A Dress to Die For (32 page)
Read A Dress to Die For Online
Authors: Christine Demaio-Rice
“How am I not going to be upset? Laura, I can’t do this without you.”
She had no answer for that, except that he was going to have to. She didn’t want to say anything that harsh, because she’d hurt him. As much as she didn’t want to, she’d really hurt him. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. I’m so sorry. But you’re my first boss. My first boyfriend. My first and only, and I can’t grow like that. It’s not right.”
He raised his chin and closed his eyes. The line of neck to jaw wanted her lips on it, but she couldn’t. Not when she’d just cut him out of a part of her life.
“I knew it,” he said. “The minute you told me he offered you a contract, I knew you’d take it. But I didn’t believe it.” He stacked his papers. “I can’t even explain that to myself.”
“Don’t let this break us up,” she whispered. His anger had never been directed at her, and she was scared he’d shut her out.
“Break us up? Why? We can go for dinner once a month. Go on ‘dates’ at nice restaurants.”
“Stop it.”
“Maybe a carriage ride around Central Park.”
“Shut up.”
“When a carnival comes in, we can share a cotton candy, and I’ll win you a stuffed animal.”
“Shut up! You’re being an asshole.”
“We work eighty-hour weeks!” he shouted back, upping the volume a few notches. “What do you think we’re going to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Great, Laura. That’s just great. Hey, how about the next time you come in here with some life-changing shit, you think it through?”
“I did think it through. I can’t live in your shadow forever.”
She thought she saw a touch of softness in his face, or maybe she was imagining it. Maybe the resignation in his eyes wasn’t acceptance of what she was saying, and maybe the dropped shoulders weren’t a release of anger but a letting go of love. It seemed like this change of posture took fifteen or twenty minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
“You’re not wearing shoes, Laura.”
“It’s a long story.”
He didn’t take his eyes off her feet. He just stood there with a bunch of papers in one hand while his other hand rubbed his scissor callus. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You could throw me on the bed and make me scream for hours?”
He laughed. It was a short one and more a release of tension than delight, but he smiled, which was what she wanted, because if he was too angry to laugh at her jokes, they really were finished. But then, as if reading her own smile, he got serious and shook his head slightly, as though he was denying her power over him.
“We can’t do it like this. We’re not normal.” He threw down his papers and snapped her ball of keys from the counter. He flipped them around, found what he was looking for, and twisted a set of keys around their ring. “This is a mistake. Big fucking mistake.”
Obviously, he was taking his keys back, because in the realm of grand gestures, Jeremy was the king, and it would never be just a breakup but the retrieval of a symbol of their intimacy. If he wanted her to cry, yanking her key ring apart would get the job done. One, because she did love him, and it looked as though they wouldn’t survive a job change. Two, which was worse, it appeared as if he was doing her a favor by breaking up with her, just like Ruby had said. She’d fallen in love with the wrong man. She loathed herself more deeply than she imagined possible.
He tossed what was left of her key chain, and she caught it midair. He clutched the keys he’d taken back, leaving a little bit of the pink rabbit’s foot sticking out from between his fingers.
“No, Jeremy. Those are my Brooklyn keys.” She held her hand out for them.
He held up the keys and closed his eyes. “These are for when you want to visit your family. Or when Ruby loses her keys. I can’t…” He stopped himself. “You know you make me crazy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s too soon. I don’t need a calendar to tell me. But if I’m not going to see you in the halls or in the conference room, or in our little corner, I need to see you in the morning. I need to feel you crawl under the sheets with me. I want your shoes next to mine. I want you here every night.”
She took a step closer, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. He wound himself around her. “I want the big closet,” she said.
He put his hand on her cheek. “No way you’re putting Barry’s crap in the bedroom closet.”
His face was so close to hers she could feel his breath on her lips. The fight had left her raw at the edges and open to his affection. She wanted him with every cell in her body.
“Tell me you love me,” she said.
“I love you, Laura. I have always loved you.”
They kissed by that barstool for a long time, their hands running over each other’s bodies as if for the first time. They smoothed out the rough edges between them, dulled the sharp points, warmed each other where they were cold, and with every touch, kneaded the fear and anger of their changed relationship.
THE END
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