Arranged

by Catherine McKenzie

  “What was it like growing up named after a character in a book?” Jack asks as we linger over dessert.

  “It was harder for my brother, Gilbert. He had girls following him around, hoping to play out some romantic scenario they’d read about.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “That’s because you’re assuming hot girls are obsessed with Anne of Green Gables.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  I smile. “That’s different. When I was young, I thought the books were written about me: that someone had written what my life was supposed to be like.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m trying to write my own life.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Speaking of which . . . who’s Kate?”

  “Kate from my book?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She’s no one. It’s fiction.”

  I watch him fiddle with his fork, chasing a scrap of chocolate cake around his plate. “You still like her.”

  “I do not.”

  “I thought she didn’t exist.”

  He raises his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, you win.”

  I feel my stomach fall. “You do still like her?”

  “No, no. I meant yes, she exists. We dated, but it didn’t last. It was no big deal.”

  “That’s not what it seems like in the book.”

  “It’s fiction, Anne.”

  “Based on your experiences, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I do, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have an imagination.”

  “Sorry. I guess I wanted to be sure there isn’t some unresolved issue there.”

  He puts his hand over mine. “You and I both have a past, Anne, but there’s nothing to be jealous about. We were together, it didn’t work out, we broke up. Anything else you want to know?”

  “I think I’m good for now.”

  “All right. Would you like to go to the activity tonight?”

  “I assume you mean the activity next door, where the kids play?”

  “Of course.”

  “What is it?”

  “Some kind of drinking competition, I think.”

  “Hasn’t this whole week been a drinking competition?”

  “My point exactly. We have to put our training to good use.”

  “I’m kind of tired, actually. I thought I might head to bed early. Do you mind?”

  “No, of course not.”

  I stand to go, and he rises as well. “Why don’t you stay? Finish your beer. I’ll see you in the morning,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  I kiss his brown cheek at the edge of where his beard is growing back in. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Two hours later, I’m lying in bed feeling an odd mixture of exhaustion and being keyed up. Every pore of my body is screaming for sleep, but my brain won’t shut down. It keeps spitting out a kaleidoscope of Jack. The way he looked reading my book, a small smile on his face. The way he looked on the catamaran, boyish and happy. The way he looked at me when we’d been kissing so long it felt like kissing forever.

  I turn on my side, hold one of the extra pillows to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut, willing sleep to come. And this works, after a fashion. In fact, I’m on the edge of slipping away when there’s a soft rap at my door.

  “Anne? It’s me.”

  I feel a moment of disorientation, like I might be dreaming.

  “Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on.”

  I slip a thin cotton robe over my T-shirt and underwear and tuck my hair behind my ears. I snap on the light in the hall and ease open my door. Jack is leaning against the doorframe, swaying slightly.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I came to kiss my wife good night.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  He concentrates. “I may be a tiny bit drunk.”

  “Mmm. I thought when I turned thirty, I was done with drunk guys showing up at my door.”

  “Maybe you can make an exception . . .”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “And the kiss?”

  “That you can have.”

  “Good.”

  He rests his hands on my hips and pulls me toward him with that look in his eyes, the one that was keeping me awake. He tastes like beer; his mouth is wet and soft. My arms are around his neck, and my back is pressed against the doorframe, though I hardly feel it. I’m still half asleep, half full of the dreamy thought of us kissing, so now that we are kissing, hungrily, all tongues and teeth and weak knees, it feels unreal.

  His lips glide toward my ear. “Shall we go inside?”

  “Yes,” I say. Yes. I can feel his smile as he bends down and sweeps me into his arms.

  “Not our wedding day, but close enough,” he says playfully.

  He carries me into the room and kicks the door shut with his foot. He walks to the bed and sets me down. The light in the room is dusky.

  He kneels in front of me and reaches for the tie on my robe. “This okay?”

  “Yes,” I say. Yes.

  He tugs on it, pulling aside the folds of fabric and slipping it off my arms. He runs his hands up my bare arms till his thumbs brush across my breasts, loose under my thin T-shirt.

  “This okay too?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  His hands slide to the edge of my T-shirt and under it. His fingers are gentle and strong against my ribs. His features are softened by the alcohol. I watch him, waiting, as he slides his hands down my legs, laying them flat. The tips of his fingers graze the inside of my thighs. I twitch away from him.

  “What?”

  “It tickles.”

  He grins, and his mouth is on mine again. We kiss, kiss, kiss until I can’t tell where my mouth stops and his begins. He pushes me back, settling himself between my legs, kissing my face, my neck, the lobes of my ears. He mutters things to me, half sweet, half sexy. I can’t speak. All I can do is think.

  Jack, Jack, Jack.

  “Jack.”

  “Umm.” He moves to another inch of my skin.

