Unsuitable Men (25 page)

She knew that. If there was one thing she knew more so than most people, it was that specific sex acts didn’t equal love, and she knew that Brendan didn’t need her to prove anything in that way. But after giving so much of herself away to men who didn’t matter, she also knew that if there was something, some part of her he wanted that she’d given to no other man, she would not refuse him. Hell, she never said she wasn’t still a little fucked up in the head.

“You have to forgive me,” she said, finally.

Brendan sat on the edge of the bed, far away from her. He looked defeated.

“I’ve forgiven myself, Brendan,” she said. “Or I’m starting to. But if
you
can’t forgive me, we aren’t going to work.”

In the morning when Tracy got up, Brendan was in the kitchen dressed for the gym or basketball. When he looked up and saw her, he sat on one of the stools and called her over to him. She went to stand in front of him, between his legs.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Last night I was out of control. Some of
the
things I asked you, I don’t even know where that came from.”

“You want to know what you’ve gotten yourself into with me,” she shrugged. “I get it.”

“
Do
you get it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she nodded, feeling tired and resigned, almost indifferent. “It’s a lot to ask any man to accept.”

“I love you, Tracy . . .”

She
nodded,
hurrying him along to what she knew was coming next.

“No. Look at me,” Brendan said, emphatically, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I
love
you. And I’ll do whatever we need to do to work through this.”

Tracy sighed. “But I’m tired,” she said. “I’m trying to work through it for myself, and I don’t think I have the stamina to work through it for anyone else on top of that.”

“What’re you saying?” Brendan asked, taking her face in his hands.

“I’m saying that . . . I have that trip to Paris the day after tomorrow. I’ll be gone a week. And when I come back, I’m going to Brooklyn . . .” Brendan opened his mouth to protest but she held up a hand to stop him. “And I’ll stay there until and unless you come and say you’re ready for me, Brendan. And if you do that, we have to close the door on this for good.

“For the first time in
years
, I can look in the mirror and not be disgusted with myself. I can’t get that far only to look across the breakfast table and see that disgust in someone else’s eyes.”

“Tracy. I would never be disgusted with you. No matter what
your
past . . .”

“Okay, well last night, the guy who came home stinking drunk seemed a little put out by my past, so . . .”

“How can I not be
put out
by it? Other men touched you like I touch you, some of them in ways that I
haven’t
touched you. They were . . .” he broke off and shook his head. “You know what that feels like?”

“No. So that’s why you have to be the one to decide whether you can deal. And if not, I’m sure we’ll handle it. We’ll always be
frien
. . .”

“I don’t want to be your fucking
friend
! This is more than that. And it always has been. You know it and I know it.”

Tracy nodded. “I do know it. But it doesn’t make any difference if we can’t hold it together.”

“So now what?” It was his turn to sound resigned.

“Now I go to Brooklyn and pack for my trip to Paris. I’ll probably stay there tonight and tomorrow night just to get ready and stuff.”

Brendan’s arms fell to his sides and he let her go.

While cross-legged on the floor, Tracy held Cullen so he was balanced on her knees as though standing, reveling, and delighting in the sight of him. She pressed her nose into his soft curls and inhaled. Cullen drooled on her blouse but she didn’t care. He tugged a lock of her hair, pulling it out of place and she didn’t care about that either.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” Riley said. “But it’s really better this way, Tracy.”

She’d stopped by on her way to Brooklyn see Riley and her godson, delaying the inevitable return to her empty house. Even with the issue they were having, she still wanted to be with him; sleeping without him next to her remained the less attractive option, but it was necessary.

“Yeah?” Tracy took another sniff of her godson.

“You did the right thing. You can’t work his shit out for him, that’s the bottom line. And make no mistake about it. This is
his
shit, not yours.”

“He wasn’t the one who slept with all those people.”

“But you’re dealing with whatever led to that with Dr. Greer. Now Brendan has to deal with his feelings about what you did.”

“But I don’t want to lose him,” Tracy said, shrugging.

“If he doesn’t figure out how to deal, you’ll lose him anyway,” Riley said.

“Thanks for the sunny outlook,” Tracy said dryly.

“So how’s it been otherwise?”

“There is no ‘otherwise’,” Tracy said. “It was great and then he asked me how many men I’ve had sex with and what I did with them. That’s the whole story.”

“Shawn said he’s been a mess lately,” Riley offered.

Tracy looked up. “See that’s the thing. I don’t
want
him to be a mess,” she said. “I want him happy. I want him to be happy with
me
. Not wake up every morning wondering why he had to go fall in love with a slut.”

Riley recoiled at the use of the word. “Tracy . . .”

