A Step to Nowhere (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

It happens frequently. You dream about something, but your dreams aren’t realized; you get disappointed and think it will never ensue, but you color your life with your dreams, separating yourself from everyday life. You confuse genuine and make-believe, supporting your mind with thoughts of a different realm so you won’t turn into a gray mass, waiting for the end of the road. Then, suddenly, your dreams become real. You don’t wait anymore, you don’t believe, but a roulette wheel of destiny picks up your lucky number. Then,
yes
. Everything changes in a moment.

We reached the building in twenty minutes despite of the traffic. All the way there I was quiet. I nodded, smiled and squeezed the wheel, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t a dream. He really was beside me. More than that: we didn’t argue, didn’t look at each other like two angry wolves. We talked politely (he did), driving together to somebody’s apartment to drink coffee. Yes. Right. Coffee. We used to drink lots of coffee together. At meetings, in the morning, or at lunch. But we had never happened to be alone with each other when doing it, and never outside the office.

We took an elevator up and while riding to the tenth floor we didn’t talk at all. We stood facing the doors; he was by the left wall, I was by the right, as if we were afraid to touch each other. Ray didn’t insert the key into the lock right away. He slid it back and forth on the metal circle and smiled. He looked ambivalent;
Ray.
This was something new.

“Where’s a bathroom?” I asked as soon as we entered. “Mascara emergency,” I added when he hesitated for a second.

Ray pointed the direction and I locked myself in the room with my bag, stepping in front of the mirror.

As I expected, mascara was under my eyes.

“Congratulations. He hasn’t seen you in five years and here you are with raccoon eyes.”

No wonder he kept staring at me and I forgot about the problem. Damn.

“You look even prettier,” he’d said. Sure; a real beauty queen. I wetted a hand towel and wiped off the black circles. Then I found mascara in my cosmetic bag and freshened my makeup. I fished out the brush, and while brushing my hair I thought that I needed to get highlights as Aisha had suggested. Five years ago I was light blond and a year ago I had returned to my natural color which was dark with a shade of red. Great timing. What if he didn’t like it? Did he like it before? What was his favorite hair color? I had no idea what he liked or what he thought. I had to relax. I leaned on the sink and stared into the eyes of my reflection. Fearful eyes. I looked like a scared rabbit. That was what they looked like?
Anyway, it’s too late for shaking. Act naturally. There is no past between the two of you, only the present, and this time hold it with both hands and don’t do anything stupid. Understand? You will not do anything
stupid
, don’t even think about it.

“Act naturally.”

While I fought my fear and tried to calm down, Ray had made coffee with liqueur. When I left the bathroom he was already sitting on the blue couch, tasting the drink. There was a white cup on the table for me. I wanted only liqueur; wine would have been even better, but coffee would have to do.

We had spent a few good minutes on meaningless questions about our whereabouts and complimenting each other on great looks. I had known what was going on in his life. Some things I had found on the Internet, some things from conversations with my friend Leslie. Unlike me, she was dedicated to Ray and continued working with him. When I joined the company they had been shooting one show, now there were seven. I had returned to New York because of my mom’s illness and started to work as a correspondent on a local news channel, sometimes freelancing for magazines. I was promoted to an editor in one of them and it had been my main job recently. My new boss hadn’t become a subject of my sexual dreams and that was pretty much okay with me. It was much easier to work when you didn’t think about your boss’s firm ass or didn’t try to imagine what his kiss was like. Three years with Ray had been downright torture. Torture I had arranged for myself.

Now, the two of us were sitting on the couch, knowing that no one would interrupt. Realizing that we weren’t tied anymore by a working relationship. We talked, but it seemed we didn’t listen. We were approaching a critical moment, delaying it, afraid to say or do something wrong. Finally, he said what I was waiting for, was hoping for, and was afraid of.

“I’ve thought about you all this time.”

I didn’t answer at once, swirled leftover coffee in the cup and tried to calm down my madly beating heart. I hoped the jolt, which was growing somewhere in the middle of my stomach, was not going to reflect on my face or come out in the form of steam from my ears. This silly thought began to calm my brain, which was muddled by happiness, and I could look into Ray’s eyes. His gaze was upon me. Every time I had looked at him five years ago I went hot as I did now and I needed a cold shower. I needed a cold shower right now if I didn’t want to become a heap of ashes. Or maybe not, today.

