Why couldn't he and Lydia be that couple? What he wouldn't give to roll the clock back and just ask her out at that employee orientation nearly two years ago. He'd wanted to. And he could have; she'd have likely said yes, even in her anger at his misconstrued condescension. Yet he'd held back, smart enough to know not to pursue her when she was pissed, and then…
And then what? Why hadn't he chased her? Years of financial statements and merger conference calls and red-eye jet rides blended into a blob of excuses. He got busy. Life got crazy. The rise to the top meant leaving lots of important things behind.
Lame. All of it.
There was no easy answer, because at the heart of it all he had put his ambition ahead of himself. Cheating himself out of years of happiness. A thief of lives, and as he built an empire he had broken more than one heart.
His.
Hers.
Too many.
All of those thoughts whipped through his mind at breakneck speed as he tried to keep up with the conversation, grateful for a final platter of something that turned out to be tasteless and cloying. It wasn't the food. It was him, appetite vanished and the world increasing the rate of speed with which it hurtled through space.
Hours. If he was really, incredibly lucky, he had a few more hours to be with her before the entire world blew up. That video was like an asteroid on a collision course with his life. Even a nuclear bomb wouldn't break it apart enough to be harmless.
Inevitability sank in. Mike wasn't the type to give up or give in, but right now he had one of the last, few conscious choices to make before the juggernaut of that sex tape took over his life, Lydia's reputation, and Bournham Industries’ gossips. Not to mention the board of directors. With a life that had been carefully calibrated to work perfectly, he knew it was all going to topple neatly as well. Like implementing a military coup—it was always easier to conquer a highly organized society than to destroy one filled with chaos.
Efficiency and corporate sociopathy had made his company a lean, aggressive leader in media strategies. Ironic, then, that the media itself would destroy him, playing endless loops of that tape until Buddhist monks in isolation in the Himalayas could recite every sound from memory.
Lydia's mouth was moving and he realized she was saying something to him, expecting a response. Glowing and excited, her clothes were a bit rumpled from being tossed aside in a heady rush, and her hair had a carefree look to it that made him proud. He had done that. Put the wrinkles in her clothes, the pink in her cheeks, the twinkle in her eyes, the moans in her mouth and elsewhere. Achievement came in many forms, so why hadn't he reveled in this accomplishment the same way he gathered balance sheets, measuring his self worth by his net worth?
If measured instead in orgasms and smiles, he’d be a billionaire by now.
Or die trying.
Something was wrong. Deeply wrong. Matt had changed a few minutes after they'd made love. Not the cooling off most guys went through after a one-night stand, where the air seemed to go stale and sickly within seconds, making her feel cheap and used even if she'd been a willing participant in her own debauchery. Only a handful of nights like that in her life, though; she learned what felt good emotionally and what did not quite well.
Quick study, she was.
No, this was a nearly palpable grief, as if Matt were about to be sent to the gallows, or awaited bad news. If they’d been more familiar with each other, even a tiny bit, she’d have been blunt and just asked what was wrong. Instead, though, she found herself having to go at the truth from the side entrance. Putting on a good face, he kept smiling at her, reaching for her hand, pretending to listen. But something wasn't quite right, and finally she just decided to cut to the chase.
“What's wrong?” she asked. “You are acting like you just drowned a kitten by accident.” She leaned in and whispered mischievously, “I know the sex wasn't that bad.”
His eyes were unfocused and he seemed almost drunk as he shook his head, trying to rid himself of a fog. “Oh, no. Nothing.” Fake smile. She knew that one all too well; he was using the classic female maneuver, and she wasn't going to let him get away with it.
“So the sex was that bad!”
“What?” That brought him back to reality. At the table to their left was a couple who looked like they got married during WWII, wrinkled faces stretched in a look of surprise, the woman covering her face with one hand and giggling into it. The old man looked at Matt and just shrugged.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
The old man leaned over and stage whispered, “Bad sex is better than no sex, bud. Don’t ask me how I know that. And,” he said, rheumy blue eyes peering at Lydia, “get as much of it as you can while you can.”
“Marty!” his wife shouted.
Thump. “Ow! You kicked me,” he growled at her.
“You deserved it!” she snapped. The waitress looked at them nervously, standing in front of them with a heaping pile of soba noodles. Both dug into their food while Lydia and Matt tried not to laugh.
“Shall I kick you under the table?” she joked.
Matt just blinked, studying her. “You’re not my wife,” he said with a sigh.
“Then you have no excuse for having bad sex,” Marty quipped. Thump. “Ow.”
“Mind your manners,” his wife grumbled, her mouth full of wontons and noodles.
