Cheating on Myself (20 page)

I dropped my shirt in the sink and grabbed a hand towel from under the sink. I turned the water on to fill the basin so I could soak my soiled shirt. I wet the towel and began to dab at the skin hit with Pippa’s puke missile. After a few seconds of scrubbing, I could tell I wasn’t going to be able to reach most of my back, where I’d been hit the hardest. I thought briefly about hopping into the shower, but decided to just suck it up and wrapped myself in a towel before calling Erik in from the hallway.

“Can you get my back with the wet towel?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” he muttered, obviously as freaked out about the situation as I was. “How far did it go?”

“Pretty much all the way down,” I said, shivering from my bare skin, the cool water, and Erik’s touch.

I could see Erik’s reflection in the mirror. He was staring off into the distance, blinking rapidly, trying hard not to stare at my exposed shoulders. I never thought of my shoulders as sexy before, but they suddenly felt like the bazooka of sex weapons. Powerful, strong, and succulent. I could almost feel Erik’s lips on them when I noticed his eyes flick to the bare skin peeking up over my towel.

“I think you’re going to have to unwrap your towel a bit,” he said quietly. “Maybe you can just hold it up in front of you? If you’re uncomfortable about taking it off in front of me?”

I laughed nervously. I knew my very put-together ex-boyfriend could handle himself around my well-covered breasts. I let the towel slip to the floor, and felt Erik’s hands wrap around my chest just as quickly as it lost its towel covering.

Someone—me?—sucked in a quick, startled breath, and then my body melted against him, my skin instantly soaking in the warmth coming through his shirt. I looked up, into the mirror, and watched his eyes on mine as I felt his hand slip up under my bra. My eyes closed momentarily, and I moaned despite my head telling me to stop what was going on with my body. But instead of listening to reason, I reached over with my foot and kicked the door closed. Erik pressed himself against me and buried his face in my neck.

“We’re doing it again,” I whispered. “This isn’t like us.”

“It is now,” Erik muttered back. “I forgot how sexy you are. I feel like I’ve missed years of these gorgeous breasts. I have to make up for lost time.” He grinned, something I’d never really seen Erik do, and turned me around so he could put his lips between my breasts and work his way up. I leaned against the countertop and felt the water—still running in the sink—spilling out across the vanity. While Erik took my bra off and ran his tongue over each of my nipples, I shuddered and tried to keep enough control over my body to turn the water off.

“Do you think you need a shower?” he murmured in my ear. “It might help get you clean.”

I’d never heard Erik talk like this, I’d never heard him suggest something so… hot… spontaneous… tempting. Ever.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, making my way down his chest, pulling at his shirt buttons, and kissing a trail down his body. When I got to his pants, I pulled them open and eased the fabric past his hips. I reached around and squeezed at the butt that had been so tempting in the kitchen earlier in the night. He groaned and tugged at my hair. Slowly, deliberately, I pulled his boxers down, inch by inch, until I could feel him pressing against the fabric holding him in. I slipped the boxers down past his knees and made my way back up again with my mouth, kissing first his knees, his thighs, his hips. Until finally, I took him in my mouth and felt his body relax when he pressed into me.

I was only there for a few seconds before he stepped away and helped me take off the rest of my clothes and together we stepped into the shower. He turned on the water and it flowed over us, the water loud enough to drown out every bit of doubt and worry that crept into my mind. It felt good, and my body desperately wanted to be there. I wanted to be with Erik like this, I wanted to know him like this. I wanted him to know
me
like this.

He pushed my hair out of my eyes as water streamed down from overhead, soaking us. I’d never felt this kind of intensity with him, and I could only imagine part of the reason this was happening was because it was wrong. I was cheating. Cheating on my new life with my old life.

When my mind finally broke through to remind me of this, I stepped back and stared at Erik through the curtain of water that poured down from above us. “We have to stop,” I said, but my body was screaming at me to continue. “I can’t.”

“You can. We are,” Erik said, and his gentle touch felt like a million kisses on my cheek. “Enjoy this. We deserve it.”

