The Plan: A Standalone Off-Limits Romance

by Ella James

I attempt to roll my eyes, but they fall shut instead. As Gabe carries me up the last few stairs, I feel like I’m sailing through space. And maybe time as well. His body against mine is pleasantly familiar. The moment he gets to the top, he sets me on my feet, keeping his arms around me like a cage.

  “Do you have your keys?” I feel his breath on my temple. It smells like mint.

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you find them, hero? Heh. It makes me laugh to call you hero. What I really mean…is like, zero…”

  I feel his chest expand as he inhales. I watch as he lifts my purse, still hanging diagonally across my chest, and delves inside. I make a grab for it.

  “Don’t snoopy…snoopy.” God, I’m fucking funny when I’m drunk.

  I can feel him watch me as I fumble in my purse. “Oh no! They’re not here!” I look down the stairs—so many stairs. “Ah, hell. I think I had them…when I fell.” My words sound slurred. I laugh again, because I’m stupid. Drunk and stupid.

  “I’ll check underneath the stairs.” Gabe starts to help me sit, but then he scoops me back up, tossing me over his shoulder as he descends the stairs.

  “Whoa—you’re like Godzilla here…” I giggle.

  “What?”

  “Big steps, boom…boom.”

  He sets me on the bottom step, then disappears behind the staircase. I can see his back as he bends over, sifting through the grass.

  “The famous Gabriel McKellan,” I boom.

  He leans around the stairs, looking confused. I kinda like the way his curls are sticking up.

  I laugh. “Oh, carry on. I like to see you bending over.” When he looks again at me, I give him my best smirk. “It’s 2017, babe. Time for you to be objectified. And you whoa—I mean, you know what, Gabe? You know what? I really like the way your ass looks in those shorts. Are those even shorts?” I pull my phone out, struggling with the flashlight as he comes back around in front of me, holding my keys.

  “Ohh, blue jeans.” I look up at him. His face is locked down, but I think he’s trying not to laugh. “Are those some schmancy, big deal Hollywood asshole brand? Seven thousand dollar jeans?”

  He screws his face up. Shakes his head.

  “Are you embarrassed, rich boy?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Are you sure?” I pull myself up, holding onto the bannister, and stare at him. “I think you are.”

  “About my blue jeans? Mar, I bought them at the WalMart.”

  “BAHA…surrreeeeeee you did. Surrreeeeeee.”

  He picks me up again, and starts back up the stairs. “Are they Wranglers?” I ask, slapping his ass—more like his hip—as we reach the top and Gabe works my key into the lock.

  “I don’t know.” The door swings open, and I say, “Is that how you stay anona—anonymous? Dress like the locals?”

  “Always,” he says flatly as he sets me on my feet inside the kitchen.

  “You’re in my house. Weirdness!” I blink at him, and hold onto his gaze, because it’s mega weird to see him here in my space.

  “Mar, I’m always in your house.”

  He’s in the doorway, though, I realize; he’s not stepping in.

  “What do you think?” I wave my arms around. “You like my crib?”

  He nods, stepping backward. “Goodnight, Marley.”

  I lunge for him. “Wait!”

  9

  Gabe

  Marley’s plastered. Three sheets to the fucking wind. So when she yells for me to wait, I consider leaving anyway. Would she remember in the morning? Before I get a chance to find out, her small hand is wrapped around my wrist; her dazed, brown eyes are peering up at me. Her face is open, trusting, youthful, as is her voice when she whispers, “You look older, Gabe.”

  I peer at the freckles strewn over the bridge of her nose, at her long eyelashes and her red lips.

  “Yes.” She looks older, too. More beautiful, if that’s possible—her dramatic features emboldened by time, so they seem to fit this older, bolder Marley.

  “You look like someone really different,” she says, the words slightly slurred. “Are you really different?” Her gaze on mine is unnervingly focused for someone as drunk as she is.

  “Are you?” I manage, in an even tone. I look down at her hand on my wrist, but Marley doesn’t seem to notice as she swings my arm.

  “Oh yeah,” she says, lifting up her other arm. “I am sooo different. It’s like…crazy.” She tilts her head at me, the way Cora does when she’s feeling contemplative. “We never really knew each other, did we?”

