Chapter 14 #2
“Would you rather I call you Sarah in a place like this?”
“No. Don’t call me anything.”
“I have to call you something. You don’t seem like the kind of woman who wants to be called baby.”
“Rather stick a knife in my ear.” Sarah secured her wallet in her coat pocket and attempted to slip away. A stiff hand covertly grabbed her arm and held her in place.
“Spare me a few minutes. We need to talk.”
Oh, sure. They needed to talk. About many things, Sarah supposed.
Like how Luca had a kid she never thought to tell her about.
But no. She wanted to talk about Sarah’s life, didn’t she?
Or maybe “talk” about how everything was a huge misunderstanding, and she simply needed to give her another chance.
Is that what she wanted? I bet she’d love that. Asshole.
“Go to hell.”
“Suppose I deserve that.” Even so, Luca did not relent her grip. “I went poking into things I shouldn’t have. To be fair, I didn’t expect to find something as… intense as that.”
“Yeah, well, now you know. What are you going to do? Use that information to blackmail me into being your lover? Because it won’t work. I don’t care who you tell. Seriously. Tell the whole world. I’m not going to let you hold that over my head.”
“Why in the world would I tell anyone?”
“Oh, I dunno. The fact that you didn’t have a problem with sticking your nose in my ass to begin with?”
“As I said, I didn’t think it would be that dark.”
Dark. Because what Sarah needed was confirmation that her shit was dark.
“Let’s not do this here. Let’s go somewhere else. Doesn’t have to be a hotel. We can go to a café, a restaurant…”
“Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere with you.” She looked down at her hand. “Let me go. I don’t care if your bodyguard bullied everyone into staying away from me. You can’t hold me hostage. I’m not your possession.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“Then let me go.”
Luca’s hand dropped to her side. Sarah attempted to get up again.
Yes, the attempt was made. But by the time she spun around again, she was so tired that she forgot how to stand on her own two feet.
“What are you doing, Sarah?” Luca asked again. “What do you hope to achieve in a place like this? It’s not…”
“Don’t say it.” She knew what Luca wanted to say. Healthy. It wasn’t healthy. Yeah, well, who was Luca to tell her what or what not to do with her body and sexuality? Maybe it’s the only thing that makes me feel like I have control. “I don’t need your moralizing. I get enough from my doctor.”
“I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you. Nobody should have to deal with what you have. But…” Great. Here she went. “This isn’t how you handle it. There’s nothing for you here but more hurt.”
“What the fuck do you know?” She spun around again, so quickly that some of the pins came undone in her hair.
Not that she needed the wig anymore. Angel might as well go back to sleep for all the action she was going to get that night.
“So this place is good enough for you? Good enough for the rest of these people? Do they look like they’re hurting to you? ”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not saying the place is the problem, or what two consenting strangers decide to do with each other… only that if someone has gone through what you have, this is probably the last place she should come to try to work through it.”
“I’m so glad to hear about the shrink degree you earned at Princeton.
” Sarah slapped her hand against her face.
Why? Why did her body think now was a good time to start crying?
No, no, no! This was not supposed to happen when she dressed up as Angel.
Angel had fun. She didn’t care what people thought.
She only wanted to have a good time and go back to sleep in the morning, when Sarah woke up and reclaimed the body they both inhabited.
Angel was supposed to help Sarah get through life.
To let her sit back and forget those horrifying memories that sometimes crept up on her as air stilled and rooms grew silent.
“Sarah. I care about you. I don’t say that flippantly.”
Fuck it. She wasn’t going to sit there and take Luca’s hypocrisy any longer.
“If you care about me so much, why didn’t you tell me about your kid?”
Luca was surprised, but did not say anything. She took Sarah’s untouched martini and swirled the olive around the rim of the glass. “You found out about that, huh?”
“You’re not going to deny it?”
“The last thing I want is for my son to find out one day that I denied his existence.”
“Fuck you, Lu.” She laughed in resignation.
“You harp about my secrets, my terrible history, the way I choose to handle things… and you’re hiding a kid from me?
Who’s the woman I saw you with, huh? Your wife you’re not actually divorced from?
