Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology
Page 18
Fuck, I really am a coward.
“Are you sure about this?” Marcy asks when we step out into the early-morning chill. She’s not wearing a jacket, so she wraps her arms around her chest to ward off the cold.
“Positive.” I glance over to see my Uber pulling up. “I should go—I don’t want to miss my flight. And you need to get back inside before you catch a cold.”
We exchange a long hug. “I love you, Em,” she says. “But I think you’re an idiot.”
“I love you, too, and I think you’re wonderful.”
I give her one last squeeze before sliding into the car.
* * *
The GPS on my phone says we’re ten minutes from the airport. We’ve already been driving for about thirty, and I chose to sit in the back so I wouldn’t have to make conversation. It’s way too early for small talk.
The driver’s choice of radio stations only makes matters worse—it’s a country/country pop music station, which means a lot of Luke Bryan and Carrie Underwood and Garth Brooks. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I lean back and close my eyes and try not to think too hard about why I’m on my way to the airport.
It’s not until a familiar crooner wafts out of the car speakers that my eyes snap open.
“Dammit, Willie,” I mutter under my breath.
The driver twists around. “What was that?”
“Nothing. I was just . . . talking to the song. It’s one of my favorites.” My tone is grudging.
“I prefer the Elvis version,” she reveals.
Of course she does.
“Do you want me to turn it up?” She does it, anyway, despite my lack of response, and Willie’s voice gets louder.
I sit back and listen as he sings about his regrets, wishing he’d acted differently, lamenting about all the wasted time, and a lump of emotion fills my throat. I don’t know if Marcy’s right and I’ll regret not giving Evan a chance. I don’t know if Evan is my happily ever after. I don’t know if happy endings even exist. I mean, my dad sure didn’t get one. But that’s my dad, not me.
So no, while I can’t be sure that Evan is my forever person, I’m pretty damn positive that Willie Nelson would kick my fucking ass if I didn’t at least try to find out.
CHAPTER TEN
What a difference one hour makes. The Blue Valley Lodge is humming with activity when I return to the hotel. At six a.m., it was dead. At seven a.m., there’s a throng of people milling in the lobby. I spot a tousled-haired Robin at the front desk, looking sleepy. I remember her saying she had an early flight to Florida today. An actual early flight, and not the one I paid extra to get on. By the way? Having to pay another hundred and fifty dollars to make another change to get back on my original flight? Marcy is right—I am an idiot.
“Morning,” I murmur as I pass one of Marcy’s uncles on my way to the front counter. I greet the available clerk with a half-hearted smile. “Hi. I checked out online already, but did anyone come downstairs to bring the keycard back? Room three-oh-nine.”
He types something on the computer and checks the screen. “Yes, actually. A gentleman dropped it off about ten minutes ago.”
Shit, I was hoping he might still be in my room. More so, I was hoping he hadn’t read my stupid note. “Okay, thank you. Did you happen to see where he went?”
“Sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“Okay. Thanks, anyway.”
I give the lobby another scan. No Evan. So I wander into the restaurant, and this time I see him. Standing in front of a table of croissants, loading a plate. His hair is messy, and I think I spot a hickey on his neck, which brings a flush to my cheeks. I was sucking pretty hard on every part of him last night.
Without hesitation, I race over to him and blurt out, “Yes!”
His eyes widen at the sight of me. “Wha—”
I cut him off. “Yes, I’ll go out with you. I’m saying yes, okay? I want to have dinner with you in D.C. Like, actual dinner, it’s not code for me wanting to fuck you again. Well, I want that, too, because you know how much I love your dick, but—”
His cheeks turn bright red, and that’s when I stop.
Because the Evan I know would never blush at the mention of sex.
“Devon,” I say with a sigh.
“Yup.” He gives me a jovial salute, and once again I can’t fathom how these two are twins. One exudes buckets of sexual charisma, and the other does things like salute.
“So. I’m guessing all that was meant for my brother . . .?” He lets the question hang.
