Sliding Past Vertical Read online

  Then she pulled out a towel and turned.

  Her mouth opened in a gasp as she clutched the towel against her breasts.

  * * * * *

  “There you are,” he said.

  To Sarah, he sounded more frightened than angry. Tentative, as if he thought he had no right to know where she had been. He looked at her like he was trying not to notice she wore only a strategically placed towel and the tiniest of panties winking through open jeans.

  Sarah swallowed. She couldn’t tell him. Not like this, when she hadn’t had time to think of what to say. This time the words had to be perfect, and she owed him nothing less. If mere words would even be adequate to make up for the pain she’d caused him. She opened her mouth, ready to blather out something about too much to drink and crashing at her lady professor’s house, but it hurt to even consider lying to him. “I’m sorry,” she said, and it felt good to say at least that much. “I know, I should have called. But I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” he said.

  All at once, she took in his rumpled state. His clothes looked slept in, his eyes red with shadows underneath. And he was supposed to be at work, not standing in front of her, looking at her like someone had almost died. Looking at her like someone who loved her. A shiver zoomed up her back.

  “Em...you were waiting up for me?”

  She moved toward him, still holding the towel in front of her breasts with one hand, and touched his arm with the other. She drew his gaze and held it softly, and he gave her the gentlest of smiles. How could she have been angry with him? Anything he thought or expected was because he loved her—because he’d always loved her and had been waiting for her.

  Even though she didn’t deserve him.

  Maybe, like Izzy and her young man, like Rashid and his fiancée, she could fall in love with Emerson. Stupid, she told herself. You’re either in love, or you aren’t.

  “I...uh,” he licked his lips, “got someone to take first shift. In case...you called...needed a ride...or something...”

  From her radio, Santana oozed slow, Latin beats. The warm smell of fallen leaves drifted through the window. A soft haze of desire clouded Emerson’s face.

  He swept back her hair, first off one side of her face and then the other, his palms so gentle on her skin, as gentle as in the elevator, and he kissed her, a touch at first so soft it barely registered to her conscious mind. But her body knew.

  The towel fell to her feet.

  Chapter 23

  Afterward, when the room stopped swirling, they made a snug fit in Sarah’s narrow bed, two heads on the same sad little pillow, damp thighs interlocked, arms at awkward angles.

  Even though her eyes were closed, Sarah could feel Emerson warming his metaphorical medicine dropper, getting ready to gaze at her adoringly. Being looked at that way made her feel sexy and important for about ten minutes—maybe an hour—when they were teenagers, but adolescent worship was not what she wanted to see on a grown man’s face.

  It was too much pressure. No one could live up to that much adoration or survive a fall from a pedestal that high.

  So she continued to feign sleep, despite the tightness in her lower back, the left hand that had gone numb, and the feeling she’d made a terrible mistake. More horrible was the feeling that if she took one glance into those eyes she’d do it all over again.

  Then Emerson pulled away, slowly, as if afraid to wake her. Her left hand tingled with returning blood. She heard him fumble on the nightstand for his glasses.

  The better to stare at you with, my dear.

  Even imagining his face was dangerous, and in her mind she already saw his heartbreaking downturned eyes and the gentle, vulnerable smile, which could disappear in an instant if she said a careless word.

  “That was pity, wasn’t it?”

  “Huh?” Sarah blinked a couple of times.

  His pale eyes focused on her, through her.

  He was not smiling. No baby-chick look. No medicine dropper, no warm milk.

  Something inside her winced.

  “Pity.” He almost spat the word at her. “Mercy. Commiseration. Charity. You felt sorry for me.”

  “Take your thesaurus and stick it.” Sarah, too surprised to be careful, punched out the hard “K” sound like a weapon.

  It did what it needed to, but it was his own damned fault.

  She turned away, facing the wall, arms folded across her breasts. She couldn’t look at those startled, wounded eyes. “Might I remind you,” this time she carefully considered each word, “that you started this.”

  “You didn’t stop me.”

  “Please. I allowed it, so that makes it all my responsibility?”

  “You did a little more than allow it, Sarah.”

  “How? You walk in on me while I’m undressing and while you weren’t even supposed to be home and that means come and get it? Now serving number thirty-seven?”

  Her voice shook. Her stomach knotted like it had when Rashid had told her the truth—Emerson wanted her and expected her because she had come back. She needed Emerson to take some of the blame. It was, and always had been, too heavy to carry by herself.

  He stroked her shoulder; his fingers were gentle and warm. She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to turn around and curl into his arms.

  Instead, she shrugged him off.

  “You let me kiss you,” he said, a hair sterner from her rebuff. “For a really long time. You let me pick you up and put you on the bed.” He dropped his voice. “And what you did next gave me a damned good idea you were a little more than willing. And then you let me—well, begged me might be more accurate—”

  “Okay, okay,” she snapped. “I was there, save me the blow-by-blow. So to speak.”

  “What I’m saying is that you didn’t have to do this.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “So you’re saying you wanted to.”

