An Ever Fixéd Mark (12 page)

“I imagine he’s a little scared. If he was
in love with your best friend as a teenager that might bring some
stuff up.”

“Great,” Lizzie peered into the reflection
of the mirror. “I don’t want… I don’t want to be his choice because
he’s been carrying a torch for Sara all these years.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Jen looked
at her own reflection. “Didn’t you like someone in high
school?”

“Yeah… but I never really thought I had a
chance. You know, Jen. I have a self-defeating attitude towards
men. I don’t ever pick the ones who like me back as much as I like
them.”

“
I think he likes you
back, Lizzie,” Jen sighed. “Maybe you are the one who is still hung
up on Sara.”

“I didn’t say she was a lesbian because I
had a crush on her.”

“No… but you were in her shadow. Her pretty,
perfect shadow. That’s a tough shadow to leave. Even after running
for two years.”

“I’ve been in a lot of those shadows.”

“Did you ever think that maybe he liked
you?” Jen turned away from the mirror. “Maybe the Sara thing was
just an excuse to be around you.”

“Not likely,” Lizzie could still see the
reflection of her frumpier self in the mirror.

“Would you have given him the time of day if
he did?” Jen had a direct approach much like Nora’s.

“You know what’s funny? I used to be in a
club with his brother,” Lizzie remembered the thought as she spoke
it. “We had a lot of fun together. Oliver made me laugh. I thought
for a little while that he liked me. But he was two years ahead of
us… and he had a girlfriend. I decided it was just my
imagination.”

“Maybe Oliver paid attention to you because
he knew his brother was secretly pining for you,” Jen winked as the
bass vibrated through the bathroom door.

“Secretly pining?” Lizzie laughed as they
edged towards the door. “For Sara’s less attractive friend?”

“You know Lizzie, you didn’t just suddenly
become beautiful,” Jen paused before opening the door. “You lost
weight, but you have always had beauty. It’s just when you got
thinner, you decided to believe it.”

Lizzie looked at Jen but lacked the wit to
retaliate. She pulled open the door and went back out to where Ben
was waiting for her.

*****

Lizzie looked down at Ben as her heart
rhythm slowed. She breathed in deeply and dropped her chest onto
his. She kissed him passionately once more and slid down against
the mattress, not removing her glance from the green gray eyes that
followed her movement. Her heart was still accelerated and her
every nerve enlivened. She felt her limbs itch with the energy to
run several miles, but she had no desire to leave the spot where
she lay opposite him, staring into those gray green eyes.

He moved a hair that fell from her temple
across her nose. The touch of his fingers against her face thrilled
her smile to a broader width. She didn’t know when the last time
was that she felt so content, so elated, so glad to be in a moment.
She wanted to hold onto it… but not by herself. She felt the hope
and adrenalin of risk rise to her throat. She kissed him again and
narrowed her eyes as she pulled away. “Ben.”

He rested his palm against her scalp and
slowly caressed down the length of her hair. “Elizabeth,” the
breath of his voice was still close to her lips.

She rolled onto her back to leave the
temptation of another kiss and excuse to abandon what she was
daring herself to say. “What I said about being good before,” she
looked up at the stripes of her blinds silhouetted by the street
light. “I was telling the truth. I have been a pretty heartless
whore the past several months.”

“Elizabeth,” he said her name again as he
draped an affectionate arm across her breasts and rested his chin
inside the curve of her shoulder.

“I…” she felt his kiss against her neck. It
made her nerves tingle, as though each one were an electric charge.
She instinctively arched her head, making it easier for his
seduction. He eased his arm back so one palm landed on her exposed
breast. Lizzie leaned into him but moved her motivation back into
her head. “Ben,” she whispered. He moved away from her neck and
lifted his eyes that burned with an intensity she never saw before.
He kissed her lips briefly until she closed her mouth and stopped
reacting. She lifted her hands and held them against his
temples.

“I don’t think you are a whore,” his
concentrated stare said with determination.

