Impossible Things (19 page)

Rosaline spoke up, “How in the world did you know all that?”

Lucy turned to see that her mom was looking at her grandmother, her hands on her hips. Her grandmother was angry as she turned on Rosaline, “I knew because I hired people to watch you! You didn’t really think I’d let you out of my life completely did you? I had to know, I had to.”

Isabella began crying at that and Rodrigo pulled her to his chest.

Lucas grabbed Lucy’s arm and she turned back to him. “When she asked me to meet you I was as eager as a young boy. But what sealed it was when she handed me a picture of you. It was taken a few months ago as you left work. Your hair was in a bun with little wisps flying everywhere and you were chewing on your bottom lip. I was a goner. I think I’d already loved you but after that I wanted you. I wanted the grown-up Lucy Jacobs in that picture.”

She shook her head at him and began to back away.

He stepped forward quickly and grabbed her arm. “Lucy please. You’re always making me beg you and I’ll do it again but please don’t be mad at me. I love you. Call off the wedding, or just postpone it if you have to.  Take some time to get to know me-“

Isabella cut him off, “The wedding is already off. She left Sam.”

The look on his face was that of an eager, young boy as he squeezed her arm. “You broke up with him? Why didn’t you tell me? Give us some time Lucy. Please?”

It was all too much. She’d had enough. She had been lied to by everyone, manipulated and treated as if she wasn’t a person. As if she didn’t have thoughts of her own, feelings of her own. She was so pathetic that her grandmother didn’t even think she could get her own man, so she had found one for her.

She met Lucas’ eyes for the last time and said, “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

She turned and walked away, brushing off her grandmother’s hand when Isabella reached out for her.

She took a cab back to her grandmother’s house intent on getting her things and checking into the cheapest hotel that she could find. Instead, she walked up the pathway to the front door and Sam was sitting there, waiting on her. He looked like hell. He was unshaven and his eyes were bloodshot and as she approached he jumped up.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He came towards her and tried to grab her arm but she backed away from him.

“I miss you Lucy. Please come home.”

She snorted. “Why so you can ignore me? So I can live off you? So I can do your laundry and cook your food? You don’t need me you need a maid.”

She went to pass him but he stepped in front of her. “I love you, I need you.”

She shook her head. “You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

He grabbed her arm and she tried pulling away but he wouldn’t let her. “I do know you. We’ve been together for nine years, of course I know you.”

Furiously she shook her head. “No you don’t. You see what you want to see; you think what you want to think. My dad told you something about me and you didn’t even bother to ask me about it.”

“Lucy please!”

“No,” she screamed. “No!”

She moved back and looked at him. She was so angry that she didn’t care that she was screaming and that the entire neighborhood could hear her. “Do you realize that you haven’t told me that I’m pretty in six years?”

He shook his head.

“No! You don’t know because you don’t care! As long as I’m taking care of you, you don’t care about anything.”

“That’s not true babe, I do care.”

She stomped forward and pointed her finger in his face. “If you ever, and I mean ever, call me babe again I will cut your balls off. I hate it when you call me that. You’re not some stupid surfer and I’m not your babe!”

He held up his hands and his face was sheepish as he said, “I’m sorry it’s a habit.”

That cute, little boy expression would have melted her heart before but now it did nothing. She was furious with the world and she wanted to make him pay, “Do you know what’s not a habit?” she asked him.

He shook his head and she said, “You have never, not once in the nine years that we’ve been together, brought me to orgasm. The only way that I can ever come is after you go to sleep I have to touch myself, and when you caught me at it you were disgusted. I will never forget that look on your face. I should have left you then.”

His face would have been comical had she not been so angry. His mouth opened and closed like a fish and his eyes were shocked. She walked past him, up the stairs, opened the door, and slammed it behind her.

“Stupid ass,” she muttered to herself as she made her way up the stairs and to her room. She thought about packing and leaving but decided against it. It was after Midnight and she had no idea where to find a hotel. She would wait until the morning and buy a plane ticket home.

She had taken her dress off and put on a pair of pajamas that Rodrigo had bought for her when the doorbell rang. Thinking that it was Sam again she ran down the stairs and opened the door, prepared to yell at him, but it wasn’t him. It was Lucas.

“What do you want?” she asked. “I told you I didn’t want to see you again.”

He smiled and that pissed her off even more. He said, “I’m Italian that doesn’t deter us, that’s like throwing out a challenge.”

She went to slam the door in his face and he put his foot in it and asked, “You never once had an orgasm with him in nine years?”

She jerked the door open all the way. “Now you’re eavesdropping on my conversations? How dare you!”

He grabbed her hand as she went to hit him. “I was worried about you when you ran out so I came to check on you. I heard you because you were
screaming; hell I think the whole neighborhood heard you.”

She tried jerking her hand away from him but he wouldn’t let her go. “Lucy I know you’re mad. I can understand and even appreciate that but when you calm down will you think about what I said?”

He pulled her against him and it made her hand bend at an odd angle. When she cried out in pain he released her hand and apologized. His breath was hot on her face as he asked, “I told you that I love you, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. It meant something, but what that was, other than a jerking sensation in the p
it of her stomach, she wasn’t sure.

“Don’t you have
any
feelings for me?” he asked, and again there was a plea in his voice.

