Chapter 9
NINE
Kimberly paced the living room, and debated with herself whether to finally confront him or not. He had been locked up in his room ever since they had come home from George’s birthday party, nearly two hours prior. “What could have happened?” she whispered to herself, over and over again. She played back every word they had spoken to each other from the time they left the house this afternoon until the end of the party, three hours later. Nothing. She could come up with nothing to explain Jake’s sudden withdrawal from her.
She squared her shoulders and decided to go to his room and confront him. She would use the pretense of being hungry and ask if he wanted to order out for dinner. She took a deep breath and climbed the stairs. She paused in front of his bedroom door. She chewed on her lower lip as she began to have second thoughts. Maybe he was just tired and wanted to catch up on some sleep. Doubtful. It was a lame excuse she wasn’t even willing to buy. Frustrated, she muttered a curse she rarely used. She didn’t want to come off as clinging and insecure, but his behavior this afternoon left her nerves on edge. She knew she wouldn’t relax until she talked to him. She pushed a stray lock of hair to behind her ear and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
She opened the bedroom door and stepped inside with small, hesitant steps. She stood only a few steps inside the doorway and swallowed several times while she waited for him to look up from the book in his hand. Seated in the room’s only chair, he looked relaxed and annoyingly preoccupied in his book.
“It’s almost eight o’clock, and I wanted to know if you are hungry, if you wanted to order take-out, maybe from that new Chinese restaurant we both want to try?” Her heart pounded wildly in her chest when Jake’s eyes roamed over the length of her and eventually settled on her face.
“I don’t think so. I’m not really hungry. Thanks, anyway.” He continued to watch her, his expression unreadable.
Was she being dismissed? How dare he treat her like this. Anger quickly replaced her earlier apprehension. “Jake, I don’t understand. What’s going on? What happened between the time we left here this morning and now?”
Jake never hated himself more than he did at this moment. “I don’t know what you mean, Kim.” He clenched his back teeth together. Although Kimberly’s rigid stance said she was ready for battle, her eyes gave her away. She glared at him, but he could still see the hurt reflected in her eyes and the confusion marring her features. He needed to talk to her, to explain. He owed her that much.
He closed his book and placed it on the night stand. He didn’t know why he thought he could lose himself in a book anyway. He had barely read two pages during the last hour. He raked his hand through his hair several times before he stood up and crossed the room to stand next to the window. He stared out the pane of glass with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Finally, after several minutes, he turned to face her. He noticed that she still hovered near the door.
“Kim,” he began. “Last night was a mistake. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I took advantage of you when you obviously had had too much to drink, and I apologize. I take full responsibility for everything that happened between us.” He leaned against the windowsill and patiently waited for her response. He braced himself for her tears, hating himself for being the cause of them.
He was not at all prepared for her reaction. Rage, far worse than he ever thought Kimberly capable of, settled in her deep brown eyes.
She breached the distance between them with angry strides before she stopped to stand less than a foot away from him. She was angrier than he had ever seen her, and she deserved to be. Something wonderful had happened between them, something he had never experienced before in his life, and he knew it had been the same for her. Now he threw it back in her face, as if it meant nothing to him. It had taken everything in him to call last night a mistake, and while he wanted to take the words back, he knew he couldn’t.
“You’re sorry for last night?” She lashed out. “You take full responsibility?” she hissed mere inches from his face. Her entire body visibly shook with anger, and he wanted nothing than more to call back his lies, but he couldn’t. As a couple, they were not meant to be.
“How… how, dare you, Jake Taylor!” Kimberly raised her hand in the air before either of them knew what she planned to do. Her palm collided with the side of his face with a startling intensity. Smack!
Kimberly’s eyes widened to a point that he thought they might actually pop out of her face. She rubbed her palms together, and he assumed that she experienced something similar to his own pain. She looked him straight in the face, anger expressed in eyes glazed over with unshed tears. “That, Mr. Jake Taylor,” she informed him with an arrogant toss of her hair, “was for the apologies you forgot. Specifically, for taking advantage of me at one-thirty in the morning, again at three-thirty, then at five o’clock this morning. And let’s not forget your good morning kiss at eleven-thirty, followed by a quickie in the shower.” She clenched her fists at her sides and turned to walk out of the room.
