That was hard to believe. Just a little light S&M, and he'd had no trouble breaking free when she went to get the condom. He hadn't really been under her control; he'd wanted her to do what she did.
Hell, he'd begged for it.
Was that it? His own needs? His own desperation?
Maybe it had nothing to do with Bonnie at all. He had never thought of himself as a family man, or a couple man, for that matter—but he'd never thought of himself as being a commitment-phobe. He'd assumed that some day, in a distant future, he'd settle down and maybe have dependent life forms. First, a fish. Then, after a few years, work his way up to a cat—he'd really like a dog, but dogs didn't deserve a human who liked to fly around the world and backpack in Belize and take six-week road trips around the country in his little Prius.
Did Bonnie?
He was angry with himself for freaking out now, just when he'd finally won her over. What kind of asshole chased after a girl and dumped her as soon as she let him catch her?
The answer made him want to puke. Paul shoved himself away from his desk and stalked through the house to the room at the back where they'd had the best sex of his life.
His favorite room in the house, where he used to spend most of his time but hadn't even stepped inside since the night with Bonnie.
His father was just that kind of asshole. Three marriages, three mistresses—if you could call them that, this day and age—and he was working on another, one of each. Paul always though his sister's devotion to her husband and their baby-making was to create the fantasy family life they'd never had. Always looked good on the outside, but not so real on the inside.
Who was he to think he could do any better?
And didn’t Bonnie deserve better than him?
He had to think, and not here at his grandmother's old daybed with the curtain ropes still dangling on the headboard.
Relieved to have a plan, Paul fled the room to get his backpack together.
After two weeks of silence, Bonnie went into action.
She formally dropped out of school.
She pursued the incarceration of Starbucks creep, which luckily and unluckily, was proceeding easily without her since they had another case on him.
And ignoring the pity and sympathetic indignation of her elderly roommates, she swept Paul and their brief time together out of her mind and into the same Rubbermaid plastic box where she'd stored her unfinished thesis, intending to think about neither one ever again.
How could he?
The third week after their last night together, Bonnie began painting again. Not easy, since she used oils and the fumes in a small apartment were toxic even to the young and oblivious. To the old and sensitive, the linseed oil and turpentine was like Chernobyl. They didn't complain, which made Bonnie ache with gratitude and affection, and then anger, since anytime her emotions swelled she thought of him.
How could he? At first she feared he'd been in an accident. Family emergency. Hell, even a work crisis would satisfy her she was so smitten. But spying through her neighbor and Paul's sister had revealed the truth, that he'd seemed just fine before leaving the country for a sudden backpacking vacation in Costa Rica.
If Bonnie weren't afraid of flying, she would have chased him down and shoved him into a volcano. Backpacking!
So she painted the image instead, using vacation photos of strangers posted online and nursed her broken heart.
Costa Rica!
“Good riddance,” Marilyn said from her recliner, feet propped motionless on the stair-stepper.
“Hush, Mary-bellie,” Lorraine said. “You never know about people. He's probably a very nice boy who just got the jitters.”
“Rabid dogs get the jitters,” Marilyn said. “Then you put 'em down.”
Seeing another therapy session looming, Bonnie screwed the cap on the vermilion and began to rinse off her brush.
Lorraine shook her head sadly. “You haven't called him again, have you?”
“Of course not.” The first day after, she'd called him six times, never suspecting the truth. She capped the jar of solvent and left the room to wash her hands—and escape their loving but painful concern.
Scrubbing her hands in the bathroom, she told herself she was fine, then looked up to the mirror to see her stricken face.
A scream shot up from the other room, jolting her out of her wallowing. She flung open the door and ran into the living room, where Lorraine was screeching from the couch with two thin white arms raised into the air.
“Your phone! Your phone!”
Taking a deep, frustrated breath, Bonnie turned to go back to the bathroom. Her hands were dripping. “It's just spam. Warning me the factory warranty on my car is about to expire.”
“You don't know that,” Lorraine said.
Marilyn snorted. “Warranties never cover anything anyway.”
The phone continued to chirp from the coffee table. Remembering she had promised Prof. Alice a coffee date, Bonnie sighed and went over to see if it was her.
His name flashed on the tiny screen. She squeezed the plastic phone in her hand and felt her heart stop. “You bastard,” she muttered.
“It's him!” Lorraine cried in a stage whisper.
Teeth clenched, Bonnie answered the call. “What do you want?”
All she heard was his exhalation into the receiver. “I didn't know if you'd pick up. I thought about using my sister's phone.”
She didn't say anything. Let him swing.
He cleared his throat. “I'd like to explain. Can I see you?”
That got her. “See me? Why, so you can have another great fuck and then fly off to fucking South America? Why not make it Australia this time? Hell, how about fucking Pluto, you selfish, asshole bastard!”
Then she hung up.
Marilyn was scowling and smiling at the same time, looking like a gargoyle in a grape-colored sweatsuit. “Good job. If he comes by here I'll kick him in the balls.”
