“I wanted it to be fireworks so badly. I thought there were some, once. But I knew he wasn't as happy as he was with my sister. He was just a nice guy. A nice guy to marry the other sister and take care of her because I couldn't survive without someone taking care of me.”
“It all fits together, then. It's nothing that either one of you thought it would be. So, why not just let him go and try to find your Barbie oasis elsewhere?”
“Wesley is my husband. Mom knew I could never live on my own, that's why she told him to take care of me. She also knew I had an incurable crush on him. I can't give up just because it isn't tiki huts and paradise waterfalls. I can change to be what Wesley wants, and it’ll make me feel more desirable. We have a foundation. Years of being together counts for something. I can put imagination and determination into what we have and make it better. I've just been lazy. But now I know that I don't have much time left. I can make him happy, I know it.”
“Don't you want to be happy? You talk a lot about making Wesley happy, but what about you?”
“I will be happy. Trust me, when I think about all those meeting sites and blind dates I could have to endure, I know Wesley is my Prince Charming. It's not like I'm abused or forgotten. I've got it good.”
“It sounds more like a plan of convenience. A default at best.” He jumped off the counter, and walked to the living room.
“So you don't want to help me anymore?” I talked loud so he could hear me, until I made it to the living room. Maybe it was for the best. I couldn't begin to interpret the emotions Mark made me feel that day. All the umbrella drinks and waterfalls I saw when I looked in his eyes. The eyes that looked back at me and saw me—the real me. Plastic bowls were easier to manage. Predictable and safe. Barbies could kill themselves going down those stupid waterfalls.
He returned to the sofa. A moan pressed out of him. “Sure, I'll help you trick yourself into believing in your delusion of grandeur. I just hope you don't wake up ten years from now a bitter, middle-aged woman. With a bitter, middle-aged man. You just let me know when you're ready for the next lesson.”
“I'm ready.” I'd show him. I planned on taking advantage of this practice lesson and turning it into something good I could use for my marriage. My bitter-less marriage. At least I was able to commit to someone. The last time I looked, he was practically blindfolding me to bring me to his isolated house. A place where no one, not even a bitter someone, was living with him. What did he know about commitment?
I sat down on the sofa and waited for the signal. Images of clouds circled my head. Any more liquor, and I'd feel I could reach out and touch one.
“Okay, just relax.” He put his hands on my shoulders and began massaging them. Awkward moment number four.
“Is this a part of it?” His touch made me tremble a little. A quiver I had never felt before.
“It's to help relax you. You can't taste and enjoy a kiss if you're a rocket, lit and ready. You roll into it, like the surf on the edge of the beach. Receding and then reaching again for more time on the sand. You take pleasure in it. It's not a process. Nothing with steps. It's a feeling.”
I was almost under his hypnosis. The sober thought that this was not my husband whispering into my face, jerked me to reality. “Then what are we doing? I thought you said it was a lesson. A lesson contains steps.”
“All right, then it's a lesson, Amy. Just drop the steps when you do it for real with Wesley.” He sat back on the couch and motioned for me to try.
“Now, you start with intense eye contact.” He stared into my eyes. I stared back. A mental highway of intensity bridged the gap between us. My hands began to sweat, my heartbeat picked up speed. Could he feel my heaving breaths? Suddenly, Mark said, “I can't do this.”
He stood up and walked to the fireplace.
“It's me. I'm not kissing material, am I? I'm too uptight, too picky, too unattractive, too— “
He strode back to the couch, pulled me up by the shoulders, and kissed me. I suppose it started out as a way to stop me from talking, and then it slowed down to the pace it took to sample one another. To introduce himself, physically, to me. To make love to my tongue and kiss the inside of my lips. He tasted like my new favorite flavor of everything. I could've lost time, along with all my inhibitions, inside his kiss.
