Just About Sex (30 page)

Staring at his green fingers, he told Laurel his worst fears. “I’m not sure she loves me.”

“She loves you.”

“She doesn’t trust me.”

“She will.”

And the worst fear of all. Not really a fear—more like an absolute certainty. “I don’t deserve her.”

With the rustle of her fluttery flowered skirt, Laurel’s legs and feet came into his field of vision. Raising his head, he watched while she turned a chair away from the table and sat in it. She rested her hands on the outsides of his thighs and patted them, a gesture he found oddly comforting.

“How’d your audit go, Alex?”

“Not good. Turns out I’m a cold, selfish jerk.”

“Hmmm. You never asked me what I thought of you.”

He laughed. “Well, since we’ve never slept together, I didn’t put you on the list.”

“Good point. But I know you pretty well and I want to give you my two cents anyway. If you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead,” he said, shrugging.

“You’re not ten years old anymore, Alex, and—”

“I know that.”

“—you’re not the gifted freak that none of the other kids wanted to be friends with. People don’t automatically reject you anymore, so maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to reject them first.”

He froze.

“You need to let them in. You need to let
Simone
in.”

Jumping to his feet, he paced away from her. “I don’t do that,” he said, even as he felt the thrill of recognition and understanding.

“If you say so.”

Could Laurel be right?

Alex frowned over his shoulder at her. “You need to get out of here. I’ve got some thinking to do.” He jerked his head toward the splotchy green mess on the far wall. “And some cleaning.”

Laurel laughed again and stood. “You’re welcome for the pep talk.”

Alex grumbled under his breath but couldn’t stop a smile. He found a rag and wiped his hands. “Don’t let me keep you.”

He followed her to the door and opened it for her. She turned back. “Simone’s a lucky woman, Alex.”

Embarrassed and disbelieving, he looked away. “Yeah. Sure.”

Laurel grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at her unwavering gaze.
“A lucky woman,”
she repeated.

A flush of heat crept up his throat and over his cheeks. Too choked up suddenly to trust his voice, he leaned in and kissed his sister on the temple. And, being careful not to get paint on her purple shawl, he pulled her in for a hug.

Simone sat in the leather armchair across from Gerald and Krystal Jackson, who’d held hands, giggled and simpered throughout their session, much to Simone’s annoyance. Happy couples really pissed her off these days, especially the Jacksons, who always reminded her of the day Alex stormed into her life. More than once she’d had to stifle the urge to tell them either to act their age or to get a room.

Still, Simone was proud to have helped them through Gerald’s impotence, and glad to see them so happy. Thank goodness Alex had left this one small area of her life intact when he’d blown the rest of it to smithereens.

She closed her notebook and capped her pen. “You two don’t need me any more,” she announced.

Gerald shot his gray-haired wife a smoldering look, and she flushed to her roots. “Not any more,” he said. Krystal giggled again.

Enough was enough. Simone jumped to her feet. “Well…keep in touch. And call me if you need me.”

They both pulled her into exuberant, rib-splitting hugs before they wandered off down the hall, giggling and whispering. Rolling her eyes, Simone sat at her desk and checked the e-mail for her site. She had one new message, from “A.G.” in Cincinnati. Her pulse rate went through the roof.

The onslaught continued.

After the ugly confrontation at her apartment, she’d heard nothing from Alex for a week. Then suddenly, as if someone somewhere had flipped a switch, he’d started calling and writing—at least one of each, usually more—every day.

For the past several days she’d had constant, heartfelt, wrenching e-mails, and his voice on her machine. He hadn’t shown up at her door, and for that she was grateful. Apparently he was willing to give her a little bit of space.

He wanted her back.

She’d never answered, and didn’t plan to. What good would that do? He’d been perfectly clear from the beginning that he wasn’t good at relationships and didn’t want one. Neither did she. Not really. She had to rebuild her career and credibility.

Besides. She could never trust him again. No matter how beautifully he apologized. No matter how much she wanted to.

So she’d delete the message.
After
she read it.

