Keeping Pace (7 page)

Well, not at first.

The day passed quickly, during which I received one blush-worthy text from my lover. I admonished his cheekiness and warned that if he didn’t get at least five pages done on his dissertation, there would be no dessert—typed in all caps—for him later. I assumed he went back to work, because I didn’t receive a reply.

As I was packing up to leave for the day, a good thirty minutes earlier than my usual time, Lou stopped by. I tried to tell myself that no matter what he asked or told me, I would not let it ruin my good mood.

And yes, I was in a good mood. I often thought about Josh and what we were doing. I thought about the long conversations we’d had in the night. The sleepy morning reflections, even the banter during meals. I recognized the new us as certainly going through the honeymoon phase of this relationship. That what I’d needed all this time was finally at hand and made me cling to it with a desperate hope for more.

“Checking out so soon?” Lou asked, snapping my attention back to his presence.

“Yeah. I have a few things to take care of this evening.” One of these days I would have to get a handle on the way my face heated up. “Did you need something before I left?”

“No, it’s not that.” His gaze roamed my face, studying me. “I just wanted to check on you and how you’re doing.”

I tried not to frown. Where was this coming from? “You mean the Beth thing? It’s all good. I wish her well.”

“How are you doing, though? We used to be friends. I feel like we’re not anymore.” He perched one hip on my desk. For some reason, the way his pocket gaped open during that motion commanded my attention.

“We’re still friends, Lou. Unless you know something I don’t?”

“When Patrick was alive, we used to go out a lot. Even after he passed, you and I went out a few times.” His hand crept closer to mine, almost as if he wanted to curl them together.

I toyed with the idea of mentioning Josh to him but decided it wasn’t fair and also was unnecessary. Lou knew better than most how to play the political game. Once he’d been promoted over me, all bets were off as far as he and I were concerned. If he wanted to go out again, there was nothing wrong with doing so, just as long we both understood it could only be as friends.

“Of course we can meet for lunch any time you want. Just name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “Good. I’ll hold you to it.”

We said our good-byes, the conversation still puzzling me when I got home. I felt like there was more, as if maybe he’d wanted to have a conversation with me but needed an excuse to do it. For his sake, I hoped he wasn’t sick or plagued with equally bad news. No matter what he thought, I did enjoy his company. Maybe I’d distanced myself a little from the people I hung out with when Pat was alive, but he wasn’t alone in that position. I’d have to work harder on being less antisocial.

I opted to skip my evening glass of wine in lieu of a quick shower. If last week was any indication, Josh would be over within minutes of my arrival.

I rounded the bend to the stairs, stopping when a familiar sight greeted me at the back door. Two lovely long-stemmed pink roses wrapped in white tissue paper stood propped against the glass.

“Oh, Josh,” I murmured. If I wasn’t careful, I could awaken one day to find myself developing feelings for him. At this stage in my life, I needed only a lover. I wondered for the first time what Josh hoped for.

Ever since Patrick left me, I’d had the occasional bout with insomnia. I stared at the clock, blinking and praying it really didn’t say it was only a little past midnight. I’d gotten less than two hours of sleep and still had almost the entire night ahead of me. Nights like this were the worst. If I’d gotten up at four or five, at least I made it through the day feeling functional. At this time of the night, I’d probably only doze before being forced to leave for work.

Josh joined me on the deck almost another hour later. “Bad dream?”

I made room for him in the deck chair, which wasn’t easy. It obviously wasn’t meant to hold two people, but somehow we made it work. “No—I do this every once in a while.”

He draped his arms around me, and I leaned back, comfortable as always in his hold. “Talk to me, then.”

I stifled a yawn. “What do you want to know?”

“What do you dream about when you do dream?”

The question surprised me. The answer was easy, but I wasn’t sure if I should say it out loud. “Just the impossible,” I finally said, my voice soft.

Josh waited for me to say more. When I didn’t, he asked just as softly, “Patrick?”

