Mid Life Love (4 page)

“Jonathan, what
if I told you that I’ve been looking for a student with your potential to help
me out on a new computer that I’m developing?” The professor caught my
attention. “A computer that would change everything?”

“I would say I
don’t believe you. Then I would say I hope it’s not one of the computers that I
saw today.”

“Fair enough.”
He chuckled. “Well, what if I said I wanted to help you?”

Ha!
“No thanks. I’ve
had enough
help
to last me a lifetime.” I took my speech from his hands,
stood up, and headed for the door.

Before I could
turn the knob, he jumped in front of me. “I have a one year assistance
scholarship that I can award to any student. It’s supposed to be for graduate
level students only, but if your background checks out...It’ll cover one year of
tuition and a small part of your room and board. You would still have to find a
job or two to cover the rest, but I honestly think you would make an excellent
student and an even better developer one day. And, if you work hard enough
during your first year, I could convince the academic committee to consider you
for other scholarships.”

What?

“I’ll do a
background check on you tonight.” He adjusted his glasses. “If you are who you
say you are and you agree to work with me on this project, you’ve got free
classes at Harvard and a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a national
project. What’s your phone number so I can—”

“You think I
have a
cell phone
?”

“I’m sorry...” He
looked me over, probably noticing that I was still soaking wet and carrying a
dingy and holey backpack. “I just assumed that you...Where were you planning on
sleeping tonight?”

I didn’t answer
him. I just looked around the classroom. I figured that since my next bus
wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow that I’d hide out in the building and sleep
underneath a staircase once the janitors were done cleaning.

“My name’s Mr.
Lowell, Jonathan.” He walked over to his desk and grabbed his briefcase. “If
you don’t have any prior obligations,
Mrs.
Lowell is making pasta
tonight and we have a guest room you can use for a few days while we sort this
thing out.”

I looked away
from Mr. Lowell and shook my head. I was ashamed of myself. I’d broken every
rule of living on the run in a matter of minutes: I wasn’t supposed to talk to
anyone. I wasn’t supposed to trust anyone. I was supposed to keep to myself
until I arrived in New York—until I stormed into IBM headquarters and forced
them to listen to my ideas. Yet, there was sincerity in this man’s eyes, and a
national project with access to the best technology in the world was too
tempting to pass up.

For an entire
year, I used every free minute I had to work on Mr. Lowell’s project. In
between soaring through my classes and working three jobs to cover the
expensive dorm and food costs, I managed to help him earn a seven hundred
thousand dollar grant to build more of his impressive L-tech laptop.

Right after he
was officially awarded the money, he handed me an envelope that contained a
twenty thousand dollar check, saying that it would help me pay the remaining part
of my sophomore year’s tuition.

I was about to
run to the bank and cash it immediately, but he snatched it back.

“You know what,
Jonathan? You’re better than this.” He shook his head. “Tell you what, instead
of this check, I’m going to give you something even better.”

“A
bigger
check?”

“Funny.” He
snorted. “I’m going to be the first investor in your company. I’ll even host a
dinner with my wife to get you other investors this weekend. I don’t think you
need to waste any more time taking classes with people who aren’t as smart as
you. You need to drop out and start working on your own company. I’ll help you
in any way that I can for the first year.”

“What are you
talking about? I don’t have a company, Mr. Lowell...”

And I want my
check back!

“Statham Inc.?
Statham Enterprises? Statham
Industries
! It has a nice ring to it, don’t
you think?” He slid my award check into his briefcase and picked it up. “Trust
me, in five years, you’ll have the amount of this check times a hundred. As of
now, it’ll just be my consulting fee.” He patted my shoulder and walked out of
the room.

C
laire

Today was one of
those days when I honestly felt like I’d wasted the best years of my life. I’d
spent all morning watching the Lifetime channel, going through old photo
albums, and listening to one of my other San Fran friends—Helen, talk about how
she’d been nominated for “Lawyer of the Year.”

She went on and
on about how the ceremony was going to be in Vegas, how they’d booked a
celebrity for a guest speaker, and how she just couldn’t wait to lounge in a
rooftop pool; all the nominees were entitled to the five star treatment, which
included having their own penthouse suite. 

Although I was
extremely happy for her, I was also slightly jealous. Helen was thirty nine
years old too, but unlike me, she seemed to have it all together: She had her
own law firm, traveled somewhere new and exciting every month, and the stories
she told me about her sex life made me wish I’d had more experience before tying
myself down to Ryan.

As a matter of
fact, anytime Helen, Sandra, and I had a ‘girls’ night,’ she always overwhelmed
us with salacious stories about her newest lover. At first, I thought she was
just doing it to brag, but after a while I realized that she was doing me a
favor. She was making me see how pathetic my nonexistent sex life was, trying
to help me get in tune with something called an “inner goddess.”

But, since I
refused to date, I relied on vibrating friends to get the job done: They were
effective, easy, and I didn’t have to worry about them cheating on me.

Once I was off
the phone with Helen, I decided to do some work. I started looking over my
associates’ latest slogan submissions and proposed ad ideas. I read through
three of them and shut the folder, making an immediate break for my car.

