Almost Mine (3 page)

Soon we’d finished our soup and the fish course arrived. Between succulent mouthfuls we continued to reminisce. “College applications gave me writer’s cramp from hell.” Travis rubbed his wrist, as though still feeling the pain.

“And the road trips! A new school every weekend.” Despite my protests of being torn from work, I’d enjoyed touring universities, reliving a few of my own college memories by retelling them to my family. Ah, those were the days. A heavy weight dragged at my heart. They shouldn’t have ended.

“And remember how we—” Travis scooped up a forkful of green beans amandine, whatever recollection he’d dredged up unshared with me.
Right. No mention of “me and you” or “us” anymore. The only safe topic was Bob.

During our dessert of chocolate mousse, I couldn’t help but ask, “How’s the acting going?” No need to let on that Bob had already clued me in.

Travis’s spoon clattered into the crystalline dessert cup. “Not good, I’m afraid. There aren’t many good parts for a man my age.”

Living with someone for years teaches a man to recognize a lie. Well, not an outright lie, but a half-truth. He wasn’t telling me the whole story. Fear squirmed to life in my belly. He had to be sick, for I’d never known him to abuse drugs, the other option for why he’d sunk so low so fast. Sickness. That was the only explanation. I’d never seen him this forlorn.

Inspirations struck. “Let’s go to Whispers
.
” Maybe dancing would lift his spirits.

“We don’t have to.”

Travis? Turning down dancing? Who was this man and what had he done with my husband? “Why not? You love to dance.” I turned on the charm, batting my eyes. “They play oldies on Friday nights.”

“It’s getting late. You probably have meetings tomorrow.”

My nearly saying, “But tomorrow’s Saturday” wouldn’t have gone in my favor. Many a Saturday during out last year together I’d nipped into the office for a brief meeting, only to wind up spending the day. “No, my calendar’s empty.” I tried for the smile that used to melt his heart.

A pale echo of his former smile answered mine. “If you insist.”

I knew he couldn’t resist, especially not oldies.

After paying the check I drove us to a club we’d once frequented. The place still looked the same, furnished in Art Deco and hosting a lively crowd, kicking off the weekend with the classics from Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and other legendary singers.

We’d barely made our way through the door when I heard my named called. “Ian! Travis! How great to see you again.” The club’s manager approached, megawatt grin lighting up his face. Like myself and Travis, the passage of time had left its mark on the man.

“Good to see you, too, Jack. The club looks great. How have you been?”

We exchanged small talk. Damn, but I’d missed Jack’s humor. When was the last time we’d talked? After our breakup, Travis had neglected Anna. I’d neglected Jack. I made a mental note to invite him to lunch real soon.

Finally Jack embraced us both. “Excuse me. I need to go speak with a few people. You know how it is. Something always needs my attention.” A smile creased his cheeks and he hurried off. Travis and I found an out of the way table. The moment we sat down a handsome young man approached, wine bottle in hand. “Compliments of the house,” he said, pouring us each a glass. Mmm… Nice vintage. I definitely owed Jack lunch now.

Travis held out his hand as he’d done the first time we’d met, and by placing my palm against his, I answered a question he’d asked with only a gesture, a smile, and a raised brow. He led me out to the dance floor, one hand on the small of my back. At first we came together stiffly, very conscious of every little touch. Slowly we relaxed, settling into old habits and older dance beats.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Jack’s distinct Texas twang replaced the last strains of Little Richard’s
Good Golly Miss Molly
. “Tonight is a very special night, the anniversary of two dear friends.”

Oh dear God, no. Travis and I stared at each other with wide eyes. What did Jack do, keep a calendar? My breath hitched as my old friend continued to spell out doom for us. “In their honor, I’d like to play a very special song.”

No, no, no, no, no! I heard the melody in my head before the first note even sounded. Percy Sledge’s voice wasn’t easily forgotten. A knife ripped into my heart.
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.
My and Travis’s song. And like the singer, I’d loved my husband for too many years to simply stop. A spotlight aimed our way left us with no other choice but to dance. Some people cleared out the way, all eyes on us, while others grabbed their own partners and took advantage of an opportunity for some public cuddling. And then everyone else on the dance floor simply faded into the background. I couldn’t take my eyes, or thoughts, off of Travis.

