Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

  “And?” he prompted.

  “I wanted to remind you before the meeting that I came to you a while ago. That I told you that I had some misgivings about the direction that Justin was taking with some of the French artists. And I think the numbers reflect that …”

  “Are you saying that if he had listened to you, the division wouldn’t have had a loss?”

  Simone pursed her lips for a moment then took a breath.

  “Yes.” She shrugged.

  “Simone …” Brendan said, grinning. He shook his head. “This business doesn’t work like that.”

  “I’m not trying to throw Justin under the bus or anything, but …”

  “That’s exactly what you’re trying to do,” he said, no longer smiling.

  “No,” she said. She sounded genuinely affronted. Maybe she even believed it herself. “Because you and I are friends, I wanted …”

  “Hold up,” Brendan said. “Simone, we’re not friends. We’re colleagues. I’m your boss. You and I? We’re … friendly. But we’re not friends.”

  Her face flushed. “Well …”

  “Look,” Brendan said. “I’m not saying that to embarrass you. I accepted, and appreciated an invitation to come to your home, and since then I’ve seen you socially at my club. And every once in a while, we stop and chat when I see you around the building. That doesn’t make us friends.”

  “I understand,” she said. Now her voice, and her eyes were steely.

  “You’re young in this business, so let me give you a piece of advice. Trying to climb the ladder of success by stepping on someone else’s back may get you a couple rungs higher. For a minute. But if you go this route, sooner or later, you gon’ trip up. And when that happens, there’ll be no one who gives enough of a damn to break your fall.”

  “I didn’t mean to …”

  “I’ll see you at the meeting at ten,” Brendan said.

  He held her gaze until she stood and offered him once last smile before taking her cup of coffee and turning to leave. At the door, she paused and looked at him once again.

  “Maybe it was presumptuous of me,” she said, her tone almost sly. “To think of us as friends. I suppose I made assumptions, because of Thierry and Tracy.”

  “Thierry and Tracy?”

  “Yes.” Simone’s shoulders squared off, her back straightened. She looked pleased with herself suddenly. “You and I may not socialize that often, but they certainly do.”

  And then she was gone.

  Tracy opened the door wearing yoga pants and a fitted tank top that clung to every curve. Her hair was wet, and pulled back, smooth and sleek, a single, thick braid resting on her shoulder. A vision flashed into Brendan’s mind, of one of their wilder nights, the evening after Chris and Robyn’s wedding celebration. They’d both gotten a little too drunk to drive and had to spend the night at Chris’ house in New Jersey.

  Tracy’s hair had been styled just like this. And once Brendan had her naked, he flipped her over onto her stomach, wrapped that weighty braid around his hand and they’d gone buck-wild. Tracy screamed so loud when she came, he had to release her hair and instead drag a pillow across the bed for her to wail into.

  Afterwards, they’d both tumbled over onto their sides, laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, wondering aloud whether Tracy had woken up the entire house.

  You freak! she squealed, smacking him on the chest. Where’d you get all that hair tugging action from all of a sudden? You almost yanked every strand out of my head!

  Then she rolled over on top of him and kissed him like she wanted to rob him of his breath.

  “Why didn’t you just come in?” she asked now, rolling her eyes. “Since when do you ring the bell at our own place?”

  “You look like you’re about to head out,” Brendan said, shutting the door behind him, and tossing his jacket across the sofa.

  “Hot yoga. I’ve been going again lately.”

  He looked her over, noticing for the first time how lean she had become. He would guess she had lost maybe five to seven pounds over the past few weeks.

  “I’m gonna ask you something,” he said, sitting on the back of the sofa. “And I want you to tell me the truth.”

  That gave her pause. She froze, then narrowed her eyes.

  “Tell you the … of course I’ll tell you the truth, Brendan. Whatever you ask.”

  “Are we separated? I mean … what do we call this? Are we working on a separation here, or what?”

  “I don’t … no, I’m …”

  She looked thrown by the question. But how could she be? How could she possibly be taken off guard that he asked that?

  “Come home, Tracy,” he said.

  She stood there, less than two feet away from him, and Brendan reached for her. He caught the hem of her yoga top and tugged at it, until she took two steps forward.

  “I know I fucked things up,” he said, speaking over her. “Because some way, somehow you got the impression that I don’t love every fucking thing about you.”

  “But that only works if I love me too,” Tracy said.

  “And you don’t?”

  His heart would shatter if she said ‘no’. Maybe it was naïve of him, to believe that two beautiful homes, a husband who loved her, and a daughter who needed her could be enough to fill Tracy up. But he’d hoped it would.

  Maybe he’d been lazy. Because he knew.

  He knew her mother was a cold, hard woman. He knew Tracy had a history of men who devalued her, and of valuing herself even less than they had.

  And he knew that her temperament and moods were changeable, volatile, unpredictable. But, he never looked past that. He never asked the tough questions, and all this time left his wife to ask and answer them on her own.

  Tracy shrugged, and Brendan pulled her closer.

  “Some days I love myself. And other days, there’s a tape playing in my head on a loop …”

  “And what does it say?” he asked, quietly.

