by Brea Brown
Tom Ridgeworthy is half the writer I am, in his opinion? Really? That’s a phenomenal compliment in the mass market literary world. Sure, Ridgeworthy writes according to a formula that he’s devised and perfected in his scores of novels, so I’m sure many people—myself included, when I’m trying to make myself feel better—look down their noses at that. But his formula is proven. It’s successful. It’s golden. The only reason I don’t have my own formula is that I’ve only written one book. And nobody knows who the hell I am. But if I could crank ’em out like he does and land on the bestsellers list every single time, you bet your ass I’d do it. And it wouldn’t matter if some elitists thought my writing was subpar. Their opinions wouldn’t affect my bank balance or my self-worth at all.
But what’s making me keep my distance from Luke isn’t his gratifying comparison of my writing skills to one of the most successful and prolific writers of the modern age. Nope. It’s the other part of what he said that’s freaking me out. Coupled with what we discussed immediately prior to his blow-up, his statement about my being a superior person makes me feel desperately hopeless, ironically enough. It should make me feel good. It should even make me contemplate “getting the wrong idea.” But all it does is give me heartburn. Or maybe that’s the pizza.
Anyway, I’ve already entertained plenty of wrong ideas during the past week. Plenty. Too many. It seems in doing so that I’ve forgotten my place. I am a writer who works with an editor, who has generously offered me the use of his wife’s house for the purposes of finishing my manuscript, because I had trouble working anywhere else. This environment suits me and allows me to write well. That is all.
Except… that’s not all. Because I love that stupid, bad-tempered editor, and he makes me happy. And I make him happy, I think, based on the amount of time he chooses to spend with me, even when we’re not working. And… I’m going to come right out and say it: I want him to rip my clothes off and do things to me that they do to each other on the naughty channels in the wee hours of the morning. Some of the things, anyway. But I know I’m too meek and skittish and plain to make that possible.
Even if he offered, I’d be unable to go through with it. Because he has a wife. And possibly a fetus inside that wife. He may seem to have forgotten those things sometimes, but I haven’t. I can’t. Call me an unsophisticated farm girl, or whatever, but just because I’ve transplanted myself to a big city doesn’t mean I left my upbringing on a shelf in the house that burnt down in the middle of Nowhereville in Indiana. My old-fashioned morals and values—as inconvenient as they are—didn’t die with the rest of my family.
Maybe when I’m finished with this book (if that ever happens), I’ll go wander on the moors of singlehood in the hopes that a less complicated man discovers me and nurses me back to vigor before I perish from sexual inactivity. I’ve heard it can be fatal.
Okay, so I’m pouting a little bit.
*****
“Are you going to hide down there all night, watching porn?”
I knew it was a mistake to answer my cell phone when his name flashed on the screen, yet… I couldn’t resist answering.
“I’m not watching porn!”
“Mm-hm. Sure. Okay.”
“I’m not! It’s not even on at this time!”
This inadvertent betrayal of my knowledge of such things makes him laugh.
Shit.
“You know what I mean,” I grumble. “What do you want?”
“I said I was sorry for yelling at you. Why are you still mad at me?” he asks, sounding more hurt than annoyed. “Was it something I said? Surely, it can’t be anything I said. I didn’t say anything offensive.”
“I’m not mad at you for anything you said,” I confirm. “But I am sick of you thinking it’s okay to shout everything at people when you want to get your point across.”
His voice sounds tight when he replies, “I know. It’s wrong. That’s why I apologized.”
“But it’s not okay to shout and think that an apology is good enough.”
“What else do you want?”
Oh, gosh. Don’t ask me that! I can think of about a hundred ways to answer that question. And none of them is clean, appropriate, or professional.
Finally, I come up with a decent response. “I want you to think before you shout so that the apology isn’t necessary.”
He sighs. “But my temper—”
“You’re not a child. You need to learn how to control your temper. Plus, you lose it about the strangest things.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“We’ll agree to disagree so it doesn’t turn into another argument that ends with you shouting at me.”
