One Sex Scene Too Far Read online

  She stopped reading romances. She boxed up all of her books and took them to the thrift store, a process which took many trips. Part of her felt like burning the books instead of giving them away. She’d always known that romance novels pedaled lies. But now she saw that it was dangerous to even read their fantasies. Because they made people get carried away.

  ****

  November bled into December. Robin still hadn’t heard from Luke, although the papers were full of headlines about him. He’d pulled out of hosting the CanAwards, a big literary awards ceremony, without giving an explanation. He’d also backed out of a new television show on CBC about writers through the ages.

  Christmas arrived. Robin went to The Island to spend it with her family. Her mother kept telling her to eat, saying that she looked drawn and pale. The winter ended and spring came and went. May switched to June, or to “June-uary” as the locals called it because it rained so much.

  One Saturday in June, the sun finally decided to make an appearance. Robin, like everyone else in Vancouver it seemed, went trailing down Main Street. It was Sam’s birthday on Monday and she wanted to get her a gift, although she had no idea what to buy her.

  Robin trekked along the road while the sun burned onto her shoulders. Cars cruised by with music pumping through their open windows. Everything was so bright. The windows of the shops winked light into her eyes. She was squinting so much that she wished she’d brought sunglasses.

  Usually, she loved the start of summer. She loved the long evenings when the sky turned purple over English Bay. She liked the smell of barbecuing meat that would drift over the parks. But this year, she couldn’t care less about summer. She had stopped crying over Luke but she felt numb inside. Her heart had shriveled up. She had nothing left to give.

  She continued to trudge down the road with the sun blistering her shoulders. There were so many shops, a bewildering amount, far too many for her to browse through. It had been lethal to set off without a plan.

  She toiled on past card shops and clothing stores that sold denim jackets and beaten-up cowboy boots, and places that refilled growlers of tea. At last, she came to a book shop. She stopped for a second and sheltered from the sun under the awning. She stared into the window. She missed books, she decided. Not reading had left a hole in her life.

  A book stood propped front and center of the window display. Robin read the title. A knot formed in her throat. She closed her eyes. Then she opened them again and re-read the title. Yes, she had been right. She hadn’t been imagining it. The book was called Robin, and it was by Luke Delaney.

  Robin started to shake. She turned and ducked into the shop. She rushed through the gloom up to the counter. A bald man stood behind the desk. Tufts of hair grew out of his ears.

  “Hi,” Robin said to him. “Can I have the new Luke Delaney book?”

  The man shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve sold out. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve shifted a phenomenal amount of copies this week.”

  “What about the book in the window?”

  The man frowned. “It might be sun damaged.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. Just give me the book.

  The man walked over to the window with Robin following. He seemed to move deliberately slow.

  He lifted the book down from its prop and wiped it with the hem of his t-shirt. Then he inspected it clearly for sun damage.

  “You’re in for a treat.” he said. “It’s already top of The New York Times bestseller list. My wife was in tears over it. She couldn’t put it down, she couldn’t. I had to get my own supper for two nights in a row.”

  Robin’s hands itched to grab the book from the man. But she dutifully followed him back to the counter. She took a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and thrust it at him. Then she seized the book and made a rush for the door.

  “Miss,” he called after her. “Miss. You’ve forgotten your change.”

  Robin ran out of the store. A bus stop stood ahead of her. She perched herself onto one of the plastic seats and opened the book.

  It began with a prologue. Normally, she never bothered with prologues but she decided to read this one because it was by Luke.

  “Robins feed on worms and insects and berries. But not my Robin. She wanted to feed on love. Only she was too scared.”

  Robin frowned. The book was about her. And—what the hell—he was psychoanalyzing her. She read on.

  “Robins sing when storms approach. My Robin was singing on the fateful night of the party. But I was too full of ego to listen to her song of warning.”

  The words started to blur in front of Robin’s eyes. Was this Luke’s way of saying sorry to her?

  The prologue ended and she turned to the first chapter. The story didn’t start at the book signing as she’d expected. Rather, it began with Luke knocking her off of her bike. Like in real life, the story followed how Luke had driven her back to his apartment. Then followed a gorgeous description of her staring out of the window at the tumbling flakes.

