Happily Ever After: A Novel

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For my parents, Henry and Eva Von Ancken

midlife crisis

noun

a period of emotional turmoil in middle age characterized especially by a strong desire for change

(
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
)

Chapter 1

Stolen Secrets,

Chapter One

At exactly 8:45, Lily Dell pushed through the rotating doors of New York’s Jensen & Richardson Communications and smiled at the security guard. She was running late, but that was no reason to be unfriendly.

“How are you today, Hank?” she asked.

The older man tipped his cap to her. “Fine, Miss Dell. Thanks for asking.”

“Have a good day, okay?”

“As long as the sun is shining and I have air to breathe,” he said with a wink.

Lily had the same exchange with Hank every morning, but that was okay. Lily found routines comforting. On some level, she knew it was because of her childhood, but there was no point in digging into that muck. She’ d escaped it. That was enough for her.

“Wait!” Lily called as she ran for the elevator banks. Her office was on the fifty-eighth floor, and it could take forever for an elevator to show up at ground level during the morning rush. A bleached-blond woman with long pink fingernails stuck an arm between the elevator doors, holding them while Lily squeezed in.

“Thank you,” Lily whispered to the woman.

The elevator moved in fits and starts, stopping repeatedly until it reached the thirtieth floor, when Lily finally found herself alone. Quickly, she dug into her handbag for a lipstick. At the rate she was moving, there was no way she was going to have time for a pit stop in the ladies’ room to fix her makeup before meeting Mr. Hathaway.

Fumbling to open the lipstick without dropping her suit jacket, laptop case, or black leather purse, Lily lost her grip on the sleek tube and sent it tumbling down her crisp white shirt, leaving a trail of blushing peach as it went.

“Shit!” she cried.

“Oh, it’s not so bad as all that,” came a voice, and from the shadows of the seemingly empty elevator stepped a man. He was tall and lean, with jet-black hair and unreadable eyes the color of moss. His skin was pale and stood out against the dark pinstripe of his expensive suit. She noticed the edge of a faint scar to the side of his right eyebrow. He smiled at her, showing off just a hint of his perfect teeth.

She tried to smile back, but suddenly the elevator was much too small.

“We’ve met,” he said quietly, taking a step toward her. “Do you remember?”

What a question! She’d spent every waking moment since the reception last week trying to figure out who the beautiful man was but to no avail. It was the Keller Champagne marketing launch party, and although Lily hated to admit it, she’d had a few too many samples of the product. She’d been making her way toward the restrooms when this man, who now stood in the elevator with her, appeared.

Over a few yards of empty space, their eyes met, and time slowed and stretched as Lily suddenly became aware of every molecule in her body being pulled toward this stranger. They didn’t stop walking. They glided by one another, their eyes locked.

“Good evening,” the man said.

“Yes,” Lily croaked.

“You look lovely,” he said.

Before she could say thank you or ask his name or beg him to explain
what
had just happened, he gave her a mock salute and disappeared around the corner. It took almost a full minute for Lily to regain her bearings and chase after him. But by the time she reached the reception hall, he was nowhere to be seen.

“I do remember,” Lily said now. Her voice sounded strange, as if it were coming from outside of her.

Slowly, the man bent down to retrieve her lipstick from the floor of the elevator. His motions were deliberate and smooth; she could see his broad shoulders straining against the fabric of his suit.

“You dropped this,” he said, holding the tube out to Lily. His hands were big and graceful, not two qualities that normally went together in her limited experience. As she reached for the lipstick, their eyes met and the temperature in the elevator soared. A hot flush rose on Lily’s cheeks, far brighter than the lipstick that now stained the front of her shirt.

“Thank . . . thank you,” she stammered. When she took the lipstick, her fingers brushed the man’s cool skin and the cuff of his suit jacket. The signal from her fingertips raced immediately up her arm and down through her stomach, coming firmly to rest between her thighs. She shuddered despite the rising heat. A wave of unfamiliar lust washed over her, rendering her momentarily dizzy. Lily never reacted to men this way. She was measured, careful, logical. She’d learned her lesson about what happened when you weren’t. But her body did not seem to care.

“Oh,” Lily murmured, squeezing her thighs together. It felt good. The man took a step closer. He gave off a warm, citrusy scent that did not help her dizziness. His smile was gone. He eyed her as if she were prey, a great eagle about to dive on a helpless field mouse. Her legs threatened to buckle in high heels that no longer felt even remotely stable.

“Your shirt,” he whispered. Lily was sure he could see her heart pounding through the thin fabric of her clothing. Did he feel this too?

