“Insane,” Celia whispered when the story was over. “That puts a whole new spin on the sea lion story.”
“Yeah,” Laura said with a nod. “Girl time, Neesh calls it; Tally too. To them it’s nothing. Just a little fun between girls; nothing that the guys need to concern themselves with.”
“An interesting point of view,” Celia said.
“One that I just can’t bring myself to agree with,” Laura said.
“And Jake doesn’t know about this part, right?”
“Right,” Laura said. “Or the next part.”
“The next part?”
Laura nodded. “The next part,” she said. “It happened when Jake and G got together at our house—the one in LA that we don’t live in anymore. They wanted to work on their new song. Neesh came along to visit me. It was the first time we were together since that night on the beach. I told Neesh when we were alone with each other that I didn’t want to have any more ‘girl-time’ with her. That I couldn’t justify it the way that she did.”
“And how did she react?”
“It seemed like she reacted reasonably,” Laura said. “At first anyway.”
“At first?”
Another nod. “At first. And then, later that night, after a few drinks, while G and Jake were really involved in their tune ... well...”
She told the next part of the story, how Neesh had lured her into the spare bedroom and went after her.
“She attacked you?” Celia asked, shocked (and more than a little turned on by the thought).
“No,” Laura said. “She didn’t attack me. She told me that all I had to do to make her stop was to push her away.” She took another sip of her wine. “I didn’t push her away.”
“Wow, Teach,” Celia said, unsure what else to say.
“That was the last time,” Laura said. “At least until the wedding day. I felt guilty as hell about what I’d done; I still do. The next time Neesh and I got together, I told her very firmly that I didn’t want to do things like that with her anymore and that I wouldn’t be able to hang out with her or be her friend if she even tried. She agreed. She promised me that I would have to beg her before she tried to seduce me again. And she kept her promise too. We were able to move on after that, stay friends, and she never tried again, but ... the guilt never went away. Neither did the wanting.”
“And Jake doesn’t know about any of this?” she asked.
“No,” she said, “but he knows that I wasn’t truthful about how things happened on the night of the wedding.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, naturally, after I called him up while he was getting ready to be a groomsman at G’s wedding and asked him if it was okay if I let the maid of honor eat my pussy out, he was a bit curious as to how that particular moment in time came to be. And he was also kind of curious about where Neesh was while this was going on.”
“Yes,” Celia said. “I can see how he would want to hear the details of that one.”
She nodded. “Unfortunately, I’m not a very good liar. I never have been. I’m not good at coming up with stories to cover what really happened or with telling such a story in a believable manner. I gave him some bullshit about how Tally had been flirting with me the night before and then how she had just flat out made the offer to me when Neesh left the room.” She sighed. “My tale was not believable. I could tell even as I was spinning it that Jake knew there was a lot more to the story. He tried to pry some of the details out of me, but I clammed up. That put a wall between us. It’s been getting bigger ever since that night. Things kind of came to a head tonight.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Well ... I’ve been kind of thinking all this time that it was the fact that I’d let Tally do that to me that was actually upsetting him. He let me know tonight that this was not the case. He’s upset because I’m keeping something from him, he said. The trust that is supposed to be between us is damaged, he said. He tried to get me to tell him the real story.”
“And what did you say?” Celia asked.
Laura shook her head. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “I just told him that the story I told that night is what happened and I’m sorry that he doesn’t believe it. I wasn’t very convincing, I’m sure.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“Nothing more,” she said. “He just turned off the light and got into bed. He turned his back to me and scooted all the way over to his side. When I tried to cuddle up to him like we always do in bed he ... he ... pushed me away.”
“Harsh,” Celia said sympathetically.
“Yeah,” she said. “And that’s why I came out here with a bottle of wine and a bag of pot.”
“It makes sense now,” Celia said.
Laura sighed deeply and took another drink of her wine. The glass was now almost empty again. “What do I do, Celia?” she asked. “I don’t see any way of making this right.”
“I’m not sure you can make it right, Teach,” she said. “You lied to your husband. You did something behind his back.” Oh, and listen to who is lecturing you on that, a part of her gleefully spoke up. The woman who slept with your husband one snowy night.
“Yes,” Laura said softly. “I did.”
“Now ... I’m not saying that a woman isn’t entitled to a little secret here and there. There are things I’ve done that Greg would be horrified by, but I don’t confess them to him.” And how!
Laura looked up at her. “Like what?” she asked.
“That’s not important to the discussion,” she said dismissively. We’ll just keep that can of worms nicely sealed shut. “My point is that Jake knows that something is not right about the situation. Remember when you told me about you and the trumpet player out on tour? What was his name? Spackle?”
“Squiggle,” she corrected.
“I assume Jake still knows nothing about that, right?”
“God no,” she said. “You advised me he didn’t need to know about that. And you were right.”
“Right,” she said. “That knowledge is of no use to him. It would only hurt, wouldn’t help anything. But you did tell him about the bartender and the female groupies, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Right after he proposed to me in this very hot tub, as a matter of fact.”
“Well,” Celia said, “maybe the same situation applies here. You need to tell the truth to Jake to make things right with him. But you don’t necessarily need to tell him the entire truth.”
“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Laura said righteously.
“Of course it is,” Celia said. “But we live in the real world here, Teach, not Pollyannaville. Sometimes lies of omission are a necessary part of life.”
Laura thought that over for a moment and then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I see where you’re coming from. What am I supposed to tell him?”
Celia smiled. “How about we put our heads together a little and come up with something? Something that tells most of the truth but that leaves out a few minor details?”
Laura still looked a little doubtful about this, but she nodded. “All right,” she said. “Heads together.”
They put their heads together. With the two of them working in tandem, and with a few more hits off the pipe for each of them, it didn’t take very long to come up with something simple, yet elegant.
Chapter 13: Novel Solutions
West Covina, California
August 25, 1995
Paramedic Jim Ramos was sitting on the rear bumper of the Ford ambulance in the bay of Kaiser Hospital. A battered metal clipboard which opened up to store paperwork inside sat on his lap and he was composing a patient care report—called a “tag” in the vernacular of the job—about the patient he had just dropped off. It had a been a routine call—a lifelong smoker experiencing shortness of breath from his chronic lung disorder—and it was a routine tag. Jim had been in the paramedic business for nearly fifteen years now and most of his mind was elsewhere as he put the words to the pre-printed form.