by Robin Kaye
As soon as his ears stopped ringing, he took a deep breath in and slowly slid out from within her, kissing his way down her back to her waist where her beautiful dress was bunched. “Are you okay?”
“Hmmm.” She sounded half asleep.
He brushed her hair back off her face, struck again by her beauty, her delicacy.
“I don’t think he knew.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Did I hurt you?”
“Hurt me? No.” She laughed and looked over her shoulder at him. Eyes sparkling from her flushed face.
“I got carried away at the end. I was a little rough. I’m sorry.”
She stood the best she could, holding her dress with one hand, turned, and melted against him. He pulled her hair back to see her face. She held him, kissed his neck, and said something.
“What?”
“I like it a little bit rough. I’ve never done anything like this before, in my office, on my desk, with my boss on the phone. It was so… hot… exciting. I really liked it.”
He lifted her to sit on her desk. Her thong hung from around her stabilization boot, her bra hung from the hand holding her dress up, her hair was a mess, and she looked thoroughly ravished. “I’m just glad you didn’t invite Ben to come, too. I would have had a real problem with that.”
“I’m tellin’ you girl. You need a new bathing suit.”
Annabelle threw herself on the bed beside the less than half-packed suitcase. Allowing Wayne to “help” her pack for the weekend in the Hamptons proved to be a big mistake. “My ankle feels better, but it’s still not up for a shopping spree.”
He sat beside her with a smile that reminded her of a shark circling his prey before he strikes. “We’ll get you a wheelchair. I’ll push you around myself.”
“No. I can see you pushing me right down the escalator at Macy’s. It’s not going to happen.”
“Pshaw, where’s your sense of adventure? Though I guess you must have one to buy this bathing suit.” He held up her little leopard print bikini.
She pushed herself into a sitting position. “What’s wrong with that? I’ve been known to stop traffic in that suit.”
He folded his arms, tapped his toe, raised his head, and sniffed. “The point is not to get everyone’s attention. The point is to get Mike’s attention. Do you really think Mike’s going to want every straight man on the beach drooling over his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a man.”
“Well, I am, and let me tell you, real men don’t want every other man undressing their significant other in front of them. That’s exactly what will happen if you wear this thing out in public.” He threw the bikini back in her drawer. “Mike is not the type to need arm candy to make him feel manly. He’s the kind of man who will want to unwrap you like a present. In private. Now let’s go get him something delectable to take off you. I promise we can hit all the shops on my list in under two hours. I’m a power shopper. Ask Henry. He absolutely hates to shop.”
“Two hours?”
He held up his hand “Scout’s honor.”
“Don’t tell me you were a Boy Scout.”
“What did you expect, the Fireside Girls? Even though they were more my speed, I didn’t have the right equipment.”
By the time Annabelle’s two hours of torture were up, Wayne held a scary amount of shopping bags. She had bathing suits for public and bathing suits for private, sexy kicking-around-the-house clothes, and to add to her collection, a few barely there nighties and teddies, which would undoubtedly spend more time on the floor than on her body. Wayne referred to them as gift wrap. She shook her head. He even talked her into buying an incredibly sexy getup that he called “dessert” to wear under a nondescript little black dress. The thought of going out to dinner wearing something so hot under something so not had her squirming in her seat. She couldn’t wait. But mostly, she couldn’t wait to see Mike.
Becca lifted a box and made her way up the narrow staircase from the brownstone’s basement to Annabelle’s apartment, Dave trailing in her wake. The dog had shadowed her since she’d arrived. As if he thought she were going to swipe something.
When she’d called to schedule a visit, Annabelle had jumped at the chance for them to spend time together. Mike’s work schedule had become insane because of the extra shifts he’d promised to cover in order to get the Memorial Day weekend off, and since Ben was still in town, Annabelle had no problem taking time off.
Becca had spent the past few days preparing to beg forgiveness and somehow break the news of Mike’s parentage without losing her best friend or ripping Annabelle and Mike’s relationship apart.
Apparently, Annabelle had a different agenda in mind.
Becca set the box in the living room and returned for another with Dave drooling behind. On her way down, she tried with little success to dust off her clothes.
“I really shouldn’t complain, because I’ve been bugging you for two years to go through everything you packed after Chip’s death, but if you were going to use me as a pack mule, you could have clued me in. I would have brought work clothes.”
Annabelle sat on an ancient stool resting her ankle on the dusty rung and smiled. “Sorry, it didn’t occur to me. I was thinking of the emotional support, but I’m really liking the pack mule image.”
“I could have given you emotional support two years ago. Instead of dealing with Chip’s death, you’d packed up the pain as surely as you packed up all evidence of your life together. You’ve done everything but deal with the fallout.”
“I wasn’t ready to deal with it then.”
“No, you were too busy letting your mother run your life and pick out a pig of a fiancé for you. I can’t really blame her for fixing you up with someone since she never even knew Chip had existed, no less died. But I do blame her for fixing you up with a weasel.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You better talk about this to someone. You can talk to me or find a good shrink. You spent two years living your life on autopilot. You smiled on cue and acted like everyone expected you to, but I saw the difference. Your spirit was missing.”
