Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

Tonight it succeeded only in making Leigh desperately want a cigarette. No matter that she’d quit nearly a year ago, right when she and Russell started dating; not a day went by that she didn’t desperately yearn for a nice long drag. Smokers always waxed poetic about the ritual of it, how a large part of the satisfaction was packing the box and pulling the foil wrapper and plucking an aromatic stick. They claimed they loved the lighting, the ashing, the feeling of being able to hold something between their fingers. That was all well and good, but there was nothing quite like actually smoking it: Leigh loved inhaling . To pull with your lips on that filter and feel the smoke drift across your tongue, down your throat, and directly into your lungs was to be transported momentarily to nirvana. She remembered-every day-how it felt after the first inhale, just as the nicotine was hitting her bloodstream. A few seconds of both tranquillity and alertness, together, in exactly the right amounts. Then the slow exhale-forceful enough so that the smoke didn’t merely seep from your mouth but not so energetic that it disrupted the moment-would complete the blissful experience.

Leigh wasn’t an idiot, though, and certainly knew all the nasty drawbacks of her beloved habit. Emphysema. Lung cancer. Heart disease. High blood pressure. Having to endure graphic photos of blackened lungs in magazines and terrifying commercials of gravelly voiced people with tracheotomies. The yellowed teeth and the wrinkles and the smoky hair and the stained top knuckle on her right middle finger. Her mother’s constant harping. Her doctor’s dire predictions. The maddening Just-in-Case-You-Haven’t-Heard voice total strangers used when they sidled up to her outside her office building to enumerate smoking’s many dangers. And then Russell! Mr. My Body Is a Temple would never, ever date a smoker, and he’d made that perfectly clear from day one. It was enough to make even the most devoted smoker call uncle, and after eight years of pack-a-day enjoyment, Leigh finally caved. It had required superhuman effort and an ability to endure torturous cravings for weeks on end, but she had persevered. So far she hadn’t managed to rid herself of nicotine entirely-some might say she had succeeded only in transferring her tenacious addiction from cigarettes to nicotine gum-but that was neither here nor there. The gum wasn’t going to kill her in the immediate future, she hoped, and if it did, well, so be it.

She popped an extra piece for good measure and set aside the manuscript. It usually wasn’t too difficult to get engaged by a hot book that multiple publishing houses were clamoring for, but this one felt like drudgery. Would the American public really want to read another eight-hundred-page historical fiction tome about an ex-president from the last century? It was enough already. All she wanted to do was curl up with a good beach read and get lost in something that wasn’t so deadly boring. She would’ve given anything for it to be a No Human Contact Monday Night. Sapped of energy and in no mood to read another word about a campaign that had taken place over a hundred years earlier, Leigh tossed aside the manuscript and pulled her MacBook onto her lap.

Often one of her friends was on IM at two in the morning, but tonight all was quiet. Leigh clicked through her favorite Web sites quickly, efficiently, her eyes scanning the pages for information. On cnn.com, an alligator attack in South Florida. On Yahoo!, a video demonstrating how to make a watermelon basket using only a chef’s knife and a nontoxic marker. On gofugyourself.com a funny bit about Tom Cruise’s bangs and the Flowbee. On neimanmarcus.com an announcement regarding upgraded shipping on all leather accessories. Click, click, click, click. She scanned the most recent bestseller list on Publishers Weekly , clicked to support free mammograms at The Breast Cancer Site, and checked that her direct deposit went through at chase.com. She briefly considered checking the symptoms for obsessive-compulsive disorder at WebMD but resisted. Finally feeling weary if not entirely exhausted, Leigh carefully washed her face using the correct upward circular motions and swapped her sweats for a pair of soft cotton shorts. She watched Russell’s face as she climbed in next to him, inching her way slowly under the comforter, determined not to wake him. He remained motionless. She switched off the light and managed to flip onto her side without disturbing him, but just as her mind started to slow and her limbs began to relax into the cool sheets, she felt his body press against hers. His aroused body. He enveloped her in his arms and pushed his pelvis against her lower back.

“Hey there,” he whispered in her ear, his breath still smelling of cookies.

She lay there limp, simultaneously praying he would fall back to sleep and hating herself for wishing that.

“Leigh, baby, are you awake? I know I am.” He gave another little push just in case she wasn’t sure what he meant.

“I’m exhausted, Russ. It’s so late already, and I have to be up early for the meeting tomorrow.” When did I start to sound like my mother? she wondered.

“I promise you won’t have to do a thing.”

He pulled her closer and kissed her neck. She shivered, which he interpreted as delight, and ran his fingers over her goose bumps, which he took as a good sign. When they first started dating, she thought he was the best kisser on earth. She still remembered their first kiss-it had been positively transcendent. He took her home in a cab after the book party and the dive bar, and just before they reached her building, he pulled her toward him for one of the softest, most amazing kisses she’d ever experienced. He used the perfect combination of lips and tongue, the ideal pressure, the exact right amount of passion. And there was no doubt he had plenty of experience on which to draw, having been one of the most well-known and sought-after men she had ever met. Yet in the last few months, it had started to feel like she was kissing a stranger-and not in an exciting way. Instead of soft and warm, his mouth now often felt cold and damp and a little shocking on her skin. His tongue probed too voraciously; his lips always seemed either rigid or fleshy. Tonight, against the back of her neck, they felt like they were made out of papier-mâché before it properly hardened. Pulpy papier-mâché. Refrigerated, pulpy papier-mâché.

“Russ.” She sighed and clenched her eyes closed.

He stroked her hair and rubbed her shoulders, trying to relax her. “What, baby? Is this so awful?”

She didn’t tell him that each touch felt like a violation. Hadn’t the sex once been fantastic? Back when Russell was a bit elusive and flirty and seductive, and not quite so clingy or so determined to settle down with a more serious girl than all the flighty ones from his twenties? It all seemed like so long ago.

Before she realized what was happening, he worked her shorts down to her knees and pulled her even closer. His upper arms were huge, literally bulging under her chin and inadvertently pressing against her throat. His chest threw off heat like a furnace and the hair on his thighs felt like sandpaper. And for the first time ever while in bed with Russell, she began to feel the familiar heart-attack symptoms begin.

“Stop it!” she breathed, her whisper louder than she planned. “I can’t do this now.”

His embrace slackened instantly and Leigh was instantly grateful that it was too dark to see his face.

“Russ, I’m sorry. It’s just that-”

“No worries, Leigh. Really, I understand.” His voice sounded calm but distant. He rolled away from her and within minutes his breathing steadied to its deep-sleep rate.