by A. K. Rose
FIVE
Laura couldn’t sleep. She replayed the evening’s events over and over in her head, analyzing what had—and what hadn’t—happened. Telling Mel the truth was the right thing to do, it was. But it didn’t stop the voices, the little nudges, the drive to fully give herself to someone in a way she never had.
Nice Midwest girls did not do this, or if they did, they hid it well, because she certainly had never heard about it. Nice Midwest girls stayed in Ohio and worked in offices and called their mothers on Sunday. When was the last time she called her mother? She couldn’t remember.
The only thing she could remember right now was the taste of that red wine on Mel’s lips and the warmth of skin touching skin. The heat of intermingling breath. The feel of Mel’s hands exploring her body. The anticipation when Mel’s fingers lightly brushed her hip bone.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She slinked quietly out of the guest room and down the hall to the master bedroom and stood in the doorway, observing. Laura watched the duvet cover rise and fall with Mel’s every breath. Why could she sleep? It made no sense.
“Come get in bed with me,” Mel whispered. She was not asleep.
Laura shrugged off the bathrobe she had been loaned and slid in the bed as instructed, breathing a sigh of relief as Mel’s arms wrapped her waist from behind, as warm bent knees fit perfectly in the crook of her own.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Laura whispered back.
The two lay there for a short eternity, breathing in and out in unison, peaceful in their bond, when it was Mel that couldn’t stand it anymore. She promised to not take advantage of the situation, but, her desire was impossible to contain at three a.m.
Mel brushed back Laura’s hair and began kissing her neck. Softly, gently. Instinctively, her hands moved higher, higher, until they caressed Laura’s breasts, her body responding immediately with sure signs of pleasure.
With a smoothness and grace about her, Mel slowly rolled so that she was facing Laura, so she could look deep into the eyes of this confused, gorgeous woman in her bed. Laura returned a hungry gaze, a silent plea.
“I want to taste every inch of your body so badly right now, to take you places you’ve never been,” Mel said with conviction. “But, I don’t want to fuck you up. Are you absolutely sure you want this?”
“I am absolutely sure. I. Want. This.”
· · ·
That night started a fire in Laura that burned hot and burned fast.
The next six months were an absolute whirlwind, but then, as they do in time, things started to normalize. Life started to happen. Routines developed. She landed a steady job as an administrative assistant at a small publishing house. She was working in publishing—second best to actually being published—and had, for now, avoided fleeing back home.
She learned that New York gives you exactly what you put into it. There are no gifts. Laura’s mind was in a good place, for once, and she had Mel to thank for it, for showing her the way and helping her find the person she wanted to be.
The time they spent together was probably excessive, at first. Like any new romance, much of it was dedicated to being naked, to loving each other, to forming a bond like she had never experienced before. Mel was a caring lover, a protective companion. In some ways, she was a mother figure, guiding Laura through the process of becoming a woman—something her own mother had no desire to do.
Laura fell fast, and she fell hard.
She started imagining a future together, complete with the country house and babies, and . . . love, something she had never really had much of in her life. She wanted to have kids and give them a life where they knew they were wanted and could do anything and be anything.
Time marched on without fail, as it is wont to do.
Summer gave way to fall, fall became winter. Mel had to travel a lot for work in winter, as so many executives change jobs around the turn of a new year. Perhaps the New Years’ resolutions awaken something in them, or give them time to reflect on what they don’t like about their current jobs.
Whatever it was, work took Mel away most weeknights and some weekends in early 2000. They talked on the phone nightly when they were apart, catching each other up on the activities of their day: the mundane, the routine, the jerk at the coffee shop, the compliment from a co-worker. They covered it all, and they ended each call predictably. A simple gesture, an easy line: “I love you. Sweet dreams.”
One week in early February that year, Laura’s calls went unanswered three nights in a row. She began to worry. She brushed it off, at first, figuring Mel was busy with a client. Or that their availability just wasn’t aligning due to time zones.
By the fourth night, she was a wreck. What if something happened? What if Mel was in an accident? She was in London, how would Laura find out if a terrible thing happened in another country? She had no rights. They were not married—not that being married was an option—and she didn’t know any of Mel’s co-workers.
She scanned the international news on the internet—no reports of attacks against an American, no stories of homicide or fatal car crashes or anything, really, to lend credence to the concern that Mel was hurt or worse, dead.
Laura dialed Mel’s cell, hope filling her, and then, when she got voicemail once again, her heart deflated like a popped balloon. She left a simple message.
“We need to talk. Give me a call. I love you.”
SIX
Weeks went by, but Mel didn’t call back. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. Laura never heard back, never knew why, and struggled with the demons that come with being unexplainably cut out of someone’s life. She was removed like a cancer, swiftly, and without an explanation. Here one day, gone the next.
She went to Mel’s apartment daily at first, then weekly, letting herself in, checking for signs of life, but one day, the key didn’t turn the lock.
