, she could feel him, once again; the pressure of his body against hers. Her heart pounded in her face.
“I just want to see you. Please?”
She pulled in a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
There was a series of soft clicks and rustles on his end of the line. She swallowed and opened her mouth. Then closed it again. After a time, he said, “So, did you read the book?”
“A little bit.” She straightened her spine and pulled her neck upward in an attempt to keep the shakiness out of her voice.
“The part about you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So you get it. Now come over. We’ll talk about it. I just want to talk to you. I’m dying to talk to you. Finally. After all these years. Please, Jess.”
Jess tilted her head from side to side and stared out into the room where Grandma lay perfectly still. This is what struck her now: the motionlessness of the room. The dank smell of overripe flowers. The moisture and the heaviness and the stillness.
“Jess.” His tone was sharp now, cracking. “There literally isn’t a moment to waste. My flight was supposed to leave tonight. Well, I guess it did leave tonight…without me.”
“Oh?” It was more an exhalation than a response.
“Because I was hoping you’d call, Jess.”
She bit her bottom lip and swallowed.
“Listen, Jess, I’m sending you a car. The driver will be discreet. All you have to do is… be outside, in front of your house, in seven minutes.”
Seven minutes. She listened to her breath flow in and out, and then her reply came out in a rush, before she had made the conscious decision to form the words. “Okay, okay, yes. Okay.”
He was silent a moment, then: “And, Jess? Do me a favor.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t change your clothes. Don’t change anything about yourself. Come exactly as you are, right this very minute. I want you just as you are.”
Her stomach lurched, and there was a soft click on his end of the line.
She stood, then, knowing that if she didn’t leave the basement right this very moment, that she might somehow change her mind, and so she swept toward the stairs. The white oriental lily on her desk quaked as she rushed passed. Two of its petals drifted down and landed with a soft phwip on the shiny oak surface of her desk. The petals were wilted, withered around the edge and dusted with pollen, the finest dust, like powdered mica, aglow in the blue light.
Jess raised her face to look at the old woman, then, where she lay, breathing softly, covers tucked beneath her chin. She was taken, suddenly, by her grandmother’s peacefulness; overwhelmed with love for this little wrinkled person in her oversized pajamas, cuddled into her covers just so.
Jess took a sharp breath, and she kissed the tips of her fingers and held them up, extending them out toward Grandma. Then she turned, and she launched herself up the basement stairs, three at a time, hurling herself toward something. Something new.
Four
Elizabeth
Elizabeth stood, blinking, at baggage claim. The fluorescent lights and the dry, recycled air always made her eyes feel sticky. And why did the sirens need to be so eerie… every time a carousel would begin to turn? Whoop, whoop. Like something dreadful was about to happen.
The other passengers from Jake’s flight were here. Full flight, by the looks of it, but no Jake. A small girl shuffled past, scanning the waiting crowd. A middle-aged man in a gray suit rubbed his bald head and watched the suitcases circle again and again. A tall couple pressed their bodies together. One by one, the passengers on Jake’s flight tugged bags off the carousel, kissed loves ones, and shuffled off into the night. But no Jake.
What if something had happened to him? It would be her fault, certainly. She would be to blame. She was the one who had let him go…who had let him shove right past her, and now he hadn’t returned, as he promised he would.
She knew he was erratic. Of course, she knew he was unpredictable. That was understandable. But, damn it, she trusted him. He knew how important this was. To him, to her, to everyone. To the entire project.
Elizabeth’s phone felt tiny in her hand. She tipped it to check once again. No messages. He hadn’t gotten on this plane. Of course he hadn’t.
So now she would have to go to him. She glanced at the face of her phone once again, then checked the monitors showing departures. The next flight was in just a few hours. The middle of the night.
She chuckled to herself and adjusted the straps of her overnight bag. Of course she wasn’t really surprised. Jake almost never did as he was told, and she had been more or less expecting this eventuali
ty, or she wouldn’t have packed a suitcase. She wouldn’t have come to meet him at the airport. She wouldn’t have needed to see, with her own eyes, whether he got off the plane.
Then again, never had the stakes been this high. She couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why he didn’t care. She had gone down this road a few times…with men just like him.
No, that wasn’t true.
