Ready for Love

by Carolyn Faulkner

  Especially since Decker—loyal sort that he was—wouldn't hear a word against her.

  Things came to a head on the anniversary of his marriage to Jane. It was a day that he had said he wanted to spend with me, and me alone. We'd both taken it off work—not that we intended to do anything special—but he just wanted to hang around and be with me—someone who truly understood what he was going through.

  We were at his place, curled up on the couch in each other's arms when his doorbell rang. I moved so that he could get it and was surprised—and not in a good way—when I saw Taryn come bursting through the door with bags of stuff in her hands, heading into his kitchen without so much as a by-your-leave, with Deck following in her wake, and me, sitting on the couch, watching my world crumble before my eyes.

  "Taryn, what are you doing here?"

  She stopped taking things out of her bags—which looked like ingredients for a very nice dinner—and stared at him. "Why, it's your anniversary—yours and Jane's. We always spend it together. I come over and make you dinner and we sit around and reminisce. You didn't forget, did you?" I knew she was laying on the guilt with a trowel. "That would be very unlike you."

  "No, I didn't. It's just that I have Gemma here with me."

  Taryn barely spared me a glance, muttering, "Hello, Gemma," before turning her attention to her intended target. "But we have a tradition, you and I. I've had your wedding video converted to an avi file so that we can watch it together on your TV. You've always said you wanted to do that, but I knew you were always so busy and you'd never get around to it." She paused for a moment in her little speech, giving him an almost affronted look at the idea that he might be just as content—if not more so—to spend the day with me, almost whining, "We've spent every anniversary since she died together, comforting each other—"

  I didn't much want to hear her get any further into what they might have done to accomplish that, so I rose from the couch and grabbed my coat out of the closet on my way to stand next to Deck, who looked truly stricken at what was happening. I knew he wouldn't be able to find his way to choosing me over Taryn. There was just too much emotional history—baggage—there for him to be able to tell her to get out, that he had someone else now.

  And I didn't even blame him for it. Andre didn't have any siblings, but who knew how I would have reacted if a brother of his had gone after me while Decker and I were seeing each other.

  I did know, however, how Decker would have reacted to that type of situation. He would have put himself between me and the other man, making sure I was safely behind him, and he would have told the man to leave. If the guy hadn't taken the hint, Decker would have forcibly shown him out, in a manner that would have left no doubt in the man's mind that I was no longer on the market.

  While I was making my way to him, I looked from him to Taryn and back again several times, and I knew I wasn't about to do anything that dramatic. That just wasn't my style. If he wanted to be with Taryn on the anniversary of his marriage to his deceased wife, who was I to tell him no?

  So, instead, when I got to him, I touched his arm lightly, diverting his attention to me, saying softly, "You and Taryn have a good time. I'm going to go home." Then I left, without kissing him, without saying another syllable.

  And he let me.

  He didn't catch up with me at the door, he didn't try to kiss me—he just let me walk out the door.

  I managed to close it behind me before the tears began, at least, and I cried all the way home, driving when I really shouldn't have because I was so upset.

  I don't know why that little scene bothered me so much—perhaps because I had a strong feeling that, if Taryn decided to go after him, I didn't really have a leg to stand on. She'd known him for most of his life. I'd known him for less than a decade. She had all of those shared, communal memories. I had years of our platonic, workaholic friendship and then a few really amazing times in bed. That was it.

  I didn't know where to start to fight for him, especially with the odds so stacked against me, so, instead, I began to let my heart revert to the way it was before I'd met him. Cold and closed and dark. Perhaps it was better this way.

  Better, at least that it happened early on, I kept telling myself as I sobbed my way home. It wouldn't hurt quite as much as it would have if it had gone on longer.

  It wouldn't hurt as much as if I'd actually fallen in love with him. But, of course, I had.

  I didn't hear from him for the rest of that day—the one I'd taken off to be with him during a time he was most likely to have a hard time, so that I could offer him emotional support.

  I spent it alone, in front of the TV, putting something on in the background that made it sound as if people were here, like I used to in the early days of my process of mourning Andre, and starting to mourn Decker instead.

  And it didn't get better as the subsequent weeks went on.

  He sent flowers to my work the next day, emailed and called to apologize, and we made a date to get together when we both had the night off, so that he could make it up to me.

  As angry as I was at him, I was kind of interested to see how a Dom made up to his sub.

  But the night before, he called to cancel, sounding very reluctant, but eager to reschedule, which we did—but because of our hectic work lives, it was another week before we had a chance to get together.

  Again, there was something that came up that prevented us from seeing each other. I didn't pry, because I wasn't that kind of person, but he hinted at some kind of family emergency.

  Family emergency, my eye! I bet Taryn had gotten wind of his plans and had developed a sudden, deadly hangnail that he had to come help her with.

  We were seeing less and less of each other. It was understood that we both had jobs to do, but we'd worked it out wonderfully before.

  Now, it seemed that he never had any free time—there was always something occupying it that wasn't me. We were being pulled further and further apart. I could feel him slipping through my fingertips.