Annabelle let out an exasperated sound that was a mixture of a groan and a growl. “I thought you were going to help me go through this… stuff. I didn’t expect psychoanalysis.”
“I don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know you did whatever it took to avoid dealing with Chip’s death. Including allowing your parents to make decisions about your future. You were so numb and detached, you didn’t care. You condemned yourself to a life without feelings—until the day you woke up with Mike.”
Mike had been the only one to reach Annabelle, and now Becca’s news may spell the end of that relationship, too. Becca turned her back on Annabelle, pretending to look at something while she pushed aside the guilt. It wouldn’t help either of them right now.
She grabbed the top box and dropped it, waiting for Annabelle to look at her. Sure she’d create a streak of dirt worthy of a Hollywood makeup artist. She wiped her brow. Annabelle looked at everything but her. Becca was pushy. She knew it, but damn it, Annabelle needed to get past this.
“Okay, I’ll stop the psychoanalysis, not that you don’t need it. Just do me a favor. While we’re going through this, think about why you’ve waited two years to do it.”
“I was busy with… stuff.”
“Stuff… as in a fiasco of a relationship with Johnny DePalma?”
“Stuff like breathing, eating, finding a job, and somehow getting through every day. The relationship with Johnny was—”
“Easier than doing what you should have done. Come on, you packed away your past and refused to acknowledge it ever happened. You didn’t begin working through it until Rosalie’s wedding.”
“Not on purpose. I… I had to. It hurt too much to even think about, much less deal with.”
Annabelle’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“Honey, that’s life. You hav
e to feel the pain before you can feel better. Even if you do it two and a half years after you should have.”
“Yeah, and how do you know so much?”
“Therapy. Isn’t it nice to know that something good came out of the tens of thousands of dollars my parents spent to find out why I wasn’t the daughter they’d always wanted?”
“Maybe I built this up in my mind. I’ve been dreading this for so long. I never felt strong enough to face it before now.”
“Chip would never have wanted this for you.” But, he’d have probably found some smug satisfaction in knowing Annabelle had such a hard time getting over him. Of course, it would be much easier for her to move on if the relationship had died a natural death before Chip had. “You feel strong enough to deal with your past now because you’re getting on with your life. You’re no longer pretending it never happened. Now, if you’d come clean with Mike, you might begin to move forward.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you have to. He deserves to know. If you want a future with him, hell, even if you don’t, you still have to tell him he’s a dead ringer for Chip. It’s the right thing to do.” It would also make breaking the news of her quasi-betrayal easier if Annabelle had already planned to tell him. Maybe.
Annabelle ripped open the box of art books Becca had set in front of her. “I can take these to the gallery.”
“Or you can set up a studio in that little den area and start painting again.”
“I don’t know.”
Becca hated the pensive look on Annabelle’s face. When they first met, she was anything but pensive. She ate up life in big, overstuffed mouthfuls, reveling in it. Becca pulled out a handful of books and remembered all the hours she’d worked beside Annabelle in their loft. She wiped a clay smudge off one book, knowing full well she’d been the one to leave it there. “When was the last time you tried to paint?”
“After Chip died, before his funeral. I couldn’t even hold a brush.”
Becca saw a composition book stuck among the art textbooks. “What’s this?” She set the other books on top of the box and started paging through it. It was an interesting combination of writing and sketches.
Annabelle plucked it from her hands. “That’s my journal.” She rubbed the smudged and dog-eared cover. “I used to write every day until Chip got sick. After that, I was too busy.” She opened the book to the first page. “I started this before I graduated high school.” Digging through the box, she pulled out a half-dozen others just like it. “Look. This one starts right around the time I first met Chip.”
Annabelle grabbed the remaining journals and left the box for Becca, who followed the gimp into the apartment and watched as Annabelle took the stack of journals into her bedroom. Becca smiled. Annabelle had some interesting reading ahead of her.
Annabelle rolled over and took another journal from the stack. Reading them was like seeing a movie of her life. The distance gave her a different perspective. She saw things she never expected. The first thing she noticed was how immature she’d been. Not that anyone could have told her that at the time, but she’d seemed like a needy child. Just the type of girl a guy like Chip attracted. In the beginning of their relationship, she’d felt so privileged to be in his presence. Her obvious lack of self-esteem had her running scared and falling all over herself to keep from losing him. Some of the things she’d written were embarrassingly pathetic. Maybe Becca was right. Maybe she needed a good therapist.
Her home life wasn’t the best. Her parents’ marriage was a disaster, and no matter what she’d done to get attention, she’d always seemed to be in the way. The youngest child syndrome. She and Rosalie were as different as two people could be, one entirely left-brained and the other right-brained. Richie was years older than she was and too busy to be bothered with his baby sister. Annabelle had felt as if she were an only child in a house full of miserable people.
