Love Deluxe (6 page)

Our kisses were deep and long and our mouths, like our bodies, fit together perfectly. It seemed that there was nothing in the world but the two of us on that bed, in that room, moving as close as time and space would allow. My lips were sore and I was recklessly happy and we were scorched where our bodies touched but we couldn’t bear to move apart.

John whispered so low that I barely heard him, “I want you, do you want me?”

It was several minutes before I found my voice, “I do, but not here, not in this house.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice husky with regret and rolled over onto his back. In doing so he rolled off the bed and I let myself fall gently on top of him. We lay on the floor laughing, and our lover’s spell was broken. He climbed into his own bed and gave me a mischievous look.

“What?” I asked.

“Let’s give that jerk-off lawyer something to think about tonight.”

“Go ahead, I guess.” 

He grabbed the gaudy crown headboard and banged it against the wall over and over.

“What are you doing, have you lost your mind?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

“Old dick-wad is in the next bedroom isn’t he? Doesn’t it sound like we’re having one hell of a good time? I bet old Carl will imagine all sorts of kinky things. Fucking douche-nozzle, I saw him drooling over you all day, but who can blame him? Fuck, I wanted to kick his ass for giving you the hot eye like the filthy little rodent he is.”

“You’re a crazy man!”

I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face as I turned on my side to face him.

He twined his fingers with mine as we lay on the floor and then he rolled onto his back, “I still think the third date is the sex date,” he said, “and we’ve been dating a lot longer than that, I think we’re overdue.”

“What do you mean overdue, I didn’t know we were dating?”

He let go of my hand, sat up and turned toward me with a look of astonishment.

“We’re not dating?”

“Well, maybe just a little, maybe tomorrow will be our third date.”

“Man,” he beamed at me and then pulled me hard against him and closed his eyes. “I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve, I can’t wait ‘til tomorrow!”

There was something so unabashedly innocent about him. He was absolutely correct, I swear he had to be the world’s largest kid.

***

When we left the next day, Myles was the only one sad to see us go. Carl was still pissed off and their girlfriends were visibly relieved. We drove to the Ski Lodge before heading back home and John played some ‘tunes’ from the Foo Fighters. I wasn’t wild about them so he had me listen to some old Chicago from the seventies when Terry Kath’s voice made their music phenomenal. Songs I had listened to with my older sisters when I was little.

At the Ski Lodge we were lucky enough to get a nice table right at the water’s edge. We sat quietly, just smiling at each other, our fingers twining now and then. John moved his arm toward mine on the table and grinned when our skin touched. He was usually so suave and sure of his effect on women but suddenly he was shy and hesitant, like a teenager on a first date. It was intoxicating, the feeling that this hot, gorgeous man was besotted with me. I was as giddy as he was as our eyes met and we gazed at each other with a look that only lovers know. The breeze from the lake wrapped around us, soft and warm and filled with the thick green smell of lake water and cypress trees. It conjured feelings of something I had once known. I thought I remembered real happiness and I wasn’t even fearful of losing it. To love is a great risk, but my mother always said it’s better to have had something extraordinary, even if you lost it, than never to have had it at all.

“Hey, beautiful Cate,” a familiar voice above us said.

We both looked up and Jackson was standing there. He was wearing only swim trunks, holding a beer and he looked sweaty and unkempt. The thought skittered through my mind that he was really such a mess, why had I ever been so crazy about him? John stood up and shook his hand, being polite. I sat there at a loss. Jackson leaned down and tried to give me a beer soaked kiss but I turned my head away. He asked if he could sit with us for a while and I pointed out that there were no extra chairs. He didn’t take the hint and talked in circles, his speech was slurred and his words were pointless.

Finally, John stood up, towering above Jackson and said, “It was good to see you, Jackson. Cate and I are kind of wrapped up in each other right now so maybe you’d better go find your friends.”

Jackson looked like he’d been punched in the gut but it was obvious he was no match for John Foster and he reluctantly walked away.

It was getting late and the unspoken promise of our ‘third date’ lay ahead so we held hands and walked through the lobby toward the parking lot. I excused myself to go to the restroom, which was inside the Ski Lodge bar. The minute I walked through the door I came face to face with Jackson.

“Cate, listen,” he grabbed my arm and pulled me onto a barstool next to him.

“Look, Jackson, I’m here with John and you’re not going to mess it up, okay? Just don’t.”

He looked at me as seriously as I’d ever seen him and asked, “What the fuck! Are you going to marry that Dolph Lundgren looking son of a bitch?”

That caught me off guard but I answered, “That’s none of your damn business. I need to get back to him and don’t try to screw this up for me with any of your psycho, drunken, weird ass, bullshit. I’m serious.”

