by Heidi Lowe
“I thought we would have a picnic in the park. There's a miniature festival this weekend.”
“Sorry. This is really important.”
“If you have to go, you have to go. We'll do the picnic another time.”
She's made it too easy for me to get away with this. I feel terrible. Why couldn't she be less understanding, demand that Sandra go instead, seeing as it's more her line of work anyway?
I can't bring myself to put my arms around her when I finally step into bed. I don't have the right to; and doing so would feel disingenuous for some reason. That thought alone scares the shit out of me.
It's Saturday evening, and I'm buck naked, lying on a queen-size hotel bed. The air con is running, making my nipples hard. That was her decision – she wants them hard for when she returns. She's stepped out to make a call. It's the first time since we got here yesterday afternoon that either of us has left the room, or been clothed, for that matter.
On the desk across the room are the tools of her trade – a different kind of trade. A couple of dildos, a blindfold, a strap on, handcuffs, and various other things I'd never seen before this getaway. The collection tells a sordid and sexy tale, one that has me smiling even now as I wait for Angel to return. We've only used half the things on that table; tonight, we'll use the rest. My body is already exhausted from the amount of sex we've had up to now; I don't think I'll survive another action-packed night.
She taps lightly on the door and I let her in, not bothering to cover myself up at all. I'm proud of my body; for my age, it still looks the part.
“Mmm, I could get used to this,” she says, pulling me close to her, smashing her lips to mine as she drives me back on to the bed. “Coming home to this every evening.”
She pins my arms above my head as she kisses my face and neck. It hasn't been more than half an hour since our last sex session, but she's already back for more. I can hardly believe she has the energy.
She lets go in order to slip her pants off, then pins me down again. She dips a bare leg between my thighs, and rubs her flesh against my sex. Within minutes she brings me to climax, soaking her leg and knee in my juice.
“I meant it when I said I could get used to this,” she whispers later. I'm lying in her arms, the sex currently on recess.
“I'm sorry to break it to you,” I say, laughing, “but I don't hang around naked all day at home waiting for someone to come in and screw me.” I'm laughing alone. I look up at her and see that her face has gone serious.
“What if I told you I wanted to call the wedding off? I mean, you've been on me to do it from the get-go.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“There's something else I want more...”
We're staring at each other, and suddenly it all becomes clear. Holy shit, she's talking about me!
I let out a nervous laugh and sit up. I'm hoping my suspicions are wrong on this one.
“Angel, I–”
“Just imagine, it could be like this all the time. Waking up beside each other every day.” The look in her eye is so determined it's scary. She sits up too, grabs my hand. “And there would be no need to sneak around anymore. Once it's out in the open, once they both know, we can be together like we're supposed to be.”
Shit! It is exactly as I thought.
“What you're suggesting is insane.” I pull my hand away from hers, shift along the bed to put distance between us. “You want me to leave my wife, my family?”
“That life isn't you. This is. I know you–”
“Well obviously you don't, because I would never leave my wife or my kid–”
She rolls her eyes. “She isn't your kid.”
“Go to hell!” I stomp out of the bed and start dragging on my clothes. “You might taste like paradise and give the best head in the world, but I would never give up everything I care about for that.”
“Everything you care about is right here, that's why you came back to me. What you're doing is settling. Settling for second best. And you'll never be happy.”
“I was happy before you came back into my life.”
She laughs cruelly. “Keep telling yourself that. You only think you were happy. But as soon as I showed up, you realized you were living a lie. You owe it to yourself, heck you even owe it to Faye and Emily, to live the life you're supposed to live. It's not fair to them that you stay when you don't want to be there.”
“Shut up! You're not getting into my head this time.” My face is only inches from hers now. “So fuck you, Angel, Angelique or whatever the fuck your name is. I'm getting the hell out of here.”
She doesn't try to stop me, just watches me throw my things into my holdall and slam out of the room. I'm so overtaken with fury that I get lost leaving the hotel, which only worsens my mood. Well, that went sour pretty quickly.
“Who the hell does she think she is?” I mumble to myself as I'm driving back to New Haven. “To think I would leave Faye and Emily for her, just walk out on my family like some scumbag, good-for-nothing man.” The idea is too bizarre for me to think straight, and I spend the whole journey in a blind rage.
“Nik, is that you?” Faye calls as the front door slams shut behind me. There's alarm in her voice that I don't immediately understand, and then it hits me. She's not expecting me back till tomorrow evening.
“Yeah, it's me.”
She comes out to meet me in her dressing gown. Her hair's tied up and she has her reading glasses on. It's a sexy look, sexier now than usual.
“You're back early. What happened?” She pecks me on the lips.
I make a face, holding her in an embrace. It feels great to have her in my arms again. “Big, fat waste of time. Don't wanna bore you with the details.” And I do something I haven't done to her in years: I lift her up into my arms.
She laughs in shock. “What's gotten into you?” she says, throwing her arms around my neck.
I plant a kiss on her nose, her lips, her eyes, everywhere that I love. “Nothing. It's just good to be home where I belong.” I carry her into our bedroom, barely removing my lips and tongue from her mouth as we go.
