by Hazel Hughes
He paused, his eyes traveling over Elizabeth’s face, his expression unreadable. “But you wanted to know about my mother, right? I left Toronto and never looked back. Bitch could be dead for all I care.”
Elizabeth inhaled sharply. It hurt her physically to hear him talking like this.
“Is that what you wanted? Do you feel like you know me now?” Sebastian said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. She just shook her head, biting the pad of her thumb.
He stood up, pacing, his eyes alive with angry fire. “Yeah, those are my roots. That’s my history, but you know what, Elizabeth? That’s not me. I’m not my past. I’m not that fourteen-year-old letting Frederick Hauser give it to him up the ass, and I’m not that twelfth-grader nailing his chemistry teacher for an A. And I’m sure as hell not that green actor bent over the desk of some C-list director. Nobody fucks me now. Nobody!”
Elizabeth watched him, a mixture of fear and pity in her eyes.
He came close to the bed and stood over her, sneering. “I don’t want your pity, Elizabeth.” His face was a mask of cold fury, but she couldn’t stop herself from speaking.
“What do you want?” she asked. There was a tremor in her voice.
His face softened, and he sat down on the bed next to her. “Well, I really want my burger,” he said, breaking the tension with his joke. She smiled.
“Besides that?” he asked, running the back of his hand over her cheek, looking at her tenderly. “I want your love. No more ignoring my emails. Making me hunt you down at a Justin Timberlake concert. Give in to it, Elizabeth. Surrender.”
Chapter 12
“Seriously, Liz. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Emily said this from where she was sitting in the back seat of Nina’s car, and despite the seething anger of her tone, Elizabeth exhaled a quiet sigh of relief. At least Emily was talking to her again. They were halfway between Chicago and Fairfield and this was the first time Emily had so much as acknowledged Elizabeth’s presence. Elizabeth had endured enough of Emily’s silent treatments over the years to know that the best way to handle them was to suffer through them. In the past she had tried apologizing and cajoling. She had tried getting angry. She had even tried tears. But all that did was strengthen Emily’s icy resolve and prolong the silence. In the end, Elizabeth found, the only way to win was to beat her at her own game. Nina knew the drill by now, too, and would talk to both Emily and Elizabeth but drew the line at acting as intermediary.
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, though she was ninety-nine percent certain she knew exactly what Emily meant.
“Oh, come on, Liz.” Emily’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You wander off with Mr. AWOL, send a lame text about meeting up with some friends, then we don’t see you till you creep in at 5:00 this morning.” She huffed, and though Elizabeth couldn’t see her from where she was in the passenger seat, she pictured her friend crossing her arms under her ample bosom. “I knew you were having an affair,” she continued accusingly. “In the Big Apple”
“Would you quit calling it that?” Elizabeth said, cheeks flushing with shame. “The Big Apple,” she mimicked Emily’s velvety voice, knowing she was acting childish. “You sound like my mother.”
“Hm. I wonder what your mother would think if she knew that she was providing child care so that you could get your rocks off with that Prada-wearing pretty boy?” Emily spat.
“Putain de merde!” Nina hissed before Elizabeth could retort. “Do you two hear yourselves? You sound like focking children! If you can’t discuss this like adults, please shut up, or I will crash the focking car.” She gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.
Chastened, both Emily and Elizabeth retreated into silence again.
After a minute or two, Nina spoke. “You have to admit, he is very sexy, no?” she said, conversationally.
“Oh for God’s sake!” Emily groaned. “Nina, don’t encourage her.”
“What?” Nina raised her shoulders in a Gallic shrug. “I am just saying ...”
Emily cut her off, leaning forward between the two front seats. “You are, aren’t you? Having an affair?” she asked.
“Well, technically yes, but ...” Elizabeth started.
“Damn it, Liz,” Emily interrupted, sounding exasperated and sad at once. “What about Steve?”
