by J. D. Robb
Hank directed her attention back to the gap between the rack of costumes and another scene from her life with Jeremy.
She recognized the expression on Jeremy’s face as he followed her through the blurry image of their kitchen into a much clearer picture of their dining room after work—and from the look on her own face, she knew that a heavy ball of tension was coiling in her abdomen.
“I cooked your favorite tonight—coq au vin.”
“Great. Hopefully it’ll be better than the last time you made it. I’d like one good thing to happen to me today.”
She knew better than to ask about the not-so-good parts of his day, but did so anyway. “Rough one, huh?”
“Rough? That’s mild.”
“What happened?” she asked, turning to light the candles she kept centered on the table—mostly to create a relaxed atmosphere, as opposed to anything romantic.
“Stop. Blow it out. I’m not in the mood for that shit.”
“I thought—”
“Well don’t.” He took his seat at the table. “I’m not in the mood for that either.”
That stung. Bad.
But she understood days that could drain every ounce of happiness from your life. And she was aware that lashing out at the people who love you best happens because they are the most likely to tolerate and forgive your bad behavior. Plus it was her experience with Jeremy that he simply needed a little time to calm down and center himself. Her sweet, funny Jeremy would come back around.
So she swallowed her own harsh retort, pressed her lips together and poured his wine.
Generally, it didn’t seem to bother him that she didn’t drink with him—preferring water to the blistering headaches even small amounts of alcohol delivered. But on other occasions . . .
“There it is again.”
“What?” she asked.
“That smug, superior look you get when I drink.”
“What? I don’t. I don’t care if you drink.” Her smile was tight and hopeful—she didn’t want to fight with him. “I envy you. I could use a drink once in a while.”
“Once in a while? But not as often as I have them.”
“I didn’t say that . . . or mean that. Look, I’m sorry you had a bad day, but don’t take it out on me. It’s not fair.”
He appeared to back off a bit—but it was only to form a new line of attack.
“Sorry.” He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You’re right. It’s not fair. But do you think it’s fair that since you didn’t get your promotion, I have to work longer hours and work them all with Barry Levine?” He took another gulp of his wine. “We could have used your pay raise to buy us some time while I tried to find a better, more fulfilling job that would benefit both of us in the long run. I’m frustrated. Can’t you see that?”
She nodded, though she didn’t see his frustration being any greater than her own.
They finished their meal in silence. She did kitchen duty alone that night, then joined him in the living room to watch television—so to speak. The television was simply background noise while Jeremy, sporting earbuds, disappeared to wherever the computer on his lap took him and she escaped into Elizabeth Moon’s new novel.
Until it was time for bed . . .
She heard him close his laptop; listened while he prepared for bed. She knew when he left the bathroom and went down the hall to their bedroom. Then she pretended to be engrossed in her book when he returned in his pajama bottoms to stare at her from across the room.
Normally, she would have looked up expecting to see that spark of desire that promised the hot, sweaty sex she was accustomed to with her husband.
But her sweet, funny Jeremy had not returned . . . and the other one had offered no apology for his surly conduct earlier in the evening. His resentment and her hurt feelings from dinner lingered in the air like the scent of coq au vin.
There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have been grateful to see that he still wanted her at the end of a miserable day. A time when she cut him slack with apologies; told herself that the intimacy of making love would fill the empty spaces that the lack of respect and kindness and friendship the rest of the night had created. A time when she could still pretend she didn’t feel used.
There was also a time when all the books she read said she needed to open a dialogue with him. She needed to let him know how she felt and express her concerns. After several attempts at communicating her distress didn’t go as well as she’d hoped, the books suggested marriage counseling as an opportunity to rekindle their relationship.
Jeremy was surprised—shocked, even—to hear that she thought their relationship needed to be rejuvenated. It cut him to the quick; he was devastated for three solid days.
Yes, there was a time for all of that and then some—like the niggling notion of other women. And if she was truthful, there were also times when she gave as good as she got in feeble attempts to take back her self-esteem. But it became harder and harder to flip the switch between overjoyed and offended; between joining in and faking it; between faking it and making no effort at all.
“Are you bringing that sexy bod to bed anytime soon?”
She looked up at him and smiled; her cheeks felt stiff. “Absolutely. I just want to finish this chapter real quick, okay?”
“Sure.” He turned to walk back down the hall. “But don’t be long. I’m beat. I may pass out.”
Please do, she thought and then she turned the page and started chapter twelve.
She didn’t get through the second page before she shoved her candy wrapper bookmark into the crease of her book and tossed it onto the end table.
She covered her face in shame. “What am I doing?”
She wanted to follow him; she loved making love with him. But her feelings were hurt and her expectations had deflated. Was she pouting like a child; a stubborn, grudge-holding child . . . or was she a woman cocooning herself in a protective shell?
She knew that doing nothing changed nothing, and yet she couldn’t make herself get up and go to him—not this time. Her mind and emotions snapped back and forth so fast she went numb. It was her marriage, her life, and she was disengaging, withdrawing and shutting down. She felt it.
