Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger

by Beth Harbison

There was only one man.

  He ran his hands up under my shirt and unhooked my bra in a single movement. When he cupped my breasts with his heat, I was gone. There was no stopping this, and I knew exactly where it was going. Obviously even an idiot from another planet could have seen where this was going, and I was going with it.

  He pulled my shirt off over my head, and I let my bra drop to the floor.

  He bent down and kissed my shoulder, my collarbone, then took my nipple in his mouth and sucked, first one side, then the other. Normally this doesn’t do much for me, and I don’t know what Frank does right that everyone else did wrong, but it was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

  Meanwhile, he unbuttoned my jeans and shoved them down over my hips and down my thighs until they heaped at my feet on the floor and I stepped out of them.

  There was something incredibly hot about standing before him, all but naked, completely vulnerable, while he was dressed and working my body with his hands and mouth like I was just there for him to devour.

  He moved me over to the sofa and I fell back against it, completely unresisting when he knelt in front of me and pulled my plain white panties off. (Had I known this was coming, I would have worn one of the cute pair I had from Victoria’s Secret.) And then I was completely naked, completely at his mercy.

  And he was not a sexually merciful man.

  Lucky for me.

  He put his hands on my inner thighs, parting them farther, opening me totally to him, then he kissed my stomach, my hips, my thighs, and everywhere but the place that ached the most for him. He was good at this, better than most, driving up the need until it reached a fever pitch. I didn’t know what he’d been doing all these years—and I really didn’t want to know—but he clearly hadn’t been sitting around doing nothing but reading the Financial Times.

  I arched against him, reaching to pull him closer until I felt his tongue flicker lightly against me. Then it was back to the tender spot between my pelvis and leg, where he ran his tongue slowly down, following the map closer and closer to my need until, suddenly, and without teasing, he took me in. And this time he did devour me. He held me in his hands at the hips and locked me in place with his mouth until I couldn’t stand the anticipation anymore.

  “I need you,” I rasped, clutching at his shirt and tugging it to pull it off him.

  He helped, and tossed it aside, then did the same with his jeans, leaving his briefs on as he knelt before me again.

  I closed my eyes and reveled in it for a moment, before what he was doing could no longer be enough, and I pulled him up to me, catching his briefs with my toes and pushing them down out of the way.

  He met my gaze and hesitated just for a moment before pressing into me, never losing eye contact. Then he moved down very slowly to kiss me, still looking at me, and me looking back. There was communication there, without a word. Understanding of something inside, though the questions of past and future remained.

  There followed an intense moment I could neither define nor turn away from, before I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, closing my eyes and willing him to fill me up and take me over.

  We held fast and didn’t let go, never losing that contact even when he moved me on top of him. I cupped his face with my hands, gazing at the man I realized I had so much more to learn about, and kissed each temple, the top of his head, then his mouth.

  “This is amazing,” I whispered.

  He rolled me over again. “What about this?”

  I smiled and felt my warmth wrap around him. “This too.”

  He kissed me and increased his power. I yielded, and touched my hands against his chest, feeling every movement flex in his muscles. It was easy to dissolve into this. It was what I wanted. It was what I wanted more than anything.

  I had known this man almost all my life. Had he been my fate all along? Had life drawn us together over and over, only for me to focus on the wrong man?

  There was no stopping now, there was no way I could.

  I gave in to it.

  Because the need to meld into him was overwhelming, and for moments it felt like we did just that, but ultimately I knew this action raised many, many more questions than answers.

  We kept going. It was amazing, with dizzying moments of unity that made me feel like we’d transcended our humanness and gone into eternity.

  And afterward I again experienced fleeting moments of harmony, but the voice in my head—or my heart?—kept interrupting them.

  Say good-bye.

  This nagging voice in my head began like a siren in the distance but grew louder and louder as the inevitable moment of parting drew near: How could we be doing this? How could we ever do it again? It was just too complicated. Too ceaselessly complicated.

  Yet, at the same time, what would it be like to have this—to have each other—every single night?

  After we lay there for I don’t know how long, I made myself get up. It wasn’t easy. I forced my movements, and then my words. “I have to go,” I said. “Early day tomorrow.” And there was the lie.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked immediately.

  I didn’t turn to him as I put my pants on—a giveaway right there, I guess, but I didn’t want to lose it in front of him. “No, not at all, but”—I forced a laugh—“this was an unexpected detour tonight.”

  “Yes.” I heard him get up and could see him dressing from the corner of my eye.

  This was wrong, this hurried return to normality, like nothing had happened. Making love like that deserved a long, warm, secure rest and recovery time, to let the spirit settle back into place. Not a harried pulling on of pants, an inside-out shirt, and a walk of shame to the car.

  This was me, I was the one doing this, but I couldn’t stop myself. Everything in me said it was time to go. I wasn’t sure what everything in me was reacting to, probably nothing more than fear or the weakness I felt for him under his touch, but I had to get out before I made a mistake I could never take back.

  “So.” I smoothed my shirt and grabbed my purse as he slipped on his second shoe. “I guess I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  We headed toward the door and I opened it, allowing him through first.

