you single?” I quip and he laughs. He leans back in his seat, letting the sunbathe his face, and links his hands behind his head.
“I’m actually only recently single. But it wasn’t serious. And I haven’t seen her in almost a year.”
It’s irrational to be jealous of someone who’s name I don’t know. Especially when this man isn’t ever going to be mine. But, I am. Fiercely.
“I was almost fifteen when I finished Blackwell. I enrolled at U of H for both undergrad – where I met Tyson, incidentally,” he winks. “And then Medical school. I was twenty – two when I graduated. And by then, my brothers were old enough to move with me to New York, where I was doing my residency. I was there for four years. I got this fellowship with Baylor and this is my last year.”
“And after that?” I am blown away by how casual he is about all of the incredible things he’s done.
“I have an offer for a position at Baylor College of Medicine as Associate Professor. I’m excited. It’s kind of my dream job, but you’d think I was applying for the secret service or something.”
“So, you’re moving to Houston?” I ask, as casually as I can. Our waitress brings a pitcher and two highballs already full of mojitos and I drink half of mine down in one gulp.
“Yeah, in Houston and so, when I’m done in Colombia in about six months, I’ll be back in good old H-town.”
“Wow.”
“So, what about you? I know you got married, but like I know nothing really more than that. What happened after I left that bakery? And that guy I stabbed? You ever seen him again?”
I choke on my drink.
I Remember Everything
Stone
I stand to whack her on the back, and she holds a hand up to stop me. She clears her throat and pulls her sunglasses off to wipe her tearing eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask when she finally takes a deep breath.
“Yeah, something went down the wrong way,” she says, and I frown because she only sipped that mojito, but let it go. I rushed through my retelling of the last eighteen years. Left out details that I’d rather forget. But she looked like a deer who’d heard the cock a hunter’s rifle when I asked her the same question.
“So, tell me.”
“Not much to tell, really.” She rests her elbow on the table and leans forward to rest her chin on her linked hands. She turns her gaze skyward and presses her lips together in a thin pensive mien.
In the light of the late morning, with no make-up on, her mass of inky curls and coils piled on her head, I could be looking back in time. Time hasn’t touched her. The spray of freckles on her cheek, the soft dusky pink center of her perfect cupid’s bow mouth, the way she sways while she’s thinking – it’s all the same. And yet also brand new and exhilarating.
She’s got on this little white camisole and tiny red shorts that I’ve been imagining pulling off with my teeth.
“Well, I went to SMU, got a degree in journalism, and went to work for Wilde World’s communications department. And then, I got married. And that was kind of the end of my career because I had my daughter right away and we moved to France right after. I moved back home five years ago because honestly, I hated living in Paris. I hate that everywhere we went people thought I was my children’s Nanny. Someone even asked me “where I got them,” once. Oh, and my husband had a new mistress every so often, she’d come to dinner with her husband. I got tired of all that shit and left.” She picks at a half-eaten tortilla, and shrugs like she’s telling me about her sewing circle. “Now, I’m basically a single parent and an unofficial brand ambassador for Landel Corp and Wilde World, and that’s about it.”
I take a sip of my beer to hide my frown. Clearly that was the Cliff's Notes version. I don’t press for details she doesn’t want to give, but I ask questions that I really want answers to.
“So, besides your kids, what are you most proud of in the last eighteen years?”
“The Jezebel,” she says quickly and unequivocally.
“Like the tattoo, the one of your lower back?” Heat floods me as the memory of my hand running over it while I fucked her.