I quickly planned a speech—you’re beautiful, the best lay I’ve ever had, but we can’t—all of which was true. But then she walked into my condo wearing nothing but a raincoat and red lipstick and my tongue was tied.
“How’d you get away?” I’d asked her as she toweled off after a quick shower, and she told me the lie she’d spun about a friend with a new baby who needed a break. “She might need lots of breaks,” she’d said, and I got that scared feeling again. Not that I didn’t enjoy the sex—it was spectacular. She was fiery and creative and inexhaustible. But she was someone else’s forever. Or so I thought.
“I’m going to leave him,” she said as she slipped back into her raincoat. “Wait for me.”
I told myself it wasn’t my fault that her husband couldn’t satisfy her. I told myself that she was the one who was cheating, that her husband deserved better than a woman who wanted someone else, that he’d be better off if she left him. And while all of that may have been true, it didn’t make what we had done OK. Somehow between Irish coffee and that rainy-day romp, I had become her fatal attraction. And, like the movie, there was no way it would end well.
I called her a week after our rainy-day hookup. “We can’t do this again,” I insisted. “I won’t let you leave him for me.”
“Why are you denying what you feel for me?” she’d asked. But the only thing I was denying was that I was a pathetic piece of shit.
“You should go to couples therapy,” I’d said. And her reply was as flattering as it was mortifying.
“You can’t turn a draft horse into a stallion.”
“You and me, it’s not going to happen,” I’d insisted. “I’m sorry if I led you to believe otherwise.”
I’d thought I’d gotten through to her. That it was finally over. But now she was texting again.
I won’t be here when you get here, I texted back, putting on my shoes in case she was already in the building. So don’t come.
I stared at my phone for a long, tense beat, waiting for her response. Nothing. Good God, what if she was in the elevator?
As I rechecked my golf bag—golf balls, tees, glove, towel, sunscreen, lucky coins—I thought back to my encounter the night before. It felt good to be in the presence of a beautiful woman. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to her lean dancer’s body, the graceful slope of her neck, her eager curiosity. Yes, I had slept with another man’s wife, but it didn’t have to define who I was forever. It was time to move on from this—do better. Be better.
My phone buzzed. Not a text; she was calling. I muttered an expletive, then answered it. “I’m walking out the door.”
“I need to see you.”
My cheeks burned, something between terror and rage. “No,” I said. “I’m not doing this.”
“Please, I can’t do this over the phone. I have the day off, let me come.” She was crying. I felt like a shit. So I said the first thing I could think of to shut this down.
“I’m seeing someone.”
I meant it as a lie, to get her to leave me alone. But when the words came out of my mouth they felt so right, so freeing, so inevitable, it was like my desires and my future suddenly merged into one. It was a story that was already written. I just had to walk into it.
“I don’t believe you.” But it didn’t matter. Because I believed me.
“Go back to your marriage,” I said.
And the line went dead.
CHAPTER 16
* * *
JORDAN
“Jordan! How nice to hear from you!”
“Everything’s fine, Evelyn,” I said to Ashley’s mother, who no doubt was surprised to get a call from her daughter’s roommate on a random Sunday afternoon. Now that I had the ring, there was just one more thing I had to do, and I decided to do it right then and there in the jeweler’s parking lot.
“I haven’t seen Ashley yet today,” I said, so she would understand that I wasn’t with her daughter and had my own reason for calling. “She’s been working really hard these days,” I added, to imply she was at work, which she probably was. Ashley didn’t get up early on Sundays unless she had to give a tour, appear at a birthday party, or had some sort of acting-related thing.
“Well, she certainly is due for her big break,” the proud momma said, and of course I agreed, even though I didn’t understand anything about being an actor, except that becoming one didn’t seem to follow any logical process or timetable.