When I heard the front door crashing open downstairs, followed by the frantic sprint to the bathroom, I finished with the last lily and wrapped my brush in plastic. I had just one more wall to finish, then if Lena wanted to move her things back upstairs, she could. I heard the toilet flushing as I came downstairs, and I watched her move into the kitchen, pull the jug of water from the refrigerator, and swallow a quarter of it in a single gulp.
“I have something I want to show you,” I said.
“I’ve been losing weight, Papa Bear,” she said from the refrigerator between sips of water. “Aren’t you supposed gain major poundage when you’re knocked up?”
I allowed a thoughtful nod, but knowing I couldn’t even fake my way as an obstetrician, I suggested she mention it to her doctor the next time she sees him.
She placed the jug back inside the refrigerator, then headed for the basement.
“No, it’s upstairs,” I said.
“I’m tired,” she whined.
“You’ll love this, just come up with—”
“I’m completely done!” she snapped, disappearing into the stairway and slamming the basement door.
Heat rose into my cheeks. I considered chasing after her, shaking some sense into her, and confessing how my knees and back ached like a motherfucker after spending the entire day painting stupid flowers for her, how there really was nothing wrong with pink, she was the one that wanted it, had begged for it as a Barbie-loving preschooler, and I had conceded to her silly demands and painted the room just like she wanted, spent a whole day rolling my arm up and down the walls while she had gone out with her mother for a pedicure or some other kind of mother-daughter pampering. So instead of confronting her now, I let her go. She needed the space so she could get her head screwed on properly.
I returned upstairs, but instead of burying myself in the paint, I grabbed the bank statements that Beth had provided a couple of days ago and started reading through them. Again. A few items had been highlighted, some in yellow (my notes) and some in Lena’s favorite color, pink (Veronica’s notes). My notes underlined inexplicable transactions, mostly cash withdrawals from a bank machine. I couldn’t reconcile the cash, or the occasional, low-dollar purchase at a dollar store or coffee shop, unless the location of those withdrawals, stores, and shops were unique, unfamiliar. A Washington, DC ATM withdrawal, for example, was most likely our pre-baby trip to the capitol.
In terms of questionable transactions (one that Veronica had pointed out) one belonged to a $357.87 purchase at the Hilton in Chicago. I had only visited that hotel once; it was a work conference with the folks from Trans Union about how we could evolve our collection tactics to avoid involving third-party collection agencies. That transaction had a relatively easy explanation because I had made that purchase for a business trip.
But the $436.14 purchase at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit had nothing to do with me, my work, or anything else with an explanation. I had never been there, and it didn’t make sense for Karen to spend that kind of money there either. Not when we lived less than thirty minutes from downtown Detroit. It had obviously been a room purchase. Good eye, Veronica.
I felt the phone vibrate in my pocket, just like I had every day for the past week. I knew to expect a text from Veronica.
How are you?
I tapped back:
Me: Good, you?
Want to swing out for a quick bite tonight?
I gulped at the sensation of something stirring in my crotch and noticed the trembling pushing through my hands. I jumped out of bed, abandoning the statements with its highlights and notes, and hurried downstairs.
At the door to the basement, I took a deep breath and shouted, “Lena, you’re not working tonight, are you?”
“No!” she screamed back, reminding me that she still needed some space tonight.
“Okay.” I ran back upstairs, trying to text and climb those steps at the same time. Fail. I nearly broke my jaw halfway through.
Me: Name the placcc
Damn. I tripped, landing on the side of my face and inadvertently hitting Send before fixing my typo. Ouch.
I retyped my response, making it intelligible as I entered the bathroom and rubbed my jaw where I expected to find a line of rug-burn. But there was nothing, not even a red mark.
The iPhone vibrated again.
My apt. 8pm. See you :-)
I felt that swirling sensation in my crotch again, stripped out of my clothes, and jumped into the shower with a bit of a hard-on. When I thought about Veronica, about what had happened in her foyer against that wall, and where it had led in her bedroom, I realized two things. One, I would have to learn to shower with a stiffy. And two, I didn’t have much of an appetite anymore. Except for her.
Flowers. I brought flowers—lilies like the ones on Lena’s wall—and once I killed the Chrysler’s engine outside Veronica’s apartment, I reached across the center console and grabbed them from the passenger seat. After glancing around for a sign of my stalker and not seeing anything suspicious, I continued to the apartment and hit the buzzer. I only waited a second or so before Veronica raced down the stairs to let me in, the blue streak seemingly dancing in her hair. She wore a striped sundress that reminded me of rainbows, long enough to touch her knees at times, but not quite long enough to permanently hide the words written along the exterior of her thigh. I read good, then shifted my attention from her legs to her face, because that seemed like the polite thing to do.
“You look tired,” she said, opening the door for me.
“You look,” I started, then gulped and said the first word that dropped out of my mouth, “delicious.”
She giggled and climbed the stairs ahead of me so I could try to see where the good led.
