Brick by Brick (27 page)

We locked the truck and trudged the few doors without talking or touching. Gage showered while I phoned Manny, using James’s cell phone, since it had his number. He was concerned about James but reassured me repeatedly. “Guys in bar brawls get their noses broken over and over. You see a doctor so it all lines up right, you’re good to go. Worst case, the top part’s flat, you get surgery, you’re good to go.” He promised to keep all the Bedwell Masonry balls in the air until James returned to do his own juggling. “Really, Natalie, I’m good to go.”

While we talked, I paced, my eyes flitting from the unwrapped birthday gifts to the denuded table where the cake had been ruined. We’d never opened the wine.

I dragged myself to the bedroom when the call was over. “Sorry that took so long.”

Gage lay in the big bed, his hair damp and his shoulders and chest bare. “I recommend the shower. After a day like this, it feels real good. Want your back washed?”

“I think I can manage.” I threw the linen dress, and after one glimpse, my panties, into the bathroom’s plastic wastebasket.

When I came out, he’d turned off the bedroom light. I made my way to the side of the bed he’d been nearest, and climbed in, feeling awkward.

“Come here, Natalie.” His arm directed my head to lie on his chest. “It’s weird, without him. It makes me miss him more, being in this bed.”

“It’s only for the one night.” Unless he needed the flat-nose surgery.

“Yeah. Listen, I’ll make love like he said, if you want to, but if you’re tired enough to sleep without it, I think I am too.”

I wasn’t surprised he didn’t want me. “I might be. Probably.” I could fake it.

“Good night, then. It’ll be better in the morning.”

The room was cool enough, this late, to snuggle. We lay like spoons. Gage smelled of salt and clean skin, the way I remembered Jamie smelling at Cape Cod. He moved an arm across my body, the hand comfortably on the lower round of one breast.

I nestled my bottom against his warm belly and upper thighs, as good a fit as it had been for my brand-new husband all those years ago. Like James’s, Gage’s pubic hair tickled in a way that faintly aroused. I lay there, moving against him minutely, seeking additional contact, for several minutes.

Gage brushed my nipple with his thumb at regular intervals. His pulse, or my breathing? It didn’t matter.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted Gage any more than he’d wanted me, but now I might. My lower lips moistened, opening fleshy and warm against his thigh. Surely he felt that. I shifted, wanting to center myself on his penis, wanting to feel it waken and harden against me, wanting it to enter me deeply in this position.

I moved his hand from my breast, reminding it how to turn and slither along my plumped lips, to glide between them, to end with a hard little buzz on my clitoris. For several minutes he did exactly what I’d taught him, as my breath grew short and I wriggled my pelvis on the mattress like a landed fish.

I couldn’t wait much longer. I urged his willing hand to guide a finger, then two, into my emptiness, to ready it to be filled with his body, to tease my pink button with his thumb when it could reach.

And I reached behind, my hand teasing and tickling his belly, lower, lower, until I found his penis.

Absolutely soft. Gage had no love to give me. He backed away, beyond my hand’s reach.

“Are you okay?”

He pulled his hand free from my stickiness and rolled over, his back to me. “What do you think? I’m in bed with a naked woman who wants me, and nothing. That seem okay to you?”

“I understand.” I did, my suspicions suddenly certain and clear. He’d slept in our bed because of Jamie, not me. I came with the package, the parsley on Gage’s plate. Superfluous. He didn’t mind it, even ate it when it seemed expected of him, but he didn’t want it.

Laying such comprehension on Gage would force him to insist it wasn’t true. I’d have to pretend to believe him and apologize for my belated clarity. Easier to duck behind the cliché. “It happens.”

He rolled to face me, so forcefully he bounced us on the bounce-proof bed. “Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. It is. But it’s all right.”

He glared at me, no doubt hating me for not being a gorgeous movie star who could excite him without the added attraction of a gorgeous brick mason. “Shit. Natalie, I’m utterly wiped out, and worried even though I know he’s all right. Want me to get you off some other way?”

“No.” The mood, the need, had vanished. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Gage rolled back toward me to kiss my cheek, draping one possessive arm across my waist this time. Our breathing slowed, and I think I was asleep when the careful lifting of that arm woke me.

