Fallen from Grace

by Laura Leone

  It was immature and absurd, and she had to stop acting this way. It was also unfair to Ryan. As well as unkind. He'd been honest with her, he'd trusted her—and, in response, she was treating him like a leper.

  He wasn't a serial killer or a child molester. He just had sex with women for money.

  A lot of women, apparently.

  For money.

  Why? Why does he do it?

  Well, she wasn't going to find out by hiding in here. She had to pull herself together, face Ryan, and move forward.

  Just as she was embracing this resolution, her recently-fixed doorbell rang. Lost in her thoughts, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  She wasn't expecting anyone. Ryan presumably wasn't, either, since he wasn't home. So, wondering who could be at the door, she found her slippers and, wearing yesterday's sweats, made her way downstairs to open the outside door.

  #

  Ryan had been so anxious to see her and so depressed over the way she was avoiding him, he actually did a doubletake when he opened the downstairs door to enter the building, late that afternoon, and found her sitting right there in the stairwell, on the third step.

  "Sara?"

  She looked up at him, her expression so morose he felt a terrible stab of guilt. Had he done this to her?

  "Ryan." Her voice was distracted.

  "Hi," he said cautiously.

  "Mm." After a moment, her gaze drifted back down to the floor.

  "Are you okay?" he asked, coming a little closer.

  She shrugged. "I guess."

  Her hair was a mess, there were dark circles under her eyes, there was a coffee stain on the leg of her sweats, and she was in her slippers. She was wearing her glasses instead of her contacts, which was rare. He thought she looked cute in her glasses, sort of a prim librarian sex fantasy; but he knew she disliked them.

  "I don't mean to sound argumentative," he said, "but you don't look okay."

  She looked up at him, her expression tired and defeated. She made a noncommittal sound and shrugged again.

  He risked taking a seat next to her. If she noticed, she evidently didn't mind. "Are you sitting here dressed like a bag lady and staring at the floor because of me?"

  "What?" she said without looking at him.

  "Because of what we talked about the other night?"

  "Huh? Oh! That."

  "Yes, that." When she didn't reply, he added, "You've been avoiding me ever since we talked about that."

  "Yes." She nodded slowly. "Yes, I have. I'm sorry."

  "Sara..."

  She turned her head and held his gaze. "It was wrong to disappear the way I did that night. I was just..."

  "I know. It's okay."

  "It's not okay." She shook her head, closed her eyes, and rolled her shoulders around a little as if they were aching. He wanted to rub them for her. Instead, he clasped his hands together. After a moment, she said, "And avoiding you after you told me, um, your secret... That was no way to treat a friend."

  Relief started to flow through him. "Are we still friends?"

  "Of course!" She met his eyes again and put one of her hands over his clasped ones. "Of course, we are, Ryan. I mean..."

  "What?"

  "If the part of you I've known, the part you've always shown me... If that's real—"

  "It is," he said. "Except for lying to you about what I do when I leave here, everything has been real between us." He unclasped his hands and turned one over to lace his fingers with those of the hand she had extended to him.

  "Then I guess you really are who I thought you were," she said. "After all, I knew there were things you weren't telling me. Things I might not like, that might even hurt me." She looked at their joined hands. "Now you've told me, I don't like it, and it hurts. So, in a way, everything's going according to plan."

  That startled him into a puff of laughter. She did that to him all the time. He loved the way she put things.

  "Then what's the next stage of the plan?" he asked.

  She smiled wryly. "I guess we just go forward."

  Hoping it would be okay, he raised their joined hands to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

  She added quietly, "But being friends is as far forward as I can go."

  He'd expected that. "Then I won't ask you to go any farther."

  "I can't be lovers with a man who's busy beings lovers with everyone else."

  He shook his head. "I'm not lovers with any of them, Sara, not like that. I just—"

  "Have you slept with someone today?"

  "No." After an awkward moment, he gestured to his black eye. "I'm off for a few days. I can't go back to work until this stops looking so scary."

