After This Night

by Lauren Blakely

  “I know. I should have. But you were happy and determined, and I wanted you . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “You wanted me to believe I could do it,” she supplied.

  “Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  “You wanted me to think I’d pulled it off myself. But I only wanted one thing. To not be played. And you took that away from me. You, of all people, should know better. You hate lies and you hate liars, and you lied to me by not telling me. You patted me on the ass and sent me into a game that didn’t matter, but you led me to believe it did. Then I won and I practically danced down the street afterwards, and you kissed me and told me you were proud of me. I thanked you for making it possible for me to win on my own terms. And that was another moment that you could have told me.”

  She stopped to grab him by the arm, trying to make her point. “Instead, you let me believe I’d won my freedom,” she said, and now the lump in her throat was so painful that it felt like a swollen ache. She brought her hand to her mouth, as if she could keep the crying at bay. But one rebel tear streaked down her cheek as she whispered, “Then you made love to me in your house, in front of the mirror, and asked me to move in with you. And you knew then. All you had to do was tell me. I would have still said yes.”

  “I wanted you to be happy. And I didn’t know how to say it,” he said, trying to reach for her, to tug her back in for an embrace, but she held him off.

  “You’re a goddamn lawyer. You talk to people for a living. Your whole world is semantics and details,” she said, the words breaking on her tongue like salty waves. She took a deep breath, trying to somehow settle the tears that threatened to wrack her body. “You could have found a way to tell me. Instead, you spent the whole night telling me you loved me, and asking me to move in, when you should have been telling me the truth. FIRST. Because the truth is fine. The truth isn’t what hurts. It’s the time you had when you chose to not tell me the truth. And that makes me feel like I gave you my heart and you played me like a fool.”

  “I only did it to protect you.”

  “I did something once to protect you. I lied about who you were to protect you,” she said, reminding him of that morning on the street in San Francisco when Stevie showed up. Clay winced as she mentioned it. “And what happened? You walked away.”

  “You’ve got to understand. I was trying to help you last night, Julia,” he said, his words slick with desperation.

  “I know your intentions were good, but this isn’t about your intentions. It’s about your actions, because those matter more to me. I have been deceived so badly over money by men.” She grabbed his shirt collar, her eyes locking with his. “I need you, the man I love, to never deceive me. I want to be on your team, but you’ve got to play fair. I’m fine with what you did, but I am not fine with how you did it. I am not fine with those twelve hours that you had to tell me the truth. If you had time to ask me to move in with you, you certainly had the time to tell me about Charlie’s demands,” she said, as she stood up quickly, pushing away from the table.

  “Please don’t go.”

  “We are making a scene, and when patrons at my bar make a scene I ask them to leave, and that is what I’m doing,” she said as she walked down the street.

  He kept pace alongside her. “I am sorry. That is all I can say. I fucked up, and I’m so sorry.”

  She stopped outside his building, parking her hands on her hips. “Do you know how I feel right now? Do you?”

  “Terrible?” he offered up weakly.

  “Stupid. Like I’m the biggest idiot in the world,” she said, erecting a wall inside her to keep the tears locked up. She had to say this. He had to know. “And it makes me feel as if everything that happened between us last night was a lie.”

  “The way I feel for you is not a lie, Julia,” he pleaded, and she could hear every note of his pain. But she hurt too. “It’s the truest thing in the world.”

  “Then you ought to act like that,” she said, staring sharply at him as she grabbed the handle of the door.

  “So what happens next?”

  “I’m leaving New York. And I’m going to go home to my house, and that’s as far as I know right now.”

  “Please. Give me a chance to make this up to you,” he said, practically begging.

  Once inside the elevator, she placed her hand on his chest. “I understand you want to. But I have to leave for the airport in two hours, I need to pack, and I’m hungry as hell.”

  “At least let me feed you. Let me get you something to eat.”

  “If only this were as simple as French fries,” she said as they stepped out onto his floor. “But you can help me pack.”

  “Then I will gladly help you pack,” he said, and together they went upstairs, both like beaten-down ragdolls, listless when they should have been joyful. They didn’t speak as she gathered her lotion, shampoo and makeup from the bathroom, dropping them into a plastic bag, and layering that on top of her clothes. Maybe there was nothing more to say. The time for words had passed. This wasn’t about arguments, or trying to convince someone you were right or wrong. This was about whether she’d listen to her heart or her head, and what both had to tell her.

  “So what happens, Julia?” he asked as he zipped her bag. “Are you coming back?”

  She met his eyes, the sadness in hers reflected back. “I want to, but I really need to think about everything now. I need a solid week apart. No contact. To make sure I’m not making a mistake. It’s easy for you if this doesn’t work out. You’re not giving up anything. I’m changing everything.”

  “And I would never take that or you for granted. I promise, I will cherish you, as I already do. Will you let me buy you a ticket to return?”