“What about Steve?” Elizabeth said, angrily. “When was the last time he touched me when he didn’t want sex? Jesus Christ, he doesn’t even bother to kiss me goodbye anymore.” She turned to look over her shoulder at her friend. “Our anniversary came and went. Do you think I got a card, flowers, happy anniversary dear? Anything? Fat chance.”
Emily’s face was impassive, considering.
“No!” Nina gasped. “You always go to a nice hotel for the weekend, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we do. Because I plan it. But for once, I just didn’t have it in me. And surprise, surprise, Steve didn’t even notice.” Elizabeth’s tone was ironic, contrasting uncomfortably with the ache in her chest. She felt close to tears.
“Okay, I get that you and Steve are going through a bumpy patch ...” Emily began.
“Just how long is a ‘bumpy patch,’ Em?” Elizabeth interrupted. “Six months? A year? Because this has been going on a lot longer than that. How long before you start calling it something else?”
“Fine,” Emily answered. “More of a bumpy stretch. But couldn’t you talk about it? See a counselor? Do you really think cheating on Steve is going to help your marriage?”
“Sometimes a little amour fou can, you know, bring back the flame of love,” Nina said.
“Nina!” Emily scolded. “We’re not in France here. This is America. The star-spangled Bible belt of the Midwest. In some states, adultery is still against the law. We don’t have casual affairs the way you do, like you’re picking out a new pair of shoes.”
“Au contraire,” Nina sniffed. “There is nothing casual about buying a new pair of shoes!”
“Have you ever cheated on Marc?” Elizabeth asked, quietly, feeling a flutter of hope. Not that she’d wish it on Nina, but she’d feel better if she knew she weren’t the only one.
Nina made a dismissive noise. “No. Marc and I, we never gone through this ‘bumpy patch,’ thanks God.” She shrugged. “Sometimes he makes me crazy, of course. This is normal, I think. But even when he leaves his dirty socks on the floor, again,” she paused, to give weight to the word, “at the end of the day, he treats me like his queen.” She glanced over at Elizabeth, one eyebrow arched. “Of course, I also try to treat him like my king.”
Elizabeth mulled this over, guiltily, all too aware that nobody got treated like royalty in their house, with the possible exception of Buddy, the lab.
The women all fell silent for a moment, each involved in her own thoughts.
Nina broke the silence. “The sex with Sebastian is good?” she asked, as if she were asking about the weather.
“Nina!” Emily scolded. When nobody spoke, she grudgingly asked, “Yeah. How is the sex? It must be pretty damn mind-blowing to be worth completely fucking up your life for.” She leaned forward again; her voice was loud in Elizabeth’s ear. “You do realize that’s what will happen if Steve finds out, don’t you?”
Elizabeth sighed, thinking about it. “Yeah.” She paused for a moment, her mind returning to the night before with Sebastian. Her clit twitched involuntarily as an image flashed through her head: Sebastian’s hands holding her hips as he took her from behind, the sharp slap of his hand on her ass as she came. She crossed her legs.
“The sex is ... well, it started out amazing. I mean, he is hot, right? And he knows what he’s doing. That first night, we were in the room for almost twenty-four hours straight and he made me come, I don’t know” – she did the mental calculations – “ten times?”
Emily let out a long, slow whistle from the back seat. “Wow,” she said.
Elizabeth continue
d, looking down at her heads. “Yeah, I know. But then it started getting a bit weird. I mean, he likes to do it in public places, you know, where we might get caught.”
Nina made a dismissive noise – “Pff!” – and waved her hand, like that was no big deal.
“Oh, perfect,” Emily groaned. “Just what you need, to get papped with your pants down. Wouldn’t that be a great way for Steve to find out, looking at People while he’s waiting in line at Hy-Vee?”
“And he, um, deflowered me,” Elizabeth said, smiling with embarrassment. “You know, the back door.”
Nina made her little dismissive noise again and Emily said, “Man. You and Steve really are vanilla.”
