Chapter Forty-One Elise
I return the next day and there’s a note for me on the table where we place our keys. My hands shaking, I tear it open. His script fills the paper with rushed, confident strokes.
Elise,
I’m training most of the day. Let me know when you’re ready to talk or when it’s OK to text. I’m sorry I pushed so hard.
Love,
Randall
Elise: Saw your note. Reach out any time.
Randall: I don’t deserve your text but thank you. How are you?
Elise: I didn’t sleep a wink. You?
Randall: I had your pillow so I managed a few hours.
That makes me smile. He’s so earnest about how he feels about me. Honest. It was a rough conversation last night, but it was honest.
Randall: Can I call you?
I call him myself.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
“I don’t have much time, but I wanted to hear your voice and tell you how sorry I am.” He sounds wretched.
“I’m sorry, too,” I say, humbled by the relief that our fight didn’t carry over to today. “I shouldn’t have been so defensive every time you brought up my job. Or my lack of a job.”
“Elise, you don’t have a job because you have a calling. A passion. Never apologize for that.”
“I love you, Randall.”
“I love you, too. I can’t believe how much I pushed. I should have listened to you instead of forcing a conversation you weren’t ready to have. It’s a shock, even for me. Part of me couldn’t believe a trade would happen right as my life with you is beginning. Should have known better. Should have prepared you for the possibility. I’m sorry.”
“Randall, can you do me a favor?”
“Anything, baby.”
“Can that be the last time you say sorry about last night?”
He chuckles and says yes.
“What time are you finished?”
“About four, since I have to sign papers with my agent after practice. Will you be home?”
“I’ll be home.”
I use that time to see if I can salvage the empty boxes I used when moving in. There are also all the books due to the library that I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. I return those on my way to getting steak and vegetables for dinner.
One of our last dinners together in this home.
I’m tossing a salad when Randall lets himself in. There’s a half second of complete and utter stillness.
And then it breaks.
Randall annihilates the distance with two big steps, and I launch myself at him. We hug as tight as we can. Our bodies are fused, though it isn’t sexual at all. We’re clinging like the other person is a life raft.
He chants my name over and over, kissing my hair and inhaling my neck. I do the same, filling my senses with Randall like I’m hoarding the sensations that make me feel safe and loved. Storing them not only in my mind but also in my pores, my fingers, my heart. Every inch of me is its own memory bank.
We don’t speak, both weary of the mistakes we made yesterday. Instead, we let our kisses do the talking. The real message is our love. It speaks loud and clear: nothing changes how much we mean to each other.
He brings me to the sofa where I straddle him so we’re face to face.
“I would have gotten here earlier, but I got stopped by a cop for speeding.”
“You got a speeding ticket?”
“He let me go with a warning because he’s a Mavericks fan. Fuck, I almost asked for the ticket if he would just hurry up.”
“You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
“You’re here, too, and that makes me so happy, Elise. That’s the thing, as long as I can get you in some way, the distance won’t matter. We’ll figure it out. I should never have put that three-day deadline on the table at all.”
“You mean two days now, I guess.” The words are out before I can stop them. Yet isn’t it better to face the timeline head on? I don’t want to be in denial; I want to make the most of the time we have.
“I’m required to be at training camp in Vancouver. You, however, are welcome to stay in this home for as long as it takes to make your decision or to get into a rhythm that’s right for us. Maybe I’ll keep it and just rent in Vancouver. That way, I don’t have to move anything, and I’ll always have a home with you.”
I guffaw at such an outlandish proposition.
“Randall Haughland, are you serious? You cannot keep a house just so we have a place to hang out when you’re visiting me in Columbus. I’m not staying in your house while you’re not in it.”
“Why not? I don’t want to think of you anywhere else. I like knowing you’re sleeping in our bedroom and watching television on this couch. I love imagining you in your office where you create wonderful plays and corrupt future generations through revolutionary theater.”
I laugh because he’s too much. Why did I doubt him yesterday? Why did I lash out and suspect, even for a minute, that he didn’t value my work?
“The timeline of when I have to report to Vancouver doesn’t apply to you, OK? And we’ll figure out how to see each other, I promise.”
Timeline. Two days.
The day of Randall’s departure looms like a guillotine posed to drop.
Part of me already misses him, squinting up in awareness of its finality. No matter how hard we try, there will be a break. Physical and material and real. There’s no changing that fact, no matter how many air miles we rack up.
But it’s a break I’m determined to survive. For him. For us.
“And I’ll come out to see you, too. I’ve been called in for local projects and there’s the class next semester that I need to submit to the department head. I’m sure I can visit in a few weeks.”
“We can do this, baby. And maybe I’ll suck so bad they’ll send me back.”
I play-punch Randall, my knuckles no match for the hard planes of his chest.
“Don’t you dare joke about that. Your career is important to you, so it’s important to both of us. You’ll be amazing.”
“God, I’m going to miss you,” he groans.
“Not tonight. We have tonight.”
He carries me to the bedroom like a bride. We take our time removing our clothes and savoring each other’s naked bodies.
I kiss him everywhere. I love the taste of his ear lobe and the feel of the V of his hipbones against my tongue. I make him turn around so my fingers can memorize the contours of his back, the valley between mountainous shoulder blades, the twin muscles of the lower back so deeply pronounced in the physique of a hockey player. I rub his sore neck and he sighs. When I rub my wet pussy against the back I’m massaging, he growls and flips us around.
Wordlessly, he lays me down and touches me like he’s never seen a woman’s body before. Nibbling my collarbone and kissing my jaw. Rubbing my hair between two fingers and then taking a fist full in a slight tug. He runs his tongue along the skin on my side and lightly bites the inside of my arm, making me squeal in surprise. He spends time with my breasts, kissing them softly, fondling their peaks, sucking them so ravenously the whole breast fits in his mouth.
We make love tenderly, bodies undulating like unhurried waves on a calm day. He takes me from the side.
His sculped chest covers my back, his hands locking me close. We grind as he reaches around to tease my clit. And just as I’m about to come, he switches our legs so we’re scissored. The angle shifts, the curve of his shaft nudging new erotic depths. My body goes off like fireworks.
He remains rock hard. I push him on his back so I can ride him. He grips my hips to still them.
“Give me a minute, baby. Your pussy feels too good. Fuck, I love how your orgasm chokes my cock.”
I refrain from rocking over his body, but my hands roam over princely cheekbones and a masculine jaw. Down the middle of his pecs where a soft fuzz tickles my palm. Over abdominals ridged by the strain of holding his orgasm back. God, he is so beautiful.
He tilts his hips, a sign that I’m to move as I wish. Grinding and swirling so he’s deep and I feel him everywhere. Everywhere.
“Ride me harder, Elise. Make your sweet tits bounce for me.”
“Yes, sir,” I rasp seductively, just the way he likes it.
And I let the crashing of our bodies carry me to another height. Higher and higher as the pleasure becomes so acute, the knot of ecstasy so tightly bound, it’s almost painful.
Then, in a moment of joint ecstasy, the binding that separates need from satisfaction unravels. We come together, clinging desperately for the moment to last as long as possible.
After our simple dinner and another round of lovemaking, we hold each other in bed.
I tell myself I’m fully in the moment.
I tell myself I’m not thinking about what happens two nights from now when we’re apart and the bed is cold and my heart is torn.
I tell myself I’m not devastated that Randall is leaving.
I’m not.
I’m not.