Pamela Morsi (29 page)

After a long moment, she sighed and wiped away the tears.

“I’m sure my John felt exactly the same way,” she said.

904.65 Collected Accounts of Historical Events

B
y the time the last book was shelved, the dinner was cleared and the volunteers had agreed on a schedule to begin work in the children’s department, D.J. was exhausted.

The people began filing out. And James returned from his hiding place.

“Thank you for what you did,” D.J. said as he slipped in between the nearby shelves.

“Okay.”

“You really saved the day for me and for everyone who loves this library.”

“Okay.”

“Miss Grundler is not going to disappear. She’s going to be back and she’s going to be very mad at you.”

“Okay.”

“I wish we could throw water on her and she would melt, but that’s not going to happen.”

“Are you sure?”

D.J. laughed. And from within the depths of the shelving, she heard James laugh, too.

Across the room she spotted Scott saying his good-byes as people filed out the door. Maybe no one else noticed that he shook Vern’s hand and kissed Stevie on the cheek as if she were an old friend. But it was enough that D.J. did.

The library now cleaned and locked up, there were no questions asked about who was taking D.J. home. She hobbled her way to the back parking lot, but he swooped her up into his van and they drove through the mostly deserted streets of Verdant after dark.

“Thanks for letting me take you home,” he said.

She shrugged. “Well, we are going to the same place.”

“Not true,” he answered. “I’ve got my house back.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the guys from the septic tank service finally got out there this week. They had to dig up a big chunk of the backyard, but they found the blockage and cleared it out.”

“That’s good.”

“You won’t believe what the guy told me,” Scott said. “It’s going to ruin your reputation.”

“My reputation?”

“He told me the inlet was plugged up and to tell my girlfriend to stop flushing her tampons.” Scott shook his head. “I swore to him up and down that no woman has been in there to flush anything since I’ve owned the house. He didn’t believe me.”

Had he really not had women in his house? Suzy didn’t think so. She didn’t think he was a player at all. After the revelation about Stevie, D.J. was no longer sure of anything. Something about tampons niggled at her brain, but she was so tired and so pleased with the sound of the girlfriend being herself she didn’t bother to delve into it.

Scott parked the van next to her car.

D.J. opened her own door, but found herself slightly hesitant to put her feet on to the ground where she’d last encountered a nasty bite. Ultimately, she didn’t have to. Scott lifted her into his arms and carried her across the lawn.

“I can walk,” she assured him.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to hold you next to me for days. This seems like the perfect excuse.”

He carried her up the stairs to her apartment, no small feat, she imagined, although he did it with an ease that belied the weight of a full-grown woman.

“I saw you talking to Stephanie today,” he said.

His tone was really casual, but D.J. sensed that he was fishing. “Yeah, some girl talk,” D.J. teased him. “Sharing secrets. Kissing and telling.”

Scott reached the deck and set her down gently on her feet. He unlocked the door and turned on the light.

“Not every guy gets a good recommendation from the ex-wife,” she added.

He nodded. “I’m sure she took the blame for everything,” Scott says. “She always does. But I’m at fault, too.”

“Oh?”

“Guilty of being an idiot,” he answered.

She hobbled inside and down the hallway to the living room. He stopped her in the hallway and directed her to the bedroom instead.

“You need to get off your feet,” he said.

“Is that your usual line for getting a woman into bed?”

“No, but if it works...” he answered, teasing. “Have you got pain meds?”

He glanced around the room, which was still in chaotic disarray.

“In my purse.”

She handed him the bag and he rifled through it until he found the bottle.

“Sorry about the room,” she said. “I still haven’t really unpacked.”

“Well, don’t start now,” he said. “
Rest
doesn’t mean sorting out your apartment.”

He put two pills in her hand and got a glass of water from the bathroom.

“You’re going to feel a lot better in a few minutes,” he promised.

Scott propped the pillows behind her back as she stretched her leg out. “Let’s get this boot off,” he said, as he began unstrapping the Velcro closures.

She sighed heavily once released from the stiffly boned air cast.

“Better?”

“Much.”

“This thing is just to stabilize your leg and help with walking until you can wear shoes again. You probably shouldn’t wear it all day.”

