While You Were Gone: A Thought I Knew You Novella (14 page)

“I’m Logan,” he said. Instead of shaking her hand, he touched her arm on the pretense of leaning in to make himself heard over the music. He smelled like vanilla and something earthy, like musk.

Chris always smelled of cologne.
Well, when he doesn’t smell of perfume.
She wrinkled her nose at the thought.

“Something I said?” asked Logan, raising his eyebrows.

Maggie shook her head, vowing to put Chris out of her mind for a few hours. She motioned for Logan to accompany her to the bar. She held up two fingers to the bartender. He pushed two beer bottles, slick with sweat, across the scratched wood top. She took a long pull from hers, and Logan watched her. She liked how she felt, showing off for a man.

Logan gave her a lazy grin and tossed his credit card down on the bar. “You’re married?” He held her left hand and gently tapped her diamond ring. His hand was warm and soft, and it lingered, his thumb running up and down her palm until she pulled away.

“Yes… but he’s… we’re…” She couldn’t explain what she didn’t understand. “He cheated on me. We’re not the greatest anymore.”

“When did this happen?” Logan asked.

It struck her as funny that they were having an incredibly intimate conversation at full volume, trying to be heard over the thrumming beat. “Two years ago.” She shrugged.
Eh, no big deal. My husband slept with his secretary. Of all the fucking clich
é
s.

“I’ll bet he regrets that.” Logan leaned in.

His dark hair tickled her cheek, his breath a sugary combination of beer and peppermint. For a moment, Maggie thought about what it would be like to kiss him. About how that beer and peppermint would pop on her tongue, sweet and bitter. About how hard his chest would feel naked under her nails as they formed half-moon indentations in his skin.
Does he have chest hair like Chris does?

“If he did, he didn’t show it.” She waved her hand around in a circle.
Change the subject
.

But Logan didn’t change the subject. “Why would anyone cheat on you?”

The pick-up line was contrived, and she rolled her eyes. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“Oh, you’re beautiful. But I think you know that.”

“Don’t you know? For every beautiful woman, there’s a man out there who’s sick and tired of putting up with her shit.”

And that was how it all started.

The texts came at all hours of the day and night. With each trill of her phone, she’d smile. Chris never questioned her, either because he didn’t care or because he assumed it was Helen or Mika.

At first they were generic:
I miss your laugh
or
I want to see you
or
I want to kiss you.
Later, after she’d started confiding in him:
I hate that you’re alone again tonight
or
does Chris know how lucky he is?

That night at the bar, they hadn’t kissed. Flirted, yes. Technically, had Maggie cheated on her husband? No. But she felt like a kid again, sending notes in junior high. Back before cell phones, a folded note would make its way across the room, and she had known it was for her. Scrawled in boyish handwriting was
Meet me after school
. Memories of fumbling kisses, with her back against the rough brick school, and the inexpert thrusting of tongues that made her gag.

Now the boy was Logan, and the idea was tantalizing. She thought about that constantly, the initial contact of a first kiss and the soft give of his lower lip between her teeth. She thought about the deep white scar under his chin.
Where had he gotten it?
She wanted to run her fingernail along the raised flesh as her lips grazed the hollow between his neck and his ear, his breath hot on her cheek.

She saved all the texts in a file on her phone but deleted them from her incoming messages, just in case. She didn’t even remember giving Logan her number, but both Helen and Mika had denied having any part in that. Maggie chalked it up to having too much to drink.

When the first one had come, it said,
Hello, beautiful. I’m not sick of you. In fact, I can’t get you off my mind.

Her palms had sweat, not with excitement, but with fear.
Who the hell wrote that?
Then, with a flash, she remembered and wrote back.
I’m spoken for, you know. Not very gentlemanly.

He’d replied,
I’m not having very gentlemanly thoughts about you.

And much later:
Can we meet up again?

That one gave her pause because she had no plans to avenge Chris’s affair. After a year of marriage counseling, they had decided to move forward, not back.

Dr. Deets’s words came back to her. “You can’t change the past, but you can change how your past impacts your future.”

She remembered the family counselor’s small, almost childlike frame folded into an oversized red leather chair, his thin legs effeminately crossed. His relentless throat clearing and nasally, know-it-all drone had made Maggie’s eye twitch. He talked about control and loss of control. She waved him off and refused to go back.
Pompous. Arrogant.

The idea of seeing Logan again sent a current through her spine and down her legs.

Maybe? Let’s just chat for now.

Tease.

She would wonder later what would have happened if she hadn’t played with him. But she was having too much fun.

“Right, honey?” Chris was looking at Maggie, his hand on her knee. His voice brought her back to the present.