Elise crossed her thin Daria arms across her chest, but couldn’t meet the look in Hank Hill’s eyes . . . Martin’s look. “You’re right. I do shut down and run . . . Well, if he hadn’t run first, I probably would have. But I still wonder, if he hadn’t taken all the money and left, if I could have—”
“Uuuuuuuaaaaaagh!” he said, showing his teeth. “You’re chasing your tail, girl. No number of ifs will change what is. Slow down, step back and just think.” He tipped his head to the space where outfits were coming back into view. Strawberries, lemons and grapes—fruit suits. “That’s when you did all the right things; when your instincts were telling you something was wrong. That boy ain’t right. And deep down you knew it. But you didn’t want it to be true, so you didn’t listen to what your gut was telling you—that he needed to be taken out behind the barn and shot. And I’ll tell you what, that ain’t the worst part of it. No, the worst part is that when all was said and done, and you knew you were right about Jeremy, you suddenly got giblets for brains and decided you couldn’t trust yourself to trust your own good sense anymore. And that’s overthinking to the point of not thinking at all.”
“Yeah, well, where was my amazing intuition when I first met him? Or the whole time we dated . . . or during the first year of our marriage?”
“It was there—it’s always there, watching for yellow flags. Maybe there was just nothing to see. What if he wasn’t looking to fleece you in the beginning? Could be that didn’t occur to him until after he took up with that floozy—and that’s when his game started falling apart. He got sloppy, took too many chances, made too many fouls, and flags started falling all over the place.�
� He raised his hands palms up. “Maybe not. Maybe he was a rat bastard all along. Maybe you made a mistake. Hell, even Tom Landry made mistakes from time to time.”
“What if I keep making mistakes?”
“What if you do? And what if the mistake is seeing red flags where there aren’t any? What if it’s choking under the slightest pressure? What if it’s shutting down and running in the opposite direction if someone tries to . . . well, you know . . . love you? What if you keep living in fear or you quit and never play the game again? Isn’t that like scoring for the other team? Who wins then?”
Daria wasn’t a huge fan of sports analogies, but when Hank Hill used them they made sense. Alas.
He turned and walked into the next row of getups—nature costumes. Trees and mushrooms; fall leaves and rainbows; butterflies and snowflakes.
“I hate being lonely,” she said, barely noticing the large yellow sun partially blocking the path. “I do. Also I’m allergic to cats. So I’ll probably end up being a crazy bird woman—the one who talks to herself and feeds the pigeons in the park all day? But I’m so afraid of being hurt again that it might not be so bad if—”
This time the loud rumbling noise came from deep inside—of her. Churning, vibrating, uneven. More confused than frightened, she put her hands on her stomach and looked down, but as quickly as it had come, the reverberating and stirring died away to nothing.
“Okay. Are you ever going to tell me what that sound is, or—” She looked up and frowned for several long seconds. “Who are you supposed to be?”
CHAPTER SIX
Martin looked like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man . . . with clothes on. Legs apart, arms out, he looked like a human kaleidoscope of what appeared to be superheroes.
His arms and legs presented random bursts of green or black or red or blue sleeves and leggings; some limbs were scaled, some hairy, some metallic. Frosty, flaming and electrified. There were some with contrasting gloves and boots and some without, and some looked distinctly . . . well, turtlelike. His head and torso popped, hit and miss, body armor, mammoth muscles and capes with various caps, masks and helmets.
“I appear to be having an identity crisis,” he said, his voice a booming whisper mix that was creepier than it was cool. “Pick your favorite. Please.”
“Do I have to?”
The light in his eyes changed from uncertain to unamused. “Yes. And quickly, I feel nauseous.”
Elise offered him another rare Daria smile. It was friendly and fond. “Spidey then, I suppose. No! Wait! Superman.” She wrinkled her nose and gave her head a shake. “I don’t know . . . those Spidey-eyes . . . and Superman is, taken as a whole, less bizarre, more emotionally available and socially adept, I think.”
Immediately his hands fisted on his splendid red trunks and his crimson cape billowed—without a breeze—behind him. Superman . . . though his face was quickly morphing from DC Comics to George Reeves to the Christopher Reeves version that was her personal favorite. Even after his laser-blue eyes faded to Martin’s lively golden-green, he was still the Superman by which all other contemporary Supermans were measured.
“You’re a pain in the neck, you know that?”
“I’ve been told before,” she said.
“It bears repeating.”
She agreed with a lopsided smile, then she went serious and worried. “Why haven’t I changed?”
“Maybe your feelings haven’t changed.” He dazzled her with his supersmile. “Or maybe I’m here because you need a new perspective on an old problem.”
She thought about it briefly. “Are we back to the book and its cover again?”
“I love working with people I don’t have to drag every inch of the way. And yes, we’re back to your extraordinary ability to be judgmental and arrive at false assumptions.”
Hadn’t she already admitted to those unflattering flaws in her character? She looked away, disappointed that Superman would kick a sad little IRS agent when she was down.
But then he added, “Except this time, instead of polarizing people and ideas you barely know or understand, let’s take a look at some you do know.”