It was amazing how the slightest movement of my head invited him for more. How his fingers tangled in my hair, pulling me in for more. His lips were soft, his tongue was lovely, and it knew just how to seduce mine. I opened my eyes and closed my mouth, pulling back slightly from the reach of his touch. He opened his eyes, and he looked at me. My ability for verbal communication was temporarily out of order. I was in shock.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that.” He turned and walked to the kitchen.
It took a minute for me to be able to feel my legs and trust that I could walk without falling. It was a moment like no other. Ecstasy in the form of two lips, fitting perfectly on top of mine. Agreeing for a taste, and then inviting it with pleasure. Did I stop breathing? Was it over too fast? Did enough happen for me to live a lifetime on the feeling it brought me? I'd never experienced snaps of electricity actually inside my body before. It was nothing remotely like the first time I kissed Wesley.
It happened the night I went to his house to tell him Ashley had left. My sister never cared that her actions affected everyone around her. She was leaving for no other reason than she just couldn't take being home anymore, without our parents being alive. Ashley and Wesley had been more off than on for their last year as seniors at Oregon University.
“What about Wesley? He loves you, Ashley. You've hurt him before.”
“Then he won't be too surprised, Amy. I told him we were going to go our separate ways after college anyway. He's too serious. I'm looking to date around. Experience the world. There is no way I'm going to settle down to fit into his equation of what comes next after a college degree.” She continued stuffing clothes from her drawers into her suitcase. She stopped briefly to roll up her sleeves and survey the room.
“I can't pick up your pieces anymore, Ashley. What about school? You only have a semester left. You can't quit school. Mom and Dad paid for you to get that degree.”
Ashley yelled from the bathroom, where she was now throwing her toiletries in a bag. “Amy, they wanted the degree, not me. I have a friend who lives in California. I'm going there for a while. You finish school like Mom and Dad wanted. That's your dream and theirs, not mine. I'm going to go be an actress. You don't need a degree for that. Tell Wesley goodbye for me.”
I sank down to the floor in the bathroom doorframe and began to cry. Ashley knelt next to me. “Amy, you'll be fine. Wesley will look out for you. If you need me, call.”
“I need you now, Ashley. Why do you have to leave?” I looked into her eyes. The same as mine, only a little more heartless.
Ashley stood up, threw her duffle bag across her back and grabbed her suitcase. “Amy, get a backbone. Finish school and move on with your life. I've got to go. I'm picking up Brad at his house. I'm already late.”
I left shortly after Ashley's car lights rolled off the edge of the bedroom wall. Just like always, it was my responsibility to tell Wesley she was gone. I blew my nose and looked in my rearview mirror, previewing what he'd see when he opened his front door. A broken down wreck. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and headed up to his house, carrying a pack of weights behind my ankles. How dreadful to give and get bad news twice in one week.
I stood at his door, shaking from what I had to tell him. I figured he would fall apart. He always said he and Ashley would probably settle down after college. Fortunately for me, I never commented either way.
He swung the door open after the third press on the doorbell. I tried not to look directly at him. Smells of a take-out restaurant wafted out to the stoop. I looked for where it was coming from. Casserole dishes were lined up on the front table, ready to be picked up from the neighbors who were probabl
y trying their best to feed him in his time of grieving. They weren’t even rinsed, some looking as though they were becoming science projects. It had been a week since his parents' funeral. “Amy, what are you doing here? Come in, it's cold outside.”
He escorted me inside. I looked past the living room and saw that the kitchen looked like a grenade had gone off. The once neat and tidy black-granite countertops were littered with half-eaten bags of chips, cookies, and bowls of dried cereal. Soda cans, even beer bottles, sat on every open space. The sink was brimming over with Mrs. Whitfield's ivory, every-day dinnerware. And most of the white cabinet doors were swung open. I looked at Wesley. His hair was a mess and his shirt hadn't been changed since the funeral service. A loud television blared from upstairs.
I walked slowly, unsure with every step I took. It was so unusual not to have his parents come and greet me too. Pictures of them at their various vacation spots hung on the walls in collage frames. His mother would have freaked out to see the house in its current shape.
