East Rising (Naive Mistakes #2) (22 page)

"Thanks for bringing me
here," I said. "I appreciate it." I rubbed his hand, and I left it
at that. I didn't push it. I didn't hug him. I didn't tell him it
was OK to cry. This was a major step. A
mammoth
step, for him. I'd be there
for him, without making him feel like I was doing it.

"I think you might need to buy me a new
dress," I said.

He smiled. "And me a new suit! Come, let's
get out of here. I hate this fucking place."

He looked at the bench once more, and we
walked away, our clothes sopping wet.

As we put distance between ourselves and
that bench, Conall spoke more, as if being there had simply been
too close to the wound. But now, he eased up.

"Leora, I said I hate that
place, but I really don't. I've walked that Diana Walk at least a
thousand time since...it happened." He cleared his throat. "But
I've always done it alone. It's always been
my
thing to do. It hasn't had that
much effect on me before. I thought..." He shook his head, weaved
his fingers through his wet hair. "Well, I thought I'd put this all
behind me, but, as you can see..."

"I get it." I squeezed his hand. He squeezed
it back, hard, steadying himself, or his mind. "No need to
explain."

We walked, a
lot
. Eventually, now
practically dry, we arrived at a
DKNY
. "After you," he
said.

I shook my head and pointed
to the
H&M
across the street. He shot an eyebrow up. "You're bloody
kidding me, aren't you? I mean, no offense to
H&M
, but you do know they're
a
little
lower
end."

"Mid-range, not lower end."

"Come on, I owe you."

"No, you don't. I told you. I want to make
it on my own, at least for a bit. But I promise, I'll pick the most
expensive dress they have in there. And maybe some gloves, and a
hat."

He smiled. "Go, go. Pick
out what you want, I'll be at
Gucci
getting myself a suit."

He tried let go of my hand but I clasped it.
"No," I said. "Not today. You're not walking away from me
today."

He squeezed my hand back, confirming that he
agreed, and that he understood.

We bought clothes. Conall splurged on
himself, buying the most expensive friggin fast-fashion coat and
shirt that he could find. He looked like a runway model.

I actually ended up just
getting a pair of black jeans (not from
H&M
,
Dior
jeans), and a tee. OK, two tees.
Two
designer
tees.
Fine,
and
a purse.
But that was it!

We sat at a fast-food fish-and-chips joint
in the late afternoon for lunch. Conall looked more relaxed.

"Did you really get no sleep last night?" I
asked.

He shrugged. "I got a little."

"What, did you sleep on the frickin boxing
mat?"

He said nothing.

"You did, didn't you?"

"Sure, it's comfy."

My. God. I was gonna have to watch this bad
boy.

"You never did tell me why you're looking so
brown."

He chewed on a French fry.
(Excuse me, a
chip
.) "Well, in the summer, I worked in the garden with my shirt
off a lot, so I got a little brown. Then, I liked how it looked, so
now I visit the salon in the winter."

I choked on a French fry.

"Oh, you think that's funny, do you? It's OK
for a woman to take care of herself and get her French wax or
American wax and do up her nails and all that crap but when a man
gets a tan at a salon then it's, what, gay?"

"No, I guess not."

We ate some more. A moment
later, it hit me what he'd
actually
just told me.

"Wait a minute, you say you worked in the
garden with no shirt in the summer. I guess that's when Alex was
there, right?"

"Sure."

"Oh."

He smiled: A knowing, mischievous smile.

"What?" I asked.

"You're jealous, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not. It's just,
well, I'm sure she was taken aback...I mean,
flattered
, by the fact you put the
entirety of W. H. Auden's
Funeral
Blues
on your back in tribute to her
passing."

"You'd think that, wouldn't you?" He
smirked.

"What!?" I threw a mayonnaise-covered French
fry at him which thwacked him right on the ear!

"Hey!"

