Snapping awake, I scooted away from her kind and gentle lips, startling her. She stepped out of bed, wearing nothing but her white slip and flowing blonde hair.
“Cam, what’s wrong?” She wasn’t exactly glaring at me, but the look on her face suggested she was not impressed. At all.
Fuck. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and rolled onto my side. I patted the empty space in bed, inviting her back.
“How late were you out last night?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered, but I knew. Of course I knew. “Come lay with me.”
Riley considered it, but not for long. She shook her head. “I’m going to have a shower. I have to go back into the city. I forgot those Bulls tickets at the office.” She stripped out of her slip, her smallish, perky breasts flopping out. I loved her nipples, so I watched her. She knew it, too, because she stopped at the foot of the bed, full frontal, and asked, “Want to come?”
I smiled but shook my head. “Rain check, I’m sorry. I have a bit of work to finish up this morning.”
“Cam, I thought that was why you were working so late all week?” she complained. “So we could have our weekend to ourselves.”
Shit. “I know. It’s not much, though. Just a few reports I need to pretty up.”
“And I didn’t mean come with me into the city. I meant why don’t you come with me in the shower?” She winked, biting on her lower lip.
I very deliberately admired her entire body, my eyes crawling up and down, first getting lost in that galaxy of freckles on her upper chest, then rolling over the small bump of her belly that you couldn’t see underneath any clothing, but was absolutely perfect. Still, I could think of nothing else but Hope, which wasn’t cool at all. When my stare reached the small patch of soft pubic hair, I abruptly moved my attention back to her face, feeling guilty. Like I was cheating on Hope with my soon-to-be bride.
I sat up in bed. “I’m going to get started on my work bullshit, so we can have the rest of the day together.”
The deflated look on her face told me she knew. Maybe not about last night’s laughing and flirting and how Hope and I had latched onto each other for a breath longer than we should have when we said goodbye. But she recognized that I was distracted.
“Okay.” She started walking away, then stopped at the bedroom door to glance back at me. “Everything okay, Cam? You’ve been acting all strange these past couple of weeks.”
I could’ve corrected her. Technically, it had only been since last Friday, eight days ago. Instead, I gave her a shrug. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Bullshit.” She shook her head.
“Work’s busy, and if anything,” I said, taking a deep breath, “it’s probably just pre-wedding jitters.”
Riley didn’t like that response. She strolled back into the bedroom, her hands on her hips, her scowl beating down on me like the desert sun. It was blinding all right. “Jitters, huh?”
I chuckled, pulling the blankets over my lap like they could protect me. “I think it’s all pretty standard, Riley.” I swallowed hard, nodding past her at the door. “Go have your shower…we’re wasting time with this.”
She kept her eyes on me a little longer than she should have, then finally turned and walked away. I watched her ass as she left, wondering what had gone so wrong, so quickly.
Fuck, Hope.
I massaged my face and waited to hear the shower spray before finally jumping out of bed and hurrying to the other bedroom to set up my work laptop at the desk. While the computer booted up, I stared out the window at the townhouse across from us, remembering that night.
Fuck, Hope.
I returned my attention to the computer and found an email. Well, I found half a dozen, but there was one in particular that stopped my heart.
Fuck, Hope.
I saw that there was an attachment to that email, so I opened the message and stared at the paperclip icon. I was hoping for a picture, preferably a nude or semi-nude one, but when I looked a little closer, I read the file extension and saw that it was just a fucking document. I cursed, the words silent on my mouth when—
“Cam, I’m heading out.”
I swung around in my chair like she had just caught me watching porn and masturbating. I wiped my clammy palms along my legs because in so many ways, this thing with Hope was a million times worse than online adult movies. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
From her position in the doorway, Riley tilted her head, scrutinizing me. “You’ve been weird all morning. Maybe you should get some more sleep, huh?”
I nodded, ready to agree with almost anything just to get her out of the house so I could open that non-visual attachment and see what it was all about.
“Okay, why don’t we meet at the Starbucks in my building at noon?” She strolled into the room, but I didn’t want her to see the message so I met her halfway, letting her fall into my arms to keep her from seeing what was on the computer screen.
“Sounds great. Noon.” I kissed the top of her head, my hand on her shoulder like she might be a cousin, and Riley didn’t seem to like that.
Twirling out of my grip, she reminded me about meeting her at noon, then she was gone. I walked to the window and watched her hurry out of the townhouse and rush down the laneway. Once I couldn’t see her anymore, I returned to the computer and opened the attachment.
It was a fucking novel. Literally, a novel of some one hundred and eighteen pages, consisting of nothing but words. I scrolled forward through the pages to see if there were pictures to help lighten the load, but there weren’t.
“This is a joke. It has to be.” I brushed my hand through my hair, wondering what the whole point of this was. I clicked back to the main message screen and found her original note.