This is real, not the stuff I was doing back at that cheap hotel. Faye is my life. Nope, I could never leave her. I'm adamant about that as I take her to bed.
NINE
You know the funny thing about good intentions, and doing the right thing? Sooner or later the novelty wears off. Sooner or later you take a long, hard look at your life and discover that, holy crap, doing the right thing doesn't make you happy. It's like an obligation.
For me it took three weeks. Actually, it took two before the cracks started to show, three before I finally gave in. Faye and Emily had never felt like an obligation until Angel showed up again. Before I let her worm her way into my head with her talk of settling. That night at the hotel, she planted those seeds of doubt there, and sat back and waited while they blossomed and flourished. I did the watering; she didn't even show up to check on the progress.
I'm five minutes away from her salon, and I know that when I get there she'll be expecting me. She'll wear that self-satisfied smirk, maybe even nod knowingly, because she'll know she's won.
For the past three weeks there's been radio silence. I got on with my life, went through the motions of being a good, devoted wife. I showed up. But I think I left my heart in that hotel room. All I do know is something's missing from me now. I realized that after two weeks of hearing nothing from Angel, not seeing her, and doing my best not to think about her.
And then the third week kicked in. I had this sudden, sinking feeling, like you might get if you just discover that your bank account and savings account have been wiped clean out. With every trace of her number cleared from my phone and history, I retrieved the number from an old itemized cell phone bill, and messaged her. Although asking how are you might seem innocuous, just the very fact that I messaged her at all, particularly after the blow up we had at the hotel, spoke volumes.
I should ha
ve known she wouldn't reply. To that one or the half a dozen others I sent her after that, with each one getting more and more desperate – more anxious – for her response.
So here I am now, approaching her place of work, about to make the biggest decision of my life. The last time I trembled this much was when I was about to ask Faye to marry me. How contrasting both events are.
She's behind the counter when I barge into the salon. Another colleague is working on a young girl's eyebrows. Angel looks up at me, and just as suspected there isn't even a trace of surprise on her face.
“All right,” I say, throwing my arms up in defeat. “I'll do it. I'll leave her.”
We're sitting in my car, and we've been silent for some time. I've lost track of it. No one really knows what to say in a situation like this. I can see that she's just as lost for words as I am. I start to notice trivial little things, like the speck of dust on the dashboard, and the dead fly on the windscreen. If I think about these things I won't have to think about the big, important stuff.
“They can't know,” I say eventually. “Faye, my dad, I don't want them to know what we've done. What we're going to do. Not straight away. I'll tell Faye it's someone else, but I won't tell her it's you. That would be too much.”
“Of course. I'll just tell Bernie it wasn't working out. I think he'll understand.”
I laugh without humor. “Then you don't know my dad. That man can hold a grudge. He'll probably swear himself off women for the rest of his life.”
“My old apartment is still vacant. We can stay there while we figure everything out.”
“Jesus.” I plonk my head on the steering wheel. This is actually happening. I'm leaving my wife for my mistress, who also happens to be my father's fiancee. When did my life turn into a soap opera, or worse, a Spanish telenovela?
I feel her hand on my back. “Nik, look at me.” When I do, tears have already started to trickle down my cheeks. “It was always meant to be us, we just took a long time to realize that. But we found each other again. That's all that matters.”
Her words are surprisingly reassuring.
***
The version of my goodbye note to Faye that I finally decide on, took roughly ten tries to get right. And even now, as I read over it again, there are still things I want to change. Maybe emphasize the fact that my decision to leave has nothing to do with her shortcomings. Perhaps insist that I will always love her. But time's up. Faye has taken Emily to visit a college friend and will be back in about an hour. Angel is waiting for me out front. We're taking her car. I'm leaving mine with Faye. It's the least I can do.
I lay the note on Faye's nightstand, take a deep, painful breath, then wrench my suitcase out of the closet and start loading my things in. It's weird, I've never noticed until now how much clothing I have. I'll need three or four suitcases to take everything. When the dust settles I'll come back for the rest.
There's a multicolored scarf Faye bought me for my thirty-third birthday. I toss it in without thinking, then take it out again. I bring it to my nose. It has her scent all over it. My scarf, but she wore it more than I did. I close my eyes and sniff her aroma in, the smell tugging at my heartstrings. I'm like a widow going through the possessions of my deceased lover. Our house is filled with things that remind me of Faye, of our life together, yet it's this scarf that breaks me. It occurs to me, for the first time, that I could be making a terrible mistake. That I'm not driven by love for Angel, but by lust. And that if I am wrong about this, there will be no going back.
My phone buzzes and buzzes. I look at the screen: Angel's calling. I don't answer because I need time, time to say goodbye to my old life. She'll have me forever, what's another five or ten minutes?
But then I hear the front door opening, followed by the animated chatter of my daughter. Oh no! Faye's back. Angel must have been calling to warn me.
“Nik, are you home? I saw your car in the driveway. Penny gave us a lift back. So nice of her.” She steps into the room. “Hey, there you are...” She sees the suitcase, sees what I'm doing and stops. “What's going on? Are you going on a secret holiday I didn't know about?”