She nodded. The hospital nurse had told her much the same thing. But she didn’t want the conversation to turn to her snakebite recovery.

“So why were you an idiot with your ex? Because you didn’t know she was gay?”

He hesitated thoughtfully. “I was an idiot all on my own. I
didn’t
know she was gay. I knew there was something, even if I didn’t know what it was.”

“This is none of my business,” D.J. stated. “But I’d like to know, if you feel comfortable in telling me.”

Scott stretched out along the end of the bed, propping himself up with an elbow. “We started dating when we were just kids,” he explained. “There is no way that I blame myself for being attracted to her or thinking that she’d be perfect for me. She was smart and fun and pretty. We were great friends. Everybody thought we were so lucky to have each other. At first everything seemed fine. She liked holding hands and a quick kiss good-night, but when I began to want more than that, she didn’t respond well.”

D.J. tried to picture the mismatch of this hot guy and the gorgeous woman who could never be attracted to him.

“All the other guys were beginning to score with their regular girlfriends,” he said. “Even giving a big discount for lying, I was not making much progress at all.”

“Did you talk to her?”

He shook his head. “I thought Stephanie was perfect. The problem couldn’t be hers. It had to be mine.”

“Yours?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I was a fairly confident teenager, but it’s an age of awkwardness. I thought my technique was bad. That I must be doing it wrong. I needed to know how.”

“How?”

“So I tried to learn how to be better at it the same way I’d learned everything else. I studied. I read every book and magazine I could get my hands on.”

“You’re kidding?”

He raised a hand. “Scout’s honor. I read
Playboy
and
GQ
and
Cosmo
.”

“You read
Cosmo?
” she asked incredulously.

“Lots of good advice in
Cosmo,
” he assured her. “All that necking stuff you liked, straight out of the
Lust Advisor
.”

She laughed. “You really are a good kisser,” she told him.

“I know. I’ve worked at it.”

“But it didn’t work with Stevie.”

“Not so much. But I wouldn’t give up. By the time we were in college, I pretty much pressured her into having sex with me.”

“Not good,” D.J. said.

“Bad, seriously bad,” he corrected. “No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, she never truly enjoyed it, she only tolerated it.”

“But again you didn’t give up.”

“I was sure that I was simply lousy in bed. I needed to learn how to satisfy her sexually.” He shook his head. “My parents flipped when I got a B in Organic Chemistry. I couldn’t tell them it was because I was too busy studying Female Orgasm.”

D.J. laughed, she couldn’t help herself.

“That’s not the worst,” he said. “I decided to get some hands-on training. I deliberately went out to find a hot, experienced woman that could teach me how it’s really done.”

“A prostitute?”

“No, I’m way too fastidious for that,” he answered. “I went out during spring break, you know, where all the girls go wild. I picked up the hottest, sexiest beach babe in all of South Padre Island.”

D.J. felt her body stiffen all over.

“Nobody needs the details, but suffice to say, the woman blew out every brain cell in my head and left my body wrung out like a dishrag.”

D.J. was staring at him, wondering. How many times had he been to Padre? How many women had he picked up?

“I’m telling you this, mostly to explain what happened afterward.”

“What happened afterward?”

“I came home and had a talk with my dad. I told him about all the problems that I had with Stephanie and how...how great it was with this girl I met. How I felt as if, somehow I was a different person with her. A happier, more fulfilled person. I felt like...like I was in love with her. It was crazy. I didn’t even know her. And yet, I had all these feelings for her.”

D.J.’s brain had gone numb. She could hear every word he was saying, but couldn’t quite take it in.

“Dad told me not to ignore those feelings. That what happened with her should prove to me that Stephanie and I were wrong for each other. He told me that the best thing for both of us was to break up. That I should wait for a woman who could make me feel the way I felt with the girl from South Padre.”

Scott sat up.

“That’s the only time that I can remember when I completely disregarded my father’s advice,” he said. “I was so consumed with my belief that Stephanie and I were perfect for each other, that I refused to hear all evidence to the contrary.”

