Jade (16 page)

While we drive home, I try to remember what I told Lyv about my love life, or, actually, my lack of love life. I remember that when we first met, I spoke about my first broken heart. I breathe out. For a second, I thought Nathanael had gone to speak to her about me behind my back. But he wouldn’t do something like that. How untrusting of me to even consider it.

❦

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FRIDAY, AT THE CRACK OF DAWN
, Nathanael knocks on my door. He walks in without waiting for an answer. He’s standing by the door in his boxer shorts, waiting for me to pay attention to him. I’m half asleep, but I can see that he looks like hell. His eyes are puffy; I guess he’s been fighting with his pillow since we got in, and did not get any sleep.

I’m on autopilot, and react as I used to when, in college, Agatha would come knock on my door, ready to drown herself in a pool of tears. I slide from the middle of the bed to one side, and motion for him to come lay next to me. He slides under the quilt, and holds on to me for dear life. I make soothing noises, and run my fingers through his hair as he nestles his head between my neck and the pillow.

For a while, I just hold him, and then I say, “Nat, baby, tell me what happened.”

“Pamela sent pictures to Martine.” His voice has a defeated tone that I’ve never heard before. 

In my half-sleep state, I have a hard time refraining from laughing out loud. Had he been thinking with his brain instead of with his dick, he would have seen this coming. 

He’s a catch, and Pamela has been playing for keeps. She’s really not the silly bubble brain that she claims to be. Pamela must have taken some interesting pictures of them, and found a way to send them to Martine… probably from his smartphone. I close my eyes, and I remember her playing with it yesterday at lunch.  

Martine is just a kid; she must have freaked out, and whatever she did to lash out has really upset Nathanael. Did she call him to insult him, or email him to let him know how she felt? Whichever, it will teach him to turn off his phone at night. For all of his smarts, he’s not really any more mature than a teenager, himself. No matter how much I love him, I can’t really feel sorry for him. 

“I’ve lost her,” he says. He’s so pitiful that I want to slap him into adulthood. 

“Yes, you probably did. And you gave her a very bad opinion of men. I’m pretty sure she hates your guts, right now. I know I would.” That’s the first slap.  

“What am I going to do?” He asks, miserable.

“You’re going to get over it, and continue with your life.” There’s the second slap. He doesn’t like it, but he stays snuggled against me, since I’m the only comfort he’s going to get around here, and tough love is better than no love, at all.

“Of course, you can also try to run back to her, and beg for her forgiveness. But, if I were you, I would give myself a hard look in the mirror to check if I was really in love with her, or not.”

He snorts, “It does not matter, now; she’s done with me. She made it very clear that she did not ever want to see me, again.”

“She’s seventeen years old! What else is she going to say? I’ll bet you my life savings that, right now, Martine thinks she’ll never love anyone, again. It’s probable that she’ll need time to come around, and get over your betrayal.”

“God, I’ve been a selfish bastard,” he mutters. Give the man a prize; his brain has engaged, and now we can really talk.

“Yes, I think you acted like one, but that does not define who you are,” I tell him as tenderly as I can. My fingers are in his mess of curly hair, and the texture brings on a familiar feeling from childhood: it conjures images of Happy, my mother’s poodle. 

I rock him a little against me, saying, “It’s going to be alright. You’re a nice person, I know you are.”

He pulls away enough to look at me, and asks, “Do you really think so?”

I nod, and, as I do, I notice his gaze moving from my eyes to my lips. One of his interminable hands wraps around my waist to pull me to him, while the other comes up under my t-shirt to cup my breast. His lips are gently pressing against mine. 

It’s so unexpected that I’m paralyzed with indecision.

What’s surprising me the most is that my body has a mind of its own. His body feels so nice against mine that I instinctively lean into him. My breasts feel like they’ve doubled in volume under his touch. 

Still, I’m trying to make an intelligent decision, here.

I don’t rule anything out, because I’m certain that Nathanael knows his way around a woman’s body; Pamela’s sweet cry during those past weeks told me so. This could be good.

