The Whole Golden World (16 page)

25

M
organ pulled out of her driveway and had to force herself to breathe so she wouldn't pass out at the wheel.

Though the occasion felt momentous to her, the lie required to make it happen was pathetically simple. A brief, “Hey, Mom, I'm gonna spend the night with Nicole, okay?” And she was off to—dare she think of him this way?—her boyfriend's house. Her lover's house. Morgan giggled out loud.

Nicole was an orchestra friend she'd drifted away from in senior year. But it was believable enough she'd spend the night there. To Dinah, anyway. And unlike Britney, whose mother was friends with Dinah, Nicole's mom and her mother never even saw each other. Nicole's mom, in fact, commuted to Royal Oak to work, and no one ever saw her in town at all, hardly.

Morgan motored away from her house and indulged herself in a giddy squeal. She winced as her old car's buzzing exhaust messed up her sophisticated rendezvous.

All she would have to do was check her phone now and then for texts or calls from her parents. They'd have no way of knowing where she really was when she answered.

Morgan had committed his directions to memory, so she drove with confidence, while being careful not to speed.

She felt briefly self-conscious about her old beat-up Chevy in the fancy neighborhood, then reminded herself that no one would be paying attention, not really. Her car was just another car on just another street.

She pulled into a long driveway that ran down a hill, the garage mercifully out of the view of the road. The garage opened just as planned; he must have been watching for her. This gave her another delighted shiver.

Once the garage door closed behind her, she squealed again, unable to help herself. She'd done it! She was inside and unseen. She opened her car door to see him standing in the doorway of the garage, a big gorgeous smile on his face.

“Hey, handsome,” she said, stepping out of the car in her skinniest jeans and a shirt she'd unbuttoned down to her cleavage on the way over.

“Hey, yourself,” he'd said, appreciating her body from top to toes.

It took all her willpower to saunter over with a sexy swing in her hips, and not fling herself into his arms in one ecstatic leap.

 

The candlelight made him look like a movie star.

This time, there had been no frantic clutching on a cold floor. He'd ushered her inside and showed her a table set with two plates, and candles lit. Jazz was playing from somewhere. She couldn't see any stereo or speakers. Maybe rich people had ambient sound they could pump anywhere in the house.

The music-from-nowhere made the whole thing feel even more like a movie.

As he'd served the pasta, Morgan had worried aloud over making a mess. He'd assured her that he could clean up so well they'd never know the difference, and the wine and dinner he'd brought in himself. He couldn't cook, he admitted sheepishly, so he'd ordered from Amici.

Now they were still sitting in the chairs at the corners of the table, the crumbs of dinner and dessert still scattered on the tablecloth.

Morgan toyed with the stem of her wineglass, something she'd seen women do in movies. She'd had wine before, but it was always some awful fruity stuff that made her queasy, and only in plastic cups. This red had a strong and difficult flavor but that made it easy to sip slowly, and with each sip she'd acclimated to the acrid boldness and was detecting the berry flavor underneath. Eventually, she was able to drink it without even a shiver, like a Frenchwoman or some other species of sophisticated adult. He'd refilled her glass with what she imagined was an admiring smile.

So far they'd been talking about his college days. He'd been telling her about a guy named Bill, famous in college for his ability to eat the hottest chicken wings, handfuls at a time, without taking a single sip of beer or water.

He leaned back in his chair—the picture of elegant cool, like George Clooney—and said, “So where are you going to college?”

That yanked her back to her actual life, to the e-mails she got in the same week from both Central Michigan and Boston U accepting her as a student, and how all she could do was file away BU's in her “save” folder, because she couldn't bear to look at it, couldn't bear to delete it. She shook her head and sipped the wine.

“I don't want to talk about that. I'd rather talk about . . . travel. Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

For a moment—so quick it seemed like déjà vu, something she wasn't even sure happened at all—his smile turned into a sneer. “You mean if I were fabulously wealthy like my brother?” His face relaxed in the next instant. “I wouldn't waste my time baking on some bland beach. I'd explore some part of the world. Japan, or India. An African safari. Something like that.”

