by Amy Isan
“Oh really? I had a feeling something was up. Scott was talking about you last time I flew him around,” James said. He smiled.
I followed Hugh up the plane’s steps, and James came right behind me.
After we boarded, he secured the door and started preparing the plane for take off.
Hugh and I took our same seats. It was ridiculous to think I had a usual seat on a private plane, but that was how my life was looking at the moment. If I could just hang on to this. But I had a feeling that was going to be really hard. I glanced at Hugh’s ringed finger and felt my stomach knot a little bit. I was going to have to get used to seeing his wedding band. Even if it made me feel weird.
“We’re going to get in pretty late aren’t we? After the time change...” I said.
“Oh?” Hugh perked up, as if I woke him from daydreaming. After a moment, he heard me. “Yeah, we probably won’t get in until after midnight. But don’t worry, flying in over the harbor should be pretty, with all the lights and the moon reflecting off the water.”
“That sounds incredible.”
After a few moments of taxiing, the plane took off smoothly. It was late in the day and as we cleared the white cloud cover, the sun was low on the horizon.
“I don’t know how you do all this flying around.” I helped myself to the drink compartment.
“It is,” he said. “Do you want to pour me a drink too?”
“Sure.” I pulled out the whiskey and two glasses. “Cold glasses are really the only way to go.” I filled both glasses with caramel color.
I gave him the drink.
“To our trip,” he said. I clinked my glass with his and nodded.
We swallowed our drinks and I felt my cheeks burn. He was right. I didn’t have a reason to doubt us working out. Maybe I was just surprised, things didn’t turn out like I expected. I’d have to stay more positive. Things would work out. They’d have to.
Chapter 5
Several hours and some naps later, we landed in Massachusetts. Hugh already had a car ready at the rental counter, so we began our drive around Cape Cod. It was enchanting.
The night sky reflected off the harbor, giving it an eerie feel. Since the waves were protected, the sea wasn’t nearly as tumultuous as I was used to back home.
I rolled down my window and let the cool breeze come in from the ocean.
“It’s nice isn’t it?” he asked. “Wait until you see the house. It’s been on my dad’s side of the family for years, since I was a kid at least. His dad used to take him when he was little, so my dad took me. Some of my earliest memories are in that little house.”
I smiled at the thought. I looked back out the car window, smelling the sweet breeze. It always managed to send shivers up my spine.
I was feeling good, a lot better about us. I tried not to think about what the future might hold, about his wife, or anything like that.
This week was going to be for us.
***
It was a quarter to one in the morning when we pulled up to his summer home.
A sandy beach was only fifteen feet away from its back yard. How the home hadn’t been overtaken by any kind of surge in the harbor was beyond me.
The summer home was a small cottage. It was painted red, with some powder blue shutters adorning the windows. With a white coat of paint, it’d be hard to tell it apart from any other kind of north eastern architecture.
To the side of the house, a small shower was set up guests to get sand off their feet from the beach before they came inside. He unlatched the door and pushed it open with a gentle shove. Wind and weather and age creaked, and the house shook itself free and came back to life.
“I just need to make sure all the water is turned on and check the breaker box, I’ll be right back.” He wandered into the far side of the dark house.
It felt different, it felt intimate. It wasn’t just his house I was visiting, it was his childhood.
In high school he told me stories about when he’d visit the beach house. One afternoon I had asked him why all his stories where from when he was a kid.
“Why doesn’t your family go anymore? Why don’t we just go, the two of us?”
“I don’t really want to, you know. It was something we did together as a family. My mom is sick, and there really isn’t a reason to go anymore.”
A couple months later, his had mom passed away. She had been sick the entire time I knew her, with every kind of ailment you could name. She only got worse and worse, until she was hospitalized. Hugh stopped coming to school for a while back then, and he wouldn’t return any of my phone calls.
After she died, he started coming back, but he wasn’t the same anymore. Before I knew it, he was graduating and leaving me behind.
I heard the rush of water as he kicked the valves over. Then he yelled out: “Try the light switch.”
I flipped the one near the front door. All the lights in the house lit up, giving off a brilliant yellow glow.
The house was quaint. Couches from the 70s and 80s littered the main living room, all situated around a tender looking fireplace. The walls were paneled and most of them had wallpaper covering them. The kitchen was gleaming with white tiles, a white fridge, and white floors. In there, the most conspicuous thing was the oven, which had obviously been replaced at some point.
It was cozy. I threw my bag on the ground and collapsed into one of the love seats. Hugh appeared from one of the hallways, grinning.
“Already making yourself at home I see.”
I laughed a little, “What am I supposed to do? Stand at the door?”
He joined me on the couch, reaching over and kissing me on the neck. “No, I much prefer you right here.”
I felt a warmth building up between us. A kind of intense friction. I wanted to explore that, but I was exhausted from the flight out.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t convince me. His cock was hard inside his pants, and I could feel its warmth against my legs.
He pushed into me, kissing me. I parted my lips, letting him get a taste.
