“You like the way I make you not feel.”
“Cal, these are my clients Michael and Lana.”
“Clients?” Lana spoke up with a grin, clearing her throat.
“My friends,” Sam gushed, returning the affection. “And they’re getting married in—”
“Can I speak to you?” Cal interjected, his eyes hard-pressed, taxed.
“Excuse me.” Sam feigned a smile at the young couple. “Keep working on the exercises I showed you.”
Cal pulled Samantha into the study, the bedroom he’d converted into an office, one of the two bedrooms in their house in San Diego. Cal’s house. The one Sam had moved into.
“What?” she asked.
“Shut the door.”
“You shut the door.”
Cal slammed it. “I told you I didn’t want—”
“We’ve talked about this. You knew I was going to start bringing clients to the house.”
“I don’t want just anybody coming in and out of here.”
"They’re not just ‘anybody.’”
“Not today.”
“It’s—”
“This is my private space.”
“You have privacy.” She eyed the closed door.
“This is my home, Samantha.”
“It’s my home too. You didn’t even speak to them.”
“Do I have to explain everything to you? Right now?”
“No, why would you need to explain anything to me — ever?”
Cal took a seat at the desk, keeping his back to her. “Please, ask them to leave.” He leafed through some paperwork.
“Are you kidding me?” she replied, and Cal could practically hear her nostrils flaring.
“Ask them, Samantha.”
“What is it? Explain it to me, then.”
“Forget it.”
“No. You dragged me in here, away from my clients — my friends.”
“She is…” Cal began, his voice losing the steadiness people usually relied upon. His eyes filled with the something he certainly hadn’t wanted the strangers to see. Elbows on the desk, his head fell into his palms. “She’s anxious all the time, paranoid.”
“She has been—”
“No. This is different.” He looked up. “I talked to Rosa this morning. She’s changing. It’s worse. She’s having outbursts. She’s crude. Even to Rosa.”
“Cal, we are talking about your mother.”
“Damn it, Samantha. She doesn’t even recognize Rosa sometimes. She has Alzheimer’s.”
Sam stepped behind him, touched his back, and made circles over his polo shirt. “I’m sorry.” She massaged his shoulders. “I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t tell them to leave. We knew... We knew your mom was headed in this direction. We can talk more later.”
“You can tell them to leave.”
“We discussed this. You agreed.”
“I did not.”
By now, Cal had stood, but he remained near the desk, hovered over it, his palms pressed flat against the wood.
“Cal…” she pleaded, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He stiffened. Flinched. She removed her hand. Cal opened the laptop. Sam drew in a loud breath, but he didn’t turn or speak. He simply logged on and sat down.
“We should fly out there this weekend. We can spend some time with her.” She waited a moment. “Honey?”
Nothing but the sound of the tapping of his fingers across the keyboard filled the room.
Samantha exited.
Then Cal began to really work.
Without thinking. On autopilot. Because thinking meant his mind would fill with thoughts of his mother. His guilt. All the ways he’d failed her.
So, he worked.
Combed through contracts. Wrote two new ones. Sent out emails. He made plans to travel to Ojai. The hour went by quickly. It was the disease that would go by slowly, and the fights with Samantha would surely increase.
The days spent running, the time spent searching, the working, all of it would increase. Yet his love for Samantha would remain the same. The tension between them never absent or dull.
But his mother... She’d become dull.
Well, not yet, but she would eventually — once the disease completely took over.
The people occupying his living room weighed on his mind too. Sam cared more about her friends than she did him. No, that wasn’t true. That was a lie. Another trick Cal hadn’t quite yet learned to lick.
* * *
“I want you.” Cal stood in the hall, peering at Sam, her tank top, short shorts, the sweat soaking parts of her clothing. The clients had gone. She’d just finished closing the front door.
“Is this how you’ll cope? Don’t you want to talk about what happened? I’m still mad at you.”
Bare-chested, he made his way toward her, hoping to strip her with his terse tone. “I want to fuck you. Get undressed. Now.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Sam slipped off her sneakers.
Cal met her at the rear of the sofa and put his palms on her waist. They locked eyes.
“You’re so sweaty,” he murmured against her ear while he began to stroke her over her clothing. “I want you, Sammie.”
“You want me because of the way I make you feel.”
“You feel amazing.” Grabbing one of her hands, he placed it near his, now inside her undies. “Touch yourself.”
Sam massaged herself alongside him, closing her eyes, her breathing growing erratic, while they both worked her body into a frenzy.
“That’s not what I mean,” she moaned. “You want to not feel. You like the way I make you not feel.”
Cal put his lips on hers, shushing her truth. He did like the way she made him feel. He loved it. He wanted her clothes off this instant — so she could make him feel, then not feel.
It was almost enough.
They were good together. They could have amicable conversations when they wanted to, when she wasn’t nagging or judging him, when she ran beside him.
And the sex was still good. Fuck, it was amazing. She was a great partner and lover, and he remained happy making love only with her.
He was happy, right? This was happiness?
Working, finally on his own, running daily, feeling the ground beneath his feet, vibrating through his entire being. Living in this city, a fun city, hadn’t gotten old either. And he was a three-and-a-half-hour drive from his mother, a quick plane ride.
Fuck… His mother.
Sam needed to hurry — undress, surrender, make him not feel...
Because of all the inappropriate times, his thoughts were still stuck on his goddamn mother. Constance was getting older, and now she was losing her mind to a disease. An unfathomable one.
He didn’t know how it had begun. Or how long it would last.
The disease, the happiness he’d invented, or his relationship with Samantha.
It was all a crapshoot. All he knew was right now. This moment.
Once Sam acquiesced, Cal took her to the bedroom, their clothing and the argument they left on the floor behind the sofa. The two of them lay, joined in their bed, in the dusk of the room, Cal over her, her hands above her head and wrapped around the pillow, the entire length of him inside her warmth as he thrust against the entrance to her womb.
Skin mingling, hearts beating, breath increasing.
Cal felt almost trancelike, his mind blanking with each pulse inside her body. He would retract completely, then surge forward again and again, Sam’s back arching with each pound, followed by her sounds...
God, the sounds…
It was all he wanted to hear — her pleading, the broken vowels, the ruffling of the sheets, the gentle squeak of the bedframe, their lungs fighting for air, Samantha repeatedly moaning not only his name, but the word please.
Their frustration expired as their pleasure increased. It swelled each time he desisted, pulling out, teasing her, making her wait for the next thrust, biting her nipples, pinching them between his teeth, then licking, pushing inside deeper, deeper, deeper, slipping further and further from the recesses of his mind and falling farther inside Samantha’s heat.
She did make him feel, then not feel.
Their fuck was the right now. The only now. There was no outside world. No Alzheimer’s. No clients.
As he listened to and felt the tremors, the last of their orgasms, Cal succumbed to the final bit of the unreality, then fell beside her. Draping an arm across Sam’s waist, placing his cheek over one of her breasts, he fixated on their breathing, the sound of their hearts beating.
Damn, it was good.
He closed his eyes, holding her in the bed they shared, curled up against her, legs intertwined.
Except…
Death and disease and life’s frustrations were already circling their goddamn exhalations. Fucking vultures. The moment Cal clung to was through.