“Ava just fell asleep,” she told me outside her apartment. “We’ll have to keep it quiet.”
I shrugged, no big deal.
After she turned the knob but before she pushed the door open, she asked, “Were you followed?”
I shook my head, avoiding eye contact because I hadn’t really checked my mirrors as often as I normally would. I was too preoccupied about seeing Veronica and spending time with this unlikely woman. The entire time, all I could think about was hearing her voice again, kissing her lips, holding her, and maybe eating some dinner in case she really had prepared something for us.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she whispered.
I followed on her heels and felt my muscles tense the moment we stepped inside. As she reached past my shoulder and engaged the deadbolt, I practically held my breath. She stood close, probably too close. Dangerous, like how tasty she looked in that skirt tonight.
She licked her lips and whispered, “Kiss me, Elliot.”
So I kissed her. The moment our lips touched, she moaned and rolled her body against mine. This foyer had been my best ally when it came to Veronica.
“I want to read you,” I blurted as her hand reached between my legs and cupped my cock. She released me, my words sinking in. I doubted any other man had said something like that to her, but I genuinely wanted to read her story.
“Read me?” Her face contorted into a grimace beyond confusion. The first word that jumped into my head was: dork.
And it was perfect, so perfect I laughed at the dorky beauty of her face.
“Shhh!” she hissed, then smacked me. “Ava’s sleeping!”
I wrapped my arms around her, laughing so hard. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt like this, so free and so… myself. Once I calmed down, I reached down and scooped her up in my arms, her legs and that word on her left thigh—goodbyes, it turned out to be—were hanging over one arm, and her neck and the word never on her collarbone were hanging over the other. And of course those eyes, those big eyes that intimidated me and made me feel at home all at once, were lost in mine.
“Yes,” she whispered.
As we entered her bedroom, I noticed the white sheets again, the cotton ball fluffy comforter, b
ut these items weren’t glowing tonight like they had the last time I visited her room. It was getting dark, but still light enough to see the dark color on her walls, the Christmas lights hanging from the corner posts of her bed frame, the artistic stenciling on the walls. It reminded me of my teenage years and some of the girls I had dated. My youth, probably because Veronica was young, too young for someone like me, someone in his forties. That realization deflated my ego a little.
“Elliot,” she said as I placed her gently on the mattress, on her back.
I walked around the side of the bed—the floor is clean, why did I expect clothes all over the place, an iPad and books, the same shit that polluted my basement, minus the sex toys—and located the plug for the lights. I connected the line to the wall, bringing the lights to life like little stars in a jazz club, a slow pulsating kind of glow.
“I want you,” she said behind me, and then I felt her tug at the back of my shirt.
I turned around and saw that her sundress had hitched up her leg, almost revealing her crotch—those cotton panties won’t last long tonight—and the good revealed itself.
Goodbyes are like true love, they last forever.
I gulped at the similarity to my theory about death lasting forever, and then quickly tried to remember the conversations that ended our evenings, lunch dates, whatever. Had Veronica said goodbye to me? How did those evenings end?
“God, Elliot.”
I lowered myself on top of her, kissed her lips as my arms trembled, revealing me as an amateur at this kind of thing. Humiliated, I apologized for the trembling.
“It’s okay,” she breathed, and I steered my lips along her jaw, down her neck, then pulled up into a sitting position so I could roll the sundress up over her head, exposing her and the blue silk bra that matched that blue streak in her hair. Nothing fancy, not visually anyway, just…Veronica.
She sat still, vulnerable without being afraid, all while my eyes devoured her and discovered the full length of words across her collarbone—Never let me go—the scrolled sentence across her right rib cage—I am the biggest what-if of your life—which caught my breath, so I read it again.
The world seemed to fade into silence at that moment. I raised my focus, and I could read the look in my own eyes, simply by staring into hers.
I gulped.
And then I admitted, “You’re everything that’s perfect.”
When she blinked, she held her eyes closed. I eased her back onto the mattress, crawled off the bed, and worked my way up her right leg, kissing a path from her ankle where I found seven words on the outside of her foot—you are my start and my end—all the way up to her knees before switching to her left side and found more words—your are my happy and my sad—and worked up past goodbyes are like true love, they last forever tattoo that looked sexy and inviting at the same time, all the way up to her waist.
“I want to be a writer,” I whispered.
“A ‘writer?’”
“And you’re the most beautiful story I’ll ever write,” I told her, reaching down and peeling the panties away from her skin. I ran my lips along a slow and deliberate path that started at the inside of her hip and ran to her pubic bone.
She moaned, a soft and sweet sound that rolled through me like thunder. When she raised her hips, I pulled the cotton straight off of her, allowing the insides of my fingers to trace her soft, smooth legs all the way down to the tips of her black-painted toenails.
“Then write me a chapter,” she breathed, opening her legs slowly, almost nervously so that she could give herself to me. “With your tongue.”
