Random (Going the Distance) (20 page)

I am falling in love with him. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a fact. My mom used to say skepticism was a girl’s best friend, so I’ll keep some in my pocket, just in case.

Facebook dings, and there’s a new message from my dad.

Jess it is.

The beach was Koekohe. Those are famous rocks, called Moeraki. Your Nana lives close by there and we’d driven down to see her. I’m so glad you remember. You were a fish from the time you were a tiny baby, but I reckon that makes sense since your mum & I met on a beach.

Give me your phone number and I will call you. Or let me know a time we can Skype. God, girl, it’s just so good to know you’re well and in the world. I can’t wait to talk to you, see your face.

Well and in the world
. Did he think I was dead or something?

I think about replying, but from Henry’s room comes the sound of him coughing, shuffling. “Jess?” he calls. “That you tapping away on my computer?”

So I close Facebook and turn around. “It’s me, Henry. I just wanted to talk to you.”

He shuffles in, leaning hard on his cane. Ginger waddles along beside him, almost protectively. He hasn’t shaved, and there are pouches under his eyes.

“Bad day, huh?”

He makes his way to his recliner and falls into it heavily. “I’m all right. Just comes and goes.”

“You have enough medicine? Want me to get you a glass of water?”

“Got pills right here.” He shakes a little orange bottle, then points to an empty glass. “You can fill this up if you want. Little ice, too, if you wouldn’t mind.”

I smile, bending over to kiss his head. “You got it.”

A couple of dogs help me walk to the kitchen, stand around hopefully, then walk back with me. I arrange some of the cookies I baked for him on a little plate and carry them back into the other room.

“Oh, sweetie, that’s just the nicest thing.”

“I put the rest on the counter.” The dogs look up at me eagerly. “Have you fed them yet? I can do that, too.”

“That’d be great. Cans on the counter.”

Along with everything else. I grin to myself. “I know, Henry. I lived here.”

Whistling for the little rat pack, I divide three cans of food evenly between the six dogs, all of them sitting politely with their mustaches and shaggy ears and button eyes. Henry has trained them, so they behave well. When I put down the bowls, they politely wait until their own is in front of them.

I wash my hands and shake them dry, since there are no paper towels or dish towels or—I start looking around, and the piles of crap register. Are they getting worse? I can’t tell, and, even if they were, what could I do about it?

It’s one too many things to worry about today. In the living room I sit on the computer chair, since it’s already cleared off. “Did the guy come look at your sculptures?”

“That’s not until tomorrow.” He grunts, moving around in his chair. “I don’t think I can take you to dinner tonight, sweetie. Just not up to it.”

“Oh, Henry, that’s okay! I don’t come to see you to get food.”

“I know. I just remember being young.”

“I really came to talk to you today. Things have been kinda crazy.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”

“You know some of this, but I can’t remember which parts, so I’ll just give it all to you.” I pour out the story of breaking up with Rick and the fight between him and Tyler.

“Wait, who’s Tyler? Do I know about this guy?”

“I just met him the day the car crashed into the restaurant.”

“Is he the reason you broke up with Rick?”

“No. That’s what everyone thinks, but I broke up with Rick because I don’t care about him anymore. All he wants to do is party.”

“Fair enough. Go on.”

That’s one of the things that makes talking to Henry such a relief. He doesn’t make a lot of pronouncements and judgments. He just listens. I tell him about Rick breaking in and the new job, and only then do I get to the part that’s important. “I’ve seen Tyler quite a bit, and I really like him a lot, but I have some reservations, and that was what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay.” He takes a sip of his water.

“He’s really good looking, like a model almost, and he’s older than me, 25, and he comes from a lot of money back east. They pulled strings to get him into CC.”

His eyebrows rise. “Hmmm,” he says. “What do you like about him, other than his looks?”

