Love Deluxe (7 page)

The groom hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Are you alright? You look fantastic, Catey, you’re glowing, but I’m worried about these.” He brushed his fingers over the shadow of bruises on my upper arms.

I felt my face turn pink at the thought of what John and I had been up to as I looked him in the eye and tilted my head. Smiling, I gave a little shrug.

“I see, alright, well enjoy yourselves but come up for air once in a while and give us a call.” He kissed my cheek and said quietly, “Be careful, Cate, there are red flags everywhere.”

John and I waited for the valet to bring the car and I was quiet, thinking about red flags, what the hell did that mean? I let it go, knowing he was a little paranoid and who wouldn’t be with all that money? Someone always wanted something from him. Reporters wanted interviews, people asked for loans and whispered about his net worth, as if that was all there was to him anymore.

The car arrived and before I could get in John wrapped me in his arms. His mouth brushed my ear and he whispered, “Marry me.”

I leaned back, looked him in the eye, not sure if he was kidding or not, “Has the evening got you all sentimental or are you just crazy?”

He ran his fingers along my jawline, smiling broadly with a boyish glint in his eye.

At home we barely made it to the bed before throwing shoes, clothes and sanity to the wind. We made love slowly, wordlessly, finishing with moans that were far from noiseless. John fell asleep almost instantly, he claimed that our love making was like a drug that left him in need of recharging. I climbed under the covers naked and sweaty and wrapped myself around his long, smoothly muscled body. Sex with him had the opposite effect on me. I was beyond satisfied and completely energized. After he fell asleep I would read or watch TV. Mostly I’d just lie next to him letting my fingers play across his sculpted chest, reveling in the feel of his skin under my hands.

I wondered once at his lack of chest hair and he’d replied, in true John Foster fashion, “It’s a swimmers body.” I was always caught off guard by his strange sense of reality. He was not, in fact, a swimmer. Another time I noticed a small pock mark near his ribs and he told me how a childhood friend had accidently shot him with a BB gun.

“Did he get in trouble?” I asked.

“Well, his mom and dad and my mom and dad got together and they made him apologize.”

“Really, what did he say?”

“Sorry I shot you.”

I laughed remembering that matter of fact statement. He stirred and pulled me closer murmuring, “Sleep buddy,” and I did.

When I woke in the morning I was alone and I could hear the clang of pans and plates and silverware in the kitchen. I stretched lazily, scooting over to John’s side of the bed, loving the smooth, cool feel of the sheets. I curled my body around one of his pillows and buried my face in another, breathing him in.  He appeared in the doorway holding a tray of food, French toast, fruit, orange juice for him, Diet Coke for me. He was tall and tanned and sexy as hell, shirtless and barefoot in tattered jeans. He set the tray down and I sat up as he walked to the bed. He leaned toward me and I reached up and let him pull me to my feet.

He moved his mouth to my ear and whispered, “I love you, buddy. Do you love me?”

“Why do you want to know?” I asked, kissing his neck, his chest, my hands cupping his firm ass.

“Because I want to know something else,” he sounded serious.

I looked up at him and waited, he was nervous, I could see that.

“I want to marry you,” he hesitated and took a deep breath, “I want you to marry me. I’m lost in love with you and I don’t want this feeling to ever end.”

I loved the way he had gone about it, that he wanted it to be romantic in a John Foster sort of way. I loved that he understood I wasn’t always comfortable saying I love you back. I loved that I was going to marry him and that we’d be together, always.

“Will you, buddy?” he asked anxiously.

I only hesitated for a moment. “Yes, buddy, I will,” and I kissed him and as we were kissing we were both laughing like kids. And I did love him like crazy and maybe I was crazy, to think that life, fate, God, was giving me something, someone wonderful to help fill the space of my loss. I had been given hope.

We made love and he marveled that sex felt so different when it was connected to the heart. We were entangled on the bed and it was a mystery where I ended and he began. Our breakfast sat prettily on the tray, cold and untouched and we didn’t care. His eyes were the amazing blue of a sunlit sea and again I was amazed that being in love was so very new to him.

