Just Yesterday (7 page)

Part of me understands. Part of me doesn’t.

Grace continues to stare at me another moment, misinterpreting my lack of response before averting her gaze and reaching for her wine. “Christ,” she mutters. “I barely even recognized her.”

Confused, I raise a brow. “You saw her?”

“Yesterday morning,” she tells me quietly, her eyes focusing somewhere behind the bar. “I was there briefly.”

“At the funeral home?”

She is rolling her eyes in my direction, and I can tell that she knows I don’t believe her. She tosses back the rest of her wine and turns back to face me, her lips a tight, straight line. “Look,” she begins brusquely. “We can’t talk here. Can we go up to your room?”

“Sure.” I slide from the bar stool and lead the way to the elevators, wishing with every step that I could shake the fog that surrounds me.

“You’re right,” I tell her, finding a lame smile. We are in my hotel room. While Grace has settled down in the only comfortable lounging chair, I’ve dropped down without ceremony onto the bed. “Sometimes the past gets jumbled in my mind. I forget that you two didn’t really know each other.” I can feel the crease growing between my brows.

“It’s funny. You two are so interconnected in my past,” I muse, lifting a finger to smooth the crease. “Sometimes I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

Grace is watching me, her face softening.

“I mean, clearly what was real for me wasn’t necessarily real for you. We both remember it so differently.”

She grins a little, eyes dancing. “You mean like how you keep insisting that I broke your heart when you know it was really you who broke mine?” Her smile is crooked, and I am suddenly reminded of who she is, what she has been to me, and the impossibility that we are here together. After all these years.

I return her smile, although her statement is less than amusing and only adds to my sadness. “SomeŹthing like that,” I tell her. “For so long now, I’ve thought that you and Connie had this long, pasŹsionate affair.”

“She didn’t tell you the truth?” Grace’s frown reappeared.

“I don’t think I ever let her.” I could still remember the phone conversation. When Connie had blurted out the words I slept with Grace, the teleŹphone had literally slipped from my hands and fallen to the floor. My lungs had filled with a sudden, leaden weight as glittering spots erupted behind my eyes.

“I don’t want to hear another word,” I had said when I was able. “I can’t fucking believe you’re telling me this, Connie,” I’d spat.

“I thought you should know.”

“I don’t want to know anything about you and Grace fucking,” I screamed. “How could you do this to me? Why are you telling me this?” I was blind with seething. “To gloat? Is that it?”

“Of course not, Liz. I —”

“No more,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

Before she could utter another word, I slammed the receiver onto its cradle and sank to the floor, fighting the nausea that overtook me.

It was several weeks before Connie and I spoke again. Our relationship became strained and distant from that moment on. And she never mentioned Grace’s name again.

I recount the story briefly to Grace now, leaving out the part about how much it had devastated me.

She is leaning forward, eyes narrowing as her elbows come to rest above the knees of her jeans. “You have to let go of all of that, Liz. You can’t keep feeling guilty for things that happened over ten years ago.”

“I know that,” I tell her. “I just need to sort it out.”

She shakes her head. “You think too much.”

I’m not sure if she is kidding or not. “I know that, too.” My smile is satiric, until an image of Connie’s face, amid the soft pink pillows of the casket she now lies in, comes quickly to mind. Tears threaten to spring. “I just wish I’d known. I’ve blamed her all this time.” I wince, mentally kicking myself.

Grace moves forward, moving from chair to bed in a single movement. “Hey.” Her voice holds that quiet sweetness that jars my memories. She lays a casual hand on my outstretched leg. “Stop doing this to yourself. Let it go.”

I hear her words, but they don’t register. All I see is Grace’s unsmiling face, dark eyes intent on mine. She is trying to comfort me, and I’m struck by this fact. I realize in that moment that she is the only lover from my past that has not made the transition to friend. I’ve only been comforted by Grace the lover, never as Grace the ex-lover. I don’t know how to take it, how to react. But I know as I look at her that we will never be friends.

