That One Summer: A Collection of Steamy Contemporary Romance

Chapter 3

The bar is a good placeto start, but where is it going to end? Throughout dinner, each time Graeme”s gaze connected with my own, my body whispered to me, quietly, but persistent.

”More Champagne, or do you want something else?” Graeme asks as I take a seat on a bar stool by the counter.

I should have water, but I need to numb my senses. Every part of me is in tune with Graeme as if he’s the only thing my senses have been trained for. Standing next to me, his presence is a full assault of heat, scent, and memories of being with him. As he turns to summon the bartender, his arm brushes against mine, leaving a tingle of heat that spreads a slow burn through me.

”I”ll have a Mimosa, thank you.” Champagne might be a full bottle and I can”t commit to that. I need to be sober to be able to bolt if I need to, without stumbling on my Louboutins.

Graeme orders a beer and takes a seat on the bar stool next to mine. ”How’re things going?”

Which things? Work? Life? Love?

”Things seem to be going great for you.” A sound counterattack, but hardy brave.

He smirks. ”Florian has become a friend. We now work on every project together. I enjoy not having to pitch and claw for every job out there in the hope of making a name for myself.”

Graeme has never been the self-promoting type. Somehow, he always looked beyond the hype and did his thing at a steady, sturdy pace. It’s probably the reason he never got my Instagram career. The flash, short-lived moment of it. Except that moments pile up. He saw right through it, from the start. He is the one who will outlive us all in the long run.

”Are you riding on Florian”s fame then?” Nothing like an insult to put him in his place.

He laughs. ”Like a wave.”

The barman arrives with our drinks, and we each sip quietly for a moment.

”You”ll be glad to know we”re entering into a partnership. The lawyers are drawing up the contract. Soon it will be Paul Carlyle, Environmental Design and Architecture.”

My eyes pop at this news. To be able to buy into a partnership with Florian Paul he must be doing extremely well. Graeme didn”t struggle on the East Coast, far from it, but he”s landed on his feet and found his tribe on the other side of the States.

I swallow my pride. ”That”s fantastic, congratulations.”

He only nods with a shrug, as if this success was inevitable. ”So, how”s the Instalife?”

Our signature fight shoots back to the surface like it had a thousand times in my mind over the two years we”ve been separated. I can”t lie, not to Graeme of all people, who told me repeatedly that my social media career was destroying me, that it was destroying us. Those little moments...they pile up.

”I don”t know. I sold my account more than a year ago to Four Dimensions Design Group. They have a team managing it now.”

He stares at me, and the blank canvas he usually sports slips as the color drains from his face. Eventually, he frowns and drops his gaze. ”I didn”t know, but that explains why there are no more photos of you on the feed.”

Did he look for photos of me on my profile? Stalk me? Like I stalked him—unsuccessfully? For a long time, I was the person who took all the photos for my Instagram account, walked my followers through clever design concepts with reels and in general running the show. By the time I decided to sell, I had ten assistants—good looking and younger—to help with the shoots, image fossicking, and administration, so I phased myself out. ”We kept the deal private. Very private.” It”s after all not done.

”Makes sense. Are you still involved at all?”

”No, I stepped away completely.” As he asked me to do a thousand times.

Inside, part of me shatters. Tears narrow my throat and shoot pinpricks behind my eyes. I bite my tongue to contain myself.

He says nothing and stares across the counter, ignoring his beer.

My mimosa is nearly finished, one big sip and this torture will end. Because admitting the truth to the man who was right all along, is torture. The man I loved, and who asked me to let him go, almost on a whim. Why hasn”t he asked me for the divorce papers—signed and sealed, done and dusted—as I expect him to? It”s been more than a year since I”ve been served those papers.

Graeme turns to me. ”Are you seeing someone?”

How much more is he going to want from me this evening?

”No.” I haven”t dated since Graeme and I met over sixteen years ago when we started out—wild rookies, both of us—at a medium-sized New York architecture firm. ”I”m working on my new baby.”

