Boundless (Unearthly) (23 page)

“Consider me entertained.” I turn, laughing, pressed in by the people around me, when suddenly I see Tucker farther up the boardwalk, coming out of what appears to be the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum, another place I’ve never been to even though I’ve considered Jackson my home for more than two years. He’s smiling with his dimples out, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned face. I can hear the faint sound of his laugh, and I can’t help it, it makes me smile to hear it. I love his laugh.

But he’s not alone. Another second and Allison Lowell, the girl from the rodeo, the girl who was one of his dates at prom the year I went with Christian, the girl who’s had a giant crush on him pretty much her whole life, follows Tucker out of the building, and she’s laughing too, her long red hair in a fish-tailed braid over her shoulder, peering up at him exactly the way I know I used to look at him. She puts her hand on his arm, says something else to make him smile. He folds his arm around her hand, like he’s escorting her somewhere, always the perfect gentleman.

Shots ring in the air. The crowd laughs as one of the villains staggers around melodramatically, then dies and lies twitching.

I know how he feels.

I should go. They’re coming this way, and any second he’s going to see me, and there isn’t even a word for how awkward that’s going to be. I should go. Now. But my feet don’t move. I stand like I’ve been frozen, watching them as they walk along together, their talk easy, familiar, Allison glancing over at him from under her lashes, wearing a western-style shirt with those vees on the shoulders, tight jeans, boots. A Wyoming girl. His type of Wyoming girl, specifically.

I can’t stop thinking about how much better she’d be for him than I am.

But I also kind of want to tear her hair out.

They’re close now. I can smell her perfume, light and fruity and feminine.

“Uh-oh,” I hear Wendy say behind me, noticing them at last. “We should—”
Get out of here,
she’s about to say, but then Tucker glances up.

The smile vanishes from his face. He stops walking.

For all of ten long seconds we stand there, in the middle of the crowd of tourists, staring at each other.

I can’t breathe. Oh man. Please don’t let me start crying, I think.

Then Wendy pulls on my arm, and my feet magically work again, and I turn and run—oh yes, I’m that dignified—and I’m about three blocks away, around the corner, before I slow down. I wait for Wendy to catch up to me.

“Well,” she says breathlessly. “That was exciting.”

She’s not talking about the gunfight.

We take the long way getting back to my car. When we’re both seat-belted in, ready to go, she suddenly reaches and takes the keys out of the ignition.

“So you’re still in love with my brother,” she says, and when I try to grab the keys, she adds, “Oh no, we’re going to talk about this.”

Silence. I fight the humiliating urge to cry again.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Let’s get it all out in the open. You still love him.”

I bite my lip, then release it. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on, and he’s moved on. Clearly he’s with Allison now.”

Wendy snorts. “Tucker is not in love with Allison Lowell. Don’t blow stuff out of proportion.”

“But—”

“It’s you, Clara. You’re the only one, from the first day he saw you. He looks at you exactly the same way my daddy looks at my mom.”

“But I’m not good for him,” I say miserably. “I have to let him go.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

“We’re not meant to be,” I murmur.

This gets another snort. “That,” she says, “is a matter of opinion.”

“Oh, so it’s your opinion that Tucker and I, that we—”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “But I do know that he loves you. And you love him.”

“I’m at Stanford. He’s here. You said yourself that long-distance relationships don’t work out. You and Jason—”

“I didn’t love Jason,” she says. “Plus, I didn’t know what I was talking about.” She sighs heavily. “Okay, so I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. I know I shouldn’t be telling you this, as a matter of fact. He’d kill me. But Tucker applied to college this year. And he’s going, in the fall.”

“What? Where?”

“UC Santa Clara. You see, don’t you, why this is important?”

I nod, stunned. UC Santa Clara just so happens to be in my part of California.

My heart is in my throat. I try to swallow it down. “You suck.”

Wendy puts her hand on mine. “I know. It’s my fault, partly. I kind of threw you two together that summer with the boots.”

“You really did.”

