The Plan: A Standalone Off-Limits Romance

by Ella James

  “Did it look healthy? And wholesome?”

  I laugh. “I don’t know. It looked like a bunch of apple trees.”

  “But did the soil look really richly brown? And did the grass look super green? And could you smell the apples?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe?” I can’t help laughing more.

  “You’re a writer, you know. I feel like I need a better description of this apple farm. I’ve always imagined them to be these incredibly wholesome places that can cure cancer if you just go walk around there for a little while.”

  “Then you’d probably be disappointed.”

  “Nahh. I think it’s magical there. A land of unicorns…” She takes a long swig of her cider. I look down at the duvet. Probably time for me to get moving. I get up and start to dress. “So—tomorrow?” I ask, pulling up my boxer-briefs. I cast a glance at her. “You want two times?”

  She nods. “Today is the big day—I think. So twice today and twice tomorrow is ideal.”

  “Sounds good.” After I’m dressed, I turn a circle in her room. I scoop the remote up and toss it to her. “You need anything else?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You okay with some papers coming tomorrow? From my lawyers? Nothing funky.”

  “Sure. I’m fine with that.” As I head to the door, she says, “So, Gabe?”

  I look back at her. Smile a little.

  “Friends?” she says.

  I nod. “Friends.”

  “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “No worries.”

  All night, as I listen to her move above me, I make a liar out of myself.

  Part Three

  “I have so much I want to tell you,

  and nowhere to begin.”

  –J.D. Salinger

  1

  Gabe

  After Marley left and I got sober, I decided I would take a scholarship from Northwestern. But through our lawyers and that paperwork, I found Marley living in Chicago. Because she’d gotten there before me, the whole city felt like hers. More to the point, maybe, I couldn’t stand to be near her.

  So I went to Iowa. I didn’t like it there—I was enrolled for only three semesters before I moved to New York—but during my time in the dorms, I had a roommate I did like: a quiet, intense guy named Dave, who now works as a news reporter.

  He had this quote that looked like it was cut from a newspaper taped to the wall above his desk. It was from the TV show The Sopranos. I saw it so many times, I still remember it, right down to the font:

  Christopher Moltisanti: “You ever felt like nothin’ good was ever gonna happen to you?”

  Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: “Yeah. And nothin’ did. So what?”

  For years, I didn’t understand why he would tape it to the wall. Was there really anyone out there who didn’t care if anything good happened to them? I’d been wanting things to happen since I could remember. Mostly any things, but good things in particular. What was so noteworthy about this conversation that Dave wanted to see it every day?

  Something about it stuck with me, and every now and then, I’ll think about the quote again and wonder what the fuck it means—and what it meant to him.

  This morning when I wake up with it in my head, I sit up, pull my phone off the bedside table, and Google it.

  I rub my eyes, yawning as I peer down at my phone.

  Christopher Moltisanti: “You ever felt like nothin’ good was ever gonna happen to you?”

  Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: “Yeah. And nothin’ did. So what?”

  Christopher Moltisanti: “That’s it. I don’t wanna just survive. It says in these movie-writing books that every character has an arc. Understand?”

  Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: [Shakes head]

  Christopher Moltisanti: “Like everybody starts out somewhere. And they do something, something gets done to them, and it changes their life. That’s called an arc. Where’s my arc?”

  I can’t stop laughing as I listen to Marley get ready for work. Fucking Dave. Why the hell did he cut the bit off where he did? What kind of nihilism from the son of lawyers, raised on a fucking farm in Kansas?

  I chuckle all morning and think of emailing him. Instead, I end up thinking about the Sopranos, which prompts an idea…and suddenly I’ve got 6,000 words on something new. I work until I hear Mar getting home for lunch, and then I walk upstairs, bearing another jug of cider for her fridge. Marley answers naked, and I fuck her on the couch, pulling her ponytail, and then I walk her down to her car.

  In the afternoon, I write some more, and go for a long run.

