My Time in the Affair (17 page)

“What time is it?”

“A little after six in the morning.”

“Jesus, we just went to sleep a couple hours ago.”

“I know. What a waste of a couple hours.”

She went to argue with him, but he sucked on the inside of her thigh, hard. She yelped in surprise and he moved farther north, blowing cold air as he went. He always knew how to catch her off guard, and before she could get her bearings, he really was eating her like she was continental breakfast.

“Oh, wow, what a way to wake up,” she groaned, fisting her hand in his hair, pulling a little.

“You're usually so grumpy in the mornings, I should wake you up like this more often,” he chuckled at her as he pulled away, replacing his tongue with his middle finger.

“No one is stopping you.”

While his finger worked in and out of her, he kissed his way up the side of her hip. Circled her belly button with his tongue. Her shirt covered her chest, and he frowned as he worked to push the material aside.

“We've got to break you of this nasty modesty habit you have,” he complained, kissing the top of each of her breasts.

“I've always been this way,” she replied, beginning to pant as his hand worked faster and faster.

“We're going to change that.”

Then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her hard, his tongue imitating his finger.  She pushed her body up against his, rubbing her naked chest against his, creating heat. When his finger stroked particularly deep, she gasped and pulled away from him, only to have his teeth sink into her bottom lip.

“Please, please,” she began to whimper.

“Please, what?” he asked, looking down the length of her body, watching his fingers move.

“I want you … inside me … now,” she panted.

“I am inside you,” his voice was mocking.

“Not like this.”

“Like how?”

“Tal, just fuck me.”

“Oh, feisty.
I love it.
”

He didn't move, though – he seemed determined to get her off on his hand. She was thrashing underneath him, literally begging for his cock, when the hotel phone began to ring on the night stand next to her.

“Who the fuck could that be!?” she exclaimed, moving her hips back against his hand, now striving to come on his fingers.

“Probably the front desk calling, asking you to keep quiet,” he teased.

“I don't care, I can't keep quiet.”

“Answer it. Let them hear you. Let them hear what I can do to you,” he whispered.

God, it was so bad. So wrong.
So fucking hot
. She began to shiver, and she knew an orgasm wasn't far off, so she picked up the phone.

“Hello?” she breathed into the receiver.

“
Surprise!
”

Mischa sat up so fast, she smacked her forehead into Tal's collar bone. He immediately backed away and grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her in place. She felt like she was going to hyperventilate. Like she was going to pass out.
Like she was going to have a heart attack
.

No no no no no no no no no …

“
Mike!?
” she hissed, her eyes flying to Tal's. His eyebrows shot up and he stared at her for a second, then began moving. He crawled backwards off the bed and moved quickly around the suite, collecting his clothing.

“Yeah! I was able to get out on the early flight yesterday, isn't that great!?” her husband laughed.

“Yeah … great … where are you right now? Naples?” she asked, talking around her bottom lip, which was lodged between her teeth.

“No, I'm here.”

“You're at the hotel?” Mischa looked at Tal, who paused in the middle of putting on his pants and looked back at her.

“I'm outside a room,” Mike replied. Misch nearly fell off the bed.

“
You're at the door!?
” she practically shrieked. Tal's eyes moved to the front door of the suite, then he went back to putting on his pants.

“Yeah, I knocked on the door for like five minutes,” Mike started. Misch scrambled to get off the bed, pushing her shirt back down over her breasts.

“Knocking? I haven't heard any knock,” she replied, watching as Tal strode towards the door and peeked out the peep-hole. He looked back at her and shook his head.

“Well, yeah, cause apparently you're not in
this
room anymore. I tried your cell phone, but you didn't answer, so I called the front desk. They said you'd switched rooms, but wouldn't give me the new number, would only patch me through to the room phone,” Mike explained.

Oh, thank god.

