The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Seven

The burial was short and relatively simple compared to the church service. Skylar, Brandon, and I hovered on the outside of the group, unsure of where exactly to stand. Only a few people really cried, but I thought it was more out of respect than because they were sad. Celeste wouldn’t have shed more than a tear or two at her own mother’s funeral. Any more would have been utterly distasteful.

Celeste only wanted certain people present at her interring, and even fewer at the gathering afterward, which was limited to family and close friends only in the salon of her apartment. Skylar and Brandon were not allowed to attend, which was how I found myself walking into the elevator of her building alone.

“Hi, Gracie.” I waved hello to the affable doorman who had actually cried when Eric gave me my engagement ring. “I’m here for the reception.”

“Afternoon, Ms. Leff—Mrs. de Vrie—Ms. Jane.” He seemed just as confused about my marital status as I was. Yeah, join the club, buddy.

I made for the elevator, but just as it was about to close, a large, familiar hand blocked it. Eric entered, his face freezing when he saw me.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” I said as the other doorman closed the old-fashioned grate and began escorting us to the top floor.

We rode in silence with twin stiff postures, our hands clasped at our waists like dolls.

“You look nice,” Eric remarked.

I looked down. “It’s just a black dress.”

When he looked me over, I swore I could feel his heated gaze through the layers of leather and wool.

“I remember you modeling it when you were making it,” he said. “It looked nice on you then too.”

I wanted to ask him what he was playing at. Shouting at me one second, praising me the next. I was the one in this relationship who imparted the emotional whiplash—he was always the steady hand. Maybe Brandon was right. Maybe something really had happened to him while he was gone. The question was, what, exactly?

“You’re not wearing your rings.”

I held out my hand, as if just realizing that I had removed the jewelry. “It’s…they’re just here.”

I pulled out the long chain I was wearing around my neck. The simple platinum band and my engagement ring, set with its enormous black diamond, dangled from the end like a hypnotist’s tool. Eric followed its progress, back and forth, then fixed his deep gaze on me for a second before he looked away.

I looked down. His ring finger was now bare. I hated—hated—how much it hurt.

“You took yours off?” I asked.

His hand clenched. “Right, well. I suppose we’re not married, are we?”

His harsh words in Boston thundered in the back of my mind.

“Nope,” I said in a voice that was sharper than I intended. “I suppose we’re not.”

Before he could reply, the elevator doors opened, and Garrett, Celeste’s butler, was waiting for us. We filed into the familiar penthouse foyer, which now seemed like a terrible parody in the absence of its owner.

“Welcome, sir,” Garrett greeted Eric with an oddly formal bow and hung there a moment too long. “Miss Jane.”

“Hello, Garrett,” Eric greeted him. “How are you holding up?”

“As best as we can, sir.”

Garrett offered a curt nod, but the creases around the old butler’s eyes seemed darker and deeper than usual. It struck me then that the de Vrieses weren’t the only ones mourning. Garrett had been Celeste’s butler for close to sixty years, since she was a young bride herself. The ancient man must have been wondering what in the hell he was going to do with himself without his mistress.

“The rest of the family has arrived, sir,” Garrett said as he turned and began to lead us slowly through the maze of hallways that tunneled around the penthouse.

“Eric,” I whispered as we walked.

“Not now,” he said over his shoulder.

“We need to talk.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do.”

At that, I received a sharp, silvery glare. Eric glanced at Garrett, who kept walking like we weren’t squabbling like children in front of Celeste’s prized Gustav Klimt.

“Jane,” Eric said. “It’s done. We’re done. You need to get it through your head.”

“You’re so full of shit, you’re basically a compost factory,” I retorted. “Were we done when you held my hand through the service like a child? I know you’re in pain, but you’re also jerking me around. You disappeared for almost two weeks, and I have a feeling you’re going to do it again as soon as the lawyer tells us whatever he has to say. So, we need to talk. Now.”

Eric just shook his head and turned away like he was dealing with an errant toddler, not me. “Later,” he said. “When you’ve calmed down.”

“I am not doing this again with you!” I hissed, grabbing at his shirt sleeve.

Eric whirled around with a face like thunder. The bruise over his right cheekbone was yellowish now, but still evident.

“Who did that?” I asked as I stepped forward, floating my hand over the spot. “Was it him? Was it my…” I couldn’t bring myself to say “father.”

He jerked away, like my fingers were a knife. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

“None of my business? I’m your wife, Eric.”

“No, you’re not!” he snapped. “We’ve been over this. Neither of us signed the license. I left before we could, and I’m sure as fuck not doing it now. We’re not married, Jane.”

“You keep saying that,” I said. “But we said the vows. We exchanged the rings. The m-minister pronounced us man and w-wife. I asked—according to h-him, we’re married.”

I hated—absolutely hated—the way my voice warbled, how I couldn’t stop the tears rising, and that my face was heating up. I hated that I cared, that I had opened my heart to this man at all. Sure, I had been furious before we said our vows, but I still said them. I still—God help me—wanted the bastard.

Because I thought I had belonged to him, and him to me. We were a mess together, but he was my mess.

Wasn’t he?

Eric took a deep breath, and slowly, the anger flowed out of his body just as quickly as it had arrived.

