by Susan Ward
I’m starting to feel anxious. Nervous. I don’t know why.
“Chrissie, whatever it is you have to say, just say it.”
Her eyes flash. “Please. I’m trying to. But what I have to say isn’t easy. I’m trying to explain. Your illness, it terrified me and it made me think. About all kinds of things. Us. The past. How short life is. None of us knows how long we have. There are things between us that I need to fix. Correct. This isn’t easy for me.”
I wait until she is calm.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. You’re worrying for nothing, Chrissie. And I think by now even you should be able to figure out we will always be friends. Nothing is ever going to change that.”
Instead of calming her my words have made her more frantic. It’s an odd reaction. “You can’t know that for sure.” Her fingers tighten around her glass until her knuckles are white. “What a mess I’ve made of everything. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I hope you know that, Alan.”
After too long she looks at me, pinning me with an intense stare, her bright blue eyes pleading and leveling and arousing.
She flushes. “I’m sorry, Alan. I shouldn’t have come here.”
Now I just want to end this and get away from her. I stand up, putting distance between us. I’m beginning to dislike her for the anticipation I feel in my cock, her emotional botheration and my complete inability to do anything but love her. Even in ghastly moments like this.
“Then why don’t you get the fuck out?”
I don’t know which one of us is more shocked by that. Oh God, did I just throw her out? It’s the last thing I want.
She stands up.
She sets her glass on the table.
“Chrissie, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. You’re right. I should get out of here. I should never have come.”
That remark aggravates me further. I’m not sure what she intends to trivialize with that comment: me or her feelings for me.
I move my body into the space that separates us and stare into her eyes. “Don’t leave. Not like this.”
“No, Alan. You were right. It’s better for us both if I go now.”
No. No. I don’t want to be right. Not about this.
I stare at her. “Why did you come here?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
What the fuck is she trying to do to me? We’re together for the first time in two years. Chrissie maneuvered it. Both my heart and my body are on fire for her, and all she did was drag me through a few minutes of incoherent verbal drivel. And now she wants to end this and leave me with another fucking undecipherable moment of us.
She can’t leave. Not yet. Not this way.
I lean in and kiss her, pouring all the love in my body for her into it. I press my hands to the base of her spine, holding her against me and deepening the contact in an alternating flow of lips and tongue, pressure and lightness.
My breathing speeds up as I wait for a response. Her body stiffens, but that’s all. Nothing more. I tell myself to step back. My hands and mouth continue to devour her.
Then, just when I’m about to end this, she moans, pressing her pelvis into me, and starts meeting the heated, hungry moves of my body. Her hands fist in my hair. Her tongue dances with mine, insistent and hungry. We fuck each other with our mouths. We shed our clothes, dropping to the floor and our bodies mold together, frantically searching.
I turn her until she’s straddling me. If this is the last fuck I’m ever going to know with her, I don’t want to miss a single moment of it flashing on her face. I wrap my arm around her slim waist, lift her, and then position her on my erection. I lie back as she lowers herself, taking me in her.
My breath escapes from my body. I don’t know how I’ve lived without this for two years. God, she feels so good. I can’t even count the number of women I’ve fucked since her. Not a single one of them could ever feel like Chrissie.
Mesmerized, I watch her slowly rise up, then sink back down hard onto me. Ragged pleasure dances across her face. Her head rolls as she moans. Again. Pausing at my tip in a manner I know well, then slamming down to fill herself with me again. She is so wet and tight around me. Her hands stroke my flesh as she effortlessly finds our rhythm and rides me. She grows harder and harder with each bounce. The tension in her builds. I grab her hips, pumping hard upward into her as she shouts my name incoherently through her orgasm.
I can’t hold back.
I explode inside her even though I don’t want this over yet. She’s limp in my hold as I thrust into her until I can’t go any longer.
She collapses on my chest, and I wrap my arms around her, burying my lips in her hair. Then I remember what I saw on her face as we fucked. I’ve wondered it a thousand times, why she walked out on me in Malibu. I finally have the answer and I don’t like it.
Chrissie never stopped loving me.
She couldn’t take the pain of loving me.
The way her eyes looked the entire time she rode me was an expression I saw a hundred times when we were together. Love…and pain.
She stares at me, overwhelmed by what we just did. She pulls away and starts gathering her clothes. I don’t try to stop her. And for the first time, I don’t know what to say to her. As great as this fuck was, it would have been better for us both if I had let her walk away.
Chapter 5
2013
“Does 2006 mean anything to you?”
I smile. “Not a thing.”
Miles makes a notation. I turn to stare out the airplane window.
“There are some quotes here that Jesse notated he wanted to use in the biography,” Miles says diligently, “but the contract specifies I have to get your permission before I include them in the draft I send to the publisher for approval. Can we go through the ones he wanted to use?”
This should be interesting.
I shrug. “Shoot.”
He sets papers neatly in front of him on the table. “OK, the first one is a quote from your manager, Brian Craig.”
Oh great. This should be fucking fantastic.
“He says, ‘For a man of such internal discipline, Alan Manzone has a disastrous weakness for addiction. While he was able to kick heroin at the age of twenty-six, his second major addiction he’s never been able to kick, not even after the rehab of two failed marriages.’”