“Some what? Some people I know? My friends? My family?” Tears pricked at Elise’s eyes, her throat got tight and her remote, dispassionate Daria-shield slipped a bit. “I’m alienating my family? And my friends? Hurting them? No one’s said—and Roger would say . . .” Now she was feeling nauseous. She took a deep breath and let it out slow and dazed. “I didn’t know. My family is stuck with me, I guess, but how can my friends stand me if . . . Why do they stay?”
Her hands were trembling. She clenched them, open and closed, looking up at the iconic champion of truth, justice and the American way—he didn’t lie.
“Your friends love you, Elise,” he said with understanding and compassion in his handsome face. “They accept and cherish what you’ve allowed them to see in you—the good and the not so good.”
“I love them, too. Fay and Trudy know me better than my mother. Carol Ann, she’s the best; she drove me everywhere for three weeks after I sprained my right ankle last year. Abby and Leigh . . . and Molly and . . . all of them. I have great friends. I’d jump in front of a locomotive for any of them. They know that, right?”
“They know you.”
“So they think and agree that I’m . . . Daria Downer? That I’m fault-finding; that I take a lot for granted?”
“All about you.” He held up a finger. “I’m not saying they approve of the practice or that it doesn’t bother them at times—only that they accept it as a part of you. And they do that because there’s so much more about you that is worthy of their friendship and love.” He stopped at another four-way aisle intersection. “Their primary concern is that you’re not seeing the damage it’s doing to you. They’re afraid that you don’t know how self-destructive it is.”
The gray shadows fell across period costumes—Colonial gentleman and Southern belle; flapper, pilgrim and disco dancer—and then scattered away from a scene that had played repeatedly in her mind for weeks. For three weeks and two days, to be exact.
“It’s that night, after our six-month anniversary dinner,” Elise muttered, watching intently.
She’d let Max park his car, turn off the engine, get out, take the elevator and walk her all the way to her apartment door knowing full well what he was anticipating and equally as certain that she had no intention of letting him in.
She had come to a decision; she just didn’t know how to tell him.
“Max.” It was an odd moment to note how perfect he was to hold hands with. He wasn’t so tall and she wasn’t so short that either one of them had to compensate for the length of their arms—their hands were just right, back to back then palm to palm, coming together easily and inevitably.
“Hmm?” He smiled at her.
“We need to talk.”
“Good.” She could barely glance at him. “You’ve been acting . . . not yourself all night. Is something wrong?”
Her tongue felt stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she was too aware that they were still holding hands. She let go and turned to face him.
“This isn’t going to work,” she said, blurting out words that were closer to the end of her prepared speech than the beginning.
“What?”
“Eh. That’s not how I meant to say it.”
“Say what?” He had the deepest, warmest brown eyes she’d ever seen. They were confused and cautious.
“I’m saying that this, you and me, it isn’t going to work. I’ve known for a while and I’m sorry now that I didn’t put an end to it sooner. Certainly before tonight.” She waved her fingers back and forth between them and their elegant attire. “All your plans and . . . the flowers and . . . I’m sorry.”
He studied her face. “What’s happened? What triggered this?”
“Nothing. Not
one specific thing. And it’s nothing you’ve done. You’re great. I like you a lot. I’m just not ready for more than a friendship right now. My life is complicated and—”
“It isn’t any more complicated than mine, Elise.” He wasn’t angry, just stating a fact. “You’re scared.”
She was. It might save a lot of time if she just owned it.
“Okay. I’m scared.”
He nodded, like he’d known for a while. “So am I. I get it. Life’s scary.” He recaptured her hand. “And love is the scariest part of all. It’s supposed to be. If love was as easy and free as everyone says it should be it would hold no value. It would be as ordinary and objective as . . . getting hungry. But it isn’t easy and it isn’t free; it’s rare and fragile.” He secured her other hand. “Don’t let your fear force you to turn your back on something so special and out of the ordinary.”
“Yeah. Extraordinary. I saw what loving someone can do to you when my dad left my mom. She suffered. It broke something inside of her . . . and me. I knew better. But then Jeremy came along and I thought: Oh wow. This is real love, not what my parents had. This is something extraordinary.”
“And it was.” His frown was worried, his sigh was sympathetic. “Loving someone is never wrong. It’s what you live for. It’s . . . it’s why you live; how you should live. But it takes two people to keep it alive, Elise. If one person gives up on it, it dies—and it’s a painful death.”
“With a new girlfriend and all my money, I don’t think Jeremy’s feeling much pain.”
“I’m not talking about Jeremy. I couldn’t care less about Jeremy. People have shit in their lives—you scrape it off your shoes and keep walking.” He stooped to look into her downcast eyes. “I’m talking about you, Elise. About us. Right here. Right now. You’re the one I care about.”
She looked up, knowing she’d see everything he was saying with his voice set solid in his eyes. It terrified her.
His smile was small, sweet, endearing. “Besides, it’s too late to run away from me now. You’re crazy about me.” She frowned and his smile grew, but only a bit. “You can deny it if it makes you feel safer, but I know when someone loves me, the same way I know when someone doesn’t. I can see it in your eyes; hear it in your voice. I can feel it when we touch . . . and when we kiss.