Page 70 of That Weekend in Paris
And then she’s kissing me again. We manage to rid ourselves of the remainder of our clothing. I stand for a moment, staring down at her with no attempt to hide how much I want her. She slides her hands up my chest, clasps them behind my neck. I savor the feel of her body against mine. I lean down and lift her up in my arms, carrying her to the bed, where I place her gently on to the mattress.
She lies back against the pillow, one arm thrown above her head, no longer self-conscious. I lower myself down beside her, stretch out so that our bodies are aligned. I raise up on one elbow, tracing a finger from the center of her forehead, down her nose, across her full lips, the tip of her chin, the hollow at the center of her neck. And then around each side of her breasts. She breathes soft and shallow now, and I know that she wants me as much as I want her. But I still need to ask. “Are you sure, Dillon, that this is what you want?”
“Yes,” she says, adamant now.
But I can see the worry in her eyes, and say, “The last thing I would ever want to do is take advantage of you.”
“You’re not,” she says. “I think if I let this night pass me by, I will never forgive myself.”
I consider this for a moment, then lean down and kiss her with all of the longing inside me, and yet, I know this isn’t the right time. That there will be a time for us somewhere ahead in the future. I don’t know when or how. I just know that it will be. And that the right thing for tonight is to save what we both want so much for the time when we are free and clear. I am about to tell her this when my phone rings.
Dillon
“The high road is something very, very long, of which one cannot see the end – like human life, like human dreams. . .Vive la grande route and then as God wills.”
?Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I WATCH AS KLEIN puts down the phone, realizing that something is terribly wrong. It’s the middle of the night, and no call at this time ever heralds anything good. “What happened?” I ask, my voice a little more than a whisper. “Who was that?”
“Curtis, my manager,” Klein says, sitting on the edge of the bed now, his back to me. He’s quiet for several long seconds before he adds, “He said that Riley is at the hospital in labor—”
He stops there, but he doesn’t need to finish the sentence. A wave of sickness washes over me. I sit up and slide to the edge of the bed, facing away from him now and reaching for my clothes. “The baby is yours,” I say.
“I don’t know how that can be,” Klein says. “She told me she—”
“But she actually didn’t.”
“Why would she do that?” Klein says, his voice razor-edged with agony.
I’m not sure if he’s asking the question of himself or of me. “I cannot imagine.”
“I thought the choice that she made was her way of getting back at me, but was this actually it? For her to have the baby and not allow me to be involved?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have to go back,” I say. “You have to go to the hospital.”
He’s quiet now, and I can feel his agreement. Even if he hasn’t voiced it out loud, we both know that there is no other option. If the baby is his, and there seems to be little doubt, he needs to make his presence known now.
“You have to go,” I say again.
He turns then to look at me, and I can see in his eyes regret for what is about to happen between us, and the realization, too, that our time here might have been all the time together we’ll ever know.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is not how I wanted this night to end.”
“This is your baby. You have to be there.”
“Yes,” he says, standing. “When will you come back?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, realizing I really have no idea. It’s clear to me then that I haven’t been thinking beyond our stay in France. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath, waiting to see what would happen and how that would affect where we went from here.
“Can I see you when you get back?” he asks.
I want to say yes. So very much. But. “What’s probably best for both of us is for you to see this through. Do what you need to do. And I don’t want you to factor me into any decisions you make. That’s not really fair to either one of us, and I understand that what’s happening with you now was before me.”
He starts to say something. I can see that he wants to disagree but realizes that I’m right. Not that I want to be, but I know that I am.
