About Last Night

by Ruthie Knox

  Number one. Wren in the foreground. Behind her, a visibly pregnant adolescent on a stepladder, stringing tiny Christmas lights along the ceiling of a beige suburban living room. Her face filled with hope and the naïve light of childhood.

  Number two. A lit match, its black flame illuminating a burning house and the young woman sitting on the curb in a huge fireman’s jacket, her arms wrapped around her knees and her hands missing in the sleeves. A policeman’s uniformed legs and belt crowded the side of the frame, suggesting the woman’s culpability. Her expression spoke of loss, anger, and abandonment.

  Number three. A series of books forming the black squares of a checkerboard, and each square in between featuring a scene of Cath in college. Daydreaming in a classroom. Drinking from a plastic cup at a party. Wrapping her arms around the neck of an anonymous boy and smiling flirtatiously. Sitting on a thin, narrow dorm room bed and staring into space. In every image, her eyes were edgy, tormented.

  Number four. A black maze of tangled lines covering the entire canvas like a thicket of brambles, and a series of tiny renditions of her figure wandering through it. One small Cath in a nightgown, trying to free the fabric from a thorn that protruded from the labyrinth. Another sitting in a corner, her head back to look up at the sky. A third holding a passport in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, striding forward as if she knew precisely where she was headed. More of them. All alive, all lost. All carrying on bravely, if purposelessly.

  And in the middle, the largest painting of all. Number five. In this one only, the tattoo was no overlay. It was the shattered urban skyline on her own bare stomach. A man knelt in front of her, half in the frame and half out, the back of his head and the breadth of his shoulders as familiar as the shape of her fingernails. He wore the red T-shirt he favored for the studio and a daub of green paint below his ear. She wore a pink cowboy hat emblazoned with the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes. She wore his hands, too, one on her breast, the other at her waist. His thumb sank into the spot where the word CITY was supposed to be. Under his fingers, the tattoo smudged, as if he were wiping it off. She looked down at him. She smiled. Her eyes were in love.

  A small paper placard on the wall offered the title of the series. Mary Catherine: A Life. The paintings were unbelievably good. The paintings weren’t for sale.

  Something was crushing her lungs, squeezing hard and tight until black spots danced before her eyes. “Breathe,” Judith’s voice instructed, and she opened her mouth and sucked in a loud, gasping breath. Hands to her stomach, she shut her eyes and inhaled, inhaled, inhaled.

  He’d painted her. Everything she’d told him, he’d painted. In ocher and vermillion, rendered by Nev’s hands, her life looked different. She looked different. She looked like a victim and a survivor, the final painting a redemption. He promised a happy ending. Her happy ending.

  Her lungs still hurt. “Exhale,” Judith said, and she did, and then she inhaled again.

  “I have to get out of here.” Her voice filtered up from the bottom of the ocean.

  But when she turned around, she spotted him off to her right, surrounded by strangers. He wore a tuxedo with the bow tie undone. His cheeks were pink, his collar button unfastened, and he was saying something to a woman Cath recognized as the arts reporter from The Guardian who had interviewed her the week before. He looked absolutely, devastatingly handsome. Water in the desert. A life preserver thrown to her drowning heart. He was everything in the world she wanted and couldn’t have.

  He saw her. He saw her, and then he smiled the way he’d always smiled at her, as if they were the only two people in the room, and he loved her, and he’d very much like to find out what she had on under her dress. That shark smile. That Big Bad Wolf grin. It got to her like nothing else ever had or ever would.

  She needed a wall to lean on. A column. An arm. Anything. She reached out for Judith, but Judith had disappeared. There were only strangers, and the paintings, and Nev striding toward her looking like 007.

  He arrived, and so did the smell of him, that blend of turpentine and peppercorns and forest floor and man that her nervous system had filed away under the heading “Sex.” The room got smaller and hotter, more crowded and empty of anyone but Nev.

  “Hello, love,” he said.

  Put up a fight.