“I forgot to tell you,” she let out a deep sigh and pressed her hand to her forehead. “I'm not in that room anymore.” Tal went back to moving around, yanking on a shirt and then shoving the rest of his stuff into his duffel bag.

“Obviously. Why'd you get moved?” Mike sounded annoyed. Mischa watched as Tal went into the bathroom, and when he came out, he was carrying his toiletries. They all got dumped in the bag, which then got zipped up.

“Peter had to go to New York to get some stuff, he gave me his suite,” Mischa explained about her boss.

“Oh, sweet! Upgrade! What's the room number?”

“Room 1816.”

Tal finished putting on his shoes, then walked right up to her and kissed her quickly. Before she could respond, he hugged her close and put his lips to her ear.

“
I'm here with you. Be strong. If you need me, come find me.
”

Then he was walking out of the room, not a trace of him left behind.

“Sounds great, I'll be up there in a minute!” her husband said in a cheery voice. Then the line went dead.

Misch spun in about three circles, not sure what the fuck to do. Then she ran into the bathroom, ripping her shirt over her head. Tal's fingers had been inside her not two minutes ago. She just … couldn't meet her husband, not while she was stained with another man's skin.

What the fuck is going on!? How can this be happening!? I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm soooooooo not ready. I don't think I'll ever be ready.

She turned on the water and jumped underneath it, just long enough to run a washcloth over her skin and between her legs. Then she jumped back out and ran around the suite. Slipped on some underwear and a long, sleeveless, jersey knit dress. Very beachy, very non-sexy, very non-confrontational.

Is there recommended fashion for this? “What to wear when you break up with your husband” clothing?

She was almost to the door of the suite when she realized she still wasn't wearing her rings. She cursed and ran back to the night stand, and had just slipped them on when there was a knock at the door.

Be strong. You can do this. Be strong. Fuck. FUCK. I AM SO FUCKING FUCKED.

*

Tal shut the door to the suite behind him.

And then he waited.

Waited till he heard the elevator ding, down at the other end of the hall.

Then he slid his sunglasses on and walked forward, one hand casually in his pants pocket, his bag swinging in his other hand.

Of course he knew what Michael Rapaport looked like, he had seen plenty of pictures. But seeing someone in person is different, and seeing the husband of the woman Tal had just gotten done fucking, well, that was a whole new realm of different.

The other man was wearing board shorts and a tank, with hiking shoes on his feet. He was also wearing sunglasses, and he was smiling broadly as he made his way down the hall. Obviously excited. He was quite a bit shorter than Tal, but he was very wiry, and Tal remembered Mischa telling him her husband was a marathon runner, had gone to the University of Michigan on a track-and-field scholarship. It showed.

“Hey,” Michael said as he passed, smiling and giving a head nod.

“
Ciao,
” Tal replied in a low voice, nodding his head as well. He could be polite to the other man, had no reason to be rude at all.

Fucker.

They passed each other without saying anything else. Just barely brushed arms.

Mischa had once told Tal that when she was with him, she felt like time would stop. Like they were in another realm, another dimension, something. “
A timeless existence
”, she'd called it. He'd written it off as romantic notions from a lonely woman experiencing passion,
real passion
, for the first time.

But now Tal understood, because that was
exactly
how he felt. As he turned to face the elevator, he could still see Michael out of the corner of his eye. Could watch as the other man knocked on the door, could see that door open, and had to witness as Michael immediately pulled Mischa into his arms. Wrapped her in a hug and picked her up off the ground.

Picked
Tal's
woman up and touched her body.

Except she's not yours. Not completely. Not yet.

Tal went down to the lobby and seated himself in a cushioned chair. Clenched and unclenched his fists. He and Mischa had come up with a plan, and originally, Tal would have left in an hour or two anyway. He'd booked a room at a different hotel. They figured it was safer that way, in case something happened and Mike refused to leave. Mischa absolutely did not want the two men meeting. It would be bad enough hurting Mike; she didn't wanna rub Tal in his face, and she didn't trust herself or Tal to keep away from each other if they were in the same hotel.