“Jane,” he said more gently. “You’re off the hook, all right? My family, everything. You’ll be compensated for this madness, and you don’t have to deal with this insanity anymore. It’s better this way. Really, it is.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said, reaching for him again. “Eric, please, I know I was angry at the wedding, but we’re—we’re not finished. Right?”

“Eric?”

We both turned at the voice calling down the hall, a voice that was liable to make me snap in fucking half.

Eric and I spoke in unison: “What the hell are you doing here?”

Caitlyn Calvert emerged from the parlor entrance, immaculately dressed in a demure sheath dress with a Peter Pan collar. Her tawny, light brown hair was pulled back in a neat French twist. Blue eyes blinked innocently at the two of us. She was Bambi reincarnated as an Upper East Side socialite.

“Eric,” she cried as if we hadn’t both just cursed at her. “Oh, Des, we’ve been so worried about you! Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry, what?” I stepped in front of Eric before she could get to him. “You practically ruined my wedding, you psycho! What in the fuck are you doing here?”

“Jane, is that coarse language really appropriate at this time?” she asked irritably. “I’m Nina’s best friend. Of course I was going to support her and the family. Why are you here? I thought you wouldn’t be particularly eager to show your face after you embarrassed Celeste the way you did.”

“That’s enough.” Eric’s voice was machete-sharp, and I was relieved when his cutting gaze aimed right at Caitlyn. “Cait, you need to leave.”

“What? Des, let’s just calm down.” She extended a slim hand, like she wanted to cup his face. “You don’t want me to leave—”

“I do,” Eric said. “You think I don’t know what you did? You knew exactly where Jane was before the ceremony.”

“Desi—”

“Nina told me everything on our way to the gravesite. You made sure Jane knew we slept together because you wanted to break us up. Isn’t that right? Or maybe you just wanted to embarrass her.”

Caitlyn’s doll eyes blinked like she was having a conniption. “Eric…it was just a…I really didn’t—you can’t say that night didn’t mean anything to you! I was special!”

I snorted. “You and half of Boston.”

The woman really had no clue whom she was dealing with. Sleeping with Eric, the king of the one-night stand was about as special as trying on a pair of jeans. Back then, if he didn’t take you home, he wouldn’t even remember your name.

Special? And as far as I knew, only a dead girl and I could lay claim to that particular title. I wasn’t sure that was something to admire, but there it was.

“I’m not your Desi. I’m not your Eric. I’m sorry that night meant more to you than it did to me, but you have to let it go,” Eric said. “The question isn’t whether it meant anything to me. The question is why I never wanted more. Because really, Caitlyn, why would I want a hamburger when I had steak at home?”

For a second, I saw Eric’s grandmother in his eyes. It was the first evidence I’d ever seen that Eric actually shared her DNA, but it was obvious—the family-born ability to cut a person down with a single glance.

Caitlyn actually sank like she’d been chopped at the knees.

“I—”

“Get out of here, Caitlyn,” Eric said. “I don’t care what Nina or Calvin say. Until the lawyer says otherwise, this apartment belongs to me, and you’re trespassing. So get the hell out before I have my security drop you down the garbage chute.”

Caitlyn’s mouth opened and closed like a fish before she slowly backed away.

“You’ll regret this,” she said as her face twisted in anger. And then she turned and flounced toward the elevators.

“Well, that was a waste of Botox,” I remarked as she disappeared down the hall. “I think she ruined the whole procedure with that scowl of hers.”

Eric was flexing his fingers like he’d just won a fight with a knock-out punch. He didn’t, however, look particularly victorious. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Aside from the part where you plagiarized Paul Newman, that was pretty impressive.”

Eric looked up. “What?”

“The thing about the hamburger. He, um, said that about his wife, Joanne Woodward.” Suddenly, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Playing with my chain, examining my manicure, toying with my hair. Was this how you broke up? By pronouncing your love for a person to someone else?

When I looked up, Eric’s eyes were wide, all traces of anger vanished.

“I know,” he said quietly. “I read it in a magazine a few months ago. I remember thinking that it made a lot of sense.”

A few months ago was when he had finally confessed that he loved me. When he chased me into the ocean to shout it over the surf crashing on a sandbar. Then he dropped to his knees on the walk back to his family’s house, clasped his waterlogged watch around my wrist, and asked me to marry him for real, not just for a check.

A few months ago was when we stopped being an act and became something else.

“I’m not a piece of meat,” I said, though the argument was weak. Who was I kidding? I’d be anything he wanted if he would just come back.

Eric’s eyes closed, and when they opened again, the longing I saw there was so forceful I almost had to step backward.

“I know,” he said. “You’re so, so much more, Jane.”

But instead of pulling me close and kissing me, like I wanted to do with every fiber of my body, angry or not, he took a step away and rubbed the back of his neck violently.

“Look,” he said. “I won’t go, all right? But I just need to get through today. Can you do that with me, Jane? Afterward, we’ll talk. We’ll make a proper end of it. I promise.” He blinked. “I don’t want to leave again without saying goodbye.”

For a moment, I felt frozen there under the paintings and the gilt crown moldings.

“Come on,” Eric said, holding out his hand. “We’ll get through it together.”

I looked at his hand for a moment, unsure of what I should do. But in the end, I took it, not caring how pathetic it made me. I took it because I wasn’t sure if this time would be the last.