The heat between us burned through my clothes. It singed the edges of my hair and blackened my bones. I wanted to do that. I wanted to dress like this for one man, alone, in a bedroom, or any private space, just so he can peel it all away, and I wanted that man to be Lorenzo.
Before we could say another word, his sisters pulled me on the dancefloor. Songs I don’t know, but suddenly love, are blasting.
LORENZO
Harlem by New Politics is a great song, but Lydia couldn’t dance to save her life. I’ve never seen anything more awkward in my life, and I’ve never laughed this hard.
Chance and Zeus were behind the bar watching also. Their laughter is spawning more of my own.
She didn’t even care, she was so happy to be out and free. Her carefree, rhythmless moves were quirky and cute, but, still sexy in some strange way.
My sisters are dancing well and in perfect time with the song they know and love.
Angela tries to show Lydia a few moves, and she starts to catch on.
It will be a long night, that’s all I know.
“Is she deaf?” Zeus asked us.
“She doesn’t get out much,” Chance told him. “Much meaning ever.”
“Well,” Zeus crossed his arms. “If she wasn’t hot as fuck, I would have to pull the lever and open the trap door in the floor.”
NOAH
As I drive, Ruby’s hand in mine is the only thing keeping me grounded. I’m furious with Lydia, and at the same time, I know how irrational I’m being.
But I’m losing her, and I know it.
I thought I would be glad to see the signs, that she was slowly falling out of love with me. Instead, I feel scared. Scared to burn the bridge, scared to cross a new one, and Ruby is unusually quiet.
“It’s an art festival,” I tell her to lighten the mood. “In the Upper West Side. I thought it would be fun. No one we know should be there.”
She doesn’t answer, just stares out her window.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She turns on me with venom. “When are you leaving her?”
Taken aback, I divide my attention between her and the road. “Why are you angry?”
“What’s the plan for us?”
“We talked about it.”
“No, we didn’t.”
I slow behind a line of cars. “We talked about it when we went away to Atlantic City.”
“That was May, this is July, what the fuck are we doing?”
I rub at my beard, wishing I could pull it from my face. “I said I would approach Lydia about a divorce in the summer. I didn’t say when. I’m trying to ease her into it.”
“Right,” she smiles sadistically.
“You’re barking down my throat but you’re still wearing this,” I lift her left hand where Lorenzo’s ring is. “What about this?”
“Why should I make moves when you haven’t?” She took her hand away. “This is stupid, this whole thing, I don’t have time for you to pussy-foot around,” she slung at me.
I couldn’t take the feeling of the walls closing in. Lydia lying and acting crass, and Ruby suddenly rushing me. “You can’t just erase marriage. She deserves time to figure her life out! She’s never been on her own. She needs a job, a place to live, a car! All she’s got is a damn scary cat that she’s been lying to me about for God knows how long! I’m still not even sure if it’s a cat!”
“She’s a grown woman, Noah.”
“I can’t just leave her—”
“Her or her cunt?”
My temper lit and erupted in the same second. “I haven’t slept with her since—”
“Sure, and I’m going to believe you? You lie to her; you could lie to me—”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“This is bigger than your comfort zone marriage. We don’t have time to sit on our fucking thumbs!”
“Why?” I shouted. “What the hell is suddenly so pressing that you’ve got to nag and bitch until I fold and do what you say on your timer?”
“I’m trying to tell you—” she cried, her tears making me more impatient, less sympathetic.
“Then just fucking say it!” I screamed back.
But before she could, in my fit, and my blind rage, I missed that I was supposed to yield on green.
LYDIA
The night is measured by songs and laughs.
I’m not a drinker, so I passed on the alcohol and I notice that Lorenzo has too. We levitated toward the same booth often, sitting with his sisters and enjoying everyone’s company.
Angela prompted him to dance with us a few times, but he refused each request, saying he didn’t feel like it, not tonight. Giada began to miss her little one by midnight and left to be with him and Liam. Donna went with her.
Angela was dancing with Chance up in the lofts and Mia is at the bar, leaving Lorenzo and I alone in our booth.
I took off my jacket a long time ago when I was dancing, now I wished I was wearing it.
Lorenzo’s dark eyes skimmed over me and I couldn’t breathe.
A slower song, Holding a Heart by Toby Lightman played, and it shrunk the space between us.
When he slides out of the booth, he leaned on the table and jerked his chin to the dance floor. “Come on.”
“You said you didn’t want to dance.”
“Changed my mind. Come.”
His bossy accent made me smile before I obliged him.
I know how to slow dance, thankfully.
He took my hand and with one in his pocket, he led me out with the rest. He was frowning a little, as if he was working on impulse, not a plan.
Designating a spot, he slipped both hands around my waist and put my body against his. I felt his fingers dance down my arm until he could hold my hand up, and his other rested at my lower back.
This is the closest we’ve been.
He’s not a hugger.
Lorenzo’s scent was intoxicating.
The sturdy stronghold of his arms, making me feel weak.
I needed more of him.
With my pulse in my ears, I took my hands back and held the material of his shirt sleeves. Grasping them.
His hands, rough with calluses, warm, and large, they smoothed up my arms.
