Just One Night: The Stranger Part 11

"We are good," my mother said, but she didn't know how wrong she was. I've gagged and bound the angel on my shoulder and given my devil my mind and body as a playground.

Can I go back? Do I even want to?

"I don't know," I say. It's an answer to both Simone's questions and my own. I tried taking one step at a time but now I don't know what direction I'm supposed to walk in. So I stand in the bathroom, weighed down by secrets and jewelry, looking for bread crumbs to lead me back to a path that doesn't terrify me.

The bathroom door opens. It's Ellis, the woman who I went to school with during my undergrad years, the woman who took me to the luncheon where I first met Dave. We rarely see each other anymore . . . maybe three or four times a year for a reunion lunch, but tonight she treats me like I'm her best friend in the world. "I'm so happy for you!" She gushes as she brushes past Simone. "I always tell everyone I know that you and Dave are the perfect couple."

And as she embraces me, I hear Simone mutter to herself, "Perfect, like the statues of Italy."

DAVE DRIVES ME HOME. My ring needs to be resized. It squeezes a bit too tightly.

I've given my answer but have yet to make my decision. My world is upside down and backward like that. And it's my fault. I can no more blame Robert Dade for the complexities in my life than I can blame a fierce storm for knocking down a poorly made building.

"Are you happy?" he asks, and I nod and smile because I don't know what else to do.

He pulls into my driveway and turns to me. "May I come in for a nightcap?"

The word takes me off guard. It's old-fas.h.i.+oned and formal, the kind of thing a man asks for with an ironic smile on a third date. But Dave has been with me for six years, touched my bare skin more frequently than my favorite perfume has. Tonight he pledged to spend his life with me. He's past the point of having to drop hints to charm his way into my home.

Still, I don't question it. So much has been strange between us lately, maybe this new twist in his vocabulary is simply in keeping with our new awkwardness. So I lead him in and as he watches from the doorway of my kitchen, I select a sweet port from my small collection of wines and two fragile gla.s.ses for us to drink from.

But before I can open the bottle, he puts his hand on mine. It's a light touch and yet . . . it holds a different kind of weight.

"It's been a while, Kasie."

I stare down at the unopened bottle.

"Ten days since we've made love," he continues.

"Ah, you've been counting," I tease but there's a tremor in my voice. Has it really been that long? Why haven't I noticed?

Because it hasn't been ten days for me. It hasn't even been a day. In the wee hours of the morning I had been with Robert Dade.

Dave moves his hand to my wrist, his fingers pressing gently down on the little vein that gives away my speeding pulse.

How can I do this? How can I be with two men within twenty-four hours? How can I call myself anything other than a s.l.u.t after that?

I focus my eyes on the port, not even allowing myself to blink, as if even the slightest movement of my lids might produce tears.

"Let me pour us something to drink?" I ask meekly. My guilt has made me timid. It makes me blush and tremble.

Dave sees all this, he feels my racing pulse . . . but he reads it differently. He leans over and tenderly touches his lips to mine. It's a soft kiss, loving, and as he quietly opens my lips with his tongue, I yield to him, raising my arms and wrapping them around his neck as he pulls me closer. Some of my fear subsides. This feels simple, comfortable, secure. G.o.d, do I crave a sense of security right now.

And I like the way Dave holds me, like I'm precious and worthy of admiration.

It's so dissimilar from the uncontrolled pa.s.sion that shoots from Robert's fingertips. I remember him biting my lip, holding my arms above my head while tenderly kissing my neck, pressing me up against the wall as I welcomed him inside me. . . .

I pull away from Dave. "A drink," I say weakly. "I want us to have a drink together first."

Dave's confusion is clear but it's the hurt I see that tears at my heart. I lean forward and place a closed-mouth kiss on his jawline. "Just one drink first. I want you to taste this port."

He nods and walks out of my kitchen.

How many times have I seen Dave leave a room? It never bothered me before. But now the sight of his retreating back hits me like an ominous omen. I have to take three deep breaths before I can steady my hands enough to effectively dislodge the cork.

I find him on my sofa. He doesn't look at me as I hand him his gla.s.s. The wine is such a deep red it's almost black and now even that innocuous detail seems telling. The room is suddenly filled with signs and every single one of them is alarming.

Another deep breath, a few more silent words of reason to help me pull it together.

Dave finally raises his eyes, his pain sharpening into something that resembles an accusation. "Are you still mad at me?" he asks.

I stare back, blankly.

