A Reason To Stay (2 page)

“Don’t knock Todd Sweeney. He was fresh on rebound. He was fun, and I knew it wouldn’t last. He never once asked to go to my place. Gosh, that was a good month.” Elise drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, and a smile came to her face. She thought back to those two weeks she spent with Todd.

“So what if I learned a little too much about Stephanie, his ex. He was outrageously amusing while it lasted.”

No meal was made a martyr from that ending. Just a nice ‘See ya later, and tell Steph I said hi.’ Why couldn’t they all be that easy to shake?

The stoplight turned green and Elise drove slowly through town, not knowing if she was ready to go home. Her task was still dangling out there somewhere, unfinished and unchecked. The thought of eating a fatty fast food burger made her feel as if she hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Misery would’ve eaten it and cried the entire time, but this loser feeling she was having would’ve only looked at the scales the next morning and made herself run two extra miles on the treadmill.

“All I’m saying is that Darren is a keeper. Get over your space issue and settle down with someone. I don’t want to have to think about you getting fat on Rocky Road, never shaving your legs, and sharing microwave dinners with twenty cats. I
would
like someone to be pregnant with at the same time I am. I did, after all, go off the pill last month. Martin has already bought a box of cigars.”

“Kelly Whithers, even if I did settle down, which I will never do, don’t expect me to have children. Look at what my mother did to me. I’m so messed up now, I can’t even make it a year with the same guy, no matter how freakin’ perfect he is.”

“Just don’t break up with him until I get home. I can bring over
Terms of
Endearment
and we can eat twenty Lindt chocolate balls each. I deserve some hard-core calories after this business trip.”

“With my luck, it will take me until next week. I’m batting zero with a reason to end it. I don’t want to come off being the bad guy. And I certainly don’t want to give him something that he will try to fix.” She banged her hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “If only he cheated or practiced devil worshipping. Something solid.”

“Elise Newton, stop looking where there is nothing to find. Spend more time on the couch of a shrink. When you find out why you can’t commit, you’ll find out that Darren’s the one to keep.”

Elise got off the phone and thrust her head against the backrest. Slowly she looked up. Damn it, she was parked in the driveway of his house.

CHAPTER TWO

Ring, Ring...
Destiny Calling

Elise squinted her eyes into half-moons as she groped the nightstand in search of her ringing cell phone. “Who in the world is calling at this hour?” she croaked, managing to work through the sleep that still lodged in her throat.

She finally found it under her blouse where Darren had thrown it when he was undressing her last night. She should have known better than to go to his house. He always had a way of talking her out of her clothes, at one point of time or another.

“Hello?”

“Hey, girlie. What’s up? Are you ready to go and write some awesome software that the world can’t live without?”

The voice was familiar, sweet with just the right amount of country twang. Yes, it was her. It was her sister from Kentucky. The one who insisted on forgetting there was a time difference for California residents. “Melanie, you do remember that I live on the West Coast now, right?”

“Oh, my Lord! I did it again, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, Elise. It’s so difficult to remember that our clocks are not the same as one another.” A five percent sentiment of sincerity was noted. “But since you’re up now, I have a huge favor to ask.”

Elise rolled over to her side, muffling her voice into the phone. “What is it?”

“Why are you talking so weird? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just not alone at the moment and I’m trying not to wake up the other party. You know, like you did
me
when you just called?” Elise peered over her shoulder to see if Darren was disturbed by the noise she was making. His left leg rubbed bagck and forth on the navy blue sheet. She tried to remember its hair pattern, a little less around the knees and sock area. Goodness was she going to miss seeing that leg.

“
Eww
, Elise is staying over. I’m telling Mom,” she said in the sing-song fashion of a five-year-old. Then she laughed, obviously high on life. Her sister always managed to be the eternal optimist of the family. Thank God someone was. Elise had the market cornered on dysfunctional.

“Really? I’m barely awake, and you’re giving me grief for staying over somewhere? And what makes you think I’m not home? I could be, you know?” The volume in Elise’s voice was raising, forcing a little more fidgeting from her bedmate.

“There’s not much I know about you, dear sister, but I do know that it’s seldom that you allow anyone to enter your private sanctuary. You’re too much like Mom when it comes to men.”

The thought that she was being compared to her mother made her want to throw the alarm clock that was sitting on the bedside table. She was nothing like her. So what if she’d spent a year after college graduation talking to a shrink about why she seemed to be following the pattern of her mother, chronically single and never trusting of men. She knew the truth. “Whatever. Just stop the notion that you know anything about my life and get on with it, Mel. What do you need from me?”

“Mom is going to have surgery Friday on her foot and I can’t get off work to help her at home. I need you to come and help.” There was a pause. No doubt, her sister was waiting for the array of excuses.

