I met Carrie at Sweetwater for coffee and a cinnamon roll. It was crowded, as usual, but she had snagged us a table in the back and waved me over when I slipped through the heavy front door, a cold wind following me. There was a nip of winter in it already.
“Cold out there.” I shivered, smiling when I saw she'd ordered for both of us already. “Thanks.”
“I can't wait for Christmas break.” She waved me into a chair, pushing my cinnamon roll toward me. It was thick and fat, the sides dripping with sticky white cream.
Perfect. I hadn’t allowed myself indulgences like these in the past year, hadn’t even considered it. Chocolate, ice cream, pastries, sex-doing anything sweet felt like a betrayal. “Doc has almost a month off. Key West and sunshine, here we come!”
I hesitated, the finger full of frosting halfway to my mouth. “You'll be in Florida for a month?”
“Two weeks,” she amended, giving me a little smile and sipping her coffee. “You can come with us if you want.”
“No.” I shook my head, tearing off a piece of roll. It didn’t taste quite as sweet now as I’d hoped. “I've got so much to do over break. My load for my last semester is even heavier than this one. And this one is kicking my ass.”
“But then you'll be all done,” she reminded me, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. She was wearing a skirt, a gray and pink plaid wool one that ended at her knee. Her pantyhose were sheer, her legs long and sexy, still tanned from the summer spent sunbathing.
“Yep,” I agreed. And then what, I thought? What happens when I don't have school to do anymore? When I was pregnant with Isabella, I almost forgot about school altogether. It was Mason who buckled down then. He was an engineering major at the time and had brought home a four-point-oh the semester before she was born. And then we lost her and everything changed. I turned to school, focusing all my attention there, and Mason began drifting, aimless. My red cheeks stung as they warmed, and I swallowed hot gulps of coffee, trying to warm my insides as well. Although I wasn't sure that was possible anymore.
“Ugh. Don't look behind you.” Carrie wrinkled her nose and bit into her own cinnamon roll.
Of course I looked anyway.
“I said not to look,” she warned. But it was too late. There was a woman in the corner with a baby. They’d just come in and the baby’s cheeks were red from the cold.
How old? I wondered. A year? Year and a half? Isabella would have been about that age, I guessed. It was like a knife twisted in my belly, every time.
“I don't know which is harder.” I turned back to the table. Carrie’s gaze was on her coffee. “The little ones remind me of what she was like when she was born, and the older ones remind me of what could have been.”
“They all kill me.” She poured another sweetener into her coffee and stirred.
Sometimes I thought it was like neither of us could get enough sweetness or warmth.
“It sucks.” I chewed and swallowed, watching her stir and stir. “Are you guys still trying?”
“Always.” She rolled her eyes, licking her spoon and setting it carefully on her napkin. “I set an alarm to take my temperature every day. Poor Doc, I page him when I'm ovulating and he runs home from the hospital hoping he's not called back on an emergency.”
I nodded. “But getting pregnant isn't the problem.”
“No.” She sighed. “It's staying pregnant that seems to be the issue.”
“You know, I had some bleeding with Isabella in the beginning,” I told her. “The chiropractor gave me this stuff, a sort of cream. Progesterone, I think? I still have some if you want it. Maybe it will help?”
“Sure. Why not? I'll try anything.” She gave me a small, rueful smile. “I'd walk on my hands wearing garbage bags and toe socks if it would make a difference.”
That made me laugh and her smile widened into a real one.
“Hey, there he is!” Carrie waved at the door and I turned to see Doc coming in, shaking off the cold. My heart leapt and my belly clenched at the sight of him, tall and handsome, snatching off his hat, his ears still red from the cold. “I hope you don't mind but he got off early and I didn't want to cancel with you.”
“No, I don't mind,” I replied, which wasn't exactly true, as Doc wound his way through the tables toward us. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him, that I didn’t like seeing him. In fact, I think I enjoyed it far too much.
“There's my girl.” Doc leaned over to kiss his wife and I looked away.