  She gave it a try. “I could sue you for this.”

  His dimple turned up for a visit. “Which part?”

  “I was thinking the naked part.” She glanced quickly at the central painting, then away. At his face, then away. Her eyes settled near his collar. It wasn’t exactly a neutral position. Nev in a tuxedo ought to be classified as a weapon. Slightly disheveled, he was a sex grenade.

  “You could sue me for all of them. I didn’t ask you to sign a release.”

  “I would’ve said no.”

  “Precisely.”

  She’d said nothing but no since that morning in Hertfordshire. No, she wouldn’t take his phone calls. No, she wouldn’t speak to him at the train station. No, she wouldn’t let him into her office or her flat. She’d been afraid of exactly this—that he’d find a crack in her resolve and immediately make her forget why she couldn’t have him. It had taken four hours for the tattoo artist to inject the warning she’d devised into the soft flesh of her belly, and she’d welcomed every bite of the needle, hoping the pain would become a carapace she could use to protect herself from repeating her mistakes.

  But he’d stolen her tattoo and changed it. He’d stolen her whole life story and flipped it around, making it beautiful and tragic instead of sordid and stupid. She didn’t have any carapace to keep him away. Only this body that loved him, this heart that loved him, this brain that was supposed to be helping her fend him off but instead was telling her, Hey, Cath? Guess what? You love him.

  She burst into helpless, defeated tears.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against his chest. “Don’t cry, darling. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have painted you if I’d thought it would make you cry.”

  “It’s not the paintings,” she said, sniffling. “The paintings are amazing.”

  “What is it then?”

  She looked up, wiping her tears and probably smearing her mascara in the process. “I’m in love with you.”

  He smiled. No, he beamed, huge and bright, all sparkling teeth and twinkling green-brown eyes. “That’s excellent news.”

  “It’s not. We’re no good for each other, only I can’t resist you, and we’re going to end up making each other miserable over and over.” She sobbed, and he tightened his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. His chest was vibrating. He was laughing.

  “Why are you laughing at me?” she asked. “This isn’t funny.”

  “I missed you,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. “God, I missed you terribly.”

  He stepped back, placing his hands on her shoulders so he could look at her. He was still smiling, but his hands weren’t altogether steady, and his cheeks were even more flushed than they’d been a minute ago.

  Nervous. This was what Nev looked like when he was nervous. She’d never seen him nervous before, and for some reason the sight comforted her.

  “Turn round.” He steered her to face the paintings again. “Tell me what you see.”

  Reluctantly, she obeyed. “My life.”

  “What kind of life have you had?”

  She looked at the paintings, one after another. Thought about her lost father and her lost baby. Her lost innocence and missed opportunities. “Sad. Hard.” Unforgiving.

  “Is that what you see?”

  “Yes.”

  It was, but it wasn’t. He’d made her life different somehow. Shrunken it down and enlarged her. She was the heroine of the story he’d told. Tested and tried by fate, she’d emerged from every episode alive and stronger. Nev’s Mary Catherine was resilient. She was a fighter. This Cath didn’t require forgiveness, because she hadn’t sinned against anyone but herself, and s
he’d done the best she could. “No.”

  “It’s not what I see, either. Shall I tell you what I see?”

  She didn’t answer. He smoothed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, catching both wrists and bringing them around her front so she settled back against him in the circle of his embrace.

  “I was trying to show you what your life looks like to me. Your past— It’s not a series of mistakes, love. It’s just you. All the things that happened to you that made you who you are. You asked me if I hated you for what you’ve done and what you’ve been through, but I never could. I admire you. I love you. And I wouldn’t change any of it, even the worst parts, because I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

  “Oh,” she said, overwhelmed, but in a fluttery, pleasant sort of way. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  He kissed behind her ear. “Look at the last one.”

  She looked. It was an erotic image, passionate without being obscene. It was a memory and a prediction.

  “That’s what we are together. What we’ve been from the first. Do we look like we make each other miserable?”

