She gives me a wink and a pat on the arm, then turns to help Sandy, who is setting up a canvas tent beside mine. I call Coffee to follow me and head to the truck.
Hannah, having said her good nights, follows suit, taking my left hand in hers as we walk away. She finds the lavender in my hand, grabs one bag and inspects it.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s actually considered a luxury item,” she says.
“Right then. Those four can live on this commune, while we sleep on lavender,” I tease.
“Who said anything about sleeping?” Hannah looks up at me, desire in her eyes. I can’t get us to my truck fast enough.
Thirty-nine
Tripp
Early morning sunlight casts our shadows on the wall opposite the four-poster bed. We look larger than life. I chuckle to myself. How appropriate. Last night, we were Sex Gods. We were like Eros and Aphrodite. Without the stalking your target, weakening its heart, and loosening its limbs part. Greek mythology is so bloody dark.
Right then, so maybe we were more like Molly and Sam from Ghost, or Jack and Rose from Titanic. Oh. Those were so sad! It seems all iconic couples have a tragic love story.
So then, we won’t be iconic. We’ll just be privately happy… and having lots of sex. We have so much chemistry together. Hannah sets my body on fire. I can’t stop wanting her, needing her.
I curl up against her curves and pull the white sheet up to our necks. My pillow is blanketed by her long tresses. I breathe in strawberries and apricots with a hint of vanilla. I want to wake up like this every morning.
She stirs, then slowly turns to face me. “Morning, Numpty Gal,” I whisper.
She frowns. “Hey. I was having good dreams, but the sun woke me,” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“But now we have the whole day together. Early start. Up with the birds.”
“I’m not a bird.” She groans and puts her pillow over her face.
I laugh. “Yes, you are. Birds always find their way home. You did exactly the same.”
She pulls the pillow off of her eyes and props herself up on it, squinting at me.
“You’re saying I’m like a bird?” She raises her eyebrows.
“Yes.” I stroke her hair. “My little bluebird. By the way, why were you wearing that blue slicker last evening? It was bloody twenty-eight degrees!”
She sits up, fluffs her pillow, and sets it against the oak headboard.
“I’m just a little fond of it, okay? I wore it out birding with you. I’m kind of fond of everything that reminds me of you, Tripp.” She almost whispers the last part.
I jump out of bed.
“Where are you going? I wanted to snuggle,” she says, adding, “You look yummy in those boxers.”
“Tea and crumpets, of course. I’ll be back.”
“Are you going to do this every morning? Because you wouldn’t want to spoil me.”
“You’re already spoiled, but it’s no trouble. Besides, if I left it to you, you’d probably cock it up,” I say, leaving the room before she throws something at me.
“Not true! You are such a Grumpet!”
I just love the sound of her laughter.
It’s a warm morning, so we’ve opened the French doors, allowing more sunshine and a light breeze to waft across room. Hannah left me a white robe on the bed and is already wearing hers when I walk in with our breakfast tray of crumpets, poached eggs, and strawberries.
I put the robe on and tell her we look like the couple from the cover of Cruise World Magazine. She makes me take a selfie with her. It isn’t too bad. Kind of fun, actually.
We set aside the tray and sit side by side in bed sipping our Earl Grey tea, staring out at that alluring slice of ocean in the distance. I never thought something as simple as this could bring me such pleasure. We haven’t seen anything; gone anywhere. Just being in each other’s company is enough.
“Sweetness. I need to tell you something. The other night, when I got so quiet about Béa…”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain.”
“Yes, I think I do.” I put my tea down on the bedside table. She keeps hers in her hand. She’s fidgeting with the cup. “I love the idea of adopting her, or at least, telling her we’ve got her back. I was planning on telling you this in the forest, but, you know, angry tree huggers…” I make a comical, horrified face.
“Yeah,” she laughs, “It’s fine.”
“We can tell her our plan tonight, but from the looks of it, she’ll have Hank taking care of her now…”
She sits up a little. “You think? That fast?”