Cameron,
I’m sorry for coming back into your life so close to your wedding day. Ultimately, all I wanted out of this was to see you again, to see that you’re happy. And you are. Or were. And I’m afraid I’ve complicated that. But before I fly back home, here’s what I’ve been working on these last few years. It’s called Our Story, and you’ve somehow inspired every single word. I didn’t write it, but I’d love it if you could read it. As much as it’s my story, it’s not mine at all.
Enjoy it, and good luck next month with Riley. You two make a beautiful couple, so congratulations.
Hope
I read her message over and over again, at least half a dozen times as my stomach dropped, and a deep, piercing heat rose into the base of my skull. I didn’t want to read a fucking novel.
I checked my watch. I had a couple of hours before I had to leave to meet up with Riley. I didn’t have all fucking morning, so I skipped forward several chapters and started there.
} i {
Our Story – Olivia
Waking up next to Oliver on the Monday that my flight left for home, I remember thinking that nothing had ever felt worse than what I felt at that moment. We had fallen asleep holding each other. But this morning I found him with his back to me, his black T-shirt rising out from the mess of white sheets that had enveloped us a few hours earlier.
Reaching out, I pulled the sheets onto his shoulder, covering him. It wasn’t so much that I feared he would get cold, but…I hated that he had rolled away from me, that I had slept with the false belief that he’d been holding me in his arms this entire time.
With Oliver, everything changed from the moment my name dripped off his tongue. Even if I didn’t exactly believe in soul mates, I believed in…well, us.
I edged closer to him on the bed and wrapped my arms around him from behind, just as he had done to me the night before. And then I curled my legs around his and buried my face into the back of his neck, breathing in all of him. It felt so perfect, lying here with him. Yes, lying—as much on the bed as to each other, to the people in our lives.
“Did we do anything last night?” he asked, his voice coarse first thing in the morning. “My arm fell asleep under your neck.” He rolle
d over, and the dark circles under his eyes told me he hadn’t slept well.
I nodded, smiling. “Yes.”
He leaned a touch closer. “I need to kiss you.”
With Oliver, I fought for love because he made me believe in something I never knew to be missing from my life. Until now.
} i {
Following my trip to Chicago, I returned to my real life in Vegas, which meant selling mortgages and other financial services to everyday folks who wanted bigger and better than they could afford. That first day back was difficult, but it was a Tuesday and quiet. While I waited at my desk for a lender to get back to me on a “tight” application, I swung my chair around and stared out my window at one of the most notorious skylines in the country. Even as a local, I thought it looked fake. Just like I imagined it would appear to people who had never visited Vegas and only ever saw it on movie or television screens.
“Oliver Weaver,” I whispered to myself, “what have you done to me?”
From my office, I could also watch the airlines come and go every ten minutes or so. Each time I noticed an airplane, I wondered—okay, I prayed—that Oliver would be aboard, that he would come for me and take me away. Life without him was a silent film.
When my phone chirped, I snatched it up right away. “Olivia Warren,” I nearly shouted, my heart beating hard inside my chest. I never acted like a schoolgirl when my phone rang. But when I heard his voice, I knew why.
This relationship with Oliver, whatever it meant, was different than anything I had ever experienced before. I just didn’t know it yet.
} i {
A couple of months had passed since my trip to Chicago, and I was preparing dinner at the stove, working on a special scallops and rice recipe when that hard heartbeat returned to me. I stepped away from my work, sat down at the table, and tried to regain control.
It was getting dark outside, and the air had cooled. Maybe the change in temperature was to blame. Really, I didn’t know what this heartbeat thing meant, but I wondered if it could also have something to do with an earlier conversation I had with Oliver. We spoke for nearly an hour earlier today, when my boss was at a client’s house to sign documents.
“You okay?” my husband asked from the living room. “I’m fucking starving here.” Yes, he was a dickhead, but he had plans to go out with the boys tonight, which meant I would have the place to myself.
I nodded without looking at him. “I’m fine.”
Returning to the stove, I checked on the scallops, then pulled the rice off the stove. I slopped a couple of servings onto our plates. Instead of sitting at the table, I told him that I needed some fresh air. He said nothing. He may not have even heard me, like a child who needs countless reminders to get their shoes on for school.
I slipped outside to our front porch, which wrapped around our house, and I stepped up to the railing. The darkness made it hard to see—not that deep-black dark of a moonless sky at two in the morning, but that confusing, hazy dark right before the sun disappears for good.
An airplane roared overhead, and I caught myself tracing its path with my eyes, watching it and wondering where it was headed. Chicago? And then it started again, that wild and crazy heartbeat that made me weak and worried at the same time. Oh, Oliver, where are you?
“I’m here,” he said, seemingly stepping out of another dimension. He wore straight-leg jeans and a white button-down shirt with brown leather shoes. They were gorgeous shoes, but I took in all of him.
I glanced back toward the front door, then the large living room window that allowed me to see my husband at the table, still eating.
“I just want to smell your hair,” he said, stepping carefully into the neglected garden that bordered our porch.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “My husband will kick your ass if he finds you here.”
Oliver seemed surprised. “He knows about me?”