Elise didn’t disappoint. “I can’t. There is no way I can get off on such short notice. I—”

Her sister interrupted. “Elise, your mother needs you.
I
need you. Come on. It won’t kill you. I know you can get off. After all, you must have a lot of leave built up, seeing that you haven’t come home for the past four Christmases.”

“I told you, Melanie. I got the flu last Christmas.” It was the same lie she had told Darren when he asked her to go to his parents’ in order to introduce her to them.

“Whatever, I guess it’s the type of flu that comes around every important holiday. Just please do this for me. There is no way possible I can stay with her, work, and take care of my kids. It’s your turn to play big sister and come home.”

Elise scrunched up her face, dying to scream,
Why me?
“And there’s no way Aunt Hildie could take care of her? Or, I know, how about the neighbor ... Mrs. Fletcher, the one with the eye patch. Is she still living?” She knew it sounded desperate, giving a last-ditch way out of going back home.

“Mrs. Fletcher? Come on, Elise, she was found guilty of poisoning her husband and sent to jail right after you moved. I always knew something was very wrong with not being able to see the shift in both of her eyes. And I’m not sure if you know this, but Aunt Hildie is seventy-five years old. Are you kidding me? What’s she going to do, have Mom share one side of her walker? Her knees are riddled with arthritis.”

“All right, all right.” She squeezed her temples with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone. “I will be there. I’ll call you sometime later. You know, when the sun is actually shining on this side of the earth?”

Her sister laughed, seemingly happy that the war of the favor was over and she stood as the victor. “I will be asleep for most of the day. I just got off night shift. Call me, my time, at five o’clock....And Elise?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really looking forward to seeing you.” Now there was the hundred percent sincerity she had strived for earlier.

“Me, too. Sleep well, Melanie. Bye.”

Elise ended the call and put the phone back on the table. She pushed herself to the bottom of the bed where it was warmest, feeling the smoothness of the sheets on her naked body. Fragmented memories of how she got there played in her mind like a movie short of
This Is Your Life
.

How could she have done it, slept with him, when the very reason she waited for him at his house was to end it? The plan was thought-out, fail-proof, if she had only been conscious. She’d be on the sofa and he’d walk in. She would keep her distance, tell him that their relationship, although nice, simply wasn’t going anywhere and then run like hell.

Instead, he came home very late and found her asleep on the sofa. She was awakened to him carrying her to his room. He placed her gently on the bed. Through blurry vision, she was held captive in his intent gaze as his fingers slipped open the buttons on her blouse. Slowly he leaned into her neck, her eyes closed, and
Bam
! Again. Now, she was headed into month ten with the guy she couldn’t find a reason to end it with, even if she did try to Google better ways on how to do it.

As she lay there formulating an escape plan out of his house without waking him, she felt a hand on her back. Turning around slowly, she caught sight of Darren staring at her. Didn’t his bedroom eyes ever transform into anything else?

“Is everything all right?” The early morning call had interrupted his REM state, too.

“Yes. Go back to sleep.” She stayed very still, hoping he would drift back into unconsciousness. For some reason, she liked it better when she could sneak out of his house before he awoke. It gave her the edge of independence that she needed. To come and go when she pleased. Not after a lengthy snuggle in bed, coffee for two, and a kiss at the door. Just a lovely slip into her clothes in the bathroom and then tiptoe to the front door and expertly open the door so not to creak, past the threshold, like a savvy home intruder. Then home free.

“Who was it?” He rubbed his eyes with the index fingers of his tightly balled fists.

Great, it was too late. He was past the state of drifting consciousness and fully alerted to the reason someone called her before the sun peaked past the horizon line.

Elise sighed. She could thank her sister for the two lovely predicaments—one, for inviting her for a week’s worth of torture back home, and two, denying her a quick getaway from Darren’s house.

“It was my sister. It’s nothing. She forgot it was this early here, that’s all.” She stayed molded into her warm position.

He pulled her closer to him. His body was the perfect temperature to take the chill from her bones. She lay in the crux of his arm as he rubbed her bare arm, affectionately. Why did she fight the idea of cuddling so much? He obviously loved it.

“You rarely mention her. Do you talk to her often?” His mouth blew warm air into her hair as he spoke.

“Of course. I talk to her every other week or so. She even stayed with me for a week, right before I met you.”

The room grew brighter, and Elise tried to pull away from him. Darren held her tighter. “Where are you going? I’m enjoying this, you know?” He crossed his arms in front of her, holding firm. Suddenly, she was hot. “Don’t go,” he whispered.

“I have to go home and get ready for work.” She stopped squirming, and waited until he released her.