But Tal couldn't leave. Not yet. He kept his sunglasses on and picked up a newspaper. Read it forwards and backwards. Kept glancing at the elevator.

What are they doing up there!?

The problem with existing in Mischa's “
timeless place
” – fifteen minutes felt like an eternity, but that was all the time that elapsed between Tal leaving her floor, and the couple entering the lobby. He peered over the top of the newspaper, watching them pass in front of him.

He wondered how Michael could be so clueless. It would have been obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain that there was some sort of problem between the two. Michael strode across the lobby, all eager and excited to hit the town, almost marching in his haste to make it outside.

Mischa moved much slower, more languidly, and she didn't look excited at all. She looked somewhere between annoyed and going-to-her-own-funeral. She had a fedora shoved down low on her head, covering hair that looked damp, and she wore a large pair of sunglasses. Her dress was long and simple enough, but the thin material clung to her curves, and she held it up and away from her feet as she walked. So graceful. So beautiful. So out of place with the other man.

They don't even look like they're together. At all. Just two strangers who shared an elevator. That poor man.
That poor girl
.

Mischa glanced at her cell phone, then glanced at her husband. Jet lag had knocked him out, like a baby. He was even still wearing his clothes, stretched out on top of the covers, snoring away.

She chewed on her bottom lip, debated whether or not to answer the incoming call, then grabbed the phone and tiptoed across the suite. She slowly opened the door, wincing at how loud it sounded. But when she glanced at the bed, Mike was still out cold. She slid out of the room and eased the door shut.

It was an all out dash after that; she ran to the other end of the hall, answering the phone as she went.

“Hello?” she panted, stopping when she got to a wall.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tal demanded. She grimaced. He sounded
pissed
.

“Nothing, I just snuck out of the room,” she whispered, pacing back and forth, staring at the door she'd just left.

“You wouldn't have to sneak out
if he wasn't there,
” Tal snapped.

“I know, I know,” she groaned.

“What the fuck happened to the plan!?”

“It's still the plan!” she snapped back. “It's just …
delayed
, alright!?”

“No! No, not fucking alright! Grow a backbone, Mischa!”

“
Hey!
I'm trying! This is hard for me, and you're not exactly making it any fucking easier!” she hissed.

“Well, excuse me, but I'm already very aware of how shitty you are at dealing with difficult situations. Why is he still there?” Tal asked. She chose to ignore his “shitty” comment.

“Because, I didn't get a chance to say anything yet,” she started. She could hear him take a breath, a big one, probably so he could yell at her, and she barreled right through him. “He wanted to see all these touristy sights, and I couldn't exactly dump him at the
Grotta di Fornillo
, knee deep in tourists!”

“Did you spend all fucking day there?” Tal's voice was snide.

“No, but we did go just about everywhere else. The man can walk for days, Tal. I had to beg for lunch. Then he wanted to fill me in on everything that's gone on at home – everything I've missed out on because I was avoiding his phones calls for
somebody else,
” she threw back at him. If he was going to make her feel like shit, then he should feel that way, too.

“Don't you put this shit on me. You spent all day together. You walked around. You talked. All things that were in the original plan,” he pointed out. Mischa rolled her eyes.

“Sometimes plans go differently when they're put into motion!”

“No. No, they don't. I live my life by plans, and you know what? You make a plan, you follow a plan, you execute a plan. So far, you've only accomplished step one,” he informed her.

“You know what? Whatever, it's too late. Bitch all you want, the day is done, it's after ten o'clock. Tomorrow, I promise,” she swore to him.

“Did you fuck him?”

She was shocked.

“Is that a real fucking question!?” she demanded.

“Of course it is. You cheated on him with me, who's to say you won't cheat on me with him!?”

She felt as if she'd been slapped. She yanked the phone away from her ear and hung up.

