The Never Series Pt. 03

He started climbing again, without turning to face her. She followed close behind, calling his name, "Chris, Chris, please!" He entered the Master bedroom and found his overnight bag on the nightstand. He slung it over his other shoulder and was turning to leave, when she confronted him, blocking his path out of the room. "Chris, talk to me", she pleaded.

He glared at her, stone-faced. "You planned for Tanya to catch us, didn't you?"

She returned his stare, fear in her eyes. Her shoulders fell in resignation. She seemed to understand that she could no longer deceive him. "We're just really close, Chris. Look, I... I didn't tell her we'd be... but I admit I should have known that she might infer that. You see, we've... well, we've been with men... the same man... at... at the same time... on a couple... on several occasions, so, yeah... I guess I should have known that she might read something into.... She's done this kind of thing before... I mean, she's watched me before, but, in the past, she always did it discretely, and I guess later when I found out, I told her it didn't bother me. Look, she's just a very sexual person, and so am I, and so, we talk... a lot... about it."

"So, you told her to come over, so we could have a threesome? What the fuck, Caroline!"

"What? No, no, no... I never said that, Chris! I never told her that! I just... Let's just say, I wasn't all that surprised that she showed up early, that's all. She was supposed to come over at 3:00, like I told you."

"You never offered me to her... never told her I was 'good fuck?'"

"What? No, no!" Then, she paused to consider what he was saying, "Well, yeah, I did tell that you were a wonderful lover. Like I said, we talk about sex... but I never told her any details, and you've got to believe me, I never offered you to her, Chris. I wouldn't do that! That wouldn't be fair to you! I would never ever do that! Not unless you told me you wanted that. Maybe I thought that, later... that maybe you... the three of us... but I never said anything. Please, believe me!"

"Then, did you tell her that I was some easy mark? Did you say that she could extort sex from me in exchange for helping me to get published?"

"What?" She was incredulous. "What are you talking about?"

"That's what she's saying, Caroline! That's what she told me. She says that she'll help me, but only if I fuck her!"

"No, I can't believe that. Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? I can't believe she'd say that! I can't believe she'd say that to you... that she'd do that to you! That's awful! That's... that's... but, come on, Chris, most men want to fuck her! Jesus, she doesn't have to twist anybody's arm to get them to do it! You don't think she's gorgeous?"

"That's not the fucking point, Caroline! For god's sake, do you want me to be her fucking whore? Is that what I am? Is that what I am to you? Do you want me to be your fucking whore?"

"Chris... how can you say that? How can you think that's what I want? Look, when you wrote me... I... I just always thought fondly of you... and... and, well, when you contacted me, I just thought we could maybe rekindle our relationship, that's all! Like I told you last night, I just want to have a lover, and I thought you wanted the same thing -- neither one of us has a partner now, and so I thought it was perfect! I thought that's why you wrote me in the first place, that you were interested in me, and...." She shook her head. "But listen, you've got to believe me, being a writer has nothing to do with it! I had no idea that you could write! I'm willing to help you, Chris, to do anything I can, but all of that has nothing to do with our relationship!"

"I'm sorry, Caroline, but I just can't do this! I can't trust you anymore, not if you have anything to do with her. I sure as hell am not staying as long as that... fucking, arrogant bitch is here. Jesus, how in the fuck do you put up with her?"

"Chris, don't go! She's really not that bad! I'm sure once I explain things to her, she'll apologize to you. Don't go, please!"

"You heard her -- she doesn't apologize. It's not who she is", he mocked. "Besides, why would I accept an apology from some fake, fucking Hollywood bitch? There is nothing trustworthy about that cunt!"

Caroline stood there, staring at him, dazed, unable to respond. "Goodbye, Caroline." The sound of his own voice surprised him. It sounded flat and totally without emotion. It was neither sad, nor angry; it wasn't regretful, nor was it unapologetic. It was the voice of someone bidding a stranger farewell.

For the third time in five minutes, he pushed his way past her, headed out the bedroom door and down the stairs. When he opened the front door, he saw a red BMW M4 parked directly behind his Honda in the circular drive. Its front bumper was so close to the back of his sedan that he had to walk around the front of his car to get in.

