Category Archives: meme

Eliza had not had a night like this for a long time. Alessandra knew how to throw an opening party. It was a bit of deja vu because she and Oscar had been to openings together before, including the infamous one in Shanghai when they realized they were deeply in love…

Tonight she danced with him, the music moved through them as Alessandra joined them. Their arms held each other up like a fragment of Botticelli’s Primavera. Jeanne had gone back to Alessandra’s house with Bibi, which she was so kind to share with them even though they were staying at a hotel. That allowed Eliza to be on the dance floor with them as a part of a threesome, until Oscar and Alessandra floated away their arms still up in the air. Eliza continued to move to the pounding beat of the music. 

He appeared, and she was not even sure where he came from, but he was gorgeous and moving to the pounding beat that seemed intuitive to him. The enticing new man smiled at her, and it was like discovering electricity throughout her body. 

“You are a really good dancer, I saw you with Alessa—are you one of her muses?” he asked.

“No!” She burst out laughing. “Are you?”

He blinked rapidly before he shook his head.

“Not anymore…”

“Oh, well you are beautiful…”

Eliza bit her lip.

“So are you…so are you…” he repeated surveying her entire body. Eliza could have been offended, but she was not.

They moved into a single rhythm, as they danced together. Pounded together really. She was damp with sweat. The sweat even blinded her, as she felt his hands on her hips and she moved with him.

“Eliza!” Alessandra came over with Oscar whose arms were folded across his chest. “You have met Emmanuel!”

Eliza did not know his name, but she could not deny that she had indeed met him. 

Emmanuel nodded at her, and walked away with Alessandra.

“You could practice some self-control!” Oscar snapped at her, taking her hand. “You are someone’s mother sweating on the dancefloor with a man you do not even know!”

“”Well I was dancing with you two, what does that make me?”

Oscar looked enraged, Eliza was not sure why and she wanted no part of it as she walked off the dancefloor.

“Eliza!” he called, but she did not turn around.

“Leaving so soon?” Emmanuel put his hand on her hips again and Eliza looked up at him, her mouth open as she tried to decide what she was going to do.

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primavera via wikipedia

Eliza let out a deep sigh when she saw that they had missed their connection. It was the first time they were leaving to go somewhere in a long time, and their flight was delayed in New York. Now she and Jeanne sat with Bibi. If Jeanne had not encouraged her, she would not even have made an effort to go anywhere. But Jeanne was going with Terrence and it was too tempting since Paris had brought her nothing but love and pleasure. Bibi was on Jeanne’s lap, and Eliza looked up and saw Alessandra. Oscar had told her jokingly she might run into her because she had a show there but Eliza never imagined…

“Hi Eliza,” Alessandra said, and kissed both of her cheeks. Eliza smiled, but she was taken aback by seeing the other woman. Well she was not really the other woman, but she was the woman that Oscar was seeing and…

“Oscar joked with me that I might see you,” Alessandra said, and looked at Eliza wide-eyed. “He is always talking about you…”

Eliza resisted a smile of triumph. There was not a competition, they were not competing for him. If he wanted to be with Alessandra, Eliza would support him. She was married to Rafe after all, and Oscar had supported her to the moon and back.

“He talks a lot about you.” Eliza said, and she saw Alessandra’s eyes shine. “He is a remarkable man, and he makes remarkable connections.”

Alessandra grinned at her, and Eliza felt that she was making a different kind of connection as she had missed her original connection.

“You should come to the party we are having opening night for my show…Oscar is flying in…”

“I would love to, but my sister…”

“Is invited too, and your daughter? I would love a little girl there!”

“Then yes, absolutely.”

How could she say no?

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Eliza looked at the picture in the frame. She had been so surprised when she got the print from Alessandra Wagnall, because she had followed her career for a long time and the print was one that she had admired. Oscar got it for her as a gift right after her miscarriage, and it was something beautiful that she loved to gaze at and even Bibi loved when she held her up so she could see it.

Flash forward to the present, Alessandra Wagnall was in her apartment. Alessandra was a force of nature, and it was clear that Oscar was besotted. 

