Once More With Feeling

by Megan Crane

  And it was just as good as I remembered. Just as hot, just as flush and sweet, and he braced himself there like he wanted to look at me. He smiled, that beautiful smile of his I hadn’t seen in so very long, untainted by any hint of the darkness and sardonic inflection he usually carried around with him, and I felt it like a new heat at the back of my eyes.

  He whispered something that might have been my name. And then he began to move.

  And that’s when it really went crazy.

  Later, he carried me into his bedroom and laid me down on the bed. It was wider and more comfortable than my little guest twin, and the pillows smelled like him. I buried my face in the nearest one and breathed deep. My body was still humming with the after-effects of what we’d just done. My mind was perfectly, happily blank.

  I could only feel. And I felt everything.

  I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke Alec was tracing patterns over my skin with his talented hands, bringing me from a vaguely erotic dream into a white-hot reality without missing a beat. His fingers moved along my arms, the line of my neck, spreading flames wherever they touched. He tested the shape of my breasts against his palms. I sighed, and the sigh turned into a moan, and the moan was his name.

  I never wanted this to end.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered when he shifted to crouch over me, kissing his way from my navel to my hip, then inward, toward the molten core of me. I arched into him, unable to stop myself. Not that I wanted to stop either one of us.

  ‘Ruining you for all other men, if possible,’ he replied, laughter heavy in his voice, and then he shifted again and took me in his mouth.

  And when I exploded all around him, again, he came to lie next to me and pulled me over him, to straddle him. I tried to catch my breath as I braced myself against his hard chest, meeting those dark eyes of his, and then I rolled my hips back and took him deep inside of me.

  Still holding his gaze, I began to move.

  ‘Good thing you’re not a monk,’ I teased him in a hoarse whisper.

  He laughed, his hands coming to rest on my hips as I set the rhythm. Slow. Sweet. And all of it an exquisite madness.

  ‘I may take it up after this,’ he said like it was torn from him. ‘I think I just found God.’

  And then neither of us could speak again for a very long time.

  It took me a long moment or two to understand why I woke next, my heart already racing wildly in a chaotic, frightening beat. I sat up, gasping, trying to figure out what was happening.

  Next to me, his arm falling away from me when I moved, Alec opened his eyes and was immediately wide awake and clear, in the way he’d once told me he’d learned in medical school.

  ‘Phone,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Not mine.’

  I lurched out of the bed and into the cold hallway, completely naked and my feet therefore uncomfortably bare against the frigid floorboards. The phone kept ringing. I slapped the light on in the guest room and then squinted against the glare of it, my brain refusing to work as it should. The phone stopped ringing, and I rubbed at my eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the brightness. Waiting for my body to recognize that I was not, in fact, in the middle of a nightmare, and calm itself accordingly.

  ‘Here,’ Alec said behind me, even as warmth enveloped me. I pulled the comforter he draped over my shoulders tighter around me, and then leaned into the kiss he pressed to my temple. I took a moment to watch him move down the hall toward the bathroom, still gloriously, carelessly naked. I needed to investigate my own body, take stock of what and how I was feeling, both physically and emotionally. There were so many layers here.

  Or maybe I needed to take advantage of the fact that we were both awake at this godless hour and save the stock-taking for daylight.

  But then my phone started ringing again, and I frowned, as that now familiar little arrow of fear worked its way through me. I moved over to the bed that I could now see without being blinded, and dug around in the purse I’d left there. My phone was at the very bottom of the damned thing, of course, and a quick glance told me it was my mother. At 5.42 on Christmas morning.

  Somehow, I doubted that she was calling to see what Santa had left me under the tree.

  ‘Mom,’ I said by way of a greeting. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I won’t even ask you where you’ve been,’ she said.

  ‘Vermont,’ I told her anyway. Because her not asking was, of course, asking. ‘I’m with a friend. Is that what you called about? At this hour?’

