Chapter 15 Henry
Chapter 15
Henry
Henry rolls over and instinctively wraps his arms around Lucy until they’re spooning, his face buried in her hair. It takes him a millisecond to realize that they’re naked, and the stirring under the covers confuses him. Did they have sex last night? The memory is grainy. He braces himself for Lucy to find them in this intimate position, but she’s warm and still, and he relishes her nearness.
When his hand glides down the side of her body, Lucy stirs, letting out a deep sigh. She’s soft and curvy, and his hands know where to touch. He waits for her to wriggle away, to fling his hands off her, but she does neither. Beneath his palm is a balmy heat as her breaths rise and fall. She remains calm, feigning sleep, but he’s shared a bed with her long enough to know she’s awake.
“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” It comes out awkwardly. Henry has never been dubbed funny.
“Did we?” She pauses. “Because if we did ...” Her voice trails off.
“I don’t think we did.” He has no evidence to prove otherwise, but if he made love to his wife, he thinks he’d remember.
She sighs again. It’s slight, and her body relaxes beneath his fingers.
“What happened?” she asks, still not facing him.
“I’m not sure.”
Maybe it was being back at their favorite place. Maybe it was habitual. Maybe there were some things, like space, that would forever remain a mystery.
Lucy seemed to think he hadn’t noticed their distance—how she turned away from him, refusing his touch—but he had. In the beginning, the rejection hurt, but then things snowballed, and their sex life (or lack thereof) turned into one of those rubber band balls: messy and complicated and bound together tightly, rolling away from them at a speed neither of them could catch up with.
She slowly turns around; their noses are close enough to touch. His dick is definitely awake, and he wonders if he could give her that last hurrah and make it the very best.
“Are you sorry we came?” she finally says.
And when she realizes the double entendre, she smiles. A smile that still brings him to his knees. The thumping in his chest gets louder, or it’s a pull somewhere else. He feels himself growing hard again.
“What is happening here?” she asks.
“You’re naked against me.” And then: “We’re defying gravity.”
“Or a divorce.”
Her familiar eyes seem different. It’s been a while since they last looked into each other’s souls this closely. Does she see his shame? He likes to think he knows everything about his wife, but there’s a universe behind those eyes filled with her own stories and secrets.
He doesn’t remember first agreeing to the divorce, but he doesn’t remember fighting against it either. In some ways, it was easy to relinquish control. If she left him, he could wade through his misery alone, save her from being dragged down alongside him. “If we love each other, and we want each other ... which I think ... maybe we do ... why are we doing this?” He regrets the pathetic, desperate words as soon as they leave his mouth.
She presses a finger to his lips, and he smells the flowery scent of her lotion.
He stares into the blue of her eyes. “Lucy.”
He wants her to fight him, to admit this whole divorce charade is just that, but she doesn’t. And when he changes the subject, any lingering desire burrows into the white sheets.
“How’d it go with Sienna?” he asks.
“I’m not sure how much longer I can avoid the conversation. She knows something’s up.”
“Why don’t you just talk to her? She’s always been your person.”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel ...” She pauses while a bird squawks outside their window.
“What?”
“I don’t know ... By the way, I think Adam did something to his face. He looks different. Or maybe it’s his hair. Do you think he’s coloring it?”
He laughs. “That guy gets better and better looking. It’s annoying.”
She waits a beat. “Yeah, but he’s still intolerable.”
Henry’s ears perk up. So he’s gotten to her too.
“Did you hear him bragging about flying private? Does he think that impresses us? It doesn’t,” she says.
Henry treads lightly. “He’s worked hard. Let him have his glory.” But he’s surprised it’s taken her this long to notice how Adam has changed and how it has become more and more difficult to inhabit his orbit. He almost laughs at his own joke. They aren’t near his orbit. At least not anymore.
When the four of them first met, their lives fit together so easily. Adam went to a nearby community college, and the girls were roommates—immediate best friends—and they ended up in line at Coffee Break the first week of school. His connection to Adam was instantaneous. He was friendly and funny. People were drawn to him. And his eyes on the prize mentality made him seem light-years ahead of their peers. His ambition was contagious; his silly pranks and antics added the right touch of levity. He and Sienna struck up a subtle flirtation. Somehow he coaxed her to write all his papers, and their combined grit, smarts, and looks turned them into a supercouple.
As much as it pains Henry to admit, he owes Adam. He was the one who insisted Henry get out of his head. Adam drew him out and forced him to pay attention to what was here on Earth. That’s how he finally came to see Lucy as more than a friend. “The girl’s in love with you, Einstein.” Adam had meant Galileo, and Henry didn’t correct him. “Do you see the way she looks at you?” He hadn’t. But the next time they were all together, on that first day of spring, when students lounged on the lawn by their dorms like a beach, he fell inside Lucy’s ocean-blue eyes. They’d been inseparable ever since.
“They’re so darn sweet together,” Lucy continues while he commends himself for holding back on a wisecrack. “Did you hear what he’s planned for her birthday this year? The boat trip to the BVIs?”
The whole table had heard what Adam planned for Sienna’s birthday. And this was what Adam was known for: grand romantic gestures, all eyeballs on him, whispers of praise for his lavish displays. He ate it up like berry clafoutis.
A moment passes, the idea sinking in that they won’t be on that boat.
“Leo Shay,” she finally says, ending the silence. “That was unexpected, but he and Penny seem like a nice couple, don’t they?”
Henry had thought a lot about the Shays being at the table, not because they’re famous but because they’ve endured a very public scandal.
“Good for them for coming ... I wonder what this means. You know Leo’s presence will play miserably on Adam’s psyche,” she adds. “He’s going to have to share the spotlight. And that mother and daughter. Those two are ripe for the picking.”
He listens as she rattles off her observations, leaving no time for him to comment. “I suspect the mother might struggle with body dysmorphic disorder. Did you hear her complaining she’s put on weight? And that Rosalie, she’s clearly the adult in the relationship. It’s no wonder she hides behind that mask.”
Henry’s amused at how she quickly sums up those around her.
“There’s a collection of buried dreams hiding beneath that girl’s makeup.”
“Black hole,” he says, one of his scientific terms. “I feel for her.”
“Of course you do, Henry. You’re too good for the earth.”
When she doles out these hefty compliments, he wonders why he wasn’t enough. And yet, they’re naked, still close enough to feel each other’s breath on the cusp of divorce.
Strange things happen at the inn. Being here gives the illusion that things are normal. Exceptional food, cups always full. Last night Jean-Paul and Renée were as welcoming as ever, inquiring about their lives and their kids, having no idea it’s all about to change. The whole notion seems surreal, and he feels unsettled, as though there’s something he’s missing too. During their dinner conversations, he had smiled and pretended everything was fine. But when Renée announced their financial troubles and the possibility of having to sell the inn due to some bad decisions, he had a hard time keeping his focus after that. It always came down to bad decisions.
And as if reading his mind, Lucy weighs in on Renée and Jean-Paul’s situation. “They’ll work it out. They have to. This place is too special to let go.”
He wants to tell her that their relationship was once special too.
Seemingly done with the short trip down last night’s memory lane and nowhere close to figuring out how they ended up undressed, Lucy rises from the bed, oblivious to her nakedness, and strides across the room. She’s complained about the changes in her figure, but his friend tugs at him again as she sweeps toward the bathroom.
“Let’s go on the Crab Orchard hike,” she shouts from behind the door.
Which is the signal for him to tell his friend to stand down so he can rise up.