  “I don’t know.” The words are rough and low: an admission extracted by her nearness and her scent, by her wide, doe eyes and too-soft mouth.

  “I wanted to know you,” she says softly. One side of her mouth is tucked up in a sad not-really-smile. The rest of her face looks like it might crack any second. “In school, you were always someone I watched, did you know that? You seemed quiet and…I don’t know…untouchable,” she says, waving her free arm as she talks. “I think I liked untouchable a little bit, you know? That hungry feeling, like I couldn’t really get you. I think that felt familiar, cause my dad.” Tears fill Marley’s eyes, and she blinks, shakes her head, mashing her lips together. “God, I’m drunk. And thirty-three. Did you know that? I’m thirty-three right now, at midnight. Is it midnight?”

  I nod. “After.”

  I should go, but I feel rooted to the floor as Marley drops my arm and wobbles to her couch. She sprawls out on her back and wraps a hand around her eyes, as if the dim lamp light is too bright for her. I can see her squint as she looks at me.

  “I don’t mind that you live here, you know,” she sighs, “but it makes me feel like a fuck up.”

  I swallow, disarmed by her bluntness. “How?”

  “Oh, you know. Like fuck-ups feel.”

  “You shouldn’t feel like a fuck up,” I hear myself say quietly. “I fucked up a lot of it.”

  “You were up in space, just floating…” She lifts a hand, waving toward the ceiling. “I just failed, and even if I wanted not to fail, I couldn’t find you up there.” Marley sits up, pushing a hand into her messy hair, and looks at me through her fingers. “I’m so sorry, Gabe. That’s what I feel the sorriest about.”

  “What is?” I manage.

  “I shouldn’t have left you…there…like that.” With her eyes locked on mine, she stands up, swaying like a limb in a breeze. “I ran because I was so scared, you know? Of failing. I was worried, and I couldn’t…fuck, you know…I couldn’t get to you. I thought you didn’t give a shit, either.”

  “About you?”

  She nods just once, her eyes on the verge of overflowing.

  The distance between us shrinks as I step closer to her. I don’t even know how in the fuck it happens, but my arms wrap around her back, and I’ve got Marley pressed against my chest. For the longest second, I just hold her there—and it feels good. So good and right, my voice is steady as I say, “I used to fuck you three, four times a day sometimes. I read my writing to you.” Nails fill up my throat. I swallow, even though it aches. “I would let you get into the shower with me,” I say to the top of her head.

  “Yeah, when you were drunk.” She laughs, a hollow sound. I wrap my hand around the back of her head.

  “It wasn’t because of that.”

  “It was.” She pulls away a little, and her eyes lift to meet mine; they’re suspicious, almost angry. “You were drunk like, all the time, and I was—” she laughs— “clueless. You would go out on the Strip and play that stupid—sorry, it was stupid—poker. Do those awful fights. And you would lock yourself up in that second bedroom with your laptop.” Her eyes glimmer. “I did things wrong, I know. And I was pushy. I was stupid, I had no idea what I should do for you. You wouldn’t talk to me, and I thought crazy sex would cure you.”

  My cock twitches in response to those words, or maybe just her nearness. Holding her to my side, I guide her to the couch and urge her to sit down. I crouch on the flo
or in front of her—and hope she’ll get the message that I’m sending.

  “What?” She wipes her face and sniffles as she looks at me with searching eyes. “I guess it’s my turn now, to be the drunken idiot. Do you remember that stuff you used to do? I hope I don’t remember this.” I wince, and she nods behind me. “You can go now. Get up off the floor. You’re not a floor type… Just be gone.”

  I shake my head. I try to think of what to tell her: older, unknown Marley, with her aching eyes and broken heart and braided hands. “You were right to worry. I know I always said that you were nagging and you were driving me away, that I wasn’t…” I swallow. I can’t say the next two words: “a drunk.” I suck back a breath, and then I’m on my feet. My face and eyes feel so hot, it’s alarming. I turn my back to her, and I feel like I always did. It’s unbelievable, some kind of spell, some kind of fucking time warp.

