18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

F orrest placed a hand on the rail going up to Lucy's apartment and stood still, frozen at the base of the stairs.

When they had sat around his father's grave earlier that day, the sun had kept a chill at bay. Now, gray clouds were gathering as the sun dipped to the horizon, allowing the fall chill to creep in on Forrest. Lucy's apartment would be warm and inviting, the kind of place where cookies came out of the oven and each upholstered chair would have a throw draped across an arm. He stepped onto the first step.

The last of the guests had left an hour earlier. While Forrest thanked Porter and Charlotte profusely, they offered for him to stay and have dinner. He'd made his excuses saying he needed time alone. The truth was, Forrest was feeling a gravitational pull to the tiny apartment in their backyard.

Miriam's words and the presence of friends and family had both helped Forrest find some level of closure. He still had much mourning ahead of him, but he felt more peace about his father's passing than he had experienced since the moment he and Gracie had watched him pass.

Perhaps it was the emotional space cleared by this small measure of closure or the fact that he was simply tired from trying to avoid Lucy while simultaneously feeling desperate to be near her, but Forrest walked out of Porter's house and straight to Lucy's stairs, certain he would not go home yet. Without any fore-planning, he lifted the antique knocker on her front door and let it fall.

Clark answered with rabid barking, announcing that a guest had arrived. Lucy cracked open the door, still looking down at Clark, hushing him futilely. When she finally looked up, her eyes widened and she flushed.

She had changed out of her black dress into black leggings and a long-sleeve, white v-neck shirt. She clearly had not expected to see anyone. The dark lines of a black bra, most likely left behind from the dress, were written through the white t-shirt. Forrest forced his eyes to hers. She pushed up her glasses. "Forrest?"

She was nervous. He made her nervous. Damn.

"Hey." Hey? Really? "Hello, Lucy. I was wondering if we could talk."

She opened the door wider, and Clark darted forward, circling frantically around Forrest's knees. "Hey, boy. I've missed you." He petted Clark, feeling excitement vibrating through the dog. It granted a moment for them each to regroup.

The apartment was dim except for a lamp next to the sofa. The same book he'd seen her reading at the hospital lay open beneath the lamplight. He had interrupted her reading. He was a little surprised she was still on the same book. Was she having trouble concentrating like he was? He’.d picked up Leaves of Grass the night before, hoping its familiarity would help him calm down enough to sleep. Instead, the subtle, erotic undertones of Whitman's poems had kept him up until the sun was starting to rise. He probably looked like hell. Actually, Edith's exact greeting to him as they all stood talking after the service had been, "You look like hell, Forrest."

As Clark calmed down, an uncomfortable silence settled over the apartment. After years of easy conversations, it felt tragic. What else could Forrest lose in a week? "I just wanted to thank you for being there today."

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know. After everything, after what I did." He turned from her, pretending to look at a houseplant she kept near a window. The thing about services for the dead is that the grief of those closest to the deceased is on stark display for everyone to see. Forrest was so tired of being seen, of people's eyes pausing for a moment on the bags beneath his own.

At the same time, even as he hid from her, Forrest wanted comforting. He wanted to find comfort in Lucy's embrace and in the cocoon her hair created around his face when she was straddled over him whispering into his ear. He imagined that given how perfectly Lucy-like the rest of her apartment was, her bedroom would be an oasis of her. The door was a few steps away from him. If he walked in there, would she follow? Forrest shook away the thought. He would not use her again. She deserved infinitely more.

Without any physical touch, Forrest knew that Lucy had walked up behind him. The air heated the entire length of his back. Tentatively, Lucy said, "Not what you did. What we did. It was both of us, Forrest. It was you and me."

He should not turn around. He could walk a few steps, put distance between them. He could bend over and pet Clark, breaking the pull he felt, as if a rope tied around him was being yanked by Lucy.

He turned around, though.

Lucy reached up, and smoothed his hair, running her hands all the way down the length of his beard. He closed his eyes and tilted his forehead so that it rested on Lucy's. He felt more present to her caress than he had felt to anything during the past few days. It was as if a haze had lifted, and everything was in hyper-focus.

