When Shawn and Riley left Brendan and Tracy’s place around five, Riley called ahead and asked Tony to prepare dinner, and see about reserving the rooftop so they could have dinner al fresco. She told him he didn’t need to worry about making anything child-friendly, predicting, accurately, that Cullen and Cassidy would have worn themselves out playing and be asleep by the time they got home.
She put both children to bed, and went to shower, telling Tony to let her know when dinner was ready upstairs. Usually, Riley would help him with that, carrying up the place settings and arranging everything herself. Maybe she thought, foolishly, that by helping the help it would mitigate the fact that she even had someone like Tony, cooking gourmet meals for her and her family, and arranging for them to dine in a rooftop garden.
This evening she felt drained. Standing under the shower jets, she closed her eyes, picturing Brian and Ella, smiling at each other like newlyweds. She heard Ella’s voice cheerfully proclaiming herself and Brian “poor as church mice.” For dinner what would they have? There was a Thai takeout place on the corner of the block where their non-profit was. Brian had always liked Thai food. Riley could picture him and Ella stopping there for dinner, sitting together and excitedly speculating about their prospects for funding from his wealthy ex-girlfriend.
Riley hadn’t thought to ask Brian how long they had been married. For fewer years than she and Shawn, she knew that. But for how long exactly? If it was more than three years, it was sweet that they still looked at each other the way they did. Or at least, Riley told herself it was sweet, even as she felt a pang of jealousy. At what she wasn’t entirely sure. She loved Shawn and felt no attraction to Brian any longer. Still, there was a pull there that was difficult to comprehend or deny.
Coming out of the shower, and feeling the blast of cool air, Riley realized that she had been so preoccupied, she hadn’t properly fixed her shower cap, and the edges of her hair were wet. Within minutes, the entire thing would curl, and the painstaking straightening job from the Dominican salon would be undone.
Removing the shower cap, she scooped her hair up and into a ponytail, not bothering to fuss with it any more than that. Everything about her life seemed trivial and superficial suddenly, when contrasted with the gritty, real-life concerns of a roomful of mothers grieving for their children in prison, and for the lives that were lost because of those children.
“Ready to eat?”
Shawn was sticking her head in the bedroom, and as always, his eyes scanned her from head to toe. Where men were concerned, where husbands were concerned, she couldn’t be any luckier. The way he wanted her never seemed to change or wane. Even during her pregnancies, he’d wanted her, despite the appearance of stretchmarks, and areas of looseness where she had once been firm.
“Yup. Just need to throw something on. Did Tony bring everything upstairs already?”
“Just about to,” Shawn said.
“C’mere,” she told him.
He grinned and gave her a look. He knew how to interpret her tones, and her ‘c’meres’ usually meant something frisky was in the forecast. She intended that there would be. She didn’t know why now, but she wanted to fall to her knees and take him out of his pants, to suck him off with his hands anchored almost painfully in her hair, and to listen to him groan out her name while he exploded in her mouth.
“Nah,” he said unexpectedly. “Dinner.”
“You want what Tony made more than you want me?” she asked, teasingly.
Shawn seemed to think about it for a moment. “Can I have both?” he asked, stifling a smile.
Riley rolled her eyes. “Meet you upstairs. I have to get dressed.”
Seeing that she was feeling a little rejected, he paused, and finally crossed the threshold into the bedroom. Standing directly in front of her, he looked down, trying to read her expression. Riley, too, looked down, but Shawn tipped her chin upward.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. But he wasn’t satisfied with that. So, she added more. “Just moody I guess.”
“Or hungry,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go eat.”
He smacked her playfully on the butt, then turned and left her alone to try to decipher her mood on her own.
Tony had outdone himself, as usual.
He hadn’t just arranged for dinner to be eaten upstairs on the rooftop garden, he had covered the picnic-style table with a red-checkered tablecloth, put candles in the center and a bottle of chianti to chill nearby. Everything was waiting for them when they got there, still hot, as though Tony had served it and simply disappeared behind a bush.
Dinner was a simple bucatini with marinara and ricotta, but the sauce had a slight gingery kick to it, which made it more than ‘just pasta.’ That was one of Tony’s specialties, making meals that looked like something you could have made yourself, but with an added flourish that reminded you that actually, you could not. The table was surrounded by semi-mature dogwoods and junipers in enormous terra cotta planters, impressively-sized hosta and daylilies.
Riley had once heard two women in the elevator, talking about the rooftop addition to their building, and tutting at the exorbitant cost. When she heard the figure, Riley didn’t doubt it, because if you didn’t know better, one could almost believe they were outside, but for the tiling beneath their feet.
Across the table, Shawn was chowing down, obviously very hungry. He seldom ate much at Tracy and Brendan’s because of Tracy’s organic this, and gluten-free that. Hunger; that was what likely accounted for him refusing sex, something he generally never did. But tonight, Riley felt unusually clingy and still resented that he had prioritized Tony’s meal over her.
