by Lynn Costa
Before I had a chance to respond, Kensie asked me about the details of this sudden weekend getaway.
“I’m only going to work a half day tomorrow,” I told her. We’re going to leave at lunchtime and drive down there before traffic gets too bad.”
I paused again.
“But other than that, I don’t really know what the plans are; Zack is taking care of everything.”
I looked at Kensie, about to say something else; but then I stopped, wondering if I really should. Then I thought to myself: WTF.
“What’s with you? You seem all pissed off about me, or Zack and me, or something like that. What’s going on?”
She rolled her eyes in that “oh, okay; I’ll tell you” sort of expression.
“I don’t know,” she started. “Rick keeps asking me all the time about you and Dustin, and saying things like ‘It must be really tough on Lindsey to have been back working with Dustin for only a week and then get sent away.’ You know, things like that. And then this morning when we were getting ready...”
She caught herself, and I couldn’t help smirking.
“Kensie had a sleepover; Kensie had a sleepover,” I said a couple times in a sing-songy kind of voice.
“Big surprise,” she countered, but not nastily. Not only didn’t we really have any secrets from each other, but we were both about the same age and enjoying the sexual freedom that comes with being young, hot single women out in the L.A. professional world after college.
“Anyway,” Kensington continued, “this morning he said something like ‘Maybe we should see if we can get Dustin pulled from Chicago and sent here to MetroGen.’”
I felt my eyes widen at Kensie’s words.
“What’s with him?” I answered sharply. “It’s none of his f’ing business!”
“Yeah, I know,” Kensie replied. “He seems to be one of these guys who is a hopeless romantic or something like that, and there was something about you coming out to Chicago and being ‘reunited’” – Kensie made little air quotes – “with Dustin that touched his heart, or some bullshit like that. Anyway, he seems fixated on you two being back together again.”
Before I could say anything in response, Kensie (obviously reading my mind) continued with:
“And of course I’m between a rock and a hard place. I can’t say anything to him like ‘Rick, you idiot; you have no idea what you’re talking about!’ or ‘Rick, that’s the last thing in the world Lindsey wants!’ But on the other hand, I certainly don’t want to encourage the idea so I of course wouldn’t say anything like I think it’s a good idea, or even given him any sort of indication like that. So I tried to change the subject, and I did, but I swear he’s fixated on the idea because he mentioned it again during breakfast. I mean, what am I supposed to say?”
I instantly felt bad that Kensie had been put in such a position, though I definitely wasn’t going to beat myself up about it. It was a matter of circumstance, that’s all. If she hadn’t hooked up with Rick Worthington in the first place and if he hadn’t been sent back here with us, none of this would even be happening. So pure circumstance; nothing more.
Apparently being able to unload her frustrations to me instantly put Kensington in a much better frame of mind.
“I am happy for you,” she said, reaching out to squeeze my arm and then give me a quick hug. “I hope you have a great weekend in San Diego. Sooner or later you’ll have to try to break things off with Dustin again, so you might as well have a great time away with Zack after what you’ve gone through the past couple of weeks.”
I’m sure Kensie wasn’t thinking about the undertones to what she had just said – at least I don’t think so – but not only bringing up the looming breakup with Dustin but also phrasing it as “try to break things off” really struck me the wrong way; almost as if she wanted to end this conversation on fake good terms but actually throw in one last bitchy remark, and also to do that in a way that would get me wondering if she really had said those words with a sense of purpose.
By the time we got back to our conference room for our next meeting I was determined that I wouldn’t let what Kensie had said spoil my mood, but her words did nag at me every so often for the rest of the day, even as Zack and I were driving down to San Diego.
* * *
We had left early enough on a Friday to make good time the whole way to San Diego, moving his Jaguar along at good speeds on both the 405 and I-5. We only hit traffic for a little bit in Orange County, and then only for about ten minutes until we got around a collision that was in the final stages of being cleaned up. We left at 12:30 and made it to the beachside hotel in La Jolla a few minutes before 2:30. Zack drove fast, but not recklessly; the whole way he just cruised along at around 80, speeding up a little bit here and there to get around slower traffic.