He leaned in past my mouth, tickling my ear with his breath. “Tomorrow, I’m going to go get you a present,” he whispered. "A beautiful woman like you deserves so much.”
I smiled, a deep sense of gratitude overwhelming me. He snuggled up next to me, his breath hot and body hotter. I ran my fingers through his dark hair. He moaned underneath my touch, and squeezed me. “Are you tired?”
He nodded. “Yes. I always just want to sleep when I get here.”
“Let’s crawl under the covers then, and doze off. It's been a long day.”
He slid his arm under me, and lifted me up as he stood. I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck to stay balanced. I don’t think anyone had ever carried me before, probably not since I was a baby.
“How could I be so lucky to meet you again?” I asked.
“That’s funny,” he said, a slight chuckle growing in his throat. He walked into the bedroom and set me on the bed. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
***
I woke up with the sun in my eyes. I never realized how bright it was with the ocean to throw it into the room. I held up my hand to block the light, and turned to see Hugh still snoring next to me. The blankets were wrapped around him, the top sheet tangled around his arm.
Up until that point Hugh always surprised me by being the first to climb out of bed. It dawned on me that I hadn’t even been with him for more than a couple days. A whirlwind by any standard — especially compared to the rest of my life.
Thinking back, it was always kind of like that with him. Even in high school, he just had this kind over power of me. I just wanted to be with him. We just had this magnetic attraction.
I slipped out from under the covers, being careful not to disturb him. I made my way to the kitchen and started pulling out stuff to cook some breakfast. I never had a knack for it, but maybe today I would be able to manage something as simple as eggs?
I opened the fridge and found it completely empty. Oh yeah. We just got here.
I decided to crawl back into the sheets, and snuggle up on him.
His chest felt hot to the touch, and I laid my head on it, feeling his heartbeat. I tried to match my breathing to his breathing, that feeling of oneness... euphoric.
Hugh stirred, and I greeting him with a hushed voice, “Good morning.”
He blinked his eyes at me, struggling to get a sense of what was happening. He sat up with a jerk, nearly pushing me over.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked him, more shocked than anything.
He stared at me hard, as if he didn’t recognize me.
He blinked, and he regained his composure, his breathing heavy.
“What happened?”
“I forgot...” he looked around again, maybe lost in thought, “I forgot we came here. I was really startled.”
My skin stopped crawling, and I relaxed. I put my hand on his bare chest, threading my fingers through his chest hair.
“Mmm it’s okay, it’s just us here.”
He smiled, and kissed me. It felt different than before, there was some kind of loneliness attached to it.
“I was going to make you breakfast,” I said. “But there isn’t any food.”
He chuckled a little. “Oops. We got in so late, I guess we forgot to grab any.” He swung his legs from under the sheets, and stood.
I watched his back, and I could see every taut muscle shiver under his skin. I amused myself with the thought that I wasn’t just looking at a man in his boxers, but a man who made two-million a year.
“What are you smiling about?” he teased me. He thought for a moment, then continued, “I know a great place we can get something to eat,” he said, as he pulled some folded up clothes out of his suitcase. He set out a pair of khakis and a cottony button-up. “Afterwards we can go shopping, a little reward,” he winked at me.
“You really know how to make me feel like I’m in high school again.”
I hopped off the bed and unzipped my own suitcase. I wish everything I had wasn’t wrinkled.
“Oh,” I thought for a moment. “What went wrong...? I don’t even remember. Like it was so long ago.”
He slipped a leg into his khakis. “I think we argued a lot, about little things.”
“Yeah,” I wrinkled my forehead. “That’s right.”
“We’re different people now though, Caitlin.” He scooped his arm behind me, pulling me closer to him. He smelled amazing. How did a man who just woke up smell so good? “We’re older, wiser, and... richer.”
“You’re richer,” I teased him, playing with his tie. I buttoned up his shirt.
“Well, for now, it’s just me...” he trailed off.
When he told me he loved me then?
“Why don’t you wear this?” he leaned over and pulled out a yellow dress from my suitcase. I frowned.
“Because it's wrinkled.”
“Well, maybe a little." He smoothed it between his hands. “We are on vacation.” He said this in a way that made it sound like, who gives a shit?
“That doesn’t mean I want to look like a hobo.”
“Well, put it on anyway. We’ll pick you up something in town, after we eat. I hardly think anyone can judge us for looking a little sloppy during breakfast, you know.” He smoothed out his own shirt, and walked into the bathroom. He ran the sink and started brushing his teeth.
I decided he was right. I slipped the yellow dress on, smoothing it over my legs.
He had a mirror behind the door to the room, and I didn’t look too bad; little folds in the design made the wrinkles almost look like they were on purpose.
He came back out of the bathroom, blowing his breath on me, “Smell good?”
It did. “Minty.”
“Excellent. Do you want to get going? I know I’m starving.”
My stomach growled, right on cue. We looked at each other and laughed, before heading out the front door.
***
While the beach house was a good trip from the airport, it wasn’t very far out of town. The sun had warmed up the harbor quite a bit and little sail boats and propeller boats littered the skyline.
