Color of Love (41 page)

His eyes were tired but, his gaze was clear as he looked into Leah’s eyes. Her mouth was bright with lip gloss. Jason kissed her lightly and shook his head, bemused.

“I thought you were someone coming to rob me.”

She grinned. “I am.”

“I’ll make it easy for you. You can have everything.”

She gave him a peck on his mouth. “How generous. I accept.”

They slowly hugged.

“What are you doing here?” Jason pulled back to examine her outfit. “What are you dressed for? God, you look great.” He nuzzled her neck. “Smell good, too.”

“I just came from church. In case you don’t know it’s close to noon.”

Jason shook his head. “Didn’t know. Don’t care.”

She giggled, and scrutinized him more closely. It was obvious that he’d slept in his clothes. It looked like he hadn’t shaved since leaving New York on the previous Friday. She touched his lips, his jaw. She smoothed his hair. “We were singing the offering hymn and I got this feeling that you were home. I wanted to be with you.”

Jason smiled at her. “You read my mind correctly.”

She tightened her arms around his neck, rubbing her cheek against his, unmindful of the scratchiness. “Well … here I am.”

He removed her pert beribboned straw hat and sailed it across the room like a frisbee. Leah moved her hips forward against him and felt his full hard arousal under her buttocks and thighs.

“As long as you’re here …” he murmured, before starting to kiss her with earnest, tender passion.

Some electric charge seemed to enliven them, heating their bodies and melding them together. They began pulling at each other’s clothing, trying to get rid of the barriers as quickly as possible. Jason slid down on the bed with Leah on top of him. There was an erotic intensity to the way they wanted each other. Her body was ready when Jason finally sheathed himself deep inside. It was quick and explosive. They started the slow dance again, slower and longer and more deeply, trembling in each other’s arms. She wrapped herself around Jason, never wanting to let go. When the throbbing tension was released in both of them, they lay quietly for a long time, Jason’s head pillowed on her breasts. Her hand languidly stroked his hair.

Jason was almost asleep when Leah shook him, making him get up to take a shower. She joined him in the tub, but afterward stood watching him as he shaved. They eventually got dressed and went for something to eat, while Jason shared with Leah the details of his twenty-four hours in Pine Grove. Even when he talked about Michael he did so with more fondness than pain, and Leah knew that his healing had begun.

“Was it very hard?” Leah asked him.

Jason smiled thoughtfully, and reached for her hand across the table. He shook his head. “Some of it, I guess. But it was also a relief. I put a lot of stuff behind me. I also knew I had something to come back to.”

“And I practically attack you before you’ve even unpacked,” Leah laughed ruefully.”

“Missed me?” Leah merely nodded. He laughed lightly. “See. I was right.”

It was unbelievably hot. Leah felt like a limp rag. She wore her hair pulled back into a twisted knot these days to keep the thick mass from closing in around her face. A few weeks ago she’d given serious thought to cutting it short, but that had been in a moment of being irritated with the heat. Besides, Jason didn’t want her to.

Leah wondered, as she climbed out of the underground inferno of the subway, why the commute had recently begun to seem so unbearable, why she dreaded the ride crushed against so many strangers. It was hard to breathe, and she’d felt particularly threatened underground. Trapped. Even now, up in the real air, there was a sensation of too many people, of someone being too close to her for comfort. Leah made her way to the corner store, deciding that an ice cream pop might revive her limp spirits.

The tall, skinny youth from the corner, her neighborhood nemesis, tried to stop her. In dark glasses he stood alone. Unsupported by his friends, he launched into his usual verbal romancing of Leah. It was like a game between them as he continued to test the waters of his manhood.

“Hey, sweet thang,” he drawled.

“Don’t you have someone your own age to play with?” Leah asked as she passed into the store.

“I like older women.”

Leah emerged moments later, peeling the sticky paper from the cream pop. She rounded the corner heading for home.

“Hey, hey,” the boy yelled after her. “You still seein’ that white dude?”

The ice cream was wonderful. Soothing. For a moment she slowed her steps and glanced over her shoulder. The skinny youth had found another target, someone closer to his age. Someone easy to flatter. And there was no one else. She relaxed to enjoy the rest of the pop.

