Screaming Infidelities
A/N: A stand alone piece that has haunted me for weeks until I finished it. It's a little different than anything I've done. Please review and tell me what you think.
i. avoiding the spots where we'd have to speak
Calloused fingers running up her bare back wake her from a gentle sleep. When she opens her eyes he's staring back at her with a peaceful smile playing on his lips. She's lying on her stomach with the sheet loosely around her waist while he traces invisible declarations of love onto her back. It's easy for her, being like this with him, forgetting the real lives they have waiting for them when they leave the comfort of her bed.
He leans over and kisses a trail up her neck. When she rolls over she sees the clock on the nightstand and reluctantly pushes him away. Lucas groans as he slides away from her and swings his legs over the edge of the large bed, where he dresses quietly. Peyton stays wrapped up in the thin sheet and stares at his back while he slips his dress shirt around his shoulders. He turns back towards her and suddenly can't keep his hands or his lips off of her, she doesn't push him away again. It's an intimate moment that is interrupted by his cell phone vibrating against the dresser. He quickly slips on his boxer shorts and springs off the bed to grab his phone, he notices the caller i.d. and then slips out of the room.
He comes back into the room minutes later with an uncomfortable look on his face and goes back to dressing. There is a moment of awkward silence that hangs in the air before he sheepishly looks at her and says, "She's running late, I have to pick up Emma from school."
Peyton stares at him for a beat before she slips out from the sheets and into a robe that was draped on the end of the bed. "You not saying her name doesn't change the fact that she's your wife." She says as she breezes past him, a hint of anger in her voice and closes the bathroom door behind her.
ii. when did your eyes begin to look fake
They were together for a year before college took them to opposite ends of the country. A basketball scholarship in California and art school in New York tested the limits of their otherwise solid relationship.
They tried to make it work and it did for a few months, but basketball and being away started to change him. He was a star on the court and a quasi-celebrity on campus. They would go weeks without talking and when she would finally reach him he was either drunk at a frat party or on his way to practice.
When it all became too much she flew out to California in one last effort to salvage what was left of their relationship. Finding him drunk with a redhead sitting on his lap at a party in his dorm room was all the answer she needed. He chased her down two flights of stairs and when he caught up to her she looked him in the eyes and told him they needed to take a break.
He was supposed to work things out and make his way back to her, he wasn't supposed to get a girl pregnant.
iii. you're not alone and you're not discreet
Scarlett and Lucas were a combustible mix from the beginning.
She was flaming red hair and too much lipstick, attending an Ivy League school on daddy's dime because she was bored of penthouses and the same old parties back in New York. They met at a party, the same party that Peyton had crashed, and wound up in bed together, both of them too hung over to remember what had happened.
It was supposed to be a casual thing, with Lucas nursing his wounds and Scarlett getting a little notoriety for being seen with the local basketball phenom. But one too many reckless nights led to something neither of them wanted, a pregnancy.
They learned about the pregnancy the week after Lucas had announced his decision to enter the NBA draft during a press conference that was covered by ESPN. His agent and her parents urged them to get married, at least for the sake of his career. So they married, and a month later he was picked up by the Knicks during the first round.
Fourteen games into the season he blew out his knee and basketball was gone and the money was gone and he had nothing, except a new baby and wife that he didn't love.
iv. i'm missing your laugh, how did it break
When he spotted Peyton on the sidewalk of a bustling New York City street four years after they'd last seen each other, he almost didn't believe it was her. But when she locked eyes with him, and he saw the hurt and anger wash over her face before she turned and tore quickly across the street, he knew it was her.
Traffic had brought everything to a standstill so there was little danger while he weaved though the bright, yellow taxis with their angry drivers yelling obscenities out of opened windows and honking their horns.
He chased her for three blocks, ignoring the burning ache in his knee, until he caught up with her at the entrance to her upscale apartment building. Peyton ducked inside but he couldn't get past the ill-tempered doorman so he stood on the sidewalk and begged for her to let him talk to her through the heavy revolving door. Finally she relented and stormed back through the door, telling the doorman that he'd be coming up with her.
The elevator ride had been as quiet as one might expect from an awkward reunion in a tiny room with no escape. She didn't want to speak, afraid that her sadness would ruin the angry façade that she was trying so desperately to maintain. She didn't want to cry over him, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was still in love with him, that she'd never really stopped loving him even after all the things that he had done to her.
