Accidentally On Purpose Part 31

I nodded again, counting who was going in what bedrooms in my mind. "So, we'll have one room left over for a guest room. What are we going to do if, you know, you get married or something? I mean, it's something to think about if we're buying a house together."

He looked at me funny, like I just said the dumbest thing.

"What happens if you you get married?" He asked. get married?" He asked.

I almost laughed. A stupid chuckle left my mouth instead. "I think my current state is as good as it's gonna get for me. I'm so not on the market."

"Why would you even say that?" He said, irritated.

"No one buys broken items," I sighed, and reached over him and scrolled through the houses.

"People buy broken cars and fix them up all of the time."

"I'm not a broken hot rod. I'm more like...a shattered vase. No one buys those."

"Why are we talking about you like you're an inanimate object?"

"What about this house?" I clicked on a four bedroom house, but Luke pushed my hand away and slammed the laptop shut.

"This is driving me crazy," he said, jumping to his feet. "Sometimes I see that woman I knew so well, but as soon as she starts to come out, you push her back down into the dark."

"That's poetic," I smirked, also getting to my feet. I needed something to do instead of sitting there. I started folding some clean laundry sitting in a basket.

"Why?" He asked. "Why are you so afraid to be her?"

"Maybe you've forgotten, but that woman you knew so well screwed you over and broke your heart."

"You know what? Honestly?" He said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the clothes away from me. "More often than you think, I do do forget, and really, I may never forget entirely, but I have forgiven you. I forgive you entirely, no more animosity, but you can't forgive yourself." forget, and really, I may never forget entirely, but I have forgiven you. I forgive you entirely, no more animosity, but you can't forgive yourself."

"Luke, really!" I snapped. "Why are you bombarding me with all of this serious s.h.i.+t lately?"

"Because in order for us to move forward, we need to deal with that s.h.i.+t, Em. You need to deal with what Kyle did to you and you need to deal with your feelings about yourself."

"I am am dealing with it!" dealing with it!"

"Hiding behind your kid and your job will only hold up for so long."

I rolled my eyes and exhaled loudly and walked out of the room. Luke was hot on my heels.

"Great idea! Run away! That's a great way of dealing with your problems."

I paced the living room, while Luke stood off to the side.

"So, you've made some mistakes," he said, with a little less aggression. "We have all made some mistakes."

"Yeah, your mistake was, how did you put it? Oh yeah. You had this inflated idea of who I was and it's not my fault that I didn't live up to your expectations." I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the floor, breathing heavily. Saying it out loud really made me understand how badly it had hurt me when he said it.

"I was hurting pretty bad," he said softly. "I wanted you to feel my pain. I apologize, I didn't really mean it. Had I known then how deeply damaged you really were, I would have behaved differently, and I should have anyway. I didn't treat you the way I should treat the mother of my child. I've really been trying to make it up to you and be a better man."

I didn't know what to say to that. I was a little surprised.

"Em, I know you're broken, okay?" He said with a sense of urgency. "But I need to know what broke you so I can fix you."

I stared at him for a dumbfounded moment before returning my attention back to the floor. "Why would you want to bother? Is it making me a bad mom?"

"You're an excellent mother. I want to because I love you, and it kills me to see you like this."

"Oh."

I didn't have to respond, because the buzzer sounded. Luke grabbed his wallet and went down to meet the pizza guy. I sat down on the couch, feeling anxious and confused. Luke had not told me he loved me in a very long time. Did he love me love me? Or just love me as his baby mama?

When he returned with the food, I expected him to pick up where we left off, but he didn't. We sat on the couch for the rest of the afternoon nibbling on pizza and wings and watching television. He sat close to me and always had an arm behind me across the back of the couch. My anxiety grew until I thought I would burst, but just before reaching that point, Luke got up and left to get Lucas.

We slept in the bed together again that night, but this time my rest wasn't disrupted by intruding questions about my past. We crashed on opposite sides of the bed, much to my relief. In the morning, I woke up to find Luke and Lucas at the dining room table having a meaningful conversation about Elmo. I could only understand a few words, but Luke nodded and spoke at what seemed like the appropriate times.

"Are you playing hooky again?" I asked Luke after kissing the baby good morning.

"Impossible. I am co-owner of the firm. I can do whatever I want."

"Humble."

"I want to take Lucas to the zoo today and tonight you and I are having date night."

"Date night?" I asked doubtfully.

"Yep. I already asked Diane to babysit."

Diane was Luke's nineteen year old cousin. She was cute and perky and all of the Kessler kids loved her.

"I know I'm not Brad Pit, but I think I make a pretty good date," Luke said when I didn't answer.

I couldn't hide my small smile. "I guess."

"Oh my G.o.d, Lucas! Did you see that?"

"Smarta.s.s," I muttered and went into the kitchen.

The boys went to the zoo, but I stayed home to clean and do laundry. Luke wasn't letting me off of the hook for date night, explaining that I needed to get out. Maybe he was right, because unless it was a family function, I didn't do anything or go anywhere. While he and Lucas were gone, I convinced myself that this was a good thing, that it didn't necessarily signify anything romantic.

Diane arrived at four-thirty and Luke and I were out the door a few minutes later.

"Where are we going?" I asked as we stomped down the sidewalk.