I’m going to
need some serious wine to get through this today...

I rushed over to
the grocery store and made my way to the magazine section. I figured I would
buy yet
another
set of magazines to show my associates the difference
between good advertisements and bad advertisements.

I picked up
InStyle
,
Vogue
,
Us Weekly
, and stilled once I caught a magazine with
“Divorce Edition” scrawled across its cover.

I picked it up
and flipped through the pages, shaking my head at the stupid advice the
so-called “experienced divorcées” were giving: “Forgive him and let it go!
That’s the easy part!” “Try to schedule time for yourself to cry in private!”
“Travel alone and see the world as soon as the ink on the papers dries!”

Any woman who
was cheated on and says her self-esteem wasn’t crushed is a goddamn liar...

I stopped
reading the “How I Kept My Esteem Intact After the Affair” article and
sauntered down the spices aisle.

Pepper...Bay
leaves...Parsley...Paprika...Paprika? Ryan’s favorite...

I picked up the
paprika and froze. I was supposed to brush the thought of him away as soon as
he entered my mind. I was supposed to say, “The collapse of my marriage was not
my fault,” take a deep breath, and move on to doing something else.

That didn’t work
today.

I felt a soft
lump rise up my throat and choked back a sob. I closed my eyes and tried to
think of a happy memory, but only the worst one came...

––––––––

I
was trembling,
shaking so violently I wasn’t sure how I was standing up straight. I was in my
kitchen, staring at Ryan, watching him pick up the incriminating photos off the
floor.

“Claire...” He
picked up the last one and sighed. “Can we please talk about this?”

“About what?” I
hissed.

“About what
you...about me having an affair.”

“Oh yes! My
husband fucking my best friend! For over
a year
! Let’s discuss that,
shall we?”

“You don’t have
to be so loud, Claire. I’m trying to—”

“I can be as
loud as I want! You’re having an affair with
Amanda
! She was my maid of
honor for Christ’s sake! I don’t even know where to start, Ryan! How could
you?”

“Our daughters
are upstairs. We—”

“Our daughters?
Our
daughters
! Don’t try to act like you suddenly give a damn about this
family! You weren’t thinking about any of us when your dick was buried in—”

“Enough!” He
began to cry and walked over to me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...I messed up and—”

“You
messed
up
?” I felt my heart constrict.

“Yes...I messed up
and I’m—”

“Ryan...” I put my
hand over my chest to prevent my heart from jumping out. “Messing up is picking
the girls up late from school. Messing up is leaving the chicken in the oven
for too long. Messing up is forgetting our anniversary—which is in two weeks,
by the way. Cheating on me? Sleeping with my best friend? That’s
fucked up
.
And it’s unforgivable. How long has it really been going on?”

He sighed and I
slowly backed away from our cutlery set.

“Hello? Ryan!
How
long
has it been going on?”

“Claire, listen
to me—”

“Tell me! Tell
me right now!” I looked away from his eyes because deep down I didn’t really
want to know.

“I’ve
always
had
feelings for Amanda...”

My heart gave
out and crumbled inside my chest. My knees buckled and my body slumped down to
the floor.

He continued, “I
had feelings for her but I never acted on them because...” He sat down on the
floor. “Because I was in love with you. I never intended to act on those
feelings, but last January we were both drinking and one thing led to another
and—”

“And you had
sex?”

“Yes...And I—”

“Where?”

“Where,
what
?”

I took a deep
breath. “
Where
did you have sex that time? Where was this happening?”

He avoided my
eyes. “Here...You were out of town at that Parker Brothers conference...And I know
that I should’ve stopped that day. I should’ve told you, but I couldn’t. I
honestly didn’t know how to break it to you because it was more than just sex
between us. It was—”

“Are you the
father of her baby?” I needed to hear him say it.

He didn’t
answer.

“Are you the
father of her
baby?
!” I screamed.

“Yes.” His voice
cracked. “I...I’m so sorry you had to find out this way and that I put you
through this...I’ll do whatever it takes to earn your trust again. I’ll have to
pay her child support, but I’ll let her go. I’ll go to counseling and we can—”

“Are you in love
with her?”

“Claire, don’t—”

“Answer me! Are
you in love with her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still
love me?”

“Of course I
love you, Claire. I—”

“Are you
in
love
with me?”

His silence was
the loudest answer he’d given all night. His lack of words unraveled me and
forced me to break down right in front of him.

He began talking
over my cries, saying words of some kind, but all I could hear was the roaring
of blood in my ears, the literal shattering of my heart.

I curled into
the fetal position and cried my eyes out. I kept saying, “Get away from me,
it’s over,” but he wrapped his cold arms around me and refused to let me go.

I wanted to
believe that we could get through this together, that he could fall in love
with me again and we could put this affair behind us. But as his clammy fingers
caressed my shoulders, I realized that I didn’t trust him anymore. And I didn’t
want to hurt myself even more by having to
learn
how to trust him again.

In the morning,
with the one shred of dignity I had left, I calmly told him that I wanted a
divorce.

––––––––

“T
he collapse of
my marriage was not my fault.” I exhaled and opened my eyes.