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
“No! The opposite.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“It’s not my fault you’re so quick to anger.”
“I’m—” He stops abruptly and takes a deep, steadying breath. After a length of time that suggests he counted to at least ten, he says pleasantly, “Are you going to work anymore tonight?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” I reply sweetly.
“If I promise not to shout at you anymore—tonight—will you at least come upstairs and watch TV with me, instead of making me feel like a hothead with no friends?”
Well, when he puts it that way, it would seem spiteful of me to say no.
Chapter Nineteen
His warm breath against my back, right at the base of my neck, is the first clue that this isn’t a dream. The second clue is the weight of his arm across my hip. And it doesn’t take a detective to tell me that I’m insane for relishing this moment, however accidental and inadvertent it is. Let me revel in the fantasy a few minutes longer…
“Jayne,” he whispers behind me.
I pretend I’m still sleeping. I’m afraid if I acknowledge him, he’ll move away from me. Unfortunately, I don’t have to talk for that to happen. He scoots to the other side of the bed when I don’t answer him, probably hoping I never noticed the contact to begin with. Now what do I do? Do I go along with the act? It’s not fair to suffer through an awkward morning after when nothing happened the night before.
Because nothing happened. I still have all my clothes on. The only reason we ended up in this room, in his bed, is that he mentioned the TV in his bedroom was a 3D TV, and I said I’d never seen one (a 3D TV), and so he offered to show it to me (the TV), so we came up here and popped in Avatar, so I could get the full effect (of the 3D TV), and as when Gus made me watch the blue people movie, I fell asleep. Luke obviously didn’t have the heart to wake me up and kick me out to sleep in my own room. And he’s a cuddler. Big deal! (Ohmygoshthat’ssosweet!) And anyway… I’m cool. It’s not like he was consciously cuddling with me (breeeeeeathe!) or making a move or—
“Jayne.”
This time, he says it louder, so I roll onto my back and turn my head toward him. “What?”
“You fell asleep during the movie,” he tells me with a smile as he stretches his arms over his head.
“Yeah, it’s still boring, even on a 3D TV. But your TV is cool.”
As he brings his arm down, he hits himself in the face. “Ow. Uh… Also…” He rubs his forehead. “I, uh… was… touching you… a minute ago, and—”
So he’ll stop making this more embarrassing than it already is (not that it’s embarrassing, but his explanation is cringe-worthy), I quickly reassure him, “It’s okay.”
He freezes. “I-it is?”
The way he’s looking at me is making my heart race. “Yeah. And, uh… anyway… I hope I didn’t talk in my sleep.” I said it to make him feel better, but the possibility of it being true makes my heart pound even faster. Considering some of the dreams I’ve been having lately, talking in my sleep around him would be very bad indeed. “I didn’t, did I?” I squeak when he continues staring at me.
He shakes his head and whispers, “No.”
“Oh, good.” But I still can’t catch my breath.
<
br /> “Jayne?”
“What?”
“I want to kiss you.”
I babble, “That wouldn’t be a very good idea, though, right? Because… well… there are so many reasons.” I hate myself. “Like… well…”
“I can’t think of any.”
“But they exist! Lots of them!” I say, as if I’m talking about unicorns. “You’re married, for one.”
“Only on paper. That doesn’t count.”
I laugh nervously. “Oh, it counts! It matters to the IRS, and it matters to me.”
He edges closer to me, but I don’t move. Instead, I keep rabbiting. “And you’re going to be a father—”
“No, I’m not. She knows I’m reaching my breaking point and that all of her usual tricks aren’t going to work, so she’s in desperation mode. She’s not even faking it well this time, though. She’s not pregnant.”
“But what if she is?”
“She’s not.” Closer still. “Is that the only thing stopping you?”
“No.” But I say it so weakly that it’s hardly audible.
