He did remember that on a return trip to the States, his mother had begged to be left behind with Ian. Ian wasn’t so sure he wanted to do the same. His cousins were all older, and he couldn’t get away with sneaking into a movie or skipping school to go swimming in a pond, not in a town filled with his relatives and busybody neighbors. What surprised Ian was how his mother was when she returned to her family, how confident and powerful she suddenly became. The woman who was too cowed to buy a pound of fish from the docks could now scold a grown man on the street for parking too far away from the curb. She could joke with a shopkeeper about the price of a winter coat, and she could venture out of her parents’ house to throw snowballs at her nieces and nephews.
At the time, Ian wasn’t sure he liked it. He was fourteen and growing into independence.
His father had mowed his mother down again. He made promises. He was exuberant and charming. But eventually, he disappeared, like he always did, and left his wife and child to fend for themselves in a strange country. His mother complained bitterly that she did not understand why he insisted they come if he was just going to leave them again.
Maybe she had been drinking, maybe she had taking nips for years. Ian was never sure. After the accident, he stopped traveling with his father. His father let him make his own decision. Maybe Tom Zamora felt guilty about how his wife had passed away. He had almost not come to the funeral. Ian went back to Oregon to his mother’s family and he went to school. And much later, even Tom came back to die.
Slivers of sadness and hatred laced his thoughts about his parents. Petra was right: their fathers had gotten off easy. Their mothers hadn’t been perfect, but at least they’d been around to face their children.
Petra’s hand crept up to his cheek. “Where did you go?” she asked.
Ian roused himself. “I was thinking that there are things we never know about people’s marriages, even when you’re the product of that marriage.”
“Hmm, that’s true,” said Petra pensively. “Although it doesn’t stop you—by which I mean me—from forming opinions.”
He had to smile at that.
He toyed with her hair. “We should go,” he said.
If their first weeks together had been a refuge, a delirious oasis, then tonight, they fucked with the full awareness of all the failures that had gone before them. He was careful with her face, her shoulders, her hips, her hair. He traced the contours of her lips and the undersides of her breasts.
He didn’t want to forget this feeling, this wonder and reverence that he felt with her.
He kissed the soft round of her belly and felt her curl her hips up. Her hands were in his hair, pulling and rubbing. He moved lower, grazing his stubble against her thighs, making her shift and sigh. He moved his thumbs along the long inner muscle and traced a line between her legs. He felt her tense under him.
She had pushed her shoulders into the pillow and her neck arched up. Her body twitched with barely restrained impatience. He smiled and gave it another long stroke. It bloomed wet and gleaming under his fingers.
She spread herself wider. He put his mouth on her and licked her nub again and again. She thrashed restlessly and muttered another encouraging expletive. He reached up one hand to toy with her nipple and encountered her fingers there, already busily at work. He rested his chin on her mound and watched. It was a beautiful sight. But she bumped him impatiently, urging him to go on. He buried his chuckle in her and mouthed her clit again. Her lower body clenched and flexed as he worried his fingers in and out of her. In another few moments she cried out and his chest flooded with feeling again.
Petra raised her head and regarded him with glazed eyes. “Come up here,” she mumbled.
Her body was still giving little shivers and twitches. He kissed his way briskly up her torso and smiled when he reached her lips.
She grinned lazily at him and smoothed a languid hand down his body. He entered her heavily, intending to savor her. She seemed to sense the mood he was in and despite the fact that she had been worried earlier, and that she was probably exhausted, she murmured savagely in his ear and trailed her fingers along his back and rear. She looked at him like she would never forget the feeling, and he felt the pull of her, deep in his gut, in his groin, in his soul, and he felt himself ready to burst.
Had he ever felt this way about anyone before? He could hear her almost sobbing in his ear, her body convulsing around him again, her arms pulling him into her, and she jolted wildly. His body thundered forward, he couldn’t think, he could only feel, and he knew he had never felt this before. He had never felt this much fear, this much tenderness, this much happiness. And whether it came from him or from her, he was not sure. The feeling mingled like their sweat and the smell of their sex. It was impossible to know where one thing started and the other stopped. He closed his eyes and fell on her, almost slowly, and they rolled to their sides, still panting, their mouths pressing desperately together. His eyes met hers, questioning, and he tried to nod and skimmed her cheek and neck with his lips again. She needed some sort of reassurance and he wanted to agree to whatever she asked. Finally, he kissed her again and pulled away to dispose of the condom. She laughed shakily.
“Hi,” she whispered, still searching his eyes.
“Hello to you,” he whispered back, holding her face.
• • •
Petra woke up in Ian’s bed again and checked his clock. It was almost seven. She stifled a sigh and contemplated sliding out. But if she did that, then, of course, that would mean that she would have to begin her day. And if she began her day, then, she would have to remember that her mother had turned into a canary and was getting married to Dr. Evil, her best friends were barely speaking to each other or her, and she probably only had two, maybe three patients to tide her through the hours.