  “She was childlike in her delight. It was like she’d been caged in a foster home all of her life and had never seen snow before.”

  Luke made it sound so beautiful. He made her sound beautiful, too. It was as if he’d put a soft filter over everything, softening the hard edges and removing all of the shadows.

  She kept reading. She barely registered buses pulling into the stop or taking off again. Or the other people, who would sit next to her for periods of time on the slippery plastic seats. Time stopped as she became lost in the rhythm of Luke’s words.

  She reached the part when he first made love to her.

  “A shyness came over me. I was so scared. My Robin seemed too fragile to touch. What if I messed up? What if I came too soon?”

  Robin smiled. She’d had no idea he had felt like that. He’d seemed so confident.

  She must have sat at the bus stop for an hour longer reading the book. Then she took it home and lay down with it on the lumpy couch. She ate her dinner, pasta and broccoli, on the couch, still engrossed in the novel.

  The story didn’t mention the threesome, thank God. Instead, it described how Luke had flirted with Jenna at the party and Robin had been so upset that she’d taken off.

  Fictional Luke was devastated by what had happened. He tried to contact her. He turned up at her house and waited for hours in a severe thunderstorm, but she refused to open the door to him.

  He became so heartbroken that he stopped eating. Nothing in his life made sense anymore.

  The book ended with him driving to a beach in Tofino, which was infamous for its riptides. He waded out into the Pacific Ocean through the icy water toward the rolling waves. Seagulls cried. The air was thick with the smell of salt. Tentacles of kelp coiled around his legs.

  The book stopped abruptly with the words, The End.

  Robin threw the book down onto the floor. So that was it? Were the readers supposed to think he’d drowned? It was so tragic. Poor Luke. No wonder the wife of the man in the bookstore had stopped serving supper. No wonder she’d cried and cried. The book was like a modern day Romeo & Juliet.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day was Monday. Robin cycled to work. It was only 8:30 a.m., and already a heat haze shimmered over the tarmac. The sun had bleached the blue out of the sky. She pedaled on, sweating profusely. She couldn’t wait to get to the office and into the cool of the air conditioning.

  When she’d woken up that morning, it had taken every shred of her self-control not to pick up Luke’s book and start reading it again. She’d only stopped herself because she knew it would have made her late for work.

  She reached the office and chained her bike to the rack outside. Then she hurried up the steps toward the double doors. It was only then that she remembered it was Sam’s birthday. Robin had forgotten about Sam’s present.

  Robin slowed her pace. She stepped sheepishly into the foyer. Sam sat at her desk, chewing gum and crashing a date stamp down onto lett
ers. A line of salmon-pink blush streaked each of her cheeks.

  Robin came up to the desk. “Hey, happy birthday.”

  Sam looked up from the mail and frowned.

  “About your present—” Robin began.

  Sam leaped up from the desk, walked around it, and grabbed Robin by the arm.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  “I’m really sorry,” Robin said. “I meant to get you a gift. I really did, but then I—”

  Sam steered Robin down the corridor and into the ladies’ washroom. She turned to Robin, her earrings swinging. Her eyes were like points.

  “Have you been on Twitter this morning?” she asked.

  Robin shook her head. She never tweeted. She didn’t even have a Twitter account.

  “It’s gone nuts,” Sam said. “It’s on fire about Luke’s book. There are over ten thousand tweets discussing who the real Robin is. People have set up a ‘We hate Robin’ hashtag. They’re blaming you for killing Luke.”

  Robin recoiled.

  “But it’s only a book,” she murmured.

  Sam scowled. “Nonsense. The book is like a frigging love song to you. You’ve broken his heart. Hey, why are you crying?”

  “Because he broke my heart too.”

  Sam put her arm stiffly around Robin’s shoulder. Robin could smell her deodorant. It smelled of fake flowers.

  “Go to him,” Sam said. “Tell him how you feel. I’ll cover for you.”

  “But what if he’s making it up?”

