Chapter 7 – Breathe (Pt. 1)

Lance sat at the kitchen table early the next morning, playing back through the day before. He hadn't been able to sleep at all; whenever he tried, he could only hear her voice.

“Please don't try to fix me.”

He couldn't decode her, as hard as he tried. When he thought he had her figured out, thought that she was nothing more than a moody bitch who didn't like him, yesterday had changed everything. The moment he thought things had changed between them and they were starting to move past hating each other, she kicked him out of her apartment...and told him not to try to fix her.

She was right; she was damaged. Emotionally, anyway. He didn't think she was beyond repair. But he couldn't quite get her words out of his head.

As he was finishing the last of his coffee, he heard his door unlock and then close heavily. He heard her walking around to the kitchen and she appeared in the kitchen entryway, hauling her bag and books along with her.

She looked up and jumped back slightly when she saw him, startled.

“Oh! You scared me,” she said. “I'm surprised you're up. You're never up this early. In fact...what are you doing up?”

“I've been up,” he said. “I couldn't sleep last night.”

“At all?”

“At all.”

“That's miserable,” she said, and put her bag and books on the table opposite of him. “Want me to top off your coffee?”

“No, I'm good,” he said, watching her walk over to the counter and fill a cup of her own. “How are you doing this morning?”

“I'm not having a nervous breakdown this morning,” she said, smiling at him. “If that's what you mean.”

“I guess that's kind of what I mean,” he said.

“I called Marc.”

He judged her face, watching as she drank her coffee against the counter, waiting for what she would say.

“Yeah? And?”

“And it's just as I thought.”

“So it's true,” he said, feeling a stab of disappointment for her.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head.

“No?”

“No. They're friends he takes to events when I'm not around to go. Female friends, completely innocent – typical media blowing everything out of proportion, all they want is a story.”

“Addy – do you really believe that?”

She took another drink and smiled at him.

“Why wouldn't I?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I would think it's pretty obvious, Ad.”

“I told you, Lance – please don't call me Ad.”

Expressionless, she turned on her heels and poured more coffee into her mug.

“He's my husband,” she said. “Up until I came here, he was the only person I had in my life. After my job is done here, he'll be the only person I have in my life. I have to trust him. I do trust him. He has no reason to lie to me.”

“No reason to lie...except for the reason that he's out there having sex with every woman he meets.”

“You're one to talk.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Oh please.” She slammed her mug down on the counter and stalked toward him. “In the past two weeks you've had more women than a King of England has wives.”

He chuckled, which turned into a laugh.

“I'm glad it's so funny to you,” she said. “You lousy, rotten little...stripper fucker.”

“Wow, Adeline,” he said with a laugh.

“Well, it's the truth. You brought a stripper home and you fucked her. And in two week's time you brought home about ten other women that you did the same thing with. It was horrible watching that.”

“Adeline, can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I didn't sleep with any of those women.”

She furrowed her eyes at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Lisette is a friend of mine. And yes, she is a stripper. I was mad at you the night you blew me off for dinner, so I went out and I ended up running into Lisette. She asked me why I was upset so I told her, and she suggested that maybe I should get you back somehow. So I paid her to come sleep at my apartment and be there the next morning so you'd see her in the kitchen half-naked. It was all an elaborate little act. I knew you'd get mad about it. And then after Lisette left, I realized that it was nice having someone here at the apartment to talk to. So that was what those women were here for.”

“So you paid women to spend the night and keep you company?”

“I wouldn't say I paid them,” he said. “I took them to dinner, or we ordered in and watched movies. Most of them found it refreshing that a man took an interest in them with no sexual motive. I guess that's why they did it.”

“Lance, that should be the saddest, most pathetic thing I've heard all week – but with you, it's endearing. Why in the world would you do that?”

“Because I finally realized that I'm lonely.”

“If you're lonely, you can tell me,” she said. “You don't need to pick up strange women that you don't even know to come stay with you. If you're that lonely, I'll come stay with you.”

“No you wouldn't,” he said with a chuckle. “You don't even like me.”

“You're half-right. I didn't like you. Two weeks ago I probably wouldn't have done it – but now I'm telling you, if you're lonely and want some company...call me. I'll come over.”

“You suppose that's what your husband tells those other women, too?”

She sighed, and he went silent, satisfied that he had made his point.

After a few moments of silence, they sat down to go over his schedule like they did every morning.

“I have a question to ask you,” he said after she had gone over his last commitment for the day and closed her planner.

