Days Like This (43 page)

“And you know what the sad thing
is?  It took me almost two decades to figure this out, but it’s so clear to me
now that I can’t believe I missed it.  All those years I spent trying to fix
him, trying to make him into the husband I was so sure he could be, it was you—” 
She paused, took a breath.  “
You
who played the role of husband.  All
that time, while I was blind to everything but him, you were standing right
beside me, doing all the husbandly things he should have done for me but couldn’t
ever seem to get right. 
You’re
the one I should have been with.  And I’m
doing my damnedest to make up for all that lost time now that I’ve finally figured
it out.  But you’re making it really difficult, you rock-headed baboon!”

“I’m not a mind reader.  I don’t
suppose it might’ve occurred to you at any point in—oh, let’s say the last year
and a half—to tell me any of this?”

“I’m sorry.  I’m not perfect.  Far
from it.  I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants with this marriage.  So
afraid I’d get it wrong, and I’d end up losing you.  And I’ve learned a few
things recently, things I should have realized all along, but maybe you’re not
the only one who’s hard-headed.”

He squared his jaw.  “What things?”

“How about this, just for
starters?  When I took him back after Nassau, he wasn’t the man I wanted to be
with.  You were.  Although right now, I can’t for the life of me remember why!”

“Yet you went back to him.  I must
be really dense, because I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I, damn it!  I
thought I was doing the right thing.  Until the moment you got in that taxi and
I watched you drive away, and I lost the ability to breathe.  I wanted to run
after you and beg you to come back.  But it was too late.  So I went upstairs
and sat on the couch and cried instead.”

“It wasn’t too late!  It was
never too late!  You knew where I was headed.  You could’ve called me.  You
could have hopped in your damn car and driven to South Boston and dragged me
back.  I wouldn’t have needed all that much convincing!”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why the bloody hell not?”

“I’d made my decision.  I’d already
made a commitment to him.  How could I—”

“There’s this little invention
called the telephone.  You could have called him and told him you’d changed
your mind.  Big boy that he was, he would’ve survived it.”

“He was my husband!”

“And that says it all, doesn’t
it, cupcake?”

“No, damn it.  It doesn’t. 
Because I wasn’t in love with him anymore.  I was in love with you!”

“I—”  He stopped abruptly,
clamped his mouth shut, squared his jaw.  “Me?” he said.

“Surprised, are you?  So was I
when I finally figured it out.”  She took a breath.  “Damn it, Rob, I thought I
knew what I was getting into when I married you.  I thought I knew what it
would be like to be your wife.  I thought I knew how I felt about you.  But the
truth is that I had no idea.  I had no idea how deep my feelings for you ran.  Once
I figured it out, it scared me to death.”

“I don’t understand.  Why?”

“Because he swallowed me alive! 
I couldn’t let that happen again!”

“Jesus H. Christ.”  He spun away
from her, walked to the window, turned and leaned his lanky hips against the
frame.  Folded his arms and crossed his ankles.  Furiously, he said, “Did you
really think I’d ever let that happen to you?”

“I don’t know.  I guess I wasn’t
thinking clearly.”  She closed her eyes, sighed.  Opened them again.  Wearily,
she said, “And of course, there’s the sex.”

With the fingers of one hand, he
slowly rubbed his temple.  “You have a problem with that, too?”

“Are you crazy?  The sex is amazing. 
Beyond amazing.  I understand that women are supposed to reach their sexual
peak in their thirties, but I had no idea it would be like this.  And if I’m
running right on schedule, what kind of mutant does that make you?  You were
supposed to reach your peak two decades ago.  If you’re like this at
thirty-seven, what were you like at nineteen?  It’s a good thing we didn’t get
together until we were in our thirties, because if you’d come at me, back when
I was an innocent eighteen-year-old kid, with that
out-of-control-locomotive-racing-down-a-mountainside-without-brakes thing you
have going on, I would’ve run screaming in the opposite direction.  You would
have scared me to death.”

He stared at her, raised both
eyebrows.  “So now you’re scared of me?”