“I know,” she smoothed along his hair and
cupped her hands at the base of his skull. “I know what I did and
why I made the choices I made. I was running away from something.
From myself. When I’m with you, I’m not running away. I feel like I
am running to something I want. I want to be here. I want to be
myself here.”

Lizzie took in a deep breath and felt the
weight of his hand as her chest rose and fell. She dropped her
hands from the back of his head and let him relax back onto his
elbow. He moved his hand from her breast and gently traced down the
length of her torso with his finger. He stopped at her pelvic bone
and retraced his finger back between her breasts, all the way along
her neck to the base of her chin. He paused, turning his fiery eyes
back to her neck. Then he fell back against the pillow and let
silence fill the room.

Lizzie heard a car pass on the street below.
She didn’t want to be distracted by the outside world. It was as if
the spell were breaking. The longer the pause after her confession,
the less warmth she felt inside and out. She didn’t want to lose
that warmth. She didn’t want to lose that chance to be with someone
now that she had finally decided to be honest. “I want you to stay,
Ben,” she made one last attempt. “Stay with me through the
morning.”

He shifted his position again and leaned
over to kiss her. “I want to stay,” he looked at her. “I want to be
the one you run to. I want you, more than you know.”

Lizzie let her next breath plunge all the
way to where he dragged his finger. As her chest rose, his palm
found her breast again, followed soon after by his mouth. She let
the conversation fade as he revitalized the sensation of her nerves
and skin. She allowed the hope to enter her mind that he would be
there through the morning. That he wanted her more than she
knew.

When she woke up the next morning, he was
gone.

Chapter Ten

She resisted the crushing sorrow that
started to work its way into her mind and strangle the hope that
sweetly lulled her to sleep. It was a challenge to distract her
thoughts. Meg hadn’t returned from where she disappeared for the
evening. Jackie was already out of the house by the time Lizzie
brought herself down to the kitchen. Not that Jackie was the
company she sought… but any conversation… even an aggravation was
better than the empty pillow that haunted her.

She didn’t understand. Why did he say he
would stay? She was already lying naked next to him. He could have
stayed silent and had the two more hours of sex she gave him
readily before falling asleep. She wouldn’t have refused him, even
if her heart was disappointed. It wouldn’t have been half so
disappointing as the waking.

Lizzie tried to eat some toast, but lost her
appetite before swallowing her first bite. She drank some juice
before dressing herself for a run. She ran for eight miles, twice
her average. Eight miles to lose her mind to the music of her
headphones and the determination to each benchmark. Eight miles to
avoid going back home to her empty home to figure out what to do
next.

The run exhausted her. It was after dawn
when she closed her eyes on Ben. It was only two hours later when
she opened them and found him gone. She took her water bottle and
sat herself on the couch, where she sat mindlessly in front of the
television for six straight hours.

She heard the key in the lock, but didn’t
bother to prop herself up when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
“So, how did it go?” Meg poked her head around the door frame.

Lizzie leaned her head away from the
television. She saw the tall frame of Alec shadowing behind Meg and
decided a simple answer was best. “It went.”

“We have pizza,” Meg indicated her
confusion. “Do you want any?”

“I’m not hungry,” Lizzie muttered, even
though her stomach ached and she still felt the drain from her
run.

Lizzie didn’t say anything as Meg and Alec
brought their pizza and beer into the living room. She didn’t
protest when they put in a DVD. She didn’t offer up the couch,
forcing them to sit close together on the loveseat. She could have
gone upstairs and avoided them. But for some strange reason, she
decided to stay there and observe Meg and her boyfriend.

Lizzie had known Alec for three years, but
she was still startled at the obvious age difference between him
and her friend. It almost made her uncomfortable to see Alec touch
Meg with affection. She knew they had sex. She knew that Meg
enjoyed the sex. But Alec – mostly because of the aging of his
smoking habit – looked old enough to be her father. It didn’t stop
the sight of them together from stinging. To see them whisper and
laugh together or find some reference Meg could use for her thesis
was more than a little irritating.