She turned herself in Ian’s arms to study him. His brow seemed a little furrowed, even in sleep. She reached up to smooth it and found herself running her index finger along his straight nose, across his lips, and along his strong jaw. He was beautiful. His body was just as beautiful. She had to stop her finger from moving still lower, under the sheet.
Last night, she thought he had seemed sympathetic, yet distant and sad. But when they had come into the bedroom, something about the hush of their clothes falling, the way he held her and looked at her, seemed to say he was telling her something. He was trying to communicate something important.
Or maybe it was just lust.
She pulled herself up and padded to the bathroom. The apartment was cold and she wished she had a warm robe or quilt to huddle with. Maybe she would bring one next time. She found her toothbrush. She washed her face and wished he had some moisturizer. She changed the toilet paper roll, wiped down the counter, pulled his thin, black comb through her hair, and stopped.
What was she doing?
She was already becoming domestic: planning to bring a robe and face cream, storing a toothbrush, cleaning. She had no idea where he was or what he was thinking. He had told her yes, last night, and she had felt better, for some reason. But she had not even asked a question. They had never talked about the relationship. She was letting the promise in his gleaming eyes distract her from her problems at the office. She sat on the toilet seat and pressed her hands to her cheeks. It would be fine. She could work harder, spend less time with him. Except. Except, part of her didn’t want to shuffle papers and make phone calls and try to rustle up more patients. It was easier to just fall for him and ignore the niggling voice in her head that said she was a bad physician who’d abandoned her principles and couldn’t keep her practice afloat.
It was ridiculous. They had really only been together two, three, maybe four weeks. She knew he had a loud, squeaky leather couch, and that he had traveled all over the world. She didn’t know what his favorite colors were, or if he liked to read, or what kind of music he listened to. She had never met his friends, unless she counted Gerry, the man who didn’t believe that allergies existed.
She preferred to believe that Gerry did not exist.
Petra almost burst out of the bathroom, but he was still sleeping. It seemed a pity to wake him when she knew he would have a long day. It was a Friday. Surely, the worst restaurant and bar day had to be a Friday.
She stood over him, naked and cold.
Without his glasses, he was almost a stranger. He was a stranger. She wasn’t sure of him. She wasn’t sure of herself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“How long have you known?” Petra asked, pacing her office. She didn’t have to worry about shouting, because she had no patients. Again. Joanie was out for lunch.
Petra’s sister cleared her throat. “They drove up on Monday and took me out to dinner at Nigiri.”
“You sold your approval for a fancy dinner?”
“Hamachi and yellowtail. It was delicious. Besides, I didn’t sell any approval. They don’t need our consent. Last time I checked, our mother was of age. What are you telling me? You held out for dinner and the down payment on a house?”
“They didn’t even stop to see me, really,” Petra said, aware that she was whining.
She sat down at her desk and sprang up again.
“Weren’t you working?” Ellie asked.
“I’m starting to think that Mom chose a time when I’d be busy.”
Although, given how she’d mentioned that she didn’t have many patients, maybe her mother had thought to find her alone. She did not share this information with her sister.
“It doesn’t matter,” Petra continued, aware that she was now sounding like she was five years old. She was glad there was no one about to witness it. “It was a short visit. They wanted to shop, presumably for more pastel suits for Mom. They’re going for the Secretary of State look, from what I can tell. She’s even transformed the way she talks for him.”
“Was it really going that well for her before she met Jim Morrison?”
“It was okay, Ellie.”
“How would you know?”
“What do you want me to do? Dance a hornpipe? Throw them a party? I’m supposed to tell her how I feel, aren’t I?”
“No, actually you don’t have to. She already knows. This is none of your business. It’s not like she has any money he can take away from her. It’s not like he can leave her knocked up. So he’s a little condescending. But she can handle him. Just try to trust her, the way you’re always asking her to do the same with you.”
“She could get hurt.”
“Argh, just stop it. Stop bossing people around, stop thinking you know better than anyone. You’re such a doctor.”
A pause.
“I should drive out to see them this weekend,” Petra resolved. “Can you meet me there? I’m not doing this alone.”
Ellie made a noise and hung up the phone. Apparently, Petra would have to do this alone.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard her sister’s message. A detached part of herself realized that she should leave her mother be. But that wasn’t how Petra operated. She had to scratch at it and worry it and roll it around her head.
She tried to think objectively about the whole thing. Evidence pointed to Jim Morrison being a jerk, especially his heavy-handed pissing contest with Petra yesterday. But it really wasn’t her business. Had her mother seemed at ease with Jim Morrison? Had Jim Morrison tried to make her feel better? Had they once shared any glimmers of the eye, had they made little signals to each other, little touches on the elbow? Had there been a caress down the back?
Were they the way she was with Ian?
Not that things were perfect with Ian.