He opened his eyes again and lifted his head, wanting to see again without fog. The lamp was behind Lucy, illuminating her hair with back-lighting. She looked ethereal, the curls perpetually loose from her bun each glowing individually. Lucy must have washed off her makeup from the day. Each freckle was articulated perfectly across her nose. Forrest was a student of poetry, but he'd never written a lyrical verse. In a week filled with things over which to mourn, this felt particularly tragic. Was he too old to learn new tricks?

With her hands still cupping each side of Forrest's beard, Lucy closed the distance between them simply by shifting to her toes. Forrest marveled again at how perfectly their bodies matched. Had he only dated short women before? No one had ever fit like Lucy.

They each tilted their faces in silent agreement that neither would or could resist the pull between them. When Lucy's lips touched his own, Forrest lost a few more battles. His hands wrapped around her, running up and down the length of her back. Then, they lowered to her ass, pressing her into him.

Wearing leggings as pants was a phenomenon that had come into fashion when Forrest was young and perpetually looking for his next partner. Then, as he had matured, they had faded into the surroundings, no longer particularly exciting. But as Forrest felt how thin the fabric was, the access it afforded for him to explore, he thanked the fashion powers that be. Hoisting upward, Lucy read his movements perfectly. Her legs went around his mid-section, and he walked them to the sofa, knocking over the coat rack heavy with fall jackets along their way.

Lacking finesse or grace, driven only by hunger, Forrest fell into the sofa, reveling in the weight of Lucy as she, too, fell on top of him. His lips trailed down her neck, pausing at her collar bones to dip his tongue into each nook and cranny before he pulled the white shirt off of her and continued trailing his kisses further down.

The bedside lamp in his bedroom had been too dim. Forrest had not noticed just how porcelain and smooth her breasts were. But maybe it wasn't the lighting. Maybe it was the way she contrasted against the black silk that brought it into focus. Whatever the cause, Forrest paused and stared, the lines still visible when he blinked. Then, he leaned forward, leaving no area untouched or unnoticed.

As Forrest paused to take a breath, Lucy took over, kissing his neck and giving particular attention to the area just below his ear. She was, as always, brilliant. One night with him, and she had already learned how to undo him.

Forrest turned his head to grant her better access. But then, damn his hyper-focus, Forrest noticed something that stopped him in his tracks.

Beneath the romance novel on the end table, there was another book with a bookmark at about the half-way point. It was a copy of Mark Twain's Eve's Diary , the widowed Twain's posthumous love letter to his wife. Forrest remembered telling Lucy about the book when he'd seen her shelf of romance novels. It portrayed Eve as cleverer than her husband and the center of his universe. Eve was everything Lucy should be and would be to the man with whom she one day fell in love.

Forrest had recommended that book because Lucy was a romantic and it was his favorite romance. She was reading about the love of a man for his treasured wife. She deserved to be the heroine of a great romance. She was built for that role.

Forrest pulled back. Lucy must have sensed the shift. She pulled back, too.

"I'm so sorry, Lucy. I can't do this."

***

Lucy dug through her shirt drawer until she found something black, long-sleeved, and with a very high neck. Her white v-neck was lying somewhere in her living room floor, discarded clandestinely and now wrinkled and covered in dog hair. Like a metaphor for my life , a bitter voice Lucy hardly recognized muttered in her head.

When Forrest had backed away and apologized (Apologized? Had she not received enough apologies from him to preemptively cover this little snafu?) Lucy had unceremoniously stood up and rushed to her room, mumbling, "I'll just be a moment."

I'll just be a moment? Had she really said that?

Lucy took a moment to play "What would Edith do?" She would have tilted her eyes into her signature a-comma-doesn't-go-there glare and said something along the lines of, "Stop treating me like some fragile, wilting flower from one of your damned 19 th -century novels. Clearly, we want to have sex, so let's have sex."

Lucy shook her head. She would need more lessons from Edith before she worked up the gumption for that. How about "What would Miriam do?"

This one was easy. After so long a friendship, Lucy knew Miriam like she knew the back of her hand. Miriam would've calmly dismounted, somehow making it look cool and, like, no-big-deal. She then would have taken Forrest's hands, looked deeply into his eyes until he was too disconcerted to mutter some asinine apology, and said, "Forrest, clearly we need to talk about your shit before we move forward." Then she would’ve cleared up decades of mommy-issues and self-doubts with the precision of a surgeon.

