Chapter Fifteen
“Why did you choose this restaurant?” Alex demanded. “It’s takeout, and it’s not even real food. Have you even seen an acai berry in nature? They’re just a trend.”
“Sit down, Alex.” Luz said, ignoring his grousing.
“I’m not eating here,” he said. “And I’d rather get on the road since you wanted to meet Friday instead of Sunday. I had to book us a different flight. And neither of my sisters could make it here in time so it’s going to ruin the photo op. You’re really eating that?”
He stared into the acai sunset bowl that contained a frozen smoothie concoction along with dates, granola, coconut, and kale with a bit of local honey drizzled on top. It was, Luz thought, spooning some in her mouth, delicious.
“It’s probably a million calories.”
“I’m hungry. It’s my lunch. And it’s four hundred seventy-five calories. And, after this, I’ll probably get an almond milk chai latte about one hundred ninety-five calories.”
“You definitely need to get back on your medication. You’ll be fat in a month at this rate”
“Probably not, but I don’t care.”
“What does Lane think of all this food consumption.” Alex looked like something smelled really bad.
“I didn’t ask him.”
“Who cares anyway.” He dismissed. “You’re my wife not his.”
“Are you really going to stand to have this chat?”
“What’s to chat about? You’re here. I’m here. I have a town car waiting. Take your last bite of whatever that is. I’ve already got you booked for double sessions with your trainer since you haven’t worked out in weeks.”
“You’re going to want to sit. You won’t want me to turn the volume up.”
“What are you talking about, Luz? You sound completely crazy. Get up.” He reached out to grab her arm, just as Lane breezed into the smoothie bar.
“Still no touch,” Lane said, catching his brother’s arm.
“What are you, her guard dog?” He shook his arm out of Lane’s grasp. “What are you doing bringing him here? I warned you, Luz.”
“I didn’t,” she said as surprised to see Lane as Alex appeared to be. “Okay, don’t sit, Alex, but you’re not going to like me to turn it up and risk going public.”
Luz brought out her phone and went to voice memo and pushed play. The conversation on Lane’s patio began to play in excruciating detail.
“You little bitch.” Alex grabbed for the phone.
Luz swiped it off the table quicker. “I emailed a copy to Paz and a couple other friends,” she said. “So don’t think trying to smash it is going to solve your problem.”
“Big deal. So you caught an argument on tape. You can’t use that in court,” he said. “It will never stand up. I had an expectation of privacy talking to my wife over breakfast.”
“I’m not using it in divorce court. I’m going to post it when you make your political announcement.”
Alex sat. “You wouldn’t,” he said slowly.
“Yeah, I will. With pleasure. And I’ll use the picture I took of you with Ava on my desk.”
“You did not get a photo.”
“I did. You weren’t noticing much else,” she said. “I will admit I was shocked, but I was deleting photos on my phone at the time so getting a shot didn’t require too much higher level thinking. You want me to show you?”
“You little bitch.”
Luz felt calmer the more he got riled up. Lane stared at her in open admiration.
“So.” Alex leaned forward, his hands fisted on the table. “What exactly is your game plan?”
“Divorce me. No contest. I don’t want money. I want out.”
Lane’s hand briefly covered hers. “Well played.” He mouthed. “Actually, Luz, I was thinking you should go for an annulment.”
“Like hell.” Alex burst out, causing several people in line to turn and stare at him. “We were married almost ten years. The marriage was most definitely consummated.” He sneered.
“Yes,” Lane said, leaning back in his chair, stretching his long legs out, looking totally relaxed. “But she definitely had doubts on the day of her wedding and, as you so smugly informed her, which is on tape, at the time of your marriage, she was not in full possession of the facts. I think that will definitely qualify for an annulment, governor.”
Alex stared hard at Lane and then his gaze slid to Luz. She could hear him think.
“What the hell do you want with an annulment?” He demanded. “You’ve committed three big sins. What’s one more?”
“I…” She looked at Lane, who was staring at her with an intensity that was distracting and arousing, which was so not what she needed right now. “I will want to marry in a church,” she said and was about to add a “someday” or other qualifying phrase, but Alex banged his fist on the table and stood up like he’d been poked.
“What the hell would you marry her for?” He demanded. “She’s nearer to forty than thirty, she can’t have children, and she’s a total bore in bed.”
“Definitely have to disagree on the last one and if you say another word about it, I’m going to slam your face against the wall and risk knocking lose a few teeth.”
“I’ll have you on assault.”
“Worth it.”
“Stop posturing, both of you,” Luz said. “I want to go to mediation and just get the divorce papers signed. Have it over with.”
