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When Ralph had left the hotel room that day, she had been in a spell of rage. Even as she cried, she was blaming him again for everything that had gone wrong in her life. But through it all, the words “I’m in love with Emily Lister . . . I’m in love with Emily Lister . . .” kept echoing. There was something about their tired, impatient finality that had cut through all her defenses. Ralph was in love with Emily Lister. That was real. It was something from the world outside of Valerie, a place where people cared about things that had nothing to do with her. Things that were (this was the idea that was growing in her mind)
more important
than Valerie’s problems.

By the time she’d run a hot bath and gotten into it, meaning to wash away the sense memory of his body on hers, she was realizing no one had ever been in love with her. They had said they loved her. They had been obsessed with her, stalked her, sent her extravagant gifts and made extravagant promises. But no one had ever known her but Ralph. And Ralph emphatically didn’t love her. He had made love to her just now, trying to create a loving experience for her, trying to wipe out the memory of their first, rough coupling, out of kindness. And she couldn’t deny to herself that he had no reason to be kind to her.

He loves Emily. He loves Ilana. I can’t love anyone; I’m too broken.
She sat in the hot water and could not stop weeping, even as she felt that the tears were making her dirty again. The tears were ruining the bath; she didn’t know why. It was as if she’d been trying to wash off her own feelings, but they kept pouring over her, dirtying her again. She had been trying to wash
herself
off. But she remained there, an unloved, unwanted mess. Alone.

She spent that night making plans to go see Ilana. She would bring Ilana to live with her. People could think whatever they liked. Maybe she should tell everyone Ilana was her daughter, even if it meant losing her job. It would be a penance she could do for all the years she had neglected her daughter. But by the time she fell asleep, she realized that none of that would do Ilana any good. Ilana didn’t even know her. Valerie was indulging in selfish schemes again, still thinking the world revolved around Valerie.

She called in sick the next morning and spent the whole day coming up with further selfish schemes. At times, she thought she could slowly win Ilana over. She could buy her gifts—children liked gifts. The fact that Ilana didn’t know Valerie could be a good thing; Valerie could be kind and sweet to Ilana and the girl would never know it was strange. But finally, Valerie realized that behind that scheme was the thought that if she had Ilana back, Ralph would eventually be won over. He would come to know the sweet, kind Valerie and fall in love with her. He would move in with her and Ilana. They would be a family. It would be a neat, happy ending—except that it would never happen.

Then she began to think of going to school to be a veterinarian, of getting a humble job as a waitress in a small town, of remaining at XTV but winning everyone over with her new sweet, kind persona. But lingering in the background of all these fantasies was the concluding image in which Ralph realized it was Valerie, not Emily, whom he loved. It would never happen. For thirteen years, it hadn’t happened, although she’d always vaguely assumed that he would return to her, that he would see through her cold exterior to the real person underneath, that he of all people would understand.

Back at XTV the next day, it was impossible to suddenly shed her cold exterior. She inhabited it while hating it, saw her own ugly character all too clearly. She was a bitch. No one could love her. There was no point blaming her childhood anymore, blaming Ralph. She was almost thirty years old. The way she was now was simply who she was. When she remembered her scheme to start a rival network, it all seemed like the boastful pipe dream of a child. She shivered when she thought about pitching the reality show about virgins to Babylona. It was so transparently a projection of Valerie’s own neurosis. Surely Babylona had found her creepy and pathetic.

On the fifth day, she cracked and called Ralph’s cell phone. When he didn’t answer, she was distraught. She hung up without leaving a message and fell into another bout of self-pitying tears, hating herself. Before she called back, she wrote down a script for the voice mail she wanted to leave, afraid that without that precaution, she would end up saying something hateful. It took her an hour to write the script, and by the end the page was a mess of cross-outs—a page of all the pleading, shameless, angry things she had ever wanted to say to him. Her final version was: “Hi, Ralph. This is Valerie. I’d appreciate it if you gave me a call. It’s nothing bad.” She read it into the phone in a careful, quiet monotone, and hung up with her heart pounding. Despite herself, she still felt hurt that he hadn’t answered the phone, still imagined him looking at the caller ID with a contemptuous expression on his face.

