The woman began to cry again, making Davis’s emotions feel dangerously exposed, too. She couldn’t leave her bawling in the alley. Well, she could, but she’d never get any peace, not that she foresaw peace in her near future anyway, but she deserved a chance to wallow in her turmoil without obsessing about having contributed to someone else’s. Then again, was it possible to separate their respective traumas? Davis played a crucial, if unwitting, part in the destruction of this woman’s life, and getting her out of sight would not get her out of mind.
Standing there listening to her sob wasn’t a much better option, though. Aside from being completely unproductive, serving as a silent witness to the pain she’d helped cause only compounded her already overwhelming emotions, and she was quickly approaching her breaking point.
“Look, I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and watch you cry, and I can’t leave you out here alone either.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I swear to God, if you apologize to me again, I might slit my wrists,” she snapped.
Belle blinked her red-rimmed eyes. “You’re right. I’ll go.”
“No. Shit,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just, you know, there’s no playbook for this situation.” Davis felt even worse. She didn’t want to make things harder than she already had. And now she wanted to kill Nic, not only for what she’d done to her, but for hurting this apparently sweet, sensitive, and emotionally frail woman. It didn’t make any sense. “Why don’t you come in and get cleaned up, rinse your mouth out or something, then you can go, and I’ll feel one molecule less of guilt before I fall to pieces?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed skeptical.
“Fine. I get you not wanting to be in my place. Quite frankly, it’d be hard for me too, but I need to get off my feet and into a bottle of scotch.”
“You’re right. I can’t stand out here all day,” she said, then softly added, “but I really don’t want to go back to the hotel, either.”
“So we’re both back to crying in the alley? ’Cause seriously, if I don’t get out of here soon, that’s what’s going to happen.”
“I’m sorr—I mean, okay. I’ll just use your bathroom quickly, then find somewhere else to go.”
Davis managed to unlock the door without melting down, but as she climbed the stairs her doubt and fear multiplied with each step. Why had she invited Nic’s wife into her home? Did she feel responsible for this woman? Did she want something from her? Was she looking for answers or some kind of absolution? Intellectually she knew she wouldn’t find either from her, or anyone else for that matter, but like it or not they were tied together in this horrible knot of pain and betrayal. She owed it to both of them to try to untangle whatever parts of it they could.
*
Annabelle fidgeted on the threshold of Davis’s apartment. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go inside so much as she didn’t think she should want to go inside. What woman wanted to be faced with the personal side of her partner’s mistress? Was she so shocked she’d lost her ability to process logically? Probably, but she’d also experienced some sort of morbid curiosity about Davis. Why her? Nic had met thousands of women over the last thirteen years. What about this one made her willing to risk everything they’d built together?
She was beautiful, but not in the refined sense Belle strove to cultivate. Davis’s short, flame-red hair and hypnotic green eyes made her seem exotic, and her low-slung boyfriend jeans and tight black T-shirt offered a sharp contrast to the slim skirts and button-downs Belle wore. Did a little bit of novelty have the power to destroy the foundation they’d built their life on, or did Davis hold something deeper?
“Um, you can come in, if you want.” Davis pulled Belle back into the moment.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to behave in this situation.”
Davis snorted. “I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, who wants to be well-practiced at this sort of thing?”
“I suppose there’s that silver lining, but I’m still feeling very unsure of myself and, well, everything else.”
“Then you’re in good company. About the only thing I know for certain is I’m Davis and this is my apartment. Everything else is under examination.”
“Davis,” Belle repeated, the name heavy on her lips. “I knew that much from Nic’s cell-phone contact list, but I thought you were a particularly needy sales intern.”
“Needy maybe, but not an intern,” Davis said. “And you’re Belle?”
“Annabelle. The only one who’s ever called me ‘Belle’ is Nic.”
“Annabelle it is. You live in Athens?”
“The suburbs. Nic didn’t want to make a home or raise kids in the city.”