Dear Dr. Simone:

I’m desperate. I really screwed up with the woman I’ve been dating and I’m not sure how to fix things. She won’t have anything to do with me, and I feel like I’ve died. At this point I’d do anything to make it up to her. I can’t give up—I’ll never give up—and I don’t believe that some hurts can’t be forgiven. What should I do? Signed,

“A.G.” in Cincinnati

Chapter 25

S
imone’s battered and broken heart throbbed painfully. How was she supposed to get over him when he wouldn’t let her put him out of her mind for thirty seconds? When she missed him as much as she’d miss her right arm if someone cut it off?

She switched to the
deleted messages
box for her personal e-mail, and skimmed through a couple of those.

Since we both know I’m not so good at speaking, maybe I’ll try writing for a while.

At lunch today I passed a woman on the street that smelled like you, and my heart stopped. I wasted the afternoon at work because I couldn’t think about anything else but you and when I would ever smell your sweet skin again.

That message had been bad enough, but others were worse.

My nephew asked about you at dinner and I didn’t know what to say. In the end I lied and told him you were doing great because I couldn’t bear to say the truth out loud: I haven’t seen you and don’t know when I ever will see you.

One had made her cry:

Do you think about me at all? Ever? Or have you forgotten me already? I don’t forget anything. Not your smile, your laugh, your jokes, your touch—I remember every wonderful second I ever spent with you. Everything. I can’t forget, even though I try.

Most of all I remember you telling me you loved me. Did you mean it? I can’t believe you did—because why would you give such a precious gift to an undeserving guy like me? And yet…in the dead of night I hope—and pray—that you did mean it. And that one day I will deserve you.

Another made her feverish with lust and sick with longing:

Will you ever let me touch you again? Smell you? Taste you? Did you know I dread nighttime now because I get so hard with wanting you I can’t sleep? Did you know I came alive when I touched your silky bare skin for the first time? That I was born again when I slid inside your body? That I could die a happy man if only I could see you come and hear you sob my name again?

Did you think this was just about sex for me? It was, at first. For about thirty seconds. But now I know having your body—as much as I need it—is not enough. I need your heart. Your soul. Please give them to me.

Worst of all, the one that had made her cry into her pillow until her dry, cracked, raw throat throbbed with pain, the one that said, simply:

I love you.

She heard Freddie’s footsteps in the hall and quickly minimized the e-mail window before he burst into her office carrying a large flat box. Wrapped in beautiful silvery gray paper, it had a gleaming white satin ribbon tied in a bow. When she saw it, her gut filled with dread.

Freddie plopped it on her desk with obvious satisfaction. “Alex Greene just left this for you,” he sang.

Startled, Simone shrank away from the thing that had so recently been so close to Alex. Words formed in her brain, but died in her throat.

Freddie reached for the package again. “Want me to open it for you?”

“No!”

Chuckling, Freddie wheeled around and walked out. “I didn’t think so.”

Simone’s trembling fingers fumbled with the ribbon and untied it on the third attempt. That difficult task accomplished, she needed several moments to catch her breath and brace for the actual opening of the box.

Finally she slid the lid off. On top was a note scrawled in spiky blue writing on Alex’s heavy ivory stationery:

Did you notice? The wrapping paper is the exact color of your eyes. Alex.

A laughing sob, equal parts joy and hysteria, burst out of her mouth until she clamped her hand over her lips. There was more.

P.S. Check out this site: Romero’sClean.com. I hear ESPN is doing a story on it.

Romero.
That jackass. She’d been thrilled to pieces the other day when she caught a blurb on CNN about his sudden reversal of fortune. Every time the press asked him about steroids, Juan claimed he was clean, but he was really in trouble this time. Apparently, he was taking quite a hit from his so-called friend’s baseball memoir, and from this Web site, which she hadn’t seen yet. The site had started a persistent drumbeat, and she didn’t think Juan could duck the allegations any longer. The last she’d heard, some Senate subcommittee, spurred on by the site and its corresponding publicity, had subpoenaed Romero. Major League Baseball had also started an investigation. Best of all, Nike had declined to renew his endorsement contract, and in one fell swoop, Romero had lost a reputed $16.5 million over five years.