Yes, Miriam would have handled the whole situation sublimely, but alas, Lucy was the one hiding in her bedroom from the man with whom she was now quite certain she was in love. Hiding because he wouldn't stop apologizing for what was happening between them. Hiding because she did not want to cry in front of him. Her tears were for Clark's eyes only. Hiding because if she walked back in there, she feared he would say something or she would say something that they would not be able to un-say. They stood at a precipice.

Lucy grabbed a knee-length sweater and put it on over her shirt. Best to cover her behind as well as her breasts. They were all causing her problems here lately. Lucy wrapped the sweater tightly around herself. Armored, she opened the door.

Forrest was pacing back and forth across the short distance of her living room, his hair standing on end. He stopped pacing as her door creaked, staring at her.

"Gee, Forrest. You look like hell."

"You sound like Edith."

"Ha. I wish."

Forrest looked perplexed. Resentment was not a normal tone to hear coming from Lucy. Maybe she did have more Edith in her than she realized.

"What are you thinking, Luce?"

The sound of her nickname pulled at Lucy. The tug hurt. She thought of the fantasy from earlier, of a future where she and Forrest are together. In that future, he would say, "Goodnight, Luce," right before he kissed her goodnight. And then, of course, the innocent goodnight kiss would turn into yet another late night. They would both be sleep-deprived in that future.

Lucy dismissed the thoughts. She had built a life on being practical, admitting that most fantasies, whether they be her own or her mother's, were not attainable.

Suddenly, Lucy felt something roiling inside of her, something she had not expected. It felt suspiciously like anger. She was angry at Forrest. How absolutely foreign to associate anger with Forrest, almost as foreign as it had felt to acknowledge attraction to him over these past few weeks. During their ten years of almost constant proximity, where had all of these feelings been? Why now? Why, just as Forrest was losing his father and Lucy was considering moving on from Hart Building, were they erupting? Anger and attraction and passion joined the party now?

"Luce?"

"I'm thinking that we're about to have a let's-be-friends-talk. A let's-pretend-this-never-happened talk. I don't know if I want to hear it from you, Forrest."

He looked ashen, drained. "I don't know what else to say. I don't have another or a better talk to give to you right now. I wish. I wish with all of myself that I could have any other talk with you. I do Lucy."

"Then let's do that, Forrest. Let's have another talk, a different talk. Let's talk about how good it felt to be with each other. Let's talk about how right we are together. Please, Forrest, please tell me I'm not the only one who feels this way." Lucy hated the pleading in her voice. She was angry with him. She didn't want to beg. She didn't want to ask to be loved in return.

"You're not the only one, Lucy. I have never..." His words broke off. He swiped at an eye with the same jerky movement he used when he ran his hands through his hair. "I've never felt anything like this with anyone. But, Lucy, I've never wanted to feel this. I've spent my whole adult life making sure I never felt like this. I have no control around you. You consume me."

"If that's the case, then why was it so easy to call a stop to it tonight."

"Lucy, I know you don't believe me, but it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

A tense quiet built in the room. Clark whimpered.

"I've seen you date a dozen different women without a modicum of hesitation. Why now? Why are you all of the sudden unable to be with someone, to be with me?"

"Because you're you. Because you're Lucy O'Shields. Because Porter can't give you some ridiculous nickname that we all laugh at, and I sure as hell can't walk out on you six months from now with a clear conscience, and Lucy, you know you can't be casual. It's not you. That's part of what I love about you. I wouldn't want you to be different. I just can't live up to everything being with you would mean."

Part of what he loved about her? The word reverberated through her. She did not feel loved.

"Forrest, there are a hundred little voices in my head right now telling me all of the reasons you're walking away from me right now. Incidentally, most of them are my mother's."

"Lucy, I never wanted to make you feel this way. I'm so..."

"Don't, Forrest. Don't apologize. Don't worry about me. I have developed strategies over the years. I've had a lot of practice for how to deal with these voices."

"Don't you see, Lucy? That's what happens. That is what being in a real relationship with me would mean. Relationships are messy. You mean the world to me, but I end up making you feel bad things. I make you hear a bunch of lying, messed-up voices in your head. And it's a shame. It's a crying shame. Because, Lucy, you’re so beautiful and brilliant. You’re absolutely perfect. Please, don't listen to those voices. I'm the problem here, Lucy."

