Green Card

by Elizabeth Adams

  “Who’s Matt?”

  “He was my boyfriend before Jeremy. We should probably share numbers and exes, shouldn’t we? And maybe names? It could be awkward if we met someone out or something,” she said uneasily, thinking of Jeremy’s intrusion at their wedding reception.

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Numbers, sure, but maybe not names. I don’t want to invade your privacy and I don’t want to talk about women who aren’t here to tell their side.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. I’ve had five boyfriends and slept with three men. Your turn.”

  He looked ahead for a minute, his face confused and thoughtful. “I think you’re right. We need some details.”

  She smiled. “Joshua Powell was my first boyfriend—”

  “Wait. Joshua Powell? Laura’s brother? The guy you were singing with in Farmington?”

  “Yup.”

  “He was your first…?” Will raised his brows to illustrate his meaning.

  “First boyfriend. Not first time, no. We went out for almost two years, then broke up after I graduated high school and then I moved to New York. We never slept together.”

  “Did you,” Will stopped himself before he could finish the question. It wasn’t any of his business what they had or hadn’t done together. He didn’t know her then, they weren’t married and he had no right to demand fidelity, especially given his own history.

  “Did we what?”

  “Nothing. So what happened after you moved to New York?”

  “I met Caleb freshman year. He was in two of my classes and a business major. He’s working for his father’s firm now. Something to do with communications.” She looked off into the woods. “He was my first. We went out for a little over a year. I was crazy about him.”

  “Why did you break up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It all just got so complicated. We were really young and neither of us really knew what we were doing. He was only a year older than me. We fought about stupid things a lot and then we had one really big fight and we never recovered. That was that.”

  He nodded. “Was Matt next?”

  “No, next was Phillip. He was a bit of an anomaly. We were friends and hung out with the same crowd. He was studying theatre and I was a theatre minor. He wanted to be a director. He was pretty good at it—super bossy.” She smiled fondly at the memory. “Anyway, we only went out for a month before we realized we made better friends than lovers. We never actually slept together. Probably why we’re still friends now.”

  “You still see him?” Harper asked, surprised.

  “No, not really. But I do occasionally run into him and we email sometimes. He was at Sheila’s dinner party in July, that time you got caught in a meeting, and we sat next to each other. It wasn’t awkward at all. And at Angie’s birthday party that you missed. It was just like old times.”

  Liz continued speaking, unaware of Will’s stony expression beside her. He didn’t like that when he’d been unable to escort her to events, her ex had been there. Nor did he like that she hadn’t told him about it. Of course, his reasonable side insisted, she and Phillip were still friends, the romance was short-lived and they’d never actually slept together, and she had invited Will to both of those events, and he was the one who had cancelled or opted out both times. And she hadn’t been responsible for the guest list in either case. It wasn’t like she was sneaking around. But still, he didn’t like it.

  “Will? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’m sorry, my mind wandered. What were you saying?”

  “I said that Phillip is working in an off Broadway show that opens in January that I’d like to see, if you want to come with me?”

  “Yes, of course. I’d love to go with you.” He smiled down at her and she returned it somewhat curiously. “You said five boyfriends. That’s only three.”

  “Right. You know, I probably shouldn’t even count Phillip since it was only a month, but I had a crush on him for ages before, so I always count him.”

  Harper took a deep breath.

  “Okay, next was Matt. We met in sophomore year, but, as I said before, I was crushing on Phillip. Unbeknownst to me, Matt was crushing on me. We started dating right as junior year started. It was casual at first, but got serious over winter break. He was my second. We went out for about seven months.”

  “So that puts us where? To senior year?” Will asked, silently wondering why she hadn’t given any more details about Matt.

  “Yes. How much do you want to know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how much of my past do you want to know about? Not for immigration files or for sexual history purposes, but just to know?”

  By now they had wandered back to the house and Will stepped in front of her to open the door. “I want to know whatever you want to tell me. Rest assured that I won’t tell your secrets, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He smiled and held out his arms for her coat.

  “I’m not worried about that, I just don’t want to bore you. Hot chocolate?” she asked as she walked towards the kitchen.

  “Yes, please. And it’s not boring.”

  She smiled. “Well, something odd happened with Matt.” She poured milk into a pot on the stove while Harper sat on a stool at the counter. “Spring break of junior year, we’d been together several months and he invited me to go to his family’s beach house for a week and meet his parents. They had a place on the gulf somewhere. Anyway, I said yes and as we were packing to go, I needed to get something from his bag. I was rifling around and found a ring. It was pretty, it looked like an antique and it was small, not too ostentatious, but it just wasn’t very me. I tried to think of reasons he would have it other than proposing. Maybe he was taking it to his mother for some reason, maybe it was a family piece that he was delivering to her. I wracked my brain for about five minutes until I realized I was standing there like a dodo and put it back. I went into the other room and heard Matt on the phone with someone, telling them that I had no idea and that it would be a great surprise. He went on to talk about some party they were planning together and I freaked. I thought he was going to propose in front of a crowd of people and I was going to turn him down in front of all his friends and humiliate him.”

