Just a Kiss, Chapter 7
Title: Just a Kiss
Fandom : Moonlight
Characters : Mick, Beth, Josef, Simone
Rating : R, for some sexual content and strong language.
Spoilers: Post -"Sonata"
Summary: Eleventh in my post-Sonata series. Josef finally confronts Beth with his growing feelings for her, and it has serious consequences for his relationships with Mick and Simone. Told from alternating pov's of all the main characters.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters; no copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Thanks so much for the positive reviews of my last chapter. I was really worried some might be offended, but the readers I heard from seemed to know where I was coming from. Thanks for that!
This chapter is fraught with exposition and long speeches, but since we haven’t heard from Simone in awhile, I felt it necessary. I’m not apologizing, because I’m proud of this chapter-just putting you on notice that I used lots of words, lol.
Chapter 7
SIMONE
It had been three weeks, and I missed Josef like crazy. Of course, it was all my fault; I had neither called nor written to him. I visited my parents daily, and I constantly worked on my mother by singing Josef’s praises. Her standard reply was always:
“If he’s so great, why isn’t he here with you?”
But how could I explain the situation without hurting her feelings, or without telling her what I had become? And I didn’t mean a vampire. I was a fraud. A woman who seemed strong and independent on the outside, but, deep down, was a little girl crying for her mommy’s approval. She wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t be able to see just how screwed up I was because of her. And even though I knew I shouldn’t need her approval, I still craved it, sought it out like manna from heaven.
She constantly hounded me about my eating habits (or lack thereof, at least in her presence), my paleness, my coldness. She attributed it all to anemia and an unhealthy lifestyle. LA had finally gotten to me, she had stated on more than one occasion. Well, something had to give, or I would be doomed to an eternity of self-doubt and self-imposed imprisonment. One thing my stay in New York had taught me though: staying near my mother was not the answer. It helped nothing. It changed nothing. I wanted to go home. To LA. To Josef. If he would still have me.
I packed my bag and checked out of my hotel room, then headed to my parents’ apartment. It was just past dawn, and I was tired and in need of the freezer, but I knew myself well enough to know that I’d better leave while I felt strong enough emotionally to do it. The hard part, of course, would be trying to explain this to my parents when I barely understood it myself.
The taxi let me off in front of the Dakota and I went in with the tip of the doorman’s hat. Outside their door, I paused, trying to summon the courage to knock. After two unanswered tries, I let myself in with the key Mother had given me. They weren’t home. I sighed and went over to the couch, preparing myself for a long wait. I’d just gotten comfortable with one of Mother’s news magazines, when someone else knocked on their door.
I stood up and stopped short, instinctively sniffing the air. A vampire was on the other side of that door. I sniffed again. Josef. Oh my God. What do I do? I wasn’t ready to see him yet; not this minute. I could pretend no one was home, but of course, he was certainly smelling me right now if I could smell him. Damn vampire senses. Buck up, Simone.
I went to the door and opened it. Standing before me was a Josef I barely recognized. He looked so tired, and his clothes looked slept in. I detected faint bruising around his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt. But beneath his haggard appearance, a spark of determination lit his eyes as he took me in. Next thing I knew, he had pulled me into an embrace.
“Simone…” he breathed into my hair, his arms like bands around me, holding me to him like a man coming home. “Simone…”
Without thought, I hugged him back, wanting to cry out at the relief I felt being back in his arms. He smelled faintly of expensive cologne and whiskey, and the hair at the back of his neck was as soft as I remembered it. I played with it as we stood there a minute, lost in each other, my cheek on his shoulder, his hands at my hips. He was the one to finally lean back a bit, his hands going up to cup my face. He kissed me lightly on the lips and stepped away. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to fuse our mouths together, to make up for the weeks that I had pushed him away. He left me a little stunned in the doorway, and walked on past me into the parlor, making himself at home on the couch I’d just left. I slowly shut the door.
