Broken
“Erica?”
The breathy, astonished husk of her voice travels like a live wire straight up my spine. My stomach is in my feet, an instantaneous layer of moisture springing to my palms; I know it can’t be her. Logically my mind knows it can’t be her. She lives in North Carolina; she’s happy and content and perfectly fine half-way across the country where she has ‘everything she needs’. As the memory of her words rolls through my head, I can once again hear the disdain in her voice. She’s not here…she can’t be here.
I know it’s another woman, someone speaking to her friend, motioning towards an empty table. It’s some woman calling after her young daughter, telling her not to run indoors. It’s anyone other than the one my heart is now beating faster because of, anyone other than the one my blood thunders in my ears for, than the one for which the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for. I know there’s no reason to look. Cognitively my brain knows that it’s wishful thinking only, a glimmer of hope in my chest that refuses to give up the ghost.
More than two years ago I moved to Houston. I left it all behind once again. But this time it wasn’t on a whim, it wasn’t because despicable circumstances drove me away. I gave it a chance; I didn’t clam up and walk off into that fog as if nothing behind me mattered. I stayed, I faced forward, and she turned away from me. She took her chance to look me in the eye and tell me her career was in North Carolina, her ‘life’ was in North Carolina. Well, I was speaking of Houston, not North Carolina. Suddenly I realized the small scope that her ‘life’ encompassed…apparently, I wasn’t in that scope.
So I did the only thing I could, the only thing that seemed logical and smart, the only thing that broke my heart. I called the Methodist Hospital’s Chief of Surgery back, the very one that Walter Tapley surprisingly recommended me to, and I scheduled the interview. When I told her she argued, she cried, she told me I was the most selfish person she’d ever known, she broke me. But, she never asked me to not go. She never asked to me to stay. She never asked me to consider her…to consider ‘us’.
In that moment I recognized for the first time, there was no ‘us’. There was her tenured position at the university, there was her family in the city; there was her career, her home, her ‘life’. And then there was me, and the hell bent desire I had to achieve, to become Chief, to run a surgical program some day. She had so much to give up, to leave behind her, to let go of. What did I have? I had her and a surgical staff position at the clinic; half of that equation wasn’t enough. But, when I told her about the opportunity, my chance - I realized that I didn’t even have her.
“Erica?” The call is more insistent this time, but lower and no less incredulous. I feel her hand light gently on the back of my left shoulder, an unspoken plea for me to turn around. It burns my skin.
With a sharp intake of breath I raise my head up straight, steeling my back, steeling my nerves. In a moment I can gain my composure. I can pull from that well I’ve dug over the years. That dark, deep reservoir inside me that houses the woman I allow the world to see. She’s strong and capable, untouched by the weakness that dwells in the heart. She’s the woman who allowed me to move on after Mary Jo. The woman who got me up out of bed, every morning, who got me through the day in those long months after moving to Houston. She’s there now, I can feel her reserve fall over me like a cloak, ‘I can do this’.
With a glance over my left shoulder, even with the expectation of the woman standing behind me, the sight still shocks. She’s the one who haunts me some restless nights, or when I catch a glimpse of dark wavy tresses turning a corner in the grocery store; she’s still the vision behind my closed eyelids when the day has been too long and nothing else soothes me. Here she is, just as gorgeous as ever, her green eyes sparkling, her hair longer and tumbling over her shoulders.
“Hey.”
Blinking slowly I turn my head away from her, back to stare at the taupe wall behind the condiment station. I can’t respond to her soft greeting; I can’t swallow past my heart in my throat, much less press words out around it.
“Erica, please.”
She steps to my side and from the corner of my eye I can see the faint tilt of her head. That slight cock that always betrayed itself when she considered me, when I knew she was trying to read me. Well, she can’t do that anymore, I can’t allow it.
“Mary Jo.” With more nerve than I feel I rise to my full height and square my shoulders. Turning to face her I use every ounce of will to keep my face expressionless, to push the raw emotion down deep into the pit of my stomach. My voice is hard, my face is hard, the concentration grounds me.
I can tell it’s not what she expected, her face is as open as mine is guarded. Actually I wonder if this is at all what she expected. I could almost laugh if I didn’t feel quite so sick to my stomach. Even all this time later, I know she knows I live in Houston, it didn’t escape her head that easily. Of course she would come here without even entertaining the possibility of running into me. I mean, why would I ever cross her mind? I obviously wasn’t on her mind back then, when we were supposedly together, how stupid of me to imagine she would think of me now.
