“Good morning,” he managed after prying his tongue from my mouth. His voice was sexy in the morning. Undisciplined roughness.
I had to close my eyes for a moment as his fingers worked faster, my hips shifting anxiously beneath him.
Suddenly, Vivaldi bellowed from the cell phone on his bedside stand, startling us both. The cold chill of reality settled like a lead ball in my stomach as he clumsily pulled his hand away from me and sat up on the edge of the bed. I lay there, unmoving, banishing truth from my daydream for a while longer.
Just one minute more. Please.
“Hello?” He cleared his throat and said it again.
I silently appealed to the universe to let it be someone from the tour. Joseph McIntosh, maybe, congratulating us on our job well done last night or confirming our arrival time in Lincoln later in the day. It was barely six o’clock, though.
It wasn’t anyone else.
“Hi,” he started again. “Mmm-hmm. Yes. I am, too.” The flirtatious huskiness of his voice was gone. All the life was sucked from the room as I sat up, resting my back against the plush headboard and tucked my knees into my chest.
Gregory rested his elbows on his knees as he spoke, dangling his fingers through his hair as he let out a deep sigh. “Yes, my flight leaves in a couple of hours so I have to … yes. Of course. I will. You, too.”
His phone slid from his fingers onto the bed next to him. He glanced over his shoulder, a grievous look on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but I couldn’t listen. I didn’t know if he regretted what we’d done last night or that his wife interrupted our morning, but neither was appropriate. Neither acceptable. Neither better than the other.
“Don’t,” I said, wrapping the sheet around myself as I slid off the mattress.
“Savannah,” he sighed.
Taking a deep breath, I walked to his side of the bed and squatted down, meeting his tortured gaze.
“Don’t,” I repeated, kissing him once. I didn’t want an apology or an excuse for last night. It was incredible. So were we. I wanted to leave it as it was before we had to return to reality.
As I stepped away, he stood, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward him. He took my face in his hands as his expression softened. The stain of regret lingered, though.
It always does.
“I love you,” he whispered as if we weren’t alone in the room.
We weren’t, really.
With tears stinging my eyes, I suddenly needed a shower more than I ever had in my life. I swallowed hard, nodding as I tried to find my voice.
“I know.”
I shrugged and gave a timid smile as I pulled away from his grip and locked myself in the bathroom. Looking at my reflection, I watched two pathetic tears slip down my cheeks. Mocking tears. Tears that garnered no sympathy from me or my conscience.
I loved Gregory Fitzgerald with every fiber of my being. And I knew he loved me back. It was as undeniable as it’d always been. We were meant to be together.
But, for every breath I took, there would forever be the exhale to remind myself of what I’d just done.
I slept with another woman’s husband.
And I could never take that back.
Gregory
By the time we stepped into a cab at the Lincoln Airport, my patience was shot.
Savannah left the hotel room in a hurry that morning. Such a hurry that I hardly knew what was happening, and by the time I got clothes on and followed her out the door, she was gone, and I didn’t know what her room number was. She ended up meeting me in the lobby, where we took a car, in silence, back to the airport. Except for communicating the barest of information, such as which gate we were going to, she didn’t speak to me at the airport, or boarding the plane.
When the plane reached altitude, she leaned her seat back, put in earbuds, and turned away from me, closing her eyes. I’ve never felt so conflicted and confused in my life. I understood confusion. I understood mixed feelings. I loved her so much. But the fact that I was married tangled everything in knots.
What I couldn’t understand was why she was so angry that she shut me out?
The moment the in-flight service started, I ordered a gin and tonic, heavy on the gin, and tossed the first one back like it was a shot. Savannah slept through the entire flight. Or, pretended to sleep if my nights next to Karin taught me anything about acting. I dredged out my old notebook and began to write.
The notebook began as nothing more than a log. A place to record my thoughts about particular performances or practices that went well or... not so well. Lately, though, it had increasingly become an outlet, a method for me to compose my thoughts before I had to deal with Karin.
Finally, the excruciatingly long flight ended, and we were on the ground in Lincoln, Nebraska, of all places. I’d never been in Nebraska. I’d never planned to be in Nebraska. I didn’t want to be in Nebraska. As the plane came in on its final approach, all I could see outside was flat ground, spreading out uninterrupted for a million miles in every direction.
Who voluntarily lived in such a place?
Savannah was awake enough that she stirred in her seat and put away her earbuds during the final approach. Thirty minutes later we were standing in the blasting sunlight of middle America, the smell of dust and car exhaust permeating everything as I carefully slid my cello into the back of a cab.
“Please talk to me,” I said as we got in the back seat. “Why are you angry with me, Savannah?”
She looked at me, a puzzled expression on her face. “I’m not angry with you.”
“Where to?” the cab driver asked.
Crap. I’d written down the hotel information somewhere, but I had no idea what I’d done with it. As I fumbled with my wallet and pockets, Savannah reached in her purse and read out an address for the Marriott Cornhusker. I could only hope that the hotel wouldn’t match the name.
“Lot of construction over there,” the driver said. “It may take a little while.”
“Fine,” I said, irritation flashing through me. “Let’s just get going.”