Plain Jayne (23 page)

I take both of the pies over to the double
oven, which is already pre-heated and ready to bake our dinners. With my back
to him, I say, “It sounds like you’ve explored lots of different ways to try to
end things with her.”

“I have!” he eagerly confirms. “I truly have.
And I want you to see that.”

After sliding both pans into their respective
ovens and closing the doors, I remain turned away from him when I say, “It
doesn’t matter what I know or assume or think, though, does it? I mean…” I
nervously chuckle. “…do you explain your lifestyle choices to Tom Ridgeworthy?”

He makes a frustrated noise close to a growl. “Why
the fuck do you keep comparing yourself to Tom fucking Ridgeworthy?” he
explodes, making me flinch and whirl around.

My mouth dry, I answer, “I-I don’t know.
Because he’s a big fucking deal! And he gives you gifts. And… and…”

“Is a high-maintenance pain in my ass!” he
finishes hotly. “Oh, and hunting buddies with my father-in-law! And an
opinionated son of a bitch. Do you want me to go on?”

I look down at my feet and mumble, “No. I get
it.”

“Good! Because I’m sick of you bringing him up
all the time and implying that you’re not as good as he is, when he’s half the
writer
you
are and even less of a person.”

Gulping and blushing, I keep my eyes on my
toes and say, “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ So shut up about Tom
Ridgeworthy.”

“Fine!”

“Thank you!”

Feeling myself dangerously close to crying,
and knowing I have about thirty minutes until our pizzas are ready, I cross the
kitchen to the door, muttering, “Excuse me,” on my way past Luke.

He snags my arm. “Wait.”

When I refuse to look at him, he says gruffly,
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“It’s okay,” I lie, trying to smooth things
over as quickly as possible so he’ll let me go. His grip loosens just enough
for me to take advantage of it and jerk my arm away from him. I push through
the kitchen door and hurry down the hall, shutting myself in the library.
Fortunately, he doesn’t follow me.

*****

To say the next few hours are tense and chilly
is an understatement of epic proportions. I didn’t even eat my dinner at the
table with Luke; I took it down to the basement and ate in front of the TV. I’d
like to make an important distinction here, though; I’m not pouting. Did it
sting that he shouted at me? Maybe. But it would be ridiculous to pout about
what he said, even if his delivery left much to be desired.

Tom Ridgeworthy is half the writer I am, in
his opinion? Really? That’s a phenomenal compliment in the mass market literary
world. Sure, Ridgeworthy writes according to a formula that he’s devised and
perfected in his scores of novels, so I’m sure many people—myself included,
when I’m trying to make myself feel better—look down their noses at that. But
his formula is proven. It’s successful. It’s golden. The only reason I don’t
have my own formula is that I’ve only written one book. And nobody knows who
the hell I am. But if I could crank ’em out like he does and land on the
bestsellers list every single time, you bet your ass I’d do it. And it wouldn’t
matter if some elitists thought my writing was subpar. Their opinions wouldn’t
affect my bank balance or my self-worth at all.

But what’s making me keep my distance from
Luke isn’t his gratifying comparison of my writing skills to one of the most
successful and prolific writers of the modern age. Nope. It’s the other part of
what he said that’s freaking me out. Coupled with what we discussed immediately
prior to his blow-up, his statement about my being a superior person makes me
feel desperately hopeless, ironically enough. It
should
make me feel
good. It
should
even make me contemplate “getting the wrong idea.” But
all it does is give me heartburn. Or maybe that’s the pizza.

Anyway, I’ve already entertained plenty of
wrong ideas during the past week. Plenty. Too many. It seems in doing so that
I’ve forgotten my place. I am a writer who works with an editor, who has
generously offered me the use of his
wife’s
house for the purposes of
finishing my manuscript, because I had trouble working anywhere else. This
environment suits me and allows me to write well. That is all.

Except… that’s
not
all. Because I love
that stupid, bad-tempered editor, and he makes me happy. And I make him happy,
I think, based on the amount of time he
chooses
to spend with me, even
when we’re not working. And… I’m going to come right out and say it:  I want
him to rip my clothes off and do things to me that they do to each other on the
naughty channels in the wee hours of the morning. Some of the things, anyway.
But I know I’m too meek and skittish and
plain
to make that possible.

Even if he offered, I’d be unable to go
through with it. Because he has a
wife.
And possibly a fetus inside that
wife. He may seem to have forgotten those things sometimes, but I haven’t. I
can’t
.
Call me an unsophisticated farm girl, or whatever, but just because I’ve
transplanted myself to a big city doesn’t mean I left my upbringing on a shelf
in the house that burnt down in the middle of Nowhereville in Indiana. My
old-fashioned morals and values—as inconvenient as they are—didn’t die with the
rest of my family.

Maybe when I’m finished with this book (if
that ever happens), I’ll go wander on the moors of singlehood in the hopes that
a less complicated man discovers me and nurses me back to vigor before I perish
from sexual inactivity. I’ve heard it can be fatal.

Okay, so I’m pouting a little bit.

*****

“Are you going to hide down there all night,
watching porn?”

I knew it was a mistake to answer my cell
phone when his name flashed on the screen, yet… I couldn’t resist answering.

“I’m not watching porn!”

“Mm-hm. Sure. Okay.”

“I’m not! It’s not even on at this time!”

This inadvertent betrayal of my knowledge of
such things makes him laugh.

Shit.

“You know what I mean,” I grumble. “What do
you want?”

“I said I was sorry for yelling at you. Why
are you still mad at me?” he asks, sounding more hurt than annoyed. “Was it
something I said? Surely, it can’t be anything I said. I didn’t say anything
offensive.”

“I’m not mad at you for anything you said,” I
confirm. “But I
am
sick of you thinking it’s okay to shout everything at
people when you want to get your point across.”

