In This Life (12 page)

“Listen. No one knows this but me. I see it, Spark. Your refusal to settle down—it’s because you don’t want to let ‘him’ go.” She enunciated her words with air quotes. “It’s your mind playing tricks on you. Give yourself to Dante. He’s proven himself to you. And you can’t do that if all you have in your head is the guy you think,” she paused once again to emphasize the word, “loved you five years ago.” She decided to pile it on. “He left you right after you had sex with him, remember? He walked away and never looked back. Why shouldn’t you?”

“Whoa. That’s harsh.” I faced her squarely as the tears dripped down my face.

She stubbed out her cigarette, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed my eyes with its tip. Then she took my face in her hands.

“Sparky, trust me on this. Trust me. He’s never coming back. Close that door. You’re married. To someone who loves you so much.”

“I know, I know.” I sniffed. “It’s been over for long time. I’m over it.”

She shook her head and added an exaggerated rolling of the eyes.

“Most of the time,” I laughed.

“There you are!” Dante’s approaching voice gave me enough time to wipe the sides of my eyes. I shot Maggie a worried look, but she nodded her head to signal that I looked fine. “We decided to come find you after we were being targeted by some pretty good looking women.”

Donny laughed in agreement. “Yes, we started assigning scores to them as they walked past our table.”

“You what?” Maggie giggled. “Maybe you should be the one wearing an engagement ring.” She hooked her arm in his possessively.

I rushed over to Dante and wrapped mine around his waist.

“Hi,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Let’s go order another bottle of champagne.”

WE ARRIVED HOME
past three in the morning to find the house completely quiet and dark. I slipped off my high heeled shoes and checked around to find that Mikey had cleaned up after himself and even put away the dishes.

“I’m going to my office to send out a quick email,” Dante whispered as he laid the keys on the kitchen counter.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to check on Mike and get ready for bed.”

The soft sound of music drifted down the hall as I walked past the study on the way to the bedroom.

The rest of the evening had gone relatively well. Maggie and Donny regaled us with stories about the rush to find a venue for their wedding. We laughed about the slight communication error that occurred when both families met for the first time. It was a happy occasion, and we celebrated their announcement with two bottles of champagne. And although I was lightheaded from the effects of the alcohol, my mind was too wired to call it a night. I took my time in the bathroom, removing the traces of makeup from my face, and taking a quick shower to wash off the smell of smoke and food from my body. I stepped out and slipped on a robe before making my way back to check on Dante.

Silently, I entered the room and locked the door behind me. His gaze was focused on something on the screen of his laptop, and his hands quickly clicked off the page once he saw me sauntering towards him. He wore a pair of reading glasses, something I had never seen him put on before.

“Hi, sexy,” he called out from behind his desk.

“Hi.” I smiled warmly as I took my place at the edge of the table. “Still working?”

“Nelly stopped with a whole bunch of documents for me to review while you were at Tully.” Nelly his ever loyal Executive Assistant/Project Manager. She kept him on task, managed his busy schedule. She was a sexy Latina woman, naturally hot but also very pesky. She got on his nerves way too often for him to feel some sort of attraction towards her. But to her credit, she was the only one who stayed. He was intolerant of incompetence and demanded a commitment to the job that many were not willing to undertake. She had proven her abilities to him and she was highly compensated in return.

He moved the mouse around the pad and typed on the keyboard.

I slid off the opposite side and sat on the table directly in front of him. “I’ve never seen you wear glasses before. You look hot. Very intellectual.”

“It helps me with the headaches, and I can see the screen a bit better.” He smiled. “But you’re the intellectual in this family.”

“I don’t like what the stress at work is doing to you,” I gently stroked his arm.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I have a feeling that this is my time. I have to just go with the flow, make as much as I can now.” Quick, deft circular motions with his hand on the mouse told me that he was eager to shut the computer down.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“About what?” he inquired, genuinely clueless about what I was referring to. He slid his chair closer to me and leaned forward.

I held his face in my hands. “Everything. This afternoon, Maggie’s engagement. You haven’t even made fun of Donny.” I teased before kissing him on the forehead.

“Ha!” He laughed. “I’m happy for Maggie, I think she’s going to drive the dude nuts with her irritating sweetness, Donny needs to wear his shirt one size larger, his arms are bursting out of their sleeves, and he also needs to gel his hair.”

“There he is,” I smiled. “The man I know and love.” I removed his glasses and placed them on the table directly behind me. And then I kissed his left eye, then his right eye and settled my lips on his right cheek. “I’m sorry about this afternoon,” I started to say.

“I know you are,” he whispered. “I love you. Maybe it’s okay, just being you and me for now.”

“No, no,” I argued softly. “I meant what I said,” I leaned back on my arms and spread my legs seductively. “In fact…” My robe fell open, its right sleeve sliding off my shoulder as if on cue. He licked his lips and settled his hands on my legs. “We are going to try. Right,” I tugged at his hands, “now.”

“No,” he said gently as he pulled me towards him. “I just want you to want our baby in your own time.”

“I want our baby. I want you now, tomorrow, next week, next year. You’re the only one I want,” I whispered, while earnestly trailing my fingers from his chin down to his chest.

“I must be drunk because I’m beginning to believe you,” he said.