  "Right. Because a woman paying a whole lot of money for you to be the perfect lover doesn't want to see—"

  "I'm not supposed to look like a street boy or a bruiser," he said a little irritably. "I'm supposed to look smart and respectable, like someone they might meet at the country club or a fundraiser."

  "In a couple of days, you'll look that way again, Ryan. And as soon as you do, you'll be in bed with another woman."

  He couldn't deny it.

  She added, "Or at least having dinner and flirting with her."

  "Yes, I will," he admitted.

  "I can't live like that," she said.

  He closed his eyes and took a breath. "I know."

  "I don't want to wake up next to you and wonder who you'll be having sex with that day, or just a romantic dinner, or how many of them there'll be that week, or—"

  "I know."

  "—what they're like, or what you're like when you're with them—"

  "Sara, I understand."

  She seemed as if she wanted to say more—lots more—but, for the moment, she dropped the subject of his working life and merely said, "But I'm still your friend."

  "Thank you." He gently rubbed his free hand over hers while he continued holding it. "Your friendship is the most important thing to me. I don't think I could stand to lose that, Sara."

  "Well, you haven't." She squeezed his hand. "And I don't think I could stand to lose yours, either."

  "You never will. You couldn't."

  She smiled softly, then frowned a little and raised her free hand to brush her fingertips across his black eye. "You said you were arrested that day, and... Ryan, my God, surely the cops didn't do this to you?"

  "No. I got this after they released me."

  "Who did it?"

  He explained briefly, keeping the details down to a minimum.

  She spent a moment digesting his tale before she asked, "Are you in any more danger from this guy?"

  "Derrick? No," he said dismissively. "He'll have problems of his own to worry about for a while."

  "I don't know, Ryan. If he set you up for an arrest just because he was annoyed about, er, losing that client, how much more angry is he going to be now that you've humiliated him and physically hurt him?"

  "Oh." Ryan sighed. "When you put it that way, I guess he will be pretty pissed off at me for a while."

  "Even more so than he was when he informed on you to the vice squad and got you arrested."

  He shook his head. "Don't worry about Derrick. I doubt he'll try anything—"

  "I hope not."

  "—and I can handle it if he does." When she continued to look concerned, he squeezed her hand. "Really. He's dumb and he's clumsy. I can handle him, and I don't want you to worry about him. All right?"

  "All right."

  "So... we're okay, then? Things between you and me, I mean?"

  "Yes. We're okay."

  When she went back to staring morosely at the floor, he asked doubtfully, "Feeling better now?"

  "Huh? Oh. Actually, I wasn't sitting here brooding about, um, that stuff."

  "Oh?"

  "No. We're already back to my regularly-scheduled self-absorption."

  He almost laughed again. "Why? What's wrong?"

  "This." She leaned forward a little
to reach for a large manila envelope which was under her feet. Ryan hadn't even noticed it before. "I thought stomping on it a few times might make me feel better," Sara said as she handed it to him, "but it hasn't helped."

  Puzzled, he looked inside the envelope. It contained a single sheet of paper.

  "It came as certified mail. I had to sign for it," Sara said. "That's why I had to come downstairs. And after I read it, I didn't feel like climbing all the way upstairs again."

  Ryan pulled the letter out of the envelope and read the return address. "It's from your literary agent?" When she nodded, he prodded, "That's the person who markets and sells your work, negotiates your contracts, and advises you about the business?"

  "Yes. Only she is now my former agent."

  He frowned and began reading the letter. Within moments, he made a disgusted noise. He read aloud: "'I feel that relaunching your career will require more time than I am able to commit, especially as I have serious doubts about the viability of the new novel which you have described to me. So I am regretfully ending our association.'" He looked at Sara. "What?"

  "Funny, that's exactly what I said when I read it: What?"

  "I thought you wouldn't tell anyone anything about the book you're working on," he said, though that probably wasn't the most important point right now. "You won't tell me anything."

