Low Pressure

“Are you sure you want to do that? It’s been in your family forever.”

“It holds as many painful memories for us as good ones.”

“What about the Georgetown house?”

She hugged herself. “Knowing that Ray Strickland had been inside it, lurking in my closet, handling my things—I could never spend another night there, so I bought out my lease. I’d rented it furnished. It’s fortunate that I never completely unpacked my personal belongings.”

“So that leaves New York. When do you go back?”

That he could ask so dispassionately was crushing, but she kept her voice level. “Actually, I haven’t decided where I want to light. My apartment up there isn’t really my home. It’s a solid investment. I’ll keep it as a pied-à-terre, but—”

“A pita what?”

She smiled. “A place to stay when I have to go to New York for business.”

“You’re gonna keep writing?”

“Strictly fiction next time,” she said ruefully. “But I can write anywhere.”

“Is that why you called me? You want me to fly you around till you see someplace you like?”

“No,” she said slowly, “I called you because it appeared that you were never going to call me. I figured that if I ever wanted to see you again, I’d have to invent a reason.”

He shifted his weight in his chair. He propped one foot on his opposite knee, then immediately returned it to the floor. He ran his hand over the length of his necktie as though smoothing it down, although it didn’t need to be.

Reading the signs of his unease, she asked, “Is this where you’ll say all the things that guys say when they don’t really mean them?”

“No.”

“You came on strong until I shared your bed, Dent. You broke down barriers that no other man had been able to break down. Was winning that prize all it meant to you? Were my orgasms trophies?”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “No.”

She continued looking at him and then raised her shoulders, silently asking, Then, what?

He fidgeted some more and finally said, “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Don’t know how to do what, exactly?”

“Be a… a half of something. A partner, or boyfriend, or significant other, or whatever you want to call it. And that’s presumptuous for me even to say, because that might not be at all what you have in mind for me. Us.

“But, if it is, I’m telling you, fair and square, that I’ll probably suck at it. And I’d hate that. Because I wouldn’t want to be the asshole who hurt you. Again. More than you’ve already been hurt. You deserve to be happy.”

“Would you be happy?”

“If what?”

“If you were a half of something, a partner, boyfriend, significant other, or whatever.”

“With you?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know how to answer because I’ve never done it. All I know is that when I left you here last week, and it looked like everything was going to work out okay, I thought the best thing I could do for you was to back off and let you get on with your life. Swear to God, it was a sacrifice because I still wanted to be all over you. And I could have been. And I knew it. But I didn’t think it would be the best thing for you. So I left, thinking, ‘Well, take a bow, Saint Dent. You’ve done a good deed.’ I’ve never felt that good about a decision. Or that lousy.”

He left the chair and went to stand at the window that afforded a view of the hotel’s landscaped gardens and the river beyond. “I’ve thought about you every freakin’ minute. My apartment was crap before, but I really can’t stand it now, because everywhere I look, I see you. It’s gotten so bad I’ve spent the last two nights in the hangar. Gall isn’t speaking to me.”

“Because you slept in the hangar?”