He and Maggie were at the nursing home, visiting Chris’s mom, Gale, like they did every Sunday. Five years earlier, Gale had been the victim of a stroke that left her mostly paralyzed and mute. Chris’s dad had already died in a car accident, so his mom was all he had left.

“What? I’m sorry.” Maggie shook her head, loosening the cobwebs.

Gale slumped sideways in her wheelchair, her white hair a patchy halo of fuzz that barely covered the crown of her head. She always wore the same white dressing gown and peep-toed bedroom slippers, her toenails a shocking shade of pink that never seemed to fade or chip. Maggie spent a large part of every visit analyzing her toenail polish. What was it that made it so resilient? The lack of any foot activity? That must have something to do with it. She couldn’t figure out who painted them. The nurses? Seemed unlikely with their proficient manner, clipped sentences, and clicking pens.

Chris laughed heartily, phony and loud. “Your head is in the clouds lately! I was telling Ma that we’d talked about trying for another baby.”

Her head snapped up. “What? We never said that. Chris, she can’t hear you anyway.” She regretted saying that when his face transformed and hardened with… What? Anger, embarrassment?

Then he said softly, to her, not his mom, “We did say that, a few weeks ago. Remember?”

Chris had come home from happy hour one Friday night, half-drunk on whiskey and talking a mile a minute. If she hadn’t known him, she would have sworn he was on something. He insisted that he could tell that that time would be different; they would get pregnant and the baby would live. She nodded while she made dinner, sick to death of the conversation. He pressed against her backside, his hand sliding up the front of her shirt to clumsily fondle her breast. As if sex was in their rotation. The initiative was whiskey fueled, and that pissed her off. She shrugged him off until he stomped away, angry at her, angry at the world.

“Now isn’t the time to talk about this.” Maggie blew out a breath, and Gale moaned softly from her chair—not out of pain or need but because that was just what Gale did.

When they got up to leave, they mechanically kissed her cheek good-bye, and the nurse wheeled her away. Back to her room or maybe to dinner. They didn’t ask, and no one told them.

“We did say we would try again soon,” he said about five minutes into the drive home.

He’d rested his right hand on the console between them, and Maggie stared at it, thinking about how she used to love his hands. Large with square, neatly trimmed nails. For a second, she remembered how his hands used to feel on her body.

“We didn’t say that, Chris, you said that. You were drunk and wanted to get laid. Which is disgusting that you would use a baby to get laid.”

“Okay, well first,” he began, his jaw working, “it has been a ridiculously long time. Second, I had no intention of ‘using’ a baby. Yes, I was drunk, but the alcohol made me say what I really want.”

“You really want to try for another baby?” Maggie was incredulous. Hadn’t that fight ended over a year ago, when they’d lost the fourth one?

“Yes. I do.”

Maggie listened to the steady hum of the wheels on the highway. As they pulled in the driveway, he opened his mouth. Maggie held her breath, the air in the car thick with unmet expectations. Her phone trilled. She picked it up and looked at the screen.

What are you wearing
?

She smiled and typed back. Chris glanced over, but the spell was broken, the wall resurrected. Maggie tapped his hand lightly before climbing out of the car.

“Pizza?” she asked, and he nodded. That was their Sunday ritual.

Chapter Two

Chris

N
ot a day went by that Chris didn’t think about how he’d paralyzed a man. The man’s name was Derek Manchester, and Chris had had at least four inches and thirty pounds on him. At the time Chris put him in a wheelchair, he was a hot-headed boy. Chris liked the girl on Derek’s arm, and in the brash way of college fraternity boys everywhere, Chris decided he was entitled to her. He hadn’t known Derek before that night, and he knew little about him after that night, but he’d spent an inordinate amount of his life consumed with him.

Chris had smiled and flirted with the girl for the whole evening, across the crowded bar, before making his move when Derek went to the men’s room.

“Why are you with that jerk?” He had expected her to swoon. She didn’t.

She’d lifted one shoulder and gave him a small, teasing smile. “He’s not a jerk. Well, not all the time.” She giggled, touched his bicep, and bent her head forward, her long black hair tickling his arm.

He’d moved in, leaning to whisper in her ear, and he heard Derek’s voice behind him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man?”

Chris had smiled as he turned around, a slow, cocky smile, and shrugged.
Stealing your girl, you asshole
. The blow to his left cheek caught him off guard, and he staggered backward.
The motherfucker hit me
. He shook his head, and when his vision cleared, the rage set in. Derek backed away slowly, his face still menacing. Chris advanced and swung, controlled and powerful. One right hook, and in the freakish way the world works, he connected with the soft spot directly under his jaw. Derek’s head turned lightning quick at an unnatural angle, and he dropped like a ragdoll to the floor. When the bartender shouted, “He’s dead!” Chris repeated like a mantra,
It was just one punch!