“That’s the bottom line, Riley. I know Brendan loves me. That’s the killing part. He just doesn’t want to love me. I’m like a
disease
he has.”

“
Jesus
, should we get Dr. Greer on the line? Why do you talk about yourself that way?”

“Because it’s true,” Tracy shrugged.

“It is
not
true,” Riley said, looking as though she might cry. “Tracy you are . . .” her voice broke, “. . . the most generous, caring, honest and loyal person I know. When I was going through everything with Shawn you were there for me, even when my own mother wasn’t.

“Every dumb thing I ever did since I was eighteen, you have been there. Brendan is as lucky to have you as you are to have him. And if he doesn’t realize that soon, then fuck him. I mean it,
fuck him
.”

And then they were both crying, and Cullen, confused by all the fuss joined in as well.

Shawn walked through the living room and seeing them weeping asked no questions but rolled his eyes and took his son from Tracy’s arms, heading into the den. Riley looked at her and they both laughed.

“Come over here,” Riley said.

Tracy went to her and they hugged.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said. “For being so caught up in my own stuff that I didn’t realize how important he is to you. I doubted your motives and I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s okay,” Tracy said. “For the longest time
I
didn’t even know what my motives were.”

“So what now?”

“I go to Paris for that conference and maybe I’ll come back and he’ll have cleared his head a little bit, figured out what he wants.”

Going back to her place in Brooklyn didn’t exactly give her distance from Brendan either, if that’s what she’d been hoping to accomplish. His shirts were in the closet, boots in the mud room, and remnants of a cheese he liked but she hated were in the refrigerator.

Tracy packed with swift efficiency and contemplated the remaining expanse of her weekend laid out before her. She could call Russell and they might go into the city for drinks and dinner, or to a movie. She hadn’t seen him since she and Brendan got back together and his loud upbeat mood might be just what she needed right now. But something about being alone was okay too. It was scary, but it was okay.

What she said to Brendan that morning she meant. She’d had enough of dirty little secrets to last a lifetime, and she wasn’t going to be his. The things she’d done, she had done. They were past and gone, and no trace of those men remained with her, except in her psyche if she let them. She wanted to replace every single one of those bad memories with all the good things Brendan gave her—his smiles, the way he held her, the way he told her she was beautiful, the way he made love to her, the way he called her “sweetheart” and meant it.

And even if he couldn’t get past everything, she would always love him for that. He helped her dare to believe—no, to
expect
—that she would have a life like that. God, she hoped, she
prayed
that when she got back home from Paris he would come to her because it was almost impossible to believe there might be another one like him out there.

For the rest of the afternoon, Tracy did a cathartic housecleaning, doing all the laundry—including some of Brendan’s—tossing out old food in the refrigerator, and even polishing the wood furniture. By nightfall, she had a pleasant achy exhaustion and was looking forward to bed.

Tomorrow, she would go to the neighborhood coffee shop that she used to frequent but hadn’t visited in a dog’s age, and catch up with some of her neighbors. And there was always one of the perpetual
Law & Order
marathons that she and Brendan watched together on Sundays. And then on Monday she would be on her way to a beautiful city she’d never visited before.

Rather than dirty the dishes she’d painstakingly washed, dried and put away in cabinets, Tracy ordered Chinese take-out and watched a design show on the television in her bedroom as she ate. It felt good to be alone but not lonely. She wondered what had changed because she undoubtedly missed Brendan, but still, she felt centered in a way she hadn’t in a long time, or perhaps ever.

Last week she’d spoken to her mother who was still having a surprisingly hard time with Malcolm’s death. As Tracy listened to her recital of all the ways she’d been wronged by this man when he was alive, she felt a wave of sympathy for her mother. And the wave had remained even when she listened to her describe all the ways Tracy was ruining her life by being with a man like Brendan Cole. She listened and she said nothing, but in her mind and in her heart, she was saying,
Mom, I only wish you had someone like him. Your life and mine might have been so different if you had.

It was well after midnight when Tracy heard the barest hint of a sound downstairs. She was immediately alert because sleeping in the house alone had become unfamiliar to her. She listened until she heard the keys in the lock and the quiet slipping of the bolt back into place from the inside. She exhaled, relaxing as she heard his quiet tread as he ascended the stairs, and she turned onto her back just in time to see him silhouetted in the bedroom door.

Her sigh of relief was audible, so he must have known she was awake, but he didn’t speak, so neither did
she
. She watched as he shed his clothes and then he was coming toward her and getting under the covers. Tracy turned to face him, and his lips were immediately on hers, his hands under her nightdress. She willingly raised her arms above her head to allow him to remove it, and cradled his head against her chest when he lowered it to take the tip of one breast in his mouth and then another.

