Thinking of You

by Rachel Kane

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said, gesturing at the park.

  For someone who wanted to talk, Alex was awfully silent, as we took the path towards the pond. All around us, people were enjoying the warmth of summer, kids running through the grass, dogs catching tennis balls.

  Compared to them, Alex looked like a creature from another world. Someone who lived in the night, not meant to be crawling out into the daylight.

  I wanted to ask him how he was, but I didn’t want to go first. Maybe that was a point of pride. At this point, I didn’t have much pride left, but I could at least wait for him to do the talking.

  When he finally spoke, it was not an apology, nor an explanation.

  “Three years ago, you wrote a memoir of your life,” he said.

  I froze.

  Of all the things in life I didn’t need, it was more exposure. I nearly turned around and walked out of the park. But I could tell he had something he wanted to say. That he wanted it badly.

  “The memoir skipped over your early life entirely, and picked up when you were in your 20s. You wrote about your time taking money from older men. How numb you felt doing it. How awful it was. But how you put that life behind you, and tried to become a writer. How you’d stumbled across a particular book of short stories, and one had interested you so much you wanted to write a whole book about it.”

  With a leaden voice I said, “My memoir. You read it. How did you find it, I had hidden it—”

  He shook his head, his eyes closed as though he were in pain.

  “I didn’t read it. Didn’t find it. She did.”

  “Alex, maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”

  Now he opened his eyes and looked at me. “No. Let me start at the end. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in three days. I’ve been busy.”

  “Busy reading my life story? Busy drinking?”

  He shook his head. “No alcohol. Micah made me promise. I’m taking a break from it. I think it clouded my judgment…or gave me a place to escape. Kept me from dealing with my own feelings. Damn, no, that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. I practiced how to say it. I wanted to make it perfect, to make you understand… I’m so tired, Cam.”

  I couldn’t help reaching for him, but stopped myself. Just a hand on his shoulder. That’s all. One hand.

  “You’d better go ahead and say it quickly then, before you fall over.”

  “She hacked you. Secret Reader was in your computer. I figure she stole the file the night she spray-painted your door. Micah’s investigator says she probably got into your computer through your wifi connection.”

  My fingers tightened, squeezing the fabric of his shirt. “She what?”

  He chuckled. “We were so stupid, Cam. No. Scratch that. I was so stupid. What’s the first rule of my job?”

  “Lie low?”

  “Okay, the second rule: Figure out the angle. I’m a damn image consultant, but I didn’t ask myself the key question, What image is Secret Reader portraying? What does she want us to see, what does she want us to think?”

  We were paused in a shady spot under the trees. I didn’t want to walk any further. I didn’t want to do anything but think.

  “She wants the world to think I’m horrible,” I said.

  “No. Pretend you’re one of those detectives you write about. The world thinking you’re horrible, that’s her method. But what’s her motive?”

  “She’s crazy?”

  And now, for the first time since we started talking, he smiled.

  It was a scary smile.

  I was glad it wasn’t aimed at me.

  “Yes, that’s what she’d like people to think. Spray-painting a Bible verse on your door. Calling herself a victim of your scamming ways. Wild grammar and capitalization in her posts. She certainly seemed unhinged. But let me ask you something: Why were there so many pauses in her revelations? Why did it take so long between one post and the next?”

  Scowling, I said, “I figured it was for dramatic effect, but I assume you’re going to tell me something different.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and began walking again, emerging from the shade into the sunlight. His eyes tightened, and mine did too as I followed him, trying to block out the glare.

  “She’s done this before,” he said. “You were aware of that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But there’s not a lot of information out there about it, just many deleted internet posts. So I made some calls. Just so you know, the average cost of making Secret Reader go away is five thousand dollars.”

  “What?” I yelled. “This was about money? She ruined my life over money?”

  Again that grim smile. “That’s what the pauses were about. Giving you a chance to reach out to her. A chance to offer her a check to make her stop. But what she didn’t count on was you.”

  My mind was whirling. All of this could have been taken care of on day one? I could’ve gone down to the bank and taken out a loan, and all this would have been over, just like that?

  It all seemed so unfair. So petty.

  For this, I had watched my career burn, and had watched the man I love tear himself from me. Watched love turn to disgust.

  “Why didn’t she just ask for money?”

  “That would have left a paper trail,” he said. “She would have been exposed. No, she’s smarter than that. Not crazy in the least. She picks authors, because they don’t have millions of fans. Their reputations are far more vulnerable. You don’t get as much money from blackmailing them as you would from, say, a movie star. But then, your average author doesn’t have an army of lawyers protecting them. Smaller money, but easier money.”

  We had reached the bridge, and I felt like I couldn’t walk one more step. I leaned against the rail.

  “So that’s the cost of my life, my reputation, my soul. Five thousand bucks. Funny how little that is.”

  Down below us, the koi were awake and hungry, circling the bridge hoping we would drop crumbs for them.

  “She wasn’t counting on you having a team behind you,” said Alex. “But more than that, she wasn’t counting on how hard you would try to hide your past.”