Eliza hated herself for feeling jealous when Oscar had a new lover, but she couldn’t help it. Especially since this woman’s print had been given to her as a gift to soothe her after a miscarriage that could have been Oscar’s baby. And after every earth-shattering break-up he had they got closer to each other. Had she ever been as close to him as she was now?

Alessandra was lovely nonetheless, and she could not help but be swept up by her herself.

“I had to bring something to make for you since you were so kind to have me over,” Alessandra said.

“But I have food for you,” Eliza smiled. “I promise!”

“I wanted to make you some dessert, and there is always room for more of that!” Alessandra smiled, and held Eliza’s hand. There was something in the way she held her hand, and the way that they smiled at each other that made Eliza nod and let Alessandra take over her kitchen.

They were all drinking wine after dinner, and that was when Rafe came home. Alessandra charmed him as well, and he raised his eyebrows at Eliza. She and her husband had a silent exchange.

“She is lovely,” he said to her in the kitchen, and Eliza nodded,

“She is.”

“Oscar’s newest?” 

Eliza nodded and cut the edge of her finger with the wine opener she suddenly couldn’t manage. 

Bandaged finger in tow, they walked back into the living room, Eliza observed Oscar and Alessandra sitting together as lovely as any couple painted in a frame. Speaking their own silent language…

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“Let me just be here with you,” Oscar held Eliza’s hand in the darkness, and felt her quake underneath his touch.

He could not explain it, but he knew that he needed to see her that day. Their visit had started happily, she was glowing when he saw her and they sat and ate noodles that he had gotten for them which was something they loved to share. 

“Excuse me,” Eliza had said to him quietly, and the words stung in his memory now. She was in the bathroom for a long while and he got up instinctively to look after her. The door was not closed, and he saw her looking at her panties. It looked like she had gotten her period, so he went back to where he was sitting and ate more noodles.

When she finally returned to him, she said.

“I have to go to the hospital.”

“What is wrong?” he stood up, concerned and went to her.

She looked at him, and he realized she looked paler than she had when he first saw her.

“I think I am having a miscarriage.”

“You’re pregnant?” His surprise was not hidden.

She nodded without looking up at him.

He thought there was something different about her, but he had not been able to place it. 

“I’ll come with you,” he said when she did not answer.

She nodded again.

They got into a car, and headed to the hospital. The math that raced through his head as they drove through the city, let Oscar know that this baby he did not know about could be his.

But he said nothing because it currently looked like there was not going to be a baby.

He stayed with her the entire time, and went home with her after the doctor prescribed her medication to help induce the miscarriage.

Eliza did not turn the lights on when she got home, and Oscar did not put them on.

“Let me be with you,” he said taking her hand. Rafe and Bibi were gone until later that evening. He did not want her alone.

She nodded.

They sat in the darkest darkness that Oscar had ever been in.

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Bibi was getting so big, Eliza thought as she wrapped her arms about her daughter. Her mini version — that was what Rafe called her — did indeed look just like her and melted into her embrace. Looking at their reflections in the mirror, Eliza saw the uncanny resemblance between them and wondered what her new baby would look like.

Even before she peed on a stick, Eliza knew herself well enough to know she was pregnant again. And again she was uncertain who had fathered her baby. 

She and Rafe had been exclusive mainly, but it was like Oscar was always there. Especially since Cleo had left him. Eliza had gone to console him several times, and she ended up in bed with him practically instinctively a few of those times. The dynamic between them was such that they always ended up being intimate even if they had not been for a long time. And she had been trying to get pregnant again, with her Rafe. She was not supposed to be able to get pregnant when she was with Oscar, but she still wondered. She monitored her ovulation like a spectator sport, she had been with him when she should not have been able to but what if?

They had wanted each other so much, why was it that he was sad about another woman and yet they got closer? It hurt her that he could not be happy with another woman, and that was it.

“The happiest I have ever been with a woman was—is you. Even as mercurial as our relationship is…” He had confessed to her. 

They were always there for each other. When she was nervous before she married Rafe he appeared, and anytime he was down she was there. She loved him—they loved each other. What happened between them was physical, but it was more than that. Like a renewal of their connection, it was fate that they were meant to be together over and over.