“That man couldn’t take his eyes off her. He barely said goodbye to you! He was gobsmacked. Mesmerized.”
“Yes, I saw that, too. Well, she is an angel. I’m glad we made dinner plans with everyone for tonight. We can find out if you’re right.”
“It’ll be fun. We have lots to celebrate,” I say, and I lean in and kiss her softly. I can still smell apricots on her skin. I want to push her back down on the bed and cover her in kisses, but she has that tea cup in her hand.
“I know. So many new adventures. I’m excited to get started on my documentary, and you’ll be meeting the inspector and breaking ground next week!” She sounds giddy. I can’t believe she doesn’t know. I always flub things like this up, but she hasn’t even noticed. I start chuckling. I can’t help it.
“What?”
“You’ve been drinking that tea so bloody slowly. Would you hurry it up!” I chuckle, stroking my beard.
She looks at me quizzically, brings her tea cup to her lips, takes a long swig, and the lolly ring I put in there falls out onto her chest. She grabs it and screams. Literally, bloody screams. Then she puts down the tea cup, gets up with her lolly ring in hand, and starts shaking the ring to air-dry the tea off of it, while jumping up and down on the bed like a child at Christmas.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she shouts.
“Well that’s not quite the reaction I expected, but we can run with it.” I get up, take her hands in mine, and jump up and down on the bed with her. After a minute, we’re laughing and gasping for air. Damn, she brings out my inner child. I didn’t know I was missing this kind of joy in my life until it arrived on my doorstep.
“A candy ring! That’s why my tea tasted so sweet!” She flops back down on the bed, and I join her. I can see tears welling in her eyes.
“It’s not… too soon?” I ask, taking the lolly ring and sliding it on her ring finger.
She frowns, pretending to be someone who takes themselves seriously. “It would have been too soon for strawberry. Cherry is the right ring pop for us.” She giggles, holding her left hand out to admire the ring.
“Ring pop? Is that what you call them?” Canadians are funny creatures.
“You don’t call them ring pops?” She says, still staring at the large, red ring on her finger.
“They’re ring lollies here,” I say, taking her hand in mine.
“Lollies.” She lets the word roll off her tongue. “Have a lick of my lolly, will you please, young lady?”
“Are you mocking me? You’re mocking me!” I chuckle.
“I just find your accent so amusing!” she says.
“Ahem, don’t get me going on about your ‘O’s’” I say.
“My ‘O’s? What about them?”
“Look, I’m trying to be serious. Let me do this right.” I laugh. “The engagement can be as long as you want, but I want to buy you something sparkly when we can get to a proper jewelry store. Maybe in Cannes? I got this at the corner store with our groceries last night.”
“Oh, really, this is fine. It’s so you. I love it. I love you!”
I stare at her. I’m still buying her a diamond ring, even if she argues. She takes my breath away. I start to speak again, but I can’t find t
he words. She leans in and kisses me, and I melt into her. Her lips taste like sweet cherries… cherry chapstick… warm cherry pie…wait a second. I pull back and look at her.
“Hannah Storm, did you lick your engagement ring?”
“Maybe just a little?” She gives me a sheepish smile.
“What am I going to do with you?” I tackle her and start tickling her armpits. She tries to wiggle free and screeches for me to stop, but her smile is wider than I’ve ever seen it before. She reaches over and tickles me under my left knee. I’m surprised to realize that she knows all my weak spots already. I have to let go.
She lies under me, her green eyes smiling. “See? Don’t you dare start a tickle fight with me, you’ll never win.”
“Is that a dare?” I ask, kissing her delicious cherry lips once more.
“We have a few more weeks at The Lighthouse to learn who will vanquish,” she chuckles. “but I wish we could call up James and see if he’ll take this place off the Good Nights site and let us stay the whole summer instead. I adore it here.” She looks wistful.
“We could,” I smile, “but it would be a moot point, because I bought the place.”
Hannah’s eyes grow wide, then fill with tears. “You… you bought The Lighthouse? For us?”
