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New York, USA, October 2016 - Part I
“Seen the news already, Roons?” Charlie was lying on Rooney’s bed his big feet crossed at the ankles. His eyes glued to his smart phone, he still had his overcoat on and Rooney wasn’t exactly sure when he had let himself into her apartment.
“I just woke up, for God’s sake…” she yawned irritated by his apparent lack of respect for her sleep. “Get your filthy feet off my clean sheets,” she growled poking her friend with her elbow as she sat up on her side of the bed. “I have no freakin’ idea what you’re talking about.”
Grinning madly, Charlie shoved the phone in her face. “Feast your eyes upon this.” He pressed a triangle icon on the small screen displayed on a website Rooney didn’t recognize. A video of a somewhat inebriated Andrew Upton being very touchy feely with a young actress half his age in some Sydney bar started playing. The quality of the clandestine footage was poor at best but revealing all the same. “I’d say you won this round after all,” he chuckled unabashedly paying very close attention to the growing alertness on Rooney’s face.
What the fuck… Rooney stared at the screen knowing very well these gossipy sites hardly ever had a thread of truth to them. Still it was embarrassing to watch, to witness debauched intimacy that held all the earmarks of infidelity to it. “It’s just a drunken night out, that’s all,” she mumbled not wanting to make too big of a deal out of it. Why would she anyway? Why would anything that happened in the Blanchett-Upton marriage affect her anymore? She was done with it, done with fretting over their life, their commitment, their family. They’d always been picture perfect, hadn’t they? she asked herself.
“Pardon me, but I do feel sorry for poor Cate having to sit through all those charity functions only to meet with insensitive journalists far too interested in her husband’s extracurricular activities…” Charlie was doing this deliberately, Rooney realized, he was trying to get a gut reaction out of her. She wouldn’t succumb to his devious tactics but she did remember one do-gooder dinner – she remembered it all too well…
Los Angeles, USA, August 2015
”Fuck me…” Cate grunted as they had left the ballroom for a quick bathroom break. “I want you to take me from behind right here and now,” she whispered leaning against the marble counter surrounding the sink. Gathering her dress, she lifted it up to reveal her bare ass parted by a black thong in the middle.
“Jesus, baby…” Rooney murmured instantly turned on by the inviting scene in front of her, “What if someone comes in while we’re at it? Everyone’s waiting for us after all.” Her mouth watered, making her swallow again and again, she knew she had already lost the game.
“Has it ever stopped you before?” Cate exhaled spreading her legs wider apart. “Just push your finger in and give it a twirl,” she taunted, “Won’t hurt you to try, would it..?” She pulled the thong away from her crack to let Rooney see her pink, lush opening that seemed to come more alive each second.
Cate knew how to drive Rooney mad and she hardly ever missed her opportunity to do so. To hear Cate’s teasing words, her downright dirty siren call made Rooney lose it in a fraction of a second. She couldn’t wait to drive her fingers in, to have Cate’s scent on their tips and all over her hand. “I like it when you really ask for it,” Rooney groaned tracing the outer rim of her dripping cunt with her index finger. “It makes me come alive.” And it did too, every fucking time.
She dipped her finger briefly in but withdrew it almost immediately making Cate whine out of frustration. “I want you to taste it,” Rooney whispered pushing the coated digit in Cate’s mouth while slowly stroking her slit with her other hand. The suction of her lips and tongue was almost enough to finish Rooney off as she soused Cate’s vulnerable neck with wet kisses. She could see Cate’s face, her darkened eyes reflected in the mirror in front of them, her body yielding to her touches, undulating under the pressure she applied with every nip and dab of her mouth.
“I want you to look at yourself when I fuck you,” Rooney murmured hoarsely tilting Cate’s head up to acknowledge her own needy stare. “I want you to see what I see every day and every night.” Raring to go in, her fingers had returned to their desired destination. Thrusting inside, she paid attention to Cate taking it all with a soft moan, her mouth left half open. How easy it was to push them up again, all the way up along her slick hollow, to fill her up repeatedly, madly, incessantly.
She had her in the palm of her hand, and she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Rooney wanted to possess Cate, to wipe her mind blank of everything else except her and what she was doing to her. The initial flick of her wrist was turning into a prolonged ascend that was in itself gratifying but not as intense as what was to come after. Cate’s moans turning into unrestrained bursts of lurking satisfaction, Rooney felt it too all too palpably – the sudden shift in Cate’s capability to endure the amounting pleasure for much longer.
New York, USA, October 2016 - Part II
“Cate’s here and the hubby is at home carousing with some all-too-willing starlet,” Charlie pointed out ignoring Rooney’s pretended disinterest. “Come to think of it, she even looks a bit like Cate… only younger.”
Rooney didn’t think she looked like Cate. No one looked like Cate. “I think you’re reading way too much into this,” she said dryly. “And it says in here that they’re just friends…” It sounded lame, and she knew it.
