A Matter of Time 03 - 04 (Volume 2) (MM)

by Mary Calmes

  Sunday morning he was gone when I woke up at noon, still in my shoes and jacket from the night before. I was hurt that he hadn't woken me, hurt that he hadn't moved me, and hurt that he had abandoned me so easily. When I called him it went straight to voicemail. I made sure I was gone before he got home. I had dinner with his family and he ended up being the one in trouble for not calling to say he was working and couldn't make it. I went to my office afterwards and then to Evan and Loudon's for late-night dessert. Evan scolded me for being a baby, told me to just get up the guts to make the first move toward reconciliation.

  "What courage?" I asked him. "It's easy to be the one that gives in."

  "No," he assured me. "That's the hard part."

  Aja agreed with Evan when I talked to her on the phone.

  "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face," she said.

  "What does that even mean?"

  "You know what it means. "

  "Well, yeah, I know what it means, but what? I have to give in or I'm too stubborn for my own good?"

  "Something like that."

  "But why do I have to give in every time?"

  "You don't, not every time. But maybe this one time or this first time you do or should."

  I groaned.

  "Don't be such a baby."

  Which was exactly what Evan had said.

  But I just couldn't back down or give in or let it go. It was juvenile and stupid but I played the cat-and-mouse game with him, with no end in sight. I took the silliness to a new low by rearranging my schedule. I knew he had to get up early to go to work and so I stayed at the office past the time I knew he could stay awake and still be expected to function the following day. I came home when I knew he would be gone, returning home to sleep and then get up late and shower. I worked for myself, so my time was flexible; I just moved everything around to accommodate the freeze-out of my lover. This went on for three days, into the following week.

  So he was working late and I was not returning his latest phone call when my friend Tracy called me. He needed to bring a buddy to his self-esteem workshop because they were having group that evening and people were supposed to share with someone in the room that knew them. The idea was that a person from your life, a friend, could call bullshit on something you said. Only a friend could really say if you were telling the truth or not.

  I tried so hard to weasel my way out of going to group once I knew what I was getting into, but by then it was much too late. I was good and stuck at the YMCA with him.

  Group is exactly what it sounds like. You sit around in a circle and talk about what's going on in your life. In Tracy's case, he had to say what he did the week before that made him feel empowered. He seemed nervous, the way he was shifting around in his chair, doing that thing where he chewed on the inside of his cheek and squinted his left eye. I was squinting at him, and he interrupted his monologue about how he had not gone home with the first guy that asked him at the club on Saturday night.

  "What?"

  I shook my head.

  "No." He took a breath. "I'm being taught that when I feel upset I need to confront the person immediately and find out the situation, instead of assuming it's all my fault."

  "What do I always tell you?" I asked him.

  He scowled at me.

  "C'mon, tell me."

  He rolled his eyes. "You always say that I don't know my own worth and that I shouldn't go home with just anybody—I'm special, they should be special."

  "Precisely." I sighed, turning forward, stretching my legs out in front of me and crossing them at the ankles.

  "Tracy," the group leader said to him. "How do you feel about what—I'm sorry, I can't read your name—is it Jordan?"

  "It's Jory," I told him.

  He smiled and looked back at Tracy. "How do you feel about what Jory just said?"

  "I don't know. I know he means it, but I don't feel special.

  He can say it because—I mean, look at him, he's like perfect."

  I shot him a look that I hope conveyed the full extent of my annoyance.

  "C'mon, Jory, you know you are."

  He was exhausting. "So are you. Do you ever—T, you are the sweetest, nicest guy with the best heart and—"

  "Jory, nobody cares about my internal organs—they only care about the outside and outside... I'm not you."

  I shrugged. "So what?"

  "Jory, I go to the gym as many times a week as you and I'll never have your body."

  This was so boring. "You need to meet somebody nice, not somebody at the bar."

  He threw up his hands and turned to the group leader.

  "You see, always we go back to this."

  "And what is that, Tracy?" the leader asked.

  "He wants me to meet somebody nice, meanwhile he screws the entire city of Chicago."

  "Is that true, Jory?"

  I just looked at him. Marc, the group leader, seemed like a nice guy, easygoing, with a gentle voice. But I was not there to be psychoanalyzed. I was there to support Tracy. "No."

  "Perhaps we have some of our own self-esteem issues to work through."

  I looked at Tracy.

  He looked back at me before his face suddenly cracked into a huge smile.

  "You're such an asshole," I assured him.

  He laughed so hard he fell over into my lap. Everyone was looking at us.

  After the session, when everyone was hanging around talking, I was leaning next to the door waiting for Tracy when Marc and another guy approached me.

  "Jory."

  I waited for whatever he was going to say.

  "We would love to invite you to join our group."

  I nodded. "Thank you."

  "So we meet every—"

  "Oh no, I'm not gonna come." I smiled at them, moving off the wall as Tracy started toward me. "It's just nice that you invited me. Excuse me."

  I stepped by them and Tracy smiled before he put an arm around my neck, pulling me in close.

