A Christmas Caroline by Camilla Isley
Fifteen
Sweet, Tender Love
We arrive at the hotel with just enough time to spare to hand our overnight bags to a young bellhop, get a room key, and rush to the hall for the cutting of the ribbon ceremony.
Once the Koi’s doors are officially open, I wander the various rooms admiring Sam’s work together with the other guests. I’m walking on solid ground, but, watching the walls, I feel as if I were advancing underwater. Every surface glitters and seems to drift around in all shades of blue. Fish and mermaids swim alongside me as I progress through the different common spaces: the hall, breakfast room, spa, and the reception, which Sam has made to appear like a giant coral reef.
I stare at Sam’s creations, forcing my jaw not to slack.
“Sam, this is amazing,” I say, out of breath. “The drawings are so clear it doesn’t even look like tiles… and the water, it looks like it’s moving.” I turn to him, placing my hands on his chest. “You’re a wonder.”
He takes one of my hands in his and brings the palm to his lips for a soft kiss. “You’re my muse. I could’ve never done this without you. Well, you and Jo. She insisted I should go with the water theme.”
“You had another one in mind?”
“I liked the idea of a tropical jungle as well, but Jo wanted the mermaids—it’s her favorite fairytale—and so mermaids it is.”
Sam stops a passing server and grabs two flutes of champagne, handing me one. “Thank you,” he says.
“For what?” I ask, bewildered. I had no role in tonight’s success.
“Thank you for supporting me when everyone said I was crazy to pursue this career, that I had no chance to support a family with my art.” This part is true. When we broke up, he was just starting out. But I’ve always been on his side about his art; I trusted he could do great things if he put his mind to it. But his parents… gosh, they were so against an artistic career, he had to double-major in Business and Art to appease them. Even if I should thank them as I double majored too, in English Lit and Business, and if not for our common classes, I probably would’ve never met him.
After college Sam took up a banking job he hated and that his father had forced him to accept. I was the one who encouraged him to turn the tiny second bedroom of our minuscule apartment in Midtown into an art laboratory where he worked any spare minute he had. I also convinced him to quit the bank once he won a contest to do the tile design for the new Second Avenue subway station.
Even when I didn’t have a personal chauffeur and still took public transportation, I never got off at that station.
One of my hands is still resting on Sam’s chest and he now squeezes it and brings it closer to his heart. “I love you.”
The floor disappears from underneath my feet, and I lean on him not to fall flat on my face. Sam’s declaration hits me harder than a kick in the gut, sending me simultaneously into ecstasy and panic because, at this exact moment, I realize that in all these years, no matter if I haven’t seen him or talked to him or not even looked at his Facebook profile once, I’ve never stopped loving Sam. Not for one second.
Everything else that I’ve filled my life with: money, power, the fancy apartment, the designer clothes… it’s all pointless. This new awareness scares me because I know this Sam isn’t real. The real Sam isn’t my husband, we don’t live together in Jersey, and we didn’t make three amazing, beautiful little humans that are half me and half him.
The panic takes over and I try to open my mouth to say something, then close it again when nothing comes out.
Sam cups my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I’m scared,” I say.
“Scared of what?”
“That I won’t ever remember the past seven years with you,” I say, when in reality, I’m terrorized I’ll never get to live them. That I’ve wasted my life in pursuit of material things that have left me as empty and cold as my perfect penthouse.
Sam looks me straight in the eyes. “If your memories don’t come back, we’ll make new ones. Together.”
That’s another thing I’d forgotten about Sam: he’s so steady, so calm even in the worst situations. I’m the one who freaks out while he’s always been the rock by my side.
“Oh, Sam,” I say, still half-choked with emotions. “I love you, too.” Then I bury my head in the nook of his neck because I’m still too shy about saying I love you to his face. I fill my nostrils with his scent and press my body against his solid, flat chest.
Eventually, I look up at him, wondering how long we have to stay downstairs and mingle with the guests before we can go back to our room and make love.
Sam’s lips curl into that mischievous grin that makes me lose my mind every single time. “Mrs. Crawley,” he says. Then lowers his head to whisper in my ear. “You look like someone who wants to bring me upstairs and have her way with me.”
I swallow.
To prolong the torture, Sam kisses me on the neck. “We have to wait at least until midnight.”
I stare at the big display clock mounted on the stage at the back of the lobby, it’s counting down the minutes until midnight and it informs me there’s still ninety-seven of the mothersuckers.
***
As the party progresses, I lose count of how many people come up to Sam to compliment him, or shake his hand, or ask for a business card. For all his success, I shamefully can’t wait for the in-public part of the night to be over. Sam and I have been eye-flirting across all the pleasantries. And he might’ve had sex with me just last week, but from the way he’s looking at me, he could be the one who’s been waiting for seven years.