I lifted my hands to his chest, feeling him, letting myself be transparent. Then I wrapped one arm around his neck, and this forced us even closer. In my heels, I could turn my head and rest it against his chest as our other hands entwine.
We stayed that way for most of the song.
“I know what you said,” I say. “At Cibo Degli Dei tonight.”
He didn’t stop swaying us, leading us.
I looked up when he didn’t answer with words.
He angled his head to see me, jaws tight.
“Did you mean it?” I asked.
“I don’t say what I don’t mean.”
“When did you start to feel it?”
He shook his head, almost in defeat. “I don’t know.”
I used both hands to caress his shoulders, then ran the backs of my fingers down his high cheekbones. His hands pressed me so close that we were just one body, and then he pushed his fingers into my new hair.
Lifting my chin, our mouths were close, only time between them.
He dropped his head, letting our noses touch.
I was shaking, and feeling it, he shushed me.
I kept my head angled upward, begging him to stop making me wait.
His lips landed at the corner of my mouth where my beauty mark was, and my mind went blank. I didn’t want him to go slowly, I wanted him to do this now, while I felt brave and justified.
Before his lips could press to mine, I put my fingertips to them. “We can’t,” I said around tears of the truth.
He brought his forehead to mine. “We can’t,” he repeated, telling himself.
We clung to one another.
“If we do… we’re no better than them…” even as I said it, I was praying it would convince me
I’m right. “We’ve never crossed that line, we’ve…” I put my hand over his heart. “I don’t want to be like them.”
He covered my hand with his. “No,” he agreed. “But—”
“I know,” I looked up at him.
We came perilously close again. Lips so close that the electric current was bridging across.
Then his cell rang in his pocket, and mine blared from my handbag in the booth we aren’t far from.
Knowing how late it was, I let go of him and he checked it. I go to mine and found a strange number. I heard him answer his right before I answered mine. With my hand over my opposite ear, I was told that my husband was in a crash and looking back at Lorenzo, and his stunned expression, I knew he was getting the same news about Ruby because they were together.
Chapter Twenty-Four
LYDIA
Lorenzo and I took a taxi to the emergency room. Running in, the chaos of the moment started to unravel the magic I felt before the call.
Guilt kicked me over on my back and put a hard boot to my face. My stomach revolted, that I was out, dressed inappropriately, dancing inappropriately close to another man. That my last words to Noah were ‘Fuck Off’.
What happened to us?
The reality of the mess we made was crushing me.
I shouldn’t have played this game.
Pretending not to know about Ruby was redundant. Us coming together as husband and wife with some honesty, that was what should have been done. I had lost myself, who I was, what I was doing.
After getting directions from the front desk, we followed the halls. Ruby was in a different area, and so Lorenzo split off from me.
I had a suffocating feeling.
That he and I skirted around something more real than any love we’ve ever had, but when trouble comes— family first.
This accident is a priority setting event. No matter what Lorenzo and I were feeling, it has to get put aside for our spouses. It’s just the way it is.
I pushed through two sets of doors and found Noah coming from a curtain-divided room. His left temple is bandaged, his wrists are too, and he has dried blood on his shirt. So much blood.
Seeing him, makes the guilt rise into a tsunami, that then crashes my shores with a renewal of the love we felt before all the lies.
I ran to him and when he saw me, I could tell he didn’t recognize me. He stepped back, unsure who the woman in party apparel was. When he realized, he started my way and held me. He smelled like a hospital, like blood, like fear. I just kept grabbing him.
For a few minutes, it was okay.
Just Noah and Lydia, hugging somewhere safe, six years ago. In love. No outsiders. Pure comfort closed my eyes. He’s okay. I thanked God for not punishing me in a severe way.
“Where are you hurt?” I asked, pulling back to see him. “All this blood,” I gasped, pulling at his shirt with concern.
He shook his head. “It’s not mine.” As soon as the words left his mouth, we were slammed back into the present. Facing the truth where it stands with two battle axes.
We stared at each other a long moment; all the pockets of lies being turned inside out.
“I need to explain before the doctors do,” he said. “I wasn’t driving alone; someone was in the passenger seat. Like I said, this blood isn’t mine.”
My emotions shut down into a cold anger. Not hot and explosive. Icy like a steel blade. “I know whose blood it is.”
His face lifted with denial and shock. “No, you don’t.”
Lorenzo came through the doors behind Noah and I pulled from my husband to wipe my eyes. When the two of them saw each other, there was a stiffness in the air, like standing in an empty room seconds before a bomb detonates.
Lorenzo’s eyes fell on Noah, then shifted to me. “Ruby is in Intensive care; I’m not allowed in yet.”
“Oh,” I nodded.
Noah slowly sees that Lorenzo is speaking to me, and his face distorts with disbelief. “You know him?” Noah askes me.
I don’t answer.
He swings his head in Lorenzo’s direction. “How do you know my wife?”
Lorenzo, like me, said nothing, only fixes a lethal look on Noah.
Noah turns to me, shutting Lorenzo out of our conversation. “How do you know him?”