“I…” She stammers, her eyes widen and she blinks hard. I’m not going to make this any easier for her; I raise my eyebrows expectantly, feeling the tight purse of my lips spread through my jaw. “I…I didn’t think - ”
Well, there you have it. She didn’t think, she didn’t expect, it never occurred …that’s a given. I can’t even find the words to respond. What does one say to that? How do you react, when you feel that knife twist in your gut once again. I’ve thought of her a million and one times, but it may literally kill me to discover she hasn’t done the same. Grabbing a disposable lid I quickly cap my coffee and give my head a faint, quick shake. “I have to go. Good to see you, Mary Jo.”
Before I can step away, turn my back to her; before I can escape out onto the busy sidewalk and take a breath of air into my lungs - she grabs my wrist, wrenches me carefully back from the exit that looms in front of my eyes like a shining chimera of freedom. “Erica, wait.” My step falters, my eyes close. The tightness feels as if it closes off my throat. “Don’t…” That soft tone that creeps into her voice was something I could never deny. “Please, don’t go.”
“Mary Jo, I can’t stay.” I draw my arm close to my side, attempting to lessen her grasp. But, she doesn’t release, she can’t read the movement…or she chooses not to.
“Erica, please.”
I’ve always hated weakness…especially in myself.
~~~~~
Wrapping my hand around the hot cup of coffee, my nail flicks against the cardboard sleeve. Focusing my eyes on the corner of the brown paper that separates from the corrugated grooves underneath. I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing in this moment than sitting across from her and avoiding eye connect, avoiding conversation, avoiding my face and my mouth betraying anything. The wheels of my brain turn, contemplating the laundry in my hamper that needs attention, the ready for publication studies in my inbox requesting peer review, the flower boxes that need watering on the front of the house, the evening news starting in about an hour. All of these things I could be doing in the silent minutes I spend toying with my coffee cup, cursing myself for stopping here today; any day really. Why don’t I pick the coffee shop closest to the hospital? Why don’t I buy better beans and spend my time at home, where I should be right now? There are things that deserve my time. And the woman sitting across the table doesn’t deserve one second of it, but I can’t articulate that, I can’t callously dismiss her; in fact, I can’t do anything it seems.
“Erica.” Her slender hand slides across the table, fingers lying gently on my forearm. Taking a deep breath I move my arms back, dropping them into my lap, and finally I raise my eyes to meet her. “I should have called, I know. I just…I should have called you.”
“Yes, you should have.”
She is the one to look down and focus her gaze on her now clasped hands. “I know how you are. If I had called you, though. If you had known I was coming, would you be here talking to me now?”
I can’t help the scoff that breaks from my mouth. She has some nerve and I can feel my defenses tightening rank. “Mary Jo, don’t try to pretend that this is anything other than what it is. You didn’t expect to run into me here. Be honest…you didn’t expect to run into me at all, did you?” I shake my head slightly, berating myself for allowing her to talk me into sitting down with her, angry with her for showing up here unannounced, angry with her for not coming before. “You didn’t have any intention of doing this. And frankly, it’s not something I’m interested in doing either.”
The chair legs scrape loudly over the slate floor as I push away from the table. But, she’s right there with me, rising off the seat of her chair, her hands on her angled thighs. “Erica, please stay. Please - just give me a minute.”
Inhaling a long slow breath, I slowly blink, but stay in my seat inching only a fraction closer back under the table. Mary Jo finally breaths and relaxes back into her chair. “I know you think you know what I’m going to say, how I feel, what I’m thinking. You always did. But, Erica you rarely knew. And you don’t want to make chitchat, so I’m not going to ask you how you’re doing. I’m not going to try to get you to catch me up on your life. I’m not going to tell that’s its good to see you…which it is. I’m not going to tell you that I’ve missed you…which I have.” Her brow tightens and I wonder if it’s a mirror of my own sorrow. I doubt to believe that it’s really there, that she’s sorry for anything other than this unexpected run in.
“Look,” she twists and bends down rifling through her purse on the floor. “Of course I didn’t imagine I would run into you this evening.” Mary Jo straightens back up and brushes a lock of hair off her right cheek, laying her phone onto the tabletop. “But, I was going to call you.” She raises her eyebrows towards the phone as it provides some sort of proof. “I looked up the number to the hospital before I left home. Erica, I called the cardiovascular department five times in the last day and half, trying to get one indication of your schedule out of them. Your staff is quite good, I might add. I tried all my best material and they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
I close my eyes, bringing my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose. I can feel a dull headache building behind my eyes. This is conversation is nothing like the hundreds that I’ve run through in my head before. I don’t what to say to her. I don’t even know what I expect to hear out of her.
“Erica, it wasn’t just you.” The tip of her tongue darts our to absently moisten her lips and give herself a moment of needed pause. I can see her eyes slightly shift, practically see her mind searching, fumbling for an argument. Resigning herself with a sigh her gaze trains on my face once more. “I complained that you wouldn’t talk to me, that you wouldn’t share with me.” I exhale slowly through my nostrils, feeling my lips tighten; here we go again. “But Erica, I was just as guilty in some ways; or maybe even more so. I’m not as put together as I may sometimes pretend.”
