Authors: Marion Croslydon
We’d spent the morning in Arlington. Viewings had followed each other like chunks of beef on a skewer. Arlington fitted the bill for what he thought we
should
be looking for. Apartment complexes, safe, clean and modern, a walkable neighborhood, excellent schools. He’d even shown me the perfect school for Lucas and its official test scores.
But the truth was I’d been dreaming of something more homey. I’d said that out loud and the realtor mentioned Georgetown. The second building we visited proved to be just what I was looking for.
“Is it much more expensive than what we saw back in Arlington?”
Josh shook his head. “I just thought you’d like to live somewhere swankier.”
In a few quiet strides, he was standing in front of the door and staring into the ‘ten-square-foot-yard.’ Well, it wasn’t that small actually. His hands were buried in the pockets of his jeans. I joined him there. I had to fight the images popping up in my head: Lucas playing in the yard, bringing back friends from school; me tidying up his toys at the end of the day; Josh flipping burgers on Sundays.
The yard could be so much more than what it looked like now. Josh had to see that.
“Do you remember how you used to tease me about that little white house we’d have one day, with the picket-fence and perfect lawn?” Andrea Loretti’s house back in Kansas City sprang to mind.
Slowly, Josh turned sideways then leaned his shoulder against the door. Even like that he towered over me. My boy was a man now and the thought triggered all kinds of fuzzy feelings beneath my skin.
“If I remember correctly, you weren’t that keen on my idea of domestic bliss.” He said it with a smile.
“I was young and so full of sh—crap, I mean, poop.” I’d started my no-cursing, proper-talking policy.
He chuckled. “Because you’re much older now.”
“That I am. But what I’m trying to say is this place is closer to your little white house than this morning’s swanky apartments.”
He gave the place another look, then laid his eyes back on me. I curled my toes around my flip-flops and waited for his verdict.
“The schools are good in Georgetown too. And it should be easy enough to give it a lick of paint. What about furniture?”
I jumped in the air. My fist pumped in victory. I toured the apartment, pointing things out here and there, already reorganizing it into my dream home. I even fantasized out loud about Lucas’s room and which shades of blue I could paint the walls. I wandered from room to room like Goldilocks discovering the three bears’ house. I’m sure I was freakin’ glowing. I reached the main bedroom and stopped in the doorway. The images flipping through my brain had nothing to do with the ones I had of the garden.
I felt Josh’s body behind me. I swear his body temperature had risen because heat filtered through my tank top to warm my back.
“And that’s where our
marital
bed will go.” I was paralyzed by his closeness. At least my outside was, because my inside was on fire. He rested his chin on my head and his hands slid along my waist to rest flat on my stomach. He pushed softly so that I rolled on my heels and encased myself in him.
We stayed like that for a while. I’d always laughed at the word ‘tantalizing.’ But right then that stupid word kept flashing through my mind like a ‘MOTEL’ sign on Route 66. Josh kissed the skin in the hollow of my neck. His lips kept brushing and teasing. And for
that
, I had no word.
After some meowing, I mumbled. “The realtor will be back any time now.”
Josh answered with a moan but didn’t stop. One of his hands left my stomach to slide along the back of my neck. He wrapped the mass of my hair around his wrist and gently pulled it to the side. His other hand came and circled my neck. His lips tickled my earlobe. His index traced tiny circles where my pulse was pounding.
He tightened his hold on my neck and pulled softly on my hair. My head tipped further to the side. With anyone else, I’d have freaked out, but the way he worshiped my earlobe was so tender it evened out the kinky circling and pulling. I let him take over. My gaze got lost in the empty space of the room. I probably looked as stunned as a mouse in front of a rattlesnake.
In my daze I could still feel Josh hard behind me. That knowledge heightened my crazy burst of lust. I wanted to shout. I wanted him to throw his vows of chastity out the window and take me on the not-so-fresh carpet or against the washed-out wall. Right here… right now.
“Mr. and Mrs. MacBride?”
The realtor’s voice made my mouth dry up and heat explode all over my face. Josh stopped the kissing and kinky strangling movement. Still, he hadn’t jumped away or anything. Given his state down there, maybe it was safer to keep things close.
“We want the apartment.” He slowly turned around, holding me in front of him like a shield. I fidgeted but his hand on my stomach calmed me. There was nothing he could do about the bright red glow burning my cheeks though.
I didn’t pay much attention while Josh negotiated the details of the contract: rent, start date, term, it was all lost on me. My guess was that the realtor—a small, middle-aged guy—was so embarrassed he wanted to get out of there ASAP. It was the fastest negotiation in the history of real estate. Ten minutes later and we were back on Wisconsin Avenue.
“Let’s take a cab back to Jack’s.” Josh stood on the edge of the sidewalk about to hail a cab, when I saw the road sign.
“Wait!” Josh looked at me over his shoulder. “Georgetown University isn’t far from here?”
“Five or six blocks,” he answered.
“I’d love to go there.”
“We’ve been running around all day. Don’t you want to rest? We both have early flights tomorrow morning.”
I stepped closer to him. “I’d like to see where you spent those years away from me. I’ve never seen it for real. I need to see it.”
Need to see where he’d become the man I was now married to. Need to see where he’d fallen in love with someone else. Maybe it was all fucked-up for me to want that. Josh’s gaze was stuck on me as if he was reading my thoughts.
Still he nodded and, hand-in-hand, we strolled west. We stopped on the way to buy something to drink because it was damn hot. I sipped my Tropicana through a straw and Josh did the same. We didn’t talk much. Without the gigantic billboard announcing it, I wouldn’t even have noticed when we actually reached the campus. What I did notice, though, was the low-flying planes and how noisy the place was.
