“Happy,” she repeated, smiling. “Well, that’s good. Because you deserve to be happy. We all do.”
“You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about that for a while now. And I think, what if that happiness makes everyone around you sad? Like, and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way—”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t you ever think of Richard’s wife. How sad she might be.... Of course you guys are happy together. But someone else is suffering.”
“No one should have to be with someone that isn’t in love with them—someone who’s just staying because of time and obligation, and rings, and other people’s expectations. That’s not marriage. That’s a lie. They were both suffering, putting everything they had into a relationship that was dead,” she said. “Now, I know everything I did wasn’t perfect. But at least now, that woman stands a chance of finding someone else. Of finding the love she deserves.”
“I see,” I replied carefully.
“I hope you do,” Kayla said. “Because, as I said, you deserve the same thing.”
Chapter Twenty
“When are you going to kiss me?” Dame asked softly. He was lying beside me underneath a cover on the floor of the black limousine he’d been coming to see me in since Monday. When Mr. Green opened the door to let me in, he’d whispered, “He’s still asleep,” and handed me a blanket from the trunk. I crawled up beside Dame and covered him with the blanket. While he usually woke up, he didn’t say a word. Half asleep and awake, he just opened his arms for me to lie with him.
“Kiss?” I repeated. I didn’t know Dame had woken up. I was still laying in his arms, my face up toward the glass roof where the moon was still holding on to Tuesday night.
“Yeah.”
“Dame,” I started, turning to him, “we both know I can’t do that. I’m married.... I mean, I know I’m doing this ... thing ... with you. But I’m not trying to have an affair.”
“And this isn’t an affair?”
“You know what I mean. I’m already starting to feel guilty about meeting you here. I’m terrified that someone will find out about this. That someone saw me in Atlanta or is watching us right now. And that I’ll get caught. And then what?” I said frantically. “I can’t go any farther—add anything else—because that’ll only make things more complicated in my mind.”
This was exactly what I’d grown terrified of over the weekend while Dame was away in New York meeting with studio executives. He’d called and called, mostly just leaving long messages where he wanted to talk about everything that was happening, but I couldn’t ever sneak away to answer. Evan didn’t have any meetings and slipping off to chat on the phone for even ten minutes would look suspicious. So I was forced to face Evan and get back to the custom of my marriage. We’d been arm in arm to two dinner parties, smiled and traded kisses as we watched a movie with his mother and when we went to church, sitting next to May and Jr, behind my mother and father, we just seemed like the same old us. Not sad or angry. Just us. I looked at May and knowing how angry she must’ve been at Jr, yet still she’d decided to stay with him to see it through until they found out if the baby was his, I thought that Kayla had to have been wrong in my office that Friday. It didn’t matter what I thought I was feeling, I didn’t want to make Evan suffer the way May was suffering. The way my mother had. They all deserved better. I told myself that maybe I should stop meeting with Dame. Maybe I should let it go and just focus on my life and being happy with what I’d had. Happy the way my mother told me to be—not the way Kayla explained. But when the sun went down on Sunday and I was just a few hours away from my 5 a.m. departure for the gym, I knew neither happiness would come easily.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not saying I don’t want to kiss you. I’m saying, I can’t. We both know what will happen if we kiss. And I’m not that kind of woman.... I mean, I didn’t think I was the kind of woman that would be doing what I’m doing right now, but I know I’m not the kind of woman that has sex outside of her marriage. And if you thought I was, then I’m sorry.” I sat up and pushed the cover off me.
“You think I’ve been sitting in this car every day for six hours going back and forth between the studio in Atlanta and Tuscaloosa to have sex with you?” Dame asked as I turned around to him. He was still laying down and had his arms behind his head. “When I walked out of the studio last night, there were two girls, one who was on the cover of Vogue last month, waiting for me.”
“Why are you telling me that? Am I supposed to feel bad that you had to miss that?” I imagined these beautiful, thin, and young women waiting outside the door for Dame, and immediately I felt jealous.
“I don’t need sex, Journey. I have good girls—great girls with careers and cars just like mine waiting to have sex with me. But that’s not what I need. That’s not what I want. I need and I want you.” He sat up.
“When I was in New York, man”—he laughed a bit and looked out the window at the river—“I felt like one of those fish out there that jumped out the river. Like I had to get back to you or I’d die.” Dame inched closer to me and it was like he was reading my mind. Like he had been for weeks and knew exactly how I was feeling for him, how I felt with him, because he’d been feeling the same way, too. “This isn’t a sex thing. This is a love thing,” he said, inching a bit closer and leaning his head toward mine. His lips were now just a kiss away. His brown eyes were locked and longing on mine. I felt something in my stomach flutter and then pound so restlessly that my ears began to ring. But I didn’t move. I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, feeling Dame’s breath enter into mine. And then everything, just in the one second it took for his lips to brush up against mine, became perfect. Like we’d both found a lake and were swimming deep, deep down to the bottom. His tongue stroked mine with so much passion and force that the pounding inside of me went to heat and then exploded. I felt my body pushing toward his, my mouth opening wider, begging him for just one more second in the water, to go one inch deeper. He grabbed my neck and began caressing me lightly. I just didn’t want it to stop. But then the sun, or something just as bright, pulled me up from the bottom of the lake to the surface.
On the inside of my eyelids danced spots of orange that burned so bright that I had to squint and then open my eyes to see if maybe the sun had somehow fallen into the back of the limousine.
“What’s that?” I asked after Dame had pulled away from me and was looking out of the window. I could hear a car engine rattling.
“Someone’s high beams,” he said, shielding his eyes with his hand at the window.
“A car?” I went to the window with him, but because the lights were so bright, we couldn’t see the car. Just Mr. Green’s back.
“Yes, my wife,” the voice of a man said angrily. “Get out of my way.”
“Evan!” I said, putting my hand over my mouth and looking at Dame. “It’s Evan.”
“Oh, shit,” Dame said.
“Shit,” I said, reaching for my purse.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to get out. He knows I’m in here. My car’s right outside.”