Some people could not find one true love, and she had two…

Bibi looked at her like she knew her secret, and she pressed her daughter ever closer to her.

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Sometimes even an author is not allowed behind the closed doors of her characters when they are going through something. I know Eliza has been talking a lot with Oscar, but Cleo has been a little more elusive…

This is a retro post from last year—what a difference a year makes! 

Rafe smirked at Eliza, and she stuck her tongue out at him. Her focus was on setting the table for their intimate dinner party.

She and Oscar had talked shortly after seeing each other in the cafe. He needed to know that she did not judge him, and she needed to know that they were still friends. Their conversation was extensive, and to show good faith she invited him and Chloe over to have dinner with her and Rafe.

“Everything looks lovely, Liza,” Rafe said, pulling her close to him.

He still held her close when they let in Oscar and Chloe. Oscar held Chloe’s hand protectively, and Chloe smiled shyly as a greeting.

Oscar told Eliza that he had told Chloe about them, and Eliza wanted Chloe to know that she was not a threat. When Chloe sat down, it was clear that Sally or someone had raised a very elegant young woman. Chloe had perfect table manners, and though she did not touch Oscar, but her feelings for him were clear. She avoided looking at Eliza and Rafe, which troubled Eliza.

By dessert, Chloe leaned close to Oscar and he caressed her bare arm absently.

When Chloe got up to go to the bathroom, Eliza followed her. Chloe looked stricken when she saw Eliza’s reflection in the mirror.

“Hi,” Eliza said, making eye contact with the younger woman in the mirror.

Chloe smiled back at her reflection, before she walked past Eliza. Unlike with her Chloe’s mother when she came to her apartment, Eliza took Chloe’s arm,

“I am not the enemy.”

Chloe nodded, and Eliza was not sure that she believed her.

Apparently she did, because that was the first of many couples’ dinners that the four of them had. Chloe began to open up more and more, which made Eliza happy. She even started to talk to Rafe. Chloe’s conversations with Rafe were such that she spent more time with him almost than she did with the rest of them.

Eliza did not mind, she knew her husband was sexy, and she knew he liked the attention as well.

“Are you okay?” Oscar asked her, and she was aware that they were staring at their partners with each other.

Eliza nodded, and Oscar took her hand.

“I know that women are atrracted to my husband, that nothing is wrong with a little flirting.”

“You think they are flirting?” he questioned.

“What do you think?”

Eliza was not sure what to think herself, but looking at Chloe and her husband she was not sure what kind of complication that this would make…

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Has Cleo cut the cord with Cadmus with Him? Time will tell, here is a retro post with the two of them.

Cleo looked over at Oscar as he slept beside her, her discarded fishnets under her on the bed. She was restless. Her eyes were damp, as well as her temples. The state between sleep and wake was the most truthful in her experience. The dream that she just had about Cadmus had not changed her experience at all.

She had been running from him in the dream—after they had made love. Cleo had made love to him from top to bottom with her mouth—his lips, his nipples, lower and lower until she reached his toes and then she ran away from him after she sucked his pinkie toe. Ashamed and sated, she hated herself for the feeling even still, woken up.

Cadmus had not been good for her. She broke up with him because they did nothing but fortify behaviors in each other that she did not want to enhance.

But she still missed him and loved him. It was obvious from her dream. If he called her in the middle of the night to talk to her, she would be there for him until she was watery-eyed and went to work a sleep-deprived mess. He needed to go over everything in his life with her, and she was too involved with him not to listen because she still cared about his every movement.

A notification flashed on her phone, she saw just the C and grabbed it because she wanted to know what he needed.

What he wanted.

You up?

Her eyes moved over Oscar, as she touch typed in reply to his text.

Yes—you okay?

I just wanted to run something past you…

She texted him about his newest quandary until she was exhausted and he finally texted he was falling asleep while texting her.

She lie on her side again looking at Oscar, and wondered if she really had anything to wonder about with him and Eliza, or was it because she knew that even while she was happy to be with Oscar she still had such strong residual for Cadmus? She and Cadmus were just friends now, but still, she had him in her life—needed him in her life.

She couldn’t cut the cord.

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