“I never said I was perfect. I didn’t cheat on you, though, and I sure as hell don’t date behind your back.” He shook his head. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be, kid.”
“That’s bullshit and
you know it,” she spat.
Jack shrugged and walked out. Britt waited until she heard the door slam before she went to the floor and cried. She knew, once and for all, that he was done with her. She lay on the carpet, sobbing, angry enough at least not to go after him, but not angry enough to keep from missing him already. She felt it was unjust, unfair of Jack to make such a huge deal of an accidental phone call, a misnomer, and a simple mistake. She wasn’t thinking of Greg. He had forgiven, or said he had—her so-called philandering, her going out with Chris and Greg in his absence. He claimed to have forgiven her for intentionally seeing other men. But this, which was purely not her fault, was a catastrophe to him. It seemed backward somehow, that as if Greg’s voice and his words were inexcusable in Jack’s eyes. If he couldn’t forgive something she had nothing to do with, she didn’t want to be with someone like that.
Then she remembered his hands and mouth on her, the relentless pull and lap of his lips and tongue. After what they had been to each other, after she had lain in his arms and thought that it was the only place she ever wanted to be. After she felt that she’d come home the instant he appeared at her door, like she had found harbor, had found her place. It was so stupid, so painfully stupid that it fell apart so fast, over something so small, over an idiot, Greg, who didn’t want to take no for an answer.
Chapter 13
Britt ran a bath and sat in it, scrubbing him off of her skin. She sat there, trying to quit crying, until the water went cold. She dried off, put on warm pajamas despite the heat just for the comfort of them, and fell asleep watching reality TV. When she woke in the morning, sore and sensitive from sex, her face swollen from crying, it all rushed back in like a tidal wave of bad memories. She checked her phone, her email, her Facebook and Instagram. There were no messages from Jack Fitzsimmons. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe he’d wake up full of regret like she did and decide that she was worth fighting for. Maybe he’d call her, message her, and appear at her door. On a glittery flying dragon with a giant rose between his teeth, she thought ruefully, because that was just as likely.
Having sex with him had made it so much worse. If he had never come over last night, if he’d kept his distance the way he tried to, getting over him would be so much easier. It would have been a distant memory of the sex they had after Tamarind. She could’ve fooled herself into believing that there was nothing as magical, as perfect as she remembered it. She could’ve blamed it on the margaritas and wishful exaggeration. Instead, she had the sense memory alive in her mind, the heat of his tongue, and the grip of his wet hand on her thigh in the shower. But most of all, and most painfully of all, she remembered Jack telling her the story of how his corporate students didn’t understand his vernacular and then when he spoke more formally they were successful...until he said her name, out of the middle of nowhere, just because she was on his mind. They had thought Britt was another American colloquialism until he explained that it was his girlfriend’s name. A man who thought of her so much that her name crossed his lips of its own volition must have been devastated to think she was dating behind his back. She buried her face in her hands, feeling ashamed, feeling dirty and wrong and adrift, unable to go back and recapture that, unsay it somehow. She even called Greg and told him to never call again. She was sure she had made it clear the last time they had met, but obviously not. He apologized and said they had their signals crossed. The jerk! His phone message had ruined everything between her and Jack!
Britt had intended to spend Sunday divided between Jack’s bed and preparations to dine with his father that evening. She had envisioned modeling her new bra and panty set for Jack, maybe showing it a good time before trying on several different outfits for his approval...or removal. That fantasy had included a bubble bath and indulging in some of that good dark chocolate that she’d procured the day before. Instead of a decadent celebration, however, she had the aftermath of a breakup, the hangover from a heartbreak. Broken, she kept thinking, was the best word to apply to her emotions. She wanted to curl up under her comforter and hide forever. She was going to have to face her now-ex at work on Monday. This was exactly the sort of thing she had wished to avoid...a messy split that bled over into her professional life. A sick sense of dread filled her. She’d have to talk to him about the new insurance paperwork. She’d have to stand near him, not touching him, acting like they were nothing to each other.
The worst part, maybe the very worst thing was the fact that Jack was the person she most needed to talk to. He’d become her closest friend, the person she told about the silly and awful things at work, the arguments with her mom, the continual disappearance of her underwear from the dryer in her building. She told him things and he gave her advice and made her laugh. He was her go-to person, the first speed dial key on her phone. She’d texted him every day, and had stored away funny things that happened and annoyances to regale him with in their nightly calls. Remembering things to tell Jack had become a habit she was going to have to break. Because this guy broke her heart and he was the person she wanted to tell all about it.
