Uncommon Pleasure

by Anne Calhoun

  “I had a long response written that I just deleted, because me telling you that I’d hung yellow ribbons and joined the local group for wives and girlfriends of deployed personnel wouldn’t make a difference. And when I thought about the time we’d spent together I realized I was just a distraction. I didn’t think about it when we were together, but you’re a Naval Academy graduate. A Rhodes Scholar. A lieutenant in the Marine Corps. And I was just out of college, a fun fling for a few weeks, but not enough for you long term. If you want to know how I felt, that’s how I felt. Stupid for believing that it would work, that ribbons and social events and e-mails and video chat would get us through, that maybe you’d come home and mar—”

  Her mouth shut with a click, and the now-silent air rang with the echoes of her raised voice. He’d never said anything about marrying her, never even said he loved her. She was the one with the fairy-tale dreams of love at first sight. She hunched into her folded arms, looked away, then back at him.

  “The support group would have fixed that, though. I admired those women so much. Some of them were going through second or third deployments with little kids to care for, working and raising families and taking care of houses and yards, and they were so strong. They served something bigger than themselves just like their husbands and boyfriends and fiancés. I could have grown up in their company. I knew the deployment would be hell for both of us in totally different ways, but sometimes you grow up because you go through hell, and you keep going, and when you emerge you’re stronger and wiser and more mature. I know I wasn’t then, when we met, but I could have been. You deprived us of the chance to go through that together, to let the experience shape us and make us stronger. You quit on us. You said Marines don’t quit, and you did.”

  Her voice was now almost silent in the dimly lit room, and she was proud of that. She wasn’t yelling at him, just calmly stating facts. “I loved you. I’d fallen head over heels, passionately, completely, and totally in love with you, with your brains and your sly sense of humor, how scared you were, how much you cared, how strong you were despite your fear. I loved you, and when that e-mail sank in, I hated you. I hated you so much. I went to the front yard with my mother’s pinking shears, and I cut the ribbons off the trees. Then I cut them into tiny little pieces and threw them in the trash. Do you want to know what happened to the paint on my back bumper? I used nail polish remover to peel off the bumper sticker, the one that said Forget Prince Charming, I have a U.S. Marine on it….”

  At that he looked away. For the first time in the weeks since he’d been back, he broke eye contact first. There was no victory in the achievement. She went on, because she had to finish this.

  “I loved you, Sean. I could have loved you forever, but now I hate you. I hate you as much and as fiercely and as passionately as I loved you. I know you got me a new battery and mowed the lawn because you’re trying to get me back, and I love you but I hate you, too, and it’s all just so tangled up inside I can’t figure out how to breathe around you.”

  She really couldn’t breathe. Panic set in, air in short supply, as she looked around for her purse, found it on the table by the door. “I have to get out of here,” she said, and shocked herself with how matter-of-fact and rational that sounded. She turned for the door, but in the blink of an eye Sean was across the room, palm flat to the door.

  “You’re not leaving,” he said. “Not in this condition. You’ll wreck, or wreck someone else.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  “It’s miles to your house, Abby,” he said rationally, implacably. “Please. Stay. You can’t go out like you are right now.”

  “Try to stop me,” she said, and dug her fingernails into his wrist in an effort to get his hand off the doorknob.

  He put his whole body between her and the door. “I’ll call Ben,” he said.

  She shoved him, but he wouldn’t move away from the door. His face was ravaged. This was no stoic Marine. Her words raked grooves around his mouth, hollowed his cheeks, darkened his eyes, pulling down the mask he’d worn for the last few weeks; behind that curtain was a man who’d used every tactic in the book to gain his objective—her—because he wanted her. Desperately. Completely.

  A second shove, this one hard enough to force the air from his lungs, but he didn’t try to hold her or contain her, just wouldn’t move from the goddamned door, and finally she gave up, spun on her heel and stalked down the hallway to the master bedroom.

  Where the big, wrecked bed confronted her, making her face what she’d just done, and with whom, and why. She’d just had the most amazing, intimate sexual experience of her life, with Sean, and she’d used it to destroy whatever remained of what they had.

  They were finally over.

  She slammed the door behind her, not caring if Sean was in the doorway, in the hall, or still standing in the living room. Then she sank down to the floor, buried her face in her bent knees, and sobbed like she hadn’t when she’d gotten the e-mail ten months ago, as if her heart was breaking.

  Because it was. All over again.

  Chapter Ten

  So much for the most expensive, elite education the American taxpayers could provide. A decade’s worth of tactics training and he’d just made the most basic mistake a young officer could make, and he didn’t even have the excuse of youth. He’d failed to turn the map around and consider things from Abby’s perspective. He’d assumed she was ready to be won back, that if he showed her how much he cared she’d understand he was sorry, and regretful, and wanted a second chance. He forgot about emotions, about all the steps they skipped going straight from seeing each other to bed. Abby didn’t play sophisticated sex games. That first night in the No Limits parking lot she’d as good as told him to back the fuck off, she wasn’t ready to be wooed, let alone won, and he’d missed the signals entirely.

  What a mess. What a fucking ugly sewage pit of a mess he’d just spent his leave stirring.