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows in affected surprise. Was it actually affected? Did I really believe he had remembered me? Did I believe that he sometimes remembered my name when I had been thinking about him every night? Every morning I woke up with a nagging longing in my heart. Nothing could be changed, nothing could be turned back. Why had I been so indecisive? Why had he talked so indefinitely?

“If only you had known how many times I regretted not taking that first step. Something I couldn’t overcome, myself.”

I frowned. He probably thought I didn’t understand what he was saying. I understood, but couldn’t believe it. He voiced my dreams. I pinched myself without him noticing, and convinced myself that I wasn’t sleeping.

“I know,” he continued, “I acted like a fifteen year old. A very cocky fifteen year old I’ll admit. Nothing changed because of it. It was all so absurd; our relationship. You moved away … I let you go.”

“What do you…?”

He interrupted me, nodding his head.

“I know what you want to say. I’ve never told you what I felt. I made some silly hints you couldn’t take seriously. Right?”

I wanted … I wanted to take it seriously.

“I’ve dated other women which you knew about. I didn’t feel toward those other women anything close to what I felt toward you. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t understand my feelings. You didn’t pay attention to me; you flirted with other guys. With me you would just exchange a couple of sentences. I was afraid you would reject me. At that time I wasn’t a person who could accept the word
no
easily. I didn’t want to do something when I wasn’t sure about the result. You can understand that. Everything’s different now.”

I listened to him, but everything seemed foggy. His words hit my mind indistinctly and it refused to grasp them. It was
I
who was afraid back then. It was
he
who didn’t pay attention to me, and I did everything to camouflage my feelings. I was afraid he would laugh at me. He was so handsome, so popular among the women, so uninterested in me. Well, to be honest, he was interested. To a certain extent. I thought I was pretty attractive, enough to arouse a sexual desire. He caught the wave and tried to bring this idea to my head in tiny hints. Only sex wasn’t enough for me; I wanted more. I didn’t want a simple relationship with him. I didn’t want that.
Then.
After I said goodbye to him, after I looked into his eyes that last time, I didn’t care.
Five years later,
I still didn’t care. I just wanted to know how it
could
be.

“I was too proud,” he said. “I didn’t take rejections easily. Especially from those … from the
one
I had real feelings for. All this time I couldn’t forgive myself. I even got married because the woman looked like you.”

My God, what is he talking about?

“I hoped to meet you and change everything, but I didn’t believe I would. Today, when I saw … I don’t know if you can understand me. I told myself that I would not let you go. It didn’t matter if you were married and had kids. I’m telling you now … you can do whatever you want, but I won’t let you go.”

He said everything I wanted to hear and more. I didn’t believe it really, I didn’t understand how both of us could lie to each other and to ourselves. We had been living five years in different cities, tied to each other with invisible threads, and didn’t realize it. How did it happen? How could people be so stupid and bat-eyed?

“I’m going to tell you the whole truth,” Ray continued, and I wanted him to stop at this point. Too much, too fast, I could get scared again and run away. “I came here to find you. I know where you work and …”

He finally stopped.

“Is that true?” My lips could barely move.

He slid closer to me. So close that I smelled his shampoo. More closely than ever before. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach and crashed there into hundreds of boiling fragments. Even before he touched my cheek with his finger I gave myself to him completely and without reservation. All my essence intertwined with his. He ran his hand through my hair and kept his gaze on my eyes. It wasn’t a dream. I could barely suppress a moan when his lips touched mine. It wasn’t a moan of pleasure, even though that was there too. It was a moan of fantasy turning into reality. There had been no one in my life I wanted more than him. Never in my life had I felt my consciousness turning off after the first kiss. A kiss I had been waiting awaiting for so many years.

CHAPTER 3

I didn’t stay for the night even though he had asked. I just couldn’t. I needed to think over the event consciously; I had to make decisions. I went over our conversations, remembered sex, again conversation, again and again. My heart was beating in my throat; I was hot. Sex. Did we really have sex? He and I? My body still felt the touch of his hands, the taste of his lips. I didn’t think it would ever happen; I didn’t think there would be any level of intimacy between us. Only in my dreams, in my fantasies, I had found myself in his embrace. I wanted him to feel the same, but I didn’t know he had. We had been fools. All this time we could have been together. He wouldn’t have gone through a soul-crushing marriage, I …

“Oh, my gosh; Jason!”

I hadn’t even thought about him. Only now, with the thought of the guy who had been waiting for my call, I came back to reality and realized that it was still raining outside, I was behind the wheel of the car, and it was miracle I hadn’t gotten into an accident. Jason.
Oh, I’m horrible!