We chewed again in silence. He really was
enjoying this torture. Finally, out of the blue, as if he'd only
been waiting for the appropriate amount of torment, he said, "I
told her it was for you."

"Huh?"

"The tattoo. The poem. I told her it was for
you. That I got it done for you. You're the only other person who
ever knew about it, so, there you go."

I stopped chewing. "Oh."

"It
is
for you. Now it is, at least.
Because not being with you made it feel like you were gone forever
from my life. And I learned, in those six months, that I cannot
imagine being without you. Ever."

Aw, damn. He was
back.
We
were
back!

Kayla: Do NOT break up with Conall or I will
break your kneecaps!

I texted back:

Leora: Huh? What's up?

Kayla: These fucking CLOTHES! WOW! I've
NEVER had such a huge wardrobe. U SURE u didn't make a
mistake???

Leora: Nope. They're all for you. Oh, and
Dani, of course.

Kayla: Dani ain't here, sista. U snooze u
fuckin lose, dig?

Leora: Dig. You're so retro...

Kayla: Wait til I call u daddy-o :) Oh,
shit, credit is running low. Chat l8a!

"Kayla loves you," I told Conall. He was
finishing up the last of his meal.

"What?"

"She loves you. She wants you to buy her
more clothes."

"Oh, I see... Nope. I tried to think of
something funny there, but I couldn't."

"You lie, I'm sure you thought of making a
lewd joke about a threesome or something."

He blushed.

"Men."

"Come, let's get the hell out of London
before the tube goes nuts."

"Wait, what about Alex?"

Conall stopped, a cloud darkening his face —
an internal cloud.

"It really must have been a lot of work to
take care of her when you got her back, right?" I said.

"You have no idea..."

"Gimme a sec."

Leora: Wanna spend the night with Alex?

Kayla: Ooh, baby... I didn't know she was
that way inclined...

Leora: Do you or don't you? Conall wants me
to spend time with him.

Kayla: Great. I come to the UK and end up
being your babysitter so you can get laid.

I didn't know how to respond.

Kayla: That was a joke! Oh, I topped up my
phone BTW. Can text you all week now!

Leora: Cool! :) Let's hang out tomorrow.

Kayla: Fuck that. You need to get
LAID!!!!

I looked over at Conall to make sure he
wasn't reading my phone. Kayla certainly had a way about her...

Kayla: Anyway. Sure, Alex is AWESOME. Really
like her. I'll stay the night. No prob.

Leora: IOU.

Kayla: No u don't. U know that.

"Kayla will spend the night with Alex."

"Really? Wow. Isn't that imposing — ?"

"No ways. It looks like they're becoming
best of friends."

"Wow. Fantastic. Brilliant."

"The appropriate word
is
awesome
. If
you're going to date an American, you'd better pick up a little bit
of the lingo..."

He then said "awesome," only it sounded all
wrong.

"Never mind, use 'brilliant.'"

We walked to the tube. "Maybe she won't have
to go to Switzerland after all," said Conall. "Does Kayla want to
move to England?"

The statements —
both
of them — caught me
by surprise. Why wouldn't he want Alex to go to
Switzerland?

And why was I fucking worrying about it?
Damn it! I was so friggin insecure it made me sick! "Um, dunno, ask
her. I mean, ask them both."

"I shall."

I chuckled at his use of "shall."

Slowly, like pieces coming off the Berlin
Wall, I was chipping away at understanding this man. It was as if
he carried the burdens of everyone he cared about on his chest. And
he carried his own burdens on there as well. Then he blamed himself
for all the bad things that happened to people he cared about. And
he carried that weight on top of it. And when it got too much, he
punched things, or he disappeared into a gym and called up a guy
who he'd known for, who knows, six or seven years or whatever it
was — Trey — and sparred with him. Only it wasn't sparring. It was
full contact.

"Let me see your cut," I said.

He frowned. "The cut is fine." He didn't
show it to me.