  “Christ, Em!” No wonder he had so much trouble keeping girlfriends. He interrogated them right out the door. “Yes,” she said. “I wanted to do this. Perhaps there’s something you’d like me to sign. It’s early, we could have it notarized.”

  She heard him let out his breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just having a hard time believing this really happened. That you could ever...”

  Her belly tightened at the way he trailed off, the fragility in his voice. At the damage she’d done in their teens that made him still feel this way about her. He had no good reason to trust her, yet once again he’d been willing to put his heart, poorly healed, into her unsteady hands.

  She turned, touched his cheek, and stroked his hair. Ever so slightly he smiled and tilted up his face like a cat greeting affection. The sun cast elongated shadows through the cracks in the blinds and glinted off the small, golden bristles on his skin. It made his eyes nearly invisible behind streaked, autumn-colored reflections.

  As if removing them from her own sleeping child, she lifted his glasses off at the temples.

  His pale eyes looked so gentle, filled with equal amounts of adoration and pain.

  He let her kiss one closed lid and then the other.

  “Believe it,” she said, setting his glasses on the nightstand.

  “But is it for real?”

  The question stopped her, and for a long time she cradled his myopic gaze. What he wanted to hear was not what she felt ready to say. She needed more time to decide and wouldn’t tell him something she was not completely sure of. But to respond otherwise would be just as hurtful, and not quite the truth, either.

  So, in response, she kissed him and ran her hands along his body. He did the same and pulled her closer. While cupping him in her palm with the greatest of care, she whispered against his neck what she wanted him to do to her again.

  Chapter 24

  Sarah woke alone and naked, in the dark, swathed in blankets. The neighbor had stopped raking and her radio had been turned off, but she could hear the sound of Wheel
of Fortune on the television downstairs, as well as dinner preparations. Pots clanged and something hissed as it hit hot oil.

  She flicked the light switch. On the nightstand sat half a chocolate donut on a yellow paper napkin, which made her smile. And there was a note where Emerson’s glasses used to be:

  Sorry, running late. Couldn’t get anyone to take second shift, or you would have woken up to something a hell of a lot better than the last of my donuts.

  Really sorry. I love you.

  She read it again and again while sitting cross-legged on the narrow little bed, the half-donut long gone, Emerson’s afghan wrapped around her bare shoulders. She let the warmth of his last three words etch into her skin, as well as the passionate underlining of “really.”

  Four times, scratched deep into the paper.

  But she stared at the note too long, until the last two sentences became one.

  Really sorry I love you.

  She crumpled the note and threw it across the room.

  A soft fist tapped at her door. Then she heard Rashid’s voice, just as unobtrusive. “Sarah? You are home?”

  She hunted for her clothes. “I’ll be out in a minute, Rashid.”

  “No, don’t trouble yourself, it’s not important. I’m cooking, have you eaten?”

  “I’ll get something later,” she called to him.

  “You are sure? You’re working tomorrow. You don’t want to have your supper too late, it will ruin your sleep.”

  She’d nearly forgotten about her new temp assignment. Whatever he was making smelled awfully good and the donut had merely whetted her appetite. “Well...”

  He sounded happier. “I will make extra and leave it for you when you are ready.”

  * * * * *

  After she took a shower and a bowlful of something with lentils, Rashid boiled water for tea, and then he and Sarah, in sweaters, sat on the back porch. He told her about his day: a possible breakthrough in the lab, the latest idiocy of his new young charge, and a letter from his uncle at MIT.

  Sarah thought about Emerson. He’d probably fret about her being outside with damp hair. It was just about time for his dinner break. The cafeteria where they’d eaten with Charlie would be long closed. She hoped he had something besides junk food from the vending machines.

  “You are warm enough, out here?” Rashid asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “You?”

  “Perfectly comfortable.”

  The neighbor’s leaves sat in tidy, raked-up piles. So that’s what he’d been doing while she and Emerson rolled around on her wafer-thin bed for the better part of the afternoon. The rhythmic whoosh whoosh had fallen into the background like a failing metronome.

  She thought of what happened afterward. The first time. The pity thing. It couldn’t have been only his own insecurities that had led to his question. He had to have picked something up from her. He knew her too well.

  She worried her motivation like a loose tooth. If she’d been feeling sorry for anyone, it had been herself. She’d spent the previous evening wallowing in guilt. And had asked for forgiveness in old, familiar ways, by giving him her body, the one thing she knew he wanted, the one comfort she was good at providing.

  But this time, maybe, she could also give him her heart.

  “The tea is not too strong?” Rashid asked.

  She shook her head, taking in his mild expression and trusting brown eyes. If only love could be as simple as he thought it was, as she desperately wanted to believe it could be. That it waited until you were ready to create it. Or felt yourself worthy of it.

  “Don’t you get lonely, waiting for your fiancée?”

  He hesitated. “Sometimes, yes. But I have my work and my studies, and friends like you and Emerson.”

  “I meant...for women. For a woman.”

  Sarah’s clarification was met with silence. Her ears tingled with embarrassment. Again she’d crossed the line, forgetting other cultures weren’t as frank as Americans. Or maybe it was just Rashid. Emerson had told her that even though Rashid’s family had lived in many countries, he’d been kept largely insulated from the world outside the embassy.