Morgan sat forward then, nodding. Yes, go on!

He winked at her. “With a fancy, civilized hotel and a huge, soft bed waiting at the end of the day. What about you?”

She tossed her hair back—it was itching her face—and for a moment she wanted to brush her hair in front of her cheek again. But she did not. She made herself leave her hair alone and face him, scar and all.

“Actually, I think first I'd want to explore our own country. We're so lucky to have so much variety here, you know? I'd take an epic road trip. I'd go east first, to New York. Then work my way to California and north to Oregon. It would take months. I'd keep a journal, and take pictures, write poetry . . .”

“Oh, you write? I didn't know that.”

Morgan flashed on her poetry notebook, hidden under her mattress. “Nah, not really. I was just rambling.”

“That's interesting,” he said, regarding her with one hand on his chin. “I would have guessed that most girls your age would say something like Paris or Hawaii.”

“I'm hardly a girl,” Morgan replied, tossing her hair in what she hoped was a flirtatious way.

“Come here,” he said now and held out his hand. She took it and let him pull her from her chair.

He walked her into the living room in front of a fire full of wispy dancing flames, tugging her gently down to sit.

“I don't understand why I feel this way,” he said, his eyes on hers. He clasped both her hands and ran his thumbs softly over her fingers. “But I do. You make me feel like a hero, you know that? Like I could run to California and back. Like I could conquer anything and anyone, and it's all there in your face. I thought I had that with . . . I thought . . .”

Morgan held her breath. She did not want to talk about his wife. Did not even like thinking the word.

He cleared his throat. “I wish I could make you promises. But I don't know what tomorrow holds. I don't even understand today, right now.”

She exhaled and squeezed his hands. “You don't have to understand it.”

“But can you live with that? That's what I need to know. I can't promise you what will happen between us. I can't promise how often I'll be able to see you. Or how long.”

A gasp escaped Morgan before she could help it. “How long?”

“That's just it. We can't proceed as normal, like an ordinary couple. It may feel natural to us, but . . . it's not that simple. Do you follow me?”

Morgan nodded. Of course. She was not a naive child, after all. She could not expect him to abandon everything he had and run off into the sunset with her. She set her jaw against the growing lump in her throat.

He scooted forward on the floor. Morgan began to feel deeply cold, despite the warm fire and the humming furnace.

He said, “I need you to not make demands on me is what I'm asking. Because I don't know what I can do, or when I can do it. If you can't live with that, I understand and we'll stop this now, before anyone gets hurt . . .”

Morgan held herself still, considering what was worse: having just one piece of him, or nothing at all.

He moved in closer to her, and she thought he was going to kiss her lips, but he tilted his head and instead kissed her neck, then moved up to her earlobe. Almost involuntarily she tipped her head, opening her neck to him, her hair falling away from her scar, which he then kissed in a succession of soft pecks.

He moved down her chin then to her chest. She tilted far back such that she almost fell, so he caught her from behind and kissed his way down her chest to the first button on her shirt, which he unfastened with his one free hand.

Without understanding how, she was suddenly in his arms, and he was standing. She felt drowsy and light-headed, and light in body, too, seeming to weigh nothing.

He started to walk her toward the stairs and then he stopped on the first step, asking her in a hoarse, strained whisper: “Are you okay with this? All this?”

She found she had only the strength to nod and reach her arms up around his neck as he bore her up, up, up the stairs.

 

Morgan startled awake and almost cried out, then in an instant remembered where she was, and who that was sleeping next to her. A smile unfurled over her face.

The four-poster bed was impossibly soft and roomy. She could stretch every which way and still not hit the edge. She rolled to her side, facing him, and sighed. The hall light was on, and in the soft glow through the open door, his arm outside the sheets was in silhouette. She could trace with her eyes the definition of his bicep.

