Sick Day (10 page)

I read her message over and over again, at least half a dozen times as my stomach dropped, and a deep, piercing heat rose into the base of my skull. I didn’t want to read a fucking novel.

I checked my watch. I had a couple of hours before I had to leave to meet up with Riley. I didn’t have all fucking morning, so I skipped forward several chapters and started there.

}
i {

W
aking up next to Oliver on the Monday that my flight left for home, I remember thinking that nothing had ever felt worse than what I felt at that moment. We had fallen asleep holding each other. But this morning I found him with his back to me, his black T-shirt rising out from the mess of white sheets that had enveloped us a few hours earlier.

Reaching out, I pulled the sheets onto his shoulder, covering him. It wasn’t so much that I feared he would get cold, but…I hated that he had rolled away from me, that I had slept with the false belief that he’d been holding me in his arms this entire time.

With Oliver, everything changed from the moment my name dripped off his tongue. Even if I didn’t exactly believe in soul mates, I believed in…well, us.

I edged closer to him on the bed and wrapped my arms around him from behind, just as he had done to me the night before. And then I curled my legs around his and buried my face into the back of his neck, breathing in all of him. It felt so perfect, lying here with him. Yes, lying—as much on the bed as to each other, to the people in our lives.

“Did we do anything last night?” he asked, his voice coarse first thing in the morning. “My arm fell asleep under your neck.” He rolled over, and the dark circles under his eyes told me he hadn’t slept well.

I nodded, smiling. “Yes.”

He leaned a touch closer. “I need to kiss you.”

With Oliver, I fought for love because he made me believe in something I never knew to be missing from my life. Until now.

}
i {

F
ollowing my trip to Chicago, I returned to my real life in Vegas, which meant selling mortgages and other financial services to everyday folks who wanted bigger and better than they could afford. That first day back was difficult, but it was a Tuesday and quiet. While I waited at my desk for a lender to get back to me on a “tight” application, I swung my chair around and stared out my window at one of the most notorious skylines in the country. Even as a local, I thought it looked fake. Just like I imagined it would appear to people who had never visited Vegas and only ever saw it on movie or television screens.

“Oliver Weaver,” I whispered to myself, “what have you done to me?”

From my office, I could also watch the airlines come and go every ten minutes or so. Each time I noticed an airplane, I wondered—okay, I
prayed
—that Oliver would be aboard, that he would come for me and take me away. Life without him was a silent film.

When my phone chirped, I snatched it up right away. “Olivia Warren,” I nearly shouted, my heart beating hard inside my chest. I never acted like a schoolgirl when my phone rang. But when I heard his voice, I knew why.

This relationship with Oliver, whatever it meant, was different than anything I had ever experienced before. I just didn’t know it yet.

} i {

A
couple of months had passed since my trip to Chicago, and I was preparing dinner at the stove, working on a special scallops and rice recipe when that hard heartbeat returned to me. I stepped away from my work, sat down at the table, and tried to regain control.

It was getting dark outside, and the air had cooled. Maybe the change in temperature was to blame. Really, I didn’t know what this heartbeat thing meant, but I wondered if it could also have something to do with an earlier conversation I had with Oliver. We spoke for nearly an hour earlier today, when my boss was at a client’s house to sign documents.

“You okay?” my husband asked from the living room. “I’m fucking starving here.” Yes, he was a dickhead, but he had plans to go out with the boys tonight, which meant I would have the place to myself.

I nodded without looking at him. “I’m fine.”

Returning to the stove, I checked on the scallops, then pulled the rice off the stove. I slopped a couple of servings onto our plates. Instead of sitting at the table, I told him that I needed some fresh air. He said nothing. He may not have even heard me, like a child who needs countless reminders to get their shoes on for school.

I slipped outside to our front porch, which wrapped around our house, and I stepped up to the railing. The darkness made it hard to see—not that deep-black dark of a moonless sky at two in the morning, but that confusing, hazy dark right before the sun disappears for good.

An airplane roared overhead, and I caught myself tracing its path with my eyes, watching it and wondering where it was headed. Chicago? And then it started again, that wild and crazy heartbeat that made me weak and worried at the same time.
Oh, Oliver, where are you?

“I’m here,” he said, seemingly stepping out of another dimension. He wore straight-leg jeans and a white button-down shirt with brown leather shoes. They were gorgeous shoes, but I took in all of him.

I glanced back toward the front door, then the large living room window that allowed me to see my husband at the table, still eating.

“I just want to smell your hair,” he said, stepping carefully into the neglected garden that bordered our porch.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “My husband will kick your ass if he finds you here.”

Oliver seemed surprised. “He knows about me?”

“No, but if he finds you, he will!” I chuckled, not because he said anything funny, but because I was so excited to see him here that I couldn’t keep the happy off my face. “Give me half an hour,” I told him. “Tim’s going out tonight, but I’ll meet you in town.”

I heard my husband shouting something inside.

“I’ll meet you in half an hour,” I whispered again, whipping my head around to make sure he wasn’t coming for me, and then turned back to Oliver. “Half an hour, okay?”

“Where?” he asked me, the grin stretching from one side of his face to the next.

Shrugging, I said his hotel.

He smiled. “I’m at the Hard Rock.”

I entered the house to my husband’s bitching and moaning about his game shirt being dirty, and the rest of it sort of blurred into the bullshit of marital bliss. For once, I didn’t fall into the argument trap. I quietly slipped upstairs while he yelled at the dishwasher, slamming his plate and fork into the right slots, then going on about how much of a moron I could be, or something like that. In the bedroom, I grinned at my isolation, at the lump in the middle of our mattress that spoke quite clearly as to just how “close” Tim and I had become over the past ten years.