“Friends?!? Riiight…” Charlie snorted, “That’s exactly what I do with my best pals – we constantly grab each other in public and even leave together after doing so.” Shaking his head, he was astonished to hear Rooney of all people defend Andrew.
“They took separate cabs,” Rooney continued half-heartedly for it had been obvious the decision to do so had at least partly been prompted by the intruder shooting the damn video.
“What did you expect them to do? Get into one in front of the camera?” Seriously amused, Charlie couldn’t help but stare at Rooney.
“Give it a rest, will you?” Rooney acquiesced to say. She was tired of listening to his gleeful remarks, which did absolutely nothing to help her in any way.
New York, USA, October 2016 - Part III
Cate had been screening her calls all morning. She had no intention of answering any unknown number and not even most of the ones she did know. She was disgusted by the tabloid news since she herself rarely made any dubious headlines. She had made damn sure she wouldn’t grace any front pages with questionable behavior and she had thought they’d been in agreement about it as well.
You fucker. That’s what she had called him when she’d reached him on the phone. Cate had been furious and she’d let it show. I’ve been gone for – what, a few days? – and you do this! The lame excuses he had made had insulted her intelligence. This is what I chose you for? The whole incident had tasted like bile in her mouth, and by now she was already gagging.
Cate thought about her children and hoped they would be spared of the more salacious details. “There aren’t any details, Cate!” Andrew had roared over the phone. “Nothing happened!”
Yet Cate knew better than that, and she wondered if it was some kind of passive aggression on Andrew’s part due to her affair with Rooney. Was he just acting up? Demonstrating his manhood that had suffered a blow because of her tryst with another woman? Should I accept part of the blame? she asked herself but declined to answer it the moment the question made itself known.
Cate recalled the night she and Rooney had attended a charity dinner. Celebrated stars of Carol, they had been the guests of honor that night – that marvelously boring event had it not been for the brazen encounter she herself had initiated in the powder room. The memory of them, fucking in the bathroom, the rest of the guests patiently waiting for their return, filled her with happiness.
It had started as an impatient quickie yet it had blossomed into so much more. Cate had wanted it, and she had expressed her desire very bluntly. In fact she doubted she had ever before or ever since been quite so insistent, so hungry…
Cate had uttered just one word, albeit an unoriginal one – “God…” – but it had been appropriate for the moment had signified the closest proximity to any divinity she had ever chosen to believe in. Yet it had been more a needed breath than any prayer, a way to unlatch that one last gate of her bashful discipline, to accept and to cherish what was happening both beyond her eyes’ reach and inside the blonde head that greeted her in the mirror. Soon she had clenched against Rooney’s fingers with all her might, ready to topple down like a house of cards made of hearts and diamonds. All her muscles contracting, preparing her body for the immaculate and irrefutable intervention, she had finally let go of herself completely.
“I wish I could return the favor, baby…” Cate had whispered to her when they were once again sitting at their high priced table. Her hand had sought Rooney’s and given it a gentle squeeze.
“Oh, you’re so going to!” Rooney had blurted out in eager reply. “I’m so wet it’s not even funny…” But the mellow mood of her eyes had formed a calm contrast to her thirsty words. The hand that had met Cate’s had been warm to touch and so very easy to hold. Is it appropriate to gaze into each other’s eyes this long, Cate had pondered, and if it is, what does it mean? She had hardly answered her own question even though she’d known the answer all along.
New York, USA, October 2016 - Part IV
Let the night fall on us, when it is its time to do so, Cate mused her thoughts somber and overcast. Let the heavy darkness drop down on the happy as well as the anguished, and should we lament the brief joy of a single day, let’s not ever forget the mercy of its set duration either. We will all eventually need it, she recognized – I need it. Now.
“Why are you with me?” Rooney had asked Cate soon after the charity event. “Why aren’t you with your husband? I’m sure he’d mind if he knew.” Somehow she had known the answer from all the bits and pieces Cate had let slip.
“I am with you because I can’t fathom being without you.” Cate’s reply hadn’t taken her by surprise, not at all. Still it hadn’t been enough, Rooney understood, not enough to boldly move forward, to claim its stake at the time. She stood by the window wondering what Cate was doing at the moment, where her thoughts wandered… No, I can’t go there.
Somewhere in the distance yet not too far away in the scale of the forever colliding small worlds, Cate thought about Rooney, about her voice in particular – that almost petulant parlance of hers, the brooding and the mischievous tone she had always found captivating. “You sound like an old lady, you know?” she had often teased her. “I can imagine what you’ll be like when you’re 90… croaking your demands and giving everyone a hard time.” To her astonishment Rooney hadn’t objected to any of it, as a matter of fact, she had loved it, all of it.
And in that split second of eternity Cate had loved all of Rooney.