THE GIFT (12 page)

“Sure does,” Mary repeated with a smile.

“Oh, you two! Stop it. Nothing happened between us. We fished and talked. That was it,” Amanda told them. “You know that it’s too soon for me to even think about seeing anyone else.”

“What does that mean?” Aunt Mary asked.

“Oh, we haven’t told you about all of that yet,” Amanda’s mother said. “Do you mind if I tell her, Amanda?” Amanda shook her head from side to side. She didn’t feel up to telling her Aunt Mary about Jagger Remington, but didn’t mind if her mother did. Staring at her hands, she listened while her mother shared how Jagger had tracked her down somehow and wooed her into a relationship solely because she had his fiancées eyes, or at least, part of them.

“That is so weird. I mean, it’s not like he could see them. The cornea is clear, isn’t it? I mean, the surgery didn’t change your eye color. Were her eyes blue as well?” Aunt Mary asked, looking toward Amanda.

“No, they were brown. Almost the color of my contacts,” Amanda said almost to herself.

It was the first time that it struck Amanda that Jagger had never seen her natural eye color. Even when they slept over at one another’s place and when they had been in Paris, she always had either her contacts in or her glasses on. Unless he knew anything about the process, he had assumed her eyes were the almost golden brown color of her contacts.

From the pictures she had seen of Cassandra, it was very close in color. So close that someone might chalk up any differences to the surgery somehow altering the original shade ever so slightly. He literally thought he was looking into Cassandra’s eyes.

“Oh, my God!” Aunt Mary exclaimed even as Amanda continued to mull over the fact that she had inadvertently only lent to Jagger’s delusions about her similarity to his dead fiancée. “I saw him. He was at the hospital when you had your surgery!” Amanda suddenly yanked her head up to stare at her Aunt Mary.

“What?” Amanda asked incredulously.

“When you were in surgery, we were able to watch the procedure through the blinds outside. There was a man there watching along with us. I assumed that he was an intern or a student, though he little older than I would expect. These days people do go to school later in life sometimes though. Anyway, he was watching your surgery,” she told them, describing the man she had seen. It was most certainly Jagger.

“He was there during the implant?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, and afterward. I saw him in the days that followed in the hallway,” she said.

“And you never said anything about this strange man watching her?” Amanda’s mother offered.

“Well, no. Like I said, I thought he was supposed to be there. It never occurred to me that some strange man was just lurking about like that,” Aunt Mary finished.

Amanda felt numb. Jagger had not tracked her down. He knew where to find her all along. Amanda was certain that he was the blurry figure she saw right after they took her bandages off and now another memory was coming back to her. The sad man sitting near her room when she had left the hospital. The nurse had said he recently lost his fiancée and she didn’t know why he was there.

It was Jagger. He was there to watch her and he had continued to watch her in the months that followed. How many times had she seen him here and there that she discounted? If he had not been forced to push her out of the way of the bike that day, would he still just be following her around?

“You mean he has been stalking her all of these months?” her mother said, looking uneasily at Amanda.

“It sounds like it,” Aunt Mary replied quietly. Both of the women looked at Amanda with bewildered expressions, but Amanda’s heart and mind raced a thousand miles a minute. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling in that moment. Though she was angry about the way Jagger had come into her life, she knew she loved him.

Perhaps she hadn’t said those words to him, but it was true and there was something about the way he talked to her, held her that seemed like so much more than just the need to keep someone who he used to love close to him in the only way he knew how.

“Maybe it started out that he just felt drawn to me because a part of Cassandra now belonged to me and he was curious about me, but how far can you take an adoration for a pair of corneas if you no longer feel the connection with their previous owner? Perhaps, Jagger was drawn to me because this small part of me was all he had left of his fiancée but I can’t believe that alone is enough to have made him pursue more,” Amanda told them.

“Amanda, I don’t want you to get hurt by this man,” her mother said.

“Mom, I’ve already been hurt. The question is am I willing to push aside that pain in order to find out why he has done this. If the answer is simply that he got caught up in the notion that I had her eyes and he saw her when he looked into these contacts I wear, then perhaps there is nothing for us. What if that isn’t the answer though? What if the answer is that he saw something more? Maybe he let go of her and wanted to be with me?” Amanda told her.

“How could you ever know if you are always a reminder to him?” her mother asked.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Dan. I will love him until the day I take my last breath, but I’ve learned to let him go and move on. I didn’t think I ever could, but then I met Jagger and I began to see that I could have a future with someone else. People die and their loved ones eventually move on,” Amanda replied.

“Yes, but you had five years to grieve Dan. You let him go little by little. When did this man have the time to grieve? He launched himself into stalking and pursuing you. That’s not healthy. In a way, it’s almost sick,” Aunt Mary added.

“Perhaps we just all grieve in different ways and we just can’t understand the way another person processed their pain,” Amanda offered. She wasn’t sure if she even believed what she was saying, but she was willing to give Jagger the benefit of the doubt. He would have to make the first move. If he didn’t, then she felt he was giving her the answers she needed, but if he came to her, she would listen. She would hear him out and consider his side of things. She had to. She loved him and that much was not in doubt.

“Obviously, I can’t tell you what to do. I am just cautioning you to tread lightly,” her mother told her with a concerned look.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be careful,” Amanda smiled, biting into one of the sandwiches as she continued to ponder the situation with Jagger. The rest of the week gave her little time to think with the constant banter with her mother and Aunt Mary about their lives growing up and pretty much everything else under the sun. They ate and shopped, got in a little sight-seeing and visited other family members and old friends.

