Tear You Apart (17 page)

“Shit,” he breathes. “Feels so good.”

It does feel good, and finally, there it is. The sweet spot. Everything inside me tenses....
I’m going to lose it,
I think, as my fingers slow. He’s getting close, and I’m easing off.

“Talk to me,” he says.

I don’t even think about what to say. Does it matter? “Fuck me.”

“I am fucking you,” Will says.

“Harder.” Sex talk, ridiculous. But it works. I push my fingers inside myself, curling upward. There’s that spot, the one his cock hits so perfectly. The heel of my hand presses my clit. Everything moves in time. “Fuck me harder.”

“I love it when you come,” Will says. “I love that noise you make when I pull your hair—”

Just the thought of it’s a trigger. I cry out. He groans. Closer and closer, we work together, even though we’re so far apart.

I let go.

I’m mindless again, without words, though not without voice. Hoarse and low. All I can do is breathe. The crush of waves on sand, that’s what I taste and smell and hear, and feel on my skin when Will’s pleasure comes out through his voice. We come together, and it takes forever, and then I’m aware of my skin sticking to the chair and the chill in the room and the clatter of Will’s phone when it falls over and shows me nothing but the speckles in his countertop.

“Sorry,” he says after a couple seconds, and tilts it upright again. His hair is messed up, and he has that sleepy-eyed look, that slow smile I recognize. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

We don’t say much as we both tidy up. I put my pajamas back on and take my laptop from the desk to the chaise longue, where I curl under a blanket and rest it on my knees while I wait for Will to come back into view. He’s wearing his pajamas, too, when he returns—the blue ones with the sailboats that I bought him one day in the farmer’s market as a joke, because he normally sleeps in his briefs.

Suddenly, I want to cry.

He takes me, his little woman in the box, into the bed with him and puts me on the pillow, so when he turns onto his side, one arm beneath his head, it’s almost as though I’m there beside him. I turn, too, stretching out on the chaise with my pillow tucked beneath me.

We can’t stop staring at each other. Saying nothing, nothing to say. I trace the curve of his jaw and throat, the sweet spot below his ear, with only my eyes, because he’s too faraway to touch. We stare and we stare and I can’t stop myself from smiling, because he’s smiling, too. We don’t have to speak to have this conversation; in fact, the only way to have it is by not using words.

And then, although it’s more than silly, it’s stupid, it’s ridiculous, I pull the laptop closer to me so I can pretend it’s Will I’m holding, not some box of metal and wire and glass. Only for a few seconds, long enough to hear the sound of his breathing as close as if it was in my ear. But I can’t feel him and I can’t smell him. I want him to talk so I can at least have that last sensation, yet when I pull away to look at him, Will’s eyes are closed, his breathing heavy.

We’ve never slept together, and this is nothing like it would be if we ever did. But it’s the closest we will ever get to it, I think, as sleep weights my own eyes. I listen to the soft shush-hush of his breathing. Then the shuffle of blankets as he shifts. I look at him. He’s looking back.

“How are we going to say goodbye?” Will asks in a sleep-furry voice.

He means now. I mean forever. “I don’t want to.”

His sleepy smile slaughters me. If I was standing, it would’ve sent me to my knees. Will yawns.

“We have to, at some point. Can’t stay online all night,” he says.

Of course he’s right, but that doesn’t change how I feel. He gets up on his elbow, propping his head in his hand. He studies me.

“If you knew this was the last time you’d talk to me, what would you say?” I ask. It’s too late for this kind of conversation, the sort I promised myself I’d never have with him. But I want to know.

Will laughs, and it’s uncomfortable, not genuine. “C’mon. We’ll talk again.”

I’m not so sure. “I just assume every time will be the last, that’s all.”

“That hasn’t happened yet.”

“No,” I tell him carefully. “But it’s going to.”

He leans closer to the camera. “Do you want it to?”

“No.”

Another yawn, sleep in his eyes. “Go to sleep. It’s late.”

I like him telling me what to do as much as I like anyone else doing it, which is to say not at all. He must see it in my face, because his voice softens. His smile is supposed to win me, but I’m not sure it does.

“C’mon.” Will’s whisper is the grit of sand in my teeth. “We’re friends, right?”

“Yes.” I can’t make myself smile, but I choose to let him win me.

I choose it.

“Good night, Elisabeth,” Will says, but I can’t force myself to say the words. He laughs a little. “Want me to count to three?”