I consider this. “He’s smart, really smart. He wanted to be an Olympic snowboarder and was actually on the team, but he had an accident and didn’t go, so that gives him…I don’t know, something deeper.” That’s still not it. I think of the way he looks at me when I’m talking, the way he brings me coffee and pastries and feeds me. “He really looks at me like he
sees
me,you know? And he seems to think I could do well in school, and we talk. A lot.” I reach into my purse and pull out the slender volume of poems. “He brought me this book of poems, and then we read them out loud to each other.”

Henry’s mouth is tilting into a soft elfin smile as he takes the book and looks at it thoughtfully. “You like him a lot.”

I nod despairingly. “I do.”

“So what’s the downside?”

“I don’t know. We come from really different worlds. I don’t trust him completely—he has a reputation as a player, but I have to say, I don’t think he’s using me. I think he really really likes me a lot, maybe even more than I like him.”

“That’s good.”

“I guess.” I take a breath and tell the rest of it. “Yesterday I met his sister by accident, and she said some nasty things, making him sound like a real loser, and it shook me. He didn’t stand up for me or introduce me, and I was really upset.”

“Hurt.”

I look at him. “Yeah. If he likes me so much, why wouldn’t he stand up for me?”

“I wasn’t there,” he says, “but you have to trust your gut, baby. You know that. It doesn’t matter if he’s rich or poor or handsome or smart or anything.”

My gut. I touch it, gauging how I feel about it right now. “He wants to tell me about his family. I told him I’d give him that much.”

“That seems fair.” He hands the book back to me. “Remember, too, that nobody is too good for you, Jess Donovan. Nobody. You’re good and kind and smart. If you remember that, you’ll know when somebody isn’t doing the right thing.”

“I’ll try.”

Chapter SEVENTEEN

C
louds are boiling up over the mountains as I drive into Manitou, darkening the world for the usual late afternoon thunderstorm. The light makes all the flowers along his street look brighter, whiter, more mysterious.

I pull into his driveway and sit for a minute, looking at the house. A nasty voice in the back of my brain is telling me it’s impossible that Tyler could love me,
really
love me. That I’m from the wrong kind of world. He’s too—

No. I’m tired of listening to that voice. I know where that leads—to a lonely night spent tossing and turning, wishing I was with him. I get out of the car, tug down my tank top and carry my jacket inside with me, thinking it might get chilly later if we sit on the patio, especially if it rains.

At Henry’s I let my hair down and brushed it until it gleamed, and it lifts in the breeze as I walk across the yard to the steps. I’m aware of my arms and legs, of my chest and hips, of my face and the angle of my head, as if I am both myself and some observer watching me. Or maybe I’m thinking of Tyler looking at me, and then there he is, at the door, wearing jeans and a t-shirt that fits his broad shoulders and taut belly perfectly. He pushes open the screen door and I see his feet are bare, and the nakedness ignites the spark of my hunger for him again, so intensely I almost can’t breathe for a second. My feet keep moving, and I come up the steps, and—

He hauls me up and into him until my feet almost come off the ground, and I fling my arms around his neck, pressing my whole body against his. Our mouths open and tongues meet, and someone is making a noise of longing and relief. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s him.

“Jess,” he whispers, pulling back a little, kissing my chin, my throat, his hand cupping my ear, my head. “Jess.”

I drop my purse and he shoves the door shut with his foot and backs me toward a room, not the studio. We’re kissing and kissing, pulling off each other’s clothes as we go. I tug on his t-shirt and he raises his hands. I peel it off, running my palms over his skin and his scars and the hair on his chest. He yanks my top off, walking me backward, kissing me, and then we’re standing by his bed. It sits between a pair of windows open to the pale light falling through the trees outside. Everything smells of rain as Tyler pulls the straps of my bra down and bends to kiss my breasts, unhooks my bra, and lets it fall. He travels down, kissing my belly, his fingers on the buttons of my jeans, then those are gone and so are my panties, and he’s parting my legs with his fingers. I dig my hands in his hair and pull him up.

“Later,” I whisper against his mouth, and unfasten his jeans, skim away his underwear. “Condom.”

He falls onto the bed and reaches toward the night stand, expertly grabs one from the drawer and shoves it closed. I’m watching him, absorbing the long lines of his body, his tattooed ribs, the long legs, the proud jut of his cock standing at full attention.