“Um, yes.” I shove a strand of hair out of my eyes. “Have you seen him this morning? I heard he already came downstairs.”
“He’s right over there.” Devon nods to the left, and I follow his gaze all the way to the floor-to-ceiling windows across the room. The windowpanes are covered with white frost and snowflakes. It started snowing around the time I got back, but it looks like it’s picking up.
Evan is alone at a table, gripping a mug with both hands. His expression is stormy, signaling he’s pissed. It doesn’t take a Marcy to figure out why.
“Thanks,” I tell Devon.
He smiles wryly. “Good luck.”
I touch his arm gratefully, then straighten my shoulders and leave the buffet area. Suspicious gray eyes pierce into me as I approach Evan’s table.
“Hey,” I say sheepishly.
He just cocks one eyebrow and takes a sip of his coffee.
“Yes, I’m an asshole,” I inform him. “I’m well aware of this.”
Finally, he speaks. A low, bitter drawl. “That’s the second time you’ve snuck out and left me in bed alone.”
“I know.” I bite my lip. “I guess it doesn’t help that I left a note?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Well. Does it make you feel better to know that I just told your twin brother I would go on a date with him and that I love his dick?”
Evan makes a strangled sound, as if he’s trying to choke down a laugh. “I bet he loved that.”
“I think I scare him.”
“You scare me.”
I eye him in challenge. “No, I don’t. You’re a courtroom shark, remember? You wouldn’t let a little thing like me scare you.”
“Well, I’ve put myself out there a dozen times these past two days and you’ve rejected me every single time, so yeah, you’re a bit terrifying, Emilia.”
I pull out the chair next to him and sink down on it. I lean forward, rest one hand on his knee, and use the other to gently pry the mug out of his hand. When I lace my fingers through his, he resists at first, but then his grip slowly loosens.
“Look. Evan. I’m not good with relationships or the idea of falling in love,” I confess. “I’m not open to it, and apparently I use work as an excuse to not get serious with anyone and sex as an excuse to avoid intimacy, which is stupid because sex is intimacy, but Marcy says it’s not and she’s my new therapist.”
His laughter finally slips out.
“But I do like you and I’d like to go on a date with you,” I finish.
“Only one?”
“Seriously?” I say in frustration. “That’s all I can commit to right now, Evan! We literally met two days ago. I just told you I’m open to the idea of falling in love with you.” I scrub both hands over my eyes. “I came back this morning because I was in an Uber and Willie Nelson came on, our song came on.” I groan into my hands. “We already have a song! What more do you want?”
I blink when he tugs my hands away from my face. His dimpled grin greets me. “I’m just fucking with you. Let’s start with one date and see what happens.” He chuckles to himself. “What time is your flight today?”
“Four-thirty.”
“To Reagan or Dulles?”
“Dulles.”
“Sweet. We’re on the same flight. I’ll try to switch seats so we’re sitting together.” He flashes his pearly whites again. “We can discuss our date on
the plane, maybe pay for some of that obscenely priced wi-fi and look up restaurant reviews. I’ve got some ideas already.”
My lips twitch in humor. “Are you always this involved in the planning of a dinner date?”
“When it’s the first and potentially last date we’ll ever have? Fuck yeah, I’m going all out for this. I need to impress you if I want date number two, and then three, four, five—”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself again. AKA scaring me.”
He brings his lips to mine, giving me a fleeting kiss before saying, “Relax, Emilia. It’s just dinner.”
EPILOGUE
♬
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All I Want
Mara White
“All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You” – Heart
♫
The Sailor’s Ruin was usually a sure thing. Seedy, but not disgusting. Dark enough for some anonymity but with surprisingly not-too-revolting bathrooms that were well-lit enough for her to check her temperature. Certainly, Ove would never step foot in this place and that was the secret ingredient of her well-baked plan.