Nathanael is an exercise in contradiction. While his hand is deliciously torturing a nipple, his kiss remains tentative, almost shy. I think he’s waiting for my reaction to push further. 

I’m still battling with myself when my own mouth betrays me. The pleasure I feel from his fondling makes me moan. As soon as my mouth opens to let the sound out, he pushes in, and, for a time I cannot measure, I lose myself in our intimate contact.

This is sweet, and, while I enjoy his touch, the second my mind goes back to a hotel room in Bangkok, I know that it’s wrong. It’s plain that there is no passion on either side of this bed. Nathanael’s touch is delightful, but it does not spark the all-consuming fire that lit up every time Oliver touched me. 

I take a mental step back, and I see Nathanael for the very selfish and fickle man that he is being right now. Once more, his brilliant analytical mind has been neutralized by his physical urges. He did not stop for two seconds to think about the consequences of his actions. The very moment his morning hard-on sparked, he just lunged for me. 

Nathanael does not want me; he would have rolled over any soft body. Once his need is satisfied, his brain will engage again, and I fear that the special connection we had will be dead. 

I don’t have enough friends to take the chance of losing this one. I need to salvage whatever’s left of our friendship before this gets out of hand.

I push him away, and tear my mouth away from his. 

“This was the most delicious bad idea you’ve ever had,” I say, trying to keep my rejection light.

He looks into my eyes, and chuckles, “That’s the sweetest let down I’ve ever heard.” 

“It felt good, but not quite right,” I say, as I kiss the tip of his nose.

His hand abandons my breast, but his touch lingers. His hand goes down to my waist. His eyes look so sad. I feel like he’s lost, and he’s holding on, because our physical contact is the only thing that keeps him together, right now.

So when he asks me to hold him for a moment, I wrap my arms around him, and kiss his forehead.

Under Nathanael’s facade, there’s a broken child that I have never seen before. I did not even suspect that this injured kid was there. I thought he was one of the lucky ones: a genius whose life had been idyllic. I wonder if that is even possible. Lying against me is a tiny boy in so much pain that it’s breaking my heart. I surprise myself by humming Labyrinth’s song, “Beneath You’re Beautiful” as I rock him against me.

I’m honored that he’s letting me see beneath his beautiful, but then I had opened the door when I let down my guard in front of him. 

“Are we okay?” He asks without looking up at me.

“Sure, baby, we’re fine. Go back to sleep; it’s only 5.”

He snuggles against me, closes his eyes, and falls asleep in an instant, while I remain wide awake, looking at a little bronze figure of Ganesh that watches over me from my bedside table, and wondering if I’ll ever find someone else who will set me on fire, again.

❦

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

FRIDAY PASSES IN A BLUR.
Nathanael is acting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened this morning. He’s all business while we’re testing the program that we have conceived. The software is churning out all sorts of results. We’ve fed in all the information that we know about the patients, but what we have is not enough; we want more data to process. 

To make sure that we get what we need, we’re working on a standardized questionnaire that will have to be used by all the doctors who participate in the program. There are so many factors that can come into play in the genesis of a disease: the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the dye you use in your hair… and those are only factors we can imagine are relevant.

There’s so much that we don’t know that I’m not sure when to stop. By 10 pm, I’m slap-happy. We’ve been trying to decide if we should ask for the shoe size of the patient.

Nathanael is making fun of me; he refuses to even consider the possibility that shoe size could be a relevant piece of information. I give in. I’m so tired that I’m not sure I can make a valid argument for my case, but I still think that we can’t discard it, along with other body measures. Maybe I need to take a step back and stop thinking about this for the weekend. 

Nathanael drops me off at home, and drives on to have a heart-to-heart talk with Pamela. She’s been hovering around us all day, and it may do them both good to have a serious discussion. I expect that she will exploit his weakness. Judging by what I saw this morning, I’m sure he’s going to get a last roll in the hay out of this meeting. I’m not meddling; they make their own beds. 