“So, where are the parents?” His eyes strayed back to the foyer where I stood, then to the floor where I’d left my suitcase. Before I could reply to the first question, he asked: “Going somewhere?”
“I don’t know where they are. I just dropped in to say…goodbye.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to answer question number two. I had hoped I would have the long plane ride to come up with all the answers he would want, so his unexpected appearance had definitely thrown me off. “I was on my way back to LA, actually. Your timing was excellent, as usual.”
He grinned. “Really? And have you come to any conclusions?”
I sat in the chair across from him, though every instinct cried out to snuggle up to him on the couch.
“Yes. And no.”
He was being unusually patient with me. Normally, he’d press and press me for answers, or become visibly frustrated or angry. This Josef was unaccountably mellow. He waited for me to collect myself, to continue my reply.
“I want to be with you, Josef. I want to marry you…someday. But I don’t think I’m ready now to-“ I felt my eyes darting around the room, at Dad’s paintings, the vase on the mantle, the oriental rug beneath my feet-anywhere but into Josef’s soft brown eyes. “I don’t want to live with you…for now.”
There. I’d gotten that out, and I was able to look at him again, though my hands were shaking and I felt near tears.
“Why not?” He asked simply.
I may as well get it all out, I thought. “I’m still working on that independence thing. Can you understand this? I know I’ll still need your advice about how to be a vampire, but can’t I do that from my own house?”
He regarded me a minute, and there was no trace of anger or disappointment.
“The last thing I want to do it tie you down when you’re not ready. I’ll always be there for you, Simone. I love you. The marriage offer still stands, and since you’re still wearing my ring, it appears you feel the same way. You know, the great thing about being a vampire is we have all the time in the world to make these decisions. You can have all the time you need. I just want you home, where I can see you, touch you, make love to you. That is, if you still want me in that way.”
His voice had gone soft and seductive, and I was drawn in by his words. Of course I still wanted him. Every fiber of my being called out for him. But I stayed where I sat, feeling suddenly like something had changed him. He’d been through something in these past weeks that I was not privy to, but it was something profound, life-altering, and I was afraid suddenly to know what it was. But afraid or not, it seemed imperative that I find out before I flew back to LA with him.
“Yes, I still want you,” I told him. His eyes lit up with what looked like hope. “But you need to tell me right now what’s going on with you. Why do you look like you’ve been hit by a truck? You’re recovering from two black eyes-I can tell. You’ve been in a fight, haven’t you? And you haven’t been sleeping or eating right-I can tell that, too.”
He sighed and his eyes seemed to take the same trip around the room that mine had when I’d been at a loss for words. He smiled tightly, and he laughed suddenly, humorlessly.
“Well…now that’s a big can of worms. Actually, it’s more like a barrel. I don’t know-do worms come in barrels?” His hands went to his hair in his usual display of nerves. He laughed again, and this time, I had to reach deeply for my own patience. “So,” he continued, “ do you want the bad news, the really bad news, or the really, awful, gut-wrenching news? I’ve got it all right here: Josef Kostan: Confessions of a Vampire Fuck-up.”
“Just start at the beginning, Josef,” I encouraged, though of course, now that I asked, I wanted to take back the questions immediately. He looked briefly like a man stepping before a firing squad, then, in typical Josef style, he grabbed the guns and began firing off his sins, one by one.
“Okay..where to begin? Let’s start with the drinking binges and the orgies. Yeah, that’s been fun. I’ve cheated on you in so many ways, in so many positions, it even boggles my mind to think about it. Oh, but it just gets better and better. I kissed Beth in a way that you could never call sisterly. Mick didn’t seem to like that much-hence the black eyes you can see, and the broken ribs you can’t. Then, to top that off, I just got back from killing Sarah Whitely. That’s my news. What’s been going on in your world?”