  “Well, I did a shit job of that, as it turns out. Next time I write a big confession, I’ll have to remember to encrypt the file. Or, y’know, maybe not write it down.”

  His smile this time was more gentle. “She’s a pro at this. It’s not really your fault. But yeah, you probably want to buy a new computer.”

  “And burn the current one. Maybe my phone too. And all my books. Because it’s nice that you found out all this stuff about her…but my life is still ruined. Is she at least going to jail?”

  “Jail? No. Unless you’d like to testify to all this in court. You’d be pretty much the sole witness. Nobody else wants to talk about her.”

  “Wait, so she just gets away with it? She destroys my life, she breaks the two of us up, and just…goes on to her next adventure?”

  He shrugged. “Life isn’t one of your detective novels, Cam. Sometimes you don’t get justice. Sometimes you just get things to stop.”

  My fingers were tight against the rail of the bridge, my nails clawing into the paint.

  “Yeah, I know I don’t get justice in life. I’m aware of that, Alex. Pardon me for hoping that this one time, someone other than me would get what they deserve.”

  Alex looked over at me. His eyes were unreadable.

  “I think sometimes people do end up getting what they deserve,” he said.

  “You’re talking about me?”

  “No. I’m talking about me.”

  I looked away from him. “Thank you for finding all this out. And for finding me to tell me about her. It’s over now. You’re sure about that?”

  “You’ll never hear from her again.” He stepped back from the rail. “All right. Look, I know this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t take back what I did to you. The fact that I hurt you. But a simple apology didn’t seem good enough. I
just wanted you to have a little closure. Have a good life, Cam.”

  He rubbed his face. The energy that had animated him while he told me the tale of Secret Reader, had left him. Now he was back to looking exhausted. His shoulders slumped.

  “I was scared you would leave me,” I said. “That’s why I never said anything. I was scared you would hate me, you would look at me differently, knowing what I did back then. That I would disgust you.”

  “How could you ever disgust me?” he asked, his voice quiet. “You’re the most innocent person I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh, I’m hardly innocent. Come on.”

  “No, look. All of this was my fault. You have to understand that, okay? I was taking out my frustrations and fears on you. Letting my past make me suspicious. Letting it make me crazy.”

  I sighed hard, as though trying to clear my lungs of all the poison I’d been breathing lately. “You got hurt by an abuser, Alex. You told me about it. I should have realized, when you told me your story, that you needed some proof I wasn’t keeping secrets. Hell, I should have told you everything right then. Even if it had made you leave me, at least we wouldn’t have gone through all this extra pain. But damn it, I was scared. I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “I didn’t want to lose you either,” he said. “But you can’t trust me. I can’t trust myself. There’s this thing inside me, Cam, something that is terrified of secrets. Something that is so scared the next big surprise is right around the corner, and it’s going to be a surprise so awful, it burns down the world. Why should I inflict that on anyone? Better that I should go back home, be a hermit, work in my garden.”

  “Lie low, in other words.”

  He nodded. “Flat on the ground.”

  We were standing a safe distance apart. No one watching would have known what we’d been through. Wouldn’t have realized how close we had become. Not with this distance between us.

  I stepped forward. I was tired of that distance.

  Now there was only an inch between us. I was close enough to feel the heat of his chest. One deep breath and we would have been touching.

  “You spent three days after we broke up, trying to save me. Not taking credit for it, not making a big deal about it. Sneaking around in the background, doing the job.”

  He shook his head. “Doing the job I should have been doing from day one.”

  “Look, I know you. You stand there talking about what image Secret Reader wants to portray, but what about your own image? You’re trying to make everybody believe you’re too damaged to function. Too damaged to be in love. But I don’t believe that, Alex. I think you’re trying to keep a secret from me.”

  Trying so hard not to look in my eyes, he said, “All right, detective, what’s the big secret?”

  “That you’re good. That you deserve to be loved.”

  “I don’t deserve it, that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t come here hoping I could have another chance with you, because I knew—”

  I laughed. “Even now, you can’t be honest with yourself. You came here precisely to see if there was another chance for the two of us. You’re just too ashamed of yourself to admit it.”

  “If you only knew—”

  “I do know. You want to be the big gruff hermit, that’s fine. But I know, underneath, you hurt just as much as I do. And for such similar reasons. Life hasn’t been fair to us, Alex. We’ve tried to keep it to ourselves, we’ve tried to make everyone think we’re okay. But the sad truth is… That we’re telling the truth. We are okay. We’ll never believe it, maybe, but I have come so far from where I was back then. The fact that I have a life I’m scared to lose, is the proof. And you, you’re clearly not the same man you were before. So just confess: You do deserve love.”

  “I don’t want to break up with you,” he said. “Can I take it back? Can I take it all back?”

  “You can take me back,” I said, sliding my arms around him.

  Forgiveness is such a strange thing. Is it something that you do, or something that you feel? We pretend it’s an action. After all, we say we can hold a grudge, like it’s something in our hand, something heavy, like a dirt-covered chunk of stone.

