The Love Sucks Club (20 page)

“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God!”
Sitting up in a complete panic,
I launch myself off the couch and land several feet away, knocking over one of
the porch chairs. Sinking to my knees, I press my forehead to the deck floor,
shaking and crying. I can’t breathe. Trying to force air into my lungs, I
breathe in hard, as hard as I can.
Esmé
is on her
knees beside me in seconds. She rubs my back and talks to me in a soothing
whisper until the weight lifts from my chest and I can breathe again.

“
Es
...”
 
I start to say her name, but I can’t get it out before I’m sobbing.

She lies down on the deck, pulling me down next to her. We curl
around each other, crying. In a moment, my mouth is on hers and I’m kissing her
through my tears. She rolls over on top of me, still crying. Our tears are
mingling together as we press together in something close to panic. My hands
are under her clothes and before I am even aware of what I’m doing, I’m inside
of her, and she’s reaching for me and we’re stroking and tasting each other in
a frantic effort to wash away whatever the hell just happened.

After, she pushes herself back and looks into my eyes. I’m still
crying, which is funny in an odd sort of way. I didn’t think I could have an
orgasm while crying. After, sometimes, yes.
But during?
Not ever. Now I’m laughing and crying and I don’t even know exactly how I feel,
except drained.

Esmé
stands up, gathering clothes.
Her eyelashes are still wet with her tears and she looks beautiful.

“Are you leaving?” I’m not sure whether I want her to say yes or
no, but I want to know so I can figure it out.

“No, but I don’t want to spend the night on the deck.”

Dragging myself to my feet, I grab my clothes, and bundle them
under one arm. “Let’s go to bed then.”

Frank is already inside, so I close the door to the deck and turn
off the lights.

Esmé
heads to the bathroom, but
turns around to look at me when she reaches the door. “I’m going to take a
shower. Do you want to take one with me?”

She doesn’t say it suggestively, but sort of ambiguously, the way
I had asked if she was going to leave. Shaking my head, I wave her along. “I’ll
go after you.”

Walking into the living room, I go over to the wall of pictures
and look at the faces of my friends and family. It’s bizarre that I don’t have
any pictures of Fran on the wall. I’m still standing there staring at the wall
when
Esmé
comes out of the bathroom wearing my robe.
Her hair is wet and sticking up all over her head. She looks fresh and alive
and I can’t help leaning in to kiss her on the tip of her nose. She wrinkles it
and smiles.

“Do you want to talk tonight?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t want to talk tonight.”

“Then let’s go to bed.” Holding out her hand,
Esmé
looks at me and waits for me to respond. I pause for a second before slipping
my hand into hers. I want to talk, but I’m so tired. I let her lead me to the
bedroom and help me into bed. My last thought before drifting into sleep is
that I should have asked her if she was okay.

Chapter Eighteen

The front door slamming startles me out of sleep. Frantic, I reach
over to the other side of the bed to find
Esmé
still
curled up and deeply asleep. Carefully creeping out of bed, I pull on some
shorts and a tank top and stumble into the kitchen. Sam is at the coffee pot
pouring
herself
a cup.

“Man,” she grins. “It’s just not like you to not have coffee
waiting for me. Do you know
,
I had to make a pot all
on my own?”

“That must have been terrible for you.”

“You look like something the cat dragged in, ate, and then puked
up again.”

“Thanks a fucking lot, my friend.” She ducks as I pick up a dish
towel and throw it at her. “So why are you here?”

“Oh man, I had the craziest night,” she says, smiling.

“You and me both,” I sigh, sinking down onto a stool. Frank, who
to this point has been sound asleep on the counter, opens one eye, looks to see
that there is still food in his bowl, and goes back to sleep.

“
You
had a crazy night? What happened? Did you step on a
hairball?” She chuckles at her own joke, while I roll my eyes.

“Give me a fucking cup of coffee and let’s go for a walk. You can
tell me all about your night.”

She pours her coffee into a travel mug and takes one down for me.
While she’s doing that, I go into the front room and write a note for
Esmé
, letting her know where I am. Taking it back to the
bedroom, I tiptoe in and place it on top of the pile of folded clothes that she
left on the chair.

Sam has both coffee mugs in her hand, so we walk out the door into
the morning sunlight. Detouring over to the truck, I grab both of our walking
sticks. I trade one of them to Sam for one of the mugs of coffee. Sam is
grinning like the proverbial canary-eating cat. Gulping her coffee, she grins
at me over her cup as we walk along the road and into the woods.

“So, you had a crazy night, too?” She smiles. “Did you stay up all
night watching Dr. Who reruns again?”