“They used to drive me nuts,” Josh said, pointing to the sky. Apart from the planes, the place wasn’t bustling with people or activity. “It’s August, pretty much dead time for the campus.”
I nodded and he kept leading me past the tall, red-brick buildings. I stared around and gave him the expected ‘Wow’ when we stopped in the main quad in front of Healy Hall. Josh was going all historical on me. He told me about the guy who’d built it, when, how and all the amazing events and people attached to the history of the Hall.
But I wasn’t listening.
All I was trying to do—trying to do right from the second we’d stepped onto campus—was steal a glimpse at the students around me. How they were dressed, how they moved, what they were talking about.
How cute the girls were?
Yep
, totally insecure.
“Let’s sit on a bench for a bit, Cass. That way you’ll be more comfortable people ogling.”
“Shit! Am I that obvious?” I kept myself from stamping my foot for breaking my proper-talking code. Again. I joined him on a bench on the west side of the quad anyway.
It was in the shade. I welcomed the break from both the sun and standing on my feet. Note to self: flip-flops not recommended for apartment-hunting.
“You didn’t come here for a tour of the campus.”
I shook my head, feeling a bit sheepish. An arch of his eyebrow was Josh’s way of asking me to spill the beans.
I shrugged and rested my bare heels on the edge of the bench. “Sometimes, after a night shift at
Teddy’s
, I would Google Georgetown University. I thought maybe if I kept scrolling through the images, I’d find you somewhere. I’d see if you had changed, if you still dressed the same way, walked the same way, whom you were with…” I trailed off and focused on the dark red of my nail polish. I wriggled my toes, gave a mini-cough, and wriggled my toes again.
“… If I had a girlfriend, if I had replaced you,” he continued my sentence in a neutral tone.
I nodded. “… if you were in love, like in love enough to make your life with that girl, marry her.”
Crap!
The cat was out of the bag. My hands flew to my face to cover it. Why did I need to stir up the past?
I kept my eyes shut, but I could see the silence hanging between us. I could even taste it: all dry and bitter. Josh wrapped his fingers around my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face. I still couldn’t open my eyes.
“I can’t change the past, Cass, and Lenor will always be part of it.”
I nodded again and swallowed through the lump in my throat.
“I wish you could see inside my heart, see that I never loved her the way I loved you back when we were kids or the way I love you now. But I can’t talk about it because it’d be like betraying her and stomping over her again. I’ve done enough of that.”
He pulled me by my wrists and forced me to shift position and face him.
“Open your eyes, Cass. Please. Look at me.”
I did what he asked and guilt hit me hard. Josh was in pain. The fire in his eyes that darkened them told me so.
“I’m scared you’ll wake up one day and regret giving her up for me.”
“I don’t know if I had to give Lenor up.” He opened my palms and massaged their center with his thumbs. “I only know that I never gave myself to her. Not entirely. The lies about my past didn’t help. More simply, I never gave myself to her because you had kept all of me and I never could let that go.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
He shook his head. “—No, I want you to know what is in my heart, or rather who is. It’s only you. Now. Tomorrow. Always. Only you.”
“Have you forgiven me?”
Josh flinched. He took his sweet little time to answer. “I don’t want to think about what you did to me then. I want to turn the page.”
“You haven’t forgiven me.”
Josh’s jaw locked. He leaned against the back of the bench. It was his way to regain some self-control. “Give me time. We have a life to build together with Lucas. The past will fade.”
“I won’t lie to you ever again. But, this time around, will you fight for me, for us?”
“Why do you want our relationship to be defined by conflict? I want us to find peace.”
“Like the peace you had with Lenor?”
“Stop bringing it back to her all the time.” He jumped on his feet and took three strides away from me. He turned back to face me. “She’s got nothing to do with us anymore.”
I stood and came to face him. His hand palmed the back of my head and he pulled me hard against him so that our faces were almost touching.
“I’ll fight for you though because I can never let you go, Cass. Never.” His voice was coarse. “Because if I do, it’ll kill me.”
His mouth took ownership of mine. His tongue hunted mine. I arched against him, my hands against his pecs. His cupped my butt and he pulled my body against his. I was under his spell.
He broke the contact and took in a raspy breath.
“It will kill me too,” I said faintly.
A smile curved his lips. “So let’s keep ourselves alive!”
I nodded and he claimed my mouth again. I let him. I wanted to give him the peace he was craving for. I so wanted to.
CHAPTER 9
Cassie
As every morning since I’d stepped onto this goddamn bus four weeks ago, my eyes shot wide open at seven a.m. on the dot. I stared at the pleats sticking out from the curtain around my bunk. That curtain between my bunk-bed and the ‘rest of the world’ had been a life-saver. I dressed and un-dressed behind it, wrote songs behind it and dreamed of Josh behind it.
And dreaming about Josh was what I was indulging in right now. Dreaming of how warm his body had felt behind me when I woke before dawn last Sunday. He was still sleeping and I felt his bare chest rising and falling each time he breathed. The time on the digital clock had warned me there were only a couple of minutes before that freakin’ alarm would start ringing. While I’d counted down every second in my head, my eyes had studied his hand enlaced with mine on the duvet. It was strong, but delicate, each vein drawn beautifully beneath his skin. He’d held me tightly throughout the night.
I hadn’t slept much, but really, who gave a flying fu—
oops
—monkey about sleep when the happiness inside reached ten on the Richter scale?
That goddamned alarm had rung all-too-soon. There’d been the rush to get dressed after a quick shower, and then the goodbyes. My cab had been the first to leave to Ronald Reagan Airport. Josh was flying from Dulles. To Europe.