Wait five minutes?
Follow her?
If any other woman had said that to me I would think I’d just been propositioned for an opportunistic fuck. But, oh no, not with Chrissie. She said ‘talk’. She means talk.
Fuck.
Across the room, Len is leaning back against one of the bars, not even bothering to hide that he was watching everything. I cross the room to him and order a drink.
“What was that all about?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
Len laughs. “Chrissie.” He says her name in that heavily exaggerated way that always pisses me off. “What is it about you and her? Someday you’re going to have to explain that to me.”
I glare at him. “Don’t ever fucking say her name to me that way again. Not ever.”
Len’s brows shoot up. “Oh, lighten up. I like Chrissie. It’s you I can’t figure out. There are four kinds of women. Sucks. Fucks. Mornings. Keepers. And then there is Chrissie. She’s perfect for you and you fuck it up with her every time. Even tonight.”
I look for the bartender, and then refill my own glass. “Shut the fuck up, Len. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I turn until my back is against the table like Len’s. I let out a slow breath. Has it been five minutes yet? Where’s Shyla? I search the room. I look out the wall of glass at the terrace. Ah, sitting on a patio lounger. Good. Maybe she’ll stay there.
I frown, trying to make sense of the last twenty minutes. After two years, Chrissie pops up in my life at a party looking the way she looks, sexy and available. Not bringing Jesse. Talking about our fucked-up history. Wanting to continue the talk in private.
Christ. I don’t understand any of this. Instinct warns me not to follow her for whatever it is she has planned. Both of us know I’m going to. It’s why she left without even bothering to wait for my answer.
Some things never change. She’s holding every part of me in a viselike grip by simply being here. It feels exactly the same. I am angry with her, frustrated by her, consumed by her, and oh, definitely ready to fuck her. Though I don’t think that’s on the agenda.
Talk? What does she want to talk to me about?
I set down my drink. “Go out on the patio, Len. Keep Shyla out there until I come back to the party.”
Len gives me a pointed stare that screams don’t do this, but he nods.
I start maneuvering through the crowded rooms. Nothing. Not here. I glance in, smile and move on. I try the kitchen, and quickly exit after startling the staff there. I hold up. Where the fuck is she? There are only two places I haven’t checked. The terrace…and my bedroom.
Oh, she wouldn’t be there. I make my way to the back of the apartment. I open the door and there she is.
Chrissie is sitting perfectly still on the floor, her back against a small sofa, a bottle of scotch and two glasses on the table in front of her.
I hang back. God, she looks exquisite. She didn’t turn on the lights. There’s only the soft glow from the fireplace bathing her, and her blond hair is falling in loose curls over one shoulder so the gentle curve of her neck is fully exposed to me. Her head is tilted just enough to make the delicate line of her jaw alluring.
How is it possible that she’s even more beautiful than she was two years ago? I softly closed the door. I turn the lock. Click.
She whirls to face me, and the color in her eyes darkens.
“I’m sorry it took so long for me to find you,” I say, striving for a neutral tone. “I tried every room. Even the kitchen. I wasn’t expecting to find you in here.”
Chrissie lifts her chin. “I wasn’t expecting to be in here.”
She stares up at me, saying nothing.
I’m not sure which way to go. I opt for direct.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on, Chrissie? Why you’ve gone to so much trouble to talk to me face-to-face?”
She flushes. “I don’t know. It made sense when I left California. It doesn’t anymore.” She exhales, frustrated.
I sit on the floor beside her, close, but not touching.
“Well, if you don’t know, love, I sure as hell don’t.”
I smile.
Her breathing calms.
She laughs.
To keep myself from touching her, I fill the empty glasses with scotch. I hand one to her.
She takes a sip, then studies me for a moment. “I didn’t come to New York without Jesse by accident.”
Interesting.
“I sensed that five minutes after you got here.”
She nods.
“I’m sorry I’m being such a pain. It was all clear in my head before I got here. I don’t mean to be difficult. It’s been such a rough year for me. Shock after shock after shock. Learning about your illness. Then Kaley getting ill. All those endless tests before she was well—”
She takes in a deep breath, unable to finish.
I don’t like the feel of this.
She fixes her gaze on me, intense and worried. “One day everything makes sense and then nothing does. Then I’m here. With a whole bunch of stuff I need to say. Only I don’t know how to say it.”
She makes another ragged exhale of breath. She finishes her drink, sets the glass on the table and quickly refills.
That was more Chrissie-incoherent than usual. Is she drunk?
“Why are you drinking so much?”
She laughs. “That sounds really weird coming from you.”
“Chrissie, what’s going on?”
She shakes her head in an aggravated way. “I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this. Don’t think I don’t know that. I’ve been a pretty big mess since Kaley got sick.”
Now I’m annoyed. Why does she keep circling back to her daughter? Kaley’s illness was a minor one. A blood infection cured at hospital. When I heard, I called Jack. According to him, she’s fine now.
I feel alarm. Maybe he lied to me.
“Kaley is all right, isn’t she?”
“She’s perfectly healthy these days. It’s just been a lot to process, OK?”
I nod, but I don’t fucking understand why she wanted someplace private to talk to me about her daughter.
Those enormous blue eyes fix on me. “I’m acting like an idiot, aren’t I?”
She makes a small smile.
God, she is beautiful, even when she’s frustrating the hell out of me.
