Back to You

by Faith Andrews

  Declan’s head falls back as he laughs. His shoulders shake and his hair flops to the side as he lets himself enjoy my joke. “Such a way with words. I fucking love you, Mia.”

  I giggle, loving that even in the midst of a disagreement we can have fun. “I love you too, baby. Ready to go back now?”

  He motions to the waiter for the check and then reaches in his back pocket for his wallet. “Ready as I’ll ever be. All this talk about sperm and condoms makes me horny, baby.” He does his best Austin Powers.

  I shake my head. “You’re always horny, aren’t you?”

  “For you, babe, yes. I’d take you right here on this table if I wasn’t worried about all these strange men getting a glimpse of my girl in action.”

  “Oh, that’s what you’re worried about? Not getting arrested for indecent exposure?”

  He leans closer, whispering, “Mmmm… there you go again. Come on, baby, let’s get home so I can do all kinds of indecent things to your exposed body.”

  What a cornball. At least he’s a sexy cornball.

  She has a point. It’s not right that I’m keeping this kind of thing from her, but fucking sue me for wanting to have a few goddamn days of peace before we have to make another decision. I want to tell her, I really do, but… not yet!

  “Baby, come outside with me? There’s one of those swings on the porch like in those Nicholas Sparks movies.” She loves Nicholas Sparks and she’s always wanted a swing for our own yard, but I can’t help thinking the kids will probably find a way to turn it into some sort of death trap. Yeah, no swing for another few years.

  “Sure, let me just go up and change into something more comfortable.” She kicks off her spiky heels and they land with a loud clunk. Anything has to be more comfortable than those.

  “Is that code for something slinky and lacey?” I’m all recouped from before. I have at least two more rounds in me.

  Mia rolls her eyes and pouts. “No. Sorry to burst the romance bubble, but would you mind if I throw on a pair of sweats?”

  “You brought the uniform on our sexy getaway?”

  “There’s no escaping the uniform. Sorry, hun.” She laughs.

  I walk over to her and plant a kiss on her cheek. “You’d be irresistible in a potato sack. Go get comfortable and meet me out there.”

  She heads up the steps and I go into the kitchen to plug my Blackberry into the charger. I have zero battery left and probably one hundred emails in my inbox.

  I give it a few seconds to juice up while I grab a bottled water from the fridge. As soon as it turns on, the notifications start buzzing. Voice messages, emails, texts. Robert, the client, my secretary. I’m on fucking vacation and it’s nearly midnight. What the fuck?

  I browse through to see what the emergency is and all I’m getting from the onslaught of shit is that they need me to call them ASAP. I check the time, then look past the kitchen wall toward the steps to see if Mia’s coming. It’s eleven thirty-eight and Mia’s still getting cozy. I guess I can make a quick call to avert whatever the crisis seems to be.

  I skip over all the middle man stuff and just go straight to dialing Robert’s number. He answers on the first ring, “Declan. Shit, we’ve been calling you for hours.”

  “I can see that, but you know I’m out of town and my phone was—”

  “We need you in Hong Kong on Thursday,” he interrupts, cutting right to the chase. “He wants to pull the fucking account, Murphy. Archer called with a question about the quarterlies and I mentioned in passing that you had to decide whether or not to take the offer and he said he didn’t want anyone else managing the account. Only you.”

  Fuck! “Well—” Shit, I’m fucking speechless. It’s flattering but at the same time I don’t want to be cornered into a decision like this.

  “Well, what? We can’t lose this client, Declan. They’re one of the top five. We lose them and they go somewhere else, we look like assholes. We lose credibility.” He sounds like someone’s holding a gun against his head—shaky and panicky.

  “Whoa, calm down and hold up a minute. Let’s not shit ourselves here. First of all, I was just there last week. I left everything in order—even prepared things for the next time. Archer was extremely pleased and even told me to have a good time on my trip. I’m not coming home and I’m certainly not flying back out there for Thursday. It can wait. It has to fucking wait.”