  He poured another cup of tea. Stirred three times. Clockwise. Forgot the sugar. “Why this sudden interest in my social life?”

  She shrugged. “You just seem to deal with it so well. Her being so far away.”

  “I know it will not be forever.”

  “I wish I could be as patient. Sometimes I think being impatient makes me do things that aren’t right.”

  His eyes widened with incredulity. “Oh, I can’t imagine you would—”

  I need to get off this pedestal, and fast. “It’s true! I choose bad men and they hurt me. If all the stars line up the right way and I get good ones, I hurt them. Emerson must have told you what I did to him in college.”

  Again he hesitated, probably while he shaped a diplomatic answer. “Only that after a period of several months you had decided no longer to be his girlfriend.” He sipped his unsweetened tea, realized his error, and added a spoonful of sugar. “Personally I believe that this was your right and his obligation to accept.”

  He made it sound like a contract.

  “Often he told me that he hoped one day you would change your mind back,” Rashid continued. “This is what I was trying to tell you last night, Sarah, when you ran away. And that you shouldn’t feel responsible for that.” He dropped his voice and looked around as if searching for eavesdroppers; there were none but a few piles of leaves and a fuzzy crescent moon. “You can’t control his desires.”

  She couldn’t help feeling responsible. Even though she’d argued that it was both their doing, she knew how serious Emerson was and how wrong it had been of her to let him make love to her when she didn’t know her own heart. In the moment of decision she had defaulted and would probably wind up hurting him again.

  She tried to hide her face but Rashid noticed the pain.

  “Something has happened to you?” he asked softly. “Was it...him?”

  She shook her head. The truth belonged to her and Emerson and nobody else. She ought to end it. If she had any sense, if she cared about Emerson at all, she should end it.

  But she could still feel him on her, inside her. She could still hear the whisper of his eyes close to hers, every cell of him desiring and adoring her as he waited for her to make up her mind. She doubted that even Emerson would be saintly enough to have the strength to throw that away, so soon.

  * * * * *

  Sarah quietly reassembled her clothing while Emerson did the same. They stood back to back like partners in a guilty transaction, taking the moment to regain their dignity.

  Something about him bothered her, something she had not yet found the courage to say. She’d tried to push it down in the beginning, but each time they made love it drifted a little higher.

  It wasn’t the ooze of baby-chick concern or the remembered gooeyness of his long, adoring, adolescent looks.

  It was something else.

  It was Dirk.

  He finished first, his attire less complicated, and then helped her hook and straighten.

  She pulled her hair out of his way. He kissed a trail down her neck to her bare shoulder, leaving his lips against her skin as if he could drink her up.

  The already rumpled bed was too inviting, the temptation too great to sink into him and let him once again reassure her that it was only the two of them. But she didn’t want to get him in trouble with his supervisor, and she was due back at her temp assignment in fifteen minutes, an assignment she almost enjoyed.

  Reluctantly she pulled on her blouse.

  She heard him sigh with similar disappointment.

  Their eyes met in the small mirror over the bureau while she buttoned. He appeared to be studying her, not with baby-bird wonderment, but like he was cataloging something for later.

  “Are you going to write about this?” she said.

  He smiled at her reflection. “Gorgeous g
irl takes advantage of lonely orderly in an empty patient room on his lunch break? Sorry. Already been done.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that slutty little student nurse who grabbed your ass that time while you were mopping. I mean this.” She turned and ran her hands up his chest, underneath his shirt, gathering his warmth. “Us.”

  “No. Never,” he said, eyes closed, only opening them when she stopped touching his bare skin. Then he watched her fingers as she straightened his shirt and zipped up his coveralls. “And she wasn’t slutty. Her boyfriend just dumped her and she needed some attention.”

  “And you were just there.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, not even attempting to deny it or act embarrassed. How could he, when he’d written her an eight-year trail of letters detailing his adventures? All of which she could count on both hands and maybe a toe or two. None of whom she thought good enough for him, or smart enough, and all too young.

  “Anything in the name of literature, huh?” Sarah said, a teasing lilt to her voice.

  “Not anymore.” Emerson was dead serious. “All Dirk gets is old memories, now.”

  “Just as long as they aren’t old memories of me.”

  “Sarah, you know I—”

  “Yeah, you don’t write about me. So how come when I came into your room that one time you hid what you were working on?”

  His cheeks flushed. “Because it was lousy first draft crap.”

  “You ripped it out of the typewriter.”

  “It was really lousy.”

  She laced her fingers at the back of his neck and smiled into his eyes. “You’re a good writer. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

  “Trust me, Sarah. It was.”

  “As bad as the 7-Eleven story?”

  He looked hurt. “I didn’t think that was so bad. They reprinted it twice.”

  She broke away to fix her makeup and hair in the mirror. Mainly she was buying time to gather up words, and watching him watch her over her shoulder. “Em. Just because you made money from it doesn’t mean it was a positive contribution to society.”