Chapter 55
55
Eight months went by like that. A week together every three months… and occasionally a three-day weekend when we couldn’t wait any longer.
Despite how much Rachel said she hated it, she still refused to come visit me in Sweden.
I told myself it didn’t really matter. In the long run, it was probably for the best. If she didn’t travel to see me, she could save up vacation days for when I came to visit.
But it still felt like she wouldn’t compromise.
It rankled me a bit, but mostly I just ignored it.
At least she finally gave me her phone number. Now I could talk to her every day.
The only problem was her phone number changed nearly every month.
“That’s why I never gave you my number – because I knew it would change so often,” she told me after the third time it switched.
“Because of your job?” I asked incredulously.
“Yup p>
“I mean – didn’t James Bond get to keep one phone number p>
“Lars,” she warned.
References to MI6 were strictly forbidden over the phone.
“Okay, okay,” I muttered.
I was intensely curious about her job, but the topic was off-limits. That was part of the agreement if I wanted to be with her.
Like her refusal to come to Sweden, the secrecy around her career bothered me, too… but I swept it under the rug and ignored it.
Since we couldn’t discuss her job and since my missions were top-secret as well, our conversations revolved around domestic details. The new dishes she was learning to cook, which she promised to prepare for me on my next visit… the stray cat I befriended on base… drama with co-workers… all of it carefully crafted to avoid the particulars of our jobs.
Best of all, we got to start using video.
She never sent me photos of her face (more job secrecy), so I finally got to see her.
Zoom calls… Facetime calls…
Which meant sex.
Or at least being able to get off with each other.
Seeing her naked body as she touched herself…
Hearing her high-pitched cries as she came…
It relieved some of the burden of waiting so long to see her.
And it kept the fires burning. Every time we saw each other in London, we nearly tore each other’s clothes off.
In fact, every time I flew in, we fucked in that parking deck because we couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel.
Strangely enough, another big plus for me about the video was I finally got to see the inside of her apartment. Rachel still wouldn’t invite me over, so I took in every little detail I could whenever we were videoconferencing.
Another thing that bothered me was when Rachel told me she was estranged from her mother and that they hadn’t spoken in years.
Seeing how my own mother had been taken from me too soon, Rachel’s refusal to even try to patch things up seemed incomprehensible.
I suggested that maybe she could introduce me to her mother as a way of bridging the divide.
“Trust me, you don’t want to meet my mother p>
“Why not p>
“She’d probably ask you when you were going to cheat on me. Or where you’re hiding the wife and kids you ran away from p>
I stared at her in shock. “Seriously p>
“You think I’m joking. I’m not p>
“Okay… but don’t you think I should meet her at some point p>
“Are you going to introduce me to your father?” she asked sassily.
I had already told her about my mother’s death and how we had run away from my father when I was only four years old.
“No,” I said, “but that’s different. I haven’t spoken to him since I was four p>
“Trust me,” she said grimly, “there are times I wish I hadn’t spoken to my mother since I was four. I haven’t spoken to my father since he walked out on me and my mother when I was seven p>
I stared at her. “Really p>
“Yeah. I’ve never told you about my mother, have I p>
“No p>
“She worked as a waitress in the city where she was born – Pescara. It’s a beach town on the Adriatic. When she was 20, she was serving drinks to a handsome British guy, and he flirted with her until she agreed to go out dancing with him. They had a fling until he went back to London… and then she found out she was pregnant. She called him and told him, he flew her to London, they got married… and seven years later, he walked out on us to go live with another woman. Ever since then, my mother hates anybody with a penis, and I’m 100% sure that would include you. So, no – I don’t ever intend to introduce you to my mother. Not if I can help it p>
“But – ”
“Lars,” she said sternly. “Trust me on this one and drop it p>
So I dropped it.
Like everything else, I swept it under the rug.
There were a lot of things under that damn rug.