Bonnie's heart was pounding in her ears and she was afraid she might keel over. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the couch and dropped her phone on the cushions. “'Can I see you?'” she mimicked. “That's what it was to him. Seeing me. That's how we met, you know—he was checking me out when I dropped Jake off at Happy Bear.”
“Never trust a man sniffing around at a preschool,” Marilyn said.
Lorraine didn't look so sure. She'd gotten to her feet and come over to rest her soft hand on Bonnie's arm. “Maybe you should hear what he has to say. It might make you feel better.”
“To hell with him.” Bonnie wiped away angry tears, leaned over and kissed the tissue-thin skin of her roommate's cheek. “I was crazy to take it so seriously. I mean, what was I thinking? I barely knew the guy.”
“Let's go out to See's,” Marilyn said, heaving to her feet. “I feel your need for a dozen mocha truffles.”
Lorraine didn't move. “Marilyn and I knew on our second date that we'd be together forever,” she said. “If we could get up the courage.”
“If you could.” Marilyn shuffled over. “You took some convincing.”
Lorraine smiled. “Not too much.”
“Two years,” Marilyn said. “With all that praying and crying to put up with.”
They gave each other a poignant look that crossed the decades and made Bonnie ashamed of her small heartbreak.
Obviously, Paul never would understand feelings that rooted that deep.
Unlike herself.
Chapter 10
He continued to call and she continued to ignore him. Each time he left a single message, without any other words or explanation: “I'm sorry.”
For what? she wondered bitterly. For helping her fix her life? Because by the time two entire months had passed, Bonnie had never been as happy with herself and her occupation—or lack of it. For the first time in several years, she woke up early without an alarm and jumped out of bed to start the day. She began running. Painting. Visiting old friends.
Obviously, she did
n't need him.
Didn't love him.
Whatever remnants of feeling she had for him—infinitesimal, broken shards of useless sentimentality—she was getting out of her system by crying herself to sleep. Or once, when she was in Trader Joe's tossing an imported frozen pizza into her cart and had to hurry out without paying.
She would not be one of those women. She would not fall apart as though a man was the duct tape holding her together.
Then one Tuesday morning he called at the usual time, while she was helping Marilyn with her morning medication, and left a different message.
“I think I'm in love with you,” he said. Then the recording captured empty air as he lingered in silence before finally clicking off.
“You scumbag.” Standing at the kitchen table, Bonnie felt the air leave her lungs. Without deleting the message, she shoved the phone back into her purse and went back to counting out Marilyn's “old lady pills.”
“What now?” Marilyn asked.
“Hush.” Lorraine said, entering the room. “She's crying.”
“I am not.” Bonnie wiped her nose. “Allergies.”
Marilyn reached over and took the pill bottle from her. “Yeah, I'm allergic to 'em too.”
He called at the same time the next evening and again she didn't answer. But as soon as the red message light began to blink, Bonnie took the phone into her bedroom and braced herself to hear more about his stupid “love,” hoping he'd add some detail about the suffering he was enduring without her.
But all he said was, “I'm in love with you.”
She listened to the message seven times before she deleted it.
Two weeks of this went by. In spite of herself, Bonnie began to thaw. She thought about him when she was awake, and at night, when her subconscious came unleashed, she burned and burned with naked lust.
One dream in particular swam up from her erotic subconscious and had her dripping wet and wired at four in the morning. Instead of Professor Alice it had been Professor Paul, and he hadn't been happy at all with her dropping out of school. In fact, she was much too young to be out of school—just a girl, really, like Britney in the video—and Prof. Paul had locked her into his office to teach her the importance of keeping her nose to the academic grindstone. While she bent over his desk.
“You are a very bad young lady,” he'd said, holding her firmly and sliding up her short plaid skirt. “I'll have to be very firm with you.”
In her dream, his hand had been impossibly large and strong. Resisting him had not been an option and she lifted her ass for a spanking and begged for more.
She woke up before he had pounded his cock into her. Lying sweaty and frustrated in the darkness, trying to recapture the intensity of the dream, she touched herself and thought of him.
The next time he called, she picked up.
She was jogging down the bike path along the BART tracks—she brought her phone with her on a run, if just to remove a temptation from her nosy roommates. Maybe it was pity, maybe it was the dream, maybe it was just that she liked him a lot and she missed him.
Her breath was already labored from the run, and holding the live phone to her ear made her heart pound harder in her ears. “Hi, Paul.”
He inhaled sharply, then recovered. “Bonnie,” he said. “Bonnie. I am so sorry.”
She waited, composing her thoughts. Kicked a pebble off the path. Watched a hawk circle overhead. “You didn't leave any kind of explanation in your messages.”
“There wasn't one that was good enough.”
“You should have lied.”
He made a low choking sound she realized was laughter. “All right. I was kidnapped.”
“Well, I'm not paying any ransom. You can rot in the rainforest for all I care.”
“Drown me in the Pacific?”
The reminder that he'd fled to an exotic vacation spot—instead of, say, an alcoholic uncle's trailer in Bakersfield—just reminded her that they were not on bantering terms. Her whole life she'd fantasized about traveling the world, not alone, but with an adventurous partner. She had the money, and now that she'd quit school she was free to pursue her dream. But he hadn't thought to invite her. Or even say goodbye.