D.J. felt almost light-headed. She couldn’t quite make the connection between what she was hearing and what she’d always known was true. It was as if the world had strangely tilted and she wasn’t sure which way to right herself.

“I don’t want to disregard my dad’s advice anymore,” he said. “D.J., I think you may be the woman that I’ve been waiting for. I realize that we don’t really know each other that well. That we’ve hardly even dated. But I feel this connection to you. I feel like I’ve known you forever and that I’ve just found you again. Do you think we could...perhaps pursue this...this friendship further?”

She sat staring at him. He noted her expression.

“I’ve said it already in public and we know the gossips picked right up on it, but I would like to start seeing you, dating you, sleeping with you. I’d like to really be your boyfriend.”

D.J. had to tell him. She couldn’t let their relationship go one step further without revealing the truth. A long moment of silence passed between them as she tried to gather up her words.

“What am I doing?” he asked aloud. “I didn’t mean for it all to come out that way. You got out of the hospital this afternoon and you’re on pain medication. I shouldn’t be pushing you. I need to let you get some sleep. We can discuss this tomorrow or the next day. When you’re rested. Now what do you need? Pajamas?”

“Yeah, yeah, pajamas would be nice,” she said.

She needed to be alone. She needed to be able to think.

Scott stood up and looked around the room at the mess of boxes.

“Maybe that box over there,” she suggested, pointing to one next to the dresser.

Scott was sorting through her clothes as D.J. tried to organize her thoughts. Could that really be how it was? That Scott, who seemed to know everything about how to fine-tune a woman’s body, had learned that in books? That he’d actually bought her fake veneer of sexual sophistication and he’d never recognized her for the silly, reckless virgin that she’d been. How would she confess to being his sexual siren? How could the past be revealed without messing up the present?

“Here we go,” she heard him say.

As he turned, something caught on the jewelry box that she’d left on the edge of the dresser. With a crash it spilt out on the floor.

“Whoops,” he said, tossing the pj’s in her direction. He bent down and began refilling the box.

D.J.’s brow furrowed as she tried to think things through. How could she have gotten it all so wrong? She’d thought he was a player, but he wasn’t. She’d thought he’d taken advantage of her naivety, but he hadn’t even seen it. Their night together had been a terrible, youthful mistake. But it had kept her from ever settling for less. Now she could have everything. The brass ring was being offered, but in order to grasp it, she had to allow the prudish persona in which she’d clothed herself to fall away, revealing the vulnerable naked truth of herself.

Suddenly intruding upon her thoughts was a silence. It was a strange, ominous silence seeming to come out of nowhere that demanded her attention and filled the small bedroom.

D.J. looked across the room as, slowly, Scott rose to his feet. He turned to her, his eyes full of questions. It was then that she noticed what was in his hands. It was a broken piece of cheap, gold-colored jewelry. A belly band with a tiny, dangling pink heart.

South Padre Island (Eight years later)

S
he awakened to the sound of surf and the squeals of little girls. The book she’d been reading was still open on her lap, as if she hadn’t been dozing beneath the shade of the beach umbrella.

D.J. yawned and stretched and looked over the expanse of sand in front of her. At the water’s edge a tall, familiar guy with sandy-brown hair lurched, zombielike along the shore. His hands, frozen into claws, stretched out threateningly as the two children in wet swimsuits darted around him, provoking both giggles and shrieks. She watched as the girls got in closer and closer, able to touch the monster but somehow never getting caught. Then suddenly, without warning, the monster grabbed both of them around the waist. With a screaming girl under each arm, he ran, with grace atypical for the undead, toward D.J. and the seclusion of the umbrella.

She laughed as he dropped the two girls in her lap.

“Exhausted,” he said as he dropped beside them on the blanket.

Like ever-energetic puppies, the girls immediately pounced upon his prone position, instigating “tickle wars.” It was clear to D.J. that, as per usual, her husband was outnumbered and outclassed.

Sophie, age six, simply could not be tickled, but knew all the best spots to go for. Her little sister, Jaleh, got goosey at a mere finger pointed in her direction and could end up crying if she got too much.

D.J. let them torture Scott for a couple of minutes before she called a halt.

