With a jolt of fury, I stood up from my nearly untouched plate, unwilling to mull any of this over in silence and watch his weird way of brooding. I went to the bathroom and grabbed my swimsuit.
When I came back, he glanced up from the screen questioningly but said nothing. I pretended not to notice.
I waded into the pool, which really was too short for laps, but I couldn’t think of any other way to work out this restless energy short of leaving the room. If I did that I’d be sending him a signal. That I resented or regretted what had happened between us. And I didn’t. But I did resent his current behavior. If he wanted to ignore me, fine. I could do the exact same thing.
I pondered all of this, as I continued my short lapping—four strokes, turn, catch breath, four strokes turn. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was starting to make me dizzy and I had no idea how long I’d been at it when I felt a strong hand wrap around my upper arm, pulling me to a halt. I came up sputtering. He was standing beside me in the pool.
“What the hell?” I said.
“I kept calling you and you wouldn’t stop. How long do you plan to keep at this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. How long to you plan to blow me off?”
He shot me a sharp look. “I’m blowing you off? Why do you think that?”
I wiped the water out of my face. “Maybe because you wired in the first chance you could get and you’re eating dinner over your keyboard. You might do that all the time when you’re alone, but in company, it’s pretty bad manners. And because you’re not talking and I have no idea what is going through your head.”
He looked away but not before I noticed irritation on his face.
I continued. “Please don’t tell me you treated your other fuck buddies that way.”
“You’re not a fuck buddy.”
I pulled my arm free, turned and pushed over to the edge of the infinity pool, looking out over the dark bay. The distant crash of the ocean and smell of salt rose up on the breeze. From behind me he sighed. “I’m sorry you thought I was blowing you off.”
My face flushed hot with anger. “Not an apology. Don’t bother wasting your breath with that bullshit. Do you have any idea how it makes me feel that you would just ignore me like that after we—after what happened between us? Like yesterday’s forgotten trash.”
He came up beside me, hooking his muscular arms over the edge, careful not to touch me. He looked into my face, I kept staring out over the bay. “I’m sorry,” he said after some long, tense moments. “I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose. It’s something I do when—when I’m thinking.”
I took a deep breath, the tight anger only easing a tiny increment. I looked at him then. He’d shucked his shirt and pants and it looked like he’d jumped into the water in his underwear. “Then talk to me. Tell me what you are thinking about.”
He paused. “I was thinking about how I never intended for it to go this far.”
A band tightened around my chest. “So you are feeling regretful. Guilty that it happened.”
“No,” he said, turning to me. “I’m feeling regretful and guilty that I enjoyed it so much I want to do it again.”
A new tension thickened between us. I struggled for breath, because I felt the exact same way. “But you won’t?”
He looked out over the bay. “It was never supposed to go this far,” he repeated.
Though I hated how he dealt with his inner conflict by shutting me out, I found that inner conflict utterly a reflection of his goodness. He wasn’t using me. He was afraid of using me. He wasn’t disregarding me. He was holding my feelings in such regard that he was denying his own. How could I be angry with that?
“But it did. And there’s nothing to regret in that. There was no ‘deal.’ There were no principles violated. The money—”
“To hell with the money, Emilia. I don’t give a shit about the money.”
I turned to him, clearing my throat. “Here’s the deal, Adam. You are acting like you did something wrong, like you ‘took’ something from me or somehow despoiled me. You know what? It’s our culture that leads men to think like that…that purity in a woman is the ultimate prize.”
He grimaced. “You sound like your Manifesto, now.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t just write those words for the hell of it. I believed them. My purity was worth no more than yours or anyone else’s. I just happened to be a lot older than most when I finally—”