But he wasn’t dead. Chris had broken his neck. The doctors called it a million-to-one shot, or at least that’s what his fraternity brothers had told him when they came to visit him—that one awkward visit after he was expelled but before he went to jail.

Maiming
. That was the charge. As if he was a feral cat.

He had done his time—his maiming charge—and was out in less than a year. Not quite a year of his life in exchange for Derek’s whole life. With one punch to the wrong part of the jaw, Chris traded his plan of being an engineer for a chance with a girl with long black hair and a nose ring.

When he drove his truck into the lot of Carmichael Construction every morning at five-thirty and made his way to his trailer, with his little desk and small filing cabinet, he did it with his head bent low. His back was hunched by an invisible backpack heavy with a lifetime supply of guilt and resignation.

Certain days of his life, he had been genuinely happy, but Derek was always there, fraying the boundaries of his mind. On his wedding day, Chris tied his bow tie and looked in the mirror, alone for the first and last time all day. He found himself thinking not of his lovely bride, tucked into the room next door, but of Derek Manchester. Would he ever tie a bow tie? Marry a beautiful woman? Or any woman?

Those thoughts were Chris’s lifetime sentence.

Chris sat at his desk on Monday morning, shuffling estimates from one side of his desk to the other, squaring the edges of the pink copies. They were estimates he had given weeks ago but had yet to receive a call back. He had some pride in his job. He built things—sometimes big things like parking garages, sometimes just a roof over a family’s head. Mostly it was corporate, the “moneymakers” as Ed Carmichael liked to say. Chris was Ed’s foreman, his “right-hand man.” That meant Chris worked, and it seemed as though Ed did not. But Ed’s name hung on the sign, so most of the time, Chris took it with a resigned shrug—like he took most things.

He made his way across the trailer to the other desk. His notepad had less than five pages left, and Tracy used to keep the new ones in her top drawer. Since he’d let go of Tracy, he was stuck being a foreman and a secretary—one man in a trailer with two desks.

“Shoulda kept your pecker in your pants, then,” Ed had said when Chris tried to ask for a new secretary. He’d hooted as if he told the funniest joke on earth. Chris hadn’t laughed.

The phone rang, and Chris picked it up, punching the
Line 1
and then the
Line 2
button. “Hello? Hello?” He wasn’t sure if he was on line one or line two, and he muttered
hell
under his breath.
How hard is it to use a damn telephone?

“Hi, it’s me.” Maggie’s voice was low and soft, and for the first time in a long time, she sounded… happy. Affectionate.

His breath caught. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?” The softness in her voice seeped out.

“I don’t know. You don’t call me at work. Usually, anyway. What’s up?” He was shooting for lighthearted, leaning back in his chair.

“Nothing. I wanted to know if you wanted to go out to dinner tonight. We haven’t done that in a while, and I have off tomorrow…”

“Um, we can. But I don’t have off tomorrow.” He pushed his fist against his forehead.
Jesus Christ, it’s only dinner. Shut up!
He never knew setting up a date with his wife would be so hard. He remembered their first date happening easily, but lately, their conversations had come in fits and starts, a stutter step on repeat.

“Well… We can do it Friday, I guess. It was a dumb idea.”

“No! It’s a good idea. Why are you awake?” It wasn’t even six a.m.

She sighed, a puff of frustration. “I had a nightmare, and I can’t get back to sleep.”

Early morning nightmares had always plagued Maggie. Her arms and legs would tangle in the sheets, punching and kicking, as she yelled profanities at imaginary intruders. Between her nightmares and Chris’s insomnia, it was a wonder anyone ever slept at all in their house. At least a baby would have given them something to do at night. The thought flitted across his mind, stabbing and painful.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He glanced at the clock. He had twenty minutes to load up the truck before the rest of the crew arrived.

“No, I’ll let you go.” Her tone was clipped. “See you tonight, okay?” She was gone, just like that—his ethereal wife. He hung up, knowing he could never quite catch her, but also that he could never stop trying.

Two guys showed up late. Ed called Chris’s phone every twenty minutes, demanding information that was in Chris’s trailer, a mere fifty feet from Ed’s office yet miles away from Chris. When Chris got back to his desk, he sat and listened to seventeen voice mails, taking careful notes on a pink “While You Were Out” pad. He delivered Ed’s in person, trying not to appear as insulted as he felt. After locking up the trailer for the night, Chris climbed into his truck and headed home under the same grayish-pink sky he’d seen when he drove in.
Is it dawn or dusk?
And then he realized that the answer didn’t really matter either way.

