Entry-Level Mistress (16 page)

From across the room, a head of long honey-blonde hair cascading over a tall modelesque body came into view. I locked eyes with Tatiana, whose expression looked somewhere between outraged and horrified. Then she was stalking across the room toward us, that expression melding into some other mask. I wondered if there was a way I could transform that concept—the various masks all these people wore for each interaction—into an art piece.

“Daniel,” Tatiana interrupted, placing herself squarely in front of us. “I’m surprised to see you here.” But she was still looking at me intently, as if searching for something.

“Always a pleasure, Tat—”

“You look familiar. Do I know you?” Tatiana interrupted, drowning out Daniel’s greeting.

I straightened as much as I could, which meant I still had to look up to Tatiana, and smiled thinly. This was a conversation between exes and not my fight.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply, since one drunken encounter did not an acquaintance make. I spied Fitzi, his yellow hair a beacon. I might have been scared to introduce myself earlier in the evening but at that moment he looked like escape.

“Excuse me, there’s someone I’d like to speak with,” I said, disengaging from Daniel. His arm tightened around me briefly, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t let me go. But then he did. I spared a brief look back at him before moving on. His dark gaze seemed to promise something dangerous, as if I’d regret abandoning him. Which was silly, because Daniel Hartmann didn’t need me to protect him against an ex-girlfriend.

•  •  •

I knew exactly when Daniel left the house. Even with hundreds of people there, with bodies pressing against mine in the crush, the room felt empty in his absence. Tatiana, however, had not gone with him and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I tied up my conversation with Fitzi, made my way through the crowd. Somewhat drunk on more than the wine, I felt wittier, smarter, prettier and more powerful. I wasn’t hiding from anyone or anything.

Leanna had suggested that I seize the moment, give this relationship a chance. That I put aside the fear.

This night, with the lulling cascade of jazz in the background, the scent of the tiki torches, night jasmine and salt air, anything seemed possible.

I walked down the wood-slatted path toward the beach, away from the brighter lights of the house. Close to the water’s edge, I shivered in the midnight ocean breeze. My father had had a house here once, a long time ago and I’d spent months here as a child. Then there was the summer that Daniel’s mother had lived with my father. I had avoided them for the most part, painted or read, hung with the few people I knew. This stretch of beach, this midsummer air, filled me with nostalgia.

I saw Daniel, his white shirt catching the thin moonlight, making him a beacon. I followed his gaze up to the sky where the stars above him winked in the night. I could make out Orion. Then the Pleiades. His future. He was Daniel Hartmann, entrepreneur, billionaire and business maverick, as
Fortune
magazine had labeled him.

I wanted to cry but I wasn’t sure why.

He looked over his shoulder, found me, and then took long strides across the beach. I slipped off my shoes, dangled them from my fingers and stepped off the path. The sand was damp and cold between my toes, but I walked forward in the inky darkness to meet him halfway.

“You’re so alive,” he said, catching my face between his hands. “Your energy, it’s inspiring. You make me want to be more but not the way I was. Not simply to fill my father’s shoes and then surpass him.”

My heart aching with the sweetness, the import of his words, I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came. He filled the silence with his kiss and suddenly I had everything to say, with my hands, my lips, my tongue and teeth. My thighs against his, hips to his. It was a new conversation, a new weight with each movement, and I fell with him to the ground, heedless of everything but the way our chests rose and fell with each ragged breath. My dress around my hips, thong discarded, I cradled him between my thighs.

It was as if the wind and the lapping water, the harsh sand and the thrust of his body into mine were all echoing silent words of love. I held onto him and, to myself, finally admitted the truth: I didn’t want this to end.

Night shifted to dawn, and we lay in bed, me curved against Daniel, one leg resting over his body.

“Emily,” he urged me awake. I shifted in his arms, wriggled, made little noises. Burrowed deeper into the space under his arm. He was warm and I was cocooned by delicious sleep. His chest tightened beneath my cheek. “Emily, wake up.”

“What’s the matter?” I forced the words—thick and drawn out—out of the depths of sleep.

“We need to talk.”

“Now?” I shifted my head slightly, pressed my lips to his bare chest and then snuggled up again.

“Emily, this isn’t working.”

All the softness of sleep turned rigid. I was awake and alarmed. The warmth of his arms became a sweltering heat around me.

“What isn’t working?”

“Us. You and me.”

What was he saying?

“Emily?”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t move. As long as I lay there, still draped across him, our bodies entwined, as long as there was no space between us, everything could be contained. Was he breaking up with me? When he had just tried to convince me to stay only two days earlier? When he’d done everything but say I love you the night before?

Oh.
Suddenly this made sense.

Maybe that had scared him as much as it scared me.

Rightfully so. After all, who fell in love with a person who should be your enemy? Who might very well
be
your enemy?

“Maybe I misunderstood something here,” I said finally. Silence met my words, as if he too were trying to figure out what I meant by that. But I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make me sound needy or desperate.

“It’s been fun, Emily, but—”

“It has been fun,” I said, cutting him off. I shifted, turning, leaning up on my arm so that I could look down at him, make out the shape of his face in the early morning light that broke through the shades. “You know, on Friday I was where you are now, I think. Scared by the fact that I actually liked the asshole that ruined my father. No, c’mon. Don’t say anything about that, unless you’re ready to have the
real
conversation. But, this weekend, sex with you was even better than it has been before. Seeing you in your element, Hartmann, is very, very hot.”

He was hot beneath my leg too and, despite the seriousness of our conversation, clearly turned on by my words. Just as I had wanted him to be.