  “Jack.” I put my hands on his shoulders, rolling him off me.

  He turns on his side, his face inches from mine. “You want me to go?”

  “No. I just want to talk about what we’re doing for a sec.”

  “Don’t worry, I have something.”

  “Good, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you want to talk about?” He tucks his head down and begins kissing my neck.

  I put my hands on his shoulders. “I can’t concentrate when you’re doing that.”

  “I know.”

  “Jack.”

  He brings his face back up to mine. “It’s not too fast, Anne, it’s just right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It was bound to happen sometime. Just let go.”

  “Just let go?”

  He brushes his lips against mine. “Yeah.”

  “Just let go,” I murmur against his mouth. “I can do that.”

  I start working on the buttons of his shirt, undoing them one by one. I let my fingers run over his chest and the tangle of light, curly hair that covers his breastbone. His skin feels hot against mine through my T-shirt.

  Jack stands up, pulling me with him. He strips off all his clothes but his boxers, then pulls my T-shirt over my head. We are so close against each other we feel like one skin. All I can feel are his hands, his breath, touching every part of me.

  “I want to be inside you, Anne,” Jack mumbles into my ear.

  I nod, and in a moment he’s taken off my underwear and his.

  And then he’s inside me and I can’t think anymore.

  Chapter 16

  I Am Aglow

  I wake up the next morning feeling like I’ve spent the night in that song “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” We’re all legs and sheets and blankets, and my body feels loose, stretched out. The balcony door is
open. I can hear the waves crashing against the shore, playing in the bright sunlight.

  I look over at Jack. His eyes are squeezed shut like those of a little boy who doesn’t want to be woken from his nap.

  “You asleep?” I ask.

  “Mmm.”

  “You want me to be quiet?”

  “Mmm.” He pulls the covers up, wiggling over until he’s closer to me. He starts kissing my bare shoulder. “I like the smell of your skin.”

  “Yuck. I must smell disgusting.”

  “Noooo. You smell like us.”

  “I think us might need a shower.”

  He flips on his back and slips his arm beneath me, pulling me into the space between it and his chest. I settle my head on his shoulder, feeling peaceful and happy.

  “You sleep all right?” he asks.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Better than I have all week.”

  “Must be the release of tension,” I tease.

  “It’s certainly relieved. Though, it could build again if you’d like.”

  “That’s such an adolescent pass.”

  “Every man’s a fourteen-year-old boy underneath the surface.”

  “How discouraging.”

  He kisses the top of my head. We lie there like that for a few minutes, Jack stroking my hair.

  “What are you thinking about?” I ask eventually.

  “There’s that question again.”

  “I’m sorry, was it ex-rated?”

  “Actually, I was thinking about whether I want to get up.”

  “Any decision?”

  “Didn’t get that far. You?”

  “I was thinking how having sex shifts the air between people. How everything is different afterward, no matter how many people you’ve slept with.”

  Jack laughs softly. “You really do have deep thoughts in the morning.”

  “It’s when I usually write.”

  “I usually write in the afternoon.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be compatible.”

  “We feel pretty compatible to me.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Of course I am. Come here.”

  “Here?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  We’re having brunch much later when Jack asks, “What do you want to do on our last day in paradise?”

  “Sit on our asses by the pool?”

  “So you can complete your transformation into a lobster?”

  “There’s a little bit of brown coming through.”

  He picks up my left arm and examines it. “The only brown I see are freckles.”

  “I think we have an appointment with Dr. Szwick first, anyway.”

  “Joy.”

  I look at my watch. “Crap. I totally lost track of time. Our session starts in five minutes.”

  “Let’s get it over with.”

  We walk to Dr. Szwick’s makeshift hotel-room office. Jack twines his fingers through mine, and I start to skip like I used to when I was a little girl, swinging his hand. Jack laughs, and I pick up the pace, tugging him behind me. We get to Dr. Szwick’s door right on time.

  “Therapy in the middle of vacation is a total buzzkill,” Jack says.

  “Agreed.” I knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Dr. Szwick is wearing another garish Hawaiian-print shirt. “Jack, Anne, welcome. Please sit down.” He watches us sit, taking us in. “You both look relaxed.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You got married?”

  We nod in unison.

  “How are things going?”

  “Well.”

  “Do you agree with that, Jack? Have things been going well?”

  “Sure.”

  Dr. Szwick watches us for a moment. “Oh, I see. You’ve slept together.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re right,” Jack says. “We’ve slept together. Is that a problem?”

  “Do you think it’s a problem?”

  “Why would I think it’s a problem?”

  “Isn’t it part of your pattern? Sleeping with women before you’re sure you want to make an emotional commitment?”

  What?

  Jack’s mouth is a thin line. “That’s not what’s happening here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I look at Jack, trying to catch his eye, but he’s staring Dr. Szwick down.