  The irritation felt good. Better and cleaner, I thought, than what had to be coming next.

  ‘Vermont!’ She sounded horrified, as if I’d said something like deepest Siberia. ‘That’s hours away!’

  ‘Mom!’ I didn’t bother to control the snap in my tone. I heard my mother sniff as if I’d wounded her. Of course. With all her wounds, she could have been a saint. I’m sure she’d considered it. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘It’s Tim,’ she said, as she had once before, though it seemed so long ago and far away to me now.

  And everything froze. Again. I’m afraid it’s Tim, she’d told me then, on Thanksgiving night. It was like another life. Was this it? Was this the call I’d been dreading all this time?

  Was it finally over?

  I didn’t know how long I stood there. It could have been hours. It was probably seconds. I felt too many things to name. I saw that fucking blouse again, as ever. I remembered the way he’d kissed me at our wedding, his blue eyes so bright and happy, and the way his lips had seemed to buzz against mine, as if he were laughing. As if we’d really found joy, the two of us. As if it were meant to be ours to keep. Was it really over?

  ‘Is he …?’ I didn’t know how to ask the question. I didn’t want to ask the question. Whatever came next, I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any part of it. But I pulled in a breath and braced the hand that wasn’t holding the phone over the rest of my face, like a shield, and asked it anyway. Because it was mine to ask, whether I wanted to or not. Whether I wanted the answer or not. ‘Is he dead?’

  The silence seem to last for centuries.

  ‘Oh,’ my mother said, as if surprised I’d asked such a thing. ‘No! No, not at all.’

  Was that relief that poured through me then? Nausea? I couldn’t tell. ‘Then what …?’

  ‘He woke up,’ my mother told me, a wondering sort of note to her voice. As if she thought it were magical.

  She would no doubt credit this to fucking Christmas and get wildly pious about it, I thought, and then wondered why my reaction at such a time was so grumpy and uncharitable. Was that Alec’s influence? But I couldn’t let myself go there. Not now.

  She sighed, and I forced my head back into the game. Back into reality, like it or not.

  ‘He woke up, Sarah,’ Mom said again. Pointedly, even. ‘And he’s asking for you.’

  16

  It was almost noon when I made it to the hospital in Rivermark and by that point I was just a zombie. I accepted it. Hell, I welcomed it.

  Zombies did not feel. Not that I knew a great deal about them outside of the usual horror movies, but I thought that part was probably universal. Of course they didn’t feel. In particular, I felt sure that zombies did not relive horrible parting scenes with their ex-boyfriends while sobbing their hearts out all the way down to the Vermont state line. Oh, no. Zombies simply drove. They stopped only to pick up more supplies of caffeine and sugar and to gas up the car, they left extremely rambling and incoherent messages on their friends’ voicemails at still dark o’clock on Christmas morning about how upset and worried and whatever else they were, and they kept right on driving.

  Merry fucking Christmas to me.

  The good news about such a long drive was that I really couldn’t muster up much in the way of emotion when I finally got there. I was wiped out. I walked into the hospital lobby and toward the elevator on autopilot. It was only when I pressed the UP button that I remembered the wa
y I’d left things with Carolyn the last time I’d been here. Meaning, not good. Had that only been the day before yesterday? It felt like years to me. Long, Alec-filled years.

  But I had to stop thinking about him. There was no point in it. It had been over for years. This had been nothing more than revisiting an old memory in a not very smart and entirely too tactile way, and I had to simply pack it back into the depths where it belonged. I never should have taken it out in the first place. I understood that now.

  Not that understanding it made it hurt any less.

  This is how you always leave, he’d said, all that pain and fury in his dark eyes, so much I’d had to look away. Out the door without a backward glance – but I’m the one who’s ‘temporary’?

