Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,44
place her, to remember the eleven-year-old version of this woman who had trained beside me at the stables. Lila was looking at Daniel, whom she clearly recognized.
“Lila, right?”
“I’ll get the car.” I heard the quiet words before Daniel stepped away. I looked after him for a moment but then turned my attention back.
“Yes!” The woman was smiling brightly, as if happy to be remembered as well. “What have you been up to? We’re the same age, right? I just graduated Stanford. Going to Cornell Med in the fall. Really, it’s so good to see you!”
The onslaught of words overwhelmed me but I returned the smile. The night felt overly warm, and my chest tight.
“I just finished school also.”
“Oh, you know, I’m keeping you,” Lila exclaimed, glancing at the street where Daniel waited by the car. “I’m so sorry, but we should catch up. How long will you be here? Or, I’m in Manhattan now, so next time you’re there?”
“Yes, I’d love to catch up.” We exchanged numbers and then Lila grabbed me in a hug.
“Really, we have to talk. I always wondered where you went.”
As I climbed into the waiting car, I swallowed back the bittersweet emotion. I hadn’t realized until then how much I’d denied my childhood once I’d moved to Arizona, tried so hard for so many years to not have anyone know I was the daughter of that Mark Anderson. But Lila was someone who remembered the good stuff.
I had told Daniel that I wasn’t hiding. Now, I wondered what life would be like if I never did and never had.
• • •
The next day, he took me sailing. I had missed this. Forgotten the enjoyment of it in my youth. There was this other way of being, this intense way that Daniel lived and it made every situation feel more. Not a single breath was wasted. After he’d set our course, and the boat simply moved, smoothly, I crawled over to him, rested in his arms. The salt air, the warmth, lulled me into thinking that life was perfect. That this moment could be always.
Out of the stillness, he lifted his hand, ran his fingers along the v-shaped neckline of my blouse, grazing the swell of my breast over my demi-bra.
“I’ve always wanted a life of action, an intense urban experience that inspires me,” I said, my words slow, rolling with the motion of the boat on the water, “that makes me feel as if I’m in the thick of things.”
“Yet you’re choosing to go off into some isolated forest,” he pointed out. He molded his hand over my breast and despite the pleasure of his touch, I looked at that place as if it weren’t my body he held.
“Only for five months.”
His hand moved again, lifted, and he continued his stroking, searching motion. I sighed, feeling my desire build, collect in all the places where he touched, in all the places I knew he would soon touch.
“What will you do after that?”
“Move to Manhattan, most likely,” I said, not nearly as interested in the conversation I had begun as I was in the fact that he was lifting the hem of my shirt, baring my stomach to the warmth of his hand and the sun. “But what I was going to say, was that right now, I like this pace. I like this.”
“I think you like being my girlfriend,” he teased. But his words were the antithesis of teasing. They made me all scared and tense because he couldn’t possibly be giving the idea any weight. Even with some of my clothes in his dresser on Charles Street. Even though we’d shared a bed the greater portion of the last month. I’d just tried to end this crazy amorphous thing we had, but now I was here with him and he was calling me his girlfriend. Was this a goodbye weekend or a prelude to something more? How could there possibly be more between us?
“Right. About that … girlfriend?” I said it lightly, matching his tone, as if I were amused by the very idea.
“Is that the label you prefer?”
Girlfriend. Mistress. Lover. I ran through all the terms, all their connotations, weight and meaning. Lover was the only one that allowed us to be free, that allowed this strange relationship we had to exist without conflict. There was no future for us. The word lover accepted that.
“Not really,” I said softly. “But I don’t care all that much what people think.”
“People will think, will ask