The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet

by Susan Ward

  Amused chuckles float through the receiver. “No problem. I promise, Chrissie.”

  I exhale a long, ragged breath. “You always say that right before you add to the heap that’s burying me, Alan. Have a heart. Go away. I’m not in the mood for you today.”

  He laughs again and I flush. Oh God, what made me say that last comment?

  “Be nice, love. You used to like me a little.”

  “Very little,” I tease flippantly, but the sudden sadness that spikes out of nowhere makes my throat tighten painfully.

  I push up into a sitting position. “Was there a reason you called? Really, Alan, I don’t have time for one of our marathon chats.”

  “I thought perhaps since you’ll have Kaley with you, you wouldn’t want to stay at the Hyatt while in LA, and you might prefer to stay at the Malibu house. It would be more comfortable for you both—”

  My heart stops and the rest of his words pour through the phone without meaning. I know he’s talking, but I can’t catch a single utterance as panic and want pulse in me.

  Did Alan just invite me to spend the week with him?

  Oh shit.

  After all this time with our emotions safely locked behind the wall of our friendship, is Alan making the first move to cross the line?

  I can’t tell for sure. I’m not sure what he’s suggesting, but it is always there, an unspoken thing between us.

  The pull. The sexual tension. The love.

  Has Alan in his elegantly ambiguous way just let me know he wants more from me than what I will share with him? We’ve never stepped over the line. He has never asked me to. Somehow we have managed to be friends and to do it well.

  No. No. No. Why is he trying to fuck it up now by inviting me to stay with him at that beach?

  I don’t want to lose our friendship. I don’t want to have to give up Alan another time, and any attempt by him to change the status of us would make that necessary.

  My legs start to jiggle in time with my rapidly increasing pulse. The twirling of my emotions accelerates. I’m shamed by how tempted I am.

  Belatedly, I realized he’s stop talking and there is only silence from the phone. I struggle for a careful, cautious response since I’m not really sure what Alan is suggesting.

  “I’m not staying at the Hyatt. I’m staying with Rene at her place in Brentwood. You remember my girlfriend Rene, don’t you?”

  A long pause.

  “Yes, I remember her. You went to New York with her. The girl you accused me of fucking in the bathroom of The Blue Light.”

  My face covers with a burn. I never expected him to remember that or for him to say it. Weird, blunt, Alan honesty delivered with a memory I don’t want—us in New York together our first spring. I definitely don’t want to think about that, not now when I’m feeling so emotionally messy 24/7.

  “I won’t be in Malibu until Friday,” he says into my silence. “I’m in New York so you wouldn’t be putting me out, Chrissie, if you change your mind. The house is vacant. It’s yours if you want it. It would probably work better for Kaley there.”

  Now I feel like a perfect idiot. A vain, emotionally volatile idiot. He isn’t asking me to come to the beach to be with him. He is offering me an empty house.

  Fuck. Stupid, Chrissie. Stupid. And even more pathetic than misunderstanding him is the slow downward spiral of my emotions that comes with understanding him.

  My heart is aching. I feel like I can’t take in air and I don’t even want to explore what that means.

  I become slowly aware we’re silent again, each of us clutching a phone on opposite sides of the country.

  I scrunch up my face. “I need to go, Alan. I’ve got a lot to do.”

  I start to hang up when I hear his voice in the receiver. I put it back to my ear.

  “I hate that you believed when we were first together in New York that I could fuck your best friend.” Alan’s voice is different this time, a quiet rasp that moves through my veins as potently as his words do. “I’m sorry that you thought that and I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  I tightly close my eyes against the rushing emotions and memories. Damn you, Alan. Why are we talking about this today? Why apologize now? Why make me ache with longing and love and regret and need?

  My mind screams to hang up quickly. My heart forces me to listen. I don’t even know how to respond to that. An apology nine years late, but an apology he shouldn’t have made because I was the one who was wrong that day.

  I wait and say nothing.

