Impossible Things

by Alexandra McBrayer

  “No, we’ve already discussed that. The ring is yours and so is this,” he held the box up and shook it, “I saw this and thought of you.”

  Unable to stop herself she asked, “You thought of me?”

  He nodded and unable to control her curiosity she reached out and took the box. She hesitated for a second and then opened it to see a beautiful, filigreed cuff bracelet covered in tiny stones. “Oh! It’s beautiful.”

  He reached out, took the bracelet out of the box and put it on her wrist. “Like you it’s delicate with the filigree but it’s platinum so it’s also strong. The rubies, diamonds, emeralds and sapphires are just there to add sparkle. Yesterday I got the distinct impression that you like sparkle.”

  She looked from the bracelet to his face and felt her heart melting. She hadn’t expected that he could be sweet. He didn’t seem the type of man to have it in him.

  “You know I can’t take it.”

  He shook his head, “No. I don’t know that. You can because it’s a gift from me to you, to thank you for yesterday and today.”

  “I can’t.”

  He put his hand on the bracelet and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “Please keep it. Pull it out from time to time and think of me and remember the short time that we had together.”

  She looked down at his hand and at the beautiful bracelet and felt herself softening. She finally had her own jewels and they each had a story behind them, and she wasn’t in debt for them.

  He pulled his hand away, reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a card. He handed it to her and she saw his name and two phone numbers on it. She looked from the card to his face as he said, “This is my number, if you want to see me again before you get married, call me. I won’t come back. If you want to see me, you’ll have to call me.”

  She looked down at the card and whispered, “I won’t call.”

  He cleared his throat and she looked up to see that he was looking straight ahead. His profile was beautiful and she wanted to reach out and touch his hair. It was just touching the edge of his collar and was beginning to curl behind his ear.

  In profile he was more beautiful than ever as he said, “I won’t expect you to.”

  She nodded, grabbed her purse and stepped out of the car. She didn’t know if he turned.

  She shut the car door, walked to her front door, opened it and went inside. It was her turn to not look back.

  Chapter Ten

  She spent the rest of the day trying to keep her mind off him. She cleaned the apartment from top to bottom and in the afternoon she began making chicken and dumplings from scratch, since it was Sam’s favorite meal. She liked to experiment and try new food and London was perfect for that but Sam preferred the kind of food that he’d grown up with so she made a lot of chicken, meatloaf and roasts. It wasn’t what she wanted but she knew that it made Sam happy to come home from a long day at work and have a taste of home.

  He walked in the door a little after five and she was nervous, not knowing how he would react after the morning. He looked exhausted so she pushed the day’s events out of her mind and went up to grab his hand. He let her, so she led him over to a chair, pushed him down, took off his jacket and began to rub his shoulders. “Ahhhh that feels so good.”

  He leaned his head forward until it was touching his chest as she massaged his neck and shoulders. “God babe, that feels so good.”

  She worked her way down, digging her fingers into his shoulders and rubbing his biceps as hard as she could. She dug her thumbs into the underside of his arm and kept going, massaging his forearms before taking his right hand in hers and kneading it before pulling his fingers. In college one year she and her friends had taken an erotic massage class and she still remembered most of it.

  Sam sighed and she felt it as the tension of the day left his body. She moved to grab his left hand but when she did he grabbed her and pulled her to his lap. She had barely sat down before he kissed her and she kissed him back with everything she had in her.

  It was Sam, her sweet Sam, and his kisses made her feel the way they always had, loved, cherished, and protected. She felt safe in his arms and she hated the part of her that had ever thought that anything else was necessary.

  She felt him growing against her butt and she pulled back, looked into his brown eyes and asked, “Do you want to take this in the bedroom?”

  He nodded and she stood up and took his hand to pull him after her.

  When they got to the bedroom she started to undress him and he smiled at her. When he was naked she pushed him back against the bed and still in her clothes she straddled him. He laughed, “Babe you think you might want to take your clothes off?”

  She put her finger against his mouth, “Shhh, no talking. I’m in charge.”

  He laughed and spread his arms out on the bed. She leaned down, kissed his chest and flicked her tongue over his nipples. She felt him grow harder and she smiled as she continued to kiss him, working her way down his body until she was level with his groin. She sent her tongue out to lick the tip of him and he groaned.

  His reaction that morning to her masturbating had been a strange anomaly. He was still her Sam.

  When she took him in her mouth he groaned and his hips came up off the bed. She pushed him back and took him deeper in her mouth, relaxing her throat muscles. His arms came down to push her away as he said, “Stop, I can’t take anymore babe.”

  He pulled her up and pushed her to her back, came up over her, and slammed into her. She lost her breath for a second at his lack of finesse. She was damp, but not enough, and at first it was uncomfortable.

