by Nina Lane
“Did she take your name?” I ask when Dean comes back into the bedroom.
“What?”
“Helen. Was she Helen West?”
“No.” He grabs the back collar of his T-shirt and tugs it over his head. “She kept her maiden name. She was always Dr. Morgan.”
I’m glad they didn’t share that.
“How do you… you know, feel? About her?”
“I wish her well.” He shrugs. “I’m sorry about what happened, but I’m glad we both got out when we did. I’m sure she feels the same way.”
“You’re so mature.”
He winks at me. “And you like me that way.”
“True.” I’m surprised to realize I’m glad for both him and Helen that they’ve been able to come to terms with their rocky past and put it behind them. Well, I’m glad for Dean’s sake anyway.
I tell him to lie facedown on the bed, then I straddle the small of his back and start to knead the tension from his shoulders. He lets out a groan of appreciation. His muscles are rigid with knots, but slowly they become pliable under my hands. I work his spine, pressing along the length of it, then back up to his neck. His skin is smooth, taut. I slide my fingers into his hair and massage his scalp and ears.
Within minutes, the rhythm of his body shifts beneath mine. I rub his shoulders awhile longer as he sinks deeper into sleep. Then I climb off and pull the comforter over him.
I give Kelsey a quick call to update her. I look around for the novel I brought with me and realize I’ve left my satchel downstairs. As I head down to retrieve it, I hear Paige and Helen talking in the living room.
Bad Liv. I stop on the stairs to listen. Sure enough, they’re talking about me and Dean.
“I just don’t know what they have in common,” Paige says. Glass clinks on glass as she refills her wine. “He’s so brilliant, you know. So well-regarded. And she… well, she doesn’t do much of anything, from what I can tell.”
Shit. I don’t want to hear this, but I don’t move.
“The sex must be spectacular,” Helen replies, her tone dry.
“Helen!” Paige sounds shocked. “You’re talking about my brother.”
“And my ex-husband. Believe me when I say I know what he can do.”
“Helen.” Paige chokes out a laugh. “She’s pretty, I guess. I’ll give her that. But you think good sex can sustain a marriage?”
“In some cases, apparently.” Now Helen sounds faintly bitter. “Dean said they met in Wisconsin.”
“Madison. She was a student, also working at a coffeehouse. He was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin. He brought her home once for Thanksgiving, which was a total disaster.”
There’s a pause before Paige continues. “We thought Dean was just messing around with her, especially when he didn’t mention her again. Then out of nowhere a couple years later, bam! He tells us they’re married. I think Mom is still expecting them to break up and for Dean to find someone more suitable.”
My chest squeezes tight.
“Where does her family live?” Helen asks.
“I’ve no idea. I can’t remember what her parents do. I don’t think she’s ever talked about them, not that I’ve asked. I get the sense they weren’t around much.”
“Probably the reason she latched on to Dean,” Helen says. “You know, stable, successful, handsome guy. She got lucky.”
“Or she got a free ride,” Paige mutters.
Double shit.
“No kids yet, huh?” Helen asks.
“Not that we know of.”
I creep upstairs, then make a bit of noise closing the bedroom door and going back down the stairs. Their conversation comes to a halt when I’m halfway to the living room.
“Hi.” I pause at the door and give them a little wave, as if I’ve just happened upon them. “I came down to get my book.”
They both look at me without blinking. Then Helen reaches for the wine bottle. “Why don’t you join us, Liv?”
“Thanks, but I’m pretty tired.”
“Come on, just one glass.”
Because I am apparently a glutton for punishment, I enter the living room and sit on a chair by the fire. I don’t know what I expect to say to them, except I feel the intense urge to justify my marriage.
Helen holds out the wineglass. I shake my head. Her gaze skims over me, briefly but with a sharpness that makes me self-conscious. I’m wearing a thin robe that I brought because it takes up less space than my padded one. Now I wish I had the cover of the thick robe because Helen continues to look at me as if she’s assessing me physically.
As if she’s still trying to figure out what Dean sees in me.
I push a lock of hair behind my ear and wrap my arms around myself.
“So, I hear you’ve taught at Stanford for years, Helen,” I say brightly.
“Yes. I’ve been there since before Dean and I were married.”
I wonder how often she’s going to remind me that she and Dean were married. Maybe I’ll think up a responding zinger I can use every time she does. Something about Dean’s and my amazing sex life, perhaps.
“Helen and I were just talking about your family, Liv.” Paige’s tone is pleasant, conversational. “I’m afraid I can’t remember what your parents do.”
“My mother is in travel,” I say, repeating the same thing I have for the past ten years. “My father passed away years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Paige says. “Perhaps your mother can join you for a visit sometime. We’d love to finally meet her.”
I mutter something noncommittal.
“Where does she live?” Paige continues.
“In the South.” Last I know about.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Helen asks.
“No.” Why don’t I get up and leave? I don’t want to talk about any of this. But I also don’t want them to talk about me. And I really don’t like the implications they made, as if Dean has terrible judgment because he married me. As if I’m worthless.