  “Why were you going to turn him down?”

  “I didn’t love him,” she said simply. “I really liked him and in many ways we were good together, but he always struck me as a little bit weird. And I know I am too, everybody is in their own way, but I don’t want to be with someone despite their weird quirks—I don’t want to think my husband is actually odd. I want to love his quirks and accept him completely, even the parts I don’t like, not wish he would quit being so weird. I’m not making much sense, but I didn’t love him and I just knew somehow that I never would. And once I realized that, there was no reason to continue the relationship, especially with him being so much more serious about it than me.”

  “So you broke it off and never went to the coast,” he surmised.

  “Exactly. It wasn’t pretty. But it was the right thing to do, at least I knew that much.”

  “So then what? That’s four, so I assume Jeremy is next?”

  “Yes,” she said, slightly distracted. She poured two cups full of cocoa and dolloped whipped cream on the tops. “I’d known him for years, or I should say known of him. He’d dated a girl in my dorm sophomore year, and we had the odd class together. He was an English minor, so our paths occasionally crossed.”

  She settled onto the stool next to Will. “We started dating over a weekend away with a group of friends in autumn of senior year. He was in grad school by then; he’s a little older than me. We were together until he got a job offer in Phoenix last February.”

  “You didn’t want to go with him?” Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that Jeremy might not have asked her along.

  “No, I didn’t. He asked me to, but I wasn’t ready to leave my life here. And he wasn’t willing to give up the job. Talk a
bout irreconcilable differences.” She released a choked-sounding laugh.

  They sipped their cocoa quietly for a few minutes until Liz said, a little too brightly, “Okay, you know my sordid past. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Okay, well, I’m afraid it’s nowhere near as interesting as yours. As you know, I’ve only had one proper girlfriend, Sandra, from uni. Before her, I was with one other girl. I was at an all-boys school, so we never had any female classmates, but we did occasionally have mixers with the girls’ schools in the area. I met a girl, Carlotta, at one of them. She had, let’s call it a… reputation,” he said with a look.

  “I see,” she said with brows raised, amused at his sudden storytelling skills.

  “She was known for divesting green boys like me of the encumbrance of their virginity. At one such party, I happily followed her behind some bushes out back and emerged a man.”

  Liz laughed. “Oh, Will! You lost it behind some bushes at a party? That’s awful! You poor thing!”

  “What? Behind a bush is a perfectly nice place to lose something and it was a much better location than my stuffy dorm room or my parents’ house.”

  “Okay, you’ve got me there. I can imagine your parents would not have been happy had they caught you with a girl in the house.”

  “No, and unfortunately I know from experience.”

  She gave him a look that told him he needed to elaborate.

  “Before all of that, just before I turned sixteen, we had a gardener working at our house in London. He came on a Saturday once and brought his daughter along. I saw her outside reading on a bench and went to talk to her like any hormonal boy would have done. She was lovely. She had the smoothest skin and smelled of lavender. Anyway,” he pulled himself out of his memories, “we got to talking and by the end of the afternoon, she’d given me her number. We arranged it so she would come with her dad as often as possible and once or twice I met her in town for a film or an ice cream. We were just kids, it was all very innocent now that I look back on it, but I really liked her and, well, anyway, one day, my father came home early and caught the two of us kissing in the library.”

  Liz’s face fell with Will’s when he got to this part of the story. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.

  “He quickly sent her back to her father and gave me the tongue lashing of my life. He said I should never get involved with women in my employ or the daughters of people in my employ. He said that parents need to know their children are safe here and the women who work here need to know that they can come to work and feel safe with their bosses. I had never thought about it that way, that I could make someone feel unsafe, just because I was a man or because I had hiring power. Of course, I didn’t have any then, but I would soon and my father assured me that everyone around knew it.”

  He sighed and Liz squeezed his arm. She knew his father had a point, and a good one, but her heart ached for two little teenaged kids who’d had no idea of the trouble they were stirring up.

  “He went on to say that I had to be careful. Now that I was becoming a man, I had to behave differently. He followed this up with a lecture on safe sex and how I couldn’t have illegitimate children running around all over town. A Harper has more restraint, a Harper is careful and responsible.”

  Liz watched in fascination as his back became straighter and his shoulders opened, his chest high with familial pride.

  “And the final nail in the coffin?” she asked, knowing there was more.

  He looked at her sideways, then continued quietly. “Some people will only befriend you because of what you can give them or do for them. He told me to be especially wary of women, that many would act interested because of my wealth or position, that I would have to learn the difference between true interest and—”

  “Gold digging?” she finished for him.

  “Yes.”

  “So the easiest way to tell if someone wants you for your money is whether or not they have their own?”

  “That’s one way, yes.”

  “And how’s that worked out for you so far?” she asked gently.

  He lifted a brow. “Touché, my dear.” He raised his cocoa mug in mock salute. He sipped silently for a minute. “Anyhow, after Sandra there was a string of debutantes and society women, none that got serious, never more than a few dates.”