“Let Daddy rest,” she told them. “You don’t want to wear him out completely on only the second day at the beach.”

Reluctantly the girls settled down. Sophie talked her father into a quieter activity, “toe math,” where feet were utilized for counting, rather than fingers.

Jaleh, who after a long day of fun in the sun, was finally beginning to tire, took a seat in D.J.’s lap. She smelled of sea salt and suntan lotion. Resting her head on Mom’s shoulder, D.J. expected her to be sleeping within minutes. But an intruder nixed that scenario.

The small dog suddenly burst in among them. He had as much silver in his coat as black, but his enthusiasm was youthful.

“Dewey!” Jaleh said, excitedly as she jumped up to play.

Sister and dog were joined by Sophie, who at least had the good manners to call out a greeting to the dog’s owner.

“Hi, Grandma!”

D.J. shaded her eyes as she looked up at her mother-in-law. Viv, clad in a vivid lavender caftan and sporting a gigantic straw hat, looked perfectly decked out for a beach excursion.

Scott jumped to his feet. “Let me get another chair.”

Viv tutted and shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she told him. “I’m here to collect the girls.”

The children looked up expectantly.

“Gerald is taking us to dinner where they launch the pirate ship,” she said. “I knew the girls would want to see that.”

“Gerald?” Scott asked. “The old guy you met on the plane?”

“He wasn’t that old,” D.J. corrected him. “And he was very distinguished-looking, I thought.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scott conceded. “But why are you taking our children on your date?”

“It’s not a date,” Viv insisted firmly.

“Where have I heard that before?”

Viv gave a huff. “Well, the rule is love me, love my grandchildren.”

She clapped her hands and urged the girls to bring the dog and come with her. They eagerly complied.

“We’re going to have a sleepover in my room,” she told them.

Sophie and Jaleh were thrilled.

“Is Gerald in on that?” Scott asked.

His mother wagged a warning finger at him.

“You don’t have to babysit,” D.J. told her. “You’re on vacation, too.”

Viv waved away her concern. “A vacation from retirement sounds like taking on a job. These two aren’t a job, they are a pleasure.”

After some noise, chaos, laughter and a bark or two, Scott and D.J. found themselves alone on the beach with a night on their own to look forward to.

“What do you think that was all about?” Scott asked. “Does she not want to be alone with this guy?”

D.J. shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “But I think she may have other motives, as well.”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “What other motives?”

“Well, she’s been making some veiled suggestions about how nice it would be to have a grandson. And how much the girls would love to have a little brother.”

“Oh, yeah? She hasn’t said a word to me.”

“She knows you’d tell her it’s none of her business.”

“Which it’s not,” Scott said. “But it is yours. What do you think? Is our family complete or are we missing somebody?”

D.J. shrugged. “I could go either way,” she answered. “You know how I love babies. But we’ve finally got everyone out of diapers and on a regular sleeping schedule. Do we really want to start 2:00 a.m. feedings again?”

“And colic. Remember colic?”

“I still have flashbacks.”

He chuckled.

“So how do you feel?”

“Another baby could be great,” he said. “If you want to, I’m there. But our life is so good. We have a great marriage with two beautiful, healthy girls. We both have jobs that we love. Good friends. Wonderful family.”

“We have the best sex in Kansas.”

He laughed. “Really? You think we have the best sex in Kansas?”

“Well, I haven’t had sex with everyone in the state, but I’m pretty sure ours has to be the best.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” he answered, grinning.

“Even from this distance I can see your ego inflating.”

“Best sex in Kansas,” he repeated.

“Just remember, we’re not in Kansas anymore. And here on South Padre, there are lots of guys running around that are almost half your age and with twice your hormones. So the competition is, shall we say, stiffer.”

Scott howled with laughter. “You’re incorrigible,” he told her.

D.J. shrugged. “I’m a librarian, how could you expect anything else?”

He rose to his feet and offered a hand.

“Where’re we going?”

“Some place a bit more private.”

“Oh, yeah? And for what purpose?”

He grinned at her. “A South Padre tradition.”

“Which is?”

“Shining a bit of sparkle on Mrs. Sanderson.”

* * * * *