"This isn't real," she told him. "None of this is real."
Her rings winked at her from the table. She had taken them off and put them there before they had hesitantly climbed onto the bed together, she still in her dress, he still in his undershirt and pants. He reached over her and pulled open the drawer and the sound was harsh, rasping in the still, stale air. He brushed her wedding and engagement rings into the drawer, to fall on top of the Gideon bible, then pushed the drawer back in, his arm falling over her waist.
"It's not real," he nodded.
She lay on her side facing away from him and he spooned up behind her, his knees bent and up against hers, his arms slipped around her waist. They were already too close, but they had not yet crossed any lines. She closed her eyes.
His arms tightened around her, the pressure of his embrace went from discomfort to pain, but she didn't cry out, didn't say a word. She put her hand over his and the feel of skin against skin... She wanted very much to pull his shirt over his head, drop it onto the carpet and trace the lines of his muscles with a fingertip, a gentle palm. She wanted to see the golden planes of his face in shadow on the pillow beneath her. Her misery before their last dance was nothing in the face of this. She didn't know why she had come to his room, didn't know why she had climbed up to curl with him over the covers, but it didn't matter. Not as long as she could stay like this.
She turned around in his arms and he crushed her to him, so tight that she could only breathe in when he breathed out, two halves of a whole, trading the same air. She put her arms up around his shoulders and closed her eyes. She felt the tip of his nose against the tip of hers, then down her cheek, against her ear. The throb of his heart against her chest. He nuzzled into her and his lips were smooth but closed, the brush so faint that it didn't count as a kiss.
They stayed that way, so tight and close. Her eyes closed. Not happening. If she opened her eyes and saw his she would lose it, lose everything, the skin-thin conviction that as long as she did not admit, there would be no consequences. She ran her fingers through his hair a few times and let her forehead rest against his.
"Nan."
"We're not doing anything wrong."
Their breath mingled. His mouth. His lips had to be inches from hers.
She buried her face against his shoulder and released the breath she had been holding.
Not yet echoed unspoken between them.
"I missed you."
"I missed you too," he said, but his voice was rough, hard.
For the briefest instant her eyes fluttered open, and she saw him so close to her, and the wave of pure desire she felt was dizzying, intoxicating, overwhelming. She closed her eyes again and released a breath, taking his. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," she whispered. "It was never supposed to be like this. I thought." She stopped and licked her lips, fell silent.
"What," he breathed, and she felt his fingertips brush her cheek. "What is it."
She opened her eyes then and stared into his, and his fingers stilled on her skin. "I thought you'd never be able to forgive me. And then I found out about Sam, and I knew you'd never be able to forgive me. To raise his child as yours."
"I don't know what I would have done," he whispered, and she could feel his breath against her lips, and it was just another inch toward the cliff, but she couldn't care about that now.
She leaned forward and buried her face against his chest and closed her eyes and breathed him in. Soap and aftershave, and him. Not a hint of cigarette smoke.
She couldn't sleep. Sometimes he moved, restless, brushed a hand over her air, down her bare arm, against her hip, and her eyes would flutter open in the darkness and she would wait until her heart slowed its way back into her chest. She couldn't miss a second of it. Because this, this night, resting in his arms, this was not happening. This was not real. It was all illusion. Never to be repeated or relived or mentioned, after it was over.
"We don't talk," she mumbled.
"We do," he said, and his voice was rough, but his breath had never fallen into that shallow cadence, signaling his sleep. "We talk."
"Not like we used to," she told him. "And then there's Frank, and I feel like I can barely start a conversation with him before he's gone again."
He nodded and her lips parted and she hated the pang of disappointment low in her belly when he didn't lean down and complete the kiss. Complete.
"But you're happy with him."
She could hear it in his voice. It took every ounce of strength he had, and that strength was formidable, to force those words out. She could almost feel his jaw clenching in the dark. She reached up and traced her fingertips over it, memorizing it as she had his every breath.
"Not the way I was with you."