I thought about surprising him by giving him a blow job on the drive down, but decided against it. There was something about this day, this occasion, that seemed more... I don’t know, loving, maybe? Passionate? Whatever it was, even though I knew we would be having plenty of really good sex all weekend, the idea of doing him during the drive down there seemed inappropriate, maybe even too dirty, given the “magic” of our first trip away together. On the way back to L.A. on Sunday night, maybe; but not headed down there this Friday afternoon. Though several times I found myself fantasizing that I was doing exactly that, and I felt myself getting really excited at the thought. I couldn’t wait until we got to our hotel so I could take care of this powerful lusty feeling that had enveloped me and was refusing to go away.
We did exactly that when we got to the hotel. Zack checked in, we drove around to the side of the building they directed him to that was closest to our room, and we didn’t even bring our luggage inside at first. We walked in and lunged for each other, and basically had a race to see who could undress the other first. (I won!) I did drop to my knees, take him into my mouth, and in something like two minutes we were ready to switch places because I made him come that quickly.
We spent the next hour making each other feel really, really good, and then finally around 4:00 decided that we should go outside to enjoy the rest of the warm early October afternoon before the sun went down. Zack had made dinner reservations at the hotel’s four-star restaurant for us at 7:30, which meant we could walk on the beach for a while, go back to our room for more sex, and then still have time to shower (probably with even more sex in the shower, or at least a little playing around!) before dinner.
We strolled leisurely along the Coast Walk Trail, then around 5:30 we headed towards some of the nearby boutiques that would be closing soon, when my cell phone dinged, indicating a text message. Even as I was reaching for my phone I could feel my pulse rate just about double, and that panicky feeling you get when you first comprehend something bad is beginning to happen. I knew this wasn’t a casual text that had just come in.
Where r u?
From Dustin, of course.
* * *
The very fact that he was asking where I was told me that he wasn’t in Chicago; that in fact he was in L.A. Maybe he was still at LAX, but more likely he was somewhere right by my building, or maybe even waiting outside my apartment door.
I froze. Zack looked at me, and I felt my left hand, the one holding my phone, reach itself out to show him the message.
He glanced at my phone’s screen for a fraction of a second, then up at me; but he didn’t say anything.
I sighed; a slow exhalation that anybody watching me would immediately take as my having been suddenly overwhelmed by some terrible predicament.
I felt my fingers begin to type.
I’m away – where r u?
Even as I pressed “Send” I found myself wondering why I had only typed “I’m away.” I knew with all the certainty that Dustin’s next text would be... well, here it was, lightning-fast:
Away? Where?
I could feel his anxious suspicion radiating through the words that formed on my phone
’s screen. I hesitated, deciding what I should type back – realizing as my mind furiously raced that he hadn’t answered my question about exactly where he was, either – when my phone rang. Apparently, Dustin had decided to dispense with the texting.
I looked at Zack, my eyes silently asking him if I should answer the phone. He just shrugged back at me and then nodded, a small, sad smile appearing on his face as he did.
“Hello?” was how I answered the call. I obviously knew it was Dustin from the his face and name being on the screen indicating who was calling, but this wasn’t the type of call I was going to answer with “Hi, Dustin” or some other pleasant response.
“Lindsey?”
I waited for what seemed like an eternity before responding.
“Uh-huh.” Nothing more.
“Where are you?”
“San Diego,” I heard myself blurt out the words.
“San Diego?” His voice radiated disbelief. “What are you doing there?”
Instead of answering his question, I asked my own.
“Where are you?”
He apparently decided to answer my question even though his own last one was still unanswered.
“I’m outside your apartment, that’s where.” Agitation was creeping into his voice as he continued. “I came back to surprise you, so we could have another weekend together.”
