Out of Grief (5 page)

I knew it would be a while before I could sleep, so I pulled out some papers to grade and brewed myself a cup of peppermint tea. I looked at the left side of the bed, now cluttered with my computer and various magazines and books I wanted to read. When my wife left me, I’d claimed the entire bed, sleeping in the middle, but as time went on, the indentation of those items on that side of the bed made it feel like someone else was there. Ridiculous when examined logically, but our bodies didn’t always respond to logic. I was rather engrossed in the short story I was reading, despite the jarring typos, when my phone rang.
Who the hell would be calling me at this hour,
I wondered as I grabbed the phone off my nightstand. Anger was replaced with fear as I saw Quinn’s name on the display “Is everything okay?” I asked when I answered.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry, I realize it’s late, but I couldn’t sleep. And you’re the only friend that doesn’t go to sleep early. Can you talk? Are you alone?”

Who did she think would be here at this hour? “Yeah, I can talk.”

“So I didn’t interrupt anything?”

Her voice sounded tentative. Like if I had said yes, she would have hung up immediately. Which was preposterous, because if I had a lover, she would have been the first one to know—so why the third degree? “Just grading papers — really short stories — for my class.”

“Are they any good?”

“This one isn’t too bad, if the kid would learn that spell check doesn’t correct the wrong word spelled properly used in the wrong context.”

She laughed.

God, I’d missed that laugh. I wished she were here beside me, so I could see her eyes sparkle the way they always did when she laughed.
Focus. You are not a love struck puppy; you’re her best friend!

“Seriously, the kid used the word plutonic for platonic, more than once.”

“Well, maybe he meant they had a rocky relationship.”

“Yeah, that’s it. So everything’s really okay?”

“I promise. Just had my check up. Everything looks good. I mean, I feel like I’m gaining an awful lot of weight, but she says I’m within the range. Oh, and the baby is craving fish.”

“But you don’t like fish.”

“No shit! You should be carrying this baby, with the way you love fish.”

There’s a thought I never wanted to have. “I had the best fish tonight with Harrison. You might have even liked it. It was wrapped in Prosciutto.”

“That talk was tonight. So how did it go?”

“You mean did Harrison and I enlighten the masses on how to write a Queer Romance?”

“Tell me they picked the topic, please.”

“No, I picked it. Hello?”

“So did you enlighten the masses?”

“Yes, we did. I told them the way to be a great Queer Romance writer is to not be in a relationship, so that you can fantasize about the perfect one.”

“You did not.”

“I did. And Harrison backed me up on that.”

“Harrison’s not in a relationship?”

“Nope.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Why?”

“I mean, his writing is so vivid.”

“If you like that sort of thing.”
Wait! Did she just say she was reading guy on guy romances? What the fuck?
“But, wait, how would you know that?”

“I read ‘Stories of You’.”

“And you liked it?”

“It was sweet in some places and raunchy in others.”

She was right there. The boy had a flair for smut. “Okay, more to the point, why would you read Harrison’s book?”

“Well, you were going on and on about him. I just wanted to …”

There was a long pause. Wanted to what? I set the paper down, and turned off the light. “Go on.”

“Have you read his books?”

“You’re deflecting.” I moved my pillows around to get comfortable. “But yes.” I let the silence grow, knowing that she would have to fill it eventually.

“I was curious, I guess.”

“About boy on boy action?”

“Come on, I read one book by an author who is YOUR friend.”

I could picture her face right now. Her cheeks were probably flushed. “Besides, my best friend is a very good romance writer, and I was just checking out the competition.”

“Not exactly my competition. Lesbians aren’t rushing out to read romances about two guys.”

“Really? Well, according to my best friend, a good romantic story should be just that. There shouldn’t have to be labels.”

Wow, she really did listen when I talked. And now she was throwing my words back at me. “So, tell me more about this best friend of yours. She sounds very wise.”

“Oh, she is, when it comes to writing.”

“Just writing?”

“Sometimes life is a bit trickier for her.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes she thinks too much and maybe talks herself out of doing things that she really wants to.”

Okay, I’ll play.
“Like what?”

I could practically hear her thinking through the phone.

“Like what?” I asked again.

“Like … all kinds of stuff.” There was a pause, then she blurted, “I gotta hang up now, the baby is pressing on my bladder and I have to go. Literally.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Sleep well.” She hung up.

I curled around my pillow, wishing it could be flesh and blood instead of satin and stuffing. Oh, who was I kidding, I was wishing it was her. I had to turn off my brain, and try to get some sleep.
Overthink things. What things?

Chapter Thirteen

“Are you going to eat the rest of those?”

Kat had been eyeing my sweet potato fries since they came. “Knock yourself out.” I slid the plate toward her.

“So this weekend, I thought we could have brunch and then maybe catch a matinee with a couple of friends of mine,” she said, as she nibbled on the fry.

“What friends?”

“Some new friends of mine. I think you’ll like them.”

I had been here before. The way that she studied the plate of fries, avoiding eye contact, told me everything I needed to know. “Would one of them be an attractive, available lesbian?”

“I don’t know.”

“Katarina Romanoff, don’t lie to me. It’s a fix up.”

She took a long sip of her diet soda and finally made eye contact. “Would that be so terrible?”

“Not if you’d ever picked someone that was even remotely interesting to me.”