My throat tightened, and I nodded. It was so unfair to Josh, but my eyes began to water as thought upon thought about my dead husband crashed into me. I held back sniffling for as long as I could muster but gave in when I realized wiping at my nose would be impossible without drawing his attention. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry about? Missing your husband?”

“Yes—”

“He was a good guy, Regina. I’d be disturbed if you didn’t miss him.”

His arms tightened around me, and a floodgate of wishes and dreams opened. “I just wish so much that we’d had a family before he died. He left me behind with nothing but his memory.”

Josh held me, saying nothing further, while I got my emotions in check. A few minutes of silence passed when he asked, “What are your fantasies?”

Despite myself, I smiled. “You already know one.”

Josh’s laughter echoed off the houses around us, and I had to shush him to get him to quiet down. “What is it with women and having that particular one?”

“It’s the fantasy. The illusion of a virile male at his most primitive. His sense of control so strained that he’s forced to extreme measures. Goes back to caveman times when they bopped a woman on the head by way of courtship, I guess.” By now, I was laughing with him, stifling the noise behind my hand in deference to the sleeping people around us.

“Well, I hope I was virile enough for you that night. I’m afraid bopping you on the head just isn’t my style.”

“Oh baby, trust me when I say I have never, and will never, lose faith in your virility.” My lopsided walk for the past few days testified to that.

“Good.”

We lapsed into a comfortable silence, the air thick with the scent of trees whose boughs were laden with leaves. There’s something about that smell. Green. It was different from when the trees actually blossomed with flowers. There was a vitality to them now.

Every once in a while, the smell of chlorine from the Smith’s pool drifted over to me. I faced his house, noting all the dark windows. His place looked like a home to me, a place where a family would grow older together.

As if he listened to my thoughts, Josh said softly, “I hope to have a family one day.”

I didn’t know how to answer him at first. Smiling, I asked, “Is that a proposition?” I felt him squirm behind me, which made me laugh. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

“No, what I mean is I think about shit like that. It’s about the only thing that makes me want to finish my dissertation and get some bigwig job somewhere.”

“You should do what will make you happy. Thirty years or so doing physics just because you’re good at it isn’t going to make you happy.”

“Is your job the one you’d planned on doing when you went to school?”

I thought about my conversation with Lou earlier, and the stress vying against Beth had put me under in the last few weeks. “No,” I admitted. “I thought I’d eventually become a teacher. Somehow instead I ended up developing educational programs for school systems. Close but no cigar.”

“Would you become a teacher now if you had the chance?”

“Absolutely.” I turned and pecked him on the cheek. “But this isn’t about me. We’re talking about you and your future. You can support a family doing almost any legal job out there. You just have to figure out what it is you want.”

“Is it okay that all I want right now is you?”

He sounded so young and unsure of himself that I had to face him again. I ran my lips along his neck, turning the drag into little kisses along the way. “As long as it’s okay that I want you too.”

We fell asleep off and on over the next few hours. There were times when he roused, and others when I heard his breathing deepen behind me. At times I watched the world come out of slumber around me, and during others, I jerked awake.

I fully expected Josh to try to convince me to go inside, but when we were awake at the same time, we merely talked. Of course, we made out a couple of times as well. At one point I was sure we’d give our neighbors a free show should they have peeked out their windows, but one of us always became the voice of reason, pulling back before things got too hot and heavy.

My eyes were gritty when I opened them all the way for the last time. I’d started to perspire, and that was almost as good an alarm clock as anything. The sun rose over the horizon, lighting the roofs around us. Ceramic tiles glistened as the sun’s rays reflected off dew formed during the night.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice was gentle.

I blinked away the grit. Despite my fatigue, I realized he was right. I had to work my voice box a few times to clear the sleep. “Mmm…it is.”

“Let’s make a date. Next Sunday morning, you and me out here. Watching the sunrise again.”

“You’re a romantic, Joshua Smith.” I cuddled up next to him. “But I like it.”

