How do I tell him on the heels of telling him I can’t have kids that watching her with Betsy today made me wonder what she would look like holding our baby? I wanted to know what if felt like to be Eric and standing at lunch with my wife and child?
That I never wanted to know what that would feel like until I met Mariah.
There’s an emptiness in my soul, a hollowness I haven’t felt since Britt left me shortly after the accident. When she told me she loved me but couldn’t imagine not being a mother and packed her bags and left for LA.
That hurt. That felt like an ice pick straight in the gut and I didn’t even necessarily want to have kids with her. It was a talking point only. A possibility after two years together. But imaging those words coming out of Mariah’s mouth seems to hold a whole hell of a lot more potential to inflict a pain I couldn’t absorb.
I also couldn’t live knowing she’d never know the sound of a baby’s heartbeat from inside her womb. Or what it was like to buy maternity clothes. Or the feeling of being sick in the mornings from incubating a life inside her because of me.
Sure, there are sperm donors and all kinds of other ways to be a parent and that’s all fine. But I couldn’t give that to her and that kills me. It feels like I’d be lacing my problems onto her and I wouldn’t do that to anyone.
“I need to go to bed,” I mutter, squeezing my temple. “Can you let yourself out?”
“Yeah.”
Shuffling to the doorway, I partially lambaste myself for drinking so much and partially rip my own ass for not going back in the kitchen and finishing off the bottle.
“Lance?” Peck calls out behind me.
“Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I head off down the hall. “Me too, Peck. Me too.”
Twenty-One
Mariah
“What did you make today?” Tish breezes in the doorway, catching me before I head to the lounge for my lunch. She peers over the tin of desserts. “Lemon and red velvet?”
“It was a long weekend.” I type away at the keyboard to avoid her gaze. “Help yourself.”
I almost called in sick today. The anxiety of seeing Lance almost got to me. I was up all night, until a quarter to four, thinking about this mess.
If I only think about the good parts, a smile graces my lips that I can’t wipe off. If I think about reality, it fades pretty quickly.
“What’s that all about?” Tish asks, pointing my way.
“What’s what?”
“That snarl.”
“It’s not a snarl,” I laugh, giving up the typing ruse and turning to face her. “You’re a pain in my butt.”
“Mhmm,” she says, biting into a lemon bar. “These are good.”
“Thanks.”
She finishes off the piece before dusting her hands over the trash. “Now spill it, sister.”
“I have nothing to spill.”
Her hand settles on her popped-out hip. She gives me her no-nonsense look.
Looking out the door, I don’t see Lance. I’m typically downstairs and back up in about 4 minutes from now and he’s waiting for me. Whether he will come up today or not, I don’t know. But I don’t see him.
“Tish, let me ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“When you were dating around, would you ever have messed around with a man who you knew wasn’t what you wanted?”
“I’m going to need more to go on.”
Sighing, I look out the door again. “Let’s say you wanted to settle down, have a quiet little life somewhere. Raise a family. That kind of thing. And then you met a guy who just … makes you laugh and smile, makes you feel confident in yourself. I don’t know how to explain it. But what if you knew that guy was never going to be the guy in the little house with the little kids.”
“I’d say he was a waste of time then.”
My heart drops. “Exactly.”
“Unless,” she says, pulling her shirt snug over her chest, “he looked like him.”
“Who?”
“Hey, ladies,” Lance calls, stepping inside my office. “Do I not get my two, three minutes of privacy in here before you come in?”
“Yeah, Mariah. Step outside so Lance and I can have our private time,” she coos, ending it with a laugh. “Looking sharp today, Mr. Gibson.” She steps around him, mouthing something I can’t even begin to make out as she leaves the library.
My palms sweat as I take him in. Dark pants and a crisp white shirt with a green tie the same color as his eyes hanging down the center. The tie is loose, like he’s been working it all day.
“Good afternoon,” he says, shutting the door behind him.
“Hello.”
“You look beautiful today. I love that color on you.”
“Stop with the book manners stuff,” I laugh.
He shrugs, heading for the cupcakes. “Ah, you made both.”
“Only because I was bored.”