No one was just like him. No one was like Jake Lassiter. For one, she had never been in love with one of them. That was one hundred percent against the rules, but Jake Lassiter was just, different. Elizabeth smiled to herself. She hadn’t yet met a woman who would tell you that he wasn’t. If there was anyone to break rules for, it was Jake.
Elizabeth rubbed her temples as she clicked along to the ticket counter. The next plane didn’t leave for awhile, but there was no sense going home to an empty house to wait. No, in a few short hours, she would be on her way, and she would bring him home. Back where he belonged. Where she could watch him.
She found her gate and settled in a blue sling black chair, resting her Louis Vuitton on her lap and wrapping both arms around it, feeling the supple leather against her skin. She tipped her head back then, and breathed deeply. Ugh. Airport smells. Stale coffee. Disinfectant. The scent of people from far and wide— their hope, their elation, their disappointments, their mournful goodbyes. The emotion was palpable. Like it had a pulse.
She had been in her line of work for so long, she knew she was supposed to be immune to it all, but Jake had been her undoing in a few different ways. Of all people, she wanted him to make it. She wanted him to beat this thing. But she alone knew what he was up against, and she would use every tool she had—and even some she didn’t—to help him.
Five
Jess
The Lincoln town car slid next to Jess on the sidewalk. The driver, his crisp black cap pulled low, opened the door and motioned her inside, and, as she slipped down into the upholstery, she expected to see him, to see Jake, but there was only emptiness and the scent of new leather. Her door shut with a muffled phwoomp and the car purred off again, turning at the next block.
What must the driver think of her? Picking her up on the street in the night? Did this happen each evening for a man like Jake? Did he send his driver to collect women at odd ends of town?
Jazz played on the stereo so softly she had to stop inhaling for a moment to hear it at all. She closed her eyes then and willed herself to focus only on the faint trill of the music as the car glided through town and rolled to a stop before a magnificent series of polished marble columns.
There he was. Between the center pillars, his hair mussed with sleep; his hands jammed into his pockets, so she could see just the outline of his fists through the fabric. She looked down at her own pink striped shirt and black stretch pants…what she always slept in.
She expected to be nervous but she wasn’t, suddenly. There was a quiet trembling, just beneath. Seeing him there, waiting for her, sent a spark through her body. A pulling sensation in her belly.
“Now I know I promised not to touch you,” he said with a fast wink, “but may I take your hand?”
She nodded and with his slightest touch, her skin came alive. Pins and needles rose to her face and she could feel herself flushing.
That’s when she knew. She knew, at this moment, that she would not be able to resist this man. That, tonight, she would do whatever he asked her to.
“You must have freshened up,” he said. “No one looks this irresistible at two in the morning.”
“I didn’t, actually.” As she spoke—as she felt his hand cradling hers—she was aware of a new sense of calm, which had overtaken her. The trembling had stopped, replaced now with a peaceful energy. A strength and a vitality. A sense of power.
They proceeded to the top floor, together, which opened to a glass-encased rooftop and a white door, flanked by two onyx columns, pearly white and veined with gold.
Jake waved a silver card toward a panel near the handle, and he pushed the door open into a high-ceilinged foyer. Behind it sprawled a vast living area with white leather sofas buttressed by pillars and a variety of potted trees. The south wall was composed entirely of glass, and a set of French doors stood open. Gauzy curtains twisted and twirled lyrically as though a silent tango were floating in on the breeze.
“Thank you for coming here,” Jake said, low. “When you called, I wandered outside to talk with you, but it’s really quite cold this evening. I’ll just shut the door, and we can take a seat on the sofa.”
“No.” Jess’s tone was decisive. “I want to go out there. Outside.” Her every sense was heightened, ever since he had taken her hand. She wanted to feel the cold air in her lungs. She wanted to feel the bite of the concrete floor on the soles of her feet.
“Okay, if you’re sure…”
As they moved toward the open doors, Jake ducked inside the bedroom and emerged with a flowing white duvet, which he wrapped around her shoulders as they stepped across the threshold to the rooftop terrace. She slipped off her shoes, and, as soon as the cold air hit her skin, she felt her body go taut. Steam rose from a hot tub nearby, and she imagined disrobing. Dropping the blanket and shedding her clothes. She could almost feel the sensation of water scorching along her toes, then her heels and her ankles. The water would buoy her up, even as it sliced against her skin.