  “Should be exciting.” Who was I suddenly? A children’s show hostess?

  He gave a laugh. He was probably thinking something along the same lines. But he came over to me, wordless, put his hands on my shoulders, and drew me to him, kissing my forehead. “Good night, Quinn.”

  And, boom, just like that he had the advantage. Even though I knew he wasn’t playing a game, and “advantage” would have sounded wrong to his ears, that was where we were. He had control now because I cared in a way I had never quite cared before.

  “Good night.” I turned back and locked the door, then went to my car without looking at him again. It was only when I was safely locked in the private bubble of my car that I told him my final truth. “I love you.”

  In a way it surprised me as much as it would, undoubtedly, have surprised him.

  Chapter 25

  “I’m sorry, I can’t work here anymore.”

  I looked at Becca in disbelief. It was four hours before Dottie’s wedding and I was in a bind trying to get everything together and take it to the church. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “As of now? As of right now?”

  She looked pale. A moment passed when she pressed her hand to her month and looked like she was going to puke before she said, “I’m pregnant. Again. And I can barely get out of bed. I threw up all weekend long.”

  My sympathy kicked in. “Pregnant?”

  She nodded, and there was very little happiness in her eyes at the announcement. “We weren’t planning it. But this time I’m so sick.” She paused again. “I just hope it’s a girl.”

  “It will be great either way. As long as you’re okay. So go home,” I said, even though it was the last thing in the world I wanted. Becca hadn’t been here
for three days, and prior to that, when I looked back on it, she had been acting a bit off. She must have been feeling crummy longer than she’d admitted.

  “Thank you,” she said, clearly not wanting to waste one more penny on explanations.

  The bells over the door trilled, and I looked to see Taney coming in.

  Oh, great was my thought. Just add insult to injury here.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” she said in her quiet voice. It looked as if she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and a little puffy, but it was her blotchy skin that gave it away. “I wanted to know if you were looking for any help here in your store?”

  There was no way. Life never went like this.

  “Help?” I asked, half expecting her clarification to include something snooty like, Yeah, moving out, because we’re kicking your ass in sales.

  But instead she just nodded. “I no longer work at the cleaner’s,” she said simply. “And now I have no work. I wonder if you need cleaning when you are closed?”

  The timing was almost suspicious, but then I remembered that there had been a piece in the local paper on Dottie’s wedding—she was a local celebrity, after all—and mention had been made of her dress being designed by me. That was only yesterday morning, but in the thirty-six hours or so since, I’d probably gotten at least a dozen calls for appointments.

  “I need a seamstress,” I said.

  “How can that be? You are providing for the biggest wedding this year, with many people there. My employer—my former employer—says that you are much faster and better worker than I, so I did not earn a living wage.”

  That was it. He’d been trying to pull more work out of her and it had backfired. “I will definitely hire you,” I said, then I mentioned an hourly figure that I guessed was considerably more than what she’d been paid at the dry cleaner’s.

  From the look on her face then, I knew it was true. “Oh, yes, please!” she said. “When can I start?”

  And this was the thing. I knew she did superior work; that if I paid her well, she would put the detailing on my dresses that I thought was worthy of my name and my shop’s name. I could be proud to send something out with her handiwork, versus that which I’d seen so many other times at the secondhand stores, etc.

  So this was a blessing for both of us—for me because Becca was puking, for at least another few months, and for Taney because she was able to do what she loved to do—what she was clearly gifted at—and get paid what she deserved.

  I’d mull over the serendipity later.

  For now, all I could say was, “Start by packing that dress up with the tissue on the table in the corner.…”

  * * *

  “Are you nervous?” I asked Dottie, buttoning the tiny buttons up the back of her dress with my own shaking hands. I was usually behind the scenes, not at the wedding, so this was what weddings did to me now, they made me nervous. I was always afraid something unexpected would happen, and, in this case, I particularly hoped it wasn’t going to happen to the dress. Somehow Dottie had put on some personal padding since our last fitting a week ago, and I really hoped none of the thirty-five buttons popped and set off a fireworks finale of flying plastic disks, leaving Dottie with a pool of silk at her feet.

  “Missy, I have been here before!” she declared, then glanced over her shoulder at me. “Of course I’m nervous. Look how the last one turned out!”

  There was an awkward moment in which I pictured her, the grieving widow, wishing she’d never loved so she’d never have had to feel the pain, before she laughed unexpectedly.

  “Sorry, Quinn, gallows humor. I’ve always been guilty of it. I don’t regret my first marriage and I sure as heck don’t plan on regretting this one. Love’s always a good thing, wouldn’t you say?”

  I thought about Burke and how my love for him seemed to have given me almost nothing but difficulty. “Yes,” I lied. “That’s all that matters at the end of the day.”

  I should have known better than to think I could fool her.

  “Someday you’ll mean that,” she said, standing straighter and sucking it in while I did the buttons at her girth. “I know you don’t believe it now, but you will.”