She would have lingered in his arms, wishing he would cross the line and hoping that he wouldn't, until the maid kicked them out of the room, but the sun bled under the curtains by slow blue-white degrees and her arms were stiff and sore and the look on his face was the kind of longing she recognized, even through the creased eyelids and stubbled cheeks.
"We have to go."
She buried her face against his chest again. "We don't," she murmured. "We don't have to."
For all the resolve in his voice, he couldn't stop touching her. The light circle of his fingers around his wrist as they shared the sink, brushing their teeth, briskly tossing cold water on their faces. His palm curved against the small of her back. When there was nothing else left to do, no other excuses they could make to stay in the room, she walked over to the bed and pulled the drawer out of the table and picked up her rings, put them on the top.
"Wait," he said softly, and when she turned to him he swept her up in his arms, her feet no longer on the ground, her breath no longer her own. She put her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck, and now, with the knowledge, she felt her face begin to constrict with the first tears. She pulled in a breath and shook on the edge of it.
"I don't want to leave," she whispered. "I don't want to go back to emails and Christmas cards and never knowing when I'm going to see you again. And I don't care if that's wrong."
He pulled back and they regarded each other, her blue eyes pooling with tears. "It's," he whispered, then shook his head. His next words were all in a rush, without thought. "I'm having lunch at the little Italian place on Lake Shore Drive," he said. "Around noon."
The expression in his eyes was fearful. Vulnerable.
She tilted her head down the barest inch. "I'll be there."
--
She put her keys on the hall table in her father's house and ran her hands through her hair, kicking her shoes off. The house was quiet; her father's car was gone. He had probably taken Sam to church, to show her off. She went upstairs and grabbed a fluffy bath sheet, shut herself into her old bathroom and turned on the shower.
If she did this.
But, she realized, stepping into the stall and turning her face into the spray, it was no longer a question of if. Not anymore.
She left a note for her father, explaining that she was going out for the afternoon and would be back later, in time for dinner. She stopped at a coffee shop and bought the biggest iced caramel mocha latte they had and sipped it until she could see without actively willing herself to focus. She wasn't tired. She was running on the thin high nervous energy, the same energy she'd been feeling since her fingers had closed around the keycard the night before.
Then she walked into a lingerie store.
She had bought herself silky little sets before, little lace-trimmed nightgowns, but that had been when she and Ned were still together. She had never been able to wear them for Frank. Part of never instigating was never wearing satin or silk to his bed, always acting like every night he turned to her was spontaneous and a pleasant surprise. Never anticipated or actively desired. Never admitting that her disappointment in their first night together had never been answered, and she had stopped wondering if it would be.
She picked out a set in black satin, trimmed in the thinnest lace, and stood in the dressing room studying her reflection, head tilted to the side, her heart racing. Yes.
When the cashier called her up, Nancy dropped two tags on the counter. "Ring me up," she said.
--
He was sipping an iced water when she arrived, maneuvering between tables, five minutes past noon, surrounded by laid-back couples who had spent the previous night together, tired-eyed businessmen and trophy wives. The nervousness only she could see in his face faded when he caught sight of her, and he smiled.
"I was wondering if you would come."
"Wouldn't have missed it for worlds," she said softly. She glanced around. "Don't let me out of your sight."
He chuckled. "I haven't arranged for any kidnappings, fake or otherwise."
They were indistinguishable from the other couples, the ones who had spent the previous night wrapped in each other's arms. He offered her a bite of his ravioli, on his fork, and she took it, smiling. They ordered dessert with two spoons and he paid with an unobtrusive gold card and when they left the restaurant she led him to her car without comment or apprehensive glance.
"Where to?"
He rested his arm against the lowered window and directed her through the winding streets of downtown Chicago. As she waited for a stoplight to change she turned her head and their gazes met, and it was all easy. Like riding a bike. Like falling. She was falling, but falling was only giving in to gravity, to nature, to the pull she felt when she looked into his eyes.
A car horn from behind them startled her back, and she caught the faintest smile on his face before she turned back to the road ahead of them.
"How much time do you have?"