Then, without even knowing why she did it, she called Liam. She had been meaning to call him for the last few days, feeling that she owed him an explanation for her behavior. But she owed so many explanations to so many people. Now she was calling him out of pure need.

When he answered the phone, her body was flooded with gratitude and relief. She said, “Hi, Liam. It’s Valerie. Could I see you?”

He said, “Of course. Do you . . . do you want to meet at a restaurant?”

“Oh.” She thought for a second, trying to make her mind imagine normal scenes, meetings at which people had simple, friendly conversations.

But then he said, shyly, “Or . . . you could always come to my place.”

“Great,” she said. “Oh, great. Just give me the address.”

 

 

 

His apartment was an ordinary fourth-floor walk-up on the Lower East Side. It was furnished in bachelor style. Everything was basic and serviceable; beige carpet, dusty Venetian blinds, a couch that folded out to a bed. There were dishes in the sink, and when she arrived he was picking clothes up from off the floor.

He said, “I’m so sorry. I really wanted to have this cleared up. . . . I wasn’t thinking when I invited you over. I thought—”

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “I don’t care about that.”

“But I want to—”

“No, seriously,” she said, feeling almost panicked at the idea of someone doing anything for her. “Listen. Why don’t you kiss me?”

At that, he smiled and came over to give her a kiss on the mouth—a lingering, warm kiss that sent a tingling feeling all over her. It came to her that Liam actually
liked
her. Even if it was based on a delusion, the feeling was genuine. She put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him back, letting the warmth of the kiss ease her tension and kindle a shy heat in her loins. When at last he stood back, he looked chastened. He said in a soft, husky voice, “Would you like something to drink? I’ll clear off a space on the couch for us.”

“Oh, good. Yes, I wanted to tell you . . . I owe you an explanation.”

Over the next two hours, in between kissing him and drinking red wine, Valerie told Liam all the secrets she’d been keeping for thirteen years. By the end of it, she was lying in his arms, talking softly into his ear while he stroked her hair. The miracle was, he was still looking at her with the same protective fondness.

He said, “I knew there must be something wrong, some trouble you were keeping inside. You were always such an angry little thing. It hurt my heart to see it.”

“Angry,” she said. “God, even you thought I was angry.”

He chuckled and kissed her on the forehead. “You telling me you weren’t angry?”

She thought about it. “I don’t know. From my point of view, I was just scared.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like the same thing from the outside. You ever see a fight in a bar, you’ll see some scared guys. But they look pretty angry if you’re on the wrong side of their fists.”

Valerie laughed. “That makes me feel loads better.”

“Damn. Well, it was meant to.”

“Liam. Look at me.”

He turned his face to hers, still stroking her long blond hair, his eyes sleepy and tender. She said, “Would you . . . could we have sex?”

His face became guarded. “I’d be kind of worried, after last time.”

She suppressed another wave of panic.
He’s not trying to hurt me,
she reminded herself.
He’s trying to protect me.
“Well, I want to promise that it won’t go wrong,” she said, her voice shaking, “but I don’t know. I’ve been noticing I can’t predict what I’m going to do.”

“Welcome to the club,” he said, smiling. “Listen, Valerie, if you want to sleep with me, that’s wonderful. I don’t think there’s anything on earth I’d rather do. But you’ve got to promise you won’t blame me if . . .”

“I promise,” she said. “Cross my heart.”

He traced an X over her breasts with his finger. Then his finger paused on the swell of her left breast. Another finger joined the first and he was caressing her breast through the fabric of her sweater. Every time his fingertips crossed her nipple, a pang shot through her. She made herself relax, listening to the response of her body rather than trying to control it. As his hand moved over her breast, she was maddeningly aware of a man touching her, of the invasion of it that was part of the pleasure. But she let it happen; she let him unbutton her shirt and see her exposed breasts. She let him bend and seize one of her nipples in his lips, suck it in between his teeth, nibble it. She let herself sigh in response.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he said, his breath warm against her skin. “I used to watch you on your show. I never heard a word you said. I never saw anything so beautiful.”

