The Price of Inertia

by Lily Zante

  I want to talk to Mari. Maybe talk is going too far. I’m curious to gauge her mood. See if she feels different, because I do. It’s either my story or her. That’s all I have in my head these days. Now that I’ve fixed the problem with my story, my mind wanders over to Mari and stays there. Hard to forget what happened between us. Harder still to not want more.

  But as I head towards the kitchen to have my lunch, I hear Jamie’s voice. He’s still here. They’re laughing. I catch the tail end of their conversation; something about a party. As I walk in, there’s an awkwardness that wasn’t there earlier. My paranoia kicks in. They’ve been talking about me. That son of a bitch has been laughing at me behind my back. Mari doesn’t look my way. Maybe she’s been laughing too.

  “Is this mine?” I ask, pulling a plate out of the fridge, even though I never ask her. It’s a given.

  “Yes, that’s yours. Did you want—”

  “Thanks.” I cut her short, take my food and leave.

  Screw that lunchtime conversation with her.

  I eat my lunch alone in my study, feeling none of the exuberance I felt before. Highs and lows. That’s the problem with getting involved. I force myself to look over my final few chapters, but every so often I am reminded of Mari and Jamie in the kitchen and it guts me.

  I make an attempt to write the ending down, but it’s not that simple now. The words don’t flow out. They are stalled and stilted. I pore over every word, every character motivation. Every line of dialog. I doubt myself and second-guess each line. I’m back to being stuck again.

  I put a huge line through the page, then crumple it up and hurl the ball across the room. I try to write again and still the words don’t come easy. I see Mari in my mind’s eye. She’s in her nightshirt, teasing me. I close my eyes and play it out all over again.

  Hell, no.

  That’s not going to help. Determined to push on, I scribble down more words, any words, even words that don’t make sense.

  She’s on my lap. Gyrating. Teasing. Playing with me. My fist slams onto the desk. This is not good.

  I can’t get the vision out of my head. She’s sitting on me. My cock in her hand. What would it be like to have her naked beneath me?

  No.

  I strike a line through the almost empty sheet of paper.

  I try again.

  Close my eyes.

  Breathe deeply.

  Try to conjure my characters in my head. Try to see what they do and why, and what it was I had figured out for them. I try to write again. A noise in the hallway catches my attention. I hold my breath and wait. For her.

  Mari usually walks around, cleaning, decluttering, polishing as she goes about her daily tasks, but now every noise has me looking at the door, wondering if she will come in.

  Waiting for her next move. Hoping she will come in, because we need to talk about what happened.

  I wait and suck in another breath but her footsteps peter away.

  I hiss out a breath.

  I can’t focus because my mind is consumed by her. I never know when she might come in and tempt me again. I spend my days and nights wondering what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling, and what she wants from me. Because I know exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and what I want from her.

  Fuck.

  I smack my pen down. Try some positive self-talk. Tell myself that I’m making progress.

  Not when it comes to your writing.

  I’m making progress of a different sort. With Mari.

  So where is she now? Now that’s she’s set my blood on fire.

  I have another boner I don’t need.

  This can’t go on.

  Her.

  Me.

  Us.

  Whatever this hidden, secret, lustful thing between us is.

  The angry buzz of the vacuum cleaner kills the quiet, and now I can’t work at all. It’s not the noise, because that hasn’t bothered me before.

  It’s her.

  The thought of her in that other room, getting on with her work. Why is she able to get on with her tasks, and I can’t?

  I need to block her out.

  An angry groan escapes my mouth, anger and frustration puffing up like a souffle. I walk around the room, needing to expel the energy that’s been building up inside me like a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

  Three hours later, I haven’t written a thing. I can’t focus. I can’t think. I can’t make progress. That’s what counts. That’s what matters. A finished book. Not how much stamina or muscle definition I have. Or the number of push-ups I can do. Or Mari swanning around the house and keeping her distance, then turning into a vixen when I least expect it.

  This can’t go on.

  I’ve turned into a frustrated, horny loser.

  I throw my pen down and stand up with such force that the chair is knocked back. I’m going to put an end to this, and now. I walk out towards the source of the vacuum cleaner’s noise. She’s in the TV room and looks up as soon as I walk in. For a long drawn-out moment, I find myself falling into those dark irises, rekindling the fires of last night. They burn bright. A shiver rolls through me as I recall her breast on my lips, her sated sigh as she came, clinging to me as if she would never let go.

  She switches the vacuum off. “Yes?” It’s a cold, hard, clinical ‘yes’. Almost headmistressy in its authority. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to revisit last night. It’s off topic.

  It propels me to say what I need to. “This can’t go on. This—whatever it is we’re doing.”

  Her eyes widen. I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve dared to bring up the unspoken, or because of what I’ve said. “You distract me, and I can’t have that.”

  She’s silent, as if the force of my words has knocked the life out of her. I need her to say something. I need her to tell me I’m wrong. I need her to say we can continue. She helped me last night. She helped me make new memories. She listened and was there for me.