“I used to have lots of reasons, too, but right now, I can’t think of any of them.”
His shaking hand tells a truer story, though, when he lifts it to brush my hair away from my face. And pokes me in the eye.
I flinch and jerk my head back, pinching my eye closed. “Ouch!” I cover the burning, watering socket with my palm.
“I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” he says on a groan. “Shit. I can’t believe I did that. I mean, I can believe it, but… Let me see.”
“I can’t open it right now,” I tell him as I roll away from him and sit on the side of the bed.
He sits next to me and repeats, “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. It’s only an eye poke. No big deal.” Experimentally, I blink hard and wipe away the tears streaming down my face. “It already feels better,” I fib.
“Oh, good. Fuck. I am such a moron. You must think I’m so stupid.”
“I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess. I still have all my teeth.”
He laughs miserably. “You can replace teeth, though. Eyes, not so much. Let me go see if I have some drops in my bathroom.”
After he goes into the other room, I hear him muttering to himself, “Real smooth, asshole. ‘I wanna kiss you… after I blind you.’ What is it about a room with a bed in it that makes you such a fucking spaz?”
“I can still hear you,” I inform him while continuing to wick away the tears.
He pauses and then says, “Of course, you can. Because I’m not already humiliated enough.” He reappears in the doorway, looking chagrined. “Um… I don’t have any eye drops. I’m sorry. I can run to the pharmacy for you. Yes. That’s what I’ll do.” He strides to his closet. “I’ll get dressed and leave the house to get you some eye drops. And I’ll be gone for a while. Or maybe I won’t come back.”
“Luke.”
“Hmmm?” he asks from the confines of his closet.
“Um, why don’t you come back over here and… kiss it better?” I blush and hold my breath.
A few seconds pass, but then he emerges, looking shy. “Really?”
I nod. “Yeah. I don’t think it’s serious.” I sniff and blink. “See? It still works. One kiss, and I bet it’ll be good as new.”
He sits next to me on the bed. “One kiss?”
I shrug. “Maybe more than one. Go ahead.”
He does. And I almost weep for real at how good it feels.
“Do your lips hurt?” he asks. At my nod, he briefly presses his lips against mine. “Better?”
“They hurt real bad,” I murmur.
He smiles and kisses me harder, wrapping his arms around me and then threading his hand up through my hair, which is still slightly sleep-tangled and snags on his fingers.
“Gaaa, my hair! Never mind. It’s okay,” I frantically tell him when he withdraws from me. “Just keep kissing me.”
No pain, no gain, right?
*****
Nothing else happened. My pain tolerance is too low for it to have gone on much longer. Luke wasn’t kidding. He’s a bull in a china bedroom. And if it wasn’t so painful, it would be sweet and cute and kind of a turn-on. But it did hurt. A lot. It hurt when he tried to get his hand out of my hair; it hurt when he elbowed me in the ribs; and it hurt when he trapped my hand under his elbow on the bed. The pain was a blessing in disguise, though, because if I didn’t have it to ground me, who knows how far I would have let things go? In spite of everything, he’s a damn good kisser.
When I sat up, wiped my mouth and said, “We have to stop,” he immediately agreed.
“You’re right. Tullah’s gonna kill me if you have bruises in your author pic.”
I acted like that was my main motivation, too. It was easier than repeating all the depressing things we already know.
I had another heart-stopping moment, though, when he said in a jocular tone, “Hit the showers, Greer,” as I was headed toward his bedroom door.
“W-what?” I asked, sniffing inside the collar of my t-shirt. “Do I stink?!” Oh, it would just figure, although I didn’t know how it could be possible, considering I’d showered the day before and spent much of the afternoon in the pool.
He laughed in his bathroom doorway. “No! I was… Never mind. You don’t smell bad. At all.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
Shaking his head and still chuckling, he turned and disappeared from my view, closing the door behind him.