  “No.” The word for how they looked was ecstatic.

  “Do we look all wrong for each other?”

  “No.” They were perfect. “But …” She tried to remember what to say. That she was a mess— But maybe she wasn’t. She was good at her job, and this man behind her, this man holding her in his arms, seemed to think she was good at her life.

  He turned her around. “I’ve been a bloody stupid fool,” he said quietly, running his fingertip along the rim of her shoulder. He met her eyes. “I disappointed you, and I behaved like a despicable coward, as you said, and I’m so sorry for that. I’m trying to turn myself around.” He gestured at the gallery space, and she took in for the first time how large the room was. Dozens of Nev’s paintings lined the walls, and hundreds of people milled around talking and looking at them. She caught a glimpse of Richard in conversation with Judith and Christopher. More disconcerting, she saw that a circle of people had gathered around to watch her with Nev—the muse and the artist in conversation.

  She looked back at him, and the earnestness in his eyes grounded her.

  “I quit the bank. The day after you got on that bus. And I’ve told my mother if she ever tries to manipulate me again, or even so much as offers unsolicited advice, I’ll stop speaking to her.” He glanced down at his jacket sleeve and smiled sheepishly. “This is the first time I’ve worn a suit in nearly a month.”

  “When you relapse, you do it right.” She ran one finger over the studs on his shirtfront.

  He touched her smiling face, his thumb brushing lightly over her cheekbone. “I’m doing my best to deserve you, love. I know we could be happy together.”

  She thought about the morning she’d woken up in his bed and found a toothbrush and a towel waiting for her in the bathroom. How she’d walked into his studio and seen him painting, and he’d made her pulse race and her palms damp when he smiled. The feeling she’d had the first time he was inside her—that the two of them were more together than she’d ever been with anyone else. That as a whole, they made something bigger than the sum of its parts.

  She thought of Nev at the bar after the rugby match, how magnificent he was when he did what made him happy instead of what he thought he ought to do.

  She thought maybe he was right. They could be happy together.

  His strong hands cupped her face, and he kissed her.

  Flashes went off, bright enough to see through her eyelids. His lips were warm and soft, the same, but strange again after so many days without him. Just like the first time he’d kissed her and every time since, her whole body lit up in response to the movements of his mouth over hers. But this time it was different. This time she knew who he was. This time she knew who she was, too.

  When he broke off the kiss, she opened her eyes. “What was that, Neville?”

  He smiled. “You tell me, Mary Catherine.”

  It was the smile that did it. She kissed him again, hard and fierce, and when his tongue brushed her lower lip, seeking entrance, she let him in. She wouldn’t try to keep him out anymore.

  They came up for air eventually, by which time the state of her panties was shocking. Nev looked around at the fifty people staring at them, gawping and recording their makeup kiss with cell phones and cameras and one very large, very unwelcome video camera that said BBC FOUR on the side, and he said, “Bugger.”

  “Bugger?”

  “I hadn’t planned to do this with an audience,” he mumbled.

  Before she figured out what that was supposed to mean, he’d dropped to one knee in front of her and stuck his hand in his pocket.

  “Nev?” she asked, growing apprehensive. It was one thing to believe they were an indivisible unit. To accept, however tentatively, that they had a chance at happiness. It was quite another to see the man she loved on bended knee, pulling a jewelry box out of his tuxedo jacket.

  He opened the box. “Will you wear it again, love?” The ring he’d bought her more than a month ago.

  “Please, please stand up.” Her eyes darted frantically around the crowd. “Please, please, please.” She couldn’t do this yet. Not tonight, not in front of these people.

  “I want to marry you.”

  “I get that. C’mon, stand up,” she begged, leaning over to tug ineffectually at his elbow.

  “I love you.”

  “I know. I love you, too. Get up.”

  “I want to wake up next to you every morning forever, Cath. Tell me you want that.”

