by Hazel Yeats
Jude got up, brushing something invisible off her shirt. “The thing is,” she said, “I sort of have the feeling that you’re missing the point here.” She began to walk away. Cara wasn’t sure if she was offended or simply disappointed. Or neither.
“I’m not.” Cara rose abruptly and followed her. “Tell me what it is you want to say. Or ask.”
“Look.” Jude was standing still. “I’m not asking for a ring here. Or a promise.”
Cara just stood there, waiting.
Jude shrugged. “I’m not really asking for anything.”
“You’re not?”
“I only know what I feel.”
Cara threw caution to the wind, sick of having to imagine the other person’s response to everything, and sick of abiding by the codes that accompanied every fucking step in a relationship, until you were finally hooked and all codes flew out the window. The only right way to go here was to be honest. Painfully and completely honest. She reached for Jude’s hand.
“Listen, Jude,” she said. “I’m not sure I should tell you this, and I’m honestly not asking for validation, but I have nothing to offer you.”
Jude held her gaze. “Don’t you get it?” she said. She brought her free hand to Cara’s face and tucked a few loose strands of blond hair behind her ear. “It’s you, Cara,” she said simply. “You’re the one. I had to travel halfway across the world to find you. And now that I did, there’s no way I’m letting you go, no matter how much you put yourself down.”
“What can one do on a rainy night like this?” Cara did a drumroll on the dinner table.
Jude, who turned out to be a horrible cook, had made a salad, or rather, she had bought a salad, in a plastic container, and divided it onto two plates. That wasn’t even the worst meal she’d ever served. She knew her wine, though, which made up for a lot.
The apartment was quiet—Zoe was having a sleepover at a friend’s house. They’d stayed in all day. Jude had tried to write; Cara was rereading The Well of Loneliness, an old classic that she had always enjoyed, despite the review that said, “This book will make you wish you were dead.”
Outside, a storm was raging.
“I should have added something,” Jude mused, holding her glass by the stem and gently twirling it. “Chicken. Or maybe pasta.” She looked doubtful. “Right? The salad alone was not a balanced meal.”
“It was,” Cara assured her. “It’s what people call a light dinner. And it’s a proven fact that people who eat fewer calories live longer.”
“You’re just saying that,” said Jude. “Because you don’t want to aggravate me.”
“On the contrary. I love aggravating you.”
“But you love something else more.” Jude’s voice was like treacle—slow, sweet, and thick. Cara knew that voice, and she felt her body respond to it immediately.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jude got up and walked around the table. “I’m hungry,” she said. Her eyes were dark, shining like stars in the night sky. “For you. For your deliciousness.”
A bolt of lightning shot across the sky, bathing them in an eerie, white light.
“Damn paparazzi,” Cara whispered, stretching out her arms.
Jude laughed as she straddled Cara. “You’re so weird,” she said. She lost the smile and locked her gaze with Cara’s. “There’s something about you, did you know that?”
Before Cara could answer, Jude growled, the sound mirrored by a drawn-out rumble of thunder outside. Jude ran her hands across Cara’s scalp, tugging her head back, and initiated a kiss, heated and impatient. Her tongue touched Cara’s at the exact moment the long awaited clash of thunder and lightning split the sky in two.
CHAPTER 9
Cara met Zoe on a Saturday in early April. The wonderfully sunny spring day was drawing to a close. The evening was warm, enticing, and full of promise. If ever there was love in the air, it had to be now. April, she thought, was anything but the cruelest month. She was lightheaded and dizzyingly in love when she went over to Jude’s apartment to pick her up for a night on the town. She knew, somehow, that they were about to share the most romantic night ever. She had cleaned and tidied her apartment with great care, pulling out all the stops when turning her bedroom into a romantic hideaway. There were fresh flowers on the dresser. There was champagne in a cooler. There were rose petals on the bed. There was a CD with late night jazz in the stereo. The thrill of anticipation made her shiver.