  The next two days are much the same. I realized how to make her smile. I do that when I can, and other times, I try to keep things casual. In the evening of the second day, I bring her legal papers, which she signs.

  I fuck her good and hard, and when she asks me to stay for a beer, I tell her that I’m writing. Mar seems happy for me.

  When I go downstairs, though, I don’t write. I jerk off twice and wait for it to be morning, and then at lunch I fuck her, and then in the evening.

  Being inside her is incredible. I start to get hard at the first whiff of cinnamon—because she has a cinnamon broom hanging near her front door.

  One night, I tell her, “You’re getting me hard in the fucking grocery store with this.” (They have those brooms there, near the registers).

  Marley thinks that’s really funny.

  When I’m not with her, I’m either jerking off or listening to her walk around. If I can stay in Marley mode, I almost never feel the yawn of darkness. After a night of the A.I. dream on repeat, I gather all my pictures of Geneva and stash them in a drawer. Just for a few days. She wouldn’t mind that, would she? I tell myself “no.”

  The next day, I decide she would, so I pull them back out. I only look at them when Marley’s home, though. It feels less lonely that way.

  I don’t feel like running anymore, for some reason, so I stop that. I try to take Cora on a walk in the morning, and that feels like enough.

  It’s so cold outside. So gray. That night, I can’t sleep, even when I leave my windows open and jerk off until my eyelids sag.

  I start trying to avoid my thoughts of Gen, and even take her pictures down again. Still, my stomach aches, and I feel weird and weighted. Restless.

  So I live for fucking Marley.

  One, two, three more days of fucking Marley. On a Saturday night, after we finish, I lie there for a few minutes on my back, Mar lying beside me with her cheek propped in her hand.

  “Tell me something,” she says softly.

  I look over at her. “What?”

  “I don’t know. Just anything. We’ve got the fuck, I guess I kinda want the buddy part.”

  That makes me smile. Which makes her smile.

  “You tell me something.”

  “Okay,” she murmurs.

  I shut my eyes, sifting through the dozens of questions I have for her. I pick one, then shift onto my side so I can see her when I ask.

  “Do you still believe in the irony factor?”

  I watch her face transform from blank to amused to rueful. “No,” she shakes her head. “What was that?”

  “A blight on my mental health,” I laugh. “You used to say that the most ironic time for something to happen was the time it was most likely to happen. I’ve been scared of dying on my birthday ever since. I paid a car off once and didn’t drive it all that week.”

  She laughs. “A wreck… Ha. I remember that, the irony factor.”

  I jut my eyebrows up accusingly, and Marley giggles. “That’s not a real thing, obviously. It’s a news phenomenon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She twirls a strand of her dark hair between her fingers. “Well, ironic things seem common because we hear about them. The story of the man who crashed his car on his birthday is going to make the news, where the story of the man who crashed his car on a boring Tuesday on his regular commute isn’t.”

/>   I smile, shaking my head to needle her.

  “Do you still spread the dirty plates and glasses all over the counter instead of piling them up in the sink?” She shoots me her own pointed look.

  I smile at that, and shake my head.

  “You thought if you put them in the sink, they’d get moldy.”

  “I was a stupid kid.” I shrug the shoulder I’m not propped up on.

  Marley’s face is bright and curious, as if we’re reminiscing good old times and not our failed marriage. “Do you still have to have the lights just right when you work?” she asks.

  I nod. “That’s legit. Lighting effects the mood.”

  She nods, her gaze warm on my face, and all at once I have to swallow and remind myself to breathe.

  “Do you still write?” I ask.

  Her face shutters as her lips press into a thin line. “No.” I watch her breasts heave as she inhales. “I took a class at Northwestern, and it screwed me up. Poetry,” she says, looking mournful. “I couldn’t hack it in a class, so I guess it threw me off. I didn’t write for years, and now I only rarely do.”

