The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Five

“It doesn’t make sense,” Skylar said for the fourteenth time over nightcaps.

Desperately in need of some comfort food after our altercations with Eric, the Crosby-Sterlings and I enjoyed some of their housekeeper’s famous lasagna before Skylar and Brandon put their kids to bed. Now my friends were both sipping on whiskey while I made do with a glass of port. It was either that or vodka, and I suspected that Beluga was only in the house because of a certain Upper East Sider’s tastes in liquor. I’d have a sugar-crashing headache in the morning, but I wasn’t touching that crap.

“He’s never acted that way before,” Skylar continued. “In school, he was at worst indifferent, even though it was completely obvious he was in love with you.”

“Was it now?” I asked. “Was the fact that he slept with Caitlyn Calvert an indication of his ‘love’ for me too? Or the part where he hid that shit while I had tea parties with the woman for months? When are women going to stop taking men’s abuse as signs of affection? I think you’re brainwashed, Sky.”

“Please. Indifference toward your sexual exploits or forgetting to tell you something is not abuse, and you know it,” Skylar retorted. “I’ve known the guy for almost ten years now, through all of your ups and downs, and I’ve never heard him say a bad word about you. And he’s certainly never cared about your dating history, not that he even should, considering his own.”

I shook my head. I was tired of thinking about this. Tired of replaying the entire argument in my mind again and again. Tired of hearing those final painful words ringing in my ears like fucked-up bells. That slap was still vibrating across my palm.

Whore. It wasn’t the first time someone had called me that. Most people don’t like women who are frank about their sexuality. They don’t like women like me.

But Eric was always different. We’d shared more than one laugh together in the nest of our bedroom as we recalled past partners without an iota of jealousy. It had been a comfort, knowing I could be open about everything in my past with him, and him with me.

* * *

“Do you remember the physics guy?” I asked as we watched the first of the autumn leaves falling from the oak outside our window.

Eric’s hand walked up and down my bare back, and he chuckled at the memory. “Was that the one who wore ridiculously tight jeans?”

I shook my head. “No, that was Greg, the music major.”

“Right, right. I remember wondering if that guy was providing his own birth control with those things.”

I snorted. “Maybe. He wasn’t particularly well equipped, though. Like a tube of lipstick, that one.”

His chest shook with mirth under my cheek. I smiled into the smooth, warm expanse and inhaled deeply.

“What about you?” I asked. “Were they all good, or did you have some horror stories too?”

“Well, there was an assistant at Sterling I nailed during my second year.”

“Nailed? What are you, a carpenter from 1987? Were you ‘banging the chicks’ too?”

I received a quick pinch at my waist, causing me to squeal.

I smacked his chest. “Tell me! I swear to God, I don’t care!”

Eric examined me for a moment, like he didn’t quite believe me. “All right,” he said finally. “She…she had a nice ass. So when we…got to that point where things were…going to happen, I turned her around to—”

“Can you stop pussyfooting around this story, Petri dish?” I interrupted. “You were about to fuck. I can handle it. Get to the punchline.”

For that I received another round of merciless pinches to my own backside, causing me to laugh and wriggle uncontrollably.

“Listen, Lefferts,” he said with a faux-stern expression once he stopped. “There is an art to storytelling, you know.”

I broke down all over again while Eric just waited impatiently for me to collect myself.

“I asked what was wrong,” I said. “Not who had the nicest ass in your roster.”

“She had a tattoo,” he replied. “I pulled down her underwear, and there it was. Right on the part that, well, you like smacked here and there.”

I didn’t even blush. He wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t ashamed of it.

“What was the tattoo?”

Eric shook his head sheepishly, even though he wasn’t the one with the embarrassing body art. “Tweety Bird.”

I bit my lip. “As in Looney Tunes?”

“As in lemon-yellow, boner-killing, ‘I tawt I taw a puddy tat’ Tweety Bird,” he confirmed. “And every time I, ah, gave it to her, the damn thing jumped like it was trying to fly.” He shook his head as I erupted into laughter all over again. “It’s not funny. Totally ruined those cartoons for me, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m not laughing at that!” I crowed as I wiped tears from my face. “I’m laughing at the fact that you do such a good Tweety impression. Can you do any others? How about Elmer Fudd? Or Daffy Duck?”

“That’s enough!” A second later, I was flipped onto my front so Eric could cage me against the mattress from behind.

“She’s got jokes,” he said as he ran his hands up and down my back, lingering on my ass for a second longer than necessary. With a swift smack there, he quieted the last of my giggles. “Let’s see who’s laughing now, huh?” His hands slipped under my hips and jerked them up so quickly I lost my breath. “All right, pretty girl. On. Your. Knees.”

