6. Unlimited
The three of us sat around a table just after two, enjoying a couple drinks and jabbering about gliding through the trees. I still couldn’t get over the experience. A fresh thunderstorm pounded outside as we took shelter from the rain.
“That was incredible,” I cooed. “I’ve never felt more alive, more free. I mean, it was freaking amazing!”
“I know, right?” said Jason, taking a sip from his local micro-brew. “I told you it would be worth it.”
“Yeah, it was so cool,” said Nikki.
“Once you opened your eyes,” I added.
“And stopped crying in fear,” laughed Jason.
“Shut up! I wasn’t crying!”
“Whatever,” I groaned. “You know, I feel fantastic right now. Like, I’m not even upset about Fred anymore.”
“You’re not?” asked Nikki in disbelief.
“No. Fuck him. You know, we haven’t had sex in over six months?”
Jason coughed into his bottle, a spray of foam splashing down his shirt.
“Six months? Oh, honey,” said Nikki, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“No, over six months. I mean that I stopped keeping track after I’d been celibate for six months. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I mean, really. I’ve been with this man for five years—five years!—and he doesn’t even pay attention to me. Did I tell you how I surprised him with this trip? Hm? I dressed in my brand new bikini and cooked salmon for his dinner. Salmon!” I emphasized.
Still fighting the beer lingering in his throat, Jason coughed, “Bikini?” but Nikki shot him a warning glare.
“And what does he do? Says he can’t go and takes his nasty old fish into the den to work for the rest of the night! He didn’t even have the decency to tell me I looked hot!”
Nikki had taken her hand back and was exchanging confused glances with Jason as I babbled on.
“Seriously, I’m always the one who initiates with him. I practically beg to get his attention now, and it never works. He forgot our anniversary, for Christ’s sake! Do you know when the last time was that he commented on one of my books, or how I looked, or even said he loved me without me saying it first?” The pair of them stared back at me, not daring to answer. “I’m seriously asking, because I don’t even remember!”
“Gemma, maybe he’s just stressed over work,” Nikki started.
“Yeah,” continued Jason, halfheartedly. “Maybe.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said again. “I’ve been trying and trying to get him to notice me and nothing changes. This relationship has changed me into this passive little damsel, hoping to bat my eyes in just the right way to catch his attention. I used to be bold, take charge. Hell, I’m half certain that my books sell so well because they’re fantasies I wish I was living. This trip has changed all that. I feel alive. I feel more like me than I have in years. So this whole garbage situation with Fred, it doesn’t matter anymore. You know why? Because I’m done.”
Nikki’s brow furrowed, and her eyes widened. “Done?”
“Yup. Finito. I am through waiting around for my own boyfriend to realize what I am worth. It’s over. I am done with Fred.”
“Maybe you’ve had a little much to drink. Too much excitement for one day,” said Nikki, indiscreetly pulling my drink away from me on the table.
“For the first time in a long time, I am thinking very clearly. Once I get back home, I am moving out.”
* * *
A few hours later, I sat on my bed with a notebook in front of me, a jumble of complaints and arguments scribbled carelessly across the pages. I tried desperately to organize my thoughts into one coherent series of talking points I would attempt to memorize for the inevitable breakup speech. At that moment, it was just various ways of saying Fred had been ignoring my existence since moving in together. It was too repetitive.
Just as I was muttering a great point to myself, in search of the pen that had somehow instantly disappeared into the covers on the bed, I heard a door open from over the wall between the two bedrooms.
A light feminine giggle floated over the divider. “You must be the most popular dancer here,” I heard Nikki say. “The other men must get jealous of all the attention you draw.”
“While there is a shortage of single women as lovely as you that frequent the island, none of us can say we struggle too much,” said the deep voice of who I assumed was Siti.
A pang of terror filled me—they were going to get very naked very quickly, and there was no way I would be subjected to that. Still, I didn’t want to interrupt Nikki’s fun—it was her vacation, too, after all. In a panic, as I heard the smacking of their lips against various body parts I tried not to picture, I grabbed my shoes and ran out the front door.
It wasn’t fully dark out yet, but the sun was setting quickly. A cool breeze blew past me, and I regretted not grabbing my light jacket before escaping. I had no idea how long Nikki and Siti would be wrapped up in each other, and even less an idea of what I was going to do alone at this time of night. I’d already eaten, I wasn’t in the mood for any more drinks, and the spa portion of the resort had long closed, so a massage was out of the question. Briefly, I thought of sitting at the water’s edge and just relaxing for a while, but with the clouds above rolling overhead, it was clear another storm was coming. Plus, ever since I decided to free myself of Fred’s dead weight, I’d been bursting with energy.
I wandered along the beach toward the setting sun, through a small patch of jungle that would have been idyllic for a few photos in this lighting, but I’d left my phone in the room in my haste. As the jungle cleared, the oranges, pinks, and purples of the sun’s last light glowed faintly over the horizon. I passed a large campfire site and realized I was at the family resort where Jason was staying. I made my way toward the buildings at the edge of the greenery, only a few with lights on in the windows, and tried to remember Jason’s room number. Gladly, though, I was saved the embarrassment of knocking on a stranger’s door.