“What do I get out of it?” Alex demanded.
“Freedom.” Luz said. “And silence. I won’t speak about our marriage to the press or to friends.”
“And Lane.”
“I’ll tell him anything I want to,” she said coolly.
“You’re really going to walk away from the house? The vacation houses? Investments?” He looked incredulous.
“Lane did it. I can, too.”
Alex looked mean. And calculating. But also confused.
He glared at Lane. “What do I get if I agree to the annulment or a divorce, and then she leaks to the press, little brother? Luz is…”
Lane stood up so quickly the chair tipped, but he caught it before it hit the floor. “Let’s take a walk, big brother.”
* * *
Lane pulled up outside his Ole Hanson house.
“Why here?” Luz asked quietly, sitting up so the fuzzy blanket slipped off her body. It was after midnight. She was so tired, but also strangely happy. “I said Preach’s.”
“You did,” Lane said, his voice a bit tense. “Luz…” He turned in his seat so he could face her. He touched her hair, falling in her face. “I don’t want to run your life. I want you to be happy. I want you to feel free to do what you want to do and go where you want to go. I know you want space. You need space, and I want to give it to you. I do.”
“I sense a but.”
He ducked his head, played with her fingers for a second and then pulled away. “I bought this house for you.”
Luz blinked, thinking she’d misunderstood. “But you said…”
“I know what I said.” Lane ran his hand over his face. “But I have to be honest with you. Once I started making money, real money, I started watching the house, and checking in with realtors because you had always loved that house and talked about it, and it made me feel closer to you, and I thought…it sounds stupid, I know, but I thought if you ever did leave Alex, if you ever had enough, you’d need a place to go.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Luz finally said into the silence. “I can’t accept a house, Lane.”
“Just stay there. As long as you like. Figure out what you want to do next. Take your time.”
“Lane,”
“Please.” He took her hands and leaned into her so their foreheads were touching. “Please just stay there. I want you to feel safe. I need to feel that you’re safe.”
“Lane, it’s not your fault that I felt so scared as a child and freaked out by change and instability when we were in college.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But I feel like I should have known, that I should have understood you better. You were my whole world, and I didn’t take the time to really know you, so let me try to understand who you are now, what you need now.”
Luz closed her eyes and breathed him in. Was it really that simple? And why did she need to keep making it so hard?
“I’m not ready to commit to anything, Lane.”
“I know. I’m not asking for anything. I just want a chance. And I know you need time.”
“It doesn’t seem fair to you,” she said softly, “being in limbo.”
“It’s my choice,” he said.
Luz thought about something Dulcie and Preach had said a couple days ago about choosing to let go of the things out of her control and choosing happiness.
“I’ll walk you in,” he said, getting out of his Jeep, opening her door, and grabbing her purse and weekender bag.
She laughed. “You should be glad I haven’t gone all out on a new wardrobe with all the hauling my bags around you’ve been doing.”
“I think I can handle it.”
He keyed in the code that opened the gate and then took a leather tie from around his neck with a key attached and placed it over her neck. “This is to the front door,” he said. “Let me get some lights on, and I’ll you teach you how to set the alarm system.”
She followed him inside the house and trailed after him as he showed her how to work the elaborate alarm. He handed her a folder full of information about the house.
“If you need me…” He started.
She nodded, pressing her lips together tightly to keep herself from asking him to stay.
* * *
“You know those are considered weeds, right?” Paz let herself through the gate of the hacienda style house that after six weeks, Luz was starting to feel like it was home.
She scooped more dirt around the ring of golden poppies she had planted around the rim of a few of the potted olive trees to add color.
“Kinda like me.” Luz made a lame attempt at a joke. “I really don’t belong here, but I’m taking root.”
Paz tossed down her tote bag and scarf and went into the house. She returned with a can of coconut water.
“I hate these,” she said. “I don’t know how you can drink them.”
“I have other things in the fridge.”
Paz sat in a chair and kicked her legs up over the fountain. “And you’re wrong. You’re not a weed. You’re a tree. You totally belong here in San Clemente and in this house.”
“Way out of my current price range.”
“Not if you stuck it to Alex like he deserved.”
“No,” Luz said. “I don’t want anything from that marriage. The bad memories are enough to carry around.”
Although she was no longer waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxious and disoriented. In fact, she was sleeping better than she could remember, and she was having really vivid dreams, a lot of them about sex, well, sex with Lane. And they would be so real, she’d wake up wet and aching and wonder where he was. She’d almost dialed him up several times like she was trying to play out some Drake song fantasy.
“Then don’t,” Paz said. “When are you going to let Lane move into his own house?”