“I think it’s ruined,” he said. He was so close now she could see the flawless surface of his skin. She could think of nothing but how badly she wanted him to touch her. Anywhere.

With agonizing slowness, he ran a finger down her cheek and into the hollow of her throat. There, he applied the slightest bit of pressure, making her gasp. Her body, as if detached from her brain, arched toward him.

Please, she thought. I can’t do this.

His finger continued to travel down over her collarbone, easily pushing aside her shirt and slipping between the lacy edge of her bra and her skin. She forced herself to hold his eyes, which showed only focus. Lifting the fabric of her bra, he made room for the rest of his hand to slide around the outside of her breast.

Scream, she told herself. Call for help. But the only sound she seemed capable of making was another desperate “oh.”

With a sudden forceful motion, the man pulled her shirt and her bra strap off her shoulder to reveal her full breast. It looked white and strange in the dim lights of the elevator, at odds with the rest of her skin. He cupped her gently in one hand, bent down and ran his tongue over her hard exposed nipple, taking it between his teeth and gently tugging. Bolts of electricity shot through Lily, and she wanted to howl, to beg for more. Instead, she bit her lip and grabbed the wall for support, sure she was about to faint. The very lonely place between her legs throbbed in anticipation. How long had it been? Forever.

“You taste so . . . sweet,” the man whispered.

How much time did they have? Was it enough? She could not believe she was having these thoughts! Who was this man making her body quiver like jelly? As if reading her mind, he brought his lips to her ear.

“Fast,” he said, sliding one of those big hands between her knees and moving it up along the freshly shaved, smooth skin of her inner thighs. Pants would have saved her here, whereas a skirt spelled certain doom. His hand reached her ordinary cotton panties, already soaked, and for a flash she wished she’d worn something more special, something with lace. As he pressed his fingers against her, she sucked in a breath of air.

Leaning in close so she was forced to look into his eyes, he ripped back her panties and ran his smooth fingers across . . .

“Mom!”

Huh? Oh, Allison. Damn.

“What is it, honey?” I call. A trickle of sweat runs down my back. Is my office hot?

“Come. Here.”

“Okay, Ali. I’m coming.”

It’s 11:15 on a Thursday night, and I know two things. The first is that Lily Dell was about to have sex in an elevator where time has no meaning, cotton rips like wet paper towels, and moaning is sexy rather than a sign of mental illness. The second is that my own chances of having sex tonight in an elevator, or anywhere for that matter, are exactly zero. And sadly, those are odds you can bet your life on.

Chapter 2

I
didn’t plan for it to go this way. No one fantasizes about being a slightly overweight, middle-aged, divorced mother desperately in need of an eyebrow wax and some sort of Pilates intervention. No one dreams of driving a blue Toyota minivan with unidentifiable food particles wedged between the seats or owning a sofa with coffee ring stains on the arms. But these things happen regardless. And then you must live with them.

My name is Sadie Fuller. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see my twenty-five-year-old self. She’s young and fresh and ready for anything life decides to throw at her. Other times, I walk past a storefront and catch a glimpse of myself now, at forty-six, and I wonder who on earth it could be staring back at me. Surely that woman with the crow’s-feet and the laugh lines and the sun damage isn’t me. That woman must be my mother.

In addition to the minivan and the coffee ring stains, I have an eleven-year-old daughter named Allison, a dog named Perkins, and an ex-husband who is really very lovely except for the fact that he’s gay and I’m a woman.

I have brown hair that used to be glossy but is now chemically treated, and brown eyes that don’t work quite as well as they once did. I stash reading glasses like I used to stash cigarettes. Never know when an emergency might arise. I give regularly to Planned Parenthood and the Democratic National Committee, and for some reason, this year, I raised my hand to help manage the annual school fund-raiser. Being as I already pay forty-five thousand dollars a year for Allison to attend fifth grade at the prestigious Holt Hall, I kind of thought that might be it as far as parent involvement went. My premise was obviously a false one.

Which just reinforces what we already know—assumptions will get you nowhere. For example, you might look at me and think, stay-at-home mom who has let herself go, and never realize that at night, while the rest of suburbia sleeps, I write erotic romances under the name K. T. Briggs.

Perhaps you’ve heard of me, if sex in elevators or on conference tables or in airplane lavatories is your thing? Attorneys think about briefs, doctors think about test results, I think about beautiful people fornicating in inappropriate places.

When asked what kinds of books I write, I say romance. It’s not like I’m a prostitute or anything, but I worry that in the eyes of my affluent, conservative neighbors, there might not be much difference. Smut is smut. No one wants to discuss how best to describe oral sex during the cookies and coffee portion of our monthly PTA meetings. We’re
moms,
for God’s sake! We’re here to talk about the nutritional value of the average sandwich and whether or not it’s appropriate to take third graders to see
Wicked
on Broadway. Who has
time
to think about sex in a sun-drenched rose garden with George Clooney, or Channing Tatum, if you like them a little bit younger?

