Crazy in Love by Luanne Rice Read Free Book Online

night: Exactly what had he meant? I knew the answer he would give me: he was just being sensible. The time had come for us, for Nicholas Symonds and Georgiana Swift, to give in to what other couples, probably no less loving than we, had accepted much earlier. Sometimes the demands of life kept people apart. It was that simple.
    But not to me. In the taxi I imagined motives: dark, heavy as sex, and furtive. I thought of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, who had imagined his wife Faith to be pure, then discovered she had joined the witches’ sabbat along with the rest of the neighborhood sinners. Had we been special, Nick and I? We didn’t speak, but we sat close to each other and rode uptown with our shoulders touching.
    “I know I’ve hurt you,” Nick said when we were alone in our hotel room.
    Then, because he was sounding like the Nick I wanted, I started to cry. “Explain it to me,” I said, which was really stupid because I knew just what he would say, and I knew that it would make good sense.
    He said nothing. He turned off the bedside light and walked to me. He held me for a long while. When he began to stroke my arms in a slow, gentle way, I began to feel mad with desire or maybe violence. Energy pulsed along my veins; I could have chaneled it into wild sex or a fistfight.
    “Nick,” I said, pulling back because I felt afraid. I kept my head down.
    He was unbuttoning my dress. I felt his big fingers undoing the delicate buttons easily. His other hand cupped my shoulder, then pulled the dress away. I saw it fall to the floor, a puddle of blue and white cotton around my feet, and I stepped out of it. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I brought my arms across my breasts, but Nick held my hands and pulled them away.
    “Have I made you want to hide?” he whispered.
    “No. I don’t know,” I said, standing stiff and hearing my sullen tone. What would happen if I hit him? I wondered. After that thought I felt more like making love. I kissed him. I was standing naked against him, and he was fully dressed. I felt his erection through his trousers. He lowered his head and kissed my nipples. Sometimes with Nick I thought of nothing and felt joined, truly joined with him in spirit, but not that night. That night he undressed me and then himself, and every place he touched me seared, and I paid attention as if I were committing every sensation to memory.
    “I have always loved you,” he said later, just before he fell asleep.
    Watching him as he slept, I thought about dinners past and dinners yet to come. Smoked turkey and appenzeller sandwiches at the Library of Congress. During Nick’s third year of law school we lived on Capitol Hill. Studying late, or preparing a journal article, he would say he was too busy to take a dinner break. I would take him sandwiches. As I walked past the Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol, all floodlit, white, and stark, my mission seemed greater than the mere delivery of dinner. The Library of Congress guard would admit me with barely a glance through my bookbag. I would cross the rotunda to the law library, where I would find Nick at his favorite carrel beside the mezzanine’s wrought-iron balustrade. Then we would go into the stacks to feast and talk.
    Cold lemon chicken during the New York Bar Examination Review course. By this time Nick was working until midnight at the firm, with four hours off for a nightly Bar Review course. Circles deepened under his eyes, he lay awake every night, utterly exhausted, worrying over the Rules of Evidence while at the same time worrying what it meant that the head of the Tender Offer Squad had invited Jean Snizort to lunch at the Broad Street Club but not Nick. We were living in New York then, downtown from the theater where the Bar Review was held. I loved that time. Nick would take the subway up from Wall Street. I would walk to Times Square. I would bring dinner with me, things that could be eaten tepid or cold, and sit