The One That Got Away (18 page)

Also decidedly not friend-ish is the hand he skims underneath my shirt, stroking the skin on my back, or the noise I make when
he sucks gently at my lower lip. He pulls back for an instant, so I peek at him from under my eyelashes, and am rewarded with another sleepy, cat-in-the-cream smile.

“Clearly you're good for me—I'm feeling better and better every minute,” he whispers, and kisses me again, more intensely this time. Eamon, who I've been daydreaming about for weeks. Is kissing me.

Gorgeously.

God help me. I remember him being a great kisser, but this is unbelievable. Head whirling with incredulous delight, I devour him, sliding a hand into his soft hair. He makes a rich, curling growl of satisfaction deep in his throat and pulls me harder against him. Then, as I shift my head to kiss him even deeper, my necklace clinks softly. The necklace Noah gave me. Right before he told me he wanted to marry me.

“Oh my god! What the hell am I doing?” I gasp, levering myself away from Eamon with trembling elbows.

He knows better than to answer, just watches me with steady brown eyes.

“I have to go. I'm sorry,” I say, rolling away from him and flinging back the covers.

He grabs my hand before I can flee to the bathroom with my clothes. “Whoa, come back here. Where are you going?”

I stare down at our joined hands. “This is crazy. We can't do this. I should never have stayed over; what a terrible idea.”

“I think it was an excellent idea,” he says, grinning boyishly. “In fact I think you should come back here so we can continue celebrating my restored health.” He slides his hand up my forearm, and for an instant I think how easy it would be to stuff a pillow over my conscience and lie back down next to him. In ten minutes I'd be making love to him, his lovely skin bare under my hands. But then what?

“Eamon, I have a boyfriend. This can't happen again.”

“Yeah, I don't give a shit about him. He's wrong for you anyway.”

I blink, speechless at his offhand dismissal of my four years of history with another man. “What could
possibly
make you think you have the right to say that to me?”

“Well,” he drawls, “I like-like you. As more than a friend. If we were playing spin the bottle, I'd be hoping the bottle would point to you.”

For once, I am not in the mood for his teasing. “Give me a fucking break.”

“I'm serious,” he says, smile fading. “You're adorable and sexy and hilarious and I can't stop thinking about you.” He watches me for a moment as this sinks in, then continues. “I know I had a chance with you years ago, and I won't say I screwed it up, 'cause I think you understand why I couldn't be with you then. But I want that chance now. I want you to be with me.”

Wordlessly, I close my eyes. After all this time, I absolutely
cannot
believe he is here, saying these things to me now, offering me exactly what I had once wanted so badly.

And now I can't take it.

I can sense him watching me, but I can't bring myself to look at him again; I'm too scared of what might happen if I do.

“Come on, Mahler, talk to me,” he says. “You're freaking me out.”

“This is insane,” I whisper. “I don't even know where this is coming from.”

“Yes you do,” he says softly. “It had to be obvious that I was into you.” With his left hand, he reaches over my shoulder, his fingertips sparking against the skin of my neck, and scoops my hair forward. His knuckles graze my collarbone as he lets it spill over his palm. “And I don't think I'm crazy for thinking you're into me, too. Come here and kiss me again.”

I close my eyes to try to process what I'm feeling. Which is
that I am aching for him, all the way down to my bones. It is more complex than the physical desire. All I want to do is wrap my arms around his neck and spend the rest of the day making love to him, looking at him, touching him, laughing with him. Today, and as many other days as I can get. I want it so badly that I'm almost ready to do it now, and deal with Noah, and the consequences, later. Kind, loving, loyal Noah, who I've spent the last four years building a life with, apparently doesn't mean a thing to me when Eamon Roy tells me he wants me. The realization makes my chest constrict with panic, and it is this more than anything that makes me say no.

I make my voice firm, decisive. “I can't.”

“Why not?” he says, unfazed.

He knows exactly why not, but I remind him anyway, to drive the point home to both of us. “Because I'm with Noah. Things are…tough right now with him gone, but I love him, and I want it to work between us. I need it to.”

