Read Online Having Faith by Barbara Delinsky - Free Book Online Page A

chagrin, from the living-room floor.
    The smell of perking coffee wafted about and would have been welcoming if Faith hadn't been standing so still, facing the counter, keeping her back to him. He slipped onto a bar stool. His legs weren't feeling as steady as usual. The support was welcome.
    As he sat there, waiting for the pills to calm the noise in his head and take the raw edge off everything else, he wondered if Faith wanted him to leave. She had every right to be alone if she wanted. It was her house. She wasn't feeling well, and his presence was a reminder why.
    But he couldn't leave. The cold water he'd doused his head with in the sink had cleared his mind that much. He and Faith had to talk.
    He didn't do a thing, though, until the coffee was done and she handed him a steaming mug. He'd always thought of life as being more civilized over morning coffee, and Faith's coffee was strong. If it didn't make him more civilized, he didn't know what would. He figured it would also go a long way toward settling his stomach and dulling the ache in his head.
    It did both for Faith. After a few minutes, she was able to carry her mug to the counter, take the companion stool to his and face him. ' "Guess we missed dinner," she said. She was relieved to see that his eyes had the same sickly red look hers did.
    "Guess so."
    "If we'd had something in our stomachs, the champagne wouldn't have hit so hard."
    "Either that, or we'd have been bounced from the restaurant."
    She started to smile at that thought, but the movement of her mouth somehow reached her eyes, which still hurt. So she made a quiet sound to acknowledge what he'd said and closed her eyes for a minute.
    "I
    feel very foolish," she whispered.
    "That's two of us."
    "I have never, never done anything like this before. I mean, even aside from what we did to Jack and Joanna, the sex was something else." She opened her eyes to his.
    "I don't sleep around. Sawyer. I never have. There was one guy before I met Jack, and there haven't been any since. Except you."
    Sawyer thought about that for a minute.
    "I'm flattered."
    "I didn't mean it as flattery. I meant it to tell you the way I am.
    I'm not loose. I'm not a frustrated divorcee. I don't go around getting drunk and begging men to make love to me. "
    "Is that what you thought you did?"
    "Yes."
    "Well, you didn't. In the first place, you didn't get drunk. If you'd done that, you'd have been incapacitated. You'd probably have passed out. Neither of us was drunk. We were tipsy.
    That's all. "
    "Is there really a difference?" she asked.
    The faint bitterness in her voice annoyed him.
    "Yes, there is," he insisted.
    "There's a big difference. If we'd been drunk we wouldn't have been so lucid."
    "Lucid? You think we were lucid?"
    "To some extent, yes. The things I said about Joanna were true. I probably shouldn't have said any of them. But they were true. She did a job on me sexually. There were times when I wondered whether I lacked something in that department, since I couldn't make her respond. I never would have planned what happened last night, but once we got going I must have had an inner need to keep going. You were my friend. I'd had just enough to drink. I was loose. I wanted to know if I could turn you on. So maybe I used bad judgment, and I blame that on the drink, but on some level I knew what I was doing." He paused.
    "My guess is you did, too."
    Faith let his words sink in. Much as she tried, she couldn't completely deny them. Quietly she said, "Then we have to accept the responsibility. So that makes it worse."
    "Yes and no."
    She stared at him.
    "Explain."
    "Yes, we have to accept the responsibility. We're mature adults. We can blame what we did on the wine, but that doesn't excuse it. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't so terrible."
    "Are you kidding?" she cried.
    "Sawyer, we slept together last night!
    You and me. Best friends. Best buddies. We made love. We went all the way. We scr"-He cut her off.
    "Don't say it.