Our breathing stalls in unison.

”A baby?”

How dare I make such a simple word slip—to him of all people? ”I meant my new company. I”ve set up shop in upstate New York. Home interiors. Things are happening, at last.”

”A new business?” For a moment he looks taken aback. ”Which you started incognito?”

”Yes. From scratch.” I had to. It might sound like a stupid sacrifice, to let go of everything I built, but it was the deep cleanse my soul needed. I don”t know if Graeme would even understand this. But in a way it was what he did too when he upped to leave for San Francisco. At the time, I thought there was another woman. Something I”ve never had the guts to ask him because the pain would have been unbearable, layered over all the other coats of pain. Instead, I let the break between us work its way through flesh and bone and heart like an iron file.

”Are you seeing someone?” I return his question, to drag my thoughts away from everything I”ve lost.

The moment of quiet is a heartbeat that waits to shatter. His breathing falters as his hand clutches his beer glass tight. ”There”s never been someone else, Tess. And there still isn”t. Not like that, in any event.” He breathes a heavy sigh. ”I thought you knew that.”

When his gaze meets mine, the honesty in his eyes is too much for me. I want to flee to my room, ditch my heels and run. The tears I”ve been clawing back for the past ten minutes swell into a flood I can”t contain. I swallow compulsively, in an attempt to keep my dignity at the bar of Le Paradis. ”If there wasn”t another woman, why did you file for divorce?”

Which I haven”t signed yet. Cornered, I forwarded the papers to a lawyer friend, who confirmed that it was a great deal and that I get to keep all my assets, the flat in Brooklyn, the car. The break was clean, neat, a guillotine blade hovering over us. I haven”t signed anything yet, but the papers wait in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk. Locked away in a dark corner.

”I was hoping to get some reaction from you. Anything really.” Graeme gives a mirthless chuckle. ”Maybe I hoped you would fight for us. For what we were and what we had. And not for everything we didn”t have. I”ve been waiting for you to give me a call.”

Maybe for the first time in my life as a married woman, I see Graeme”s side of our truth. He has gone to such lengths to get something—anything—from me. Now I see that I had become distant from him, cold and cruel in my own failure. The truth cut to the bone. By the time Graeme left for San Francisco, we haven”t had a decent meal together in four months. We haven”t spent time in our apartment together for more than two nights in a row for six months. But maybe, most importantly, we haven”t had sex for more than a year.

I slip off the stool and my feet find a wobbly purchase on the deck. ”Excuse me.”

He touches me to make me pause, the feel of him warm and caring, but I pull away and rush in the direction of the washrooms as tears chase down my cheeks.

Footsteps sound behind me, long, wide, and determined, catching up with me in my ridiculous heels. A hand on my shoulder slows me down and sweeps to my elbow, where it takes hold of me in a commanding grip. It”s so unlike Graeme that I stop abruptly, stumbling, but he catches me, eases me around and gathers me to him.

I sob into his chest as he cocoons me close, safe in a comfort I”ve longed for and missed fiercely.

”Stop running, Tess. Just stop running for once and talk to me,” he whispers in my hair, his voice as agonized and distressed as my own heart that beats tight with pain at each emotion I”ve constrained for years.

The floodgate opens, and sobs tear from my chest as I press closer to him.

Graeme holds me, his fingers in my hair, stroking down my back in warm brushes that eventually calm me down. ”I never wanted us to go our separate ways, Tess,” he murmurs. ”But seeing your broken heart displayed everywhere except to me, where it mattered the most, killed me over time. All those projects you were involved in, every time there was hope, a new nursery project will fill your feed and then you”d go Gothic or something off-kilter two days later. Then I just knew.”

Going from baby pastels to black would give it away. How can you lose something you”ve never had in the first place? And I”d only tell him days or weeks later that I lost the pregnancy if it could be called that. I never made it past six weeks. I was hardly pregnant. Welcome to the most hostile uterus on the planet. Infertile as the soil on Mars. My complete failure as female of the species incompatible with the perfection of my flawless social media life.