I go in our unit to change into a bathing suit, and sneak out to the pool area. In compliance with Florida regulations, the pool is only open from dawn to dusk, but I’ve been coming here at night fairly often. It’s been my hideaway when Pamela sleeps over. More often than not, I hang out alone in the water for an hour to give them some privacy.

I slide into the water slowly, and swim a few laps with a breaststroke. I can swim all I want, as long as the noise I make is covered by the sounds of the Jacuzzi. The night watchman only walks by the pool every hour, and he does not come on the pool side of the gated enclosure unless he hears noises.  

It’s one of the things I like best about this place: even in the daytime, few people use the pool. There’s only a crowd on the weekends. It’s like I have my own private pool, except that I would probably be skinny dipping if I did.  

After a few laps, my head is clearer. I go float on my back in the scalding Jacuzzi water, and look at the starlit sky. It’s very relaxing. The strong jets massage me, and make me turn around like a wheel inside the circle of water. I can’t do this for too long, otherwise I’ll fall asleep right here. 

It’s too bad that I never had an opportunity to swim at night in my favorite waterfall pond. I give myself a mental slap; my mind can’t go back there. Every single time it does, I’m a mess of contradictory feelings. I waste hours reminding myself that I made the right call.  

Furthermore, I barely knew Oliver. You can’t be in love with someone you don’t know, can you? My voice of reason gets smothered by a lusty one that did not even exist before the first time that Oliver kissed me. The lusty voice tells me to stop listening to my brain, and get back in touch with my body. She’s conspiring with my body, and she says that my body knows what’s good for me: action. Don’t I know it? I almost slept with Nathanael! Well, actually, I did sleep with Nathanael, but I could as well have slept with Happy. Nathanael is just an overgrown poodle.  

Despite what Lyv said yesterday, she’s probably right: I need to get back in the saddle in order to get over this man. 

Maybe when Nathanael leaves, Pamela will let me tag along when she goes back to her favorite single bars, searching for her next prey. Maybe I could get lucky, too.

I hear voices, and scramble to my feet. I hide from view as much as possible. If it’s the security guard, I’m going to get a one hundred dollar fine, and a lecture.

It’s not the guard. Instead, two people are floating around in the water, having a quiet conversation. Some of the words are partly covered by the gurgle of the Jacuzzi, but it’s not hard to fill in the missing words.   

“This place is beautiful,” says a young girl’s voice. “And I think your mom is cool.”

“Yes, she is tough, but she’s loving. I think you can be happy here for the summer. Mom will keep the condo for a while; she needs to do major renovation in the house that she bought in Jupiter,” answers a low male voice that sounds so familiar, I hold my breath to hear better.

“I’m so glad you’re here with me,” says the girl.

I shudder in the scalding water. Those voices belong to Chanlina and Oliver. 

Lyv said something about a granddaughter moving in with her. Oh my God, she’s Oliver’s mother! He did say that she was in the restaurant business. Of all the places I could have moved to, I had to move next door to his mother! And if that was not incredible enough, what were the chances of befriending her? 

My heart stops, and then tries to catch up for the missing beats. I’m having lunch with Oliver tomorrow. 

I want to laugh, and I want to cry. I want to jump into the pool, and hug him, but I also want to go home and hide. There’s this giant pendulum going back and forth in my head. I’m torn between my urge to listen to their conversation, and my urge to run away. The latter wins; it’s dark enough to walk out, if not unseen, then at least unrecognized.

I wait until they are at the end of the pool, and get out of the Jacuzzi silently. I grab my towel, and make a run for the pool gate. It squeaks a little, but not enough to cover Chanlina’s voice. 

As I walk away, I hear her ask, “Do you think Jade will be happy to see us, again?”

Oh, little one, I so wish I had the answer to that question. I’ll be happy to see her, because I like the kid. Actually, I feel a bit guilty where she’s concerned. 

Since I came back home, I only sent her one email, and it was terse. I told her to write to me when she landed in Florida, and that I would come see her. I did say that I was thinking about her, and that I missed our mornings in the pond. I could have been nicer, but, at the time, I did not want to deal with anything that made me think about Oliver.