Chapter 19 Heart to Heart
Heart to Heart
“Oh God.”
Jamie was already moving. He’d pulled the towel off his neck and slung it onto the back of a chair.
But as I jumped up to pick up the photo, which had fluttered next to the dresser, he held a hand out. His worn blue T-shirt and dark pants stretched as he leaned down to pick it up himself.
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”
But Jamie shook his head, offering me a rare smile, though it was brief and gone before I could feel the warmth of its presence.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I should have moved it.”
“No.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know what to say.
Jamie looked down at the photo for a moment, holding it pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Then he came over and picked up the book, which I’d set on the table, and stuck it back inside.
He set it down again. “Please. Sit back down. It’s okay.”
I dropped back into the chair. My throat felt thick, my eyes close to watering again.
But it was like this every time I thought of the unfathomable loss Jamie had experienced.
This photo was obviously precious to him.
The way it was worn I knew it didn’t live in this book—he had to keep it with him everywhere he went.
“Do you miss him?” I blurted in the silence. Then I cringed. I couldn’t believe I’d just asked that. “I mean… oh God. I just mean, I know it’s nothing like losing a child but—”
Sarah, no. I shrank into myself.
But Jamie was looking at me so earnestly, I swallowed the sand in my throat and blundered on. “My dad, he died when I was ten. I used to actively miss him back then. So now when I don’t think about him, I wonder if… Fuck, it’s nothing like that. Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
I ran my hands over my hair, my elbows up. I felt like a complete idiot. I was shaking.
Jamie dropped onto the edge of the bed, a few feet from me. “It’s okay, Sarah. I know what you mean.”
I lowered my arms.
His hair was still wet, the ends dripping dark blots onto his worn t-shirt.
“In the beginning,” he said, “I used to wake up, and for a split second, I’d forget what had happened.
Each time, it would come back to me like a…
hammer to my heart. I felt like something that had been run over, more than once.
A few times, I even fell down. Physically. My wife—ex-wife—she never recovered.”
A tear rolled down my cheek, and without hesitation, Jamie leaned over and thumbed it away.
My chest tightened. He shouldn’t be comforting me. And I certainly shouldn’t want to capture his hand in mine, kiss his palm, tell him how so, so sorry I was.
Luckily he seemed to realize what he’d done at the same time, and clasped his hands together.
He rested his elbows on his knees, his head low.
“For a while, Seamus was the only reason I got up in the morning. I had to show him there was life even after a hole had been cut out of us. Now it’s not so… active, like you say.”
I nodded. Another tear spilled, and I wiped it away, not wanting him to think I was making this about me.
“The company must have helped too,” I said. “Being able to do it with Seamus, I mean.”
Jamie’s lips turned up, but his eyes didn’t join the smile. “Yeah. It did. The company is everything to me.”
For a moment, as he looked at me, he appeared almost pained. An hour ago, I would have guessed the subtext was But you’re there. Ruining it for me.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
A beat passed, then Jamie said, “Do you miss carpentry, Sarah?”
I was thrown by him calling me by my first name. He never did that. Except he had a moment ago too, hadn’t he?
A sudden yearning ran over me. Sarah. Call me Sarah again. That’s how desperate I was for his affection, I guess.
“Yes,” I said. “So much.”
“It’s how I started, too. Kevin and I… we used to build things together when he was little. Birdhouses. Bookshelves. I moved away from it when I was growing the business, but I miss it.”
I looked up. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Ted—my ex—he didn’t like me doing it. He was intimidated by me, even when I switched into project management. I mean, I love project management, too,” I said quickly. Project Management was what Reilly Contracting had hired me for.
Jamie gave a brief smile. “I’m not taking notes.”
My lips lifted, just a little, at the sight. “Every time I smell sawdust I’m reminded of my dad.”
He studied me for a moment. Long enough that I felt pink creep up my cheeks.
“Why don’t you have any kids?”
My stomach tightened. I hated this question. I’d been getting it for years. But Jamie hadn’t asked the way people usually did, with that underlying tone like my time was running out. Like it would one day be some big regret. He’d asked like he was genuinely curious.
“You don’t have to answer that,” he said. He pressed his hands to his knees like he was going to get up.
I didn’t want him to get up.
“I thought I wanted them—once,” I blurted out.
I was immediately embarrassed. But I was also surprised to hear myself telling the truth. Usually, I told people it was a decision I’d made years ago that I was perfectly happy with. And I had, early on. But it got muddled with Ted.
“We tried. Me and my ex. For years. He really wanted them and I thought I could get on board. I did get on board.”
It was important to Ted, and I knew my lack of desire for kids was mostly fear-based thanks to losing my dad so young.
“It’s just…” I cleared my throat. I’d made peace with this pain years ago, but it still sometimes rose up, like something rotten.
I remembered how no matter what I said, Ted kind of glazed over, then he’d repeat the same things over again.