  Each time I look at this woman, I see something new. She’s a good person. A sexy, irresistible woman who cares about me. She’s the perfect combination, and I’m still too afraid to go for it. “Do you understand?” I ask her when she doesn’t say a word.

  She stares at me defiantly. “You make it sound as if I’ve been the one pushing this.”

  “I didn’t strip down to my shirt,” I remind her.

  “I was washing myself in my room when you walked in,” she asserts.

  “You stood there letting me have a good look.”

  She lifts her chin, because she knows I’m right. “You rolled your pen all over me.”

  “You took my pen, and then you claimed you found it.”

  Her mouth twists. Is it only me who isn’t good at communicating with women? I’m a master of the written word, but I clam up when in person. “And because you think I took your pen—”

  “Didn’t you?” It’s the second time she’s refuting that and it makes me stop and backtrack. Is there a possibility that she didn’t intentionally take it? What if it was an accident, as she claims? Then I’d be left looking like the fool. I only used the pen on her because I believed she was playing games with me.

  Fuck. The longer she looks at me like that, as if I’m clearly delusional and desperate, the more I know it was an accident.

  My twisted writerly mind jumped to the wrong conclusion completely.

  “You came to me in the study,” I remind her. I’m grateful that she did. I relive that moment many times. Her skin, her softness, her wetness, her breathless sighs, these very things I can’t erase—nor want to.

  “I came downstairs because the noise of the thunder woke me up. I made a mistake, and one I sorely regret.”

  She made a mistake? I was her fucking mistake?

  “It’s not like me to do things like that. I’m not that type of woman.”

  “I’m not that type of man.”

  For a reason I can’t fathom, she looks nervous. “Are yo
u …”

  I’m too busy staring at her neck, and her lips and eyes, and the parts I want to kiss, to notice her hesitation. “Am I what?” I ask.

  “Are you going to replace me?” The tone of her voice snaps my attention away from her lips and to her eyes. She looks timid. “I can’t lose this job.”

  I tilt my head. “You won’t lose this job.” Her irrational fear makes her weak. I like her when she’s the other way; a woman who knows what she wants and sets out to get it. The woman before me is nothing like her. Mari wrings her hands together.

  “I wasn’t thinking. I saw you all alone, and you looked sad. I shouldn’t have come into the study.” There is fear and trepidation in her voice, something new and unlike the wild creature who seduced me.

  “I asked you to come in.”

  She presses her lips together and gives a tiny shake of her head as she looks down. Her heated cheeks are the first sign that she is embarrassed. This other Mari unsettles me. I’m so used to her being bold and brash, and in charge.

  In control.

  I can’t help wondering if this is an act, but then I remember what Rob told me about her getting laid off her other job abruptly. I’m not familiar with that type of life-changing event. I can’t relate. “I shouldn’t have even been there.”

  She’s so worried about the lousy job. “You won’t lose your job. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  She won’t lift her gaze to me, but her cheeks are even more red. “Thank you.”

  “But we can’t do this.” Even as I tell her this, I don’t really mean it. Not deep down inside. Not really.

  “You’re right,” she says, staring at me. “We can’t.”

  “We need boundaries.”

  “We just need to stop.”

  Her saying that, making the decision, annoys me.

  “I need to finish my book—”

  “And I need to finish my chores.”

  I was about to explain to her that I spend most of my waking hours thinking of her, but she’s turned her back to me and switched on the vacuum cleaner again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  MARI

  * * *

  I want to bury my face in shame, but I vacuum away, needing to be busy, and praying that we won’t cross paths again today. Ward leaves the room after making me feel like a cheap slut.

  I turn on the vacuum cleaner, not because I’m in a hurry to clean the house, but because I need him to know that I’m okay, that he hasn’t hurt me, that I don’t care.

  But he has hurt me.

  And I do care.

  I care very much because nobody has ever made me feel dirt cheap before, yet Ward Maddox has accomplished this so easily. Except he’s wrong to think I instigated this turn of events. He can’t know and won’t ever know that the reason I didn’t rat out Jamie was to protect him.

  And yet, I haven’t been an angel myself. I didn’t help things with my look-at-me-in-a-bra move.

  Somewhere between Dale cheating on me, and Ward having some inexplicable crazy-as-heck effect on me, I’ve lost my self-esteem and become a needy woman. I have become the type of woman I used to scorn; a woman who uses her sexuality to attract men.

  But it’s less about the attraction and more about the power. Having someone like Ward—a rich, famous and reclusive man who barely knows me—take an interest in me is great for my self-esteem.

  After this exchange, I revert to how I was before, with my previous keeping away from him stance. I don’t hide from him like before.

  These stupid games we play have to stop, but I wasn’t prepared for him to stop them now, so soon.

  In the days that follow, I keep my distance again. He does, too. He’s gone quiet and back to his reclusive self, only without him hanging around in the TV room, slouching all over the couch, making a mess with all the chip packages.

  We both get on with this new state of affairs.

  When Jamie asks me again about Raleigh’s party a few days later, I tell him I can make it. As well as getting me out of the house, it’s going to be a great opportunity to see what my friends are up to, and to see if I might have better luck looking for jobs where they work.