“Good old Noah. I have to tell you, I really don't get it,” he muses, rubbing his thumb across the tender skin on the inside of my elbow.

“What is it that you don't get?” I snit, trying to use anger to marshal my shattered defenses, but he ignores my tone and considers the question.

“What he adds to your life,” he says finally. “Why you're with him. I think he's a condescending asshole, frankly. What kind of dickhead tells his girlfriend her job doesn't matter because he makes more money than she does?” He pauses and studies me for a moment before continuing. “You're not in love with him.”

“Of course I am,” I sputter, queasy at how hollow the words sound. How hollow they feel. “And by the way, he thought
you
were an arrogant prick. I find myself suddenly beginning to agree.”

He shakes his head. “You're not in love with him,” he says
again. “The way you kissed me just now, that was not a woman who's in love with somebody else.”

“I never said I wasn't attracted to you,” I mutter grudgingly. “But I shouldn't have kissed you. It was a mistake.”

“I think you're hiding behind him,” he says.

“Okay, we're done.” I jerk my arm free of his grasp. “The last thing I need is psychotherapy from one of my clients.” Childishly, I slam the bathroom door and crank the sink faucet on full blast to drown out his response, but he follows me and yanks the door open.

“You're kidding me, right? With the ‘client' stuff? After all this,
that's
what I am to you?” He leans against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, scowling.

I scowl back at him from over my toothbrush, then turn my back to spit with as much angry dignity as I can muster. “Of course not! Obviously we're friends. But even if I weren't with Noah, the fact that I work for you would be a damn good reason to avoid getting involved.”

“So according to you, you and I are friends and former lovers who, in a temporary lapse in judgment, briefly indulged our mutual physical attraction, which will never happen again.”

“I don't know if I would go so far as to call us former lovers, but otherwise, that's exactly right,” I say.

“Okay, so, if we weren't lovers, then what do you call it when you spend all night making love with someone?”

“Well if it only happens
once
, then usually they call that a one-night stand, Eamon.”

He recoils as if I had slapped him, but I refuse to feel guilty at the hurt that's stamped on his face.

“That's all it was to you?” he says quietly.

“No. But I spent eight years thinking that's all it was to
you
, so forgive me if I haven't adjusted my thinking yet. I can't give you another chance, not now. I'm already with someone else. You and
I are never going to be more than friends.” Even as I say the words, grief stabs at me, but I don't back down. “Now, please get out of here so I can change.”

“That seems like an excellent reason to stay,” he murmurs.

I stab my finger toward the bedroom. “OUT!”

He rolls his eyes ostentatiously but shoves away from the door, leaving me alone. I take longer than necessary to dress, and, when I finally emerge, the bedroom is empty. I find him in the kitchen, rummaging in his fridge for ingredients for one of his disgusting power smoothies.

I have no interest in continuing our discussion, so I stand a safe distance away, in the dining area. “Hey, I'm going to take off,” I call, jerking my thumb toward the driveway. “Gotta get home. I'm glad you're feeling better.”

“Me too,” he says, flipping open the door to his freezer. “Thanks for keeping me company.” Without looking at me, he rattles some frozen blueberries into the blender.

For some reason his reserve annoys me. I just spent ten minutes telling him I want nothing to do with him—why am I disappointed that he's decided not to push it? “No problem,” I say. “I had fun—” The growl of the blender drowns out the rest of my words. He looked me right in the eyes when he pressed the button.

“Are you serious?” I yell when the motor stops. Noah would
never
pull a trick like that.

“We were done talking. You made that clear.”

I don't even bother to swallow my sound of disgust. “God, you can be an asshole.”

He tips the blender jug over a drinking glass and slaps the bottom of it, dislodging a mudslide of purple sludge. “Not the first time I've heard it,” he says, giving the jug another resounding thump.