  “But he was—”

  When the fuck did I become the one with the bigger business balls? Robert was usually composed, even when every other accountant was ripping their hair out during tax season. “He was nothing. He was being Archer. You know how he gets when he wants something. He wants it then and there. Like he’s not just one client out of the hundreds we work for. I’ll call him first thing in the morning and talk him off the ledge. In the meantime, I haven’t made a decision yet and I haven’t spoken to Mia about it either,” I say, whispering in case she’s walking down the steps. “I don’t want to feel like this is an ultimatum. I really need to think it through and make the right decision for my family. I thought you were okay with that?”

  “Declan. I know I told you exactly that and I said that because I respect you and Mia and I know that this will be a huge sacrifice. But I’m also gonna tell you this. If you don’t take this offer—especially now that Archer has us by the balls—it won’t be a smart move for your career.” Oh, now he isn’t shitting himself. Suddenly his voice is stern—his balls must’ve dropped from his man-pussy again.

  But now I’m angry. I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret so instead I just straighten up and clear my throat. “I understand. I’ll let you know as soon as I speak with Mia.”

  “Good. Don’t forget to call Archer tomorrow.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good night.”

  I don’t even say good night in return. I just end the call and toss the phone across the counter, thankful that it’s tethered to the charging wire or it probably would have crashed to the floor and cracked.

  “Hey, what did the poor Blackberry do to you?” The unexpected sound of Mia’s voice startles me.

  When I look over to her—her hair falling down around her shoulders, her sweats hanging loosely at her hips, her nipples hardened beneath the thin cotton tank top—all the anger melts away. “It wasn’t the Blackberry. It was… just work stuff. That office might crumble to the ground without me.”

  She walks over to me and places her hands at my shoulders, kneading the tenseness away. “I can just go to bed if you have stuff to take care of.”

  Selfless, understanding Mia. I kiss her on the tip of her nose and lean back to admire her beauty. “Nope. It’s taken care of for now. We have a midnight date with a porch swing, remember?”

  As cliché as it may sound, we sit on that swing, holding hands and star gazing. I can swear we even see a shooting star fly by. I close my eyes tight and make a wish. Please let us be okay. I just want our old life back.

  Declan unlocks our hands to place his palm on my thigh.

  I rest my head on his shoulder, contemplating. “How’d we get here, Dec?”

  “I called a travel agent, we got in the car, and the rest is history.”

  I lift my head from his warmth and tilt it, gawking. “I’m serious. Did you ever think a supposed ‘power couple’ like us would have to… I don’t know… rekindle?” Power couple was a phrase Grace donned us with. She used to tell me everyone was envious of Declan and me because of how much he visibly loved and adored me. And me? I was the wife all the guys would bother their wives to be more like. I couldn’t imagine that now. All of our friends knew what we’d been through—Declan and his infidelity, me and my relationship with Noah. Not so much the picture perfect role model of a couple anymore.

  “No one’s perfect, Mia. And if anyone tells you their marriage is… they’re fucking lying.”

  He’s right, but our past mistakes seem a little more complicated than leaving the toilet seat up or being a bad cook
. “I’m just saying that I can’t believe we let this happen to us.”

  Declan shifts, turning his body to face mine. He hangs his arm over the back of the swing, looking directly into my eyes. I know he’s frustrated with my inability to just let this go already. But he better get used to it, because I’m far from healed.

  “We took each other for granted. We were stupid. There’s no other way to put it.”

  Simple enough—but unfortunately, it doesn’t soothe me. “What if we’re stupid again?”

  His eyebrows pinch together, forming a deep V. “Huh?”

  “What I meant is… nothing’s guaranteed, Dec. We don’t know what we’ll be faced with in the future. I know I’ll never do that again,” I say, as if the word “that” can encompass what went on with Noah. I leave it at that and continue, “I want us back. You’re it for me and always will be, but I also thought I was it for you and I never imagined you’d do what you did either. I have zero regrets. Not even one tiny iota of a regret. Don’t get me wrong… I almost couldn’t walk down the aisle the day of our wedding from all the nerves, but—”

  “Wait. What? You never told me that.” He doesn’t look at all hurt, more like he’s just surprised, interested even. Is that a smirk I see?

