Trivial Pursuits Ch. 22

Alessa gave a nod, her eyes contemplating everything. "Yes, I'll do that. Thank you," she said as she rose to leave. Macrae's warning became an in-moving storm cloud against which Lou's earlier words circled like menacing black birds. Together, they unsettled a mind that had for a moment found peace. Sitting back at her desk, she tried to push the unease away with work, but failed. With something of a huff of determination, she stood up and marched to Denny's office.

Tapping lightly, she walked in to find him on the phone. Though he looked up, he didn't hurry his conversation along, but continued schmoozing whoever was on the other end. Alessa quietly sat herself down, trying again to erase the irksome discomfort with a smile. After several minutes passed, he asked his client to hold on. Placing the phone against his chest he signaled to her to speak.

She just shook her head and whispered. "I just wanted to see if you were free for lunch."

He returned the whisper. "Sorry. Locked in here. I'll have to stay in all afternoon. Maybe dinner?"

She swallowed and nodded as she tried to smile. "Okay, that's fine. Yes, let's order something. I'm sure I have enough work to stay late and keep me busy."

He only nodded, but whatever he was about to say in response was cut off when he turned a smile into the phone. "No, Jeff, I'm still here. Just conferring with a colleague. No, I'm completely on board with the plan," he reassured, turning his chair to look out the window, silently dismissing her.

She blinked, and looked down at her light gray skirt, brushing out the imaginary wrinkles. She stood up and walked, her mind somewhat buzzing, out the door and back to her desk.

It would be her first run since her mother had died, and she tried to imagine herself as stoic, grabbing her bag and heading to the gym down the street at six on the dot. Emotionlessly, she donned her running shorts and sneakers and stepped on a free treadmill. But it was hard to mute Macrae's voice warning her not to rely on Denny. It was like experiencing a quick drop in the road, her stomach catching in her throat as she visualized Lou's tear-stained face while she claiming no relationship lasts, such a different tune from when she sang how great love was. A tightness started in Alessa's gut as her feet pounded on, even as she tried to reassure herself Denny loved her.

She could tell she hadn't run in nearly two weeks, stiff muscles slowly stretching to wake and move smoothly. But the burn never gave her that high she had always experienced before. Instead the pain was cranky and biting and somehow tangled with the knot growing in her stomach. She stretched thoroughly, thoughts of dinner with Denny pulling at her in hope.

Alessa rinsed off and headed back to the office, cold and muggy January air causing her to wrap her coat around her more snuggly. She hoped he was finished with his work as she was now tired and ready to head home instead of working longer. Alessa entered his office expectantly, but found him pacing back and forth, but this time speaking into a headset, clearly in a heated debate with whoever was on the receiving end.

She waited, again trying to seem pleasant and patient all the while feeling that sinking in the pit of her stomach. Rather angrily telling the other person to hold, Denny muffled the phone against his chest as he explained in a rather clipped tone that he wouldn't be free for some time.

"If you want, you can go on home. I don't think I'll be finished here for several hours still," he explained, his frustration seeping into his voice.

"Oh, okay. Yeah, I think I will. Run was a bit tiring and I'm pooped. I'll see you at home," she said in a tone that sounded more like a question. He simply nodded before turning back to his animated discussion. Again, she was wordlessly dismissed, and again she felt the disappointment settle rather anxiously inside her.

Feeling a headache growing, she put herself in a cab and took two ibuprofen when she reached their condo. She took a hot bath before slipping on the nightgown she had worn at Thanksgiving. The pain in her head eased away, but as the minutes ticked into hours and the hours in to a seeming eternity, she could only think of the comfort his arms would bring as she waited for him to come home. She stayed awake until after midnight, but she had fallen asleep before he had ever returned home.

Unfortunately, a major client was being sued by a group of its employees, and so for the next few weeks, dinner cancellations, working weekends, and late nights at the office turned into a way of life. The effort they had initially put in to finding ways to connect since she'd moved in seemed like a habit of the past as they saw very little of each other outside the office, and Denny seemed too tired to spend any time in with her. In the bed or out.

