Spiral Of Bliss: Adore Part 7

He drags a hand through his hair with a sigh. "I don't know, Liv. If it were just the two of us living in the apartment, then I'd be a lot more inclined to want it."

"Regardless of what we have here?"

"Liv, for almost ten years, I've never done a d.a.m.n thing regardless of what we have." A note of irritation edges his voice. "I've done everything with you-with us-in mind. Everything. So you're asking a pointless question because it's not just you and me anymore, and we don't live in the apartment, and we do have a child to think about."

"I'm trying to get at whether or not you'd even want the job," I tell him.

"And I told you it doesn't matter."

I hold up my hands in a placating gesture. "Okay. I just don't want you to make a decision you'll later regret."

"I'm beginning to regret having told you about this," he mutters.

I blink. "Wow."

Dean sighs, turning to cross the room to me. He brings his hands up to the sides of my neck.

"Liv, I just don't see the point of this conversation," he says. "Why are you even asking these questions? I need to do some political maneuvering, but do you want me to seriously consider pursuing the job?"

I stare at the warm, vulnerable hollow of his throat that is one of my favorite places to kiss. Of course I don't want him to consider the job. I want him to stay happy right where he is. I don't want him to notice another door on the other side of the room, away from us, and wonder what would happen if he walked through it.

"No," I finally say. "I don't want you to take a new job, Dean. Certainly not one in Europe. But I also don't want to be the reason you turn down an amazing opportunity."

"Liv, you're the reason I do things, not the reason I don't." He brushes his thumb across my lower lip. "Why are you so upset?"

"I'm not upset. I'm proud of you." The instant I say the words, I realize just how true they are. I put my hand against his jaw. "The United Nations, for heaven's sake. I mean, I knew you were good, but I didn't know you were that good."

"Yes, you did."

I smile. "Yes, I did."

He pulls me against him, his strong arms encircling me in a warm, protective embrace. A rush of selfishness fills me so fast my throat aches. I can't stand the thought of sharing my husband with anyone.

Since the day we met, this man has never looked beyond me, beyond us, beyond the fortress of our marriage that we've fought so hard to build and defend.

But what would happen if he did? What if my white knight decides to lower the drawbridge and let the rest of the world in?

CHAPTER FOUR.

OLIVIA.

I didn't have a key. I was eleven. I couldn't get into the apartment. I had no idea where my mother was.

I can't remember where we were, what city it was. Indianapolis, maybe, or Milwaukee. It was a cold, glittery night. We'd been there for two days, having driven from Florida where my mother earned some cash selling woven bracelets on the beach. She'd used the money to put down a deposit on a first-floor, downtown apartment that smelled like mold.

She'd sent me out to get milk and bread from a store a few blocks away. When I got back, the apartment door was locked. I didn't have a key. I rang the bell. No answer. Knocked. No answer. Tried to peek in the window. Dark inside.

Dark inside.

My heart thumped low and heavy against my ribs. I clutched the plastic bag. My hands were sweaty. I waited for a long time, huddled up against the door. Every now and then, I'd ring the bell or knock, as if she'd suddenly open the door and tell me she'd been in the shower all this time.

The night air grew colder. When my fingers started getting numb, I pushed to my feet and walked back to the grocery store. Even if I had no one to call, at least it would be warm there. Lights shone from the windows, neon beer signs flashing.

I walked with my shoulders hunched. I didn't notice the group of men loitering outside the store until I straightened. They were big, maybe five of them, dressed in ratty jeans and jackets. Cigarette smoke, bottles of hard liquor, raspy laughter.

"Hey, honey, why you all alone?" one of them called.

I stopped. I'd been forced to deflect plenty of leering, wrong looks from men. I'd been looked at, touched, and spoken to in ways no young girl should be. My mother had never protected me, so I'd had to learn how to protect myself. Even if it was by being invisible.

A guy with a beard stood between me and the entrance to the store. He narrowed his gaze on me.

"You know how to answer a question, girl?" he asked.

My stomach knotted. Their stares burned into me. I'd have to pa.s.s them all, walk through the gauntlet they'd created, to get inside the store.

"You're a pretty little thing," another guy remarked, tilting his head back to drink out of a bottle. "You shouldn't be out alone this time of night."

"You got a boyfriend?" the bearded guy asked with a leer.

The others laughed, the sound cracking through the air like a whip.

I dropped the bag and ran. Better than trying to be invisible was not being there at all.