At some point during the second movie,
Lizzie fell asleep. She woke in the darkened living room. Someone
slammed the front door and was walking up the stairs. Lizzie
smelled Jackie’s perfume as she looked in to see who was on the
couch. Lizzie breathed in slowly, pretending to be asleep. She
waited for a quiet half hour until Jackie left the bathroom and
closed the door to her bedroom.

Lizzie pried herself off the sofa, her
joints stiff from not properly stretching and lying on the couch
for so many hours. She went to the kitchen and refilled her water
bottle, quickly swallowing it before filling it again. She found a
few remaining pieces of Meg’s pizza in the refrigerator. She stood
by the window, picking off the anchovies and doing her best to not
swallow it in one bite.

There was a full moon. Her silly small talk
wasn’t completely off base. Full moons made people do foolish
things. Like confess feelings. Or lie about them. Lizzie forced her
eyes shut. She didn’t want to hurt like that. Not again. No. This
was a lot worse. It was worse because this time she actually
believed that it might be.

She heard something drop on the ceiling. Meg
and Alec apparently stayed at the apartment… and weren’t asleep.
They probably weren’t going to sleep any time soon. That made the
idea of going upstairs even less appealing.

Lizzie went back to the couch and altered
her position from her thirteen hour sloth. She turned on the
television to shield her ears from any reminders of upstairs. She
mindlessly surfed through all the channels, finally settling on a
documentary about the American Revolution. She drifted in and out
of concentration, mixing up the details of the show with her tour
at the Fulton house and Meg’s latest thesis description and the
echo of Ben’s empty promises. Her semi-conscious wandered to
Harriet’s chair and fell against the cushions as someone bit into
her neck. She opened her eyes and saw Ben watching from the
doorway.

In the quiet of early dawn, she returned to
her room and the bed she left untouched since the day before. She
ripped up the sheets and removed the smell of him from her pillows
and then went back to sleep.

She checked her email after waking in the
afternoon. She knew there wouldn’t be anything from Ben, but looked
anyway. She logged onto Facebook just to make sure no feed
indicated where he went. She knew her phone was somewhere… in a
pocket… or her purse. She could check to see if anyone called on
Saturday, but the effort to sift through the pile of clothes on her
floor was too depressing. She tried to read a book but just drifted
back to a vacant stare towards her window. The constant inactivity
slowed her mind, allowing the time to pass with surreal speed.
There was nothing accomplished as her weekend drew to a close.
Merely, she managed to stop thinking.

The phone startled her ears at four o’clock.
She followed the sound to the jeans still on the floor from Friday
night. It was probably Nora, searching for her own distraction from
stress to hear about Lizzie’s outing with Ben. WHY had she told her
friends? Why hadn’t she learned that all the men she wanted never
wanted her… and to tell anyone differently was just a fanciful
story?

She flipped the phone without bothering to
confirm Nora’s identity. “Hello?” she greeted with moderate
pleasantness.

“Hi, Elizabeth. This is Ben.”

Lizzie sat slowly on the edge of her bed.
“Hi Ben,” she let her voice return to her actual mood.

“I’m… I regret that… I really enjoyed seeing
you on Friday.”

Lizzie felt a calm chill in her mind take
over. ‘You did,” she inflected no emotion in her voice.

“I would like to see you again,” his
explanation was kind but equally distant. “I think I should explain
some things.”

“Explain what?” Lizzie released meanness
into her words.

“Are you available tonight?”

Lizzie paused, letting a few moments slip
into silence while she contrived possible excuses. She could call
Nora, or see if Meg and Alec wanted more pizza, or even invite Eric
over for a one night reunion. Anything would be better than seeing
him again so soon. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“It doesn’t have to be a late night,” he
hesitated. “I just want to talk to you.”

Lizzie wrestled between disappointment and
insult. “I can meet you for coffee.”

“Okay. Where?”

“Um…” Lizzie felt her brain clear and
reconsidered. “I really shouldn’t have caffeine that late. Why
don’t you come back here and I’ll think of somewhere else to
go.”