Bring Me Back

by Karen Booth

  I couldn’t think about it with any seriousness, things were out of my control. I turned off my computer and tried to relax. I shut my eyes, but that only made my anxiety balloon. Being alone with my thoughts was a terrible idea. My eyelids fluttered open and the books served as my reminder. I was blowing my opportunity to check out Chris’s library unsupervised.

  There were so many books to look at, an array of colorful spines, an eclectic mix of authors and subjects. I browsed and came across some about art and photography. A few had dark and gritty stuff—black and white images of people in despair, living lives that were unimaginable, poverty and filth. But then there were books filled with bright and colorful pop art. More than a few focused on artful portraits of beautiful women, some with clothes and many without.

  I opened a volume of sepia tone photographs of a grungy late Nineteenth Century London. The pages spread open to the middle, held by a photograph. There was a lanky boy with thick reddish-brown bowl-cut hair in a striped t-shirt and navy pants with rips at the knees. He leaned against a graying man in a wide maroon necktie and scuffed cordovan shoes.

  The Tudor house behind them had a wobbly roof and a latticework of thick brown slats over the cream-colored exterior. The garden behind the fence was overgrown, blooms popping through the pickets. I turned over the photograph and the caption was written in what appeared to be a woman’s hand, beautifully formed cursive letters: Alistair and Christopher May, 1973. I counted the years in my head. It had been taken the year before Christopher’s father had died.

  It made Chris so human, so ordinary, to see him like that—I’d never once thought of him that way, normal, a boy with his dad. It was heartbreaking to see the happiness in their eyes, neither aware of how little time they had left together. His anguish was likely as great as my own over my mom, simply different circumstances and times.

  Chris came through the door as I wiped away a tear. My first reaction was to slam the book closed and dash back to put it on the shelf. I smudged my hand across my cheeks while he set his things down on the entryway table.

  “Glad to see you’re home safely,” he said, entering the room.

  “You weren’t honestly that worried about me.”

  “I was.” He kissed me and draped his arm over my shoulder. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too.”

  “What’s wrong?” He focused on me. “Something’s wrong.”

  I took a deep breath, still dazed from the photo of Chris and his dad. For that one moment, I’d forgotten what had come to light at lunch. “Let me show you.” I pulled the magazine from my bag. “Angie brought this to lunch.” I handed it to him, standing to gauge his response as he plopped down on the couch.

  The corner of his mouth went up as he started to read. “Canoodling? Is that what we were doing that day?” He held the magazine out at arm’s length. “I’d love to have the X-rated version of this photo for my scrapbook.”

  “Doesn’t this bother you?” I snatched the magazine from him. “Because I’m kind of freaking out. I have to go to PTA meetings and the grocery store when I get home. My dad might see this. You said we’d have privacy on our trip. I wouldn’t call this privacy.”

  “Of course it bothers me, but do you have any idea how many times this has happened to me?” He stood and closed the distance I’d made, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, holding me immobile. “You’re never going to have total privacy with me. There’s always someone lurking around with a camera.”

  I rested my forehead on his chest. “I think Patrick knows. He wants to talk to me on Monday morning. What am I supposed to do about that?”

  “You should come clean. Frankly, that will be a big relief. This whole business of keeping secrets is driving me bloody crazy.” He rubbed my arm. “Don’t worry, you can make me the bad guy if you want. I pursued you, after all.” He took my chin and turned my head toward him. “Seriously, I think it’ll be fine.”

  “He already warned me about this, twice, and I lied to him about where I was going on vacation. There’s no reason for him to ever trust me again.”

  He looked at me as though I was a child. “You love to assume the worst, don’t you? You need to relax. There are always other assignments.”

  My reaction spurted out of me. “Don’t tell me to relax. I’ve spent years trying to land a cover story that could move me into feature writing.” I broke his hold on me. “The Rolling Stone piece is everything I have to stand on.”

  Chris remained quiet and I couldn’t help but notice how my bracelet clunked against my wrist when I shifted my arm. He clutched my hand. “I’m sorry. Of course, you’re upset, but it will blow over.”

  I froze. He didn’t understand what else was about to happen and how much it could hurt him. I wrestled with telling him, making a completely irrational wish for the news about his vengeful ex-wife to disappear.

  “This isn’t going to go away. None of this will blow over.” I looked him in the eye, and it hit me. He’d just read what I was terrified to tell him. “Wait. Elise’s book.” I felt as if the air had been forced from my lungs, like a flattened dog toy. “You knew about it.”

  “Elise’s book? Yes, I knew. She threatened me with it a few weeks after I kicked her out. I never thought she’d go through with it. It’s not like she’s managed to accomplish anything at all over the last ten years.”

  My thoughts ran, struggling to keep up with everything. One look in his eyes and I knew I owed him the truth. “I knew about it too.”

  “Before today?” His cheeks flamed red. “When exactly were you planning to tell me? Why would you keep this from me?”