Another stranger comes up to Sam to compliment the artist, and while they talk shop, I distract myself scanning the other guests’ faces for people I might’ve known as Manhattan Caroline. Instead, I’m surprised to find a disconcerting number of heads turned our way. Or Sam’s way, more precisely. Half the women in here are devouring him with their eyes; and how to blame them? He’s the most handsome man in the room, and the kindest, sweetest, most attentive, and, if memory serves me well, stellar in bed. How did I ever let him go?
He doesn’t even seem to care about all the female attention. If he notices it, he ignores it. Sam only has eyes for me. Even after being married for seven years and having three kids, he looks at me as the day he hit on me for the first time.
The memory of our eyes meeting across Downstein at NYU hits me, how he cheekily asked if he could sit at my table. My heart skips several beats as I remember his smile, and my elation at finally getting the cute guy from my Econ classes to talk to me.
He was fun, brilliant, and so ridiculously good-looking. A few hours was all the time needed for him to get me in bed that same afternoon. I know I might sound cliché now, but I never did that sort of thing with anyone. Before Sam, I was a solid member of the “never put out until the third date” club.
Not with Sam.
Within a couple of hours, we were tearing each other’s clothes off in my tiny but private bedroom—at least as private as a room can be in an apartment with thin walls shared by five girls. But we didn’t care if the others heard us. We instantly became one of those clueless couples that are so in love they can’t see how annoying their PDAs are to the rest of the world. We spent the rest of the school year in a daze together. Either making love or studying for finals and midterms. Since we shared our second major, we could study together for all our Econ classes, or just next to each other when we were doing our humanities coursework.
I chuckle as I remember that time I couldn’t make sense of some basic accounting principle and Sam, dead serious, tried to explain the concept to me butt naked. If I couldn’t follow before, his guise sure didn’t help. He kept repeating that all transactions should be recorded in the accounting periods when they actually occur, rather than in the periods when there are cash flows associated with them and all I could think about were his ripped chest and abs… and when my gaze wandered a little lower—let’s just say the explanation was cut short.
“What are you thinking about?”
His warm voice brushes against my neck like an actual caress.
“That time you were trying to explain the accrual principle to me.”
We both know how the afternoon ended, and Sam’s eyes now go dark with desire. “Well, I was a brilliant teacher. You, on the contrary, were a naughty student if memory serves.”
“Mmm, I don’t know, Mr. Crawley, if all teachers behaved as you did, where would our education system go?”
“You passed the exam in the end.”
“Yep, I did. And strangely, I can still recite the foundation of the accrual basis by heart. You must’ve made quite an impression.”
Our flirting is interrupted by the hotel manager grabbing the microphone and calling for the guests’ attention.
“Ladies and gentlemen, with only five minutes to go before midnight, I invite you all to grab a flute of champagne and gather around. Tonight…”
Blah, blah, blah…the speech goes on but I don’t pay attention. I concentrate on the giant red shifting numbers of the digital clock mounted at the back of the stage. Just a few more moments, and Sam and I can finally disappear to our suite and have the rest of the night for ourselves.
By the time a server passes our way and offers us two glasses filled with bubbly, the crowd is already chanting, “Ten, nine, eight…”
I look into my husband’s eyes for the longest seven seconds of my life until, at the stroke of midnight, he leans over to kiss me. And okay, Jo might’ve had a point with all the fairy tales she’s been reading because if this is how finding Prince Charming feels, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world—not even the cleaning rabbits.
The kiss is merely a peck on the lips, but Sam’s eyes promise so much more as we clink glasses and take a sip of champagne to celebrate the New Year.
The dry wine has barely trickled down my throat when Sam takes the flute out of my hands and drops it on a nearby table.
He places a hand on the small of my back and leans down to whisper, “We can go now.” A shiver runs down my spine while goosebumps ride up my arms.
Since my throat is too raspy with desire to reply, I merely nod.
We shuffle through the crowd as discreetly as possible, not meeting anyone’s eye so as not to be stopped.
Then we’re in the elevator alone and my heart is hammering like a trapped bird.
Once the doors close, we can’t keep our hands off each other anymore. I grab my husband by the collar of his shirt and pull him down to me in a passionate kiss. With my other hand, I yank his shirt out of his pants to get to the bare skin of his back. With my dress being a lot skimpier than a tux, Sam doesn’t bother for skin-on-skin contact, he simply cups my butt, pulling me to him until the elevator dings open on our floor. Sam grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall as we laugh our heads off like a pair of carefree twenty-somethings. But, even when I was younger, I’ve never run so fast in heels.