Then when she’d met Chip, for the first time in her life, she’d felt loved and wanted. She’d spent most of their relationship trying to deserve that love and fighting to keep it. Chip had taken all she’d had to give and had made her an unwitting pawn in the chess game with his parents.
Looking back at their relationship, she realized it would have been only a matter of time before one of them outgrew the other. Clearly, the woman she’d become would not have made Chip happy, and Chip would never have filled the bill for her either. The sad thing was that they’d never been given the time to figure that out for themselves. By the time the relationship had progressed to the point where stress fractures were showing, his cancer had returned.
Death has a way of putting compatibility problems on the back burner.
Annabelle got up, wandered to the den, and picked up the sketch pad and pencils Mike had bought and brought them back to bed with her. She lay there wondering if she should try again. Maybe sketch something simple… Her cell beeped. She tossed aside the sketchbook and pencils, grabbed her phone, and slid the bar to unlock it. A text appeared. “Good night, Belle. I miss you.”
She typed in an answer. “G’nite, Mike. I miss you more.” She turned off the lights and, hugging his pillow to her chest, pictured Mike. She meant every word. She really did miss him more.
When Becca awoke, Annabelle was fully dressed and running for the door. “Where are you going?”
“I almost forgot—Mike’s mother called me the other day and asked if I’d show her around the gallery and then go to lunch. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. I’ll just go for a walk with Dave and maybe hang out with Henry and Wayne if they’re home. Those two are a riot.”
“You have no idea.”
“So, having lunch with Mike’s mom, huh. That’s a pretty big deal.”
Annabelle rubbed her stomach. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell her I wasn’t working today. I was too dumbfounded to refuse. The woman makes me nervous.”
“Oh, come on. She can’t be as bad as my mother, and you survived her.”
“Only because she didn’t have the opportunity to finish me off.”
“Maybe Mike’s mother will be a sweetheart like her son. Stranger things have happened.”
“Not to me. Even Johnny’s mother barely tolerated me. I think I have an attraction to men whose mothers hate me.”
“Hold on. You were never attracted to Johnny.”
Annabelle shrugged. “True enough. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking by getting engaged to him.”
“You weren’t thinking. That was the problem. At least you seem to have rectified that.” Becca slid off the couch and stretched. “Is there coffee?”
“On the counter. If I survive, I’ll be home before dinner.”
Becca swatted Annabelle. “Way to believe in the power of positive thinking. You’ll be fine. Just don’t babble. Babbling always gets you into trouble.”
“Thanks.” She blew Becca a kiss and patted Dave’s head. “You’d better get dressed. Dave just ate, so you have about fifteen minutes before he needs to go out. The bags are by his leash. It gives new meaning to the phrase doggy bags.”
“Aw, man. You did that on purpose.”
Annabelle shot her a wicked grin before the door shut behind her.
Annabelle paced her office. She had so much on her mind. Today was not the best day to deal with Mike’s mother.
She moved one of the black-and-white shoji screens and couldn’t help but think that maybe Becca had been right yesterday. Annabelle had packed away the past so she didn’t have to deal with it just like she put up the screens in front of the art supplies. She’d hid everything so well, but just because you didn’t see or deal with problems, they didn’t just go away.
Last night, everything had changed. Now she saw her life and herself in a very different light. She ran her fingers over the canvases and picked up a paintbrush and stroked her cheek with the soft sable. She waited for the familiar empty feeling, the crystals of fear, the memories that haunted her. The
y didn’t come. Yes, she set down the brush. Maybe things were changing. Maybe she was ready to try again. But first, Annabelle had to get through lunch with Mike’s mother. She took a deep breath and let the unease wash over her, but not because of the memories. Because Annabelle made a mistake, several mistakes, actually.
When Mike’s mother called to invite Annabelle to lunch— just the two of them—her first mistake had been accepting. In her limited experience, the only reason the mother of a man she dated would ever ask her to lunch without her significant other present was so there would be no witnesses when she was literally or figuratively fed to the fishes.
Annabelle took the elevator to the gallery. Colleen had insisted on meeting at the gallery she’d heard so much about. Thank you, Mike. So, not only was she forced to brace herself for the torment of the inauspicious encounter, she also had to worry about the appearance of the gallery. She got off the elevator and looked around. Even though everything had been dusted, washed, and rearranged a dozen times that morning to prepare for Colleen’s visit, when Annabelle looked at the gallery with a critical eye, all she saw were flaws.
“Kerri, could you please put that Hibel back where it was in the first place? I’m sorry.”
She was so nervous she’d chewed her thumbnail down to the quick, and she had her staff scurrying around like schoolgirls through Central Park after dark. They kept moving. But couldn’t escape the fear.
She’d have to compensate them with a week of lunches for putting up with her neurosis. All she had to look forward to was that by her next day at work, Mike would have already dumped her, and her staff would see her neurosis was well founded. But for now, the sound of her boot hitting the hardwood was enough to make any member of her crew jump.