  “I think Anne wants to know the answer too, Jack.”

  “I’ve made a commitment, haven’t I?”

  “Of a kind.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Until you fully commit to someone, emotionally as well as physically, you won’t be able to make another person happy.”

  Jack’s face reddens. “That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s what I am doing.”

  “I feel like you’re still holding something back, Jack, something important.”

  “I don’t feel like that,” I chime in. “I think he’s been doing what you said, trying to be friends, trying to forge a connection.”

  Jack shoots me a grateful look.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Anne. And I hope you’re right. Let me make one thing clear to both of you. I’m not the enemy. I’m here to help you succeed, not to tear you apart. But if you don’t do the hard work now, then you’ll go to pieces later on down the road, just like all your past relationships have done, no matter how compatible you are.”

  “Do you think it’s a problem that we slept together?” I ask.

  “Not necessarily. I just want to make sure you don’t start repeating patterns without noticing it. Think of me as your institutional memory. I’m here to point out the warning signs that you’re going back to your original programming, so to speak.”

  “So we become Anne and Jack two-point-oh?” Jack asks.

  “If you will.”

  I bite my lip. “And one of Jack’s warning signs is sleeping with someone too early in the relationship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that true, Jack?”

  Jack sighs. “Yes.”

  I meet his eyes. “Can you tell me that’s not what’s happening between us?”

  “I don’t think it is. I meant what I said last night. It wasn’t too soon.”

  Jack holds my gaze, and Dr. Szwick recedes into the distance as I remember the connection we formed in my bed last night.

  “I agree,” I say.

  Jack smiles and turns to Dr. Szwick with a hard expression. “Can I ask you something? How come you get to bring up things from our individual sessions? Shouldn’t you be keeping those confidential?”

  “In normal therapy, you’d be right. But this isn’t normal therapy. I only saw you alone to prepare you for the process and to gather information that would be useful in these joint sessions. Everything you told me there is fair game, Jack. That’s how this works. And it’s the only way it works. Understood?”

  “Yes,” we say together.

  We spend the rest of the day by the pool. I stare at the fluffy white clouds as Jack scribbles in his notebook next to me. For the first time in days, I can feel the pull of my real life, and it’s starting to freak me out.

  I eye Jack over the rim of my margarita. “Have you given any thought to what you want to tell everyone when we get back?”

  He closes his notebook. “I thought we’d use the standard ‘met on vacation, fell madly for each other, got married while very drunk one night, will live happily ever after.’ ”

  “Right, but what night did we get married? Who married us? How come we didn’t get it annulled when we woke up the next morning?”

  Jack’s eyes grow wide.

  “I know I sound nuts, but I also know my best friend, and she’s going to be asking these questions. We need to have a detailed story.”

  “Why’s she going to be so curious?”

  “Because she’s a girl, because this whole thing’s really not lik
e me, because she’s a lawyer. Take your pick.”

  “All right. Let’s see . . . we’ll say we met on the first night here, spent hours talking, had a good connection. We went out to a club and ended up making out on the dance floor, after I rescued you from a punk-ass twenty-two-year-old who was all over you. You wanted to jump me, but me being the gentleman I am, I turned you down and told you there was plenty of time for that.”

  Jack just manages to dodge the swizzle stick I throw at him.

  “We spent the next day and each day after that talking all day and kissing all night . . . and on our second-to-last night here, we had a long, romantic dinner where several bottles of wine were consumed.” He snaps his fingers rapidly three times. “And later, suitably liquored, we stumbled into somebody else’s wedding and decided to pull a Britney Spears and Jason Alexander. We woke up with sore heads but happy hearts and agreed to give it a go. I think that about covers it. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m glad I’m not your mother dealing with you as a teenager. Tell me, how did you know the name of Britney Spears’s first husband?”

  “I’ve told you a million times, I have—”

  “An enormous brain. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s our story, but I think it’s more believable if you were the one all over me on the dance floor.”

  “What about that twenty-two-year-old I had to peel you away from?”

  “That’s not jealousy I hear, is it?”

  “I’ll never tell.” He lies back in his chair and closes his eyes.

  A few minutes later, Margaret wanders over to my deck chair. She’s jettisoned the top of her bathing suit once again, and her hair is in beaded cornrows. Her breasts lie long and flat against her skin, bright white in contrast to the tan she’s accumulated over the last week.

  Jack returns her vague hello with a perfunctory “hi,” mutters something about needing a beer, and leaves.

  “Can you believe the week is already up?” she asks. “Brian was just saying how fast it’s all gone.”

  “Are things going well? He seems so quiet.”

  “He’s not when he’s alone with me. I think Jack intimidates him.”

  “Really? Why?”