Why Does it Taste so Sweet? (7 page)

He stood as she approached. He was wearing dark trousers and that gray linen jacket. A tie, even. He’d shaved, made some effort. Such a transformation from how he had been!

He leaned forward, hands on her arms, and kissed her cheek.

“Hi,” he said, and she nodded in return.

They sat, and an awkward silence settled around them.

“Erm... drink?” he asked.

Emily nodded. “Vodka and–”

“Slimline tonic? Slice of lime?” He laughed, then went to the bar.

This was strange. She’d never done this before. A break-up that had to be followed up with
practicalities
. Before, when boyfriends became exes, it had simply been a matter of making sure they each had the few things they might have left at the other’s place. This was far more complicated: the house, the incomes, the legal stuff. What was a fair split when she had earned more than him, and paid more than him, but now might not even have a job? Were they going to fight over every little detail?

He brought her drink and she sipped, while he sat, raised his pint and took a long draw.

“You’re looking good,” he said, his eyes flitting towards her and then away again.

Good
, not
well
.

“Look, I know this is awkward. God, I know it’s gut-wrenchingly painful, or at least it is for me. But we need to sort things out. I don’t want to be the kind of guy who drags everything out for as long as possible. You’re a good person, Emily. You deserve good things.”

Damn it, but he was doing sensitive, too. This was old, charming Thom, not the sullen, resentful man he had become. Not too long ago, this would have worked on her. Not that she even suspected him of trying to work something on her now – he was just being the decent man he could still sometimes be. But it was a natural thing he did, pressing those buttons.

It came as something of a shock to her to realize she was still susceptible.

“So how are we going to do this?” she asked.

He had a list. He’d set everything out, the assets, the debts, the commitments, the things that were in joint names and those that were in just his or hers. The house, the mortgage, the life insurance, the cars, credit cards and loans, savings.

It was only now that she wondered if he might actually be trying to pull something after all.

“It’s not going to work, Thom,” she said. “It’s over.”

She remembered what Marcia had said: Thom had spoken to Marcia, trying to convince her to talk to Emily, to persuade her. This wasn’t a sudden switch to practicality: he knew what he was doing. He was offering her everything, making it easy, showing her what a decent, charming man he could be. He
knew
he was pressing those buttons.

She looked into his eyes, and he knew, also, that she understood what he was doing.

“I’ll do anything,” he said.

How was it that he could still do this to her? Would there always be something deep inside her that would be vulnerable to his charms like this?

But those charms... no matter how sweet, they were always laced with poison.

“You tried to hit me.”

He looked down, said nothing.

Perhaps worse, he had relentlessly tried to grind her down and break her with his resentment and envy of her success. She almost told him now that she was in the process of losing her job: a parting gift to him, a final bittersweet acknowledgement that her success had only ever been transient.

“I love you.”

“I never questioned that part.”

Why was it that she was always attracted to these flawed, dangerous charmers? Now she could see it so clearly: just as Thom was a damaged man of many fragmented facets, so too was Ray.

Ray had made that transition for her, from teen crush to something very different. No longer the rock god, he was a flawed man, capable of brilliance and charm, but still fragmented and broken. He knew that: he’d said as much when he’d told her he was learning this whole thing from day to day. Trying to keep it together.

She looked now at Thom and smiled. Ironic that while Thom had succeeded in making her see his own positives, seeing him as the complete man he was, in doing so he had refined her understanding of Ray, too.

She took his list and stood. “Thanks for the list, Thom”, she said. “That’s really useful.”

Then she leaned over and kissed him tenderly on the cheek, and in that moment they both really knew that it was over.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, as she straightened.

She nodded. “I am. You?”

He shrugged. “I’ll get there.”

And then she turned and walked out of his life.

She recalled her own advice to Ray, when they’d had that brainstorming session about how he was being pulled in every different direction as he built up to relaunching his career.

Why are you doing this? Who are you doing it for?

He wasn’t doing it for the record company executives, or all the people around him. He wasn’t even doing it for the fans. He was doing it for
him
.

When he realized that it shaped everything. The whole relaunch became a stripped back thing, even the music pared back down to the raw energy and spark that had inspired him to do it in the first place.

This was her life.

Why are you doing this? Who are you doing it for?

She’d had enough of running around, chasing shadows. Of caring about what everyone else wanted and expected. She needed to do what was right for
her
.

Before, she’d been afraid of ultimatums and making demands, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need: a clear question, and a clean answer.

Stripped back.

Pared down.

This is it.

§

Are you home?

He’d said he only had a few loose ends to tidy up and then he would fly back. He should be home by now, but she hadn’t heard anything.

Had he taken her departure as a closing scene, or was he simply trying to be discreet and give her some space?

I am xx

§

He met her at the front door. He’d been watching out for her, and when her cab pulled up he was there, in the doorway of his north London house.

He looked different, but she couldn’t work out why at first.

He stood there in blue jeans, white t-shirt, arms folded protectively across his chest.

That was it: protective. Defensive. Scared.

She liked that in a man, that he was capable of understanding just when to be really scared. Knowing when it really was make or break, when there was so much at stake.