“Gemma?” called Jason from a short way down the beach. “What are you doing over here?”
“Nikki’s got a boy over,” I said in a mocking tone. “There’s no way I’m letting myself be an unwilling observer in their playtime.”
He pulled a face. “Oh, god. Yeah, I don’t blame you.” A flash of light startled both of us just before the resulting thunder shook the ground beneath our feet. “Come on, my villa’s just over here.”
His villa stood, like ours, separate from the other cabins to allow privacy, but it was clear even from the outside that this was a much more luxurious accommodation than I could have afforded. As I entered and looked around the room, I was astonished at how understated Jason’s phrase of ‘beachfront cabin’ was in describing this place. The front wall of the building was almost all glass, with gauzy white curtains to draw for privacy. There was a nice open sitting area to one side, a small dining area to the other, but the main attraction was at the back of the large main room: an over-sized king bed with four high-polished, tree-sized posts that sat atop a raised dais. This room clearly oozed tropical romance, and for a moment I had to stop myself from picturing the two of us tumbling around on the sheets.
“Jesus, this is one hell of a room. It makes mine look practically rustic.”
“Yeah. Annie booked it. I guess at the time she still had some idea that we might rekindle the fire once we saw this.”
I silently agreed that it was definitely successful in kindling a fire in me, even if it was not meant to. I had to tear my eyes away from the bed, its draw hypnotic, and stationed myself on one of the two plush sofas. I chose the one facing away from the bed. He sat next to me, and I noticed a small tumbler of some brown liquid on the table in front of him. “So, you must be disappointed she didn’t show,” I said.
He heaved a long sigh. “I honestly don’t know what I feel. Not really sure I would have come, myself. My job was sending me here, anyway, so I just told them I already had a booking and that was that. I won’t deny I kind of just expected her to be here.”
“She does always seem to come crawling back, doesn’t she?”
“Can’t imagine why,” he groaned and finished his drink with a grimace.
“I can.”
“Oh? Enlighten me.”
“Come on, you were spoiled for choice back in college. You were never single for long, admit that.”
“Yeah, but that was college. Everyone was horny and trying new things.”
“I know plenty of people who were single all four years and not by choice. Annie kept coming back because she knew you were one of the few truly good guys in the world. She came back because she couldn’t admit that what she wanted was a unicorn, a fairy-tale she made up in her own mind, and compared to that fictional unicorn, everyone else looks like a troll. Even the handsome princes.”
“You would say that,” he groaned.
“You think I’m wrong? That I see you through some rose-colored glasses that erase your flaws? Nope, try again. Your flaws are only small pieces of you. You are more than just those tiny flaws; you are what you make of them, how you overcome them, how you choose to take those flaws and turn them into something positive. I see you, and you’re amazing.” Jason stared at me with an expression of extreme thought. “I know Annie saw it, too, only she chose to ignore what it meant. You need someone who sees your value as you are, not what your value is to them.”
“Someone like you?”
“I didn’t say me.”
“You know, I was always confused why you stayed friends with me after that night. With what I did to you, I don’t know anyone who would have continued speaking to me, let alone attend my wedding to someone else.”
I felt the rush of blood to my face. “You made a choice. I wasn’t going to punish you for choosing what was right for you at the time.”
“Even if it was the wrong choice?”
It was my turn to stare at him. “Well, none of us know what our choices will lead to when we make them. Anybody can look back at something and say they should have done it differently, that’s the benefit of hindsight. You couldn’t have known you and Annie wouldn’t work.”
“Except I did. She’d dumped me three times by then. It was never me dumping her. She was always the one who found reasons to end it. Every time she took me back, I thought, ‘How long will it last this time?’ I thought that somehow I was obligated to see if it would work with her.”
“Obligated?”
“It’s hard to explain. I convinced myself that she had some claim on me, like how priority housing worked in school. I thought she wouldn’t be coming back to me if she didn’t really love me.”
“Wow. That’s not good,” was all I could say.
He laughed. “Yeah.”
After a short silence, I felt compelled to speak. “I convinced myself that it wasn’t my place to tell Annie what happened that night, that it was somehow private and between the two of you to hash out.”
“That’s why you made up that story?”
“Yeah. Your sex life is your business to tell, not mine.”
“But it involved you. Wouldn’t that also make it your own business?”
“I’m not saying it was sound logic,” I laughed.
“All this time, I thought you regretted it or something.”
“I regretted the morning after. I regretted that so much, I almost blocked out the whole thing until you showed up here and hugged me.”
“You forgot what you said?”
“I didn’t forget it entirely, not really,” I confessed. Confusion filled his face. “I forgot the details, pushed them down deep. I made it into a fuzzy old movie in my head made up of generic stand-ins and downplayed feelings. I forgot how great it was, how much it all meant to me.”
“Which made it easier for you to stay friends with me.”