  With the tables turned, I felt the full force of how hard it was to come clean. “I found out a few days ago. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone, and I didn’t want to tell you yesterday. We were having such a nice night and I was afraid. I knew how much it would hurt you.” I saw his face calm. “I found out from her ghostwriter. He’s my ex-boyfriend.”

  He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “Well, this is a bloody mess we’ve got now, isn’t it?”

  “I know.” I slumped down on the couch with him and he rubbed my back. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you right away. I didn’t want to be the one to break the bad news. Guess I was being a big chicken.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t want you to keep things from me, though. You can tell me everything. I can handle it.” He cocked his head to the side and touched his thumb to my chin. “I’m sorry things are a wreck with your editor. Hopefully you’ll be able to work it all out.” He pushed my hair back over my ear. “Can we take this in the kitchen? I’m starving.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I woke that night with a new fear, a thought that came on a mission to rob me of a good night’s sleep. If Chris knew about Elise’s book before I did the interview with him, had he planned to tell me everything all along?

  I tossed and turned, unable to get back to sleep and hoped that jostling the bed would wake him. I even nudged him in the back a few times. It didn’t work and I eventually drifted off, but the worry was waiting for me when I woke up for real.

  It was an extra smoggy day in Los Angeles, making it difficult to see anything beyond Chris’s domain through the wall of glass in the living room. I walked outside and watched him from the terrace, his movements in the water a beautiful distraction even when I felt sick to my stomach, dreading the question I had to ask.

  He climbed out of the pool and I felt his pull from fifty feet away. “Hey, Mark Spitz. Do you want breakfast?”

  He grinned. “You know it. I’ll be right up.”

  He arrived in the kitchen with the towel around his waist and kissed me on the cheek while I cracked eggs. “What are we having?”

  “French toast and bacon. Did you know you have a ton of bacon in your freezer?

  “I love bacon.”

  All through breakfast, I remained preoccupied with what was hanging over my head. I’d told
myself I’d ask him, but then I would delay, and then I would gather my strength again. By the time we’d finished eating, I was still scared, but I had to come out with it. Being a chicken wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

  “I was thinking about something you said yesterday,” I said, standing up from the table. I watched him finish off the carton of orange juice with the fridge door open. “You said that Elise told you about the book a few weeks after you split up. So, that means you knew about it before we met.” He closed the fridge. I trembled. “Did you agree to the Rolling Stone story knowing that you were going to tell the interviewer everything about Elise?”

  He waited before looking at me, which was terrifying. He was always so quick to talk if he was called out on something. “Do you really want to do this to yourself?” He turned and pleaded with his eyes, the very force that got me into this in the first place.

  “So, that’s my answer,” I said, flatly.

  He moved closer and I folded my arms across my body.

  “Please, don’t do this. It won’t accomplish anything,” he replied.

  A swarm of thoughts buzzed in my head.

  “Look, I had no idea that you were going to be the person I would meet that day,” he continued. “If I had a crystal ball and knew that it was you and what would happen between us, I would’ve done things differently. But, I didn’t.”

  Frozen, I still didn’t say a thing—the supposed pinnacle of my career had been built on a house of cards and he’d known it all along.

  He closed the inches between us and cupped my shoulders. “Say something.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I felt as if I was on autopilot, words streaming from my mouth on their own. “I was proud of that piece. I put everything I had into writing it. You were there the whole time, in my head, talking to me and pushing all of my buttons. I wanted to do the right thing for you, because you’d put your trust in me.” I scanned his face. He looked hurt, but I was hurt too. “Remember what you said that night? That it would kill you if I screwed you over?” I stepped away, needing the physical space if only to think. “Now I know that I wasn’t so adept at my job that I convinced you it would be okay.”

  “Claire.”

  “No. Don’t do that. Don’t say my name. You knew that you were going to tell me everything. You just let me work for it. You even pretended to get angry with me. It was all an act, just like you do with strangers all the time.” My voice cracked. “I was a stranger then, wasn’t I? I was no different than a bellboy or a flight attendant, someone to play one of your jokes on.”

  “You weren’t a stranger, but I didn’t know you like I do now. That’s my point. I’d never intentionally hurt you. You have every reason to be proud of the piece. You made it worthy of the cover. And it wasn’t like I gave you everything easily. You had to convince me about a few things.”

  “We both know you were toying with me that night. You toyed with me that whole day.”

  “I swear I didn’t plan to tell you everything I did.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter, his long legs propping him up. He dug his hand into his hair and exhaled. “I wasn’t going to say anything about the baby.” He looked me in the eye. “I wasn’t prepared to give up that secret. Graham was the only other person who knew. Not even my mum or my sisters knew about it. It wasn’t an act at that point. I really wanted to tell you.”

  “Why, because I’m a woman? Because I’m a mom?” I cringed at my questions. They made me sound like a monster.

  “I don’t know the reason. All I know is that I wanted to do it.” His voice turned sad. “I don’t know if it was the chemistry between us, or what. I meant it when I said that something told me to trust you.”