The years peeled away, with Travis singing into my ear in his lovely tenor. Our love had been so genuine, so pure. How could we have misplaced it?

Gone was the woodsy scent of the cologne he’d once worn, but he still fit so perfectly in my arms. Well-practiced steps kept the time only two familiar dancers managed. I stepped back, his foot took the place of mine—I swayed forward into the spot he’d just vacated, and we’d come together in the middle, an eerie reminder of how well our lives had once synchronized.

What had gone wrong? Hmm… when was the last time we’d been here? Five years ago? Six? Oh my God! As much as we’d loved dining out and dancing, it’d been years since we’d darkened the door. How did that happen? Racking my brain didn’t produce a single defining moment when we’d stopped going out. Had I grown boring? Complacent? Dampened the fire Travis needed to keep his creative spirit alive?

The song ended and Travis stepped away, leaving me strangely bereft. I recovered as best I could. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”

We sipped wine while resting at our table, then a smile, wink, or grin had us charging for the dance floor again. Damn, but the man had always brought out the best in me. We fit together so perfectly. Why for only one night? What did I do to make him leave me? Was he reeling me in, only to break my heart all over again?

I’d give all I owned to turn back time, go home to
our
house,
our
bed,
our
old life.

I laughed, I danced, I drank, and all with the same enchanting partner I’d met at Pride over twenty years ago. And like that night, we found ourselves at his door, ready to fall through and onto each other, only his carpet then hadn’t been this ghastly brown grunge. The price of his new suit would likely pay a full month’s rent—and then some. If I accomplished nothing else with this visit, I hoped to convince him, help him, to find a better place to live.

Travis rammed his hands into the pockets of his dress pants, eyeing his shoelaces. “I want to thank you for tonight.” Why the sudden shyness? He’d never been shy before. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I understand.”

Oh. So all he’d wanted was a night on the town. Nothing more. Time to test the waters. “I promised the night. Unless you’ve changed your mind.” Leaving might mean “for good.” I wasn’t ready to leave.

He met my gaze then, those beautiful green eyes filled with hope. “You really want to stay?”

A seemingly happy man left a life of luxury and relative leisure to exist in a hovel and barely get by. I needed to know why, and I wouldn’t get any answers by leaving. “I want to.”

The gratitude on his face chased back my uncertainty. His earlier, pre-evening mood returned, robbing him of newly revealed youthful vigor. If I stared hard enough, surely I’d see the weight of the world pressing down on his slender shoulders.

He appeared so unsure of himself, so vulnerable, when he peeled off his suit jacket and draped it across the back of a chair. His shirt joined the jacket. Once more I noticed his pitiful thinness.

The sight of his body brought home the wrongness of the moment. The man wasn’t healthy. Instead of inviting my lust, his skinny torso invoked pity. When his pants joined his jacket on the chair, no beginning arousal tented his boxers. “You’re overdressed, aren’t you?” he asked.

I couldn’t go through with this. Hold him, coddle him, nurse him back to health? Yes. Have a “one more time for old time’s sake” romp? No.

As if reading my mind, Travis assured me, “I only want the time with you—I haven’t asked for anything else.” The side of his mouth hitched up in a mocking grin. “The sheets are clean, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

So many questions and only Travis held the answers. Stripped down to nothing but my boxers, T-shirt and socks, I crawled into the bed and pulled him to my chest. God, but he felt good there. Thoughts of betrayal had no place here, in this our final night together. Tonight, for one last time, Travis was mine.
Almost mine.

The wrongness in him pulsed like a living thing, preventing ardor, but he nestled snugly against my chest, as he’d done for many years.

I had to ask, “Why—”

“Sh… No questions. Just hold me, please.” Weariness slurred his tones; he’d danced off any alcohol long ago. “Tired, so tired.”

“I promised to stay the night, remember? If you don’t want to answer questions, I won’t ask.” I might explode from not knowing, but my wounded pride wouldn’t let me beg for explanations.

He curled tighter into me, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Thank you.” The words emerged scarcely above a whisper. The deep in and out of his breathing a short time later told me he slept.

What now? Perhaps the time had come for me to say the goodbye I’d come to.