Confusion courses slowly over my consciousness. I can admit, I expected another lecture on my aloofness, how I was never truly present in our relationship, how I made her work so hard. But for once - possibly for the first time - this doesn’t sound like an assignment of blame.
“Erica, when Molly left…” Her eyes fall to the tabletop and I see the motion of her arms, smoothing her hands over the top of her thighs under the table. Something in my chest responds, a movement that constricts deep inside my ribcage, a profound weight that descends on my heart. Mary Jo, that strong woman I knew, didn’t falter, she didn’t fail to meet every challenge she perceived from me, she never one time displayed the slightest indication to back down. But, here she sits - loathe to even look at me, searching for words, silently admitting some weakness. This isn’t the Mary Jo I know. But then, I found out when I left that I didn’t really know her at all.
“When Molly left, it did hurt. I know, I’m the one who says ‘everything happens for a reason’. I talk a good game, right? But that doesn’t mean that the reason isn’t hard to face. She left because of me, because I wouldn’t change, wouldn’t compromise. It hurt -“
“Mary Jo,” I interrupt her. This isn’t something I really need to hear, anything I want to hear. She misses the woman in her life before me, she’s sorry she left, she has regrets. “Please, I don’t need to hear this.” The feeling n my chest changes, it intensifies, it sinks like lead into my stomach. “I’m not a therapist, I’m sorry you have regrets, but I can’t help you. I hope you enjoy your stay in the city.”
As I turn to move out of my chair she stops me once again. “Erica, wait. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about her, I’m talking about me, I’m talking about you.”
“Mary Jo, frankly I don’t see what us talking about you or me is going to accomplish. Look, let’s say hypothetically that you were going to call me. That you were going to look me up once you got here…what would be the point? What is the point of this whole thing? You and I were together, now we’re not. You don’t owe me a cup of coffee, you don’t owe me an explanation of why you’re here, - I don’t want anything.”
“Damn it, Erica!” Her voice rises when she interrupts, drawing unwanted glances from the tables around us. She stops and leans closer over the table, lowering her voice. “You don’t listen when you should and you talk when you need to shut up.”
I feel the heat spread across my cheeks and lean across the table, meeting her burning gaze with my own. Nearly hissing through clenched teeth, “Don’t ever tell me to shut up.”
“Good God, for two seconds will you be quiet and let me talk.” Her words rush forward as if she’s fighting a clock counting down the precious seconds she has left of my attention. “The woman I was with before you made a lot of demands on me. She didn’t respect my position at the university, she didn’t think I was emotionally invested enough, she didn’t like my neighborhood, my friends, my family, - my life. And when she was offered a position in a new city she just expected me to up and move with her. Molly didn’t want to talk about compromises, or what it would mean to me. Noting mattered but her. So I let her go and told myself it was a blessing in disguise. And…” Mary Jo sighs deeply and licks her lips. I could literally see the resolve melting in her shoulders. Her voice falls even further and I’m forced to nearly strain to hear her. “When you told me you got this great job offer, it was that all over again. My career is not insignificant, not to me. I may not be earning investment firms millions, I may not be bringing some guy’s heart back to life, but what I do has value and passion and impact. I grew tired of being the one expected to compromise.”
The weight of unspoken pressures and assumptions washes over me in a wave. Yet again I’ve made the mistake of miscommunication, lack of communication, misunderstood communication. It’s like my life has naturally fallen into this well worn groove that’s going to keep leading me straight into a brick wall. “Mary Jo, I never -“
“I know. You didn’t, but I did. I projected; when you brought up this job offer it was like the same story all over again. I shut you out, I shut you down, I know I didn’t give anything a chance; us a chance to talk, to compromise, to try. I was going to tell you that. When I…When I called you, when I saw you I was going to tell you I made so many mistakes and I wish I had them to do over again.”
Our faces are separated by mere inches across the tabletop; I never thought I would be this close to her again. I never allowed myself to think there were any second chances. I thought I had made so many mistakes myself. All this time Mary Jo has been thinking the same. You can never reverse time, you can’t undo the past, you can’t wish away the missteps; but you can pull yourself up and square your shoulders. You can perhaps open you heart and look ahead. Moving my hand slowly across the table, the tips of my fingers curl around the top of her right hand. In that moment her eyes were shining, I’m sure mirroring the mixture of grief and relief written in my own.
“God Erica, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
~~~~
Her words swirled around my heart, gripping it tightly, and pulling me in that familiar undertow back to her. Regrets, admissions of failings, long suffered doubts were laid out on the table. My resolve cracked like the hull of a boat, the string of her words seeping in, flooding my senses and allowing me to sink into the warmth of her. The warmth of her that haunted me for three lonely years; the warmth of her burning beneath my lips now. There was no resistance; nothing for me resist. Apologies, acceptance, forgiveness are the words we needed to say, to hear, to give voice to. But, we crave absolution, cleansing, a promise that the future exists.