However, I would not be able to pay the mortgage, tuition, car insurance, or alimony if not for a whole lot of moms out there whiling away their free time fantasizing about fucking just about anywhere but in their own beds. And I’m grateful to each and every one of them.

I stumble down the hallway toward Allison’s voice. She sits up in bed, a blanket draped over her shoulders, squinting as I flick on the light. Her face, the spitting image of her father’s, is flushed.

“What’s up?” I ask, sinking down next to her. Pushing a lock of dirty blond hair aside, I instinctively run the back of my hand across her forehead. It’s cool to the touch. A few freckles dot her nose and cheeks.

“Bad dream,” she says, leaning into me. My eleven-year-old is right on the cusp of becoming a full-fledged teenager and thus being required to hate me until she turns twenty. So for now, I take care to cherish the moments when she allows me to wrap my arms around her. I figure if I store up enough of them, they might see me through the dry years ahead.

“What was the dream about?” I ask.

“Fuzzy things with fangs,” Allison says, snuggling closer. She smells like mountain air in the summer, fresh and soapy, and I’m struck, as I often am, by her potential. She can be anything. How amazing to have that, even if you’re too young to understand what it means.

“And?” I ask. I refrain from suggesting she read something without vampires for once because that will make her pull away and she feels very good in my arms right now.

“They were chasing me and Perkins,” she continues.

At the sound of her name, Perkins, a thirty-one-flavors mutt, raises her head off the bed. She would surely lay down her life to protect us, but being as she is the size of a loaf of bread, it might not have much impact. After a stretch and a toothy yawn, Perkins goes back to sleep. She will stay here all night, faithfully guarding Allison’s feet, no matter how many times she gets kicked in the head for her efforts.

“Where were they chasing you?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Places.” Allison’s eyelids flutter. I pat her pillow, and she dutifully lays her head back on it. She smiles at me. I know what comes next.

“Will you stay?” she asks. Her voice is sweet, like she chugged a pitcher of pixie dust, but I fall for it every time. Mostly because I want to.

“Yes,” I say. “Only a few minutes. I’m working.”

“On the new story?”

Yes. My publisher says there has to be a
story
in there somewhere. It can’t all be sex, because that would make it plain old pornography. Erotica has substance. It has a plot. It has . . . whatever. I know. No one watches porn for the acting, and no one reads erotica for the plot.

But this is something my eleven-year-old does not need to hear quite yet. I lie down next to her, wrap my arms tighter around her long, lean body, and manage the light switch with my toe. This makes Allison giggle.

“Go to sleep,” I whisper. “It’s late. School tomorrow.”

I watch as her eyes close and her red lips fall open with the rhythmic mouth breathing of sleep. If I could, I would freeze everything right at this moment. I would hold on to my beautiful child forever, never leaving this room, never changing a thing.

But time is short and I have pages to go before I sleep. I untangle myself from Allison and tiptoe back to my office. I take a few sips of red wine. Now where was I? Elevator sex. Right.

Leaning in close so Lily was forced to look into his eyes, he ripped back her panties and ran his smooth fingers across her hot, throbbing folds of skin. Oh, such exquisite pain and pleasure side by side. It was all Lily could do not to tear off the rest of her clothes and wrap her naked body around him, begging him to take her here against the elevator wall.

A chiming cell phone interrupts my elevator sex. Am I to be deprived of a climax yet again? Tonight may not be my night. I’m as unlucky as a fourteen-year-old boy at Catholic school.

Of course, it’s my ex-husband, Roger, calling. We speak every day. Or, more accurately, Roger speaks and I listen. I have written entire chapters with him chatting away on the phone. He would be crushed if he knew how effectively I can tune him out. I prop my feet up on my desk and answer.

“Roger.”

“Sadie.”

“It’s late, Roger.”

“But I have a problem and it just
cannot
wait,” he says. All of Roger’s problems are urgent.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I don’t think I can marry Fred,” he whispers.

“Were you planning on marrying Fred?”

“We talked about it yesterday, but then I meditated on it and I think the answer has to be no.”

“Did Fred ask you to marry him? Directly?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Is Fred there right now?”

“Yes. In bed.”

With a vision of Roger huddled on his toilet with the bathroom door closed whispering into his cell phone, I tip back toward my laptop. I scan the open page. Where was I?

“Sadie, are you listening to me?”

“Of course, Roger.”

