She returned her index finger to its hovering point above the doorbell. She was an open, extroverted, candid woman of action, for chrissake! She could talk to Aaron without Jon present and without any allegations of wrongdoing—at least from her husband’s limited vantage point. She sighed and dropped her hand again. So, what the hell was stopping her?
This mental tennis match was driving her crazy. Back and forth. Back and forth. What should she do next? Whose court was the ball in now? She stepped away from the door and reconsidered: She didn’t have to ask Aaron over for dinner that day. It was only the eleventh and Jon would be gone until the sixteenth. She could come back tomorrow instead. Or even the day after. But where was this uncharacteristic cowardliness coming from? And why—
“You tryin’ to drive Sharky mad?” came Aaron’s voice from the window above her. She glanced up. Oops. Busted. “He’s going nuts in here, barking and jumping. Can’t you hear him?”
She forced a grin at him, finally tuning in to the sound of Sharky’s deep throaty barks. “Oh, sorry. I was just…lost in thought.” Even to her own ears this excuse sounded seriously lame.
“Well, stop thinking outside the house, would’ya? The door’s unlocked. Come in and pet the poor bastard before he hurts himself.”
“Sure.” She pushed the front door open and was immediately assaulted by a very excited pooch. She scratched between his ears as he licked her, and she rubbed down the fur covering his back, enjoying the special animal love that was so wholehearted, so physical and so blissfully uncomplicated. This moment required no second-guessing, thank God. Then, she caught her breath as she realized Aaron was eyeing her from midway down the staircase. “Hey,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hey,” he said back. “I’m not bad. You?”
Her heart rate escalated to speeds medical professionals would find alarming. “Fine,” she lied. Then she turned her attention back to Sharky for a few moments because, well, the dog wasn’t expecting coherent conversation. “Good, Sharky,” she murmured. A happy rumble in his throat and a wag of his tail let her know he, at least, was pleased with her arrival. She wasn’t yet sure about Aaron.
“So, what’s up?” he asked her, throwing a rawhide ring at Sharky to occupy him and running his fingers through his damp, dark blond hair to push it away from his face. Looked like he’d stepped out of the shower maybe ten minutes ago.
“I come bearing an invitation.” She smiled. She had rehearsed these lines in her head, oh, four thousand times in the past week. “I was talking to Jon about you.” She paused and let that information sink in to his handsome head. He studied her wordlessly, his brow creased in silent disbelief. “And I told him I wanted to ask you over for dinner. He said that would be no problem, and I was welcome to extend the invitation.” She paused again and had the satisfaction of seeing the astonishment in his expression. “Unfortunately, Jon left town on business today and won’t be back until Tuesday. However, he encouraged me to invite you over even in his absence, so I wanted to see what your schedule looked like. When you’re free. If you’d prefer lunch or dinner. This week with me alone or later next week when Jon can be there. It’s all open.”
He laughed in a burst of nervous surprise, the corners of his eyes crinkling like an old man’s, but the amusement in his voice when he spoke sounded very boyish to her ear. “Thank you, Tamara.”
“Well, I’d save the thanks until you’ve actually eaten something I’ve made, but you’re wel—”
“No.” He shook his head for emphasis. “That’s not what I’m thanking you for. Thanks for having that conversation with your husband. And thanks for telling me about it. Since I can’t actually imagine Jon wants to bond with me over burgers, I might just take you up on a quick lunch sometime. We can compare strategies for next year’s garden or something.” He ran his fingers through his hair again, the hand nearest to her catching her eye because she saw a tremor run through it just as it skimmed above the dampness. “Nice of you to ask me,” he added.
“Well, pull out your calendar and let’s take a look then.”
He shook his head. “Don’t need to. I’ll make myself free. You choose the date and time and let me know. I’ll be there.”
She took a step closer to him and saw the tremor in his hand again. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”
He must have caught her staring at his hands because he shoved them in his jeans’ pockets and took a step back. “Yep.”