How the fuck could he say that to me!? How
dare he
fucking say that to me! Who the fuck does he think he is!? What the fuck does he think is happening between us!?

Mischa clenched her teeth together and let out a mock shriek, pacing double time between the walls.

It's a very valid point. You're the bad guy here. Not Mike. Not Tal. Just you. Don't get angry. Understand where he's coming from, and move past it.

When her phone rang, she answered it.

“I'm sorry,” Tal immediately said, his voice even and flat.

“I'm sorry, too,” she managed to respond in an equally even, flat tone.

“Fuck, Misch,” he groaned, the flatness falling away. “I'm just … I know it's hard for you,
I know
. But it isn't exactly fucking easy for me, knowing you're up there with him. Knowing he's gonna sleep next to you tonight. What if he touches you!? What if he wakes you up the way I woke you up!? I'll fucking kill him.”

“Stop it, no you won't. And he won't do that, either, he's not like that. And even if he randomly decided to be, I won't let him.
I promise you
. You and me, right? You said that.
You said it,
” she reminded him.

“I know, I know. It's just …
hard.
”

They were both silent for a while and Mischa put her back against the wall before sliding down it, lowering herself so she sat on the floor.

“When I came to Italy,” she started, her voice thick. “I had my plan. But nothing went according to that plan. When I slept with you,
that
didn't go according to plan.
Nothing
has gone the way I thought it would, and
nothing
was easy like I thought it would be.”

“That's not true,” his voice was soft.

“All of it's true,” she sighed.

“Falling for you was the easiest thing I've ever done,” he whispered. She managed a watery smile and picked at the edge of her dress.

“Yeah. Yeah, there's that,” her voice was barely above a breath.

“
Promise me
you'll talk to him tomorrow,” the hard edge was back in Tal's voice. She nodded.

“I promise. I've already told him that after breakfast we're going to the beach. Nothing else, no other stops, just the beach,” she assured him, running her fingers up her leg and clasping her knee.

“If I don't hear from you by noon, I'm gonna call the room,” Tal warned her.

“I don't appreciate being threatened,” she snapped.

“I don't appreciate being shoved into the background.”

Touché, Mr. Canaan.

“Alright, alright. If you don't hear from me by noon, feel free to call. Would it make it easier if you had his cell phone number?” she couldn't keep the sarcasm from dripping off her words.

“I already have it.
Noon.
”

Then the line went dead.

How does he know everything!?

*

Mischa's foot tapped out a staccato beat on the cobblestones. She chewed on her bottom lip and tugged at a lock of hair. A blind person would've been able to tell how nervous she was; Mike just kept shoveling eggs into his mouth.

“Hey, wanna go for a run on the beach?” he asked.

“Huh?” she hadn't been paying attention to him.

“A run, on the beach. You said you wanted to go to the beach,” he reminded her.

The beach. The beach where I might have fallen in love. The beach where I'm going to end our love. I'll never be able to go to a beach again.

“Oh. Yeah. No, no running, Mikey,” she told him. He glanced over his sunglasses at her.

“Remember how gung ho you were about exercising before you left,” he said in a careful voice.

“Excuse me!?”

“I'm not trying to be a dick, babe, but you were so determined to lose weight. You don't wanna gain it all back while you're here,” he pointed out. She sat up and put her hands on her hips.

“Are you implying that I've gained weight?” she asked, glaring at him.

“No. Well, I mean, maybe a couple pounds, which is fine, you look fine. But it only takes a couple more on top of that, and then you're right back where you were,” he warned her.

Fuck this.

“Are you done?” she snapped, standing up from the table.

“What? I just started, I -,”

Mischa walked away from the table.

He caught up to her outside, laughing and giving her a quick sideways hug.

“C'mon, sweets, don't be mad at me,” he begged in his baby voice, kissing the side of her neck. She resisted the urge to push him away.

He still thinks your skin belongs to him because you haven't told him that you gave it to someone else.

“I'm not, Mikey,” she assured him, then let him hold her hand. Link their fingers together.