Over time, I lost my ability to talk to my husband. Something we had but lost in a maze of sorrow.

The moment passes with agonizing speed as all I want is to stay exactly where I am—in Graeme”s arms—but he relaxes his hold to cup my cheek and forces me to look up at him.

”I”m so sorry,” I whisper. Nothing I say can dilute the heartache we”ve been through. The futility, the utter unfulfillment, the unfairness of it all—it was all too much to keep contained in the small cubicle our marriage had become. In the bigger office space of life, I”d squashed our marriage into the smallest hole where nobody wants to sit. To be constantly ignored by the bypassing traffic of more important things, more important people, and more important work I could drown in.

”It”s okay, Tess, it”s always been okay. And I don”t think I ever told you that much, in so many words. I”m sorry too.” Graeme has tears in his eyes and all I want to do is kiss them away.

A young couple walks past us, laughing. Honeymooners. Just like us ten summers ago, full of love and expectations of a future we only failed at. For a minute we’re stunned. This moment happened in a side corridor of the hotel, where passersby could stumble upon us at any time. Instead of zipping further apart, Graeme leans into me again. His gaze swoops down my face to my lips, and then he kills any further consciousness of our surroundings by kissing me. Deeply.

At first tender, as if asking permission, his lips soft over mine, but like the first raindrop on desert sand, I yield, begging for more. Everything is new, the way his lips hug mine, press close and opens me for him, his warmth closer and deeper as he cradles my head in his hands. Every gesture, every turn of his tongue whispers to me in soft vibrations that settle in my core where I am wet and wanting.

This was how it was, ten years ago, when we were here. He used to kiss me like this all the time. Unhurried, unrestrained, every sensation utterly erotic.

He pulls away, and I have to cling to him to keep my footing. His eyes search mine, his own haunted and burning with a fever.

”Where”s your room?”

My dormant body has been shocked awake, abuzz with awareness and desires I”ve suppressed for years. I”ve been so out of tune with my libido, this urgent need overwhelms me.

”It”s the honeymoon suite. Number 69.”

He chuckles. ”Really?”

”If you can believe it.”

Graeme presses a kiss to my lips. Soft and full of promise. ”I”m in number 70.”

We’re neighbors. I don”t want to be. Not after that kiss. I want to be lovers. If only for tonight.

”Let”s go to bed. Tomorrow is an early start.”

His words make my heart tumble, my shattered nerves reconnect and zap around in anticipation.

He takes my hand and my fingers weave with his as they had countless times. We walk through the busy lobby and down the long corridor, need pulsing through me.

We arrive at my door, and he lets go of my hand so I can find my room key in my purse. I fumble, my fingers stupid in my resurrected sexual state. I glance at him with a nervous smile. ”I”ve ruined your shirt,” I whisper. My mascara spread like ink scratches over his chest, wild and wet.

”Won”t be the first time.”

No, it isn”t. In the beginning, when we still had piles of hope and all modern medicine”s happy interference at our disposal, we worked through shirts on a regular basis.

We stare at each other as we both glance back into our past. Time lost, never to be regained, wasted.

”Are you happy, Tess?” Graeme asks softly, the gentle light in the corridor throwing shadows over his face. He looks older, the fine lines around his eyes have deeper tracks, his stubble”s mix of gray and dark brown looks more salt than pepper. ”Honestly happy?”

I hesitate. ”Yes. I think so.”

Why does he ask? So I can lie to him—again?

He sighs and drags his hand down his face. It”s as if the air is sucked out of him, and he withers. ”Where”s my signed divorce papers, Tess?”

He doesn”t wait for an answer but turns away, leaving me shocked and scrambling for words to make it all right again. Reverse to a moment a mere minute ago where things were going in the opposite direction.

I should have been honest. I should have told him how I loathe my life without him in it, but his door closes before I get half a word in.