“Well, believe me.” I jumped off the desk and knelt right in front of him.

He watched as I unzipped his pants and held him in my hands before showing him how hungry I was for him. He held my head down and let out a groan. “Don’t stop,” he whispered.

“I love you, Tey. So much,” I said. I wanted to do for him what he was always willing to do for me. To give me love and pleasure and happiness without asking for anything in return. Jude was gone, disappeared into thin air. Gone.

He lifted himself up to make sure that I took all of him in my mouth. “Suck me, baby. Oh God. Fuck me with that dirty, filthy mouth.”

I teased, I lingered, I drove him crazy until he lifted my head up roughly, taking me by the shoulders, and settling me on his lap. “I want to be inside you. Put me inside you.”

I followed him obediently. I knew that he liked it when we talked during sex. I moved myself on top of him, ground myself into him.

“Tell me, Spark. Tell me how it feels,” he said gruffly.

“You’re so big, so strong,” I said with a whimper. “You fill me up so much. You’re all I need. You, just you.”

He lifted me up and set me down on the desk. “What do you want, baby?”

“I want you to fuck me hard. Harder, Tey, do it harder.”

“Like this? Like this?” He held on to my hips as he drove into me, one of my legs on top of his shoulder, the other spread out across the crook of his arm.

“Yeah,” I said with a gasp. “Yeah, just like that.” The pleasure never failed to make me forget. And every day, I swore it was getting easier and easier. Teeny tiny triumphs in the one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days since he’d been gone.

He leaned over and bit my breast. “This is mine. Your beautiful tits are mine. Squeeze them for me, baby.”

I followed his every order, bringing my hands to my breasts and caressing myself. He loomed above me, watching me, invading me forcefully. The force of his thrusts would push my head off the desk; he would pull me back, fill me to the brink before pushing me off the table once again.

“Baby. I’m going to fill you up soon. Tell me you love me.”

Whenever I was with him, I lived in these moments. There was no one else. This wasn’t a game that I played between two men. I didn’t settle for Dante because I couldn’t have Jude. I gave up on Jude long before I decided that Dante’s love was what I needed in my life. The gentle, unassuming kind of love that lifts you up like the wind and allows you to take flight. It was a liberating kind of love, and except for a few silly bouts of reminiscence and nostalgia, I loved him. I loved Dante.

“I love you. Oh, Oh, I love you!” I shouted. Those words. Of all the words we’d said tonight, those were the ones that made him come. He released himself inside me and collapsed into my arms. The laptop fell on the floor and papers were strewn all over the place.

I tenderly skimmed my fingers along the ridge of his back as he tried to catch his breath. “Did we maybe make a baby? Can we try and try and try?” he asked.

“Are you really going to retire?” I teased back.

“Oh yeah, as soon as you get pregnant, I’ll be your house slave,” he chuckled. “Baby, you just made me the happiest man on earth.”

“Dork.” I slapped his butt. “Let’s go to bed before Mikey realizes that the noises he just heard weren’t in a dream he was having.”

“WHAT TIME DO
you have to leave today?” Dante asked.

We were whispering under the covers as dawn gloriously settled over Manhattan. The tinted windows that shaded us from the glare of the rising sun were the same ones that opened us up to the beauty of the city. There we were in the aftermath of our lovemaking and proclamations of love and promises of a forever.

“I’ll head out at noon so I can drop Mikey off at school on my way there. I’m on the night shift for seven days straight,” I answered, as we both focused our attention on the suitcase that laid open on the floor next to the dresser. “I’ll try to be home two weeks from today.”

“I’ll miss you.” He lovingly caressed my face as I wrapped my arms around his waist.

“I’ll miss you too,” I answered, lifting my head up and pinching his nose with my fingers.

“You know, these living arrangements will have to change eventually,” he said. “Let me be the one to commute. I can set up an office there. These two weekends a month aren’t exactly the best way to start a marriage.”

“And what? Leave all this?” I made a sweeping motion with my arm.

He scrunched up his nose and made a face at me. Truth be told, I enjoyed my independence. Those nights away at the hospital were the nights when I allowed myself to miss my mom, to mourn, to cry over what could never have been. Baltimore was far enough from New York to give me the space I needed. He was smart enough to know that. He was also smart enough to drop it for now. “Let’s rethink it once you start a new rotation,” he concluded.

“Okay,” I agreed. “And don’t stress out too much about work! If you don’t get the deal, you don’t get the deal. You’ll still be okay. We have enough, Leola.”

“Okay, boss!” he said with a chuckle. He flipped me up from under the blanket and tossed my body on top of his.

I let out a giggle as I ran my hands along his sides, trying my best to tickle his ribs.

“You really want to do that?” he warned, before throwing me on my back, locking my arms above my head. He started to rub his chin against my neck.

“No! No! Uncle! I didn’t mean to do that! Stop!” I squealed. I kicked and screamed until he released my arms. I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. Something fell out of it, landed on his head, and fell right on top of my face. The laughing stopped immediately when he lightly brushed my cheek and held up the culprit.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking at the object. It was the wooden rosary from a time long ago and a place far away, its tiny beads now old and worn. The knotted rope that held them together, frayed and thinned out by the years. “Is this the same one you got in Thailand?”