I shake my head. I let my fingertips trace the outline of his face for a second or so. “Good night, Will.”

Before he can count or move or do anything at all, I slide my fingers across the touchpad and disconnect the call. His image is frozen there for too short a second, a blink, before the laptop beeps and all I see is my own face. My hair’s a mess and my mascara’s painted shadows under my eyes. I turn my head from side to side, wondering exactly what Will sees when he looks at me.

How could I have ever believed he and I would be “just friends”? We will never be “just” anything. There’s too much of us.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I keep telling myself this is just infatuation. That it’s not real. That we are built of sand, not brick.

I sit at my desk and stare out the window, but I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. I tell myself that if I stop seeing him, this all will pass. It will fade.

Oh, God.

Oh, God, please let it fade.

This won’t last. I tell myself it can’t, of course. It started in the wrong place and keeps going into even more wrong. Something like this, with me and Will, this up, up, up, this crazy chaos, this inferno...things like that don’t last.

If I stop it now,
I think, while the seconds tick by and I stare and stare at my work as though it should mean something, yet I can’t make the numbers line up. If I stop it now, very soon, before I know it, all that’s left will be memory. And over time, the smell of him will go away. The taste of him.

I put my fingers to my mouth and let my tongue stroke over the tips. I can still taste him. I lift my shirt to breathe against the fabric where he held me close; I can still smell him.

He is all over me like a stain.

This can’t last. I will end it, or maybe he will, when he discovers someone new and real, not me, the bright and shiny, the star always out of reach. Will’s going to find someone new; I expect him to. I tell him and myself I want him to, but we both know I am a liar, the worst sort, the kind who smiles with the lie clamped tight between her teeth.

This will end. It has to. Very soon, I think as I refresh my email in case there’s a message from him. Check my voice mail in case he’s called. This will be over very soon, and I will go back into my life and try somehow to make it work.

I will get away with this.

I press my fingertips to my eyes to hold back the tears; nobody can come in here and see me weeping at my desk. Sobbing like a lunatic. But the pain rears up and grabs me by the back of the head to pry open my mouth. It kisses me breathless while it drips venom through every vein, and though I wish this pain could make me numb, it only sets me on fire. I hold back the sobs with the heel of my hand against my lips. By biting my tongue. I breathe and breathe.

What if I could be happy with Will? Really happy. Not settling. What if I have waited my whole life to find this person who fits me like the missing piece of my puzzle? What if my entire life has led me to this point, not to teach me a lesson about appreciating what I have, but to help me let it all go?

I finish for the day. I go home. I make dinner, which Ross and I eat while he talks to me about his work and I nod without really listening. Jac calls, talks to her dad. Talks to me. I pay some bills. We watch a movie. Ross reminds me about a long list of things that need to be taken care of, all of which I’ve already arranged to do, but I nod and nod and let him talk. When he goes to bed, I pretend I’m engrossed in the book on my lap, but I haven’t read more than a paragraph in hours. I can’t focus. Can’t concentrate.

I haven’t talked to Will in two long days—he’s busy with his son and I’ve had a lot going on around here. Our real lives got in the way of the fantasy one, which is to be expected, but I don’t like it. I miss him from someplace low in my gut, and yes, it’s sexual, but it’s also more than that. He’s become a part of my day. The best part.

Two in the morning and I haven’t read another word. I’ve reorganized my cookbooks and cleaned the fridge and done a lot of online holiday shopping to get it out of the way, even though Christmas is months off. And still the weight of missing him is in my gut, weighty as a pile of stones that stack and stack until they block my throat, too. Two in the morning is the worst time to need someone.

Balance,
I remind myself. It’s only been a couple days.
He’s not ignoring you. He hasn’t disappeared. Balance, Elisabeth. Don’t be that girl who shows up with mascara tracks on her cheeks, asking, “Am I pretty? Do you think I’m pretty, really?”

I should go to bed. I should not, at the very least, text him. But of course that’s exactly why I do, knowing he won’t answer because he’s asleep.

Have a great day....

But he does answer me a few minutes later.

You’re up late.

Yes. So are you.

Working on some edits. Got a bunch of last minute client requests.

The conversation continues in that stuttering, stilted manner, until I break down and ask him what I really want to:
Lunch tomorrow? (Today)

Can’t. Sorry.

When?