The world seemed warmer and brighter and also softer and less capable of causing pain. The midday sun poured into the room washing over us and every surface it touched seemed radiant with life. I remembered that feeling, I’d seen the world the same way when I fell in love with Henry and when I held Brooks in my arms for the first time. It was a miraculous phenomenon; looking through the eyes of love.

There was so much to do but only one thing mattered, being with John Foster. The world moved in pairs and he was my other half, with a twist. We had all the normal joys and we had sex. Sex which was so much a part of us together that it was the elephant in the room. It couldn’t be hidden, and we didn’t care if it was. We might drive down the street and I lowered my head to his lap, he stopped next to a truck and I didn’t care if they saw us. In the movie theater he told me to move my legs apart and with his hand in my panties, he whispered, “Cate Stuart, you’re so wet, shame on you!” We had bruises and scrapes and splinters from using every available surface in the almost completed lake house. If we heard the realtor drive up for a showing we’d quicken our pace, look into each other’s eyes and the rush of being caught was so delectable it pushed us both over the edge of reason.

***

In the years before, when Henry died and sex alone in my big bed was my only choice, I wondered if he could see me. Did Henry feel sorry for me when I screamed his name as I stiffened and shuddered in release? Did he sigh and feel pity at my need for human pleasure in the great big middle of my sorrow? I would turn and howl into my pillow, “Come back, please, please, come back to me, don’t leave me like this, I’ll do anything, anything!”

Oh, how I loved Henry, loved him still with a love that didn’t dim or fade. Loved his brilliant mind and deadpan humor, his loyalty and unabashed adoration of Brooks and me and our family. I marveled that I could ask him any question and he would know the answer. “Why is the dirt red in Georgia?” “How could so many people willingly follow Hitler?” “What is the state bird of Oregon?” Just anything, anytime, he always knew the answer, I loved asking and he loved answering. We were made for each other, everyone agreed.

We met while I was in college. He was ten years older and separated from his wife. I was nineteen, I’d finished high school at seventeen and was moving from the dorms to a real apartment with Emily. He was living in the same apartment complex to wait out his divorce. I fell in love the first moment I saw him, he was tall and lean, handsome and pale, with dark hair and the blackest eyes I’d ever seen.

Emily and I spotted him sitting on his balcony one night and I told her. “That’s the man I’m going to marry.”

“No way,” she said. “He’s totally hot but he makes me think of a vampire.”

“Vampire?”

“Yeah, you know, he never says anything when we see him. Never comes to the pool, just sits on his balcony in the dark with that jet black hair and white skin.”

I didn’t care what anyone thought, he was my other half, I could feel it. He didn’t want to get involved with anyone so young or so soon but I had to have him. There was something about him, something solid yet mysterious, guarded and romantic. He was what I’d always wanted. I knew he was the only man for me and he was, but not forever. Funny how people believe the ones they love will always be there, never truly comprehending that they are gifts that can be snatched away without prior notice.

***

John and I would marry in a month, the middle of August. There were a dozen decisions to attend to suddenly. Emily and Rob had met John once, but my sisters hadn’t and I would need to meet his family. We had an offer on the lake house and although it was not yet completed, we decided to sell. I was thinking of putting my house on the market and I’d begun to lose interest in my antiques business. Our wedding and honeymoon had to be planned quickly and I needed to make a doctor’s appointment to get my blue pills refilled, although I realized I hadn’t been taking them lately.

We had gone out to mark a couple of errands off our ‘to do’ list and I realized we were parked in front of a row of stores. The one directly in front of us was Bailey, Banks and Biddle. I turned to John and he was sitting sideways in the driver’s watching the memories skitter across my face.

“Are we where we’re going?” I asked.

He seemed pleased with himself. “We need a ring, I know you like this place.”

“We don’t have to do this now; you can pick one and surprise me with it.”

“No, we need it now so it will be official and I want you to have what you like. So come on, buddy, let’s get cracking!”