He always did that. Just kind of paused when I was talking, then carried on like he had just been waiting for his turn.
I’d told him I wanted to take a break to think things over.
And he’d just say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just try again next month.
’ Only I wasn’t worried. I was done, and didn’t have the courage to follow through.
Jamie never did that. He always listened to me and actually heard what I was saying. At least in the times when we were actually talking. Like now.
I looked away. “Anyway. Turns out I couldn’t. The doctors said the chances of me conceiving naturally were one in a hundred or less. And Ted wasn’t interested in adopting.”
When I looked back at him again, Jamie’s face held no judgment. Just interest in what I had to say. For the first time in forever.
“But I had girlfriends back then, who were child-free by choice. They helped me see that half of it was a sense of moral obligation.” I laughed drily.
“Ted constantly told me I’d regret it if I didn’t have kids.
He got my mom involved. They told me together one time, in a crowded restaurant, that I’d look at kids later and get sad. ”
My stomach wrenched at the memory. It had been a huge betrayal. A foreshadowing, ironically, to his later betrayal the day he dumped me.
I laughed awkwardly, embarrassed I’d mentioned the restaurant thing.
Then I considered. “But the thing is, once we stopped trying, all I felt was… relief. I look at kids now and I love them for who they are, not who they could have been for me. In the end, I told Ted I wanted to focus on my career. That was probably the nail in the coffin, now that I think about it. He was so envious of my career.”
Jamie had an expression on his face that was hard to decipher. Then he said, “Sounds like that guy wouldn’t know what to do with a kid—he’s baby enough.”
I couldn’t help it; I let out a choked laugh. A real one, this time. “He was. Completely.”
It was funny; that was the exact word my friend Winona called him just the other day when I was telling her how terrible our sex life had been.
About a year before we split, I nervously confessed to Ted that I’d been doing a ton of work in therapy on being assertive.
I didn’t tell him it stemmed from my feelings at not being able to figure out sooner how to tell him I didn’t want to be a mom.
But I did tell him it didn’t apply in the bedroom. I wanted to be dominated and praised.
“Ted looked at me like I was dirty or something,” I told Winona.
“He kink-shamed you?” She was incredulous.
I guess that’s what it was. I didn’t even think I was asking him to be particularly kinky.
Just for him to boss me around a little.
You’d think he would have liked that, seeing how much he didn’t like me being in charge in real life.
But he accused me of watching porn and fantasizing about other men.
Then he refused to have sex with me at all.
For weeks. Not that I’d been clamoring for it at that point.
“That man was a straight-up baby, Sarah,” Winona had said.
Except Ted wasn’t wrong about one thing. I had been watching porn. I’d found this site called WomenVibes that was all sexy videos of real-life couples. That’s where I’d learned being told what to do in the bedroom was what I liked. I’d never had that before.
For a moment, I looked at my boss next to me on the bed.
I bet he’d be good at telling me what to do.
For a split second, I imagined him opening the door for me like he had earlier.
But instead of snapping at me, maybe he’d close the door and loosen his robe; grabbing that bulge that even now I could see the faint outline of in his pants.
I heard his voice in my ears—deep, low, rough. “Get on your knees, sweetheart.”
My thighs clenched. I think I felt moisture gathering between them.
Then I realized Jamie was staring.
My cheeks flooded with heat.
Holy shit. How long had I been sitting here, lost in my mind?
Lost in fantasizing about Jamie?
“Sorry,” I said. “I um… don’t think about that time very often.”
Hopefully he’d take my furious blushing for embarrassment at opening up so much.
Still, my center surged with heat, like he knew exactly what I was thinking.
Then I remembered, painfully, that moment I told him how I felt. He’d rejected me. Hard.
Something passed over Jamie’s face, but once again, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Sarah,” he said, his voice low. “I—”
A knock sounded, interrupting him.
My stomach plunged. Oh god. Was it a personal visitor? I had no idea what went on in his private life. But I did know he was the star of this conference. I saw the way even the most professional women got knock-kneed around him. Of course he’d have a visitor.
I stood up. “I should go.”
“No.”
Jamie stood. “I ordered food a while ago.”
“Oh. Okay.” I stammered. “Still, I’ll just go.”
But once again, Jamie held his hand out. “Sit down, Sarah.”
Like an obedient little girl, I lowered myself back down. Only this time, that heat came back, surging in my lower half.
His eyes raked down my body as if he could see it. They honed in on my hands, which were folded over the apex of my inner thighs.
“There’s enough for two.” Jamie’s voice was low. Rough. Strained. Or was I imagining that?
He headed for the door, then paused at the dark edge of the hallway. “Your ex is an idiot, Sarah. Anyone who fucked up a relationship with you would be.”
It was extremely lucky he opened the door then, exchanging conversation with the person delivering the food.
Because I made an ungodly sound not appropriate for anything except someone touching me extremely intimately.
I was hot all over.
And I wasn’t convinced that last sentence had been about Ted.