I lowered my arms to see James standing there and looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
“I just told you I loved you.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s me. It’s me. I’m so sorry.”
“Did Nicky used to hit you?” The way his body tensed when he said that told me he was prepared to go down to the club and confront all two-hundred-fifty, mostly-muscle pounds of Nicky if that was the case.
“No, it wasn’t him,” I said. “It doesn’t matter who it was. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never want to talk about it. How can you be okay with me not knowing anything about you?”
Oh, I was more than okay with James never knowing that I used to be so ugly, so unremarkable, that he couldn’t remember our one high school exchange, even though I used to dream of nothing else but having a Molly Ringwald Ending with him.
“James, I can’t dwell on the past. I’ve told you before that my sanity is precious to me. I’ve got to stay out of that black hole.”
I came around the table. “But the person you see standing before you; she’s what counts.”
For the first time ever during one of our arguments, I reached for him first. I laid my hands on his chest. “I love you, too. I promise that I love you, too.”
I stood on tiptoe to kiss his mouth, his cheeks, his chin, and anything else I could reach.
He just stood there rigid with anger, even when I pushed his robe off over his shoulders and untied the string on his pajama bottoms.
He knew that I was trying to change the subject with sex, but he let me lead him over to the bed and lay him down on his back.
He didn’t stop me when my lips moved down his chest to his stomach, and he was already hard by the time I took him in my mouth.
Eventually his hand came down to rest against the back of my neck and guide me further. A few moments later, I looked up at him. He was staring at me, his expression still pinched and angry. “You say you’re trying to protect your sanity, but you’re driving me crazy.”
Then with a sharp intake of breath, his mouth dropped open and he came.
. . .
After he came down from his blow job, he decided to tell me the full story of Erica London, the light-skinned actress he had been engaged to until they had broken up under mysterious circumstances just two months before the wedding was supposed to take place. I already knew all about it. Russell had sent me three copies of the Celeb Weekly issue in which it was reported as one of the side-panel stories. But I stayed quiet as James explained what had happened from his end.
He said that he hadn’t seen it coming at all. “We were supposed to go out to celebrate her getting a TV pilot, but a few hours before our date, she called me. She said that she needed to focus on her career. Alone. And she said that she couldn’t marry me.” He traced a finger down my bare arm. “To this day, I still can’t figure out if she stopped loving me, or just never did.”
He turned over to face me, his face half hidden by the down pillow. “That was five years ago. And you’re the first person I’ve loved since her.”
I folded my hand into his. “I understand that you’re scared, because you don’t want to get your heart broken again.”
“She didn’t break my heart. She just had me confused. I get that now. Because I look at you and it’s like, ‘Damn, this woman’s got me twisted. She could really mess me up.’ ” He kissed me on the forehead. “I’m going to be a lot more upset if we end like that.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “James, I would never just let you go like that. In fact, I can one hundred percent guarantee you that when we split up, it will be you who does the dumping.”
“Well, I’m not going to dump you, so you can put that doomsday tone to sleep.”
It was fascinating how confident he was when he said these things.
“Come with me to New York,” he said, pulling me close.