* * *

A smilestill lingered as I recalled those sweet moments. I didn’t care where he had been. Just that we were together. And I’d thought he’d felt the same.

“I think you’re just bitter, Jane.”

Skylar and I both turned to Brandon, who had been listening to us go back and forth for the last ten minutes while he made a fire in the living room’s enormous brick fireplace.

“About what?” I asked.

“You’re holding a grudge. What really bothered you about Caitlyn Calvert?”

“Brandon!” Skylar warned him, but he waved away her protests.

I tipped my glass from side to side, watching the reddish liquid. “She…she’s just terrible. And how many times have we heard Eric hate on women exactly like her. And then he invites her to his bed? The message couldn’t have been clearer.”

It wasn’t that he had slept with someone else all those years ago, I realized. It was that he had slept with her. Someone so different than me, who fit into the posh world of the Upper East Side as seamlessly as I stumbled over it. There was a part of me that always worried Eric would rather have someone like that in the end. And by not disclosing the affair, he had confirmed it. Right before he called me a whore to my face. Everything Caitlyn was not.

“But he didn’t invite her back,” Brandon said. “And I bet he was hurting as much as you were back then. Guys do stupid fuckin’ things when their pride is wounded.”

“That sounds like loyalty talking,” I replied as calmly as I could. Which was to say, not very.

Brandon picked up his whiskey and sat down on the wide hearth. “Loyalty for what? Eric and I only really know each other through Skylar and the fact that he used to work for me.”

“You were his best man.”

“For a wedding that wasn’t even real.” Brandon shrugged and poked at the fire, sending sparks up the chimney. “Here’s what I know: the two of you are basically cut from the same cloth. You both got around, you both have pasts, and you both have more trust issues than the Vatican. Don’t argue with me; it’s the truth.”

I opened my mouth, but closed it immediately. Because, of course, he was right.

“But I also know this,” Brandon continued. “Two weeks ago, the guy couldn’t stand to be away from you for more than a night. He ruined a perfectly good bachelor party to fly halfway across the world to get to you, Jane.”

“Maybe that’s just because Caitlyn was there,” I said bitterly. “Maybe he was worried she would say something.”

“I don’t think his response has anything to do with some chick he banged back when the two of you were both playing musical chairs in nightclubs.”

I blinked as a sudden rush from that night came back to me. Eric chasing me into his bedroom, yanking off my clothes. The hungry, focused look in his eyes that pinned me against the wall before he could even get there.

* * *

“Tell me,” he said again and again every time he removed another piece of clothing. My skirt. My bra. Everything fell to the floor alongside each pronouncement I made.

“You,” I whispered each and every time. “I belong to you.”

“That’s right,” Eric said once he finally stripped me naked. He placed both hands on my shoulders and pushed me gently back onto the bed. His fiery gaze drifting over my body like a pirate surveying his booty. But it wasn’t greed that lit his expression. It was lust. Longing. Love.

* * *

“So you thinksomething happened while he was gone?”

Skylar’s voice yanked me out of my daydream this time, but the gnawing in my stomach remained. That was the real bitch of the matter. As furious as I was at the man, I still missed him. Something deep and primal inside me yearned for him. Cared about him. I couldn’t turn it off.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Someone gave him that black eye.”

“I think you need to talk to your dad,” Brandon said.

I blinked, taking an extra second to comprehend what he meant. Then I scowled. “John Carson is not my dad.”

But Brandon and Skylar just blinked, like twin owls who felt sorry for their prey.

“Dammit,” I muttered. “Okay. As soon as the funeral is over, I’ll go see him. Or try to track him down or something else.”

I’d returned to Brookline with new resolve: pack my things for the weekend, go to New York for the funeral, then get the hell out in time to start a new bar exam class in Boston. I wasn’t going back to Chicago. Skylar had already said she could find me clerical work at the firm, and I had enough in my savings from the last few months to tide me over until I passed the bar and could find a real job in Massachusetts. Away from Eric. Away from this mess.

If only my heart could make as clean a break.

Instead, I tipped back the last of my port and stood up to clear our glasses. I had a long day tomorrow, starting with a several-hours drive back to New York. I didn’t have any intention of showing up to Celeste’s funeral looking like a tired old woman. And I suspected I would need some energy to face what was coming.

* * *

We gotup at the crack of dawn to drive down to New York together, but I had summoned the courage to go to Eric’s and my apartment on the Upper West Side instead of getting ready at Skylar and Brandon’s hotel room. All of my clothes were there, and I needed something more appropriate than the jeans and concert tees I’d been living in for the past ten days. I might have been bullied out of my marriage, but no one was getting between me and my fashion.