  "Thanks for coming, J, you were a really good sport."

  I grunted.

  "I didn't mean to embarrass you."

  "You didn't." I yawned, giving him a brief hug before shoving him back away from me. "But for the record, it's just me and Sam now, okay?"

  "It is?"

  "Yeah. I'll have you over for dinner so you can really meet him."

  "That'd be great."

  I smiled, then gave him a pat on the shoulder before I turned to leave. I was on the street heading toward the subway when I heard my name called. When I looked around, I saw Aaron Sutter standing beside his car, in the rain, under an umbrella. I jogged over to him and when I was close enough, he reached for the lapel of my peacoat and yanked me forward.

  "Hi." I smiled at him, running my hands through my wet hair. "What are you doing here?"

  He just stared at me, at my face, absorbing me with his eyes.

  "Aaron?"

  He dropped the umbrella, put his hands on my face, and kissed me. It was so spontaneous, like he never was, that it caught me off guard. He usually asked if something was okay or not, announced all his intentions, and received permission or not. That he was just suddenly kissing me, on the street, out of the blue, his tongue sliding over my lips seeking entrance... it was a shock.

  "Aaron." I said his name as I took hold of his wrists and pulled his hands off me. I took a step back before he could recover. "What's going on?"

  "Jory," he sighed, his eyes soft. "I'm sorry for everything.

  I'm sorry all the way back to the first time I took you to bed and was careful instead of how I really wanted to be. I'm sorry for not telling you everything I was ever thinking, and I'm sorry for ever making you feel like you were less than perfect just the way you are." He smiled quickly, bit his lip before raking his hair back from his face. "See, I want you back, and I'll do whatever you want to make that happen."

  All I could do was stare at him.

  "I should have told you that all I did when I was aw
ay was think about you. I mean, I missed talking to you and laughing with you and arguing with you and being in bed with you and just all of it. You make my life fun, you make me laugh at myself, and you infuse my house with this warmth that is just gone now. I mean, even my butler misses you. He told me I wasn't such an asshole when you were there."

  I laughed at that. I had really liked his butler; he was very sarcastic with a dry but wicked sense of humor.

  He reached out and captured my face in his hands again.

  "Jory, I don't give a shit about anything else, I don't care if you fall down drunk every night we go out, as long as I get to take you home with me."

  I took another step back from him. "What are you doing here?"

  He looked at me oddly. "I just unburdened my soul to you and you want to know what I'm doing here?"

  "Yeah."

  His voice had a thread of chill to it. "I called Dylan, she said you were here giving Tracy support."

  I nodded.

  "Could you please respond to what I just said to you?"

  I took another step away from him. "I appreciate what you said and I'm flattered, but you and I are over as anything else but friends."

  "Jory."

  "C'mon, Aaron." I squinted at him. "You know that."

  "Jory—"

  "If you really look at us... you know I'm not the one for you."

  His eyes were scared. "Come home and talk to me."

  One more step back and I was successfully out of arm's reach. "I can't do that, you know I can't. There's no way."

  His entire expression hardened. "Why? Because of that detective? How does he rate a second chance but I don't? I didn't leave you for years and then just show up one day out of the blue. I never had you take a bullet for me! I never hurt you the way he did!"

  "Because you can't," I said, because it was better that he knew so he could be done with me.

  "What?"

  "You could never hurt me the same way he could."

  And we were both silent, letting my words seep in, and he saw suddenly the size of the chasm between us. I had to make him see it so he understood that there was no way to get back across.

  He took a breath through his nose, stood rod-straight, and looked at me with flat eyes. "I could never hurt you like that because you never loved me enough to let it."

  I nodded slowly.

  "God, Jory, you really love him."

  "He's the only man I've ever loved."

  And with that, he left.

  He didn't offer me a ride, which was a relief, and he didn't look at me again. He just got back into his car and left me alone, standing on the sidewalk in the rain. There was no other way for it to have ended.

  * * * *

  I remembered halfway home that I still had my cashmere trench coat at Dane's office. I was way too cold, soaked through every layer I had on, to catch the subway and not end up getting pneumonia. So I took the detour downtown to Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan. I still had my key card for the after-hours elevator and another for the front door. When I got off on the twenty-fourth floor, I went immediately to the glass door and knelt to unlock the bottom. I was surprised when it swung forward. Someone was dead. Dane would murder whoever had forgotten to lock the door. I was betting on his latest new secretary, Kristin. She had seemed perky when I talked to her on the phone and Dane had called her energetic. It wasn't one of his better compliments.

  Walking by the front desk where Piper usually sat, I saw a light on toward the back. It wasn't in Dane's office, so I realized someone was burning the midnight oil. Maybe it was Miles Brown. I slowly took off my lace-ups, not wanting to track water across the marble floors. I would slip up behind the architect and scare the crap out of him. He screamed like a girl, and I knew this from the many other times I had taken years off his life by jumping out at him. It was a lot of fun.

  But when I started down the hall, I realized Sherman Cogan was in his office instead. When I poked my head in, he turned from where he stood beside the wall and looked at me. His smile was instant.

