reality.
For their first real date, John took her to a three star Michelin restaurant (how he managed a reservation when the restaurant normally had a month-long wait was beyond her), where she ate almost to excess and protested when he pulled several crisp hundred dollar bills out of his wallet to pay for it (that he was apparently very well off had not really crossed her mind, but now it made her slightly uncomfortable). Afterward, cheekily asked her to buy him a vanilla ice cream cone from a little shop on the way back to the hotel. They shared several long, dreamy kisses as preludes to the night ahead, not caring about the world that went on around them (or the taxi stopped at the light with the forlorn young doctor who instantly recognized John, but couldn't quite place the petite blonde with him before the light turned green).
Back at the hotel, John whispered hotly in her ear that they should go back to his room, where he opened the door to reveal two dozen roses, a bottle of good champagne on ice, and two glasses (the concierge did well and would be tipped handsomely, John had said). They managed one glass of champagne each before she settled on her knees in front of him and drew his zipper down. With his hands buried in her hair and on the edge of losing control, he gently begged her to stop (please don't stop, stop, please), and moved with her to the bed, discarding the rest of their clothing along the way. He lay back on her command and let her take her pleasure of him willingly, until she could no longer move for the quaking of her hips and the weakness in her limbs. He carefully rolled them over and (with reverence and wonder in his eyes) slowly moved within her until he finished with a soft exhale of her name.
They slept for several hours (warm and safe and content) before she awakened to the sensation of his lips and early morning stubble low on her belly and his hands teasing her thighs apart. He brought her once, twice, over the edge before moving back upward to ply her lips open with kisses that tasted of her own sweetness. He pushed into her slowly (infuriatingly) again, and she closed her eyes at the bliss and the tenderness of it all.
(she knew that she loved him, deeply and truly, but the emotions were too new, too raw to speak aloud. her heart hurt from all of the love it held within. she didn't know when it happened, it was just...there.)
Every other parting between them had been over the thresholds of hotel doors, with smiles and quick kisses and glances at schedules on their phones. This one was different (and painful). They shared a cab to the airport in silence, his arm draped around her shoulder and her head tucked against his chest as the early morning traffic whizzed by them. At the juncture of domestic and international, they stood in the swirl of travelers and those left behind and kissed without a care for who saw and snickered.
(she had half a mind to tell him then, but she stopped. not here. not in the face of the sadness of leaving him again.)
She could see he was thinking carefully about something during their last few moments in each other's presence. "What is it?" she whispered, plucking a bit of lint from his jacket lapel.
He looked over the top of her head at the departures board. "I'll be in London the week after Christmas visiting my mother," he told her finally, after working his jaw back and forth. "Through the New Year. I know we agreed to keep our distance when we're in each other's cities…"
She kissed him fervently and pulled him in close (that she could crawl into the circle of his arms and live forever…). "I'd be gutted if I knew you were that close to me and so far away," she whispered into his chest, dangerously close to tears. They said their goodbyes and stepped back, holding hands until their bodies were too far apart to touch, and only then did they let their limbs go slack and their hearts sink.
They lived for these few days together, when they were different people only for each other. His thumb played at the indentation of skin on his third finger when he thought of her. She began keeping a small planter of peach coloured roses on her balcony, the same shade as the ones he had sent to her the day after she returned home. He'd made a note of the perfume she wore and bought a bottle of it that he kept in his nightstand (in a hidden compartment that held a combination locked firebox with his important documents, where Vera would never find it). She had a day planner with his tenth wedding anniversary circled a dozen times in red ink, nearly two and a half years away (god willing she could survive that far).
They would see each other again in nineteen days, again in Boston, then a week later in Oslo. That would carry them through November. They would have to make do with phone calls and texts (she told him she didn't care what time it was where she was, if he wanted to call her, he could. and he did.) in the interim. He found his old iPhone and bought a prepaid card for it, solely to talk to her without there being a record on his primary line. She convinced him to download Skype and put a strong password on it (they laughed nervously at the idea of putting on a show for each other, but never committed to it. not yet).
They lived separate lives but had become woven together like the tightest cloth. I miss yous and I wish you were heres became punctuation. Soon and next week and until then became prepositions to link the days between them.
In early December, when she was in Miami, and he was in Tampa, he surprised her by renting a car and driving over five hours in rush hour traffic to spend a mere two hours with her before she flew home (he was white-knuckled and shaking when he arrived and told her he hadn't driven since the accident that shattered his knee and gave him his scar and his limp and an unhealthy dose of PTSD). They didn't even get a chance to get to her hotel room, which was several blocks away, but they took a long walk along the beach hand in hand with their shoes dangling between them. It was more than enough to be together, even for that little while.