I couldn’t help laughing as I walked away thinking about the Dolph Lundgren remark, it was pretty good. The resemblance had never dawned on me, probably because I’d never seen Dolph Lundgren in anything other than one of those cheesy Rocky movies and that was years ago. But the comparison was dead on, down to the slightly prominent brow ridge. John laughingly referred to it as his “Cro-Mag” and claimed it kept the rain out of his eyes.

Outside, John was leaning against the car and there was severe look of pain written across his handsome features. He reached for me, pulled me to him and buried his face in my hair. He looked for all the world like a lost child, a strangely forlorn boy you would want to protect, to save from any hurt. I stepped back and peered into his eyes and he seemed to be a different person. Those eyes, normally so clearly crystal-blue had clouded as if filled with smoke. Suddenly I realized that he really cared for me, maybe even loved me, and he was afraid of losing me. He thought I would choose Jackson and what we had begun would be ended. I laced my arms around his neck and kissed him long and deep and he smiled, his eyes clearing.

He laid his cheek against mine, his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Catey, Catey. I like you a lot and I love you… I love you a lot more than a lot.”

I stared up at him and smiled. It was so obvious that love was new to him, how strange, I thought, a man who’d just turned thirty-nine and he’d stumbled into an unknown land.

***

At my house we walked to the door and he stopped and stood close. He reached behind me and removed the clasp from my hair so that it fell around my shoulders. He ran his fingers slowly through it, leaned down and I turned my face up to him. The effect of the kiss was immediate, a geyser erupting in the pit of my stomach. I wanted him to come in the house, I wanted him to stay. I wanted to feel his mouth on mine forever, feel him next to me in my big bed, beside me, inside me, everywhere. He moved away reluctantly but his eyes never left mine. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and suddenly he turned and was gone. I couldn’t believe he left, I was stunned, bereft. Damn, I knew these feelings, why in God’s name had I set myself up for more hurt?

I staggered upstairs with hot tears threatening and a storm of loneliness churning in my gut. I filled the bathtub with steaming hot water and threw in a scented bath fizzy then swallowed half a blue pill and slipped into the deep tub. I lay back and let the fragrance and the feeling of weightlessness engulf me while tears ran down my cheeks so fast they made a plopping sound as they hit the water. I was sick of substituting baths and spas, parties and shopping for fulfillment, weary of living on the outskirts of life. I wanted to be whole again, complete, part of something larger. I wanted something that would matter and last.

I languished in the tub feeling abandoned, my face as wet as my body when I heard the doorbell ring and then loud knocking. I wrapped myself in a thin robe and went to the stairs. The light was on outside and I could see through the leaded glass of the door that John Foster had returned. I went down the stairs slowly and stood on the bottom step as if frozen. He continued knocking hard, watching me through the glass. He waited, not certain when I would open the door but certain that I would. I walked to the door, the flimsy robe sticking to my wet body and I let him in. His hair was damp and he was clean shaven, he moved into the living room and turned to me.

“I had to feed Turkey,” he said, “He needed water, too.” His voice trailed off and he ran his hand through his gleaming wet hair as if he didn’t have a clue what to do next.

“Come on,” I said softly and I took his hand.

Chapter Four

My bed was so tall it had a little set of steps to help with getting into it. John was so tall he didn’t need the steps; he climbed in and carried me with him. He ripped my robe away and I fumbled with his clothes, we kissed and touched desperately, our minds and bodies overwhelmed as we searched for a familiar place to land. We moved into a state that was new and strange to both of us, swallowed swiftly by physical need so fierce we were devoured.

That intense sexual place was foreign to me. There, I was no one I’d ever known before. I could hide in the well of sensation, unknown, faceless, soulless. As he moved inside me there was hurt and blood, just a little, and I groaned and pulled my hips back.

He smoothed my hair and searched my face, questioning.

“Don’t stop, don’t ever stop. Hurt me, please,” I pleaded in a voice I didn’t recognize.

Hurt me, so that deeper pain will end
.

I pulled him in, he was so big and long, he pressed into me and our sounds were ancient, exotic. There, in that act, was pain and exquisite pleasure and… forgetfulness. At last I had found what I needed— morphine for the soul.

What an odd place to find respite, maybe our separate hurts would cancel each other. On that bed, now an altar, we became a cult of two. We were satisfied there as in a holy place, a benediction was bestowed. We were intoxicated with the exactness of the response of our bodies to one another. The feel and smell of skin seemed new to us; the need to taste and inhabit the other was as strong as thirst. The shamelessness of our sounds and movements, the sad hopelessness of our needs, in that manner we medicated one another. But it didn’t satisfy for long; we made love over and over, as if sex was newly discovered by us and no other.