Jude seemed a little flushed and nervous when she opened the door. And not in a good way. The sitter was there, but Zoe, who was supposed to be asleep, was anything but. She was feverishly running around the living room, clutching a pink elephant under her arm.
“Look,” Cara said, “there’s a pink elephant in the room.” She smiled at the girl, who looked adorable, wearing Hello Kitty pajamas and a pair of fuzzy slippers on her little feet.
Cara reached out her hand to the child. She was going to do this right. She and Zoe would be as close as two coats of paint in no time. What was the secret again? Respect, right. She remembered what Jude had told her at the bookstore. Respect them, and they will respond in turn.
But Zoe took one look at Cara, and her expression changed dramatically. This sweet kid flashed her an evil grin and began to holler.
“Mommy!” she cried. “I feel sick!”
Jude came storming down the hall. “I’m right here. What’s wrong? You weren’t sick two minutes ago.”
“I want Mommy!” Zoe hollered again.
“Shush,” Jude said. She sat down and took the child on her lap. “I’m here!”
“No!” Zoe screamed. “I want Mommy Laurie!”
Jude’s face turned to ice. Cara could tell she needed a second to recover. Then she shook her head. “Aw, honey,” she said. “Mommy Laurie’s not here right now, you know that. She’s at the ranch, remember?”
Zoe managed to produce a couple of tears and wrapped her arms more tightly around her mother’s neck. She sniffed.
“Sweetie, sweetie,” Jude said, patting her back, “I promise we’ll go see Mommy Laurie soon, okay?”
And then something strange happened. Zoe, her chin resting on Jude’s shoulder, focused her eyes on Cara. When she did, her mouth curled up in what Cara could only call a vindictive smile. She couldn’t believe the little manipulator. Anyone could tell she was faking it. Anyone but Jude.
“Because she can!” Jude spit out the words. “Because making my life miserable is her new goal in life!” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to get involved with this woman. Let alone marry her.” She was pacing the floor of her apartment, picking up throw pillows and hurling them across the room. Jude was one of those people who rarely expressed rage, and when she did, it was always contained enough to never actually break something valuable.
Cara rested a hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her down. It seemed like all they were doing these days was fighting forces from the outside that were disrupting their peace, purposefully or not. Although this was a point of great concern to Cara, she hung in there, calm and supportive, and strangely proud to find that her feelings for Jude were obviously strong enough to face adversity without running.
“I never did get,” she said, “why jealous exes always think that horrible behavior and creepy stalking are going to lure a lover back in. If I wanted someone back, I’d be charming and considerate. I’d leave roses at their doorstep instead of dead rabbits.”
Jude stared at her, wide-eyed. “Dead rabbits?” She pointed to the front door, her face full of disgust. “Please don’t tell me…”
Cara shook her head. “Of course not. I was just thinking of that old movie where someone finds a pot on the stove that turns out to contain the boiled remains of their pet rabbit.”
“I thought it might be a reference to my wor
k,” Jude said. “To Bunny. You know, killing my protagonist as a symbol of destroying my career?”
“You’re seeing ghosts,” Cara said. “You can’t honestly believe she’d travel 9,000 kilometers with a dead rabbit in her carry-on.”
Jude shrugged. “I don’t know what to expect anymore.”
“What does she want anyway?”
“To make me suffer.” Jude slumped down on a chair. “It doesn’t matter how.”
Cara shook her head. “Women can be very vindictive when they don’t get their way. Maybe I should have a talk with her.”
“Yes,” Jude said, “if we want this to get completely out of hand, then we should send you to California to set her straight.”
“I meant, on the phone,” Cara said.
“She was never like this when we were together.” Jude shook her head, then she looked at Cara and sighed. “Would you mind terribly if we took a rain check on dinner? I’m really not in the mood for a date.”