  Sam shifted her wad of chewing gum to the other side of her mouth. “If he’s making it up, then I’m the Queen of England.”

  Chapter Eight

  Robin rode in the back of the cab toward Beach Avenue. Thoughts stormed through her head. What if Luke laughed at her when she told him how she felt? She’d die if he laughed at her. Could she really risk exposing herself to him like that?

  She stared out of the window. They were crossing the Burrard Bridge. It was a glorious summer day. Boats glided along the inlet, leaving wakes of froth in the indigo water. Everyone was out on the ocean—jet skiers, people on kayaks. Robin watched a paddleboarder steer around a log as long as a telegraph pole. It had probably been washed down from Alaska and had been drifting for ages. She felt like she was drifting, too … ever since things had ended with Luke.

  The taxi stopped outside Pacific Tower. Robin paid the driver and clambered out. She hurried through the courtyard, past displays of plants in pots and a burbling fountain. She came to the intercom system on the door. Heart pounding, she pressed Luke’s buzzer.

  She heard the phone ring inside. It kept ringing and ringing. Then it went through to an answering machine.

  Robin’s stomach dropped. She waited a second before trying again. No one answered. Of course Luke wasn’t there. How arrogant of her to assume that he was holed up at home, heartbroken.

  She turned and started to trudge back through the courtyard toward the road. She guessed that she’d better take a cab back to work.

  She’d blown it. It was over. She’d never have the courage to go to him again.

  “Robin,” a man’s voice called.

  Robin stopped and glanced in the direction of the voice. Her pulse skipped. Luke was stepping out of a taxi, which had pulled up alongside the curb. He wore a pair of sawed-off jeans. His biceps bulged from a sleeveless running shirt. He was so beautiful that Robin almost forgot to breathe. He seemed tanned and relaxed, not pale and heartbroken.

  He saw her and a look of confusion flickered across his face. It changed to one of wariness.

  Slowly, he came up to her.

  “Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Robin swallowed. This was proving even harder than she’d imagined.

  “I read your book,” she said.

  Luke’s dark eyes flared. “You did? What did you think about it? Look, I know the ending was too melodramatic. The kelp—everyone’s been bagging me about it.”

  “Nonsense. People love your book. And…” The butterflies were building in Robin’s stomach. “And I loved it too,” she continued.

  Luke’s face softened. “About the party.”

  “No—” Robin cut in. “Let me speak.”

  If she didn’t talk now, she’d never have the courage to say what she needed to say.

  “I was wrong,” she said. “I should never have let my parents’ bitterness poison me. The way I feel about you—God, I love you so much it’s like a sickness. When you went, it felt like you had died. It felt like I’d died too. I realize now that romances can last forever.”

  A shell-shocked look came over Luke’s face. “Really?”

  “Really, really.”

  “That’s not what Jenna said. She called me three days after the party. She said that you’d had a long chat with her. Apparently, you told her that you’d only slept with me because I was famous.”

  “She’s lying.”

  Luke glowered. “Christ, if I had known, I would have never given up. I would have kept on trying to win you back. After you left, I couldn’t deal with anyone. I stayed in my apartment writing. I couldn’t believe I’d lost you over a book.”

  “But what about the scenes with Christoff and Georgette? They aren’t even in your novel.”

  Luke shrugged. “That was the funny thing. When it was time to do the rewrite, I found that the spark had gone. I wasn’t interested in writing about them anymore. The only thing I wanted to write about was you.”

  “I love you,” he continued. Love blazed from his eyes. “Give me a second chance. I swear I won’t mess things up. Oh, and there’ll be no playacting either.”

  “What? Not even a little bit?”

  He laughed. Then he leaned in and kissed her hungrily.

  She pressed herself into his muscular body and kissed him back hard. She was aware of the splash of the fountain in the background and the drone of the cars along Beach Road. The sounds were different than in the books she read. In her romance novels, the hero and heroine always kissed to the backdrop of lapping waves or to the trill of birds.

  But these noises were better, she realized. Because they were real like her romance with Luke, which wouldn’t stop when the reader reached the last page of the book.

  The End

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