It was so simple, we breathed each other in and the response was immediate, he was hard and I was wet and ready for him. He pushed into me and it seemed he wouldn’t fit but I guided him, arched toward him, wrapped my legs around his long, smooth body and pulled him deeper. He moved in me so deeply, my face was at his chest. I bit him as the pain mounted, with a deliberate rhythm he hit something deep, deep inside my body and as he did the pain turned to a wicked, relentless pleasure. I exploded around him and we both felt the flood of wetness I released. That was his undoing and his groan was almost a roar as he followed. Into the night and even in daylight we sought that pleasure, returning again and again to lose ourselves in the erotic abyss.

Our union we worshipped as a golden idol, greedy and insatiable. Urgent in our frenzied need of each other, a race with the devil we always won. There was no reason for haste; time was our solitary possession, endless in its journey to a destination unseen. If we were quick it didn’t matter; we began again. We were insatiable, addicted to that short lived high. Needing more, going farther, hiding ourselves in that venerable place, that Neverland found. I heard a whisper from a long ago story I’d read to my child: “
Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown up things again
.”

Precious little was accomplished other than constant lovemaking for nearly a week. On the fifth day I woke at dawn in excruciating pain. It felt as if that long neglected region between my legs was on fire, you could safely say we’d overdone it. I slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake John, tiptoed to the bathroom and slid into a cool tub of water. I lay there consumed by pain and wondered how my Gynecologist would react if I summoned her to the emergency room to give me a shot of Novocain ‘down there.’ The thought made me laugh out loud and in a moment John stood over the tub rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Why are you taking a bath at six a.m. buddy?” he asked.

Of course that just made me laugh harder. I explained it to him and a serious expression settled on his face, “You’ll be okay in a couple of days, just hang in there and you’ll toughen up.”

I asked how the hell he could be so sure and he shrugged and said, “I had a lot of experience with virgins when I was younger.”

I was dumbfounded and I realized that I could count the number of men I’d slept with on just a few fingers, yet for all I knew I was the only woman in America that John Foster
hadn’t
slept with before.

But we didn’t care, not about the pain, not about work, not about anyone or anything outside our nation of two, not even about poor old Turkey. We were lost and then we were found, in each other, in our own sacred Oz. Lost in a current of sensation that turned off all feeling other than the physical, a place of perfect emotional amnesia. Mental hurts were suspended, physical hurts were welcomed. Again and again we fell into bed, I opened to him readily and he thrust into me, punishing and healing. We pushed the past away, locked the door against memories and celebrated our new religion.

***

John Foster never slept in his own house again. He went there to feed Turkey and to pick up clean clothes, but we couldn’t bear to be apart any longer. Over the next few weeks I rode with him to the building site at the lake or he came to the antiques store with me. We were ridiculously joined at the hip and we loved every second of it. The world was our playground and my bed had become the center of our universe.

The lake house was framed and siding and roofing were in place, sheet rock and cabinetry were going in. One day, John needed to be at the job site and I had to be at my shop and we were desolate to be spending even one day apart. That led to an early morning sex-a-thon.

Before we got out of bed, eyes still closed as we still lingered in that place between sleep and waking, his body covered mine and we moved together wordlessly. Later I told him I’d named that act blind-kitten-sex.

“Why?” he asked.

“You know how kittens search around for a warm body before their eyes open; well it reminds me of that.”

He turned red to the roots of his hair and acted hurt, so I sat up in bed and pulled his huge head into my lap. I ran my fingers through his white-blond hair and tugged on it here and there. He closed his eyes and moaned and we were lost again. Then in the little office off my bedroom I wrapped myself around him as he gathered blueprints and engineering reports. Finally we tumbled into the downstairs guest room just before he walked out the door.

“You’re not a very dependable contractor, late for work already.” I teased him as we lay sweat-soaked and gasping for breath.

He looked at me seriously and said, “I can’t keep my cock out of you long enough to get anything done.”

I could only laugh because it was the absolute truth, we were sublimely shameless.

***

I met Emily for lunch and filled her in on what was going on (nonstop sex)!!!

“Filthy strumpet!” she laughed so hard she spit iced tea across the table.

I wiped my face and told her to shut up, but she couldn’t stop laughing, her eyes tearing up.

She finally regained some composure, wiped her eyes and said, “What the fuck, sister? I didn’t even know you liked sex.”

“Will you hush?” I said, glancing around to see if anyone could hear us. “I’ve always liked sex, but God, I cannot tell you how hot this is! I’m serious, Em. I didn’t even like the man a few weeks ago. And I’m nearly forty freaking years old! Now if I just smell his clothes hanging in the closet I get, you know… beyond excited. Like, stupid idiot, teenage hormones raging, gotta change my panties excited! You would not believe me if I told you how many times a day we do it. I’m not kidding, I can’t stand to be away from him. We drove to the lake the other day and stopped half way there and did it in the bathroom at a truck stop.”

She couldn’t even begin to hide the merriment from her face, she shook her head, eyes twinkling and said, “Well slut, I’d better rush you down to the Baptist church and dunk you seven times in the baptismal!”