“Of course I mind,” Cara said. “Come on, go change. Put on your dancing shoes. There’s no better way to forget about all this than to go out and have some fun.” She walked to Jude’s chair, grabbed hold of her hands and tried to pull her up. It was like trying to pull up a dead person. “Come on, sweetheart,” she pleaded. “It’s our anniversary.” She kissed Jude’s hand. “I’ve got a whole thing planned.”
Jude freed one hand from Cara’s grasp and stroked her cheek, a gesture that was condescending more than anything else. “It’s not really an anniversary, is it, Cara? I mean, two months, that’s nothing really special.”
Cara shook her head. “You know what? I would have made it special.”
They didn’t see each other all week—Jude was ‘tied up.’ She canceled again the Saturday after, having an unscheduled meeting with her lawyer in the afternoon and wanting to use the evening to write.
“I thought you had writer’s block?” an annoyed Cara said over the phone.
“Which is exactly why I have to sit down at my desk as soon as I feel even the slightest urge to work.”
“It’s like…literary constipation.” Cara giggled.
“I guess,” Jude said. “But anyway, I hope you understand.”
As it turned out, Cara didn’t. She got the horrible feeling that Jude couldn’t get rid of her fast enough.
“Maybe we can work on it together,” she suggested. “I want to help. I could come over later. Bring some dinner.”
“No, honey, I’m sorry. It’s not just the writing either. Zoe’s been having nightmares and she calls me to her room every three minutes to check for monsters under the bed. It wouldn’t be any fun for you.”
“There’s no law that says I have to have fun all the time,” Cara said. “It’s not like I’m seven years old and need to be constantly entertained and indulged. I simply want to be there for you. For both of you,” she added hesitantly, not sure her presence wouldn’t make Zoe’s nightmares worse than they already were.
Jude didn’t speak, which Cara knew to be a silent rejection of her plan.
“Whatever happened to facing things together?” she said, as a last attempt to get through to Jude. “I am, after all, the one.”
She knew it was a bad moment to bring that up, a childish attempt to claim something that had to be earned from day to day rather than be a permanent position that required no effort to maintain. She needed to know if Jude’s words had meant anything at all, or if it had just been some stupid, sentimental line that people use in the heat of the moment and then forget about. She broke out in a sweat when she realized that she was, once again, going through the nightmare of seeing a woman morph into the opposite of everything she had seemed to be. Her mind went back to that day in the park. She had marveled at finding someone who was not only gorgeous, but more laid-back than any woman she’d ever been with. She wanted to scream with frustration. How would she find that easygoing person now, under all these layers of misery and doubt and anxiety?
“I’m under a lot of pressure here, Cara.”
“So let me help you. Don’t shut me out. Let me come over and support you.”
“I’m sorry, but that would be counterproductive right now.”
Heat washed over Cara—a rush of anger and disappointment, and something more alarming, a feeling as if the floor beneath her crumbled and her life went into a free fall.
“Counterproductive? Jude! What the fuck kind of word is that! What am I to you? A business associate who messes up your timetable?”
Jude’s sigh was audible. “This is not about you, Cara. This is my livelihood. My reason for living. I need to take this seriously.”
Cara flinched. She knew very well what Jude’s career meant to her, and she totally respected that, but was it really her reason for living? The anger subsided, and the adrenalin seeped out of her, leaving her feeling like a deflated balloon. Her muscles seemed to go limp—she almost dropped the phone. At least it was clear to her now where she stood in the pecking order. Not, apparently, where she deserved to be. Not where she had so presumptuously assumed she already was.
“Very well then,” she said. “Good luck, Jude. I hope it will all work out for you.”
“I can’t believe you dumped Jude Donovan.” Myra was so outraged she spilled her tea all over Inge’s couch. She lifted a buttock and wiped over the leather with the back of her hand before her angry gaze settled on Cara again. “I thought we went over this? What part of ‘don’t screw this up’ didn’t you get?”
