Tethered

by L. D. Davis

  I fumbled with the phone without checking the caller ID display and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning,” Jerry said. “Would you mind calling your security and telling him to let me come up?”

  “Of course I mind,” I snapped. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

  I put a hand over my heart, trying to calm it

  “I know what time it is. Now be a good girl and call down to the desk. Even though I’ve proven to them that I am a famous athlete, they still won’t let me past the lobby.”

  “Maybe they don’t follow hockey,” I guessed.

  “Damn adorable,” he said. “Come on, princess. It’s getting lonely down here. I might have to cuddle up to Bill and Ward here, and I’m guessing by the way they’re eyeing me they would not appreciate it.”

  “How did you get my number? How did you find out where I live?” I questioned.

  “My publicist called your publicist and told her that you and I had gone out to dinner together but I accidentally left your phone number on a napkin in the diner. Then your publicist called your assistant and I only had to show her my dimples and talk about our shoot a little today and she was very forthcoming.”

  I scowled. I didn’t use Eileen to pick up my dry cleaning, to do my food shopping, or to do any dirty work. She had to keep my schedule straight, screen my calls and take messages. Really, it wasn’t a lot. All I asked for in return – demanded in return – was for her to be discrete. In fact, she had to sign a confidentiality agreement when I hired her. Telling Jerry my phone number and my address were grounds for firing and a lawsuit.

  “She’s fired,” I growled.

  “Don’t fire her,” Jerry said soothingly. “She really believed that she was doing you a favor.”

  “Then she should be fired for stupidity,” I snapped.

  “Call security, princess. They’re eyeing me like they’re going to throw me out.”

  “Why are you calling me at one in the morning?” I asked, ignoring his observations.

  “Last night you said I could call you tomorrow. It’s tomorrow.”

  “I meant during the hours when I am awake.”

  “You’re awake now,” he said and then purred “Come on, princess. Let down your figurative hair so I can climb up.”

  I shivered slightly, and smiled, because that was kind of sweet. And stupid.

  “You’re hard to get rid of,” I said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, but you’re not staying long.”

  I ended the call before he could object and then called down to security to give Jerry permission to come upstairs. A few minutes later, I was leaning in my doorway watching him stride towards me. He had changed into a pair of jeans and I could see a gray sweater peeping through the top of his jacket. He had on a knit cap to keep his head warm and a pair of leather gloves. He looked really good and I looked at him appreciatively.

  “Do you always stalk women?” I asked him when he stopped a couple of feet away from me.

  “I never have to,” he said seriously. “None of them are as hard to get as you.”

  “I guess they fall into your lap,” I said dryly.

  “Sometimes,” he shrugged.

  “You know if you’re trying to win me over, you’re failing miserably. You may as well pull your tail between your legs and go home now.”

  “I’m not going home because you’re about to invite me in,” he said and rocked back on his heels.

  “No I’m not,” I scoffed. “I’m sending you away.”

  “If you were going to send me away,” he said as he leaned in close to me. He put an arm above my head on the door frame. His body almost touched mine. “You would have done it before I got up here,” he concluded.

  “You’re standing in my personal space,” I tried to say it like I was irritated, but it came out kind of breathy.

  “I know,” he smirked and then looked me up and down.

  “So, step the hell back before I fuck you up,” I whispered as I looked into his eyes.

  “Oh, you’re a tough girl,” he teased.

  “When I have to be,” I shrugged.

  “Well, tough girl, I have news for you. You’re already fucking me up in ways I’ve never been fucked up. I only just met you not even twenty-four hours ago and I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s like you crawled under my skin and nailed yourself to my body, because I can’t shake you.”

  “Sounds painful,” I managed to say and swallowed hard.

  “You have no idea. Can I kiss you?”

  I looked at his lips and licked my own. “No,” I whispered.

  “You’re going to change your mind,” he said, running a finger down my cheek and over the curve of my neck. “You’re going to let me inside first, and then you’re going to let me kiss your fucking adorable mouth.”