“Yeah. Apparently, it messed me up more than I thought. I should have just told Annie the truth when she asked.”
“Then I guess we’re both at fault. I never told her, either.”
“It wouldn’t have been a great idea to have me as a guest to your wedding if you had.”
More thunder crashed outside, and the force of the booms made the ceiling fans sway back and forth a little. I wondered briefly how long Nikki and Siti would go on, and if maybe there was a chance they’d be asleep by now. I was still amped up from ziplining and realigning my life goals, and sitting next to Jason was bringing back all the old emotions. My heart fluttered in my chest, I saw flashes of his naked body, felt the rush I felt so many years ago. If I stayed much longer, I was going to make a fool of myself.
“It’s getting late,” I said. “With any luck, Nikki will have exhausted herself by now.”
“You don’t have to go,” he said as I stood and moved toward the door. “I remember what it’s like to be sexiled and have nowhere else to go.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to get in the way of your semi-vacation, or the article you have to write.”
“Really, it’s no trouble—”
“I don’t want to do something we’ll regret,” I blurted. “I shouldn’t stay.”
I could feel his gaze on my back. “So you didn’t regret it then, but you would now?”
I whirled around. “It’s different now. We’re both technically still in relationships. I mean, if you were single, that would be one thing. You’re still married.”
“I am.”
“The more I think about it, the more embarrassed I am about not saying anything that morning. The more angry I am. I was a coward for telling a lie, and you were a coward for not telling her. If we had said something, I would know for sure if all that pining had been worth it and just move on. Because even if we didn’t work out in the long term, I would have been able to call you mine just for a little while. I never moved on because something in me blocked it out. It prevented me from feeling how bad it hurt to see you with her. And it hurt. It devastated me. And here we are now in paradise, together, miserable.”
“If I was already divorced—”
“We’d already be in that giant bed back there,” I said, gesturing to the alluring and decadently fluffy mattress. “That thing looks so luxurious and comfortable, it’s practically obscene. And all I can think about now is wrapping myself around you until I can no longer feel my legs.”
Jason stood up and pointed to the bed, but steadily closed the distance between us. “That? It is very comfortable.” When he looked back at me, his blue eyes smoldered like they had that night, and I felt my resolve weaken. “You’d love it.”
“Stop it,” I said, but he was already so close to me. “This is a moment of weakness. Annie would be furious—”
“Annie’s not here. She chose to not be here.”
Thunder rumbled again, shaking the door I leaned against for support. The tremors radiated through me, thrilled me, and the forbidden nature of what we danced around was tantalizing to the point of torture. “No, she’s not,” I agreed. “And you are… separated.”
He hesitated a few steps from me, not close enough that I could feel his heat, but my body anticipated it in spite of the distance. I felt the color rushing up over my chest and neck. I remembered how I felt when his lips met mine, when they caressed my bare skin. It was like touching a plasma ball—all the hairs on my body stood up, skin tingled with energy. I found myself staring at the shape of his mouth.
“Cards on the table,” he said, still out of arm’s length from me. “I’ve always found you incredibly sexy, even when we first met. That morning, I don’t know what happened, really. It’s all kind of a blur. One minute you were there, then Annie’s there, and you were gone. But I will always regret that I didn’t stop you from leaving that day.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Do I want you right now? Hell yes. But if you want to hold back, I will respect that. I swear, no lines will be crossed if you choose to stay. I would of course take the couch to let you enjoy the splendor of that bed.”
“Please stop mentioning the bed,” I mumbled.
“I won’t stop you from leaving tonight if you think it’s too much of a temptation to stay. I get it. But it is pouring out,” he said as the rain crashed heavily on the roof, as if to remind me. “You’d be soaking wet before you reached the water’s edge.”
If only he knew, I thought, the slickness that covered the swollen mounds of my womanhood was already seeping through my underwear.
“It’s your decision,” he said.
Thunder crashed louder than ever outside the villa, as though the heavens themselves were shouting at me to choose. Weighing the circumstances in my head was dizzying. I wanted him. He was married. They were separated, probably going to divorce once he returned home. Fred didn’t know I was finished with him, so I would also be cheating on him. But did that matter? Of course it did; if the other party in a relationship doesn’t know the relationship is over, then it’s not over. Or was it? If Fred learned I’d cheated on him, he’d most likely end the relationship, anyway. I would just be ahead of the game, and would I be happier for it? Would we be happier?
Jason saw my struggle and finally closed the gap between us. “Would you stay if I asked you to?” he breathed.
His steely blue gaze held me steady. Years ago, I had the ability to resist my feelings for him, so I was unsure why I was suddenly so helpless in his presence. Of course, since our one night of passion, I never let myself be alone in close quarters with him. It was possible I was unconsciously protecting myself from this very thing. It occurred to me that not knowing the feel of his body on mine had been a firewall that allowed my senses to remain grounded. A firewall I had destroyed in one night, leaving me defenseless before him.
“Yes.”
He leaned forward, his cheek brushed against my cheek, his chest just barely touching mine, and he whispered into my ear, “Stay.”