  “How am I supposed to trust you? It’s not like you haven’t had plenty of chances to tell me this.”

  “When? I couldn’t tell you over the phone and I wasn’t about to ruin our first weekend together or our trip. You would have been out of there before it started.”

  “And you couldn’t tell me before I’d finished the story, because that would have meant an end to your plan.”

  “Look, Elise is going to nail me to the wall with her book. I had to fight back, to tell my side before she had a chance to destroy what’s left of me.” He threw up his hands. “Honestly, what good is this doing? It’s done. We need to move on.”

  My entire body shook. Something about him made the betrayal more potent. I wanted to escape, but I had nowhere to go and everything I could lose was standing in front of me.

  He pushed off from the kitchen counter and reached for me.

  “Please don’t touch me. I need to be by myself.”

  “Whatever you want.” The weight of his stare was unbearable. “I’ll be downstairs.” Just like that, he fell back to the place he went when things got bad.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was no space I could occupy that wouldn’t make me think of him. His presence was everywhere. I trudged back to his room and sifted through my suitcase until I found my running clothes. I put them on, scribbled a note, and was out the door.

  ****

  I’d never run so far in my entire life, my body pushing to keep pace with my brain. Up and down the hills, I had no idea where I was, but something told me to keep going. He’d let me believe a lie and continued to let me live off that lie, all the while drawing me into his world. It had been easier to let the lie remain as it was. Otherwise, it would’ve ruined everything. I felt like it was ruining everything anyway.

  It was purely by accident that I made it back to the house. I stumbled across it, exhausted—my thighs and calves throbbing, my back sore.

  He was there when I opened the door, in khaki shorts without a shirt; yet another low blow. “Thank God, you’re back. I was about to call the police. Seriously, Claire, a four-hour run? I was sure you were lost. Please don’t scare me like that again.”

  My body was rigid but I swayed, like a tall building in the wind. He reached for me and I turned my shoulder and pushed past him, down the hallway to the bedroom.

  “Please say something. Talk to me.” He followed me and groaned in frustration. “I can’t stand the silent treatment. I don’t care if you want to scream at me. That would be better at this point.”

  I splashed cold water on my face in the bathroom and he looked at me expectantly, his eyes roving from left to right and back again. I pressed the towel to my forehead, strangely enjoying the roughness of the terry. “I’m afraid to say anything. You’ll say something to win me over and it’ll work because you always get what you want.”

  He plaintively held out both hands. “But I don’t get everything I want because what I want right now is you. I can’t stand to look at you, knowing you don’t want me to touch you. It’s killing me.”

  Everything seemed to creep along in slow motion, as if the universe wanted to make the most of the anguish. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? All you would need to do is touch me and everything would be back to the way it was.” My voice was raw from hours of breathing through my mouth. I sat on the bed and took off my shoes, staring at him. I hunched, feeling as if I could collapse at any moment while my sweaty smell ripened.

  “You know I don’t mean that. I know I’ve hurt you and I want to make it better.”

  “There’s no way to make it better. You can’t take it back.”

  “Don’t you think I would if I could?”

  “You don’t understand. I’ve spent years working twice as hard for half the money because I didn’t want to raise Sam in New York or LA, so that I could be close to my dad if he needed me. I’m getting ready to put her through college and I barely have enough money saved for her first year. This was probably my final shot to make a better living as a writer because I’ve come up short with every other chance I had.”

  “If this is about money, I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  I sighed and my shoulders dropped again. “This isn’t just about money. It’s nice of
you to offer, but I don’t want your money.” I closed my eyes and exhaled. “I feel like such a loser. So much for my big accomplishment.”

  He sat next to me. “Don’t say that. Nobody needs to know about this.”

  “I’ll know. If anything good comes out of this, it’ll be tainted.” I crossed my arms. “I hate that feeling.”

  “It won’t be tainted. You’re an incredible writer. You turned my pathetic stories into something worthy of the cover of a magazine. They wouldn’t have put your story on the cover if you weren’t a great writer.”

  “That cover is all about what you said.”

  He scanned my face and moved closer. “I think it took both of us for it to be anything. I don’t want you to dismiss your role because it didn’t happen the way you wanted it to.” He moved closer still. “No other writer would’ve treated me as fairly as you did. I’m so lucky that I got you.”

  I looked at him. I couldn’t push aside what had already made itself at home in my heart. We sat silent for minutes as I realized he was right, even though it was completely annoying to admit.

  “You’re still coming to the show tonight, right?” he asked.

  I didn’t hesitate, even though the contrary part of me wanted to leave him hanging, if only for a moment. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.” His eyes lit up and I smiled and shied away.

  “You’re so bloody beautiful when you smile like that.” I looked back and his eyes struck up an entirely separate conversation with me, saying everything I wanted to hear. He leaned back against the headboard and held out his arms. “Come here.”

  “I’m sweaty and gross.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get.”

  “No. Seriously. It’s bad. I stink.”

  “And I said I don’t care.”

  “Will you promise me one thing first?” I asked.