I gulped again, then went to work, starting at her knee and edging all the way up to her pussy. I reached forward with my fingers, but stopped myself. Instead, I planted my hands on her hips and held her down, firmly so that she couldn’t move. Her legs opened a little more, reassuring me that I was doing the right thing.
I started with a soft, easy stroke, nothing crazy, just enough that she would feel a whisper slice across her slit. Like a prologue at the beginning of a good thriller, the kind where you wonder if it has anything to do with the overall story, or if it existed purely as a mind-fuck. The next pass I let her know I was there. Flicking my tongue across her clit, I aroused another moan, a slightly louder one this time. I felt her hips move underneath my grip, but I held her down. Another flick, and her hands slipped into my hair, gripping me and holding on tight.
“Elliot…”
I noticed that she was enjoying this; she liked it a lot. After the next scene—this is only Chapter 3—I released her hips and watched her relax. I needed to use my hands. I knew my tongue couldn’t do this all on its own. Using two fingers, I entered her while my tongue wrote chapters four through something like twenty, working hard at keeping the pacing strong, the flow as fluid as possible, the tension taut.
“Elliot,” she said, and this time her voice had a whine to it, like she might be begging. “Oh, god, Elliot…”
I slowed my rhythm, both tongue and hand, and felt her muscles contract around my knuckles.
“Oh, fuck, Elliot.”
She made a sound, her fingers seized around my hair. It had been well over a year since I had been with a woman, and, well, it was important that I take my time with Veronica.
“Elliot.” She said my name the way an angel would. I loved it. It drove me nuts. “Elliot,” softer now as the contractions eased, and she unbuckled my pants and slid my zipper.
Withdrawing my hand, I crawled onto the bed, toward her, and despite the softness in her words there was a ravenous greed in her eyes. She tilted her neck, wanting my lips against hers.
“Turning point,” I muttered, more to myself than to Veronica. She frowned, that look of a too-young woman being told no by her sugar-daddy. I noticed her tight, rigid nipples and used my wet, right hand to write a line across her breast before leaning forward and running my tongue along that same path, starting at the top and ending closer to the middle of her chest. I loved the taste of her on her own body, her breast.
Next, I painted a large semi-circle, starting at the middle of her chest, moving around the side of her ribs and looping all way down to her pubic bone. She liked that. I could tell by her closed eyes; the pulsating vein in her neck and that pillow-soft purr confirmed it. Then I worked my way back up, over and around her navel.
“No,” she begged as I brought my face forward to taste more of her. She moved quickly, too quickly for me to stop her. Before I knew it, she had hooked her feet into the waist of my pants and stripped me bare, my old man dick—not U-shaped or crooked like Nathan’s, but firm and hungry—ready for action.
“No,” she said, more firmly this time. “Now it’s my turn.”
In one swift motion that she must’ve learned at some kind of kinky self-defense class, she flipped me onto my back and climbed on top of me. Grabbing my cock with her hand, she seemed to consider what to do next. In that moment, I understood how she had felt while I licked so much of her, while she opened her legs to me, one nervous inch at a time. I felt beyond vulnerable—am I good enough, will this end well, are we matched for each other, will I fuck this up?—and then she made up her mind. Her palm gave me two gentle pumps, then she climbed on top of me, her already-wet core sliding over my shaft with an easy warmth.
Veronica made me feel young again. She made me feel again, moving her body against mine, slowly at first, then quicker because she knew I wouldn’t last long.
“I’m going to come again,” she said, and when I reached around her back and pulled her down to kiss her, I noticed the perspiration forming along her spine; she really was going to come again. “Fuck, Elliot,” she pleaded then dropped her face to mine, kissing me with a ferocity that surprised me.
As she surrendered a second time, the weight of her body against mine, her muscles tightening around me, it all nudged me over that invisible edge. I released inside of her—I wanted to pull out, but I swear I didn’t see it coming—and with a final,
jerking thrust, I opened my eyes to find her staring down at me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, turning my head away.
She reached down, grabbed my face, and stared into my eyes. She was intense. “Don’t, Elliot. That was the best. Ever.”
I thought she meant the story again, the novel I started writing with my tongue, so I told her, “That was actually the Epilogue.”
When she burst into laughter, burying her face into the side of my neck, I wondered if maybe, just maybe this was the craziest thing ever.
In bed, semi-dressed in panties (her) and my boxers (me), I traced my finger along the script on her ribs—I am the biggest what-if of your life. I was semi-wondering what it meant, but also semi-mesmerized with how her nipples had cooled off, flattened out. My eyes wandered over her young, fresh, and unfamiliar body.
You are a big what-if, aren’t you, because what if you are crazy, what if you’re a gold-digger, what if you convince me to do this again, what if, what if, what if?
“When you saw Nathan,” I started, my voice a shade louder than a whisper. “Did you…and he…?”
Surviving Goodbye Page 15