What is Love? by Tessa Saks Read Free Book Online

years
together just as planned. Let’s work this out and go away and have some fun.”
    As he spoke these
words, guilt crashed over him like a North Shore wave. Samantha! His
heart froze. How could he not hurt Ellen, yet not hurt Sam? He sat on the bed
holding Ellen’s hand, painfully aware that he would hurt someone no matter what
choice he made.
    ***
    Sam listened to the
message on her answering machine and threw the cordless phone onto the floor,
hoping it would shatter into a hundred pieces. “The bitch has him going to
Barbados,” she screamed to her roommate.
    “His wife?” Sienna
called out from the kitchen.
    “Yes, his bitch
wife!” Sam yelled and flopped back onto the bed, pushing away the sickening
image of that fat, miserable woman vacationing with Jonathan.
    Sienna appeared in
Sam’s doorway holding a bottle of vodka. She kicked the phone aside with her
foot, the bent antenna catching on her sock until she shook it free.
    “He told me he’d
canceled it with her and was taking me instead.” Sam threw a badly mended bunny
against the headboard. “What the hell? Why would he go with her? He hates her.”
    Sienna poured a
shooter of the vodka, handed it to Sam, and said, “Maybe she convinced him—you
know—it would look bad for the family. Blah, blah, blah.”
    “What would the
neighbors think, more like it.” Sam drank the shot in one quick swallow. “God,
I hate her! She’s such a selfish cow. She doesn’t deserve him. You know, she
doesn’t even screw him. They haven’t had sex for, God, like thirty years or
something.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “No. Dead serious.
He said after the babies, her hormones died or something. Then she just
couldn’t do it—ever. What a bunch of shit. She was in it for the money, got it
all and then ‘Sorry dear, not tonight or the next fifty years, see—I have this,
like, bitch’n headache’.”
     Sienna laughed.
“That’s pathetic. Good luck keeping your man, never having sex.”
    “She used religious
guilt, too—as an excuse, I mean,” Sam said, pressing her hands together in mock
prayer. “God doesn’t like kinky sex. It’s immoral, you perv.”
    “What a loser. She
sounds like my mom, all Godlike and uptight. She drove Dad away with all that
guilt and shit. A total nag.”
    Sam held her glass
out for a refill. “But wait—get this—she lets him mess around with other women.
She knows he screws around, but no prostitutes allowed.” She downed the shot.
    “What morals! Screw
strangers but just don’t pay for it.”
    “Yeah, put your dick
into every girl at the office, but keep it clean, just in case I decide to
sleep with you sometime in the next hundred years!”
    Sienna laughed.
“Yeah—wouldn’t want to catch anything.”
    They were both
laughing, leaning against each other. “Oooh, don’t let the neighbors catch
you.”
    “Don’t get caught on
film.”
    “Don’t do it with
anyone I know,” Sam said, wiping tears from her eyes.
    “And don’t fall in
love,” Sienna added, pointing her index finger at Sam.
    Sam stopped laughing
and sat up straight, a knot tightened in her chest. “You think he might change
his mind? About us, I mean.”
    “He’s crazy about
you, I’ve seen it.” Sienna shook her head. “No way.”
    “Yes, but she could
make him feel guilty. Too guilty. She’s such an evil bitch.”
    “He loves you—he’s
said it a thousand times.” Sienna put her arm around Sam.
    “I know, I know.”
Sam pulled away and threw a pillow at Sienna. “But damn her! She could try and
change his mind, try to seduce him.” Sam sat against the headboard and reached
for her cigarettes on the nightstand. “I wish she’d croak.”
    “Maybe he plans to
push her off the boat.”
    “Now that would be
perfect—”
    The phone rang,
interrupting Sam’s laughter. Sienna picked up the phone off the floor and
handed it to Sam, straightening the antenna.
    “Hi, baby,”
Jonathan’s voice whispered.
    “Don’t ‘Hi