The Solitude of Passion (25 page)

“Oh,
no
.” Lee’s smile melts from her face as if she were genuinely disappointed. “Please? It won’t be the same without you. Besides, that way I won’t have to recount every detail to you when I get back. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“Yes. I want to know everything.” Not really. I know enough. All the important details anyway. She hones in on the sarcasm in my voice and frowns. “You go.” I slip my hand up her shirt and rub her back. “I’ll take the kids to school. Actually I might keep Eli home. I saw him pull at his ear last night. He might be coming down with a cold.” Eli’s more than a little prone to ear infections. Both Lee and I know the fallout—a multitude of sleepless nights, and force feeding him medicine that he likes to spit back in our faces.

“Max.” She closes her eyes a moment as disappointment permeates her. “Are you sure? I could have your mom or Janice watch him.”

“I’m positive.” I want to tell her that I’m not ready, but its pointless considering I’ll never be ready to deal with Mitch.

“Okay. Well, thank you.” She gives a little bounce, and for a minute I’m not sure if she’s thanking me for staying with Eli or for not interfering with her outing. “You deserve an award for being the best father of the year. I’ll have to bake you a cake.” She dots my lips with a kiss.

Great. Now I’m practically a hero for not going.

“You’re all the reward I need, Lee.”

Her demeanor changes as she takes me in, desperate and broken from just one brief encounter with her not-so-long-lost husband. It’s the repercussions that have me fearful—that have me wondering how fast she’ll shove a suitcase in my face and tell me to get the hell out.

It’s not so much Mitch keeping me from going, or hearing him recite the atrocities that most likely occurred, it’s the pain that ignites in me when I think of Lee looking at him in that way. It’s the thought of feeling like a third wheel on some date my wife is on with her dead ex-husband. It’s a nightmare within a nightmare, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out. I wish there were some great analogy that could relay how I feel—some girl who would drive Lee to the edge of a mental cliff, but there isn’t. I don’t have some great love who has suddenly resurrected herself to compare the situation. Lee is the only one for me. Always has been. Always will.

Lee and I were a whole encyclopedia of wonder and excitement together, and now I feel like nothing more than some old, useless receipt.

She leans in and plants a string of kisses over my cheek. “Take Eli to your mom’s. I’m begging you to come. You can see for yourself that I’m still your wife.”

There it is. She hit the nerve. Didn’t bother with Novocaine, just drilled right in and I’m so glad she did. Those were the words I’ve been craving all night and into the morning.

“I know.” I pull in close, bump our foreheads together and stay there. A flood of hot tears swell beneath my lids, they filter down and penetrate my shirt uninvited.

Lee knew what I needed to hear. She knew the exact words I needed to comfort me, and she gave them like a blessing.

“So, are you coming?” Lee doesn’t wait for a response, simply covers her mouth over mine and bathes me with a deep, sensual kiss.

“I’ll be with Eli,” I whisper. “I just need more time to wrap my head around this.”

A million years to be exact.

Lee

The sun crests over the Townsend estate as I pull into the driveway. Mitch comes bounding down the stairs and hops into the passenger seat wearing a heart-stopping smile, and I take in a breath. A quiver runs through me at the sight of him, and now it seems like the worst idea in the world not to have brought Max along. I know if I pleaded just a little longer, he would have caved. Max would figure out a way to fly to the moon if I asked him to.

Mitch settles his eyes on me, sad and forlorn. “Nice car,” he says, securing the seatbelt. He doesn’t lean over and kiss me, just a platonic greeting as though he had somehow acquiesced to the fact I was married to his enemy. I don’t buy it, but I meet him on his terms.

“Thanks. I needed something bigger after Stella.” I stop short of adding,
Max helped me get it.

“Yeah, I figured.” He nods uncomfortably. “I’m glad.” He tracks those jade green eyes I’ve dreamed of a thousand times, slowly over my features.

It’s awkward. I could never have imagined an awkward moment with Mitch, and now here we are experiencing it.

He glances in the back seat before reverting his sad gaze. “So where’s the family?”

My stomach clenches when he says it. There wasn’t the slightest hint of malice in his tone, but it felt sharp as acid in a rancid wound.

“Eli,” I whisper, shaking my head, “he’s not feeling good. Max stayed with him. Stella is in school—preschool.” I bite down on my lip to keep from bawling. Just the thought of all he’s missed is the knife in all this. “She’s so smart. She asks a million nonstop questions, and her vocabulary is out of this world for a girl her age. She’s just learning to read. She’s picking it up so quickly. Max and I think she’s a genius.”

Mitch winces when I say his name.

I try to focus in on the road as we navigate onto the highway. The evergreens skirt the inland route, but there’s nothing except clear blue ocean to the left.

“I don’t doubt she’s a genius. She gets that from you by the way.” He reaches over and squeezes my knee. An entire current of affection races up my leg, and it takes everything in me to keep from stopping the car and pulling his body over mine. I’m so thirsty to hold Mitch, I might pass out soon if I don’t drink him down. “How about Eli? I want to know about him, too.”

I blink a smile over at him and let out a sigh of relief. I was so worried it was Stella he wanted and would look through Eli as though he didn’t exist—turn him into an extension of his hatred for Max.

“Eli…” What can I say other than the fact he’s Max in a two-and-a-half-foot package? “He’s quiet—pensive.” I shrug. “He likes trucks, and boats, and dirt all on an unnatural level of course. He gives the world’s best hugs. You’ll have to see for yourself.”