  “I don’t know how you could have ever thought I could even notice Rene when there was you. From that first night we spent together on the beach, you consumed me completely.”

  Oh God. Effortlessly he turns my world upside down. Every inch of my flesh is alive. My heart is pounding so hard against my chest it is painful. My limbs tremble. Tears sting my eyes. A few words and he takes command of my heart and I want desperately to be lost in Alan again.

  I struggle to organize my thoughts and find an appropriate reply to get me out of this unclear and awkward moment.

  “Do you want to hear something silly?” I ask desperately, slightly breathless and in a deliberately comical way.

  I hear a slow exhale through the phone and I imagine Alan shaking his head and staring at me.

  My throat clenches painfully.

  Another excruciatingly long stretch of silence.

  “Sure, love,” Alan says in a tender, amused way. “Tell me your something silly.”

  The words I say are not the ones in my head. “I always thought it was me consumed by you.”

  My heart stops. Oh fuck. What made me say that? Panicking, I click off the phone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I flick the signal and turn onto the 101 freeway south. Another ear-piercing scream comes from the passenger seat and my fingers tighten on the steering wheel.

  “Kaley, will you please stop crying?” I plead as I fight to merge into the faster moving traffic. “I’m not going back to the house. We can buy you another bear when we get to LA. Won’t that be nice? A new friend for you and Bear.”

  The crying intensifies. I struggle to stay calm and focused so I don’t cause an accident. But when Kaley cries this way it would drive anyone mad. Ear-piercing, unending screams from an inconsolable child. When she doesn’t get her way, it never ends.

  “I’m sorry I forgot Bear,” I murmur soothingly.

  Well, that apology worked brilliantly. She’s kicking the dash now. How could I have forgotten the freaking bear? But then, I was feeling it again, irked and not knowing why, as we loaded the Range Rover to leave.

  Everything on the surface seemed normal. Neil putting the suitcases in the car. The way he felt hugging and kissing me. How he said goodbye to Kaley. Him loading Kaley into her car seat and chiding her to be good.

  All familiar and ordinary, and yet it didn’t feel familiar in any way. It felt like I was being rushed, like he was pushing us out the door, and then, worse, an aura of relief seeping from him when we were finally ready to go. Like he was relieved that we were leaving and fighting not to show it.

  I shake my head. I wonder if it felt strange to Kaley and that’s why she’s more irritable than usual. Or maybe it’s just me—my unease and anxiousness—that has got her into a full-blown tantrum.

  I can’t stop myself and I shift my gaze. Her round face is red and tearstained. Those giant eyes lock on me, and my heart clenches.

  I exhale a ragged breath. “Fine. I’ll go back. See, Mommy is getting off the freeway. Will you stop crying now?”

  She stares out the windshield in a smart and alert way no three-year-old should be capable of, crying and sniffling, crying and sniffling, until she sees something that confirms to her this isn’t a trick.

  The screaming stops. I roll my eyes, disappointed with my crappy parenting. All the books say ignore the tantrums, but heck, none of those authors have met Kaley. Even Jack can’t ignore it. He opts for diversion. Me, I just ta
ke the simple route. I cave.

  Face it, Chrissie, you’re a terrible mother. One look at those giant dark eyes and your heart melts and she wins. Kaley always wins.

  She’s asleep by the time I turn onto the highway up the mountain. As I enter the narrow one-lane, tree-lined road to the house, I check the clock. Fudge, forty minutes and I’m no farther than where I started from. I do a quick check of Kaley. Sound asleep. At least I won’t have to haul her from the car into the house just to grab her stuffed bear. If she were awake, she would never let me step away from the car for two minutes without her.

  Slowly I ease down the steep decline, avoiding bumps so as not to wake her, and park in the circular drive in front of the house. I unbuckle my seat belt, pull the keys from the ignition so that warning beep won’t sound, and carefully open the door.

  Once out of the driver’s seat, I hurry to the front door. Inside the house, I freeze, my already taut nerves growing tauter.