“Believe it.” She bit her lip, wondering if she should tell them more. It did feel good to confess. She was beginning to understand the appeal of Roman Catholicism. “And we had a threesome.” She glanced at her friends to gauge their reactions. Emily’s eyebrows had shot up to her hairline, but Nina’s expression was as blasé as ever.
“This is not uncommon,” she said, shrugging.
“With some guy we picked up at a gay bar,” she continued.
“Some guy? A gay bar? Hello? HIV?” Emily almost shouted, leaning forward again. She collapsed back against her seat. Elizabeth could hear her rubbing her hands over her face in frustration and disbelief. “God, please tell me you used condoms?” she muttered.
“We did.” She paused, deliberating with herself whether or not she should tell them about the tattoo. Taking a deep breath, she plunged ahead. “He made me get a tattoo.”
“He ‘made’ you?” Emily asked, incredulous.
“Well, he convinced me to,” Elizabeth half-lied. More like coerced, she thought. “And, um, he watched while I got it. It really seemed to arouse him. We did it in the bathroom of the tattoo parlor after.”
Emily hooted in disbelief, and even Nina raised her eyebrows.
Elizabeth made a split-second decision not to them about Sebastian’s tattoo. Or how he had scraped his thumb over her wound, his cock swelling as she tensed in pain. Maybe they didn’t need to hear about Susan, either. Or Mel. They had heard enough.
“He sounds like a freak, Liz. Not healthy,” Emily said, shaking her head. Elizabeth didn’t answer, but she had to agree with the last part, at least. Her relationship with Sebastian was definitely not healthy. But she craved him like a junkie craved his next hit, and was just as helpless to resist.
“Let me see it,” Emily asked, suddenly.
“What? The tattoo?” Elizabeth asked. “Em, it’s on my C-section scar. I’ll show you when we get out of the car.”
“What did Steve say when he saw it?” Nina asked, concern furrowing her brow.
“He hasn’t, yet,” Elizabeth answered. They all pondered this for a minute.
Then Emily spoke, her usually deep voice almost a childlike whine. “Oh, God. How am I going to be able to face Steve, knowing this? What am I going to say?”
Elizabeth was wondering the exact same thing.
*
“Lizzie, honey! How are you?” Abbie’s sugary voice bubbled through the phone receiver. Elizabeth looked around the living room for a place to put down the off-set spatula she was using to ice Steve’s birthday cake, before settling on her apron-covered lap. When the phone rang, she had been peering out the front window at Matt and Lilly Andover, their neighbors across the street, who were screaming at each other and tugging on the handles of their curbside garbage can. One of the things that she and her mother agreed on was that the Andovers were better entertainment than most of the crap on TV.
“Great. You had a look at my second draft?” Elizabeth had sent it two weeks ago, proud that it was only five days late.
“Huuuuge improvement!” Abbie raved. “I think it works much better now that you decided to stick to the first-person point of view. And the changes you made to chapter two really helped me sympathize more with Chantalle.” A beat. “I just have a couple more teeny suggestions before I start pitching it.”
Elizabeth stifled a groan. Of course she did.
“I’ll email them to you tomorrow. But that’s not why I’m calling. I have great news.” Abbie’s already high voice shrilled even higher.
“You have a royalty check for me?” Elizabeth joked. She had gotten the credit-card bill from her trip to New York with the thousand-dollar lingerie purchase on it.
“Ha ha ha,” Abbie trilled. “Don’t I wish. No, I got a call from Clearwater in London. I guess they heard about Cullen optioning Habibi Baby. They want exclusive distribution rights to the book in the UK. I talked them into paying for your tour there. They’re thinking last week in April. Five cities, five days. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Some bookstore signings. Interviews with a couple of journos, a radio show. Now you won’t be staying at Claridges,” Abbie cautioned, “but they are footing the whole bill. Including a per diem. Practically unheard of these days, unless you’re freakin’ Danielle Steele. Isn’t that amazing?”