She stood one step down from him, and yet still she felt as if she was the one in the dominant position.

“You’re just a man,” she said.

He waited for her to go on, but instead she climbed the last step, and moved past him into the house. She pushed the door and went into the front room. The walls were painted white, the furniture black; an upright piano in scuffed, dark wood stood by the window. That old chestnut acoustic guitar still leaned against the far wall.

“I never claimed to be anything else,” he said, coming in to stand by the piano.

“You’re not a rock star. You’re not the delicious eye candy from all those posters I had.” He looked mock-hurt at that. “You’re not who the press say you are. You’re just a man. Full of complications and flaws and contradictions. I always thought I understood that, but, well... I think it’s only now that I really get it.”

“I’ve been trying to make you understand this all along. I try to be a good man, but I know I find it very easy to be a complete jerk. I desperately want to be the man worthy of you.”

His eyes transfixed her.

“I’m not the only one who wears a mask,” he said. “Or who has masks applied to them by others. We all do. Different masks for different situations. I see who you are, Emily. I saw through all those layers and masks right from the moment I saw you in the crowd at the Roxette. I see who you are and I love you, and all I want is for you to do that for me.”

That moment... in the crowd. The eye contact.

“The song... was that just a line you spun me? You’d already written the song: it didn’t come to you then.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t a line I was spinning,” he said. “All I told you... the song coming in a flash, knowing that it meant something special... all that was true, just in a different order. Sometimes reality just doesn’t write the story the way it should. Yes, I’d already written that song, but I didn’t understand it. When I saw you, I knew. It was your song. Our song. It all made sense then. Everything did.”

They each took a step, another, and now they stood, toes almost touching, bodies almost touching, hands hanging at their sides, as if neither had ever touched or held another person.

“Like I say...” His voice was husky, faltering. “I want to be worthy of you, but I can be a jerk. I’ve
been
a jerk. But it’s only because it matters so much. I’m scared, Emily. I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t know how to trust people. I don’t know how to be loved. It’s new ground for me, it really is.”

She reached up, put a finger to his lips to silence him. Turned her hand so that she could cup his chin, gently draw him in, down, until his lips were against hers.

Some time later she pulled slightly away and looked up into his eyes.

“I love you, Ray Sandler,” she said.

She’d never felt like this either. Never really known how to trust or how to be loved.

Not properly.

Not like this.

It was a few days later, the Sunday, when Róisín came.

Emily and Ray were out in the park behind his London home. They’d spread a picnic blanket, brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and settled in for the afternoon.

Emily was sitting, Ray lying, his head in her lap. It was a strange and simple pleasure to be able to do something like this, but this pocket of the city was somehow different, the park almost a private garden where the press would finally leave them alone.

Ray sat up, twisted and kissed her, then stood. “Just heading inside for a minute,” he said, and strolled over to the doorway through to his back yard.

Emily settled back onto her elbows and closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of the sun.

A shadow fell over her and at first Emily thought it was a cloud, but the sky had been blue. She opened her eyes and Róisín stood there, tall, angular, hands on hips as she looked down at her.

For an instant, Emily panicked, remembering Ray joking that Róisín was becoming a stalker.

Emily’s eyes darted around. There was no one nearby. The nearest people were a young family across on the other side of the grass, the father playing football with small boy and girl; a dog-walker heading away along the path that angled across the park. Pigeons and starlings scuffing in the dirt.

She remembered that slightly manic interview where Róisín had claimed to be back with Ray.

There was something Ray had said:
Don’t worry about Róisín... She likes the mischief, but she’s not dangerous
. If he had felt the need to say she was not dangerous then did that mean there was the possibility that she might be?

Then she saw the look on Róisín’s face.

It was the same expression that had stolen over Thom’s features that evening. The realization. The acceptance.

“I was wrong, wasn’t I?” said Róisín.

Emily nodded.

“He won’t always come back to me.” There was a melancholy beauty to those Dublin tones, now. “This is different. Mo said that to me. Rake did, too, after he’d met you. He tried. Rake did. Stupid. I thought Ray would come back if his old friends could remind him about all the good times...”

The good times: the drink and the drugs. The old days.

“But I was wrong. I just thought you should know that.” And then she turned to walk away. After a few paces, she paused and looked back. “Don’t break him like I did,” she said. “You hear? I’ll have your ass if you do. You take good care of him.”

And then she really did walk away.

§

Ray emerged seconds later.

He looked down at Emily, saw something in her expression and his eyes narrowed. Then he followed Emily’s gaze to the tall, skinny figure now in the distance and just about to leave the park.

“Is that...?”

He looked back at Emily.

“Is everything okay?”

She nodded, then smiled. “It is,” she said. “I really think that it is.”

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www.pollyjadams.com/about.php

Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestsellers
Winner Takes All
and
Black Widow
. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly's most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and
Wings of Desire
, the story of a young woman's relationship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.

You can find out more about PJ and her writing on
her website
, on
http://www.facebook.com/pollyjadamswriter
and on Twitter
as @PollyJAdams
.

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