Chapter 14
All day Monday, she glared at the insurance paperwork in the manila folder on her desk, the one with his name scrawled on the label tab, as if it were a nest of vipers lying in wait for her instead of a mundane collection of forms to be filled out and scanned. She avoided taking them to him. She busied herself with other tasks, then double-checked everything after she completed it. She marked off items on her ambitious to-do list until all that remained was Jack.
Britt stood, straightened the cuff on her shirt, and took the folder in hand. She stalked toward the marketing department, equally out of charity with both Marj and Jack who both worked in that section. She screwed up her courage and went to his cubicle. He wasn’t there. She found him in Luke’s cube talking fantasy baseball with his feet up on the desk. He was so damn casual, so at ease with himself. It infuriated her as she stood there, sweating through her blouse and practically trembling as she clutched the folder like armor.
“May I help you?” he asked, kicking his feet down from the desk and tightening the blue tie he had loosened.
“There is the matter of the new insurance. You have paperwork to complete. Get it back to me by the end of the week,” she said curtly.
“You feeling okay, B?” Luke asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You look all red. Maybe you’re getting sick.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, teeth clenched.
Just being this close to Jack was torture. Her whole body wanted to go liquid at the sight of him, as if memory lived in flesh and muscle as well as her mind. She wanted to go to him, kiss him until he understood everything or forgot everything. She wanted to drag him toward her by his tie. She wanted to bite his insolent bottom lip and then open for him, taking his tongue in her mouth. So if her face was flushed, that was why. Because of the dissonance between what she wanted and what she could have.
“Just drop it on my desk,” he said dismissively and turned back to Luke.
Britt wanted to say more. She shrank from him, though. His formality, his coldness. He was done. She knew that the night before but this underlined it for her, picked it out in bold print just in case she had thought there might be the barest flicker of hope. His icy tone, his careless manner served to extinguish any reserve of belief she had in their future, their eventual reconciliation.
She sat, desolate, in her cubicle and stared at her monitor, unseeing. She wished she could have told him off, the way she had done with Kevin the night of their breakup, but she felt more for Jack even in this short time than she had felt in six months with Kevin. This was the train wreck she’d feared...being dumped by the boss’s son and forced to see him and yearn every day at work. She’d have to watch from a distance with seeming disinterest when he accomplished something, when he brought a girl to the office Christmas party in a few months, when, God forbid, he got engaged and married. She’d have to club together with the
other employees for a gift. The thought of buying Jack and his future bride a wedding gift made her clutch her stomach. She fought back tears, told herself rationally that she was making a disaster of nothing. That he was just some guy she had dated for a few weeks and he had been out of the country most of that time. That he was just her rebound guy, a good shag to help her get over Kevin. She told that story to herself enough that she nearly believed it by five o’clock.
When Marj tried to talk her into going out, she claimed she had a headache and hurried home. She ordered enough Mexican food to get the place down the street to deliver, which was way too much for one person. She put on her pajamas before it was dark out side and shoveled guacamole into her mouth with enough tortilla chips to qualify her for an intervention. She fell asleep watching Four Weddings and A Funeral on TV and when she woke, it was to the sound of rain lashing at the windows. Thunder rumbled and she drew her knees up to her chest and wished shamelessly that Jack were there.
Perhaps it was the romantic comedy she’d been watching. Perhaps it was the swell of loneliness she felt from waking up by herself during a storm, but she did the thing that felt right, that felt grand and cinematic. She pulled on her jeans and t-shirt and her rain slicker with the hood...Andie Macdowell, she was not...and set off to win Jack Fitzsimmons back. She splashed along the sidewalks, head down against the pouring rain. She waded out into a massive puddle that soaked her jeans and hailed a cab. The driver glared at her as she dripped in his back floorboard. She rode to Jack’s building, rehearsing mentally what she planned to say.
“You can be mad at me. Just let me be with you,” she thought was the simplest.
“I can’t stand being without you. I promise I’ll never give you reason to doubt me again if you’ll just forgive me,” was closer to accurate.
“Jack, I know I fucked up but I miss you and it’s raining and I want to sleep with you. Okay?” was the boldfaced truth of the matter.
She snorted at the thought of saying that to his face and decided that option one was the least humiliating of the three. When she got out of the cab, she had an endless wait for the elevator. A couple stepped out, arguing loudly.