“Oh God.
Your humor is just too much for
me to handle,” I laugh, smacking her on the arm.

“Well, do you want to go first?”

“No, you.”

We walk in silence for a few moments, and I’m about to ask her
what’s going on when she suddenly turns to me and smiles. “It’s just...I’m not
sure how to start.”

Shrugging, I continue walking without looking at her. To tell the
truth, I’m not sure where to start telling her about my night so the longer she
takes with her story, the more time I have to think. When we crest the top of
the hill, she leans against a tree and takes a sip of coffee. Perching on a
stump, I follow suit. Laying my walking stick on the ground, I lean back
against the tree behind me. “Well?”

“So, after the lighthouse hike, you left with Susannah.”

“And?”

“And Olivia and I went out for brunch.”

Shocked, I sputter a bit on a sip of coffee. “You and Olivia went
out for a meal?” She could have told me that she went out to eat with Sarah
Palin and I’d be less surprised.

“Well, you know, I felt like an asshole for making her cry the
night before.”

“She always cries.”

“I know. I know it. I just felt bad this time.”

Rolling my eyes, I set my coffee down on the ground in front of
me. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Suddenly launching herself off the tree, she paces in front of me,
grinning. “Yeah, I mean, as she pointed out, we’ve done it before. So why not?”

“Why not, indeed?”

“I sense a wee bit of sarcasm,” she says in a terrible Scottish
accent.

“A wee bit?”
My accent is also terrible, but
better than hers.

“Look, she was kind of sweet and fun on the hike. Plus, you have
to admit that she’s fucking adorable.”

“You’re right. As far as outward appearances go, she is very
attractive.”

“Anyway, we went back to her place after brunch and one thing led
to another and next thing you know, we’re on the couch and she’s straddling me
with her breasts in my face. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

Laughing, I collapse my head into my hands.
“Sammie-Sam-Sam.
Oh, Sammie, Sammie, Sammie.”

“Come on.” Indignant, she smacks my on the top of the head. “Stop
laughing at me.”

“Okay, okay. It’s
just,
you know she’s
straight, right?”

Hitching her thumbs through her belt loops, she puffs her chest
out. “She wasn’t last night.”

“Oh Jesus!”
Unable to contain myself, I
laugh until tears spring from my eyes. Sam stares at me in disgust for a few
seconds before sitting next to me on the stump and joining me in laughter. When
we manage to contain ourselves, I use the hem of my tank top to wipe the tears
from my face. Sam sighs and leans against my shoulder, stretching her legs out
in front of her.

“Okay, that sounded pretty ridiculous, even for me,” she concedes.

“Even for you,” I agree.

We pause for a few moments, staring around us at the trees and the
butterflies. Sam gets up and walks over to a nearby mango tree, pulling one
off. Sitting back down on the stump, she pulls out her knife and peels it,
handing a slice to me before taking one for herself. We eat in silence,
relishing the flavor of the luscious fruit. With juice dripping down my chin, I
turn my face to the sky and let the warmth of the sun wash over me. Life isn’t
that bad sometimes. We finish the mango and wipe our fingers on our shorts. I
think mango is a fruit best eaten on the beach. You can let the whole thing
drip sinfully all over yourself and clean up by simply strolling into the
seawater.

Sighing, Sam tosses the pit into the bushes. “I love mango.”

“Nature’s perfect fruit,” I concur.

“Better than a fresh passion
fruit.”

“Better than papaya.”

“Way better than a banana,” she grins.

“So, Sam.
What happens next?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that I kind of like her, you know?”

“I know. You have a habit of being interested in straight women.
Haven’t we talked about that?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is. Olivia is pretty
adorable, though.
Annoying as hell sometimes, yes.”

“Well, you’re both grown-ups. You’ll figure it out.”

“Besides,” she adds, grinning again. “I’ve got to be better than
porn star guy.”

“My eighty-eight-year-old grandfather would be better than porn
star guy.”

“Is he available?”

We break into another fit of giggles. When we’ve recovered, Sam
pokes me. “So, tell me about your crazy night.”