She pulled back and grabbed the edge of the door. She looked up at his green eyes and the expression in them made her heart turn over in her chest. “It was sex
and nothing more. You heard me.  I was desperate. We fucked and now it’s over.”

His face looked as if she had punched him and he came towards her. She tried to shut the door but he was too fast. He pushed the door back and she went with it. She would have fallen had he not reached out and caught her. He picked her up, put her over his shoulder, and slammed the door behind him.

He went up the stairs with her thrown over his shoulder and his hard shoulder punched hard in her stomach with every step. She felt as if she might be sick from the pressure of that and from seeing everything upside down.

She began to fight him then and he tightened his grip on her. He opened one door, looked in and moved on. Three doors later he opened her bedroom door, saw her dress on the floor where she had left it and went in, slamming that door behind him. He threw her on the bed and she bounced so hard that she bit her tongue and tasted blood.

She looked up to see that he was unbuttoning his pants, not even bothering with his jacket or shirt and she crawled backwards on the bed. But once again he was too quick and he grabbed her ankle and pulled her back towards him. “Stop it Lucas! I’m not having sex with you.”

He didn’t say anything as he unzipped his pants and he
was already hard and heavy. Desire began to run through her veins and that bothered her. No matter how mad she was, no matter how hurt, the minute she saw him, she was ready for him. He didn’t even have to unzip his pants, the minutes their eyes met across a room she was ready for him.

She didn’t want to give in to
him; she didn’t want him to win, but she wanted him.

He came over to her, bent his head and she felt his tongue at her neck as he kissed and nibbled his way down and across her collarbone. She fought with everything she had in her not to moan and for awhile she succeeded. When his mouth found her nipple through her thin cotton pajama top she arched her back off the bed to push it more firmly in his mouth.

He wasn’t gentle and she was okay with that. She gave as good as she got and when it was over and she was drifting back down to reality when she opened her eyes and saw that he was standing next to the bed, looking down at her, as he buttoned his pants. The look he gave her should have warned her but it didn’t. She smiled at him, the smile of a well-pleasured woman and he said, “
That
was fucking. What we did before was make love.”

And with that he turned, opened her bedroom door and slammed it behind him.

             
She woke up the next morning unsure of what she was going to do. She had less than a thousand dollars in her savings account and three hundred pounds in cash and she wasn’t even sure if it would be enough to get her home.

Home. What was even there for her anymore? She didn’t have an apartment, a job or a boyfriend. To go home would mean staying with her parents while she tried to piece her life back together, and as much as she loved them, she didn’t love the idea of living with them and being under the
judgmental eye of her dad.

Sighing, she got up, took a shower, and
because she still didn’t have her things, she had to put on another set of clothes that Rodrigo had bought for her.

She
had
to go back to her apartment to get her clothes. It would mean facing Sam again but it didn’t matter. She needed her stuff. She grabbed her purse and made her way down the stairs. It was still early, only after seven, and she hoped that everyone else would still be asleep. She wasn’t that lucky.

Rodrigo was standing by the door putting his coat on. He saw her before she could turn and run and he stopped and waited for her. “Good morning,” he said and held her coat out and helped her put it on.

“Good morning.”

He grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him. “I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. But I honestly had no idea about Lucas. I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

Curious at that she looked up at him, “Why if he’s your best friend? Am I not good enough for him?”

He looked stunned but then he began laughing as he shook his head. “No. You
’re far too good for him.”

She didn’t want to know
what that meant and yet she did, so she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

Rodrigo stepped back, dropped his arm and sighed. “Nothing’s wrong with him. But he’s spent thirty-four years going from woman to woman and I want more for you than that.”

Unable to help herself she said, “You said you wanted me to find passion.”

He nodded. “Yes and I meant it. But I want you to find love also.”

“And you don’t think that someone like him can love someone like me?”

He shook his head and her heart dropped. “It’s not you. This has nothing to do with you. I love Lucas like a brother but I’m not sure
that he can love. He’s spent most of his life alone and I don’t think he would know how to be with someone.”

Lucy looked up at him, curious more than ever about this young grandfather she had suddenly found herself with, and wanting to know more about him. “You’re the same age?”

He nodded.

So that meant that at thirty four-he was forty years younger than her grandmother.  It seemed like a huge difference to her, someone who hadn’t even been alive for forty years, and yet it seemed to work for them.

“What happened to him?”

Rodrigo sighed and put his hands in his pockets
. It was such an unexpected gesture for him, he who always looked impeccable, and had perfect clothes and hair, that she almost smiled.

“
As you said before-life happened. He was a lonely boy who grew into a lonely man.”

“So you don’t want us together?”

He looked down at her and it was his turn to be curious. “Are you together?”

She shook her head. “No. I was just asking.”

He didn’t respond at first, he watched her and suddenly uncomfortable she looked away. She didn’t know why she had asked such a question.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet as he said, “If I felt that he loved you, really loved you the way that you deserve, with his entire heart and body then I would be the first to congratulate you. He is a good man
. A lonely man, but he has never given me reason to hope that he’d settle down, and you are precious to your grandmother and you have become precious to me. We are family and I protect my family.”

They parted then,
Rodrigo going to a meeting and Lucy going to the apartment that she had shared with Sam. She had expected that he would be at work but he wasn’t. When she walked in he was sitting on the couch, in the same shirt that he had been wearing the day before, with stubble on his face and a bowl of cereal on the coffee table in front of him.