My mouth on her bare shoulder speaks of pardon and promise. Her hands cup gently around my head and I hear my name from her in a near whisper. Looking up and moving slowly over her, I see the slight quiver in her chin and the tear that slides from the corner of her eye, gravity pulling it back into the dark waves at her temple.
“Shh…” I run the pad of my thumb across her lips as she opens them to speak. I don’t need to hear her say she’s sorry again. I can see it written all over her. I know what she feels, I have that same sense of wasted time and regretted stubbornness. But those aren’t things I want to hold onto any longer. This is our second chance, our opportunity to let the past go, and I’m determined that we will take it.
Moving down, my lips replace the slide of my thumb along her lower lip. It’s everything that I remember, everything that I could never forget. The taste of her, the feel of her soft lips, the sigh that escapes from her throat. I honestly never thought I’d be here again.
My lips trail down across her jaw line, stopping to enjoy the tender flesh below her ear. Mary Jo shifts beneath me, her hands caressing my shoulders, her left leg rising to wrap around my hip. In that moment I realize I only want to be wrapped up in her, and that it really doesn’t matter if it’s here, or back in North Carolina, or anywhere else she and I might decide together we want to go. But, I know that the running is over, we’re both home.
The realization stokes the fire deep in the pit of my stomach and I press my hips down into her own, rolling against her, rolling into her, sinking. She gasps quietly and digs her fingertips into the skin of my back. “Erica.” A breathy declaration, a plea for mercy, a siren’s song for my attention draws me back to her mouth. With parted lips I devour her moans, blending my own quiet mewls with the gentle breaths of love falling from her lips.
Our tongues touch, gently acquaint, a smooth slide of velvet that makes me desire to drink in her very essence. Gripping her hips I pull her insistently against me, myself against her. It’s been too long and the synapses are firing in my head, begging, pleading, demanding not to be restrained another second. She’s exactly where I’ve wanted, where I’ve dreamed these past years.
“Erica, please.” She pulls my lower lip between her teeth, the bite hard. Her arms clutch around me, as if in attempt to pull me into her; exactly where I want to be. I slip my hand between our pelvises feeling the sheer fire radiating out between her thighs wrapped tightly around me. Molten, wet velvet meets my fingertips and she cries out, my open mouth capturing the sob that comes from my touch. Pulling my head back slightly, my left elbow braced against the bed, I lean over her, my hand smoothing the wisps of hair off her forehead. “Mary Jo.” Her neck arches, pressing back into the pillow. “Mary Jo…look at me.” Her eyes stay tightly shut, the edge of her teeth gripping her lower lip. “Look at me.” As my fingers slide over and barely into a very slick entrance, her eyelids flutter open, deep dilated pupils, ringed by bright green, find me. Pressing lightly forward, in shallow languid strokes, I nod my head slowly at her.
Mary Jo struggles for words, her eyes closing and opening in long stretches of seconds. An involuntary moan escapes quietly from my own throat. This is what I’ve missed so desperately, what I’m going to fight to never let go of again. She’s hot and tight around my fingers, urging me to press on, to give us both what we crave, what we need. I thrust deeply, gently, slowly, drawing her hips up to meet my hand. Mary Jo’s face turns into my hand on her forehead, pressing her lips to the soft skin on the inside of my forearm.
“Erica.” She pauses and gasps as my fingers curl and relax. I unwind and wind her, all in my hand, all at my will, all for my pleasure, her pleasure, our pleasure. “Erica…I love you.”
Capturing her lips with my own, my thumb is gentle and nimble, flicking softly back and forth over her hard clit. I press her, I pull her, I request the response her body so desperately wants to give. Circling her clit with a now firm, but gentle press of my thumb, my fingers curl and tap and stroke the soft velvet heaven that her body reveals. Mary Jo claws at my arms, her head rolls away in desperation as she clings to that edge, begging to leap and float through space. I nip at the side of her exposed throat, giving one last push to let her go, to pull her back to me, to release everything that once was, so what can be has room between us. Holding her close, the explosion is hot around me as she shudders in my arms, as she cries out for me.
I float with her on that cloud, back to earth; the warm caress of her lips against my neck, her face buried in my shoulder. A city is not a home, a location, a plot of land. Home is love and comfort and a place where you understand who and what you are. I’ve never felt that safety, that permanence, that place of home. But it washes over me now, and home is not a place. Home is here, in my arms, in my heart, and I’ll never again let it go.