“Don’t go,” I said.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Get up if you want, but don’t go to Rowan’s, is what I meant.”

“I wasn’t going to. Is it okay if I wear one of James’s robes?”

“Sure. The blue one’s clean. On the hook.”

He kissed my cheek again and left quietly.

I tried to sleep but wasn’t very close when soft kitchen sounds intruded. Dinner seemed long ago, and I knew about comfort food. Gage couldn’t cook. Maybe I should go make him some eggs.

In the bathroom, I turned on the light, winced in the brightness, peed, and glanced in the mirror as I washed my hands. Raccoon eyes; I’d been wearing makeup for Jamie’s birthday dinner at the restaurant, before everything got so awful, and it hadn’t all washed off in the shower.

I removed it and ran a brush through my damp hair. Emerging from the bathroom, belting James’s ratty robe and inhaling his smell from it, I smiled as the James scent was overwhelmed by something even sweeter.

My recipe box sat open between the flour and sugar canisters, on the counter dusted white and littered with measuring cups and spoons. In the sink mixing bowls soaked in murky water. The timer ticked loud in the night silence.

Where could he be? After a quick peek into the empty living room and James’s study, I flicked on the back light and stepped outside. The patio bricks felt icy under my bare feet. His head cradled in his arms, Gage lay on his back on the little patch of grass we planted for our nieces to play on.

For an instant I thought he’d fallen asleep after all, but he said, “Hi.”

I crouched next to him. “Hi.”

“Did you ever look at the stars and think how little you are?”

I laughed. “We’re all pretty insignificant, on the scale of the universe.”

“I’m, like, nothing, but look at all the trouble I caused. If I’d done any one thing right, one damned thing, we’d all have been here, full of cake and wine, asleep after making love, instead of James almost…” He turned his head away.

I lay down next to him. “You can say it to me, Gage.”

“No.”

I rolled to my side and propped my head on my hand. “Know what? You suck. I give you my body and then my husband, and you still don’t trust me. What do you think I’m going to do, laugh?”

Gage didn’t say anything.

“Before I called Manny, I went through the numbers on James’s cell.” I didn’t know who was an employee, who delivered brick, cement, or portable toilets, or who called about overdue invoices. “I sort of practiced in my head, how I’d say it, if things had gone the other way. ‘Hi. This is Natalie Bedwell. Mrs. James Bedwell, Bedwell Masonry? Your number’s in his cell phone, and I thought you should know that he died last night.’”

Gage looked stricken. I opened my arms, inviting him within their circle. He planted his face between my breasts.

“The bed felt so wrong without him. What if his spot was empty forever?” I said.

A series of heaving silent quakes escaped Gage, muffled by the faded robe, shaking us both until he used up his breath.

Gage pulled free of me, pushing himself into a half-sitting position. The skin around his eyes shone in pulpy shadowed lilac, his nose damply orange-pink in the yellow porch light.

Fiercely protective feelings washed over me. Gage loved James, same as me, but he was stunning, not strong. Beautiful People could be vulnerably human.

“He could have died.” Gage put his hand over his mouth before he spasmed anew, his single unreleased sob so wrenching I knew it had to hurt the muscles in his belly.

“He didn’t.” Where did this inner calm spring from? My strength surprised me. “Let it out.”

He shook his head no, but at least he didn’t lower that steel wall, locking it inside.

I pulled him to my chest again, where his warm breath filtered through James’s old robe. “He’s okay; he really is. He’ll be fine,” I murmured, stroking hair and registering the chill that came from Gage’s skin. How long had he been out here? “Tell me what scared you the worst. You’re safe. It’s only Natalie.”

Again he shook his head no, pushing my breasts with his refusal. I held him and waited. And waited. It paid off.

“I couldn’t stand it, I really couldn’t,” he said in a rush into James’s old robe. “It almost happened. It could have.” He gripped James’s tattered robe fiercely, as if the cloth could save him from falling.

All I could do was hold him while he shook and shook, silent.

A few minutes later he’d calmed to wet-sounding sniffles and tiny trembles. He pulled away, pretending to be engrossed in the back fence.

“Better?” I knew he was.

He wiped at his nose with one sleeve. “I was so scared, like the bottom dropped out of my life. I don’t know what I’d do without him. God, listen to me, how self-centered I’m being. You’ve loved him for ten years. I’ve only just started.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. James makes it easy.”