I dug in my bag with my right hand, holding the wheel with my left, pulled out my cell phone that I had turned off in the bathroom of Ray’s friend’s house, and checked the voicemail. He had called once. He asked when I was going to be home and if he should come tonight or tomorrow.

I didn’t want to call back, didn’t want to ruin the vacuum of euphoria I was in. Yes, I was madly in love, but it didn’t erase my responsibility for another person’s feelings. I lied to myself, I lied to Jason. Of course I had never told him that I loved him. He was angry about that; he slammed the door leaving, but he always came back. He was a good guy: responsible, kind, and no doubt he was in love with me. He didn’t hide his feelings and I tuned in on his wave; I followed him, and sometimes I believed that I loved him too. I even weighed an option to marry him. He talked about it multiple times. I hadn’t answered, ignored his hints, but I was sure that one day I would be ready to tell him “yes”. I had heard so many times that in a marriage, one person always loved more than the other. I had even heard an opinion that families where a man loved a woman more were the happiest and the strongest. Of course I had heard a lot of versions that had been completely opposite to these. Probably some people owned recipes for happy marriages; I just wanted to forget. I wanted to stop dreaming and live for today, without looking back.

What was going to happen now?

I sighed and forced myself dial Jason’s number.

“Hi, babe! How are you?”

“I’m driving back from work.” My voice didn’t tremble. I was a bad, bad girl. I didn’t even know I was that bad.

“Wow! It’s late. Tired?”

“A little.”

“I can come over and massage your back.” His voice became intimate.

“I’m afraid I’d fall asleep before you could even lock the door of your apartment. Tomorrow I have to wake up early again. Deadline you know.” At least I didn’t have to lie here.

There was a sigh in the phone.

“Sorry,” I said. I felt like scum, but I couldn’t see him now, I didn’t have the right. I didn’t have a right to tell him the truth now either.

“See you on the weekend then.”

“Yes,” I said, planning to meet him for sure. I didn’t know that somebody else was planning my days for me. I didn’t have a right to not meet him, to not explain. He deserved that much; it was due a long time ago. “See you Saturday.”

“Drive carefully, babe. It’s raining like crazy.”

“Sure.”

I turned the phone off and threw it in the opened bag.

I’m such a bitch.

How could I do this to the person who loved me? Maybe it was better than lying to him for the rest of our lives. He could find another woman. One who would be sincere in her feelings toward him. He was a great person; he deserved to be treated fairly. On the other hand … Ray hadn’t promised anything. What if
he
was lying?

No, he wasn’t. His every word was permeated with the painful truth. He had lived through what he told me. He needed me.

I remembered the day when I saw him for the first time. I had come to apply for a job. He held a second and last interview with me. As soon as I had entered the office, as soon as I had seen his brown eyes and open smile, I wanted him. Yes, it was primal, animal instinct. Some would say that it was immoral to think like that. Well, what could I do? That was the truth. At that moment Ray seemed to be perfect. Power, confidence, and intellect had been radiating from him before he started to talk. At my previous job I’d had an unpleasant encounter with my co-worker and that was why I quit. So I didn’t show any emotions to Ray in any way. Work and personal relationships didn’t fit together. I had ignored any interest from him to me. It came in the form of invitations to restaurants to “talk business”, flowers for successful projects, and compliments of course, in regards to my excellent performance. After about two months of my working in his company, he had invited me to his house to discuss a new project.

“We can discuss it here,” I said without hesitation.

He looked at me for a few seconds before agreeing that it was a good idea. Then I found out from one of my co-workers that Ray was dating a woman in our building, but from a different company. A week or two later I had learned that he was a dog who had managed to date a good part of the women working in the building. I didn’t know if it was the truth or not, but I didn’t plan to clear it up. I had known one thing for sure; I was not going to be another name on the list, I wasn’t going to be
one of them
. So, I had forgotten about my bad experience at the previous job and started talking with other guys more. I dated one of them. Well, it was a
two date
adventure, but still, I could switch my attention from my new boss to somebody else for a while. In spite of that, my attraction to Ray became obsession in a short period of time. I had to see him constantly. I just wanted to see him, that’s all. Feel his energy. I noticed everything he would do or say. I also noticed his glances in my direction when my dialogs with some guys went beyond work issues. I thought he didn’t like it. It seemed he was jealous. But, it was probably because I just
wanted
him to feel that. How could I know what was going on in his head? I couldn’t read his mind.