“No, but if he finds you, he will!” I chuckled, not because he said anything funny, but because I was so excited to see him here that I couldn’t keep the happy off my face. “Give me half an hour,” I told him. “Tim’s going out tonight, but I’ll meet you in town.”
I heard my husband shouting something inside.
“I’ll meet you in half an hour,” I whispered again, whipping my head around to make sure he wasn’t coming for me, and then turned back to Oliver. “Half an hour, okay?”
“Where?” he asked me, the grin stretching from one side of his face to the next.
Shrugging, I said his hotel.
He smiled. “I’m at the Hard Rock.”
I entered the house to my husband’s bitching and moaning about his game shirt being dirty, and the rest of it sort of blurred into the bullshit of marital bliss. For once, I didn’t fall into the argument trap. I quietly slipped upstairs while he yelled at the dishwasher, slamming his plate and fork into the right slots, then going on about how much of a moron I could be, or something like that. In the bedroom, I grinned at my isolation, at the lump in the middle of our mattress that spoke quite clearly as to just how “close” Tim and I had become over the past ten years.
I crashed onto that same lumpy mattress, grabbed a book, and pretended that I could see the words through the film of Oliver-fog on my eyes.
} i {
We had a quiet corner table at Nobu in the Hard Rock Casino building. It wasn’t busy at all. Then again, a lot of people were probably gambling or watching the game, like Tim. The quiet ambiance allowed me time to really watch Oliver, drink him in.
“You’re here,” I said while he continued talking about his “surprise” trip to Vegas for a conference a senior partner couldn’t make on account of some personal issues. I really didn’t care about the circumstances. We’d spoken earlier today when he was at the office, and he was there, in Chicago, but now he was here, in Vegas, in front of me. I took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re here and I missed you and now I’m breathing again.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as if inhaling him, all of him.
“Yes, I’m here, Olivia.” He chuckled, lifting my hand to his lips and kissing each of my fingers. He had always done that, it was something that belonged exclusively to Oliver, something we didn’t share with our spouses—it was ours. “Why is this so weird all of a sudden?”
I opened my eyes and told him that I missed him. “I’ve dreamed about you a million times.”
He chuckled again, and his smile allowed me to imagine lifetimes spent with him.
“Today, Oliver. I’m talking about today only. I dream about you more and more every moment we spend apart. But now you’re here. And you’re mine for how long?”
His forehead rippled with the inevitability of our limited time together. “I’ve got the conference on Sunday, and I’m flying out Monday morning,” he said, almost apologetically.
Our sushi arrived. Oliver wore his wedding ring, and I still wore mine—I could have removed it after my husband left with “the boys,” cursing the whole time that he had to wear a dirty Buccs jersey, which wasn’t dirty. I hadn’t removed anything except my clothes, replacing the pantsuit with a pair of jeans and a blouse, so Oliver and I looked like a couple.
What probably indicated to others that we were not spouses to one another was the happiness at our table.
“Try this,” Oliver said, pinching a spicy tuna roll and feeding it to me.
I found a dragon roll on my plate and did the same for him, all the while wondering what married couple fed one another like we did.
“This is us, isn’t it?” Oliver asked, almost chuckling at the sweetness of our motions.
I agreed with him, but I still doubted that we would always be like this, that this utopic happiness would endure years and years of togetherness.
We laughed and flirted and fed each other like two college kids who needed to get laid. Once we finished, Oliver asked me if I wanted to come upstairs. “It’s a suite because that’s what our firm’s partners get when they travel.
Which means the minibar is covered. As well as room service for dessert.” He sounded a little nervous, but then slid his arm around my waist and pinched my side playfully to cover it up. “And you can afford dessert.”
“Shut up!” I laugh, swatting his hands away from my sides—could always lose a few pounds, tighten up my abs. “You know exactly why I haven’t been eating.”
I accompanied him to his room, and just like he promised, he had a nice big suite. As soon as we entered, we stood motionless on the other side of the door and just stared at each other. I was still breathing him in, memorizing every possible detail. But once that door closed, I jumped into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist and holding him with such ferocity, I worried I might hurt him.
We kissed like we had done this kissing business a million times before. The familiarity of our lips pressed together felt like home. I loved this man wholly and completely, every inch of him. And it was the kind of love that would never end, never go away, no matter how I hard I would try over the years ahead of us.
} i {
The months following Oliver’s trip to Vegas passed with a swift permanence that I could only compare to head-butting an oncoming freight train. There was pain, yes. But it felt like months before I could appreciate it, before I finally awoke from the coma of the sudden impact. That painful change began the moment I stepped through the door late Sunday afternoon, after spending Friday and Saturday night with Oliver at the Hard Rock.
My husband was drunk—typical Sunday afternoon bullshit—with the Raiders game playing on the television in the background. When he heard the front door opening, he called me something nasty. Still dreamy from my time with Oliver, I stepped deeper into the house, noticing the kitchen sink, dishes all piled up. An open pizza box with the crust still inside and flies crawling around told me Saturday night had been a lonely one for him as well.
Sick Day Page 9