Once in a Lifetime: Deluxe Edition

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

When I arrived at our apartment on Saturday after the drive back from The Hamptons, I was in such a state, I’m surprised I managed to throw some spare panties in a suitcase. Ours was not an easily uproot-able life. I moved into Jodie’s apartment on York Avenue not long after we got together. My place was bigger, but hers was rent-controlled and located only a few blocks from Gerald’s townhouse on East 78th Street. The plan was to find a place together after I’d been with Schmidt & Burke for a while, but that never happened.

So, now, I feel like it’s Jodie’s bell I’m ringing. I can hardly still call it ours, not even in my head. She buzzes me up. She knows I’m coming to collect my things. I already know that I won’t be able to move everything I want this time either. She’ll just have to live with my stuff for a while longer, until I figure out a more permanent place to stay.

I don’t knock immediately when I reach the front door of 3B, but the door opens anyway.

“Hey,” Jodie says and gestures for me to come inside. It’s strange to have her do that while the key to this apartment still sits snugly in my pocket.

My heart sinks when I see the two suitcases and the couple of boxes she has piled up in a corner. She wants me out so badly she packed up my things.

“You’ve been busy.” I head over to the boxes.

“Look, I know you wanted to see Troy, but he’s staying over at Jake’s after his soccer game.”

“How is he?”

Jodie stops in her tracks and looks at me as if I have absolutely no right to inquire about the well-being of her son, a child I shared a home with for almost six years. “What do you want me to say, Leigh? That he misses you? That you leaving has him crying himself to sleep at night? Because, yes, that’s what he does. You know he adores you and it hurts.”

I bite back the tears. “I wish you’d stop saying that I’m leaving you.” I lean against the boxes, looking for some sort of support. “Because, to me, it feels much more as if you’re not giving me an option to stay.”

Jodie holds up her hands. “Let’s not do this again.” Almost instantly, her arms go limp again, drooping by her side. She’s not looking very glam today, despite the glossiness of that skirt she’s wearing. “I can’t.”

“I want to say goodbye, Jodie. I want to see him.”

“Of course. I’ll set something up. I promise. Today, I just couldn’t—” Jodie wrings her hands together.

“I understand.” It’s not as if I have any claims to make on her child.

“Where are you staying?” She struts to the couch and sits, not looking me in the eyes.

“At a colleague’s.” When I arrived back in the city on Saturday afternoon, I decided to call Sonja on a whim. Most likely because I was in dire need of some admiration.

“Not Sonja?” Jodie asks, the inflection in her tone indicating that she already knows the answer. And that I’ve just reached a whole new level of despicableness.

I just shrug. It’s easy for her. She still has a home.

“I can’t take all of this now.” I point at the boxes and think of the rickety pull-out couch in Sonja’s broom cupboard which doubles as a spare room. “I just came to get some essentials.”

“You seem to have gotten by without them for the past week.” In a way, it satisfies me that she’s getting worked up because I’m staying at Sonja’s. Perhaps it wasn’t the most dignified choice, seeing as Sonja blatantly hit on me one time Jodie joined us for after-work drinks, but what’s the point of caring about that now?

“Can we please get through this in a civilized manner, Jodes?” I sigh. “It’s hard enough as it is.” My mind flashes back to that night when Jodie met Sonja. Jodie sat there pouting like a wronged teenager, sulking with a martini glass in her hand, her back to me and the rest of my colleagues. After I’d let her stew for half an hour, I took her home and showed her how much room there was for another woman in my life. “No one takes it like you, Jodie,” I’d said to her while ripping her panties off her. “And you know it.”

She nods and rests her head on her upturned palm, fingers cradling her jaw. “This place is not exactly spacious either. Just… don’t wait too long.”

I try to find her eyes, but she doesn’t let me. I suppose asking if we could, at some point, still be friends, is out of the question. “I won’t.” I turn to the suitcases. “Are my suits in here?”