Gage’s voice dropped so low I had to lean in to hear. “So do you. You don’t believe me when I say I love you both, though, do you?”

For once I carefully weighed my words before releasing them. “I believe you want to.” There was no point in telling him how often I burned with the spiteful pettiness of a Number One Wife watching her husband court and seduce Number Two.

“But you don’t think I do.”

Should I lie or evade? It was very late and too much effort.

Luckily, he went on before I had to tell him I could stand the lopsidedness of our love triangle. “Do you think I love James?”

I nodded. Strangers seeing the three of us at the dinner table or watching TV would know who loved who. And who didn’t.

“Well, I love you just as much. Maybe more.”

How could that be? My earlier thoughts shamed me. I groped for something to say. “I had no idea.”

“That’s my fault too. Everything is.” He tipped his head, studying the stars. “At first I tried not to let it show because James might not be cool with another guy in love with his wife. Now I hide it because even I think it’s kind of sickening.” Gage trained those almond eyes on me.

“Sickening how?” Did he fantasize some perversion starring me, justified in his mind because he loved me?

“Juvenile. I walk around touching your stuff, because you touched it. How fourteen is that?”

Oh, was that all? Good. “Do you really? How cute.”

“Yeah, my love’s cute as hell.” He sighed. “You know how I like the dinosaur mug for my coffee? It’s not because I like the dinosaur mug. It’s fine, but James doesn’t like it, so you were always the last person to touch it besides me. So I go for it anytime it’s clean. And when you get up, I roll over to where you were sleeping and just soak in your warmth and smell your pillow for a minute before I get up too. It smells good.”

“Aww…” I said, the see-a-baby-animal sound. “It’s my conditioner.”

“Whatever. Remember when I went to California, that first time, and you wanted me to call? You gave me a note with the number, and ‘Call Me!’ I carry it in my wallet, and I take it out and look at it pretty often. Not because I forgot the number. It’s in my phone. That note says ‘I care.’ Not ‘James and I care,’ just you. It says ‘call me,’ not ‘call us.’”

“That’s right out of a bad romance novel. Excuse me while I rip my bodice.”

He didn’t laugh. “Don’t make fun of me for how I feel, Natalie.”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m joking because I’m uncomfortable.”

“My love makes you uncomfortable. Great.”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant at all. I’m flattered that you feel that way. But it’s irrational. Look at you! Tens fall for other tens, maybe once in a while a nine.”

“I’m not educated like you, but I’ve learned some stuff in this business. Beauty really is only skin-deep. I’ve worked with people who are so fucking gorgeous you could, like, cry. Artworks. Until you get to know them. Ugly inside, in all kinds of ways. I’m willing to be hungry, do all the skin care and gym time, for my career, but I swear I won’t be like them, not ever. Fuck ten.”

“That’s a relief for us fives and sixes.”

“Tonight, in that awful dress and all bloody, to me you were a ten. You’ll always be a ten.”

“I’m touched. No, deeply moved. Mystified too.”

“‘Mystified.’” His grin lit the shadows thrown by the porch light. “It’s weird that you don’t see it, as smart as you are. Me a ten, what a crock. I’m packaging. A Tiffany box with a polished rock inside. They could put you in some Altoids tin, but you’d still be a gem. Of course I love you. How could I not? I don’t see why everybody doesn’t.”

I felt my face heat. “That was the nicest thing to say, Gage. You’re about a lot more than packaging, to me.”

“That’s good. That’s a start. Because you don’t have to love me back, just be okay with it. Can you do that much?”

“More.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“More, huh?” He kissed me the way movie lovers kiss, first my lips, then my throat, my hair, my ears, hungrily, as if he couldn’t get enough of me.

I kissed back the same way.

I couldn’t get enough of him, but I tried to get him all.

His tumescence tented James’s blue robe. I touched him through the cloth, caressing. Loving. With one hand, he parted the opening in James’s other robe, finding me already wet. Gage stroked with skilled fingers, bringing me to needy arousal with sure strokes gentle in their nature.

I lay back on the little lawn and opened myself to him. He looked me in the eyes and said nothing as he stripped off the robe, settled his weight on me, positioned himself, then glided in as if he were coming home.