He unlocked his apartment and turned his head to look at her and she blushed, softly. "I left a note for my dad that I'd be back in time for dinner."
He had left the stereo on. The sound was mournful. The hardwood floor was spread with rag rugs and there were a few dishes in the sink and his movie collection had tripled since she had last seen it. She stepped into a pool of sunlight and smiled.
No framed pictures of girlfriends. No lace-trimmed pillows. No hint of perfume in the air.
"Do you have a girlfriend right now?"
If he was taken aback at the directness of her question, he didn't show it. "Not right now."
He cued up a movie and then settled on the couch, near her. At first they didn't touch, but just like the nights they had spent on her father's couch, on his parents' couch, in the Omega Chi common room, soon his arm was around her shoulders, soon hers was tucked behind his back to rest on his waist, and as before, it was nothing, it was not happening, she was just lost in another memory. She put her head on his shoulder and fought off the overwhelming desire to sleep, to let herself rest in his arms again.
His hand slid over her upper arm. "You okay?"
She nodded, then reached over to pull an afghan over her lap. "I'm just a little cold."
"Here," he said softly, leaning back, resting his head against the arm of the couch. He pulled her on top of him, her back to his front, the afghan draped over both of them, her head cradled on his upper chest. His hand draped casually against her stomach. She could feel the nearly imperceptible pressure of his fingers over her shirt more than anything else.
"Thanks."
She looked at her watch after the movie, while he was in the kitchen pouring them both sodas, wondering how late was too late for dinner, how fast she could make the drive back to River Heights. The television was displaying some overexuberant pregame show, and she snapped it off, walked over to his stereo, and soon the same melancholy strains were swelling in the room. Thick dark clouds were racing over the sun, sweeping the room into alternate shadows. She ran her fingertips over the jewel cases of his music collection and then he was at her elbow, just as the sky opened, just as the first startled spray of raindrops peppered his window.
"Here you are," he said.
She took her drink and put it down on the coffee table, took his out of his hand and put it next to hers, and they moved into each other's arms, swaying slowly with the music, the soft cadence of the rain. He pressed his lips gently against the crown of her head, her forehead, and then she tilted her face back to look up into his, her pulse quick and terribly heavy in her chest.
"I never stopped loving you," she whispered.
He stopped, then. Stopped moving, stopped the gentle stroke of his fingers over the small of her back, and she was powerless to move. She searched his eyes until she could no longer bear the uncertainty of his silence, and then her gaze dropped, her lips trembling slightly. She moved out of his arms and swept her purse off a low table, her shoes off the narrow strip of floor between the couch and table, and sucked in a swift trembling breath, her sight blurring and swimming as she walked to his door. Her engagement ring sliding under the ball of her thumb, the same nervous gesture.
She had just snapped back the deadbolt when his hand closed over her upper arm, the shock of skin on skin, and she turned around to look into his face, afraid of what she would see there.
"I never stopped loving you either."
--
The ball of her thumb slipped against her wedding ring and she nudged it up to the joint, rubbed the paler skin beneath.
He pulled the rings off her finger and flung them to the floor.
The violence of the gesture startled her. The violence with which he swept her up into his arms and pinned her against the door and kissed her, that was expected. She reached up and twined her fingers through his hair, returning the kiss, desperate and hard. When he pulled back for breath his skin was still on hers, arms against her back and his forehead against her temple and his lips an inch from her cheek. She turned her face to his again and their mouths met, and if there had been a spark before...
She wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the back half of the apartment, the promise of the half-open door, her thumb rubbing her newly bare finger. She bent to him, her hand still resting against his scalp, pressed her lips against the warm flesh just under his jaw, and he made a soft noise. If she said a word, if she seemed at all unsure, maybe this would vanish like mist and they would look at each other with wordless horror and dread, making further impassioned promises to never be alone together again, to never cross the line. To breathe back in the words they had spoken.
Never. Never again.
She kissed him and he rested her weight against the edge of the doorframe, leaning in to return it, demanding, insistent, rough. Teeth and the pressure of his tongue in her mouth. Her fingernails against the back of his neck. He gasped for breath.