“So we’re thinking that Dean might get tenure at King’s soon,” I tell Helen. “Especially since he just received an IHR grant.”
Helen looks startled. “Dean got an IHR grant?”
Hah.
“Oh, didn’t he tell you? They sent him the letter before Christmas. The funding starts this summer.”
“Well, that’s great.” Helen takes another sip of wine.
I try to come up with some fabulous recent accomplishment of my own that I can brag about. “And I’m pregnant” doesn’t fit the bill. Maybe “And I can make an awesome soufflé”?
“I didn’t know you were here, Helen.” Joanna West enters the room. She somehow manages to look effortlessly elegant in a flowing caftan thing, even though it’s nearing ten at night. “Any word from the doctor?”
“I called earlier, and Dad’s sleeping,” Paige says. “We can visit in the morning.”
“Fine.” Joanna slants her cool gaze to me. “Hello, Olivia.”
“How are you, Joanna?” My stomach twists. I hate the evidence that she can still make me nervous, this sophisticated woman who blames me for taking her son away.
“We saved dinner for you, Joanna.” Helen rises and hands Joanna a glass of wine. “Liv made it. Come and have some.”
“Thank you, dear.”
The three women go into the kitchen. Although they’ve just snubbed me, I’m less hurt than I am relieved at the chance to escape their company. I stay seated for a few minutes, listening to the hum of their conversation.
I can’t help feeling a little envious at the knowledge that Helen still has a good relationship with Joanna West. Paige and Joanna have always been close, the two West women united, and Helen seems to be the third piece to their little conclave.
Pressing a hand to my belly, I go back upstairs. Dean is sound asleep, sprawled out on his stomach. I take my Liv’s Manifesto notebook from my satchel and sit at the desk, turning on the low lamp. I open to a fresh
page and pick up a pen.
I put the book aside and go to slide beneath the covers. I press myself against Dean’s warm body and close my eyes, but it’s a long time before I’m able to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OLIVIA
side from a therapist, I had never told anyone what happened at Fieldbrook. Not even North, the one person before Dean whom I could trust. After a huge fight with my mother when I was thirteen, I left her to go and live with my aunt Stella, my father’s sister.
For five years, I stayed with Stella and her husband Henry in Castleford—classic small-town Wisconsin. Stella had strict rules for my stay—good grades, part-time job, church attendance, no drinking or sleeping around—and I was happy to obey those rules. After years of instability with my mother, it was a relief to have structure, rigid and stifling though it was.
For five years, no one had anything bad to say about me. No one had anything to say at all. I was quiet, contained, studious. I didn’t date and had only a few friends, choosing to focus on my studies and extracurricular activities like speech-and-debate that would look good on my college applications. When I was eighteen, I earned a full-tuition scholarship to Fieldbrook College, an exclusive private school near Milwaukee.
The day I got the acceptance letter, I stood by the mailbox with my pulse racing as I felt the past slipping away and the future opening up like an endless field in front of me.
Dear Miss Winter,
On behalf of the admissions committee and board of directors, we are very pleased to inform you that you have been selected as the sole recipient of the prestigious Fieldbrook College Merit Scholarship…
Finally I could stretch my wings, leave my self-centered mother and my repressed life with Aunt Stella far behind. Finally I could figure out who I was and what I wanted to be.
Three months later, I packed up everything I owned and drove across the state to start my future. That was it. Both the beginning and the end.
And then six years later with Dean… a beginning again.
Even in the early part of our relationship, I knew I would tell him before I slept with him. I had to. But I didn’t know how or when I would… until I had no choice.
The weekend after our strip Scrabble game, he came over to my apartment on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We spent a couple of hours working—he graded essays, and I researched a paper about information resources—before I took a break to put some dirty clothes in the washing machine. I gathered up a few quarters and my laundry basket, declining Dean’s offer of help as I went down to the third-floor laundry room.
A dozen washers and dryers lined the narrow room, the yellow glow of fluorescent lights overhead. Several of the machines were running, the washers making sloshing noises, the dryers rotating with the tumble of clothes. No one else was there, and I put my basket on the table and started taking out socks and T-shirts.
I was in a somewhat meditative zone, focused on sorting the colors. Any noise was muffled by the rhythmic sound of the machines. I didn’t hear Dean enter the room, didn’t even sense his presence. All I knew was that two big, male hands suddenly slid around my waist from behind. Fear hit me hard and fast.
My heart jammed up into my throat. I yanked myself away from him and bolted, only to find myself trapped in the corner.
“Liv?” Dean backed off, shock and dismay flaring across his face. “Liv, I—”
“Wait…” Goddammit. I held up my hands and tried to take slow, even breaths.
I was there again, back in a laundry room with boys I hardly knew, music and laughter pounding through the walls, dizzy from the noise and the smell of beer.
They were big, both of them. One of them stood near the door. I’d known even then that I was trapped, even if I had gone into the room willingly, even if I had fooled around with the blond boy who had looked at me the way no one had before…
“That… that scared me,” I stammered.
“Liv, I’m sorry.” Dean dragged a hand down his face. “I never want to scare you.”