“Wesley, I came to tell you Ashley left.” Band-Aids hurt less when they're ripped off quickly.
“What? What are you talking about? I talked to her earlier today. We go back to school next week. Where did she go?” His forehead tensed, gathering into tiny folds, trying to take in what I was saying.
“She went to California.” I stood in the middle of the room, waiting for his reaction. I sucked in my bottom lip, squinting and waiting for the explosion.
He stepped back and steadied himself against the wall, although this was nothing new. She did it right after high school too. She said she felt smothered and left for New Mexico for a month-long vacation with friends. Wesley should've been hard to surprise by now, but in the week after losing both his parents, he was reacting to the news with signs of a minor break down. His hand pinched his temples and his eyes became directionless.
“Come in and sit down.” I took off my coat and led him by the arm to the sofa. I pushed a pile of clothes so we could sit. He hovered a moment longer, like a plane not ready to land.
“Did she say why?” His bottom lip trembled a little.
“You haven't been together for a couple months, Wesley. You know Ashley, she's never one to stay around.” I put air quotes around the word “together”.
“I was giving her time alone to grieve. She said to call her in a few days. And as far as her moving out of my apartment at school, she just needed some space before graduation. She assured me we were fine.”
“She was planning her escape.” Did I say that out loud?
“I always thought we'd somehow get back together. I overlooked the thing with James. She told me her friends got her drunk. She didn't know what she was doing.”
Yeah, I'd heard about James too. New guy, blond hair, blue eyes, drove a Hummer and was ripe for the picking. Ashley always carried an empty basket for fresh meat. And naiveté was always Wesley's strongest trait. It never took more than three bats of Ashley's eyes and a new lie to douse his curiosity about the rumors he'd heard.
Wesley finally sat down next to me. I pulled his head into my neck, cradling him, just the way I needed to be handled in the wake of my own parent's death and sister's hiatus. “It's going to be all right.”
He lifted up his head and looked into my eyes. I couldn't help it. Tears were slipping down my own cheek. He wiped them away with his finger and looked me square in the eye. Maybe it was Ashley he was imagining. Rebounding at the speed of light. He moved in closer and pulled me in for a kiss. I had waited all my life to be kissed by Wesley Whitfield. Ashley had gotten everything in life. She could have had him gift wrapped if she snapped her fingers just right.
The kiss started with hesitation, and then it was as if, after he second-guessed his action, he hurried to finish up. Nipping my lip in the process. There were no fireworks, just a half-exploded sparkler that failed to finish, as he jumped up from the sofa.
“Amy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I felt bad. You felt bad. I just wanted to make you feel better.”
I untwisted my shirt. Was the correct response embarrassment or a little honesty on the rocks? I mixed equal portions of both, wiping my lips, and feeling my bottom one throb a little. “It's okay, Wesley. I'd be lying if I said I regretted it.”
He turned around. “What?”
“I've always liked you and have always thought my sister was a complete loser for taking you for granted. I would never take you for granted.”
He came closer and sat back down. “I never thought you—”
“How could you? You never had eyes for anyone other than Ashley.”
“That's not true. When we broke up last year, I dated a few girls.”
“And when Ashley snapped her fingers, you were right back at her beck and call.”
I stood up and walked toward the door. I grabbed my coat from the floor and began putting it on. “I'll call tomorrow to check on you.”
I transported from my memory when I heard a bang from Mark’s kitchen. “Damn it.”
I went toward the expletives and found Mark sucking his knuckle. “What happened?”
I rushed to him and took his finger out of his mouth to look at it. He apparently sliced it on a beer top. The twist top won. I took him to the sink and ran cold water over it. “Does that feel better?”
He looked into my eyes. Eyes that I couldn't escape. Now especially, since I had tasted the lips that were placed right below them. What was happening? It was an after-school special about two teenagers left alone to explore the possibilities of all that was forbidden. Except I was married, and he was monogamously challenged.
“I don't know what happened in there.” He pulled his hand from the water and wiped it on his pants.
