Flirting With Pete: A Novel (22 page)

She was wondering what else in those magazines was true, when he released her and took a breath. He drew himself up to his full height. He let his head loll back and took another breath.

Jenny steadied herself against the wall with her chin tucked low and waited for him to say something dark and mean. When it didn’t come, she dared a look. He was smiling.

“See?” he said. “That was interesting. And we’re still dressed.”

She swallowed. He was so cool. She had to get him to stay. “We don’t have to be.”

He just smiled and brushed his thumb over her freckles. “There’s time.”

Jenny’s heart positively melted. Pete was everything she had always dreamed a man could be. She thought of pinching herself to make sure he was real, but how could such a large physical presence
not
be real? Looking up at him, feeling the caring in his smile, she knew for the first time what it meant to be in love and want to give and give and give to a man. Unfortunately, her assets were slim.

“Do you like chicken fajitas?” she asked.

“I love chicken fajitas.”

“I made them for a party, but I made too many, so there’s lots in the freezer. They’ll fry up nice, unless you’d rather have little beef Wellingtons—”

“Chicken fajitas.”

She smiled. “Good choice.”

“Do that again, that little smile.”

“What little smile?”

“That one. It lights you up.”

“Makes my freckles pop, more likely.”

“Makes you look happy.”

She was happy.

Then the phone rang and she froze. Nothing good came from phone calls to Jenny. Ever.

She wanted to let it ring, but if it was Darden, there would be
no end
to his questions about where she’d been and what she’d been doing and why she hadn’t been at the phone.

“Hello?”

“It’s Dan. I got a problem here, MaryBeth. Old Nick Farina’s raisin’ a ruckus, something about your stealing flowers from him. Now, I know there’s an explanation, only he wasn’t listening to me. He kept telling me I had to drive over there and look into the charge. He says you stole black-eyed Susans from his yard. Did you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“That’s what I asked him. There are black-eyed Susans growing wild all over the place. He swears he saw you picking three big ones right there in his yard.”

“I was on the road. There’s no other way to come home from work but past his house.”

“I told him that.” Dan sighed. “I’ll tell him I talked with you, okay, but be prepared. He’s apt to give you the what-all when you go past there tomorrow.”

Jenny thanked him for the warning and hung up the phone. She turned around and caught her breath, then gave Pete a big smile, because he was still there. That made her happy again. “Want a beer while I cook?”

“Sure.”

She took a Sam Adams from the fridge— another bottle would never be missed— and passed it to him. Then she opened the freezer. In no time she had the makings for fajitas sizzling in a big iron skillet and salsa bubbling in a saucepan and tortillas heating in the oven, and she didn’t drop a thing, because she wasn’t nervous. Pete was like no one she had ever known. While she cooked, he sat peacefully, just watching her, like there was pleasure in that alone. He didn’t make her self-conscious. He didn’t ask her questions she didn’t want to answer, didn’t swear or threaten revenge. He kept offering to help her cook, and she kept refusing, and it got so they were laughing about it, but the laughing was easy, too. The laughing was
wonderful!
She suddenly realized that she felt relaxed, for her a new sensation.

They had finished eating and were sitting across from each other, letting the food settle, when she started feeling shy about the choice she had to make. What did her heart desire in exchange for a meal? She couldn’t begin to choose.

So she asked, “Why did you say you were selfish?” When he frowned, she said, “Last night. When I invited you in. You said you were selfish, lonely or not.”

It was a minute before he responded. “I haven’t been nice.”

“To your family?”

He looked pained. “I was the oldest of the kids. The whole time I was growing up I had more responsibility than the others. My dad dumped it on me, said I had to set an example for the younger ones. I hated it. So when I had a chance to go to college, I took it and went as far away as I could. I figured the others could learn to do the work, just like I’d had to. And they did. Only there were some troubles along the way, and I didn’t help. I got great at not returning calls.”

“Why?” Jenny asked. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, kept studying him. She liked the way he flexed a hand, strong but no threat. Same with the forearm beneath his rolled-up sleeve— strong but no threat. Even the way his brows drew together indicated wisdom.