I continue to stare, my mind thrown back in time to that first year. Before she’d grown up. Before cynicism had crept into her voice and into her heart. Before her eyes had grown scornful. Before her laugh had grown mocking. Before her wit had become cutting. She had comforted me often then. In the sweet adoring way that was so exclusively hers.

I remember her e-mail now, remember the mentioned kiss, and my eyes fall to her mouth. Such a kissable mouth.

“Why didn’t you blame me?” she asks, breaking through my reverie.

It’s my turn to smile. “Don’t get me wrong. I blamed you for plenty,” I assure her.

Grace rewards me with her throaty laughter.

“But never for what happened with Connie.” I grew serious again.

“But why?”

I hesitate and grow nervous, knowing my reply, not wanting to let her see the emotions behind it. “Because I loved you,” I sigh. “Because in my mind you were so pure. So sweet.”

A wide, mischievous grin slides across her face. “We both know that’s not entirely true, don’t we?” Her eyebrows are dancing wickedly, and I laugh. My mind races, wondering if she’s insinuating that she isn’t so sweet and pure, or that she doesn’t believe my reason for not blaming her. I assume the first.

“You were sweet to me,” I remind her, then reconsider. “At first.”

“Ooh.” She cringes. “And pure?”

More images flood my mind, quick, staccato flashes. Grace in Miami, her body smooth with sweat beneath mine.

Now my grin is as wicked as hers is. “Virginal.”

Her laughter is delicious.

“Okay,” I admit. “Maybe not. But before, yes. The first year.” My smile softens as I watch her digest this. She is thinking back, remembering.

“You were my first lover, you know.” She says these words as if they hurt her, and I feel my heart constrict. Regret. So much regret. Regret that has haunted me for years.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” I’ve never meant the words more.

“I know,” she assures me.

I want to take her hand, step into a time machine, and go back to that time of innocence. I want to take it all back and start over, knowing then what I know now. It takes everything inside me not to say these words aloud.

“What made you come here tonight?” I ask instead. “Why did you track me down and follow me?” It’s my turn to watch her shift with discomfort.

“I’m not sure …” Her voice trails off slightly. “I think I began to panic, a little. It seems like we’ve been in touch so much lately. Like you’re somehow part of my life again.” She was at loose ends, searching for words. “I was afraid that after tomorrow you would leave and that would be it. Poof. Out of my life again.”

My eyes close briefly, involuntarily. She has been reading my mind, echoing my thoughts.

“We’re always leaving each other.” Her smile is sad, reaching her eyes. “I’ve missed you. And I don’t want to lose you again, Liz.”

“Grace.” Her name leaves my lips as I shake my head, checking my words. “You just don’t know,” I say finally. Then before I know it, my arms are reaching out and Grace Sullivan is moving into them, the palms of her hands pressing against my back as my fingers find the length of her curls.

I’m astonished as my mind begins to scream. One month ago the idea of holding Grace like this was inconceivable. But here she is, holding me close.

Moments pass as I listen to our quickened breathing. We are unmoving, awkward together, and I know this moment is as much a shock to her as it is to me.

But as our breathing settles, I begin to feel her fingertips roll along my spine. I bury my face in the nape of her neck and breathe deeply, remembering her scent, memorizing the feel of her smooth skin against my cheek.

Joanna comes to mind, and I push the thought of her aside. Forcefully. Purposely. There will be plenty of time to think about Joanna later, I know. At this moment all I know, all I care about, is that I am holding Grace Sullivan in my arms.

My lips brush her throat. Once. Just once, I tell myself. Then her lips are traveling my neck, my cheek. Our breath mingles and becomes labored as our mouths move closer, each of us asking the other the same question. We hesitate as our lips finally meet. Tentative. So tentative. Gentle and unsure. But soon there is the certainty as our mouths remember. Heads tilt just so while lips part and the sweetness of her tongue finds mine.

I shudder as our breathing becomes so loud that I can hear nothing else. Hands are moving now, fingers touching, tracing lines along skin that until now was just a memory. Remembering.

The kiss is broken, and we pull apart from each other, just enough for our eyes to meet as we catch our breath. I expect to find laughter in her eyes, a sort of triumph. Instead I see a seriousness that sobers me. My heart turns over at least three times, and I wonder if I ever stopped loving Grace Sullivan, even for one moment of my life.