  Wound tight and hypersensitive to all the eyes on them, eight of which belonged to his parents and her colleagues, she glared at him. “The last time a man asked me to marry him, I burned his freaking house down, Nev. I’m not ready for this.”

  “Just wear it. We can wait as long as you’d like. I want to see my ring on your finger again.”

  Her eyes misted over, and she blinked the tears away. “You do?”

  “I meant those rings when I bought them, darling. I spent hours trying to find the perfect engagement ring for you, and then I threw the rings in your lap and walked off as if they meant nothing. But they meant everything. I want you to wear my ring.”

  Until he said it, she hadn’t understood how badly she’d needed to hear that.

  “I’ll wear it,” she said. Then, in case he got the wrong idea, she added, “But I haven’t agreed.”

  “All right.”

  She held out one trembling hand, and he slid the sapphire onto her finger. He turned over her palm and kissed it. Then, with a tug, he pulled her down onto his raised knee and kissed her mouth, long and lingering, and she tipped her head back and closed her eyes and gave herself over to this man she loved. This man she would marry someday. Eventually.

  When the kiss finally ended, seconds or minutes or hours later, dozens of strangers were applauding and wolf-whistling. Cath leaned close to his ear. “Ask me again in a month.”

  He smiled. “I’ll ask you again tomorrow, love. And every day after until you say yes.”

  They rose, holding hands, and he pulled her back into his embrace. As she smoothed her palms over his shoulder blades, she felt the ring as a foreign presence on her left hand.

  She would get used to it. It belonged to her now, as surely as she’d belonged to Nev since that first morning in his flat. The morning after her last mistake.

  “Cath?”

  “Mmm-hmm?” She rested her head against his chest, dreamy and content in the wake of so much turmoil. So many lonely days without him.

  He pitched his voice low enough to prevent being overheard. “Can you stick round for a bit until I can get out of here?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” But she didn’t want to. It would be a lot more fun to convince him to duck out early. She slid her hands down to his lower back, bringing his hips into contact with her stomach.

  “You’ll come home with me?”
<
br />   “Mmm-hmm. Wanna know what color my bra is?”

  “No,” he said immediately. “I’ll never survive the evening if you tell me.”

  “It’s the red one.” He groaned. The red one was his favorite.

  “There’s something else,” she said.

  “What’s that?” He sounded as though he knew he was stepping into a snake pit, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “I’ll wear the cowboy hat to bed.”

  His spine stiffened, and so did his cock against her stomach. When she looked up, she laughed, pleased to see the unmistakable desire in his eyes, and the spark of mischief. “You have a thing for cowgirls, City?”

  “I have a thing for you, love.”

  “I hope your thing is ready for a workout. I missed it.”

  Nev crumbled then, his public self giving way to the demands of the man who wanted her more than he wanted to fit in. He scanned the crowd, and he must have seen his father behind her, because he said, rather abruptly, “Dad, we’re leaving.”

  Richard might have replied. She couldn’t say, because Nev was already steering her outside with one hand at the small of her back. They reached a car at the curb. Ever the gentleman, he opened the door for her.

  “In,” he said.

  “Greenwich,” he told the driver.

  And then he pressed a switch to raise the dark partition that separated the front and back seats, pushed up her dress until he could see her red panties through the latticework of her fishnets, and said, “You wicked girl.”

  “Shut up and kiss me, Neville.”

  Clever man, he did.

  Acknowledgments

  For my mom, who persists in thinking everything I do is wonderful. I’m lucky to have her in my corner.

  With thanks to Faye, for gently encouraging me to rewrite the first draft of this book from scratch and then lavishing me with praise when I did, and to Mom and Dad, Ellen, Jeni, Carrie, Rachel, Gina, Del, and Serena, all of whom read the manuscript and offered criticism and cheerleading.

  Sue Grimshaw, Angela Polidoro, and Laura Jorstad at Random House caught all manner of awkward omissions, clunky phrasing, and weirdnesses, for which I’m grateful. Any that are left are probably the result of my stubbornness and certainly should be construed as my own fault.