But she passed the hot tub and drew closer to the balcony, where she surveyed a blanket of twinkling lights. Up here, all sounds were muffled. All was silence and calm.
Jess could feel Jake’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him directly just then. Instead, she considered him from the periphery of her vision. He was staring at her, with that look on his face. The one in the photograph on his book jacket. But when she turned to him, he had put on the other face. The one that had met her at the car. The one that had brought her up here in the elevator.
Grandma’s words echoed through her mind. There’s something about him I don’t trust. Jess’s throat closed. A city asleep. Thirty floors up. If she screamed right now, would anyone hear?
He was standing next to her, looking out. His skin was several inches from her, but she felt an intensity arcing off his body.
“So,” she said awkwardly, staring out into the darkness of the night.
He faced her, grinning, and he leaned against the stone balcony.
She drew the duvet around her shoulders, tighter, and she felt a chill run through the length of her body.
“You seem kind of tense.”
She stopped herself before she conceded that, of course she was tense. She was always tense.
“I could give you an amazing massage,” he said, holding his hand toward hers. “Let’s come inside.”
She looked at him now, full in the face, and he turned his palms upward. “Okay. No massage. We’ll just talk.”
She knew her face was pinched and her eyes were wide, and she could feel them filling with tears in the night air. It was just the right temperature to make her eyes water.
“You know, Jess, a lot of people around here like to talk about you.”
This was the last thing she wanted to hear. “They do?”
“Yep, and, granted, I’ve been asking around. But I’ve heard your whole life story, from a variety of perspectives.”
Jess stared out into the night and focused on drawing her breath in and out.
“I heard you were this incredible student…very serious in school. Which, of course, I know, because I had a couple of classes with you back in the day. But you were always so modest, too. So humble. It made you irresistible. I remember your valedictorian speech at graduation. So touching and inspiring. I watched you up there, in your cap and your gown.” He laughed, low. “I have never wanted a woman as bad as I wanted you then. Before or since.”
Jess felt her chest rise and fall. She looked up toward the stars and the moon. Did he think this would be easy as feeding her a line? Oh, why had s
he come here?
“Seriously. You have no idea the kind of power you hold over me, Jess. A woman so strong, so powerful. So bright and ready to take on the world.”
“Hmm.” Her eyes swept toward him. “Then I’m sure you won’t like the rest of my story.”
“What? You going on to med school and getting straight A’s. I heard you’re almost finished.”
“I was.” She sniffed. The night air felt freeing suddenly. She inhaled deeply, feeling the cold air enter her mouth and her lungs and, for reasons she couldn’t explain, she began to speak. She began to tell Jake Lassiter everything she had longed to tell another person, for years and years, if only someone would listen. She began simply enough and then, once she got going, she found she couldn’t stop.
Later in her life, looking back on it, Jess would try to understand precisely what made her crack open in this way, on this night. She was never entirely certain, but she thought perhaps it was the fear that Jake Lassiter planned to use her, and if he was going to use her for what he needed, then she would use him for what she needed.
For whatever reason, she began to tell him everything, her hopes and dreams, her fears and failures. She told him why she had started medical school and why she had left. She told him her fear of making mistakes that she couldn’t take back. Her fear of disappointing her family and herself. Her fear that, if she chose to be a doctor, she would need to commit to it so completely that she would never be able to be anything else: a wife or a mother.
As she spoke, she never once looked at him, but she could feel his eyes on her, watching her face move and contort. Watching her words come out in gallops, her eyes blazing. And he stood, perfectly straight and still. He watched the tears slide down her face, never saying a word or lifting a hand, but simply witnessing her. Not responding, but simply hearing her. With each sentence, each confession and admission, she felt herself becoming lighter. She felt herself breathing more deeply and completely.
She went on, chattering and jabbering and rambling. “I realize that I put too much pressure on myself. That’s who I am. I love taking care of people, and once I become a physician, I fear that this is all that I will be. But maybe I want to do more. Maybe I want to try new things, travel, have some kind of adventure…maybe, I don’t know, someday have a child. But I know myself. And to be the kind of doctor I want to be, it will be all or nothing. And I’m not ready to go all in. Not now. Not yet.”
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