  I can’t look at Marley. My loyal girl with the searching eyes and dumb persistence. She loved me blindly, unrelentingly, enthusiastically. I would lock myself up in our guestroom with a cache of liquor and a death wish. Marley would pound down the door and yell at me and try to make me mad or upset, anything so I’d come out and talk to her. And I was such a fucking dick. I was such a fucking piggish asshole. I took advantage of her systematically, just like…an addict.

  “It wasn’t mutual,” she says now to my back, in tired tones. “I get that, Gabe. I had a thing for you the second you moved here in ninth grade.” She gives a hollow laugh. “That night we married on the class trip? You want to hear a dumb confession?”

  I turn around and look at her, and Marley stands up, arms spread wide. “I wasn’t really that drunk. You were drunk. You could barely put one shoe in front of the other, but I had only had a few drinks. When you pulled me into the chapel with you, I was thrilled. I had no one waiting for me. I had no one. We might have been the same age, but to me you were… You seemed so manly and grown up.” She wipes a tear that’s trickled down her cheek. “My mom was a bitch to me. I had a dead dad. I just wanted someone, you know? When we were like ‘oh God, we’re married,’ I…fucking wanted it. Anyway, I think it’s obvious, I should find a different place to live now.” She inhales deeply, has the fortitude to smile at me. “I don’t like feeling stupid. Doctor,” she says, with her fragile, shaky mouth.

  “I can’t believe that you’re a doctor, Marley. Dr. Roberts.” I see my words hit her face, and I shake my head, laughing although it’s not the least bit funny. “Not like that. I didn’t mean it like that.” I step closer to her; Mar holds up a hand.

  “It’s okay,” she says softly.

  “No. I was a fucking lousy husband. Vegas, class trip wedding having nothing to do with it. We got married, I said ‘let’s give this thing a go,’ but I couldn’t put my money where my mouth was. I didn’t know a fucking thing about even a girlfriend.” I swallow—hard, and make my gaze meet hers. “Mar, you know about my dad. You’re from this town…”

  She doesn’t move a muscle. In that instant, memories burn me: these same solemn brown eyes on a careful, young girl, trying not to hurt me more.

  “I was an alcoholic—just like him. Still am,” I say through razor blades in my throat. “I fell off the fucking wagon back in May.” I rub my sweaty palms over my pantslegs. “It was me,” I manage. “It was my fault that you left. I get why you did, Mar. I was a fucking mess, and you were twenty years old.”

  I step closer to her. “Listen,” I rasp, shaking my head. “You weren’t a failure, and you shouldn’t feel anything when you see me except proud of yourself. You were loyal and good and—” I laugh hoarsely— “unwisely persistent. Marley, you did nothing wrong except you probably should have left me out there sooner. You left and I went to AA.” Marley leaving was my so-called rock bottom. “It’s what prompted me to write The Secret World of Others.” I swallow hard and give her my pathetic version of a gift. “That’s why he—the alien, Burner—goes all through the desert looking for the water that he thought he saw, that he remembered smelling. And he dies before he finds it. He had had a glimpse of something nourishing, that he needed to live.”

  I feel the room closing around me as I look at her, my eyes holding onto Marley’s like a life raft. “I had to make it a tragedy. It was all I was capable of writing. But you were the water.”

  Marley stares at me with her wet eyes. She laughs. “This isn’t what I thought you’d say.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I tell her, feeling brave, “but just for honesty, I was in love with you since freshman year, Mr. Smiley’s class. I wasn’t that drunk either, that night on the trip. Actor,” I say, holding up a hand.

  I watch the shock play over her face. “Really?”

  I nod.

  “You have been in movies,” she says in a breathless, giddy tone. “You weren’t wasted?”

  “I was just as unmoored as you, if not more. I was working on a drinking problem that whole school year. You drew the short straw, getting hitched to me. I wasn’t capable of taking care of anyone back then.”

  In one heartbeat, her whole face changes. Her mouth pulls into an “o” and her eyes fill with pain. “But Gabe, that means…” She shakes her head. “If you were an alcoholic, that means I left you—”

  “Drunk,” I say. “You left me drunk. Just like you should have.”

  Before she can give me more, I lift a hand and make my exit.