I couldn’t help it; I was curious as to how he got away from Client Hell out in Chicago, so I asked him.
“Things are actually going well this week,” he replied, “and nobody is working this weekend. So I finished up at lunchtime today...”
Well, that makes two of us, I thought to myself as he continued talking.
“...and caught a flight back to surprise you. I told Worthington about it but made him promise not to tell Kensie, since I was pretty sure she couldn’t keep a secret from you.”
He paused before continuing.
“But I guess I probably should have, because if you knew I was coming home you wouldn’t have gone to San Diego. What are you doing there anyway? Are you there with Courtney and Kensie?”
I heard myself answer “unh-unh.”
A pause.
“Is your sister out visiting?”
Now he was fishing.
“Well?” he demanded when I gave him no response.
“Dustin, we need to talk.”
* * *
I wasn’t going to do the breakup over the phone. He kept pressing, almost going as far as asking if I was in San Diego with another guy – almost, but not quite – but I kept saying over and over again, “We need to talk in person.”
He knew. Not the details of course, but he knew. Finally he gave up, realizing that I wasn’t going to budge and only after I told him that I would meet him at a deli on Santa Monica Boulevard in three hours or so, depending on how bad Friday night traffic was back up through Southern California.
It wasn’t until after I hung up that I realized that I had no car of my own to drive back to Beverly Hills. I was just about to call Dustin back when Zack said:
“Take my car.”
“I can’t do that,” I replied.
“It’s okay,” he countered.
“You could drive me.”
He shook his head.
“I think you’re better off making this drive alone,” Zack responded. “You’ll have time to think about what you’re going to tell him, and get your head around the whole situation. I really think you would be uncomfortable with me along for the whole ride, given what you have to gather all of your strength to do.”
He paused for a couple seconds, then looked at me sadly and added:
“Besides, if you take my car then I know we’ll have to meet so I can get it back from you.”
* * *
During the entire drive back up from San Diego to Beverly Hills, Zack’s words really bothered me. Last time I tried to break up with Dustin, I not only hadn’t gone through with it but we all knew what had happened, and quite possibly I might never have seen Zack again if my assignment to Chicago hadn’t wound up unexpectedly being a short one. So maybe he thought he was “joking” with me that with his Jaguar in my possession, I couldn’t just disappear if I somehow failed again to go through with this breakup. I didn’t think it was very funny, but maybe what he had said was just a coping mechanism for himself.
The rest of the time, I tried to come up with what I was specifically was going to say to Dustin. I had already uttered the phrase “Dustin, we need to talk” – finally – but wouldn’t go any further by phone. But for some reason, every time I started mentally composing I got as far as “Dustin, we need to break up,” but my mind refused to feed me anything else for the speech I soon needed to deliver. So for nearly three hours driving back up through the terrible San Diego, Orange County, and L.A. traffic that Friday night, the conversation in my head mostly went like this:
“Dustin, we need to break up.”
“Dustin, we need to break up.”
“Dustin, we need to break up.”
Two Years Later
Epilogue
Scottsdale, Arizona
Saturday, September 12th
Exactly two years ago today was the day Zack Buchanan and I met for the first time at Cerise; the first time he asked me out, an offer he kept open even after I confessed to him about having a boyfriend. By the fates of the calendar, September 12th was a Saturday this year, and we all know Saturday is the perfect day of the week for a wedding.
Our wedding.
Zack and I were getting married at a new opulent hotel that had opened six months earlier in the Kierland resort area that was nestled in the ritzy heart of Scottsdale. Zack had proposed to me exactly one year earlier, on the anniversary of the day we first met. Of course, this past year between when we became engaged and our ceremony and celebration today had turned out to be barely enough time for all of the wedding planning to be done; not only because of my own work and travel schedule but because of my mother’s micromanagement of the entire planning process. Big changes were still being made as recently as last week! You might have thought that since my sister Lauren had gotten married ten months earlier, my mother would have slid easily from planning Lauren’s to planning mine, and the planning for my wedding would have gone smoother than Lauren’s had. But instead, my mother picked apart every little thing that hadn’t been one hundred percent perfect in Lauren’s wedding and reception, and then she must have changed her mind five or six times for each one of those things after she shifted her attention to mine.
