At Last (13 page)

He had to leave. He stared out the window as Liz went back to babbling at Susan. He tried not to notice Susan stealing glances at him. It is over. He’d told himself, promised himself, that all he had to do was stay until Liz was there.

Liz was there. Now he could go. He needed to go. He wanted to go. Yet, he never wanted to leave Susan’s side again.

How pathetic.
How fucking pathetic
, would be how Liz would put it.

Liz said she was hungry and told Susan to get dressed. Kevin turned, walked down the hall, and threw his things in his duffle bag--he’d picked up so much clothing that it almost didn’t fit. He placed it by the inside of the door, and waited for Susan and Liz in the front room. He called the front desk and asked them to book him a flight out in two hours.

He would join them for lunch, and wait until they started seriously catching up, and he’d grab a cab and head off for the airport.

It was the only thing he could do.

~*~

What the hell was up with those two? Liz sat across from them at the restaurant. They both looked stricken as she talked to them. Susan had appeared fine in the room, but now she had a red face and a sour expression, like she was going to barf. And Kevin’s mouth was so tightly pressed together, his lips had disappeared.

She’d told him he’d be dying to get away from Susan after a couple days. All that moaning and rampaging about another man would make him suicidal. Looking at Kevin, at his drawn expression and the stiff way he was sitting, it appeared she’d been right.

She felt sorry for him, the poor shmuck. Maybe she’d throw him a roll in the sack before he ran off to spend the rest of his days boarded up in a monastery. He was hot as hell, and she hadn’t been fucked properly in almost three weeks. With all the maid of honor crap, and the gallery, and her mission to Aspen to relocate Mark’s balls to his throat, she hadn’t had time enough for a bikini wax, much less to hook up for a real fuck date.

But she could make an exception. He’d be easy to seduce. All that pent up sexual energy, with no outlet, and she had years of experience making men beg to sleep with her. It would be for a good cause. He’d been there for Susan, and for Liz. He wasn’t nearly the asshole she’d pegged him for in college.

Seven years, and he hadn’t made a move on Susan yet. Liz thought about that. Maybe he was gay? She shook her head at the thought. Either way, he was a good guy, and Susan was a fool for not seeing he was a catch.

Liz gave herself a mental head slap. It was Kevin! Kevin Jacobs. She had hated him since the moment she’d laid eyes on him. Oh well, she’d hated Picasso when she first saw his work, yet she’d bought her apartment last year with her commission from selling one of his smaller works in a silent auction. Things changed.

Neither Susan nor Kevin did more than move their food around their plates. No wonder they were so tired looking. They’d both been too depressed to eat.

Liz took a long gulp of her Cosmo, then ordered another. She looked at Kevin and told him, “Time for girl talk. So why don’t you go take a walk on the beach, okay?”

Kevin looked up, surprised. Obviously he’d been off in his own little world, and as he stood up and walked away, looking like a zombie, Liz was pretty sure he still was.

~*~

Susan hadn’t heard a word Liz had said since they’d sat down. She was trying to keep from crawling onto Kevin’s lap and making a complete spectacle of herself. It would feel so good to be pressed against him, but Liz would go ballistic. She might even try to disembowel Kevin with her salad fork. But she wanted the taste of
him
on her tongue, not the syrup from the French toast she’d ordered and had yet to touch.

She needed to break it to Liz quietly, gently, and preferably while she was comatose from knock-out drops, or chained to a wall. Susan wondered if the concierge could get her some chains, and some horse tranquilizers.

She jumped when Liz told Kevin to go take a walk. As he stood, it took every ounce of restraint for her not to grab him and pull him back down in the chair. She didn’t want him going anywhere. As he walked away, not even turning to look back, Susan felt a deep pang of despair. Why didn’t he look back?

Liz was snapping her fingers in her face. “Hey, coma girl, what’s up with the blank stare?”

Susan shook her head and tried to pull her mind from the image of Kevin walking out of the restaurant. That was a bad thing to think about. It made her feel all cold and stiff inside. She concentrated hard on Liz, on what she was saying.

What the hell
was
she saying?

“I understand, sweetie, with the wedding-that-wasn’t, and being stuck on this godforsaken island with Kevin--I’m sure that was a blast!--that you’re all post traumatic stressed out. And I guess sending you on your honeymoon wasn’t the brightest idea I ever had...well, I think that was Kevin’s idea, or maybe we had it at the same time. Whatever. What I’m saying is it’s not your fault you’re all wound in knots still.”

Susan was trying to keep up, and all she got was the ‘wound in knots part’. Was she wound in knots? She did feel pretty tense. And Liz was picking up on it already. She’d have it all figured out by dinner, and she’d be screaming and throwing things, and Kevin would have a salad fork sticking out of his stomach...that nice, flat stomach. Now that was what all stomachs should look like, and never did.

Liz was staring at her, her brows knitted in a serious scowl. Susan gulped and waited for Liz to pounce. She couldn’t possibly read her mind, Susan thought. Yet Liz just sat there and stared, her ruby lipstick-ed mouth drawing into a perfect rose bud.

Don’t make any sudden moves, she can
sense fear.
And Susan thought of Kevin again. The way he felt against her, on top of her, beneath her, inside her. She thought of him just walking out of the restaurant and felt her whole body turn from hot to cold in the blink of an eye.

Liz’s eyes turned from hard and questioning to soft and sympathetic. She reached out and took Susan’s hand. “God, you’re a mess.” She caught the eye of a passing waiter, not even their waiter. “Take away her plate and bring her a martini.”

The waiter looked completely bedazzled as he took in the sleek, polished sight of Liz. He looked down at Susan’s plate. “Was there something wrong with your meal, ma’am?”