The mother with the baby had moved and was fully in my line of sight now. The little girl in her arms was dark haired and bundled in a pink coat with fake white fur around the hood. That could have been my life, I realized, watching her wipe the little girl's runny nose with a Kleenex and give her a plastic bag full of Cheerios. Instead I was sitting here with the Baumgartners and Mason was somewhere wasting his life role-playing. I felt a little like I was living an in alternate universe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Was I living someone else’s life?
“Hey Doc.” I smiled and greeted him as he waved a waitress over.
Carrie helped him off with his coat. “I didn't order for you because I wasn't sure you were going to make it.”
“I wasn't sure either. I had an emergency appendectomy this morning.” He looked tired, but his eyes were still darkly bright as he glanced between the two of us.
“But here I am.”
“I can't wait for vacation.” She leaned her head against his shoulder and he slipped an arm around her.
He sighed. “Tell me about it.”
They kissed again, more intimately this time, and my stomach did that flip-flop thing. I didn’t know if it was jealousy or what, but whenever I saw them like that, my whole body responded like a guitar being tuned, wound slowly to its breaking point.
“You know, I should get going.” I started gathering my book bag, shrugging on my coat.
Doc frowned, looking from my half-eaten roll and back to me. “You don't have to leave on my account.”
“No, it's not that.” I waved his words away, as if he wasn’t the reason at all. “I told Mason I would meet him at the apartment.”
“You did?” Carrie looked at me in amazement, her jaw dropping.
I shrugged, trying to avoid her gaze. “He wants to talk about our future. Whatever that means.”
Carrie frowned. “Sounds ominous.”
“Or promising,” Doc countered, catching my gaze and giving me a little smile.
I shook my head sadly. “Probably the former.”
“Dani.” He reached for my hand and I let him have it, feeling the warm pressure as he squeezed. “I don't bite.”
“I know.” I flushed, looking over at Carrie. How was I supposed to handle this, holding her husband’s hand in the middle of the coffee shop while she watched? She didn’t seem to care and he didn’t seem to care. Why was it such a big deal for me?
“I'm sorry I make you uncomfortable,” he prompted.
“It's not you, it's…” I pulled my hand away gently, reaching for my bag. “It's the whole situation.”
Doc leaned his elbows on the table, his gaze steady, curious. “Is there anything I can do to fix it?”
“I gotta go.”
I escaped out into the cold, not looking back. The walk home was long and I trudged the whole way, knowing Mason wouldn’t be there for hours. He’d said five but I didn't expect him until six and he didn't actually arrive until seven. I heard the putter of his moped out back while I was finishing up a Lean Cuisine-oriental chicken. I quickly dumped the tray in the garbage and tossed my fork in the sink, nudging Jezebel out of the way to open the back door.
“Hey.” He tucked his helmet under his arm, unzipping his jacket. He looked good.
He always looked good. It made my chest hurt.
“Hi.” I waved him in and shut the door, joining him at the kitchen table. “So what's up?”
I knew it was something. He never called, and if he showed up, it was always unannounced, sneaking in and out of the apartment like thief. When he left me a stiff message on the machine saying, “We need to talk,” I knew I had to be on my guard.
And I was.
He put his helmet on the table, leaning back in his chair. “I've been thinking about this Italy thing.”
I stiffened, prepared, but for what, I wasn’t quite sure. “And?”
“I can't go with you.”
I nodded. This was nothing new. “Okay.”
“But I don't want you to go.” He worked the strap on his helmet nervously. Snap, unsnap. Snap, unsnap.
“Now we're right back where we started.”
“I know.” Snap, unsnap. “There has to be a way to fix this.”
I shook my head, nudging Jezebel under the table with my foot. She was purring, heading for Mason, getting ready to say hello. “We've been saying that for over a year.
Long before my going to Italy was even a question.”
He lifted his gaze to mine. “We could try therapy again.”
“We didn't do anything but fight in therapy.” I was just pointing out the obvious.
