Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin Read Free Book Online Page B

have to be nailing each other willy-nilly on the kitchen counters and hardwood floors to have a solid physical connection. After all, sex on and against hard surfaces might look hot in the movies, but in real life it is uncomfortable, overrated, and contrived.
    Of course there was that one time with Leo in his office …
    I desperately try to push the memory out of my head by kissing Andy again, this time on his mouth. But as is the way when you’re trying not to think of something, the scene only grows more vivid. And so, suddenly, I am doing the unthinkable. I am kissing my husband while picturing another man. Picturing Leo . I kiss Andy harder, desperate to erase Leo’s face and lips. It doesn’t work. I am only kissing Leo harder. I work at the buttons on Andy’s shirt and slide my hands across his stomach and chest. I take my own sweater off. We hold each other, skin to skin. I say Andy’s name out loud. Leo is still there. His body against mine.
    “Hmm, Ellen,” Andy moans, his fingers stroking my back.
    Leo’s hot hands are digging into my back with crazy pressure, urgency.
    I open my eyes and tell Andy to look at me. He does.
    I look into them and say, “I love you.”
    “I love you, too,” he says, so sweetly. His expression is frank, sincere, earnest. His face is the face I love.
    I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on the feel of Andy growing hard against my thigh. Our pants are still on, but I center myself over him, grinding back against him, saying his name again. My husband’s name. Andy . There is no confusing who I am with right now. Who I love. This works for a while. And continues to work as Andy leads me to our bedroom where the all-or-nothing radiator is either dormant or sputtering steam everywhere. Right now, the room is downright tropical. We push away our goose down comforter, and slide against our soft sheets. We are completely undressed now. This bed is sacred. Leo is gone. He is nowhere.
    And yet, moments later, when Andy is moving inside me, I am back in Leo’s apartment on the night the not-guilty verdict finally came down. He is unshaven and his eyes are slightly glazed from our celebratory drinks. He hugs me fiercely and whispers in my ear, “I’m not sure what it is about you, Ellen Dempsey, but I have to have you.”
    It was the same night I gave myself to him completely, knowing that I would belong to him for as long as he wanted to keep me.
    And, as it turned out, even longer than that.

six
    Margot calls the next morning long before the sun is up—or, as Andy would say, before anyone in their right mind is up. Andy seldom gets agitated, but three things consistently set him off: people who cut in lines; bickering about politics in social settings; and his sister calling too early in the morning.
    “What the hell ?” he says after the second ring. His voice is scratchy, as it always is the morning after a few beers, which we ended up downing the night before at a Third Avenue bistro, along with burgers and the best shoestring fries in the neighborhood. We had a good time, laughing even more than usual, but our dinner didn’t jettison Leo any more than sex had. He was stubbornly there with me all night, remarking on the crabby man at the table beside us and the Joni Mitchell background music. As I finished my third beer and listened to Andy talk about his work, I found myself drifting back to the morning Leo told me that my face was his favorite in the world. He said it just like that, utterly matter-of-factly and unsentimentally over coffee. I was wearing no makeup, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, sun from his living room window streaming in my eyes. But I believed him. I could tell he meant it.
    “Thank you,” I said, blushing, thinking that his face was by far my favorite, too. I wondered if this, more than anything else, is a sign of true love.
    Then he said, “I will never get tired of looking at you … Never.”
    And it is this memory, perhaps my top-ranking