“Well, I—I don’t wanna keep you if you’ve got work to do. Lots of magazine stuff to organize today?”
“Not any more than usual. And, Tamara, you’re not keeping me. I like talking with you. Sharky loves having you visit. It’s…always a pleasure to see you.”
She took another step toward him and, again, he backed away. What the hell? “Uh, thanks. Likewise.”
Then, for what felt like two hours (even though it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds), the two of them just stood there and looked at each other. He seemed to be scanning her hair and her mouth and she wasn’t entirely sure what else because she stared first at his eyes, then his jaw, then her gaze traveled down his chest and—this was crazy. She was a woman of action, not endless, pointless rumination. If she wanted to take a step forward—literally, figuratively—she could, dammit.
She inhaled, moved toward him one more time and reached out to snag his arm with her fingers before he could try to slide away again. Oddly, this time, he didn’t try. He was so completely motionless she wouldn’t have known he was breathing had she not noticed the slightest rise and fall of his chest.
Her gaze returned to his face, his jaw, his lips. The flesh of his arm warmed under her fingertips. His neck muscles tensed as he swallowed and she moved fully into his embrace. Only when there was absolutely no uncertainty left about the direction she was headed did he break the statuesque pose, pull his hands out of his pockets and wrap his arms around her. Not tightly, but it was at least a show of open acceptance in her being there.
By contrast, Tamara exhibited no such restraint. She pressed her body against his, dug the pads of her fingers into his back and touched her lips to the corners of his mouth repeatedly until his lips parted and he finally kissed her in return. At last, his grip on her tightened, and she felt his hands roaming across her lower spine…and without the least hint of a tremor.
If Tamara had any lingering convictions that what she had experienced the night of the Hallowiener Party was the direct result of too scant a sense of judgment and too high a dosage of Appletini mix, this was soundly axed when their tongues met and her groan of desire matched one of Aaron’s. For a split second, she visualized herself back in her bedroom, alone—her vibrating bunny turned on, her eyes shut, her mind projecting Aaron onto her imaginary screen of passion. How many times had she played out that fantasy? She tried to open her eyes and face the reality of that lonely bedroom, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were already open. The moment was real, and she was here. With him.
He broke away from her and sighed. “Look, I’m not apologizing to you right now because you started it this time, but we can’t…do this.”
“Maybe not,” she said, understanding finally what her fantasies had been telling her for months. Aaron’s body may have been mixed in with those fantasies (heavily mixed in, if she were being completely truthful), but the jolt of physical attraction she had felt toward him wasn’t the only part of those visions. She needed to end the loneliness she felt in that bedroom. In that life. Daydreaming about Aaron touching her was really nice, but being trapped in a bleak and lonely world—one decades in the making—was no longer tolerable. Aaron or no Aaron, she had to distance herself from that.
“You’re married, Tamara. There’s no maybe about it.” He withdrew his arms and crossed them, putting half a foot of empty space between them again.
She nodded. “Yeah. But I won’t be staying that way.”
His arms dropped to his side. He cocked his head and squinted. “What?”<
br />
“I’ll be filing for divorce before the end of the month,” she said, marveling at how it was possible to speak these long-dreaded words so evenly. But they were the right words leaving her mouth. They were not partial truths. They were whole, painful, raw truths. Despite all of her mental and verbal protests. Despite all of her wishes otherwise over the years. Despite all of her attempts—and, perhaps, even Jon’s—at steering their marriage away from the perils they’d been warned about by their parents.
Bottom line: It hadn’t been Aaron’s body or his kisses that’d drawn her to him (much). It had been his company. His conversation. The contrast he had provided to the emotional isolation at home.
“W-When did you decide this? And, um, are you—okay?”
She grasped him lightly with both hands straining to span his biceps and kissed him very lightly on the tip of his nose. “I’m okay. Kinda.” She shrugged. “I think I actually knew before the Hallowiener Party, but I was trying to avoid admitting it. For years I thought, ‘I don’t want this to happen to me,’ but the focus was wrong, you know? All that energy being used to try to prevent something….”