The guy his parents had paid for hadn’t done either of us much good. He had an office that smelled like patchouli and sat in a chair that squeaked every time he shifted in it.
Mason and I sat on an equally squeaky brown leather couch while the therapist nodded and asked, “How did that make you feel?” every time we said something. It felt useless, like talking to a mirror.
Mason tried a smile. “At least we were talking.”
“Yelling,” I countered.
He tried again. “Communicating.”
I snorted. “I don't know if I'd call that communicating.”
“What if we got back with each other? If we moved in together again?”
“Do you want to?” That suggestion took me aback. I sat and contemplated it, having Mason back here. What would that be like? What would we be like together?
The memory of him in my bed was too close.
He reached across the table and took my hand. “I want you.”
“I want you too.” It was barely a whisper. I looked down at his hand covering mine and knew it was true. I’d always wanted him, even when I convinced myself I didn’t. But the gap between us was much wider than the expanse of the kitchen table, and I wasn’t sure it was so easily bridged.
“Let me back in.” He didn’t beg or plead, but I heard the longing in his voice.
“It's your house too. More, really, since your parents pay for it.” I brought it up like a shield to put between us. It was a sore point, one of those things we’d always argued about, even before Isabella.
“That's not what I mean.” He sighed. “The other day, we were…it was almost like before.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “It will never be like before, ever again.”
“I want to fix it.” Now he really was pleading. I didn’t look up, didn’t want to see if the emotion choking his voice was in his eyes. “That's all I want. I want to turn the fucking clock back. I want her back. I want you back.”
I pulled my hand slowly away, leaving his alone clenched in a fist in the middle of the table. “It's not possible.”
“You think I don't know that?” he choked. “You think I don't spend every minute of every day hating myself for not being able to save her? Save you?”
I tried to make myself as small as possible in the chair. “I don't need saving.”
“The hell you don't.” He slammed his fist on the table, shaking it and making Jezebel startle against my feet.
“I don't know what I need,” I told him honestly.
Mason pressed his palms flat against the table. “You don't need to run away, that's for damned sure.”
“I'm not running away.” I folded my arms and tried not to glare at him.
“Yes you are!” He threw up his hands, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been running away since it happened!”
“I was mourning!” I snarled, feeling a headache beginning to throb behind my eyes.
“You think I wasn’t?” he snapped back. We were both glaring now. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be in pain too? You think I left first? Fuck you! You've been gone since she died!”
I took a deep, shuddering breath, leveling my gaze at him. “Her name is Isabella.”
He cringed like I’d hit him. “She was my daughter. I know her name.”
“She is your daughter,” I corrected softly. “So why don't you ever say it?”
“She's gone, Dani.” He put up his palms- I give up. “I can't bring her back.”
“I know that.” God knew, that was something that never left my consciousness.
“But why do we have to pretend she never existed?”
“I didn't let them take it down, did I?” he hissed, waving toward the bedroom door.
“All her things are still in there just like you wanted them-like a…like a shrine!”
I swallowed and blinked at him, trying to keep my voice from shaking and failing miserably. “That's why you left.”
“No.” He sighed and tried to look away but our eyes locked together and wouldn’t let go. His voice came out as hoarse as mine. “I left because of everything…because it was all broken. You were broken. I was broken. And I couldn't…I just couldn't fix it.”
“You still can't,” I reminded him in a small voice. “No one can.”
We listened to the refrigerator hum and the clock over the kitchen sink tick in the silence between us. Jezebel took the opportunity to jump up onto the table and stalk back and forth between us.
“Maybe we should move back home.” His suggestion came out of left field and I knew then that this was it. This was the thing he’d really come to talk about, to tell me.
“What?” And still it shocked me. The idea of going back to our tiny hometown four hours away from here, the place where we’d both attended high school, where we’d made out in the cramped backseat of his little Escort, where our parents continued to live their very different, very separate lives, was so anathema to me, it actually made me nauseous.
“My dad's offered me a job.”
I stared at him, agape. I couldn’t say anything.