I drew in another breath and felt my heart began to settle. “You don’t scare me. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t be with you if you did. I’m… it just caught me off guard.” I tried to smile. “Bit edgy sometimes.”
He knew that already. I’d gotten skittish during our first intimate encounter, and he’d seen me through a full-blown panic attack at a football game.
But none of that was because of him.
It was because of me.
“Come on.” He tossed my clothes into the basket and grabbed it. “You okay to go back up?”
I needed nothing more than to get out of that laundry room, where the stuffy air and noise of the washers now pounded at me like a headache.
Dean kept a distance from me until we were back in my apartment. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, taking a few swallows as I gathered my courage.
“I messed up.” I set the glass in the sink and turned to him. “I tried so hard to get away from my mother, to prove I wasn’t like her, and then… then suddenly I was.”
“What happened?”
“I… I told you about the perverts who messed with me when I was a kid.” I clenched my hands together, shoved away icy memories. “My mother’s so-called boyfriends. The only good time I had was when we were at Twelve Oaks, the commune in California. But she made us leave again after only a few months, even though I wanted desperately to stay. That was when I left her. That was when I finally thought I might have a chance to be like other girls.”
The tightness in my heart loosened as I met Dean’s gaze—that of a strong, protective, good man who liked and wanted me in all the right ways.
“I was a straight A student,” I said. “Never caused a single problem. I went to Fieldbrook when I was eighteen. It was a small college, less than fifteen hundred students. Good humanities and language program.
“After I moved there, I felt free, for the first time in… well, for the first time ever. That fall semester, I met a guy in my accounting class who was a year ahead of me. An athlete. On the crew team. His name was Justin. He was handsome, popular… and I hadn’t dated at all, so it was flattering when he showed an interest in me.
“I’d always wanted to do what other girls did. To feel normal. I wanted to go on dates, wear pretty clothes, have close friends, learn how to flirt… but I’d been too afraid, too worried that Stella would find a reason to kick me out. So being at Fieldbrook, I finally felt like I could do all that, now that I was on my own.
“I went on a date with Justin… he was the first boy I even kissed… then he asked me to a party a few days later. House on the outskirts of town. It was loud, lots of drinking, all that stuff. Can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t try and leave.
“After a few hours, Justin and I ended up in this tiny laundry room at the back of the house and started fooling around. I’d had two beers, but I wasn’t drunk. It was mutual, and at first, I liked it. I thought… I’d spent so much of my life feeling different, being the strange, quiet girl or being an outsider with my own mother, that it was nice to have Justin’s attention, to feel included and… I don’t know. Wanted.
“So we were kissing and touching, and…” I had to look away from Dean then, my face burning. “I had my period. I told Justin that when he started getting more aggressive. He… well, he got mad. Thought I’d been leading him on for nothing. I was too naïve to have thought of that… but not too naïve to realize what he had expected from me. That was when I got scared.”
“Liv…”
I held up my hand to stop Dean from coming toward me, knowing I would shatter if he touched me.
“He told me to strip to the waist and give him oral sex. I didn’t want to… but I… the room was really small, and it was hot with all this noise from the party and the thumping bass of the music… he was between me and the door, and I… I felt trapped. I just did what he told me to do so I could get out of there.
“It… uh, it took me a long t
ime to understand why I went along with it, that I was still being coerced. After it was over, I looked up and saw one of Justin’s friends standing at the door, blocking the only way out. I didn’t know how long he’d been there or how much he’d seen, but it was enough.”
I fell silent. Humiliation scorched me from the inside out.
“I can’t remember the other guy’s name. Justin said something to him. I couldn’t hear past the loud music, the ringing in my ears. And this other guy came toward me, and I knew, I knew I’d have to do it again, with this guy I didn’t know at all… but thank God a couple showed up, wanting to use the room to smoke a joint. It was enough of a distraction that I was able to pull on my shirt and get the hell out of there. I got a ride home with another girl. Spent the rest of the night stumbling between the shower and getting sick in the toilet.”
I could feel Dean’s rage, his instinctive move toward me.
“Wait.” I backed away. “I was… I didn’t realize what had happened, that I could have reported it. I just tried to put it behind me and crawl back into my shell. Justin asked me out again. I said no. I felt horrible, dirty. Ashamed. I kept flashing back to the time that pervert used me to get off, and my mother didn’t stop him. I felt like I’d let those boys use me the same way, and I hated myself for it.
“I turned Justin down twice more. He didn’t like that. Told me I had no right to turn into an ice queen, that kind of thing. I thought he’d just move on and leave me alone. Then I found out he had a girlfriend, and that the other guy had told her what happened in the laundry room… well.
“She left me some nasty messages, and gossip started. It seemed like the whole campus was talking about me within a week. Saying I was a slut, that Justin had paid me, that I’d have done it with any boy. All the horrible things people would have said about my mother.
“And I hadn’t made any close friends, so no one really knew me. I went from this… this quiet little nobody to… that. The slut who sucked off a guy at a party while another one waited his turn.