Jake’s hand swiftly left his side to grab her by the arm before she had a chance to take more than a few steps away from him. He grasped her forearm and whirled her around to face him. “Kim,” he bit out in a barely controlled whisper, although his own temper was at the bubbling point. “Kim, you don’t understand?—"
“You’re right, I don’t understand,” she interrupted and yanked her arm out of his grasp. Her brows were narrowed over her dark eyes and her lips curled in distaste. “I don’t understand how I could have spent the last twenty years thinking I loved you. I don’t understand how I could be such a fool for falling into bed with you because I thought you returned my feelings. I was just someone to warm your bed. For you, I was just one in a long list of easy lays?—"
Jake grabbed her other forearm and curled each of his hands around her arms in a deathly grip. “Easy lays? If you think I treated you like some kind of whore, then maybe you better learn the difference.” Jake bent his head and captured her lips in a punishing kiss. He coerced her back against the adjacent wall, determined to show her how much her accusation hurt him.
He planted his strong legs in front of her and blocked her escape from his forced embrace. While one of his hands held her head in a bruising kiss, the other hand rapidly traveled under her blouse and over her ribcage. He continued to assault her lips with his own, and he swallowed each of her soft moans. He fumbled for only a second with her bra, before he made quick haste of the center clasp. His hands felt rough against her naked breasts, the slow tenderness of their earlier lovemaking gone.
Kimberly choked out a cry, then went limp, and sagged in his arms. She no longer participated in their impassioned lovemaking, and it was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his head. He swore under his breath. What the hell was he doing? He only meant to frighten her, to get back at her for thinking that when he made love to her, it meant nothing to him. My God, what have I done? He backed away from her, his face devoid of color. He ran shaky fingers through his hair, positive now that he had lost his mind. “Kim, I... I’m sorry.” He took several ragged breaths. “I only meant to show you...hell, I’m so sorry.”
He walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. He rested his elbows against his knees and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t understand how he could have gotten so carried away. Never before in his life had he let himself get so out of control with a woman. He had to leave, had to get away from her before he harmed her any further. He lifted his head, intent on getting up when she sat down beside him.
“Jake,” she whispered brokenly. She walked over to the bed and sat down next to him. “Jake, I love you. Please tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
Jake looked into her eyes, brimmed with tears. After the way he had just treated her, she responded with I love you ? He shook his head in disgust. He didn’t deserve her, never would, but he needed to tell her the truth. She deserved at least that much from him. “Shh, Kim. Please don’t talk about love, not with me.”
He reached over and wiped a sole tear off of her cheek with the tip of his finger. He breathed deeply before beginning, “Kim, I don’t know how much you know about my marriage or divorce, so I’m going to start from the beginning.” He placed a soft kiss on her forehead before he stood up and walked over to the window. He was on the brink of conjuring up all of the ugly memories from the past, and he didn’t want to be near Kimberly while he did it. He knew she would be able to see past his cold words into the pain that was nestled in his heart. She would offer her sympathy, and he would be all too willing to accept it. And he couldn’t. Kimberly deserved someone a hell of a lot better than him, and he would make sure that she understood just that.
“Kimberly, when I was thirteen, I got mumps. A severe case. We... Zane, Gramps, and I,” he clarified, “had just moved to California. Fortunately, Zane was at baseball camp when I first broke out, so he was spared from getting infected. Anyway, Gramps took me to a doctor, who basically suggested I take some aspirin and get a lot of rest. Gramps believed that if we had still been in Texas, and I had seen our family doctor, my case of the mumps might not have become so severe. Even though he called our doctor in Texas, and was told that wasn’t necessarily the case, Gramps still felt responsible.”