  “You think so?” I breathed. I was seriously feeling warm in the chilly hallway.

  “I know so,” he whispered in my ear.

  His lips grazed across my cheek, but stopped at the corner of my mouth. Bravely, I turned my head so that my lips grazed his, making him gasp.

  “Work for it,” I whispered against his mouth.

  Before he understood what was happening, I had slipped back into my apartment and closed and locked the door.

  “Call me tomorrow,” I called through the door.

  “It is tomorrow!” he called back in frustration.

  “Well, you fucked up by coming by so early. So now you’ll call me tomorrow, and if you call me before nine a.m. tomorrow morning, I won’t answer.”

  I heard him groan and it sounded like he dropped his forehead to the door. He muttered something in what I presumed to be Spanish and I even found that rather sexy.

  “Will I get to kiss you tomorrow?” he asked, sounding hopeful.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Goodnight, Geraldo.”

  He let out another groan and then said “Goodnight, princess.”

  Jerry was well behaved and didn’t call me until nine the next morning. I agreed to go out with him that afternoon to Rockefeller Center to go ice-skating and then dinner afterward. I didn’t let him into my apartment and I didn’t let him kiss me on that first date, or our second, third, and fourth dates. He was comically frustrated, especially since our dates were so spread out due to our schedules, but he never tried to push his way into my apartment or force me into the kiss. For our fifth date I invited him to my apartment for dinner. While I was in the middle of cooking and chatting, Jerry very quietly and very politely asked me if he could kiss me.

  “Okay,” I had whispered.

  “Yeah?” he asked, eyes open wide.

  “Yeah,” I said with a smile.

  Jerry held my face carefully in his hands and pressed his plump lips to mine. He was very gentle and very sweet as his lips moved slowly against mine. When his tongue sought entry, I opened immediately and sighed as his tongue made contact with my own. Slowly, he stroked the inside of my mouth with his moist tongue. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he wrapped his around my waist and pulled my body flush with his. He kissed me until it was clear that something was burning on the stove. He hastily released me, reached over to the stove, moved the offending pot to a cool burner and snapped the stove off. Before I could object, he had pressed me up against the counter and his tongue was slipping into my mouth again.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Emmet shook Jerry’s hand and smiled and said how it was nice to meet him and even went as far as saying he was a fan. If I wasn’t able to see past the surface of Emmet’s words and demeanor, I would have believed he was genuinely happy to make Jerry’s acquaintance, but I could see past the surface. I was the only one who could. I had insight that no one else in the universe had. I could feel his seething hatred of Jerry and his pain and resentment towards me.

  After seeing a small article about Jerry and me in one of the gossip magazines, Emmet had called me and asked me if Jerry and I were together. I didn’t
think he really had any right to ask, but at the time, I was honestly able to say that we weren’t serious yet, and then a couple of weeks later I brought him home to meet the parents. If I had known Emmet was going to be there, I wouldn’t have gone.

  Spring training started in two days and Jerry was leaving Louisiana the next afternoon for Clearwater. It was a last minute decision of mine, to ask him to come meet the family before he headed to training. He was reluctant in the beginning, because he usually didn’t enter into long-term relationships, let alone meet the family of the woman he was seeing. We still had not labeled our relationship after several weeks. I had the feeling he was waiting to see how I handled his busy schedule, but I was interested in seeing how he handled mine.

  After dinner that night, Fred engaged Jerry in a conversation about fishing. Apparently Jerry loved to fish, too.

  “I know a great spot to fish at this time of night,” Fred had said as an offering.

  “Sure, why not,” Jerry had agreed easily.

  “Don’t get eaten by a gator,” I warned him.

  “I promise you, princess, if it is me or the gator, I’ll walk through that door with some hot gator skin accessories for you to model for me.” He kissed the corner of my mouth tenderly and then followed Fred out of the room.