“Really?”

“Oh, really.”

He pulled her blouse open all the way and she sat up to take it off, watching him watch her. It was like a dream in which you can do things that are normally impossible; she was standing up and taking off her skirt now, letting him see her from just a foot away, letting him stroke her thighs as she pulled down her panties. When she was naked in front of him, she said, “This should be so normal for me.”

“It doesn’t feel normal to me at all,” he said, and kissed her belly.

She caught her breath. His lips moved down, exciting the sensitive skin of her lower abdomen, and she felt an anticipatory electricity in her cunt, the awareness of what she was going to let him do. His hand moved up her thigh and his fingers rested for a second on her pussy lips, barely moving. Somehow the fact that he was watching himself do this was most inflaming of all. She wanted him. She actually wanted him; it was suddenly simple and easy and good.

“How do you want to do it?” he said, his voice betraying his excitement.

When she looked down at him, she was surprised to see him still fully dressed, still the handsome cowboy with the shy, kind demeanor. She said, “I don’t know. Every way?”

He laughed. “I can do that for you.”

Without thinking, she got down on her knees and began to undress him, with hurried, clumsy movements that seemed to make him breathless with lust. He was fondling her breasts and letting her take his shirt off, open his pants, his eyes focused on her face as if drinking in her willingness. At the last moment, he moved her aside and stood up to shed the last clothes completely; she was smiling at him as he pulled off his socks with the same maladroit haste she had experienced a moment before. But when he was naked, the beauty of his body, its strong and well-formed masculinity, made her feel weak and needy. The thick muscular legs, his broad shoulders, the long shaft of his penis rising, curving slightly from its corona of golden hairs—she wanted all of him. She wanted him so much it was impossible to believe she could really have him.

He said, “Every way.”

Without replying, she bent forward and kissed his dick. The smoothness of it surprised her. She was trying to think that she’d seen this done a thousand times before, that it was easy, nothing. Still, the touch of his cock to her mouth felt incredibly sensual; it was something too amazing to be ordinary.
Of course doing this with someone would make you fall in love,
she thought, with a vague stirring of sympathy toward her younger self.
Of course it would.
Then she drove the thought away, looking up at him a little bashfully to say, “I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before.”

“But . . . you want to?” His voice was hoarse with lust.

“I want to.”

“Do you want me to talk you through it?”

“Okay.”

“Try licking it, on the underside there. Lick it up the center.”

She began to do so, again marveling at the silkiness of the skin. It tasted salty; it was a wholesome taste. There was nothing dirty about it at all. His cock responded to her tongue, stiffening even more, seeming to strain under the onslaught of pleasure. She tried moving her tongue in circles, and he groaned. It was as if she could feel his pleasure in her own body. She was getting more and more excited with every second. Her breasts felt tight and exquisitely sensitive until even the cool air was like a caress. And she was aware of the wetness of her pussy, its aching for him.

He said, “Okay, take it in your mouth. Just suck the tip of it.”

She followed his instructions. The size of his cock in her mouth was immediately thrilling—of course it was, and the idea that it would be inside her, this frighteningly big and beautiful thing, was impossibly wonderful. She sucked the tip of his cock, feeling the contours of it with her tongue, and without being told, she began to move her head down, greedily taking more of it into her mouth, wanting to know it. Wanting to make him crazy with the movements of her tongue, up and down.

He breathed, “Oh, God. Oh, my God. That’s incredible.”

It was incredible. She was working her mouth up and down him, filling her throat with his cock, the exact shape of it driving her crazy. Then suddenly he pulled back, a subtle movement that she picked up on instantly, and she let his cock slip out of her mouth and looked up at him questioningly.