When in Rio (30 page)

I tried not to place too much meaning in his choice of words, not wanting to face yet that
I
may have been written off. “I probably needed a day to just do nothing and clear my head before we get back home anyway.”

“Yeah. She’s really something, isn’t she?”

The fact that he didn’t think it necessary to explain who he was talking about, and that he thought I needed the time to clear my head, made the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach harden and congeal, a nasty lump of sick and sorry. I didn’t know how I would ever be rid of it.

“I guess,” I said softly, trying to smile. Jack wasn’t really paying attention, he was too distracted by his own thoughts. Thoughts of Marisa, I supposed. I wondered what they’d been talking about while I read and napped, then realized I really didn’t want to know because it simply didn’t matter. What was done was done. If it was going to end, it was better that it should happen now, I tried to tell myself, than after making a fool of myself back home and finding out one day that it was all over because Marisa had crooked her little finger and Jack had trotted back to her.

Which was a very reasonable way to look at things, but it didn’t stop my eyes from pricking with unshed tears as I excused myself to freshen up before dinner. I couldn’t see Jack through the tears and I was down the hall before he could follow me. I ignored him when he called my name, because I thought that the only way I could possibly feel
worse
about the situation was to hear him try to explain or apologize.

Splashing cold water on my face and working my courage up did wonders. Dinner, although certainly a little painful, was bearable. I think I put on a good front—the polite guest, the good employee. I complimented Marta on the food which, although I’m sure was wonderful, I could hardly remember tasting afterward. There was a
pavlova
for dessert, all crunchy meringue and seasonal fruit, and it was good enough to cut through the fog in my brain. But for the most part, all I tasted were the bitter tears I had swallowed earlier and all I could do was try to ignore the fact that although Jack sat next to me, he also sat next to Marisa—and she talked to him constantly throughout dinner. About her husband, about something in Portuguese that sounded like it had to do with the water rights of local farmers, about her boys—she spoke about them in a fairly unflattering way, as if they weren’t seated directly opposite her, listening to every word. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I felt even sorrier for the twins than I felt for myself.

Marta tried to carry the table with topics of general interest, Mario playing along gamely and gallantly, but Marisa kept Jack’s attention with whatever she was talking about. One of the twins, I couldn’t tell which, had snuck his game player into the room and attempted to play it with the sound off during the meal. Marisa didn’t notice, but Marta did. Even
I
did. It was Mario who stood up silently, his mouth firm, and tapped the boy on the shoulder, gesturing for the game. The boy gave it up with an insolent shrug, sharing a look with his brother who was in the process of hiding all his vegetables in his napkin one faked bite at a time.

To Gabriel’s credit, he seemed a bit scornful of his cousins’ attempted naughtiness. He resumed his “young prince” mode, complimenting his mother fulsomely on each dish and trying to make grownup conversation with his father about the state of the roads following the rains. I suspected there might be an ulterior motive in it, or perhaps just a somewhat manipulative approach to interacting with grownups, but at least it was preferable to watching the twin cousins make ugly faces at all assembled.

When dinner was over, and each of our places littered generously with the snow of meringue crumbs the
pavlova
had left behind, another mini-drama of differing parenting styles unfolded.

Reminding her own children that it was time to prepare for bed—a routine with which they were clearly familiar—Marta saw that her twin nephews evidently intended to remain encamped in the snug, playing their video games. She gently recommended that they too get ready for bed and was met with blank stares. I expected Marisa to chime in at any moment, for some reason. Surely bedtime was universal? But evidently not. Marta finally just insisted, escorting the boys out of the room and down the hallway to wherever the children were staying.

If there was no bedtime, I thought, how could there be bedtime stories? Who made sure that these children brushed their teeth each and every night? Their father? A nanny? Why had she brought them with her then?

If I had been less wrung out by the events of the week, or simply more confident about my welcome, I might have gone and wrapped my arm around Jack’s waist as he sat on the couch in the snug, still listening to Marisa and occasionally glancing my way with more forced smiles. I could have taken his hand or played with his hair or done something else to at least try to stake a claim.