Their laughter followed me as I ran, my tennis shoes pounding on the cracked sidewalk. Instinctively, I ran back toward the apartment, but fear propelled me faster and faster. By the time I stopped, gasping for breath, I realized I didn't know where I was.

I stopped on a street corner, looking around. An empty lot, car repair shop, boarded-up house. Yellowish pools of light cast by streetlamps. Panic flickered in my gut. I didn't know what to do except keep walking. There was no one else around, not that I'd have trusted anyone enough to ask for help.

I walked through the maze of streets until my feet ached, pa.s.sing closed stores and noisy dive bars I was too scared to enter. Everything scared me-pa.s.sing cars, shadowed alleys, underpa.s.ses thick with weeds. I didn't even dare try and find a police officer for fear they'd involve Child Protective Services after taking me in.

When I was too exhausted to keep walking, I found a sheltered stoop where I could hide in the shadows. I nodded off into an uneasy sleep, waking when the sky began to lighten.

I pushed to my feet, hugging my arms around myself as I started walking again. A grocer was just unlocking the door of his shop as I approached. Desperate and longing to be back at "home," I hurried up to him.

"Sir, can you help me?" My voice was hoa.r.s.e, cracking. "I'm lost."

He eyed me warily, trying to figure out if I was a runaway kid, beggar, or both.

"P-please," I begged. "I know the street where I live, but I can't find it. Could you just l-look it up for me? Tell me how to get there. I'll walk home."

He finally relented and gestured for me to enter the store. He told me how to get to Sycamore Street, and it turned out I'd walked ten miles away from the apartment. Then he gave me an apple and told his wife to drive me back.

A light was on in the apartment. I knocked. I didn't know whether to be enraged or relieved when my mother answered the door. She looked like an angel, the light glowing on her honey-blond hair, her features as fine as those of a princess. She looked at me with her thick-lashed blue eyes and blinked.

"Where were you?" she asked.

"You told me to go to the store for milk and bread last night," I said, my throat tight with the urge to fling myself into her arms, to feel her embrace. "When I got back, you weren't here. I didn't have a key. I've been walking all night. I got lost."

She blinked again, like she didn't remember. At times like that, I almost wished I could blame drugs or alcohol for her lack of concern. Using the excuse "She was drunk" or "She was strung out" seemed far easier than admitting the truth, which was "She just doesn't give a s.h.i.t."

My mother opened the door wider to let me in. A man's jacket was flung over the sofa, his shoes next to the coffee-table. A heavy thickness hung in the air, one I'd learned to recognize as a male threat, menacing and lewd.

I glanced toward the bedroom. The door was closed.

"Well," my mother said. "Where's the milk and bread?"

"Paris?" Allie's eyes widen behind her purple-framed gla.s.ses as she sets a roast-beef sandwich in front of Florence Wickham at the counter. "That is so awesome. I wanted to do a year abroad in Paris when I was in art school, but I ended up going to Madrid with a friend. We traveled all over Europe, though. Had a completely amazing time. I love Paris."

"Moi aussi," Florence says, pursing her lips around the straw of her cherry soda. "The city of lights and love. How can you not be happy there?"

"How many times have you been?" I ask.

"Oh, countless." She waves her hand in the air. "But no matter how many times my husband and I visited Paris, we always found something new to see and do. And the food is incomparable."

"Liv and Dean went to Paris on their honeymoon," Allie tells Florence. "Isn't that romantic? They were married at a villa in the south of France."

"Oh, how lovely," Florence says warmly. "Have you been back, Olivia?"

"Dean has. I haven't."

"Why not?"

I shrug, not wanting to admit I haven't had a reason to return to Paris. "Well, Dean has gone for work reasons and I've just stayed here."

"I'd never pa.s.s up the chance to go to Paris," Allie remarks. "I'll never forget this chocolate profiterole I had at a cafe on Boulevard Montparna.s.se."

"My niece and her husband went on a food tour of France a couple of years ago," Florence says. "They took cooking cla.s.ses, went wine tasting, even shopped at the market with a chef so they could pick fresh produce. They had such a fantastic time they're planning to do it again next year, either in Paris again or Rome."

"You could totally do that, Liv," Allie says, her voice tinged with excited envy. "Take French cooking cla.s.ses or pastry cla.s.ses in Paris. And you could write about all your experiences on your blog. Liv in a Parisian Wonderland."

I frown, not having expected such an enthusiastic response from her. "Well, we might visit Paris again, but we're certainly not going to move there. Dean hasn't even been offered the job. It's just an opening."