The main squeeze you keep in the spotlight when you’re not fucking me on the side?
I knew that this,” she gestured to the narrow space between them, “was shallow, but Sarah is not someone’s affair. ”
“It’s good enough for Angel?”
“You’re not going to deny that either…”
“You know,” Luca said, leaning against the counter, “I thought that was Alicia’s car I saw yesterday. You were in it, weren’t you?”
Like Luca wouldn’t deny anything, neither would Sarah.
“So you saw Victor. That’s my son, by the way. Victor. Bouncing five-year-old baby. Hmph. Guess that means he’s not really a baby anymore. My, where does one’s life go?”
“And the women?”
Luca pondered the rows of bottles displayed before them.
Spirits from all over the world. The Caribbean.
Europe. Japan. Argentina. Morocco. “The woman you saw leaving in my car is my ex-wife. I never lied about being divorced or when it happened. That was our son together, from our marriage.” She drank Sarah’s martini.
“The older woman was her mother. Jill and Victor have been living with her parents since the divorce.”
Sarah didn’t respond. Not audibly, anyway.
Yet in her head, she screamed at herself as loudly as she could.
You expect me to believe that? To coddle you because you have a son you never told me about?
And a hot ex-wife who gets to take your car everywhere?
How ex are you two, exactly? Why did you divorce?
Luca turned on her stool, motioning to the bodyguard a few steps away. “There’s a lounge down the street from here. It’s quieter. Less… charged, if you catch my drift.” She glanced Sarah up and down. “We’re dressed well enough for it. Shall we go? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“How many of them will be lies?”
“I haven’t told you a single lie yet, and I’m not about to start.”
For all Sarah knew, that was a lie.
Sarah – for she was wholly Sarah again, her blond wig folded in a spare paper bag someone handed her – sat in the corner of the quiet lounge Luca thought so highly of.
She sat across from Sarah, jacket removed and collar bothered.
Her hair was out of place, despite her usually being so kempt with a comb and product.
Sarah had barely noticed it back at the club.
Ms. Blackbourne’s bodyguard stayed a respectable distance away at another table, on his phone but cautiously alert. The closest table of guests was far enough away to give Sarah and Luca the illusion of true privacy. Subdued jazz music helped bolster that effect.
They shared bourbon and house-made garlic bread. Sarah didn’t care about fitting into her tights or dress any longer. She took a hearty bite of bread and washed it down with Luca’s favorite brand of bourbon.
She had no idea why Luca was entertaining her. Curiosity? The knowledge that her night was over? That she had wasted a trip to New York when she could have stayed home all weekend and had the same amount of fun?
Whatever her reason, she knew she didn’t want to do much talking. So she let Luca yap all she wanted once the drinks were down and they were left alone for the hour.
“I met Jill at Princeton. She wasn’t a student, though.
She was the granddaughter of one of the department chairs and often stopped by to visit him.
Lunch, mixers… stuff like that. Didn’t think much of it at the time.
I only happened to meet her when we crossed paths at one of those mixers hosted by her grandfather.
The man didn’t even head a department I had anything to do with, but Danica was interested in it, and convinced me to tag along. ”
Sarah drank more. I care about this, why?
“You’ve seen her. She’s beautiful, but she’s also charming to a fault. Within five minutes, I was intrigued by her. Within fifteen, I was in love.”
My head itches. Damn wig. Sarah pulled one of her hairpins from her wallet and used it to scratch an ornery spot on her scalp.
“We started dating, of course. But the thing about Jill is that monogamy is not really her thing. She was upfront about that. Told me we could date, and she could even give me a lot of her time, but there would be others. She didn’t care if I dated other people, either.
And I did. Sometimes.” Luca stared into the bottom of her glass.
“But I was fixated on her. Even met some of her other lovers, which is nuts to think now.” The bourbon continued to swirl in Luca’s glass, but she wasn’t drinking it.
What had soured her stomach so suddenly?
Do I care? “I’ll spare you the details for now, but I even got involved with some, uh… ”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Threesomes and shit. Just spit it out. Do you know who I am?”
Luca snorted. “I had no idea Jill would take me to experimentation land. I’ll say that much. Thought it would be Dan…”
“And?”