  “I like him,” Sam said slyly as she collected dishes from the table.

  “Me, too,” I said with a smile.

  “I was starting to believe you turned into a lesbian,” she said. “If you were a lesbian, that would be okay, but I have to admit that I’m much happier knowing you can have sex with a penis and give me grand babies. I was worried you were going to dry up so bad your hymen would have grown back.”

  “I’d rather not discuss my hymen or use of dick with you, Sam,” I said. I dared a glance at Emmet, wishing Sam would shut up. She had no idea that she was antagonizing a beast in her son.

  “I’m just saying,” she said with a shrug. “When you cut your hair a couple of years ago, I thought that was it. I thought you were going to start dating girls and wearing plaid.”

  “My hair looked great, and short hair and plaid does not a lesbian make. And for the record, I wouldn’t be caught dead in plaid.”

  “Well, it don’t matter, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “You have Jerry now. I’m sure he’ll end your dry spell.”

  Sam left the room, leaving me alone at the table with a fury ridden Emmet. A moment later, she turned the kitchen radio on to some oldies station. The music was loud. Elvis Presley was singing Hound Dog, a personal favorite of Sam’s. I imagined her absently singing along to the song in her frilly apron as she cleaned up.

  Emmet made no efforts to disguise his emotions now that it was only us. The cord between us was hot with his anger, making my chest burn. His eyes were hot emerald orbs that scorched me through and through. When he spoke, his words were dipped in venom.

  “So, you’re Jerry Vasquez’s groupie of the month,” he said tacitly. “There is a whole league of women like you, following him around with doting eyes, accepting his fancy gifts and laughing at his pompous humor… spreading their legs. By the time the season starts he will have moved on to the next brainless, pretty girl. So, you should suck up as much time as you can get with him.” He held up his glass of water, as if toasting to that.

  I was shocked into silence. I don’t think I had ever been so hurt by anything Emmet had ever said to me. I didn’t think it was possible for him to hurt me more with his words. I was wrong.

  “You’ve lowered your standards and now you’re spoiled goods,” Emmet said with a shrug. Then he laughed, a hard, humorless, nasty laugh. “You’re as good as his whore.”

  My water glass was flying across the table before I even realized I had picked it up. Emmet ducked gracefully from the blow of the glass but water had splashed on his face and clothes. The glass shattered on the floor behind him. The Supremes were singing on the radio in the kitchen now, and covered the sound of the shattering glass with You Can’t Hurry Love. Emmet’s eyes looked at the glass on the floor and then narrowed on mine. I could barely see him through the tears that had formed in my eyes.

  I got up from the table and started for the door.

  “Go ahead and run away,” Emmet called after me. “You’ve always been particularly good at that. I’ll bet Jerry doesn’t chase you. You’re so easily replaceable, why bother.”

  I continued out the door, hurried past the kitchen before Sam could see my tears, hurried through the living room and out the front door so that Fred and Jerry wouldn’t see me as they were leaving.

  I dashed out into the cool twilight and halted. I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t even know what I was doing outside. I was only aware of the pain and anger I felt and my desire to get away from Emmet. It was equal to my desire to run to Emmet, and I swallowed a frustrated scream at the absurdity of it all.

  I felt him closing in on me, but I didn’t know where to go, so I just stood there and waited.

  “Why did you bring him here?” Emmet asked a couple of feet behind me.

  “Had I known you were going to be here, we wouldn’t have come,” I snapped over my shoulder. Then I spun around to face him. My attention was momentarily drawn to Fred’s truck driving away down the road.

  “Can you feel him leaving?” Emmet asked with a quiet harshness. “Do you feel connected to him? Or is your connection simply physical.”

  “I didn’t act like an ass when you brought Laura here,” I said to him as I wiped angrily at my tears. I was especially angry at myself for crying.

