Marie Sexton - Coda 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (27 page)

He knows where I am. He knows how to find me. But he doesn’t. I love him, Jared, more than I can say. He says he loves me too, but still he let me go.

I
HAPPILY
quit my job at the accounting firm and submerged myself in my new role as Cole’s accountant. It took several meetings with Chester—and Cole hadn’t lied. He really was an arrogant, homophobic asshole. But it was also obvious that he was thorough and incredibly honest, and I had to admire him for that.

It took me a bit to brush up on personal accounting and to get a grasp on where all of his money was. There were multiple holding accounts, but only one account that he used actively. It had to have enough in it at any given moment to cover spontaneous purchases or traveling expenses, but not so much that it would be disastrous if his debit card was lost or stolen. There was an account for his mother. Her stipend was deposited into it at the first of each month, and she spent every cent. There were accounts set up for each of the housekeepers at his various homes. I realized then that they did much more than clean. They were more like property managers, and he paid them generously, although he probably didn’t even know it. They used their accounts to pay expenses on the properties as needed. One of my jobs was to make sure they had enough to cover those expenses but didn’t take advantage of the easy access to his funds.

I realized something else. He really did have
a lot
of money. He was also right when he said that it would have been unbelievably easy 218

 

for me to steal it and nobody ever would have known. Needless to say, I didn’t even consider it.

The weeks went by. There were still days when I missed him like crazy—days when the tiniest things would make me ache for him. I missed dinner together and having him laugh at me and just waking up next to him each and every morning. But there were other days when I could think of him and smile, and that pain in my chest would be almost bearable.

I missed the sex too. The two were not necessarily connected. On multiple occasions I debated visiting the bathhouse, but in the end, I never did. Somehow I felt that finding a new partner, even an anonymous one in the glory hole of a bathhouse, would be the final straw. It would be admitting defeat, accepting the fact that I had lost him forever. I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

I found that I could live vicariously through his accounts. He used his debit card for everything. Although it took a couple of days for the charges to come through, I could piece together a picture of what he was doing. I knew at all times which city he was in. I saw when he made a purchase for eight thousand dollars at a gallery in New York, and wondered what exactly he had bought. I saw when he ate at his favorite restaurant in Paris, and I wondered if he had been alone.

I knew it wasn’t necessarily healthy, but it helped me cope. It gave me a connection to him, however tenuous.

My days had no discernible rhythm. My time was my own. He had given me a freedom I hadn’t had since college, and I reveled in it. I slept late. I donated most of my suits to Goodwill, although I kept every single tie he had bought for me. I wore jeans or shorts, like a regular person. I didn’t shave every single day. Sometimes my house felt like a tomb, and I would take my laptop to the coffee shop to work. I still jogged almost every day, but rather than rising at five in the morning to beat the Arizona heat, I often waited until nine or ten at night, after the sun had set.

And finally, nearly a year after he had given me the gift certificate, I went skydiving. It was at once the most frightening and the 219

 

most exhilarating experience of my life. I wasn’t even surprised to discover that Cole was right. I longed to fly.

Six weeks after taking the job, I decided I needed to get out of the house. I took my laptop to a café near my home that offered free wireless. I ordered a Cobb salad and a glass of wine. That was another small but somehow significant sign of my new life: I could have wine with lunch. There was no office to go back to, no client to impress, nobody who could frown on me for it. I smiled as I ordered the Sauvignon Blanc, because I could picture the look on his face if I were to order Chianti.

While I waited for my food, I got online and checked his accounts. I found that two days earlier, he had booked a flight from Paris to New York. It wasn’t hard to check the flight number on the airline’s webpage. He would be arriving in New York late tomorrow afternoon. I wondered if he would spend his nights with Raul while he was there. The thought made that pain in my chest flare to life, and I pushed it away.