Kimberly stared back at him, confusion radiated from her eyes. “Jake, I don’t understand? Weren’t you vaccinated? I thought all kids were vaccinated for mumps.”
Jake sighed. “My grandfather thought I had been, so he contacted the pediatrician my mother had taken us to as kids and was told that according to their records, my mother had refused to get us vaccinated. She had had this idea that they did more harm than good. My grandfather had no idea. Everyone, including our new doctors, assumed we had been vaccinated. I don’t think my grandfather ever forgave her.” He ran a hand over his chin. “As soon as I was better, and Zane was back from camp, Gramps made sure our vaccines were up to date.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Kim.” He slowly turned to confront her. “I had a severe case of mumps as a teenage boy. I developed Orchitis, which is an inflammation of the, well, I’m not going to go into the details. Let’s just say it was bad and extremely unpleasant.” Jake shifted his stance to look out the window again. He shook his head, and his laughter was filled with bitterness. “It left me sterile. I can’t have children.”
He waited for her gasp of shock, and even though he was surprised when it never came, he continued. “I met Brenda soon after graduate school. I was up front about my inability to ‘reproduce’ right from the beginning. Brenda’s reaction was different from any other girl I dated. She was elated. She joked about how lucky it was that she would never have to worry about birth control. She was a dedicated career girl, she had told me. She had no room in her life, then or in the future, for children. We married a year after we met. Neither of us had much family, so it was a simple ceremony by a Justice of the Peace in Boston.”
He stared at the floor. “Soon after we got married, I landed a job as a journalist for a major network. I began traveling all over the world. Brenda was an interior designer, which I mistakenly thought kept her occupied while I was away. I was making pretty good money, considering my lack of experience and age at the time. When Brenda suggested we buy a house in the suburbs of New York, complete with four bedrooms and a big backyard, I didn’t even protest. I felt so guilty for leaving her alone while I was off on assignments that I indulged her any time the opportunity presented itself. Brenda had been having a hard time with her own career and decided to take time off to evaluate what she wanted to do with her life.”
“One night, when we had been married almost two years, we went to dinner at a neighbor’s house. I think their names were Cynthia and Bill or Bob, something like that. I barely knew them, but apparently Brenda had become rather close to Cynthia. Her husband also traveled a lot as a salesman, and she stayed at home with their three children. I knew within minutes after we walked through their front door that Brenda had changed her mind about having children. The signs were there before she met Cynthia, but I guess I pretended to believe otherwise. It finally dawned on me that night that we owned a four-bedroom house, and I had no idea why.” Jake paused and thought that he might take a walk tonight, maybe it would help ease the headache that pounded harder as the day progressed. He shook his head and turned to stare out the window to see a pair of teenagers kissing underneath the street light.
Jake turned around and forced himself to continue, “I confronted Brenda as soon as we returned home. She confessed that she had had a change of heart and wanted children. She pleaded with me to have some tests taken and to consult some specialists about my problem.”
“I refused because I knew it was hopeless. I thought the discussion was closed, but that wasn’t the case. Brenda decided to take a more overt approach. She bought every book, magazine, and pamphlet ever written on the subjects of sterility and infertility. She became obsessed, forwarding articles to my email and begging me to read them. She left books in the bathroom, stuck them in my suitcase, and left them next to the remote control. I couldn’t open a drawer in the house without the word infertility staring me in the face. She contacted specialists all over the country and arranged for them to call me directly.”
Jake ran his fingers along his neck, and his hand stopped to massage the tense muscles at the back of his neck. “It got to the point that I couldn’t wait for my next assignment. About the time I thought I had neared the point of insanity, I met a journalist who told me about two children he adopted from Guatemala. I was ecstatic. Adoption. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?”
“Brenda was mortified.” He shook his head as he recalled her outraged reaction. “Adoption? How ridiculous, she told me at the time. She would never consider adoption, not when she was perfectly capable of having children, she told me. And I, she claimed, denied her the opportunity. Soon everything became my fault. I was selfish. I was insensitive. I didn’t care.”