"I shouldn't have left you that night," he continues. "The night you straddled my lap and asked me to . . ." His voices fades off and he looks away again. "I apologized with roses. But if that's not enough, just tell me the price for moving past it. Because this"-he vaguely gestures with his hand at everything and nothing-"this is h.e.l.l."

"I'm not charging you for a miscommunication. I'm not angry."

"But something's off," Dave observes. "When I put my arm around your shoulders, you don't lean into me the way you used to. It used to be that when I reached for your hand, your palm would just naturally melt against mine. Now it's as if our palms don't fit together the way they used to. I asked you to marry me tonight in front of everyone in the world who matters to us. Is it too much to ask that we celebrate and . . ." Again, his voice fades.

I almost don't recognize this man. I've never seen him miserable.

I did this to him.

"Dave," I say his name carefully and sit by his side. But I don't reach for him. Instead I sip the rich sweet notes of wine and try to find an explanation that will help rather than destroy.

"Did I scare you that night?" he asks. "Please tell me I didn't. I want to make you feel safe. It's my job. Please tell me I didn't mess up something so fundamental. Please."

"No, you make me feel safe," I say quickly. "Always." I study the contents of my gla.s.s before taking another sip.

"Then what is it?"

I don't answer right away. I'm busy gathering up my scattered bits of courage. This is the moment. I know that. It's now that I need to tell him.

"Is it your sister?"

The non sequitur jars me, throws me completely off balance.

"You know we're a week away from her birthday. Melody would have been thirty-seven, right?"

How on earth did we get here, from talking about the troubles in our relations.h.i.+p to talking about Melody? She has no place in this exchange.

"She died two days after her twenty-second birthday, right? That means we're approaching the fifteenth anniversary of her death."

I don't respond. The conversation we had been engaged in ripped at my gut but this conversation is untenable. I know why Dave and I are having problems; that's on me. But to try to blame this new distance between us on Melody would be worse than anything I have done so far. And it would be worse than all her sins combined.

"You were thirteen when she died," Dave is speaking slowly as he tries to remember the details of a story that I so rarely tell. "It was a suicide."

"No," I spit out the word vehemently. "It was an accidental overdose." I say this as if that isn't a kind of suicide. Cocaine, ecstasy, tequila, men: my sister used them all to feed her self-destruction. Every line, shot, and brutal crush was no better than a violent slash of a knife.

And yet she said she loved them all. Her love of excess and recklessness was only matched by her hatred of structure and tedious commitments.

She accidentally overdosed. My mother said she brought it on herself.

Dave doesn't say anything. He doesn't want this to be a monologue. He had hoped I would hold his hand. He wants me to once again lean into his embrace and tell him he knows me better than anyone else.

But this was not a reminder that will lead to that kind of affection. At the moment it's hard for me to think of him at all because, at the moment, I'm not his fiancee. I don't even know him. We've never met.

At the moment I'm nine years old and I'm staring out my bedroom window at a girl named Melody who can't stop dancing. She's dancing in the front yard to music no one else can hear.

It will be the last time I will ever see her. She came home to ask our parents for money and when they refused to open the door, refused to even acknowledge her presence, she had danced.

But I'm not going to talk about those things to Dave or anyone else. Instead I drag myself back to the present and pull my lips up into a small, practiced smile before I wrap my hand around his knee and stare up into his eyes. "This isn't about her," I say. "It's not even about us. It's about me being ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" he repeats as if struggling to find a way to apply the word to me.

"You were right to walk out on me that night," I continue. "I wasn't acting like myself. Wedding jitters maybe. But it wasn't right." I lean into him, the way I used to, the way he wants me to. "There's no percentage in being crazy or out of control."

He brushes my cheek with the back of his hand. "You're not like any woman I've ever met in my life. You're my Kasie, and you're perfect. I said you weren't that night we ate at Scarpetta's. I lied."

"No, that was the truth. But I'm sure there have been other, nicer lies that you've told me over the years. We all lie, occasionally," I say. "And we make mistakes."

"I suppose so," he says uncertainly.

"Maybe what differentiates the good from the bad is that only some of us . . . when we lie, when we make a mistake . . . maybe some of us can pull it together and . . . and fix things."

Again I feel the tears well up as he kisses my cheek but this time I let a few slip from the corners of my eyes and I don't protest as he tastes them.

You're not like any woman I've ever met in my life.

His words . . . and I like them. I like the idea of being completely unique.

It means that I'm nothing like her at all.