“Fixing up houses and flipping them.” I think he mistook my silence for agreement. He just kept talking. “There's good money in it. We could get our own place.
Start again. Try again.”
Try again. Oh my god, he meant try to have another baby. A replacement baby.
Now I really was nauseous.
I took a deep breath, getting the words out as calmly as I could manage. “I'm going to Italy, Mason.”
“You don't have to!” He raised his voice almost to a yell and I gave it right back to him.
“I want to!”
His jaw clenched, unclenched. “So you want to leave me?”
“You left me first,” I snapped.
“I beg to differ on that point.”
I shoved Jezebel off the table as she tried to settle on the table between us and she mewed at me in protest from the floor. “Mason, I'm not going to live off your parents anymore. I don't want that kind of life.”
“You don't have a problem with them paying your rent now!” he growled.
I gaped at him and then stood, the chair falling over behind me to the floor, making Jezebel bolt for the bedroom. “If you believe that, you don't know anything about me!”
“I know everything about you!” He grabbed my arm as I started after the cat, jolting me around so I was facing him. “I know that you can't stand being wrong or hurt. I know you wish you had died instead of her.”
“Stop it.” I tried to shake him off me, but he held my arm in a bruising grip.
“I know that you love me!” he yelled, shaking my arm, making my teeth rattle.
I glared up at him, using my other hand to push against his chest. “Love doesn't solve anything! I loved her and she died. I loved you and you left. What the fuck does love do for me? Nothing!”
Mason grabbed my other arm, the one shoving him, and held me still. “Come home with me.”
“To do what?” I was shaking all over. “So you can work for your parents, so we can live their lives? That’s like asking me to live in quicksand! I want my own life! Don't you, Mason? Don't you?”
The look in his eyes almost melted me. Almost. “I've never wanted anything but you.”
“I can't do this anymore.” Even as I said it, I realized it was true. Enough. I’d had enough. “You're never going to grow up are you, Peter Pan? Do you want to live in Neverland forever? Are you going to spend the rest of your life playing games and pretending bad things don't happen?”
“I'm trying!” he croaked.
“Trying isn't good enough.” It was a painful truth and he didn’t want to hear me, pretended I hadn’t spoken.
“I'm trying to make a life for us-for you!” He shook me, hard, and I struggled to get away. “A job, a house, a baby-isn't that what you want?”
“No!” I yelled, giving it back to him. “I want us. I always wanted us. I don't care what you do, as long as it’s yours. Don't you understand that?”
“Nothing is ever good enough for you!” He let me go, walking away, pacing.
“Jesus, my mother was right!”
“Your mother?” I gulped, trying to breathe.
“She warned me you were a gold digger. That you got pregnant on purpose. She warned me not to marry you.”
I knew she’d never liked me, but this! His words made me go cold inside.
“And I did it anyway.” He paced, talking to himself. “Because I loved you.
Because I thought you loved me. Because the baby…” His voice broke and he ran a shaking hand through his hair. “You know they think it's your fault? My mother swears it was all that freaky yoga stuff you were doing. That you killed her!”
He lifted his twisted face to me and I saw his tears. “Not that it matters. They don’t believe she was mine anyway.”
I went after him, screaming like an animal. I don’t remember anything I said, although I know I said things, and he did too. He shoved me away from him into the wall, knocking the wind out of me and I sat there, dazed, the world going in and out of focus, not sure if the pounding I heard was on the door or in my head.
“Dani!” Someone was calling my name. “Open up! Dani! Are you okay?”
It was Doc pounding on my front door. I struggled to stand and Mason stepped aside as I moved to open it.
“Sounded like you might need a little help over here.” Doc’s jaw worked as he looked past me toward Mason. Doc was wearing just a sweatshirt, no jacket, his breath making white mist in the cold. He must have heard us yelling and run over in a hurry.
“Mason was just leaving.” I swung the front door wide, letting Doc in.
“Is that so?” Doc’s big bulk filled the doorway, his gaze fixed steadily on my husband.
