The Space Between Us (35 page)

“Hey, hon, I guess I got my answer.” Jessica bounced next to us, hand in hand with Carl.

“Yeah, I—”

She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, hon, it’s all good. Though maybe you’d better catch them. Once the door’s closed, you’re not supposed to knock or anything. But they went in the lookie-loo room. You can peek in on them through the glass, if you want.”

Charlie stopped dancing, not caring that we were jostled by the people around us.

“Right. Right. Thanks,” I said.

“She just…” Charlie shook his head.

“It’s what we came here for, remember?” I didn’t like it, or the way Meredith had gone about it, but it was true. “C’mon.”

A narrow, dark hall led around the back of the private rooms. We stopped at a small set of steps that led to nowhere, sort of like bleachers, directly across from the panel of clear glass in the wall.

“Look, Charlie.”

I already knew what I was going to see. Together we peered through the glass. Because we were higher, we could see everything in the room. The shelves, the mirrors on the walls. The mattress on the floor.

Meredith and Kirk.

His shirt was open, but not off. His pants undone. Meredith had pulled up her skirt, her panties tossed to the side. She straddled his face, her clit pressed to his mouth as she rode his face. She’d pushed her shirt up, her bra down so she could tug and tug at her nipples. Even from this distance I could see how tight they were. How hard. She twisted them, her head thrown back so her hair hung down almost to her ass.

She rocked her pussy against Kirk’s face. His erect cock bobbed, held in one fist as he used his other hand to caress her ass. Once again I was watching her through glass, and I didn’t need to hear her to know how she sounded.

Charlie made a small, low noise in the back of his throat and slid closer to me on the step. The only light came from the window in front of us. I felt the touch of his fingertips on my knee, and when I didn’t protest, a little higher. I looked at him; he looked at me.

No matter why we’d come here, we were still together.

Meredith ground her clit on the stranger’s stroking tongue as her fingers twisted, twisted her nipples. Her mouth opened. Her eyes closed.

The feather touch of fingertips on my thigh. Higher. Urging my legs to part. A soft stroke over the lace of my panties, then another. Nothing pushy or fierce. A touch so slight and unobtrusive I could ignore it if I wanted. Small pressure on my clit. Pressing.

Stroke. Press. Stroke.

I drew in a breath. The air around me smelled of perfume and smoke and sex. The step beneath my ass was hard, unforgiving, not a place to relax, and that was fine because every muscle in my body had gone tight and tense and taut.

Waiting.

I watched as Meredith moved off Kirk’s mouth and dropped on her hands and knees, her ass in the air. As he got behind to fuck her, nice and slow and deep and hard. I knew how that felt. She shook, mouth stretched in a cry I couldn’t hear but didn’t have to. I knew how she sounded when she came.

My body didn’t shake or move. I didn’t sigh or groan or gasp. I came in silence, bursts of exquisite and torturous pleasure exploding inside me so hard I had to blink away floating specks in my vision. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, there was Charlie.

He cupped my cheek, his kiss soft. Sweet. He pressed his forehead to mine. “I think it’s time to go.”

Chapter 38

C
harlie was very quiet on the ride home.

Meredith, always chatty but even more so when she was drunk, couldn’t shut up. She rattled on and on about “The Ranch,” how much fun she’d had, how we should totally go back. She stumbled when she got out of the car, her clothes in perfect order but her lipstick smeared and her hair a mess.

In the house she kicked off her shoes and went straight to the kitchen sink to draw a long glass of water, which she downed right away. Charlie took his time to hang up his coat. Mine, too. He picked up Meredith’s shoes and lined them up neatly by the back door. In the kitchen he put his keys into the bowl by the phone where he always left them, and the clink of metal against the porcelain was very loud.

“I don’t want to do that again,” Charlie said.

I hadn’t been drinking booze, but I needed some cold water, too. Meredith moved out of the way as I went to the sink, but she still stood close enough that I could see the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and a thread or two of silver in her hair. I filled my glass and drank, not looking at her. This wasn’t my fight.

But of course, it was.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“I didn’t like it,” Charlie said.

Meredith’s brows knit. She put her glass into the sink, the clink of it on metal much louder than the sound Charlie’s keys had made. “Why not?”