Marilyn didn’t need to drink to loosen up for this. She didn’t have to count days or even bring her thermometer, because the truth was, she had the routine down like breathing. Those first months, she’d chant under her breath, a means to an end, a means to an end. But there was no longer any need to soften the impact. She was fully aware, as well as committed to the necessary betrayal in order to obtain the desired outcome.
Marilyn loved Ove, and he in return, adored her. The nearly twenty-year age difference, seventeen to be precise, had never made her flinch. The fact that, once upon a time, long ago, she had been his graduate student, no longer mattered at all. He was divorced when she met him, and they immediately clicked. For him, she gave up the mainland and agreed to embrace his love of living on the island.
The most pressing-devastating-catastrophic incursion on their union, wasn’t the cheating—it was Ove’s apparent sterility. Never mind the man had fathered four children with his first wife, that for all other intents and purposes, he was fit as a fiddle, in the words of his physician and close friend, Dr. Bonner. But his sperm count was low and seemingly inadequate to get her pregnant after many years of trying.
Marilyn wanted a child. She longed after infants, envied her friends who pushed them around in the latest prams, salivated over their onerous complaints about the cost of preschool and cloth diaper services.
She and Ove gardened. They grew things. Made homemade pasta and agonized over sauces prepared from scratch with ingredients plucked from their own flower boxes. Ove did scrimshaw with ethically and legally sourced materials he acquired from antiquing and online estate auctions. Marilyn preferred needlepoint over knitting and always had a project in her hands, for she was a creator at heart. Ove read nonfiction and she loved thrillers with her feet in his lap or on the back of their slumbering Labrador, Pete.
What she ached for was the slapping of tiny toddler feet against the kitchen tile, the slamming of the side screen door after years of being told to close it softly, the shoes and socks discarded on the floor that she’d have to stoop to retrieve. Marilyn wanted it all. Cheerios and squashed bananas on the floor. Fingerprints to wipe from the stainless steel in the kitchen. Ove had done it four times already nearly a lifetime ago—and he was ambivalent about the idea. Marilyn suspected that his indifference came from wanting to see her happy, to please her in any way he could.
Her hand slipped down to her belly where the excitement began to brew. She loved Ove, but through her indiscretions, had also discovered a surprising truth about herself—that she loved sex—with strangers too.
“Mar, I’m getting ready to do last call. You want a last spritzer or should we settle up?”
Larry, the barkeep, knew her, what she drank, her not-so-subtle reason for sitting alone in a bar on a rainy Wednesday evening. Although he most likely believed her to be cruising for hook-ups and hadn’t yet devised the deeper, and purposeful secret.
She loved Ove. She also loved the rush that came from touching live flesh for the very first time, the crash of a new lover’s foreign lips against her own. Greedy hands, hard bodies, the sting of a slap, the rawness from rubbing, the musk of sweat, the feel of a heartbeat vibrating under her fingertips. The black silence of orgasm. When a scream of ecstasy could be violently ripped from her chest.
Needlepoint and reading under the lamp while sipping hot tea were for Fridays. Marilyn used her Wednesdays and Thursdays for something else entirely.
“I’m finished. Just the bill please,” she whispered to Larry. He quickly dumped her ice and glass into his slosh sink and tore the top paper carbon bill off of his pad.
“No luck tonight, huh?” Larry said triumphantly as he laid down the check.
Marilyn could read the glee in his somber mask of indifference. She also gloated because she would never stoop so low as to ask Larry for assistance in her project. She reached for her card and placed it on top of the check. She didn’t want to reward him with an answer.
She loved Ove, that was what she had to keep telling herself.
Larry eyed the white band of skin around her left ring finger—the scar of commitment, she had to use lard or olive oil to get the damn thing off. There was a porcelain swan by the dish soap upon whose neck it hung every Wednesday and Thursday night.
Her temper was firing. Her body, so used to adamant attention by this time of night, was staging a protest. Nipples aroused, silken panties rubbing innocently against freshly waxed tender folds.