The creeping unease Lou's words had placed in her mind after her own break up was driving Alessa to desperation to be with Denny. But as she found herself alone in bed late one Friday night she promised herself she would get what she needed, even if she had to tie him down.

She was awoken sometime after one a.m. when he finally slipped into bed. Smiling in her half-sleeping state, she rolled over in his arms and began running her mouth over his chest and neck. He moaned only a moment before finding her mouth with his. Though the kiss was pleasant, he pulled away in what she thought was too short a time before placing a chaste kiss on her forehead.

"I'm so tired, you cannot even imagine," he stated drowsily before yawning, his body now still against hers. Sleepily, Alessa blinked as she realized he was again silently dismissing her interest. She frowned as she tried to think back to the last time they had actually had sex.

"Mm, Denny," she moaned, stirring her mouth against him again in an attempt to arouse him. "Please, I miss you."

He sighed, his hands stilling her slowly writhing body. "I miss you too, but not tonight, Sweetheart. M'too tired." And then he guided her to turn over so he could spoon her and effectively curb her ability to kiss or touch him. In an unhappy strop, she sighed, but was so overcome with fatigue herself that she didn't have long to dwell on it before she fell back asleep.

It was nearly eight in the morning when the sounds of another rustling about the room woke her up. Feeling somewhat refreshed, she rubbed her eyes and sat up. Denny was slipping on his shoes.

"Morning," she said with a smile.

"Hey, morning, Sweetheart," he answered without turning around. He stood and left the room. Alessa half lay there as she listened for him. She could vaguely make out the sounds of the espresso machine spitting out his morning coffee. A few minutes later he briskly walked back into the bedroom carrying his travel mug to snatch up his briefcase. She was sitting on the edge of the bed by this time, realizing that he must be leaving.

"Bye, Sweetheart," he said, coming to her side quickly to give her a fast peck on the lips.

"You're going to the office again? I wanted to spend the day with you."

"I'm sorry. Me too, but I've got to work." Alessa was fast in snatching his collar to keep his mouth on hers. She tried to lick his lips to have them open up, but he struggled to pull away. "I've gotta go. Maybe I can bring dinner home tonight."

"Tonight?" she asked disheartened. "No, I want you now," she whined, pulling at him again while vining her right leg behind his left one. "Stay with me. Make love to me," she begged huskily.

Denny relented only a moment, kissing her a little more thoroughly, but when her hands found the buttons of his shirt, he pulled away completely. "I can't," he restated more firmly, a slight scowl on his brow. "I have to get back to the office. I don't have time for this." She was frowning up at him, and in exasperation he clipped at her, "I can't spend all my time with you."

"You haven't had time for me a lot lately."

"That's not true. I've been very supportive of you. But I have to work right now. I can't just fuck you whenever you want," he stated in irritation.

Her eyes grew round and her jaw dropped open at his mean crudeness. She hopped up, coming chest to chest. Her expression was furious. "That's not how you acted when I wanted nothing to do with you! You wouldn't keep your hands off me. Kept pawing at me all the time when I didn't want you. And now what? Now that I've given it up you've got better things to do?"

"It's not like that," he denied, his temper rising with hers. He didn't want to have a fight. Not with her. Not at that moment, and so he began moving towards the door. She chased after him.

"It's exactly like that! I don't know why you wanted me to move in with you if you can't be with me when I want you or when I need you! I guess I'm just easier access for you when it suits you!"

"That's bullshit," he seethed in growing frustration.

"The hell it is. It's always about you, on your time, when you want it, regardless of how I feel."

"Don't give me that crap. You want it too. Clearly," he remarked derisively as he dramatically swept his arm over her alluring night gown. "You always have. You were just too much of a coward to do anything about it. Face it. Without me you'd still be that frightened, uptight, screwed up woman trying to bury herself in work to avoid her fucked up family and any relationship of worth."

Alessa took a sharp intake of breath, her pained and mortified expression telling Denny he'd gone too far. He let out a frustrated sigh. "Listen, I'm sorry," he offered lamely. "But I do have to get to work; you know how it is. We can finish this discussion when I get back, alright?"

