It’s over, Chrissie. He’s out of your life. Married.
I stir the instant coffee into my cup and head for the bathroom. An hour later, I’m in my bedroom, dressed in a simple black sundress, trying to decide if I’ve packed everything I’ll need for three weeks, when there’s a soft knock on my front door.
Groaning, I move toward the hallway. Rising up on my tiptoes, I look through the peephole. A large body, so close to the door that I can’t make out who it is. I undo the chain. I open it a crack and my heart drops to my knees.
Oh my god! I don’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t find a single word in my head.
The perfect lines of Alan’s face change from enigmatic to amused.
“The correct moment to say hello passed about three minutes ago. Are you going to invite me in, Chrissie?”
I flush. Crap, how long have I been standing here doing nothing but staring at him?
Alan doesn’t wait for my response. I clutch the door for support as he moves around me into my condo. He tosses his leather jacket on a chair and then sinks onto the sofa.
I try to still my spinning emotions by focusing on closing the door and locking it. I’m feeling more than a little flustered and more than a little stupid, but in my wildest dreams I never would have believed that Alan would cross the Bay to drop in on me, uninvited.
I step from the door, and then do a fast float of the room with my eyes for a place to sit. I drop down onto the chair where he tossed his jacket.
“You’re looking good, Chrissie,” he says softly, shattering the acutely silent air.
My vision ignores my will and fixes on him. “You look good too, Alan.”
It’s petty, but I hate that he does. Alan looks even better than he did during our spring together. Fit, tan, rock star chic. He’s stylishly dressed in the kind of clothes he wears for interviews: a flowing black shirt and leather pants. His long, wavy hair is just the right amount of tousled. Must have wanted to give his fans a dose of fuck-me hair in the morning.
“Are you enjoying school? What are you studying?”
I inhale a long breath. God this feels weird. “Music.”
I drag my gaze away from him. In spite of how many times I’ve imagined this moment, I never expected it to feel like this. Miserably uncomfortable. But then we didn’t exactly part as friends and having him here sitting, strange and distant, forces me to remember he’s married.
“Jack bought you a nice condo, I see,” he says casually, fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket. He lights it without asking if he can, takes a long drag, and stares at me through the smoke. “I’ve wondered what it would look like. The place you chose over me.”
My face burns. Only Alan could make a glib pejorative directed at himself a cutting insult. If there had been a hint of anything in his voice—kindness, gentleness, affection—that comment would have played so much differently. But it held only the clip of meanness.
I stare at him. Elegantly mean Alan. Emotion rockets through my veins, raw and unwanted. It’s mean Alan who is sitting in my condo with me today.
“If there’s a reason why you dropped by, tell me and then leave,” I whisper, in spite of my resolve to stay emotionless. “Otherwise, your being here is ridiculous, and I should go to the airport for my flight to Seattle.”
He arches a brow. “Seattle?” he repeats in a rough sort of way. “Why are you going there?”
Normal question in not normal context.
I stare at him without answering.
His eyes do a casual study of my living room and then shift back to my face. “How long have you had a guy living with you?”
I tense. How does he know that? My gaze focuses on Neil’s surf board and wetsuit propped against the wall.
“I don’t see as how it’s any of your business how long I’ve been living with Neil.”
His eyes flare and widen. “And I don’t see why you care if I know.” He stomps out his cigarette on a plate I left on the coffee table. “It was a polite question. Conversational. Nothing more.”
That comment hits me like a slap on my face.
I force myself to look at him directly. “I think you should leave, Alan. Why did you come here?”
He takes out another cigarette, lights it, and takes a long drag, staring at me through the smoke again. “I’m in San Francisco. But you know that.”
I pretend not to understand what he means.
He says, “It seemed ridiculous...” There is just enough edge in “ridiculous” that my scalp prickles. “…not to cross the bridge to see you.”
I change course. “So how is Nia?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
I blink at him.
What does that mean? Are they getting divorced? Maybe the stories in the press aren’t true. Maybe they’re not deliriously happy together.
“Where’s your boyfriend? Seattle? Is that why you’re going there?” he asks.
“Yes.”
It’s probably a stupid question, but right now it feels like the most important question in my life. “If you don’t know or care where Nia is, why did you marry her?”
His simmering gaze locks on me, and I feel the punch even before he bites out through clenched teeth, “To forget you.”
I can barely breathe. Weird, convoluted, harshly spoken, Alan honesty. I don’t know how to deal with him when he’s this way. I’m relieved when his eyes move from me to focus on stomping out his cigarette.
“It didn’t work,” he adds on a rasp. “I still think of you, always.”
“Were you thinking of me when you married Nia, four months after I left New York?”
I watch the dark light in his eyes change. His gaze clouds into something painfully harsh.
“I think of you when I fuck her,” he says in a brutal, quiet voice that is deafening. “Is that good enough for you, Chrissie?”
I flush deep crimson and my eyes fix on his face. I fight to recover from the shock of him saying that, and realize he’s watching me and expecting some kind of reaction. He’s assessing every change in my expression. I don’t know what has slipped onto my face, but his features lose their harsher arrangement.
“Do you ever think of me?” His voice is so quiet I can barely catch his words.
“I think of you every day, Alan.”
His posture and expression change in a flash. For some reason my answer kicked up his anger. I can see something powerful coursing through him.
He stands up, pacing the room as if struggling to contain something. He takes a deep breath, stops, turns, and then stares down at me.
“Then can you do me the courtesy, Chrissie, of explaining why you haven’t responded to a single phone call or letter. One returned call would have sufficed to tell me directly to fuck off.”
The last of that is said through gritted teeth. Calls? Letters? What is Alan talking about?
“You called? You sent me letters? I don’t understand,” I choke out.
His gaze burns into me. “What don’t you understand, love? That even the worst cunt would have picked up the phone once, or answered at least one letter?”
My face snaps up. I feel shaky inside. My heart stops.
Oh no…cunt. I see it on his face and I don’t want to. Alan isn’t here because he loves me; he’s here because he hates me. Oh God, he hates me. Alan is here because he hates me.
“I understand you leaving New York, Chrissie. What I can’t understand is why you had to be such a bitch after you left.”
Everything inside me collapses in a fast free-fall.
I spring from my chair and race to the kitchen. I don’t want Alan to see me cry. My fingers curl around the edge of the sink, my head lowered as I struggle to breathe in and out.
He thinks I’m who walked away from us. It’s too much for my emotionally undone senses. That I haven’t a clue why I never received a phone message or letter from him doesn’t matter. Alan hates me. It would have been so much better if Alan hadn’t come to Berkeley. If I had never known this.