Fuck you, Brian. Very funny. That was obnoxious.
I bite the inside of my cheek, and battle not to snap off the response forming in my head.
I can feel Miles staring at me. “Second addiction?”
Miles’s expression says it all. He’s thinking Brian is referring to women. That I’m a sex addict. No, you miserable cunt. Brian is talking about Chrissie. A cheap shot he just had to get in. Goddamn you, Brian, you are an asshole.
I stare him down and Miles flushes.
“Why would Jesse Harris have wanted to use that quote?”
I shrug. “You’d have to ask him.”
Miles’s eyes bug out. Fuck, that was a crass thing to say.
I grab a cigarette, strike the lighter and inhale deeply. I let the smoke curl slowly from my lips. “Next quote, please.”
Miles stares. “Do I have your permission to use that one or not?”
I take another long hit from my cigarette. “Use it. If Jesse wanted it, it’s in.”
There, I’ve surprised him. And to be honest I’ve surprised myself. Why did I give permission for that? Guilt over that night—no, don’t start thinking about that. The only thing I have going for me is I’ve managed for an entire year to stay away and not fuck up Chrissie’s life again.
I find Miles holding out a pen to me. I take it and initial the sheet, granting my approval for this hideous comment to be included, my own private apology to Jesse for what I did the night of his burial.
Images flash through my head like screenshots from a porno flick. All my blood concentrates in my cock in a way that is exclusively Chrissie’s. It was a
fucking incredible night. It almost made up for the nine years Chrissie forced me to watch her married to Jesse. She was on fire, the burning scorch of grief. Twelve hours of frantic, violent fucking, unlike anything I have ever known with her. Shit, unlike anything I’ve ever known with any woman.
It was the wrong move. I shouldn’t have done it. But I knew it would happen the moment we’d returned from the long hours of Jesse’s memorial to find ourselves alone in Chrissie’s house. I had every intention of being the man I should be for her that day. But, fuck, it had been pulsing in my cock from the moment I’d stepped off the plane in Santa Barbara for the funeral. I’d gone to California to bury a friend. All I could think about was fucking his wife.
Disgusting. Maybe Linda is right, I do need therapy. I was good friends with Jesse. Necessity if I wanted to still have a place in Chrissie’s life after her marriage.
Pathetic?
Yes.
Manipulative?
Sure.
But it worked.
Chrissie and I remained friends, and I got to christen her widowhood. Fuck, I’m a prick. Jesse was a great guy. I liked him. I didn’t want to. Didn’t intend to. But I did. He deserved better than that from me on the night he was buried. Sure, I still fucking love Chrissie, but I’m very good at not violating the line with my ex-lovers. Especially when I like their husbands.
But I fucked up. I should have split the second Chrissie sent the kids off with Jesse’s family for the night. It just didn’t seem right to cut out on her.
More images flash in my brain. Her tears had come first. A vision of Chrissie curled against me, holding on for dear life, crying and vulnerable.
Christ, why did I do it? She was consumed by grief. She didn’t know what she was doing. She needed comfort. I only intended to hold her. But I shouldn’t have touched her. And then, damn, she moved closer, she touched me…instant combustion.
That’s when the fucking started. I understood it then and I get it now, what it was for her. Chrissie just needed sex in that strange way people do sometimes in the midst of death. I told myself not to, and fucked her anyway. And that’s all it had been for her. Carnal fucking. A way for Chrissie to shut off the heart and brain to pain.
I down a full glass of scotch this time. It happened. I need to let it go. Forget about it. It’s fucking ridiculous to feel so badly over this still. It’s been over a year since I fucked her that night after Jesse’s burial.
“Since Jesse started this project with you and will be noted as a co-author on the book at release, do you want to include a comment about him or his death for the biography?”
Oh, you fucking weasel. You can be a shit at times.
I set down my drink. “He was a great guy. We were good friends.”
Miles waits expectantly. “Concise. Do you want to expand on that? He did die while working on this book. He’s an enormously popular man. Maybe how you felt when you heard the news?”
Fuck.
My jaw clenches. “Shocked. That’s how I felt, how we all felt. It’s not the kind of death you expect. He was young. In perfect health. Happily married. A terrific father. A brilliant novelist. A good man in every way. What the fuck do you want me to say? He died of a heart attack on the way to the docks to go sailing with his family. Unexpected. A loss for everyone who knew him.”
Miles starts to write. “Can I use the good parts of that in the book? I’ll quote it accurately, but not completely.”
“Fine,” I snap harshly.
Jesus Christ. My temples are starting to throb. Are we almost through this, Miles?
“What’s that you’re holding?”
Startled, I look down at my hand. Oh fuck. Why am I holding it?
I take a steadying breath before answering. “An infinity band from Tiffany.”
“You keep taking it from your pocket and staring at it. You do it sometimes before you go on stage. I’ve been wondering what’s up with that, why it is important to you. Some sort of good luck charm?”
I toss it on the table. “Depends on how you look at it.”
There, figure that one out on your own, Miles.
“Do you want to talk about Shyla Donahue? We haven’t covered that marriage.”