He was done before Riley, and reached for the chianti, scowling at the bottle before putting it back down. Wine wasn’t his thing if they were at their own table. He was strictly a beer man, sometimes going for artisan dark ales or IPAs, but Tony hadn’t brought anything like that up, so Shawn stuck to water. Riley, on the other hand, filled her glass, and emptied it while she ate, eyeing the bottle and thinking about seconds just as her meal was done.
She looked up to find her husband watching her, reading her.
“So, what’s up?” he asked.
“What do you …?”
“Don’t ask me what I mean. You haven’t said a single word since we sat down.”
Riley shrugged.
“You know how many times that’s happened since I’ve known you? Like maybe twice.”
“I told you, I’m …”
“Moody,” he said. “Yeah.”
Just as she was about to make another excuse, Tony appeared. He was carrying dessert, perfectly timing how long it would take them to finish their meal. He cleared while Riley and Shawn watched, and was gone in less than five minutes, having left behind only their dessert, and a pot of tea.
Shawn tasted his tiramisu, taking one bite and then shoving the plate aside. With sweets, he could take them or leave them, and Riley often wound up having his as well as hers. She ate hers quickly and resisted the urge to reach for Shawn’s unfinished portion, instead reaching for the pot of tea.
“You want to tell me?” Shawn said.
“Tell you …”
“What’s wrong. Because I know something is.”
“Not something I want to … I don’t want to talk tonight,” Riley said honestly.
“Okay.” Shawn nodded. He shoved back from the table and turned his chair around. “C’mere.”
Riley hesitated only a second, then stood and went to him. He looked up at her, and as he did, slid his hands over her hips, upward and under her shirt. His rough palms grazed her nipples, and they hardened immediately.
Moving his hands back down and over her stomach, Shawn slid them beneath the stretchy waistband of her loose lounging pants and back around to her ass. Cupping it, he pulled her closer and then continued south, taking the pants and her panties with him until they fell, of their own accord,
from her thighs and into a puddle at her feet.
“Shawn,” she said, swallowing.
But she was already feeling the warmth low in her belly, and lower still. Her stance involuntarily softened so he could part of thighs.
“Don’t start talking now,” he said, grinning up at her.
Then he dipped his head and tasted her. One swift swipe of his tongue and she instinctively widened her stance further. Shawn grabbed her ass again and pulled her closer toward him. Riley let her head fall back, even as part of her wondered whether this was too risky, and whether Tony might unexpectedly reappear, bringing something he had forgotten, or wanting to clear the dessert plates.
“Shawn,” she said again.
He ignored her, his tongue working over and around and inside her, even without the assistance of his fingers. Riley held his head, for balance and to press herself closer, feeling dizziness, and a slight pleasurable sting, probably from the spicy ginger that had to be on Shawn’s tongue. Just as she thought she would come, he lifted his head and licked his lips, his eyes dark, his nostrils flared.
He loosened his jeans, raised his butt off the seat and pulled it down in one economical movement. Without waiting, Riley opened her legs so she was astride him, and Shawn held her by the hips, guiding her onto him. Feeling herself filled by him, she exhaled one long breath, and closed her eyes. Shawn’s hand on the back of her neck dragged her to him and they kissed, tongues tangling and lips mashing. He tasted like her, and like tiramisu. She sucked his tongue until all he tasted like was himself, her hips lifting and falling, his fingers digging into her sides.
Riley came hard, and loud, clasping Shawn against her as he worked his tongue in that sensitive spot at the base of her neck. He stayed hard for a while after that, thrusting and arching into her until she came again, and him along with her. Then, just as their breaths began to slow, Riley felt all the complicated, conflicting emotions of the day come crashing down onto her, and sobbed.
13
Day four. Only three to go.
That’s what Shawn reminded himself when Livia Kincaid entered the control room. He had given in to Kio’s wishes and was listening to some of the beats he’d found as they were meant to be listened to. He’d waited the entire morning until he was immersed in the work before reaching for his phone and shooting off a text to Kincaid to let her know where he was and inviting her to come join him if she wanted to.
And just forty minutes later, here she was. This time, she entered quietly, and when he nodded his greeting, simply smiled in return and took a place on one of the sofas in the rear of the control room and took out a notebook.
Shawn wondered whether that little detail was in response to what he’d said about her not writing anything down. Didn’t matter. Just three more days now and she was out of his hair.
The one-week shadowing obligation was now stretching into two, but it was his own fault for having made it so difficult for her to catch up him. But now that he was about to get into some real work, Livia Kincaid would disappear into the background, about as significant as the wallpaper.
Making music was—apart from making love to his wife and raising his children—the singular most rewarding and consciousness-occupying thing in his life. It was definitely the most creatively fulfilling. Even the words he had put to paper by themselves could not compare to hearing them with the right accompaniment of sound and rhythm. When he was in the studio, time had no meaning and everything else disappeared. When Riley was pregnant with Cullen, it was difficult for him to be too far away from home without anxiety, but the studio was the only place where she used to have to come get him.
Shawn smiled, thinking about it now, how Riley—who made it a rule to never interfere with his creative process—would show up bleary-eyed and enormously pregnant at four a.m. telling his sound engineer and producer, I need my husband back now. But when she got him to leave, it was only to make him sleep, eat, shower, or all three, and then she would release him to his music once again.