When they stepped off the elevator his hand unintentionally brushed against hers and the chills that simple touch had sent up her spine had flooded her with memories of how they used to be, and she suddenly felt so desperate to be in his arms, to feel like she'd felt back in high school. When she turned to look at him, it was obvious that the touch had triggered something in him.
They slipped inside her apartment and she was slowly peeling the suit jacket from his shoulders before the door had clicked shut. She moved closer to him and unbuttoned his dress shirt with slow and precise movements from her slender fingers, and when he leaned forward and breathed her name gently into her ear she almost tore off a button trying to get it undone faster. He was standing half-naked in her living room before she finally reached up and kissed him.
Somewhere between their reunion on the busy street and whispered 'I love you's breathed against the bare skin below her navel he neglected to mention the wife he was still very much married to. It was only later, when they were half-dressed sitting at her tiny kitchen table eating leftover Chinese that he told her about Scarlett.
The anger and resentment that she had held onto through the elevator ride, the sex, and the cold Chinese food exploded. She bit back hot, angry tears as she threw the greasy carton against the cupboards and angrily paced the kitchen before she screamed at him until she her voice grew hoarse.
His head hung low with shame and defeat and he was almost scared to make eye contact with her for fear that her disappointment would be too much to bear. He let her yell and throw things and when she had finally run out of energy he looked her in the eyes and told her that he loved her, that he had never stopped. He told her about Scarlett and his daughter and the cushy job he'd gotten at her father's publishing company, how his situation was complicated but being with her again made it all seem less complicated and he wouldn't lose her again.
She sat at the kitchen table, across from him but never looking his way, and tried to process everything that he had thrown at her. She didn't want to be in love with him still, even less so after he'd lied to her yet again and turned her into the dirty mistress without her consent. She hadn't realized that she'd spent five years waiting for him until he'd shown up and kissed away all the bad memories.
She ignored the bitter taste of concession that invaded her mouth, and told him that she wouldn't be the other woman, it was her or Scarlett and he would have to make that choice. He kissed her hungrily and told her that he'd made that choice years ago.
v. I hope you're as happy as you're pretending
She hadn't expected him to leave his wife overnight. She expected it to take time but weeks faded into months and months became two years and the pale line on his ring finger mocked her every time he would run his hands over the bare skin of her thighs.
In the beginning of their affair he would sneak over to her apartment on his lunch hour and they'd lie in bed trying to ignore the clock on the nightstand ticking away their time together. Regardless of how she felt about the implications of their affair, she was happy and she had missed that feeling almost as much as she'd missed him. They'd spend rare weekends away from the city when Scarlett would visit her mother in Maine. They'd rent a room at a hotel and spend the weekend in bed watching fuzzy movies and making plans for a future that she knew would never happen.
He'd made promise after promise that he would leave her that he'd tell her it was over and he could start over. She'd believed him at first, believed every word that he'd said to her. Eventually she grew tired of asking for something that would never come so she just stopped asking.
vi. screaming infidelities, taking it's wear.
She doesn't speak to him for two days after Scarlett called his phone. She ignores his messages and his e-mails and she spends forty-eight hours thinking about what her life has become. At the end of those forty-eight hours spent holed up in her apartment with the drapes pulled tight she finally calls him back and asks him to come over.
He shows up a few hours later fresh from the office, his suit jacket is slung over his shoulder and the sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows. He looks happy and relieved that she's called. He kisses her softly on the lips and tosses his jacket onto the coat rack near the door.
He starts to apologize about what happened with the phone call and the interruption days before but she stops him with a wave of her hand.
"We have to talk." She says in a tone that makes him visibly uneasy.
"You're sort of scaring me Peyton, what's going on?"
"I love you Lucas, and I know that I am always going to feel that but I can't do this anymore." She tries her goddamn hardest to keep her voice from quivering because she won't be weak, not anymore.
"What's going on Peyton?"
"We've been playing this game for two years Lucas, the cheating, the lying, the sneaking around? I'm tired of all of it."
"So what, you're leaving me?" He asks, anger rising up and burning at the back of his throat.