This entry was originally posted at http://h4hahn.dreamwidth.org/46932.html
The breathy, astonished husk of her voice travels like a live wire straight up my spine. My stomach is in my feet, an instantaneous layer of moisture springing to my palms; I know it can’t be her. Logically my mind knows it can’t be her. She lives in North Carolina; she’s happy and content and perfectly fine half-way across the country where she has ‘everything she needs’. As the memory of her words rolls through my head, I can once again hear the disdain in her voice. She’s not here…she can’t be here.
I know it’s another woman, someone speaking to her friend, motioning towards an empty table. It’s some woman calling after her young daughter, telling her not to run indoors. It’s anyone other than the one my heart is now beating faster because of, anyone other than the one my blood thunders in my ears for, than the one for which the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for. I know there’s no reason to look. Cognitively my brain knows that it’s wishful thinking only, a glimmer of hope in my chest that refuses to give up the ghost.
More than two years ago I moved to Houston. I left it all behind once again. But this time it wasn’t on a whim, it wasn’t because despicable circumstances drove me away. I gave it a chance; I didn’t clam up and walk off into that fog as if nothing behind me mattered. I stayed, I faced forward, and she turned away from me. She took her chance to look me in the eye and tell me her career was in North Carolina, her ‘life’ was in North Carolina. Well, I was speaking of Houston, not North Carolina. Suddenly I realized the small scope that her ‘life’ encompassed…apparently, I wasn’t in that scope.
So I did the only thing I could, the only thing that seemed logical and smart, the only thing that broke my heart. I called the Methodist Hospital’s Chief of Surgery back, the very one that Walter Tapley surprisingly recommended me to, and I scheduled the interview. When I told her she argued, she cried, she told me I was the most selfish person she’d ever known, she broke me. But, she never asked me to not go. She never asked to me to stay. She never asked me to consider her…to consider ‘us’.
In that moment I recognized for the first time, there was no ‘us’. There was her tenured position at the university, there was her family in the city; there was her career, her home, her ‘life’. And then there was me, and the hell bent desire I had to achieve, to become Chief, to run a surgical program some day. She had so much to give up, to leave behind her, to let go of. What did I have? I had her and a surgical staff position at the clinic; half of that equation wasn’t enough. But, when I told her about the opportunity, my chance - I realized that I didn’t even have her.
“Erica?” The call is more insistent this time, but lower and no less incredulous. I feel her hand light gently on the back of my left shoulder, an unspoken plea for me to turn around. It burns my skin.
With a sharp intake of breath I raise my head up straight, steeling my back, steeling my nerves. In a moment I can gain my composure. I can pull from that well I’ve dug over the years. That dark, deep reservoir inside me that houses the woman I allow the world to see. She’s strong and capable, untouched by the weakness that dwells in the heart. She’s the woman who allowed me to move on after Mary Jo. The woman who got me up out of bed, every morning, who got me through the day in those long months after moving to Houston. She’s there now, I can feel her reserve fall over me like a cloak, ‘I can do this’.
With a glance over my left shoulder, even with the expectation of the woman standing behind me, the sight still shocks. She’s the one who haunts me some restless nights, or when I catch a glimpse of dark wavy tresses turning a corner in the grocery store; she’s still the vision behind my closed eyelids when the day has been too long and nothing else soothes me. Here she is, just as gorgeous as ever, her green eyes sparkling, her hair longer and tumbling over her shoulders.
“Hey.”
Blinking slowly I turn my head away from her, back to stare at the taupe wall behind the condiment station. I can’t respond to her soft greeting; I can’t swallow past my heart in my throat, much less press words out around it.
“Erica, please.”
She steps to my side and from the corner of my eye I can see the faint tilt of her head. That slight cock that always betrayed itself when she considered me, when I knew she was trying to read me. Well, she can’t do that anymore, I can’t allow it.
“Mary Jo.” With more nerve than I feel I rise to my full height and square my shoulders. Turning to face her I use every ounce of will to keep my face expressionless, to push the raw emotion down deep into the pit of my stomach. My voice is hard, my face is hard, the concentration grounds me.
I can tell it’s not what she expected, her face is as open as mine is guarded. Actually I wonder if this is at all what she expected. I could almost laugh if I didn’t feel quite so sick to my stomach. Even all this time later, I know she knows I live in Houston, it didn’t escape her head that easily. Of course she would come here without even entertaining the possibility of running into me. I mean, why would I ever cross her mind? I obviously wasn’t on her mind back then, when we were supposedly together, how stupid of me to imagine she would think of me now.