  There is music blasting from every ceiling speaker and the air is suffocating with the stench of weed and other things. The house feels strange, but I don’t know why, and my internally messy grows even messier because I now know what I felt before leaving wasn’t my imagination. Neil was anxious to get me out of the house. He wanted to get loaded with Andy.

  I grow even more determined in my dislike of Andy. I have to get rid of him. My marriage will never be on the right track again unless I find a way to get Andy out of our life. How is it possible for one repulsive guy to so effortlessly put a wedge through two people who love each other?

  We were doing all right, good, before Andy. Weren’t we?

  I do a fast inspection of the living room and move on to Kaley’s room. I start pulling apart the neatly stacked stuffed animals on her bed. Shit, where is that bear? I need to find it and get the hell out of here before I run into Neil.

  There is too much inside me running frantic and loose. I don’t want this confrontation with Neil today. Not now. And not in front of Andy. Somehow, I need to work out some alone time with Neil so we can work through our issues privately. Hash it out. Argue it out. Fuck it out. Anything. Just somewhere away from Andy.

  The drinking has to stop. The getting loaded has to stop. The ignoring me and not coming to bed has to stop. The no sex status of our relationship has to stop. And Andy in our house—that sure as hell has to stop. I’m his wife, Neil needs to choose, and I’m not putting up with it any longer.

  What was it Linda said? Deal with it and fix it. That’s what women do. Well, I’m ready to deal. Ready to fix. And ready to fight Andy for my husband.

  That last thought makes me only more chaotic inside, since there has got to be something desperately wrong between Neil and me that I have to fight a guy for him.

  My gaze does another fast search of the nursery. That freaking bear isn’t here. Maybe I put it with the suitcases before I left. Maybe it’s laying on my bed.

  I step into the hallway and falter. The door is closed. I left it open when I wheeled my suitcases out for Neil to put into the car. Why is it closed now?

  Double-time, I rush down the hallway, feeling strange and not knowing why. The surface of my flesh is tingling with ice pricks. My heart is racing in my chest. I can’t feel my limbs. I’m numb and overly alert at once. Dread and fear are careening through my veins from out of nowhere.

  I’m just outside the door when a voice inside my head shouts out unexpectedly No, Chrissie, no. I have a sense of knowing something before I see, a terrifying moment of clarity inside the emotional fog and heartache in which I’ve existed. A need to know. A fear to know. A desperation not to.

  Why would my bedroom door be closed and music pouring out from there? It’s only 9:30 p.m. Neil hasn’t gone to bed before dawn since he returned from this last trip. Why the hell would he do it tonight?

  My thoughts and emotions are crashing through me. I hear sound from the other side of the door. A marginal part of my brain, mercifully disconnected from the rest of me, has a vague awareness of what I’m hearing, but I can’t catch the words in my head through the roaring in my ears.

  I am strangely aware that I know what is happening in my house before I open my bedroom door. I carefully turn the knob and, as quietly as I can, enter the room.

  The world shatters around me. Disjointed worries and suspicions, once without meaning—thoughts I discounted as ridiculous—lock in horrible clarity. Everything around me is without a feel of realness except the scene I’m staring at in horror on my bed. That is too real, incomprehensible, but unavoidably real nonetheless.

  I feel sick, like I’m going to vomit. My thoughts are running too fast for me to catch any of them, and instinctive fear is chiding me not to look, but I can’t drag my eyes away, not from my husband, not from this.

  For a moment I can see nothing but Neil. The way he looks…my heart chills…the pleasure. The bliss. The love taking possession of his gorgeous face in a way I’ve never seen before. He’s never looked at me like this. And his body moving in carnal want, glorifying, giving and taking. His naked flesh gleams with sweat and his eyes are closed as he plunges over and over again into the figure huddled beneath him.

  Blond hair floats back from a face I recognize and don’t want to. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Blue eyes lock on mine.