“I sucked, and you can't tell me the truth.” But, oh, did it feel good.
He paced back and forth from the refrigerator to the stove, holding the back of his neck. “Not exactly. Truth be told, it was the best kiss I've ever had.”
I quickly looked up from the floor, found his eyes and searched for the truth, but he wore no expression. “Are you trying to make me feel good?”
“Is that the way you kiss Wesley? It couldn't be, because no one leaves someone who kisses them like that.”
If only. Maybe he wouldn't have written the note if that's what went on between our lips. The ugly truth was, I knew we had been playing a game for years. A game of denial. As much as I wanted passion from Wesley, it was never there. I just couldn't give up. It would be too much like losing my mom and dad all over again. He was all I had left of my past. Ashley didn't count. I could never depend on her.
“Honestly, I don't kiss Wesley like that. At least I don’t feel like I ever have. Obviously I need to start. I think it might be an essential ingredient to keeping ahold of what we have left.” I went to the living room and retrieved my wine glass. After I rinsed it, I stood quietly in the kitchen. Mark had stopped pacing. My heart was beginning to beat with a more even rhythm. Not like the drum roll it’d been keeping pace with ever since the kiss.
“Amy, I don't think you should go Saturday.” He twirled the bottle cap on the counter.
“We had a deal, Mark. I'm going. I just have to practice holding my belly. Isn't that what pregnant women do?” I used to practice in the mirror, when I dreamed of having Wesley's baby.
He put the beer down and took me by the shoulders. “Don't you get it? I can't go there with you and act like your husband. I can't be trusted to be with you without the walls of the hospital when I'm safely in my white jacket and you're safely beside your husband. The deal is off.”
His jaw jutted out as his teeth clenched together. “I'm not sure what went on in there. It changed things. Today has changed things. What I'm feeling isn't casual friendship. Hell, it's not even one-night-stand shit. I want to spend the night with you, Amy. But not to have sex. Not to get up, tell you I'll call, and never see you again. It’s not like that.”
I pressed my eyes tightly shut. Why di
d that rejection give pain to my very soul? He must have noticed. “You don't understand. I want to be next to you all night and spend it getting to know everything about you. What you do before you go to sleep. Do you rub lotion on your legs? Do you gargle mouthwash? What do you look like when you wake up? Are there lines on your face? Would your beautiful red hair tickle my face if we slept together? These are the things running through my mind when I look at you now. Not will you wake up when I shut the front door, or what's the fastest route back to my house? And certainly the thought of you being married is the furthest thing from my mind.”
I couldn't speak. The second nature of putting sound to mouth simply evaporated from my abilities. Was this how it felt to be in someone's thoughts? To be wondered about? He released my shoulders and walked to the door, slipping his shoes on. “I'll take you back to your car.”
I walked over and pushed my feet into my flats, trying to act as though my hormones weren’t doing back flips throughout my body. I needed to keep it real. Because this was real. I was married and he was just having a hormonal effect from the lip-on-lip contact. “Mark, I'm just someone you can't have. You even told me to play hard to get for Wesley. If you could have me, you wouldn't want me. Trust me. It wouldn't take long, anyway, to realize I'm nothing deeper than a scratched surface. I couldn't hold a candle to the women you're used to dating. Don't worry, we're on for Saturday. I'll make sure you get that promotion.”
Mark didn't argue. In fact, he barely said a word. Instead, he drove me to my car in complete silence. I had time to sober up from all the wine. Being told someone likes you and finding yourself in the same boat, seems to always do the trick better than a grande Starbucks special. I tried to pull it together, staring at him out the corner of my eye. Telling myself, in no uncertain terms, this could never be a viable option for me. What I said was true. If I were available, he'd never have given me a second look. Just like Ashley, I was new to his animal kingdom. One time of succumbing to my attraction for him, breaking my wedding vows, and laying myself open to bleed vulnerability, and he'd be dodging me like all the others. Only this time he'd sweat more. I knew where he lived.
Waking Amy (Amy #1) Page 7