I pictured myself doing all those things and more at least a hundred times that evening, if I pictured them once. After an hour or so, having partaken of too much wine with dinner and far too much afterward, I finally gave up even picturing it since I knew I would never work up the nerve. And in truth, Jack looked more than a bit grumpy and unapproachable. He kept giving Mario questioning looks I couldn’t begin to interpret, and had said hardly a word since dinner. He’d been matching drinks with his friend and was as close to noticeably drunk as I’d ever seen him. All in all, it wasn’t a welcoming scene.

The last straw was the moment when she laughed at something he said and then leaned over and kissed his cheek, curling her fingers over his shoulder in a way that was far from platonic.

He didn’t object, didn’t walk away…just kept talking, seeming to take her gesture, her touch, in stride.

I gave up. I admit it. It couldn’t have been much later than nine or nine-thirty, but Marisa was called away reluctantly by Marta to check on the boys and I suddenly just wanted desperately to be gone before she got back to the room, to end the night not having seen her sitting closer and closer to Jack, fondling him more and more openly, ignoring Mario and continuing to talk in Portuguese despite the fact that Mario and Jack were both speaking in English. She hadn’t spared me a second glance since her arrival anyway, so it wasn’t as though my leaving before she got back could be construed as rude.

She was hardly through the door when I made my apologies to Mario and nodded in understanding as Jack said again that he was sorry, and that he planned to stay up and talk “just a little longer”.

His polite peck on the cheek was, I thought, a nice touch. Just the right amount of intimacy for the one who was already on her way out the door.

* * * * *

So strange, how such a few short hours could change things so drastically, could change
everything
. I had been on tenterhooks all morning because of an offhand comment Jack had made about my getting away with far too much the previous night, and his need to make sure I knew he wasn’t going soft. But then came lunch and the rest of the afternoon. Then came dinner and the end of any plans I had allowed myself to make for “back home”. And now…

I thought I would barely make it through the door before the tears took over, but all I felt as I brushed my teeth and washed my face was an icy disassociation with everything around me. Which was better, of course, because I still had the next day to get through, the long,
long
flight home next to Jack, during which my tears would be beyond unwelcome. Best if I held off entirely until back in the security of my own home.

Looking in the mirror, I tried to see myself as somebody else might, as Jack might. I saw my skin, paler than pale, a very faint haze of old freckles across the bridge of my nose. My hair, frizzing in the humidity despite being tied back in a ponytail. It surrounded my face with auburn fuzz, like a little kid, messy even in dress-up clothes.

Cute, I saw. That much I gave myself. But glamour? No. Nothing compelling. Nothing that would logically make a person—say, a person like Jack—choose me over somebody else. Somebody with not only beauty but glamour and charisma, with whom he shared a history. His best friend’s sister, who had turned him down all those years ago but now clearly thought she’d made the wrong choice. He said he knew they would have been miserable, but did he really think that or was that just his own attempt to come to terms with losing her?

The more I thought about it, the less my rational mind thought I could possibly stand a chance. He would go back to her, of course he would, how could he not? I had been trying not to think all week, but all my doubts and concerns came flooding in now, in a painful rush of reality.

Love. Love might have changed things. But he hadn’t said he loved me, nor had I said so to him. Perhaps it had just been caution on my part, but I had no way to know how Jack felt. It wasn’t as though I could ask him. All I knew was that he hadn’t said the words, the thing that would have mattered, the thing you can’t take back after you’ve said it. And without the words there was still room for doubt, and my hyperactive imagination soon filled that space with more doubt than I could dismiss.

The whole week had been such a bizarre interlude anyway. The way we had discovered one another, the walks through town at night, the dinners and dancing and all those hours in Jack’s suite. Not wasted time, I thought, telling myself so with fierce determination. I had learned about myself, and that kind of learning is never wasted.

I had learned, above all else, to never try to worship close-up what I was already perfectly happy worshipping from afar. Things are never as good close-up. But because it had all been so out of character for me, so completely unexpected and unprecedented, maybe I could tell myself it was like a dream, a very strange and sometimes wonderful dream, from which I was now required to wake up.