They chatted some more as they made their way to the beach. He talked about all the things he wanted to do while he was in Italy, and how excited he was that he was sharing the experiences with her. Mike had never traveled out of the United States. He didn't like to fly, and he'd once said he had no particular desire to travel. It was one of the reasons why they never went on vacation. Never even had a real honeymoon. Mike was a homebody.

“This is so beautiful,” he groaned, letting go of her hand and jogging up to the water. Mischa trailed behind him and stopped a ways back. Glanced to her right, to an outcropping of rocks that hid a special beach. A special secret.

“It is,” she whispered.

“And I'm so glad I'm here with you,” he added, turning back towards her.

She smiled as he walked up to her. She had missed him, in her own weird, fucked up way. She enjoyed talking to him sometimes, he could be so funny. She had missed that. She would miss it so much.

“Mikey, there's something -,” she began.

But she was cut off by him suddenly kissing her, wrapping his arms around her so tight, she found it hard to breathe. When he broke it off, she gasped for air, beyond bewildered.

“God, I've missed you, Misch,” he moaned, kissing down the side of her neck.

“What are you doing!?” she exclaimed, wiggling under his touch as his hands wandered down her body.

“I know things have been weird at home, I know, but this time apart has made me think. We're gonna try, okay? We're gonna try. You put in all that work to get your body back, so I'm gonna be more attentive,” he told her, kissing his way to her ear.

Wait … did he just imply that we weren't having sex because I'd gained weight!?

“Mike, stop, I need to talk to you,” she said, pushing at his hands as they got grabbier.

“We talk all the time.
Shhhh,
” he replied, then his tongue darted in her ear. She literally jumped.

“
What are you doing!?
” she squealed, jerking her head away from him.

“Spicing things up, trying something new,” he laughed.

“
Blech,
you know I don't like that! Stop it!” she demanded as one of his hands ran over her breasts.

“C'mon, there's hardly anyone out here. Let's be naughty,” he suggested, his other hand moving to her ass and holding her against him as he ground his hips back against her.

“Let's not. I have to talk to you.
Michael, stop,
” she snapped, planting her hands on his chest and pushing. The use of his full name caught his attention and he finally leaned away.

“What? Are you okay?” he asked, ducking his head to look her in the eye. All the flirtiness from a moment ago was gone, and Mischa got the feeling he was finally seeing her.
Really
looking at her.

And it wasn't a pretty sight.

“No, I'm not okay. Not at all. I have to talk to you, about something important. Something big,” she urged.

“Oh god. This is gonna be one of
those
talks, isn't it?” he complained.

Baby, you have no idea.

“Just sit down,” she replied, before dropping to her butt. He sat in the sand next to her.

“Okay, what's so important that it can't wait till after our amazing holiday?” he asked, his voice snide.

Oh god. I can't do this. How am I going to do this?

“Mikey, we've got some problems,” she started out slow.

“I know, babe. I just told you that I want to work on them,” he said back. She swallowed thickly.

“I know you said that, but … we've had these problems for a while, and … I just  …,” she struggled for words.

“What?”

“Sometimes things aren't fixable,” her voice was so small, even she could barely hear it.

“What do you mean? Of course they are. You've just been gone, it seems weird, we haven't seen each other in a month. Have we ever gone that long without seeing each other?” he pointed out. She shook her head.

“It was weird before I left. It was weird before I even agreed to this job. It's gone too far. It's not fixable anymore, Mike,” she told him, staring down at her knees.

“Wait,” his voice was serious and he turned to face her. “Wait, wait, wait. What are you saying, Mischa?”

“I'm saying …,” her voice kept giving out.

“Tell me you're not saying what I think you're saying,” he begged.

“I am.”

“No.”

“Mike.”

“No.”

“
Mike.
Things haven't been right for a while, and you know it. You're unhappy, I'm unhappy. It's gone too far,” she tried to explain