“I…” She stammers, her eyes widen and she blinks hard. I’m not going to make this any easier for her; I raise my eyebrows expectantly, feeling the tight purse of my lips spread through my jaw. “I…I didn’t think - ”
Well, there you have it. She didn’t think, she didn’t expect, it never occurred …that’s a given. I can’t even find the words to respond. What does one say to that? How do you react, when you feel that knife twist in your gut once again. I’ve thought of her a million and one times, but it may literally kill me to discover she hasn’t done the same. Grabbing a disposable lid I quickly cap my coffee and give my head a faint, quick shake. “I have to go. Good to see you, Mary Jo.”
Before I can step away, turn my back to her; before I can escape out onto the busy sidewalk and take a breath of air into my lungs - she grabs my wrist, wrenches me carefully back from the exit that looms in front of my eyes like a shining chimera of freedom. “Erica, wait.” My step falters, my eyes close. The tightness feels as if it closes off my throat. “Don’t…” That soft tone that creeps into her voice was something I could never deny. “Please, don’t go.”
“Mary Jo, I can’t stay.” I draw my arm close to my side, attempting to lessen her grasp. But, she doesn’t release, she can’t read the movement…or she chooses not to.
“Erica, please.”
I’ve always hated weakness…especially in myself.
~~~~~
Wrapping my hand around the hot cup of coffee, my nail flicks against the cardboard sleeve. Focusing my eyes on the corner of the brown paper that separates from the corrugated grooves underneath. I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing in this moment than sitting across from her and avoiding eye connect, avoiding conversation, avoiding my face and my mouth betraying anything. The wheels of my brain turn, contemplating the laundry in my hamper that needs attention, the ready for publication studies in my inbox requesting peer review, the flower boxes that need watering on the front of the house, the evening news starting in about an hour. All of these things I could be doing in the silent minutes I spend toying with my coffee cup, cursing myself for stopping here today; any day really. Why don’t I pick the coffee shop closest to the hospital? Why don’t I buy better beans and spend my time at home, where I should be right now? There are things that deserve my time. And the woman sitting across the table doesn’t deserve one second of it, but I can’t articulate that, I can’t callously dismiss her; in fact, I can’t do anything it seems.
“Erica.” Her slender hand slides across the table, fingers lying gently on my forearm. Taking a deep breath I move my arms back, dropping them into my lap, and finally I raise my eyes to meet her. “I should have called, I know. I just…I should have called you.”
“Yes, you should have.”
She is the one to look down and focus her gaze on her now clasped hands. “I know how you are. If I had called you, though. If you had known I was coming, would you be here talking to me now?”
I can’t help the scoff that breaks from my mouth. She has some nerve and I can feel my defenses tightening rank. “Mary Jo, don’t try to pretend that this is anything other than what it is. You didn’t expect to run into me here. Be honest…you didn’t expect to run into me at all, did you?” I shake my head slightly, berating myself for allowing her to talk me into sitting down with her, angry with her for showing up here unannounced, angry with her for not coming before. “You didn’t have any intention of doing this. And frankly, it’s not something I’m interested in doing either.”
The chair legs scrape loudly over the slate floor as I push away from the table. But, she’s right there with me, rising off the seat of her chair, her hands on her angled thighs. “Erica, please stay. Please - just give me a minute.”
Inhaling a long slow breath, I slowly blink, but stay in my seat inching only a fraction closer back under the table. Mary Jo finally breaths and relaxes back into her chair. “I know you think you know what I’m going to say, how I feel, what I’m thinking. You always did. But, Erica you rarely knew. And you don’t want to make chitchat, so I’m not going to ask you how you’re doing. I’m not going to try to get you to catch me up on your life. I’m not going to tell that’s its good to see you…which it is. I’m not going to tell you that I’ve missed you…which I have.” Her brow tightens and I wonder if it’s a mirror of my own sorrow. I doubt to believe that it’s really there, that she’s sorry for anything other than this unexpected run in.
“Look,” she twists and bends down rifling through her purse on the floor. “Of course I didn’t imagine I would run into you this evening.” Mary Jo straightens back up and brushes a lock of hair off her right cheek, laying her phone onto the tabletop. “But, I was going to call you.” She raises her eyebrows towards the phone as it provides some sort of proof. “I looked up the number to the hospital before I left home. Erica, I called the cardiovascular department five times in the last day and half, trying to get one indication of your schedule out of them. Your staff is quite good, I might add. I tried all my best material and they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
I close my eyes, bringing my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose. I can feel a dull headache building behind my eyes. This is conversation is nothing like the hundreds that I’ve run through in my head before. I don’t what to say to her. I don’t even know what I expect to hear out of her.
“Erica, it wasn’t just you.” The tip of her tongue darts our to absently moisten her lips and give herself a moment of needed pause. I can see her eyes slightly shift, practically see her mind searching, fumbling for an argument. Resigning herself with a sigh her gaze trains on my face once more. “I complained that you wouldn’t talk to me, that you wouldn’t share with me.” I exhale slowly through my nostrils, feeling my lips tighten; here we go again. “But Erica, I was just as guilty in some ways; or maybe even more so. I’m not as put together as I may sometimes pretend.”