“Good,” I call without looking at him, as I stomp toward the door. “At least you're consistent.” And then, because apparently
Eamon turns me into someone who behaves like this, I slam his front door behind me so hard it rattles.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck
. What am I
doing?
That infuriating scrap just now aside, my schoolgirl infatuation with Eamon has clearly ballooned into something much more serious. What unsettles me most about the whole encounter is not actually the kiss—although my entire body blooms with heat every time I replay it in my mind—but the dense mix of emotions I felt the night before, watching him sleep. Tenderness, protectiveness, desire, affection, and an aching longing to be able to act on those feelings. For him to return them. And then the joy when he told me that, maybe just a little bit, he did.

To my relief, Danny isn't home when I get back to the house; right now all I want to do is go for a run to clear my head. As I find the familiar rhythm, my feet striking the sidewalk and springing off in smooth, steady opposition, the panic and tension drain out of me, leaving behind a messy residue of confusion. My thoughts keep snagging on one particular comment Eamon made, about how it should have been obvious that he was into me. Because he's right—it should have been.

I've been lying to myself for weeks: acting like it's no big deal that we can't go two hours without emailing or texting each other; insisting to Nicole that our trip to Round Top and the three-hour Polvo's marathon that followed didn't feel like a date. Pretending that he hasn't been treating me like much more than a friend, because admitting that he was would have meant finding a way to make him stop. When, in fact, all I wanted was more.

Emotional infidelity. It sounds like the topic of an
Oprah
episode—her guest, a woman who's formed a too-close friendship with a male co-worker but keeps telling herself it's okay because “Well, he understands that I'm married, so nothing's going to happen…” Except that, in my case, it did. I indulged myself and
rationalized myself all the way into Eamon's
bed
, and then still somehow managed to feel surprised when the tension between us ignited.

I'm ashamed and disappointed in myself. Maybe some people would adopt a more laissez-faire attitude toward a little kissing in the middle of an intercontinental relationship, but not me. And certainly not Noah.

Because it wasn't just any kiss. I've been replaying it in my mind the way you hit repeat on a new favorite song. His hands on my skin, his lips teasing mine—it was dazzling. And it wasn't just any guy, it was Eamon. Eamon, who I already fell head over heels for once, back when I was twenty-three. Eamon, who knows better than anybody what it's like to have a goal that you're burning for, because his goal had him practicing butterfly turns in a hospital bed with half the bones in his body broken. Eamon, who I'd rather help roller-paint his ceiling than do just about anything else with
anyone
.

Why, why,
why
couldn't he have decided he wanted a relationship when I wasn't already in one? All those years ago, when there was nothing I wanted more than to be with him? Instead of now, when I've invested four years with somebody else, somebody amazing. Somebody who deserves better than to be replaced like a busted laptop with out-of-date software.

A few hours later, I am stretched out on the couch watching a satisfyingly violent zombie movie when Danny stops by on his way out to work.

“Hey, love, what time do you think you'll make an appearance tonight? I'm going to be at Clemmie.”

I grunt. “Think I'm staying in tonight, actually.”

He blows a raspberry. “Sheesh, what is the matter with you people? I just talked to Ame, he was cranky as hell. Said he wasn't over his flu. Don't tell me he got you sick after you braved his plague-infested household.”

Eamon is cranky? Well, golly, that makes two of us
. “Nah, I'm just not really in the mood to go out. I'll see you tomorrow.”

After he's gone, I can't stop thinking about his parting words. A few hours ago Eamon kissed me, then announced that, now that he's finally gotten around to wanting a relationship with me, he'd really like it a lot if I dumped my boyfriend of four years to be with him. Thus offhandedly obliterating my peace of mind for the foreseeable future. And
he
is cranky? Is he for real?

Before I have a chance to think better of it, I am dialing his number.

He answers, sounding surprised and happy to hear from me. Maybe even, if I'm not reading too much into it, a little hopeful. I abruptly lose all desire to read him the riot act; more than anything, I just feel sad.

“I want to know something,” I say quietly, fingering Noah's diamond heart pendant where it rests between my collarbones.

“What's that?”

“Why now? Why did you have to decide you wanted this now, when I'm already with someone? I wanted this so much eight years ago. I liked you
so
much. But you weren't interested then.”

“I was, Ree, I told you that. It was just the wrong time.”