Anyway, all the details were now finally in place. Lauren was my matron of honor but for the longest while, I had struggled with the idea of asking Kensington instead. Considering how everything had begun for Zack and me, and how Kensie had been there as my chief confidante the entire time, it felt more “appropriate” to me for Kensie to have been standing beside me as I became Zack’s wife. But in the end I decided that peace reigning in my family was paramount, and since I had been Lauren’s maid of honor I reasoned that anybody other than her doing the same for me would cast a thick layer of tension over the entire wedding, especially with my mother.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Lauren and I weren’t close, even after I graduated from ASU and moved to L.A. for my job. Right after I broke up with Dustin, Kensie wasn’t around since she had to take a couple weeks of personal vacation time when her brother Jeff went back into rehab, and the program at that particular facility called for a lot of family involvement. So while she was down at the rehab facility in Tucson with her parents and her other brother, Lauren flew out to L.A. for a couple days to stay with me while I went through the mourning period over that breakup.
You wouldn’t think there would have been any sort of “mourning period” or whatever you want to call it. But just like when I broke up with Andrew right after I graduated from ASU, a day or two after things were officially over with Dustin I suddenly felt absolutely horrible. It wasn’t because of a bad breaku
p scene or anything like that. Dustin mostly just sat there in a state of confusion as I told him why we needed to break up. No doubt his mind was having a lot of trouble piecing together the timeline of what had happened, even though I was brutally honest with him, only holding back things like the details of specifically where Zack and I might have gone to dinner on any given night, or exactly when we slept together for the first time; that sort of thing. Even though Dustin thankfully didn’t demand clarification or further explanation from me, he was obviously having difficulty comprehending how he and I could have been “together” that week and weekend in Chicago even though there had apparently been some other guy in the picture the whole time.
To Dustin’s credit, though, in the end he just accepted the verdict I had pronounced on our now-concluded relationship, and “Dustin and Lindsey” just slipped away into our respective pasts. He flew back to Chicago the next day and never made any attempts to get back together with me, or even to meet for coffee or a drink once the Chicago project ended for good a couple of months later and he came back to L.A. for his next assignment. Fortunately, though, along the way he must have decided that the firm’s L.A. office wasn’t big enough for both of us, so after a month and a half back in L.A. he transferred to New York. Two or three months after he moved to New York I heard through the rumor mill that he met a new girlfriend and that relationship lasted about six months, and even after that one ended he hooked up with yet another woman whom he supposedly was still with today. The consultants in our firm’s New York office rarely travel farther than New Jersey or Connecticut, so we’ve never actually run into each other... at least so far.
But this occasion was about Zachary Buchanan and me, not long-ago memories of Dustin and me. I think the only reason those thoughts about my final weeks with Dustin and the subsequent breakup popped into my head was because of Kensie’s and Courtney’s presence, which of course made me think at least a little bit about what had happened during those couple of weeks of overlap between Dustin and Zack. Both of my girlfriends were in my wedding along with my cousin Julie and Zack’s sister Brittany, and during my night-before bachelorette party the subject of how Zack and I got together of course came up during some drinking game. I felt a little uncomfortable with the gory details being shared in front of Zack’s sister. Zack, of course, knew the whole story, but I had no idea how much he had shared with Brittany or his two brothers who were also in the wedding. I was worried that Brittany might leave the bachelorette party thinking that I was some bitchy, two-timing slut not worthy of her brother, but she seemed pretty much okay with the story, and even gave me a big hug as we left as she slurred something like “I’m so glad you made the right choice.” (At least that’s what I thought she said, but I was as drunk as she was; so who knows.)