I swallow hard, my back still to her, and zip up the suitcase. It isn't full, but I can't very well continue now that she's back. I stand up, straighten up and turn to face her. My vision of her is blurry thanks to the tears in my eyes. This was a confrontation I desperately wanted to avoid, being the coward that I am. I haven't prepared myself for a face to face.
“Nikki, what is this?” She sounds anxious, the trepidation in her voice at an all-time high.
“I...I'm leaving.”
“What? Leaving. I don't under–”
“I've met someone else.”
She shakes her head slowly, perplexed, her face screwed up in utter confusion. “W–what...w–why...I don't understand.”
“It's all in the note. I have to go now.”
“No! No, you can't just tell me something like that and then leave. This better be a joke.” It hasn't taken long for her routinely calm exterior to do a complete 180. She's not hysterical yet, likely because she's still so confused, but hysteria isn't far off.
“Read the note, Faye, please,” I say in a small, shaky voice.
“No! If you're going to walk out on our marriage, on your family, at least have the balls to tell me to my face. You owe me that much.”
Her tears burn me more than they probably burn her. Why the hell did I take so long to pack? I can't do this. I'm not strong enough to face her.
“I'm sorry,” is all I can say.
“You're sorry?” she screams. “You're sorry? You told me you loved me just this morning, and now you're leaving me. You're leaving us. Who the hell are you?”
I wish I could tell her I'm the same woman she married, but we both know that isn't true. The woman she married would have died before she ever put her through this. I don't know who I am anymore.
“Who is she?”
“It doesn't matter.”
“It does to me. Who is it? Does she know you're married, that you have a child? Or does none of that matter to her?”
I step past her and she follows behind me as I hurry to the door. Emily is in the hallway. My heart was in pieces before, but now, seeing her, it's crumbling into nothing.
“Where are you going, Mama?”
“I'll see you soon, baby, okay?” I can barely speak through the tears, the bawling. And because she sees both of her parents crying, she starts too.
“How could you do this? After everything we've been through. How could you do this to our family?” There isn't even anger in her words anymore, which makes them more painful to hear. She's distraught.
It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst day of my life. And in that moment, seeing the two most important people in the world to me crying because of something I did, I think that it can't possibly get any worse. But as soon as I pull the door open to leave, I see Angel standing on the doorstep.
“Do you have everything?” she asks. It's as if she says it on purpose, to fill in all the blanks for my unsuspecting wife. Or to twist the knife in.
“Y–you?” Faye says, staring in wonderment at Angel. “You're the other woman?”
I want the ground to open up and swallow me.
Angel snatches my suitcase from me. Her face contorts with anger. “No, you're the other woman. Tell her, Nikki. Tell her how you proposed to me back in 2006. That you've been in love with me ever since then.”
“Angel, just wait in the car,” I say, but I know it's no use. In her eyes I see relish, like she's enjoying this showdown. She wants Faye to know the whole story, and she's going to be the one to tell it.
“Nikki, is this true?” Faye looks at me, pleading in her eyes and voice. If it's true it means this isn't simply a silly fling I'll get over in a week.
“It didn't happen that way–”
“We were together two years. It didn't work out back then because it wasn't the right time. But
now...now is the right time. You were just a stand-in for me, Faye.”
“Angel!” I scold. But the damage is already done. My failure to deny her claims confirms the veracity of her words. I watch Faye break down, crumble to the floor in front of our daughter.
“Let's go,” Angel says, pulling my suitcase toward her car.
I look back at the destruction I've left behind, at my broken wife, my wailing daughter, and I hate myself. Climbing into Angel's car now isn't even about wanting to be with her, it's more about knowing that I can't stay here after what I've caused.
“Why did you have to say those things?” I demand as we pull away. I'm refusing to look through the window at my family, opting to bawl hysterically instead.
“They'll be fine,” Angel assures.
I know that I'm a horrible person. But I'm not trying to be good; I'm trying to be happy.
Something tells me there's fat chance of that happening now.
CRAVE: FAYE'S STORY – FIRST CHAPTER
Thunderous banging at the front door yanks me from my slumber. The afternoon sun's blinding rays blast through my bedroom window.
I sit up, my head feeling heavier than usual. The hangover is still in full effect. If I'd stopped at three glasses of the cheap wine I picked up last night, perhaps today I would feel like facing the day. Or not. No, probably not. The over-consumption of alcohol, truth be told, is the least of my worries.
The pounding on my door matches the one in my head. I only get up to tear open the drawers and search for some aspirin, not to answer the door. Whoever is out there will leave eventually; they'll get the message.
"Faye, open the door. I know you're in there." It's Sandra's voice.
I continue searching for the pills that will make the day bearable for me, ignoring the persistent banging. I don't want to see her. I don't want to see anyone.
Thump, thump, thump. "I'm not going to stop until you open the door."
I sigh, finally managing to find a packet of aspirin. I know she means it. She gave up all those other days, but I guess now the lack of response from me is worrying her. If I ever plan on getting back to sleep, I'll have to open the door.
