Laura Caldwell - Red Hot Lies

Lucy brightened. “I’d love to!”

“I wish I could ask you to our house…” I squeezed Grady tighter, willing him to stand there and look pretty. “But we’re in the middle of a renovation. It’s complete chaos.”

“Oh, come to our place. We’re right off of Fullerton.” She named the address. “What days are good for you?”

“Wednesdays?”

“Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“No, that’s great, actually.”

Mayburn was going to love me. “One o’clock?” It wasn’t like I had to go to work.

“Great!” Lucy said, her eyes bright. Honestly, the girl was the cutest person I’d ever met.

She pulled out her cell phone. “What’s your number?”

“Uh…” I panicked. What would Mayburn tell me to do here? Give her a fake one? But then what if she called about our playdate? And wasn’t that playdate the main reason I was here? I thought about my voice mail message, which only mentioned my first name.

I noticed Grady and Lucy looking at me strangely. “Uh…” I said again, and finally gave it to her.

She dialed it, and my phone started to ring. “There,” she said with a pleased grin, clicking her phone off. “Now you’ve got mine, too.”

“Thanks,” Grady said to Lucy. “It’ll be nice for Izzy and our daughter to have some new friends.” His hand had moved up to my rib cage, and he held me with a startling familiarity.

The woman came back with my credit card and a slip for me to sign.

“I should make the rounds,” Lucy said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Nice to meet you guys, and thanks so much.” She beamed a lovely smile at Grady.

“No problem!” He squeezed me tighter around the waist.

And then, as soon as Lucy was gone, “my husband,” seemingly without a moment’s hesitation, pulled me gently through the glass doors, and once outside, turned me to face him, slipped both hands around my back…and kissed me.

Later, I would think of my mother’s words when she told me about that first night with Forester-And then he kissed me. I’d like to tell you that I resisted. But I didn’t. My mother said that Forester had walked away then.

But that’s not what happened with Grady.

It was as if something was released inside me with that kiss-something primal and passionate and angry. And it only made me want to kiss him more.

He drew away from me for a minute and looked at my face, trying to read it, but I just pulled his head back toward mine and kissed his lips that were so different from Sam’s-wider, fuller. He kissed different from Sam, too. There was a hunger in Grady’s mouth that could only be delivered with a first kiss.

A logical voice inside my head was now shouting, Stop! You’re just exhausted. You don’t know what you’re doing!

But I knew exactly what I was doing-I was obliterating the week and whatever Sam might have done. Grady’s kisses seemed to suck something out of me-the grief, the worry, the stress, the confusion-leaving behind an undeniable desire that managed to easily drown out the logic.

“Let’s go somewhere.” He took my hand. “Your place?”

A sliver of guilt sliced through my desire. “No, I couldn’t.”

“My place?”

I felt more desire getting cut away. “I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be doing any of this.”

“Fuck it. Come with me.”

He got my coat, pulled me into Jilly’s, a jazz bar only steps from Prada. Inside, it was dark, the walls deep-red. A sax player was blaring.

Grady found a corner table, ordered two gin martinis. Before I could think about it too much, we’d had two and were making out like high-school freshmen under the bleachers.

And for the next few hours, that’s what we continued to do. There was little talking except for the few times Grady stopped, gazed at me and muttered something like, “I always wanted to do this,” or “God, you’re hot.”

I let myself be consumed. I didn’t think about the fact that Sam was apparently in Panama or the fact that my mother had slept with my client, thereby gaining me years of legal work that I thought I’d somehow earned. I didn’t think about Dr. Li or who had paid her to hurt Forester.

Until the next morning.

Day Nine

I woke up at first with a feeling of calm that I knew, in those bleary initial minutes, was different than the way I had felt for a while.

And then it all rushed back. The kissing, the groping, the gin, the kissing.

What had I done? I’d been so quick to judge my mother the day before, and within hours of that judgment I’d cheated on my fiancé. Not cheating in a sex way, but cheating in a making-out-like-it’s-the-last-day-on-earth way. But I couldn’t even claim love, the way my mother had. I didn’t love Grady. I did as a friend, of course, but it couldn’t be more than that. Or could it? I guess I’d never considered it before. I looked at the clock. When I texted him last night about the playdate, Mayburn had asked me to come to his house that morning to prep me for it.

Cringing a little at a small headache, I made my way toward the shower.

My phone rang. Grady.

“So…” he said when I answered. “Are you freaked out?”

“No small talk, huh?” I gave a nervous laugh. Luckily, I’d managed to get home and get to bed after those two hours at Jilly’s. He had said he would call first thing in the morning, and now he kept his promise.

“We’re past the small talk, I think.”

A memory burst in my brain-Grady’s tongue in my mouth, his hands grazing my breasts through my dress. “Yeah, I guess…”

“You’re freaked.”

“No, I…”

He laughed. “Hey, it’s still me.”

“Thank God, because no one in my life seems to be who I thought they were.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Look, I’m not going to push. I don’t even want to talk about last night.”

“Maybe we should. Maybe-”

“Nope. Don’t even do it. You’ve got a lot going on.”

He was right about that. I had to leave to get to Mayburn’s place, and then I had to borrow Kaitlyn again and pretend I was a mother. And then I had to start facing the fact that Sam was in Panama, probably trying to sell a corporation, which owned thirty million dollars’ worth of real estate.

“So, seriously,” Grady said, “just do what you have to do. And you and I…well…we’ll either talk about it or we won’t.”

I realized then that I did love him. At the very least, I loved him as a very, very good friend. He’d somehow known exactly what I’d needed in that moment.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

Mayburn’s place was just off Lincoln Square, a predominantly German neighborhood years ago, which left behind great bars like the Chicago Brauhaus. Lately, however, the Starbucks, Gaps and American Apparels of the world had crept in.

The streets surrounding Lincoln Square were populated mostly with wood-frame, single family houses. When I pulled up in front of Mayburn’s-three stories, white-painted wood with tan trim and a manicured lawn boasting a tall oak in the middle-I was surprised. It was so family looking.

“Nice house,” I said when he opened the door.

He seemed to sense my question. “Yeah, I bought it when I was with Madeline. Kind of hoping she’d want to get married and have kids here, but hey, things don’t always work out.”

I thought of Sam. “No, they don’t.”

He led the way down a long hallway with old pine floors, past a sparsely decorated living room and into the kitchen.

The kitchen cabinets were old wood, painted white, but the appliances were all silver and new.

“I stayed because I like the neighborhood,” Mayburn said, taking glasses from the cabinet. “It’s getting more crowded, but it’s pretty mellow, especially during the winter.” He ran the faucet. “Water?”