“Of course not.  Are you even
listening to me?  For the love of God, MacKenzie, try to follow the little red
bouncing ball.  It’s really not that difficult.  Look, I realize I don’t have
the worldly experience you’ve gleaned from your exhaustive research.  I’ve only
been with one other man.  But I was married for a long time, and I’m sorry if
this makes you squeamish, but I did have a sex life.  A pretty good one.  Or so
I thought.  But sex with you—it’s like a freaking trip to Disneyland, where I
get to eat all the cotton candy I want, and go on every one of the rides.  Some
of them more than once, if you get my drift.  You’re like this giant candy
store, and I’m standing in the window, trying to decide if I want one of these
or three of those, or maybe six of that pretty one over there.  This is all
your fault!  You’ve done this to me.  I’ve never been a lustful woman.  I’ve
always been so proper, so—”

“Prudish?”

“Your word, MacKenzie, not mine! 
Ladylike is what I was going for.  I was raised to be a nice girl.  But I don’t
feel like a lady anymore.  It’s as though you’ve poured some kind of magic love
potion over me.  I don’t even know who I am anymore.  I don’t know what
happened to the me I used to be.  I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize
myself.  Instead of that nice girl I used to be, I see this bawdy, earthy,
hot-blooded, carnal woman.  A floozy.  I don’t know what that’s all about.  And
the scariest thing is that I don’t want to go back.  I like the new me.  I don’t
want to be a nice girl.  I like being a floozy!”

He was looking at her bemusedly,
with one eyebrow raised, but she was on a roll, and couldn’t stop now.  “And I
swore I’d never tell you this, because it’s so embarrassing, and not becoming
in a woman of my age—”

“You’re thirty-five years old,
Fiore.  Not exactly geriatric.”

“Shut up.  Since I’ve gotten this
far, I might as well go for the gold.  I think you are the hottest, sexiest,
most gorgeous man on the planet.  And every time I see you barefoot and
shirtless, wearing nothing but a tight pair of jeans, I dissolve into this hot
puddle of lust.”  She paused for breath, raked her damp hair away from her
face.  “And when you talk dirty to me—”  She flushed hot from the tips of her
toes to the roots of her hair, and buried her face in her hands.  “I can’t
believe I’m saying this to you.  But I’m just going to say it and then I’ll
crawl away and die of mortification.  When we’re alone in the dark…and you’re
inside me…and things are getting hot and heavy…and you talk dirty to me…I go
off like a bottle rocket.”

The smile hadn’t reached his
mouth yet, but she could see it in his eyes.  “I’ve noticed.”

“It’s not funny, MacKenzie!  Did
you know you have the sexiest feet of any man I’ve ever known?  How sick is
that, that I’m obsessing over your feet?  Did you know that all day long, while
I’m paying bills and scrubbing the damn toilet and writing music and arguing
with your daughter and sitting in those endless, horrible library committee
meetings, what I’m really doing is counting the hours until bedtime?  Because
none of the rest of it is real.  The only thing that’s real is being in your
arms, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re dancing in the dark, or having
screaming sex, or if we’re just lying in bed listening to each other’s
heartbeat.  It’s all the same, because all that matters is that I’m with you,
in that magic world we’ve created that’s just ours, and there’s nowhere else I’ll
ever want to be again.  And I’ve probably said way too much, but you needed to
hear it.”

She paused, took a hard, sharp
breath.  “There’s one more thing I have to say, and then I’ll be done.  After
everything we’ve been to each other, I am appalled that you would even
entertain the notion that I’d ever want to go back to him.  Yes, I loved him,
and yes, it broke my heart when he died.  But that doesn’t mean I’d want to be
married to him again.  I’m not eighteen any more.  I’m thirty-five, and the choices
you make at thirty-five are not the same ones you made at eighteen.  If you
haven’t heard anything else I’ve said today, MacKenzie, this is the part you’d
damn well better listen to.  If, by some miracle, he was resurrected, and he
walked through that door right now, and he asked me to leave you and take him
back, I’d laugh at him.  I would
laugh
at him!  And it wouldn’t matter
if he asked me a hundred times, or a thousand.  My answer wouldn’t change.  I would
never walk away from you, not in a million years.  Not for him, not for anybody
on this planet.  Do you hear what I’m saying?  I would tell him no.  I would
pick you.  Every goddamn time. 
I would always pick you!
  If you were to
walk out that door, right here, right now, there’d never be anybody else for me
ever again.  My heart would be irrevocably broken, and all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put it together again.  Because it’s
just you, MacKenzie. 
Just you!
  So if you ever leave me—today,
tomorrow, a hundred years from now—you’d best have a burial plot all prepared,
because that will be the day I take my final breath!”