  Abby fled down the hall in full-fledged retreat, then the bedroom door slammed hard enough to crack drywall, and he flinched. Again. Her sobs from the bedroom were heartbreaking to hear, full of the passion lacking in her flat recitation of events from ten months ago, but he forced himself to walk over to the sofa, sit down on it, and listen. She was here, she was safe, and that would have to be enough for now. In the morning he would…they could…

  You idiot. It’s over. You lost.

  When the bitter, wracking sobs tapered off, water ran in the bathroom, sending the pipes knocking against the wall again. Then the sheets rustled, followed by a single, shuddering sigh, then silence. Half an hour into the silence he stood, walked silently down the hallway, and used a pen to unlock the bedroom door. Abby slept in a tight ball on the far side of the bed, her tear-ravaged face turned to the bedroom window. He closed the door, then walked through the living room to the sliding door that led to the deck. In the yard he pulled one of Camilla’s chaise lounges to the spot on the grass where the tree branches didn’t block the sky, where the low, gray clouds hid the stars. He stretched out on the chaise, folded his arms across his chest, and stared up at the sky until dawn turned the clouds pearl gray.

  Then he went back into the house and started coffee, because Abby’s life would go on without him. A few minutes later she emerged from the bedroom, but even with her face downcast to the carpet he could see her swollen, red eyes and cheeks. He stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets as she hurried by him, a washcloth in her hand. In the kitchen she dumped ice into a bowl, ran water over the ice, then immersed it into the bowl. When it was saturated she wrung it out over the sink, came back into the living room, lay down on the sofa with her head on the middle cushion and her feet dangling over the arm, and put the cold cloth over her eyes.

  He sat down on the ottoman, braced his forearms on his knees, and waited. There was no point in rushing now. Despite the fact that she hadn’t headed right for the front door, it was over.

  One hand massaged her temple while the ot
her held the cloth tightly against her eyes. “I don’t really hate you,” she said finally.

  “Oh, I think you do,” he said. His own voice was raw, thick, scored with exhaustion. He cleared his throat, and waited some more.

  “When Dad got sick I just pushed it all away, deep down inside, so I could cope with what was in front of me, which sounds very much like what you did when you broke up with me.” She paused. “Funny how you can do something that seems so right at the time and have it be all wrong.”

  “Yeah,” he offered quietly, then kept waiting.

  There was another longer pause, then she said, “I’m not over you.”

  “I’m not over you, either.”

  “If I was really grown-up and mature, I would have said something rational like Sean, I’m really angry with you and I can’t get past that, so you need to move on. But I didn’t know I was still angry. It was almost a year ago. Who stays angry for a year?”

  “Someone who’s badly hurt?” A bitter laugh huffed from his chest. “I could have been more mature about this, too. Who goes after a woman like she’s an epic battle with the fate of the world in the balance?”

  “It’s probably romantic if she’s in the right frame of mind. But everything I feel for you is this big tangled ball of barbed wire around my heart. Hate and love, longing and resentment, anger and admiration. Sometimes I can’t bear to look at you, but that year you were gone, I was half alive. I never stopped loving you. I realized that last night. I just…don’t trust you.”

  “Right.” He exhaled through his nose. “After what I did, I wouldn’t trust me, either. I quit. I got scared, and I quit.”

  “You did what you had to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I was such an unforgivable, egregious jerk to you ten months ago when I broke up with you, and I’m sorry for the last month. I never, ever should have come on to you like I did, shown up when you asked me not to, done things you could have done for yourself. I had a plan. I’d won you once in four weeks. I could do it again. Except last year you wanted to be won, and now…you wanted to be left alone. I should have honored that, and I didn’t. I treated you like an obstacle to overcome, or a game piece, and I’m sorry.”

  She licked her dry, cracked lips. She needed lip balm—God knew he was a connoisseur of lip balm after a year in Afghanistan’s dry air—and water. Probably a handful of aspirin, but he wasn’t doing a thing until she asked. He wasn’t stupid. He had two world-class degrees and the accolades to prove it, goddammit. He would get smart about this. He would.

  “Why did you break up with me?”

  The question was tentative, as if she didn’t dare ask. Answering honestly would be like showing up naked on the parade ground for a full review. “You nailed it last night. I was afraid. Terrified. The thought that I’d make a mistake and get one of my Marines killed…I was so fucking scared I’d fuck up everything, and I sacrificed you for them.”

  There. That was the truth, the ultimate dishonor revealed. “Because what matters is the guy on your left and the guy on your right,” she said.

  He lifted his gaze from the floor to her face. Her eyes still obscured by the icy cold washcloth, she said, “I understand, Sean. I didn’t want to be the most important person in your life. I just wanted to be in your life.”

  “You deserve to be the most important person in someone’s life, Abby,” he said.

  Air huffed from her. “I’m done with fairy tales. What I deserve is to be a part of something bigger than myself. Like you are. You serve something. Your life means something. I wanted to be a part of that.”

  “You’re on that path, going to nursing school.”

  “I wouldn’t have quit on you,” she said. “I know lots of women don’t last the deployment. I wouldn’t have quit on us.”