There were dozens of beautiful rings on display but two in particular that I felt I could grow old with. One was an emerald cut solitaire. The other was a platinum band with perfect baguette diamonds inset all the way around. I tried them on and admired them, the solitaire was snug and would have to be fitted, the platinum eternity band was a perfect fit.

“It’s a sign,” I told John, he agreed and the salesman wrapped it up. I dragged him over to the men’s section and we chose a simple platinum band for him. He insisted that the words ‘
John and Catey Forever’
be inscribed on the inner surface.

As we left the store he pulled me against him, leaned down and put his cheek against mine. “Are you happy, buddy?”

“Very.” I said, feeling his erection pressing into my thigh, hoping we’d make it home and wouldn’t embarrass ourselves in the car. It was so primal just being near him, his particular smell, his lack of concern for what anyone thought, the feeling that only the two of us mattered, that only we knew what made the world go round.

“Do you really love the ring?” he asked, stepping back, looking me in the eye.

“I couldn’t love it more.”

“Good,” he said, mischief changing his face. “Because that place is so expensive they should call it Bailey, Brinks and break ya!”

***

My family would be easy to tell, they’d watched hopefully for happiness to find me. I called my parents and my sisters, Maggie and Laura, told them the news and invited them to come for the weekend. John needed to spend a day in his apartment, closing it up and letting it go for good. He’d arrange for Turkey to stay with a friend while we were on our honeymoon then he’d drive to Austin for the weekend and tell his family our news. Daddy said to let him know what day was good and he’d stop by for dinner. Mother was coming the night before John left so she’d have a chance to get to know him a little better. My sisters would drive in on Friday, Maggie from Houston and Laura from Ft. Worth.

Ours was a close family and I adored the special time when it was just the four girls, Mother, Maggie, Laura and me. My sisters were a few years older and they treated me, as always, like the bratty but beloved baby sister.
The Sisters
, as I liked to refer to them, teased me incessantly and loved to call me Catherine, which only they and my mother did. Growing up they convinced me that I was an orphan they’d found on the doorstep and my real name was Charlotte. They still thought it was hilarious how they used to scare the piss out of me when I was little by singing the theme song to the sixties horror movie,
Hush, Hush
Sweet Charlotte
. I don’t know why I ever put up with such cruel, horrible women!

We didn’t grow up with close relatives other than my mother’s parents, no aunts, uncles or cousins, so we vowed that our children would be close. And they were. We had our first babies within a year of each other, Maggie and Laura each had a daughter and Brooks was born before the year was done. They both had two more daughters and Brooks remained the only boy, our golden boy, now our lost boy.

When the women of my family were together we shopped. Now we shopped for my wedding dress. I wanted it to reflect my relationship with John, unconventional, sexy and romantic. We moved through stores like human hurricanes enjoying ourselves thoroughly, boisterous and disruptive and we didn’t care. We shopped until our arms couldn’t carry another bag and then we shopped some more. After dragging ourselves to the car we debated whether or not to see a movie and Mother said she wouldn’t be able to stay awake. Finally we picked up take out and drove to the house, opened a bottle of wine and I told them everything there was to know about John. How handsome he was and how funny, that he was the sexiest man alive but also playful and often childlike, always surprising. That women had always fallen at his feet, yet he was shy and cautious as he courted me, about his bizarre sense of humor and all of his endearingly quirky mannerisms. I leaned toward them and I knew my face was beaming as I explained how his love had rescued me. How the awesome power of his love filled me up and saved me from becoming invisible.

My cell phone rang and it was John, Mother said goodnight and went off to bed. I was like a school girl on the phone, giddy and giggling. I carried the phone into my bedroom and we talked for an hour. We both talked at once sharing every detail of our time apart, savoring the sound of the others’ voice, trying to fill the space our absence had made. He told me how glad his mother was that we found each other, how his sisters and brother couldn’t believe he was finally settling down. He didn’t mention his father, just as well, the stories I’d heard weren’t good. He would be back in the morning and we could hardly wait so long. We hung up, finally, after making all the declarations that lovers make, silly as they seemed, vital as they were.