She’d been numb at first, but as she started to warm up, as her body relaxed into sleep, she’d begun to cry. Tears flowed for the work she’d done to become the best of the best—all the clients she’d wooed, the image she’d made for herself, and all the people whose public personae were tied up with hers.
She refused to shed a tear for Mark Webster and the way he’d kissed her and claimed her on the mezzanine. Not for what he’d made her want, how he’d made her forget herself and all the boundaries that kept her life neat and clean. And above all, not for the way he made her feel. Alive. Herself. Real.
Elisa came over and set the pale purple drinks down on the coffee table. Haven picked hers up and took a long slug. She’d already had two and they weren’t working the way they needed to. “Get out the computer. Let’s look at your database.”
“Haven. That’s not what you want.”
“What does it matter what I want? It’s over with Mark. He made it more than clear.”
“Have you tried getting in touch with him?”
Not till you’re ready. Not till you know what you want.
She kept hearing the way he’d described himself. Burnout, has-been, drunk, brawler, scruffy unshaven guy with shit taste in clothes. The way the world saw him, the way she’d seen him before she’d remade him. The way he believed she still saw him.
What she saw when she pictured him was the tenderness on his face when she’d told him how hard it was for her to get naked without making everything just so first. He’d said he didn’t care if she was waxed or unwaxed, if her apartment was clean or dirty, he wanted her, and he wanted her to be comfortable.
“Haven,” Elisa said patiently. “You are paying me a lot of money to fix your love life. A lot. And if you want that money not to be a total waste, I need to know what the hell is going on with Mark Webster. Aside from what the rags report, which is titillating and speculative but unsatisfying, I need you to tell me everything.”
A tear ran down Haven’s face. A single tear, which she swatted back like a bug.
“Oh, hon,” said Elisa, and she scooted over on the couch and put her arms around Haven. “You are in love with him.”
It all came out, then, all poured out, the whole story unfolding from beginning to end in its shameful beauty and chaos.
Charme, where Mark Webster had been his scruffy, combative self and Haven had not hated him nearly as much as she’d expected to.
The barbershop and the department store, Mark’s unavoidable male beauty emerging from the layers of defense he’d piled over himself—the long hair, the shaggy almost beard, the awful clothes. And, as if it, too, had been hidden in there, his charm, the light in his eyes, the way he seemed to see through her—all the best of Mark rising to the surface.
The night at Village Blues, when she’d seen what all of that charm and light could do. When she’d seen inside him. When he’d gotten inside her.
The music lesson, when she’d understood how much he had to give to the world and she’d seen how deeply he cared about his father.
Their meeting with Pete in her office and their explosive encounter after he left. The way she’d tried to reduce what happened between them, to make it manageable. To put it in a box and tie it up neatly with a ribbon so it wouldn’t break out and overwhelm her.