“Oh, my God, you have kids?”
“No, no kids,” Belle quickly said as another piece of her heart broke at the realization they would never have children. “We’d been planning to try this fall.”
Davis paled. “She’s been planning to have a family with you while sleeping with me? I’m going to need that scotch now.” Davis walked behind the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. “Care to join me?”
“It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“Eleven o’clock on the longest morning of my life.”
“I take mine on the rocks. Should I get the ice?”
“Knock yourself out.”
She took the four steps necessary to cross the tiny apartment and removed a tray of ice out of the nearly empty freezer, noting again the differences in the life they led. Back at home their freezer, fridge, and cabinets were always fully stocked, but when she closed the door all her thoughts of food vanished as she saw the picture of Davis and Nic together. They wore matching baseball jerseys and were clearly at the ballpark, but what really struck her was the comfortable way Davis snuggled into the crook of Nic’s arm. They looked so natural, so happy. They’d been out sharing an afternoon in each other’s company. Any remaining hope that their connection had been solely physical shattered.
She turned helplessly to Davis as if she could explain why the love of her life had looked at someone else the way she’d always looked only at Annabelle. “Does she love you?”
Davis examined the picture, tears welling up her eyes before she took a strong swallow of scotch. “I thought she did. She told me she did, but she lied.” She pointed back to the photograph. “I guess all of it was a lie.”
Belle turned from the picture to Davis, wanting to believe her, but none of it felt like a lie. She thought she understood Nic well enough to read her emotions. Yesterday she would’ve sworn she recognized what Nic looked like in love, but clearly she was wrong. She’d never known Nic like she was getting to know her now, with doubt and suspicion questioning every “truth.” Had any of them ever been real? Which ones? When had the lies begun? And why?
She sipped the scotch, relishing the physical sensations that accompanied the drink. The slow burn of the liquid on her lips grounded her to the present. She welcomed anything tactile to anchor her to the real world as opposed to the sinister darkness of her imagination.
“It just felt so damn right. How do you fake that?” Davis seemed to be talking to her scotch. “But it had to be fake, because you don’t do this to someone you love. You don’t lie and two-time someone you really love.”
“By that standard she didn’t love me either.”
“Oh, shit.” Davis looked up as if she’d forgotten about Annabelle. “I didn’t mean to drag you any deeper into this. I know nothing about your life. I didn’t even know you existed until an hour ago.”
Annabelle nodded, still too bewildered to process what that fact meant about either of them, or Nic.
Davis stared at the image on the fridge once more. “When I see that picture of us together, I can’t figure out how we got from there to here.”
“Actually, that picture got you from there to here.” Annabelle took another sip of scotch to steel her f
or the recounting of her nightmare. “Some women from our country club saw you at the game. I overheard them yesterday, and rumor has it you two also enjoyed a Roller Derby together. It’s the talk of our social circle, only I was the last one to know.”
“Oh, God, I keep getting the urge to apologize to you, but damn it, I didn’t know. I won’t take responsibility for her emotional fuckery.”
“I wish I had your attitude.”
Davis took another drink and slouched onto a barstool. “I wish I could maintain it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mostly angry at her, but I feel so stupid, too. So duped and betrayed. What if it was my fault? Shouldn’t I have known? Shouldn’t I have seen the warning signs? She was never around on the weekends, never invited me to her place. I know nothing about her past or her friends. Why didn’t that add up?”
“The same way the long business trips, her not wanting me to travel with her, or the Sunday phone calls from work didn’t add up for me. I never questioned why she didn’t answer her phone at night.” She slumped onto the stool next to Davis, no longer certain her legs would support the weight of her sadness. “I never knew I had anything to question.”
“She answered her phone last night,” Davis mused. “I made her listen to a message. Was it from you?”
“Yes, I’d heard the women at the country club, and I had to see for myself. I was so afraid of what I’d find, but she was waiting for me just as calm and reassuring as she’d ever been.”
