Mountains Wanted (24 page)

They headed back to his
place for a shower and a late lunch. This time they were both a lot chattier on
the drive. She told him about her upcoming conference in Denver and how
she hoped to go rock climbing there if the weather was agreeable. “You
never know how spring is going to be in the mountains,” she explained. “There
could be a foot of snow or it might be 60 degrees. Hell, I might see both
in the five days I’ll be there.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I
remember that from when I lived there as a kid. Or how about when it’s 80
degrees in the Springs but it’s 40 and snowing up on Pikes Peak?”

She nodded, thinking
about the majestic view of Pikes Peak stretching across the horizon,
remembering what the frosty summit looked like from the red rocks of Garden of
the Gods. She suddenly thought of Rachel’s wedding set against that
backdrop and how James would already have left for Afghanistan. He wouldn’t be
there with her. The thought of not getting to be with him in her mountains dug
a little wound into her heart.

James started stripping
off his clothes as soon as he walked through the threshold of his house,
leaving a trail behind him. First his jacket and shirt, then his shorts, next
his socks and finally his boxer briefs. Sarah giggled at his urgency for nudity
and went behind him picking up all the clothes and depositing everything but
the jacket into the hamper in his bedroom. When she met him in the bathroom he
was already standing under the shower, steam starting to rise. She surveyed his
naked form with the water rushing off his flesh, drinking in the sight of him. With
every fiber of her being she wanted to be naked next to him under the running
water, her soft skin turning red with the heat and his thick fingers gripping
her hips and bending her over so that he could take her from behind.  

He wiped the water off
his face and looked at her curiously, “What are you doing?”

She couldn’t find the
words; the image of his cock piercing her pussy and his hands kneading her
asscheeks as the water riveted between them was monopolizing her thoughts.
 
           
“Get
naked and join me, woman,” he commanded, shooting her a mock-authoritative
glare.

She thought about
turning and going then but was hypnotized.
He’s like a drug
, she mused,
and
I’m an addict.
She found herself mindlessly stripping off her clothes,
letting them fall to the floor and stepping into the shower beside him, her
Auto Pilot had taken over.

“That’s more like it,”
he responded, pulling her close to him and brushing his lips against hers while
the water beat down on them.
           
I
guess it wouldn’t hurt me to have sex with him one last time,
she thought as his mouth grazed her neck. 
Or I
could even wait until tomorrow morning so we can fuck all night. Shit. Why
does this have to be so hard?

Later they twisted their
limbs together in his bed, his arms around her and her head on his chest. They’d
satisfied their hunger for each other’s bodies and were now at the point of considering
actual sustenance. Sarah was about to doze off when James startled her, “You’ve
been married before, right?”

Sarah sat straight up. He
had never pried into her past before so this question from left field was a
shock to her system. She scanned her memory, searching for when she told
him she’d been married. She was sure she hadn’t divulged too many details about
that segment of her past. “Why are you asking?”

James sat up too and
stroked her back reassuringly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”  
He
can clearly feel the negative energy triggered by this topic
, she thought. “I
have just been thinking about marriages lately. No particular reason but,
you know, why some last and some don’t.  And I realized I don’t really
know what happened with yours. I mean, you had two kids together
and...then what?  You grew apart?”

Sarah felt numb.
 “First off,” she corrected him, “Abby’s father was my college
boyfriend. I didn’t meet Owen’s dad until Abby was two.”

“Oh, okay,” James
replied, leaning in to express interest but still giving her a wide berth.

She sighed, recognizing
his body language and what it meant. She realized this was probably
important information for James to know as much as she hated talking about her
former husband. “I struggled when Abby was little. My mom helped with
her but I worked full time as a waitress, not really knowing what to do and
wanting to focus all my mental energies on raising her. I had this customer who
came in several times a week...only a few years older than me...very charming,
although smarmy is the word I would use now. Daniel Taylor was his name and
he...well, as much as I am ashamed to admit it, he swept me off my feet.”

James was still stroking
her back, listening intently. She suddenly remembered the night that he spilled
his guts about his former wife and his service in Iraq and realized how much
his story had endeared him to her.
What effect would this story have on him?
she wondered.  

“Daniel was one of those
men who always had some sort of plan, some sort of scheme,” she continued. “Always
had a new business venture. It’s not that things weren’t on the up and up, he
just didn’t have nearly the connections or capital to leverage that he thought
he did.  But I didn’t realize that at first. At first it seemed like
things came easy to him. We were always getting new stuff: houses, cars, boats,
clothes, jewelry. He wanted to me to have a baby right away. We married in
1999 and Owen was born in 2000. He was absolutely thrilled to have a son. It
was like a status symbol for him.”

“But you weren’t happy?”
James questioned.

“I was numb,” Sarah
admitted. “I was going through the motions. When I decided in 2001, when Owen
was 1, that I wanted to go back to school for a PhD, which meant moving, Daniel
wasn’t particularly supportive.” Her eyes narrowed a bit as the memory of those
fights fell freshly on the canvas of her mind. “I had finally decided what I
wanted to do with my life and he just thought it was ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry,” James
consoled her, his hands resting firmly on her skin.

“He finally conceded. My
mom moved with us to help with the kids. She had always had bad vibes about
Daniel. She tried to tell me so many times and I was just completely blind. I
loved him...” Her voice trailed off as if the wound was reopening right
before their very eyes. She shook off the pain and shared more, “So we moved
and I started my program and I saw Daniel less and less. He was always away on
‘business’ and that was when I sort of started doing my own thing.”

