Atonement(61)

“Don’t you mean Wellesley College?” he whispered against my ear before his tongue snaked into the passage.

I jerked away. “You’re disgusting. Yes, Wellesley College for my Bachelor’s but my Master’s I earned from Harvard.”

“Anyway, you can’t talk like that but I can and I want you to know I don’t expect this trip to make you forget one of the most painful memories in your life. I would have decked someone if they told me a trip to Europe was supposed to make me forget about my mother dying from cancer. I’m still not over it because she was my rock in a way that Liam never understood.”

I looked his way and kissed his cheek. “Oh no, I’m dating a Momma’s boy. I wondered how that happened.”

We both looked at one another and laughed out loud. Several of the passengers around us glared at us though their looks weren’t entirely unplesant and I tried to stifle my laughter before Colin began to tickle me sick and I started to laugh again in a loud and boisterous manner.

“Stop it!” I smacked his hands away.

“Fine. From now on, I will keep my hands to myself and you can tell me how much you like that,” he whispered in my ear.

“I think I would like that loads,” I said before I grabbed my iPod, shoved my earbuds in my ears and turned it on. Maroon 5’s Overexposed began to play and that was just fine with me.

I leaned my head against Colin’s shoulder as “One More Night” started up and we clasped hands nearest to one another. This was true intimacy and as far as I was concerned, there was no going back. There was only one way to move and that was forward. That sounded like a plan if I’d ever heard one and great one at that.





WE BARELY HAD time to settle in our Paris apartment we were renting for four days before we left Europe when my Android phone began to sound like the previous years’ top forty with “Poker Face”.

I lay on the bed while Colin took a shower and contemplated whether or not I should answer it before I gave in at the last moment and pressed the Answer button.

“Hey,” I greeted in a nonchalant voice.

“I wasn’t sure if you were going to take my call but I figured you would since it’s your birthday and all. You’re officially twenty-nine, old lady.”

“Gee thanks, sis. I didn’t realize twenty-nine was the new thirty-nine but thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

“After our last conversation…I knew you would be pissed at me for a while.”

I sighed as I sat up and put the phone on speaker so I wouldn’t have to hold it to my ear. “No worries, honey. After we talked, I broke down and told Colin the truth. He knows about what happened and he’s cool with it so there’s nothing left to say. It happened before we got together and I have nothing to feel guilty about. What went down between Liam and I occurred between two consenting adults with no ties to anyone else at the time. Please don’t let that affect your decision to be with him because at the end of the day it isn’t worth it.”

My sister snickered on the other end. “How can you say that? You know what my boyfriend looks like naked and he has done very…intimate things to your body. You spent the night with him—it wasn’t a wham, bam, thank you ma’am kind of one night stand!”

“Yeah, I know all this, Cait, I was there, remember?”

“Would you be this f*cking blasé about the whole situation if our roles were reversed? If it had been me with Colin instead of you with Liam? Would you think it would be something to just…shrug off and forget about?”

I was silent for a moment before I replied, “Truthfully? Yeah, I would be. If this so-called vacation has taught me anything, it’s life is both fleeting and precious. It takes too much time and effort to be worried about bullshit and that’s exactly what this whole conversation amounts to at the end of the day. Yes, I know what Liam looks like naked but it is an opportunity that will never present itself to me again.

“And if the situation was reversed and it was you who had gotten together with Colin before we began our relationship then I would accept it and move on. Seriously, what do you want me to say? There was an incident just a couple nights’ ago that could have landed Colin in the mortuary and so if I am a bit ‘blasé’ about the thought of you seeing my boyfriend naked, maybe it’s because at the end of the day, losing him permanently would be a big deal. Him sharing one night with you isn’t and wouldn’t be. Not in the grand scheme of life. I’m sure if we asked Mom, she would say the same thing. Do you think a day goes by she wishes she didn’t have Dad back?”