“Frankly, I’m not really ready for that to end. I don’t expect anything from you but a good time.” I trailed my fingers across the line of his shoulder. He seemed like he wanted to speak, but also like he was enthralled with what I was saying. I had power. “I’m accepting your generous severance pay and gifts. I’m enjoying your company. But there’re no strings attached. There never could be between us.” I slanted him that actress smile, the one that made me mysterious, knowing, able to take on the world. I could almost, almost, believe my own words.

“Why not?”

I laughed at how insulted he sounded. Was he as confused as I was? Wasn’t this supposed to be the final weekend? Why was I trying to convince him that we shouldn’t end?

“I think it would hurt my father too much.” A good excuse. A truthful excuse but not one that seemed to stop my emotions from taking their own course.

He didn’t say a word and I lowered my head, found the spot of skin on his neck that I knew drove him wild and licked, nibbled. He seemed about to push me away and then he relaxed. A deep sigh escaped his mouth. His hands reached up and he held onto me, tight.

“This isn’t a game, Emily,” he said, low, as if the words were difficult to form. “I don’t want you to get too attached.”

I licked my way up his neck, to his jaw, found his mouth and pulled on his lower lip with my teeth. Then, with my thumb running over his jaw line, I met his eyes.

He still watched me cautiously. I needed to convince him.

“Not only do you not have to worry about me, baby, but you’re wrong,” I whispered. “This
is
a game.” I lowered my mouth back to his, moaned when he kissed me back. Moaned again when he lifted up, my world turning in his arms until I was on my back and he was above me, strong and in charge.

Happiness surged within me, made me buoyant and giddy. And yes—yes yes yes—I was a horrible liar. I
did
love him.

•  •  •

When we woke up several hours later, we didn’t talk about anything of importance, but there was a playful air to everything we did. Through brunch, then the ride to the airport, then even the plane ride back to Boston, we didn’t stop touching each other. I refused to think about any moment other than the present, refused to acknowledge the growing chasm within me, the spiraling up of desperation.

I made it from the car to the door of my apartment building, even smiled over my shoulder at him, waved him on to go. I made it inside into the hall and even into the elevator. Then everything was closed-in, whirring electrical sounds. The emotion hit my face from the inside, pulling me in all different directions. I started to slide down to the floor, caught myself on the wood paneling, pressed my cheek to it as I gasped for breath. My face was so hot I thought I would burn up and my chest—my chest hurt. My stomach hurt too.

The elevator jerked to a stop, bobbed and then opened. I took a deep breath before straightening and picking up my weekend bag. The hallway was so much longer, darker and dingier than I remembered. The wallpaper curled at the edges. It seemed like ages before I reached the apartment. My arms were weak and the key so heavy, so hard to fit into the lock, but I managed. Before I could turn the knob, the door opened.

“Eeeek! You’re back!” In her rolled-over sweats and ratty tank, Leanna looked so much like home that I struggled to keep it together. “How was it? OMG, come on! Sit down and dish!”

I forced a smile, let Leanna close the door behind us, and moved further into the room, dropping my bag on the floor. I leaned against the wall, closing my eyes against the burning heat.

“Emily, what happened?” Leanna’s tone changed and the note of gravity in it pulled at me. I opened my eyes, found her watching me, so concerned that that hurt too. “Emily?”

Leanna reached for me. I gasped in air and then threw myself into her arms. Which closed around me, stroking my back. Through all the years of our friendship, this had never been me. Not after the first breakup, first sex, or the video artist.

“I’m going to get drippy, crying snot all over you,” I sobbed, wanting desperately to laugh.

“Hey, hey, Em. It’s ok.”

I broke away, wiped at my face with the palms of my hands, sniffing back the tears.

“Your advice was shit, you know,” I said with a shaky laugh as I walked over to the futon.

“You broke up?”

When Leanna had taken her usual seat on the papasan and it almost felt like any other normal night, I looked over and shook my head.

“He tried to and I didn’t let him. I told him it was just a game and I wasn’t ready for it to end yet. But I think he suspects how I feel. I think it freaked him out.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, come on. That’s all you have to say? Ah?”

“So you fell in love, Em, and he didn’t fall in love with you. At least, not yet.”

“Yeah, and I’m going away in a month. It would have ended anyway. I just … ” I lay my head back on the cushion. Swallowed. Scanned the line where wall and ceiling met as if there were answers there. “What did I expect was going to happen here? In what soap-opera-inspired world did I trick myself into believing I was sleeping with him just to get revenge?”

“You didn’t really believe that, Em.”

I looked at Leanna. “I’m in love with him. And I’m begging for scraps of affection here. I’m losing myself. In him, in this world, in—” I stopped, caught my face in my hands as the heat welled up again. “I shouldn’t be doing this, should I?”

Silence met my question. I peeked at Leanna.

“I should walk away, right?”

“Listen, Em, what do I know? I’m the girl who falls in ‘love’ every three months. So maybe, maybe I do know that there is more than one person for everyone. It’s not like you won’t be in love again.” Her tone changed, grew more confident. “You have a month left here in Boston. We could have fun. You could work on your mythology project. The past is the past and it isn’t as if you suffered for not having that money.”

It was true. My life hadn’t been some horrible sob story. My father’s life however …

“He sent my dad to jail.”

“Even more reason to dump him.”

Leanna was right. And she was only echoing what I knew I needed to do. But why did it also feel wrong? Why did something so perfect as that night on the beach make everything impossible?

“He loves me.”

Even as I said it, I realized it was true.

“You’re lying to yourself now, Em, and you know it.” Only this time, I couldn’t listen to Leanna because how could I explain something I knew instinctively. I had seen him look at me.