The Good Liar. Laura Caldwell
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his breathing ragged.
I turned over in my bed and lay on my stomach, still holding the phone. “Jesus, Michael.”
“I know, I know. This is the best sex I’ve had, and I haven’t even touched you yet.”
Since our date two weeks ago, Michael and I had been on the phone every night. We talked about our work, our comings and goings, our marriages, our dreams—those that had failed us and those we still had—but we also talked about how we would kiss each other if we were together; how we would do all sorts of things.
Technically, this was phone sex, a practice that had mystified me before. I mean, what’s the point? I used to think. Why not simply wait for the real deal? I hadn’t realized how much imagination was involved with phone sex. I hadn’t realized how it forced you to talk about precisely how you liked your body to be handled, your thighs to be stroked, your ear to be whispered in. And you learned from the other person what they liked as well.
While at work, as I analyzed the company’s quarterly earnings or talked to the office manager, I could not stop hearing Michael’s voice. I could not stop seeing us in bed together. Because, of all the explicit details we’d discussed, these images were as vivid as if we’d actually made love.
But now it had gone too far. Now I was mad for him.
“I don’t know if I can wait two weeks.” Michael was supposed to return to Chicago in two weeks and we would have our official second date.
“I know. I can’t wait either.”
“I’ll get a flight tomorrow morning,” Michael said.
“Thank God.”
The next night, we had dinner at Merlo, an eclectic Italian place on Maple Avenue. Our conversation never waned, nor did our intense looks across the table. Later, I walked out of the place with Michael’s arm around my back, and I was electric from just that touch.
The Gold Coast was awash with lights, but it was quiet with the post-holiday lull. A light sprinkling of snow covered the sidewalk.
“Careful,” Michael said as we walked down the restaurant’s front steps.
I stopped. Michael, who was one step below me, did the same.
“I’m sick of being careful,” I said. I grabbed his face, his warm, smooth-shaven face, and I kissed him hard. Within seconds, our bodies were pushed against each other, our arms wrapped around each other tight. I could feel my body temperature shooting high until I wanted to tear off my cashmere coat.
“Let’s go to your hotel,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“Shut up.”
In his hotel bed, Michael held himself up on his arms, gazing down at Kate. Gorgeous, smart, sexy Kate.
They were stripped of their clothes, and in fact, he felt they were both stripped of everything —every pretense or artifice. His body felt as lean and hard as it ever had, and yet his core was somehow liquid and alive. They were right on the brink, about to consummate this intangible chemistry.
He stared into Kate’s eyes—neither of them had closed their eyes tonight, even while they were kissing—and he felt the momentousness of the instant. Sex had never been like this for him. He almost laughed because they still hadn’t technically had sex yet, but this was it. This was it. That phrase kept returning to his mind. His life was different now. He was taking a step back from the Trust into a normal existence, and yet he was taking a step forward with Kate.
“Ready?” he asked Kate.
Her brown eyes stared into his—into his soul, it felt like. She didn’t say anything. Not a word. Instead, never letting her eyes stray from his, she reached for his hips. Slowly, slowly, she drew him into her.
8
Four months later
St. Marabel, Canada
“K ate, my girl, it’s your wedding!” Liza yelled, bursting through the door of the church’s anteroom. “I can’t believe you’re shameless enough to wear white.” The sides of her auburn hair were pulled back, a few wavy tendrils escaping. She wore a soft pink dress that draped over her shoulders and exposed her collarbones.
My mother shot Liza a disapproving look.
“Liza, stop,” I said, laughing. I loved when Liza was like this—funny and over-the-top—and the fact was, she was like this ninety percent of the time. The other was a serious, soulful Liza, moody and hard to reach. She rarely let anyone see that Liza.
My mom scurried around me, fluffing my dress, and pinching off a few bouquet flowers she saw as less than ideal. We were in a tiny church tucked on an angled alley street of St. Marabel. The church was where Michael came to Mass the few times a year he did so while summering in this town. Despite the fact that I hadn’t gone to Mass in years, I found the church cozy and comforting. I needed that because now that Michael was opening a restaurant here, and Michael was about to become my new husband, and all of this meant that my life was entirely new and different and unknown. Fitting that it was spring.
“I need one minute alone with my friend,” Liza said, drawing me away from my mother and against a stone wall. Her smile waned. She looked contemplative. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she said, her voice low.
“Liza. We’ve been through this.”
Liza had seemed pleased when my first date with Michael had gone so well. She seemed delighted when he came to see me again in Chicago. She sounded cautious when I went to visit him for a weekend. And when we got engaged, she was alarmed. I understood. Our relationship had progressed so rapidly, I hardly knew how to process it myself.
Long-distance relationships are the toughest breed. Michael and I fell for each other—hard—aided by the phone sex and the long weekends and the painful goodbyes that often brought me to tears. And then I couldn’t stand being away from him. It literally wrenched something inside me that I couldn’t see him, that I was forced to only hear him at night on the phone. And so our relationship had moved with electric speed. It was either that or pretend I didn’t care and try to let it grow with a slow build. But Michael wasn’t slow, at least when it came to me. He told me the first weekend I visited him that he loved me. We were in Vermont, riding horses down the back trail of his property and watching the sun sink fast over a small mountain ridge. His horse nudged up to mine. I tightened my gloved hands on the reins, surprised. Then I relaxed when I looked into his face, a face so familiar somehow.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this after such a short time,” he said. “But I have to.” He paused.
I heard a branch break somewhere in the woods, then the hum of a distant plane.
“I love you.” He said this with certainty. And certainty was a concept I hadn’t been familiar with for a long time. I’d been living with Scott, wondering and wondering and wondering—Would we have a baby? Would we last without one?
I didn’t return the sentiment that cold day in Vermont. I wanted to. But I also wanted to be smart. I wanted to take Michael’s words home and roll around in them. I wanted to see if they fit.
Yet the next day, when I was about to leave him at the ticket counter of the little airport, I felt a clutch in my chest. I would miss this man so much. And I didn’t want to miss him. I wanted to see him every morning, and every night. Before I’d met Michael, I’d honestly believed I would never feel like this again. Scott—like a thief who carries off valuables in the night—had stolen from me trust, hope, innocence, belief, all the components of first love. I had assumed the theft was complete and that I would never possess those things again. But now I had this surge in my chest, the return of feelings lost.
I dropped my bag on the concrete sidewalk. I stood on tiptoe and grabbed Michael’s face in my hands. “I