  “I do hope so, Dottie,” I murmured, and Frank came to mind. I hadn’t talked to him since we’d been together, endless nights before, so I knew it was as foolish to pine for him as it had been to spend so many years trying to change the past with Burke. Everyone was so tangled up inside this one story that I couldn’t even make sense of it anymore.

  Had it always been Frank?

  Was it meant to be?

  I didn’t know.

  “I do know, Quinn. I do.”

  I cinched the last of the buttons at her waist and said, “Turn around. How does it feel?”

  She whirled to face me, the motion defying her years in a startling way, and for just a moment—one crazy moment—I saw a young, bright-eyed, happy bride in front of me. She looked beautiful, proving right every poet and cheap lettered wall-hanging that ever contended beauty was a matter of the light within.

  Today Dottie was lit from within.

  I don’t want to overstate things, but it was like seeing those sun rays that pierce through thick puffy clouds and look like a postcard with a Bible verse on it.

  In short, it was happiness.

  So who could argue with that?

  Taney came over then with Dottie’s shoes and said, with more confidence than she’d shown in asking me for employment, “I think the match is perfect.”

  Indeed, the pale salmon–colored shoes were the exact antique pink as Dottie’s dress and all the little roses I’d painstakingly hand-sewn onto it. And with her always-tan skin (outdoorsy, now, more than sexy), the dress and the shoes were the perfect soft pale punctuation to her look.

  “Where’s my hat?” Dottie asked, her cheeks positively flushed with excitement.

  “Right here.” I went to the pile of extras I’d brought and searched through for a moment, then carefully perched the old-fashioned riding hat—the same pale pink, of course, but with a tiny net of veil hanging down in front—atop Dottie’s head.

  The entire ensemble was a mishmash of styles and moods, but it all added up to be a perfect summarization of Dottie.

  “You look perfect,” I said, turning her to face the mirror we’d propped against the wall. I always made sure, in situations like this where there wasn’t dressing-room lighting or mirrors, to bring a true mirror so as not to have the bride looking at herself at the mercy of a cheap carnival-quality mirror from a discount store, slapped on the wall because someone thought the wall needed something.

  I’d learned that lesson the hard way with a bride who herself seemed awfully close to anorexic. She looked at herself in the cheap mirror pegged to the wall of a Civil War house that devoted 20 percent of its space to the business of “haunted house tours” and the other 80 percent to cheap office space for new or bad psychologists, massage therapists, etc.

  She’d taken one look in the mirror and burst into tears, and as I went to console her and caught a glimpse of the bubble-butted pinhead that was my reflection, I realized immediately what the problem was. It wasn’t until we’d found an undeniably slim-and-straight ten-year-old boy among the guests, and placed him in front of the mirror for the bride to see the distortion, that she finally stopped sniffling enough to see that there was a little bit of a discrepancy between reality and the mirror image.

  But it was close. And I hadn’t taken a chance since on being blamed for a delicate bride’s misperception.

  “What do you think?” I asked, standing beside Dottie and looking in the mirror at her.

  I knew what she thought, it was written all over her face.

  “I think I never imagined I’d be in this place again,” she breathed, flushed like a schoolgirl. “I am so lucky. So blessed, to have found love again at my age.” She glanced at me. “Never give up. He loves you.”

  “Who?”

  “You k
now who.”

  I did. I thought. But did she? Were we thinking of the same person? And did it even matter?

  I felt my face go warm. That was a loaded conversation we weren’t going to have. “Today is your day. You look beautiful, Dottie.”

  She looked back at her reflection and took it in, shaking her head slightly. “It’s like a miracle.”

  “It is.”

  There was a knock at the door and I went to open it. The maid I recognized from Dottie’s house came in with a platter that held a large ice bucket with two bottles, and several champagne flutes. “As you asked, Ms. Morrison,” she said, setting it on the table. “And there’s a gift, as well, from Mr. Lyle.”

  Dottie went to the tray and took the small box from it.

  “Would you like me to pour you a glass?” I asked her.

  “Yes, please, dear. And there’s some sparkling cider there for you.” There was a pointed pause. “If you prefer.”

  I cringed, remembering Day Drunk Day. So that’s who I was now. The person you subtly offer the nonalcoholic option to. I almost had to laugh, but instead I poured her a glass of Bollinger, and myself a glass of Welch’s sparkling white grape juice.

  I took the glasses over to her and watched her open the box, which had no stamp or label. She removed a pad of cotton and underneath there was a delicate gold chain with a Tiffany-set blue topaz on it. It was a modest stone, and the chain was a beautiful, intricate herringbone, clearly good quality but not without signs of age.

  She took out the note and put on her glasses. “Dorothy,” she read. “I don’t remember the whole saying, but I know you are supposed to wear something blue. But this, my love, is not borrowed. It belonged to my aunt and it was given to her by her love who sadly died in a war. We will live the love they didn’t have the chance to.” She gasped and held the note to her chest, then turned to me with shimmering eyes. “Isn’t that lovely? He was raised by his aunt, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” I wondered why, but it didn’t seem appropriate to ask that right now. “What a nice gesture. And a beautiful necklace. Do you want me to fasten it?”