This Time Is Different Read online

  “Want a tour or are you happy?”

  “Both?” she answered with a laugh. She patted Sirius on the head and she turned to give me the stink eye, upset I’d busted up her love fest. “Mind if I take off my shoes? They’ve been killing me.”

  “They’ve been killing me, too. But probably not in the same way.”

  17

  Amy

  He held out his hand and I took it, abandoning my heels on the kitchen floor. “So, welcome to my beige house,” he said, as we walked from room to room.

  “The art is great,” I said, admiring a large abstract still life in thick, vivid paint.

  “Thanks. That was Laurie’s thing. She started taking painting classes at the community college when the girls started school. It became her passion.”

  “Any of these hers?” I felt him stutter a step and I cursed myself for asking.

  “No, these are ones she bought. Although some of the art and stuff the decorator picked out when I bought this place. I’ve got a big one of her paintings up in my bedroom. If you want to see it.”

  “I’d love to.” Never in a million years did I imagine I’d get invited into a man’s bedroom to look at a painting by his deceased wife, but it was happening.

  Up the grand and creaky staircase and down a long hall, filled with framed pictures and more art, and into his bedroom where he switched on the lights.

  “That one,” he said, pointing to a painting above his big four poster bed.

  “Oh, it’s a portrait!” I didn’t know what I’d been expecting. Probably some happy floral or unskilled abstract, but I wasn’t expecting this. The canvas stretched the width of the king bed. Impressionistic. Bold and wide strokes of color. Faces simple gestures of light and shadow. Three kids midair jumping into a pool, a woman reading a magazine on a lounge chair, and a gray-haired man standing on the edge of the pool’s deck, watering a patch of flowers.

  “It’s amazing,” I said, stepping closer to the bed to appreciate the skill. “She was super talented.”

  “Yes, she was,” he answered quietly and clearing his throat against his emotion.

  “Thomas,” I whispered, facing him and squeezing his hand, unsure of how to navigate, unsure which way was up.

  He pulled me into him. Wrapping his arms around me, and placing a firm kiss on top of my head. “Thank you for saying that. You’re awesome, you know?”

  I laughed softly with relief. The awkward moment slipping into a comfortable one but things weren’t quite as easy as they had been in the kitchen.

  “Well, now it’s only fair that if I’ve seen your reading room that I show you mine,” he said, releasing me from the hug, and leading me toward the door, our hands joined again.

  Back down the stairs we went and into a cozy room with three arched floor-to-ceiling windows. “You can’t appreciate it now because it’s dark out and it’s supposed to be the sunroom. But it overlooks the patio.” He pointed to the windows. “Those are all doors that open to the outside. And this,” he said with a sweep of his hand to the opposite wall, “is my collection.”

  Without thinking, I stepped to his books and tipped my head to the right so I could read the titles with more ease. Mysteries, thrillers, popular fiction, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times. Its banana yellow cover familiar to me from my own bedside table. I tapped its spine. “Read me your favorite.”

  I settled in on his beige sofa, tucking my feet beneath me and sipping from my glass. I was a scientist, not a poet. But I thumbed through it on a whim at a bookstore and it came home with me. The poems resonated with me, forever the girl whose mother had died when she was a teenager.

  Without a word, he pulled the book off the shelf, toed off his own shoes and joined me on the sofa. He swapped out his glass of wine for a pair of reading glasses on an end table, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his chest. I wanted to settle into him, but the awkwardness of being in his bedroom, of seeing his family captured in paint laid down by his wife, those feelings stayed with me. I was an interloper. I didn’t belong. But I pushed those thoughts out of my head as best I could, trying to enjoy this taste of physical comfort.

  “When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle.” And I knew this one. The vibrations of his voice filled my lungs, threatening to invade my heart. “Loping along beside you as you wobbled away on two round wheels.”