"Why bother?" she asked still tense. "What else is there to say unless you have more insults to sling my way? You don't have time for me. Correction: you won't make time for me. Period. I get it. End of discussion."

He stared hard at her a few seconds before he simply turned and left. As he rode the elevator down, it crossed his mind that it was ironic that their first official fight had started because she wanted sex and he didn't and had ended with him running away instead of her. Hell, he thought pinching the bridge of his nose, it wasn't that he didn't want sex and he wasn't running away; he just didn't have the time for it. Once at work and heaped in the mess his client hadn't gotten itself in, he eventually forgot about their fight, though the agitation it had generated seemed to stay, powering him to hard ball his way through his work.

For Alessa, however, their fight, and more importantly the cause of it, was far from her mind. It ripped into the very thing she had been warned about and always feared. She had fallen in love and begun to need someone who wasn't there for her. And while she admitted that she had been unfair as Denny had been extremely caring and available to her as she dealt with her mother's death, it seemed as though his actions at the time only conditioned her to be more dependent upon him, now leaving her in a lurch when he had to tend to other things.

She was held suspended in a relationship she had no control in, and whether or not she would ever again get what she wanted was not to be known. She was trapped, but now, thanks to Denny's education, she understood the feeling, but had no release for them. She had nowhere to run, nowhere to go, and he wasn't there to lend his support or provide a therapeutic release. She was now trapped in the home of the very person she wanted to escape. The claustrophobic fear that realization spun was more intense than ever before.

As the panic grew in her, she started to shake and pace, the manic urge to claw her skin tickling viciously in her fingertips. The residual turmoil from their fight coupled with this new growing anxiety was enough to bring tears of frustration to her eyes. The tightness in Alessa's chest made it hard to breathe.

She couldn't do it, she realized. She couldn't live day to day not knowing when the bottom would fall out, not trusting that in the next moment he would finally crush her heart, that despite any affection she had for him and he for her, it wouldn't be enough. She would end up broken, just like her mother.

Alessa had been crying on the couch until that thought stunned her like lightning. She sat up and wiped her face. She knew now that her relationship with Denny was like gangrene, which would slowly take over her whole life and kill her if she didn't stop it. If she wanted to live, she would have to do the impossible: cut Denny out.

The pain that thought produced was proof enough to her that she was already too deeply infected. Her tears returned in full force, and while she laid on the couch, mourning the loss of Denny as she had her mother, she resolved to never allow him to crush her. For the rest of the day, Alessa did her best to reel in her spinning emotions, to pull back all that she had let haphazardly escape. She went for a long run, setting a pace and focusing on her footsteps. She cleaned his apartment, though the housekeeping service had been there on Tuesday. All the while she started planning an escape.

When Denny came home that evening, he had remembered to do as promised, and brought take out from her favorite Korean restaurant. It was painful, like thousands of tiny lacerations deep in her skin, sitting next to him as they silently ate.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Denny said calmly when he had finished his food.

Alessa set her chopsticks down before looking up. She gazed at him a moment before she gently shook her head. "No."

At first Denny didn't believe her. She had been more enraged that morning than he'd ever seen her. There was no way she had let go of her fury so easily. He narrowed his eyes at her as he leaned in closer. "Are you lying to me?" he challenged, hoping to goad her into a response.

But again, her eyes turned to him. They were docile. Unaffected. "No," she said with something of a relenting sigh. "I'm not lying. I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Denny studied her as she turned her focus back to her plate. Her expression had been composed and...decided, he thought. The typical caged-bird panic was gone. She didn't appear to be irritated or even hurt as he knew she had been before he left.

He frowned lightly as he stood to get more wine, completely at a loss as to how to interpret her unpredicted change in attitude. Had he hurt her so much that she...what? Lost her passion for him? Understood how much pressure he was under at work and felt guilty for demanding so much of his time? He grimaced, knowing that wasn't the case. Then what?

He continued studying her, and after dinner they pulled out the Nintendo, which they hadn't played since she'd moved in. After almost an hour, she stated she was tired. Denny ran a finger down her arm as she stood from the couch.