“Paz, it’s his house. He can move where and when he wants,” she said. “And I am taking a break from men.”
“Oh, is that what that was yesterday morning when you were surfing? A break.”
Luz nibbled on her lip. Okay, so she’d fallen off the wagon more than a few times with Lane, which she hated because she felt like she was sending mixed messages.
“I don’t know what to do,” she muttered to her sister.
Paz sat up, her feet falling off the water feature so she was actually sitting in a chair like it was designed to be sat in. “Are you asking me advice?”
“No.” Luz drew the word out. “I know that I need more time on my own, it’s just that it’s getting harder and harder to justify it to myself. I feel like I’m playing a game with him, which I don’t want to do, but then it seems like I’m falling into an old pattern.”
Paz rolled her eyes. “You’ve been with like two guys in your whole life. That’s not a pattern. And Alex was a sociopathic, master manipulator so he doesn’t count. Lane’s smokin’ hot so you should do what you want. Life’s short and at least your forever guy is still above ground.”
Paz got up and prowled the courtyard. She drained the entire can of coconut water and made a bitter face.
Luz smiled sadly. “You still think about Holland?”
“Not like that,” Paz said. “Well, not exactly like that. It’s not like I’ve been faithful to his memory or anything.” She shrugged.
“I don’t think having sex with other men means you are forgetting,” Luz said carefully.
“That’s what Zen says.” She made a face. “He thinks I need to exorcise Holland’s ghost.”
“Not for his show. Tell me not for his show. Hollis doesn’t need some spectacle made of her brother’s death for a cable show.”
Paz shrugged, her usual way of dismissing a conversation. “Let’s go get some lunch. We can talk about the segment we’re shooting tonight.”
Luz had been helping her sister with her cable show Eye on San Clemente, and they’d been interviewing a lot of the longtime surfers in town about their experiences, philosophy, memories. Yesterday Luz had spent the entire day at a custom board shop filming the process for the documentary.
“Sure,” she said. “But I’m not really hungry.”
“You’ve been saying that all week.”
“Yeah, my stomach just feels weird.”
“Maybe you’re preggers.”
“Not nice, Paz. I told you about everything. I tried for two years. Nothing.”
“I think it was Alex’s sperm. It’s probably venomous. Or you just developed massive antibodies to its toxins.”
Luz peeled off her gardening gloves and smiled. The usual pain she felt when she thought about all her regrets from the past was beginning to fade. She was having fun with her sister, and they were in the process of raising money for an after school arts and media program for teens. Lane was setting up a technology lab, and they already had some college-age counselors who’d teach game design and programing classes after school, and she was going to teach a journalism class that would focus on news gathering, writing, and them posting on different platforms. It was a start.
“You could be preggers,” Paz said when Luz wrinkled her nose when they walked up to the window of the taco food cart near the pier. “Vivid dreams like the one you told me about yesterday, weird smells, and sour stomach.”
“I hope you aren’t speaking from experience.”
“Nah, Hollis is blogging about it. Definitely makes me a bigger fan of birth control. Oh, it’s the sun god. I’m leaving. I can’t stand the way he looks at you, like you’re like a glass of water and he’s walked across the desert. Go put him out of his misery.”
Luz saw Lane jogging up, board under his arm, along with Paz’s three interns who were now her interns as well, she supposed. They each held boards and wore big smiles.
“Surf lesson with the kiddos.” He joked, dropping a quick kiss on Luz’s lips.
He tasted of the sea, salt, sun, and sex.
Why was she denying herself all of that masculine fabulousness? What point was she trying to prove? It was getting harder and harder to remember.
Paz harassed Lane a bit and he teased back, but Luz was too distracted to notice. She wanted him. Now. It was like a compulsion.
“I need help with something back at the house.” She broke into the conversation.
“Sure, Luz,” Jorge said easily. “I’m good with a hammer and other tools.”
“No. Not you,” Luz said. “You.”
“Sure,” Lane agreed, and then he must have read something in her expression because his eyes darkened, and Luz felt as if he’d lit a match in her chest. She felt combustible and the three-block walk seemed way too far.
“Great.” Paz rolled her eyes. “I’ll have lunch with the children. Lane can pay. You owe me big,” Paz said.
“My wallet’s in my jeep.”
“Hey, Ricki,” Paz called out to the taco vender. “Lane’s buying me lunch along with my crew,”
Ricki nodded.
“For the week,” she added, “only his wallet’s in his Jeep, but you know where he lives. You can hunt him down.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ricki said. “Massive house in the hills. Needs a dog.”
“Nah,” Paz said. “The Ole on the corner that looks out on the pier. You can find him there now.”