"Well, I imagine Dean is rather exceptional at fitting into openings," Florence remarks, dipping a French fry into a pool of ketchup.

Though of course that's true, I shoot her a mildly disapproving look.

"Not this opening," I say. "Besides, even if he were offered the job, there's no way we could move overseas with a child. And it's not just Paris either. We'd have to move to different countries for weeks or months at a time. Wherever the World Heritage people send us."

"Well, that sounds incredible," Florence remarks. "What an opportunity."

"We can't go globe-trotting with a two-year-old," I say.

"People move all over the world with children all the time," Allie remarks. "Don't you ever watch House Hunters International?"

"We're not on House Hunters International," I remind her.

"Oh, you should totally apply."

"Allie, I'm not moving overseas! I can't believe you'd want me to leave the cafe."

She blinks. "I don't want you to leave the cafe. But I wouldn't want you to think the cafe is the only reason you'd have to stay. I always believe you're more likely to regret the chances you didn't take than the ones you did."

Florence nods in sage agreement. I scrub down the counter with unnecessary force. I'd secretly hoped that by mentioning the possible job to Allie, she would laugh and agree it would be ridiculous for Dean to ever consider such a move, thereby validating my own response. I hadn't expected her to wax rhapsodic about pastries, cooking cla.s.ses, and House Hunters International.

Over the next few days, I wonder if I'm the only woman in the world who can't imagine moving to Paris. Admittedly, in some tiny part of my brain-fueled by travelogues set in Provence, Isabelle Adjani movies, and b.u.t.tery croissants from the French bakery where I used to work-I can see the romanticism of the opportunity. I can imagine Dean reaching the apex of his career, he and I raising our son to be a citizen of the world, me learning French, visiting museums, making new friends for myself and Nicholas.

But I know the difference between an idealized image of something or someone (Hi, Mom) and reality. And I know that a move to Europe, even Paris, would not be like a soft-edged romantic movie where I wander down the Rue de Rivoli in a chic scarf, buying fresh flowers and macarons for my dinner party comprised of international diplomats.

Global mobility means Dean could be sent anywhere. I looked at the list of World Heritage sites, which includes monuments in China, India, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Turkey...

There's no telling where he would have to go first and for how long. It's painfully reminiscent of my constant moving with my mother, except on a far bigger and more frightening scale.

Even if I could get past my deep-seated hatred of moving to unknown places, the price of the WHC position is not one I would want to pay-leaving Mirror Lake, selling my half of the cafe, selling the b.u.t.terfly House, saying goodbye to the friends who have become my family, trying to adjust to raising our son in foreign countries. Through hard work and struggle, my dreams of life in Mirror Lake have all come true, and I could never leave them behind for dreams I don't even have.

But I'm distinctly aware I'm not the only one with dreams. And I don't know what my husband's dreams are anymore. I know he wants to protect his family, to do whatever he can to ensure we're safe and happy, to forge new paths in academic research, expand the Medieval Studies department, and guide his students to achieve their best. But all those dreams focus outward or on other people.

Does Dean have any dreams for himself?

I try not to let the disquiet of that question affect me too much. I don't want to even consider the idea that Dean might ever give up any dreams for my sake. But the question of the interview fades after Hans Klasen leaves town, and Dean and I settle back into our steadfastly familiar routine.

Though Dean isn't teaching this semester, he goes to campus to work and meet with grad students. One Thursday afternoon, Nicholas and I head to Wizard's Park to join a weekly playgroup of other children and their mothers.

The park is a gra.s.sy expanse of land dotted with sculptures and topiaries of wild animals-a tiger, elephant, a flock of penguins, a giraffe. A large playground sits in the middle of the park, and the landscape slopes down toward the lake.

The moms-or The Moms, as I've come to think of them, like an army guarding their children-are wandering around with takeout cups of coffee, talking and keeping an eye on the kids, who swing on monkey bars, cross the rickety bridges, and go down the slides.

Today Nicholas and I are in charge of bringing snacks, and I set up containers of grapes, apple slices, cookies, and milk on a picnic table before going to supervise Nicholas on the jungle gym.

When he starts shoveling sand into a plastic bucket expressly made for the purpose of filling and dumping, I sit on a nearby bench and take out my phone to text Dean.

LIV: Tell me a fantasy.

DEAN: I have office hours.

LIV: Ooo! A s.e.xy office fantasy. Am I a nave little secretary, and are you the big, domineering boss?

DEAN: I'm on campus and I have student office hours right now.

LIV: Is there a student in your office?