  The last straw was my birthday, when he was going to take me away for the week. Andre didn't like flying, so I hadn't been many places, and he thought we could go to the Continent—see all the sights. He'd spent some time there in college, so he knew his way around.

  I got time off of work, got my passport, bought new clothes, and got a mani-pedi in preparation. My suitcases had been packed for a month, and the week before we were supposed to leave, he called saying he had to cancel because of something his nephew—Taryn's son—had gotten up to that might well end up in court.

  I wasn't at all surprised that Taryn was using her kids to keep him dancing attendance on her. I doubted there were very many things she wouldn't stoop to to get him.

  He sounded apologetic—he really did. But I wasn't able to hold back my tears as I spoke to him, and when I disconnected the call, he knew how upset I was, and I was rather abrupt, to say the least.

  It was probably the closest I've ever come to hanging up on someone I'd ever been.

  Luckily for me, I guess, one of my employees called me late that night saying she couldn't go on a trip for work, so I took the opportunity to go myself, ignoring the fact that going away now kind of made me feel like a chicken. The next day I had to be at the airport bright and early, so it was pretty easy to dodge his attempts to contact me—his texts. And phone calls. And emails. I was on a plane most of the day. Of course, that didn't address the time that I wasn't, when I could easily have returned any of those.

  But I didn't. In fact, once I'd boarded the plane, and except for checking occasionally to make sure things weren't blowing up at the office, I pretty much left my phone off.

  I held off until late that night, after I'd come in from the requisite business dinner with the people I was hoping to sweet talk into using my company to meet their social media needs, crashed on the bed for a moment, stripped, had a shower, then crawled into bed, putting on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels for background noise.
Only then, did I force myself to rummage around in my purse and find my phone, set it up to charge, then actually turn it on.

  Five emails, seven calls, three voicemails, and eighteen text messages popped up immediately.

  All from the same, apparently, rather unhappy person, although I don't really know what he had to be unhappy about. I was the one who got sent out into the snow—well, heat, then, since it was almost ninety out—in favor of that conniving bitch.

  I really wasn't sure what I should look at—or potentially answer—first, but I started with the texts, typing, Sorry. On a flight, in meetings, then dinner.

  I was surprised, considering how many ways and how frequently he'd tried to get in touch with me that he didn't answer me immediately. But it was a few minutes before he did.

  Meanwhile, I went through the texts and the emails and the voicemails, which started out apologetic, but didn't end up that way.

  As I was scrolling through the texts, really only reading some of them, a call came in.

  Guess who.

  I wasn't at all sure whether I wanted to take it or not, wrestling with myself as the phone rang and vibrated in my hand, but finally I pressed "accept", not really knowing what I was going to hear when I put it to my ear.

  But the first thing he said nearly broke my heart. "Please tell me that you're okay."

  "I'm okay. I'm sorry to have worried you." And I was. Sort of.

  I heard him sigh in relief, swallow hard, then take a deep breath. "I thought you were angry with me for cancelling the trip."

  "Ding ding ding ding ding! Give that man a see-gar!"

  "All right, sarcasm noted. We can reschedule the trip."

  All I could do was snort at that. "For the record, I don't give a flying fuck about the trip. This isn't about the trip. It's about Taryn—no one—and nothing—else."

  Another pause. "And I'm sorry if I hurt you. Taryn has been a part of my life for so long—"

  "That she can sweep into your place and ignore me—like she did at the restaurant—and has since the first time you introduced me to her—and—without saying a word about me, get you to push me out of your house, when we'd planned to spend the day together. And then get you to cancel the makeup date for that, and then the makeup date for that, and then the extravagant trip we planned together, along with every other instance where we attempted to get together. It was always her or something to do with her. I'm not making it up. The woman wants you, so she's doing her best to k -keep me away f-from you."

  I wasn't going to cry. I promised myself that—if I talked to him today—I wasn't going to cry.

  So much for that resolution.

  His, "I'm sorry," was subdued, because I think he was just beginning to recognize the truth of what I had said.

  "Well, I have to admit that, when we first got together, I had my doubts. I wondered if I could let go of Andre enough to let you in." Tears were streaming down my face now. "But I did. I opened myself up to you. I let you in. I let you do things to me—I did things to you—that I hadn't done in years—that I'd never done for my husband. I let you punish me!"

  "Oh, Gemma, I—" Decker began, but I cut him off.

  "But I got it wrong. Despite the fact that you said you thought you were in love with me, I wasn't the one who wasn't ready to move forward and become involved in a new relationship. It was you. I know things are different nowadays, and exclusivity is passé, but—"

  "I am not sleeping with Taryn," he stated firmly. "I'm not sleeping with anyone but you."

  I could almost see him pacing back and forth in his house.

  "Yet," I supplied. "And you're not sleeping with me, either. How long has it been since we've been together?" I sighed, rubbing my forehead. "I know you can't see it, but she's after you. She wants to take her sister's place."

  "That's—that's impossible! It's disgusting! You can't possibly be serious."

