When She Falls

by Jessie Clever

  She watched Cam watch the regular as he hit a high note. When was it that she’d let the rules she erected around her life become so impassable? So unable to be broken. She thought of Shannon and Emily, of the time they’d spent at the Franconia Notch School for Girls and perfected the art of getting away with breaking the rules.

  Lydia sat up straighter in her chair when the regular finished his song to the explosion of the audience. As the last of the applause died away, she leaned forward, putting her lips almost against Cam’s ear.

  “Baxters do not perform in karaoke bars,” she hissed and straightened, satisfied with herself for proving some sort of point or something. She wasn’t sure what.

  But as she straightened, she caught the look on Cam’s face. The hint of resignation. The hint of disappointment. She pulled back from him, the tug of war in her chest vanishing with his expression. Disappointed in what? Disappointed in her? Disappointed in what she’d become? What did he have to be disappointed about and why should she care?

  It didn’t matter what he thought. It didn’t matter at all.

  So why did she suddenly feel empty?

  The waitress swung by their table, depositing another whiskey, and Lydia picked it up, eyeing Cam over the rim of her glass.

  “Baxters don’t perform in karaoke bars,” she repeated, louder this time and with enough force to outdo the amplifier on stage. “But Lydia Baxter does.”

  She knocked back the whiskey, slamming the empty glass on the table as she stood. She didn’t wait to see Cam’s reaction. She didn’t wait to hear any response. Zigzagging between tables and groups of people, she made her way to the table where people were signing up for slots. Leaning through the crowd, she shouted to the staffer there.

  “Do you have anything by Patsy Cline?” she called.

  Cam thought it would be easier to toss her over his shoulder.

  Lydia crooned softly into his ear about walking after midnight as he hobbled her up the front stoop of her Cambridge townhouse around midnight.

  She paused and grabbed Cam’s chin in her hand, forcing his face close to hers, and he smelled the distinct tang of whiskey on her breath.

  “Searching?” She asked just before her mouth came down on his.

  Cam was man enough to enjoy the feel of her lips against his, but sober enough to know she didn’t know what she was doing. Her entire body was pressed against his as he managed to fit the key into the lock and thrust them both inside the house. He dropped the keys on the table just inside the door, breaking contact with Lydia long enough to shed his jacket and lock the door behind him. But as soon as he turned back, she was on him, her mouth against his, her arms going around his neck. She had slipped a leg between his before he caught her about the shoulders, pulling her backwards.

  “Easy there, lassie.” He propelled her in the direction of the kitchen. “We’re going to get some water into you, and then it’s off to bed. You’re going to regret this in the morning, and I want to say I at least tried to take care of you after you decided to take a bath in whiskey.”

  He set her down at the peninsula and went for a bottle of water from the fridge.

  Lydia raised a fist into the air as she tilted back her head and yelled, “Lydia Baxter regrets nothing!”

  Cam paused, the bottle of water in his hand. “If you were sober, that would be so very telling.”

  A quizzical look sprang to her face, and she slumped against the peninsula.

  “I’m not sober though, am I?” she asked, her voice soft and sad.

  “No, you are not, but I can safely say you’ve gained quite a few fans tonight.”

  He opened the bottle and handed it to her. She took a sip, her face collapsing into an expression of disgust.

  “What is this?” she said after she’d swallowed.

  “Not whiskey.” He took the bottle from her.

  “Then why bother?” She stumbled from the stool as she came up against him.

  He caught her elbow and held her there, swaying on her none-too-steady legs.

  “Hey there, handsome,” she cooed into his chest, her fingers playing with the buttons of his shirt. “What do you say we take this upstairs?”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” he said. “But I don’t think we’re thinking about the same thing.”

  She frowned, her mouth drawing into a sensuous little pout that just begged to be kissed. “I thought maybe you’d want to see what that little red nightie is for,” she said, and in his mind, Cam saw the red baby doll nightie he had found his first night back.

  His body tightened again as he pictured Lydia in the sheer costume, her long, toned legs bared for him as she came toward the bed and—

  “Perhaps another time.” He spun her around toward the stairs.

  They made it up the stairs largely in one piece even as he dodged several advances from Lydia. He pushed her in the direction of the bed, but she did that thing again, wrapping one leg through his, her body molding itself to his. His body raged with lust, five years of celibacy crashing over him in a tumultuous tidal wave. It had been so long. So long since he had felt her like this. So long since they had been like this.

  A small voice in his head grew louder, telling him that it was going to be a long time before he felt again. If he ever did feel it again.

  She kissed him, her tongue darting into his mouth before he could stop her. For a split second he let his grip falter, let his hands slip along the cool, smooth skin of her arms, across to her back, the flare of her hips. He wrenched himself away.

  “I think it would be better if we both slept in our clothes,” he said, guiding her toward the bed.

  Lydia laughed, the sound tinny and bright, so unlike any noise Lydia had made in her life, and Cam knew she was well and truly drunk. Depositing her on the bed, he went to the bathroom, rummaging in the cupboard above the sink for some ibuprofen. His search turned up nothing, and when shuffling noises from the bedroom reached him, he called, “Just stay there until I get back.”