His kisses have traveled up to my forehead and then down again to my mouth. I don't object as he takes the port gla.s.s out of my hand and places it on the coaster resting on the coffee table. I don't pull away as he unzips my dress, pulls it off my shoulders, cups my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I don't challenge him as he cautiously removes my dress entirely and folds it over the arm of a chair along with his own sports coat and s.h.i.+rt. I don't say no as he lowers me down on that sofa and lays on top of me, careful, oh so careful not to hurt me, bruise me, cause me even a moment of discomfort. He cherishes me. I feel it as he brushes his fingers over my stomach. I feel it when he kisses my hair; I feel it in the warmth of his smile. This is where I'm supposed to be. These are the rules I have chosen for my life. I had no right to offer myself to Robert Dade. He has no place in my personal life or in my thoughts.

And as Dave kisses my forehead, I try to ignore the images, the memories . . . I try to forget that only this morning I had lost control.

CHAPTER 15.

DAVE STAYS OVER. Of course he does. It's hardly the first time.

It's just that we haven't been spending the night together for a few weeks. I've forgotten the feel of it. His gentle snores are jarring to me now.

I turn on my side and look at him. His mouth is slack as he sleeps.

Dave and I had been going out for a week before he kissed me, three months before we made love. He said he didn't want to rush me, that he knew I wasn't that kind of girl. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I hadn't waited half that time with the men before him. My first had been when I was twenty. I had been so desperate to get rid of my virginity, I hadn't cared that he smelled of cigarettes, that he spoke in cliches, that he barely looked at me as he forced his way in. My second lover had been a smart, tall, beautiful lacrosse player wth roaming hands and a roving eye. The pain of the breakup had been sharp but fleeting. There had been plenty of Kleenex left in the box once I was done crying.

But Dave is different. He respects me. He thinks I'm precious. He honors me with outdated romantic notions.

And to top it all off he helped me get the job I wanted.

Dave has given me so much, it makes sense that he'll be my first forever, the first thing in my life that will be more than a stage.

That constancy has value, right? Certainly more value than the illicit secrets that weave themselves into my dreams at night. I can never make love to Robert again. Never. I will force him out of my life.

Now if I could only force him out of my head.

IT'S ONLY 7:00 A.M. and I'm handing Dave his lunch and a travel mug full of a deep-bodied coffee before his unusually early conference call. He's surprised, I've never made him lunch to take to the office before. It's a Norman Rockwell kind of move, which is good. I need to incorporate a little Norman Rockwell morality into my life.

He kisses me on the forehead and I feel the completeness of his affection. As I watch him leave, I feel something else, too, something that springs from deep within me. I want it to be love.

But it feels a lot like obligation.

I was in Dave's debt before, what with the job and his frequent kindnesses. But now that I've betrayed him, I owe him so much more, more than gifts or favors. I owe him happiness.

Almost an hour later, while I'm dressing for work, my phone rings and Robert's a.s.sistant's number pops up.

No, that's wrong. It's Mr. Dade again. I have to find a way to turn him back into a stranger.

"Miss Fitzgerald?" Sonya's inquisitive voice melts through the phone. "Sorry to call so early."

"It's fine." I sit on the edge of the bed wearing nothing but a matching bra and panties with the phone pressed to my ear. I feel exposed, which is silly. Sonya can't see me. But she does know things about me that others don't and I'm reminded of this when she tells me in a tone that is a little too intimate that Mr. Dade is requesting a meeting away from his office.

"13900 Tahiti Way, in Marina Del Rey," she says. There's something about this address that thrills her. I can tell by the way she whispers the numbers.

"What's there?" I keep my own tone flat, emotionless. I want to wipe her memory away. . . . Has she imagined me with him? Has she imagined me with her? Did I call out when Robert let his fingers slide over my c.l.i.t, when he kissed my neck, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s? . . .

Did she hear me when I lost control?

"Oh, I just figured you two had already worked out the details. . . . I didn't ask specifically which part of the marina. . . . I mean, it's not my business."

And with that comment I know that she heard everything, imagined everything; to her I'm not just an a.s.sociate of Mr. Dade's. I'm the woman he f.u.c.ked on his desk and it doesn't matter what tone I use, what outfits I wear . . . she'll always know me for my indiscretions.

I hate her for it.

I hang up the phone without another word. But then nothing else needed to be said. He knows I'll come. It's my job, my addiction, my temptation . . . it doesn't really matter if it's l.u.s.t, ambition, or just plain ol' curiosity that'll get me there.

All that matters is that he knows I'll come.