“They’re still in the closet. I wanted to leave them hanging up.” And it’s this mundane, homely piece of information that kills me the most. Because Jodie can’t help but care about things like that, just as she can’t leave any dishes in the sink before she goes to bed. Having my stuff linger here must be terrible for her, not just on a personal level, but it must seriously mess with her OCD.

“I’ll just take those and the suitcases. I’ll come back for the boxes as soon as I can.” I can’t begin to imagine what opening these boxes will do to me, knowing that she packed them.

“Okay.” Suddenly, she stands. “Please, come here.” Her voice has grown small.

I don’t question it, just go to her.

“Just… one last hug. To say goodbye properly.” Jodie’s a few inches shorter than I and when she looks up at me like this, her eyes pleading and her lips trembling, I actually want to question my desire not to have children—again.

I wrap my arms around her. Her head presses against the flesh above my breast, as it has done countless times, and at first the embrace we stand in is strangely soothing, until wetness spreads where my blouse is open, and Jodie is sobbing, her tears hot against my skin.

“Hey.” I curl my fingers around her neck, also a tried and tested gesture between us, and pull her up so I can look at her. I know this sucks, I want to say, but what the hell kind of difference will it make now? I wipe away some of her tears with the back of my hand, but it’s pointless, because a gazillion more of them moisten my hand and her cheek, as if something has broken behind her eyes, something that, right now, looks like it can never be fixed again. So, instead of talking, I slant my head toward her, and I kiss her. Her lips taste salty and they are slippery, but she easily allows me access to her mouth. My tongue slides in and I try not to think of the circumstances. I try not to wonder about the uselessness of break-up s*x. I’m not even sure I can do it. I’m not sure this can go further than this sloppy, wet kiss, which could be considered as part of that goodbye hug she asked for.

Or perhaps she was asking for more.

Jodie’s lips are frantic on mine. She bites and sucks as if there’s no tomorrow. I can’t blame her, of course, because for us, there is none. There’s only now. One last moment. One last opportunity to be Jodie and Leigh. One last chance to change our minds, perhaps? But no, I think we both know that ship has sailed. This is just a way of saying goodbye, as opposed to the hurried manner in which I fled the house in The Hamptons.

Jodie’s tugging at my shirt buttons already. Her mouth has descended to my neck. Her hands are on my belly, crawling upward, and her fingers slip under the underwire of my bra. I have no more time to question if I really want to do this. Jodie has decided for me. For once, I let her. We can have this. Even if it’s just an instant during which we don’t have to face the consequences of who we have become. Two people wanting vastly different things from life.

So I hoist Jodie’s top up, and we unglue for a second, and I still can’t find her eyes. She can f**k me, but she can’t look at me. Somehow, I understand. Understanding each other was never an issue. We’re both very good at laying out arguments, displaying logic, and making each other see why we want certain things. If only life’s issues could be resolved by understanding each other.

Because I understand what Jodie needs now. She needs to forget. She needs a moment to hold onto, something between us to look back on other than all this pain we’ve caused each other. And right now, in the state we’re in, this can only be physical.

Jodie doesn’t wait for me to undo her bra. She rips it roughly off and throws it on the sofa behind her. She barely gives me the opportunity to take in her breasts one last time. Those tiny n*****s of hers, that can grow hard just by being gazed upon. They’re so pink and perfect, but there’s no time to dwell. Jodie practically grabs me by the neck and shoves them in my mouth. She’s not usually one to be so forceful, but that, too, I get. She wants to leave an impression, make a memory. And, perhaps, she also wants to make sure that, grief-stricken as I am, I don’t end up in Sonja’s bed.

Her mouth is by my ear and at first she just sighs and moans, but then she says, “f**k me, Leigh.” And if she wanted the hinges to come off, her wish has been granted. I move away from her breasts and let her n****e fall from between my lips.

“Look at me,” I say, my voice demanding. “Look at me, Jodes.”

Her eyes are still filled with tears and her cheeks are smeared with mascara.