All morning she had been prowling, ever since she’d woken up, in fact. She stood at her desk and paged through her computer. She had promised to call Kevin’s pediatrician to update her on Kevin’s progress. She had also made a note to talk to Moira Shane about seeing a gastroenterologist to investigate her persistent cough.
Petra sat in her desk chair. People were telling each other to trust their instincts. She believed in her ability to read symptoms and come up with possible diagnoses, but she always went with evidence first. Helen and Sarah claimed to be good judges of character. Petra had no idea what that meant. Her instincts only gave her information about sleep, food, and sex.
When they had sex, she had no doubts about her feelings for him. It was only after, when she had time to consider things, that she wondered what she was doing getting involved with someone when she had so many worries—when he was the catalyst of so many of her problems.
She shook her head. She didn’t resent him. It wasn’t his fault. But she did have to approach this with a brain unfogged by lust or tender affection.
Oh, shit, she thought. Tender affection? Where had that come from?
As if she had conjured him up, she heard her phone beep.
I missed you this morning.
She would not smile. There was no one to witness it, but she would not be weak.
She wrote back, You were sleeping so well.
It seemed best not to let him know that she had been freaking out and tearing around his room like a frenzied, naked (but quiet) hyena, eager to leave him and his firm deltoids and soft hair and sad, sleeping smile far behind. She had actually run from his apartment, albeit with her shoes off, so that she wouldn’t disturb him.
Sometimes, she really loved hiding behind texting.
Doing anything Sunday? he wrote. It’s a slower day. Thought we could be lazy together.
A pause. Another line. Take a drive somewhere?
Temptation coursed through her. That sounded fun. She hadn’t gotten around much since the ill-fated wedding. Invited myself to Astoria to visit my mom, she thumbed back reluctantly. She added, And Jim Morrison.
Would she ever be able to call him Jim, she wondered, without tacking on his last name? Even while texting, she felt compelled to add it.
Overnight? Ian wrote back.
Gah. No. Sis can’t make it. Will just rent a car and drive.
In the next minute, he called her.
“I could come with you,” he suggested. “We could take my car. This could be our outing.”
“Why would you want to do that? It won’t be fun. Besides, won’t you be busy? Aren’t weekends big for you?”
They weren’t big for her. She’d added Saturday hours in an effort to drum up business. So far, no takers.
“Lilah and Gerry can cover for me. Gerry wants to learn more about management. We could walk along the shore. I haven’t been to the shore in a long time.”
She felt herself sliding under the influence of his voice. But she really had to concentrate on surveillance of Jim Morrison and his nefarious plans. And she didn’t want to be worried that Ian would think she was being mean to her mother.
“We could go up on Saturday night,” Ian continued. “Spend the night in a bed and breakfast. I can get someone to recommend a place to me, or if your mom knows somewhere that would be great.”
It sounded so appealing. Of course, there was still marriage and the Jim Morrison issue to get over. And the fact that she would be introducing Ian to them.
They didn’t have to know how she and Ian met.
He was lovely. How could her mother disapprove of a kind, smiling man with deep brown eyes, who ran a successful business? There had to be something wrong with him, of course, but maybe his charm would lull Lisa into forgetting to find fault with him. Just like his charm had lulled Petra.
“Do you not want me to come?” he asked. “You don’t want me to meet your mother?”
“I just—”
Some of it was true. She did not want her mother finding anything wrong with Ian and asking Petra if she had time for relationships when her practice was in peril.
“I want you to come. It’s just not the best circumstances. I’m just afraid that you will see Jim Morrison and Lisa and run screaming. Or that you’ll see us fight or that she’ll try to tell me something about you that makes me sad. It’s one thing to tell you a
bout my problems. It’s another for you to witness them.”
“What could she say about me that would make you sad?”
“I don’t know,” she lied.
Ian said, “I don’t think there’s anything that she could say about you that would make me run away. Why don’t I come and make this easier for you? I could make the whole trip different.”
“You would make the whole trip different,” she said, sincerely. “And maybe I don’t want to feel good, maybe I don’t want you along, making me feel better about everything, making everything seem so easy.” She laughed uncomfortably. “What I’m saying is, you won’t see me at my best.”
“Who says I have to?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Pantalettes,” he said.
They had pulled out onto Highway 30.
She had been quiet all the way out of the city and now she was gazing out the window at the winter landscape. It wasn’t the best time of year to take a drive. The trees looked scrubby and sparse and the sky and roads and land seemed gray in the remnants of the evening light. At least traffic hadn’t been bad.
Had he pushed too hard to come with her? He glanced at her profile, the curved cheek, the sardonic lips, curved even now, the little pointed chin that he loved to kiss. He could practically hear her thinking. Not that she was always like that. In bed, she let her guard down. The more they talked and had sex, the more they slept together, the more she just let herself be. Obviously, he needed to spend more time with her. Which suited him just fine.
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