“You know, if you kept some of your things here, like I’ve suggested a hundred times, you wouldn’t have to make a trip home to get ready. You could leave from here with me.” He watched as she stood up. The air outside of his embrace smacked her with frigidness. Goosebumps stood at attention on her tanned skin. “Please, come back to bed,” he begged.

Darren reached for her, but she politely shook her head, grabbing her strewn clothes and quietly disappearing into the bathroom. She knew they would both be late if she gave in to his plea.

The bright lights reflected in the mirror, making her squint. She threw her hair up into a ponytail and dressed. After pinching her cheeks for some natural blush, she brushed her teeth. That was one thing she agreed to leave at his place, a toothbrush. She couldn’t stand to have morning breath. She opened the bathroom door. Darren had fallen off to sleep, again. She tiptoed out of the room and managed a delayed secret getaway.

The sprinklers turned on just as Elise got in her car and pulled out of the immaculately kept grounds of Dr. Darren Masterson’s home. She waited at the gate for the doors to swing open and release her again.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled up to her house. Although there were no gated homes in her small community of Pinewood, Elise loved the quaintness of her spot in the world. The houses were older, but they all had their own character. After scrimping and saving for ten years, she managed to put a deposit down and buy her very own place. In twenty-eight years, it would be paid for.

Its terra cotta color was faded from years of sun-beating. One story high, it was easy to maintain and afford. The gardens she kept reminded her of Kentucky. The gladiolas were pleasantly standing tall now, waiting for her morning return. And the petunias and geraniums looked perfect in the multi-colored containers on her porch. The smell of the early summer morning was almost enough to take her mind off of her visit back home.

~*~

Elise’s thoughts that day were everywhere. At work, she’d accidently managed to ride up a few extra floors on the elevator. When she finally made it to her desk, she dropped her two bags on the floor and plopped down in her chair, letting it tilt backward as far as it would go. She massaged her temples and closed her eyes, wishing the phone call she received that morning was a dream she would soon awake from.

“Miss Newton,” said a tiny voice through the crack of the door.

Elise’s eyes flapped open like two window shades. She pulled herself up to her desk and transformed into a high-powered intellectual in a matter of nanoseconds. “Yes, Janine, come on in.”

Janine had worked as Elise’s secretary for the last three years, and still acted with the meekness she came with on her first day. She was also wearing her hair in the same style for that matter, a tightly wound bun that sat like a mushroom on the back of her head. Elise imagined the only time it came down was right before bedtime, like the women on
Little House on the Prairie
. “Ma’am, I just wanted to give you your messages.” Her child-like hand offered them to Elise. “Is there anything I can get you? Perhaps a cup of coffee or a danish?”

She waited, hands clasped and ready to jump at any request her superior made of her.

“Janine, a cup of coffee sounds wonderful. Thank you.” Elise began looking through her messages but her brain was stuck somewhere back in Kentucky, dreading the imminent visit. “Oh, Janine,” Elise yelled out, hoping she wasn’t already out of ear shot.

“Yes, Miss Newton.” Janine reappeared like a ghost from thin air.

“I will have to leave Friday for personal business. Could you book my airfare? And I would like to return the following Sunday. Make it earlier than later.” Anticipation and anxiety funneled in her belly like the beginning of a tornado. She wasn’t sure coffee was such a good idea anymore.

“Sure. I will reschedule your next week’s appointments, too. Where’s your destination?”

“Bowling Green, Kentucky.” The words resounded in her ears and made her nerves send sparks to the funnel cloud.

“Okay. I will be right back with your coffee.”

Unless that break room gained an open bar with unlimited liquor, she suddenly couldn’t stomach anything Janine could offer. “Just hold off on it. I brought a bottled water. I think I prefer that right now.”

Janine pulled the door shut and Elise turned her chair around to look out at the sun as it climbed higher into the sky. She knew it was already in its fixed position back home. Friday she would be on another time zone. She needed to begin meditating. Trying to find the quiet spot where she could let all the bubbles that held resentment for her mother, and the ten feet of buried feelings for Ben Hudson, float into the sky. She would tape a mental calendar in her head, like the ones prisoners used, marking off the days until she was released to come back home. The place where she felt secure and free from the temptation of the guy who still managed to be the one she measured all the others against.

Her mental warm-up was interrupted by her ringing cell phone. “Hello.”

“Hey, beautiful.” Darren’s voice brought her back to her present-day problems. She closed her eyes, imagining the inviting smell of his cologne, as he spoke into her ear. It was a woodsy smell, masculine and musky after a long day at work. She’d have to find out what it was and get a sample from the department store to aid her in the relapse phase after their relationship ended.