  Part Two

  “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

  –F. Scott Fitzgerald

  1

  Gabe

  It’s been five days since I broke a twelve-year-old tradition. Instead of waking up and running, I wake up do the yoga video my buddy sent. Or, in the case of this sunny, Thursday morning, hop onto the second-hand bicycle I bought the other day and pedal to the bakery on Main Street. I bike home with my prize and polish off three strawberry crullers in the front parlor.

  Cora paces a circle on the rug, shooting me a confused, resentful look.

  “We’ll run in a little while, girl.”

  While I wait for noon to come, I read the cards I had put off and send some thank-you emails from a desk in the piano room. I ignore forty-something Facebook messages and dozens of emails from friends and readers, no doubt reacting to the Page Six story. With gritted teeth, I answer an email I’ve been ignoring since Tuesday: the one from my personal assistant, Wills.

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, mate. Anything I can do?’

  I set him deleting condolence messages from my social media accounts.

  Then I sit back and listen—to the ceiling. Marley usually works from eight to six, but earlier, before I went out to grab breakfast, I was pretty sure I heard her up there. Nothing now. I wonder if she’s at home sick. Little kids will do that to you.

  At that thought, I feel sick myself. I redirect my thoughts by going into the bedroom I’m using as my weight room. It doesn’t matter what Marley’s doing, I remind myself. That’s why I switched my run time so it doesn’t coincide with hers. She and I exchanged some kinder words that night I helped her up the stairs, but things between us are no different than they were before.

  We aren’t friendly neighbors. We aren’t friends or lovers. For the duration of the time we’re both living here—which I hope will be brief—I need to avoid her. No more Mr. Asshole, but I can’t be Mr. Nice Guy again, either.

  I do my work out, tighten a loose doorknob in the formal dining room, and wander upstairs to my writing room while I wait for the call. I’ve got big news coming, I hope. Maybe good news. I’m not much for praying, but I send one up as I scroll through my work in progress. It’s not very good so far, but I can make it better. I just need to focus. Who could do that while they wait on something like this?

  After a few times checking my inbox for an email from my lawyers, followed by a gut-twisting peek inside my “From Hugh” folder, I trudge downstairs, stretch in the hallway, and then pull on a pair o
f shades. I can’t disguise myself fully, but the shades do seem to help. I’ve cut down on the looks of recognition I get on the street almost entirely. So far, no in-person condolences, and no Fate Tribune write-ups.

  I’m descending the front porch stairs, Cora bounding on my heels, when I look up and there is Marley.

  Marley on the sidewalk with her hair around her shoulders, the hot pink tips fluttering slightly in the wind. Marley in a yellow polka dot dress, holding a giant pumpkin up against her belly. As she struggles with it, sunlight glints off her lime green glasses.

  Her gaze swings up, and when it widens at the sight of me, she drops the pumpkin and it cracks against the sidewalk. Pumpkin guts go everywhere, and Marley wails.

  “Oh, no! Pete!” She drops to her knees, her spread hand hovering over the pumpkin’s stringy, orange guts. “Aw, dammit!”

  I can’t help the chuckle I try to suppress.

  “Shuddup.” She shoots me a baleful glare. “This is your fault, McKellan.”

  I laugh, despite myself. “How do you figure?”

  “You distracted me.”

  I take a few steps down the front walk, putting me closer to her. “Did I?”

  With a glance at me, Cora prances over and begins to lick the pumpkin from the sidewalk.

  “Ooooh.” Marley rubs her head. “Hey, pretty. What’s your name? Oh my…you are a pretty baby…” She scratches Cora’s neck, and Cora’s tail goes haywire.

  “What’s her name?” Her eyes shift up to mine.

  I wait just a beat before I tell her, “Coraline.”

  “Oh is it?” she asks, still rubbing Cora. “I approve, yes I do, that’s a good name for a puppy,” she coos. “You’re a very pretty Coraline. I think I’ve heard you called Cora… That’s nice, too.”

  I grit my teeth at the love fest out in front of me, wondering if I can go on and get moving. I can’t bring myself to do that, though. Despite my self-protection logic, I should do what’s neighborly, and in this case, that’s help Mar move the giant, broken pumpkin from our walkway.