  And the worst part was, I knew I deserved it. I’d never stopped to consider Alec’s feelings in any of this. It had been my journey, my breakdown. I hadn’t given a thought to what my reappearance might do to him. What had I thought would happen? And what kind of person did that make me, that I could toy with someone else’s feelings like that? I’d spent that endless stretch of road across Massachusetts wondering that very thing. I still didn’t have an answer, and now it was too late. My time was up. This limbo, in-between life I’d been living was finally over, for good or ill.

  ‘There you are.’

  I couldn’t make sense of Brooke’s voice, not here and not now, and certainly not cutting through my memories of Alec’s hard-hitting words. Of the pain that I’d caused. I turned, convinced this was likely the start of the hallucination portion of my extended breakdown, but even when I blinked a few times, she was still standing there. And so was Lianne, right next to her, both of them looking unaccountably fierce. They looked like the best surprise Christmas presents I could have imagined.

  ‘I hope it’s okay that we came,’ Brooke said, her gaze moving worriedly over my face. Having glimpsed myself in the reflection in the glass doors on the way in, I knew that zombie was actually a kinder description of my appearance at the moment than I deserved. I raised a hand to deal with my hair, but gave up before it got there. I was beyond caring.

  ‘You should both be having Christmas with your families.’ I rubbed at my face, my gritty and still-swollen eyes, feeling even more dazed and bleary-eyed, suddenly. Or maybe I was simply exhausted. ‘No one should have to be in the hospital today if they can avoid it. I should have said Merry Christmas on your voicemail and left it at that.’

  ‘The kids were up at six,’ Lianne said with a shrug. ‘Christmas was over by 8.15. Billy can handle them for a while.’

  ‘And it’s not like I need an excuse to get away from my family,’ Brooke said in agreement. ‘There’s a reason I moved to New York and never went back, you know. My mother overserved herself on the Irish coffee and was sleeping it off by 9.35. A personal record.’ She smiled. ‘I took her car as soon as I got your message.’

  If they’d been singing me my very own personalized Hallelujah Chorus it couldn’t have touched me more.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I whispered, and let them hug me. I kind of … leaned into them, and let them prop me up for a moment. Just for a second, I let nothing matter but my two best friends in the whole world, together, in the last place on earth I would have expected to see them. Just for a tiny little moment I let someone else – two someone elses – help me stand up in all of this.

  ‘Of course we’re here,’ Lianne said in an undertone, her arm tight around me.

  ‘Friends don’t let friends cope with the aftermath of a cheating husband’s coma alone,’ Brooke said staunchly, as if she’d dealt with things like this so many times she’d put together some kind of Guide to Cheating Husbands and Comas. It made me smile to imagine it. As if it were a chapter in something she edited, something brightly lit and fun, and maybe we would all go out for fruity cocktails afterward. Instead of the harder fact that we were standing in the lobby of the Rivermark hospital, with who knew what waiting for me upstairs.

  I’d thought about that a lot on my drive, in between other bombshells and unpleasant realizations. This was the end of everything, wasn’t it? Tim was now awake and could make his own medical decisions. He could look me in the face and tell me all about the baby he’d made with Carolyn, and what that meant, and what he wanted. And then I could walk away. I’d have to, wouldn’t I?

  That should have made me happy. I told myself it did. Or anyway, it would. I was sure it would, eventually.

  ‘All right,’ I said now, before I started sobbing all over them, something I would have thought impossible after all the day’s weeping – but no, my eyes were wet again. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  And for the first time in the weeks since Thanksgiving, I wasn’t all alone as I made my way to Tim’s room to face whatever came next. It was amazing how much of a difference that made. It was as if I could somehow breathe a little deeper, a little better, simply because they were here.

  ‘You look terrible,’ Lianne said, frowning at me as we stepped into the elevator and let the doors close behind us. ‘What the hell were you doing in Vermont?’

  ‘Please God, let it be Alec Frasier,’ Brooke replied fervently.