“We didn’t talk about it beforehand,” he said.

“It was supposed to be a surprise.”

Charlie smiled without humor. “Yeah. It really was.”

I no longer wanted the water, but I took my glass and moved past them both. “I’m going to bed.”

“No,” Charlie said. “You stay. You need to hear this, too.”

Meredith’s gaze flickered over me. “Go to bed, Tesla.”

“No,” he repeated, and it was so unlike him to contradict her that we both looked at him. “She stays. She’s a part of this, Meredith. You made her a part of this, so she stays.”

What he’d said was true, but I didn’t like how he’d said it. Silent, I leaned against the counter, trapped. Meredith tossed her hair over her shoulders, and I saw something about her I’m sure she didn’t mean for me to know.

She wasn’t as drunk as she was pretending. Oh, sure, she’d had a few drinks, enough to make her giggly. But she wasn’t impaired. She knew exactly what she was doing and saying, and she’d known all night long.

She crossed her arms. “Tell me, Charles. What you didn’t like about it, when I thought we’d talked about how sexy it would be to try new things. How it would be really hot.”

Charlie’s shoulders straightened, and he glanced at me, but then focused on her again. “We talked about a lot of things, Meredith, but we also said that if we decided we didn’t like something, we wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t like that place.”

“You didn’t like me with another guy, Charlie, that’s what you didn’t like. Why not come out and just tell the truth.”

His jaw set. “You’re right. That’s it. I didn’t like watching you with another guy.”

Her lip curled, and she turned to me. “But watching you fuck Tesla, that’s okay? Watching you eat her pussy, that’s fine, too? Wow, Charlie. Talk about a double standard.”

“That’s totally different, and you know it. She’s not some stranger we picked up in a sex club!”

Charlie never shouted, so at the sound of his raised voice, I cringed.

“No,” Meredith said, her own voice dripping with derision. “She’s some stranger I picked up in a coffee shop.”

The world tipped. I didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to hear the things she was going to say. I put my glass on the counter and moved, but Meredith’s next statement snagged me to a stop.

“You didn’t complain about that,” she said. “Fair’s fair, Charlie. You got yours. Why can’t I get mine?”

“I’m not something to get!” I cried. I didn’t look at either of them. Her words had stung, but the fact Charlie wasn’t disagreeing hurt worse.

“Of course you’re not,” he said, but it was too late.

Meredith laughed. “Oh, honey. Really? Do you know how long we talked about bringing home a girl before I picked you? A long fucking time. It couldn’t be just anyone, you know. It had to be someone special. Perfect.”

“And you are,” Charlie said, though I knew Meredith had been making quite another point.

I stood in the archway between the kitchen and hall, and my hand found the curve in the wall to keep me from stumbling. I turned to face them. “That’s not what she means.”

She ticked off a list on her fingers. “Not someone we knew really well, in case it didn’t work out. Had to be someone we could get rid of with no worries or never see again if we wanted to end it. Right, Charlie?”

He looked pained, his gaze bleak and mouth a grim line, but he nodded.

“Of course, someone hot. Sexy. Someone younger, without kids or a spouse or exes who’d get in the way. Or a family,” she said. “Someone without anyone to get freaked out. Someone who didn’t have to answer to anyone.”

And there it was one more time—envy, that nasty thing. It’s not always about what someone else has. Sometimes I guess it can be about what they don’t have.

She paused to let the words drop like stones. “Someone wild.”

I lost it. I took two steps toward her, my fists clenched, though I had no intentions of hitting her. “I’m not wild! Fuck you, Meredith, you have no idea!”

She blinked rapidly, her cheeks flushing. “I thought about you for a long, long time, Tesla, before I decided you were the right one to ask. So don’t tell me I have no idea. Because you did it, didn’t you? Without too much thought, even. I asked you to fuck my husband, and you did.”

“Because I wanted
you,
” I blurted. “But I’m sure you knew that, too, didn’t you?”

Her twisted smile said it all, but she looked at Charlie. Then at me. “And now? Don’t tell me you don’t want him, too.”