Fifteen years had passed. Now, Mel chose to call back? Laura just kept thinking one word, over and over.
Unacceptable.
The anger that she had worked so hard to squelch rose higher and higher into her being, filling her mind with the sorrow of lost love, of incomplete memories, of . . . the best days of her life?
At thirty eight, Laura was older now than Mel was when she disappeared. A lifetime had passed. She had her act together; she was content with the way her life was playing out.
And yet. There was something about this woman that was so inevitable she couldn’t stop herself.
She grabbed her cell phone out of the back pocket that she’d jammed it into after she heard the message, and, for some reason, played it again.
“We need to talk. Um, please, call me back.”
There was a nervousness in Mel’s voice. An insecurity.
Do not. Do not call her back.
Laura’s inner voice was never powerful enough to stop her from doing things. It didn’t stop her from leaving Ohio, and it didn’t stop her from getting involved with Mel. It didn’t stop her from publishing a novel loosely based on her life.
Before she knew it, her finger pressed the “call back” button on her iPhone. It rang once. She almost hung up, but by then, it was too late.
“Hi,” was all the other voice said. Then, silence.
Laura plotted her move. She probably should have figured out what she wanted before calling back, but now, faced with this voice from the past, faced with an opportunity to finally get all the answers, she knew exactly what to do. There was no time for pleasantries.
“So, what the hell, Mel? You have some nerve, after all these years.”
“I know.”
“That’s it? That’s what you wanted to say to me after fifteen fucking years? ‘I know?’” Laura was livid, but it felt strangely reassuring to be able to speak her mind, after bottling it up for so long. “How did you even get my number?”
“I’m a recruiter, kid, if I couldn’t find you, I wouldn’t be a very good recruiter. Besides, it’s not that hard. I
called your agent—tell my why you aren’t your own agent? Anyway, no, that’s not what I wanted to say to you, and you know that. You wrote a book about our time together, and did it so well it’s a bestseller. You titled it, ‘We Need to Talk.’ Come on Laura, you know why I called. You practically guilted me into it.”
Mel made a good point, but, writing the book really was for no one other than Laura. She wrote it in the two years after they split—well, after Mel split—as a coping mechanism. Then, she put it in a drawer and forgot about it. She got on with her life. She worked her way up at the publishing house. She became a manuscript screener, then an editor, then an agent.
One day, when she was moving apartments, finally ridding slobby Marcie from her life, she found the draft of her book and read it.
Time does amazing things to heal old wounds, but, re-reading those raw emotions and feelings took her back to the days when she was happiest, before the love of her life turned into a ghost and disappeared without a trace. She almost threw it away, but the agent in her couldn’t. Time had given her the perspective she needed to see it was actually a very good story. It was a coming of age story. It had everything: uncertainty, romance, conflict, utter rejection. Healing.
“Mel, come on, the book is a byproduct of a life experience that I had an eon ago. You were the one who told me, when we were sitting in that Starbucks the very first day, that I needed to have experiences before I would have something to write about. And, I did. You took me on a ride. Or, for a ride. I still don’t know which. Why did you disappear on me? What the hell happened?”
Laura could hear the strong exhale on the other end of the line. Then, more silence.
“Mel? You remember that night? Our first night together? I practically threw myself on you. I begged you to make love to me. And you said you couldn’t, not then. That you didn’t want to fuck me up. Well, I hate to tell you, cutting me out of your life fucked me up for a long time. I am over it now. I am over you now, but what you did to me is the worst thing that ever happened to me. At least when my dad left, he actually died. He couldn’t help it.”
“You are right.” Mel was short on words, showing a side with which Laura was unfamiliar. “I’m so sorry. I actually don’t know if there are words in the English language to convey how sorry I am. You have every right to hate me, you won’t get an argument here.”
“I don’t hate you,” Laura interjected. “I loved you so much. I needed you. As much as I’ve tried to hate you over the years, I can’t.”
“Well, you should. Anyway, I called because I wanted to apologize, really apologize, and tell you what happened. If you want to know, that is?”
“Do I want to know?”
“I don’t think you probably do, but you deserve to. I know you’re still in New York. But, what I don’t know is, are you with someone?”
“Mel, that’s not going to work. You can’t just land in my voicemail one afternoon and pick up where we left off. I’m not the same person anymore. You don’t captivate me anymore.”
“I am not insinuating that you are or that I do. I just want to know, are you with someone?”
“No.”
“Okay, that’s good. Meet me at Starbucks and I’ll tell you the story. I need to do this in person. You know the one. Can you come today?”
“I don’t know,” Laura coolly shot back. She knew she could, but did she want to? “You understand that if I meet you, that it is because I deserve to know what happened to you, right? That’s all it means.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you there in an hour.”
SEVEN
Laura Brighton sat at the same bar, overlooking the same busy street, the same whir of people in her view as she had that fateful day in 1999. The scene was eerily the same. New York City is always changing, and yet, it never changes. People bustle around, going to and from wherever they’re going to or coming from, never making eye contact. Never slowing their pace.