“For a while I was just plain angry,” he said. “I was convinced I’d earned the right to a little freedom. I didn’t want to hear their worries and be drawn in. I didn’t want to say no or feel guilty when I did. I didn’t want to have to have the answers. Now I really don’t have the answers. I’m, like, paralyzed.”

“Like you want to go back, but you can’t get yourself to do it.”

“Exactly.”

“Like you know what you have to do. You’ve listed all the reasons, and other people have, too, but still you can’t leave.”

“Yeah!”

“Like out of all the choices you have only one makes sense, but to make that one choice is so much harder.”

He seemed amazed. “You understand.”

Oh, she did. She knew about paralysis, and about deceit and guilt.

“How did your mother die?” he asked.

“An accident.”

“Were you and she close?”

Jenny shook her head. “I wasn’t the boy she wanted. She had one before me, but he died when he was little. I was supposed to replace him, only I came out a girl. She never liked me.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true, and for more reasons than that.”

“What reasons?”

But Jenny had already said too much. She looked at her hands. “I have nothing to give you.”

Pete drew her eyes back up with a laugh. “You make a mean fajita,” he said. He planted his elbows on the table, warmed the chill from her with his eyes— long, dark lashes to die for— and gave her a crooked grin that made her melt. “So, what’ll it be? What’s your heart’s desire?”

To stay here, right here, right now. To frame the look on your face and hang it on the mirror over all those party invitations I stole. To freeze-dry this moment and put it away for the time when… the time when…

“A ride,” she said. “There’s a twisty road up in the mountains. Nebanonic Trail. It takes your breath when you’re going fast.”

“You’ve done it before?”

“No.” Darden wouldn’t take her when she was little, and there had been no one to take her later. But she heard what the kids said in town, and many times she had dreamed of going there.

Pete slapped his hands on the table and rose. “Let’s go.”

Two hours later, Jenny still wasn’t ready to go inside. Back at her house, she lay in a tent of drooping pine boughs in the night-dark backyard, and relived the exhilaration of Nebanonic Trail. All the things she had heard over the years were true. The Trail was as scary as it was breathtakingly exciting. On Pete’s motorcycle, it had been
unbelievable
— twenty minutes of leaning into one curve after another, of hugging Pete while the wind whipped and the fog teased and the night held its secrets until the very, very, very last minute, when the bike swerved into a turn or lunged into a dip. The whole time she had felt alive and free and daring. If they had crashed, she would have died happy.

The boughs parted, and Pete appeared. He had to bend over to enter, but rather than straightening once he was inside, he settled on the ground, cross-legged like her. Their knees touched.

Dark as it was, she saw his grin and grinned back. She knew hers was a silly grin, and that her hair was sticking up every which way from the wind, but Pete didn’t seem to mind. If he had, he could have left, could have said something like, “Well, you’ve had your heart’s desire, now it’s time I moved on,” but he hadn’t.

She wanted to thank him for that, and for taking her out on the Trail, so she offered a bit of herself. “This is my special place. I spent hours hiding here when I was little.”

“Hiding?”

“My mother hit me when she was angry. She was angry a lot. I hid here until she cooled off.”

“She made the scars on your legs, didn’t she?” Pete asked.

Jenny took a deep breath and said, “She used her father’s walking stick. It had a brass band around the bottom and screws holding the band on.”

“And she hit you with it? What kind of mother would do that?”

“I made her angry.”

“Okay, so she could have yelled. But to make you bleed? To permanently scar your legs? Someone should have stopped her. Surely someone noticed.”

“I wore long pants. Or high socks.”

“Then your father. He must have known. Why didn’t he stop her?”

“He had a moving business. Sometimes he was gone for four or five days.”

“He never saw your legs?”

“Well, he did. But it was like he let her get away with it because he felt guilty.”

“About what?”

Jenny’s strength dwindled. She tucked up her legs, put her chin on her knees, and shook her head.

