Mid Life Love (35 page)

J
onathan

Two months
later...

Stacy ran her fingers through my hair and kissed my
lips. She tried to part them open with her tongue, but they wouldn’t budge. She
slowly unfastened the top buttons of my shirt and started to pull it off, but I
pushed her hand away.

She sighed. “I should’ve known you weren’t up for
this...” She grabbed her bra off the chair and handed it to me. “Can you help
me put it back on?”

“What?”

“My bra...Can you help me put it back on?”

“Oh. Sure.”

“The third row, please. And for the record, I’m
officially taking the ‘with benefits’ tag off our friendship. We haven’t had
sex in forever.”

I snapped the last hook on her bra. “Fine...”

“I’m really worried about you.” She turned around
and cupped my face. “You’re
scaring
me...”

“Because I’m not having sex with you?” I rolled my
eyes.

“Because you’re not being the Jonathan I know. Why
can’t you just call Claire? You’re not the type to stay away from someone you
like. This isn’t you at all.”

“You’re suggesting that I call the woman who broke
up with me and
begged
me to leave her alone?”

“I’m just saying that—”

“That’s not my style.”

“Whatever. How long do you need me to stay in town?”
she asked. “I need to tell the condo manager a date tomorrow.”

“Not long, and you’re more than welcome to stay here
or at one of the beach houses.” I re-buttoned my shirt. “I just need you to go
to the Juniper Conference with me as my date in two weeks. I’ll need someone to
keep the single women away from me. I don’t want them thinking I’m available.”

“I don’t have to accompany you to the morning tech
sessions do I? You know that stuff bores me out of my mind.”

“Not unless you want to.”

“Ha! No. Parties and mixers only, and I’ll do my
best to act like I’m your girlfriend. By the way, since I flew out here and you
left me hanging again, I’ll need a shopping spree on your behalf. Tomorrow.
Actually, make it every day this week.”

“Fair enough.” I stood up. “Are you spending the
night here?”

“Um, I was actually going to—”

“Can you?”

“Why?”

I sighed. “I just need someone to be here...” I didn’t
feel like going into another spiel about Claire.

“Sure.” She put on her shirt and kissed my cheek.
“I’ll set up my bed in the living room. You want to get breakfast in the
morning?”

“We can’t share a bed?”

“No.”

“Why not? We normally do.”

“Jonathan...” She sighed. “You haven’t called me
‘Stacy’ once today. You’ve been calling me
Claire
ever since you picked
me up from the airport. You didn’t even ask me how I’ve been doing until we
were at dinner...As a matter of fact, after I told you, you asked me about Ashley
and Caroline ... I didn’t want to say anything because I’ve never seen you like
this and I didn’t want to upset you.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “I
don’t want to put you in a situation where you sleep with me, subconsciously
thinking that I’m Claire because I’m not. I want you to get your shit together
and figure this out. I’ll be in the living room if you need me...Okay?”

“Okay... Goodnight,
Stacy
.”

“Goodnight. See you in the morning.” She gave me a
reassuring smile and walked away.

As soon as she left my room, I walked over to my
dresser and pulled out the latest set of pictures: Claire was running on the
Golden Gate Bridge, hosting meetings at Starbucks, and lying on the beach in a
beautiful black bikini—one of the ones I’d bought for her to wear on my yacht.

I flipped through the pictures over and over,
scrutinizing every part. Then I realized that the running pictures were all
taken at night, and that these weren’t the latest pictures—they were two weeks
old.

I called Greg. “Greg, are you—”

My doorbell rang and I knew it was him; he was
always nearby.

I rushed downstairs and let him in, ushering him
into the parlor room. I poured us both a glass of scotch and sat in front of
the fireplace.

“Good seeing you, Greg...” I took a few sips of my
drink and leaned back in my chair, wondering why he wasn’t doing the same.

“You called me in the middle of the night to have a
drink with you, Mr. Statham?” He set the glass down and raised his eyebrow.