The only time she felt truly at ease seemed to be when she was with Cody. Part of the week was spent just hanging out with him either at the house, down by the stream or in town. He was very easy to talk to and even easier to look at, but she didn’t feel drawn to him that way for some reason. Perhaps it was just as she said, her heart remained with Jagger. No matter what he had done, she was in love with him and it hurt to be so far away and not know what he was doing or how he was feeling.

She and Cody had taken over the attic room for a bit while the rest of the household went out to eat dinner. Amanda hadn’t really been hungry after snacking all day and Cody had eaten with Ben. They were flipping through the eclectic stack of books her Aunt Mary had in her reading area and laughing at her penchant for romance novels.

“Do you think she has enough of them on hand?” Cody asked.

“Well, I guess when you are married to a grumpy old guy like Uncle Tank, you crave a little romance in your life,” she replied.

“Ah, romance. It can be grand. It can be heart wrenching. What about you, Amanda? Is there enough romance in your life?” he asked.

“Apparently not. That’s how I ended up on this trip,” Amanda sighed.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I met someone that I thought was wonderful. He made me feel alive like I never have before and then I found out that it was only because these transplants that I have, they came from his dead fiancée’,” she told him.

“What? That’s creepy. I thought they kept those things anonymous?” he said, sitting beside her on the loveseat but leaning in toward her.

“I did too, but apparently there are ways to find out,” she told him, continuing on to tell him the entire story.

“Wow. That is something else. Hey, can I ask you a question? Can I see the dots? I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by it and I don’t mean to treat you like a freak show. I’d just really like to see them,” he said.

“All right. Hold on,” she said, reaching into her eye and popping out one of her contacts so that he could see beneath it.

“Your eyes are beautiful. Such a gorgeous color. It’s unusual. The dots are hardly noticeable, but I can see them,” he said, hovering only inches from her face. He leaned in closer, as if he was going to kiss her and she panicked.

“No! I mean, I can’t.” she screeched, jumping up from the couch and turning away from him. She popped her contact back in and pulled out the small bottle of special saline she kept in her pocket to make sure it was nice and moist before heading toward the steps to leave the attic.

“Wait, Amanda,” Cody called after her, but she was already gone.

She avoided him as much as she could for the rest of the day and most of the next, but by the time evening rolled around, he had decided that she wasn’t going to ignore him anymore. There was a knock on her door as she lay in bed reading.

“Amanda, are you in there?” he asked quietly.

“I’m busy, Cody. Sorry,” she said. She knew she was being harsh, but she just couldn’t deal with her heartbreak and any mixed feelings that might be stirred by a kiss shared with Cody. Even though she and Jagger were on the outs, it still felt like she would be betraying him if she were to be anything other than friends with another man.

“Please, Amanda. I won’t stay long. I just want to talk to you,” he said.

“Okay, just for a minute,” she told him, pulling the blankets up and over her as he turned the door knob and opened the door to step inside.

“You and I just keep getting off on the wrong foot, I’m afraid. First, the naked thing and then the kiss thing. I wasn’t trying to kiss you,” he said. “Not that you aren’t an attractive girl. You are beautiful. You just aren’t my type. I was only trying to get a closer look at the dots.”

Amanda felt ashamed suddenly. She had just assumed that he was trying to kiss her when his face had come so close to hers and she had been so bent out of sorts about it that she hadn’t given him a chance to explain.

“I’m sorry, Cody. I’ve just been so messed up lately and I didn’t want to confuse things more. I thought you were going to kiss me and I overreacted,” she told him.

“Listen, let me put you at ease. I feel like I can trust you for some reason. You and I seem to have a connection where we can share things without fear of judgment. I think I can confide in you about myself without having to worry what you might to say to someone else about it,” he told her.

“Yes, you can, Cody. I think that you and I have a rare connection, for whatever reasons,” she told him softly. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her as he seemed to mull something over in his mind.

“The bar fight that I got into. It wasn’t because I was angry about my mother’s new boyfriend moving into our place. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that stuck in my craw like I can’t tell you, but mother made that decision and I can’t blame him for her poor choices. Anyway, I punched him for something he said,” he told her.

“What did he say, Cody?” she asked, reaching instinctively for his hand.

“He told me that my father probably died from shame over having a fag for a son,” Cody said in almost a whisper. Amanda’s eyes widened a little as that sank in a bit.

“You’re gay,” she stated flatly. “and your mother told him.”

“Yes. Mom and Dad found out when I was home on leave from the military several years ago. They walked in on me with someone. We were only kissing, but the fact that it was a guy almost killed them. No one else knew, not even his parents. His parents still don’t know. I mean, they may suspect, but I think they just don’t want to know for sure,” he said.

“Ben?” she asked, filling in the final piece of the puzzle.

“Yes, Ben. Ben and I have been lovers since we were in ninth grade. We both dated girls and pretended we were something that we weren’t rather than accept who we were, but we always knew. We went our separate ways for a while. I joined the military and Ben went to college, got married and tried to convince himself he was straight. His wife divorced him within six months and he was back here on the farm with his folks. Then I came home and we picked up where we left off,” he said.

“I can’t believe your mother would expose you like that. I mean, you have every right to your privacy,” Amanda told him, causing him to laugh.

“Privacy? It’s just shame, pure and simple. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ashamed that I fell in love with Ben, probably long before we were lovers. Ben and I have been inseparable since we were little boys. I just know that this place would not accept us and I don’t want to deal with the stares and comments. Homophobic jerks like Mom’s new squeeze are much more prevalent in this small town than liberal minded people,” he said.

“Why not move to a place where you would be more widely accepted? I know plenty of folks in New York who are openly gay and aren’t looked down upon. In fact, many of them are active members of the community just like everyone else,” she told him.