Liz leaned in and speared him straight through with one of her super-mega-watt sex-kitten smiles. “She has man troubles. That calls for alcohol, not bacon.”

“I’ll have a margarita.” Susan slumped in her chair. Kevin made good margaritas--the best. She zoned out, thinking about how long it would be before she was back in Kevin’s arms again.

And then she heard Liz say, “We’ll start hunting for Mr. Rebound.”

“No!” Susan blurted, realizing too late the word came out too fast. Liz would be suspicious. She tried to say something to defuse it, but no other words came to her. All she had left was “no,” and it was ready to shriek from her lips again.

Liz sat back in her chair, her eyebrows raised. “Okay...don’t go having a heart attack, or another coma over it.”

The waiter dropped off Susan’s frozen margarita. Just looking at it made Susan yearn for Kevin all the more.

Liz proposed a toast to Susan’s independence, the clink of their glasses making Susan wince. She had to go find him. She had to tell him…

But tell him what?

Susan sat there, trying to listen to Liz talk about some trip she’d just taken to Aspen, but all she could think was,
What am I going to do?

~*~

A half hour later, Susan led Liz into the hotel suite, and was unpleasantly surprised not to find Kevin sitting on the couch. She rushed back to Kevin’s room, feeling her stomach tightening, nervous to see him, not knowing what she’d say, but whatever it was, she needed to make him stay with her.

She found his room empty. The clothes he’d had setting out on the dresser, his duffle bag--gone. The closet door was open, and the hangers hung empty on the rod. And then she saw the note sitting on the bed.

Suze,

Liz is here now, and I’ve got to go back home. I’ll call soon.

Kevin

Susan stood there, reading the letter over again. It didn’t say anything...

She turned it over to check out the other side of the paper--nothing.

What was it with guys and leaving completely inadequate notes? She would have laughed if tears weren’t already streaming hot and heavy down her cheeks. She would have screamed, but she couldn’t breathe. And she would’ve run from the hotel and all the way to the airport to catch him, but her legs gave out and she sat down hard on her butt, in the middle of Kevin’s room, clutching the note to her stomach.

She felt like she was going to throw up, thought she was going to pass out or rip apart, tearing right down the middle like a sheet of paper. Like the paper she held in her hand.

“There you are!” Liz said, standing in the doorway. “You’ve got to quit this disappearing thing, it’s getting…” She stopped talking and dropped to the floor next to Susan, wrapping her arms around her, making soft cooing noises as she kissed the top of her head.

Susan dissolved into tears, her breaths so ragged, so hard, that all the thoughts in her head couldn’t form a single word. She just sobbed, maybe harder than she had in her entire life.

“It’s okay, let it out. He’s not good enough for you...he never was.”

“Yes, he is!” Susan screamed, the words coming out garbled and choked.

“Mark--” Liz said the name like it was actually leaving a bad taste in her mouth. “--is not good enough for you. And he’s certainly not worth one of your tears.”

Liz thought she was crying over Mark, but she didn’t give a damn about Mark! She needed Kevin!

Susan tried to take a breath, tried to tell Liz to go find Kevin, to bring him back to her, but she couldn’t stop sobbing, couldn’t catch her breath long enough to form one coherent word.

She needed Kevin.
Someone bring him back.

~*~

The plane ride home was bumpy, a storm front standing between the island and the mainland. Kevin sat staring out at the dark black thunderheads, wishing he was still with Susan, wanting her so much, the pain was excruciating. His lungs burned when he took a breath, his head heavy, each thought that moved through it a clanging weight.

“Would you like another drink?” the perky flight attendant asked. Her blond hair wasn’t a bit like Susan’s. Susan’s was real. The shade of blond on this woman Kevin had only seen on the cover of a
Playboy
.

He smiled without conviction and handed her his empty plastic tumbler. “Make it a double.”

The attendant must have sensed there was something wrong, because her cheerful expression wavered as she leaned in and took his cup from him.

Kevin looked back to the window, out on the blackness that had enveloped them. Flashes of lightning flickered in the distance.

Maybe they’d crash... Kevin tried to push thoughts of Susan, warm and soft and naked, out of his mind. At least he wouldn’t have to remember anymore.

SIX MONTHS LATER…

“You’re breaking up with me?” Susan’s voice cracked on the word “breaking” and squeaked a whole octave higher by “me.” She sat there dumbfounded. This couldn’t be happening to her again. What had she done? How could Dr. Garvin do this to her? The good doctor was all that had gotten Susan through all of this!

Susan’s body stiffened, from her toes all the way up her spine and neck. Even her arms had gone rigid, and her fingers were threatening to tear right through the soft leather of her portfolio case. Her eyeballs felt like they were about to pop right out of her skull.

And on the day of the initial presentation... Susan didn’t believe in signs, but since she’d run through three pairs of pantyhose, had accidentally flushed her watch down the toilet, and had broken a heel getting into a cab, she was starting to feel paranoid.

Now sitting there in her new Prada sling-backs, using her cellphone as a watch, and wearing her PMS--two sizes too large--pantyhose, Susan saw an uncomfortable look flash over Dr. Garvin’s pretty face. She adjusted her glasses and shifted her weight in her comfy looking chair.

“No, Susan, this is not a...well, we’re not in a relationship, we’re...” Dr. Garvin flipped through the thin manila file folder with Susan’s name neatly typed on its index tab. “What I meant to say is, your therapy isn’t going anywhere. I don’t see any real clinical reason to continue working on issues that don’t seem to actually exist.” Dr. Garvin stopped, looking up from the file folder.

“What do you mean?” Susan’s voice was small and tremulous. “Are you saying we don’t have a future?”

Dr. Garvin gulped and eyed the intercom button nervously. She looked like she wanted to call for reinforcements…like security or the National Guard.