Page 25 of Seven Minutes In Heaven
“No. Unless I was the one getting the favor, I guess, but I’d probably remember that.”
“That’s what I’m doing, huh?” Claire sat up and buried her face in the tops of her knees. Arms wrapped around her legs. Toes dug into Jake’s comforter. “Marrying a man I don’t even love or find attractive, inside or out. Because I want favors for my career.”
“Is that really the only reason? Seems there are less messy ways to go about it.”
“My family doesn’t have a lot of money anymore, all right? I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t float through life pretending to have an acting career when my inheritance won’t be enough to sustain me. I have a degree intheater,for fuck’s sake. I can’t waltz into an office and get a job to support myself. I don’t even know how. I… this is the fate I was prepared for. You don’t hear about it anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry I’ve roped you into this. I’m marrying yourfather,Jake. We can’t be doing this. I could destroy whatever relationship you have left with your father.”
He was silent a moment. Then, “I wouldn’t mind it. There would be worse things than no longer being in my father’s life.”
“Like not being your mother’s life?”
Jake contemplated another answer. “You asked me what I thought of my father? Everything I think of him stems from how he treated my mother. I don’t disbelieve a single thing she’s told me. I don’t think a woman divorces her husband and goes into isolated retirement for a small transgression.”
“I thought he just cheated on his wives.”
“Years of that wears on a woman. Especially a woman who loved him, I guess.”
Carmen loved him?Claire hadn’t known younger Arthur, so maybe there was something she didn’t see now. Better looks. More believable charm. The energy to keep up with a sense of adventure and so much promise. Love was blind, anyway. Carmen Dominguez became Carmen Carter because of love, not money.I can only imagine that kind of freedom.
“Did your father love her at all?”
“Yes. He did. I think he still does. He doesn’t understand why she divorced him. As his son, it’s the most frustrating thing about him. My mother was true to him for the length of their façade of a marriage. He didn’t appreciate that, so she left. She’s always been heartbroken about it.”
“Your father may still be in love with her on some level, but he is certainly not heartbroken about losing her.”
“Of course not. Because he keeps getting to do what he’s always done.”
Claire bristled against his body. “So is that it? Is he replacing your mother with me? Is that why he had that ridiculous painting of me done?”
She hadn’t expected Jake to answer. Let alone with what hedidsay. “My father didn’t have that painting done.” He paused. “I did.”
“What?” Claire lifted her head.
“It was done by my friend, a professional portrait artist. He asked me if I had any interesting subjects for him to tackle, so I commissioned that painting of you. It was supposed to be a wedding gift.”
“What?” Claire hopped off the bed. “What was the point of doing that? It looks like the painting of your mother!”
“I assure you, that was not a parallel I was trying to draw.”
“Well, you drew it.” At least Claire knew what she needed to do. This man wanted to draw shit? They could start by drawing some firmer boundaries between them, likenotletting something like this happen again. “I can’t do this, Jake. Let’s forget this happened. I shouldn’t have…weshouldn’t have… oh, God, what the fuck have we done?”
“Claire…”
She grabbed her clothes and locked herself in his bathroom, where she cleaned herself up and attempted to shimmy back into her outfit.Here comes a new wave of nausea.She knew what this one was for, though. She had transgressed a level of sin that no woman was meant to endure. Sin she had foisted upon herself, and sin the world insisted she consume instead of the usual, healthy sustenance she was always told to eat.Fall in love. Get married. Maybe have some babies. That’s what I’m supposed to do.
What if she was doing it all backwards? What if she lived the human experience in the wrong way?
She found Jake waiting for her on the other side of his bathroom door. He had pulled on a pair of sweatpants and continued to look every bit the handsome male model that meant he was his mother’s son.Carmen Dominguez was one of the hottest women of the late ‘70s… I never stood a chance.
“I’ve gotta go.” Claire grabbed her bag. “Goodbye.”
He held her back by the shoulder. An explosion of desire consumed Claire once more, but she fended it off, determined to put as much distance between them as she could. Distance was great. Distance meant he wouldn’t be around to torment or, worse, seduce her.
“You keep thinking it too, right?” He released her, but she did not hustle out the door. “That we should’ve been brought together instead.”
“Don’t. Don’t do this.” Claire turned from him again.
“That’s how fate works, though.” Jake continued to speak even as she forced herself into her shoes. “It taunts you until you believe every lie it tells you. I thought it was fate that the woman I silently fell in love with became engaged to my father, but it was the wrong kind of fate. It was twisted.”
Claire hesitated in the doorway. “So write a script about it. Write a movie where the father and the world he commands understands what’s happened and gives his blessing to the stupid couple. You can pretend I’m starring in it.” She slammed the door behind her.
Tears fell down her cheeks as she raced to the elevator. She didn’t realize until then how much this situation tore her apart.