“Hey, there was nothing wrong with the last two. You’re too fucking picky, if you ask me.”

Nothing wrong with the last two, was she smoking mad crack?
“You honestly thought I would be interested in a stock broker who could only talk about all the cash she was pulling in and her possessions?”

“She was hot, Nikki. Loosen up, would you? You don’t have to move in with them. Once in a while, a little recreational sex oils the machine. And trust me, that machine could stand some oiling by someone other than you.”

Sometimes I wondered why we were friends, with her laissez faire attitude toward sex, and, if I was brutally honest, sometimes I envied her. But ultimately, I knew that I wasn’t the casual sex kinda gal. I wanted to see something longer lasting than mere lust when I looked into a lover’s eye.

“Admit it. You don’t know anything about these women. You just fix me up because your current girl asks you if you have a friend for her friend.”

“And your point is?”

“I could do better on match dot com.”

“Because that worked out so well for you in the past,” she shot back.

She had a point; the three women I’d met through the site were all disasters. “At least on paper we had something in common.”

“What if this woman is the ONE, Nik? What if by not going, you spit in the face of the fates, and are left alone and miserable the rest of your life?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You sound like your grandmother now.” Her grandmother made her living as a fortuneteller. I let her read my cards once, and she told me it would be a long haul, but I would finally meet the woman of my dreams. A lot of hooey, if you ask me.

And that was how I found myself sitting at brunch across from a petite blonde, with a curvy build, chocolate brown eyes, and freckles that she tried to mask with make-up. Or, as I was beginning to fear I would refer to her forever afterwards, ‘my number one fan.’

“And ‘Dusty Cove’ made me bawl at the end. I mean, when they finally got together it was sooooo incredibly beautiful. You just make the reader feel like she’s right there, in the moment, you know?”

“Thank you.” I was trying to be polite, but the gushing was getting to be a bit too much for me, and I was busy formulating a way to torture Kat for this later.

Kat and her date were in that state of ogling each other like they couldn’t wait to be alone and rip each other’s clothes off. Emily and I were left on our own to get to know each other, while the two of them were busy eye fucking. Yes, the torture would be slow and cruel.

“Hey, where did you go?” Emily looked upset that I wasn’t clinging to every word of praise she was uttering to me, about me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “Sometimes I do that. The writer’s mind and all. Always churning.”

“Oooh!” She clapped her hands together. “So something I said inspired you?”

“Something like that.”

“That makes me your new muse, right?”

I hated when sarcasm was lost on people. It made things even more difficult to navigate. I couldn’t help myself; I kicked Kat under the table. The look that she gave me told me it must have been a pretty hard one.

“Well, you know, Emily…” I smiled and tried to speak slowly, hoping she would truly hear what I was about to say. “Being a writer’s muse is a difficult job. I mean, it means you can only have a platonic relationship. Otherwise the writer would be so distracted that they wouldn’t get any work done.”

She giggled. Actually giggled. “Then maybe I don’t want to be your muse.”

“But I have been in search of one for such a long time now. Maybe you would be good at it.” A sharp pain shot up my calf as Kat kicked me. “But you’re right, Emily. That wouldn’t be any fun,” I said, to keep my calves from being covered in bruises.

“Do you have anything new you’re working on? I would love to read something before everyone else does.”

“She only lets one person other than her editor read her work before it goes to press,” Kat chimed in before I could say anything. “I’m one of her best friends, and she doesn’t even let me see it.”

“It’s true.”

The look on Emily’s face was priceless, and I realized that I was being cruel for no reason other than the mere fact I didn’t want to be there. Who knows, maybe Emily and I could be friends, and I wasn’t even giving the poor girl a chance.

“So, Emily, tell me about yourself. We’ve been talking about me for far too long.”

“I’m a massage therapist. Deep tissue is my specialty, but I know Shiatsu and Swedish massage, too.”

“What made you decide to do that?”

“I like helping people feel better.”

“Great!” Kat exclaimed. “Nikki has been very tense lately. Maybe you could help her relax.”

“I can see you carry a lot of tension in your upper back,” Emily said to me.

It was true. “How did you—“

“Your shoulders pull forward a bit. That’s a sign of shoulder tension.”

Thankfully, the waiter arrived with our food, and talk of massages and tension turned to admiring our food for a few minutes.

Chapter Fourteen

Whether it was planned or not, Kat and her date managed to ditch us before the movie; her date claiming that she was not feeling well, and Kat offering to accompany her home. Which is how I found myself seeing the movie alone with Emily, and walking her home, as she lived only a few blocks from the Lincoln Center Cinema.

“This is me.” Emily stopped in front of a doorman building on 63
^rd
.

“Nice building.”
Massage therapy must be more lucrative than I thought.

“Family apartment. They bought it back when the prices were good. Plus, I have a roommate to help with the costs.”

“I’m sure that helps.”

“But she’s away right now shooting a film.”

I was so rusty at this. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. I wasn’t even sure if I should even kiss her goodnight. While I was debating with myself, she asked if I would like to come up. The silence seemed to widen, like it had life of its own and would soon become a black hole, sucking us both into it.

“Or not.” Emily was staring at the sidewalk now, her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Emily.” I tipped her face up with my hands so our eyes were level. “I’m a little rusty at this, in case you hadn’t figured that out thus far.”

She nodded her understanding, and sucked her bottom lip in, as she searched my eyes.