  She wanted to get into it, wanted to enjoy it but she had lost the thread of desire, and Sam didn’t seem to notice as he pumped away inside of her.

  She thought about reaching down to touch herself so that she could enjoy it too but she remembered his reaction that morning so she kept her hands by her side.

  She looked up at him as he strained above her. His blond hair was sweaty and plastered to his head and the veins in his neck stood out in sharp relief. His brown eyes were closed tightly and as she watched a trail of sweat worked its way down his face and landed on her chest.

  She felt as if she was having an out of body experience as she watched him.

  He never opened his eyes and she felt disconnected from her lower body as she assessed him. He was handsome, not as handsome as the stranger, but cute in that boy next door way.

  Because she was watching his face she knew when he was about to come. She thought about faking her own pleasure but didn’t bother as she felt him explode inside of her.

  He pulled away, moved to his back on the bed beside her without saying a word, and within seconds he was snoring. She knew that he was tired but for the first time she didn’t feel any sympathy for him and it wasn’t because she was frustrated.

  Lying there she felt completely void of desire.

  She waited a few minutes to make sure that he was deep asleep before she got up and went to the bathroom. She turned on the hot water and took off her clothes before getting in. For the first time ever she felt unclean after sex and she washed carefully with the washcloth trying to remove all traces of him.

  When she felt clean again she emptied the tub and filled it again with fresh, hot water.

  As she lay back she thought about the past few days and tried to come to terms with how she felt. She loved Sam, she had no doubt at all about that, but now she was able to admit, just to herself, that their love life had always left something to be desired.

  He was a good man with a warm heart but he wasn’t a good lover. They’d been having sex for a year before he’d wanted to try something different, and though he had gotten better over time there were still things that he didn’t like to do. Oral sex was a rarity in their relationship and she didn’t know why. Sam had never said anything but it was always the same when she did it to him; he pulled her away and told her it was enough. He had never once performed it, or even tr
ied to, on her.

  She thought back to the car and the stranger, she still had a hard time thinking of him as Lucas, and how eagerly he had touched and kissed her in a place that Sam rarely touched. The thought of it caused a tingle deep inside and she shifted in the bathtub. Lucas hadn’t had a problem doing it; in fact he had seemed to enjoy it.

  Remembering the feel of his tongue and how good it felt she sent her fingers trailing down her body. She moved until her back was against the edge of the tub and she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Most of her black hair was in a messy top knot on her head but some of it had come down to lie on the top of the water. Her face was flushed and she looked like a different person, even to herself.

  Remembering how the stranger had made her watch in the mirror as he touched her she met her eyes in the mirror as she slowly touched herself.

  She tried to shut off her mind, to stop worrying about Sam, to stop thinking about the stranger, to just enjoy the moment and the pleasure that was building but she found it impossible, so giving up she sat up, washed off and got out. Letting the water out of the tub she dried herself off with a towel while staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  She thought that she was attractive, cute more than pretty, with black hair and blue yes, but she wondered what the stranger had seen in her.

  When she realized that she was thinking about him again she turned away from the mirror and shut off the light.

  Putting on an old t-shirt of Sam’s she crawled into bed next to him.

  She felt lost.

  She didn’t have a job, she was living in a strange city, and Sam was away from home all the time, added to that was the fact that she had done something so uncharacteristic that she didn’t feel like she knew herself anymore.

  Sighing she rolled over and went to sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  She woke to the sound of the phone ringing and rolled over to pick it up. It was Sam’s mom, and Lucy spent the next hour lying in bed listening to her talk about all the things that needed to still be done for the wedding.

  She didn’t have to say much, a few grunts of agreement every now and then, and when they finally hung up Lucy wanted to cry with gratitude. She liked her future mother-in-law but she was driving her nuts.

  Lucy didn’t care, had never cared about having a big wedding. She had wanted her ceremony to have meaning but that had been lost long ago when Sam’s mom got involved. It was now more his mom’s day than Lucy and Sam’s and it made Lucy sick to think about standing up in front of three hundred guests, most that she barely knew, and pledge their love to each other.

  Sam didn’t care either but as always he did what he mom said and told Lucy to follow along.

  She realized that it was only nine and she was already feeling depressed, so she got up, fixed herself toast and coffee and took it back to bed.

  Looking around the apartment she had to shake her head. Sam’s clothes were scattered everywhere. His suit from the day before was on the couch and his discarded socks were in a pile by the bathroom door. It was a small apartment, just one room, but it was expensive in comparison to what Sam made.

  She knew she needed to get up, and get going, she had so many errands to run for the wedding that she didn’t even know where to start but the idea of all of it left her feeling drained.