I almost made it to bed safely. If I had gotten to sleep it would have been all right, I think I really might have made it through the night and through the trip home the next day without breaking down entirely. But there on the bed we’d shared the night before was the t-shirt Jack had tossed aside that morning, deciding to wear something else, and when I’d asked if I could have it to sleep in tonight since it looked so soft—smelled like Jack—he’d grinned down to his dimples and said “Sure” and given me a kiss like heaven. He had acted so thrilled that I wanted his old, soft shirt to sleep in.

Now I clutched the shirt to me, foolishly slipped it on and hugged it around my body, and the tears rolled and rolled as I sobbed my broken heart to sleep in a wet spot tainted with salt and poisonous regret.

* * * * *

If I hadn’t cried myself to sleep wanting to erase the week, I might have been in a more decisive or at least semi-lucid mindset when I woke a few hours later to the feel of Jack spooned alongside my back, stroking my body through the worn cotton of his own shirt and crooning nonsense in my ear.

As it was, I was far from lucid, mentally and physically exhausted from the week and from my earlier tears, my brain feeling blank and incapable of thought. If I thought of anything at all, it was that this was to be the last time. I’d been granted it, for whatever reason, and it shouldn’t be wasted. I felt empty and wanted only to be filled up, even if it couldn’t last, even if I knew deep down I would surely regret it later.

And even if I had wanted to pull away, to argue or resist, Jack was hardly giving me time to consider those options. They must have switched to some stronger stuff than wine at some point after I left, because I could smell the alcohol on his breath, taste it when he pulled me over to kiss me. I could feel his erection already firm against my hip, and it was with a certain amount of vicious spite that I kissed him back, thinking about the possible origins of that erection.

Of course he couldn’t have maneuvered a way to sleep with Marisa. But here, back in his assigned room, he had
me
. Convenient, already-broken-in me. And why not? Once more for old time’s sake.

When I bit his lip too hard, he winced and pinned me down more firmly with his legs and one arm, only shifting his hand enough to shove the t-shirt up roughly, exposing my breasts. Then it was back to gripping my forearm, tacking it to the mattress with his superior strength and weight, and I got the bite back on the sensitive skin just under my nipple. My already traitorously hard nipple. He rubbed his cheek against the tip, the day’s worth of beard rasping at the sensitive flesh until I squirmed and inadvertently knocked him in the chin with my elbow.

“I’m not getting the cuffs and shit out, Katie, just hold
still
, damn it.”

I couldn’t believe myself. Or maybe I could. Maybe it was just the clue I needed about who I was that all I could do was fall motionless and say, albeit miserably, “Yes Sir.”

“Good girl.” His voice was a little slurred, the result of all the liquor. It surprised me, to the extent I had the
capacity
to feel surprise just then. I had never heard he was much of a drinker. He didn’t seem the type.

He took me—and it wasn’t all that much fun. He’d told me not to move so I stayed put, and he hitched my legs up and pushed his way inside without any of the usual formalities. I was aroused but not quite enough, and the sting of his entry woke me up all the way. More awake than I really wanted to be. His usually bright features were clouded, either by the alcohol or—I tried not to think it, but the thought worked its evil way into my brain anyway—because he was trying to envision someone else. Someone who had perhaps indicated a willingness to accept a relationship on
his
terms, were she given another chance.

I hated that just watching him work his way deeper, brow furrowed in concentration, one hand reaching out to tweak at my bared nipples, was turning me on. I grew slicker and he thrust deeper—and my self-loathing was sealed when I realized I was asking him for permission to come.

Permission he granted carelessly, as though it really didn’t matter much to him, because he was already at the end of his own stamina. He shot off inside me, filling my body and leaving me just as empty as before. He fell over me, catching himself on his elbows, and murmured my name and an apology into my mouth as he kissed it. And then, before he’d even caught his breath, he pulled off to one side and fell asleep with my hair caught painfully under his heavy shoulder.