His voice sounds tight when he replies, “I
know. It’s wrong. That’s why I apologized.”

“But it’s not okay to shout and think that an
apology is good enough.”

“What else do you want?”

Oh, gosh. Don’t ask me that! I can think of about
a hundred ways to answer that question. And none of them is clean, appropriate,
or professional.

Finally, I come up with a decent response. “I
want you to think
before
you shout so that the apology isn’t necessary.”

He sighs. “But my temper—”

“You’re not a child. You need to learn how to
control your temper. Plus, you lose it about the strangest things.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“We’ll agree to disagree so it doesn’t turn
into another argument that ends with you shouting at me.”

“Are you
trying
to piss me off?”

“No! The opposite.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“It’s not my fault you’re so quick to anger.”

“I’m—” He stops abruptly and takes a deep,
steadying breath. After a length of time that suggests he counted to at least
ten, he says pleasantly, “Are you going to work anymore tonight?”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” I reply sweetly.

“If I promise not to shout at you
anymore—tonight—will you at least come upstairs and watch TV with me, instead
of making me feel like a hothead with no friends?”

Well, when he puts it that way, it would seem
spiteful of me to say no.

Chapter Nineteen

His warm breath against my back, right at the
base of my neck, is the first clue that this isn’t a dream. The second clue is
the weight of his arm across my hip. And it doesn’t take a detective to tell me
that I’m insane for relishing this moment, however accidental and inadvertent
it is. Let me revel in the fantasy a few minutes longer…

“Jayne,” he whispers behind me.

I pretend I’m still sleeping. I’m afraid if I
acknowledge him, he’ll move away from me. Unfortunately, I don’t have to talk
for that to happen. He scoots to the other side of the bed when I don’t answer
him, probably hoping I never noticed the contact to begin with. Now what do I
do? Do I go along with the act? It’s not fair to suffer through an awkward
morning after when nothing happened the night before.

Because nothing happened. I still have all my
clothes on. The only reason we ended up in this room, in his bed, is that he
mentioned the TV in his bedroom was a 3D TV, and I said I’d never seen one (a
3D TV), and so he offered to show it to me (the TV), so we came up here and
popped in
Avatar
, so I could get the full effect (of the 3D TV), and as
when Gus made me watch the blue people movie, I fell asleep. Luke obviously
didn’t have the heart to wake me up and kick me out to sleep in my own room.
And he’s a cuddler. Big deal! (Ohmygoshthat’ssosweet!) And anyway… I’m cool. It’s
not like he was consciously cuddling with me (breeeeeeathe!) or making a move
or—

“Jayne.”

This time, he says it  louder, so I roll onto
my back and turn my head toward him. “What?”

“You fell asleep during the movie,” he tells
me with a smile as he stretches his arms over his head.

“Yeah, it’s still boring, even on a 3D TV. But
your TV is cool.”

As he brings his arm down, he hits himself in
the face. “Ow. Uh… Also…” He rubs his forehead. “I, uh… was… touching you… a
minute ago, and—”

So he’ll stop making this more embarrassing
than it already is (not that it’s embarrassing, but his explanation is
cringe-worthy), I quickly reassure him, “It’s okay.”

He freezes. “I-it is?”

The way he’s looking at me is making my heart
race. “Yeah. And, uh… anyway… I hope I didn’t talk in my sleep.” I said it to
make him feel better, but the possibility of it being true makes my heart pound
even faster. Considering some of the dreams I’ve been having lately, talking in
my sleep around him would be very bad indeed. “I didn’t, did I?” I squeak when
he continues staring at me.

He shakes his head and whispers, “No.”

“Oh, good.” But I still can’t catch my breath.

“Jayne?”

“What?”

“I want to kiss you.”

I babble, “That wouldn’t be a very good idea,
though, right? Because… well… there are so many reasons.” I hate myself. “Like…
well…”

“I can’t think of any.”

“But they exist! Lots of them!” I say, as if
I’m talking about unicorns. “You’re married, for one.”

“Only on paper. That doesn’t count.”

I laugh nervously. “Oh, it counts! It matters
to the IRS, and it matters to me.”

He edges closer to me, but I don’t move.
Instead, I keep rabbiting. “And you’re going to be a father—”

“No, I’m not. She knows I’m reaching my
breaking point and that all of her usual tricks aren’t going to work, so she’s
in desperation mode. She’s not even faking it well this time, though. She’s not
pregnant.”

“But what if she is?”

“She’s not.” Closer still. “Is that the only
thing stopping you?”

“No.” But I say it so weakly that it’s hardly
audible.

“I used to have lots of reasons, too, but
right now, I can’t think of any of them.”

His shaking hand tells a truer story, though,
when he lifts it to brush my hair away from my face. And pokes me in the eye.

I flinch and jerk my head back, pinching my
eye closed. “Ouch!” I cover the burning, watering socket with my palm.

“I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” he says on a groan.
“Shit. I can’t believe I did that. I mean, I
can
believe it, but… Let me
see.”

“I can’t open it right now,” I tell him as I
roll away from him and sit on the side of the bed.

He sits next to me and repeats, “Are you
okay?”

“I’ll be fine. It’s only an eye poke. No big
deal.” Experimentally, I blink hard and wipe away the tears streaming down my
face. “It already feels better,” I fib.

“Oh, good. Fuck. I am such a moron. You must
think I’m so stupid.”

“I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess. I still
have all my teeth.”

He laughs miserably. “You can replace teeth,
though. Eyes, not so much. Let me go see if I have some drops in my bathroom.”

After he goes into the other room, I hear him
muttering to himself, “Real smooth, asshole. ‘I wanna kiss you… after I blind
you.’ What is it about a room with a bed in it that makes you such a fucking
spaz?”