“Did they find that suspect who was doing the random
muggings on the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“Not to my knowledge sir, they haven’t. I doubt he’d
appear in the daytime though. If you’re concerned about your employees’
commercial shoot there tomorrow, I can arrange to have—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s...Can you make sure someone
from security is on the bridge at night to watch Miss Gracen? She runs on
Wednesday and Thursday nights between eight and nine...She doesn’t need to know
you’re there. I just need you to make sure nothing happens to her.”

“Of course. I’ll make sure that gets done sir.”

“And since I’m staying home tomorrow, could you get
the newest pictures from Corey for me? I know she’s on vacation this week, but
I didn’t get anything from last week.”

“I already have them.” He reached into his jacket
and pulled out a small manila envelope. “Corey wasn’t sure if he should give
these to you so he gave them to me.”

“What?
Why?”
And since when do they talk behind my back?

“He doesn’t think you can handle it. Quite frankly,
neither do I.”

“Greg,” I said as I took another sip of my drink,
“give them to me. I don’t know why you and Corey are suddenly best friends, but
I think I’m more than capable of—” 

“Miss Gracen is dating someone else.”

WHAT!
My blood heated. “What did you
just say?”

“She’s dating someone else.”

I tried not to sound appalled. “Who is he?”

“Does it matter?”

“
It does
. Give me the damn envelope.” I
slammed my glass down on the table.

He sighed. He walked over to me like he was going to
place it in my hands, but then he stepped past me and tossed it into the
flames.

Before I could react, he held his hand up. “I’ll
make sure that Miss Gracen is safe at all times whenever she runs on the Golden
Gate Bridge and whenever she goes to the beach alone.” He cleared his throat.
“But I won’t keep doing this to you, sir. With all due respect, it’s not
helping. The security team has stopped tracking photos for you as of today and
I’ve changed all the access codes to their offices. They’ll no longer be
pursuing this project.”

“Under
what orders
? Are you trying to get
fired?”

“Are you trying to lose your most loyal employee?”

“I have
plenty
of loyal employees and they
know how to do
exactly
what they’re told. If you value your job, you
will go back to corporate right now and have those photos reprinted before—”

“You fire me?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you testing me,
Greg? I
will
fire you. You are not irreplaceable.”

He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow.

I stared at him long and hard, biting down on my
tongue until it bled because I couldn’t fix my mouth to say, “You’re fired.”

If he was a regular security guard or driver, I
would have fired him on the spot—no questions asked, but Greg was much more
than that. He’d been there for me since the beginning and he was my silent
confidante. My right hand man. And he and I both knew that I couldn’t afford to
lose him.
Ever
.

“Fine.”

“Good. Hayley sends her regards. Her Scrabble team
is on a flight to Italy as we speak. When she returns to the states, she would
like for you to send her an early edition of the
s
Phone red. The hackers
who attempted to break into your company’s firewall last week have all been
charged and no harm was done to the internal system according to Corey. Those
are the updates you weren’t paying attention to earlier today. Do you need
anything else from me tonight?”

“
No
.”

“Very well then. Have a good night, Mr. Statham.”

––––––––

I
sat in the parlor room until midnight. I tried
drinking my pain away, but I could only get through one glass. All I could
think about was Claire—her kissing someone else, being held by someone else,
having sex with someone else.

Each bitter thought made me want to drive to her
house and demand to know who the hell this new man was, to put a stop to it immediately.

How can she move on so soon? How is that
possible?

After replaying some of our old memories, I decided
to walk around my house until I was too tired to think anymore. I started
outside, walking through the gardens and the pool deck—trying not to envision
the times that Claire and I had made love under the trees.

I came back inside and circled through the hallways,
trying to ignore any place that I’d been with her, but it was no use. We’d been
everywhere. 

I dragged myself into the living room and sighed. I
placed another blanket over Stacy, kissing her on the forehead.

“Hey...” Her eyes fluttered open. “You okay?”

“No.”