  I’d read this poem years ago, but it didn’t speak to me until recently when I’d stumbled upon it late one night while waiting for Grady to make curfew. This was about setting your child free into the wild world. Watching them say goodbye as they took off on their own adventure without you.

  He finished and we breathed together, and I rested my cheek on his chest. “I like that one,” I said after a minute had passed.

  “Me, too,” he said and we lapsed back into silence. “You know this book?”

  “It’s on my bedside table.”

  “Want to keep reading?”

  “If you like,” I said, letting a sip of lush wine roll around in my mouth. It was right up my alley. If he remembered from our dinner at Houston’s I was impressed. Red and full bodied and juicy. Not the under-twenty-dollars-a-bottle stuff I snagged while picking up groceries, that’s for sure.

  “Just a second.” He stood up, walked to the wall of books, and returned with the Daniel Silva I’d been reading in his hand. “Finished this yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I read it a couple of weeks ago. Where are you?” I told him that I was in South Africa in a back-alley bar. After thumbing through pages, he settled in again and began reading.

  This.

  This was my vision made real. Being read to as I leaned against his broad chest and his lazy fingers twirled through my curls. I relaxed into him, resting my head fully and gazing up at the scraped clean jaw. I trailed my index finger along the faint bruise, careful not to press on the tender skin. The slight stubble of nighttime scratched against my fingertip.

  He stopped reading and looked at me, a question in his blue eyes. A question we both hadn’t asked and both knew the answer to. A discussion that was more than words, a language in which our bodies conversed. My ability to understand epic poetry might be wanting, but I understood chemistry. And it wasn’t just fire in his eyes but an uncontrolled and uncontrollable chemical reaction, burning bright and hot and white like magnesium.

  “Kiss me,” I softly pleaded. And he did, fully, lips on mine, fingers withdrawn from my hair and exploring my sides with determination. On my back on the sofa, our mouths never parting as he slid a hand up my thigh, past my skirt and brushed the edge of my panties. I thanked Diana in my head and hoped that Thomas liked them. Based upon his growl as his fingers gripped my ass, I smiled against his mouth. Didn’t matter what panties I chose.

  My fingers found the buttons of his shirt and began to undo them, pushing his shirt open and then peeling off his white cotton T-shirt. “Well, hello,” I said to his bare chest. He wasn’t ripped like my ex was, but he was firm, lean muscle with a scattering of silver hair. He was fucking sexy.

  “Hello, yourself,” he replied as he lifted me up to tug down my back zipper.

  I wiggled to help him get me out of the fitted bodice. My soft breasts suspended by the black lace and rising up on every breath to greet him.

  “So beautiful. Amy,” he breathed, his lips on mine again as he pushed my dress over my full hips, down my legs, and finally past my toes. I hadn’t made out like this in years. No rush to the action that is married sex with a kid in the house. No greediness for the main event that I’d experienced post-divorce. This was delicious. A maddening combination of lazy and urgent. His hot skin on mine, warming away the goose bumps of excitement, of expectation. Fingers and tongue on my breasts, my nipples peaked and tight. My bra unsnapped and discarded. A slight nip of his teeth and a moan escaped from my mouth.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said, as his erection nudged against my panties. Lust dr
unk, I took his hand as he led me through the house and back up the stairs and pulled me into his bedroom.

  The air-conditioned bedspread was a cool shock against my hot skin and Thomas covered me, his strong tall body making me feel delicate. I slid my hands down from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist, dragging my nails down the soft skin of his back and pushed down his boxers. He mirrored my motions and I wiggled my hips to help him free me of my panties. Pressed skin against skin, his head at my opening, I begged for him to enter me. Pleases rushed out of my mouth but instead of pushing forward, he pushed back. Up on his knees, he leaned to a bedside table and took out a condom.

  “Are you on birth control?” he asked, ripping the purple packet open, his fingers slightly fumbling.

  The best kind, I thought with a smile. No uterus. No babies.

  “I had a hysterectomy.”

  “You’re so young,” he said, his hands pausing.