Thankfully, Eric didn’t appear. It didn’t even look like he’d come here at all. His clothes were hanging in the closet just as he’d left them before our wedding. Even the book of Romantic poetry he’d been reading still lay by the bedside, crooked atop a stack of other novels.

My heart ached as I recalled our conversation about the exact poem bookmarked.

* * *

“Keats?” I asked, picking up the book. “Aren’t the Romantic poets kind of maudlin?”

“All poets are a little bit maudlin, pretty girl,” Eric murmured as he traced his hand meditatively over my stomach. “The Romantics just didn’t bother to hide it.”

“Which is kind of why I’m surprised you like it.”

“Why? You think I don’t have a heart?”

I shrugged. I was pushing for something, but I didn’t know what. We were getting married in less than a week, but I still felt sometimes like I didn’t know the real Eric de Vries.

“Keats’s parents died when he was young. Did you know that?” Eric asked. When I shook my head, he nodded. “His father died when Keats was just eight. His mother when he was fourteen.” His hand paused as he considered it. “You know, he had an inheritance, but he never claimed it. No one knows why.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“What’s your favorite?” I asked, hoping to steer him away from that train of thought.

Eric blinked, then smiled. “Oh, that’s easy. ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci.’”

“French?”

Eric shook his head and resumed the circles with his fingers. “Just the title. About a femme fatale, of course.”

I made a face. “I really hate that trope. Why do women always have to be cast as a man’s downfall?”

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing, necessarily,” he replied. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my breast. “Giving your life for the love of a good woman. Seems like a good way to go.”

I watched as he progressed across my chest, pressing kisses over my sternum.

“What…what are your favorite lines?” I asked as he feathered his lips down.

He paused just over my nipple, and I felt the shadow of a smile press on the puckered skin. “You actually want me to quote poetry to you?”

But this time, I didn’t have any retort. I remained still until finally, Eric sat up and combed his fingers through my hair as he spoke:

I met a Lady in the Meads,

Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light

And her eyes were wild.

He pulled out the strand of red buried in black at the base of my neck and tugged.

“More,” I murmured, pulling him down. I wasn’t usually one for this kind of gooey display, but with Eric, I couldn’t seem to get enough. “Tell me more.”

Eric grinned. “Now who’s maudlin, huh?”

I mimed like I was going to smack him, but instead I just enjoyed the feel of his steely arms under my touch. “Just shut up and keep talking poetry at me.”

“‘She found me roots of relish sweet’”—he sucked on my earlobe like it was candy—“‘And honey wild, and manna dew’”—his mouth traced down my chest, pulling one nipple between his lips and releasing it with a pop—“‘And sure in language strange she said’…”

I waited for him to finish, but with a sudden movement, Eric pulled my legs around his waist, his hardening length teasing my entrance just slightly. Morning light danced behind his blond hair like a halo.

And as he slid inside, his lips too slid past my ear, whispering the last lines of the verse that would sing through my entire being for days after: “‘I love thee true.’”

* * *

I shook the memory away.Getting wrapped up in those moments was exactly what got me into this mess to begin with. It was too easy to forget what kind of duplicity Eric de Vries was really capable of.

I walked into the other bedroom that had become my studio/craft room when Eric and I had fused our worlds together instead of maintaining the platonic relationship he’d first proposed. A black wool midi dress I had just finished hung from a rack near the window. It was funny…I had no original plans for this dress, but I wondered now if I had made it with this day in mind. After all, Celeste had been so sick, living the past six months with the keen awareness that they were her last.

Celeste had loved to lecture me on my wardrobe (or the fashion choices she deemed unacceptable to my new “station”). With Chanel-clad superiority, she had said time and time again that my self-designed garments were too garish or rough, urging me to use Eric’s money to buy more designer duds simply to fit in at society luncheons or just her home. For her, clothes were like armor.

Just like Skylar had warned me they would be in this world.

I fingered the dress, admiring its simple shape that I’d modeled somewhat on Dior’s New Look that Celeste loved so much. Black wool draped neatly across the bust, while sleeves trimmed with leather tapered around the elbow. Another panel of black leather wrapped tightly around the waist like a military-style corset, complete with a buckle I’d salvaged off another vintage dress. The pencil-style skirt reached a demure calf-length and was also trimmed with a solid inch of leather. It was my favorite thing I’d ever made—a mix of the brash edge I never wanted to shake completely and the classic, demure styles expected around stodgy Upper East Siders.

When I put it on, I felt like a warrior. Just like Celeste, in her own way, wanted me to be. After looking at myself for a few minutes, I removed the rings that I’d worn on my left hand for the last few weeks. It was only then that the transformation was complete.