  “You were the one who couldn’t be bothered to make the time for a boyfriend,” Emmet snapped, taking a step closer to me. “I was within my right to be with her and to bring her here. I wasn’t the one who threw us away. That was you. Besides, you had become notorious at saying you were going to be somewhere and then not show up. I didn’t think you would make the time to come down here when you could be somewhere inflating your ego for a few dollars.”

  I sucked in a breath and balled my fists at my sides. “So, did you expect me to save myself for you all of these years? Is that what you thought, Emmet? That I would be this tragic girl, pining after the very person she pushed away, and unable to be with anyone else?”

  “It would have been what you deserved,” he said icily.

  He may as well had laid me down in the grass and stomped on my chest, because that was how much it hurt. I stared at him through my tears like he was a stranger. I had no idea who this Emmet was.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said with as much steel as I could gather in my tone. “I did pine for you, and it was tragic, but I didn’t save myself for you. After that weekend you brought home that idiot woman, I went back to New Jersey and fucked Benjamin Munn that very night.”

  I must have been losing my mind, because when I saw the hard lines in Emmet’s face grow harder and his eyes widen and felt the pain it caused him, I smiled through my tears and continued.

  “I fucked him twice that night, and when he was able to produce proof that he was clean a couple of weeks later, I fucked him raw and sucked his dick.”

  I blinked and Emmet was on me. He meant to grab my shoulders, but surprised by his sudden movement and the absolute hatred I felt coming from him, I had tried to bolt, but I tripped over my own feet and his and fell backward. Emmet fell with me, landing on me hard and knocking the wind out of me. His face was in mine, nose to nose as he gripped my shoulders and shook me violently. Nat King Cole’s voice was faint from inside the house, but I could still hear him singing When I Fall in Love.

  “I loved you!” Emmet shouted. “I was ready to give up my whole fucking life for you and you fucking denied me! But you spread your legs for Benny like a common slut! You didn’t have time for me – me! The one who was always willing to give up anything for you and now you’re with this fucker? What is he going to ever give up for you! He’ll never give up anything for you!”

  “Get the fuck off
of me!” I yelled and thrashed to try to throw him off of me. My arms were pinned down by the weight of his body and he was not budging even though I was trying my hardest.

  “But you’ll give something up for him, won’t you?” Emmet snarled. Roughly, he pushed a hand between us and shoved his hand up my skirt until his hand was pressed against my sex.

  “Emmet!” I screeched. “Stop it!”

  He removed his hand, but he did not get off of me.

  “Why did you bring him here?” Emmet demanded again.

  “Get off of me,” I said firmly even though my voice was thick with tears. “Go back to Florida and go ‘embrace your future’ with Casey.”

  He paused and stared down at me as if he just remembered that Casey even existed.

  “You didn’t think I knew?” I almost laughed. “You really do think I’m brainless. Get the fuck off of me. Now!”

  Reluctantly, Emmet finally got off of me and got to his feet. He stared down at me as I lay there trying to catch my breath as I blinked up at the sky. In the last several minutes, night had fallen over us. After a minute, I pushed myself off of the ground, ignoring the bruises I felt forming on my back and the aching in my head from when it hit the ground. I knew there was dirt and grass in my hair and on my clothes and on my legs and arms, but I didn’t care. I was completely devastated by the things that had transpired since the moment Sam left me alone with Emmet. My heart was shattered and a large part of me was dying, and my god did it hurt. All of the pain I had felt in the past was overshadowed by this. This pain eclipsed all.

  I felt Emmet’s sorrow, his regret, and a bit of concern, but I mostly felt his anger and pain. It had not diminished much, and by the way he was breathing heavily and glaring at me, it wasn’t going to fade anytime soon.

  There were no words left to say. If Emmet had taken me into his arms and asked me to leave Jerry for him, I would have given in. I would have finished up the jobs I already had scheduled and I would have given Emmet my everything. But Emmet didn’t do that. Emmet had become a monster, and until I experienced it for myself, I would have never believed it. My Emmet was gone.