“You’re my friend, and I want you to be happy, and he’s my brother, and I want him to be happy, too. And I think you could make each other happy, if you’d give it a real chance.”

If only it were so simple.

“I think you should talk to him again, that’s all,” she says.

“Oh yeah? And what should I say?”

“The truth,” she says solemnly. “Tell him how you feel.”

Fantastic, I think. I’m crying over Tucker. Not very women’s lib of me, I know. It goes against everything I believe about myself, all that my mother taught me—that I am strong, that I am capable, that I don’t need a man to make me happy—but here I am, all curled up on the couch in the fetal position, an uneaten bowl of microwaved caramel popcorn on the floor by my feet, sobbing into the cushions because all I wanted was to watch a stupid movie to get my mind off things and all Netflix has lined up for me is romantic comedies.

I’m replaying that moment on the boardwalk over and over, Allison Lowell looking up at Tucker, her brown eyes all doe-like and alluring and crap, and how she touched him the way I’ve touched him. How she smiled.

And he smiled back at her.

But he’s also apparently going to college about twenty miles from me. The possibility of that, Tucker nearby, expands into an aching, hopeful, confused mess in my soggy brain.

He might want for us to be together.

I might want for us to be together.

But nothing else has changed, has it? I’m still me, still a T-person, still Little Miss Glowworm, still having creeptastic visions that I might not survive, and if I do survive, I’m still meant for someone else. He’s still him, funny, warm, gorgeous, kind, perfectly normal and yet so extraordinary, but when I kiss him too enthusiastically, I make him sick. Because he’s human. And I’m not, mostly. When he’s eighty, I’ll look like I’m thirty. It’s not right.

Except Dad told me to follow my heart.

Is this what he meant?

I blow my nose. I wish Angela were here to tell me to take a chill pill already, to kick my butt back to okay again, but that part of our friendship seems long gone. She’s not going to be in the mood to discuss boy issues. She’d probably kill for my easy little problems right now.
So you still have a thing for the cowboy,
I can imagine her saying.
Big whoop.

Which starts a whole new round of tears for me, because not only is my heart all confused and broken again, but I am totally, indisputably alone.

My cell rings. I sniffle and answer.

“Hey, you,” Christian says softly.

“Hey.”

He hears that something’s not quite right with my voice. “Did I wake you?”

I sit up, wiping at my eyes. “No. I was about to watch a movie.”

“Do you want some company?” he asks. “I could stop by.”

“Sure,” I say. “Come over. We could watch zombies.”

Zombies would be excellent. I scroll through the menu looking for anything zombie, and I feel moderately less devastated and worn-out.

There’s a knock on the door, and I think, Well, that was fast, but then I freeze.

Five syncopated raps.

Tucker’s knock.

Crap.

He knocks again. I stand in the hall and contemplate how quietly I can sneak out the back door and fly away. But I don’t know if I can fly when I feel this way, and Christian will be here any minute.

“I know you’re in there, Carrots,” he calls through the door.

Double crap.

I go to the door and open it. I hate that I look like I’ve been crying, my eyelids puffy, my skin all blotchy. I force myself to meet his gaze.

“What do you want, Tucker?”

“I want to talk to you.”

Cue the casual I-could-care-less shrug, which I don’t quite pull off in a convincing way. Still, I have to get points for trying. “Nothing to talk about. I’m sorry I interrupted you on your date. This isn’t a good time, actually. I’m expecting—”

He puts his hand on the door when I try to close it.

“I saw your face,” he says.

He means earlier. I stare at him. “I was surprised, that’s all.”

He shakes his head. “No. You still love me.”

Trust Tucker to just come right out and say it.

“No,” I say.

The corner of his mouth lifts. “You are such a bad liar.”

I take a few steps back, lift my chin. “You really should go.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Why do you have to be so pigheaded?” I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air. “Fine.” I turn away from the door and let him follow me inside.

He laughs. “Back at you.”

“Tucker! I swear!”

He sobers. He takes his hat off and puts it on the hook by the door. “The thing is, I’ve tried to stop thinking about you. Believe me, I’ve tried, but every time I think I’ve got a handle on my heart, you pop up again.”