As he finished speaking, his shoulders slumped. Normally, Lucy would see slumped shoulders and immediately jump into action. She would order a latte or bake a pan of brownies or send a perfectly-curated playlist, whatever suited the individual. And she would fix it. She would fix their hurt with a perfectly timed gesture.

But for the first time in a very long time, Lucy did not have the emotional energy to tend another's wounds. Her own were too raw.

Forrest had paced one more time across the room, but he must have caught a second wind because he turned back to Lucy and said, "You really are the most brilliant person I know, Lucy. And you've been a secretary, a secretary , for a decade? What if that is me, Lucy? What if this thing we have, this friendship or attraction or whatever the hell it is, what if that is what has held you back all of these years?"

Suddenly, all the anger that had been building since she'd hid in her bedroom burst to the forefront, the reigns slipping from her grasp. "Forrest, don't you dare belittle the past decade of my life. You may think that making sure Dr. Hubert gets his afternoon nap or building Legos with Porter's boys or reminding Edith that she has a heart and it's a damn good one, you may think that was all a waste. But it wasn't. I have loved every single moment.

"And as for you, the late nights editing your articles or talking about what we're reading or making sure your Dad was okay or just being with you, being in an adjacent office to yours? I wouldn't trade those moments for anything. Not even some fancy job with a high salary.

"I didn't come to this job with a lot of fond memories from my childhood." Tears threatened, but Lucy forced herself to finish. "I was a failure. A failure at every dream my mother ever had for me. But in Hart Building, I'm not a failure. There, I'm indispensable. And I have somehow gained a family who has loved me for who I am. Or at least, I thought that was what I had."

Forrest was completely still, paralyzed in the presence of her anger. Finally, he said, "I'll start looking for another position. I'll leave PSU so you can stay in your job."

After gliding over countless opportunities to tell him, Lucy knew the moment had arrived. "No, Forrest. I've been offered a job as Administrative Assistant to President Burke, and I will be accepting the position. I'll be gone by the time you return from your bereavement leave."

The muscles in his jaw twitched. Was he angry she hadn't told him? Disappointed she was moving to another secretarial position? Regardless, his opinion hardly mattered now.

Not betraying any specific emotion, Forrest said, "I'll head out."

Another long pause followed, during which they stared into each other's eyes across the room without saying a word. Just when she most could have used the strength it provided, Lucy's anger ran out. Within their little English Department family, Forrest was so warm and loving and dependable. He would be a magnificent husband and father. If only his mother had not walked out on him. If only his father had not been a shell of a man most of his life. If only he could trust himself. What a waste it all was.

But hadn't she known? Wasn't this why she had spent the past few days curled around a bowl of popcorn on her sofa.

"I knew the second you looked at me in the hospital that next day. I knew right away."

He didn't ask her what she had known. He didn't need to.

"Goodnight, Lucy." The door clicked behind him.

Lucy walked around the couch and picked up the white shirt from the floor. She passed it several times between each hand, feeling its weight in the palms of her hands. Then, she threw it across the room, where it limply hit the front door, and landed in a heap right where Forrest had walked out.

***

Lucy was back on the sofa, but this time, there was nothing on the TV. Why watch a fictional apocalypse when the real thing had just happened in her living room? She sat in the dark in a silence only occasionally punctuated by a moan from Clark or Lucy's own sniffles.

Lucy had been through a few minor break-ups over the years. One was even not-so-minor, ending a year-long relationship the year after she'd graduated. The boyfriend, a fellow English student at PSU, had declared he would go to LA to try and make it as a screenwriter. Lucy had felt little more than a twinge of regret. She'd known instantly that a small twinge was not enough on which to build a long-distance, serious relationship. She had cried a few tears over the wasted year with him, but it had only taken a week or two for her to move past the break-up blues.

Tonight was completely different, like she had a gaping wound that would take eons to heal. She had only slept with this guy one-and-a-half times (this was how she had decided to quantify her physical encounters with Forrest at around the two-hour mark of sitting in dark silence). Why was this one so much more painful?