“Paz.” Luz had trouble even admonishing her sister’s cheekiness. “Lane is not buying you and the human food processors lunch for the week.”
“Yes, I am, so let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Oh, one more thing.” Paz slid something in Luz’s hand.
When she realized what it was, she tried to palm it entirely. “Are you nuts?” She hissed. “I’m wearing yoga pants. No pockets and I don’t need this thing.”
“If you don’t, you will.”
“I’m not even going to ask why you are carrying this around with you.”
Paz just smiled.
Luz crossed the tracks with Lane. He was dripping wet and carried his board like it weighed the same as a loaf of bread.
“So, you need a man with tools?” Lane asked innocently.
“Let’s just say your penchant for going naked would be appreciated.”
“What did she give you that’s got you all hot and bothered?” He tried to see what was in her hand.
“Nothing really.” Luz held her hand tight to her thigh as they walked and she picked up the pace. “It’s stupid.”
“Now I’m intrigued. What is it? A dildo?”
Luz squeaked and Lane laughed. He easily reached around her body and uncurled her fingers one by one.
“Why’d she give you that?”
“Just being the Paz version of funny,” Luz muttered.
“Do you think you need it?”
“Lane, no. I told you. I can’t get pregnant.”
“But the doctor didn’t know why?”
“Doctors, and no, and I took enough of those for two lifetimes so Paz was just trying to be funny. Ha. Ha.”
She opened the gate. Lane put his board down and took her loosely in his arms.
“Want me to take a shower first?”
“No.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his jaw line. “I like you as is.”
“I’m sandy,” he said. “I could rinse off in the outdoor shower. You could help.”
Luz tossed Paz’s joke on the mosaic bistro table by the outdoor water feature and then peeled off the rest of Lane’s wetsuit and then his board shorts.
“You don’t look very sandy,” she said huskily, crouching down. “Let me check.”
He hissed in a breath.
“You don’t taste very sandy.”
“Get your clothes off.” He commanded, dragging her up so he could kiss her mouth.
She kicked out of her yoga pants and panties while he peeled off her white lace tank.
“I love no bra,” he whispered against her breasts as he feasted and walked them backwards towards the outdoor shower.
Luz tangled her fingers in his hair and arched into him.
“Your balance and coordination never ceases to amaze me,” she whispered as he turned on the water.
“Prepare to be amazed.”
* * *
They made love in the shower and then started all over again in the bed. Luz gasped when he entered her the second time and wrapped her legs around his waist so that he could go deeper.
“I love the way you feel inside me,” she said. “And that you keep your eyes open so you see me.”
“I always see you, baby.”
She dug her nails into his shoulders as he hit a particularly sensitive spot. She wanted to tell him she loved him. That she felt ready to be with him, but when he began to move inside of her, alternating deep and shallow thrusts and then fast and then slow, she was totally lost in the moment and she could feel herself beginning to peak. She wanted to hold off, make it last, come with him at the same time, but she could feel her control starting to splinter and she thrust up against him faster, wanting to feel more of him.
“Lane, please, please,” she begged not even sure what she was asking for, but knowing he’d give it to her.
Afterwards, as they lay in a tangle of weak limbs, she licked some sweat off his chest, feeling totally at peace with herself and with him.
“Luz.” He kissed along the rim of her ear and she hummed as little electrical currents shimmied through her body. “When was your last period?”
“Ignore Paz,” she said. “You always used to. Besides, you told me that when you were growing up you had ADD, but you’re totally fixated on that stupid thing.”
“I did and I do,” he said. “But I’m very focused on you at all times.” His hands slid down her back to cup her bottom and pull her even more firmly against him. “And you haven’t answered my question.”
“It’s not a valid question. I tried before, or are you going to make an argument that you have superhuman sperm?”
“That’s exactly what I was going to say,” he said, rolling over so that she was on top.
“I can believe it.” She smiled. She smoothed his curls off his forehead. “But I can’t be, because my divorce still isn’t final, and Paz and I are in the thick of raising funds for the after school program, and…”
He stopped her with a kiss. “I don’t think it works that way,” he said.
“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said in a small voice.
“I won’t be,” he said. “You’ve always been everything I wanted. Everything.”
She traced the line of his eyebrows and then his lips. “I’m ready,” she finally said.
“Again?”
She laughed. “What? Can’t manage?” She taunted. “And I was hearing all about this superhuman sperm.”
“Reloading.”
“Lovely image, thank you.” She kissed his chest. “No, seriously. I think I’m ready to be with you.”
“Baby, I’m still inside you, so you are with me.”
“Yes.” She relaxed against him. “I am ready to be with you forever.”