  She finally made herself get out of bed and she cleaned the apartment and started a load of laundry. Seeing that Sam only had two clean shirts left she gathered together a pile of his clothes for the dry cleaner and went to take a shower.

  When she got out she got dressed, grabbed her list of errands and Sam’s clothes and left the apartment. She dropped the clothes off at the cleaners, stopped by a place that allowed you to send faxes and sent the church their last instructions. She stopped at the place where Sam had purchased his suit to make sure that they had his measurements, and finally, in the early afternoon, she was able to stop and grab a coffee.

  As she sat and drank her coffee she realized that she had only one place left to go and while part of her was excited about this particular errand the other part of her dreaded it. She had an appointment to do a test run on her make-up for the wedding.

  She finished her coffee, got back on the tube, and ten minutes later she was standing in front of the small store that Julie, her florist, had recommended.

  When she went in she was immediately transported back to her days as a teenage girl who had haunted mall make-up counters. She was wondering around admiring everything and smelling the sample bottles of perfume when a girl with bright pink hair approached her. “Hi, can I help you?”

  Lucy felt dowdy next to her. Her hair was in a bun, again, and she hadn’t put on any make-up before leaving the house. Her jeans and sweater were boring and she suddenly felt much older than her twenty-seven years as she answered, “Hi. I’m Lucy Jacobs. I was supposed to have my make-up done by Sarah.”

  The girl smiled and Lucy saw that her tongue was pierced. “I’m Sarah.”

  They chatted for a few minutes about what Lucy wanted, a fresh, natural look with rosy cheeks and a soft pink mouth before Sarah led her to a chair at the back of the store. She put a cape around Lucy’s shoulders and asked her questions about her wedding. Soon they were talking about general things, like the weather and TV programs and celebrity gossip which Lucy was completely ignorant of, but it was nice to get out of the house and have another girl to talk to.

  “Can I say something?”

  Lucy looked at the girl. She had been applying blush and her tone didn’t sound positive but Lucy said, “Sure.”

  “I understand what you want but I have to say I don’t think that’s you. With your coloring and your hair you’d be a knockout in red lipstick and some black eyeliner. Nothing serious mind you, just some soft liner and killer lips. With your pale skin, blue eyes and black hair you’d look like a living Snow White!”

  Lucy smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve never done red. I just never felt bold enough to wear it.”

  Sarah stood back and appraised Lucy. “Who’s doing your hair?”

  Surprised Lucy said, “I am. I couldn’t afford anyone.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No! I am. Let me do the liner and the red lipstick and I’ll do your hair as well. You would look amazing with your hair half-up and some braids at the front. Sort of like a sexy milkmaid.”

  Lucy sure as hell didn’t feel much like a sexy milkmaid, and she knew that Sam’s mom wouldn’t approve of red lipstick on her wedding day, which was what made her mind up.

  His mom had made too many decisions about Lucy’s big day. It was time for Lucy to take some control back. “Okay you can try but if it looks bad we’ll go with a soft pink or coral okay?”

  Sarah smiled. “Trust me it won’t look bad.”

  Lucy spent three hours with Sarah as she tried different make-up colors and did Lucy’s hair. Sarah ordered them sandwiches from the deli across the street and insisted on paying for it.

  All in all it was a very nice day, and Lucy left the shop smiling. She was walking down the street when her phone rang. She stopped, and reached into her purse to get it. What she came up with was the card with Lucas’ number on it. She had forgotten all about it.

  She shoved his card in her pants pocket and answered her phone. It was Sam. He was going to be home late, his boss wanted to take him to meet some people, and he wanted to tell her before he had to go back to work.

  When Sam hung up she felt lonely. Lonelier than she had felt at any time before and she stopped on the street to take a deep, calming breath.

  As she stood there a woman passed her. The woman was wearing a simple, elegant white coat that Lucy knew had to be expensive and carrying a handbag that she knew cost over ten thousand dollars. The woman was walking with her head held high, designer sunglasses on, and Lucy wanted to be her with an overwhelming passion that made her want to scream.

  The woman was so confident, so sophisticated, that all t
he old longings from when Lucy was a girl came back. She wanted to run after the woman and beg her to teach her what she knew.

  Lucy stared after the woman and when she couldn’t see her anymore she pulled Lucas’ card from her jeans pocket and stared at it. With shaking hands she took her phone back out and dialed his number. She figured she’d probably get his voicemail and when she did she would tear up the card, throw it in the nearest trashcan and never think about him again.

  He answered. “Hello?”

  The sound of his voice was better than she remembered. Her hands started to shake and before he could say anything else she dropped the phone. Luckily for her it hadn’t broken and when she put it back to her ear she heard him say, “Hello?” again.

  She quickly pulled the phone away from her ear and hit the end button.