I knew my jaw had dropped in shock, and I stared at him, dumbfounded. I didn’t know which confession to latch on to first. Josef was always surprising me. I suddenly found it all very amusing. To both our surprise, I began to laugh, loudly and with much gusto. When I saw his face, now the one contorted in shock, it made me laugh all the harder. A minute or two later, and my hysteria had died, and I wiped away my tears of mirth. Josef hadn’t joined in on my laughing binge. He sat there in amazement. Now who was the surprised one?
“Well, now,” I began when I could, ticking his crimes off on my fingers. “Let us take this one item at a time, shall we? Item one. The party of the first part-being you-engaged in drunk and disorderly conduct and sexual congress with several other parties of the second part. Item two. Then, said suspect, being not of sound mind, and with head firmly up his ass, engaged in the likely uninvited osculation with a close personal friend that was NOT his fiancé-the party of the third part. Item three. Sexual partner of said party-of the fourth part-- then proceeded to assault you in a totally understandable and non-criminal form of self-defense on behalf of his accosted partner. There. Does that about sum it up, counselor?”
He smirked in appreciation of my lawyer-ease. Then, his face became serious. “You forgot to mention what I did to Sarah.”
I shook my head and held his gaze, my eyes softening at what must have been a painful, though long-overdue decision. “That’s a separate issue. We’ll deal with that one later. First, though, I need to pass judgment on your other set of crimes.”
Josef and I had had a relationship for a few years, and only became exclusive for a little over a year. I was the one who had pushed him away. And while I didn’t expect for him to go out and cheat on me, knowing Josef as I did, this part of his confession didn’t surprise me much.
“Look, Josef, I get why you turned to the booze and the women. I bet most of them were faceless freshies to you, weren’t they?”
He nodded solemnly, still waiting for my sentence.
“I can forgive this, because I know I made you feel like things might be over between us. But if I’m going back to you, you and I are going to be the only ones in your little orgies from now on, you hear me?”
“You mean, you’re not mad about that?” He asked in disbelief.
“I didn’t say that, Josef. I’m so pissed off right now, so jealous imagining you with other women, I’m tempted to find out their names and drain them all dry. But I understand it, because I put a lot of blame on myself. I’m going to try my best to put it behind me, if you tell me it won’t ever happen again.”
He gulped and put on his most sincere expression. “I am sorry, Simone. I was out of my head, and when the drinking didn’t help, I combined it with sex, hoping that I could get you off my mind, at least for awhile. If it helps any, it didn’t work, and it just made me feel worse. If you’ll still have me, I swear I’ll never do that again. No woman can compare to you, Simone. I swear to God that’s true.”
I nodded, afraid to speak to that as I prepared myself to address item two. “Now, about Beth…where the hell did that come from? I had a feeling there was something going on there, but I didn’t want to believe that, convinced myself I was just imagining things. Are you-are you in love with her?”
His eyes fell to the floor, and I felt my stomach drop. Of all his crimes, this would be the worst. I couldn’t be with a man who was in love with someone else. I couldn’t-wouldn’t share Josef with anyone, especially a woman I thought of like a sister. I knew though that Beth was madly in love with Mick, and I wondered with a brief flash of betrayal why she hadn’t called to tell me what he’d done. But if the situation were reversed, would I have called her? Caused her unnecessary pain? I don’t know. It would depend on the details, I supposed. I waited for Josef to share them.
“I thought I was. For about five minutes.” He saw my reaction to this, no doubt saw the pain in my eyes. “But I was wrong, Simone. So to the extreme of wrong it’s almost funny. I’d always been physically attracted to her, from the moment we met, but she belonged to Mick. Therein lay the attraction, I think. I was jealous that he had met her first. Beautiful, intelligent, funny, ambitious. The truth was, she was forbidden fruit to me, something I wasn’t used to. When you and I became serious, I hoped these feelings would go away. And they did until you and I became committed. Mick figured it out when I was about to turn you, and warned me to get a grip, or else.” He laughed. “Well, or else happened, as you can see. Anyway, I’ve analyzed this over and over in my mind, and I guess it comes down to wanting what I couldn’t have, the close quarters of the Winnebago, and both of our commitment issues. And when you left me…well I went into self-destruct mode, found a way to get Beth alone, and kissed the hell out of her.”