  "Hello there, stranger," he said warmly. "Come for your old job back?"

  "No." I shook my head, slipping into his office. "Just came for a new coat."

  "I see—looks like you could use one. What did you do, stand outside for an hour?"

  I shrugged, walking over beside him to look at the blueprints on his wall. "It's pouring out there."

  "Don't I know it." He chuckled, looking back at the blueprints. "That's why I suggested to Melissa that she meet me here for dinner. We're going to the Chop House."

  I nodded.

  He turned and looked at me. "Would you like to join us?

  Melissa was just saying to me a few weeks ago that she never gets to see her Jory anymore."

  I liked Melissa Cogan a lot—she was funny and smart and could talk to me about chili dogs and sports and four-star restaurants and the ballet all at the same time. "Not tonight, I feel like a drowned rat. But soon. I'll give her a call."

  "Do that," he urged me, patting my squishy shoulder before looking back at the blueprints.

  "What is this?"

  "Project Miles is working on. I didn't feel like walking back and forth from my office to his, so I had the guys make me an oversized set and tack them up in here."

  "From what, a digital file?"

  "No," he scoffed. "Listen to this—those guys at Delmar Construction only had one hard copy, can you believe it? How do you have only one set of plans to turn over?" He rolled his eyes. "So I had Jill take pictures of the other set and put it up in here."

  I went cold.

  "Hilarious, right?"

  I bolted down the hall to the office of Miles Brown, opened the door, and turned on the light. There on his wall was the exact duplicate of what was in Sherman's office, except the one I was looking at was in pieces and the other was in long sheets. And I was an idiot, because it had been staring me right in the face the whole time.

  "Jory?" Sherman called out to me. "Buddy? You all right?"

  The answer was no. I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

  * * * *

  The drive out to Glendale Heights gave me time to think and put things together and just breathe. When I was almost there, my phone rang and I saw that it was Sam.

  "Hi," I answered quickly, distractedly.

  "Hi? This is all you have to say?"

  "Sam, I really don't—"

  "So where is it you live now?" he cut me off sharply.

  "Sam—"

  "What? It's a legitimate question. I haven't seen you since Sunday morning. It's Thursday night."

  "No, I know, but could we talk about this later 'cause—"

  "If you wanted to know, if you cared at all, I'm at Hooligans with Pat and Chaz."

  "Okay," I said, trying to get him off the phone.

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm on my way to Glendale Heights."

  "For what?"

  "To see Susan Reid."

  He scoffed.

  "What's funny?"

  "That you think that you have clearance at eight o'clock at night to see someone under criminal psychiatric evaluation.

  You're a goddamn riot."

  "Oh." I was deflating. As usual, I hadn't thought that far ahead.

  "I'm curious, though—why would you need to see her anyway?"

  "It's a long story, but I think maybe—"

  "Look, I know we fought but this ain't the way to fix it.

  Ignoring me is not going to make anything go away, it's just prolonging the big blowout."

  "Are we gonna have a big blowout?"

  "Oh fuck, yeah."

  "And then what?"

  "Then what—what?"

  "What happens after the blowout?"

  "I dunno... God willing we'll have hours of makeup sex and then go on."

  "Oh."

  "Oh?"

  "No, I just thought... I don't know what I thought."

  "You thought what? This was
the end?"

  "I dunno."

  "Oh for fuck's sake, Jory, can you stop being such a goddamn drama queen? We're gonna fight, we're gonna disagree, it doesn't mean shit. You're gonna hafta deal with my friends. I told Pat and Chaz—which is why I'm here, by the way," he clarified, "that they don't hafta kiss your ass—"

  "Sam."

  "'Cause that's my job, after all," he said, his voice deep and sexy.

  "Sam."

  He chuckled. "But they better be good to you, or we're done. So they get it, they like ya, they're just not sure how to bond, so we'll fish next weekend and see how it goes."

  I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

  "Jory?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "Pardon you what?"

  "What'd you say?"

  "When?"

  "About next weekend."

  "Oh, we're gonna fish."

  "Fish?"

  "Yes."

  "Like with a pole and stuff—all day sitting outside?"

  "Yep."

  "Oh God," I groaned.

  He chuckled and the sound rolled right through me. I missed him like crazy. "Baby, I know your friends like me, I just need to get comfortable with them too. I'll work on it, you'll work on it, and we'll go on."

  "Jesus, Sam, you're such a grown-up."

  "Somebody has to be."

  I let it go. "I thought maybe you wanted out."

  "Never want out."

  "Okay."

  "I wanna be in."

  Already I knew where this was going. "Uh-huh."

  "Like inside you."

  "I got it."

  "When?"

  "When what?"

  "When do I get my makeup sex?"

  "Was that the blowout? I thought you said it was gonna be big."

  "Fuck the blowout. I want you back in my bed tonight. Do you understand?"

  "I understand." I sighed. "After I talk to Susan Reid. I'll just go out there and sit and wait. Maybe they'll let me in. I'm cute and nonthreatening. It could work."