Elizabeth’s mind struggled to process the information. “Last week of May. Abbie, that’s in two weeks.”
Her agent giggled. “Better start packing!”
Elizabeth heard a muffled crunch. “Mm, sorry,” Abbie mumbled. “I’m celebrating with a churro and hot chocolate.” She took another bite. “I swear, selling Cullen the rights to Habibi Baby was the best thing we could have done for your career. The word is out that Elizabeth Holmes is a hot ticket.”
Elizabeth licked absentmindedly at the metal spatula, Sebastian’s face coming into focus in her mind. Coconut. Steve’s favorite. “Mm,” she answered. Her career, probably. Her life? Maybe not.
*
That night, after opening presents and eating cake and putting sugar-saturated children to bed and giving Steve his traditional birthday blowjob, Elizabeth had crept up to her office and turned on her laptop. She knew Steve was asleep with a fantasy novel open on his chest and a smile on his face, but Elizabeth kept looking over her shoulder while she waited for her computer to start.
Since the concert in Chicago, she had started replying to Sebastian’s emails. Not long replies. And not every day, but she was replying, engaging, complicit. Sebastian didn’t post links to gossip sites anymore, but Elizabeth had them all set up in her bookmarks now, and she checked them daily, even though Sebastian had told her that AWOL was currently filming in the rainforests of Southern Mexico. He said he wrote to her on his lunch break from a divey internet cafe called La Morena Guapa.
His messages were shorter and more graphic, but his spelling was just as bad. He attached photos of the set, of his hotel room, of himself with his arms around two pretty chocolate-eyed girls, their bare arms honey-brown in their cheap tank tops, “just friends” in the subject line.
She wrote back, describing in dripping, lurid detail what she had imagined them doing while she was straddling her husband. Her married sex life had never been better, though she still insisted on keeping her top on and the lights off. She wasn’t ready for him to see the tattoo.
Sebastian kept asking her to send a picture of it, preferably including the rest of her naked body, but she had demurred, so far. Now she had something better to give him.
“I will be in London the last week of April for a book tour. Will extend it for two nights in London if you come.”
Her heart thumping, she clicked send.
*
Elizabeth had been avoiding her friends since the Justin Timberlake concert. And, she suspected, Emily, at least, was avoiding her too. Normally, the three families spent a lot of time together. But not long after they returned to Fairfield, Nina’s maiden aunt had died. As the favorite niece, Nina had been called on to sort out the estate in France. With Nina out of the picture, Elizabeth couldn’t face Emily’s judgmental glares, so she had been using her impending deadline as an excuse to send Keenan to soccer practice with Steve or her mother. And both Emily and Elizabeth had been struck by strange urges to take their respec
tive families on mini-road trips on the weekends.
“Oh, it’s the annual Tulip Festival this weekend in Keosaqua,” Elizabeth said as the family sat around the breakfast table, sullenly spooning their oatmeal one clammy Wednesday morning.
“Ugh,” Keenan said rolling his eyes. “Not another car trip. Why can’t we just stay here this weekend? Avery said he got a new scooter when they were in Des Moines and he’ll let me try it.”
“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “I haven’t seen Chase or Mark in ages. Why don’t we have the Spitzers and the Dubois over for a game day, or something?”
“But the Tulip Festival,” Elizabeth pleaded, lamely, looking at her mother and Gwen. “We could make it a girls’ day out,” she said brightly.
Gwen glowered at her and bubbled her oatmeal between her lips.
Connie shook her head. “I’ll pass. I want to get the lettuce into the ground before it gets too warm. Besides, I promised Helen at the church that I’d help her bake pies for their spring fund-raiser.”
“Game day! Game day!” Keenan started chanting, pounding his fist on the table. Gwen and Steve laughingly joined him. “Game day! Game day!”
Elizabeth threw her hands up, smiling. “Okay! You win,” she said, reaching over to ruffle Keenan’s hair. “I’ll give Emily a call tonight.”
