A Lover's Secret by Bethany Bloom Read Free Book Online Page B

harder. Some Irish cream or some
Butterscotch Schnapps, maybe? No extra charge, as long as it’s our little
secret, and as long as I get to sit and drink it with you.”
    “No, no thanks. A little coffee is fine. Black. I mean no
cream or sugar.”
    He laughed again, and she snapped her head down, so she
wouldn’t have to see the way his eyes danced at her. And there it was. Jake’s
book. Three stacks of the damn thing, including one copy on top with a worn
cover and weary, folded pages.
    “That’s the restaurant copy,” the man said. “Feel free to
enjoy it while you’re here. Just don’t leave with it. If you want a copy of
your own, you just let me know.”
    She nodded and slipped off her shoe to retrieve the twenty-dollar
bill she had hidden in there.
    “Oh, no charge for pretty ladies,” he said, winking, and
then he thrust Jake’s book toward her. “I can tell you want to read it. Go on.”
    She took it in one shaky hand and sat at the table farthest
from the counter. The pages of the book were worn and soft, like fabric. She
checked the copyright date. Brand new and well read. She flipped again to the
photograph on the back jacket. The chipped tooth. The familiar eyes. She could
hear his voice now. There was a quiet, dark quality to it. A resonance and a
rasp. “You’ll call me. You’ll change your mind.”
    She’d be damned if she was going to start at the beginning
with that cocky list of conquests, so she placed the book on its spine and let
it fall open.
     “You are meant to live an enraptured life,” it
began.  
    Enraptured, huh? What would that feel like? She skimmed down
a bit.
    “Ride the wave of your life, like the crest of an orgasm.
Ride it to completion. It is there for you.”
    What kind of trash was this? But as she read the words, she
felt a softness and a heat at the junction of her thighs. A flutter. What would
it be like? To be with him? To open up to him, to ride this enraptured life?
She read on.
    “Your every day is to be enjoyed. To be savored, to be
captured and triumphed over. And, friends, it is possible that you have far
less time than you think. Too many people think they are safe, but no one is
safe. No one. So you must grab life. Today. Grab it by the balls…”
    “Oh, please,” she said aloud. Embarrassed, she popped up her
head in time to see the man behind the counter grin. She flipped to another
section, closer to the beginning.
    Here, she read a warning about the things in life that she
would someday see. Possibilities and inevitabilities and events and horrors
that she would surely be called to endure. As she read, she felt a sadness
rising from the pages. It was a forlornness, buried deep in the subtext, which,
she was sure, was evident to her only because her training as a physician
helped her to read between the lines. She had always been the best in her
class, in fact, at understanding people’s true motives, at uncovering or simply
noticing the truth that lay beneath.
    Here, in Jake’s writing, there was a haunting; a deep, deep
pain. A regret. Something she couldn’t put her finger on precisely, but it was
undeniable. She felt the card he had given her, poking the tender flesh at her
waist. She flipped to his photo again, not meaning to, and his face peered up
at her. It was there. It was subtle but, for her, unmistakable. Pain. A
mystery. A secret.
    Her breath quickened, and she flipped the pages again,
moving closer to the front now but careful to avoid the opening paragraphs.
    A subheading caught her eye. “The Girl from the Hallway.”
    Her heart stopped and she felt a rush of air all around her,
followed by a profound stillness. She swallowed, and then she began to read,
first in great gulps and then more slowly.
    “My journey toward wanting to live in this way—only for
the day, only for the moment—began in what would become my biggest regret. I
was a shy child and, as a teenager, incredibly introverted. I was scared of
many, many things,