She turned blindly to flee.  “Wait,”
he said, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I can’t be near you right now.”

“Come back here!”

“No!”

She’d almost reached the bedroom door
when his fingers closed around the belt to her robe and brought her to a dead
halt.  “Damn it, stop!” he said fiercely, and then his arms came around her
from behind, and he pulled her tight against him.  Breathing heavily, he
whispered against her hair, “Stop.”

She took a ragged breath.  “Why
should I?”

“Because I love you.  Because I’m
an idiot.  Because—”  He paused, his breath fluttering the hair at her temple. 
“—if you ever leave me—today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now—you’d best
have a burial plot all prepared, because that will be the day I take my final
breath.”

She closed her eyes against the
flood of tears, but it did no good.  They fell anyway, huge, fat drops that
rolled down her cheeks and plopped to the floor.  She found his hands, threaded
fingers with his, heard his sigh of relief. 

“I’m still furious with you,” she
said.

“I know.”

“I’ll probably be furious with
you again at some point in the next fifty-nine years.”

He kissed the top of her head,
rested his cheek against her hair.  Said brokenly, “I know.”

“Quite possibly more than once. 
Considering our track record.”

“It doesn’t matter.  You can be
furious with me as often as you need to.  Just as long as you don’t leave me.”

“Love,” she said.  “It’s such an
odd duck.  It’s a continuum.  I’ve loved you forever, and when we got married,
I knew we’d moved to a different place on that continuum.  I just didn’t
realize how far I’d moved.  Until you left for those six weeks, and being
without you was torture.  It took me a while to figure out why.  Looking back
over the years, I don’t know why it was such a shock to me when I realized how
long I’d been in love with you.  And how far I’d fallen.”

“I didn’t mean to doubt you.  I just
went a little crazy.  I’ve always felt like sloppy seconds.  I could never
measure up to Danny—”

“For God’s sake, MacKenzie.”  She
turned in his arms and met his eyes.  “How can you not know that you are so
much more than he ever was?”

“Look at him.  Then look at me,
and tell me how that’s possible.”

“Oh, he had a beautiful face, no
doubt about that.  The kind of face that turned heads and made women cry.  But
on the inside, where it counted, he was empty.  He was a good man, and I loved
him desperately, but there was something missing.  I don’t know if it was
always missing, or if Vietnam stole it from him.  He was broken, in ways you
don’t even know about.  Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”  She reached up, touched
his face with the tips of her fingers.  “But you, MacKenzie, you have so much
beauty on the inside, where it counts.  Some people, the gods and goddesses of
this world, are able to get by on their looks.  The rest of us ordinary mortals
have to learn to develop a beautiful interior, and that’s what you have.  Not
that there’s anything wrong with your exterior.  I’m quite fond of it.  And so proud
to pass your DNA on to our kids.”

He let out a soft,
self-deprecating laugh.

“I’m serious.  And yes, Danny was
talented.  He had a voice that could rip your heart to shreds.  But without
your talents, which are exponentially greater than his, do you really think he
would have become the superstar he became?  You put him there, my love.  You
may have been the man behind the curtain, but you were never second to him in
any way.  You are the wizard of all wizards, the great and powerful Oz.  You
know it, I know it, he knew it.  So if I ever again hear you refer to yourself
as sloppy seconds, I’ll slap you silly.”

“I’m sorry I went off the deep
end.  But I didn’t know what to think, so of course, being the brooding jackass
Irishman that I am, I thought the worst.  You’ve been acting so crazy ever
since I got back.  Running hot and cold.  Like some alien stepped in and took
over your body.”

“Yes, well, pregnancy will do
that to a woman.”

It took a full two seconds before
she saw her words register in his eyes.  “What?” he said.

“You heard me, Flash.  This
wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to tell you, but your little tantrum blew my
plans right out of the water.”