But, of course, Lucy knew the answer to her own question. While the one-and-a-half sexual encounters had been divine (there are so few non-ironic opportunities to use that word, but really, it applied here), they had only served to clarify what already existed between her and Forrest, the loss of which she was now mourning. The two were connected, each compatible halves of a heretofore contented whole. They had spent years staying up late editing his writing, laughing about campus gossip, simply existing together in the little world of their Hart Building office. And somewhere along the way, this companionship had morphed for Lucy into a deep, abiding love.

It was the kind of love Lucy had hoped existed just enough to keep her up late reading paperback romances into the wee hours of the morning on more than one occasion. It was also the kind of love that she had felt certain was not for girls like her. She was not a damsel in distress (despite current appearances), nor did she want to be. She liked being the fixer, the one who rescued others. She was not frail or fragile as her mother had hoped she would be, and while she did not project strength and power in the manner of Edith and Miriam, she knew both were in her possession. It was just that her strength was a steady undercurrent, quiet but present and determinative. It had carried her through the countless invalidations through her youth and the loss of her mother before their relationship could be mended. It had carried her through into the person she was today, a person capable of loving herself and others deeply and truly.

And so here she was, loving Forrest with every fiber of her being and suspecting he loved her in return, but unable to make him love himself enough to trust that they could be together. And if she were going to get through this pain, through the loss of the man who was likely the great love of her life, Lucy would need to draw on all the reserves of strength in her possession.

Clark whimpered again. "I know, Clark. I know, buddy."

Looking down where Clark's eyes were shining in the dark of the room, Lucy knew that she would need her friends to help her navigate the coming months. She would not be better in a week. She was a person familiar enough with the mechanics of grief to know the timetable.

And perhaps the hardest part of it all would be that one of her allies and pillars of strength would now be off limits. There would be no mysterious flowers showing up on her desk or books with silly inscriptions or questioning looks through his open doorway when she looked depressed. During the months following her mother's passing, he had honed a quirk of the shoulder that clearly said, "Are you okay?" He could do it at any time. During a staff meeting, when they were alone in his office working on some article, if they saw each other across campus.

Had that time been when she'd fallen in love with him? Or was it watching him come over when Charlotte was out of town to lend Porter a hand with the kids? Was it the surprisingly sappy speech he'd delivered at the Huberts’ 50th wedding anniversary party or all the times he had thanked her for talking with his dad because he was so worried he might be lonely?

As Lucy composed a list of moments in which Forrest Graham had become a little dearer to her, a little more ingrained in the fabric of her heart, a knock came at the door. Clark immediately abandoned mourning as he barked in jubilation that someone new had arrived.

"Well, that got you in a good mood. I wish it was that easy for me, Clark."

She opened the door to find Edith and Miriam, each clutching their coats tightly around them against the cool night air. Edith wore an expression Lucy had never seen on her face. Was that sheepishness?

"So, I know I really suck at being nice and, you know, caring. But I'd like to try."

Miriam added, "And I'm sort of an expert at caring, so here we are."

Lucy opened the door wider, making room for Clark's greeting ritual. They walked in, Edith mumbling under her breath, "Oh, dear. Let's get some lights on in this place."

As Edith moved around the apartment finding and turning on lamps, Lucy said, "How did you two know? I mean, we broke up, or whatever you call ending a relationship that never really began, a few hours ago."

"Porter was spying from the kitchen window," Edith said.

"And he conference called Edith and I. Since you're not technically a member of Trinity and, thereby, one of my parishioners, I'm allowed to gossip about you."

"Hashtag ethics?" Lucy quipped.

"Exactly. So anyways, Porter reported that Forrest came to your place after he left their house. He then left these premises looking, in Porter's words, 'like he’d just been rejected by every academic publisher this side of the Mississippi.' So it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened."

Edith, who was now rummaging around the kitchen, said, "Although, for the record, if it had taken a genius..."

Lucy finished the thought, "You clearly would have been just fine."

"Clearly."

For the first time since Forrest had left, Lucy's eyes were dry.

Edith passed wine glasses to Miriam who had brought her own corkscrew and was prepared to pour. Edith said, "We wanted to do something for you, you know, like you do for the men I break up with."

"Yes?"

Miriam said, "So I brought chocolate and wine..."

"...and I brought a Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary." Edith was beaming with pride.

Lucy's chin shook in a horribly undignified manner. So much for the dry eyes. "Oh, girls. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me."