Just One Night 1_ The Stranger(39)

I don’t respond. The conversation we had been engaged in ripped at my gut but this conversation is untenable. I know why Dave and I are having problems; that’s on me. But to try to blame this new distance between us on Melody would be worse than anything I have done so far. And it would be worse than all her sins combined.

“You were thirteen when she died,” Dave is speaking slowly as he tries to remember the details of a story that I so rarely tell. “It was a suicide.”

“No,” I spit out the word vehemently. “It was an accidental overdose.” I say this as if that isn’t a kind of suicide. Cocaine, ecstasy, tequila, men: my sister used them all to feed her self-destruction. Every line, shot, and brutal crush was no better than a violent slash of a knife.

And yet she said she loved them all. Her love of excess and recklessness was only matched by her hatred of structure and tedious commitments.

She accidentally overdosed. My mother said she brought it on herself.

Dave doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want this to be a monologue. He had hoped I would hold his hand. He wants me to once again lean into his embrace and tell him he knows me better than anyone else.

But this was not a reminder that will lead to that kind of affection. At the moment it’s hard for me to think of him at all because, at the moment, I’m not his fiancée. I don’t even know him. We’ve never met.

At the moment I’m nine years old and I’m staring out my bedroom window at a girl named Melody who can’t stop dancing. She’s dancing in the front yard to music no one else can hear.

It will be the last time I will ever see her. She came home to ask our parents for money and when they refused to open the door, refused to even acknowledge her presence, she had danced.

But I’m not going to talk about those things to Dave or anyone else. Instead I drag myself back to the present and pull my lips up into a small, practiced smile before I wrap my hand around his knee and stare up into his eyes. “This isn’t about her,” I say. “It’s not even about us. It’s about me being ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” he repeats as if struggling to find a way to apply the word to me.

“You were right to walk out on me that night,” I continue. “I wasn’t acting like myself. Wedding jitters maybe. But it wasn’t right.” I lean into him, the way I used to, the way he wants me to. “There’s no percentage in being crazy or out of control.”

He brushes my cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met in my life. You’re my Kasie, and you’re perfect. I said you weren’t that night we ate at Scarpetta’s. I lied.”

“No, that was the truth. But I’m sure there have been other, nicer lies that you’ve told me over the years. We all lie, occasionally,” I say. “And we make mistakes.”

“I suppose so,” he says uncertainly.

“Maybe what differentiates the good from the bad is that only some of us . . . when we lie, when we make a mistake . . . maybe some of us can pull it together and . . . and fix things.”

Again I feel the tears well up as he kisses my cheek but this time I let a few slip from the corners of my eyes and I don’t protest as he tastes them.

You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met in my life.

His words . . . and I like them. I like the idea of being completely unique.

It means that I’m nothing like her at all.

His kisses have traveled up to my forehead and then down again to my mouth. I don’t object as he takes the port glass out of my hand and places it on the coaster resting on the coffee table. I don’t pull away as he unzips my dress, pulls it off my shoulders, cups my breasts. I don’t challenge him as he cautiously removes my dress entirely and folds it over the arm of a chair along with his own sports coat and shirt. I don’t say no as he lowers me down on that sofa and lays on top of me, careful, oh so careful not to hurt me, bruise me, cause me even a moment of discomfort. He cherishes me. I feel it as he brushes his fingers over my stomach. I feel it when he kisses my hair; I feel it in the warmth of his smile. This is where I’m supposed to be. These are the rules I have chosen for my life. I had no right to offer myself to Robert Dade. He has no place in my personal life or in my thoughts.

And as Dave kisses my forehead, I try to ignore the images, the memories . . . I try to forget that only this morning I had lost control.





CHAPTER 15





DAVE STAYS OVER. Of course he does. It’s hardly the first time.

It’s just that we haven’t been spending the night together for a few weeks. I’ve forgotten the feel of it. His gentle snores are jarring to me now.