Pete took her hand and held it dangling between them. With each little swing, the past faded… more… more. It helped that she had his fingers to concentrate on. They were blunt tipped, lean, and so real that other things became real, too. Like the size of him and his sturdiness. Like the clean, windy way he smelled. Like the warmth of his skin, the fuzzy tingles in her tummy, and, deeper, a wanting.

She had never felt that wanting before— or the curiosity that came with it, a curiosity about physical things about Pete. Like whether he had hair on his chest, or how dark his nipples were, or whether there were beauty marks on his back. She should have been repulsed by such thoughts, but she wasn’t. Instead, she wondered if he was wondering the same kinds of things about her. He wasn’t calm, not to hear his breathing. But was it sexual longing? Or a deeper something? Or was she imagining the whole thing? She still didn’t know why a man like Pete would want her.

But there he was, moving closer, touching her neck, her throat, the vee of her polo shirt, and she was suddenly on her knees, holding tight to his shoulders, wanting something she couldn’t put a phrase to, because its meaning was so new.

“Tell me,” he whispered. His hands hovered over her breasts. She felt herself swelling toward him, but she couldn’t quite reach— deliberately, maybe, because breasts hurt during sex— which didn’t explain why she ached to feel Pete’s hands on her, didn’t explain it at all.

Feeling confused but driven, she cried, “You can do what you want, anything, it’s really okay, I won’t mind.”

What he did was to slide his arms around her and draw her close, then hold her, just hold her, until she was feeling less frantic. Then he took her down to the ground. She felt the weight of his body on her breasts and belly, even between her legs for too brief an instant to threaten, before he rolled sideways and tucked her under his arm.

No threat, no force, just a caring hold. She let out a shaky breath and snuggled closer. The achy feeling inside eased. Pleasure took its place, and then, when the warmth of him penetrated, contentment followed. She began to smile.

“Ahhhh, Jenny,” he said in a gritty way, “why didn’t we meet at another time?”

“Because I needed you now,” she answered and listened to the sounds of the night. “Do you believe in God?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“I remember going to church when I was little and looking at the minister’s robes. I imagined God wore robes like those. So I’d hide in here and pretend I was under His skirts. It was a safe feeling. I feel that now, too. Like we’re sealed off from the world. Like the ugliness can’t reach us. Know what I mean?”

Pete slept in the spare room again— after walking her into the house and saying something about no one telling
him
chivalry wasn’t alive and well.

She could have lived without his chivalry. When she was in his arms, the world became a place of possibility and hope. She would have liked to spend the night there. Just being held.

Instead, she lay again on the old quilt on the floor of her room. She couldn’t get herself to lie on the bed, not on those disgusting silk sheets, not with Pete in the house. She would have felt dirty. And anyway, she wasn’t tired. She lay down, sat up, lay down again, rolled over, sat up. She crept to her door and listened, crept down the hall to Pete’s door and listened. When she heard sleep-breathing, she slipped inside and flattened herself to the wall.

He lay on his belly. One arm was under the pillow, the other hung to the floor. His hand was slack. His shoulders were wide, his skin smooth and glossy above the shadow of hair under his arm. His torso tapered to a lean waist and hips. He wore no underwear. There was just the sheet, bunched low, covering legs that were long and muscular, meandering swells in the otherwise flat landscape of her life.

She tiptoed closer. When he didn’t wake, she moved closer still, until she could see the details of his ear, the swell of his Adam’s apple, the wrinkled back of his elbow. And suddenly she felt full. Like her insides had sponged up gallons of emotion. Like she was ready to burst.

Shaking with the feeling, but quiet as could be, she lowered herself to the braided rug and curled up next to where he slept. She didn’t want to burst. That would mean losing what was inside, and she wasn’t ready to let it go. So she hugged herself and closed her eyes and counted Pete’s breaths until they put her to sleep.

She slept late and was feeling logy when the telephone rang. She had been making tea to wake herself up, but the sound of the phone accomplished that.

It was 8:35. She knew who was calling. So did her stomach, which rolled into a bumpy, jumpy grind.

Don’t answer it, Jenny.
But she had to.
He’ll be home in two days. Can’t it wait?
He had been locked up for six years— for her.
So what? Don’t answer.