“I will work on that. I will try to stay out of your barn,” I promise.

“No,” he says. “I don’t want you to stay out of my barn.”

“This is crazy,” I say. “I can’t. I’m trying to do—”

“What’s right,” he fills in. “You’re always trying to do what’s right. I love that about you.” He comes closer, too close now, stares down at me with that familiar heat in his eyes.

Then he says it. “I love you. That’s not going away.”

My heart flies up like a bird on wings, but I try to clobber it back down. “I can’t be with you,” I manage.

“Why, because of your purpose? Because God told you so? I want to see that written down somewhere, I want to see it decreed, that you, Clara Gardner, can’t love me because you’re part angel. Tell me where it says that.” He reaches behind him, and to my shock he pulls what looks to be a Bible out of the waistband of his jeans. “Because I want to read you this.”

He opens it, thumbs through to find the right passage.

“
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
See, right there in black and white.”

“Thank you for the Sunday school lesson,” I say. “Don’t you find it a little silly that you’re quoting the Bible to somebody like me, who receives divine instructions straight from the source? Tucker, come on, you know it’s more complicated than that.”

“No, it’s not,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be. What we have, that’s divine. It’s beautiful and good and right. I feel it….” He presses his hand to his chest, over his heart. “I feel it all the time. You’re in here, part of me. You’re what I go to bed thinking about and what I wake up to in the morning.”

The tears start to slip down my face. He makes a noise in the back of his throat and crosses the room toward me, but I stumble back.

“Tuck. I can’t,” I breathe.

“I like it when you call me Tuck,” he says, smiling.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Sudden understanding dawns in his eyes. “That’s what this breaking-up business was all about for you, wasn’t it? You thought I was going to get hurt. You pushed me away to protect me. You’re still pushing.” He shakes his head. “Losing you, that’s the worst kind of hurt there is.”

He reaches out and touches a strand of my hair, tucks it behind my ear, then backs off a little, tries a different approach. “Hey. How about this? You’re home for a couple more days, right? I’m home, as usual.” I see the news of his college situation rise up in his mind, but for some reason he doesn’t tell me about it. “Let’s go fishing. Let’s climb a mountain. Let’s try again.”

I’ve never wanted anything so much.

He sees the uncertainty on my face. “I should have fought for you, Clara, even if I would have had to fight you to fight for you. I should never have let you go.”

I close my eyes. I know that any minute now he’s going to kiss me, and my resistance is going to melt away completely.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. And then, out of self-protection more than anything else, I bring the glory. I don’t warn him or anything. I don’t damp it down. I bring it. The room fills with light.

“This is what I am,” I say, my hair ablaze around my head.

He squints at me. His jaw juts out a little in pure stubbornness. He stands his ground.

“I know,” he says.

I take a step toward him, close the space between us, put my glowing hand against his ashen cheek. He starts to tremble. “This is what I am,” I say again, and my wings are out now.

His knees wobble, but he fights it. He puts his hand at my waist, turns me, pulls me closer, which surprises me.

“I can accept that,” he whispers, and holds his breath, and leans in to kiss me.

His lips brush mine for an instant, and an emotion like victory tears through him, but then he pulls away and glances toward the front door. Groans.

Christian is standing in the doorway.

“Wow,” Tucker says, trying to grin. “You really know how to cramp a guy’s style.”

His legs give out. He falls to his knees.

My light blinks off.

Christian’s clutching a DVD copy of
Zombieland
in one hand, the other hand clenched into a fist at his side. His expression is completely shut down.

“I guess I’ll come back later,” he says. “Or not.”

Tucker’s still catching his breath on the floor.

I follow Christian to the door. “He just came over. I didn’t mean for you to—”

“See that?” he finishes for me. “Great. Thanks for trying to spare my feelings.”

“I was trying to prove a point to him.”

“Right,” he says. “Well, let me know how that turns out.”

He turns toward the door, then stops, the muscles in his back tensing. He’s about to say something really harsh, I think, something he won’t be able to take back.