Now, hours later, it’s like I imagined what happened earlier. I didn’t, though. It was real. Really real. I have the red eye to prove it. But if all I had to go on was Luke’s behavior, I’d wonder. Not that I expect him to act differently. Well, maybe I do. I don’t know. I don’t know what I expect. I feel so different. And I don’t know how to act.
After alternately staring at my blinking cursor and studying him in my peripheral vision for the better part of two hours, I close my laptop and set it on the coffee table with a thunk. He looks sharply over at me as I stand and stretch.
“I’m going for a walk,” I announce. When he moves to get up, I add, “Alone.”
He looks surprised, but he doesn’t make a big deal about it. Instead, he goes back to reading the manuscript in front of him. “Alright. See you in a while, then.” Scritch-scratch, scribble, scribble, scribble, slaaaaaaash.
Okay, then. That was easy enough.
When I continue to simply stand in the middle of the room, he glances up and half-smiles. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I toss, missing “breezy” by a long shot (as in, falling somewhere closer to “leaden”).
I don’t want him to come with me, but I want him to want to. Oh, shit. I’m losing my mind. I’m becoming one of those scary mind-game-playing women who get all proprietary at the first kiss.
He starts to look up at me again, but before he can even ask a question with his eyes, I bolt from the room. Must have fresh air.
I jog through the yard, scramble up the dunes, and scamper down the other side. I’m not a runner, but for the first time in years, I decide to try it. Barefoot, I pound down the beach on the packed sand, mesmerized by the prints I make that almost immediately disappear again.
When I get into a rhythm and no longer have to think about things as basic as breathing, I’m forced to confront other, more disturbing thoughts. As in, what’s the goal here, Jayne? Miss High and Mighty from last night seems to be nowhere around today. No, one careless cuddle session and a slightly less-accidental kissing clinic later, and the moral dilemmas have suddenly escaped me. He has a wife? Big whoop. She could be pregnant with his baby? No prob. He’s my editor? So what? I’m horny. Oh, in that case… the rules don’t matter. Do whatever feels good and deal with the consequences later. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? I’ve always wanted to be worldlier. This is good practice.
No. I don’t like this. I mean, I do like it. Too much. But I don’t like where it’s going,
ultimately. The pit-stops along the way are fun, but the final destination sucks.
Now that the train’s left the station, though, how do I stop it? I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I want to.
*****
I still don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can tell I’m going to have shin splints from my Baywatch audition, so I turn around and return to the house, hoping I’ll magically figure something out when I hit the back door. That doesn’t happen, oddly enough. Maybe some lunch will get my brain working.
As much as I’m trying to avoid talking to him until I figure out what I’m going to say regarding more serious matters, it would be impolite not to ask Luke if he’d like me to fix him something while I’m making my own ooey, gooey peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When I get to his study doors, though, I nearly injure myself when I try to open them and find them locked.
“Aggh!” I cry, gripping my shoulder.
On the other side of the door, I hear Luke say, “Hang on a second, Arthur.”
The lock clicks, the door opens, and he winces at me through the narrow opening. “Hey. Uh… sorry about that. I’m on a call.”
“I see that,” I reply, rolling my shoulder. “I was coming to ask if you wanted lunch.”
He suddenly becomes stiff and formal. “No, thank you. I’m busy.”
Taking my cues from him, I say, “Okay. Sorry to bother you,” but it’s barely off my lips before he’s closing the door in my face. And throwing the lock home again.
I stare at the wood grain for a second, wondering what that was about. Then I remember that the owner of the publishing company is named Arthur, and it hits me that we probably broke a rule or two earlier this morning regarding publishing staff and their authors, so he’s trying to sound ultra-professional so as not to arouse any suspicions.
I’ve satisfied myself with that explanation, but as I’m about to walk back to the kitchen, I hear him say, “I’m back. Sorry for that…. Yes. I know…. It has been a few weeks, yes…. No, everything’s fine, but she’s making the edits a bit more slowly than I expected…. I know…. Yes, I know…. But—”