He wasn't The One.
She hung up on him.
While she jogged back home, the silent weight of the phone in her pocket slapped her thigh with each step and she thought of strong, disapproving professors.
He was starting to hope, which was dangerous. He'd been asking himself if she'd left him for weeks, would he forgive her?—and only because the answer was of course did he allow himself to keep calling her.
That and the certainty that she was The One. He was sure, he was determined, and he was patient.
And so he kept calling.
He never should have taken the backpack out of the closet months earlier. He had intended to run off for only a day or two to the Sierra, but then he had driven to Oakland Airport and happened to have his passport with him and a month of vacation time. . .
He never should have taken the backpack out of the closet.
“The thing is,” he left in his next message, since she hadn't answered his calls for another few days, “I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you and that freaked me out. Because I thought it was impossible to want that so quickly. I thought it was impossible that you would want it too.”
After he hung up on that one, he kicked himself with the knowledge that he'd gone too far. If he had any chance of winning her back he'd have to back off for a while. He closed all his curtains, holed himself up in his office, and poured his energies into his job so he could bear to wait for her. She had to think he was nuts, coming on fast, running away, and then practically proposing marriage. He wouldn't blame her if she called the cops, beat the crap out of him, then ran over him in his car.
But he didn't think she would. The connection that had sparked between them had been terrifying but real, and he knew he wasn't the only one who had felt it.
The next day, she sent him a text message inviting him to meet her for a drink.
“Just so you know, buying me a smoothie isn't going to fix everything,” she said.
She looked so good. Different, somehow, with looser clothes that had colorful stains down the front. He didn't care if she showed up in a Hefty bag. His body was on high alert at the first glimpse of her shape through the plate glass storefront. Her smile, which she quickly suppressed when she saw him, made his heart ache like an unprepared muscle after a workout. He sipped at his cold strawberry-flavored drink and tried to look cerebral, not horny as hell. Loving and cerebral, the kind of guy worth forgiveness.
A lifetime of it.
“It's great to see you,” he said. She couldn't help another tiny smile, so he grinned back. “Will you marry me?”
She gaped at him, then rolled her eyes. “Aren't you funny.”
“Not particularly.” He got up. “What can I get you?”
She waved him away and went over to the counter alone, glancing at him like she didn’t know what to think anymore. He smiled back and drank in the sight of her, feeling his heart ache. The weeks—months—without her had been numbing and pale. Having her so close was like flipping a switch inside him.
Losing her again was unthinkable.
“I'd love to take you to dinner, if you'd let me,” he said when she returned with her own drink. “Later?”
She licked her straw, then wrapped her lips around it. Paul tensed, watching her suck in the cold, sweet liquid.
“If you mention marriage again, I'm leaving,” she said. Her warm brown eyes met his in a frank, open gaze. When she licked the straw again, slowly, her eyes still on his, he realized what she meant: Keep it sexual.
After the long separation, Paul was in no position to argue. She had him hard at hello. “I want you in my bed,” he said, ignoring the people around them, the counter help, the guy bumping his chair behind him. He dropped his voice to a low, urgent growl. “May
be I just want to marry you because you're the best fuck I've ever had in my life.”
Her pink mouth stilled around the straw and her eyes widened. Then she smiled—a confident, sultry, womanly smile—and Paul nearly unzipped his pants right there at the table.
She stood up. “Walk me to my car.”
He was on his feet escorting her down the suburban street to her distinctive VW before she could pretend either one of them was in control of what was happening to them. Her sweet, flowery smell filled his nose and he bent lower to breathe it in, conscious of her quick steps next to his, then dragged his lips across her temple and inhaled more deeply. “God, I've missed you.”
She pulled out her keys. “I'll meet you at your place. This time I'm bringing my own ride home.”
“See you there.” He stole a kiss and she couldn't help smiling at him. Though she tried.
“Go on,” she said. “I think I can find it.”
Paul jogged—no, sprinted—down the street to his car, glad she was speaking to him, grateful she was going to fuck him, shoving aside the pathetic voice in his heart that said it wasn't enough. That he wouldn't be able to stop himself from pressuring her—especially during the raw, unguarded moments after they'd had the best mind-blowing sex of his life.
Don't be a dork, he told himself. Sex is better than nothing. With her, better than anything.
She'd realize what they had eventually. He could wait.
Watching Paul jog around the corner, Bonnie bit her lip, smiling and imagining the handsome male backside bare and sweaty under her hands. Under her tongue, which would explore each muscle from his shoulders down to the dimples of his ass. She would have him spread-eagle in a king-size bed, tangled up in crisp, white sheets, every inch there for her taking. Before he grew impatient and took her.
Suddenly, a thick arm hooked around her neck and jerked her backwards.
“Pa—” she gasped, and the arm tightened. White sparks shot across her vision, then red, then black. Her throat was too small and getting smaller with each shallow breath.
“Hello again,” her attacker said, and then she knew. He was supposed to be in jail.
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