Too polite to laugh in their faces, Lydia and Matt just ignored them.
“So, where are you from?” Matt asked her. She chuckled at the “first-dateness” of the question and he seemed to recognize it too, laughing a bit as well.
“I’m from Maine,” she said.
He nodded. “Portland?” Nearly everyone from Maine she’d met in Boston had come from Portland, so she wasn’t surprised by the question.
“No, a little town farther north called Verily.”
“Verily? Sounds Mayberry-ish.”
She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Something like that. My parents own a campground up there.”
“Really? A campground? Did you grow up there?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“And you have brothers and sisters?”
“I have five brothers.”
His hand froze. This wasn’t an uncommon reaction and his eyes locked with hers, mouth going slack in a look of surprise and a bit of awe. “Five brothers?” His brow furrowed. He said, “Let me guess—they’re all older.”
“Not quite. I have one who is younger. I’m right in the middle, the fifth kid.”
“So you have…wow, I have all sisters,” he said.
“So, you know what it’s like,” Lydia replied. “Being the only one.”
“Yeah but…from the other end.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Five brothers. This is going to get grim.”
Her heart soared. That kind of comment meant that he was thinking about more, and until now, she had just been thinking about each moment, one by one, unfolding. The past few hours had been a heady rush of everything all at once, heart, mind, soul, and now here he was, talking about meeting her brothers. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“You ready to get out of here?” he asked, eyes darting back and forth across the room.
Full, and very much interested in spending more time with him in private, Lydia smiled and said, “Sure, want to…” She paused, then looked him right in the eye, with the most determined look of an invitation that she had ever given a man. “…Come back to my place for a drink?” Her middle finger traced circles around the top of her glass.
His eyes broke away from hers and stared at the motion, transfixed. His neck and shoulder muscles relaxed and he reached for his wallet, pulling out a credit card to pay the bill. When he motioned for the server to come and handle the transaction, he found her eyes again. “I would love a nightcap.”
“How about a morning coffee?” she said.
The grin that spread across his face was shaky at first, and then, with a deep, gravelly voice, he answered, “Even better.”
They left, the old man from the couple waving with a lecherous smile, as they departed, Matt’s arm around her waist, her stomach filled with butterflies. How could she still want more? she wondered. More, more, more, she thought. Of course, it was natural that she’d want more, precisely because this, what she had with Matt, was more. It was more intense, more respectful, more emotional, and more promising than any set of interactions, of touches, and sighs, and words than she’d ever had with another man. More.
Stepping out into the cool evening air, hoping to cool her thoughts, the walk back to the office was reasonably short, and then the question, She hadn’t driven in today, had he?
“Where’re you parked?” she asked.
“In your spot.”
Both laughed.
“Why would you take my spot?” she poked, as they walked to the very familiar location.
“You don’t drive in half the time, so why do you need to defend it?”
A tiny little piece of irritation mixed with the sheer joy of what she was experiencing. Memories of that first encounter in the parking lot, so long ago, and yet, so recent, fluttered through her mind. She shrugged. “It’s mine when I want it, and it’s yours when I don’t need it.”
“Isn’t that the toddler creed?” he asked, opening the passenger door to his Toyota.
She climbed in and had to concede that he had a point. “Fine, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.”
“That sounds like my last girlfriend’s mantra,” he poked back. Starting the car, he pulled out of the parking lot and made his way to the main street, then halted. “I have no idea where you live,” he said.
She gave him the address and he punched it into an old GPS. “Calculating,” the machine said, and then boom.
“Seventeen minutes and fifty-three seconds?” she said. “Well, that’s fiction.”
“The machine doesn’t know Boston or Cambridge,” Matt added.
“This time of night it shouldn’t be too bad,” she said, as he made a left, and then for the next thirty minutes they chatted—lighthearted banter that gave her the opportunity to live a dual existence, to let her own racing thoughts, assumptions, suppositions, and hopes all coexist with the small talk coming out of her mouth. This was going so much better than she could have ever expected, and taking him back to her apartment was going to be interesting. Grandma was gone for the night, staying at her boyfriend’s house. She’d been spending more and more time there, and it had left Lydia feeling a sense of neglect, of being left alone a little too much. Now she was grateful for the solace; it meant there would be no prying eyes of any kind in her relationship with Matt.
What the hell are you doing, Mike? he thought as his hands turned the steering wheel to the left, and then, like a good little soldier, he turned to the right, following the GPS’s precise instructions. Going back to her place was a natural next step, perfectly within the order of an evolving relationship, except this wasn’t. Oh, how he wanted it to be, but oh, how he had f**ked this one up royally.