No answer. Not for several interminable minutes, then not for another hour. I sit and stare at my phone, then methodically go through and delete all the messages. Then all my recent calls.

This, to quote Eminem, is the part where the rap breaks down.

Because now I’m unable to sleep, and upstairs, Ross’s alarm goes off, and he comes down to find me pretending I got up early to make him breakfast before he leaves for yet another business trip to someplace I can’t recall. And because I realize for the first time what it means to be having an affair, how it consumes everything. Every thought, every action, the slices of toast I put on his plate, the kiss he gives me at the sink, everything is overlaid with the steady, constant thump of the same thought, over and over.

What would you do, if you knew?

“You’re the best wife I ever had,” Ross says at the platter of scrambled eggs and bacon I present. It’s a joke, an old one, and I laugh because I’m supposed to. I’m the only wife he’s ever had, but surely even being the only, I can’t be the best.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I’m not expecting Will to call me the next day, right before lunch, but when my phone rings and I see that it’s him, I answer right away. I have to. I think I’m physically incapable of ignoring him. I can’t stop myself from smiling, even as I hate myself a little for being so relieved. “Hi!”

“Hi.” He sounds off, and immediately, I’m on my guard.

“You okay?”

“Tired. Didn’t get a lot of sleep.”

I make myself sound sympathetic. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

“Got my work done, though.”

“Good.”

There’s a pause. I hear traffic and the intake of breath. He’s smoking.

“What are you doing now?” I’m stupid for asking, but there’s still hope, always hope, that he’s calling to meet me for lunch.

“Getting ready for a cover shoot.”

“Science fiction?”

“Romance,” Will says.

I picture a couple embracing. “Sexy. Sure they want you to take the picture and not be in it? ’Cuz you’d totally sell a million copies, especially if you had your shirt off.”

I’m trying to tease him. He’d have laughed, before. He doesn’t laugh now.

“Yeah.”

I break. “Have lunch with me, Will. Just a sandwich. It won’t take long....”

“I can’t.” He sounds irritable. “I told you.”

“Then why are you calling me?” I bite out the words.

“Because if I didn’t, you’d get all bent out of shape,” he snaps. “Christ, Elisabeth. Back off, okay?”

I’m silent.

“Look,” he says. “If you want to pick something up and come over about two, I’ll be done by then.”

“Only if you want me to. I’m not trying to force you.”

“I said you could, didn’t I?”

This is exactly the argument I never wanted to have, and I hate it. But I take the sandwich to his apartment, and I arrive at two on the dot so he can’t accuse me of being too early.

I don’t kiss him when he lets me in. We eat the food with minimal conversation. Will takes the plates and puts them in the dishwasher while I use his bathroom, taking an extra long time to wash my hands so I can be sure I won’t cry when I say goodbye.

“Thanks for lunch. I’ll call you,” I tell him at the door, even though I have no intentions of doing that.

“I wanted to ask you to come with me to this thing I got invited to,” Will says suddenly. “It’s a bring-a-date sort of thing.”

Before I can ask him when it is, and mentally check my calendar, he goes on. “But then I realized I couldn’t ask you, because you probably couldn’t go, and if you could, it would be because you made up some excuse about what you were doing.”

“Will...”

His look is guarded, no expression. A blank. “I wanted to be with you, and I couldn’t. So I got pissed off. I don’t like wanting what I can’t have.”

Well,
I think,
who does?

But he wants me, that’s what I hear, and although it should make me feel better, it only makes me feel worse. I don’t want him to hurt. I never wanted that.

“Should I leave?” I think I mean his apartment, but once the words are out, they could mean anything.

“Yeah. I think you should.”

My hand on the knob, I look at him over my shoulder. I want to be dignified about this. At least I want to try. “Should I not call you again?”

He doesn’t answer for half a minute, and my heart breaks slowly, piece by shattered piece.

“No. I’ll call you when I’ve had some time to think.”

Fuck dignified. I’m too proud. “Don’t say it if you’re not going to. I’d rather you just tell me you’re not going to talk to me again than try to save my feelings or something like that.”

His expression softens, still guarded, but not so blank. “I’ll call you.”

I nod stiffly and let myself out. I hold my shit together all the way back to the gallery, where I lock myself in the bathroom and press my hands to my face to stifle the sound of the sobs I’m expecting to tear me apart—except they don’t come. Everything about me is bone dry.