  On Friday before he leaves, Jamie confirms about the party tomorrow and offers to come by in a taxi to pick me up at eight o’clock. I catch a glimpse of Ward walking past the door, and a sense of smug satisfaction comforts me.

  I’ve already made up my mind to wear my sexiest dress, and I hope he’ll be skulking around to see me in it.

  * * *

  WARD

  * * *

  “When can I expect it?” Rob asks when I tell him that I’m still stuck on the ending. I clutch the phone tighter. “Soon.” But I don’t know how I’m going to get any writing done today, knowing that Mari is going out with Jamie tonight. I haven’t been able to make any progress all day.

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “I’m working on it. There are still some things I need to iron out.”

  “Sure thing, buddy. I was under the impression that you were almost there.” I sense an unasked question lingering behind his words.

  “You’ll have it as soon as it’s done.” I hang up. I have made no progress ever since I warned Mari that we had to stop. But now I realize the real issue. It’s not that I’ve stopped thinking of Mari. In fact, the problem is much worse. I have blue balls and I am even more frustrated than ever.

  The solution wasn’t to avoid one another, it was to get together and talk it out. It was to do something about it. The pent-up frustration is now at exploding point and my manuscript is no further along. I grow more miserable and frustrated with each day.

  She’s doing exactly as I asked, she’s keeping her distance, but not seeing her is killing me. Things are so much worse, not better.

  I slam the phone down and squeeze the soft padding near my eyebrows. It’s full of tension. My eyes feel sore. My neck feels stiff. I can’t sleep properly. My brain churns with plot points that I hate again and characters who are too stupid to live.

  I hate my story. I told Rob I was almost done, and I was, but now I detest everything I’ve written. It stinks. It’s boring. It’s drivel.

  Worse, Mari is going out with Jamie tonight.

  I blame Rob for putting these two people in my life.

  They’ve caused me more problems than I care to count. Everything about this current situation, about her and him, messes with my mind.

  I should burrow away in my writing cave but if I do that, my mind will be on Mari leaving. Jamie said he was coming at eight to pick her up. I resolve to be in the gym at that time, working up a sweat and venting my frustration, but when the time comes, I hover around in the kitchen.

  When the doorbell rings, Mari doesn’t see me loitering in the hallway when she rushes to answer the door. But I see her. It’s pretty fucking hard to miss her in that sexy short white dress with pencil point heels.

  I see the back of her dress. It is low enough that it comes down all the way to her lower back. I hiss out a breath. She’s not even wearing a bra.

  This revelation smacks me in my gut.

  She says something to Jamie, and by the time I’ve realized that her voice is getting louder and that she’s coming into the kitchen, it’s too late for me to hide.

  Too damn late.

  She almost walks into me skulking in the shadows. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

  My mouth hangs open. I want to disappear. Before I have time to collect my thoughts and find something to say, she sashays past me again.

  I hear laughter, and then the door slams shut. I kick the door closest to me. Screw the gym. I search for junk food to fix my mood and find chocolate, and a bag of chips, and some cans of fizzy drink.

  This evening, I’m going to do nothing but eat and watch TV. But as I flick through channels automatically, not watching anything, my mind is in chaos. Soon enough, the floor is littered with wrappers and empty cans.

  I stay
up until two in the morning, waiting for her to return. I wait and wait, and when it turns to four o’clock, my stomach is in knots. She’s with Jamie, probably in his bed and she has no intention of coming back tonight.

  Fuck her.

  And fuck Jamie.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MARI

  * * *

  I must be a walking magnet for men to treat me badly, but I never seem to learn my lesson. First Dale, now Ward. Jamie is right. I feel ashamed. Well, I’m going to wash Ward right out of my hair. Just like I did Dale.

  I twist and turn as I admire myself in the mirror. These heels are going to be killer to walk in but they make my legs look long, and accentuate my calf muscles. I turn around and glance over my shoulder to check out the dress from behind.

  It’s low at the back and thank goodness I remembered to bring my backless bra which gives me the confidence to wear this without worrying that I’ll have an accident and reveal all. I had to pick my dress up from Jamie’s place because I had no going out clothes here. I feel homeless with my belongings scattered between Jamie’s and Ward’s homes. I need to get my own place and start over.

  Still, I’m looking forward to tonight. I haven’t dressed up like this for months and now I’ve gone all out. But as I take another look at myself, I’m worried that it’s too much. The dress is too fancy, too sexy, and the heels are killer.

  It’s only Jamie.

  Yet I’m not dressing up for him.

  I want Ward to see me before I leave. I rush to get the door when Jamie arrives. His face lights up the moment he sets eyes on me, but I don’t pay much attention to his compliments because I’m trying to figure out how to get Ward to see me. I can’t walk into the study, which is where he most likely is. But he sometimes hangs out in the kitchen.

  “Just a moment,” I tell Jamie, and before he can say a word, I head into the kitchen, not because I need something, but because I can almost sense, can almost feel Ward is nearby.