“Did you mail my check?”

“Of course, Roger.”

“Good,” he says. “Things are a little tight this month. The studio doesn’t do so well in the spring. People want to be
outside.
I have no idea what that is about.”

According to Roger, people don’t like to do yoga in the winter because it’s too cold or in the summer because it’s too hot or in the autumn because they can go outside and look at the pretty fall foliage in Central Park. So every month is a little tight for Roger. I was hoping Fred might stick. Fred is rich. But apparently, Roger meditated himself right out of that idea.

“I don’t know either,” I say. I add a sentence to my manuscript. Reread it. Delete it. I take another swig of my wine.

“How’s my baby girl?” Roger asks.

“Sleeping. It’s night, remember?”

“Right.”

“Hey, what’s the coolest bar in New York right now?” I ask.

“Buddha, on Twenty-Third,” Roger answers without pause.

“Straight?”

“Not even a little.”

“I need to put my hero in a trendy New York bar,” I say. “But I think it has to be a straight bar for this book.”

“What about the hot dog and popcorn counter in Target?” Roger says with a laugh.

“Not funny.”

“Sorry.”

“Is there anything else, Roger? I’m at forty-two hundred words and I’d really like to hit fifty-five hundred and go to bed.”

“Sorry, Sadie,” he says. “It’s just I’m so
lonely
now that I’ve decided to end this thing with Fred. What if I never find another man?”

“You’ve never even had lunch alone,” I remind him, which is almost true. If Roger dumps Fred tomorrow, he will be madly in love again by Sunday brunch. Roger does not waste time mulling over why a relationship failed. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! I grudgingly respect him for it because I know a lot about never finding another man.

“I miss you, Sadie,” he says.

“No, you don’t,” I say.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Good night, Roger.”

I hang up on him before he can trap me into a full dissection of his romantic troubles.

I married Roger for one reason: he was the father of the child neither of us meant to conceive. As I had given up on kids and romance and had accepted my spinsterhood, this came as a bit of a surprise. We were not an ideal couple. Roger had no ambition. He was needy. And I was the scarred veteran of a spectacularly failed romance, suspicious of all things male. I liked Roger well enough, but I did not love him in the heart-pounding, pulse-racing way I had always associated with marriage. Plus, the sex wasn’t great, but I dismissed that as being unimportant. Obviously the idea of a baby had overwhelmed all reason, and we quickly convinced ourselves we were a perfect fit.

“Let’s get married!”

“Let’s be a family!”

It wasn’t a hard sell really. Roger was nice. He held doors and pulled out chairs. He loved romantic comedies, no matter how poorly miscast. He loved to cook and entertain. And most important, he was over the moon about being a dad.

“I never saw this happening for me,” he said, his head resting on my swelling belly. In retrospect, I should have asked him to explain the “why” behind that statement in detail, but I was blissed out with pregnancy hormones and not thinking clearly.

I divorced Roger because he fell in love with a man named James. Roger said all the yoga had helped him evolve to his authentic self, and his authentic self turned out to be gay. Over an expensive dinner, paid for by me, he walked me through the steps of this evolution. I did not want to go on this particular walk. I kept reminding him we had a child together, as if that were somehow going to change his sexual orientation. At the end of the meal, Roger gave me a sad smile and asked for a divorce. His heart needed to chase James. And then Tim, followed by Andre and Seymour and Jacob and Ian and Oliver and Gavin and so on and so forth.

After my safe harbor of Roger turned out to be in shark-infested waters, I decided, quite reasonably, I had played all the angles, tried all the variations, and I was done. I was giving up men, romance, and anything related to either. The new, practical, very alone me would be just fine.

Of course, it only took about six months to realize I would never actually be alone again. In that short span, Roger’s evolution took a hairpin turn and he began to behave like an insecure teenager. I now had two children to mind. It was a sobering thought for a newly single mother.

The wall clock indicates it’s close to midnight, and I quit at midnight no matter where I am or what I’ve accomplished. Allison will be up asking for things by 7:00
A.M.
, and if I don’t log at least six hours in the sack, I’m done for. The only advantage of sleeping alone is that you know you’re going to sleep. I mean, what the hell else are you going to do?

Now where was I?

But before Lily could even get her mind around what was happening, this intense and fiery man returned all her garments to exactly how they’d been. No. No. No!

“It’s really too bad about the shirt,” he said, stepping away from her.

Lily, still leaning on the wall, felt her whole body quiver. She was nothing more than a shell, now filled with lust and longing. Unable to even open her mouth, she clutched her laptop bag to her chest, as if she could simply disappear behind it forever. Her breath came in ragged gasps.