The Heart Of It (5 page)

“Maybe . . . don’t,” he whispered

“Okay.”

Don’t touch him. She understood. And she went back to kissing him and getting devoured in turn. She braced her hands against the floor by his ears while his hands slid up her thighs, back to her ass.

She swayed her hips, smiling into his mouth. “You have a thing for my butt.”

“It’s . . . it’s really nice.”

Laughter spilled out over their kiss. “Thank you.”

She’d been on the receiving end of some high-end seductions in her life. Roses, champagne, massages, diamonds. Private dinners made by celebrity chefs. But she’d never been quite this . . .
consumed
. The kissing, his hands, the heat of his big body beneath her, it was all-consuming.

“Fuck me again.” She licked the words into his mouth, and she felt his reaction ripple out from his hands over her body.

He rolled to his side, and she grabbed his shoulders like he was a boat she was going to fall out of. Laughter again, and she was suffused with fondness for him. He pulled another condom out of his back pocket.

“How many of those have you got in there?”

“Like, five.”

“I admire your spirit.”

She wanted to take the condom out of his trembling fingers, but instead she shifted off his hips, letting him roll the condom over his cock.

“C’mere,” he murmured, one hand on her waist, the other pushing his dick up, and after some fumbling he was inside of her, his hands squeezing her waist hard enough to leave marks.

His eyes were squeezed shut, and she wanted to tell him to open them, to look at her, but instead she closed her own, rocking against him.

S
he came out of the bathroom wearing her dress, which seemed like she might be leaving. But she didn’t put on her shoes, which kind of seemed like she might stay. And Gabe was back to not knowing what to do with his hands.

“I don’t know how this works,” he blurted.

She lifted an eyebrow.

“I’d like you to stay.”

“You paid—”

He lifted his hand. “You can go if you’d like. Keep the money. But tonight was kind of a big deal for me. With you. I mean. The sex. And I ah . . . I ordered some room service, like a ton of it.” At this point, his hand gestures were so over the top a plane might land in the hotel room. “A little bit of everything.”

Her glance at her watch was brief, painfully casual, and he felt the time and money exchange like a monster in the room trying to twist all the goodwill and camaraderie into something uncomfortable and deviant.

It was hard work trying to stay loose on his best days. After sloppy, wonderful sex with an escort he was impossibly infatuated with, it was a lost cause.

“A little bit of everything sounds good.” Her smile tipped the scales back towards camaraderie, made him settle back into his body with a thump. She sat down at the chair behind the small desk.

“You want a bottle of water?” He didn’t walk so much as stumble and fall across the room to the mini fridge. He felt . . . hollowed out. But in a good way.

“Sure.”

Delighted by this, by her having a drink, by the way she had her feet up on the foot of the bed, he grabbed the small bottle of water from the lower shelf, twisted off the lid, and handed her that and a glass. She ignored the glass and drank from the bottle.

He got himself a bottle, too, and lifted it in a toast. She smiled and did the same.

“So.” There was no place else to sit except on the still-perfectly-made bed, so he sat with his back against the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. “What made you move to Toronto?”

She laughed. “I’m Canadian. At some point plenty of us come to Toronto. Why did you come here?”

“It rains too much in Vancouver, and it was as far away from that arena as I could get.”

He dared her with his honesty, with the way he wouldn’t break eye contact, to let go of some of her secrets. To trust him like he’d trusted her.

She spun her bottle slowly in her hand.

“My son’s father’s business was in Toronto.” She spun her bottle slowly in her hand. “I came here with him.”

“What was his business?”

“Diamond importing.”

Gabe chocked on his water which Elena seemed to enjoy.

“I was with him for threeyears. Until just after Simon was born.”

“Why did you break up?”

Elena’s shrug, that half turn away—he had no idea what it meant.

“Is that an answer?”

“You are pesky.”

“You are secretive.”

She lifted one shoulder in a delicate, mysterious shrug. “The answer is not a secret. It’s just ugly. Marcus was not interested in a baby. He had plenty of sons with his wife. And he was less interested in a baby who was very ill, who took all of the attention and energy he was paying me for.”

“Your son was ill?”

“Very.” Oh,
that
expression he could read. Those white lips, the hard eyes. They said,
I will not say any more about this
.

“So, he just walked away? From his sick son?” This seemed like some other world. A soap opera script.

“He gave us some money. Let me keep my jewelry. He was more generous than most.” She lifted her bottle to her lips and then set it down. “How did you get into writing?”

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“Desperately.”

That made him laugh. “This isn’t how most of your dates go? Clumsy awful sex against a door followed by an interview about your past?”

“The sex was not clumsy or awful.” He felt himself blushing. “And most of the men I’m with, talking
is
what they want to do. Though it’s usually about them.”

“We’ve done plenty of that tonight.” The sticky awkwardness, the terrible way he lived between past and present, in and out of his body, half in reality and half in fantasy—it all fell over him again. And suddenly, sharply, he wanted to be back in his apartment. Back with his crime-solving boy and his earnest father and the world Gabe controlled. Where he applied the equation of page count and subplot to the pain he manufactured so that everything, no matter how awful, came to a happy ending.

There were no such guarantees in real life.

No such guarantees in this room.

“Why haven’t you talked to your sister in ten years?” he asked, surprising himself with the question. When he’d opened his mouth he’d intended to tell her she could leave if she wanted. That he wouldn’t be calling her again.

“She lives in Norway.”

“There are these inventions called phones.”

Her lips twisted in what could not completely be called a smile. “She sends me a card every Christmas and another on Simon’s birthday. She keeps me informed.”

“But you haven’t talked to her.”

“Why the fuck does it matter to you?” she snapped, as if her patience had just expired.

“Why did it matter to you if I left this room earlier?”

She stared at him, giving him nothing.