I gazed down at the man I’d given my heart to once upon a time. Travis appeared younger in slumber, the beginnings of crow’s feet relaxed in sleep. Now I understood. I’d agreed to this night to retrieve the heart he’d taken from me. But hey, I wasn’t really using it anyway.

Would he begrudge me a last kiss? Travis snuffled in his sleep, the same gentle noise I’d heard many times before from the pillow beside me. A fist seized my heart. When I walked out of the door in the morning, I’d sever our last connection except for Bob, and I’d managed well enough to co-parent these last two years without speaking to the other parent.

My full bladder forced me into the bathroom. Afterward, I washed my hands. A partially opened medicine cabinet beckoned.

My heart pounded a reggae beat. The man outside the door, lying in bed, was my Travis, and yet he wasn’t. I’d never known Travis to do drugs, and he denied being sick, but something simply wasn’t right. Gone were the joy, the joking, and the ever-present laughter. I rifled through his cabinets, searching for the kinds on illicit substances often bandied about in courtrooms as evidence. What I found was… Oh dear God. Still in rumpled drug store bags, receipts attached: five months’ worth of clomipramine, all five bottles unopened, all with Travis’s name on the label.

Not being familiar with the product, I accessed the Internet from my phone. An antidepressant. Also prescribed for obsessive-compulsive behavior. Our lovely home. Always so neat. My perfectionist husband. Obsessive compulsive? Maybe. But depressed? Five bottles filled over five months. All unopened. He wasn’t taking his medication; he’d been saving every dose.

One didn’t need a pharmacy degree to decipher the message. Travis intended this one night as a goodbye—a more permanent one than I’d ever imagined. The image formed clearly in my head, Travis, showing me out the door and, a handful at a time, gulping down these pills. My heart skipped a beat, then slammed against my ribs. I grabbed the sink to keep from falling. Travis, my Travis, the other father to my son, planned to kill himself.

Oh. Hell. No.

He’d brought me here to say goodbye, did he? Well, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

What the hell could I do? Confront him and watch him try to lie his way out of a confession? As an actor, he’d likely put on an Academy Award worthy performance, but I couldn’t deny the evidence. Travis meant too much to me.

He might soon hate me, but I was still his husband, and when morning came, I’d do what I had to do—as his husband.

Travis slept on, clad in boxer shorts and socks, nothing else. I curled up next to him on the bed. He trembled when I slipped an arm around him, then sighed and placed his head on my shoulder.

I held him tightly, determined to be the anchor I’d failed to be for all those years. Depression. He suffered from depression.
Of course he’s depressed, he threw away a great life, didn’t he?
The lawyer in me searched for both sides of the story. Maybe depression wasn’t the result of him leaving me. What if he’d left because he’d been depressed? And illness hadn’t been ruled out entirely either. He needed help. He needed my help.

I turned off the lamp and lay in the dark, racking my brain for clues. When Bob had left for college, Travis had moped around for days, totally lost. Me? I’d missed him, too, but work kept me busy enough, and I’d eagerly increased my case load, leaving early in the morning and coming back late, sometimes after Travis fell asleep.

Questions needed answers, answers I might not get from my former love. But whatever went on in his life, someone else knew. Elise. I needed to talk to Travis’s sister, for the first time since she’d called me an unmitigated ass and hung up on me two years ago, cutting “Uncle Ian” out of her children’s lives.

A steady ticking led my eyes to the bedside clock. Four AM.

Last I’d heard, Elise still worked nights. Well, if she was asleep, I’d have to apologize, because I needed information. But if she saw my number on her phone, she might not answer. Maybe I should call the front desk of the hotel where she worked.

I slipped into the bathroom and took my chances with her cell. An angry woman growled after the second ring, “What the hell do you want?” Yes, I’d dialed the right number, and yes, I’d found Elise.

“Elise, yesterday I would be in your face, asking what right you had to talk to me like that, but as it is, I need your help. It’s Travis.”

“Oh my God! Is he okay, he didn’t…” Her words broke off on a sob.

“No, he’s fine, for the moment. Now, I need information. Knowing how close you two are, don’t lie to me. The last time we talked you called me an ass. Exactly what kind of ass am I?”