18
It’s night. The sheets are cool on my legs, my bedroom is dark, and the wind whispers against the old windowpanes and the smooth stone of the chateau. I clutch the gold watch in my palm, its warm metal a heavy weight in my hand.
“Am I really doing this again?”
Yes, the watch winks at me.
“Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe tonight I won’t dream.”
I stare at the blue enamel, so much like the frothy waves of the sea coursing over the white-sand shore. The watch doesn’t answer.
I take in a deep breath, one filled with lavender and wood and hundreds-year-old stone walls.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I wind the watch, twisting it back to life. The hands spring into motion, ticking down the seconds. I lie back, close my eyes, and?—
Robert’s kissing me.
My back digs into the cool wooden slats of the cottage. The hot tropical air assaults me. The heady, spiced scent of fuchsia flowers, salty sea, and loamy forest grips me.
I’m pinned between the hard thrust of Robert and the cottage. The slats are scratchy from peeling paint and warped from the humid sea air. I spin dizzily, trying to land back in this moment. The leap from Geneva to here has me spinning.
Robert’s kiss is punishing. Hard and fervent. He grips my waist, drags my hips to his, his fingers biting into my flesh. Then, with a harsh exclamation, he lifts my dress, and that’s when I finally land in the moment.
“I need you now.” Robert swears against my mouth. “Seeing him touch you?—”
I rip my mouth from his and shove. Hard.
He doesn’t move.
Instead he grabs my chin. “What?”
“I’m married,” I say, jerking my chin from his fingers.
“Yes,” Robert says, his eyes flicking with impatience. “I’m aware.”
I stare at him, my chest heaving, my head still spinning.
I landed right back in the moment I left. It feels just as real as it did before. The prickle of sweat running down my back, the taste of coffee on my lips, the press of Robert’s thighs against mine. From around the corner the rooster lets out a scratchy, triumphant crow and a man and woman laugh.
Robert looks toward the noise, waits, and, when there’s no more sound, turns back to me.
“Becca,” he says, his thumb running a circle over my hip, “by Christmas we’ll have enough money to leave. But until then you know I hate it. I can’t stand it when . . .” He pauses, taking in my expression. “It’s so hard to love you. It hurts when I want to touch you, knowing that I can’t.”
My word.
He loves me.
This dream man, who I don’t—absolutely don’t—love.
In fact, I find him horrible. Like the awful taste of orange juice after black coffee.
I take his hand, the one stroking my hip, and pull it from me.
“I’m married,” I say again. “And even if this is a dream, what you’re doing, it’s not okay.” I gesture between the two of us. “Whatever this is, it isn’t okay.”
Robert leans close and looks into my eyes as if he’s checking if I’m serious.
“Becca.” He mimics my gesture, motioning between us, “This has been going on for three years.”
Three years!
“Does he know?”
Robert scoffs, a bitter sound. “The great Aaron McCormick? You know as well as I do that his ego would never allow him to suspect that his wife and best friend don’t love him as much as the rest of the world. You know he doesn’t know.” His eyelids twitch then and he focuses on me. “Unless, he said something?”
Unbelievable.
My demons, they’ve reared up to the surface, and here they are, ready for me to slay. “What happens when we leave?”
Robert’s shoulders relax and he leans over me, the muggy heat swarming us. “We move to New York. Start over, just you and me.”
“The kids?”
“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts. They’re better here. Aaron will take care of them.”
“That’s reprehensible.”
His mouth tightens. “It was your idea. It’s what you want.”
My breath catches, because leaving them behind would be just like what my mum did to me.
“I want to leave my own kids? To live in New York with you?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice urgent, eyes on my mouth.
“I love you?”
“Desperately.”
“And not my husband?”
“Not for years. Not ever.”
“And not my kids?”
“You don’t want them.”
“I’m an asshole.”
“You’re an angel.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“You love me that way.”
I duck under Robert’s arm and move closer to the light puncturing the deep shadow of the eaves and the tropical leaves. I straighten my dress and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, wiping Robert away. “I’m going to say this once, and only once.”
Robert tilts his head and I notice that air of naivety is gone, replaced by simmering intelligence and drive.
“I don’t do this. We aren’t doing this. I don’t leave my kids. I don’t leave my husband. I don’t have affairs.”
Affairs are like clinging white-knuckled to a wrecking ball as you smash into skyscrapers, shattering windows and destroying lives. There may be a thrill in swinging through the air on that giant ball, but you can’t stop the pendulum’s swing once it’s begun, and the destruction goes on long after you want it to stop. And the ruins left behind leave a scar that rips far into the future.
I wouldn’t do this to my worst enemy. Not ever. Not again. It was unknowing the first time, and it sure as hell won’t happen a second time with my knowledge. Not even in a dream.
“You don’t have a marriage,” Robert says. “You don’t even have half a marriage. I’m more yours than he’s ever been. What the hell is wrong with you? Is it the party? This stupid anniversary party? His last-ditch effort to try to blow a spark into a cold, guttered flame? Come on, Becca. Remember how much fun we had in New York? That’s our future.” He cuts his hand across the air, flinging it toward the sea. “Not this dying island.”
Something more needs to be said. Something to end it all. “My marriage isn’t guttered. Last night McCormick and I made love all night long.”
At that Robert’s eyebrows lift, and then, instead of shock or anger, he lets out a deep laugh.
“Last night,” he says, laughter in his voice, “we all cooked for the party until 5 a.m. and then you and I made love behind the cottage while I held my hand over your mouth to keep you from screaming as you came all over me. You and McCormick, you haven’t been intimate in two-and-a-half years.”
Two-and-a-half years?
I do the math. Blink. Do the math again.
Does that mean?—?
I think of Sean’s copper-penny hair. It’s not like McCormick’s thick black hair. It’s not like my (Becca’s) blonde hair.
“Sean—”
“I don’t want to know,” Robert says, shutting down my question. “We promised it was better if we didn’t know.”
I take another step back, moving toward the light and back to the front of the cottage.
If this dream is about fixing my life, if it’s about facing my demons, then there’s something I need to do.
“I don’t love you,” I say to Robert. “I don’t like you. I don’t want you to come near me again. I’m married. I’m staying married. I love my kids. You and me? We’re done.”
He doesn’t protest. In fact, he’s studying me as if he’s never seen me before. Not in his whole entire life.
I back out of the rippling shade and into the light. The sun hits me and I blink into the brightness. Robert stands still in the shadow, staring after me.
I hurry around the cottage, and then, with the grass prickling under my feet and the ocean roaring in waves over the beach, I run onto the cool wood of the porch and back into the house.