“James has family in Florida and wants to stay there. He accepted my offer last night.”
She’s crying now. She’s looking at her lolly ring, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh no. I don’t know what you’re going to do next,” I say, looking into her eyes. “You aren’t going to jump on the bed again, are you?” I ask.
I pull her up so that she can sit and face me, then wipe her eyes dry and take her hands in mine. We’re facing each other when I finally propose how I intended.
“I want to grow old with you in the house where we met.”
“Oh, Tripp. This is… wow… this is even better than the ring pop!” She laughs.
I give her my best old man grumble. “Now wait a minute. That cherry lolly cost me a pretty penny.”
“Oh, my goodness! We’re engaged!” Hannah can’t sit still and realization is setting in on her face. She looks overjoyed. “I have to call my mom! I have to tell her our news! She can come visit here, right? I mean, you like moms, right?”
“I love moms,” I chuckle. “Maybe we could have a month alone first, though? I want you all to myself for as long as possible.”
She takes my face and strokes the stubble on my chin, then kisses me hard, several times.
“We have dinner guests tonight,” she whispers between kisses. “Remember? You said you wanted to put out the good silver and glasses. You were even going to make beef stroganoff.”
“To hell with that,” I mumble, kissing her neck, my hands slipping under her robe to caress her lower back, her tummy, her breasts. As she lies back, pulling me with her, I anticipate one of our best mornings ever, and an eternity of good nights.
“We’ll just order pizza.”
The End.
The Ticket
CHAPTER ONE
“Ouch! Mother fucker!”
“Shhh! You’ll scare all the patients in the waiting room!”
My OBGYN sounded ashamed as she said it, and yet, she kept on digging and scraping like a miner searching for gold. I lay back and tried to focus on the white ceiling. It had a bold blue sticker on it: Follow Me On Facebook. I moaned, but not from the pain. I heard the cold clink clink sound of tongs hitting a metal bowl. What did that make my vajayjay, a cobb salad?
Don’t you think the patients outside should know that you’re ripping my insides out? I wanted to scream at her; instead, I bit my tongue, pushed my feet further into the stirrups, and did a series of those tiny breaths I learned nearly two decades ago in Lamaze. Breathe in, then out, out, out, out. Try not to panic or it will make it hurt more. You are not going to die from a pap and an IUD replacement! Except, why is the doctor’s face so grim?
Dr. Halo stared at me a moment, then back into that dark place, and then she started cursing to herself quietly. Most of what she muttered was undecipherable to me.
“Murble, murble, marshmallow brains! You forgot to tell me you had a tilted uterus! Damn! I’m using the wrong tools!”
I bolted up, but she pushed my chest, forcing me back down, ripping my skimpy paper gown up the backside in the meantime. “Not yet,” she said, and I felt a painful pinch.
“There! Isn’t it beautiful?”
She was dangling the T-coil in front of my face with an inane grin on her face. I looked around for cameras. This had to be some prank show. It had to be. Jimmy Kimmel was going to walk through those doors laughing, tell me to get some clothes on, and offer me a luxury weekend at a resort in Maui, just for being a good sport.
It had been my idea to get an IUD after the birth of our second daughter. A vasectomy felt so permanent in the beginning and neither of us wanted it, despite that Dan had told me numerous times he didn’t want any more kids. In the end, he never had the surgery because he never got around to it. As I laid there in agony, having one IUD removed and another inserted, I wondered, why bother? It wasn’t like we were having sex anymore. Things dried up for us in the bedroom years ago. I was just trying to be responsible, and you’re supposed to replace it every five years. Still, it was weird when I found that condom in Dan’s suitcase this morning. He swore it was an ongoing prank between him and Brian, his longtime boss, but did men over 40 seriously still play frat school jokes like that?
“One condom. Allie, come on, what am I going to do with one condom? If I were cheating on you, I’d buy boxes.”
“Thanks, that’s consoling.” I tried to chuckle and brush the whole thing off by offering to make him pancakes. I felt like a royal bitch for not trusting him.