Mason looked just at me, his voice soft. “If I walk out that door, it will be for the last time.”
I didn’t say anything. Instead I walked to the back door, opened it and waved him through. When I shut it behind him, I turned to find Doc behind me, his face filled with concern.
“Are you okay?” He looked like he wanted to say something else, maybe reach for me, but was holding himself back.
“No,” I whispered, telling him the truth. Then I collapsed in his arms and sobbed.
He carried me to the couch. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how we got there, me in his lap, my hot face pressed against his neck. He rocked me and patted me and shushed me for a long, long time. I couldn’t stop crying. I hadn’t cried like that since Isabella was born, when my eyes had been so swollen I could barely open them and I had to ice both my face and my breasts to keep the swelling down.
“What happened?” Doc finally asked when my breath had settled into occasional hitches.
“It’s over.” I sniffed, wiping at my face with the sleeve of my turtleneck. It was no use-I’d soaked them both. “Not that it wasn’t already. I don’t know. I just wish it all could have been different.”
“I’m sorry.” He rocked me some more and I felt him kiss my hair. “You’ve had it rough, Dani.”
“I guess so.” I was feeling even more sorry for myself, hearing the sympathy in his voice. I lifted my head to glance at the clock. “Carrie must be going crazy.”
“She’s at her pottery class,” he assured me. “If she’d heard what I did before I came over here, she would have been knocking on your door with a baseball bat.”
I laughed. “She’s heard us before.”
“But she wasn’t sleeping with you then.”
I blushed. “About that…” They were both so matter-of-fact, but it made me want to crawl under the couch or something.
“I just thought we should talk about the elephant.” Doc smiled, his eyes bright.
“The…elephant?” I blinked.
“Yeah, you know, the pink one in the middle of the room?”
I tried not to laugh. “Oh that one.”
“I just want you to know it’s okay.” He tucked a strand of tear-wet hair behind my ear.
“She said you were okay with it,” I admitted in a small voice, still not quite believing him.
“I am.” He nodded, turning my chin so he could meet my wandering eyes. “I really am.”
It was hard to believe, but she said it and he said it, and what other choice did I have? “Okay. I believe you.”
“Good.” He looked satisfied. “Now, when you move in with us…”
I startled. “What?”
“Trust me on this.” He grinned and I nearly melted into his lap. His smile was infectious. “You’re going to come home with me now. And when Carrie gets back, I’m going to suggest you stay. And she’s going to agree.”
“No, wait, I…” I protested, even tried to get out of his lap, but he held me firm, his arms wrapped tightly around my hips.
“Yes,” he insisted.
“But Doc…” I shook my head.
“No buts.” He put a finger to my lips, silencing me. “I just want you to know that you’re more than welcome. No strings attached. You make Carrie happy, and that makes me happy. Okay?”
What else was there? “Okay.”
“Good.” He slapped my hip playfully, giving me a nudge. “Now let’s go.”
I stood, looking down at him, perplexed. “Where are we going?”
“If I let you stay here, Carrie will string me up by my giblets, and I’d rather keep those intact, thank you very much.” He winked and stood, waving me onward. “Now get your coat.”
* * * *
Doc had been right on. Carrie was furious with Mason and clucked over me and when Doc suggested I stay, she picked up on the idea like it had been her own, insisting. Doc grinned, shrugging when I looked at him, like he was saying, “I told you so.” I slept on their sofa that night.
And I could hear them through the wall. What did they make these apartments out of anyway, I thought. Balsa wood? I hugged a pillow over my head and buried myself under the comforter Carrie had covered me with, trying to block out the sound, but it was no use.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling in the dark. There was a full moon and the blinds were open a little, making shadow slats. I turned over and tried again to sleep. It wasn't an easy task, considering I couldn’t stop thinking about the time I’d spent in the very bed Doc and Carrie were now having sex in.