"Let's just see where our feet take us," he said, taking my hand.

"You mean you didn't plan anything?"

"Nope."

"You suck a little at this dating thing," I said.

"Was that a joke?"

"Nope."

An hour later we found ourselves at a Barnes and n.o.ble, standing a few feet apart, quietly sifting through books.

"This is a hot date," I said.

"I know you think so. The only thing missing are your s.e.xy pink rubber gloves."

"Maybe we should go buy some, I mean if that's what rocks your boat."

"Only if you promise to wear the gloves and nothing else."

I snickered. "Yeah, because my body is so rockin' after having a baby."

"I think your body is even more rockin' than before you had a baby."

I threw a sideways glance at him. "I haven't lost any weight since the day Lucas was born."

"You're hot, I'm telling you," he tried to rea.s.sure me.

"You think so now. You haven't seen the stretch marks on my belly."

"I don't care about your stretch marks," he said, putting his book back on the shelf.

I felt the conversation was going in a direction I wasn't ready to go in, so I changed the topic.

"Are you flying to Jersey with me and Lucas for Labor Day?"

Donya's baby was a couple of weeks old and I was anxious to see her in person. She named her Rosa, after her husband's deceased mother.

"Do you want me to?" He looked at me.

"Yeah. Sure."

"Don't be so excited about it," he frowned. I think I actually hurt his feelings.

"I don't get excited about anything these days. Don't take it personally."

He looked at me doubtfully.

"I would love for you to come," I said with as much excitement as I could muster.

"Right here in the book store?" He feigned shock. "I knew my bad a.s.s girl was in there somewhere. I haven't done it in a public place since that one time in the bathroom at the diner."

"Walking away now," I said and left him in the aisle with the two older women who had just witnessed our whole conversation.

We went to dinner after the book store. The first thing Luke did was order us some hardcore drinks. I eyeballed my drink with apprehension. I haven't had a hard drink since before I found out I was pregnant with Lucas.

"Drink up," Luke insisted after devouring his.

"This is going to hit me like a pile of rocks."

"It will loosen you up a little."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Are you calling me uptight?"

He pressed his lips together and we had a staring contest, but I quickly lost, because he was right. Every day I felt tightly wound, knotted even. Sometimes it was hard to breathe, because everything inside of me felt squeezed tight as h.e.l.l, as if there was a boa constrictor slithering around inside of me, squeezing and squeezing, suffocating me.

"Hey, are you okay?" Luke reached across the table and took my hand. And the snake squeezed a little tighter.

Why does Luke make my condition worse? So stupid.

I picked up the drink and took a deep breath. I wasn't going to sip it like a little b.i.t.c.h. I was a master at drinking in my past life. I was going to make this tall, hard a.s.s drink my b.i.t.c.h. I downed it faster than Luke had downed his.

He looked at me with a crooked smile while I made a face. Well, I couldn't allow that drink to make me make a face. I called the waitress over.

"Two more please, and some shots of Hennessey."

By the time our main course was served, I was lit. The snake was still there, but he had loosened up a little, or I was just numb and would feel it again during sobriety. I didn't have even half the drinks I would have had in the past, but all of those months without liquor made me feel like a drinking virgin.

Luke drank some, but he wasn't feeling it like me. He had a perpetual grin on his face watching me and listening to me ramble on about nonsense. When we got up to leave, I forgot that I had on strappy sandals that Carrie Bradshaw would die for and almost fell on my face, but Luke caught me and kept a steady arm around my waist. I wrapped both arms around him.

"You're sooooo good to me," I cooed as we waited on the sidewalk for a cab.

He kissed the top of my forehead in response and waved down a cab. He helped me inside, leaned forward to tell the driver where to go and then settled back with his arm around me.

"What's with all of the f.u.c.king little kisses lately?" I asked. "I don't know if you're kissing me like I'm a pet or like a friend or like a lover. They're really conflicting kisses!"

He laughed and looked at me with something like adoration and said "I'm sorry. Let me clear that up for you." He put his hand under my chin and gently tilted my head and kissed me.

Fireworks went off in my head. Heat exploded from my mouth where his tongue caressed mine. Electric currents sizzled from where his hand was under my chin and spread throughout my body, right down to the tips of my toes. Oblivious to the cab driver up front, I locked my hands around his neck and without taking my lips from his, slithered on to him and straddled him. I could feel him hard against me and I wanted it super bad. I didn't realize I was grinding against him until I felt his hands on my hips.

"Hey," the cabbie called from the front, breaking our kiss and grinding session. "Why don't you pay me and take your s.e.xcapades to your bedroom?"

I opened the door, grabbed my pocketbook and stumbled off of Luke and onto the sidewalk outside our apartment building. I didn't wait for him, and rushed inside, not acknowledging the doorman or the guy that does security at night. As I rode the elevator to the sixth floor, I felt my boa constrictor again, squeezing me. Like a taught rubber band, things were snapping back into place. I was still fairly drunk though, but not enough to soothe the alarm that was beginning inside.

I let myself into the apartment, forced a smile at Diane who was sitting on the couch with a Vogue magazine.

"How was your night out?"

"Great," I forced a smile.

"Wow, you're drunk as h.e.l.l," she giggled. She got up, picked up her backpack. "Where's Lukester?"

"On his way up. How was Lucas?"