J: In a meeting. Thinking of you. I’ll call you back soon, OK?
She wanted to kick herself for having been so needy, for having bothered him during the day.
Somewhere in this gigantic beast of a city was Jack, sleeves rolled up, chin down, focused on running his multimillion-dollar business. Meanwhile, she had nothing to do but stare at everyone else, and hope that someone, somewhere would need her.
* * *
“Take ten and then we’ll go through the scene one more time,” Davis said to the trio of actors on stage at the Belasco Theater on Forty-Fourth. After an hour of wandering, she’d found her way here and was waiting for her brother in the back of the Broadway theater where he rehearsed the play he was directing. As the actors walked off stage, he joined her in the seats.
Row P. Seats 101 and 102.
He ran a hand gently across her shoulder, then asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Should I take the job in Paris?” she blurted out.
He didn’t need details. He didn’t ask for them. He had his answer. “Yes.”
“But wouldn’t I just be running away, then?”
“You need a breather, Michelle. You need time and space to recover from this. Go to Paris, take the job, and let this all blow over.”
“I’ll miss him,” she said softly.
“I know,” he said, his voice soft and kind too. “But you spend your whole life taking care of people, and it’s what you love. You’ll be unhappy without it.”
She flashed back to how she’d felt in Paris. On stage. Delivering the keynote. Talking to her colleagues. She had been energized, alive, and firing on all cylinders. Here, without her anchor of work, she was drifting.
They talked more, and soon Davis gestured to the stage. “I need to get back to work. But join me later. Jill’s back in town. We’re all going to meet for drinks.”
“Sounds good,” she said, and as her brother rejoined the cast at the edge of the stage, she returned to a blank day, knowing as hard as it was, and as much as she’d miss Jack, she really ought to say yes to the job in France.
Work had made her happy. Work was her solid, steady, constant. It had never let her down.
* * *
When Jack came over that evening to get ready for his charity event, she didn’t know how to tell him she was thinking of leaving. That she’d been offered a job that might have her flying across the ocean in two weeks time. For a woman who trafficked in words, she was floundering with the right ones to say to him. Instead, she focused on the present. She buttoned up his white shirt, tied his bow tie, and helped him slip on his jacket.
“You look so good in a tux,” she said, her heart aching because he was so damn handsome, and she’d miss seeing him every day and every night.
“I would look better if you were by my side, but I understand you’re not ready,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her in for a kiss. She wasn’t ready to be his date at the gala, not by a longshot. She wasn’t even sure when she’d be ready to have dinner again in a restaurant with him. He didn’t seem to mind, though. He understood the wound was still raw, and that it would take a long time to heal.
“Come over when you’re done,” she said when they broke the kiss. Perhaps, she could break the news then.
“I love that you invited me.”
“You’re always invited. You’re always welcome,” she said, even though always was being compressed into two more weeks.
“I’ll always want to be with you.”
“Always is a very long time.”
He looked at his watch. “I don’t have to be there for thirty minutes.”
She rolled her eyes, glad to be playful. “You just got dressed in your tux.”
“I’m a very fast dresser,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her to the couch onto his lap. He brushed her hair behind her ear, and leaned in to whisper, “Undress me.”
“Jack,” she said, as if she were chiding him.
He shook his head. “No ifs, ands, or buts. If I can’t have you by my side tonight, I want to make love to you now. And again later. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. We’re together now.”
“I know,” she said, swallowing back the tears that threatened her. They were together now. But what would happen to being together when she left? For now, though, for this second, she wanted the same thing. She did as he asked, stripping him, then herself, before she sank onto him.
He made the sexiest groan as he filled her, and she nearly cried because it felt so good. Because it felt beyond wonderful. She gripped his shoulders and pulled him on top of her as she lay back on the couch, wanting to take him as deep as she could.
She ran her hands along his strong back, memorizing the feel of his skin, his muscles, him.
“See?” he said on a slow and easy thrust that had her gasping. “There’s always time for this.”
“Always,” she echoed, squeezing her eyes shut, letting the sensations carry her away from the possibility of this ending. Of this being one of their last times together. She had so much to say, so much to tell him about all that she felt for him, but she could barely speak. She could only feel.
She catalogued the sensations. His bare skin so hot against hers. The sheen of sweat between their bodies. The closeness, the unbelievable closeness, as she wrapped her legs around his hips, inviting him deeper into her. She grappled at his shoulders, digging her nails in. He rocked his hips against her, moving inside her, the delicious friction and the sounds he made sending her close to the brink.
He made love to her passionately, possessively, in a way that blotted out everything but him, her and them.
“Michelle. My Michelle,” he whispered reverently against her collarbone, brushing sweet and sinful kisses along the column of her neck.
The sound of his voice saying her name did her in. It set off the chain reaction of tears rolling down her cheeks, and ecstasy racing through her body. Tears and anguish all at once, in her body, in her mind. It was bittersweet, but she didn’t want the bitter. She’d had enough bitter.
As she came down from the high of her orgasm, he held her face in his hands and lightly brushed her lips with his own.
“Have I told you today how much I love you?”
Since that day in the gardens he hadn’t been able to stop saying it. Even through the mud and the muck and the dirt, he’d kept saying those words. Showing her how he felt. Being the man she wanted, and the man she needed.