“I don't want to talk about my husband anymore,” she said.

“It's not about that.”

“Fine, then proceed.”

He chuckled at her snippy professional tone.

“Some of my friends asked me out to a club tonight,” he said.

“Haven't you done enough clubbing lately?”

“I went out alone those nights,” he said. “So it was more sitting at the bar moping than it was clubbing.”

“So what, you need my permission or something?” she said.

“No. Actually, I'd like you to come with me. I need a ride since my car's still in the shop, and I think you could use a night out anyway.”

“Oh no, no, no,” she said. “I don't go out clubbing.”

“Why?”

“I just...don't,” she said with a stutter, failing to come up with a good reason.

As she thought about it, she had always avoided nightlife. She had always been too busy to go out to bars and nightclubs – at least, that's what she told herself. In college, her fellow classmates had gone out but she had been too tired. After she married, she entered straight into the workforce and was still too tired. Truthfully, when she wasn't tired, she didn't see a reason to go out.

Going out was either for fun or to find a husband, she vaguely remembered her Nana telling her once; she could have fun at home and she already had one of those.

“Come with me,” he said. “You'll get to meet my friends – you need to meet the people I spend a lot of my time with, since you're the one handling all my time.”

“I don't know,” she said, feeling her stomach knot up.

“You'll have a good time, I promise. My friends never disappoint. Besides, you'll be able to keep me in line. Isn't that what you love to do?”

“There's no possible way to keep you in line,” she said with a smile.

“Come on.”

“I'm not very comfortable with the idea.”

“My friends are awesome. I think you'll get along great with them. And it's Thursday so it's not like there will be a lot of people there. You need to have some fun, Adeline – you're too stressed out.”

The look in his eyes told her that he was concerned for her. It was the same look he had shown the day before, so she knew it was genuine.

“It's not like you have anything better to do,” he said.

This was true; her huge plans for the evening included unpacking one or two more boxes, then stripping down to pajamas and curling up with a book, hoping she didn't fall asleep on the couch and drool on the pages. She might have talked to him last night, but Marc had recently jetted off to Italy and was far too busy drinking Chianti and studying modern Italian cinema to spend much time on the phone. Forget internet communication – he wasn't interested in anything like that either.

She had one friend – Stephanie – and she was in California. Where Adeline should be.

But Adeline wasn't in California. She'd left it behind her. She was here now, and she was realizing that if she didn't want to end up a twenty-seven-year-old spinster who holed herself up in her apartment, she might as well try to be somewhat sociable.

“I'll go and stay a couple hours,” she said. “But if you're not done by one, you'll have to find your own ride home.”

“Two,” he said.

“1:15 at the latest,” she said.

“1:45, and I'll make it worth your while.”

He had his usual slick grin on his face.

“And how would you make it worth my while?” she asked.

“I don't know – I could take you out to dinner, or lunch...maybe even breakfast, if you were up to it.”

She vaguely questioned in her mind – was he flirting with her?

She chuckled, and couldn't help but smile.

“1:30, and I prefer a home-cooked breakfast.” She grabbed her bag and started putting all her things in it. “Toast, bacon, eggs lightly scrambled, coffee and orange juice. Better not disappoint, I'm picky about my breakfast.”

“I'm from Mississippi,” he said. “My cooking never disappoints.”

“Be that as it may, I'll save the offer for one of the many other mornings I'll be here,” she said as she stood up and threw her bag over her shoulder. “You'll have to catch a cab to get around, I have some errands to run and I'll be busy all day. But I can pick you up tonight around ten, if that's okay.”

“Fine with me,” he said. “I hope your husband won't mind that you're going out with me.”

She smiled at the disdain in his voice as he said husband.

“He doesn't have to know. Besides, he's probably too busy riding some gondola down a canal to care.”

“I could so easily turn that into a sexual reference,” he said. “But I won't.”

“I'm sure you could,” she said with a laugh.

She turned, getting ready to leave, but then stopped and turned back.

“I have a question that's been burning in my head all morning.”

“What's that?”

“You said the thing with Lisette was all an act, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So the whole surgery thing...you told her to say that? As part of your 'script'?”

“Nope,” he said. “She's still a blonde – she actually believed that one.”

She laughed heartily and started to walk away again, but turned back once more.

“I meant what I said earlier,” she told him. “About when you feel lonely, you can call me. You don't have to keep pretending that you're fine.”

“What makes you think I'm pretending, especially considering I offered up my lie so easily?” he asked.