“Brenda became obsessed with having my sterility problem cured. She became more enraged each time that I refused to be tested. She started creating scenes when we were in public. She complained to complete strangers how selfish her husband was and how he denied her the children she desperately wanted.”
Jake took a deep, ragged breath as he recalled the next ugly memory. “On Christmas day--we had been married over three years by this time-- we went to my sister-in-law’s house. Karen, Brenda’s sister, had divorced before her daughter Alicia was born. Alicia was adorable at three-years-old and took to me right away. I was reading her some book, I don’t know, ‘Dora the Doctor’ or something like that, and Alicia was sitting on my lap. Brenda walked in on us and she, ah, she freaked out. She demanded that I stay away from her niece since I hated children. She acted as if I was a child molester or something.”
“I should have confronted her about our situation before then.” He exhaled deeply. “I had avoided it and the possibility of divorce. My own parents had never married, and I just didn’t want to go there, I guess.” His shoulders slumped, and he gazed out window, consumed by his memories.
“Soon after our visit to Karen’s house, Brenda started to accuse me of disliking children. I secretly hated children, Brenda would tell me over breakfast. Or the topic of conversation at dinner would be how jealous I was of all the attention a child would demand.”
Jake turned around to look at Kimberly, still seated quietly on the bed. “Our final argument, ironically, was after we returned home from a trip out west and attended one of your brother’s Fourth of July parties.
“We argued, rather brutally, neither of us holding anything back. I went out for a walk afterwards, and when I returned home several hours later, poof!... Brenda was gone, along with all of our savings and anything of value in the house. End of marriage. End of story.” He moved his bottom jaw back and forth and pressed his lips together. Her rejection still hurt, dammit. Despite everything, it still hurt.
He wanted to go outside for some air and was about to, when Kimberly walked over to stand in front of him. “Jake, I’m so sorry, but not every woman is like Brenda. I’m not like Brenda. Jake, things will be different between us?—"
“No, you don’t understand. I don’t want there to be an us. I don’t want an us with anyone. I went through hell with Brenda, and I won’t do it again?—"
“But—"
“Don’t bother, Kimberly. I heard it all before from Brenda. ‘Kids aren’t important. We have each other, blah, blah, blah.’ Kim, I don’t want the family thing anymore. I’ll be thirty-five years old next month. I’m set in my career, and I want different things out of my life now.” He tilted his head and looked her directly in the eyes before he continued. “Kim, I don’t love you. I like you. I respect you.” I love you more than I thought possible to love anyone, he silently added. He realized with a startling intensity that he loved her, and that was why, above everything else, he had to make her understand that she needed to get on with her life without him. Someday, she would meet and marry a man who deserved her, and they would have all the children she ever dreamed of. She would forget about Jake Taylor.
“I like my life the way it is, Kimberly. I see the world. Each day is a different challenge.” I’d give anything to wake up next to you every morning. I wouldn’t care if I ever traveled outside of San Francisco again if I could only be with you. Jake swallowed back the hard lump in his throat. He lifted her chin up with his thumb. He watched her swipe at the tears that spilled out of the corners of her wide, dark eyes, and it broke his heart. “Kimberly, you’ll always be special to me.”
“Thanks, a lot,” she whispered. She tore her chin from his grasp and stepped away from him. She pushed her shoulders back and tilted her head proudly as she walked toward the bedroom door. Before she stepped through the doorway, she paused. He watched her clench her hands at her side before she turned around to glare at him. “I hope your suitcase keeps you warm at night, Jake. And that it’s there for you during the holidays, or when you’re sick, or when you’re too old to travel… I would have stuck by you through anything, Jake Taylor. But instead, you decided to break my heart. I would like to break yours in return, but obviously you don’t have one.”
Jake felt the slam of her bedroom door shake the entire second floor. “Damn,” he swore quietly and proceeded to punch his fist against the bedroom wall. He leaned his forehead on the wall. His arm rested above his head to brace his body. “Damn,” he repeated.