“She rushed back in time to meet you only because I made her check the message. We’d just finished having sex in her car when—” Annabelle must have looked as awful as she felt because Davis stopped talking. “Are you okay?”
“No, not really. I just can’t take everything you can. The thought of you two,” she choked down another healthy sip of the scotch before continuing, “of you two together, that way, is a lot to handle anyway, but the fact that she made love to me an hour later…I just don’t know if I can take this.”
Davis downed the rest of her drink like she was doing a shot. “She made love to you last night? Okay, well, that does call for another drink, because she made me feel certifiably insane for suspecting that. I saw you two together this morning, and she still denied it to the point I’d started to question my own judgment rather than her.”
“You?” Annabelle no longer sipped her alcohol, but instead took it in gulps, unsure whether she’d become inured to the alcohol or simply needed a larger dose to overpower the burn of her anger and embarrassment. “How do you think I felt bursting into a hotel room scared to find my partner in the arms of another woman only to see her calmly getting out of the shower? She acted surprised to see me. She was sweet and even a little condescending, talking about how being alone too much led me to doubt her. Good Lord, she graciously took the blame for the figments of my imagination. She let me think I’d made a fool of myself. I worried I’d had a psychotic break.”
“So she’s not just a petty liar and an adulterer, she’s also a masterful manipulator. She played both of us perfectly. Do you think she ever thought about how it would end?”
Annabelle felt like they were talking about someone else, not Nic. Not the woman she’d trusted with her life. Nic couldn’t be capable of deception or calculated exploitation of her insecurities, but the more they put their stories together, the more they painted a picture of someone beyond untrustworthy, someone controlling and self-serving to the point of disregard for everyone she claimed to love.
“I’d like to think it wasn’t all a game. If not for what that says about her, then for my own sanity.” Annabelle’s stomach ached again. Her head did, too. She wanted to share Davis’s anger, and part of her did, but she wished it were a bigger part of her. Disorientation and confusion abounded. What had she missed in Nic’s makeup over all those years that made her capable of such betrayal?
Davis reached over with the bottle of scotch and topped off her glass. “Could you imagine doing what she did?”
“I can’t even imagine sleeping with someone else, much less carrying on an affair. She’s the only person I’ve ever been with.”
“Ever?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks flamed from embarrassment aided by alcohol. “She said she liked being the only one who’d ever touched me, but she lied about that, too.”
“No, I’m sure she meant that.”
“Are you? I’m not. I’m not sure about anything. And I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel certain of anything again, especially that. What does it say about me that I gave everything I had—my career, my body, my whole life to a woman who found me so lacking she had to live a whole other life in order to find fulfillment?”
“Annabelle, that’s not true.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.” Her voice rose in both pitch and volume as she neared hysteria, but it felt good to vent some of the pressure threatening to cripple her. “You don’t even know what she wanted with you. How can you possibly know what she thought of me? I obviously wasn’t enough for her.”
“No, it’s not you. This is about her.” Davis scooted closer, her hard edges softening in compassion, and the fire in her green eyes overrun by sympathy. “You can’t do this to yourself.”
“How can I not? How can I think about our life together, all that time, all those memories, and not pick them apart one by one trying to figure out where I went wrong?”
“Women like her are too self-absorbed to be rationalized. Trust me, I’ve dated enough of them to know it’s never really about you.”
“How can you say it’s not about me? It’s my life she shattered.” She pounded her fist on the counter. “It’s my home she wrecked, my dreams she rejected, my future she threw away, and my body that didn’t satisfy her.”
Tears streamed down her face as she continued to hit the counter, but the outlet for her internal hell mattered more than any physical pain she inflicted on herself.
“Annabelle, come on,” Davis pleaded, tears filling her eyes now.