“You act like it's no big deal – when actually it seems like a cry for help. You want me to think you're fine, and I think that's a lie you don't even believe yourself.”

“Likewise, I don't think you believe the lies you're telling yourself either,” he said. “You can't tell me you really trust your husband.”

He thought she would get upset at him, but instead he looked up to see her smiling.

“Well, I guess we both have things to work on then,” she said. “Maybe Steph was right – we're on more even ground than we thought.”

With that, she readjusted her bag over her shoulder and finally turned to walk out. When he heard the door close, he reached over to his side and grabbed the People magazine under the stack of newspapers and other magazines.

He turned to the page and looked at the two pictures he'd stared at all night as he had been unable to sleep; the same picture of her husband that had thrown her into a panic, and on the opposite page, the picture of Mackenzie – the one that Adeline had obviously missed.

She was right that he wasn't okay, but she was wrong that he didn't believe that lie. He'd lied to himself so long, telling himself that he was fine, that it was hard to convince himself otherwise now. But it was much easier to focus on somebody who wasn't himself.

He sighed and looked away from Mackenzie and back over to the photo of Marc.

“What have you done to mess her up so badly?” he asked, almost in a whisper. “And what in the world am I going to do to fix it?”

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“I really don't know why I'm doing this,” Adeline yelled to him over the loud music as they sat down at the bar.

“Because I asked you to,” Lance said with a smile as he looked over at her.

“Yeah, that's a good reason,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Because if you asked me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, I'd totally do that, too.”

Her anxiety level had raised the minute they walked into the club together. It was loaded with people, for one thing. Apparently, they had two different ideas of what 'not a lot' meant in regards to people. The music was decent – of course, all she could tell was that it was a Lil' Wayne song, and couldn't make out any words – but it was too loud and hurt her head. The dark atmosphere combined with the bright, colorful dancing lights and the lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke from when it was still legal to smoke inside made it worse.

“Have I forgotten to mention that people with anxiety issues don't tend to do too well in social situations?” she asked him.

“Your whole job is a social situation,” he said. “You do fine there.”

“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “Don't go there. My job is not a social situation. My job is one of the most anti-social activities I do during the day, because most of the time the only person I interact with on a regular basis is my client. I talk on the phone a lot. The most social my job gets is when my client asks me to be a patsy date to an awards show or some charity event for sick kids. And all I have to do is show up in one photograph to prove I was there – then I can hide in the bathroom pretending to powder my nose.”

“Too bad for you there's no photographers around. I'll have to call ahead to the paparazzi next time I decide to drag you outside of your plastic bubble.”

She rolled her eyes and looked away from him. Of course he was being sarcastic; she shouldn't have expected any less from him. And he was right, too, as much as she didn't want to admit it. She always kept herself so introverted and sheltered. She had never been to a club before.

And as nervous as it made her, as uncomfortable as she was – she had to say that she was glad she had come. She was having a minute amount of fun.

She was actually so excited before she had picked him up that she had dressed the part; or at least, what she thought might be the part. She had pulled out a tight, long-sleeved black dress, a pair of leggings, and some fur-lined boots she hadn't worn in about a year. She'd put on a little more eyeshadow, a little more mascara, and puckered up her lips to apply a bit more lipgloss than she normally did. She had even pulled her hair out of its normal ponytail and fluffed it up a bit with some hairspray to get light waves.

“You look amazing,” he had told her when she showed up on his doorstep at five 'til ten. For a moment, she smiled, and he smiled back, and it all felt so normal. Like the two of them did this every day.

But soon, that normalcy faded, and here she was.

“Addy,” he said, in the most unusual soft tone for him, “relax. Breathe. You'll be fine. These people are only people. My friends should be here any minute now, then we'll find a booth; and if you want, we'll find one in the darkest corner of this club. What matters is that you got out of the house, and you're here with me now, and you're going to have fun.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” she said, even as she smiled at him.

He motioned to the bartender.

“You need something to loosen you up,” he said. “I know...you need an Orgasm.”

She tensed up, feeling her eyebrows raise.

“I, uh...I appreciate the offer, Lance, but I'm not sure that's appropriate.”

He paused, smiling when he realized what he'd said.

“No, Addy, I meant the drink. An Orgasm is a drink.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling full embarrassment. “Oh, God. I could die.”

“It's nice to know the offer is appreciated, though,” he said, holding back laughter as the bartender approached. He shot her a cheeky grin. “Maybe you need something a bit stronger.”