  "Mm."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "What I've told you: It's sort of a historical thriller."

  "And?"

  "That's it."

  "And on the basis of that, she decided it's not 'viable'?"

  Sara shrugged, looking downcast.

  "She's dumping you?"

  Sara nodded. "Just like my publisher."

  Outraged, Ryan finished reading the rest of the letter, which simply mentioned a couple of bureaucratic details which would need to be tied up and then wished Sara "the best of luck" with her future.

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," Ryan said, furious on Sara's behalf. "What a lazy, short-sighted bitch!" As if Sara weren't under enough pressure, now her agent was abandoning her? Jesus! "What's wrong with the people in your business?"

  Sara sighed and took off her glasses. "Publishers have become pretty unforgiving in this tight market. So, given my circumstances, she thinks I'm done, finished, old news." Looking suddenly exhausted, she bent over and put her head in her hands. "She thinks I'm a washout, and she'd just be wasting her time trying to sell anything else I write."

  Angry at the agent and distressed to see that Sara was taking this very hard, Ryan put his arms around her and rested his cheek on her bowed head. "She didn't say 'washout,' Sara."

  "It's in the subtext." Her tone was irritable.

  "Look, the way I remember it," he said, "you told me that you couldn't get an agent to represent you when you were an aspiring writer, so you spent two years submitting to publishers on your own, until one of them made you an offer. And then, after you'd done all the legwork, this chick finally got interested in your career, and that's when you hired her to negotiate that contract."

  He heard Sara sniff. He suspected she was starting to cry.

  "So she's not saying you're a 'washout'," he continued firmly. "She's saying that she's had a nice, easy ride with you, just sitting around collecting her commission on the seven books you've sold to the publisher you found without her help. But now that you're actually going to need her to work for a living, to market and sell your new manuscript, to find a publisher for it... Forget it! That's just more than she's willing to do for you, after five years of you being such an easy trick for her."

  For a split second, he wondered if Sara would be offended at his making the comparison to turning tricks; but then he heard her make a mildly amused sound, and he was relieved.

  "I don't know," she mumbled. "Maybe she's just sizing up the situation and making a smart decision."

  "What's 'smart' about this decision? You've sold seven books already—"

  "Writers disappear from the business all the time, Ryan, even writers who've sold a bunch of—"

  "—you're incredibly talented—"

  "Talent is cheap."

  "—you're dedicated, you don't give up—"

  "Maybe it's time."

  "Don't even say that. I'm not going to listen to that."

  "Ryan, I—"

  "And you're working on a new book that's going to turn your career around."

  "That's just a lot of bullshit," she muttered. "You're just saying that because—"

  "Damn it, Sara." He dragged her upright, made her face him, and shook her gently. "If you want to be depressed about this, you're entitled. I can tell it's a big blow to your confidence. But don't you ever accuse me of bullshitting you! At work, I say whatever I think people want to hear. But when I'm with you, I'm sincere—and I've told you that."

  "Oh, for God's sake!" She scrubbed a hand across her tear-streaked face, which was a little pink and puffy now. "If I say you're bullshitting me because you're trying to make me feel better, Ryan, I'm not accusing you of working me! I'm just saying that—" She made an exasperated sound. "—that you're sugarcoating this because you don't want me to feel so—"

  "I don't have to sugarcoat this. It's what I believe."

  She scowled at him for a moment, and then her expression changed to reveal such unhappiness that it broke his heart. "It's what I want to believe, too," she said brokenly.

  "Oh, sweetheart." He hugged her as she wept. His arms around her, her head on his shoulder, her curly hair tickling his neck and jaw... It felt so good to hold her like this. And it felt so awful to be unable to protect her from the blows of her profession.

  "God, I've turned into such a watering pot lately," she said in a weepy, disgusted voice.

  "Well, between me and your career, you've taken some hits below the belt lately," he murmured, stroking her back.

