The Guilt Trip(45)
The devastation that would be wreaked if Jack discovered that the trust he’d shown her had been abused doesn’t bear thinking about. The possibility, however remote, that Josh is the lasting legacy of her deceit makes Rachel want to be sick.
She’s suddenly reminded of everything she stands to lose. She wishes Jack were here, so that she could selfishly check that her rising panic is unnecessary: be reassured that he doesn’t know anything more than he has for all these years about her and Noah; that Ali hasn’t felt the need to impart whatever she may have caught the tail end of. Because that’s all Rachel is convinced she could have witnessed: seeing Noah, drunk and maudlin, fall into her for an unrequited kiss. That’s it. That’s the worst-case scenario she will allow herself to believe because anything more makes her brain explode.
She huffs as she turns onto her side in an exaggerated motion, hoping that it will reset her frenzied brain and let her drift off to sleep. But just as her head falls into the pillow, she’s sure she hears a splash. She lifts herself up again, listening with both ears, like hunted prey waiting for something to pounce.
There it is again. Leaving the light of her phone on the bed, she tiptoes toward the terrace doors and silently slides one open before stepping out onto the cold tiled floor. She can hear hushed talking and a quiet giggle before she gets near enough to the glass balustrade to look out onto the pool below.
The azure mosaic tiles sparkle as the underwater lighting casts a luminous glow across the soft ripples that the bodies in there are creating. Rachel can make out the silhouette of two people fused together as one, their heads close together, their shoulders half-submerged. She listens to the drawn-out silence they’re immersed in, waiting for one of them to say something that she can identify with; that she can identify them with. But for the moment it could be anyone: Will and Ali, Noah and Paige, it might even have been her and Jack if he had had his way earlier. She tries to shake any other combination from her mind, yet all she can see, as the shaft of light between the couple closes in even further, is the darkened outline of Jack and Ali.
She doesn’t want to watch, but she can’t tear herself away, mesmerized by the motion of the water as it swells and falls over the infinity edge, each undulation bigger than the last as the thrusting action in the pool increases.
“Don’t stop,” she hears a female voice cry.
Rachel’s gut twists around itself as the sound of Ali’s voice suddenly makes her face clearer. In her mind she can see her, contorting in ecstasy, as Jack brings her to a climax.
As Ali cries out, Rachel is unable to stop herself from grabbing her dress from the back of the chair, wrapping it around her waist and tying it in a hasty bow. Rage and fear propel her across the landing and down the stairs. As she crosses the living room, she imagines what she’s going to say when she’s face to face with her husband, who she’s caught red-handed in the act with his brother’s fiancée.
“You fucking bastard!” she’ll scream, as she attempts to drag him out of the water. “How could you? And with her, of all people.”
He’ll initially deny any wrongdoing as his brain overreacts to the predicament he finds himself in, working a second or two behind the surefire reality of what his wife has just witnessed.
“How could you do this to Josh?” she’ll yell, with arms flailing.
“To Josh?” he’ll reiterate, his tone cold and unforgiving. “Don’t you think you’re the one who has to answer for what you’ve done to our son? For lying to him for all these years; pretending I was his father when you knew damn well that I wasn’t.”
The confrontation crashes back and forth in her head in the seconds it takes for her to reach the patio doors and throw them open. She knows what’s coming. She knows what to expect. So when she finds Ali and Will standing there, naked and shivering, she’s stumped.
“Rachel!” he says, instinctively covering himself with his hands.
She immediately senses that she’s standing between them and their modesty, and reaches for their towels on the sunbed while her misplaced rage dissipates.
“I’m … I’m so sorry,” she stutters, embarrassment flushing her cheeks.
Will reaches out one hand to take the towel and she half-throws it at him to avoid him coming any closer. Just a few minutes earlier, she’d wished for more light to shine on the identities of whoever was in the pool, but now she’s eternally grateful that it’s as dark as it is.
“It’s okay.” Ali laughs, with a hand on one hip, clearly in no rush to shield herself from Rachel’s prying eyes. “We were just having a last get-together before Will goes off to the hotel.”
Rachel knows she should turn away, but she can’t help but look, desperate to know that Ali is just the same as her. But, Rachel muses as her eyes sweep over Ali’s perfectly formed hourglass figure, you’re nothing like me.
In the outfits she wears, Ali’s body looks like it belongs to a glamor model, squeezed into dresses that are two sizes too small. But without unforgiving structures holding her in and up, her purest form is breathtaking. Her breasts sit perfectly, accentuated by her tiny waist that nips in before curving into hips that Kim Kardashian would be proud of. She’s tanned all over, except for one triangle, making her limbs look long and lean, with not an ounce of excess weight anywhere.