  She looks unhappy, so I say, “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugs. “I needed something I could be passionate about, so that’s actually how I got into pre-med.”

  “You like it?”

  She strokes a hair back through her hair. “It’s a calling more than a passion, I think. I’m not sure it’s really meant to be enjoyable, you know? But it’s fulfilling. Mostly. Seeing babies was a struggle for a while. Kind of still is.”

  “I’m sorry.” Surely those are the two most inadequate words.

  She looks down at the bedding. “Thanks.” She looks back up at me. “You never know what you’re getting into as a younger person, do you? Shit gets real…”

  I chuckle at the truth of that, even though it’s not funny. As I get up to pull my clothes on, I feel more like eighty-three than thirty-three. It feels like it’s been a long, long time since I married young Marley on the Vegas Strip.

  She sits up, watching me as I step into my pants. I notice I don’t feel a sense of awkwardness with her—ever, anymore.

  “So hey,” she says, softly. I glance up. “I’m kinda out of that time period now. You know, like…it’s waiting time. To see if anything happened. It’s too late now to conceive if I didn’t already. For about a week, it’s useless. We don’t even need to do it once a day. Just every other day…or even not at all. Unless you want to.”

  I blink. “How long is the waiting time?”

  “About a week.”

  I’m grateful for the moment I get, slipping on my shirt, before I need to look at her with a not-disappointed face. I shrug. “You want a break? To…let it take or whatever?”

  She shrugs. “I guess that’s logical enough. If that’s okay with you.”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  She tucks the sheet around herself and follows me into the den. “I’ll let you know when we can test. I won’t do it without you.”

  I nod. “Cool. Thanks.”

  She looks so strange there in the doorway between hall and kitchen, wide-eyed with a sheet around her chest, as if I’ve never seen what’s underneath.

  2

  Marley

  It’s strange not to see him. Not to shave and slather on my favorite lotion for him. Not to spray my sheets with “lavender dream” linen spray for him. The house feels so empty when I get off work. I make tacos for myself and think of taking some downstairs. But that would be weird…right?

  The two-week wait has never been my strong suit, even without this loneliness. After ovulation, it’s two weeks before a woman gets her period. I counted on Gabe not to know a lot about it, so I kept having him over the first week. But this week, when there’s no chance of me getting pregnant—none at all—it felt dishonest not to tell him.

  I eat my tacos by myself and then go for a bike ride, swinging by Mom’s house to check on her. She’s got some chicken soup on the stove, even though she’s not supposed to be up cooking.

  “Stay and have some with me,” she says, sounding tired.

  I do—and it’s not so bad. We watch ESPN to satisfy Mom’s later-in-life sports obsession, and she only acts disparaging and gossipy once: a story about poor Mr. Morrison next door, whom she feels positive has gotten hair plugs.

  Then I stand to go, and she holds her hand up. “Wait, I do have one more thing.”

  I raise my brows, expecting her to pass me something she ordered from QVC. Instead she shakes her head, her face gone grim.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you—how dare you not tell me you’re living with that Gabriel McKellan?”

  “What?” I frown, acting surprised to buy myself a few seconds. “I’m not living with him.”

  “Well, you are so! That Ms. Emery across the street told me he’s on the first floor. Says he’s up your back stairs all the time.”

  Up my back stairs…

  For some reason, that makes me laugh so hard I throw my head back, glimpsing the long crack in Mama’s ceiling.

  “Mama. Give me a break.”

  “I’d like to know what’s going on, at least stay up on all the gossip.”

  “Nothing is.” The lie is knee-jerk. As soon as it leaves my mouth, I start to question keeping it from her.

  “You aren’t in bed with him?”

  My jaw drops. “Mama! I can’t believe that you would even ask that.”

  “Well he’s good-looking. And rich.”

  “You’re giving me whiplash! I thought he was overrated and his books were boring. Or he’s a jerk.” Since I failed to return home from the class trip, Mama has hated on Gabe when the mood suits her. I think, for the years after all of that, it was her way of trying to support me. “And wasn’t it you saying a few weeks back that you heard he was involved in some kind of scandal?”