“We already made the reservations!” The statement caught my attention. It came from the table next to me where a young couple was having lunch together. The man was wearing a suit and had a briefcase leaning against the legs of his chair. The woman was fighting tears. It was she who had spoken. She was talking in a forceful whisper, obviously trying to keep her voice down, but unable to keep it completely under control. “We’ve been planning this trip for months!”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked her. “If I say no, they’ll give the account to Connor.”

 

“So let them!”

 

“Claire, you’re being unreasonable. This is the chance I’ve been waiting for. The chance
we’ve
been waiting for—”

“The only thing I’ve been waiting for is our anniversary!” “Maybe next year—”
“That’s what you said last year!”
“You can still go, Claire. You may as well use the tickets.” 220

“By
myself
?”

“Sure. Why not? You’ll have fun. Maybe Carrie can go with you—” His phone rang, interrupting him. Claire sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, angrily wiping the tears from her cheeks.

That stupid man actually took the call. “This is Mike.”

It reminded me of my first date with Cole, when he had walked out. I had been such an ass, so caught up in the rat race that I couldn’t even enjoy dinner. But even with my phone ringing non-stop, he had still given me his number and told me to call.

What if he hadn’t been willing to give me that second chance? What if I’d never taken it?

 

Mike was still talking. “Of course, sir. It’s not a problem at all, I assure you.”

Claire stood up, grabbed her purse, and walked out of the café. Mike didn’t follow.

And suddenly, with painful clarity, I realized what an idiot I really was. Julia had said it. My father had said it. Why it had taken me until now to realize that they were right, I didn’t know.

More than ten years earlier, in an apartment in Colorado, I had packed a bag and walked out the door, leaving my own cat behind—not because I didn’t want her, but because I was sure I wasn’t really leaving for good. I was sure Zach would beg me to come back. I waited and waited, missing him the whole time.

He never called.

My own failure to act had cost me the man I loved once already in my life. But had I learned my lesson? Apparently not. Here I was, older but no wiser, waiting for Cole to realize that he loved me as much as I loved him. Waiting for him to realize that we were meant to be. Waiting for him to call.

What if he never did?

 

221

I was unwilling to admit that we might be over. But if I waited for him to admit he was wrong or to change his wandering lifestyle, I would be waiting the rest of my life.

I made my plane reservation before I even left the café. I went straight to Julia’s house when I got home.

 

“I need you to watch my house for a while. Can you do that?” “Of course.” It had been months since I had traveled anywhere, but she still had the key. “How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going after him.”
She smiled at me. “It’s about damn time.”

T
HE
flight from Phoenix to New York was six hours long. Six hours to contemplate all the ways this could end.

Every minute was an exercise in patience. Pre-boarding made my heart pound. Finding my seat made my palms sweat. The take-off almost caused me to hyperventilate—there was no turning back now. I was given a bag of pretzels (because peanuts were no longer allowed), and a tiny shot of Sprite on the rocks. What I really needed was a Valium, but I was pretty sure the stewardess didn’t have those on her rickety little cart.

Every choice I had ever made had led me here, to this airplane. Everything I wanted in the world was at the other end of this unbelievably terrifying cross-country flight. What if it all went wrong? What if he didn’t want me?

I rented a car at the airport and headed for his home in the Hamptons. After the nerve-wracking flight, my arrival at an empty house seemed oddly anticlimactic.
222

Cole had told me his house was small for the Hamptons. It was certainly less ostentatious than many of the other homes in the area, but it was probably still worth at least a cool million. It was a nice ranchstyle home with large, open rooms and an unbelievable kitchen that had probably been remodeled to his exact specs. I was surprised to find the underwater picture from our New York visit hanging in the living room. I went in search of the bedroom, and what I found there made me smile. Even though it was summer, there was a thick comforter on the bed. And on the wall was a different photo from the same gallery—a photo of drifts of snow among leafless aspen.

In the back yard, I found a pool surrounded by a small, perfectly manicured lawn and a gorgeous array of flowers.

 

I also found the gardener.

