Chapter Three
And then things changed.
As usual, I had gone to bed around 10:00 p.m. but this night I woke up hungry and needed a snack. I padded down to the kitchen in my light robe. We had gotten used to each other enough that guys would regularly be wandering around in their shorts or sometimes a towel. It was a casual kind of intimacy that I found homey and, well, kind of flattering actually.
So here I was at 1:00 in the morning rummaging through the refrigerator when I actually screamed a little when I felt hands touch my waist.
Aaron was grinning that patented grin of his when I turned around assuming a defensive posture. I don’t like being snuck up on.
He quickly held his hands up and whispered “no mas” but he was grinning and actually sort of giggling.
I let out a deep breath.
“Okay hotshot,” I said, “you got me. Want a sandwich?”
And he smiled. Not that grin but a real-live smile.
“Would you like to know what I’d really like?” he said.
“Sure,” I said, not thinking.
“You,” he said, just like that, and he held my eyes with his.
“Aaron,” I started, but he interrupted me.
“Becky,” he said, “you are the nicest, sexiest, funniest, most independent, most desirable woman I have ever known. I just wanted to get it out there.”
“Aaron,” I started again but once again he interrupted.
“If you say no I’ll understand. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand,” he said, “but please don’t think I’m trying to bag a cougar or something Becky. You may not know it but you’re fascinating.”
“I’m flattered,” I said.
“But?” he said.
“But, Aaron, first off I’m twice your age,” I said.
“Actually, twice plus 3,” he said, flashing that grin.
That made me giggle.
“Second, it wouldn’t be possible to keep it, well, secret,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just holding my eyes until he won and I looked away.
“Becky,” he said in a very soft voice, taking a step that brought him well into my personal space, “there would be no need to keep anything secret. You honestly don’t get it?”
“Get what?” I asked, honestly not understanding him.
“Hell, beautiful,” he said and there was that damn grin again, “we all want you.”
For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
“What,” I started and stopped.
I stood there, looking up at him.
“What,” I started again and wound down.
He smiled then.
“Becky,” he said in that soft voice, no joking now, “I have sources” and he gave me one of those Groucho Marx eyebrow waggles, “and I know more about you than I should. I know about your Master’s Degree. I know about your divorce. I know about your settlement. I know about your time in rehab.” He held his hand up when I started to say something.
“I have my sources,” he said, “but what I don’t know is the three years that seem to be missing between divorce and rehab. Shall I make a guess?”
I was processing this and just nodded.
“I’m guessing that you got traded in on a new model,” he said and I could feel tears start to well in my eyes because, of course, he had it right.
He touched my tear away.
“I’m guessing,” and his voice was very soft now, “that you got mad and got even with the divorce settlement and then you have those three lost years. Shall I go on?”
I nodded again, hating the tears now running down my cheeks.
“You were, let’s see,” and he looked up and to the right, thinking, “43 or 44 at that point and I’m thinkin’ you went on a three-year bender. Have I got it right?”
“Yes,” I said softly, my eyes downcast now.
He did that two fingers under the chin thing that all men seem to learn in about the third grade and lifted my face until our eyes met.
“And having self-esteem issues I’m guessin’ that you were pretty much a well-fucked barfly during that time,” he said, his voice still soft.
I nodded again, but I held his eyes.
“And you really don’t get it, do you?” he said, his hand on my shoulders now, light, not demanding, but holding my attention.
“Get what?” I managed.
“That you are beautiful. You’re hot. You’re bright. You’re witty. You’re fun. Annddd,” he drew out the word, “that every guy in this building is about half in love with you.”
I was, literally, speechless.
He bent forward, very slowly, and kissed me, very softly, and then leaned back.
“You think about what I said Becky,” he said in that soft voice, “the offer is definitely out there. And if not me any of the guys or, we’re hoping, all of the guys.”
And he left me there, standing in the kitchen, shocked and speechless and the tears still streaming down my face.
I didn’t sleep that night. Well, I suppose I dozed. But I was overwhelmed on so many levels my mind wouldn’t turn off.
I never really understood what I thought I was proving, or to whom I thought I was proving it, but he had me pegged. For those three years, I had fucked and sucked my way border to border and coast to coast. I had been drunk pretty much every night and had a different man. Sometimes names weren’t even exchanged. Sometimes, okay, often, more than one.
It wasn’t until I woke up in a dirty motel room in, of all places, Bullhead City, Arizona, with a black eye, a fat lip, and cigarette burns on my ass that I figured I had hit bottom. So I had hopped into my little car, miraculously unwrecked after three years of a drunk driver, and headed home. I checked myself into rehab although I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. A drunk to be sure, but that had been by choice, not by need.
Anyway, there it is. And now here I was. And I had no idea what to do.