We did deserve it. Erik and I deserved the opportunity to look back on our lives together with this as the grand finale. If he was willing to carry on with no consequences, mindful of the boundaries, knowing this wasn’t going to go anywhere, then I could, too.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. When I smiled, he took me in his arms again. His skin was hot, and he was wet and slippery from the shower. Still, something felt wrong. It was impossible to let myself relax when I knew I was cheating on myself. I pushed away and said, “No. We really need to stop.”

Erik stepped back. He nodded, then we sat together on the floor of the bathtub, letting the water run over us while I relaxed into his familiar chest and felt his breath rising and falling beneath me.

* * *

Though it felt like we’d been upstairs for hours, only about fifteen minutes had passed while we were in the bathroom getting me cleaned up. Even still, I wasn’t looking forward to going back downstairs to face the family and the curious looks on everyone’s faces. While Erik dried his hair and re-dressed, I sat on the closed toilet, wrapped in a towel. I watched him style his hair and put himself together, impressed at his ability to make himself look precise again in less than five minutes. No one would ever know what he’d been up to just moments before. The thought made me smile, and he turned to me, his expression curious.

“I’m just thinking about your mom,” I said, laughing. “What if they knew what we’d been doing up here?”

“No one will know,” he assured me, coming over to place a kiss on top of my head. “They just think we’re up here talking.”

“We’re not.”

“No, we’re not.” He stopped preening and gazed at me in the mirror. “Do you want to talk?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, and I wondered where
this
guy had been during the last ten years. “I want you back, for good, but we can talk when you’re ready. If you want.”

“Thanks,” I said, standing up to put on my clothes. “I don’t have a shirt,” I said, only then realizing that even though I was clean, my shirt was still soaking wet in the sink.

“You could come to dinner in that,” Erik teased. He leaned over to kiss my bare shoulder. Oddly, the gesture felt cold and awkward outside the heat of the moment. I pulled the towel tighter around me. Erik stepped back and began to unbutton his own button-down. “Here,” he said. “Wear mine. I’ll just wear my t-shirt.” Erik always wore a plain, white t-shirt under his dress shirts. Always. He said it extended the life of the nice shirts. I was glad he had offered me the top shirt and not the undershirt—wearing his undershirt felt too intimate. I could come
this
close to fucking my ex in his sister’s shower, but wearing his shirt felt too intimate. There was something wrong with this picture.

I took his shirt and began to button it over the bulky towel still wrapped around my body. It didn’t really fit, but I was relieved to find I could at least close the buttons over my breasts. He and I weighed roughly the same, and I’d always worried someday his clothes wouldn’t fit me anymore. It was some stupid measure of femininity that had led me to believe a girl should fit in her boyfriend’s clothes.

I suddenly wondered what I would look like in Joe’s overalls. I bet they’d be cute, in a rural sort of way. I’d sort of like to see them
off
him even more than I’d want to see them
on
me. Ack! I was thinking about another guy five minutes after nearly having sex with my ex. Maybe it was the sexual tension I’d felt building up the whole night before with Joe that had led to what had just happened with Erik.

“Are you good now?” Erik asked, and when I nodded, he smiled and slipped out the door to let me finish dressing alone. I could hear his footsteps in the hall and then on the stairs, and I knew I was alone.

I breathed out and studied my wet hair and my body inside Erik’s shirt in the mirror. I tried hard to smile at myself, but found I couldn’t. I wasn’t proud of what had just happened, and it sickened me to think of how good it had felt. I wondered, for the millionth time in the last few months, what right I felt I had to leave Erik in the first place.

A timid knock at the door pulled me out of the dumps, and I opened the door to find Pippa grinning at me.

“Dinner’s ready, Stella,” she said. “Mom ordered pizza. You can have a bite of my mac and cheese, if you want.”

I grinned at her and took one last swipe at my hair to try to put it in place. “You know what, Pip? I’m not sharing anything with you. You puked on me, remember?”

“You look cute in Uncle Erik’s shirt,” she said, fingering the fabric around my wrist. “Grandma says you miss him. Mom told her she was reaching. What’s reaching?”

