by O. M. Grey
Her cheeks relaxed as well.
“This would be too easy.”
“It’s anything but easy,” she sighed, betraying a slight catch in her throat.
“Of course, I mean with you. It’s so natural.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Just one minute everything changed.”
“Sure felt that way.”
“Can’t we just go back?”
“We have to, I suppose.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Neither do I.”
“Look. They’ve got their Christmas Blend in. Two for one, the lady said.”
“Really? And they have decaf. Sometimes they don’t have decaf in the special blends.”
“You only drink decaf?”
“Yep.”
“That’s just not human.”
“I go rather nuts with caffeine. Literally. It’s a thing.”
“And non-fat, you said. Are you on a diet?”
“Always.”
“You don’t need to be. You look amazing.” His eyes again held the heat from before.
“Kevin,” she breathed.
“Right. Sorry.” For the next few moments, he looked around the cafe. His eyes fell on one person typing away on their laptop, then another reading a book, before they came back to his companion. But he did not look at her for long, just momentarily meeting her gaze before looking down again.
“But what about last week? Do I just put your seduction out of my mind. Wipe it from my memory?”
“We didn’t...” His words slipped across the table so silently they almost did not exist.
“I know we didn’t. I was there. But it was close enough.”
He took a sip of his coffee and watched the laptop guy put his computer in his brown satchel and fasten it.
“What? That didn’t count? Don’t kid yourself.” She crossed her arms and fixed her eyes on the tiers of pastries behind the glass.
“Their coffee is really rich.”
“It is. I have to get it watered down when I get just regular decaf. I tell them to fill it three-quarters and then the rest with hot water. When I get it iced, the hot coffee melting over the ice makes it perfect. Then the best part is watching the half and half swirl down between the ice cubes. I always try to take a picture of it, but it never comes out just right.”
“My god, you’re adorable.”
A blush flashed across her cheek and she tried not to smile. But she glowed with love, and it seemed to meet with the joy emanating from him. Their eyes locked, and for a moment they were the brightest spot in the dark cafe. But the sadness quickly returned.
“I can’t do this dishonestly.” His voice was barely audible over the recorded music and whirring machines. “Those are the rules, right?”
“Yes, so you said last week, too. Then...”
After looking around as if he expected a PI to be taking photos, he leaned in closer across the small cafe table, lowering his voice even further, his words desperate. “What do you want from me?”
“Something you are unwilling to give, or even try for.”
“I asked you to please have patience. It’s going to take a long time.”
“So you keep saying, and I can be patient, too. These feelings just don’t go away, after all. But are you even trying? Does she even know I exist?”
“Of course she does. It’s just...delicate.”
“Why did you do this to us? We were fine before. Perfect as friends. Colleagues. Now you haunt me. Every minute. Every fucking minute, Kevin.”
“It can’t be like that.”
“Well it is like that! It’s not something I can control or I would. Believe me. I would.” The tip of the woman’s nose started turning red and her eyes became glassy. She bit her lip and looked anywhere but at him. Her eyes fell on the rows of reusable cups along the wall and flicked from one to the next down the row, counting them. Red ones dominated the bulk of the display, as it was close to the holidays. Everything was either red or green or blue or white.
The man was silent for a moment. His face held a look of confusion, as if he was trying to think of just the right words. Tears formed in his eyes as well, but the sadness quickly turned to shame. He covered his face with his hands, slowly drawing them down his cheeks, then picked up his coffee for another sip.
She visibly softened, then broke the silence. Yet her voice was cold. “Still no word from my agent. It’s been months. I think she’s forgotten about me.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case.” He forced a smile.
“When will we run lines together again? I miss that.”
“I do, too.”
“Then we should start doing that again. Supporting each other in our work. That seemed to work well for us both last time. We can do this. We can go back.”
“I don’t want to lose you from my life,” he said softly. “I don’t know what to do.”
She reached out to his face but stopped just as her hand was about to touch his square jaw. She pulled back and crossed her arms again, looking away.
“I don’t want to lose you from my life either. And I know we can’t do this dishonestly. It was my rule from the beginning, remember? This just all sideswiped me and now my heart is overpowering my reason. Thank you for the reminder.”
“You saved my marriage. I’m just trying to return the favor.”
“My marriage is fine. My husband knows, remember? We have an agreement.”
“My marriage isn’t.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I love my wife.”
“Yes. I know. I love my husband, and I...” Her thumb worked the drops of mocha into the lipstick on the lid, smearing it. “Don’t you see, love breeds more love. Desire, more desire. There is no loss here, as long as it’s honest.”
“She’ll never go for it.”
“You can’t know that unless you try.”
“I know my wife.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman put both hands around her coffee cup, as if to warm them. She looked down intently at the lipstick stained plastic lid before taking another long sip, then continued smearing the lipstick stain into a blurry mess across the plastic top.
The man watched her for a moment, the look in his eyes evolving from pain to love back to pain again.