In the room, we make such a quick job of tearing each other’s clothes off, it’s like a tornado has them picked clean from our bodies.
Then Sam pushes me back on the bed and settles on top of me, biting my earlobe in that way that makes me lose my mind.
That’s when disaster strikes. My nipples become rock hard brushing against Sam’s chest and before I can shimmy away from underneath him, the milk-works begin. Warm liquid spurs out of my breasts down my sides and on the mattress in a flood.
“Oh my gosh, I’m all wet,” I say, dying of embarrassment.
Sam must misinterpret my words because he stops grinding against me to laugh on my clavicle. “Did hitting your head make you start to talk dirty?”
“No, Sam, I’m serious.” I push him off. “I’m literally soaked, I’m leaking breast milk all over us and the mattress.”
Sam lifts off me to sit on the bed, and I’ve never felt more vulnerable and grosser in my entire life. And that’s when those damn hormones kick in and I can no longer control myself, breaking out in sobs.
“Why is this happening?” I wail. “No baby is crying.” I scramble to cover my breasts with the sheets.
Sam scoots next to me. “Don’t worry, it’s normal.”
“How can it be normal?”
“The hormones that control breastfeeding are the same hormones you produce when you have an orgasm. So when you get excited this,” he points at my general chest area, “might happen. But it’s no big deal.” Sam runs a finger down my arms and kisses my neck. “I don’t mind.”
“But I do.” I shoot out of the bed and run into the bathroom shutting myself in. Sex has suddenly become the furthest thing from my mind. I turn the shower to a scorching hot temperature and get underneath. I take my time scrubbing myself free of all the stickiness and then, wrapped in a towel, removing all my makeup. Then I fish the breast pump out of the vanity case and suck all the excess milk out. When I change into clean underwear, I stuff my bra cups with double padding, and I finally feel brave enough to get out of the bathroom.
Sam is waiting for me on the bed, his boxers are back on and he hasn’t gone to sleep or pretended to.
“I’m sorry,” I say, scooting close to him.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he says. “You reacted the same way the first time this happened after Jo. I keep forgetting this is all new for you.”
“This happens with every kid?”
“It’s pretty common, yeah.”
“How did I overcome the gross-me-out part the other times?”
Sam gives me a wolfish smile. “You got more horny than self-conscious.” He points down at his still semi-naked body. “How to blame you?” We both chuckle. “Also, you always wear a bra when we make love while you’re breastfeeding and the ladies”—he points at my boobs—“are off-limits.”
“Okay,” I say, pondering the double-padded bra I’m wearing right now. It should stop any leaks, but I don’t know if the “sexy times” mood is irremediably ruined for tonight.
“And you’re okay with all this?” I ask, wondering. Sam has always been a breast man. “The milk doesn’t put you off?”
“No, it doesn’t,” he says. “I love you, whichever way. The things your body has to endure. First with pregnancy, then in childbirth, and breastfeeding… I don’t know how women do it.”
My brain has fixated on the word childbirth, sending a shudder down my spine. I’m sure glad I didn’t have to experience that. And for the first time, I wonder what doing it three times did to this body.
“Does sex hurt after giving birth?”
“Not if you wait the right amount of time.”
“Which is?”
“Every woman is different, but for us, it’s about four to five months.”
My eyes boggle. “Five months? And you’re okay not having sex for that long?”
“As I said, we men get the easy end of the bargain. And I’d wait for you for a year if that’s what it took for you to heal.”
He’s being impossibly sweet and sensitive and my lower lip begins to tremble in response. Damn hormones. I don’t want to cry again.
Before I can shed the first tear, Sam tickles my sides, making me screech, “Stop, stop, what are you doing?”
Sam moves on top of me, holding my wrists over my head in one of his big hands while he tickles me mercilessly with the other. “I figured you were about to be moved to tears by how caring and considerate your husband is, and I really didn’t want you to cry again.”
If I could swat him, I would. “That’s even sweeter, you daft, horrible man.”
Even through the tickling, tears sting my eyes. Sam redoubles his efforts and soon I’m too busy begging for mercy to cry.
Sam must realize the danger is over because he relents. Still, he keeps my arms imprisoned above my head, and his other hand, now resting flat on my side, is searing my skin.
He tentatively moves his palm down my ribcage to my thigh and back up. I raise my hips in response, frustrated that I can’t grab him and pull him down to me where I need him.
“Sam, please,” I beg again and this time it has nothing to do with tickling.
He locks eyes with me. “You’re wearing a bra under that T-shirt, aren’t you?”
“Double padding.”
That’s all my husband needs to hear to make sweet, tender love to me all night long.