Once when he was a kid, in the coldest winter he remembered, Ginny, the sister he’d spent all his days with, had dared him to walk out onto the frozen lake. But Dad had drilled it into them from practically the minute they’d been born that no matter what, they were not to go onto that lake without him in the winter.

“It’s deep,” he’d said. “And there’s a spring, it makes it unpredictable.”

But Ginny had dared him. She’d dared him and dared him, and he’d gone out onto that lake, until he heard the deep cracks, the echoing booms of ice breaking far below his feet.

He felt that way right now. To the bone, he felt that way. Adrift on a frozen, unpredictable lake cracking apart around him, but compelled to keep going.

“There are infinitely better ways we could be spending this time.” Her smile was practiced, that dip in her shoulder, both intended to seduce him. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t tempted. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to slip that dress back off her body. But it was a small want, a minor desire compared to how he wanted to know her. Slip off her secrets. Find, if he could, if she’d let him, the small terrible engine at the heart of her.

He pulled the corner edge of the label off the bottle. “Why don’t you talk to her?”

“Because all we do is remind each other of bad things. What is the point?”

“The good things, I imagine.”

“Is this more of your silver linings bullshit?”

“I thought I would never play hockey again,” he said. “And I’m not sure if I can explain to you how much I loved it, how much it made up who I thought I was. But after the trial, the team moved on, and every time I walked into an arena, I would throw up.” He eased more and more of the label from the bottle, like it was surgery. Like it needed all of his attention. “So I stopped walking into them. I gave away all my stuff and just stopped. But I dreamt about hockey. The sound of the ice under my skates. The way my arms felt after hitting a slap shot. Even the smell of my gear.”

“My sister and I . . . It’s not the same thing.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not.” He looked up from his label surgery. “I’m talking about a sport with no ability to love me as much as I loved it. You’re talking about a person you grew up with. A person you probably loved a great deal and who I imagine loved you back. And continues to love you enough to send you cards twice a year knowing you won’t write her back. It’s not the same thing at all.”

She set the water bottle down on the table and pressed her hands against her knees. “I’m really glad that you feel so good about tonight. I’m glad that you were able to have sex without being drunk. Much to my surprise, I feel honored in a way to have done this with you. But your little psychological breakthrough does not give you license to pick apart my life. You don’t know me, Gabe. Not at all. And frankly, you’re forgetting who I am and what I do for a living.”

“I’m not judging you—”

She laughed and stood, and he felt in a heartbeat how stupid he’d been. How foolish. How pompous. He was a simple knot compared to her complexity.

“I’m not here for you to judge,” she said, slipping her feet into her shoes. “I don’t give a fuck what you think. I am here to make you feel good. To make you feel wanted. That’s what your money buys. It doesn’t buy my past. Or my secrets. You want a girlfriend? Go upstairs and find one.”

“I don’t want a girlfriend. I want . . . fuck, Elena.” He scrambled off the bed. “I want you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, pulling a hair tie out of her purse and sweeping her hair up into it. And then, to his astonishment, she slipped on a pair of glasses.

Glasses.

It was like watching Wonder Woman turn back into Diana Prince.

“Close your mouth, Gabe. You look like a fool.”

He felt like one. He felt young and stupid and ruined by her.

But Christ, he couldn’t stop.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

She stepped towards the door, and he got in front of it.

“You know it’s not the same when you do it,” she said, cold and hard. “I can’t pick you up and move you.”

Sick, he stepped aside.

When she reached for the doorknob, ready to walk out without looking back, he touched her wrist. Just the tips of his fingers against her skin and then gone. That was all. But she stopped.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. She was lying.

“I really like you.”

“I like you too, Gabe. You’re a good guy.”

“Can I . . . see you again?” He was asking about twenty different things.
Was that special to you at all? Did that mean anything? I’d like to see you, know you, talk to you, do you want any of that with me?
He thought the answer might be yes, otherwise why had she made him stay when she could have taken the money and let him go?

Or maybe he was just being a fool.

“Of course, honey,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek, and he felt his body lean into the gesture, like a controlled slide into the boards. “Just call the service.”

E
lena gave Maggie the babysitter money for a cab ride home and turned off all the lights as she headed upstairs to bed. She checked on Simon, a small lump under his duvet. He slept like a seed, all curled in on himself, nose pressed to knees.

When she ran a hand over his hair, he sighed, a soft sleeping-boy sigh.

She washed her face and took off her dress, slipping into her nightgown, all while pretending she wasn’t going to do it. But when the busy work of ending the day was over, she stopped lying to herself and pulled the box out from under her bed.

Every letter and card Lisa had sent over the years. It used to just be Christmas cards, but in a moment of hormonal weakness Elena had sent Lisa a note telling her she was an aunt.

After that, the cards came twice a year. Christmas and Simon’s birthday. Never her birthday, as if Lisa knew that would be too much. A step over some arbitrary betrayed-sister line that would result in all the cards being sent back, unopened. Lisa knew her that well. Still.

She found the last one, from Simon’s eighth birthday, and ran a finger over the familiar handwriting.

I miss you so much. Call. Please call. Or write. Email me. Anything.

Beneath the words were a phone number and an email address.

Not tonight, she thought.

She was done with tonight. Done.

Tonight had seen too much bravery.

But maybe . . . maybe later. Maybe in a few days when she felt less . . . thin. Less vulnerable. She’d attempt to call. Or email first. That seemed best.

But not tonight.

Tonight would be put away until it was forgotten.

One Week Later

Gabe didn’t think she’d come. He wasn’t stupid. But it didn’t stop him from looking up every single time the elevator doors opened and someone stepped out of the dark hallway into the brighter light of the bar.

“You waiting for someone?” The bartender asked, sliding a his burger in front of Gabe.

“Yes,” he said.