I crashed onto that same lumpy mattress, grabbed a book, and pretended that I could see the words through the film of Oliver-fog on my eyes.

}
i {

W
e had a quiet corner table at Nobu in the Hard Rock Casino building. It wasn’t busy at all. Then again, a lot of people were probably gambling or watching the game, like Tim. The quiet ambiance allowed me time to really watch Oliver, drink him in.

             
“You’re here,” I said while he continued talking about his “surprise” trip to Vegas for a conference a senior partner couldn’t make on account of some personal issues. I really didn’t care about the circumstances. We’d spoken earlier today when he was at the office, and he was there, in Chicago, but now he was here, in Vegas, in front of me. I took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re here and I missed you and now I’m breathing again.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as if inhaling him, all of him.

“Yes, I’m here, Olivia.” He chuckled, lifting my hand to his lips and kissing each of my fingers. He had always done that, it was something that belonged exclusively to Oliver, something we didn’t share with our spouses—it was ours. “Why is this so weird all of a sudden?”

I opened my eyes and told him that I missed him. “I’ve dreamed about you a million times.”

He chuckled again, and his smile allowed me to imagine lifetimes spent with him.

“Today, Oliver. I’m talking about today only. I dream about you more and more every moment we spend apart. But now you’re here. And you’re mine for how long?”

His forehead rippled with the inevitability of our limited time together. “I’ve got the conference on Sunday, and I’m flying out Monday morning,” he said, almost apologetically.

Our sushi arrived. Oliver wore his wedding ring, and I still wore mine—I could have removed it after my husband left with “the boys,” cursing the whole time that he had to wear a dirty Buccs jersey, which wasn’t dirty. I hadn’t removed anything except my clothes, replacing the pantsuit with a pair of jeans and a blouse, so Oliver and I looked like a couple.

What probably indicated to others that we were not spouses to one another was the happiness at our table.

“Try this,” Oliver said, pinching a spicy tuna roll and feeding it to me.

I found a dragon roll on my plate and did the same for him, all the while wondering what married couple fed one another like we did.

“This is us, isn’t it?” Oliver asked, almost chuckling at the sweetness of our motions.

I agreed with him, but I still doubted that we would always be like this, that this utopic happiness would endure years and years of togetherness.

We laughed and flirted and fed each other like two college kids who needed to get laid. Once we finished, Oliver asked me if I wanted to come upstairs. “It’s a suite because that’s what our firm’s partners get when they travel. Which means the minibar is covered. As well as room service for dessert.” He sounded a little nervous, but then slid his arm around my waist and pinched my side playfully to cover it up. “And you can afford dessert.”

“Shut up!” I laugh, swatting his hands away from my sides—could always lose a few pounds, tighten up my abs. “You know exactly why I haven’t been eating.”

I accompanied him to his room, and just like he promised, he had a nice big suite. As soon as we entered, we stood motionless on the other side of the door and just stared at each other. I was still breathing him in, memorizing every possible detail. But once that door closed, I jumped into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist and holding him with such ferocity, I worried I might hurt him.

We kissed like we had done this kissing business a million times before. The familiarity of our lips pressed together felt like home. I loved this man wholly and completely, every inch of him. And it was the kind of love that would never end, never go away, no matter how I hard I would try over the years ahead of us.

}
i {

T
he months following Oliver’s trip to Vegas passed with a swift permanence that I could only compare to head-butting an oncoming freight train. There was pain, yes. But it felt like months before I could appreciate it, before I finally awoke from the coma of the sudden impact. That painful change began the moment I stepped through the door late Sunday afternoon, after spending Friday and Saturday night with Oliver at the Hard Rock.

My husband was drunk—typical Sunday afternoon bullshit—with the Raiders game playing on the television in the background. When he heard the front door opening, he called me something nasty. Still dreamy from my time with Oliver, I stepped deeper into the house, noticing the kitchen sink, dishes all piled up. An open pizza box with the crust still inside and flies crawling around told me Saturday night had been a lonely one for him as well.

I stopped at the edge of the living room, disgusted by the crumbs on the floor next to the sofa where he watched the game with his back to me. Yet I was the one with the nasty nickname. Right.

“Where were you?” he demanded.

“You’re a slob, Tim. This place is fucking gross.”

“It’ll be clean tonight. Now where the fuck have you been sleeping, you fucking whore?”

I stood there, watching him. I didn’t have to think too long about my next statement. Like driving in a blizzard or a sandstorm, I saw only as far as the few feet in front of me, not the miles between here and my ultimate destination.

At last, my husband turned around, his eyes red and puffy, his beard unshaven. I swore his teeth had gone yellow, and I shuddered at the prospect of just how foul his breath might be. Despite his obvious rage, I stepped forward.

“I’m not asking again, bitch,” he said. “Where the fuck have you—”

“Done. I’m done with your bullshit, Tim.” I glanced back at the sink and gave it an elaborate wave—it was a scene
that repeated itself at least a couple dozen weekends every year, a reminder of his laziness and how he cared about nothing and no one but himself. “You’re fucked without me; we both know it.”

He laughed, a crazy laugh that reminded me of what made me fall in love with him in the first place—that craziness, seemingly untamable, so new and foreign to me. But it also reminded me of everything I now hated about him.

Standing on unsteady feet, he approached me.

I wasn’t scared of him, not anymore. I was tired. “You’re fucked without me,” I repeated, and I tasted the venom on my words. I decided at that moment that no man would ever walk all over me ever again. Starting right now.

My husband stopped and swayed, but, by some miracle, he kept his balance. He was close enough to hit me, but far enough away that if he swung and I stepped backward, he would fall flat on his face.