When he moved down her body, she parted her legs for him and gasped at the warm feeling of his breath against the most sensitive part of her. His fingers parted her and all she could do after that was feel—his tongue, his lips, his breath and light nips from his teeth. She reached for him but he resisted, bringing her twice to completion before moving up to rest his head on her stomach. Tracy stroked the side of his face, waiting for him to speak, thinking that surely he must intend to say
something
. But he didn’t.

Instead he kissed her stomach, her hips, the crook of her elbows, her fingers, thighs, and behind her knees. Then he kissed her mouth, and even though she could feel his excitement, he was slow and sweet and gentle, loving her, cherishing her, making her feel as though there was nothing more precious to him.

That was when she stopped wishing he would speak. He
was
speaking to her, telling her everything she needed to know with his body, with the most secret part of himself in the most secret part of her. He moved inside her so slowly it was almost torturous but it was beautiful as well, and Tracy trembled and quivered uncontrollably, all her nerve endings set on fire.

Finally, he grew tense and raised his upper body, his elbows holding its weight on either side of her head, and he was breathing her name rather than saying it, his breath stirring the hair at her temples. So she said his name back to him, telling him she loved him, hearing him say the same to her. When he climaxed, she could feel him deep inside her, jerking and convulsing even as the rest of his body went slack.

Afterwards Brendan seemed not to want to part with her and simply rolled over so she was lying on top of and astride him. Beneath her left ear, Tracy could hear the rapid rhythm of his heart, which was also her heart. She was soon asleep and when she woke up on Sunday he was gone.

The silence was the worst part. It was almost as though she had dropped off the face of the earth. The night when he’d crept into her bed, he wasn’t sure whether he meant their lovemaking as an apology or a goodbye, and so he hadn’t stayed. Because he knew Tracy didn’t like to be left, he almost expected that she would call him on Sunday, but she hadn’t. Brendan spent the day playing basketball and then went to Shawn’s to spend some time with his godson. Riley watched him like a hawk as if trying to decipher his facial expressions and read it for things he did not say. He left at Cullen’s bedtime and was himself asleep before ten.

On the second day, the day she left for Paris, Brendan went back to Brooklyn and found that Tracy had made the bed and cleaned the bedroom before she left. The rest of the townhouse was spotless as well, like a model unit where no one actually lived. The only reassuring thing was that she had washed and folded the clothes that he kept there and put them back in the drawer.

One entire side of the dresser
, he recalled her saying when he’d first brought his clothes over.
You have no idea what a concession that is for a woman to make.

That day they’d been playful and she was sexy in faded jeans and tank top with no bra, her hair in a ponytail, her face devoid of make-up. Without make-up she looked so young, like a college girl. Even now, it was hard to reconcile that image with the one she’d painted for him, or her trolling bars, going home with men she barely knew, or didn’t know at all. He wanted to do what she’d asked him to do, put everything in the past and close the door, but how the hell was he supposed to promise that he could stop the tape playing in his head of her, naked and open, her body covered by someone else’s?

By the third day, try as he might, there was also no escaping the fact that he didn’t know yet what he was going to do. Still, one choice was clearly far more painful than the other—letting her go would mean taking the chance that one day he might arrive at Shawn’s house in New Jersey and Tracy would be with someone who had been man enough to face down her demons and claim her for
himself
. Someone who might marry her, maybe even start a family; someone who would close Tracy off from him for good. The possibility of her having that future—marriage, kids and family—without him was at least as painful, if not more so, than his recurring thoughts about her past.

On the day she was scheduled to return home, Brendan found himself unable to concentrate. Thoughts entered his mind and flitted away moments later. All he could focus on was the clock. She was landing at four. It would take her another two to three hours to get to Brooklyn. She would for sure be home by eight, more likely by seven.

At six he was at Shawn’s condo, sitting with him in the den, listening to some of Sam Gaston’s stuff. They were thinking of releasing the CD anyway, even without Sam around to help promote it. It would be risky, but they were banking on the music selling itself. A few people they’d had listen to it believed it was that good, and worth the risk. 

Brendan glanced at the time. Six-seventeen now. Almost certainly she was home. She’d driven her car to the airport, he knew, because he hadn’t seen it parked on the street when he’d gone by earlier in the week.

“What
d’you think
man?” Shawn asked.

Brendan looked at him blankly, having missed entirely whatever it was Shawn had asked him.

Shawn shook his head. “What’s going on?” he asked finally.

“Nothing. Stuff with Tracy.”

Shawn nodded. “She’s a handful, isn’t she?”

Brendan laughed. “You could say that.”