  Understanding shoots at me from my own bed. Andy isn’t here because he’s Neil’s drug supplier. How stupid I was to think that. To miss what I already knew, deep down inside, before this moment. Neil moved Andy in because…

  Neil runs his hands up Andy’s back, touching him with a tenderness I can taste, and for the first time in a very long time I can read my husband’s heart clearly.

  I can’t take in air. The world is growing dark and twirling. The hallway is a tiny tunnel of light I can barely see. Neil opens his eyes.

  No! No! No!

  I run for the front door.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I’m frantically trying to open the car door. The shaking of my hands makes them useless and I can’t manage to squeeze my fingers around the handle.

  The tears pour faster, clouding my vision and clogging my throat. I’m going to faint if I don’t pull air into my lungs soon, but the second I suck in oxygen my emotions push it out.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t feel.

  My weak legs give way and I sink to the ground beside my Range Rover. I’m hyperventilating and I know that the concrete beneath me is cold, but I can’t feel that either. I can’t feel anything. My body is nothing but a loosely joined collection of deadened cells, and even the front drive, brilliant with lights, has a strange surreality to it, surrounded by darkness that swallows all detail and shape.

  I bury my face in my hands, blocking out the world around me and wishing I could die right here. I fight to pull myself together, but it’s my thoughts that join instead. I left the house with a series of devastating truths, I don’t want to acknowledge them, but there is one I can’t push away. Can’t keep from my head. It bursts from my center all through me, refusing to be denied or contained.

  Neil loves Andy. My husband is in love with Andy.

  Everything I believed to be true before today is wrong. The problems in my marriage. It isn’t drugs. It isn’t Alan. It’s love. Neil is in love with Andy. And all these years we’ve been married have been a lie, because Andy existed in Neil’s world before me.

  Oh God. How could I have been so stupid? How could I not see this? There was never an ex-girlfriend. That was why Neil never mentioned her by name. It was always Andy between us, even in our good moments, the subtle feeling of almost perfect but not quite enough, it was all because of Andy, just like it is Andy between us today.

  I lean back against my car, staring out into the darkness, lost and not knowing what to do. Above me Jesse’s house shines from the hill, and my over-shocked nerves get another electric jolt. Is he up there, spying down at me, witnessing the worst day of my life? A petty worry and definitely foolish, but it feels li
ke the moment someone else knows of this it becomes forever part of me. Defining. Inescapable. Real.

  I run my fingers through my hair trying to get hold of myself, but I can’t. This night has happened. It is forever part of me. It became a part of me the second I saw Neil fucking Andy.

  I breathe in and I breathe out, but the waves of panic are only increasing. Hands appear out of nowhere. Fingers close on my arms.

  “Chrissie—” Neil’s face is above me, and the words he’s speaking fly around me, unwanted and dismissed.

  “Don’t you touch me,” I scream, trying to break free of his hold, and because he won’t release me I start hitting him and struggling harder. “Let me go. Get away from me. I hate you.”

  “Baby, settle down,” Neil murmurs, anxious and afraid. “You don’t want to hurt yourself. You don’t want Kaley to hear. You need to calm down.”

  I jerk away from him, springing to my feet, and laugh, a harsh, jagged bark that cuts at my throat. I stare at him with eyes I can feel are wild and flashing.

  “Calm down. Calm down? Don’t talk to me like I’m overreacting. You didn’t break a plate in the kitchen. You fucked your best friend in our bed. You don’t settle down from something like this. Not ever!”

  I can see it in his eyes. Those words hurt him, and I hate that I’m glad and that he’s scared out of his mind and that I’m hitting him and can’t seem to stop it.

  He tries to keep clear of my flailing arms. “Where are the keys? You’re not driving like this. You are not going anywhere until you’re rational and we’ve talked this through.”

  “There is nothing to talk about,” I scream. “You are having an affair with Andy. That’s pretty much a dead-end street for our marriage.”

  Somehow I get my door open, avoid Neil’s attempt to grab onto me, and climb into the driver’s seat.