I watch him select the one he wants, noticing the dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks lack the color they usually have and the greens of his eyes are a little duller than normal.
“Up all night?” He asks, peeling away at a red velvet cupcake. “Thinking of me?”
“Hardly,” I scoff. “I made those and was in bed by eight-thirty.” Lies, lies, all lies.
“Better than me. My cousin came by and I may have had a little too much tequila.”
“I can’t drink that,” I say, frowning. I wonder if what happened yesterday afternoon had anything to do with him drinking so much. I don’t recall seeing him with a hangover ever before. The idea leaves me feeling uneven.
“Does it make your clothes fall off? If so, I have a flask in my car I can go get.” He bites into the cupcake. “Big fan of the cream cheese icing. Not quite as good as the peanut butter, but close.”
I go back to my computer screen, needing a distraction from the way his mouth works back and forth. Things are too normal, too we-didn’t-fuck-like-monkeys-yesterday.
The room becomes too small for the two of us as I remember the heat of the pantry yesterday as we slipped off our clothes. His cologne reminds me of the taste of his skin when I bit into his shoulder and I wonder if my teeth marks are still there.
All night I wondered how he would react once the orgasm wore off and reality set in. How he couldn’t just not message me back because he would see me every day unless one of us changed jobs. I’m not egotistical enough to think I’m any different than anyone else he sleeps with. Not really. Maybe we know more about each other. Maybe things between us have taken some obtuse turn. But none of that changes the fact that Lance is Lance and I’m me.
“I wasn’t going to come up here today,” he admits. “I was going to stay in my classroom like a responsible professional and work through lunch.” He chomps down on another cupcake. “Yet, here I am.”
“Why?”
“Why what? Why wasn’t I coming up here or why did I decide to?”
“Either,” I offer, chewing on the inside of my cheek.
My hands drop from the keyboard, my attempt at distraction pointless. There’s no way I’m going to be thinking of anything other than him. I haven’t in the last however many hours. I’m certainly not going to pull it off with him standing in front of me.
He takes another bite and considers this. “I thought maybe you wanted space or that I should give it to you. Or, quite possibly, it’s just what I do historically after sex.”
“Fair enough.”
“But,” he adds, almost taking a lemon bar but picking up a third cupcake instead, “I then realized that was ridiculous. We were friends before you came all over me. So why in the hell can’t we have both? We’re very, very good at both.”
“Because your language is horrible, you eat all my cupcakes,” I say, “and your come was still leaking out of my vagina this morning.”
I didn’t mean to say that. But as the cupcake falls out of his hand and lands icing-first on top of book order forms, I’m glad I did. It takes him a full five seconds to regroup.
“See?” he says, his white teeth shining. “I come in here to be friendly and you make it dirty.”
“Yeah, I made it dirty because I’m the one who brought up our interaction yesterday. Try again.”
“No, I brought it up but it’s still your fault.”
“Oh, really,” I laugh, crossing one leg over the other. “And how do you figure that?”
He leans forward, his grin as mischievous as I’ve ever seen it. “You make it impossible not to want to lay you on the top of this desk and see if I can’t fill you up again.”
My thighs burn I’m squeezing them so hard, my mouth watering at the thought of his body on mine. He knows exactly what I’m thinking and, by the look he’s giving me, he’s thinking the same thing.
“Are you wet for me?” he goads, thinking he’s getting the best of me.
Game on.
Holding his gaze, I make a point of slipping my hand under my desk. His pupils widen, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he watches me. My finger glides through my slickness. I hold it in the air, inches from his face. “I’d say so.”
His eyes burn, his temple pulsing, as he watches my finger move in the light.
“The question is, Mr. Gibson, are you hard?” I drag my gaze from his face to his swollen crotch and nod. “Looks like a yes.”
“Why do you do this to me?” he asks, sticking out his bottom lip.
“You asked. You didn’t have to know. I could’ve sat here all day with my thighs stuck together and nobody would know that but me.”
A low rumble escapes his lips. “What are you doing after work?”
“I have plans. You have icing on your lip.”
He ignores the second part of that. “Cancel them.”
“And why would I do that?”