No Greater Love than Mine

by Harper Bliss

  But I said yes. For some reason I may never understand, I said yes. I said yes to her once before and look where that got me. I can always cancel. But I’ll sleep on it first.

  6

  Jackie

  “The squid’s really good,” I say, because it’s true and I have no idea what else to say. It’s not that Angela has dressed up for this dinner. She’s wearing a similar style pantsuit to the one she turned up in for our therapy session, her blouse tucked in tightly. Yet, there’s something different about her. Something about her has mellowed.

  “The squid it will be then.” Angela puts her menu on the table.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “A small price to pay for being able to get back to active duty in two weeks’ time.”

  “If you look at it like that.” On my way to the restaurant, I’ve decided to give Angela the first fifteen minutes of our time together to get all the snide remarks out of her system without calling her out on them. I figure fifteen minutes is the very least I can give her. But I will not indulge her too long at my expense. I may have made the wrong choice in her eyes, but for me it was the right one. A difficult one, but the correct one nonetheless.

  “Tell me about your son,” she says, surprising me. “How did Carl turn out?”

  “He’s the most wonderful man.” An involuntary smile spreads over my face. “He’s getting married in six weeks. He’s been going crazy over it for what seems like the past six years, even though they’ve only been engaged for six months.”

  “Cold feet?” Angela asks.

  “Quite the opposite.” I chuckle. “Very hot feet.” Is that a hint of smile I detect on Angela’s face? “I’m surprised he hasn’t scared Beau off yet with his nuptial hysterics.”

  “Beau?” Angela quirks up an eyebrow.

  “His fiancé.”

  “Your son’s gay?”

  “He is.”

  “Carl is marrying a man.” Angela says it as though she needs to hear the words out loud to process them.

  “He sure is.”

  Angela shakes her head and makes a weird giggling sound.

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “It’s not funny, just strangely ironic.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Angela gives a full belly laugh. “You didn’t want to be with another woman because of your son, who turned out to be gay himself.”

  “One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”

  “I’m not saying it does, but you do have to see the irony of it.”

  I scratch my nose. I still don’t get what’s so funny about the whole thing.

  “Have you told him about us?” Angela asks.

  “No. His father and I were still together when, um, we happened.” I swallow hard. “But he does know I also date women now.”

  Even though I’ve already admitted this to Angela before, this seems to amuse her again. She paints on a grin I can’t decipher, then says, “Tell me about the last woman you dated.”

  I’m saved by a waitress stopping by to take our order. We both order the squid and I ask for a bottle of the house white wine.

  After the waitress has walked off, I hope Angela is keen on a change of subject, but she plants her chin on an upturned palm and looks at me. “I’m listening,” she says.

  I hope the sigh I expel tells her I’m not comfortable discussing this. Not because I’m about to tell her about a woman I dated, but because it’s Angela I’m telling about this woman. “Her name’s Sondra. It didn’t work out.”

  A different waitress comes by to open the bottle of wine and pour us each a glass.

  “That’s brief, even for you,” Angela says before taking a sip of wine. “Good choice. The wine. Not the woman. At least I gather from the oceans of information you’re drowning me in.” She chuckles heartily.

  “She was younger and still had children living at home. You know how complicated that can be.”

  “Actually, I don’t know that much about it.” Angela’s on the warpath tonight. Perhaps she’s been on sick leave for too long.

  “A child will always be a woman’s first priority.”

  “So I’m told.” Angela leans back and does the silent thing, probably hoping I will fill the void in conversation.

  “Look, we may as well address the elephant in the room.” I don’t know if it’s the few sips of wine I’ve had or just the effect of sitting across from Angela Hill again—across from this woman who once made my heart skip many beats—but I need to say this. “I should never have let things go as far as they did between us. That’s on me. It created expectations that were impossible for me to meet.”

  “Do you regret our night together?” She trains her steely detective gaze on me.

  How can I possibly say I regret it? I wouldn’t admit to that even if I knew it was what she wanted to hear. “No.” Even though it’s been twenty years, I still get rushes of remembrance. Flashes of how her touch set me alight, of how it undid something in me that had thus far remained tightly locked up. “My only regret is that I had to hurt you.”

  “I don’t regret it either. After all, I was single and available.”

  “You knew my situation.”

  Angela purses her lips and nods. “I think we can ignore the elephant from now on.”

  “Tell me about the last woman you dated,” I quickly say, before she starts interrogating me again.

  She chuckles. “I solemnly swear it’s not a cop-out when I say there’s really nothing to tell.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m not relationship material,” she says matter-of-factly. “Simple as that.”

  “I don’t buy that.”

  “Well, it’s not your call to make, so…”

  “Fair enough.” I try a smile. “Let’s change the subject to something a bit more comfortable.”

  “Yes, let’s have some small talk.” The intensity of her gaze on me says she’d rather leave the restaurant than engage in chitchat—she was never the kind.

  We are rescued once again by the arrival of our dishes.