  I really don’t want to get off track, especially since I was so close to getting it all out just then, but the look on his face urges me to go forward with my confession about our wedding day. “I was a nervous wreck. My mother was all flitty and giddy—no flipping help at all, the Pope was staring me down—”

  “The Pope? His excellence was not a guest at our wedding, babe.”

  I laugh, thinking back to the way I’d felt in that little back room, imagining the Pope’s eyes following my every move, visualizing him judging me for having cold feet. “I know he wasn’t actually there—forget it. That’s not the point. I only mentioned it because, well, do you ever think if we would have waited until we were older things would have played out differently?” Like maybe he would have slept around a little more and not had the temptation to play the field after we were married.

  “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “You really are the king of optimism and one liners these days, aren’t you?”

  He twists his body again, deflating against the back of the swing and groaning. “I’m just trying to move forward. What’s the use in rehashing or worrying about how we could have avoided it? There’s no fucking use.”

  This is where he’s wrong. This is where Declan can’t possibly understand my inner turmoil. “There is a use. It’s therapeutic, it’s part of the healing process. Ever hear of denial, Declan? You’re in denial if you think that a little vacation is going to patch up all our issues and make it all better.”

  “Am I now?” he asks, not even looking at me.

  “Yes! You are! I need to talk about this. I need to get it out. To tell you my fears, my regrets, to get the fucking guilt off my chest!” By the time I’m finished with my speech, the tears are fighting to burst through. Nope, now they’re streaming down my face.

  Declan rakes his fingers through his hair and takes a deep breath. “Please don’t cry, baby,” he pleads, taking my hands in his. “It kills me to see you hurting and it breaks me in two to know there’s nothing I can do to fix it right now.”

  “Letting me talk about it will help fix it,” I manage to get out between wiping the tears from my face.

  He releases my hands and when he stands up, he doesn’t turn around to face me. Instead he walks to the edge of the porch, gripping the worn white wood. “This is exactly what I was trying to avoid—at least for a few days.”

  We stay silent for a few brief, uncomfortable moments before I decide to break it. “We can’t avoid it forever. I won’t avoid it forever.”

  When he turns around, the wetness in his eyes glistens in the moonlight. He’s holding back, but I can tell he’s upset. Declan’s never been more open with his emotions than he has this past year. I guess it’s par for the course.

  “If I promise we can talk about it… all of it… in a few days, can you enjoy our time together? Can you put it out of your head for just a little while longer so we can go back to laughing, and smiling, and just having a fucking good time?”

  I know this is hard for him. He has his own guilt to live with and I’m sure reliving our separation and talking about the what-ifs isn’t something a prideful man wants to do, but I give him so much credit for allowing me this. “Yes. As long as you promise.”

  “Cross my heart, hope to die,” he says, marring his body with an imaginary slash across his chest to solidify our deal.

  I can live with it not happening right now as long as I know it will indeed happen.

  Regrets… fucking regrets. Mia has them? Who knew? I mean I know we got married young, had kids young, but after the initial shock… this shit just all seemed normal. When I proposed to her in college I had not one doubt in my mind that I was making the best decision of my life. She was my everything—I’d have proposed to her on our second date if it wouldn’t have made me look like a complete lunatic. Even before sleeping with her—I mean what virgin guy picks his wife before ever dipping his dick?

  None of that shit mattered. Mia was the kind of girl you didn’t let slip through your fingers and I wasn’t about to let something like barely being legal stop me from making her mine forever. So as soon as I’d saved up enough funds—and begged Dad to cash in some of my savings bonds from when I was a kid—I went and picked out a ring fit for a princess. Fit for my princess. It was one of my most thrilling days to date. To be able to tell the world—well, the little bubble of our world that surrounded us at college—that I wanted to spend the rest of my days with this one, perfect, incredible girl. Love made us do crazy things, but I was the type that trusted love. I allowed the emotion to make decisions for me and I had not one single regret. Not one!