  We had a lot of stones to let go of. A lot of past, weighing us down.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, his whisper hoarse and hot against my throat.

  Forgiveness makes it sound like someone has sinned against you. So maybe that was the wrong word for what I did with Alex. Maybe I didn’t forgive him at all. Maybe I recognized him instead. Maybe this had nothing to do with guilt and apologies and grudges, and everything to do with seeing the man you love, as he is, as he truly is.

  “Don’t,” I whispered back, “you haven’t done anything to be sorry for,” and he started to say something else, and I started to respond, and I think our words had stopped meaning what they were supposed to, and had begun to mean something much simpler.

  I love you. Don’t leave me. Nothing can ever take us apart again.

  When did I drag him back home? Who can say. One minute we were in the park, and the next he was on my sofa, and I was struggling with his shirt, trying to bare his body the way he’d bared his soul.

  “Be gentle with me,” I told him later, when he hovered above me. “It’s my first time.”

  A delighted laugh. “Mine too.”

  He understood. He knew perfectly well what I meant. That I had never been with someone as I am before. That this was my first time being with someone without any lies, without any secrets.

  We kept our eyes open the entire time. Each of us desperate to see the other, every second.

  I cried out in pleasure, a sound of absolute honesty.

  30

  Alex

  “No, I think it’s a great tie,” said Cam. “If that’s the one you like, you should wear it.”

  I scowled, first at the mirror, then at him. “I thought we promised no more secrets, no more lies.”

  “I’m pretty sure we only meant great big lies about our past, not lies about your horrible taste in menswear.”

  I spun around. “Aha! I knew you hated the tie! Why did you let me buy it, then?”

  Cam chuckled and came over to me, his own collar open, his freshly-pressed pants still laid out on the bed. He reached up and began to knot my tie for me. “Because you looked so happy when you found it. I figured the palm trees reminded you of California. But it turns out the secret you’ve been keeping from me, is that you’re one of those old men who likes wearing botanical prints. Next it’ll be a Hawaiian shirt, and I’ll never be seen with you in public again.”

  I looked at myself in the mirror again, and straightened the knot a bit. “Are you nervous?”

  His reflection behind me smiled. “Me? Presenting myself to the reading public for the first time since the scandal? Of course I’m nervous. Scared to death. What if Secret Reader shows up in the flesh? What if she has some horrible new fact about me I forgot to mention? Like that time I drank directly out of the milk carton?”

  He was joking, but if there was one thing I’d learned, it was that Cam dealt with stress by making jokes. For a man who was used to hiding almost everything real about himself, it was one of the few ways he had left to conceal his discomfort.

  “She won’t be there,” I said. “I can assure you of that.”

  “I know. You’re right. I’m worried over nothing.”

  “No,” I said, “I mean, I can assure you she won’t be there.”

  He looked at me strangely. “And why is that?”

  “She’s visiting an aunt in Chicago this week.”

  Now his eyes narrowed. “Okay, how do you know that?”

  I grinned. “Just trust me. I’m never letting her bother you again. But part of that is, knowing where she is at all times.”

  There was no point in being mysterious, except I knew that he would love it, love the sense that I had done something truly shifty to save him.

  The truth, as ever, was more prosaic: A meeting
between me, Micah, and Secret Reader, where Micah displayed all the evidence against her, and explained exactly which laws she had broken, and how much time she would serve for it…and how much we would be suing for, at the same time. Used to weak authors who broke down in fear, she had no experience dealing with people who could actually put her in jail, and so she had made certain promises to Micah, which included weekly check-ins.

  She was never going to hurt Cam—or anyone else—ever again.

  Still, I sensed there was something even deeper underlying Cam’s worry, and I turned back to him.

  “So are you going to show up half-naked to your big book-release party?”

  He glanced down at his bare legs. “At least it’s the good half. Are you sure we have to go to this thing?”

  “Considering Jane will kill you if you don’t go, then yes, I think we have to show up. You wouldn’t want Jane to go to jail, would you?”

  “No jury would convict her,” he said. “Not after all I put her through. She’s the best agent in the world. I can’t believe she got the publisher to stick with me through all this.”

  “But you’re scared no one else will stick with you,” I offered, and that had him nodding.

  Was that a glistening in his eyes? Here was one topic sure to get him emotional, the idea of what the world thought of him.

  Even now, even after the scandal had died down, he worried.

  But I knew just the thing to take his mind off it. And what do you know, he was perfectly dressed for it.

  I knelt down before him.

  “Oh, c’mon, Alex, is this really the time…oh. Hm. Yeah, maybe it is the time.”

  We had come a long way from that first night together. We were two different people back then, people who didn’t know how to trust one another. Even in our attraction and budding affection, there had been a deep suspicion and distrust.

  Trust was a lot better. When you’re with someone you trust, it’s different than anything else you’ve ever had.

  Cam made me realize that I’d never truly felt safe with anyone before. Even long before my experience with…with that actor, whose name I didn’t even want to think while kneeling here pleasuring my boyfriend—even before that, I didn’t trust anyone. I had always been suspicious. Fearful of getting hurt.