Maybe she should drop his class. There was no way she could sit in there every day, not now. She would combust right in her chair if she had to hold in the memory of this night and all the places he'd touched her. They had done it what, three times? Four? She wasn't sure, the memory was fuzzy, as if seen through a scratched lens. She just remembered feeling wonderful and ecstatic, over and over.

Had she taken her pill?

Morgan sprang upright. She normally took her pill when she brushed her teeth, and she could instantly tell she had not done that. They'd just crashed out in the sheets together after a while.

Morgan had to urgently pee, too.

She slipped out of bed and padded through the semidarkened house, feeling her way. She was afraid to turn on many lights. Some night owl could notice the lights were on late with his brother on vacation.

Morgan found her bag by the door where she'd come in and then took it back upstairs to the bathroom. As her sex haze faded, she was starting to notice her head felt sore, and she had a funny taste on her tongue.

In the bathroom's soft nightlight glow, she ripped open her makeup bag and found her pack of pills. She relaxed at the sight of the empty pill slot and suddenly remembered she'd taken one dry before she'd even entered the house, figuring she might be too distracted to remember.

Thank goodness she'd convinced her mother she wanted them only to “regulate her period” when she started dating David. Dinah may have suspected the real reason, but if so, she'd apparently taken a pragmatic view and faked ignorance, and for that Morgan could only be grateful.

After a trip to the bathroom, Morgan realized she hadn't checked her phone in hours. She'd set it to vibrate and left it in her pocket, then as they tore off each other's clothes it would have landed on the floor in her jeans.

Morgan crawled around on the floor in search of it, her heart pounding harder with each second. What if something terrible had happened at home? What if Jared had a seizure? What if her dad had a heart attack like old Mr. Adamczyk . . .

What if her mother couldn't reach her phone and decided to try Nicole's house directly?

With quivering hands she read her messages. All from Britney, and one from Ethan. None important.

Her head felt swimmy and achy again. She wanted to search for some Tylenol somewhere but didn't want to wake him and didn't want to rummage.

She pulled herself back into the vast, soft bed and snuggled next to his warmth. In his sleep, he slipped a heavy protective arm over her, and she closed her eyes to revel in its weight.

But sleep never came.

Somewhere in the vast house a grandfather clock chimed the passing hours, torture for an insomniac who didn't like to think about the sleep she was missing.

In a cruel twist, the nightmares she would have avoided, being awake, taunted her conscious mind, as their images popped up again and again, especially the new variety with her being crushed or consumed by him. . . .

Him. She could no longer even think his teacher name.

Morgan turned from side to side, her nerves increasingly jangly with anxiety, her mind exhausted from the effort of pushing aside her creepy dreams.

 

It was nearly nine o'clock when he awoke at last.

Morgan was in the kitchen, washing and drying dishes and setting them carefully on the counter. She'd already taken a shower, and then dried the shower with a towel, then carried the towel into the basement where she'd dropped it in a pile of towels in a basket.

Her skin was starting to itch, being in someone else's house, especially as daylight poured in through the tall, east-facing windows, their filmy curtains doing little to stem the flood of morning sun.

Her head was still pounding, but she didn't dare make coffee, not wanting to make the mess worse. For all she knew they were coming home today. She'd never asked.

So when he finally appeared, she felt at first relief, a great
whoosh
of it that almost took her right down to the floor, tired as she was from only having dozed for a couple of hours.

“Hey,” he said with a gravelly morning voice. “You didn't have to do that. But thanks.”

He started rummaging in the kitchen. In making coffee, he scattered the grounds on the counter and she flinched. He said, “Ah, don't worry. I'll clean it. They're not back until Monday. And I'm not expected home right away either. I was out with my college drinking buddy last night you know.”

He winked at her and then came over closer. He set down his mug, cradled the back of her head in his large hand, and pulled her toward him.