“Meredith,” Charlie warned. “Enough. You’re drunk. We’re all tired. And we have Christmas tomorrow, a long drive—”

“Oh, fuck Christmas,” Meredith spat. “Fuck the drive, fuck all of that. Fuck my stupid family, Charlie. You think I want to get out of bed at the fucking crack of dawn to get over there so my parents can give us another gift certificate to Bob’s Big Boy?”

“So we stay home then,” he said, sounding a little desperate. “We sleep in. Have Christmas with Tesla.”

Her lip curled again, and she looked straight at me. “Tesla has plans.”

“She can stay with us if she wants to change them,” Charlie said quietly. “Christmas is about being with the people you love.”

Meredith drew in a sharp, braying sigh. Her hand slapped my glass off the counter. It crashed on the floor, spraying water and glass chips. The three of us stared at the mess, and she spoke first.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie, would you listen to yourself? Would you? It was never supposed to be like this.”

Some delicate thing inside me shriveled and began to die.

“Why did you do it, then?” Glass crunched under my shoe when I stepped toward her, but Meredith didn’t move. “Why ask me to fuck Charlie? Why keep asking? Why ask me to move in with you, be a part of you? If this isn’t what you wanted, why’d you do any of it?”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “Because I was bored.”

Charlie let out a small, low moan of pain. “What?”

She looked at him. Meredith could be charming, giddy, sexy, manipulative, convincing and wickedly funny. She could be soft or hard, loud or quiet, generous or miserly.

But this was probably the first time I’d ever seen her be honest.

“I was bored, Charlie. God, I was so fucking…” her breath hitched and she closed her eyes briefly, but then opened them to look at him “…bored.”

He shook his head. “I don’t…understand. What were you bored with?”

Meredith’s eyes glittered with tears, and she swallowed hard. “You, honey. I was bored with you. Everything about you, from the way you combed your hair and wore your ties to how you took so long to make me come. I was just…I was so…bored, Charlie. I’m sorry, but I was tired of fucking you.”

“So why not leave me, then?” His throat worked. More glass crunched as he stepped back until he hit the counter. His fists clenched, though I doubt Charlie had any more intention of hitting her than I had.

She gave him a familiar, irritated look. “Because I love you, Charlie, and I don’t want to leave you. I just wanted to fuck someone else once in a while. I wanted it…so much.” She shuddered, blinking, and silver tears left trails through her makeup. “I thought if you had someone, I could have someone, too. Not forever. Not to take your place. Just once in a while. I just wanted to have some freedom. I wanted to be a little wild sometimes.”

Charlie closed his eyes, then covered them with one hand as he turned away. His shoulders twitched. Helplessly, I reached for him, but Meredith’s glare froze me in my place.

“You weren’t supposed to fall in love with her,” she said.

“But I did,” Charlie answered, without turning around. “It doesn’t mean I don’t still love you.”

I left them then. Went upstairs to the room they’d given me, but that had never really felt like mine. I knew she’d follow me, just as I knew Charlie wouldn’t.

“And what about you, Tesla?” Meredith asked from my doorway.

“I love Charlie. Yes.”

“And me?”

Silence spun out between us until finally I spoke. “Let me tell you another story.”

Chapter 39

“I
t’s time for me to go.” Vic said this from beneath the hood of some old beater he’d been pretending to work on for the past twenty minutes.

I knew he’d just been pretending because he fiddled a lot with nuts and bolts and wires, but hadn’t actually changed anything or even started the car to see how it ran with all the adjustments. He avoided looking at me. I was smart enough to see that.

It scared me.

I went there that day dressed in a short denim skirt, my best panties, a T-shirt clinging to breasts that despite my every wish had not gotten bigger over the summer. I went there prepared to lose my virginity. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, or Vic, since the week before, when we’d made out and made each other come on the couch in the back room. Thinking of it, my heart raced and my clit tingled.

But Vic was ignoring me, saying he had to go, and a tidal wave of embarrassment engulfed me. “Where are you going?”

His sigh was so loud I heard it clearly, even though he still had his head buried under the hood. Metal clanged. He pulled back and tugged a dirty hanky from the back pocket of his jeans to wipe his hands. He leaned against the car and looked at me, finally.

“It’s time for me to leave, that’s all.”