“I looked him up. After I looked up the woman you’ve been sleeping with,” I said without blinking. “Months and months ago. After I followed you to a little house in the suburbs. Where I saw you meeting with her.”
Noah’s face pales so much, I wonder if he’ll fall over. “You can’t know that,” he blurts in more denial.
“Lorenzo and I text when you two lie about classes, working late, suicidal teens, Bible studies, and then we meet up and get coffee, or watch a movie, or have a game night.”
His eyes blazed suddenly. “You’ve known all this time and never said a word to me?” He screamed it so that nurses and patients could crane their necks and look.
“Sucks to be lied to, doesn’t it?” I tossed.
Lorenzo moved to stand closer, but I think it was because he wanted a better look at Noah’s face.
“Are you fucking him?” Noah accused.
I laughed once. “No, honey, you’re confusing me with yourself.”
“I don’t know, am I?” he waved his hand at my body. “Look at you. What am I supposed to believe? You came here with him, didn’t you? You want to talk about trust, you sure got even. How soon after you found out about my mistakes did you start making your own? Dressed like a slut—”
As soon as the word left his mouth, Lorenzo replaced the slight with a punch that would have landed against Noah’s nose. I figured it out and shouted in time. Noah ducked around the same time I shoved Lorenzo, throwing off his aim.
“Oh, God! No, stop it!” I yelled whirling to shove Lorenzo again.
Noah looked at Lorenzo like he was crazy, and it made me furious. How could he not understand our pain, our anger?
“The next one will be for fucking my wife,” Lorenzo said over my head as I pressed him back.
“Stop it!” I thumped him, but it did no good. Lorenzo’s threats were too serious, people did hear and were now looking, seeing him as a danger.
“You have to stop,” I whispered, shoving him again.
“Yeah,” Noah’s voice grated my nerves. “Maybe we should call it a wife swap, seems fair.”
Lorenzo lunged, but I stood between them with my hands out. Noah backed away, unable to stand behind his words. He’s never been a fighter; he’s not built to pick a fight he can’t win. Height won’t make a difference to someone like Lorenzo.
“Your wife knows the meaning of vows,” Lorenzo defended. “You unworthy, piece of shit. She kept loving you,” his voice deepened in a way that told me something harsh would be next. “She kept loving you. When she found my wife’s underwear in your car, when you tried to make her smell like my wife, when you hid my wife in your home. When she lost your baby. Oh, but where were you? Why couldn’t she get you on the phone, huh? Was it off? In your pocket? On the nightstand, while you were in bed with another woman? With my woman? You aren’t a man, you’re less than a horny little boy.”
Noah’s face finally reflected some remorse, but Lorenzo bringing it all up again, hurt me. Though it was directed at Noah, the memories tore through me, taking me back to where this started.
“I already know I’m a bad person,” Noah told him.
I looked up at Lorenzo with my back to Noah. “You need to go,” I physically hurt when he looked down at me. “Go to Ruby.”
“They won’t let me in yet,” he reminded.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Noah.
He regretfully shook his head.
“He doesn’t know,” Lorenzo interjected. “Because they don’t tell lovers about the state of a patient. They tell spouses.”
Noah and Lorenzo exchanged so much with their eyes, but it was a language I didn’t speak.
“You shoul
d stay close to where she is until someone can tell you something,” I said.
“They already did,” said Lorenzo. “She has a concussion and blood loss.”
Noah crumbled, he put both hands on his hips and made a slow circle. His concern for Ruby irritates me but I also can’t help but understand. I hate her in some ways, but I don’t wish any of this on her.
“I’ll pray for her,” I heard myself say.
Both men looked at me. They were surprised.
“We should go home,” I told Noah. “There’s nothing we can do and when she wakes up, she should be alone with her husband,” I pinned Noah with a look.
Leaving Lorenzo was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Regardless of the pain they’ve caused, I know he’s afraid for Ruby. I imagined he felt all the things I felt coming through the emergency room doors. I received relief when I found Noah standing, but Ruby wasn’t safe yet. She wasn’t okay.
As much as staying with him seemed right, I knew Noah would stay too, and I was not robbing Lorenzo of time alone with his wife.
Because that’s what she is.
My eyes dropped to Lorenzo’s left hand and a ping is felt in my chest.
She’s his wife.
As Noah and I passed Lorenzo, Lorenzo’s fingers reach to brush mine and a sob caught in my throat.
The cab ride home was silent. Noah and I sat on opposite sides of the backseat and looked out our windows.
Upon getting home, I let Kendrick out of the toy room, and he took the steps at a slow and heavy pace until he reached the bedroom. He pawed the door until I opened it, and then he sat at the side of the bed and hissed that awful sound until I hefted him up and set him down on the pillowtop.
I needed to find out if there are stairs for obese cats.
Noah came in as I was taking off my earrings. “The cat can’t sleep here, Lydia.”
I turned on my heels, the heels that were killing me now. “Yes, he can. And he will,” I told him.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“That cat has ten times the right to be in my bed,” I said. “You do not, and if you argue with me about it, I’ll take a match to the damned thing,” I meant it. I felt a scary indifference that could lead to arson at this point.
The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5) Page 28