“No, you come on. Tell me how this isn’t about me.” She drained her scotch glass before slamming it back down. There was no more burn when the drink hit her throat, and she craved it. She was losing her grip on the here and now, slipping further into desperation. Frantic to feel something other than heart-wrenching torture, she grabbed for the bottle, but Davis caught her hand.
“I think you need to stop.”
She tried to jerk away, but Davis held her tight. “Let go.”
“Not until you settle down. You can’t let her do this to you.”
“She already did, and damn it, you helped her.” She swung wildly, but barely landed a glancing blow before Davis caught her free hand in her own. Still she thrashed to get away.
“I didn’t know, Annabelle. Please, you have to stop. I didn’t know. You couldn’t have known either.”
She tried to back away. She couldn’t be held by the same woman who’d held Nic, but Davis was too strong and pulled her closer, her gentle pleading a stark contrast to the strength of her body.
“Please listen to me. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you.”
“It was me. I wasn’t enough for her, and you were.”
“I wasn’t.” Davis’s voice cracked only slightly. “She cheated me, too. God, if you couldn’t keep her, I didn’t stand a chance.”
“No.” She didn’t need to hear any of this. She couldn’t be logical. She was suffocating, drowning, in pain and doubt and the anguish she saw reflected in Davis’s eyes. She tried helplessly to break away again, but Davis shook her, strong arms encircling her body.
“You did everything right. You’re beautiful. You’re better than her. You can’t let her destroy you.”
The alcohol, the heat of their bodies, the haze of confusion, the agony of her own pain, and the passion in Davis’s overwhelmed her. She couldn’t escape, but she couldn’t stand the clawing need to lash out either. In an explosion of raw, almost animalistic impulse, she surged forward an
d captured Davis’s mouth with her own.
Davis stiffened, immediately letting go of her wrists but not pulling away from the kiss. The shock of what she’d done hit Annabelle a second later, as if on some drunken time delay. She stepped back. Mouth open, eyes cloudy, she could barely move, much less process what had come over her. Even if she could’ve made sense of it, she had no time to act before Davis surged forward, kissing her, this time with purpose.
She reacted on instinct, soaking up the feel of lips, soft but insistent against her own, warming her in a way the alcohol had failed to do. The kiss was the first satisfying thing she’d felt in hours, and she clung to it like a life raft. For a moment, she wasn’t in pain or turmoil. She wasn’t broken or lacking. Davis snaked an arm around her waist, holding her up and keeping her close. Secure again, for just an instant, she’d found something that felt right.
She ran her hand up Davis’s shoulders and cupped the back of her head, sliding her fingers along the soft nape of her neck and into her short hair. Her too-short hair. Too short to sink her fingers into, too short to latch on to, too short to be Nic’s. For the first time in her life she was kissing a woman other than Nic. More than that, she was kissing the woman Nic had kissed. The blunt force of horror slammed back into her consciousness, and she wrenched herself free from Davis’s embrace.
Immediately she regretted the separation. It felt like someone was wringing her heart out from the inside, but now without the physical comfort of Davis’s body or the distraction of her lips, only the pain was left to consume her senses. She couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t strong. She’d never survive this torture on her own. Floundering, she reached out again, knowing fully this time that she sought a crutch. She didn’t care. She needed something, anything to ease the crippling hurt. She caught a fistful of Davis’s shirt and yanked it toward her so hard their bodies collided, sending them both stumbling.
It wasn’t right. She knew it wasn’t right as she unclasped her buttons. It wasn’t the body she sought. It didn’t offer the familiarity she craved. She’s not Nic. Nic didn’t want you, not the way she should have. Davis at least offered her something honest, something she needed. And God help her she did need it. She needed Davis’s hands on her skin, the press of her body, the graze of teeth against her lower lip. Her breath came in shallow, heated bursts, and her heart raced. She almost felt human again instead of the hollow shell she’d been since seeing Nic in Davis’s arms. Damn it, how could she have done this to her?
Does She Love You? Page 12