Love Me With Lies 03 Thief (20 page)

She’s breathing hard when she nods. I let her go and lead her out of the room and to our minivan.

She has not lost her childlike awe. When she sees something that has never crossed her vision before, she becomes entranced — parted lips, wide eyes.

We step into the large foyer of the restaurant holding pinkies, and her speaking stills. To our left is the hostess stand, and in front of us the room opens up to two stories of red wall, decorated in gilded gold mirrors. It’s a spacious receptacle into the restaurant doors leading off into different directions, and her head swivels around to take it all in. The bulbs they use to light the room are red. Everything glows in red luminescence. The room reminds me of old class and sex.

“Drake,” I say to a tall blonde standing behind the desk. She smiles, nods and looks for my reservation.

Olivia has let go of my pinkie and has grasped my whole hand. I wonder if she’s afraid — perhaps intimidated.

I bend down to her ear.

“Okay, love?”

She nods.

“This looks like the red room of pain,” she says.

My mouth drops open. My little prude has been expanding her reading horizons. I choke on my laugh, and a couple of people turn to look at us. I narrow my eyes.

“You read
Fifty
?” I ask quietly. She blushes. Amazing! — the woman
is
capable of blushing.

“Everyone was reading it,” she says, defensively. Then she looks up at me with big eyes.

“You?”

“I wanted to see what all the hype was about.”

She does that
blink, blink, blink
thing with her eyelashes.

“Did you pick up any new techniques?” she says, without looking at me.

I squeeze her hand. “Would you like to try me out and see?”

She turns her face away, pressing her lips together — horribly embarrassed.

“Caleb Drake,” the hostess says, interrupting our whispering. “Right this way.”

I lift my eyebrows at Olivia, and we follow the hostess through a door at the rear of the room. We are led through a series of dim hallways until we enter another decadently red room — red chairs, red walls, red carpet. The tablecloths are mercifully white, breaking the continuity of the color. Olivia takes a seat, I follow.

The server approaches our table moments later. I watch her face as he guides her through a wine menu that is the size of a dictionary. She is overwhelmed after a few seconds, and I speak up.

“A bottle of the Bertani Amarone della Valpolicella, two thousand and one.”

Olivia scans the menu. I know she’s trying to find the price tag. The server nods my way in approval.

“A rare choice,” he says. “Aged for a minimum of two years, the Bertani hails from Italy. The grapes are grown in soil that is composed of volcanic limestone. The grapes are then dried until they are raisins, which results in a wine that is dry and higher than most in alcohol content.”

When he retreats from our table, I smile at her.

“I’ve already slept with you, you don’t have to order the most expensive wine on the menu to impress me.”

I grin at her. “Duchess, the most expensive wine on this menu is six figures. I ordered what I enjoy.”

She bites her top lip and seems to shrink into her seat.

“What’s the matter?”

“I always wanted this — to come to restaurants that raise their own cows and mortgage bottles of wine. But, it makes me feel insecure — reminds me that I’m really just poor, white trash with a good job.”

I reach for her hand. “Aside from your notably filthy mouth, you are the single classiest woman I have ever met.”

She smiles weakly like she doesn’t believe me. That’s okay. I’ll spend the rest of forever convincing her of her worth.

I order her the New York Strip. She only ever eats the filet, because that’s what she thinks she’s supposed to do.

“It’s not as tender, but it is more flavorful. It’s the steak version of you,” I tell her.

“Why are you forever comparing me to animals and shoes and food?”

“Because, I see the world in different shades of Olivia. I’m comparing them to you — not the other way around.”

“Wow,” she says, taking a sip of her wine. “You’ve got it bad.”

I start singing a rendition of Usher’s “You Got it Bad” and she shushes me, looking around embarrassed.

“Singing is something you should never do,” she smiles, “but, maybe if you translated some of those lyrics into French…”

“Quand vous dites que vous les aimez, et vous savez vraiment tout ce qui sert à la matière n’ont pas d’importance pas plus.”

She sighs. “Everything sounds better in French — maybe even your singing.”

I laugh and play with her fingers.

The meal is unparalleled in the state of Florida. She reluctantly agrees that the New York Strip is better than the filet. After our meal is over, we receive a tour of the kitchen and wine cellar — which is custom at Bern’s.

Our tour guide stops in front of a locked cage, behind which resembles a library of wine bottles. Olivia’s eyes grow wide when our guide shows us a bottle of port that is two hundred dollars an ounce.

“It’s a delight in your mouth,” he says, comically.

I raise my eyebrows. I am standing behind her, so I wrap my arms around her waist and speak into her hair. “Do you want to try some, Duchess? A delight in your mouth… “

She shakes her head no, but I nod at our guide. “Send it to the Dessert Room,” I say.

She stares at me in confusion. “The what?”

“Our Bern’s experience isn’t over. There is a separate part of the restaurant just for dessert.”

We are taken up a flight of stairs to another dimly lit area of the restaurant. It is mazelike in the Dessert Room; I’m not sure how we’ll find our way out without help. We are taken past a dozen private glass orbs, behind which each individual table sits. Each guest is given their own privacy bubble to eat their dessert. Our table is to the rear of the restaurant and fit for two. It is a strange and romantic setting. Olivia has had two glasses of wine and is relaxed and smiling. When we are left alone, she turns to me and says something that makes me choke on my water.