Instead of I love yous, they spoke in code. Let me know when you're home, else I'll worry. Be safe, be safe. I'm yours. You're mine.
fiction.
December plodded along slowly, despite the advertisements to the contrary (nine more shopping days until Christmas!). John would arrive in London on the 27th and stay through the 4th of January. His mother had recently sold her home and moved into a high rise retirement community, so instead of staying with her as he usually did, he would rent a hotel room a few miles away. This suited him quite well as he wasn't keen on explaining his nightly absences to his eighty-two year old mother, nor why he was sneaking a beautiful young woman up to his boyhood bedroom. She had barely tolerated Vera when their relationship was good, but she was still an old fashioned Irish Catholic woman who believed that marriage was sacred (despite her own having been so miserable).
Before he could go to London, he had the business of maintaining appearances with Vera as the holidays approached. They always put on a good face with each other at work (except behind closed doors), even acting pleasant when they needed to be. There was always the underlying tension between them. They both wanted out of the marriage, but neither would blink first (Fredric Kent had made his own promises to his daughter involving calendar dates and bank accounts). She had as much to lose as John did. So they put on a good show between them.
They had the especially stressful task of pretending to be a happily married couple for the benefit of her father when he visited the week before Christmas. Luckily, he preferred to stay in five star hotels over his daughter and son-in-law's (supposed) house, so the need to fool him domestically was avoided. They only had to pretend to be happy away from work for one night, when they met Fredric at his hotel restaurant. He presented them both with envelopes containing certificates for a hundred shares each of company stock (not that John scoffed at essentially getting close to ten-thousand in cash from the old man, but a little more thought would have been nice) inside generic Christmas cards signed by Fredric's secretary (John knew the man's signature well enough to know that the flourish of the F in 'father' was all wrong). They kept the discussion neutral, mostly about business and Fredric's travels abroad, and managed to avoid any uncomfortable questions (at least he'd stopped pestering them about children finally).
Regardless, John was especially careful, even more so than normal. He pulled his genuine wedding band out of the drawer just in case Fredric had an eye for how the metal was cut. He went completely no contact with Anna for the duration of the visit, which she understood (or at least she said she did). He tried to fight back the revulsion he felt when Vera drew her hands across his shoulders and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek when she joined John and Fredric for tea in the office.
He felt like he was cheating on Anna (strange for a married man to be cheating on his mistress with his wife, but that's what it was).
To her credit, Vera was just as annoyed by it all. They seemed to have reached an understanding, even if she didn't know that he'd been seeing Anna again (if she ever really knew to begin with). She'd toned down the vitriol in her voice when she spoke with him privately. It was almost as if she was being genuinely...civil. She smiled openly when he walked past her in the office, and after a while John came to the sickening realization that week as to why.
On December 21st, just before the office shut down for the year, his father-in-law announced in front of a gathering of disinterested employees that Vera's lover Rick (with his perfectly tailored suits and two-hundred dollar haircuts) was being promoted to Director of Sales for all of North America (a very high six figure position to John's mid). John became incensed when Rick sought his eyes out in the crowd and gave John a look that said I took your wife, and I'll take your company. Rick now outranked him, and John knew full well that the fastest route to CEO was through Director of Sales. And even if John managed to stick it out long enough to get partial ownership back, he could be bought out for pennies on the dollar and forced out by the board. A board potentially influenced and led by Rick, that Vera also sat on. He was outnumbered.
I think that Rick is the best fit for the company's future, Fredric had said in his booming Scottish baritone before leaving for the airport in a company limo without so much as speaking to John about the matter.
Vera was just as smug as her lover about it all, especially since she'd apparently been talking him up to her father for months without letting on that she was sleeping with him, let alone living with him. Perhaps she saw the trajectory that Rick was on and sought him out. Or maybe Rick saw the weakness in John and Vera's marriage and decided that the best way to the top was via the boss's daughter. Their marriage had been broken long before Rick came into the picture, but it hadn't taken long for him to sweep up those shattered pieces and create his own mosaic.
Rick Carlisle was a calculating son of a bitch. And he was dangerous. He knew the stakes involved and would take any actions necessary to ensure that he would win in the end.
John had backed down over Vera. He wouldn't back down over his company.
(not until he had no other choice)