We were both off on another laughing spree. We ordered margaritas to toast my new found happiness and another round to toast my absolute slutiness.

“So,” Emily began and then paused, “we’ve been back from Florida for what, five weeks? And you two are doing the wild thing twenty four seven so what do you think, are you in love?”

“I don’t know, yes, maybe, I don’t know… possibly,” I stammered.

“Good answer,” she said leaning back and really looking me in the eye. “Just so we’re clear on that, because you really sound like you’re sure that you’re not sure.”

“It’s just insane,” I said. “And you’re right, five weeks, oh my God! We had a date five weeks ago, then I sort of kept him around to take my mind off poor Jackson, then we slept together two weeks ago and … I love him. I do Emily, I mean, what have I got to lose, right? My heart is already broken way beyond repair… so I admit it, I’m telling you first, I’m in love with John Foster and he doesn’t even know.”

She stared at me with her hand to her mouth. She was quiet for a long while and then she smiled, leaned forward and took my hand.

“Damn, girl, you must be in love. “Poor Jackson,” I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

We stood and hugged and jumped up and down just like when we were little girls and I realized she was right, Jackson didn’t exist anymore and heartache and heartbreak were nowhere in sight. It had to be love.

***

The following Saturday would be a ‘coming out’ of sorts for my relationship with John Foster. Sarah, a childhood friend of mine was marrying the vitamin billionaire and we were invited to an intimate dinner party after the ceremony. It would be the first time John would seriously interact with the people who thought of me as Henry’s wife and Brooks’ mother. They had been my friends for most of my life, but they were also dyed in the wool, old money, Alamo Heights. They would certainly turn an appraising eye on this unconventional Californian that I was bringing into our
by invitation only
camp.

I’d been away from my married friends for the most part since I’d gotten involved with Jackson and I realized how much of my former life John had yet to see. He was aware that I was a little obsessed with keeping my weekly nail appointment at
Get Nailed
and he must have noticed that I didn’t cook or clean (the maid had her own key and she came and went quietly) and that I loved to travel and shop like a fiend. But he didn’t yet know that my former life revolved around people who had the kind of money and influence that elected senators and governors and put George W in the White House. That I was one of them, or had been, and they would judge him against their old friend, my late husband. They would conclude that he was a fling, a lapse in judgment, something I needed to experience and would tire of. But who could really know what was right for me? I was changed, after all, probably at the cellular level. I had taken great emotional blows and gone on, but who I was now had yet to be determined, and being with John Foster made me want to find out.

“Why ya so nervous, buddy?” John rested his forehead against mine as we were leaving for the party. He looked me in the eye and said, “You know my old granny always says green-eyed women have the devil in them.”

“Well then you’d better behave yourself or I’ll make your life hell,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“You make my life heaven,” he whispered, lifting my hair and kissing my neck, his lips lingering there, hot on my skin. I felt that familiar volcano begin to rumble deep inside.

“Let’s go now or we’ll never get out of the house.” I said, forcing my hands away from his body.

“You look smokin’ hot in that dress, nobody better try to steal my sweetie tonight!” he stepped back, nodding appreciatively, his eyes smoldering as they swept over me from head to toe.

It was a great dress, black, lacy and not too low cut, but body hugging, following every curve. It ended tightly just below the knee, it was chic and sexy, very Marilyn Monroe. John was in a new dark grey suit with a sapphire shirt and matching tie that made his blue eyes look electric. As we drove, I turned my head away from him, stared out the window and smiled, calling me his “sweetie!” God, I was a fool for that man.

The party was over the top wonderful as was expected from a couple who couldn’t spend all their money even if they made it their goal in life. She was glowing in gossamer Vera Wang and at five feet ten and barely a size two, she looked like a former runway model who had snagged ‘Mr. Very Right’ which happened to be the case.

He’d taken his idea for edible vitamins from pretty good to world class and then sold the company to a pharmaceutical conglomerate for more than a billion dollars. Shrewd investing had made him one of the richest men in America, but the American dream couldn’t buy him immunity from tragedy. He too, had lost a child and sadly that shared tragedy brought us closer as friends.

I’d told him once, how I felt that my battered heart hung on a rusty nail in my chest and he said, yes, he knew the feeling well. We compared horror stories of well-meaning friends and blatantly ignorant acquaintances who offered useless and sometimes hurtful platitudes. We cringed at, “everything happens for a reason” and, “something good will come of this.” Such ignorance, we agreed, give me all the bad in the world but let me have my child back. Best to just say, “I’m truly, bless your heart.”

The couple was buoyantly happy, beaming their expectations for a joyous future on all who’d gathered to celebrate. After dinner, drinks, sentimental toasts and teary wishes for great joy, the guests began to leave. I hugged the bride and we promised not to forget our usual sushi Friday’s.