“Friends, then,” she finally said after taking a deep breath and a deeper swig of her mocha.
“Of course. Always.”
“Just deny this.”
“We either betray ourselves or we betray them, so we betray ourselves.”
“Agreed.”
Tears filled the woman’s eyes. For several seconds, she squeezed her eyes tightly as if willing the tears to stop from flowing.
“What is it, my darling?”
“Darling. You are the only man to ever call me that. And when you say it, I catch my breath.”
“You are my darling, my love. But this situation, it’s impossible.”
“Do I just keep fantasizing then? That’s all this relationship has been, one fantasy after another. You did this to me.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
“You started something you couldn’t finish.”
“I know.”
“Look at me, Kevin. I’m getting older by the day. And you, your career is on the verge of taking off. Film after film, and I can’t even get a commercial. You become more influential and more powerful and just better every day.”
“I wouldn’t have any of it without your help. Without what you have been to me. My friend. My confidant. My muse. I found an agent thanks to you. And nonsense about you getting older. You’re beautiful.”
“I have a decade on you.”
“But you look younger than I do.”
“I’m just so afraid you’re leaving me behind. You’ll forget about me.”
“You
should know better than that.”
“Should I?” She dabbed the brown napkin to the corner of her eye, catching the tear before it streaked her black eyeliner down her face. “Look at me. Fucking school girl. I’m just a fool.”
“Julie.”
“Just stop. Just stop talking for a minute.”
The sound of a bell, a single dong, clipped the air.
The man picked up his iPhone and looked.
“They need me back on the set.”
“Of course.”
“You know I don’t want this. Not this way.”
“I know.”
“But I just.... There’s just.... There’s just no other option.”
“I know.”
“I don’t really know what else to say.”
“Say whatever you like, just as long as it’s not goodbye.”
“Until later, then.”
“Of course. Later.”
She watched him leave, never blinking until he was out of sight.
Final Word
A note on the pillow read: I warned you.
The sounds of the new day silenced, as if she had been sealed in a coffin. No birds, no traffic, nothing. Just silence. Then the pounding of her heart and her quickening breath invaded her ears from the inside. She sat up, and he trickled out of her, wetting the sheets.
Images from the previous night flooded her mind. Pleasure. Passion...and fear. She could feel his hands grasping her hair, holding her face close as he said, “If anyone finds out about this, it’s over.”
She had known him forever, it seemed, but in reality it had been less than a year. Theirs has been one of those connections, indescribable. Close. Fast friends. When it turned more, she fell hard. He had told her how he married after the army. But even with a wife and a three-year-old son, his need for her remained, and hers for him. Although she had tried to keep things platonic, she had been unable to resist when he had pushed toward seduction.
Life had damaged him, but then it hadn’t left her unscathed either. The scars on her arms and legs, self-inflicted, spoke to that. But she nor anyone but another soldier could grasp the depth of his internal injuries. As former sniper who had served in Iraq, he struggled with normal life. She could see the pain behind his eyes because it mirrored her own. Although she hadn’t known him before, she sensed the war had changed him. Still, they understood each other’s insanities. Both broken. Both scrambling to survive in a world they didn’t understand, and more importantly, one that didn’t understand them.
A buzzing pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked over at her phone vibrating on the night stand, a reminder of an unread text from her best friend.
He must have seen it.
That’s how he knew she had told. She must have slept through the first alert, dreaming. Content in her satisfaction. His senses, honed from his experience overseas, enabled him to hear the quiet vibration in the night.
Now he knew. Now it was over.
She collapsed to the floor, holding herself in a fetal position. The fear that consumed her wouldn’t even allow tears to come. Gasping for breath, she tried to grasp this new reality.
He was gone. It was over. Surely he couldn’t throw their love away so easily. But the fear of hurting his family mixed with the unstable nature of PTSD made him unpredictable. She had seen it, his personality change from charming and witty one moment to dark and brooding and harsh the next. She had often wondered if he was reliving something from the war, remembering things that he quickly pushed back down deep inside the darkness of his mind. Despite horrors of war, tragedy and loss and savagery beyond comprehension, his greatest fear now was losing his family. He would stop at nothing to protect his place with them. He would never talk of them. She had asked repeatedly to see a picture of his wife, hoping that seeing her as a person, instead of just a intangible concept, would help her resist him. She would not do anything to hurt him or his family, but he always made an excuse. Perhaps his fear of losing them, of being discovered, had turned dangerous and triggered something primal inside him.
A new horror came to mind.
What if he meant over over. Like, over for her. Completely, not just the relationship?
“Get up,” her subconscious screamed at her.
But she couldn’t move.
“Get up! Get up!” The words burst from her mouth and echoed against the walls in the silent apartment.