“Hi!” Maggie’s voice had an uncharacteristic perky lilt, and her face was sunny.

She leaned into him, up on her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek, initiating physical contact for the first time in months. Her lips felt cool, and he touched his face. His fingers came away sticky with lip gloss. The knot in his gut uncoiled.

“Are we still going out?” She turned back to the sink to finish drying dishes.

She was dressed up to go out, and he placed a hand between her shoulder blades. Her back was hot, and he fought the urge to grab her waist and pull her against him.

“Do you want to?” Chris imagined her smile. He studied the molded curves of her back, the rounded dip into her bottom. He envisioned her legs under her fitted jeans, lean and strong. He inched closer, closing the gap between them, until he breathed in the scent of her hair—a heady floral aroma he couldn’t name but was intimately familiar with.

“I think so. We should, don’t you think?”

He didn’t have an answer because he didn’t know the right one.

She faced him and continued talking, apparently not needing his answer. “I want out of this purgatory.”

Chris studied the tile floor, the twelve-by-twelve squares like a Minesweeper game. He chose to stand still, waiting for the detonation. She cleared her throat.

“Does that mean you want out of the marriage? Or you want out of the way we’ve been?” he asked neutrally.

“Either way, I kind of don’t care anymore. But I can’t keep hating the man I’m living with. The man I’m
married to.
”

He was shocked by that word: hate. He hadn’t known that was there. She stepped into his space. With her hands resting on his shoulders, she leaned into him, pushing her lips against his. Her body was soft and warm, and the unexpected touch ignited him. All thoughts of his day, Derek Manchester, and Ed Carmichael vanished. Vestiges of frustration were buffed out and made smooth by Maggie’s mouth on his. All he could think about was how good she felt and how much he’d forgotten that.

“Except…” She breathed, her hands lifting his shirt and seeking out his skin. “I don’t think I actually hate you. So, that’s a problem.”

He pushed her back against the sink. She eased him back with her hand and gave him a small, sly smile. In that instant, she looked like his old Maggie, before all the babies, before his mistake, before anger etched her face. She clasped his hand and traced circles in his palm, sending shivers down his spine. He closed his eyes, exhaling.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she whispered.

Afterward, they lay entwined, their skin cool and clammy. He twirled her hair, a strand of silken gold, impossibly pure and clean against the backdrop of his stained palm. She sat up, rupturing their cocoon. He tried to pull her back. She resisted, her head turned away from him.

He felt his control slipping. “Why? This feels so good. Please don’t shut me out again, like you always do.” He hated the whine in his voice, but he refused to go back to the tundra.

“This doesn’t fix everything,” she said. Her voice held no malice, none of her usual contempt. Her words were simply out there, true and plain as fact.

“No.” He knew that was true, but their current détente had the fragile feel of a cold war. One wrong move, and everything could blow the hell up. “But it’s a start. Right?”

“Yes…” Her hair fell over her face, rendering it unreadable. As if it was ever really readable. “I don’t know how to erase it all, Chris. Even now, two years later.”

“We can’t erase it. Like Dr. Deets said, we have to move forward.”

“It’s like my mind won’t let me forget. I start to, and then I think about her. About Tracy. Even now, she’s here.” Maggie shifted away from Chris, tucking the blanket up around her chest.

“Okay, what do I have to do? How long do I pay for it? Forever?” He pounded the mattress with his fist.

“Well, what if I can’t get over it?”

Her face was open, and to him, that was a step forward. He held her hand, softly thumbing the spot between her thumb and forefinger. He studied her long thin fingers, adorned with a delicate solitaire diamond and a plain band. “Then, I guess, I live with that. That’s my cross to bear.”

He felt the burden of more guilt suffocating him in the dusk of their bedroom. They sat like that, holding hands, for a while. Chris wondered if they got up and continued about their life, would they ever get back to that place again?

Way back when, before all the babies, before Tracy, he could lie in bed for hours next to Maggie, her legs wound around his. One gray February day, probably seven years ago, they had declared one day
Naked Tuesday
. Both Maggie and Chris had played hooky from work and burrowed under the heavy down quilt, emerging only to grab food and smuggle it back to the bedroom. Chris remembered Maggie diving under the warm blankets with a box of Ritz crackers, squealing from the frigid apartment air. That day seemed a million years ago, as if it had happened to two different people.

Then, fleetingly, his mind went to Derek, as it so often did.

Maggie looked up, met his eyes, and smiled. A real, genuine smile. “Did you still want to go out?”