“It didn't have to be. For me it wasn't.
You
decided that it was. And you decided somebody else was a better option than me.”

“Trust me, it was the wrong time. Even if we'd found a way to be together, you would have been miserable. We met when I was in light training, but the rest of the time, I was a robot. Swim, eat, sleep, that's all I did. That's all I cared about. It was all I
could
care about, if I was going to achieve what I wanted to. The only reason Hannah could deal with it was that she was doing the exact same thing. She wanted it as badly as I did, so we could coexist in that narrow little world. You would have hated it. You would have hated
me
.”

“I just wish you'd given us a chance,” I tell him, even though I recognize the truth in what he's saying.

“I'm asking for it now.” His voice is a low, sexy rumble.

“But now it's impossible. Noah and I have a great relationship. We're planning on getting married. And you're acting like he's nothing, like you and I can just pick up where we left off? It's crazy, Eamon.” I press the pendant harder against my skin.

“It's not crazy. This isn't picking up where we left off; this is a thousand times better. We're both grown-ups, and I have all the time in the world to spend with you. And as for Noah, if your relationship was that great, you'd be married already.”

My temper flares right up again. “What a stupid thing to say.”

“Really? You've been together what, five years?”

“Four. But we weren't ready—”

“You both weren't ready, or you, Sarina, weren't ready?”

“Both of us,” I say, even as I think back to Noah's face the night that he gave me the necklace. His sweet, hopeful face, and my plummeting stomach.

“And it doesn't bother him that after four years you still live with a roommate, instead of with him?”

“I like my independence.”

“That didn't answer the question. Does it bother him?”

I am silent, stubbornly.

“So it does bother him, but he's decided not to make an issue out of it because it's not worth fighting over.”

“What is your point with all this?”

“My point is that I don't buy that your relationship is this
amazing thing that you can't give up. You keep telling me how committed to him you are, but I don't see it in your actions. You've postponed living together, you've postponed getting married…. I think you've been stalling because deep down you don't really want a life with him. It's time to be honest with yourself about what you want.”

“Commitment means choices as well as actions, Eamon.” My voice is trembling. “I've chosen to be with him for four years, and I'm choosing it again. It's not going to happen with you and me.”

No matter how deeply it digs at me to say it.

The next morning, overwhelmed by a wave of missing him—and, also, overwhelmed with contrition—I call Noah. I hate that we've let things between us get so disconnected. If distance is the test of a strong relationship, then we are failing. He is utterly absorbed in his work, and I have been utterly absorbed in mine, in Eamon's project—and in Eamon. I need to revitalize our connection, to remind myself how good we've been together, right from the very beginning.

I open my laptop on my desk, the desk he gave me, so I can try him on Skype first. I need to see him, even if the image is hiccupy. I get lucky; the call connects and he appears on my computer screen, smiling like it's Christmas morning. The rush of pleasure that floods me at the sight of his face reassures me. This is Noah; Noah, who I love. All this stuff with Eamon is nothing—we will be fine. I just have to make it a couple more months.

“Hey, kitten!” he says. “Listen, I'm so sorry for what I said the other day. I was trying to make you feel better, and I—”

“No,
I'm
sorry,” I say quickly. “I shouldn't have hung up on you like that, it was childish.”

He waves a hand. “I deserved it. So, what're you up to?”

“Not much. I missed you. Just wanted to see your face.”

“I miss you too, honey. Whatcha been doing this weekend, anything fun?”

Guilt churns in my belly. I cast about for something, anything, to tell him. “Not a whole lot…I watched
Snakes on a Plane
. Did you ever see that? It's freaking hilarious.”

He makes a face like I do when somebody tells me I should try organ meat. “Yeah. I saw it on—no joke—a plane. It was terrible.”

“Of course it was. Hilariously terrible!” I grin, waiting for him to agree with me, but he just shrugs.

“If you say so.”

I refuse to read too much into the fact that he doesn't share my opinion of one Samuel L. Jackson horror-comedy.
Except that he doesn't really share my sense of humor in general
, I suddenly think. How had I never noticed that before?