I felt my phone
vibrating and held it up to my ear. “Hello?”

“Mom, I need
some Pop-Tarts.”

“Caroline, you
have a car and a part-time job. Go to the store and buy them yourself.”

“I spent my last
check on an iPod! Besides, Ashley said you were at the grocery store and I
can’t do my work without Pop-tarts. Can you get some for me and drop them off
at the library?
Please
?”

Sometimes, I
swore that my daughters weren’t related to me. They couldn’t be. At sixteen
years old, they had all the book smarts in the world, but their common sense IQ
was probably negative.

“How old are
you?”

“Sixteen.” She
sighed. “Oh my god! Oh my god! Let me call you back mom! The ice cream truck is
coming up the street! I
have
to get an Elmo-sicle!”

Just as I was
about to put my phone back into my purse, my other daughter called. “Yes,
Ashley?”

“How long was I
supposed to keep that bread in the oven?”

“You weren’t
supposed to touch that bread at all, Ashley. I said it was for
dinner
. It
was going to go with the spaghetti and—”

“I was hungry!
What was I supposed to eat?”

“Leftover
chicken salad, sushi—”

“I’m a vegan
since last night mom.” She gave me one of her ‘you-just-don’t-understand-me’
groans. “Remember? I can’t eat meat. Can you get me some soy products while
you’re out? And I’m totally sorry, but I completely burned that bread...Shouldn’t
the oven have made a sound to alert me? And why does every plastic pan I put in
the oven burn up? What’s that about?”

Oh my god...

“I’ll see you when
I get home, Ashley.” I hung up.

My daughters
were
not
related to me. If I was sixteen years old with a job and a
shared car, I wouldn’t be calling my mother about anything. Then again—I
scrolled down my phone’s list and called my own mother. “Mom, are you still
coming over for dinner tonight?”

“Sure. What time
should I be there?”

“Seven o’ clock.
And I need you to bring some bread over. I had some ready but Ashley put
another plastic pan in the oven.”

“You need to get
those girls checked out, Claire. I told you they were born with half a brain.”

“Tell me about
it. See you tonight, mom. I’ll—”

“Wait! Robert
Millington told me you still haven’t called him. He
really
wants to take
you out. I think he’d be good for you!”

I tried not to
groan. Robert was the son of my mom’s best friend. He was two years older than
me, but he wasn’t attractive and he was extremely
dull—worse-than-watching-paint-dry
dull
. His idea of great conversation
was discussing the differences between American and British politics.

“No thanks, mom.
Not interested.”

“Why not? He’s a
good guy! He has his own law firm, he’s in great shape—”

“And he’s
boring
.
I’ll pass. See you tonight, mom.” I hung up.

I made my way
down the beverage aisle and grabbed a carton of dry milk. I headed for the meat
section and grabbed a few pounds of beef—
soy
beef.

As I walked by,
I looked up at the reflective glass that hung over the chicken display. I still
had problems recognizing myself on some days. I was still coming to terms with
the new and improved me—the woman who actually
enjoyed
putting on
make-up and spending more than twenty minutes on her hair.

You still got
it...You still got it...You still—

I pushed my
basket straight into a display of cereal boxes.

Great...

Stooping down, I
began putting it back together the best way I could. I wanted to fix everything
before the snotty manager came over and said his infamous, “Mistakes like this
are what drive our prices up.”

“Need some
help?” A deep voice said from behind.

“Sure.” I didn’t
look up. I kept stacking the red boxes in between the yellow ones, making sure
each box was perfectly aligned into the tacky half diamond formation.

As I stacked the
last cereal box atop the display, I turned to look at the man who’d helped me
out.

OH. MY. GOD...

He had one of
those faces that belonged in a Ralph Lauren ad—stark blue eyes that gleamed
with the faintest hint of light, a perfectly chiseled jaw line with a light
sexy stubble, and full, well-defined lips that looked inviting enough to kiss
all day.

He was dressed
in dark blue jeans and a black sweat shirt with “San Fran” in white letters.
And for some odd reason, he was smiling at me.

He’s probably a
student at the law school down the street....If only I could go back in time...Oh
well...

“Umm...Thank you
for your help.” I turned away and went back to my basket.

“Wait a minute,”
he said as he walked over. “I didn’t catch your name.”

How cute...

“Claire.”

“Nice to meet
you, Claire. I’m Jonathan.” He reached out to shake my hand. “I know this may
seem forward, but I can’t leave the store without knowing if I can I take you
out tonight.”

What? Did he
just ask me out? For tonight?

“Umm...”

“You can pick
the place.” He smiled a perfect white smile and ran a hand through his jet
black hair. “And we can meet there if you don’t want me to pick you up.”

Stop looking at
his smile and avert your gaze somewhere lower...Not that lower!

“I would but...” I
literally couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was the sexiest man I’d ever
seen—his face had to have been personally sculpted by the Gods, and I was starting
to feel this strange rush of warmth coursing through my veins. “I can’t.”

“Is it because
you’re seeing someone else?” His eyes veered to my bare left hand. “Are you
married?”

He has to be
kidding me...