Her thoughts switched gears apprehensively to the exhibition coming up. She had been sorting through some of her caricatures, and Jill had helped to pick the ones with the most humor and which captured the personality of their subjects the best. Leah was glad that Jill had been able to work through her feelings and that they could be friends again. Leah also thought it interesting that, actually, Jill seemed a little envious of her relationship with Jason. Peter had not worked out after all.

After dinner, she sat on her bed contemplating the twenty or so art boards leaning against walls and furniture in her room. As she concentrated on picking the best samples of her work, she suddenly wasn’t sure any of them were good. She was already discarding one picture when there was a knock on her door and Gail stuck her head in.

“Got a minute?”

“Sure. Come on in,” Leah responded absently.

Her attention was still on a particular image when Gail sat quietly next to her, holding in her hands a black dress studded with rhinestones.

Gail waited out her sister’s distraction, her patience an indicator that her visit might not necessarily be good news. But when Gail said nothing, Leah turned to her with a puzzled look.

“These are interesting,” Gail hastened to say, pointing at one picture. “I sure hope they’re supposed to be funny.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Is there one of me?”

Leah hesitated. “I’m working on it.”

“Oh-oh. That means I’m going to look evil,” Gail muttered. Then she tempered her response with a wicked smile. “Where’s the one of Jason?”

Leah tilted her head. “There isn’t one.”

Gail’s gaze was steady, but her smile was amused. “Why not?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t been able to do one that I like.”

“How long have you been trying?”

“Just a few weeks.”

Gail shook her head and chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I guess it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe you’re too close to the subject. Like, you’re in love with the man and can’t see straight?”

Leah stared straight ahead. Yes, that most certainly had occurred to her.

“I know what the problem is.” Gail snapped her finger. “You can’t decide whether to show him with a bunch of black kids, or dressed in that silly red cap, or with a smoking gun. Right?”

Still silent, Leah glared at her sister.

“Don’t like those ideas, huh? Well, I think—”

“Did you want to say anything else to me?” Leah asked.

Gail grimaced good-naturedly. “Right. Shut up, Gail.”

Leah looked at the black sparkling creation in her sister’s lap. Gail fingered the cloth.

“I just thought you’d like to know Allen and I are getting married.”

Leah stared. “You’re serious.”

“Dead on. Why would I kid you?”

Leah was stunned. “I … don’t know.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No. Why should it?”

“Well, given the way it all happened …”

“Let’s not go into that again. It’s done. I hope you and Allen will be happy.”

“It’ll be like playing house when we were kids,” Gail said with uncharacteristic giddiness.

“Even then you did it poorly,” Leah said dryly.

“Forget you …” Gail sucked through her teeth.

Leah changed her position on the bed so that the two women faced each other. “Have you set a date?”

“Probably in the next three months.”

“Why so fast?”

“Well, for one thing Allen’s getting a promotion and transfer. He’s going to be a vice president.”

“How nice. And what’s the other reason? Oh, my God, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

Gail grimaced. “Do I look stupid? It’s just that we have a lot to do by the end of the year. Make arrangements, find a house—”

“House? Where?” Leah asked with sudden quiet.

“Atlanta.” Gail looked at the dress in her hand and slowly, redraping the crèpe de chine folds, passed it carefully to Leah. “Here, this is for you. Remember that black number I designed that you liked so much? I know you think it’s a bribe or something …”

“It’s a bribe,” Leah said, smoothing her hand over the textured ridges of the rhinestones.

“But I knew you wanted it.”

Leah’s smile was wry. “What’s it for? Is this like the booby prize? You get Allen, and I get a designer dress?”

Gail got up from the bed, “Oh, lots of things. To say I’m sorry for the way things have been between us this year. I hope there’s no hard feelings.”

“Gail? Do you feel safe with Allen?”

Gail tilted her head. “Do I feel safe? You mean, am I afraid he’s going to go off and try to hurt me one day? Umph! He’d be one sorry black man if he
ever
tried stuff like that. But he won’t.”

Leah smiled thinly. She began to fold the dress to put away. She had no idea where she’d ever wear it. “That’s not what I mean, but never mind.”