  He bent to look in the cabinet that served as a linen closet and found an unopened bottle of the stuff. Quickly snapping off the lid, he wrestled with the silver safety seal before finally getting two pills in his hand. He strode back into the bedroom.

  “Take these and—”

  He nearly dropped the ibuprofen when his feet caught on the rug.

  Lydia was naked.

  Or nearly naked.

  She had taken off her dress and laid across the bed, her body concealed by nothing more than her bra and panties, which was not much. Her bra was a lacy black thing that plunged between her breasts, and her panties. God, he could get her panties off with a sneeze.

  “Lydia.”

  It was his voice, but it didn’t sound right. It was raspy and weak, but then, he hadn’t expected to say anything at all. He was hard, his pants tight against his erection, and he dropped the ibuprofen next to the discarded water bottle on the nightstand.

  “You need to take those,” he said, his voice truly weak now, the words hardly more than a fading whisper.

  Lydia smiled at him, her eyes shining in the light from the bedside lamp. “We can’t sleep in our clothes, silly,” she said, and Cam remembered she was drunk, and this was not going to happen.

  He picked up the water bottle, handing it to her with the pills.

  “Are you giving me drugs, Cameron McCray?” she said coquettishly.

  “Yes, good ones.” He sat on the edge of the bed as far from her as possible as he extended the pills in her direction. “You’ll enjoy a nice little trip with these.”

  She popped both pills into her mouth at once and swallowed a mouthful of water from the bottle.

  When she’d finished, she handed the bottle of water back to him, saying, “Can we have sex now or what?”

  He set the bottle on the nightstand and went to stand, but Lydia latched her arms around his waist pulling him back towards her. She laughed again, that same tinny, twinkly sound, and he le
veraged himself as far away from her as he could.

  “Where are you going?”

  He could feel far too much of her now. Her long legs tangled with his, her fingers pressing into his back, her full breasts against his chest.

  “You said if you had a clear invitation to my side of the bed you would join me, Mr. McCray. Why are you running away now?”

  He watched her in the muted light, watched the way her eyes sparkled. He wanted to trace the lines of her face, the angles of her cheeks and the curve of her jaw. He wanted to run his lips over hers and down along the line of her neck and then further. He wanted so much to take, take what she was offering and take what she wasn’t.

  But he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. If he had one chance to save whatever it was between them, he couldn’t let this happen now. No matter what she was offering.

  Carefully, he peeled her arms away and got off the bed. Standing, he bent and gripped her chin in his hand.

  “I will take what you’re offering when you know what it is you’re offering,” he said to her, and left, shutting the bedroom door between them.

  Eight

  “I know I’m your friend, Lydia, but a very small part of me really wishes I had been there to see you rock out with Patsy Cline.”

  Lydia groaned at Emily as she lay with her head on the makeshift pillow she had created out of catalogs and binders of color swatches on the desk. She had sneaked out of her townhouse that morning when dawn had brought reality crashing down on her, and she just did not have it in her to face her husband. Fleeing to her shop, she hoped for at least a few hours of solitude before Shelly and her mother arrived to open for the day, and of course, the opportunity to call Emily without the threat of eavesdropping husbands.

  “I think I even did some line dancing on stage,” Lydia said, her voice muffled against the stack of catalogs.

  Emily laughed. “Oh God, that must have been great.”

  “It gets worse.” She closed her eyes on the thought. “I asked Cam to have sex with me.”

  Emily was silent for longer than Lydia thought she should have been and for a moment, worried if her friend had heard her.

  But Emily said, “You invited him upstairs, you mean?”

  Lydia shook her head against the catalog pillow, which sent a bolt of lightning shooting through her hungover skull. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter on the pain.

  “No, I mean I blatantly asked him why we were not having sex.”

  Again there was silence.

  “Lydia?”

  “Yes?”

  “This may be a time to start evaluating some of your life choices, particularly the ones involving whiskey.”

  “This is all Cam’s fault,” Lydia said. “I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for him.”

  “You could also say you wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for him.”

  “That’s what I just said,” Lydia mumbled.

  Emily laughed. “No, I mean, isn’t he playing the part of hero right now to your damsel in distress?”

  Lydia sat up too quickly, and the room began to spin. She put a hand to her forehead, frowning. “I am never a damsel in distress.”

  “We never are,” Emily said, but her voice carried a heavy dose of sarcasm. “But you did ask him to come. You did ask him for help, right?”

  Lydia tried opening her eyes, but the fluorescent overhead lights pierced her eyeballs like daggers.

  “I did,” she said, her voice coming out as little more than a huff.

  “Then maybe you should forgive yourself for a moment of fun in a stressful situation and get on with it.”

  There was a hesitation at the end of her sentence, and Lydia waited to see if Emily had more to say.

  When she didn’t, Lydia said, “What are you holding back on?”

  Emily sighed, the sound like a blast of wind through the phone.

  “Lydia, sometimes you concentrate really hard on all the things that are wrong, and sometimes you can miss the ones that are right.”