  And I laughed. “No, I’m thirty-eight. Twenty-one is young for a hysterectomy. Grady is my only for a reason.”

  “I’m sorry.” Pity was the last thing I wanted from him. I wanted to get this back on track to where I felt how he wanted me, not where I felt how he was sorry for me.

  “Don’t be. It was just my uterus and I’m alive. I’m lucky. Well, I was about to get lucky.” I laughed and pointedly looked at his hands poised over his hard cock. “And don’t think I missed your big cock reference earlier. Don’t go underselling yourself in the future.”

  18

  Thomas

  “You mean with the wine? I picked it out for you.”

  Her answer was a crooked smile and happy green eyes and a messy mass of brown hair. “Big cock, indeed,” she said as she glanced at my dick with a wink. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t heard that before, but the fucking wink. Jesus, she was fun.

  And what man wouldn’t give, well not his left nut, but maybe his little finger to have those words come from those lush lips, bright red and full from his kisses?

  I rolled the condom down my length and looked down at her body, laid out for me. Full breasts, soft stomach and hips. A body made for giving and receiving comfort and affection. If there was a hardness to Amy, I hadn’t found it yet.

  The last woman I’d dated was hard. And it wasn’t her body. It was her life that had made her hard. A toughness that didn’t appeal to me.

  I liked easy. I liked comfort. I missed that about married sex. And was surprised when I found not only comfort with Amy but laughter. A week. You’ve known her a week, my head said. But that wasn’t what I felt. A week wasn’t real. It wasn’t possible, was it?

  My mouth fell on hers again, and I lost myself in her taste, in the feel of her tongue against mine and her fingernails gently biting into my back.

  I rubbed my cock in her wet pussy, knocking on the door but not taking a step over the threshold. In answer, her fingers clawed into my ass. With my hands full of her breasts and fingers toying at her nipples, I kissed my way down her torso, the rosemary scent of her hair mixed with a gentle gardenia blossom. As I reached her stomach, she tensed.

  I pushed back and kissed her mouth, murmuring against her lips as I swept my mouth over hers. “I want to taste you. Give me your pussy.”

  Her lips bobbed on mine as she nodded and I slowly retraced my path down her body until I kissed the triangle of dark hair. Salt and tea and damp earth. Her soft smell overwhelmed me and I wanted her on my tongue. I wanted to please her. To make her come apart and put her back together. With two fingers I pushed back her lips, gently licked her from bottom to top. Licking and sucking and nibbling, her legs began to quiver.

  Pleases and yeses and mores spilled loudly from her lips, the desperation not hidden. And I fucking loved it. Loved that I was making her feel so damn good that she was shaking. That there wasn’t any pretense. She was all need and want. I felt her break under my mouth. Her fluid body frozen for a second before she tumbled over the edge with a scream. I took her mouth with mine, rolling our tongues and her taste between us, as I pushed into her. Christ, she was tight.

  Her hands clutched my ass again, urging me to give her more. To give her all of me. Her words returned and I wanted them gone. I wanted those yeses and mores reduced to nothing but moans and screams. I worked a finger in between us, looking for her clit. The moment I found it, I knew. Her head lifted off the bed and her back arched in a gasp. I patted and stroked and kneaded until nonsense once again passed through her lips. And when she shuddered, I found my own pleasure, following her over the edge.

  I settled onto my back and flipped her to lay on my chest. My breathing was fast and heavy. My fingers skated along her sweat-slick skin. The world slowly returned and I found my own words again. “I was serious about you spending the night,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, the sound deep and lazy.

  After a bit, we tumbled into the bathroom to clean up and then back into bed. This time I was mindful enough to pull back the covers before we nestled into each other and fell asleep.

  I woke up to something tickling across my shoulder and I froze. Indiana Jones hated snakes. I fucking hated spiders. Before it could bite me, I jumped out of bed. The morning light filtered in through the curtains and I realized my mistake. Not a spider, but a sleepy woman with a head full of dark curls peered up at me.