“Do you think we could have sex in here?”

I return my glass to the table and blink slowly. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t had wine in a long time,” she admits. “I feel a little carefree.”

“Public sex carefree?”

“I want you.”

I am a grown man, but my heart skips a beat.

“No,” I say firmly. “This is my favorite restaurant. I’m not getting kicked out because you can’t wait an hour.”

“I can’t wait an hour,” she breathes, “please.”

I grind my teeth.

“You only do that when you’re angry,” she says, pointing to my jaw. “Are you angry?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I really want the macadamia nut sundae.”

She leans forward and her breasts press against the table. “More than you want me?”

I stand up and grab her hand, pulling her to her feet. “Can you make it to the car?”

She nods. As we are rounding the corner, our server returns with our two hundred and fifty dollar an ounce port. I take it from him and pass it to her. She shoots it. The server flinches and I bark out a laugh, handing him my credit card.

“Hurry up,” I say. He races off and I press her against the wall to kiss her. “Was it a delight in your mouth?”

“It was okay,” she says. “I really want to put something else in my mouth…”

“God.”

I kiss her so I can taste it. When I turn around, he is back with my card. I quickly sign the receipt and drag her out of the restaurant.

After an intensely memorable fifteen minutes in a pharmacy parking lot in the backseat, we drive to an ice cream shop and eat our cones in the heat, outside.

“Doesn’t hold a candle to Jaxson’s,” she says, licking her wrist where the ice cream is dripping.

I grin as I watch the traffic on the street.

“Do you think we’ll ever get sick of doing that?”

We switch cones, and I eye her through my haze. She ordered the ice cream shop’s version of Cherry Garcia. I ordered something with peanut butter. I watch her eat it. She has that sexed look — flushed skin, ruffled hair. I’m tired, but I could easily go another round.

“I highly doubt that, Duchess.”

“Why?”

“Addiction,” I say simply. “It can span an entire lifetime if untreated.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“I don’t really care.”

“Me neither,” she says, throwing the rest of my cone in the trash and dusting her hands on her dress.

“Let’s go. Our hotel room has a hot tub.”

I don’t need to be asked twice.

Four months after Leah was acquitted, I filed for divorce. The minute — the very minute I made the decision, I felt a huge weight lifted from my figurative shoulders. I didn’t necessarily believe in divorce, but you couldn’t stay in something that was killing you either. Sometimes you fucked up enough in life, that you had to bow to your mistakes. They won. Be humble … move on. Leah thought she was happy with me, but how could I make someone happy when I was so dead inside? She didn’t even know the real me. It was like sleepwalking; being married to someone you didn’t love. You tried to fill yourself with positives — buying houses and going on vacations and cooking classes — anything to try to bond with this person you should already have bonded with before you said
I do
. It was all empty, fighting for something that never was. Be it my fault for marrying her in the first place, I’d made plenty of mistakes. It was time to move on. I filed the papers.

Olivia

— That was my first thought.

Turner

— That was my second thought.

Motherfucker

— That was my third thought. Then I put them all together in a sentence:
That motherfucker Turner is going to marry Olivia!

How long did I have? Did she still love me? Could she forgive me? If I could wrestle her away from that fucking tool, could we actually build something together on the rubble we’d created? Thinking about it set me on edge — made me angry. What would she say if she knew I’d lied about the amnesia? We’d both told so many lies, sinned against each other — against everyone who got in our way. I’d tried to tell her once. It was during the trial. I’d come to the courthouse early to try to catch her alone. She was wearing my favorite shade of blue — airport blue. It was her birthday.

“Happy Birthday.”

She looked up. My heart pounded out my feelings, like they did every time she looked at me.

“I’m surprised you remembered.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”

I half smiled at her jab.

“I never forgot you…”

I felt a rush of adrenaline. This was it — I was going to come clean. Then the prosecutor walked in. Truth was put on hold.

I moved out of the house I shared with Leah and back into my condo. I paced the halls. I drank scotch. I waited.

Waited for what? For her to come to me? For me to go to her? I waited because I was a coward. That was the truth.

I walked to my sock drawer — infamous protector of engagement rings and other mementos — and ran my fingers along the bottom. The minute my fingers found it, I felt a surge of something. I rubbed the pad of my thumb across the slightly green surface of the ‘kissing’ penny. I looked at it for a full minute, conjuring up images of the many times it had been traded for kisses. It was a trinket, a cheap trick that had once worked, but it had evolved into so much more than that.

I put on my sweats and went for a run. Running helped me think. I went over everything in my head as I turned toward the beach, dodging a little girl and her mother as they walked along hand in hand. I smiled. The little girl had long, black hair and startling blue eyes — she looked like Olivia. Was that what our daughter would have looked like? I stopped jogging and bent over, hands on my knees. It didn’t have to be a ‘would have’ situation. We could still have our daughter. I slipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out the kissing penny. I started jogging to my car.