  Regrets. God, the only one that comes to mind is a masseuse named Samantha. What was I even thinking? One stupid night, one stupid mistake and look at the domino effect. My one and only regret caused Mia to make her own as well. Fucking regrets! And now I can’t get Frank Sinatra, singing My Way, out of my head! Regrets—I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention. That damn tune will keep me up all night!

  “What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Mia asks as she fluffs the pillow underneath her head, interrupting Frank’s mental crooning.

  Instead of dwelling on it, I try to keep the mood light by jumping into bed next to her. I shimmy under the blanket and curl it around us in a spooning-cocoon. “Let’s see… tomorrow. First we have lots and lots of sex, then we have some more and… oh yeah, I booked the winery tour too. Hey maybe we can have sex in the vineyard!”

  Mia giggles, her tone is musical and her head nuzzles into the crook of my arm. “I like the sound of all of that. I can’t wait.”

  “Me either. Especially the sex part.”

  “What a surprise,” she says with a yawn.

  “Uh oh, guess we can’t start the party early, huh?” I ask, my hand already venturing between her legs.

  She grabs my wrist, pulling my hand out of her pants. “Dec, it’s like two in the morning. It’s been a long day. A long wonderful day, but I gotta sleep, especially if you want me to be of any use to you tomorrow.”

  I swing the blanket off us with over exaggerated effort. “Fine! But tomorrow I will put you to use, woman. Many, many times.”

  She lets out another yawn, followed by a room-brightening smile. “Many, many, many. Promise.”

  “Night, babe.”

  “Night. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She’s out before I can even count to ten. And I’m up for another hour or two trying to get that fucking song out of my head.

  Sleeping in late, up-against-the-wall shower sex, and putting my makeup on without a pint-sized lipstick thief attached to my leg like a leech—I’d say this morning has started off just swimmingly.r />
  I put the finishing touches on my carefree, natural look—if only a man understood the lengths we go to pull off au naturale—and smile at my reflection in the mirror. Tucking an unruly strand of hair behind my ear, Declan creeps up behind me and wraps his arms around my middle.

  “Flawless. Perfectly flawless,” he revels.

  If only that were true. I’m far from flawless. The makeup hides the subtle imperfections on my face, but I’m not sure there’s anything fit to mask the flaws that mar me deep within. I hush the nagging voices in my head and tell them to take a hike. I want to enjoy this day. I was ordered to do so by the man enveloping me in his warmth. I owe him that much.

  “Thank you, babe. You look pretty snazzy yourself. Is this your special wine tasting attire?”

  He takes a step back, smoothing out his shirt and flicking up the collar of the bright colored polo. “Yuppie enough for you?”

  I laugh, running my hands through his neatly combed hair. “Mess this up a little and you’ve turned from sexy yuppie to sexy preppy.”

  “Not sure there’s much of a difference, but whatever you say.” He shakes his head so that his hair falls free of its gelled state.

  “You look hot. You know it, so shush. I shouldn’t have to feed your ego after all these years.”

  He inches closer to me, cupping my shoulders in his grip and making small circles against my skin with his thumbs. “That’s where you’re wrong. I will always need you to feed my ego and never tire of you telling me how much I turn you on.”

  “Ha!” I let out a squeak. “Funny how that’s what you took from that, but… yes, Mr. Murphy, you still make me weak in the knees, even in your yuppie gear.”

  In one swift motion he lifts me up and places my rear on the bathroom countertop. “Now, that’s what I like to hear!” he growls, nipping soft bites along my neck.

  I wrap my legs around his torso and give into the moment, but just as I tilt my head so my mouth can find his, we’re interrupted by a loud car horn.