Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

Never before had she felt so awful, if by awful one really means absolutely fucking fantastic . She returned to the guest room and found Jesse sitting in bed, still naked under the blanket. Light from the bedside window illuminated his face, and Leigh could now see the clock: 7:23 A.M. He looked up and, for the first time in hours, she was overcome with self-consciousness. She was standing there completely naked in the glow of full daylight before this man she barely knew, her author, for chrissake. Had she really done this?

“Leigh.”

She forced herself to look directly at him. The room was cold and she could feel the hair on her legs beginning to prickle.

“Leigh. Sweetheart. Come here.” He lifted the edge of the blanket and motioned for her to join him.

She climbed in next to him. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled the covers over them both. He kissed her on the forehead like her father used to when she was sick. And what her father would think if he could see her now…not just in bed with someone-bad enough for a dad-but with the man she had been assigned to edit…and what about Russell…her fiancé…she was still wearing the beautiful ring he’d placed on her finger only five months earlier. She was a filthy, disgusting slut, unworthy of all of them.

“You look like you’re in the throes of a crushing panic attack,” Jesse whispered in her ear. He pulled her even tighter against him, but it was protective, not sexual.

“I’m a filthy, disgusting, unworthy slut,” she said before she could stop herself, but the second the words were out she regretted them.

Expecting a denial or, at the very least, another hug and some sympathetic clucking-Russell’s specialty-Leigh was horrified, and then supremely pissed off, when Jesse started to laugh.

She wrenched her body away from his and stared, dumbstruck. “You think that’s funny? You think it’s amusing that I basically just ruined my life?”

He hugged her tighter and rather than feel suffocated like she usually did, Leigh allowed herself to relax. Jesse kissed her lips and forehead and each cheek before saying, “I’m only laughing because you remind me so much of myself.”

“Oh, great,” Leigh muttered.

“But we didn’t do anything wrong, Leigh.”

“What do you mean, we didn’t do anything wrong? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Maybe with the fact that I’m engaged? Or you’re married? Or that we work together? ”

She emphasized the working together bit, but it wasn’t until she’d listed everything that Leigh admitted something to herself: She’d been waiting for Jesse to offer a reasonable explanation for his marriage, something along the lines of “We’re actually divorced” or “I’m not really married.” She knew this was unlikely. But that hadn’t stopped Leigh from hoping.

He pressed his finger to her lips and shushed her, which she was surprised to discover she found cute and not enraging. “What happened between us happened naturally. We both wanted it. What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong with that?” she snapped, her voice taking on a mean, almost vicious tone. “What about your wife ?”

Jesse rolled over onto an elbow so he was hovering above Leigh and looked directly into her eyes. “I’m not going to patronize you with the usual shtick about how miserable we are and how she doesn’t understand me and how I’m about to leave her, because that’s not true and I don’t want to lie to you. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t extenuating circumstances. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t want you desperately right now.”

Well, that was definitely not what she wanted to hear. The I-hate-my-wife-she-doesn’t-understand-me shtick would’ve been just fine as far as she was concerned. The fact that it wasn’t forthcoming made her even more acutely aware of how wrong this all was, something made more confusing by the fact that it all felt so right. So right ? What the hell was she thinking? This was lunacy… There was nothing right about betraying Russell or having sex with the man she was supposed to be working with. It had been a horrible lapse in judgment, inexcusable even, and it would be a miracle if they all got through this unscathed. Of course she could no longer edit Jesse, that much was clear, but that seemed an insignificant price to pay for her overwhelming stupidity.

It was time to leave. Immediately.

“What are you doing?” Jesse asked as Leigh wrenched herself out from under him and wrapped herself in the throw blanket. She grabbed her entire overnight bag and, with one hand clutching the blanket to ensure she remained covered, she half sprinted, half hobbled to the bathroom. Only after locking the door behind her did she allow the blanket to fall, but this time she couldn’t face her body in the mirror. Knowing she would only sob if she allowed herself the luxury of a shower, she pulled on a pair of clean underwear, jeans, and a button-down and wrapped her knotted, frizzy hair into a bun. She took the time only to brush her teeth and, with that single task complete, Leigh clamped her jaw shut to keep herself from crying and opened the door.

He was standing in the doorway wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, looking miserable. Leigh wanted nothing more than to hug him, a desire she found both repellant and appealing, but she managed to squeeze past him without so much as brushing against his arm.

“Leigh, sweetheart, don’t do this,” he said, following her down the hall and then the stairs. “Sit with me for a minute. Let’s talk about this.”

She swept into the kitchen to gather her papers and notebooks and saw the remnants of the dinner they’d never gotten around to eating. A casserole dish of hardened lasagna rested on a hot plate between two place settings and two poured glasses of red wine; two simple silver candleholders were covered in melted ivory wax.

“I don’t want to talk. I want to leave,” Leigh said quietly, with no intonation.

“I know, and I’m asking you to wait.” Leigh glanced at him and noticed his stubble was sprinkled with gray and the hollows around his eyes were so dark they could be mistaken for bruises.

“Jesse, please.” She sighed, her back to him as she slid her files into her bag. She remembered she’d left Something Blue in the guest room upstairs, but there was no way she was going back for it now.

He placed his hand on her shoulder and pulled at her gently to turn her around. “Look at me, Leigh. I want you to know that I don’t regret last night at all.”

For the first time since she’d gotten out of bed, Leigh met his gaze. She stared at him with her iciest narrowed-eye look and said, “Oh, I’m so relieved! Thank goodness you don’t regret what happened. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that. In the meantime, get your hands off me .”

He pulled away. “Leigh. I didn’t mean it like that. Please, sit down with me for just a minute…” Something about the way his voice trailed off let them both know that the invitation, while sincere, was not something he actually wanted. He looked tired and beaten, like a man who was exhausted by the thought of having to deal with yet another hysterical postcoital female.

She would give anything for him to say that he loved her from the moment he met her and this wasn’t just another extramarital conquest for the legendary Jesse Chapman-that she, Leigh Eisner, was different-but she knew better. She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked proudly through the front door with her head held high, both surprised and saddened when Jesse didn’t follow.