Confusion courses slowly over my consciousness. I can admit, I expected another lecture on my aloofness, how I was never truly present in our relationship, how I made her work so hard. But for once - possibly for the first time - this doesn’t sound like an assignment of blame.
“Erica, when Molly left…” Her eyes fall to the tabletop and I see the motion of her arms, smoothing her hands over the top of her thighs under the table. Something in my chest responds, a movement that constricts deep inside my ribcage, a profound weight that descends on my heart. Mary Jo, that strong woman I knew, didn’t falter, she didn’t fail to meet every challenge she perceived from me, she never one time displayed the slightest indication to back down. But, here she sits - loathe to even look at me, searching for words, silently admitting some weakness. This isn’t the Mary Jo I know. But then, I found out when I left that I didn’t really know her at all.
“When Molly left, it did hurt. I know, I’m the one who says ‘everything happens for a reason’. I talk a good game, right? But that doesn’t mean that the reason isn’t hard to face. She left because of me, because I wouldn’t change, wouldn’t compromise. It hurt -“
“Mary Jo,” I interrupt her. This isn’t something I really need to hear, anything I want to hear. She misses the woman in her life before me, she’s sorry she left, she has regrets. “Please, I don’t need to hear this.” The feeling n my chest changes, it intensifies, it sinks like lead into my stomach. “I’m not a therapist, I’m sorry you have regrets, but I can’t help you. I hope you enjoy your stay in the city.”
As I turn to move out of my chair she stops me once again. “Erica, wait. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about her, I’m talking about me, I’m talking about you.”
“Mary Jo, frankly I don’t see what us talking about you or me is going to accomplish. Look, let’s say hypothetically that you were going to call me. That you were going to look me up once you got here…what would be the point? What is the point of this whole thing? You and I were together, now we’re not. You don’t owe me a cup of coffee, you don’t owe me an explanation of why you’re here, - I don’t want anything.”
“Damn it, Erica!” Her voice rises when she interrupts, drawing unwanted glances from the tables around us. She stops and leans closer over the table, lowering her voice. “You don’t listen when you should and you talk when you need to shut up.”
I feel the heat spread across my cheeks and lean across the table, meeting her burning gaze with my own. Nearly hissing through clenched teeth, “Don’t ever tell me to shut up.”
“Good God, for two seconds will you be quiet and let me talk.” Her words rush forward as if she’s fighting a clock counting down the precious seconds she has left of my attention. “The woman I was with before you made a lot of demands on me. She didn’t respect my position at the university, she didn’t think I was emotionally invested enough, she didn’t like my neighborhood, my friends, my family, - my life. And when she was offered a position in a new city she just expected me to up and move with her. Molly didn’t want to talk about compromises, or what it would mean to me. Noting mattered but her. So I let her go and told myself it was a blessing in disguise. And…” Mary Jo sighs deeply and licks her lips. I could literally see the resolve melting in her shoulders. Her voice falls even further and I’m forced to nearly strain to hear her. “When you told me you got this great job offer, it was that all over again. My career is not insignificant, not to me. I may not be earning investment firms millions, I may not be bringing some guy’s heart back to life, but what I do has value and passion and impact. I grew tired of being the one expected to compromise.”
The weight of unspoken pressures and assumptions washes over me in a wave. Yet again I’ve made the mistake of miscommunication, lack of communication, misunderstood communication. It’s like my life has naturally fallen into this well worn groove that’s going to keep leading me straight into a brick wall. “Mary Jo, I never -“
“I know. You didn’t, but I did. I projected; when you brought up this job offer it was like the same story all over again. I shut you out, I shut you down, I know I didn’t give anything a chance; us a chance to talk, to compromise, to try. I was going to tell you that. When I…When I called you, when I saw you I was going to tell you I made so many mistakes and I wish I had them to do over again.”
Our faces are separated by mere inches across the tabletop; I never thought I would be this close to her again. I never allowed myself to think there were any second chances. I thought I had made so many mistakes myself. All this time Mary Jo has been thinking the same. You can never reverse time, you can’t undo the past, you can’t wish away the missteps; but you can pull yourself up and square your shoulders. You can perhaps open you heart and look ahead. Moving my hand slowly across the table, the tips of my fingers curl around the top of her right hand. In that moment her eyes were shining, I’m sure mirroring the mixture of grief and relief written in my own.
“God Erica, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
~~~~
Her words swirled around my heart, gripping it tightly, and pulling me in that familiar undertow back to her. Regrets, admissions of failings, long suffered doubts were laid out on the table. My resolve cracked like the hull of a boat, the string of her words seeping in, flooding my senses and allowing me to sink into the warmth of her. The warmth of her that haunted me for three lonely years; the warmth of her burning beneath my lips now. There was no resistance; nothing for me resist. Apologies, acceptance, forgiveness are the words we needed to say, to hear, to give voice to. But, we crave absolution, cleansing, a promise that the future exists.