  “Different things. But mostly it says, ‘you have to do better, Tracy Ann. You have to do better, do more, do better …’ And then maybe you get annoyed or impatient with me about something and that tape gets louder and plays on a loop.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want you to go through that. But you want to know what I keep hearing in my head lately?”

  She nodded. They were inches apart, and Brendan felt her breath sweeping across his cheek.

  “It sounds like this: ‘you’re losing her, you’re losing her, you’re …’”

  Before he could finish the refrain, Tracy was kissing him. There was no softness in it, just need. Her lips pressed against his so hard, he had to pull back a little to part them. And when he tasted her, it was like home.

  Tracy reached for, and fumbled with his shirt, tugging the tail out of his pants and unfastening the buttons from bottom to top, sliding her palms up and across his chest. Brendan shrugged out of the shirt, letting it fall behind him onto the couch, and reached for her top. Tracy stopped him with a hand over his.

  With both of them naked to the waist, Brendan pulled her against him, closing his eyes at the sensation of his wife’s soft chest, and the long-missed feeling of her skin against his skin. He kissed the length of her neck, her shoulders and across her chest, moving them both around and then onto the sofa.

  Her breasts, slighter larger since she’d had Layla, were still perfect, the nipples the color of red clay, and the size of silver dollars. He took one in his mouth and felt Tracy’s hips arch upward beneath him. She reached for him, struggling he knew, to reach and unfasten his pants. But she couldn’t; and made a sound of angry frustration that caused him to smile, because it was so much like that their daughter made when she couldn’t get her way.

  “What d’you want?” Brendan asked, lifting his head from her chest and grinning at her. “Can I help you with something?”

  Tracy’s chest was heaving, her breathing just short of labored. “You know what I wa
nt.”

  “Well you’re not gettin’ that,” he said, grinning at her. “Not yet. It’s been too long. I’m not rushin’ shit. Not even for you, Your Majesty.”

  “Brendan …”

  “As a matter of fact, this couch isn’t workin’ for me.” He sat up and pulled her with him, then stood and lifted her. With an instinct that Brendan was unsurprised to see hadn’t left her, Tracy wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. For a moment, he stood like that, and they stared at each other.

  A small smile tugged at the corners of Tracy’s lips and he could tell she was thinking what he was thinking. That there was always erotic and emotional muscle-memory when they came together. The way he touched and held her, the way she touched him, the things they said, did … it was a symphony, branded into their bodies, that neither time nor distance could erase.

  The bedroom was a god-awful mess. So much so that Brendan paused at the threshold. The bedcovers were in disarray, articles of clothing draped over the headboard and the armchair, empty coffee cups on the bedside table and a wineglass on the dresser.

  “Damn.”

  Tracy glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. “My priorities are elsewhere these days,” she said, just before Brendan lowered her onto the bed.

  “Like where?” he said, kneeling on the bed at her feet and beginning to tug her yoga pants downward. Tracy lifted her hips to make the task easier. “Hanging out with your new friend maybe?”

  “What new friend?” She helped him get the pants off her ankles and shimmied out of her lacy underwear.

  “Thierry Wolfe.”

  Tracy squinted in confusion. “What?”

  “You been spending time with him lately?”

  “No. Where did you …?”

  “His wife. I think she would know. Except … maybe not. Because I didn’t know.”

  “Because there was nothing to know.” Tracy sat up, eyes wide. “What did she say?”

  “That you and her husband are friends. Made it sound like you’ve been spending more than a little time together.”

  Tracy snorted. “Hardly.”

  She sat up a little, reaching for Brendan, trying to pull him down toward her, but he resisted, wanting to see her eyes.

  “So, why’d she say that?”

  “I have no earthly clue,” Tracy said, looking him directly in the eye. “I only ever went with him to see art that one time. Did you think I would …?”

  “I didn’t,” he said, shaking his head.

  And he really hadn’t.

  Tracy would never be unfaithful. Never.

  One wasn’t supposed to believe in absolutes, especially when they involved the murky motives and unknowable nature of another human being. But of this Brendan was certain—his wife would never be with another man.

  But Simone caught him off-guard, and the fleeting image of another man’s pursuit of his wife reminded him of what he had, and what he could not stand to lose.

  Tracy moved closer. She cupped his face in her hands.

  “Never,” she said, as though she’d read his mind. “I don’t care what’s going on with you and me. And whatever anyone out there might be implying? That could never happen.”

  17

  Tracy felt her entire body heave as Brendan kissed along its length, bending one leg at the knee as he moved upward. With his free arm, he pressed the opposite leg against the covers, so that when he reached the apex of her thighs, one leg was straight, the other slung over his shoulder. Long before his tongue touched her she felt, in her shortening breaths, the anticipation of it. And when he finally put his mouth on her, she let her mind fly free.

  Lovemaking with her husband was without restraint, or boundaries. There was nothing he wanted that she would not do, if he asked. But he never asked. What he wanted he took, and what he took, he first gave to her. His pleasure always followed hers. While between her legs, he looked up, watching her face, as if measuring and gauging her progress toward release. He wanted her to get there, but not too soon, because she would be sensitive, and at least momentarily, push him away.