“Leah, we may have to do something about the house. You know. Like sell it. What do you think?”

Leah was bewildered again. “I don’t know. I think I have to think about it. Everything is … happening so fast.”

Gail reached out and took hold of her hand. Even in the feminine grip Leah knew her sister was the kind of person who wouldn’t sweat the unimportant details like selling a house and picking up with her life elsewhere. Gail would quickly adjust … and always get exactly what she wanted.

Gail lightly squeezed her hand. “What about you? What do you want?”

Leah thought instantly of Jason. She flashed through an incredible sequence of events from the night they’d first made love all the way to the realization of how much she loved him. Her stomach tightened, but at that moment it was impossible for her to tell if it was from joy or fear. She finally smiled at her sister.

“I want what you have. I want my dreams to come true, too.”

Leah was in bed, but she was wide awake. She was propped up against the pillows, her knees drawn up to create a tent out of the blankets. She was staring blankly at the black and rhinestone dress that hung from the back of her closet door.

It was after midnight.

The news of Allen’s proposal to her sister had done something profound to Leah, although it wouldn’t have surprised her if Gail had made the first move. It came to her slowly, gathering steam as the night grew later, that she was going to be alone. Gail and Allen were planning a future together, knew where they were headed … and she had no idea.

Leah felt a frightening sense of displacement, like everything that she’d always accepted as safe, routine, familiar, was about to change forever. And so would she.

She only knew one thing concretely: she didn’t want to be alone. Jason hadn’t called and that somehow made things worse. She realized that he’d probably had to work overtime. But not having any contact with Jason made her feel anxious and bottled up. She had a sense of being abandoned by Gail, and she wanted to be held and reassured. Jason did that well.

And then the phone rang.

The house was so quiet, the streets outside so empty of traffic, that the sound seemed shatteringly shrill. Leah jumped and reached for the phone before it could ring a second time.

“Jason?” she breathed into the receiver. She knew her voice seemed high and thin.

“You waited up,” he answered in a tired drawl. “I thought you might be asleep. I’m sorry I’m so late.”

Leah let out a soft, ragged sigh of relief, and her spine relaxed into the mattress. “It’s all right. I knew you’d call. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Just the usual. I had a late arrest and that means paperwork.”

“You sound so tired,” she commented solicitously.

“I am. I was going to come over, but …”

She giggled. “You’d get less rest than you really need.”

His voice became playful and seductive. “Not a bad tradeoff.”

Leah sighed again, winding her finger around the telephone cord. “I … miss you,” she whispered sincerely. Did she sound desperate? She could sense his smile.

“I miss you, too.”

There was a pause. Not much, but Leah knew that the silence was too long for Jason to ignore.

“Leah? What’s wrong,” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think … maybe I’m nervous about the show.”

“Don’t give me that,” he warned softly. “Something’s got you upset and it’s not that art show.”

Leah took a deep breath, both grateful and nervous that he’d read into her anxiety. “Allen and Gail are getting married.”

Jason was also propped up in bed. He was also feeling lonely, which is why he’d called Leah the moment he’d gotten home even though it was almost one-thirty. He’d just needed to hear her and know she was there on the other end of the line.

Jason blinked and looked across the room at the things that had belonged to his son, now displayed on his book unit. He felt so much in that moment the cutting off of his old life. So much of it he didn’t want to think about, so much he couldn’t recall. It simply didn’t exist anymore. He’d have to create a new one.

He finished his cigarette and slowly crushed the butt flat in an ashtray. He suddenly felt extraordinarily peaceful and oddly light-headed. “So your sister’s getting married. I wouldn’t have bet on it, but you should be happy for her.” He heard Leah sigh.

“I am.”

“The only problem I can see is that Allen’s going to have his hands full.”

“Probably. But Allen’s no fool. Sometimes Gail only thinks she’s in charge.”

Jason closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. He could easily picture Leah in his mind. He knew exactly what her facial expression was as she considered her sister leaving. He could see the soft, pensive shine of her eyes, and knew exactly how deep Leah’s thoughts about her own future went, because he’d had the same thoughts recently.