My mouth on her bare shoulder speaks of pardon and promise. Her hands cup gently around my head and I hear my name from her in a near whisper. Looking up and moving slowly over her, I see the slight quiver in her chin and the tear that slides from the corner of her eye, gravity pulling it back into the dark waves at her temple.
“Shh…” I run the pad of my thumb across her lips as she opens them to speak. I don’t need to hear her say she’s sorry again. I can see it written all over her. I know what she feels, I have that same sense of wasted time and regretted stubbornness. But those aren’t things I want to hold onto any longer. This is our second chance, our opportunity to let the past go, and I’m determined that we will take it.
Moving down, my lips replace the slide of my thumb along her lower lip. It’s everything that I remember, everything that I could never forget. The taste of her, the feel of her soft lips, the sigh that escapes from her throat. I honestly never thought I’d be here again.
My lips trail down across her jaw line, stopping to enjoy the tender flesh below her ear. Mary Jo shifts beneath me, her hands caressing my shoulders, her left leg rising to wrap around my hip. In that moment I realize I only want to be wrapped up in her, and that it really doesn’t matter if it’s here, or back in North Carolina, or anywhere else she and I might decide together we want to go. But, I know that the running is over, we’re both home.
The realization stokes the fire deep in the pit of my stomach and I press my hips down into her own, rolling against her, rolling into her, sinking. She gasps quietly and digs her fingertips into the skin of my back. “Erica.” A breathy declaration, a plea for mercy, a siren’s song for my attention draws me back to her mouth. With parted lips I devour her moans, blending my own quiet mewls with the gentle breaths of love falling from her lips.
Our tongues touch, gently acquaint, a smooth slide of velvet that makes me desire to drink in her very essence. Gripping her hips I pull her insistently against me, myself against her. It’s been too long and the synapses are firing in my head, begging, pleading, demanding not to be restrained another second. She’s exactly where I’ve wanted, where I’ve dreamed these past years.
“Erica, please.” She pulls my lower lip between her teeth, the bite hard. Her arms clutch around me, as if in attempt to pull me into her; exactly where I want to be. I slip my hand between our pelvises feeling the sheer fire radiating out between her thighs wrapped tightly around me. Molten, wet velvet meets my fingertips and she cries out, my open mouth capturing the sob that comes from my touch. Pulling my head back slightly, my left elbow braced against the bed, I lean over her, my hand smoothing the wisps of hair off her forehead. “Mary Jo.” Her neck arches, pressing back into the pillow. “Mary Jo…look at me.” Her eyes stay tightly shut, the edge of her teeth gripping her lower lip. “Look at me.” As my fingers slide over and barely into a very slick entrance, her eyelids flutter open, deep dilated pupils, ringed by bright green, find me. Pressing lightly forward, in shallow languid strokes, I nod my head slowly at her.
Mary Jo struggles for words, her eyes closing and opening in long stretches of seconds. An involuntary moan escapes quietly from my own throat. This is what I’ve missed so desperately, what I’m going to fight to never let go of again. She’s hot and tight around my fingers, urging me to press on, to give us both what we crave, what we need. I thrust deeply, gently, slowly, drawing her hips up to meet my hand. Mary Jo’s face turns into my hand on her forehead, pressing her lips to the soft skin on the inside of my forearm.
“Erica.” She pauses and gasps as my fingers curl and relax. I unwind and wind her, all in my hand, all at my will, all for my pleasure, her pleasure, our pleasure. “Erica…I love you.”
Capturing her lips with my own, my thumb is gentle and nimble, flicking softly back and forth over her hard clit. I press her, I pull her, I request the response her body so desperately wants to give. Circling her clit with a now firm, but gentle press of my thumb, my fingers curl and tap and stroke the soft velvet heaven that her body reveals. Mary Jo claws at my arms, her head rolls away in desperation as she clings to that edge, begging to leap and float through space. I nip at the side of her exposed throat, giving one last push to let her go, to pull her back to me, to release everything that once was, so what can be has room between us. Holding her close, the explosion is hot around me as she shudders in my arms, as she cries out for me.
I float with her on that cloud, back to earth; the warm caress of her lips against my neck, her face buried in my shoulder. A city is not a home, a location, a plot of land. Home is love and comfort and a place where you understand who and what you are. I’ve never felt that safety, that permanence, that place of home. But it washes over me now, and home is not a place. Home is here, in my arms, in my heart, and I’ll never again let it go.
This entry was originally posted at http://h4hahn.dreamwidth.org/46932.html