"As I recall, you were begging me to do something this morning," he teased, hoping to somehow break through the awkward wall of ice she'd put up since he'd returned home.

She turned to look down at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw a crack in her veneer. But it was only a splint second, gone before he knew what it was. She smiled tiredly, almost sadly. "I'm really tired. I got kinda busy today and wore myself out."

He knew she wasn't mocking him, just throwing his words back. Once they were settled in bed, Alessa allowed him to pull her into his arms as they went to sleep, but did not seek any more contact than that. Denny wondered what fragile thing he had broken.

Sunday was fairly uneventful, her quiet, detached manner still pervasive in their interactions. In an effort to do something that she would enjoy and bring her out of her strange mood, Denny suggested they go to the bookstore in Russian Hill. For a minute, Alessa bit her tongue to hold back the caustic observation that he didn't have time to sleep with her but he had plenty of time to read. But it was a fruitless retort in a relationship she was determined to no longer invest in. And though she was initially prejudiced against the bookstore, she found a thoroughly used copy of an Edith Wharton, though Denny walked away empty handed.

And again, that evening when Denny attempted to seduce her, she had a laudable excuse. On Monday, Denny had an early conference call, and so left even earlier than was typical for Alessa.

She took the bus in to work and hung up her trench coat. She made a cup of coffee and fired up her computer. Scanning through emails that required immediate attention, Alessa tended to them first. Once urgent issues were dealt with, she pulled out her phone book and dialed Hyun-Joong's number.

"Alessa, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?" he asked the moment he picked up, having clearly read the caller I.D.

"Haven't caught you at a bad time, have I?"

"Actually, I am glad you called. Remember the attorney I was complaining about?"

"Oh? Has something happened? You never mentioned a name."

"Well his name is Mitch Simpson and he has got to go. I was thinking of calling Denny today. This man is an idiot. Should never have been assigned here."

"What has he done?"

"What hasn't he done? He's not only personally offended the Director of Foreign Investments at KHB Financial, he has been going out to clubs more and more."

"Clubs?"

Hyun-Joong sighed. "Clubs known for...well for providing people with the opportunity to experiment. Sexually. Several people think he's getting in deep. And after reports of his behavior this weekend, well, I'm afraid of not only how it looks for both our companies, but that he may do something and overstep a legal line. Maybe drugs. Maybe prostitution. I'm not sure, but it's bad."

Alessa's eyes darted around the office as she sat more erect at her desk. "Um, listen. That's kind of good actually, at least, it plays into why I've called."

"Oh really? And what's that? Need an invite to a kinky club?"

"No," she hissed disapprovingly. "Listen, I've reconsidered and I wondered if you were serious when you asked if I'd come over to the Wiles, Mayer, and Schecter branch in Seoul to work with your firm."

"Absolutely. Wait. Are you saying you're willing to move over here for the secondment?"

"I'm considering it. But...but I'm not sure."

There was silence nearly ten full seconds.

"And what about Denny?"

"What about him? You were the one who asked if I wanted to give up my career for a guy."

"No," he corrected slowly. "I asked why you'd give up your career for some casual fling. You were the one who insisted it was more than that. And I doubt it's changed in a month." Alessa didn't have an immediate reply. "Alessa, what's happened between you two?"

"Not much. Only what I suppose would have to happen eventually. And it made me realize I want to focus on my career. I don't want to settle."

There was silence again as he thought about it. "Well, I don't know how you're going to manage it. I mean, Denny handles my account. He's in charge. I doubt he'll let you come. Especially if there's been some sort of fall out between you two."

"Denny isn't in charge. Yes, he may handle your account, but you are the firm's client. And with an issue like this, one that is about personnel misrepresenting the firm and our client, this will require not only upper management discipline but also...HR to find a suitable replacement," she informed him, ideas falling beautifully into place. "But that's if you still want me. I mean—"

"I know. Not as my girlfriend," he cut her off with a laugh, knowing what she meant. "If it's what you want, then yeah. You'll be infinitely better than this moron. I've got to send him home immediately regardless if you or anyone else takes his place. Though," he paused.