Happily Ever After: A Novel (5 page)

Twenty minutes later, I hand the man over to an EMT with gray hair and a low, comforting voice. She inspires confidence. The man gives her a tentative smile. She takes my name and address and phone number. Standard procedure, she says. And thank you for being a good, upstanding citizen. Okay, she doesn’t exactly say that part, but I can tell she thinks it.

I turn to my new, crazy friend and smooth down his hair.

“You’ll be okay,” I say.

He looks skeptical but nods his head and returns his attention to the EMT as she slaps a blood pressure cuff around his arm. I am dismissed.

Only when I pull into my driveway do I realize I abandoned my cart with the carefully selected two-ply toilet paper somewhere near Baby Products.

Chapter 8

I
’m back home by eleven o’clock and seated at my desk. Although I hate to admit it, the Target man threw me. He was lost and confused and totally at the mercy of strangers. Relying on others for anything important is among my greatest fears. What if they fail you? Better to do what needs doing yourself and avoid the possibility of being let down altogether.

I probably could have survived the Target interaction with little drama, but layer on top fifteen hundred words appearing as if by magic in
Stolen Secrets
and you have the ingredients for a pharmaceutical intervention. I pop open the Xanax and toss back two little white pills. Some days are one-pill days, other days are two. Today is a two, and it’s not even lunchtime.

I stare at my open computer screen. My hands tremble. Something very bad is happening. Probably a brain tumor. A psychotic break from reality. I remain in my chair perfectly still, and wait for the medication to kick in.

Chapter three was going just fine. Per my outline, Aidan and Lily were to leave the restaurant, go back to his place, and get naked in a slow and agonizing fashion. He’d tie her up and tease her, and she’d be shocked but ready. I knew
exactly
where this story was going when I went to bed. And there was nobody named Clarissa in it, that’s for sure. Did my brain tumor slip me into some sort of creative trance? I throw back another Xanax for good measure. The doctor told me to mind my dosage because antianxiety medicine can become addictive, but right now I could not care less. A witch named Clarissa has hijacked
Stolen Secrets
.

A chirp from my cell phone interrupts the noise in my head. Jason is on his way.

I push back from the desk. I have twenty minutes tops until he arrives, and the least I can do for him is to smell like something other than anxious armpit sweat.

I emerge from the steamy shower still shaky, but it’s not so bad that I can’t control it. I’m wrapped in an orange towel when the doorbell rings. I peer out the side window and see Jason. He holds a bag of sandwiches from Vinnie’s Italian Deli. Sometimes, if time allows, I let him stay for lunch and we have adult-themed conversations. You know, the lawyering gig, what movies we’ve seen, the housing prices in Billsford. Safe topics. Neutral topics.

But as I swing open the door, I’m almost overcome by the urge to tell him what a strange morning it has been. I’d start with the witch and head right on into the beautiful, crazy man in Target. But I stop myself short. We don’t do that kind of conversation. We have sex and talk about the weather.

“Nice towel,” Jason says with a smirk. These last months, Jason has gotten bold. He tells me he’s dating. I lie and tell him I am too. Soon he will announce he has a girlfriend and our Friday mornings will be finished. I have yet to spend any time thinking about what that will mean for me. Or to me.

“I’m running late,” I say.

Jason puts the sandwiches on a side table and yanks the towel. It falls to the floor.

“You have the best boobs,” he says. “Handfuls.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say. “Upstairs?”

“You go first. I want to watch your naked ass walk up the stairs.”

Jesus. I’ve created a monster.

A few months ago, Jason finally got around to asking me for the title of one of my books. Instead of explaining what
kinds
of books I write, I handed him the hardcover version of my latest K. T. Briggs effort.

“Bodice rippers?” he asked. He examined the cover, which featured a hot guy with long, flowing blond hair. His shirt was unbuttoned to expose a rippling six-pack, and he held a woman in his arms. She had the same flowing blond hair, but her eyelet dress was strategically torn to show creamy white thighs attached to long legs. There was a stallion in the background.

“In a way,” I said.

“Can’t wait to read it,” he said. And boy, was he surprised when he did.

“You describe a nipple as an acorn!” he screamed at me the next week. “And a cock as a hard shaft of love!”

I shrugged. “So?”

“It gave me a hard-on, that’s what. On the train. Embarrassing.”

“You read it in public?”

“Well, I kind of wrapped it up in the
Wall Street Journal
.”

“You need an e-reader.”

“I guess. But I loved it. It was quite a read. I almost missed my stop.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s nice.”

“So do you, you know, do these things?” he asked.

I knew this question was coming, and I had my answer all prepared. Just because I write about something is not to say I practice it. I mean, I could write a biography of Abraham Lincoln never having met the man. Or a thriller about a serial killer without actually committing a murder. So why can’t I write about leather boot fetishes without fondling my own footwear in a dark closet each night after sundown?

“No,” I said, giving him the short version of an answer.

Jason caught himself just before his face registered disappointment.

“Well, maybe K. T. Briggs does them?” he asked.

I scowled at him for a moment. “She doesn’t either. But it’s nice you liked the book.”

Jason came in less than a minute that morning. I’m sure he was thinking of me, or probably K. T. Briggs, shackled to the headboard, legs spread wide.

I walk up the stairs trying to keep my ass from jiggling, but it wobbles around back there like it’s creating its own gravitational force. This idea makes me giggle. The earth and the moon and my ass.

The butt jiggle gets to Jason. We do it against the wall at the top of the stairs. He pins my hands above my head. It’s awkward. Jason is probably five ten, but the height difference is enough that when he thrusts, he literally has to pick me up off the floor to get any leverage. I worry he will collapse from the stress.