He looks at me, standing naked in the soft light. His voice is hushed when he says, “Look at you. I’m going to remember this forever.”

There’s something in his face that makes me smile and stretch my arms to the sky, leaning my head back so far that I can feel my hair tickle the backs of my thighs. He lets go of a soft groan. “Come here.”

Laughing, I fall to the bed beside him and take the condom out. “Allow me.”

“By all means.”

I unroll it slowly, aware of his eyes on my body, devouring me. Then he’s over me, kissing me, kneeling between my legs. I reach between us and guide him, and then he’s plunging, hot and full, into that waiting center of me and I’m finished thinking. I’m only feeling, kissing, touching. My body dissolves into his, his into mine, and all the parts of us explode into molecules that mingle together with the taste of our lips and the smell of rain and the pale light. As we finish, we kiss once more, arms and legs tangled, gently, and all those molecules of the rain and the light and our bones, blood, sex rearrange themselves and settle back into the shapes that are our bodies. We lie panting and entangled.

Changed.

Tyler rises on his elbows, puts his thumbs on my face. His irises seem to absorb and reflect the light in the room, and he bends to take small tastes of my chin, my mouth, my nose. “I was so afraid you’d never come back.” He dips to press his soft lips to mine gently. “I’m falling in love with you, Jess. I know it hasn’t been long and I know—”

I raise my fingers to his mouth. “I know. Me, too.” I curve my hands around his shoulders. “It’s scaring me. That’s why when your sister was so mean—”

“Don’t talk about her yet. Not yet.” He kisses me again, then shifts sideways, bringing the covers up over us. He leans on a pile of pillows against the headboard and pulls me into him. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, feeling like I’ve been running for a long time and now I can stop. At least for a minute.

I let myself absorb the shape of him against me, the feeling of his chest under my ear. I let myself admit, too, that I am falling in love so fast it’s like jumping off a cliff. I have no idea where I’ll land, but once you leap, there’s no going back.

He strokes my hair, my back. “It was so hard today not to yank you into the walk-in and kiss you until you got over being mad at me.”

“I know. Me, too. When you brought in the pastries? I almost swooned.”

He chuckles. “I can always trust you to eat.”

“I’ll probably be fat as a house when I’m older.”

“It won’t matter. You’ll still be amazing.”

I snort. “So you say
now
.”

We lie there for a long time, touching, exploring a little, mainly just resting in relief that we are here at all. At least I am. But I need to know the story of this family.

“I need to know what I’m getting into. With your family stuff.”

“You’re not really getting into anything, because I try to keep my distance.” He sighs. “Some families just don’t work. Some marriages don’t work. My parents are two people who should have been divorced about six minutes after they got married. Instead, they had five kids.”

“Five? You’re one of
five
?”

“Yeah. Middle child.”

“I’m jealous. I always wanted a brother or sister. Somebody to be with, talk to.” I trace the line of his ribs. A spiral of words says,
Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

“It’s great when it works out that way, but me and my siblings were pitted against each other from day one, so it’s been war all our lives. My sister Kate, she’s the one who was at the cottage, is younger than me, so we were in direct competition.”

“In competition for what? Like…money?”

“Like everything. Who would get to eat a good dinner and who would get something disgusting like liver or brains. Who would get to go on a trip and who would have to stay home alone with the nanny. Who would have to sit in a room all by themselves while the family had a party, who got to actually have a birthday celebration.”

I rise on one elbow to look at his face. “You’re kidding.”

He shakes his head in a very small way. “I wish I was.”

It seems like some made-up story. “But why would they be so mean to their kids? Why would they have so many kids and then be so cruel to them?”

“It was some twisted thing they did to get at each other. They couldn’t divorce, not really. My mom’s money was poured into my dad’s company, my dad’s company bailed out her dad when there was some kind of legal issue…” He shakes his head. “So they’ve been at war for thirty years. We were just their chess pieces.”

I frown. “But the snowboarding? That was yours, right?”