  “You are free to do whatever you want, but I need to be certain that this is right for me. So I can’t promise you I’m going to use it. This has been a crazy weekend, from the game, to things ending with Charlie, to you and me. You hurt me, and I need to go home and take some time alone to make sure I’m not being foolish again, Clay.”

  “You’re not,” he said, reaching for her hand, clasping it in his. Oh, how she wanted to fall into his arms. Those strong sturdy arms that had protected her, fought for her, held her. But this wasn’t about him. It was about her, and whether she could let herself turn so much of her life, and her heart, and her home, over to someone else again. “I swear.”

  “You asked me to move my life across the country for you and I said yes in a heartbeat. Because I love you. And the whole time you were hiding something from me. And that something makes me feel like a fool,” she said, whispering the last words like a eulogy.

  To her, it was the worst name in the world she could call herself. Because she’d been there. Oh, had she been there.

  * * *

  A little while later, she walked to the door, down the stairs, and to the waiting town car that would whisk her to the airport. He’d offered to ride with her but she’d declined, saying it would be too tempting, and she needed not to be tempted in that way.

  He held onto that sentiment like a fragile glass globe of hope, clutching it for several minutes on the way downstairs. But then, he knew better. They’d always been good together physically. What was happening between them now was no longer about chemistry. It was about trust, and she needed to know he was a man of his word in all matters. There was no room for anything less. He had to keep all his promises to her, the big ones and the small ones. Life was rarely about the big things; it was usually about the impact—the potentially damaging impact—of the little things.

  After the driver stowed her bags in the trunk, Clay reached for her, pulling her in close. She tucked her face in the crook of his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest. He could feel her heart beating against him and he could have stayed there all day. As she broke the embrace, she cupped his cheek with one hand, a soft fingertip tracing his jaw, sending tremors like quicksilver through his body. He would miss her touch; he would
miss all of her.

  She stood on tiptoes, brushing her soft lips against his, lingering slowly on his mouth. The kind of kiss that stays with you for days. The kind of kiss you never forget.

  Because of how it tastes.

  Like goodbye.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He clicked on the flight tracker, and watched the black arrow snake across the Midwest. He dropped his head in his hand, and looked back up minutes later, as if the computer would tell him something. As if she’d appear on some futuristic TV screen from the plane, waving, saying he was forgiven.

  “It’s okay. I know you were just so caught up in loving me that you forgot to tell me,” she’d say with a twinkle in her green eyes, then a pretty wink. She’d press her soft lips against the screen and blow him a kiss. “I’ll be back,” she’d say and the screen would crackle out, like static, fading to black, but everything would be okay and she’d return to him.

  Instead, his life was up in the air. Because he’d been an ass. He’d been scared, wanting to secure his future before he faced his present. He, of all people, should have known better. You don’t ask someone to sign until you give them all the facts, and spell out the terms. He’d gone about it the wrong way, thinking that by asking her to move in first, he’d be able to keep her without reservation. But you don’t get the girl until you’ve gotten the girl. And even then you have to put in the effort every single day to keep her. You don’t win before you’ve won. You keep playing, and fighting for love every day.

  He reached for the screen, running his index finger across the cartoonish line of her airplane, scurrying her back to San Francisco. Was she sleeping on the plane? Watching a movie? Having a drink? Vodka on the rocks, probably.

  Wait.

  If she was drinking, it was whiskey.

  Whiskey for loneliness.

  But then, maybe she wasn’t lonely, he figured as he shut his laptop and made his way to the kitchen, opening the cabinet. Maybe she was happy, and toasting with champagne to better days without him. Chatting it up with the random stranger next to her in seat 2B. Sharing her story. Telling the stranger about what an ass Clay had been. They would laugh at him, and he deserved it. Maybe he didn’t deserve anything but to have lost her this way.

  This foolish way.

  He should have taken the chance, and told her when it happened with Charlie’s change-up, rather than waiting. Waiting never did anyone any good. When you waited, the world passed you by. Life passed you by. And the love of your life flew in the dark of night over the country, stretching the distance between you to so much more than three thousand miles.

  He left the kitchen and opened the door to his balcony, walked to the railing, and stared at the city as he finished his glass, the liquor burning his throat as he wanted it to.

  They should have spent those precious last few hours tangled up together. Or having lunch together. Or shopping together. He wasn’t even fond of shopping, but he’d have happily taken her anywhere, letting her pick out the towels she wanted, the new bench for the balcony. Hell, she could redecorate the whole house from stem to stern, any way she wanted. They’ve have shopped, and then wandered through the neighborhood, his arm around her, discovering the places in the Village that would become theirs: a cafe here, a store there. He’d have gotten her worked up at lunch, touching her legs under the table, slipping his fingers under her skirt, driving her so wild he’d have had to pull her into the restroom at a cafe and fuck her against the wall, her legs wrapped around him, certain that she’d be returning to live with him.

  Instead, he was left with this loneliness that could have been avoided with a few simple words spoken hours before.

  Avoided with the truth.