Taking a deep breath, I decide to just bust everything out at
once. “I think I’ve been having visions of Fran because
Esmé
is somewhat psychic and since we have both been wrestling with the same demons,
we somehow had this connection with each other. So, she came over last night,
we did this kind of mutual hypnosis thing and we went into some kind of other
world or dream state where I became Fran and was inside of her body when she
jumped off the cliff.” Pausing for breath, I give her a sidelong glance to see
if she is still with me. She’s staring at me with her mouth hanging open. “So,
I saw what Fran saw when she jumped, which was some kind of ethereal light sort
of beings that beckoned her off the cliff. Whether they were in her head or not
is irrelevant at this point. The important thing is that she jumped because she
thought the aliens were taking her home that way. I came out of my trance when
Fran jumped and
Esmé
and I cried and then made love
and afterward, we both cried again and we both managed to admit that all along,
we both somehow thought that I was the reason she killed herself, and
Esmé
even admitted that she came to the island with the
idea of tormenting me or some other sort of half-baked idea of getting even
with me for killing the only woman she ever loved.”

Sam is still staring at me with her mouth hanging open, but on
realizing that I’ve stopped talking, she blinks several times. Clearing her
throat, she makes an attempt to speak. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Clearing her throat again, she finally speaks. “So, you had sex with
Esmé
?”

Unable to respond, I stare at her for a second. She smiles and
then we are both laughing hysterically until neither one of us can breathe.
Suddenly, I can’t catch my breath and Sam is hugging me while I gasp for air
and cry hard on her shoulder. She rocks slightly with me in her arms, quietly
holding me until I gain control of myself again. When I’ve regained control of
myself again, I pull away, leaving a string of snot between my nose and her
shirt. She looks down on it, wipes it off with her hand, and rubs her hand
against the leg of her shorts.

“Sorry about that,” I say, staring down at my feet.

“What’s a little snot between friends?”

“You thought it was a booger, but
it’s
snot,” I grin.

“And people think I’m the immature one in this relationship,” she
says, rolling her eyes.

“I was drunk one night and I had a vision of Fran dying. Right
there in the car, I saw the blood coming down her face and somehow, I knew that
I had killed her.”

“But you didn’t kill her,” she says, calmly.

“I know that now. Or, at least, I sort of know that. It’s all
jumbled up in my head. I remember her talking to me about the lights and the
orbs and her people coming to take her home, but I never really took her
seriously. I mean, I knew she was a little crazy, but that was part of her
charm.”

“Maybe she wasn’t crazy.”

Lifting my head, I stare at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, maybe she really was seeing aliens and orbs and being
taken home.”

Snorting, another bubble of snot comes out of my nose. I wipe it
off with the back of my hand and wipe my hand on my shorts. “Sam,” I say.
“That’s pretty rich coming from you.”

“I’m just saying that there is no way of knowing whether it really
happened or if it was all in her head. And, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t
even matter.”

“Of course it matters.” Grabbing my stick, I stand up and start
down the path again.

She runs after me and catches up, panting. “
Jeeze
,
I
gotta
quit drinking so much. I’m getting out of
shape.”

“Yeah, really.
How can you have my back if you
can’t even jog a few steps?”

“You’ll be all telling some bad dudes...you
wanna
step up? And I’ll be all...hang on, hang on, let me get my breath.”

Slowing down to a manageable pace, I smile at her. “I’m not really
mad at you, you know.”

“I know, Dana. It’s a lot to handle. Maybe I didn’t say it right.
I just meant that regardless of where Fran’s orbs came from, they were the
reason that she died. And now you know that she died happy, leaping for joy to
something she believed in, even if we can’t.”

I’m silent for so long that Sam touches me on the shoulder.
“Dana?”

“I don’t know what to do next.”

“Let her go?”

My house comes into view through the woods and we step off the
path and onto the road. A few drops of rain are starting to fall, but like most
rain in the Caribbean, it’s warm. Wiping rainwater off her face, Sam looks up
at the sky. “Locals say that when the rain is this warm, it means it’s going to
be a bad hurricane season.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

Opening the door, I step into the kitchen.
Esmé
is sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee in her hands. Roxanne is next to
her.

“
Esmé
,” I start. Momentarily at a loss
for words, I look at Roxanne. “
Rox
,” I say. “This
is...”

“Awesome,” Sam finishes.

She pushes me gently out of the way and heads for the coffee pot
to refill her mug. Staring at Roxanne, I try to gauge how she’s feeling about
this situation. To be fair, I’m not sure exactly how I feel about the
situation.
Esmé
stands and comes over to me. I let
her kiss me without kissing her back. Giving her a brief hug, I look over her
shoulder at Roxanne who is pointedly looking the other direction. Oblivious,
Sam brings her coffee over and sits down next to
Rox
.

“What are you doing here?”

Roxanne gives Sam a one-arm hug. “I walked over to see if Dana
wanted to hike.”

Sam shrugs. “We just went for a walk, but I wouldn’t be opposed to
taking another one.”