  As I stare at my plate, I ponder the possibility that twenty years has been too long. Maybe too much has happened and we have nothing left to say to each other—and the things we do find to say are too contentious. Maybe for us, there’s no such thing as water under the bridge, and the night we shared—those few hours of surrendering to what we both wanted more than anything at the time—should be forever relegated to the confines of our memory.

  I glance up at her. She sends me a goofier grin than I was expecting.

  “You were never good with silences,” she says. “Which always struck me as odd for someone in your profession.”

  “I usually am,” I say. “Good with them.” I don’t say that it is, and always has been, her very presence that unnerves me. “Maybe not as good as you though.”

  “Well, in my job, I dare say, the stakes are even higher. Some well-timed silence can work wonders in an interrogation room.”

  This sparks another kind of memory. “Remember at the seminar, when I asked you to role-play an interrogation? I kept asking you to show more empathy for the perpetrator, but you couldn’t do it.”

  “I was a rookie,” Angela is quick to say. There’s a flash of something in her eyes. I only meant it as a joke, but it looks like I may have offended her professional pride.

  I don’t say that at the age of thirty-five, she was hardly a rookie. But a lot has changed in policing the past two decades and when Angela was at the academy, empathy was probably a word not often mentioned.

  “How’s your squid?” I ask instead.

  “Tender as can be. Good recommendation.” She holds my gaze for an instant. Her eyes are icy blue, but I remember the warmth in them. I was never able to forget that. The change in her when I had my hands all over her. Out of nowhere, a stab of desire slices through me, and I know, in that moment, as I remember how the look in her eyes can be transformed, that I
want her all over me again.

  7

  Angela

  What do you want from me, Jackie? I want to ask. Absolution? But she doesn’t strike me as a woman who is after absolution. She strikes me as someone who has made peace with the mistakes of the past a good number of years ago. There’s an air of calmness about her that I admire. A dignity she didn’t possess all those years ago.

  “Did you leave Michael or did he leave you?” I ask. Instead of dessert, we’ve both chosen something stronger with our coffee. Jackie holds a glass of brandy in her hand, while I’m nursing a tumbler of whiskey.

  “I left him, although, by the time I made the decision, there wasn’t much actual leaving to do.”

  “What does that mean?” Sometimes, when I scan the delicate features of her face, the almond shape of her eyes and the way the left side of her mouth is always slightly curled upward, I wish we weren’t in this Greek restaurant. I wish we were back at that bar off Sunset where the light is more forgiving and I don’t look like a police officer who took a bullet three months ago. It bothers me that I didn’t look my best when I saw her again.

  “It means that we had grown so much apart, the divorce was a mere formality.”

  “Did you have more affairs?”

  Jackie scoffs. “I would hardly call what we had an affair, Angela.”

  “My opinion differs.” My pulse ticks up. Did she not fall in love with me the same way I did with her?

  “We slept together once.”

  “But we dreamed of doing it many more times.” I clear my throat. “Well, I did, at least.”

  “If you’re asking if I fell in love again while I was still married, I didn’t.” Jackie runs her finger over a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

  “Were you in love with me?” I seem to have gone into full-on detective mode—the non-silent kind. After all, this is a serious matter of the heart I’m investigating. And I never before got a chance to ask.

  “You know I was.” There’s a vulnerable edge to her voice. “I was crazy about you.”

  Me too, something inside me screams. But I choose silence now.

  “But after your divorce, you left it up to chance whether we should ever meet again.”

  “Of course I did.” Jackie takes a slow sip from her brandy. “I thought about you a lot, but I could hardly give you a call and say, ‘Hey Angela, guess what, I’m divorced now.’”

  I merely shrug to indicate my disagreement. I don’t think I should say it out loud.

  She inclines her head. “Seven years is a long time and I knew I’d hurt you.”

  “It’s fine.” What else can it be? I can’t really see it as a missed opportunity—that one had come and gone seven years earlier already.

  “How about we drink to Roger Bradley,” Angela says. “Or is that in bad taste?”

  “He used his position to assault vulnerable clients.” I shake my head.

  “Point taken.” Jackie casts her eyes downward. “How about we drink to destiny putting us back on each other’s path instead?”

  “I’ll happily drink to that.” I prove my point by bringing my glass to my lips. “But please don’t tell me you believe in any of that stuff. Destiny and what-have-you.”

  “Would that lower your opinion of me even further?” For the first time, Jackie unleashes her Jackie-cackle. A low-bellied bluster of a laugh that’s so infectious, the corners of my mouth quirk up instantaneously at the sound of it.

  “I won’t deny you hurt me.” I drink again, to gather bravado this time. “Because you did. But, as I just said, I’m not relationship material so I honestly don’t think you and I would have amounted to very much, given the chance.”

  Jackie arches up both her eyebrows—I remember her fingertip skating over one of them earlier. I long for her finger to repeat its motion. Jackie regroups and gives me what I think of as her practiced shrink look. “Would you say you believe in relationships at all?”

  “I do, for some people. Just not for me.”

  “That’s an unusual opinion. May I ask why?”