She moved over on the couch and motioned for me to
lie down. “What’s wrong? Why do you look like someone just died?”

“She’s dating someone else.”

“What?”

“Claire...She’s dating
someone else
.”

“Oh...” She frowned. “Well, it’s probably not that
serious. It’s—”

“The fact that she’s even able to date someone else
that quickly is—”

“It’s been
three months
, Jonathan...”

That’s all?
I felt like
it’d been at least a year.

She wrapped her arms around me and sighed. “You
really love her, huh?”

I didn’t answer. I just shut my eyes and tried to
ignore the horrible pangs that were assaulting my chest. I didn’t understand
how it’d gotten to this point—still couldn’t wrap my mind around why she didn’t
tell me about my mother, why she thought us being apart was the solution for
that.

It didn’t make any sense because she loved me—I
knew
she did. I could see it in her eyes whenever we made love, whenever I
showed up to her house and spent time with her and her family, whenever we
spent all night exchanging sarcastic comebacks.

Or maybe she didn’t...Maybe it was just
me...

Just as I was about to surrender to my heavy eyelids,
I heard my phone ringing in the parlor room.

It wasn’t the special ringtone I had for Greg,
Claire, or anyone else important, so I let it ring. But then it kept ringing.
And ringing. And ringing.

I rolled off the couch and walked into the other
room, looking at the number. It was a San Fran number, but it didn’t look
familiar. I was tempted to silence it, but this person had already ruined my
chance at sleep.

“This better be fucking important.” I growled.

“Jonathan?” It was a young girl’s voice. “Is this
Jonathan
?”

“Who is this?”

“Ashley...” She started crying.

Claire’s Ashley?

“What’s going on?” I softened my tone. “What’s
wrong? Did something happen to—”

“I...I need your help, please...”

“What happened?” I grabbed my jacket and slipped
into my shoes.

“I can’t....I really need your help...”

“Where are you?” I rushed to my garage.

“I’m on...on Tim Street...At Haven Foods...And I’m—”

“Are you hurt?”

“No... But I...” She said something in between sobs.
“Can you come get me?”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” I revved up my car.
“Stay right there.”

“Please don’t call my mom,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“
Please
...”

“I
won’t.” I wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

––––––––

I
sped over to the grocery store—racing into parking
lot, slowing down once I saw what the problem was.

Jesus...

I stepped out and looked at the mangled metal mess
that was once Claire’s Audi Q7: The front of the car was wrapped around a pole
and the windshield was shattered. The front right tire had been flung across
the lot and the driver’s door was smashed in so deep that it looked like the
car had run into the guard rail before crashing into the pole.

From the way it looked, it was a miracle that Ashley
had made it out alive. I looked over at her and noticed that she was trembling.

I took off my jacket and put it over her shoulders.
“Shhh. It’s going to be okay.”

She sniffled. “Are you going to tell my mom about
this?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s going to find out somehow...”

“I know you two aren’t together anymore, and I’m
sorry for calling so late, but I didn’t know who else to call...My mom isn’t the
best option, if you know what I mean...”

“Tell me what happened...”

She wiped her face on her sleeve. “Me and Caroline
wanted to go out tonight, but she wanted to hang out with that guy—Jake,
remember? He finally asked her out after texting her every day.” She shrugged.
“It’s her weekend to take our car, but I wanted to go on another date with
Chris...I didn’t want to have to rely on him for a ride because the  last time we
went out, he drove and I barely made curfew so...”

“Calm down.” I motioned for her to sit on the hood
of my car.

“We met at the movies and everything was going fine,
but then he said he wanted to spend some alone time with me. He told me to
follow him somewhere and...It was an um, a hotel...”

Please give me the G-rated version...

“He had the room set up really special, and he’d
rented some movies, and he told me to ‘just relax’...We drank like four beers
each and I thought we were just going to mess around. Honestly, I swear! I
didn’t think he was going to try and sleep with me! This was only our third
time going out!”