Marilyn grabbed her card and exchanged it for a crisp twenty-dollar bill. No need to leave a paper trail. Why invite inquiry when she had no need to do so. It was uncomfortable enough explaining the cigar smoke that lingered in her cashmere sweaters or her short mohair skirts.
“See you tomorrow?” Larry had the nerve to wink at her.
Marilyn scoffed and nearly rolled her eyes at him, but she’d been overly educated and trained in manners since childhood not to engage in such things.
“Thank you. Good night.” She almost fell off the stool. It had been a mistake not to eat dinner.
There were a few lingering couples who she eyed jealously as she took concentrated, steady steps toward the door. She could already picture them in bed, caressing, sucking, crying out in ardor. The knot in her stomach tightened to an almost unbearable proportion.
She loved Ove.
“Mar!” Larry jogged up behind her as she pulled the heavy front door open laboriously into a gale-force wind. She turned on her sturdy, sensible high heels and the gust caught her skirt whisking it upwards to display her stockings, garters, and barely existent black lace underwear. A woman on the prowl had certain tools and lingerie was one of them. “Umbrella,” Larry told her winded. He was portly and smoked, snuck scotch behind the bar—more than was healthy for anyone. “We’ve got a whole slew of them in the lost and found. Customers leave them all the time. No sense in getting soaked.”
Her panties were soaked in arousal just from Larry’s chubby fingers resting on her shoulder. Lust was addictive, a habit-forming substance like any other. Marilyn licked her lips slowly and smiled at the barkeep.
“Thank you. See you tomorrow.”
Head down, she raced to her car. Perhaps some lone man in the bar had seen the display of her underthings thanks to the timely wind and was dodging giant raindrops through the parking lot and making his way over to proposition her. Accordingly, she turned on the car slowly. Set the radio to an old rock station, taking her time. She lit a cigarette and tested her own sobriety by counting backwards by sevens. It was way off, she gave up after two tries.
Marilyn loved Ove, but she also hungered for bottomless passion, rowdy sex, and the impossibly hard cocks tha
t youth bequeathed on men.
A failure. That was the conclusion to this Wednesday. Her life. Her inability to reproduce and the subsequent barren backyard space where a swing could hang perfectly from the old apple tree. A treehouse even in the elm by the driveway.
A useless back mudroom with no mud. A rooster shaped cookie jar with no cookies inside. An empty uterus so ravenous it was sinful. Fuck it. She lowered the window and tossed her butt into the blinding rain. She was sick and tired of feeling so empty.
Marilyn wasn’t nervous as she could do this drive in her sleep. Knowing, for example, that there were exactly seven landmarks she’d pass before she reached the turn-off for their cozy and quiet neighborhood. First, came an exit that took you down to the harbor, where sleepy boats rocked in the quaint marina and seagulls hovered awaiting dawn and the first fishermen to venture out on the glassy waters. Next, there was a small cross next to an oak tree, a memorial to a victim of some terrible traffic accident. Then, the on-ramp to the highway. A row of three hotels that she was intimately acquainted with. Knew the smell of the musty pillows and the tang of the iron heavy water that leaked from the bathroom faucets. A gas station. A hitchhiker—
A hitchhiker?
Marilyn slammed on the brakes as her car veered onto the shoulder. The man leaped out of the way and down into the ravine off the side of the road, disappearing from view.
A hitchhiker? But it was pouring, and hardly summertime anymore—the Halloween decorations were already on display at the drug store.
She put the car in park and stepped out into the rain, forgetting the umbrella Larry had so kindly loaned her. The heels of her shoes sank in the saturated peat and her headlights lit up the sideways angle of the squally onslaught of cold rain.
“Help!” Marilyn squawked into the noisy deluge. Help? She wasn’t the one who needed help. She’d pulled over to help, yet some part of her was frightened that she’d hit the man and knocked him clear into the muddy ravine, necessitating another sad little cross. “Hello?” she corrected herself, leaning pathetically into the dark. Her skirt and sweater were now soddened and heavy against her heaving chest. “Hello? Is someone there? Are you all right?”