“And…” I whispered.
He looked into my eyes, beseeching me to stay with him, to believe him. “I felt nothing, Simone. She felt nothing. It was like a bad science experiment, that gained nothing but caused a huge explosion. First, Beth slugged me, then Mick took over and beat the shit out of me. The whole time he was whaling on me, all I was feeling was…relief. It was out of my system. I knew I didn’t really love her. I knew we had no sexual chemistry. Unfortunately, Mick chose this time to stop being the loveable boy scout I’ve always known and thought I reviled. He hasn’t forgiven me. And I’m not sure he ever really will. Beth has, though…contingent on Mick’s feelings, of course. So, here I sit, in a shithole of my own making, praying that everyone I love and care about will see something in me worth hanging on to, worth risking their forgiveness on. So tell me, Your Honor, what say you?”
“I’m sorry, Josef,” I said at length, my tears flowing now. “I’m at least partly to blame for this. If I weren’t so screwed up myself, I would have seen all of this coming. I would have shaken you and told you to snap out of it. But I was so pushy. I pushed you to commit to me, to turn me, to put up with my feelings of inadequacy, especially where my mother was concerned. I left you-more than once. Ran away like a baby, this last time to Mommy. I’m not going to judge you, Josef. You’ve paid for what you’ve done. You’re still paying. I’m paying the price too, now, for leaving you, for being blind to what was going on under my nose. For not trying harder to understand you. For trying to change you. No wonder you fell back on your old habits. I’d be the biggest hypocrite in the world if I didn’t take responsibility for my own part in this mess. Can you forgive me?”
He was on his knees at my feet in an instant, wrapping his arms around my waist, laying his head on my lap.
“Oh, God, Simone. There’s nothing to forgive. Nothing. I love you, and only you. I want you, and only you. Please, give me another chance. Give us another chance.” He looked up at me, his eyes watery and pleading. “Can we start fresh from here? No more pushing, no more pushing away? I don’t know what I’ll do if I’ve lost both you and Mick.”
I put my hands on either side of his adorable face, seeing it now through blurry eyes. “You haven’t lost me, you idiot, and I don’t think you’ll be without Mick for long. We’ve both been stupid, you and I,” I smiled. “Maybe you a little more than me, but that’s par for the course, don’t you think?”
He grinned. “I can’t argue with that.” We were both smiling as he drew me to my feet, and his lips came crashing down on mine at last. Things got out of control pretty quickly, the weeks apart having taken their toll. We explored with lips and hands, punctuated by soft moans and sighs, as we began to consume each other, each into each. Josef had just asked directions to the nearest bed when the sound of the key in the lock and the doorknob turning made us jump apart, panting our frustration. Arms overflowing with shopping bags and packages, my mother entered her home. Her eyes lit on me first, with joyous surprise, at once noting my disarrayed hair, both straps of my dress hanging down my arms, and the dazed, teary eyed expression I must have worn. Then, as if in slow motion, her sights were set on Josef, who had begun to re-button his shirt with vampire speed.
“You!” said my mother, as if she’d found a fly in her Chardonnay.
Josef gulped. “Oh fuck!” he said, too low for human hearing, pulling up his zipper.
My sentiments exactly.
TBC
A/N: Next chapter, Elise strikes back, lol. I hope you liked this chapter. It felt so good to bring those crazy kids back together. I promise, it is the end of the angst between Simone and Josef. Not making any promises about Elise and Josef though…
Oh, and I must give credit to Alanis Morissete for the “fly in the Chardonnay” line, from her song “Ironic.” I couldn’t think of another description that would fit Elise’s expression better. I welcome suggestions…lol.
Please let me know what you think!