“Hmm. Yes. We forgot a little something, didn’t we?”
“A big something. My fault. I’m sorry, Vivian, I was just so . . . God, it was such hell yesterday . . . and there you were . . . I wasn’t thinking straight . . .”
“I know. My fault, too. Heat of the moment.” I peeled myself from his arms and poured a cup of coffee. “Here. My magic beans will make you all better.”
“I do feel better. It’s you I’m thinking about.” Sip. Soulful, worried eyes. “How close are you?”
“Close. Not too close, I think.” Pretty damned hair’s-breadth close.
“Jesus. It won’t happen again, I promise.” He stretched out his not-coffee hand and stroked my tumbled locks. “Or there’s the Pill.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I do know this doctor. He could get you a prescription.”
“Do you, now. Might be a good idea. If we’re planning to make a habit of this.”
I tried not to grin. I really did. So did he. But.
He said: “Thank you for last night. You saved me. You do know that.”
“Anytime. And I do mean anytime.”
He leaned forward and kissed the strands between his fingers. “I love this hair of yours.”
Look, now. A man holds your hair in his hands and kisses it, the man who made love to you last night, and I dare you not to wrap your hands around his sweet skull and kiss him silly, until you’re crashing into the icebox together, spilling hot coffee everywhere, giggling and groaning, all choked up with mutual worship. And then he stops suddenly and crushes you into his bones—your robe’s come undone by now, naturally, and your bare skin attaches to his bare skin—and says, “It’s been magic. This month with you, it’s been heaven,” and what the hell are you supposed to say to that?
“Yes.”
“I just . . . Almighty God, Vivian, I love you so much. I just need you to know that. When I fall short of you. Give you less than you deserve. I love you, you can’t imagine. You’re the world to me.” He said it violently, into that hair of mine he said he loved. In another second, he’d be proposing.
“Great guns,” I said. “I think the bacon’s burning.”
? ? ?
DID I MENTION today was a Wednesday? Well. Today was a Wednesday, and what with all the bacon and the shenanigans, I slunk like an alley cat into the Metropolitan offices well past my usual hour of lateness. And I am not, as you may have noticed, the world’s earliest alley cat to begin with.
But. I had lateness privileges now! Everyone knew I was now among Lightfoot’s chosen. Even Agatha did no more than snap her Wrigley’s at me as I waved my cheeriest and whipped around the corner before Gogo could triangulate my position from her radar station outside her father’s office.
“Hello there, Vivs!”
Gogo was perched atop my desk, right smack between the telephone and the empty fact-checking box, gams crossed, topmost footsie bounce bounce bouncing. Her face wore a brilliant pink smile.
She knows.
Gathump gathump, went the old heart. I swung my briefcase into place. “Hello there, honey. What’s cooking?”
Who told her? Where did she see us?
“You are. You’re cooking. Look at that dress! And your hair. It’s all . . .” She motioned.
I coughed. “New style.” The Salon Doctor Paul Deluxe. “You like?”
“Mmm. I want one just like it.”
“Wouldn’t suit you at all, dearest. So. What are you up to this morning? Don’t you have some advertisers to charm?” My heart was slowing from a gallop to a trot. There was not a drop of guile in Gogo. If she knew about Doctor Paul, she wouldn’t go about confronting me all sideways like this. She would come at me straight, with bathtubs of tears and that lost-koala expression that did me in, every time.
Gogo laughed. “Not today. I’m doing the decorations for Agatha’s anniversary party, and then I’m going shopping for a new dress.”
“Nothing beats shopping to heal a broken heart.”
A bit of sparkle in the eyes. “Absolutely.”
Doctor Paul had been right about Gogo. After a week or so of despair, she’d begun to bounce back nicely. She’d returned to work, the smile had reappeared on her face from time to time, the old sunshine had begun to beam out from her baby blues. Maybe she was stronger than I thought. Maybe I was in the clear.
It didn’t make me feel any less squalid as I stood before her, though.
I could meet her eyes. Just. But I couldn’t return to girly intimacy with her, I couldn’t lean forward across her bed and share secrets. What if she could see right through my eyes and periscope downward to the guilty depths of my hippocampus? What if she could see the memory of Doctor Paul and yours truly, locked together on a sofa, against a wall, atop a kitchen counter, asleep in his bed in a Gordian knot of perfect accord?
She took my hand. “Come with me. I miss you, Vivs. You’ve been working so hard.”