“Your ‘own thing?’”
James asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I’m not stupid. It
was pretty obvious that he was cheating on me. And not with just one woman. Little
things didn’t add up...I looked at emails, phone numbers, I found receipts. He
had three or four women spread all over the country. I stopped fucking him
cause I was afraid I was going to get some sort of STD.”

James nodded, “I don’t
blame you for that.”

“And I started hanging
out with Rachel more,” Sarah explained. “I knew she and her husband were into
some...unconventional stuff but she invited me to come along to a party one
weekend. And I went.” She paused and a tiny smile turned the corner of her
lips upward. “I didn’t look back after that.”

“Wow,” James said. “That’s
awesome.”

“I started researching. I
was looking for a dissertation topic so I started looking into alternative
lifestyles and interviewing different groups of people. I found that couples in
open relationships scored higher in almost every measure of internal happiness
and happiness with their partner. I tried to broach that with him once, but he
flat out refused to listen, denying he ever cheated on me. The bastard...”

“So then what happened”
he asked, fully engaged in the story.
           
“So
my plan was to keep doing my own thing, finish school and wait until I was
making good money before divorcing Daniel, but in 2007 when I was nearly done
with the program, he up and left me for one of his mistresses. Probably
the point in time where I was hurting most financially and that is when he
left.”

“Wow, sounds like a great
guy!” he noted sarcastically. “What about the kids?”

He had struck a nerve
with that. Her eyes suddenly welled up with tears. “He hasn’t seen the kids
since,” she explained. “He lost a ton of money in 2008 when the housing bubble
burst and the market was wonky. He owes me a lot of back support. He hasn’t
even attempted to see the kids and I think it’s because he’s a failure and he’s
embarrassed. They’re old enough to understand that now.”

James shook his head. “I
don’t know what to say, Sarah,” he confessed. “I’m so sorry you had to go
through that.”

Sarah wiped away a tear
and shrugged it off.  “He was an asshole. I fell for him. It’s
just as much my fault.”

“Don’t say that,” James
argued. “What kind of man abandons his children? What kind of man doesn’t want
to know or see his children?” He took Sarah’s hands into his own. “I
know I’m not a father...yet...but I would want to spend every second I could
with my kids.”

Sarah saw an opening to
shift the conversation away from her.
 I feel exposed
, she thought.
 I
have shared too much.
“So...is that something you want?  Kids?”

James’ pupils expanded
as if he was trying to envision his future. “Yeah, I suppose I do...someday.”

Sarah nodded. “Well,
you’d make a great father. Any kid would be lucky to call you dad.”

His eyebrows shot up,
“What makes you say that?”

Sarah considered his
paternal qualities carefully before responding, “You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re
good with my kids. Patient. Attentive...well, you are in person anyway...” She
thought about his incommunicado spells, the dichotomy of his attention when
they were together versus when they were apart. “And...physically you’re a
specimen...you’d be passing on great genes.” She took a deep breath and
added, “And because you have convictions. You believe in something...and you’re
willing to fight for it.”

“I’m flattered,” he
laughed, “It’s a high compliment considering what an amazing mom you are to
Abby and Owen. You know what it takes better than I do.”

“So,” Sarah tested the
waters, “I guess we just need to find you a woman worthy of having your baby!”

James smirked, “Yeah,
know where I can pick one of those up?” He laughed again and Sarah played
along, still baiting him, gauging his response. “Well, I may know someone
actually.”

Sarah’s heart began to
pound against her ribs. 
He doesn’t realize I can’t have any more
children,
she thought. “Who’s that?”

She fully expected him
to play along. To say her. To throw her a bone.  

“My high school
sweetheart,” James said. There was an eternal pause before he added:
“We’ve been back in touch.”

Sarah was speechless but
tried with every ounce of her strength to stay calm, to dig a little deeper. “Oh?”
she managed, a single, clear syllable. It felt like a gong ringing inside
her head.

“Yeah,” James said,
trying to be nonchalant. “I saw her when I was back in Ohio for Christmas. She
just got divorced...no kids yet though...she’s a nurse  It was really nice
to see her again.”

Sarah’s heart was in her
throat.  “Uh...were you going to tell me?”

“I’m telling you now,”
he said, his voice tinged with defensiveness.

Her nerves were crying
out like a million daggers stabbing into her. She felt the shock reverberating
through her from her spine to her extremities. 
Wanting to know more.
Wanting to know nothing. Wanting to take back the entire conversation.
Her
love of information winning out: “Did you sleep with her when you were home?”

He nodded, “Yeah.”
 

She got off the bed and
walked across the room to the window. She stood, trembling, wondering if she
could put one foot in front of the other and make it out of the room.
My
clothes
, she thought,
I need to put my clothes back on
. She
started to gather up her shirt and socks.
Where’s my bra? Shit.

He stayed on the bed,
rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. “Why are you mad? You’re
fucking that Polish guy!”  

“Which I told you about.
BEFORE I fucked him,” Sarah retorted. She pulled on her socks adamantly, the anger
welling from deep inside. “This happened two months ago and you’re just
now telling me?”

“I didn’t think you’d
care,” James explained. Now he was silent and his blue eyes looked dull and
gray.
           
Fully
dressed, she turned and looked at him, noticing a furrow in his brow for the
first time, the precursors to crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes. It was
as if he’d aged ten years since the beginning of their conversation. “So,
what’s going on with you two?”

James cleared his throat
and stood up, still nude. He grabbed a towel off the chair near his bed and
wrapped it around his waist. “I don’t know,” he said softly.