  I stared at the plate above us as the elevator clicked through the lit-up floors, one by one. I thought about Alec and that impossible, stubborn mouth of his that so bewitched me I did things I never imagined I would. I thought about Tim reduced to that still, small body in his hospital bed, unaccountably helpless. I thought about what I wanted, and how odd it was that such a simple question seemed to have nothing but murky answers the harder I looked for them.

  ‘I can’t even process how inappropriate this conversation is right now,’ I said after a moment. I wasn’t angry. Not even annoyed. It was just a simple statement of fact. ‘On every conceivable level.’

  We all stood there quietly. I sensed more than saw the two of them exchange a glance, but I didn’t mind. Or react. And still the elevator rose.

  He woke up and is asking for you. I still didn’t know what that meant. I hadn’t called back for clarification. I hadn’t wanted to give my mother the opportunity to upset me any further – and, of course, I was afraid that I already knew. Tim had been so clear about what he wanted. A divorce. Carolyn. Was he asking for me so he could reiterate that? To my face? Or was he angry at me for how Carolyn undoubtedly felt she’d been treated – as my mother had predicted he would be? I didn’t want to spend all those hours in the car knowing that was coming at me. It had been an act of self-preservation.

  Which looked a lot like cowardice, I could admit.

  Once again, I saw the way Alec had looked at me as I headed for the door. Those last, harsh words. That empty place in my chest where I knew my heart was supposed to be beating. But I’d walked into that situation, that whole night, him, with my eyes open, hadn’t I? I’d known what I was doing, however unfair.

  This is what temporary means, I’d thrown at him, hardly knowing who I was angry with. Or why. And it’s not like you’d ever dream of changing your plans for anyone, would you?

  Is that what this was, Sarah? he’d asked so quietly. Too quietly. Revenge?

  But I hadn’t been able to answer. And I knew that was cowardice, too. It was funny, I thought then, staring at the lights before me in this familiar elevator that I never wanted to ride again, but I’d never seen myself more clearly than I did today.

  ‘The important thing,’ I said out loud, mostly to cut through the noise in my head, the rush of all those images, ‘is that Tim’s awake. And therefore better. That’s what we need to focus on.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘I’m still punching him in the face,’ Lianne mused, as if to herself. ‘I don’t care if he’s been in a coma for the past few weeks, he’s still a slime ball.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Brooke said in the same tone. ‘And Carolyn too, let’s not forget.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lianne replied, with an evil note in her voice that reminded me exa
ctly why she’d been my best friend through all those terrible teenage years. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  And that was why I was smiling when the elevator doors slid open to reveal my entire family waiting on the other side. Just … standing there, in the elevator bank. All three of them. Looking markedly unhappy.

  There was a pause.

  I felt as if everyone were staring at my smile, then – as if it were the physical equivalent of a very inappropriate mariachi band crashing a funeral or something. I tried to wipe my expression clean, but it was too late. The tension was already much too high, and mounting. I could practically taste it.

  We all stared at each other. Everyone looked awful, which made me feel better about my zombie impression but was also a bit alarming. My father appeared to be wearing the largest, most ill-fitting orange sweater of all time. My mother’s hair was uncharacteristically frizzy and her face looked slept on. Carolyn, meanwhile, looked hollow-cheeked and haunted. None of these were the reactions I was expecting. This was not the way they should have been celebrating Tim’s awakening – which, of course, made me wonder what had happened.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked briskly, diving right into what scared me the most. ‘Why are you all standing here? Did something happen?’

  ‘You could say that,’ Carolyn snapped. She glared at me as if I’d done something to her. I let my gaze drop to the faint swell of her belly and couldn’t imagine what that might be, relatively speaking, even as relief trickled through me. If she was angry, Tim couldn’t have died. If she was angry, it had to be something else altogether.

  ‘Head injuries are very strange things,’ Lianne said into the coiling tension. ‘Recovery can be very—’

  ‘You should see him,’ my mother told me, interrupting Lianne. ‘Alone.’

  I knew better than to view that as a gesture of support. Not from my mother. Which meant it kind of terrified me.