I squeezed his hand. "I love you, Conall."
It just felt like the right thing to say after today.

"Tonight I will show you how much I love
you, Leora." He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. My heart
thumped in rhythm to the rattling subway as we rode it.

I was looking forward to his "showing me"
how much he loved me...

We got out at Crawley. "Hey, what about your
car? We forgot it in London!"

"No, we didn't. We'll catch a taxi from
here. I wasn't going to sit in traffic for three hours at this time
of day. I called someone to bring it over after the traffic has
died down."

"Of course you did."

When we entered his house he asked me,
"Wanna swim?"

"In
this
weather?"

"Yes. The pool is
heated.
Very
heated."

"Um, sure. But I don't have a swimsuit." His
eyes bored into me. "Oh...you want to skinny..." I blushed.

He smirked. "No, I have a swimsuit for
you."

Oh...
I'd hoped for something else. "Oh, OK, sure..."

"Then again..." He came closer, grazed his
fingernails behind my waist, then eased me to the nearest wall. He
kissed my neck and I heard myself whimper. "...I might take it off
of you in the pool. That's OK, isn't it?"

I melted. I put my hands around his neck and
spread my legs instinctively. But he didn't take advantage.

In my mind, this was so far beyond only
sexual. We'd passed the physical-love milepost so long ago that a
piece of me lost all vigor, all strength. I pulled against his neck
for stability.

"I'd love that," I said.

An unreasoning fear squeezed at my heart,
the dead fingers of a dead man in a dead cemetery.

Conall kissed my neck again. The shivers
made my leg twitch. He moved back, and I clutched him.

"Conall, I'm so afraid. And I don't know
why."

He tightened his arms around me.

"Leora, I'm terrified.
Terrorized for fear of losing you, of being the reason that, maybe,
something might happen to you. I wake up in cold sweats, fighting
ghosts, punching at nothing. I don't have a lamp on my nightstand
anymore because I broke three of them after some of those dreams.
You are my everything. I can lose my fortune, my clothes, my car,
my house, my friends, but not you. I'll die, I'll do anything, to
anyone, before I ever let anything happen to us again — happen
to
you
."

His sister. Alex. Me. He'd lost so much, and
here he was, still loving, still holding on.

We hugged. I wasn't going to let him go. Not
now. Not ever.

I thought of him
disappearing last night, letting his fears go into a punching bag.
And, when that wasn't enough, getting hit himself in a ring so that
he could feel the pain, feel alive, feel
something
.

I could forgive him that. I could forgive
him disappearing momentarily if it was for that reason.

I understood the feeling. The feeling of
wanting to run, to fight. To hide.

In that moment, I sensed that I understood
Conall completely. For the first time.

The pool in the wooden house steamed. How
hot did he have this thing? Conall was all games again. All games
and flirts.

I'd put on the bright orange bikini he'd
bought me. It was petite, barely covered my breasts, and the bottom
was a thong. It had been torture running through the icy yard to
get in here, and my nipples were hard as stone from the cold.

When I arrived and saw Conall in his trunks,
those nipples stayed hard for another reason... It wasn't only his
skin color (go tanning salon!) or his snaking intercostals. Most of
all it was that tattoo. My name. On his body. I stared at it for a
while.

LEORA
.

"You look good," he said.

I tried to play it cool. "You're wearing
trunks?" I asked. "Not a Speedo?"

He raked my body up and down with his
eyes.

"Conall?"

"Uh, right, um, no, no Speedo. It might get
embarrassing."

I didn't get it. Not right then.

"It's really hot in here. Do you always
steam it up like this?" I asked.

"No, only since I knew you would come over.
It takes a while to get warm which is why it wasn't so steamy when
you first saw it. I never use it in the winter. You jumping
in?"

The water looked cozy. It looked more like a
hot tub from all the heat. But it was no Jacuzzi, it was a pool,
not huge, twenty yards lengthwise or so.