Thinking about Riley reminded him of Saturday night and that weird couple of hours after they had come back from Brendan and Tracy’s. She got all quiet on him, and then on the roof, cried after they had sex. Cried.
Riley wasn’t a crier. A couple times early on in their relationship when he was falling in love and didn’t even know how to identify what he was feeling, there had been some nuts so intense that they almost made him want to cry from the sheer unfamiliarity of fucking coupled with genuine attachment. But for Riley their sex was and had always been an exuberant, joyful, mind-blowing high. She smiled against his lips when he was inside her, and her eyes grew dreamy and unfocused.
Pregnancy sex had produced a few tears, but so had sappy commercials on television while she was carrying their children. She rarely had the kind of emotional release she’d had this weekend. Shawn wondered whether it had something to do with him going back to work, and fear that might be underlying her support. But that seemed unlikely. Riley knew, even though she hadn’t always known, that there was nothing and no one that could ever cause him to compromise their relationship. Never again.
“D’you have a minute?”
But it didn’t mean there wouldn’t be those who tried.
Shawn looked up at Livia Kincaid who had come to tap him on the shoulder the moment he removed his headphones. Kio still had his on and was cuing up something else for Shawn to listen to, and everyone else was preoccupied with their own tasks.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Could we …?” She nodded in the direction of the door.
Despite his sense that this was going to turn into a conversation he had no interest in having, Shawn followed her out into the narrow hallway. Contrary to the beliefs of laypeople who tended to think of recording studios as glamorous places, most were bare bones, like this one. The standard anterooms were small, with little more than a couple chairs and a loveseat in sight, and no natural light. This one was no different.
Shawn leaned against the wall and folded his arms, waiting.
“I wanted to clear the air a little about that night at the club,” she said.
“What about it?”
“What I said, about you being attracted to me …”
“No need to apologize, Kincaid.”
“I’m not apologizing,” she said, her eyes opening slightly wider. “Why would I …?”
“Then whatever this is,” Shawn said shaking his head. “You don’t need to do it.”
“For me, I do,” she insisted.
“Then, do it. Whatever this is. For you.”
“I just think it’s always best to put everything on the table,” Livia Kincaid continued. “I do think some of your … aggression is about attraction. And I get it. I kind of think you’re an asshole? But I’m attracted to you, too. So …”
Shawn shrugged feeling his annoyance rise. “What am I supposed to do with that information?”
“Nothing. Just hear it, receive it and know that as an adult I can handle this … thing that’s going on between us. I just want to know that you can handle it as well, and that now that it’s out in the open you’ll stop being a jerk all the time.”
Three days, he intoned in his head. Three days.
“Say something,” she said. “You’re making me feel like a stalker.”
“Are you?” He gave a brief laugh.
“No. Of course not.”
He sighed. “Okay, yeah. Well … I gotta …” He hooked a thumb in the direction of the door back into the control room.
“Of course,” she said, looking briefly down at her shoes. “Sure.”
He turned away and opened the door but stopped when she said his name.
“You didn’t deny it,” she said. She was smiling, her full lips puckering slightly. “You had a chance to do it right now, but I haven’t heard you deny that you’re attracted to me, too.”
“I don’t deny it,” he said.
Livia Kinca
id’s mouth fell open just a little. Maybe she had been bluffing all this time and only claimed to know something she had only suspected.
“I’m a red-blooded man,” he told her. “I’m attracted to lots of people. Random women I see on the street. Models on television … maybe the chick who serves me my coffee in a restaurant.” He shrugged. “But who I’m interested in being with? One woman only. My wife.”
“Wow.” Her tone now was a little snide. “That’s really high-minded of you.”
The comment was obviously meant to goad him into something, but Shawn had encountered more Livia Kincaids than he could count, especially right after the episode that almost landed his ass in prison. Some women, once they thought they knew there was a chink the armor, came at it with a chisel, trying to pry that sucker wide open. But there were no chinks. Not for him. Not anymore.
Shawn shoved the door open and went inside, leaving Kincaid standing in the hall.
Someone ordered greasy burgers for what Shawn thought was lunch, and only then did look up and realize it was dinner. As a single man without children his response to that would have been ‘fuck it’ and he would have just kept it moving. But he was neither single nor childless, and had no idea whether Riley was home, or if someone else would have to get his kids to bed.
“Shit,” he told Kio. “I need to go home for a minute.”
“We be here all night,” Kio said reassuringly. “Go do your thing, man.”
“Cool.” Shawn stood up and stretched, yawning hugely.
Only then did he realize that Livia Kincaid was no longer there. Since their encounter in the hallway earlier in the day, he hadn’t spoken to her, and didn’t notice when she left. Relieved that he wouldn’t have to sit in the close confines of the back of his chauffeured SUV with her, he exchanged dap with Kio and the other guys, and shoved his way out into the hall. Pulling out his phone, he texted his driver to get an ETA, and prepared to wait.
Four: Stories of Marriage Page 10