“It was good while it lasted, and now it’s over,” Cara said. “Shit happens. Also, I did not dump her. It was a mutual decision. We’re just not in the same place. We want different things at this point in our lives.”
Cara tried to sound breezy, indifferent almost, hoping they would all shut up. It wasn’t so much the conversation itself that was unsettling—after all, she was used to being grilled about her choices. What made it far more difficult this time was that the breakup had left her sad and cranky. She was feeling hopeless, with the strong desire to stay home, draw the curtains, and drink herself into a stupor. The fact that she had initiated the break up herself didn’t change the fact that it was Jude who was responsible for it. Jude had become unavailable and uncommunicative—a stranger. She had shut Cara out, and if she knew Cara at all, she must have known that being shut out was the one thing she couldn’t possibly accept or live with.
“I agree with Myra,” Alice said. “You know I don’t like to interfere in other people’s lives, but this woman has it all—beauty, fame, money, and who knows, maybe she’ll Bunny her way to a villa with eighteen bedrooms one day.” She snorted. “And if you’re not in that place, Cara, and if you don’t have any ambition to get there, then frankly, I’m beginning to doubt your sanity.”
Myra moaned. “And to think that Tijmen and Sofie were about to have Jude freaking Donovan sit on the edge of their beds and read them a Bunny story that nobody in the world had heard yet.”
Cara frowned. “Is this about my happiness or about you guys getting invited to Jude’s book launch parties and being offered free holiday accommodation?”
“I’m just saying,” Alice said, “that she has everything to make your life perfect.”
“You’re forgetting that she has a few things to make my life hell too.”
“Like what?”
“Like a cranky kid, an insanely jealous ex-wife, and not enough time for me, to name but a few.” She took a sharp intake of breath. “But I don’t really understand what the big deal is. You know I don’t stick around to see real life creep up on the romance! You’ve always known that. Why should this time be any different?
“Because of who she is,” Alice said.
Cara shook her head. “Again, that’s all on the outside. And if that’s your argument, you’re shallower than I thought. She’s human like the rest of us. I do
n’t want the image that I have of her now tainted by seeing her in granny panties, fighting a migraine, having a bad hair day, or swinging a hatchet at her poor computer. What we had was beautiful. Too beautiful to watch it go down the drain. I’m done. I’ve crossed sleeping with a celebrity off my bucket list, and now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get on with my life.”
“A car wash? Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Cara shook her head. “Magic Auto Clean.”
“Your career choices seem to be getting more and more juvenile,” said Alice. “What’s next? A paper route?”
“We can’t all dedicate our lives to things as important as next year’s color trends, you know?” She wanted to slap Alice. “Some of us actually have to work for a living.”
“Some of us refuse to grow up,” Alice said.
“I think it’s a fear of death,” said Myra, looking at everybody but Cara. “She’s always telling us that we’re trying to forget about our inevitable demise, but I think she is. She figures she can keep it at bay by pretending life will always be the way it was when she was seventeen.” She looked smug, as if she were the only one who understood her little sister. “Come to think of it, Cara has always had a little trouble acting her age.”
“Hello!” Cara said. “I’m right here! Please don’t talk about me in the third person.”
“Personally, I believe her subconscious is telling her that she’s not good enough for Jude,” Alice said, ignoring Cara. “There’s a feeling of inadequacy at the root of it all. Which is why she dumped Jude before Jude had a chance to dump her. This way, she doesn’t have to think about not measuring up. Which would be too painful for her.”
They were sitting outside a coffee house, sipping their lattes. Inge was slumped in her chair, sad but brave. Her voluptuous body clad in loose fit harem pants and a batik print shirt, she was all dangling bracelets and big, frizzy hair. Myra, in another pair of comfortable shoes and another pair of stained maternity pants, was as distracted as always, staring off into space, clutching her ever expanding belly for dear life. Alice was simply her arrogant, bored, short-skirted self, balancing a ridiculously large pair of Ray-Bans on her nose and sipping her coffee with her pinky in the air.