  He held up his glass, cocked his arm, and considered chucking it five stories down to the street below. Cabs and cars streaked by on a Sunday night, and soft jazz music floated up from a few floors below him. Some kind of melancholy John Coltrane song that might as well have been ordered up for him by the gods of regret.

  Maybe that’s what whiskey was good for. Maybe whiskey was best for regret, because that was all Clay could taste tonight.

  He lowered his arm, the glass still in his hand. He wasn’t going to make a mess for someone else. He’d somehow have to find a way to clean up the mess he’d made of this love.

  He left the balcony, closing the door behind him as if he could seal shut the memories of all they’d done there. But he couldn’t. She was everywhere in his home. She was naked on his couch. She was undressing on his stairs. She was laughing joyfully over a gift in his kitchen. She was dancing in his bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully on his bed. She was giving him her most vulnerable yes in the bathroom, telling him she’d leave her life in San Francisco for him.

  Like a ghost shadowing him, she was everywhere and nowhere.

  He returned to the kitchen, dropping the glass into the sink. Turning around, he reached for the whiskey bottle, and tucked it back into the cabinet. But the bottle rattled. He steadied it quickly, then peered in the cupboard to see what had knocked it off-kilter.

  An envelope.

  He took the envelope, fat and stuffed. His name was on the front, and his stomach dropped when he read the words: “This belongs to you. Thank you for the loan. I always pay back my debts.”

  But there was no xoxo. No secret message to decode that would reassure him she’d be coming back. There was only money, all ten thousand dollars that she’d won, and he’d lost.

  * * *

  The next day he wasn’t any wiser as to whether she’d be returning. He hadn’t heard from her: no emails, no calls, only a text to say she’d landed safely. He took some small solace in the safety update, but it truly wasn’t enough for him. He wanted all of her. He needed all of her. And he had virtually none.

  He’d zombied his way through the day, grateful that the Pinkertons had signed on the dotted line after the emergency soothe session the day before. Warding off that near-fiasco had given him the mental space to manage the bare minimum he needed to get through the contracts and phone calls on his agenda.

  He emailed her the ticket back to New York. He’d booked it for two weeks from now, hoping that was fair—a week apart, a week to plan. She replied with a thank you.

  He checked countless times for messages from her. Each time he’d come up empty.

  He scrolled through his emails on the subway home just to make sure he hadn’t missed one from her.

  After a workout at his boxing gym that left his shoulders sore and his body tired, he still was no closer to knowing whether she was going to need those fluffy towels or not.

  The time without her was like a black hole, a vacuum that gnawed away at him. He’d subtract a few years from his life simply for a note that gave him some sense of which way she was leaning. Something, anything to hold onto, to give him purchase. How had it only been twenty-four hours when it felt like a fucking year?

  But that was what love does. It changes your perception of everything, of your own capacity for pain, for hope, and most of all—your perception of time. Because now, time was measured by her, by her presence, by her absence, and his relentless desire for her yes.

  He checked his phone once more on the way home from the gym, like an addict. He was going to wear a hole through the screen with his thumbprint from all the times he’d swiped it. He needed company; he needed someone. He showered and headed uptown, reasoning that if he wasn’t going to find an answer from her, he could at least ask questions of someone else.

  When he arrived at the building off Park Avenue with the green awning, the doorman buzzed her apartment. “You have a visitor. Clay Nichols is here to see you,” the man said, then paused. “Very well.”

  He hung up.

  “She said to come on up,” the doorman said, gesturing to the elevator.

  Clay hadn’t been here in a long time. He hadn’t needed to. Now, he did.

  When Michele opened the door, she was wearing a tank top and slim j
eans, her hair pulled into a high ponytail, showing off her neck.

  A neck that he’d once kissed.

  He didn’t mince words, or bother with preambles.

  “Are you in love with me?” he asked as he walked inside.

  “I have been for years,” she said, as the door closed behind them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I’ve been thinking of new names for cocktails. Well, Craig and I have,” Kim offered during a lull in the crowds on Monday night.

  “Yeah? Do tell.”

  “We came up with a whole list of great names while you were out of town.”

  “Your hubs is usurping my spot as a partner-in-crime?” Julia asked, resting a hip along the bar as she wiped down glasses.

  “Ha. Hardly. But he does like to name drinks. Here’s what we’ve got. A shot called the Long, Hard Night. A stiff drink called the One Night Stand. And a variation on the lemon drop martini that we called Lemon Drop Your Panties,” Kim said, and the edges of Julia’s lips lifted in a smile.

  “Great names,” she said, then looked away from Kim because all of them—every single one—reminded her of Clay. He’d been her One Night Stand, her Long, Hard Night, and she’d dropped her panties countless times for him. Every time, he’d risen—no pun intended—to the challenge, stripping her down to the bare essentials of pleasure and desire, and somehow all that desire had morphed into so much more. Into a mad and passionate love. The kind of love that thundered down the road with wild hoofbeats after midnight. Desperate, reckless, and headfirst.