One day we stayed in the office late, just the two of us. It wasn’t planned, but pure accident; I thought at first. The time was hectic, before Christmas, and I rushed to finish an episode for the show before the holidays. Everyone had left, including Ray. Then he returned because he had forgotten his phone. The building was quiet and I almost peed in my pants from fear when he soundlessly entered the office. It was a cold winter in Chicago and he had been wearing a long black coat, a gray scarf around his neck; his hair was disheveled.

“You spooked me!” I said.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, stopping by the door.

“Having fun. You?”

Relationships in our company weren’t typical employer—employee. He let himself go on one level with us to a certain extent and then became authoritative if somebody didn’t take him seriously, for example because of his age. He was younger than half of us.

“I forgot my phone,” he said, searching the tables.

“Did you check your office?”

“You think I’m an idiot?”

“I wouldn’t dare Mr. Boss.”

I picked up my phone, dialed his number, and ringing came from the couch in a coffee area. Yes, our boss was stealing our coffee, what a jerk. He would come here from his office, sit on the couch, and ask for coffee because he was tired. Because he wanted us to take care of him. Our team was small, young and creative. The rules that applied to big firms didn’t go well with us. The atmosphere in our company was often informal and friendly. If everyone did their job Ray was fine with it and joined us happily.

Now he went to the couch, grabbed his phone, and sat down.

“If you’re going to breathe down my neck I’ll never finish,” I said, pointing to the computer.

“It’s dark outside, the building’s empty. As a responsible person I must make sure that you have gotten to your car safely.”

“I don’t remember any criminal attacks in our building.”

“They keep it a secret to avoid panic.”

“I should have guessed.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Let’s order pizza.”

“Why? You want to poison me?”

“It’s almost Christmas; I’m kind … I can poison you later.”

I rolled my eyes. I was actually very hungry and there was still about two hours of work.”

“You can order it.” I shrugged.

He called “Pizza Hut” and went downstairs to await delivery while I was working. No outsiders were allowed in the building after certain hours.

I couldn’t work while I was waiting for him. My hands were sweating, there was banging in my ears. I remembered a short episode from a couple of hours ago and realized that he had left his phone deliberately.
He’s such a scumbag
, I thought.
He thinks I’m going to give in. I’m probably the only one on his list not checked. Well, his effort will be in vain. Smile, brown eyes, long eyelashes, charisma, who cares? I’m not easy. I’m not the others
.

When he entered the office with the box of pizza and a smile, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t smile back due to the tension.

“Are you okay?” Ray stopped in the middle of the room.

“Yeah; I’m tired. You dropped so much work on me and dare to ask?”

“Let’s go eat, then.”

I went as a cow to a slaughter. It wasn’t the best comparison, but that was how I felt. Like I didn’t have a choice and gave myself up to a butcher. I sat down on the couch and ordered myself to not notice the smell of his cologne that drove me crazy and turned my extremities into jelly.

Ray opened the box.

“It’s hot.”

I nodded, stared at the pizza, but noticed his every gesture. Everything inside me was burning. I wanted so much for him to turn me to him, kiss me, break me, deprive me of the opportunity to resist.

“Sam?”

“Yes,” my gaze was in the box, but I didn’t see anything. In a daze, I waited for his hands, his touch.

“You know what I think about you, right?”

“Sure.” A smirk. “You hate me.”

He smiled. Raised his hand. Put a lock of my hair behind my ear. Casual gesture. Not enough to file a sexual harassment suit. My back turned to metal. God, I wanted him so much at that moment. Then I remembered a girl … well, a young woman in our company. I remembered her looking at him like a silly hen. I remembered talk, gossip; something about Ray dating her, but he didn’t want a serious relationship. Something like that. She couldn’t let him go. She made scenes, making a fool of herself. No. That was not going to happen to me. I would not let anyone turn me into an idiot or manipulate me. I would not let anyone make me fall in love.

I fell against the back of the couch and grabbed a piece of pizza.

“So hungry,” I said, biting into it.

I noticed disappointment on his face, but it disappeared momentarily. The pain in my chest from extinguished desire was titanic; I almost moaned. Only, I smiled. And ate pizza. We both ate and talked about anything else, but not us.

Yes, I was such an idiot five years ago. I was twenty four.

I parked and went to my apartment on autopilot. I was surprised to discover myself in my bedroom. I thought this night I was going to suffer from insomnia, but as soon as I got into bed I had fallen asleep. I fell asleep, to be awakened in the morning by a phone call.