Her lips turn down at the corners while her nostrils flare slightly from her effort to calm her breathing. Dark eyes dart back and forth between mine, looking for an answer.

“I should go,” she says, finding her voice.

I know she should leave now. But I’m not ready for the moment to be over. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Please don’t.” The words are out before I’m even aware of it. “I don’t want you to go.”

Again, the triumphant smile that I expect to see on her face does not appear. Instead, her frown begins to soften and a heavy sigh escapes her lips as she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close again.

Slowly, I become aware of sunlight spreading its heat across my cheek and I turn my head away from the brightness, blinking the sleep from my eyes.

“Is it really you?” Grace’s voice is husky with the morning, her eyes twinkling with something between mischief and disbelief. She is propped up on one elbow, the stark white sheet covering her body from the shoulder down. She is grinning as she lifts a finger and lets it trace the line of my chin.

“Hi,” I smile sleepily. “So I wasn’t dreaming after all.” My arm reaches out and curls behind her head automatically.

“Who had time to dream?” Her chuckle is low. “We didn’t even sleep, did we?”

I stretch and purr as she leans over me, her mouth beginning to play along my collarbone. Every muscle in my body is sore with pleasure, and I tell her so.

“You’re just out of practice, sweetie,” she whispers against my ear, not knowing just how accurate a statement she is making.

“Does it show?” I ask her, feeling a momentary flash of inadequacy.

“Absolutely not.” She shifts her weight until her full length is on mine. My arms slide up and come to rest around her neck.

I return her smile, making a game of tangling my legs with hers. She is staring down at me, brown eyes wide. My fingers fall to her mouth and I want nothing else in the world but those lips to cover mine. Again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever kissed anyone for so long,” I muse, and lift my head just enough to press my lips to hers.

“Mmm,” she sighs. “That was wonderful.”

I can’t deny it. We had spent hours just kissing and touching, reacquainting ourselves with each other.

Now I look up at her, remembering our passion, still not quite believing that Grace is here in my arms. “I’d forgotten how incredible it is with you.”

“Really?”

I think about it only briefly. “No. That’s not true. I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten.” Our eyes meet and lock, speaking volumes about all things between us. All things past and now present.

“How long will you be here in town?” she finally asks, breaking the spell. “Do you have to go back right away?”

I sober at her words, remembering why I’m here. Remembering the mess that I know will probably greet me when I get home. I’m not ready to go.

“No. I can stay a while longer.” I reach up to brush aside a stray curl from her forehead. “How long did you have in mind?”

Her eyes sear into mine again. “I suppose forever would be out of the question?”

My heart does flip-flops even as I watch her cringe at her own words. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Shh.” I put my finger to her lips. “Don’t be sorry.” I can feel unreasonable tears trying to squeeze from beneath my eyelids. “Please don’t be sorry.” My lips replace the finger on her lips, and we are kissing in earnest now, our bodies stretching with hunger as hands and fingers and tongues grow more and more demanding.

Grace just barely jumped out of bed in time to shower and run to the studio. I am lying exactly as she left me, curled up in the oversize bed, while I watch her report the morning news.

Her hair is pulled back and twisted in a fashionŹable knot. Her cheeks are flushed and her voice even huskier than usual. For the first time in my life, I feel desire from an image on the television set. She is nothing short of hot. And the knowledge that she has just left our bed, and that we will be sharing another bed that night, makes me want her all the more. I find myself regretting that I won’t be able to watch the news at noon.

I take my time showering and dressing for the funeral. My life has taken such a dramatic turn, and I am caught between euphoria and trepidation. I have no idea where this weekend with Grace is leading. I have no idea if it is even leading anywhere. But I don’t care. All I know is that she is taking tomorrow off. That she will pick me up at the agency where I’d rented my car at three o’clock today. That she will make reservations at a hotel in Chicago. That we have three more nights together. What happens after that is unimportant to me. Today. But I know that once Sunday arrives I will be fraught with anxiety.