“Take off your skirt.” I hadn’t noticed before, but it’s the one we bought together a few months ago, during a weekend which we both firmly believed was to bring us closer together again. Because the human brain can trick you into believing anything if you really want it to. Is that why she wore it? It doesn’t matter now. It’s coming off, slipping into a puddle of dark-green fabric on the hardwood floor.

She’s taken off her underwear as well and she stands before me naked. Quite the parting gift, I think, without a hint of cynicism.

I strip quickly and methodically before pulling her toward me because, as always, this is going to be my show. The one where I call the shots.

Together, we sink to the floor. Only part of it is carpeted, but it’ll do. Jodie stretches out beneath me, her legs already spread. But some of the earlier frenzy has escaped us and the atmosphere is now morphing into a more solemn one, like a moment that needs to be cherished. If we rush this, we’re lost forever. We will have spent our last moments on a quick orgasm built on heartbreak. I think we both know it can’t be like that. Making a memory like that now would hurt too much, and everything is already so unbearably painful.

I lean over and kiss her. Slowly. Savoring her, although all I taste are salty tears. Our breasts press together in this final embrace, our n*****s meeting in that way that can be so exciting. The way only being with another woman can feel. Softness on softness. Everywhere we touch, pillowy curves and smooth skin. It’s what Jodie said to me after our first night together. “I can’t believe how soft it is,” she’d said, and it had made me laugh, although it was true, but she was just so damn cute when she said it, as if it was the biggest revelation of her life. Maybe it was.

While I kiss her I let a hand roam down her belly. I wonder how many fingers would be appropriate for a goodbye f**k. I can’t give her less than three, but all five seems too much for the occasion. Too intimate.

“f**k me,” Jodie says again, her hands in my hair. And then I do. I let three fingers slither through a wetness that baffles me. Then again, it always has, and it’s almost cruel that even now, during our very last moment together, it still does.

And it still turns me on as much as it did the first time I let my fingers wander between her legs. And this time, she gazes back, she stares up at me, and I know what that look means, because I know Jodie better than anyone does, and, especially in these circumstances, I know her better than I’ve known anyone in my life. She wants more. That’s what the non-blinking is about. The open mouth with no words coming out. Because I can’t give her anything else anymore—and, more particularly, the very thing she wants most in life, more than me—I give it to her.

I push three fingers inside of her, but quickly follow up with a fourth. To be inside of her after such a long time, because the past six months we spent most of our private time either in fraught arguments or in cold, distant silence, makes me well up. I can’t help it. The sob starts in the pit of my stomach, engaging my entire body. Because I’m f*****g Jodie. I can feel my c**t throb between my own legs, and this might be the most painful f**k I’ve ever been a part of. There’s pain, and more pain, but also the look of longing in Jodie’s eyes. Those beautiful green eyes, which were probably the first thing I noticed about her that time, so long ago when we were introduced at the courthouse. Green eyes are so rare, so of course they captured my attention. And I liked what I saw. I still do. Even though a mist of tears clouds them and our faces are so close my own tears add to the wetness of Jodie’s face, and I can’t see them right now. And then I realize that what we’re doing right now is just as messy as what we’ve become. We’re lovers who will turn into exes, perhaps even strangers.

I’m inside a woman who will disappear from my life. A woman I’ve loved for six years. A woman who opened herself up to me in ways we both deemed unimaginable when we first met.

“Oh Leigh,” Jodie moans, in that way of hers, and this is a million times more painful than when I walked out of the door at the house in The Hamptons. But maybe we need this pain. Because how else could we possibly mark the end of our affair than with regret in our hearts and tears in our eyes?

Then she comes for me for the very last time, and I can feel her climax shudder through me, like a parting gift. And then, it’s over. Then we’re just two naked people on our—her—apartment floor, trying to wrap their heads around what just happened, and quickly realizing that nothing has changed. I still need to drag my suitcases down the stairs and leave.