  “Because what are the odds that every single person on the planet is the same and wants the same thing? I’ve never needed all the fluff that comes with being in a relationship. I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

  “A little defensive, but I’ll take your word for it.” She bares her teeth in a wide smile. “But, for the record, I strongly disagree. I think that you and I, we could have and would have made it just fine.”

  It’s my turn to scoff. “Easy enough to say.” I look away.

  “It’s not, actually. It’s very hard to say. In fact, it hurts me quite a bit to say this to you.”

  I drag my gaze up from her hands to her face. “Are you serious?”

  She nods, her eyes narrowed. “We had what it takes.”

  “And what might that have been?”

  “Chemistry, for starters.” Her smile isn’t nearly as wide anymore. “And a one-in-a-million connection.”

  “But also vastly different lives. And chemistry only takes you so far.”

  She huffs out some air and waves her hand about. “We can speculate all we want. The fact remains that I’m sad we never had a chance.”

  A short silence falls. This time, I’m the one who feels the need to fill it.

  “Why did you ask me to dinner?” I ask.

  Jackie looks into her glass of brandy, from which the liquid is rapidly disappearing. Then she casts her eyes back up and holds my gaze. A shiver runs down my spine. “Because I had to see you again. I let you go once. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake all over again.”

  Her eyes are dark and brooding and not a fiber of my being doubts her words. When someone looks at you with such intensity and says something like that, it can only be the absolute truth. “Things are very different now.” My attempt at sounding confident in my reply fails spectacularly. Why is my voice so shaky?

  “We can’t change the past, no matter how many times we rehash it.” She runs a finger over the rim of her glass this time. I’m mesmerized by it. Her fingers seem to evoke something inside of me. “And we may both be in our fifties, but according to Carl sixty is the new forty, so I say we have a whole lot of future still ahead of us.”

  The scar on my shoulder itches, reminding me of how fragile life can be.

  “What are you saying, Jackie?” I take a sip of whiskey, its heat scorching my throat.

  “I guess what I’m saying is that I’d very much like to see you again.” Jackie’s all confidence now, her dark eyes ablaze with the passion I once knew. “That’s me putting my cards on the table.”

  I swallow down hard. The evening has definitely taken a turn. Despite my hard feelings toward her, I can’t wait to see where it will end. I nod, giving her something but not too much. I drink again because I don’t know how to play this. On the one hand, I don’t want her to think that her breaking my heart can be erased by buying me dinner but, on the other hand, I do appreciate her gesture—and her company most of all.

  “What do you say, Angela?” She does the head tilt that did me in all those years ago. “If I ask you to have dinner with me again, will you say yes?”

  “I will.” It’s how it always was. This unstoppable force inside of me has taken over the driver’s seat. Just like twenty years ago I knew full well that she was married and had a teenager in the house, I walked into it with my eyes wide open. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, that nothing good could ever come of it, I followed where she led. Tonight, it’s like a case of history repeating itself all over again—except that she’s single now, and her son is about to get married.

  Jackie has shown her hand, and it’s a winning one.

  “That makes me very happy.” Jackie stretches her arm and reaches for my hand on the table. She covers it with hers and gives it a light squeeze. “Are you free this weekend?”

  The touch of her skin on mine winds back the clock two decades. I’m in my thirties again and desperate for more of h
er touch. She’s pushing it. I withdraw my hand, leaving hers lonely on the tabletop. “I’m on sick leave, so.”

  She gives me a smile that says she understands why I’m blowing hot and cold—because I am. I’m flustered and confused; flattered and afraid. Sitting across from her at the end of this meal is making me feel more than I’ve allowed myself to feel in a very long time. Years—no decades. I don’t do relationships and, hence, I’m not very good at expressing my emotions. Jackie is a counselor, she must be able to read it off my face.

  She signals for the waiter and asks him to bring her the check. While we wait, she slants over the table and says, “Come to mine Saturday evening. I’ll cook for you.”

  8

  Jackie

  A week ago, Angela Hill was but a distant memory. Tonight she’s coming to my house for dinner. I’ve had a hard time focusing on any of my clients’ tales, because her face keeps popping up at the most inopportune moments. Those sharp cheekbones, that steely gaze. Her wavy hair, shorter than it was before, which I long to run my fingers through. That slice of desire that coursed through me during dinner hasn’t left. It has taken up permanent lodgings inside of me, flaring up when I’m trying to fall asleep at night, and when I open my eyes first thing in the morning.

  And I remember that it was the same twenty years ago. I should have stopped it. I should have been the wiser one and taken my responsibilities more seriously, but when it came to Angela Hill, I had no control.

  I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Is it nostalgia pushing me to rekindle this, I ask myself. But what do I know? It’s probably a bit of everything. Because I do clearly remember that, for that brief moment when I allowed myself to lose control, I didn’t feel like Jackie Cooper, mother to Carl and wife of the deputy commissioner, any more. When I took Angela to bed, I was Jackie Smith, a woman with options. A woman in bed with another woman, feeling all the things Jackie Cooper never could. Even though it was all too brief. We only had one night, because real life can’t be so easily erased.