“No. I would prefer not to.”
“We can’t skip over everything. There needs to be something in the book about her. You were married five years.”
My temper flares.
How’s this for an anecdote about Shyla?
“The last thing she did before she walked from my life and filed for divorce was to hurl that bracelet at my face.”
Miles’s eyes widen. “Really. Why?”
“Women. Who knows why they ever do anything? Any man who says he understands a woman is a liar.”
Miles sits for a moment pondering that. And, shit, I’m the liar. I know why Shyla rocketed the damn thing at me.
It was hers, I hear Shyla screaming in my memory of that horrid fight we had the day I got back to New York after the funeral. I stepped through the door. She took one look at me, and she knew I’d fucked Chrissie while I was in California.
It was hers.
I wonder if I should share this fascinating factoid with Miles. No. Better not. It could be too easily misconstrued as an unspectacular, trite eulogy for our marriage. But it really said it all. The girl got to the heart of the problem with laser-sharp accuracy and simplicity for once.
No comeback from me had been required. Not after that. I didn’t even try to make one and I didn’t try to stop Shyla as she walked from the door. This last time we were both relieved that I didn’t.
“Manny.” I hear the pilot through the intercom. “We’re about forty minutes out of New York. We should touch down around 8:30 p.m. Manhattan time.”
Thank God.
Miles starts to pack up.
“I think I have everything I need.” He zips closed his satchel. “I should have a first draft ready for your review in about a month.”
My brows hitch up. I can’t imagine what he’s going to write with the odd hodgepodge of facts and quotes I’ve allowed him to use.
Who cares?
I don’t really care about anything anymore. And I haven’t for a very long time.
The plane touches down. Stops. The steps are pulled down. I move my way to the open cabin door.
Good. Colin. Waiting beside my car. I can get the fuck away from Miles. Without saying goodbye to him, I trot down the steps and cross the tarmac.
I hear something hit concrete. I turn. Miles is struggling with his load-of-crap satchel, suitcase, and laptop bag awkwardly clutched in his arms.
More junk hits the ground.
“Do you need a lift somewhere?” I call out.
Miles looks up, startled.
“That’s OK. I’ll just grab a taxi out front.”
I let out an aggravated sigh. This guy is pathetic. Why did they replace Jesse Harris with him? And why do I feel like a shit leaving him to grab a cab? He’s nothing. An employee.
“Get in,” I order sternly.
Miles makes his way to the car. Colin takes the junk from his arms and drops it into the trunk.
“Thanks.”
He climbs in. Doesn’t move. I have to go around to the other side. I settle on the leather seat and pour myself a scotch.
Colin slams the door. A minute later, I feel the car start to move.
I hold the bottle up in Miles’s direction. “Do you want another drink?”
Miles laughs, awkward. “I think I had enough on the plane. I’ve got a lot of work to get through tonight.”
I smile, amused. Oh no, Miles, you are not going to start work on my biography tonight. You don’t like me yet.
“I am going to stop for dinner. Why don’t you join me?” I ask.
Bug eyes again. “Thanks.”
Brian wanted this book to be flattering. Time to give Miles a healthy dose of the rock star life.
“Colin, take me to The Blue Light.”
<
br /> “Isn’t that a club?” Miles asks.
“I want to have cocktails first. You don’t mind, do you?”
Miles says nothing. Good. I stare out the window. It’s time to party. I need this wanker to like me if I’m going to have a shot in hell of this book not being completely humiliating.
Damn Brian. Why the fuck did you insist I do this moronic biography? We sure as hell don’t need the money.
* * *
I open my eyes, feeling something cold in the palm of my hand. The fucking Tiffany infinity band. I toss it away and roll over in bed.
Oh crap, I’m not alone. Who the hell is that? I can’t remember her name or even where I picked her up. Fuck, I was wasted last night. A new level of fucked-up even for me. I wonder what happened to Miles. I don’t remember us splitting up. Hell, I don’t even remember coming home.
I run a hand through my hair and try to patch together bits and pieces of the night that just passed. Fuck. Nothing. Blank after the first club.
I stare at the nude body curled beside me. The room definitely smells like sex. Oh fuck. I hope I didn’t do anything stupid. I turn. I look at the floor. Used condoms. Quite a few. A busy night. I let out a ragged breath. Thank God I wasn’t too drunk to forget to be paranoid and careful.
I lie back against the pillow. Linda is right. I am drinking too much if I can’t remember picking up a girl who looks like that.
She has a beautiful face and I have a hazy memory of a chic, rich girl’s smile flashing there and a Boston-bred accent when she spoke. Yes, for some reason this girl had tried to talk to me, talked quite a bit and flashed her smile. I can’t recall what about. The words must not have been inspiring.
At least she’s a pleasant surprise. With how fucked up I was last night—with how much I needed to fuck Chrissie out of my head—I could be waking up with absolutely anything lying beside me in bed.
I lean over and look at her face. But she’s quite lovely. Brown hair. Straight, blunt cut, chin length. Well groomed. Manicured finger and toenails. Caribbean tan in winter. A high-priced whore? Or a rich girl looking for trouble? Probably the latter.