  “Morning,” she said before she laid her head back down on the pillow. “Do we have to be adults today?”

  I glanced at the clock. “Not quite yet.”

  19

  Amy

  He offered to get one of his daughter’s bathrobes, but I declined, thinking it would be weird for me to wear something of his daughter’s and betting that I couldn’t fit into it, so I happily shrugged on a Methodist Hospital T-shirt that swallowed me whole. I sat my bare ass on a stool at the island while he scrambled eggs.

  And I watched him work. Bare chested, baby blue and white striped pajama bottoms riding low on his hips. That ass. That ass I clawed into last night.

  “You’re really fit,” I said before the coffee hit my brain and it shifted into gear.

  “Thanks. Not bad for an old man, I guess.”

  “You are not old. So, you told me you like to row. Are you competitive or anything?”

  “No. Not since college. I still row every morning.”

  “That’s where the awesome forearms come from,” I said, raising my coffee mug in an appreciative toast. “Penn, right?”

  “Yeah. Philly’s a great city.”

  He plated the eggs, nabbed the toast from the toaster, and turned to face me. “Amy?” There was a pause as he took me in with his eyes. I had no clue where this was going. Was this the brush off? I hadn’t done a sleepover as an adult. Ever. Had I overstayed my welcome? Was I supposed to have said no to breakfast? “Want to play hooky today?”

  I smiled over my mug and took the offered plate. “I’d love to,” I began, relieved it wasn’t a brush off. But that left me looking for a way to gently tell him that I couldn’t hide from the world with him without it looking like I was brushing him off.

  “But we have to go be responsible citizens,” he finished for me. “I get it. I can’t play hooky either. But I’d like to play hooky with you. Just so there’s no doubt there.”

  “Grady goes camping in a couple of weeks, so I’ll have a three-day weekend.” I salted and peppered my eggs and dug in. They weren’t how my ex-made them. They weren’t all creamy and custardy. These were solid buttery chunks and they were delicious.

  “Sold. I mean, let’s do something.”

  “New Orleans,” I said on a whim.

  “Think the Holloways will send Mr. and Mrs. Methodist Hospital their itinerary? Thanks for that last night, by the way. It was weird and I probably should have handled it better by being honest.”

  “No worries. Really. I didn’t want to make her feel awkward about assuming we were together because who brings someone they met a week ago to a business dinner?” I asked with a smile before digg
ing into my breakfast.

  “This guy does, apparently.”

  “I’m glad you invited me.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Three times. Thank you,” I said, another toast with my mug.

  “Your pleasure is all mine,” he replied with a wink.

  His phone buzzed on the countertop. “Hold on a second,” he said to me, flipping the phone over to look at the screen.

  “Morning, Cassie Lassie,” he chirped into the phone. One of the twins. I nodded that I understood and slathered butter and strawberry preserves on my toast. On the greige walls hung family photos that I hadn’t looked at last night. I slid off the stool and munched my toast while looking at them. A blond woman in tennis whites that must be Laurie. At least we didn’t look alike.

  When I’d rolled out of bed this morning naked as the day I was born, I looked at the painting over the messy bed, and it caused me pain.

  It wasn’t shame. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. And it wasn’t grief. I didn’t know Laurie. Not jealousy either because I had everything I wanted. I suppose it was a certain kind of sadness. I’m sure the Germans had a word for it. Like schadenfreude but different. A long and complicated word that matched how this felt. This sadness that she missed this with him and that I was the lucky beneficiary of her loss. Mixed with a realization that no matter where things went or didn’t go with Thomas that there would always be the ghost of Laurie in our relationship and a gladness that my path had crossed with his, which was only possible at her expense.

  I jumped as Sirius brushed against my ankles. Laurie’s cat. I’m having breakfast with her husband and her cat. This time it was guilt. Unmistakably guilt that crashed down over me.