I ignored the question and changed the subject to ask Pippa about school. She told me stories of her classmates all the way back down the stairs. When we got to the dining room, everyone was seated around the table and the only two spots that were left open were on either side of Erik. I guess that took away a bit of choice. Looked like this was going to be an awful lot like old times. But in old times, there was a zero-percent chance Erik and I would have ever had a quickie in the bathroom before a meal. So I guess that changed the stakes a bit. I was feeling strangely relaxed and also increasingly awkward as I settled into my seat at the table.

The whole family was looking at me—were they all giving me a
look
?—and Erik was grinning at me like a fool. His hair was dry and put back into place—the only thing different about him was his missing shirt (perfectly reasonable explanation there)—but he was also wearing that stupid, sex-induced grin.
Stop grinning
. I twitched involuntarily and glanced around. I realized Laurel and Peter were focused on the texture of the cheese atop their pizza and Cat was fully-focused on forcing Heidi to put something other than candy corn on her plate. No one was looking at Erik except for me.

Still grinning, he slid a piece of pizza onto my plate. “Plain cheese, right?” he asked.

“Actually, I was going to try the olive and pepperoni,” I said, slipping the slice back into the box. I replaced the pizza on my plate with a thin sliver from the other box.

“You don’t like olives,” Erik said. He was still grinning. “I mean, you never liked olives before. At least, not olives without blue cheese stuffed in them.”

“I think I do now.”

“You think?” Erik teased. “Or you do?”

“I do. I do like olives.” This was ridiculous. I was trying to pick a fight with him about what kind of food I liked. I did
not
like olives, but for some reason I was hell-bent on showing him I’d changed since I’d left him. I wanted to show him I’d moved on. Olives were symbolic of other things.

“In fact, I love olives. They’re my favorite.” I took a big bite and smiled through the salty grossness. It wasn’t as bad as I would have expected, and it wasn’t as hard to pretend I was really digging the pizza as it could have been.

Erik watched me closely as I took a second, then a third bite. His brow was pinched together, obviously concerned my palette had evolved in our days apart. That this should bother him said something about the nature of our relationship. I could change. I
should
change. Why hadn’t he ever let me change?

As I chewed my way through my first slice, Laurel looked around at everyone gleefully and said, “I have news!”

Knowing Laurel, this announcement could precede anything from, “My colorist has contracted a case of herpes,” to “I’ve been diagnosed with cancer, and you’ll all need to rest at my bedside for the next three weeks while I die.” Laurel got great joy out of imparting any kind of information she had and no one else did.

“I’ve been selected,” Laurel spoke slowly, pausing for effect. “I have been
chosen
as one of the featured participants in Cooking Circle, a new series on the Foodie Network!”

“You’re kidding!” Cat said, putting down the spoonful of Macaroni and Cheese she’d been trying to shove into Pippa’s mouth. “Mom, that’s amazing.”

“No, I am not kidding,” Laurel said snippily. “They chose me, out of hundreds of thousands—possibly millions!—of applicants.”

“So what are you going to have to do? Will they fly you to New York?” Erik looked proud of his mom, which reminded me he really was a good man, deep down.

“Actually, they’ll be sending a film crew here, to our house. They’re going to film me making a family dinner.” She paused, took a sip of her wine, and looked directly at me. “They asked that both of my daughters be on hand for the filming.”

Cat glanced at me, and I thought I saw a smile tugging at her mouth. Erik cleared his throat. Meanwhile, Pippa said, “Gran, you only have one daughter.”

“Stella, it’s your Brussels sprout recipe that won them over. I can’t claim them as my own. It wouldn’t be decent.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said quickly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I think it is a great idea,” Erik said, patting my arm. My skin itched where his hand rested like a hot, heavy lump. I didn’t want him touching me. It felt like he was trying to possess me, and like Laurel was trying to guilt me back into the family. I couldn’t go on cable TV, acting like a member of the Wesley family.

“You can make the sprouts your own,” I said, pushing my pizza around on my plate. “Add some extra herbs or bacon or something that will make it your own special recipe.”