  “I know that now. I’m sorry I did.”

  I’m learning, Abby. Please don’t quit on me. But he didn’t have any right to ask her for that now. Maybe ever.

  There was a long silence, then she held out the washcloth. “Would you wet that down for me again?” she asked, keeping her eyes closed.

  He took the proffered cloth, soaked it in the ice water, wrung it out carefully, and came back to her side. He draped the cloth over her puffy eyes, then sat down on the floor with his back to the sofa. After a minute her hand patted his shoulder gently, then came to rest.

  “Thank you.”

  “Did you really want to do any of the things we did? Anal sex, the ménage, any of it?” Not that he didn’t deserve it, but he hoped Abby had done that because she wanted it, not out of some dark, twisted place he’d created.

  Another heavy inhale. “Oh, yeah. I’m not the woman you left behind, Sean.”

  Not unlike gunfire and combat terror, knowing he would never get back what he’d thrown away clarified his thinking like a crucible clarified metal. He loved her. He’d fallen as hard and fast as she had, but that love, tender, new, and unfamiliar, went unacknowledged and unvoiced in the whirlwind of preparing for war, then sucked into the vortex of fear. He had nothing left to lose, so he told her. “I love you, Abby.”

  “I still love you, too, Sean.”

  She still loved him. He still loved her. In the fairy tales, that would be enough. In reality, two people could love each other and still have the odds stacked against them.

  Fuck the odds. They were going to beat the goddamn odds if it was the last thing he ever did. The tactics decision tree winnowed through options in his head like a slot machine spinning up gold. Dinner. A quiet dinner, somewhere nice but not romantic was the right move here. He almost put his hand on her knee and asked her out to dinner.

  Almost.

  This time he waited.

  She sat up and neatly folded the washcloth. “I have to go,” she said, balancing the cloth on her palm, then offering it to him.

  He took it. The chill seeped into his skin. “I know.”

  “I have homework, and about a year’s worth of housecleaning to do.” She looked down at her hands, then up at him.

  It was awkward, standing up together, his throat tightening while she got her keys and purse together. “Can I call you before I leave town?” he asked.

  She shook her head, the movement slight but unmistakable. “I need some time to think, Sean. Can I call you when…if I’m ready?”

  “Anytime, Abby,” he said.

  She let herself out quietly. Her car started without a hiccup, and purred off down the street. When silence fell, it was his turn to cry.

  * * *

  Abby hurried through the front door of her house, dumped her backpack on the tile, and headed up the stairs. She’d just finished another review session in the lab and had barely enough time to shower and feed herself and her father before heading to No Limits for the Saturday night rush. True to his word, Sean made no attempt to contact her since that night. No surprise appearances at No Limits. No knocks on her front door. No new bumper for her car, or even a bumper sticker. She’d asked for time, and he’d given it to her.

  After a quick shower she toweled off, slathered lotion over her entire body, and pulled on a simple pair of capris and a T-shirt. She was on her way down the stairs to tackle dinner when the doorbell rang.

  Sean.

  A wide smile on her face, she opened the door not to Sean but to Jeff, Lindsey, and Mikaela. Her smile disappeared as Abby glanced over her shoulder at unvacuumed floors, undusted surfaces, the clutter of medical paperwork and unopened mail on the dining room table, her father’s unmade bed in the office, and her face flushed. “Jeff…Lindsey.”

  “Hi, Aunt Abby,” Mikaela said.

  “Hey, sugar lump,” she said, and gave the little girl a hug. “What’s up?”

  “We brought Grandpa some cake,” she said, and held out a paper plate with a piece of white birthday cake with white frosting and pink roses on it. The plastic wrap was wrinkled, and one corner of the cake was smashed into the plate. “Grammie Ruth couldn’t come to my
party because she had a cold, but we took her some cake. I wanted to bring Grandpa some cake. That’s fair,” she said with a seven-year-old’s certainty.

  Grammie Ruth was Lindsey’s mother, the grandma who babysat every Saturday night. Abby looked down at her wide-eyed niece, then at Jeff and Lindsey. They both jerked their gazes back from the disaster in the dining room to her face.

  “Is now a good time?” Lindsey asked. “We called, but didn’t get an answer.”

  “I was at school,” she said. “Dad doesn’t answer the phone. It’s fine. Come in.”

  She took Mikkie’s hand and led her down the hallway. “Dad, there’s someone here to see you,” she said.

  Her father turned to face her, then his eyes widened. Little Mikaela confidently dropped Abby’s hand and walked over to him. “Hi, Grandpa,” she said, and held out the cake. “I brought you some cake.”

  Her father looked at the cake, then at Abby, his expression so flabbergasted Abby almost burst out laughing. “Do you want milk to go with the cake?”

  “Yes, please,” Mikaela answered for them both, then sat down on the sofa next to her grandfather. “What are you watching, Grandpa?”

  “The History Channel,” he said.

  “I like the Cartoon Network,” Mikkie confided, “but Mama won’t let me watch it. It’s in-a-pro-pri-ate.”

  Jeff and Lindsey stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. “Dad,” Jeff said noncommittally. “Hello, Stan,” Lindsey added.