I smile. “No. Not an idiot. Never.”
She exhales loudly again. She smiles, staring at a vacant spot in the room in that way she has when she’s trying to organize her thoughts. “I’m not sure how you’ll take this, Alan. It will probably make no sense and make me sound like a bitch. It’s just…I’m married to Jesse. You’re getting married. It feels like we are finally done and in the past. It makes it harder for me to know what the right thing is to do.”
I hold my reaction to that tightly leashed. She’s right. That made no sense and it did make her sound like a bitch.
“You said you had something to tell me,” I prompt.
Her enormous blue eyes cloud over.
Shit. Why did I have to say that so coldly?
“I don’t want to lose your friendship, Alan. It is important to me that you never hate me.”
I grab a cigarette from my pocket and light it. There is a strange feeling of déjà vu to this. I’ve lived this moment with her before, when she was married to Neil. It didn’t make sense then. It doesn’t make sense now.
I’m starting to feel anxious. Nervous. I don’t know why.
“Chrissie, whatever it is you have to say, just say it.”
Her eyes flash. “Please. I’m trying to. But what I have to say isn’t easy. I’m trying to explain. Your illness, it terrified me and it made me think. About all kinds of things. Us. The past. How short life is. None of us knows how long we have. There are things between us that I need to fix. Correct. This isn’t easy for me.”
I wait until she is calm.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. You’re worrying for nothing, Chrissie. And I think by now even you should be able to figure out we will always be friends. Nothing is ever going to change that.”
Instead of calming her my words have made her more frantic. It’s an odd reaction. “You can’t know that for sure.” Her fingers tighten around her glass until her knuckles are white. “What a mess I’ve made of everything. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I hope you know that, Alan.”
After too long she looks at me, pinning me with an intense stare, her bright blue eyes pleading and leveling and arousing.
She flushes. “I’m sorry, Alan. I shouldn’t have come here.”
Now I just want to end this and get away from her. I stand up, putting distance between us. I’m beginning to dislike her for the anticipation I feel in my cock, her emotional botheration and my complete inability to do anything but love her. Even in ghastly moments like this.
“Then why don’t you get the fuck out?”
I don’t know which one of us is more shocked by that. Oh God, did I just throw her out? It’s the last thing I want.
She stands up.
She sets her glass on the table.
“Chrissie, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. You’re right. I should get out of here. I should never have come.”
That remark aggravates me further. I’m not sure what she intends to trivialize with that comment: me or her feelings for me.
I move my body into the space that separates us and stare into her eyes. “Don’t leave. Not like this.”
“No, Alan. You were right. It’s better for us both if I go now.”
No. No. I don’t want to be right. Not about this.
I stare at her. “Why did you come here?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
What the fuck is she trying to do to me? We’re together for the first time in two years. Chrissie maneuvered it. Both my heart and my body are on fire for her, and all she did was drag me through a few minutes of incoherent verbal drivel. And now she wants to end this and leave me with another fucking undecipherable moment of us.
She can’t leave. Not yet. Not this way.
I lean in and kiss her, pouring all the love in my body for her into it. I press my hands to the base of her spine, holding her against me and deepening the contact in an alternating flow of lips and tongue, pressure and lightness.
My breathing speeds up as I wait for a response. Her body stiffens, but that’s all. Nothing more. I tell myself to step back. My hands and mouth continue to devour her.
Then, just when I’m about to end this, she moans, pressing her pelvis into me, and starts meeting the heated, hungry moves of my body. Her hands fist in my hair. Her tongue dances with mine, insistent and hungry. We fuck each other with our mouths. We shed our clothes, dropping to the floor and our bodies mold together, frantically searching.
I turn her until she’s straddling me. If this is the last fuck I’m ever going to know with her, I don’t want to miss a single moment of it flashing on her face. I wrap my arm around her slim waist, lift her, and then position her on my erection. I lie back as she lowers herself, taking me in her.
My breath escapes from my body. I don’t know how I’ve lived without this for two years. God, she feels so good. I can’t even count the number of women I’ve fucked since her. Not a single one of them could ever feel like Chrissie.
Mesmerized, I watch her slowly rise up, then sink back down hard onto me. Ragged pleasure dances across her face. Her head rolls as she moans. Again. Pausing at my tip in a manner I know well, then slamming down to fill herself with me again. She is so wet and tight around me. Her hands stroke my flesh as she effortlessly finds our rhythm and rides me. She grows harder and harder with each bounce. The tension in her builds. I grab her hips, pumping hard upward into her as she shouts my name incoherently through her orgasm.
I can’t hold back.
I explode inside her even though I don’t want this over yet. She’s limp in my hold as I thrust into her until I can’t go any longer.
She collapses on my chest, and I wrap my arms around her, burying my lips in her hair. Then I remember what I saw on her face as we fucked. I’ve wondered it a thousand times, why she walked out on me in Malibu. I finally have the answer and I don’t like it.
Chrissie never stopped loving me.
She couldn’t take the pain of loving me.
The way her eyes looked the entire time she rode me was an expression I saw a hundred times when we were together. Love…and pain.
She stares at me, overwhelmed by what we just did. She pulls away and starts gathering her clothes. I don’t try to stop her. And for the first time, I don’t know what to say to her. As great as this fuck was, it would have been better for us both if I had let her walk away.