  “Oh—I did, and I know what it was now.” She leans forward, looking like a dog after a juicy bone.

  “Mom.” I almost laugh, because the petulance of my tone sounds like a teenager. But really.

  “We don’t need to talk about him.”

  Her eyes light up. “So he has been up your stairs. I can’t believe that you would do that, Marley.”

  “Do what?” I ask sharply.

  “That boy—and he’s still a boy to me—is still bad news.”

  “Oh, is he?” I laugh softly to cover weariness.

  In a rare moment of insight, my mother shakes her head, her lips pursed. “Yes. For you, he is.”

  “And why do you say that?”

  She shrugs. “I’ve wondered that same thing for years, Marley. What was it about that curly-headed boy? I think you simply wanted to rebel from me.” She gives me a prim, slut-shaming kind of look.

  I laugh at that, because that’s more what I expected from this little heart-to-heart. Mama making it about her.

  “Okay, Mom. You got me. It’s about you.” I roll my eyes. Because clearly, I’ve regressed to a fifteen-year-old.

  “It’s about gossip, Marley Marie. These old ladies will eat you up for brunch if you’re not careful.”

  “I’m worried,” I deadpan.

  “Word will spread. You won’t have any patients.”

  “It’ll cure the flu and strep, huh?”

  “They could ask for someone else,” she tells me pointedly.

  I throw my hands up. “I’m not paid by patient.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good.” She says this seriously.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. “Thank you for the soup. I hope you have a nice night, Mama.”

  “Watch your back,” she warns.

  As I pedal back home, under curtains of fluttering moss, beneath the tall and shifting trees, I have to laugh. My mother knows I’m having sex with Gabe. She warned me about gossip.

  Welcome back to Fate, Marley. Belated welcome back.

  Wonder what she’ll say when I’m knocked up.

  Symptoms
can be deceiving.

  “Symptoms.”

  Every time, between ovulation and my period, I have what could be pregnancy symptoms.

  Maybe my boobs are sore because I’m pregnant—or because I wore that tight new bra.

  Maybe I’m moody because of baby-making hormones—or maybe because the day has really been annoying as all hell.

  Maybe I have a headache because I’m pregnant—or because I only had one cup of coffee today.

  Maybe I’m tired because the baby is implanting in my uterus right this very second—or maybe just because I stayed up listening to the pipes swoosh.

  That last one is true. I was up last night listening to the freaking pipes. So, at work this morning, I can barely spell my own name, but I do know Gabe flushed the toilet at 1:45 a.m., showered at 3, and had a sad nightmare at 5:30. At 6, as I headed out for a run, I smelled the stench of cigarette smoke near the front porch.

  I came close—so close—to knocking on his door and asking me to run with me. I even lingered by the front walk for a minute. But I kept moving. Because my mom is right to some extent: Gabe can be bad for me. Not inherently bad, but bad because when I’m with him, I like him. He gives me that crooked smile, and my heart melts and sags down to my knees, and—bam—I’m open to him. Open for him. And not just my legs. I just…I don’t even know. I want him.

  Gabe fever. A bit like baby fever, but brought on by lust for baby daddy.

  At work, I think of swinging by his house with dinner, but I tell myself I can’t. The truth is, I have no idea where he is emotionally. Scratch that: I do have an idea. Almost every time, after we do the baby-making thing, he dresses quickly and he goes.

  Bless him, he’s got to be still dealing with the fall-out of what happened. I know he is, because I hear him with those nightmares, through the floorboard. The few times we’ve done missionary style, I see that hard fire in his eyes, and I can tell it’s more than basic lust. The man is haunted—and who wouldn’t be?

  I go home from work and try to think of something I could cook and take him. Oh, I just had extra. But…that’s obvious. And most likely unwanted.