  “Did you sleep with all of them?” she asked evenly.

  “No, but with several. Honestly, I don’t know the exact number. I’d need to think about it.” Seeing her trying to hide her expression of shock and mild distaste, he added, “I’d say it was more than fifteen and less than thirty.”

  She nodded. “Did any of them ever get pregnant? Did you get any infections?” Her voice was carefully neutral.

  “Not that I know of and no, no infections. I always used a condom. Until last night, that is.”

  Her head snapped up. “Really? You’d never done it without a condom before?”

  “No. Does that really surprise you?”

  She was about to reply that yes, it absolutely did, but stopped herself. They both knew why he hadn’t. He hadn’t been in relationships like she had been. He didn’t know where those women had been before or where they were going after. He hadn’t even been serious about the one girlfriend he did have! There hadn’t been trust like she’d had with Matt or love like she’d had with Jeremy. There had been no happy time of discovery, where every touch is the best touch and everything is exciting and new like she’d had with Caleb.

  Suddenly, she was very sad for William.

  “You know, it’s possible that I’ve had more sex than you,” she said to lighten the sinking mood.

  “Really?” he asked, amused.

  “Yes. You’ve undoubtedly had more partners, but how many times did you sleep with each one? Three, four times? Sometimes only once?” He nodded slowly, a questioning look on his face. “So let’s say there were twenty for easy math. If you slept with each one three times,” she could tell by his expression that she was being generous, “that’s sixty. Add in Sandra, whom you dated for what? A year and a half?”

  He nodded.

  “So you probably have had sex roughly two hundred times, maybe two-seventy-five.” She could see him calculating in his head as she was talking. “I definitely have you beat. I did it almost that many times with Caleb alone. Don’t even get me started on Jeremy.”

  “Bragging, Ms. Barrett?”

  “Just pointing out that while being single and playing the field may look more exciting, monogamy has its perks.” She took a last sip of cocoa and got up to put her cup in the sink. She walked out of the kitchen and called over her shoulder, “I’ll be in the bedroom, if you want to work on your number.”

  Two seconds later, Will was following her.

  **

  “So what do you want to do tonight?” Will asked.

  They were lying in bed after lunch, having been so famished from morning sex that they ate two servings each of the casserole Maria had sent with them, which left them so sleepy they had to take a nap. Then Will woke up to Liz kissing his neck and one thing led to another. Now it was after four o’clock and they were lazing in bed, Liz’s leg over Will’s and his hand playing with hers.

  “I don’t know. I know it’s ridiculous to say this after spending the day in bed, but I’m kind of tired. Do you want to just watch a movie or something?” she asked.

  “That sounds nice. I’m tired, too. And to be fair, just because we were in bed all day doesn’t mean we were sleeping.”

  “True,” she said. “Oh! I know what we should do. We can open our Christmas presents!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, that’s why we brought them.” She scrambled out of bed and turned to him with excited eyes. “Are you coming?”

  Liz sat next to the Christmas tree in the living room and sorted through the gifts. They were leaving for London a few days after they got back to have Christmas with Will’s family, but she didn’t want to take a
ll their gifts all the way over there. When William told her about his ideal Christmas, she got the idea to come up here and celebrate on their own. So she had brought all the presents that they already had under their tree. She was currently shaking one from her mother.

  “What should we open first?” she asked.

  “There are several from your family. Why don’t we start with those?” he suggested.

  He sat down across from her and she handed him a package.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “My guess is a scarf. It’s from my grandmother.”

  Will’s face showed his surprise as he unwrapped the oblong box covered in blue snowmen paper. Inside was a long, deep red scarf.

  “How did you know?”

  “She called and asked what your favorite color was and Gran’s an excellent knitter.”

  “I can see that.” He examined the work and expressed sincere thanks as Elizabeth moved on to her gift from the same grandmother.

  She laughed out loud. “Matching scarves!” She held up her own scarf and wrapped it around her neck.

  Her mother had given her a new cookbook and her sister Heather a delicate charm bracelet with a graduate hat and a wedding cake charm already on it. Tiffany’s gift—wrapped in hot pink paper and a glittery silver bow—was a homemade picture frame covered in random small mechanical pieces like nuts and bolts and gears. The note said she’d made it in art class. Inside the frame was a shot from Thanksgiving of her entire family, minus Jenny and plus Will. Even Jake was in the shot sitting faithfully by her father’s side.

  “Did she make that frame herself?”

  “Yeah. She’s got a great eye for this stuff. I hope she considers going to art school. I think she could have a career ahead of her.”

  Will nodded and opened the next box. Liz’s sisters had gone together and gotten him a tie. It was pink with purple stripes and Liz couldn’t help but laugh a tiny bit when she saw it. Loretta gave him a small tie pin with a Christmas tree on it and Neal gave him a collector’s edition of A Tale of Two Cities. Liz also got a book from Neal. She read the inscription and got a little teary.