Though Laura herself had changed, her taste in coffee had not: dark, black, very hot. She was starting to show the signs of her age, little by little. A few fine lines traced the corners of her mouth, the edges of her eyes. Visible proof that she had lived. Yes, she had lived.
Why then, was she at a Starbucks in midtown—nowhere near her apartment on the Upper West Side—in the middle of the afternoon on a random Tuesday? Why had she let her past beckon her here, to where it all started, to when she was just a shell of her current self?
Of all the questions in her life, this one was easy to answer: because she wanted to know.
Just then, just as it had before, a stranger’s voice appeared in her ear from behind.
“Is this seat taken?”
That voice. The voice. The sexy, raspy voice of her former lover was in her ear, in person. It was too much. All of a sudden, she was twenty-three years old again, lost at sea, looking for meaning and direction in her life.
Damn you, Mel.
She turned around slowly, not sure what to expect. Mel was there—an older version of Mel, a greying, still gorgeous Mel—but, she was not alone. There was a young girl—thirteen, fourteen maybe—standing in between them, Mel’s hands on her shoulders. The girl was a miniature version of Mel: long brown hair, green eyes, flawless skin.
“Laura, meet Laura,” Mel said to the girl, who shyly held out a hand for the shaking.
“Nice to meet you . . . Laura,” was the best Laura could do as she shook the young woman’s hand, an unconvincing smile on her face.
This confusing day just got way more confusing. Mel whispered something in the young girl’s ear and she scurried off, iPhone out, thumbs moving a mile-a-minute on the screen.
“So . . .” Mel started, clearly fighting to gain some composure, working to find her courage. “I think you wanted to know what happened to me.”
“I think I am figuring it out, but, I don’t understand.” Laura was shocked. For the first time, maybe ever, she had no words. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Well, as you probably figured, that was my daughter. She’s fourteen.” Mel studied the grey countertop of the bar for a moment, and then looked up again.
“One of the times I was in London, I got a little drunk. Not so much so that I don’t remember what happened, but enough so that my inhibitions were definitely down and my judgment was cloudy. I had been with a client for a few days, helping coach him through a particularly grueling interview loop, and, we became close—foolishly close. I knew better. I knew he had feelings for me, but, I was so much in love with you. I only had eyes for you. Then, one night, when he was done with his interviews, we went for drinks. Too many drinks. He kissed me and I didn’t stop him. Things got out of hand, and, I went back to his hotel.”
“Wait a minute. You are telling me you didn’t call me back because you were having sex with a man in a hotel on another continent? That you didn’t feel, after that, you should ever call me back? Mel, that is ridiculous.”
“No, that’s not what I’m telling you. I actually came home after that trip. I acted like nothing happened. Everything was fine, our life was perfectly normal. I had a tremendous amount of guilt, you have no idea. But, I couldn’t tell you. It was a one-time thing and it meant nothing me, so I filed it away and didn’t tell you. It was when I missed my period the next month that things were not normal anymore.”
Laura couldn’t believe the information she was being given. This was not at all, by any stretch of the imagination, anything she expected to hear. Of all the scenarios she’d played out in her head about what had happened, Mel sleeping with a man and getting pregnant was not one.
“So, you fucked a client while we were together, got pregnant, and fell off the face of the Earth? Why didn’t you just tell me? Spare me the pain and heartbreak of wondering what happened to you all these years? Let me live with the pain and heartbreak of knowing that you cheated on me? Give me the chance to have some say in my future?”
“I don’t know. I pa
nicked. I went back to London, told him I was pregnant, and he convinced me to stay. He convinced me to have the baby and move in with him and we’d raise it together as a family. I had a moment of weakness, and, I stayed. I knew if I had any contact with you at all, I’d fall apart, so, I didn’t.”
“And you are here now because?”
“Because we broke up. No, that is not the right word. We were never ‘together.’ We were raising a daughter together, yes, but we were not a couple. It wasn’t working. He needed to be with a woman that wanted to have sex, and, well, I needed the exact same thing. It was not an ideal situation. I wanted to come back to New York; he wanted to stay in London. So, here we are. I enrolled Laura in school, and she’ll start in September. I love my daughter more than anything, but, I missed my life.”
“Wow. I don’t even. I can’t even . . . I didn’t even know if you were dead or alive, you know? I went through absolute hell for years trying to sort this all out, and now, you show back up in my life with a practically-grown daughter that shares my name, a story of infidelity, and, what? What do you want from me? My heart was broken into a thousand pieces. I mourned for you for so long, but that chapter has closed.”
Mel looked away, and then back again, staring straight into Laura’s eyes, and with all sincerity, simply said, “Has it? Have dinner with me. We’ll talk.”
THANK YOU
Thank you for reading my story. I’d love your feedback! If you enjoyed it (or even if you didn’t), I’d appreciate a quick review on Amazon so I’ll know if you’d like to see more stories like this one.
-A.K.