Hugh parked along the street. There weren’t any parking meters, which seemed unusual to me. Bangor wasn’t exactly the biggest city in the world, but even it had parking meters. More than anything though, it made me realize how little I ever got out of the house.
“This place.” Hugh stood with his arms on his hips, striking a dramatic pose. The restaurant in front of us looked like any other mom and pop breakfast diner, but his smile told another story.
“Okay,” I shrugged. I was so hungry, I would have settled for any kind of fast food.
As the hostess seated us, I watched Hugh, his eyes seemed like they were glowing, but maybe it was the blue of the harbor catching them just right.
The server gave us two glasses of water and I drank mine greedily after she left the table.
“Wow,” Hugh commented, a slight chuckle rising in his voice. “You were thirsty.”
“We had wine last night, that always makes me parched,” I said, as if I had wine all the time. He sipped his glass, lazily looking over the menu.
It was a fairly basic list of breakfast items: sausage and eggs, a pancake explosion which said it was three to four plate sized pancakes.
I looked up at him, he was clasping his water with both hands. He was smiling, but seemed a little lost in thought.
“How long have you worked for Silver Energy, Hugh?”
He stirred, like I caught him in a daze. “I think...” he scratched his chin, “Four years? Yeah. Six months after Marcia and I moved to Reno, Scott hired me as a full-time employee.”
“And you’re already Vice President of the company? You sure you didn’t...” I mimed a blowjob.
He laughed, a bit a of a nervous edge to it. “No, no, no. Scott is always that kind of... excitable. He’s been kind of like a second father to me.”
I nodded, glancing around for another glass of water. Hugh pushed his towards me. “I can see that.”
“Anyway, he saw potential in me from the start, but it was still a risk to hire me.” He squeezed his hands together, his knuckles whitening.
“Why?”
“Just a fresh kid. Six months after they hired me... I lost Marcia.”
“Hugh...” I let my voice trail off. I should have known.
“I threw myself into work. I don’t know why — it felt good I guess. I could go in and zone out for hours and hours. At the end of the week, I’d have a huge paycheck. That felt good too. So I kept doing it, going in for hours and hours. A couple of months later, they changed me to salary, so my extra hours didn’t matter. I did it anyway. I’d put in sixty hour weeks. I started calculating it out — I could stay at the office eighty hours a week if I wanted. I probably did that for a year.”
I was silent. I didn’t know what to say. He was spilling his guts to me in this diner, and our table never felt wider. An arms length. I put my hand on his, and felt it tremble a little.
“I think it was only later that I realized I didn’t want to be at home, I didn’t want to be around the life we made together. I made great strides at work too, it wasn’t wasted dawdling you know. The next thing I knew, I was getting promoted left and right. Scott could barely believe it either, since he was getting commendations for taking the plunge in hiring a sophomore year college student. By the time I graduated college, I had been promoted four times, and was making more money than I would have dreamed of before.”
“That’s great though!” I tried to console him. “You worked really hard and are getting rewarded...” I lowered my voice, “Two million a year Hugh. That’s... a lot of money. More than I can conceive.”
“I know it is, but...” His expression had softened. I felt a sharp pain, like it was my fault for ruining his mood.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it. Le
t’s just have breakfast,” I said.
The server came back and asked us if we were ready. I hadn’t even had a chance to look, but nodded anyway. She took our menus after we ordered.
Hugh was going to have the eggs benedict, so I just copied him. I figured he knew what he was doing here better than I did.
We were only together for a short time in high school, but he had been married to this woman. While I was with him now, eating breakfast out in Massachusetts, I couldn’t help but feel like my relationship with him was a joke compared to the reality that he had with Marcia. Our first relationship wasn’t a joke to me. I knew I was being ridiculous, but how could I compete with a ghost? She couldn’t have flaws, while I was real and breathing. I tripped and dropped things.
The only time he might remember her dropping things is in a nostalgic way. A painful way. I dropped my fork on the ground right after taking my first bite. If he was remembering her being a bit clumsy, it might be in a cute way, but when I had to ask a waiter for another fork, I just felt embarrassed.
I didn’t talk much for the rest of the meal, responding to his jokes and banter with half-hearted responses. I felt bad, but somehow justified too. I could tell he wasn’t letting it bother him, but maybe it was a kind of practiced dance. He had to have done it all the time after she died.
***
After breakfast, we walked down the little main street. It was lovely and not much bigger than some of the smaller towns in Maine. Which made it feel familiar but new.
The slight wind added a little chill to our walk, which was remedied when Hugh slipped his arm around me and pulled me close to him. It was a kind gesture and it made me feel a lot better.
Hugh slowed his pace in front of a little boutique, and peered at the dresses in the window.
“You want to stop in here? I can get you something,” he said. His grin told me he really wanted to.
What little modesty I had told me to decline, but how could I? “That sounds great.”
The shop wasn’t very big, but what it lacked in size it made up for with quality.
Glimmering and shimmering dresses lined the different racks, carefully organized by style, color and size. I gravitated towards the back, where a backless dress was hung on the rack.