“As opposed to working to keep something.”
“Exactly,” she said.
He reached out to her and ran the side of his thumb from her temple to her chin. “Are you sure there isn’t anything left that’s worth working to keep? Maybe Jon would really want to try—”
“No, Aaron. Not for any truly good reason anyway. Not wanting to let go of a draining situation because of pride and stubbornness is different from wanting to nurture a relationship.”
He nodded. “Okay. I get that. But—” He groaned, and not in that “I’m filled with desire for you” way this time. “What’s this thing happening between us? Did that make you, uh…”
“No. You weren’t what set off the change. I mean, you sort of were but not really.”
“What? What do you mean I ‘sort of’ was?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his expression, which seemed to be almost indignant, but she wasn’t precisely sure why. Because he was only slightly the cause of her impending marital breakup or because he was implicated in it at all?
“Aaron, look, you’re a very attractive guy and talking to you is always fun. But, you’re—” She contemplated how best to put this. “Young. It’s not like you’re a kid or anything, but you’re way younger than I am. You’re barely thirty and—”
“I’m thirty-one, Tamara. Thirty-two in a couple of months. I’m not that young. You’re not that old. Don’t use superficial crap like that as shorthand for the real explanation.”
Her jaw dropped. “Superficial crap?” she repeated slowly. “Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”
“Oh, I plan to tell you more than that.” He shot her a small grin. “You know we should probably sit down or something if we’re going to have a long discussion. I can put on some tea or coffee if you want.”
She poked him with her index finger in the middle of his chest. “And that’s what I meant when I said you were sort of the reason. You’re annoying and a big braggart, but you want to talk things out. You want to share what you think and feel. I discovered I really appreciate that in a man.” She squinted at him and qualified the statement, “In a man-friend. A young man-friend.”
He poked her back. “First, I’m not as annoying as you are. And, second, I changed my mind. You don’t get coffee or tea. This conversation calls for a much stronger drink.” He pointed toward a long cabinet that had a few bottles of alcohol on the top and a row of crystal tumblers and wineglasses beside them. “Pick your poison and pour yourself some.”
“I’m not sure after the whole Halloween thing that we should be allowed to drink in each other’s company,” she said.
“Suit yourself. I’m having wine. At least half a bottle of it.”
And he wasn’t kidding.
“Huh,” she said, after he’d made a serious dent in the chilled, French-imported Sauvignon Blanc. “Well, I guess I can’t let you drink alone.”
“Guess not.”
So, he poured her a glass, they sat back down and they talked. Just talked. Most of their conversation wasn’t earth-shatteringly profound, but it also wasn’t antagonistic or abrasive, something that always surprised her when she was in Aaron’s company. They merely lobbed their questions and answers back and forth. It was a simple continuation of the way they’d always spoken to each other—affectionately sarcastic, topically divergent, remarkably honest—with one, critical difference: Aaron openly admitted he’d played out this exact scenario in his mind a few times.
“You’re saying, you imagined me leaving Jon and…and having a fling, or whatever this is, with you?” she asked.
He gulped a healthy amount of white wine. “Yep. I visualized it. Things I visualize tend to happen.”
“You don’t get to take credit for this.”
He laughed. “Credit? Tamara, you’re getting a fucking divorce. If anything, I should take some of the blame.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I keep telling you, this mostly doesn’t have anything to do with you. You couldn’t have visualized my marriage into shambles. It was like that for years before I met you. Besides, I had…fantasies of us, too.”
“That’s great.” He grinned. “I wanna hear about those later. But visualizing and fantasizing are two different things. Their intentions are different.”
“What? I don’t get how—”
“People don’t seriously believe their fantasies will come true, Tamara. But when a person visualizes, they’re practicing their hoped-for reality. They not only want what they’re thinking about to come true but, on some level, they expect it.”