"No Lucas, you left a long time ago. All your empty promises about leaving Scarlett and being with me, I believed them for so long. It's been two years of the same bullshit Lucas and I'm just tired of it, I am so tired."
He shifts on the couch and tries to grab her hand, but she pulls away. She doesn't want to touch him when she's trying so hard to break free from him.
"Peyton please, don't do this. I love you." She could hear the desperation in his voice, the way it wavered when he said her name. It made her stomach drop and ache with an empty hollow.
"You don't love me Luke, you love the idea of us before we fucked it all up."
"Don't do that, don't tell me how I feel." He was stern, but his eyes never rose from the floor. "Why are you doing this now? What's going on with you?"
"This has been building for awhile, but I got a job offer, a really great job offer to open my own gallery in L.A. and when my agent called me with the offer I almost turned it down on the spot because it meant leaving you. And then I sat and I thought about it and I realized that you aren't mine to leave and I can't put my life on hold for someone who can't give me what I need."
"I can change things Peyton. I can make everything work. I just need more time."
"I've given you two years Lucas, I can't give anymore."
"Peyton, things are complicated with me and Scarlett, and there are things that you don't know, there are reasons why I stay with her."
"Why, huh? Why do you stay with her, give me a good reason why you stay with a woman you don't love instead of being with me."
"Because she said if I left her for you that she'd take Emma and get full custody." It's only when he mentions his daughter that tears rim the already red edges of his eyes and threaten to fall every time he blinks.
"I don't understand. How could she get full custody?"
"Emma isn't my daughter. Scarlett has probably always known, but she never really had the opportunity to use it against me until she found out that I was going to leave her. I've spent the last few months trying to find a way to be with you and keep my daughter, because as much as I love you Peyton, I won't leave my daughter with a woman that doesn't love her."
"These last two years, this is why you've never left Scarlett? Because of Emma?" She starts to piece everything together and her plan to leave him behind forever begins to slowly disintegrate.
"It was never about not loving you Peyton, because I've always loved you since we were too young to know what the hell that really meant and I want to be with you for always but I can't do that if it means I have to give up Emma. As hard as it was to lose you, I don't think I could survive without my daughter."
She doesn't know what to do when the tears he's held at bay for so long begin to slide down his cheeks, so she slips off the couch, tucks herself around his legs and rests her chin on his knees while wiping the falling tears away. She doesn't know what they're going to do.
vii. your hair, it's everywhere
The West coast sun is warm and so bright that she's squinting behind the dark sunglasses that are supposed to shade her eyes. A cool breeze picks up from the ocean and blows her blonde curls wildly across her face, and when she breathes in deep she can almost taste the salty breeze on the back of her tongue.
She's been in California for nine months allowing the sun and the sand to heal the broken pieces of her past. She doesn't lead the semi-glamorous existence she used to have in New York, fancy gallery openings and an upscale apartment is no longer a part of her life. Now she paints on the deck of her small beachside bungalow and walks barefoot two blocks to her tiny gallery that's situated between a record store and a coffee shop that isn't Starbucks.
Her life is simple and she can't really remember a time when she was ever this happy. She's pretty sure that the source of her happiness comes entirely from the two figures building a small sand castle near the water's edge.
Peyton was surprised at how easily Scarlett had given up custody of Emma. All it had taken was an envelope filled with glossy photos of a certain publishing tycoon's redheaded daughter buying enough cocaine to get her written out of the will and thrown into prison to compel Scarlett to give up her daughter. Peyton never felt guilty about the blackmail, she just saw it as something she had to do. For Lucas, and for Emma.
The sun starts to dip below the horizon and it baths the beach and it's occupants in a warm orange glow. Emma and Lucas trudge up the sand with the little girl holding tightly to her father's strong hand. Peyton smiles at the sight of them and Emma runs the rest of the way up the beach and straight into her waiting arms. Lucas joins them and they sit together on the shore and watch the sun set.
When the sun has vanished and Emma is fast asleep in Peyton's arms, she leans over to rest her head on Lucas' shoulder and he holds her tight. She calls them an instant family, six years in the making.
The irony of it all isn't entirely lost on her. The things that had torn them apart so many years ago, Scarlett, Emma, are the same things that have brought them together again. She looks over at her soon-to-be husband and down at the little girl she calls her daughter and realizes that she wouldn't change a thing about what got them to this point.