  Sara let out her breath on a long sigh. "Well. My agent had sort of a patronizing manner. On the bright side, I guess I won't miss that."

  "Plus, she was a lazy, short-sighted bitch." When Sara made a watery, amused noise, he added, "Besides, you probably should have fired her, anyhow. So maybe she's relieved you of that decision by just leaving."

  "Why should I have fired her?"

  "Whenever you talk about being dumped by your publisher, you always blame yourself for not having seen it coming. But you're the artist. It would be a big advantage if you were savvy about business, but it's not your job. Writing is your job. Being savvy about business is your agent's job." He rubbed his cheek against her hair. "So why didn't she see the trouble coming? Why didn't she talk about it with you, maybe come up with a game plan? And now that it's happened, why is her best plan for her career to dump a longtime client who's hard at work on a new book?"

  "Well..."

  "She's reacting to the past, not planning for the future. That's bad business."

  "Maybe..."

  "She hasn't read your new book. Not one page! She doesn't even know what it's about. What was it going to cost her to read it when it was done and then make her decision about whether or not to keep being your agent?" He made a dismissive sound. "But she didn't do that because she doesn't want to work. She was only interested in you as long as you kept her on Easy Street." When he stopped talking, he realized Sara was breathing evenly now. Not crying anymore. Just listening to him and thinking about what he was saying. "Am I right?"

  "I don't know. Maybe," she murmured. "I hope so."

  "Will you try to pretend I'm right?"

  "I guess I can try."

  "Good. Because I think it'll work out better than your plan, which was to pace around the apartment thinking about what a washout you are."

  "Yes, that was my plan," she admitted.

  He smiled and kissed her hair. He felt her arms tighten around him. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder as her palms moved slowly over his back—a guilty pleasure which made him close his eyes and call on his self-control.

  After a
long, warm moment, she whispered, "I have to tell you..."

  "What?" he whispered back, feeling sort of dazed as they continued clinging to each other.

  "I'm having... those feelings again." When he didn't reply, she added, "You know the feelings I mean?"

  "Oh, yeah. I know." His hands tightened on her. "I'm having them, too."

  "I can't do this," she whispered.

  His chest started to hurt. "Okay."

  She shuddered a little. "We have to let go."

  "Right." Just one more second. "Okay." No, just give me a second. "Let's let go." No.

  Her hands tightened on his shoulders, and when she turned her head, he felt her warm breath against his neck.

  Oh, I want this. Please, please...

  She shifted her weight, and he was instantly, hotly aware of her breast pressing against his biceps, and her knee nudging his thigh, and her...

  Remembering he had assured her he wouldn't do what he was on the verge of doing, he found the strength to shove her away, and he scooted backwards until he hit the banister. His breath was coming a little too fast and shallow, and he knew the flush in her cheeks now wasn't from crying.

  She shuddered again, clasped her hands, and looked away from him.

  "Sorry," he said gruffly.

  "No, I'm sorry. I was a mess, and you were just comforting me, and I—"

  "No, you were upset. But then I got sort of, uh..."

  "So did I."

  "Well. Yeah. I guess we both did."

  She cleared her throat. "We probably shouldn't... um..."

  "Shouldn't touch," he said.

  "Not like that."

  He should be honest with her about this. "Maybe not at all." When she looked at him, he said, "It'll just keep leading to this, Sara. It's the way I feel about you. And if it's the way you feel about me, too—"

  "You know it is."

  "—then every time we start out touching as if we were friends—"

  "We are friends."

  "—we'll just wind up right here again."

  "We are friends," she repeated.

  "We're friends whose bodies want to be a lot more than just friends."

  Their gazes locked. After a moment, she said, "It's not just my body that wants it."

  "No. Me, neither," he admitted. "If my body was all that wanted it, I wouldn't... I mean, I could control..." He lowered his gaze and hoped she'd understand when he said, "Look, sex doesn't really mean anything to me."