“You’ve been reading too much of your own magazine.”
He shrugged. “Probably. Want some more of this?” He held out the nearly empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. It was more potent than she’d expected. She could feel her appendages beginning to tingle, but she was a long way from drunk yet.
Better to stop while she was ahead.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. You can have the rest.”
But he put the bottle down and turned to her. “I don’t know if this thing we have is going to go anywhere. Or even if it should. You’ve got a lot to deal with in the next several months. Even in the next year or two. But I just want to hang out with you today.” He pointed to his fireplace. “It’s getting darker and colder out, and I haven’t made a fire yet. Let me throw on some logs and make the first one of the season.”
She remembered his colossal stack of wood by the side of his house and said, “Sounds great.” But she didn’t tell him that the simplicity of that gesture—and his statement of wanting to just hang out with her—was the best foreplay she could imagine. It worked better than the wine or any aphrodisiac she could name. So, when the logs were on and the fire built to a medium, easy-burning level, she slid over to him on the sofa and said, “I want to kiss you again.”
And she kissed him again.
“You realize the wine I drank, while not enough to make me completely incoherent, keeps me from being able to resist your advances,” he told her, when he pulled away to catch his breath.
“Good,” she said, her tone deliberately flippant.
“No. Not good,” he shot back. “I’m still trying to decide if I’m willing to let myself get used by you. I like you, but I know what you’re doing.”
“What?!” She started to laugh but, then, realized—no, he was serious. “I am not trying—”
“We’ll see,” he said, cutting her off. “Thing is, I’ve been wanting to do you in front of the fireplace for, like, a year now. So, this is my chance. I’m weighing my options, but the wine is tipping things in your favor.”
Oh, God. Even before he was on her radar, she had been on his? She had certainly noticed he was attractive, but the fantasizing and the lingering thoughts were, she had to admit, something that had rushed in after they had begun chatti
ng more regularly.
As if reading the question on her lips, he nodded. “Yeah. It was more an immediate attraction thing for me. Guys are visual, you know.” He tugged at her light pullover. “Guys wanna see what’s under the shirt. It took a while before you started to look at me like that. It didn’t happen until—” He paused. Thought. “Late spring of this year. Nine or ten months after we met at that stupid block party last summer.”
It was true. She remembered. It wasn’t until she and Aaron were out on their respective lawns doing yard work that they had a conversation independent of Jon and Benji. Aaron had been sending her very subtle signals. Signals that he had noticed her. And somewhere along the line, she’d begun responding to them. She was, perhaps, more susceptible to them the closer Benji got to leaving home…and as Jon’s inattention became more obvious…but Aaron’s signals to her predated hers to him.
“So, wait a freakin’ minute,” she told him. “Shouldn’t I be the one worried about you taking advantage of me? You flirted with me first. And I’m the emotionally vulnerable one here. I’m the one about to get divorced.”
He pulled her into his arms, a gentle but firm embrace. “Tamara, I’ve already been where you are. Grief and manipulation are not mutually exclusive. I may have slipped and kissed you the night of that party but, throughout most of this fall, you’ve been as much of an aggressor as I have, if not more. You stop by here. You flirt with me. You wear provocative outfits—”
She pulled away from him and crossed her arms. “Oh, give me a break. Like you don’t stop by my house? Like you don’t take your shirt off or wear those really great-fitting jeans on purpose?” She scowled at him, even though a part of her thought the whole argument was kind of funny. “Don’t try to claim I’m the only one being manipulative.”
“I’m not saying that.” He smiled carefully at her. “Just that you’re in the position of being even more manipulative than I am. Because there are a bunch of things you need to work out in your head. Your being here with me is not just about liking or not liking me. It’s also a reaction to your husband. It’s also a testing of a new role.” He pulled her back toward him and kissed her very lightly on her cheek. “I’m telling you, I’ve already been where you are. I’m not criticizing as much as explaining.”
Friday Mornings at Nine Page 29