  So, he teased and tested her, getting her close and then pulling back.

  “You always … you always do this,” she said, panting between words.

  “Do what?”

  He spoke against her inner thigh, where her nerve-endings were aflame and even the rough friction of his facial hair made her thrust herself toward him.

  “Brendan,” she said.

  “Tracy,” he responded, before diving into her again.

  This time he didn’t stop, didn’t pull back, didn’t let up until she bucked upward, head back, neck extended, and screamed out her release. Falling back against the sheets, her body a boneless mass, Tracy opened her eyes only long enough to see Brendan above her. She waited for him to enter her, but he didn’t. Instead he palmed one breast, lowered his head to the other, and took the nipple between his teeth.

  “Stop,” she said, her voice weak. “Stop.”

  He lifted his head. “You mean that?”

  “No,” she said. But still, holding him by the shoulders, she urged him up further and kissed him, sucking the taste of herself off his tongue.

  Against her thigh, she felt how hard he was, and wondered for the thousandth time how he managed such control. All he need do was move a little to the left, and he would be inside her. And she would welcome it. But he avoided that, instead concentrating on the kiss, as if that was all he needed from her.

  Beneath him, Tracy had less restraint, and writhed against him, stimulating herself and hoping to break Brendan’s resolve.

  Eventually, and without warning, with a subtle motion of his pelvis, he pushed into her, going so deep at the very first thrust that Tracy clutched and dug her fingernails into his buttocks. He paused, waiting for her to relax then began slowly moving. He kissed her as he did and cradled her head with his forearms braced on either side of it.

  She tried to speak, to tell him how good it was but the only sounds that came were short gasps, and intermittent coos of pleasure.

  But Brendan spoke. When he wasn’t kissing her, he put his lips to her ear and told her that he loved her. Before she expected it, and before she could concentrate on staving it off to prolong the pleasure, her climax arrived. And like a tsunami, it swept her away.

  Tracy smiled at Brendan’s reflection in the mirror as he re-knotted his tie. He winked in return and reached for the small brush on the dresser that he used for grooming his goatee.

  “You’re not mad I have to leave?” he asked for the third time.

  “No. I’ll take a shower when you’re gone and make a later yoga class.”

  Though he’d asked, she had turned down the offer to shower with him, and instead lay naked among the damp sheets, recuperating while he got cleaned up to go back to the office. The recuperation she needed wasn’t just physical. She also needed a moment to restore her sense of balance.

  A little bit of Brendan was never enough for her. Now she wanted more of him. She wanted to sleep with him tonight, to wake up with him in the morning, to make his breakfast, iron his shirts, and be his wife again. She could let that identity subsume almost everything else, because there was joy in it, and a deep sense of purpose.

  But it wouldn’t change anything else.

  Everything she said to him just before, she meant. Something about their dynamic as a couple cast him as the one who was healthy and sound; and her as the one who “had issues.” That couldn’t go on. She just hadn’t a clue how to stop that cycle.

  And until she figured that out, going back home to stay was too risky. All it would take was a single afternoon, and she would be back to her old pattern of trying to prove her soundness, her worth, her relevance through over-planning, and trying to choreograph every tiny detail of her, and Layla and Brendan’s lives. And before long, he would be frustrated with her again, and round and round they’d go.

  “You’re over there thinkin’ real hard
about something,” Brendan said. “Should I be worried?”

  “No,” she said, turning over onto her stomach and observing him from the bed.

  Brendan’s eyes traveled over her, settling momentarily on her bare ass. He grinned.

  “Damn. You don’t know how I wish I could stay.”

  Tracy blushed, and bit into the fleshiest part of her lower lip.

  “So … yoga? That’s your plan?”

  “That’s the plan,” she confirmed.

  “Then what?”

  Tracy shrugged.

  “What do you do every day?” Brendan asked. “Since you’ve been here.”

  He came over and sat on the edge of the bed next to her, and Tracy saw genuine curiosity in his eyes. Of course he was curious. Before she left home, he could have written the script of what she did with her day, because it all centered around him, and around their daughter.

  “I’ve been working out more. I go to bookstores, I shop … I follow Russell around on his errands.” She smiled at that. “And I go to see Dr. Greer.”

  At the mention of the doctor, Brendan’s brows furrowed a little. He reached out and traced a path down the valley in the center of her back, and up again. Once at her nape, he shoved her braid out of the way and leaned in to kiss her there.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked quietly.

  His breath, and the contact of his lips caused her to tingle, her body awakening again.

  “I was scared to.”

  “That’s what I don’t get.” Brendan sat up again. “Every time you say that, it makes me feel like … I mean, you didn’t trust me, Trace? To understand?”

  “It’s not that. It just … it would have confirmed all the worst things already you think about me.”

  “What worst things?”

  “Brendan, you know what I mean. That I’m … Look, can we just plan to talk about this again some other day? This was just so … perfect, I don’t want to ruin it.”