Forcing herself to her feet, her instinct took over. Naked and alone, she ran to the front door and turned the two deadbolts, locked the doorknob, and shoved a chair beneath the handle. She stepped back, pulling her hands to her mouth, and trembled. Listening. But the silence remained. The whole world quiet, save for the pounding of her heart and her ever-quickening breath.
Her mind drifted back to a few weeks ago. She could still see him watching her with admiration. No, adoration. The heat in his eyes had startled her. No one had looked at her like that in quite some time, and she had thought she imagined it. An artist, like her, they had gone to an opening together. An excuse to see each other, of course, in a professional setting without suspicion, although there had been nothing to suspect at the time. They had just been colleagues, friends, supporting each other in a tough business. Keeping each other’s spirits up so that they could continue to create. But his wife was the jealous type. Older than he, on her third marriage, a scientist with little interest in the visual arts.
That night everything had changed. She had felt him watching her, and she didn’t quite know what to think. They had embraced, as always, but this time he kissed her. Just on the cheek. Rather innocent, really; but she had felt something new in that moment. For her, anyway. The look on his face as they parted made it clear that he had been taken with her for some time, and that night he had made his move, subtle as it was.
A door slammed in the hall, making her jump then realize she stood alone, naked and scared. Lost in her memories. Had she been more aware, could she have seen the danger that lay just beneath his surface?
Voices drifted through her closed door. She stared at the chair forced beneath the handle and listened.
“Why are you so grumpy this morning?” It was Mr. White, her neighbor.
“As if you didn’t know. I hardly slept with all that screaming and pounding last night.”
They must be on their way to church.
“Ah, to be young again,” he responded, his voice fading as they moved down the hall.
Then again, silence. Deafening, the kind that muffles every sense. The kind that fills the entire room with dread.
She still trembled, but the goosebumps on her flesh awakened her to the cold.
“You’re overreacting.” Her voice broke the silence. “Get a grip.”
Leaving the chair propped under the door, she retuned to the bedroom and began gathering her clothes strewn about the room. She picked up the purple panties and the matching bra, bought especially for him, his favorite color, and slid them on, remembering how he had coaxed them off last night. The soft fabric of her favorite sweatshirt dried her cheeks as she pulled it over her head, its folds warming her body and comforting her. She stepped into her PJ bottoms and slid her feet into her fuzzy slippers.
The phone on the nightstand buzzed again, causing the adrenaline to rush to her brain. She picked up the phone to turn it off, but dropped it. Its face cracked as it hit the side of the nightstand before crashing to the floor. Frantic, she looked around then ran toward the window. After she jerked the curtains closed, she pressed herself against the wall next to it. Her pounding heart filled her ears, and she could see it moving the material of her thick sweatshirt. Her breath came faster and more shallow. She slid down the wall and hugged her knees, trying to consciously slow her breath. Breath in, one-two-three-four, and out, one-two-three-four. In, one-two-three-four, and out, one-two-three-four.
It wasn’t helping.
She crawled along the floor, fighting to breathe, toward the bathroom. Grasping the e
dge of the sink, she pulled herself up and reached for her bottle of Xanax. After gulping one of the tiny pills down with a handful of water, she took comfort in the fact that the attack would soon pass. Her face in the mirror seemed old, tired. She turned the shower knob to hot, knowing the hot water would calm her until the pills kicked in. It always did, but as the room steamed up she saw it again.
I warned you written on the glass shower door. Screaming, she wiped the words off then dashed around the apartment, jerking the curtains closed over the windows and ensuring all the lights were off. Although, that didn’t matter in the daylight. Her thoughts bounced around in her head, obsessive and frantic.
She rushed into the kitchen, opened the silverware drawer, and pulled out the biggest knife. Then she resumed her position on the floor, in a corner, with her knees pulled close. She kept her wide eyes trained on the front door and waited.
It’s not enough, her brain screamed at her. You haven’t done enough. Pile boxes in front of the windows! Call the police, for Christ’s sake!
“The Police,” she said aloud. “Fuck!”
Clutching the knife in one hand and forcing herself to take deep, controlled breaths, she crawled back into the bedroom to her shattered phone. She pushed the home button and saw the familiar picture pop up. Thank God! It still worked! She slid the arrow to unlock it and pressed the green phone button. Dr. Ray’s name filled the top three slots of her recent call list.
She pressed the top one.
“Hello,” the tired voice on the other end said.
“Dr. Ray?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry to wake you. It’s Marla.”
Following a heavy sigh, he said, “Yes, Marla. How can I help you?”
“I’m in danger!” she managed between rapid breaths.
“Calm down. Are you doing your breathing exercises?”
“Yes, but they’re not working! He’s coming! He’s coming for me!”
“You are having a panic attack again. Keep taking deep breaths. Try a hot shower until it passes. That always seems to help, right?”
“No! You don’t understand! On the shower--” But her pleas went unheard on the dropped call.
“Fucking AT&T!” she shrieked and hurled the phone across the room, hitting the far wall and denting the sheetrock. There goes the security deposit.