Intrigued, she put the box aside and typed the URL. The site popped up, and Romero appeared. Well, an oversized, cutout photo of Romero’s smiling face on an animated, baseball uniformed, undersized body appeared, anyway. Cheesy banjo music started to play, and Romero, his lower lip and chin offset like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s mouth, began to sing and dance to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”:

I would nev-er take ster-oids.

’Roids are so bad for me.

Buy me some fru-its and veg-ta-bles.

I pre-fer to EAT bro-co-li.

Let me work, work, work in the weight room.

If I don’t bulk it’s a shame.

For it’s lift, lift, lift and you’ll grow

At the old ball game.

As he sang and danced, Romero winked, raised his index finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture, and pulled down his pants to receive an injection on his bare butt from a grinning teammate bearing an enormous syringe. Then Romero’s tiny body grew and finally burst out of the uniform like the Incredible Hulk.

For one stunned moment, Simone stared at the screen. Then she threw back her head and laughed until her sides hurt.

Alex. He had done this for her, of course. To hurt Romero for telling lies about her to the
National Inquisitor.
This silly little cartoon perfectly lampooned Romero and reminded her of those political cartoons on the Internet at election time. Alex’s site had hit Romero where it hurt worst: his wallet. What a brilliant plan Alex had implemented, and all to avenge her.

After several deep breaths, she turned back to her present. Underneath layers of pristine white tissue paper, was a stack of black and white sketches. Of her.

Luminous, gorgeous images of her in every conceivable pose: smiling, laughing, scowling, reclining, jogging. In ecstasy. There must have been twenty in all. Alex had managed to make her look—in each and every one—like some glowing, heavenly creature. The kind of woman any man would desperately want in his life.

Suddenly she couldn’t take it any more. Shoving the box away to make sure she didn’t get the precious sketches wet, she planted her elbows on her desk and dropped her face into her hands.

Alex. Alex.

She missed him. She needed him. She loved him.

But her broken heart, slow to trust him in the first place, couldn’t seem to recover. And why would it? That was the one great lesson she’d learned all her life: men are bad. Men can’t be trusted. Men don’t stick around. Men say and do anything for sex. Had she ever known a man who hadn’t hurt her? No. Not one. Her father hurt her. Romero hurt her. Alex hurt her.

Why give Alex another chance to hurt her?

No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Men were the enemy. She needed to remember that.

For the first time in her entire life she cried at work, too distraught to bother shutting the door so Freddie wouldn’t hear.

Later that afternoon, when her five o’clock appointment canceled, Simone decided to call it a day and left the office without bringing any files or paperwork with her. For some strange reason, she felt the inexplicable urge to see her mother.

Maybe she needed a mother’s comfort to get her through this, the worst period of her life. While Shirley certainly wasn’t Claire Huxtable, she was better than nothing. And maybe, if Simone was really lucky, she’d have some leftover banana pudding or pecan pie in the fridge.

Shirley didn’t answer when Simone called from the car, but Simone went to her apartment anyway. Only the gravest of natural disasters—hurricanes, tornadoes and the like—kept Shirley from observing cocktail hour at five-thirty.

In the parking lot of her mother’s building, she ran into Shirley’s boyfriend carrying a gleaming stainless steel pot of something or other.

“Mr. Howard,” she called, hurrying up behind him. “How are you?”

He turned and smiled when he saw her. “Simone!” He pecked her on the cheek. “It’s good to see you, dear.”

She pointed to the pot, from which came the delicious and unmistakable smell of chicken soup. “Is Mama making you bring your own dinner these days?”

“No, no. We had reservations for dinner but she canceled them ’cause she’s got a cold. So I brought her some soup.”

“I’m not sure she’s home,” Simone told him over her shoulder when he opened the glass door for her. “But we can go on up and wait—she’s always home by five-thirty. I have the key.”

On the ride up in the elevator they talked about Mr. Howard’s secret ingredient for chicken soup—fresh thyme—and the best ways to cure a cold. Simone began to feel better and was glad she’d come, if for no other reason than the chance to spend more time with this charming, courtly man.