“God, Sadie,” he says, each time he slams me against the wall. “You feel so good today.”

“I’m . . . glad . . . you . . . think . . . so,” I say, in between thumps. There’s a nice landscape by a local artist hanging to the right of my head. It bounces off the wall in perfect rhythm with the pounding. In this position, I swear I can feel his penis touching my molars. Standing up is not my favorite. I always end up longing for a footstool.

When we’re done, we collapse on the hall carpet. It’s a fairly new carpet, a pale green that works perfectly in this narrow space. Fern, I think it’s called. I shift my body weight so gravity will keep the semen from running down my leg and staining the fern carpet. Jason runs a hand from my midsection down between my legs. He lets it linger there.

“So,” he asks. “Your turn?”

Without waiting for an answer, he moves into position, spreading my legs so he can fit between them comfortably. My hip flexors strain. I start to relax. From here, I can see down the stairs and out the front door. Greta has watered the potted plants on the outside steps, but still they wilt in the outrageous heat.

Jason’s tongue works its way from my knee toward the promised land. I have not yet come up with a way to tell him that licking my knee is a waste of good saliva. I have very few nerve endings in my knee. But apparently, that is where he has determined he should start, and I do not want to come across as ungrateful. His tongue is warm, and I close my eyes. I like the part right before his tongue plunges in. The anticipation, the promise, knowing the good stuff still awaits.

And there I am, ready for the good stuff, when the phone rings. Jason’s head pops out from between my legs like a gopher’s.

“Do you need to get that?”

No. I really don’t. I want to stay here and enjoy your tongue making loopy circles around my clitoris until I cry out and pull your hair.

“Allison was sick last week, right?” he adds.

Jason remembering things like Allison being sick feels intimate in a way that bothers me, like a fingernail cut too short. But he’s right. I have to answer the phone. There will be no promised land today.

“Shit,” I sigh. I stand up, none too gracefully, and dash for the phone.

“Good morning,” a chipper voice says. “This is Billsford General Hospital emergency services calling.”

I stop breathing because when a hospital calls, it can only mean your child is dead.

“Is this Sadie Fuller?”

“Yes,” I squeak.

“We have a man here who claims you are next of kin?”

“A man?” The air rushes out of me. I’m covered in goose bumps. Allison is not a man. But I have no brothers or uncles or nephews that fit the bill either. The goose bumps return.

“Is his name Roger?” I ask. “How old does he look?”

“Young,” she says. “Probably twenty-five or so. And I don’t know if his name is Roger. That’s part of the problem.”

Roger is very attractive and very fit. He can stand on his head for days. But he looks at least forty. Although I regularly tell him he can still pass for thirty-two because I want him to be happy.

“So you don’t know his name?” I ask. “And he doesn’t either?”

“No,” she says. “He appears to be suffering from memory loss, but he remembered you well enough. Name, phone number, and address. He was brought in this morning. Really good looking.”

She sounds embarrassed by that last bit, but now I know it’s the Target guy.

“Can you tell us his name?” she asks. “Does he sound like someone you know? He even described what you look like.”

How sad for me. It’s hard to get away with dressing like a slob in a place like Billsford. Someone is always around to bust you. I’m about to say I have no idea who the man is, that I stumbled upon him looking dazed and confused in Baby Products and did my civic duty and that was that. But something stops me, some sense that I should go and see him.

“I’m not sure who you’re talking about,” I say, “but why don’t I stop by there and see?”

“That would be great, Ms. Fuller.”

We hang up. I’m still naked. Jason comes down the hall wearing only his boxer shorts. After I hit size fourteen, I no longer wanted to be naked in front of anyone, including myself. I was sure Roger found me unattractive and that was why our sex life had vanished. At least when he told me he was gay, I stopped blaming my new voluptuousness for our lack of physical contact. The problem wasn’t fat, the problem was me being a girl, and there was no way around that. Jason, on the other hand, appears to experience only delight when he sees me without clothes.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. For some reason, it feels important not to share the details. I can’t say why.

“Do you want to pick up where we left off?”

Both Jason and I have gotten rather adept at discussing sex like a business transaction. Did you get what you needed? How did that work for you? Have we achieved any significant milestones? I tell myself it’s fine, the modern approach to getting what you need.

“You know,” I say, crossing my arms against my naked chest, “I think I’m good. I have a deadline looming that I should probably get on.”

“Oh,” Jason says. He sounds disappointed but recovers quickly. “I’ll leave the turkey and sun-dried tomatoes for you. I think there might be provolone in there too.”

“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.

Jason brings me sandwiches with cheese. He’s kind and good-natured. I can admit at least that much without breaking my vows of no emotional attachment. He’s not a greedy man. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have a selfish bone in his body. He fixed my sink and my garage door opener and the back screen that kept falling off its hinges. And I think he might be losing weight. He claims he feels happy for the first time in almost twenty years. When he says that, I cry for no reason other than it is monumentally sad.

As Jason pulls his clothes back on, he talks about his new car, a sporty red coupe with black leather seats. I have no clothes, just a towel at the bottom of the stairs, so I excuse myself to get dressed. We meet a few minutes later at the front door. Jason is definitely skinnier. He looks good. I wonder if he knows it.

“Next week?” he asks. He always asks. It’s part of our routine.

“Yup,” I say, distracted.

He kisses me, and I more or less shove him out the door. The mystery of the good-looking man gnaws at me. I’m sure he got my name and number when I gave them to the EMTs, but why would he claim to be my next of kin? What does he want?

Five minutes later I’m in the minivan, headed for Billsford General Hospital.