Cole had said if I saw him, I would understand, and he was right. He was in his early twenties with deeply tanned skin and jet-black hair. He was wearing only canvas tennis shoes and a pair of incredibly short cut-off jeans. He was on his knees, pulling weeds from one of the flowerbeds. His body was strong and muscular and absolutely amazing. He looked up at me with the face of some ancient god, and I stopped short.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at me.
I tried to smile back, but failed miserably. “You must be Raul.” “You must be the boyfriend,” he said lightly.
“What makes you say that?”

His smile was open and friendly, and he shrugged and turned back to the flowers. “Let’s just say I haven’t taken care of anything but the lawn for a very long time.”

And suddenly I found that I could smile at him after all.

I was in the kitchen doing my best imitation of cooking when I heard Cole come in. I stood there, listening to him rattle around the living room, and tried to get up enough courage to face him. This was what I had come all the way to New York for. I couldn’t exactly back out now. I hoped for a minute that he would save me the effort of 223

making a decision by coming into the kitchen, but he didn’t. In fact, whatever he was doing, I couldn’t hear him anymore at all. I stepped quietly through the doorway into the living room.

His back was to me. He had already taken his shoes off and was standing barefoot, going through the stack of mail Margaret had left for him on the dresser by the door. I knew I should say something, but I found that I couldn’t make my voice work. It had only been six weeks since I had seen him last, but it felt like ages. I felt like he should have looked different somehow, but he didn’t. His clothes were the same, his hair was the same. The slender lines of his body were the same. I found myself hoping like crazy that he smelled the same too.

I wasn’t sure what to say to him, but I was dying to touch him. I took a few slow and hesitant steps toward him. On about the fourth one, the floor creaked under my foot just a bit.

“Margaret, is that you?” he asked. And then he turned and practically ran right into me.

He jumped about a foot backward and bumped into the dresser behind him. The only reason it didn’t tip over was because it was against the wall. “Good lord, Jon! You scared me out of my wits!”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. I had caught him enough off his guard that he had actually said my name, and I couldn’t help but smile. He seemed to realize it at the exact same moment, because his cheeks turned red and he turned quickly away from me.

“How in the world did you know I would be here?” he asked. “I have access to all of your accounts. I saw the charge when you booked the flight.”

“And did you find the door open, or are you perfecting your lockpicking skills?” I could hear that lilting cadence starting to creep back into his voice as he started to put his walls back in place.

“I sign Margaret’s paychecks. It wasn’t hard to convince her to let me in.”

 

He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “Why did you come?”

 

224

I stepped closer to him. He didn’t move, and when I put my hands on his arms, he tensed noticeably. I hesitated a moment, not wanting to push him too far, too fast, but I had waited so long. I couldn’t stand not to touch him. I stepped close enough that I could put my nose into his hair and smell the strawberry shampoo he used. Such a ridiculously stupid thing, but smelling it almost brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to speak. “I came to tell you that I’m not letting you run from me anymore.”

“Is that what I’ve been doing?”

 

“Yes. And I was stupid enough to let you. But not anymore. We belong together, and you know I’m right.”

 

“It’s a terrible idea, darling,” he said shakily. “Really. It will never work.”

 

“It’s not a terrible idea, and you know it. You’re just being stubborn.”

 

“You’ll get tired of me, love, and—”

“Stop!” I said, and was surprised when he actually fell silent. “Ever since we met, we’ve done things your way. I’ve always let you call the shots. But I’m not letting you destroy what we have just because you’re scared.” I felt him start to tremble then, and I wrapped my arms around him. “I—”

“Don’t say it!”

“—love you. I want to be with you. I hate being apart. I hate not being able to touch you. I hate wondering where you are and what you’re doing. And
more than anything
, I hate not knowing when you’ll finally come home.”

“I don’t like being apart, either,” he said in a shaky whisper, “but I can’t possibly stay in Phoenix, darling. Not all the time.”