“Never mind about the pancakes—I have to get to work early.”
“But you just got back from LA.”
“Tax time. You know how busy it gets. See you at counseling.”
We’d been going to see our marriage counselor Lori for almost a year, but clearly, it hadn’t done much for our marriage. I still had trust issues, and Dan wasn’t even kissing me goodbye as he raced out the door.
“Yup. She said she had a full morning, but could see us at six. I’ll put the girls’ meals in the fridge, and they can just heat it up. Maybe we can grab a bite after,” I said.
“Maybe. Bye.”
Getting Dan to go to counseling had been like pulling teeth, but after a few weeks, he seemed more comfortable and was really opening up in our sessions. The three of us were even laughing together.
“Okay, get dressed.” A low female voice startled me out from my deep thoughts, and my dreams of Jimmy Kimmel sweeping me off my feet and onto a tropical island were shattered. “I’ll see you in six months, unless you hear from us earlier.”
Once I’d dressed and set my next appointment, I sat in the car a few minutes, massaging my lower abdomen and feeling badly about how I’d treated Dan. He’d just come home last night, and we’d already bickered twice. Dr. Halo’s office is right around the corner from where Dan works. I decided to swing by and drop off a mocha Frappuccino, his favorite. Dr. Lori said it’s the little things that can bring the spark back into a marriage. I had to try harder. Maybe then Dan would try, too.
Dan’s large accounting firm had one main receptionist, Stacey, in a building of sixteen offices. We’d bonded over everything from our children having chicken pox, to their first dates and proms. She was very sweet. This morning she was applying mascara when I rushed past her desk, a mocha Frapp in my hand. I’d already inhaled mine, with extra whipped cream and a couple Advil, and was feeling much better.
“Oh sweetie, he has someone in there…” Stacey stood up.
“It’s okay, I’ll just give him this and be on my way.”
I opened his door.
There was already a mocha Frapp on his desk…
… Along with a woman in a short skirt that was hiked up to her hips. She sat motionless, her backside to me. His hands were on her hips; his groin had been pushing against hers. When his eyes met mine, he pulled away from the woman.
“Allie. Allie, it’s not what you think.” He was as white as the boxers peeking out of his open fly.
The woman jumped off the desk, then slowly turned toward me. I gasped and dropped Dan’s Frappuccino all over the carpet.
Lori.
“Your mouth was on our marriage counselor’s mouth. Are you giving her CPR with your fly undone?”
“Allie. It’s been over a while. You know that.” He wiped bright pink lipstick from his mouth and looked at me, shame and tears in his eyes.
“It wasn’t over! I brought you a fucking Frappuccino! It wasn’t over!”
I raced out of the room, determined not to let them see me cry.
CHAPTER TWO
One Year Later
“Ouch! Mother fu…”
I’m about to scream a string of profanities, but my boss, Jed Rubicon, is standing beside my desk, glaring at me, so I bite my tongue as I hop on one foot, massaging the other.
“I mean, Mother Theresa!” I wince and force a smile.
Jed gives me a funny look.
My foot is throbbing. I was in such a hurry to get to my office, I didn’t notice someone had placed a pile of folders and papers to recycle on the floor just outside the door. I managed to gracefully step over them, but then tripped at the last minute, hitting my foot on the corner of the filing cabinet. Smooth. So embarrassing. Jed witnessed the entire fiasco.
“You’re late again, Allie.” Jed frowns at me, his silver-haired brows furrowing. He’s a name partner at Rubicon, March & Morgan.
“I know, and I’m sorry. The subway was delayed,” I say, knowing full well that’s not a good enough excuse when you’re female and working for the most senior partner in one of the top law firms of the city. My commute from our home in Briarwood has been the same for five years: take the F from Briarwood-Van Wyck one stop, then transfer to the E train at Union Turnpike. The subway ride is 30 minutes when there is no train traffic or other delays, but this morning I hit ‘snooze’ twice, and there was no Dan to shake me awake. I haven’t been able to get my shit together since the divorce.
Good Nights Page 17