They were in his bedroom. His bed was a tangle of sheets and comforter, the curtains flung back and the rain beating on the windowpanes. He put her down at the foot of his bed, to stand on her still bare feet, her shoes and purse dropped, forgotten. They reached for each other again, immediately, leaving no space to question, to hesitate. His fingers curling through her belt loops, pulling her up until she was on her toes.
"Do you," he whispered against her skin.
She rested her palm against the curve of his jaw for a moment, then reached down and pulled off her loose cotton top, let it fall from her fingers to the floor. He reached up, after a beat, hooked a fingertip just under the black satin strap.
"He's never seen this," she breathed, answering the question in his eyes.
For the first time he stopped, tracing his fingers over her cheek. "Tell me you're awake," he murmured. "That I'm not dreaming this."
"We're awake," she said. Then she smiled. "Or maybe this isn't happening and we're asleep on your couch and the movie is still on."
He leaned back and they looked at his empty couch, the afghan tossed across in a haphazard pile. "Yeah," he said softly. "Something else that isn't really happening."
She drew his face down to his for another hard kiss, taking his hand in hers, pulling it up to rest over her heart. "No, this is real," she whispered.
After, she closed her eyes. "What time is it," she asked, softly.
He looked at his alarm clock, and told her, running his hand over her hair. "It's still raining."
"Why can't it sleet," she whispered. She put her arms around him and held him tight to her. "Why can't it ice over and I could call my dad and tell him I have to stay here."
He smiled, but didn't answer, just kept stroking her hair.
"Mind if I use your shower," she asked, her eyes fluttering closed again.
He trailed his fingers over her cheek. "In a minute," he said. "I don't want to let you go yet."
She nestled against him. "Oh God," she whispered into his skin. "I don't want to let you go either. I don't ever want to leave this room."
He leaned down and kissed her as she shrank inward with the first gasped convulsive sob. He held her and pressed his forehead to hers and she cried in great wrenching breaths, both of them naked in the fading summer sunlight.
After a while, when she could wait no longer, they took a shower together.
"I love you," she whispered, her voice drowned in the water pounding around them.
"I love you," he replied. "I love you."
"You don't have a hair dryer," she said, once she had toweled off and was finding her underwear.
He laughed softly. "No," he said. "Sorry."
She looked out the window. "I was just caught in the rain," she said to herself. "That's all."
He stepped into clean boxers and a pair of jeans and reached over, folding his fingers around hers. She brushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes and gazed up at him, her eyes filling again.
"This was it," he said.
"What do you mean," she said, but her heart sank.
His smile was soft, pained. "We can't do this again."
She bowed her head. "I guess you're right," she said. "I guess... I just, I just," she said, and closed her eyes, another tear streaking down her cheek. "But we can, we can email each other, right," she said softly. "And maybe call each other." The expression in her eyes was pleading, heartbreaking.
"Nan," he said, turning his cheek, almost shaking his head.
She grabbed him, then. "Did it mean nothing to you?" she cried, her fists beating against his chest.
He took her wrists in his hands, his jaw set hard. "Did it mean nothing to you?" he returned, his voice low and rough. "You're going back to him. You're going to walk out that door back to him and leave me here and you have the nerve to ask me if it meant nothing to me. Nancy, we can't do this. We can't. Maybe you want a lover, but I'm not it."
"I don't want a lover," she told him softly.
"Good," he said. "I'm going to stay away from you. I don't think we should call each other or see each other. Because knowing," he breathed, tracing his fingers down her cheek. "How could I act like I don't want you."
She closed her hand around his. "That was it?" she said softly.
"If I can't be the only guy in your life," he said.
She pulled his face down to his and he kissed her softly and pulled back, even as she slid her arms around his neck and held him to her.
"You have to let me go," he whispered.
"No," she whispered.
He put his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground and held her as she sobbed, gasping, trembling against him.
"You made your choice," he whispered.
"I did," she cried. "I chose you."