Chapter Eight

By Saturday, we’d developed a comfortable routine. The roses he left for me every evening were in bloom, now sitting in two separate crystal vases. Josh made progress on his dissertation and kept his parents’ house in order, mowing the lawn and bringing in the mail. I went to work every day, content with my life for the first time in a long time. I looked forward to having an entire day to be with him now that the week was over, instead of having to rely on skimpy evening hours when I came home tired from the day.

I can’t say at what point it became a mutual understanding that he spent the nights with me. It just happened. Today the doorbell shattered our peace before we’d risen.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said to Josh. My handy satin robe was nearby, and I slipped it on to cover my nudity. He was similarly nude beneath the sheets, and I was very tempted to ignore our unwelcome visitor to explore him further. Like clockwork, he’d greeted me with an early morning erection.

He stretched but then rolled off the edge. “Shower,” he replied as he made his way into the bathroom.

I paused long enough to watch the sway of his glorious ass before remembering the person at the door and venturing downstairs. When I opened the door, I blinked in surprise.

“Lou?” I stepped back without thinking. “Is everything okay?”

He mistook my action as an invitation and stepped through the doorway. “Morning. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

It was a little after nine, and normally I would have been up already. Between the late nights with Josh and the occasional bout of insomnia, sleeping in this morning had been a luxury.

Clutching my robe, I went ahead and made room for him to come farther inside. The room seemed to grow warmer by his presence. He smelled good this morning, the familiar scent of his cologne filling the air. Since I could count the number of times Lou had been inside my home since Patrick died on a single hand, I was surprised by how comforted I was by his presence. “What brings you over?”

“Kitchen still through here?” He smiled while he kept walking.

I frowned as I followed him deeper inside my home. Josh had heard the doorbell, and his early morning routine of a long, steamy shower kept him upstairs for now. I didn’t want these two men in the same room together for some reason I couldn’t explain. I just knew my life at home needed to remain separate from the one at work.

Lou studied the décor of my kitchen, that pleasant smile still on his face. I did a quick visual inspection with him, thankful there were no reminders about Josh’s presence anywhere to be found.

“Lou—”

“Got any coffee?”

That did it. Barely keeping a rein on my growing irritation, I faced him head-on. “Lou, it’s early on a weekend. I wasn’t expecting you. Not to be rude, but what’s going on?”

He leveled those pretty blue eyes at me. “I want to talk—off the record.”

“About work?”

“Yes.” He glanced at the empty coffee maker. “I’d love for this to be a relaxed conversation between friends. If I happen to mention a thing or two about the job by accident, a minor slip of the tongue, during that conversation…” He shrugged.

Still thinking about Josh upstairs, I weighed my options. This was my boss, strongly insinuating I needed to be told something. My price for hearing it would be to endure it at his leisure. With a sigh, I set to work getting the coffee brewing.

Sitting at the round table, we both stared at the slowly filling carafe until when it was half full, Lou finally spoke. “Big plans for the weekend?”

“Nothing concrete.” If Josh had his way, we’d go check out a particular exhibit on architecture he’d been wanting to see. Something about a display on defying the laws of physics. I’d proclaimed it endearingly geeky, to which he’d blushed.

If I had my way, on the other hand, we wouldn’t be leaving the bedroom. Being intimate with him had become addictive.

“If you haven’t eaten yet, maybe we could head over to Sunshine Alley and grab a bite while we talk?”

The trendy little eatery always had a line at its doors on Saturday mornings. “It’s kind of you to invite me, but really, I’m thinking more about heading back to bed,” I replied, hoping my light laughter would soften the rejection.

“Regina, it feels like you’re avoiding me. You have no plans, clearly haven’t eaten but don’t want to hang out?”

“I’m not that spontaneous a person, is all.”

“You used to be. You and Patrick used to take off at a moment’s notice. Remember how many times I had to cover for you?”

“Things are different now. Patrick isn’t here, and I’m just not the person I used to be.”

Lou moved his chair closer to mine. “That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about. You’re not the same, and I want to know what happened.”