“What about you, did you get some time off from work yesterday?” I prompt him.

“Yeah, actually. Diego, the lead partner down here, invited a few of us out to his country house for the day. He's got a nice family; his three-year-old was about the cutest thing I've ever seen. She kept hiding behind her mother's legs and peeking out at me when she thought I wasn't looking.” He is mentioning the little girl on purpose, I know.

I smile, waiting for the sense of calm, happy inevitability I used to feel whenever I thought about starting a family with Noah. But it doesn't come. I press my hands onto the surface of the desk, and my fingertips leave little smears of dampness.

“I really wish you were here,” I say abruptly.

He hears the strain in my voice and frowns. “Me too. You sound upset. Is everything okay with work? Aside from the Balm thing.”

Well. Yes, and no
. “I'm fine—work is going well. I just really miss you. I'm sorry, I know I sound like a broken record,” I say. Suddenly I'm on the verge of crying.

“Ah, honey, I know. I hate it too. Is there any way you can take off enough time to come down here?” he says.

“I can't afford to take another trip right now. Jay's wedding was not cheap.”

“Don't worry about that—I'll cover it for you.”

Out of nowhere, irritation flashes. “I don't want you to. I want to pay for myself, Noah, I'm a grown-up.”

His mouth hangs open. “But you just told me you couldn't afford it.”

I press my palms over my face. “I know. I mean, I technically have the money, I just—”

“Sarina, I acknowledge that you're a grown-up. But you're a grown-up who has a budget. Please let me do this for you—I can't let money stop you from coming. And anyway, I was talking about work. Can you take the time?”

I demur without even thinking about it. “I'm right in the thick of it on Eamon's project,” I explain, but he interrupts me.

“You've been in the thick of it since March. You can't even leave town for four days? Fly down on Friday and back on Monday. What's the point of working for yourself if you can't take time off when you want to?”

He's absolutely right. Shame scalds me as I recognize the real reason I'm hedging is a reflexive desire to avoid being away from Eamon. But after yesterday, it's obvious that being away from Eamon is the best thing I could possibly do.

We decide that I'll come down two weekends from now. Ostensibly, this is to avoid the worst of the last-minute airfare
charges, but it also conceals from Eamon the fact that this is a panicked flight back to the arms of the man that I'm supposedly in love with. I skate through the next few days on a sense of giddy relief—the decision to visit Noah has gotten me my equilibrium back, and so far I've been successful in refusing to think about Eamon or the kiss. Things between us have been friendly but neutral all week, neither of us so much as alluding to what happened. But I wait until the Thursday site meeting to mention the trip to Argentina, because I want to watch his reaction.

It is the first time I've seen him since we kissed. I knew better than to think my attraction to him would disappear on command—it certainly hasn't before—but I wasn't prepared for the way it's been amplified. I cannot stop staring at his slim, curving lips, remembering how incredible they felt against mine. I'm hypersensitive to every nuance of his interaction with me. Though he doesn't step one toe over the line I etched out between us, he nonetheless manages to make sure I understand that he wants to.

I wait till the end of the meeting to deliver my news. “Oh, by the way,” I say breezily, as if I had merely forgotten to mention it until now, “next weekend is my trip to Buenos Aires. I'll be reachable via email on my phone; the only time I won't be available is while I'm on the plane. But I'll have my laptop with me, too.”

Joe gives me a silent thumbs-up, but Eamon kicks at a stray hunk of drywall lying near his foot. “You never mentioned you were going to Buenos Aires.”

I make an apologetic noise. “Oh, didn't I? I'm sorry about that, I thought I had. It's not much of a trip; just a quick zip down to visit Noah. I'll be back by next Tuesday. And as I said, I'll be on my phone most of the time.”

He nods—there's nothing he can object to in this. But his jaw
is tight and something is sparking in his dark eyes. “Well, I hope you have a great time,” he says with finely tuned sarcasm.

“Thanks.” I drop my notepad into my bag, pretending not to notice. But inside, I am buzzing. He is unmistakably jealous. And, though I'm ashamed to acknowledge it, I love that he is.