He threw his two bags onto the passenger seat, climbed in, started the engine, put the car into gear, turning back onto the one-lane drive. As he was pulling away, he saw Caroline standing on the front porch, her hands on the railing, a panicked expression affixed to her face, her pink bikini providing a striking contrast to the brilliant-white façade of the mansion in the background.

He wound through the woods until he reached the front gate, which automatically opened to let his car pass. He turned left onto the road, and then he reversed the rest of the route he'd traveled the night before. Twenty minutes later, he was accelerating onto the 101, headed for home.

It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, so the traffic wasn't bad. He pulled into his driveway just before dinnertime. He carried his bags inside and tossed them onto the kitchen counter. He wanted to go for a hike, but a thousand, fresh thoughts were swirling around in his head, so instead, he sat down at his desk, and powered up his computer.

He found the file and opened it. When he started that story two weeks before, he wasn't sure how he was going to resolve the plot, but now Caroline had written an ending for him. That ending was much, much different than what he'd expected to write, and the ending was completely different from anything he'd ever written before. It struck him that, without making the conscious decision to do so, he could no longer write Romanticism. Like it or not, he was a Realist now.

He wrote for four hours, stopping only long enough to inhale a sandwich. He finished just after 10:00 p.m., and then saved copies to his laptop and hard drive, and then emailed it to himself, before shutting down. He found his toothbrush and toothpaste in his overnight bag, brushed his teeth, undressed, and climbed into bed.

As he lay there under the covers, waiting for sleep to take him, he could smell Caroline's scent on him. The pungent aroma was overpowering, and he didn't think he could sleep until it was gone. He wanted to get up to take a shower to wash her away forever, but he resisted the urge to do so, and eventually unconsciousness overtook him.

Over the next few days, he quickly returned to his normal routine -- hiking, writing, and putting in his hours at Fig Hill. He sort of expected he would hear something from Caroline, and he knew it would take him awhile before he could bear to read anything from her. He got a few phone calls from Caroline's number, but he ignored them and deleted her voice messages. He didn't check his email or log-on to Facebook again for at least a month. When he finally did decide to read his email, he did so out of fear that he might have missed some critical communications from someone else.

He was right. She had written him -- the day after he left. He broke down and read it. It was an odd letter. While it was clearly written to placate any anger he might still have felt toward her, it wasn't exactly an apology. Caroline explained what he meant to her, how seeing him again after all those years had reconnected her to something in her past, to simpler times and more down-to-earth sensibilities. She said she had come to realize she needed that in her life.

But her letter also said that she'd talked to Tanya, and that Tanya had denied the accusation he'd made against her -- that she'd never demanded sex from him in exchange for helping him to get published. Caroline concluded that it was all "just a simple misunderstanding."

She went on to say that he was "immensely talented", and that his writing was "spectacularly good." She said that he deserved to be published, and she claimed that Tanya agreed that there was an audience that would clearly appreciate his talent.

Lastly, she encouraged him to contact her again. She said that they could put whatever had happened behind them, and that she was sure they could be happy together. She even invited him to come to live with her in her home in Coldwater Canyon. From there, she said he could more easily pursue his dreams of become a respected writer. She said that was destined to be, but she really hoped that she could be a part of making it happen, and, more importantly, a part of his life.

When he was done reading, he deleted the email. He knew everything she was saying was a pipedream, that they could never be together and that there was virtually no chance that he would ever be a published writer. He had seen the handwriting on the wall in his two-minute conversation with Tanya Calvert, and he knew he wasn't willing to put up with all of the bullshit that commercial success demanded. Besides, he couldn't write a happy ending anymore if his life depended on it.

Even before he read Caroline's letter, he had decided he was done trying to make it. It was nice to know that people inside the publishing world had told him he had talent, but now he was happy just entertaining himself. That was enough he decided, and if and when the time came when it wasn't enough, maybe he could share some stories, or parts of some stories with his daughters. They might appreciate them.

And so, his life returned to the banal and the mundane, until one lazy Sunday morning a few months after he'd read Caroline's email. He was sipping coffee and browsing the Entertainment Section of The Los Angeles Times, when he accidently stumbled across a book review that caught his attention. The headline read: "A Heartfelt Romance Both Startles and Rewards: Caroline Cole's 'The Awful Grace of God.'"