“I can’t wait to see for myself.” He warms his hand over mine, and my stomach swims with elation, not only for his touch but for his willingness to accept an important part of my life.

Mitch is an all around better person than me. Had he gone off and married someone else—had a child with her—I don’t think I’d be as accommodating. I hated a girl in college once after I dreamed she was interested in Mitch.
Hated
her because of a stupid dream. And, here, Mitch is living anyone’s worst nightmare.

We drive for a short while in a cloud of silence, content with the echo of our breathing. Everything about this new reality holds all the strange nuances of a dream, like something that unfolded out of my imagination because I willed it to happen.

I pull into The Waffle Shoppe parking lot, but it’s full, and after three long revolutions I give up and park at the Mono Bay Hotel right next door. Bodies are teeming out of the restaurant, mostly men in three-piece suits, which is an anomaly for the place. We hop out, and I take up Mitch’s hand, rub his arm in an effort to let him know it’s okay for him to touch me—that I won’t break or recoil. In fact, I want it—demand it.

Mitch smiles and holds my gaze. “You look beautiful, Lee.”

I bite down over my lip and don’t say a word.

It’s cool as we step inside the establishment. Bodies are lined along the entry, and it’s becoming clear it’s going to take more than a little while to get seated.

“Two please,” I say to the hostess. She bows into me with a smile. Her powder blue bonnet covers her grey curls. They look like frail wires poking beneath her enormous hat.

“There’s a one-hour wait.” She frowns as she says it. “Big dental convention this week.” She nods toward the wall of suits to our left.

I’m hoping most of them will make a trip over to either Townsend or Shepherd, which will be great for business. Every time there’s a convention in town, we get a run of people.

I pull out my cell to warn Max to prepare for an onslaught, but drop it back in my purse like it were a snake on fire. The last thing I want is Mitch listening to me talk to Max about Townsend.

“Let’s hit someplace else.” Mitch wraps an arm around my waist as if to coax me to the door and something about it feels intimate, right.

“You can try the hotel,” the hostess offers. “They’ve got a great buffet, and you might get in quicker.”

Mitch and I don’t put up a fight. As much as I want to spend time with Mitch—the thought of huddling in the blazing sun for an hour as we wait for a seat might kill the magic of his first day back.

“This is a miracle,” I say as we walk back through the parking lot.

“This is better than a miracle, Lee.” Mitch brings my hand up to his lips and presses in a kiss. “I died every day without you, and now I can breathe again.”

“Mitch.” I wrap my arm around his waist and sniff hard to keep from weeping. “You’re heaven to me.”

We pause just shy of the entry, and I take him in, gaunt, a thinner, frailer version of himself, but he’s still there—so perfectly beautiful.

He ticks his head and leads us inside.

The hotel lobby is comprised of polished black granite, a gleaming brass sign points to the an expansive dining room chock full of what I can only assume are dentists. The decibel level alone rivals a jet engine as a steady roar of unintelligible voices circulates around the room like a static draft.

“We could drive to Creek Side,” I suggest. “There are tons of places there.” I’d sit in the car and hit a drive-thru if he wanted. All I really need to satiate me is Mitch.

“Can I help you?” The concierge calls from behind the thick granite counter. “Do you have reservations?”

I look to Mitch as a thought twitches through me.

“How many in your party?” He doesn’t bother to look up from the keyboard. He’s already scanning for an opening.

Mitch takes a breath, locks eyes with me, and lets out the slight impression of a smile.  “We could order room service,” he suggests.

“And we’ll be able to hear each other better,” the words speed out of me.

It takes less than five minutes for the concierge to hand us a square plastic key, less than two minutes for Mitch and I to ride the elevator up and find our room.

We don’t hesitate stepping inside.

The door closes behind us, encapsulating us in this private membrane, and all I can see is Mitch and his blessed-by-God face.

“So”—I take a step deeper into the room as if enticing Mitch into the mouth of a lion—“what do you want to order?” The words come from me far more sultry than anticipated. It’s so quiet here I can feel my primal yearnings begging for his attention.

“I’m not hungry.” He takes a step into me and picks up my hand, the curve of a barely-there smile playing on his lips.

“Neither am I.”

A rush of adrenaline surges through me and fills my ears like a heartbeat. Something in me reverts to autopilot, and I remove his shirt in one quick motion.

I take in a breath at the sight.

“Oh my, God,” it sails from my lips, quiet as a whisper.

Long jagged welts run over him like shredded rope embedded just beneath his flesh. I run my fingers lightly over one of the lines, tracking it from his stomach to his heart.

“What the hell did they do to you?” I can barely push the words out through the heartbreak.

Mitch doesn’t answer. He simply walks over to the windows and pulls the drapes closed, darkening the room to pitch.

He swoops back in, out of breath, wrapping his arms around my waist—and this time it feels anything but platonic.

“I missed you, Lee,” he says, taking my hands and guiding them over his back until I’m holding on for dear life.

Mitch brushes his lips against mine before pulling back, gauging me for my reaction. He offers a sad smile before dipping in again and covering my mouth with his. Mitch detonates with achingly slow, unwavering kisses. The universe starts up again. It’s as though it had stalled, and, now, with Mitch here, it was firing on all pistons—nothing but a cataclysmic echo of exploding stars, an entire meteor shower of sorrow and pleasure intertwined—a comet of lust with a tail as wide as the sea.