  "Ask her. That's all you have to do."

  I could well imagine him standing there, one hand on his hip, the other running roughshod through his hair, while he tried to contain himself.

  "All right, I will."

  "Good. We have nothing more to talk about until you do." I had already taken the phone away from my ear, but I heard him shout.

  "Wait—don't hang up yet. I won't press you about Taryn, but please tell me you're all right."

  How like him to want to make sure I was okay.

  But it wasn't nearly enough.

  And I wasn't nearly okay.

  My tears were getting my non-waterproof phone wet as I spoke. "Oh, I'm just dandy. I finally found a man I click with—who was my friend first and liked me anyway. And he was falling in love with me and I was falling in love with him, but now he's letting someone else tear us apart. Letting her do it. Letting me be replaced in his life. I can't talk any more. I gotta go."

  Chapter 8

  It was another few weeks before I heard from him again at all—no texts, no emails, no calls, nothing. I did my best to convince myself during that time that I didn't really care whether or not he ever contacted me.

  It didn't work, of course, but I valiantly kept trying to get my mind—and heart—and the rest of my body—to believe it, because I was pretty sure they were going to need to get used to the idea.

  But I thought of him all the time. And I had been right—every time my eyes landed on that blasted dining room table, I saw myself there. It was obviously time for a new dining room table.

  But I saw us together everywhere—the movies, the restaurants we'd gone to together—but mostly in my place, because we'd seemed to congregate there—huddled under a blanket on the couch, over his lap, sleeping stretched out on top of him in my bed because he'd just made me come a thousand times.

  Maybe it was time for a new table and a new house.

  I was feeling low and alone, now missing both Andre and Decker, so I decided to go back to the place where I had found succor and friendship before. The grief group. And if the fact that we'd met there had spoiled that soup, then I'd find another bowl of it somewhere else. That wasn't the only grief support group in existence—it was just the closest and the most convenient.

  Although the ranks had swelled considerably with new people, most of the same people were there when I got there, and they were very welcoming and effusive as they always were, most of them hugging me tightly like a long-lost friend, some of them noting that I didn't have a box of tissues with me, so I must not have been planning to share.

  "Where's that gorgeous hunk of man you used to hang around with?" someone asked.

  I had tried to prepare myself for that question, but I guess there really isn't any preparation that's going to help.

  "I don't know, really. We're…well, we're not together much anymore."

  Everyone aw'd at that, and it was getting close to time to begin, so we all took our seats.

  But just as Jennette was going to start, someone else came through the door.

  I couldn't see him, because my seat faced away from the door, but I heard the quiet gasps from the other people, and just as I was going to turn around to see who the heck had come in that would have inspired such a reaction, he was there, beside me, taking the empty chair next to me and saying, "Sorry to interrupt."

  And then he put a box of Kleenex down between our chairs.

  Jennette went through her usual spiel about who we were and what we were trying to accomplish here, and then she opened it up to the rest of the group.

  I half expected Decker to put up his hand and speak first—although I'm not sure why—but he didn't.

  I listened as politely as I could to everyone else's stories, doing my best to ignore the man seated to my right who hadn't taken his eyes off of me since he'd sat down.

  And I wasn't having much luck at keeping mine off of him, either. No one made a suit look better than he did. He looked amazing in them—he should have been a model. But all I could think about was that I knew what he looked like under it and w
hat his hands and his mouth felt like on my bare skin. For which I felt guilty and chided myself inwardly, always trying to drag my filthy mind out of the gutter and back to being angry at him, which I had every right to be.

  He was so damned big, and our chairs were so close together because of the cramped nature of the larger than usual circle, that I was practically sitting in his lap, so I did my best to stay as still as possible so that our arms and legs and feet would stop colliding.

  It was very nearly time to go—there was probably only time enough left for one more person to share, and I had made up my mind to leave. I couldn't stand sitting next to him any longer. It was too damned painful.

  I reached under my chair, where I'd tucked my purse, and pulled it out, just beginning to loop the handle over my shoulder and get up when Decker rose and said to me, "Would you do me the favor of staying, please?"

  "Well, I—"

  He took both of my hands in his and whispered, "Please?"

  Damn him! He knew I couldn't resist a puppy dog eyed appeal like that, so as much as the rest of me was telling me to get the hell out of there, I found myself sinking down into my seat—against my better judgment on all levels.

  Decker stood in silence for a moment, his head down, then lifted it and began to speak.

  "Some of you here know me, some of you newbies don't. My name is Decker. My wife was the love of my life, and she died of breast cancer a while back. I didn't know how to cope with it, so I started coming here, and it helped me enormously to hear other people's stories as well as their strategies in coping with a loss that makes you feel as if your heart's been ripped out of your chest and stomped on in front of you."

  I could hear his voice shaking, and that brought tears to my eyes even more than his story did.

  "The story that I'm going to tell you isn't specifically about grief per se. It's more a cautionary tale about dealing with one of the offshoots of grieving—what to do when your connection with your love one's family has, essentially, been severed by that death.