I thought it wouldn't matter, knowing she was married and with him. And at first, I thought it would probably be just one night anyway, two drunk college girls doing a little experimenting. Neither of those things turned out to be true. It did matter, and it wasn't just one night. I couldn't stop seeing her, wanting to be with her, touch her. And Doc assured me he was okay with all of it, but how could that be true? And what did he think of me?
I sighed and sat up, hearing the sound of Carrie having her second orgasm of the night. It was her fourth in two days, at least as far as I knew. I'd made her come twice yesterday-once in the shower on my knees and another time in the bedroom, sitting on my face. The memory of her over me, spreading her pussy with her fingers, made me feel weak, like I couldn't possibly stand up. But I did anyway, making my way over to their bedroom door in the moonlight. It was closed and I hesitated, hearing the rhythmic sound of the headboard. They weren't done.
“Oh fuck, baby, you feel so good!” Doc's voice. I flushed at his words, closing my eyes, picturing them. Was she on top? Was he? Maybe he was behind her, doggie style. She liked that. She told me so. “Easy clit access,” she explained. She liked being licked that way too, hips up, breasts pressed into the mattress.
“Harder!” she gasped. “Give me that cock!”
I wanted to see and my hand clutched the doorknob but I didn’t turn it. I could hear them, the hot pant of their breath, the slick slap of their bodies together.
“Don't you wish it was Dani's pussy, baby?” Carrie purred and I heard him groan.
“Do you want to fuck her while she licks me?”
“Oh hell yes,” he growled. The pounding of the headboard sped up. He was really fucking her now. I blinked at their words. Carrie had hinted at a threesome and had told me they'd done it before, but I had no idea that she and Doc had actually discussed having one with me.
“She's got such a sweet pussy for you.” Carrie went on with the fantasy. “And her ass…oh god, it's so tight. She's never had a cock in her ass.”
He gave a strangled, animalistic cry. “Would you let me fuck her ass?”
“Yes,” she promised. “And I think she'd let you too. I think she wants it.”
I swallowed, pressing my ear against the door, wondering if what she said was true. Would I let him? Being with Carrie didn't feel like cheating on Mason-although how I could imagine he'd been faithful to me and our marriage for the past year and a half was beyond me. I didn't really believe it. But for some reason, I’d felt obligated to stay faithful, even if he wasn't here, even if he hated me. And for a long time, it had been easy. But Carrie had changed all that. Now I wasn't only unfaithful, I was falling for her. And jealous of her husband. What was wrong with me?
And Mason’s gone…
He had been gone, but now he was really gone in a way he hadn’t ever been before. It was out in the open, a stated thing. The pink elephant had been unveiled.
“Oh wait, wait,” Doc moaned, but I could tell he was going to come. All guys got that sound in their throat, deep and guttural, at the point of no return.
“Come in her hot little ass,” Carrie said hoarsely. “Do it! Now!”
It sounded to me like he did as she asked because the headboard hit the wall hard, once, and he grunted several times, low and loud, the sound of his climax resonating somewhere deep in my lower belly.
“Oh god.” Doc panted. “That's too fucking hot. Do you really think she's going to?”
“I think she will,” Carrie mused. “Right now it's just us girls, but I think she'll come around. Besides, who wouldn't want you?”
He chuckled. “You have a point.”
I heard someone get up and then the sound of water running. I thought about it, still breathless from listening to them having sex. What would it be like, to be with both of them? It had been so long since I had been with a man other than Mason. Would I be able to put him out of my head, to keep myself from comparing them? Being with Carrie was different. There was no comparison and it was all about the pleasure.
I pressed my hand against the wall as if I could touch them. There was something about Carrie. Maybe I’d unconsciously known that she had experienced a pain similar to mine. Or maybe it was my own sexual reawakening that had catapulted me into this position and she was just a catalyst. Being with Carrie had stirred something in me, but I instinctively know that being with the Baumgartners, Doc and Carrie both together, would color in a world I’d been living in black and white.
I didn’t know if I could go back to living in a world filled with color, a place of infinite beauty but ferocious pain. Was it really worth the risk?