  Lydia laughed, the sound coming out more like a snort. “I do not,” she muttered.

  “Lydia.” Emily’s tone was that of the teacher she was. “Do you remember when you got married?”

  Lydia blinked. “Of course, I do,” she said.

  “You gave yourself four weeks to plan the wedding, and your poor mother wanted to pull her hair out.”

  “She’s never liked Cam.” Lydia reached in her bag for another bottle of water.

  “And that’s exactly what I mean,” Emily said.

  Lydia straightened, the room swimming about her. “What do you mean?”

  “Annette loves Cam,” Emily said. “She always has. And when you two said you were getting married, she wanted nothing more than to put on this big to do for you, but you kept getting in her way with the negativity. She tried her best, but I think you still found fault with it instead of just being happy.”

  “I don’t find faults with things,” Lydia said, but that didn’t sound true even to her.

  “You created an entire business around finding fault,” Emily said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You cater to brides with issues around their wedding days. You’re good at that. Look at your current predicament.”

  Lydia thought about Rebecca Hatfield and her obvious desire to be anywhere other than with her fiancé or planning her wedding.

  “Not all of my clients are like that,” Lydia said, her voice weakening as she thought back on her roster of clients.

  “True,” Emily said. “But there are a lot that are like her.”

  There was a shuffling noise on the other end like Emily was going through a bag. Lydia looked at her watch and realized it was half past six in the morning.

  “I called you really early again, didn’t I?” she said to her friend.

  Emily laughed, but there was something odd in the sound now, a faltering that wasn’t there before.

  “Oh, I was already up, so it’s fine,” she said, followed by a pause. The pause was not unlike any of the ones that had come before it, but there was something about it that had Lydia listening very carefully. “Listen, I’ve got to run. I…promised a student some extra help this morning before the day starts.”

  Lydia frowned.

  “You teach first grade, Emily. Are you tutoring a student on the ABCs?”

  Emily laughed, this time brittle with insecurity and suspicion. “Yeah, right, something like that. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Before she could say anything else, the line went dead. Lydia looked at her phone. Emily Airedale could not possibly be up to something. Could she? And at half six in the morning? Lydia groaned, picking up her water bottle. She thought for a second about calling Shannon, but her friend in Portland was likely out for her morning run, a morning run that likely included her new heartthrob, Mr. Rocket Buns. Thinking about her friend’s predicament made Lydia feel a little bit better about the coming day.

  She set down the water bottle and went to work on the problem of Rebecca Hatfield.

  “Ach, you scared away Lydia Baxter?” his mother said with a snort. “Not bloody unheard of, lad.”

  Cam smiled in spite of his mother’s words. “That is not the encouragement I was looking for, Mum,” he said.

  The sound of rapid barking drowned out his mother’s voice for a time until he heard her yell, “Mr. Hinckles, that’s enough! Puddles, you are not helping either.”

  There was a beat of silence, and Cam listened to the quiet townhouse about him. He wasn’t surprised to find Lydia gone when he’d gotten up that morning. He was also not surprised at the kink in his neck from sleeping on the couch in the den. His mind still raced at the image of Lydia, spread out like a feast on the bed, all that exposed skin begging for his touch. He shook his head and ran his free hand over his face.

  She did not offer herself to him, and that he had to remember. The whiskey had offered her up.

  �
��Cam, I know this isn’t the time or place to talk about this, but I think I should tell you.”

  Cam’s eyes rounded as he came out of his torturous thoughts. “What is it?”

  “I’m in a relationship with Joseph, the man who makes the market deliveries.”

  Cam sat, the words making sense and not making sense at the same time. “Beg pardon?”

  “Joseph, you’ve met him once. Wonderful man. Great in bed. Oh, I probably should have clarified. I’m having a sexual relationship with Joseph. It’s all great fun. He makes me feel alive when he—”

  “Mum, stop. For the love of God, please stop saying words.”

  The images of his beautiful naked wife were quickly replaced with those of his mother and an old, wrinkled Italian man with stooped shoulders.

  “Oh, Cam, please. We’re all adults here. And really, I’m having so much fun. I haven’t felt this free since, well, since before I married your father. Oh, twenty-three, twenty-four. Not that I’d want to be that age again. Goodness, no. But the freedom in—” His mum paused, and Cam hoped for a blessed second that she was done. His prayers apparently went unheard. “Your father and I smoked the marijuana then, Cam. It was the seventies. Everyone did it. But oh, well, that’s not really my point right now.”

  Cam laid his head in his hand, his mother’s voice passing through him without consequence at this point.

  “My point is this. Joseph and I are very happy in the arrangement between us, and I just want you to know that. Not that I’ll be inviting him to Christmas dinner or anything. It’s more of a casual thing. What is it you young people say? Friends with benefits.”

  “Mum!” Cam’s head snapped up at that last phrase, and his blood pressure skyrocketed.

  “Don’t be a prude, Cam. Everyone does it.”

  “Like the marijuana?” Cam said.

  “Why, yes, like the marijuana. Maybe that’s what you need, Cam.”