Read Online Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) by Eloise Spanks - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eloise Spanks
Tags: Romance
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birth.
On Friday, D. H. cleared out of the office early.
“When’s your flight?” he asked me on the way to his car. He was driving a black BMW. I’d climbed into the back seat instead of the front seat—why, I don’t know, and now I felt awkward back there.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
“That doesn’t give us much time.”
“No,” I said.
“You up for an all-nighter?”
I was nervously engaging and releasing the cap of my pen. “Sure.”
“Okay.”
We pulled up at my hotel and I checked out a day early, stuffing my belongings into my backpack and hurrying down to his car. This time I got in the front seat and the backpack sat in the rear, like a sleeping child.
Mr. Irldale was on the phone, an obnoxious bluetooth thingy in his ear. “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “Fine. No. Fine, fine.” He took off the earpiece and tucked it into a compartment in the dash.
“Listen,” he said. “I forgot we’re having some friends over tonight. Do you mind? We can start around midnight. I make an excellent espresso.”
And so there I was, sitting outside under the absurdly warm, moist Hollywood Hills sky, the air ticking with insects, lines of bulbs strung above us on the deck, and below them a few friends of Mr. Irldale and his wife. Kids played in the dusky light of a treehouse connected to the deck by a rope bridge. The canyon behind them fell away steeply before flattening into the grid of city lights, downtown Los Angeles sprouting up in the distance like something conjured up out of pure phosphorescence.
Mr. Irldale’s wife laughed a lot and touched his arm often. There was so much laughter. I spent the evening giving nervous attention to their dog, flattering Mr. Irldale when he mentioned the book, a natural deflector, me. When it was time for the kids to go to bed, I volunteered to tell them, crossing the rope bridge to the first step of a rope ladder that continued upward. In the treehouse I found the boys and girls playing games on their phones, their faces blue from the screens, all of them taking their light with them as they climbed down, leaving me alone in the treehouse looking out through a window at the party like a voyeur, marveling at him, Mr. Irldale: generous, kind, thoughtful, full of advice, asking how his friends were doing—really doing—his kids hugging him goodnight, his hand trailing off his wife’s as she got up and told him to stay seated. D. H. Dear Husband. And I remembered that I had this once, too. Not so grand, not so rich, not so sweet, but something not impossible to identify as falling from the same tree. Life had felt then, back with my ex, like I’d been riding upward within an elevator. Not quickly, no, but improving, each milestone a new floor, and then my ex and I had stalled at some unknown height, and I found myself alone in the shaft, the elevator rising high above me and there I was, not plummeting, no, because I couldn’t. I had my son to think of and my work, and these things kept me from falling, kept me suspended there on fibers of air. I’d had all this. Once.
Tree houses are grand places for tears. When I came down, finally, the kids were in bed, and the talk turned to sicknesses and losses, to plans and past regrets, and through it all D. H. was the center. Never sad, never frustrated. Always hopeful. An optimist. That was the thread I’d been looking for: the successful optimist, the true friend.
When everyone had left or gone to bed, he and I stayed up until near dawn, talking about the big things, as though we were friends and there was no book that needed to be finished.
Later, back home and transcribing the interview, I found the point where we’d both fallen asleep out on the deck in those oh-so-comfortable chairs. On the recording I could hear the birds chirping madly, the traffic building slowly, and the soft
pff, pff
of one of us puffing in our sleep, safe, a thousand thoughts away. In my apartment, transcribing, I reached to
On Friday, D. H. cleared out of the office early.
“When’s your flight?” he asked me on the way to his car. He was driving a black BMW. I’d climbed into the back seat instead of the front seat—why, I don’t know, and now I felt awkward back there.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
“That doesn’t give us much time.”
“No,” I said.
“You up for an all-nighter?”
I was nervously engaging and releasing the cap of my pen. “Sure.”
“Okay.”
We pulled up at my hotel and I checked out a day early, stuffing my belongings into my backpack and hurrying down to his car. This time I got in the front seat and the backpack sat in the rear, like a sleeping child.
Mr. Irldale was on the phone, an obnoxious bluetooth thingy in his ear. “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “Fine. No. Fine, fine.” He took off the earpiece and tucked it into a compartment in the dash.
“Listen,” he said. “I forgot we’re having some friends over tonight. Do you mind? We can start around midnight. I make an excellent espresso.”
And so there I was, sitting outside under the absurdly warm, moist Hollywood Hills sky, the air ticking with insects, lines of bulbs strung above us on the deck, and below them a few friends of Mr. Irldale and his wife. Kids played in the dusky light of a treehouse connected to the deck by a rope bridge. The canyon behind them fell away steeply before flattening into the grid of city lights, downtown Los Angeles sprouting up in the distance like something conjured up out of pure phosphorescence.
Mr. Irldale’s wife laughed a lot and touched his arm often. There was so much laughter. I spent the evening giving nervous attention to their dog, flattering Mr. Irldale when he mentioned the book, a natural deflector, me. When it was time for the kids to go to bed, I volunteered to tell them, crossing the rope bridge to the first step of a rope ladder that continued upward. In the treehouse I found the boys and girls playing games on their phones, their faces blue from the screens, all of them taking their light with them as they climbed down, leaving me alone in the treehouse looking out through a window at the party like a voyeur, marveling at him, Mr. Irldale: generous, kind, thoughtful, full of advice, asking how his friends were doing—really doing—his kids hugging him goodnight, his hand trailing off his wife’s as she got up and told him to stay seated. D. H. Dear Husband. And I remembered that I had this once, too. Not so grand, not so rich, not so sweet, but something not impossible to identify as falling from the same tree. Life had felt then, back with my ex, like I’d been riding upward within an elevator. Not quickly, no, but improving, each milestone a new floor, and then my ex and I had stalled at some unknown height, and I found myself alone in the shaft, the elevator rising high above me and there I was, not plummeting, no, because I couldn’t. I had my son to think of and my work, and these things kept me from falling, kept me suspended there on fibers of air. I’d had all this. Once.
Tree houses are grand places for tears. When I came down, finally, the kids were in bed, and the talk turned to sicknesses and losses, to plans and past regrets, and through it all D. H. was the center. Never sad, never frustrated. Always hopeful. An optimist. That was the thread I’d been looking for: the successful optimist, the true friend.
When everyone had left or gone to bed, he and I stayed up until near dawn, talking about the big things, as though we were friends and there was no book that needed to be finished.
Later, back home and transcribing the interview, I found the point where we’d both fallen asleep out on the deck in those oh-so-comfortable chairs. On the recording I could hear the birds chirping madly, the traffic building slowly, and the soft
pff, pff
of one of us puffing in our sleep, safe, a thousand thoughts away. In my apartment, transcribing, I reached to
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