Tru Love (8 page)

              “Yesterday, you were afraid of me,” he says, his voice a slow but steady whisper. “I don’t know why, I only know I didn’t like seeing that look in your eyes. Directed at me. I’ve been trying all day to figure you out. Now, it’s like I’m sitting next to a bonfire.”

              “I wasn’t afraid of you,” she denies.

              “You looked at me like you wanted to kiss me and that even the idea of it scared you. Why?”

              She felt fear, but a good kind. The stomach turning, drop of a roller coaster kind of fear.

              “We’ve only known each other a day,” she points out.

              “Two days,” he corrects. “But it seems longer.”

              “It didn’t feel like this,” she murmurs, thinking aloud, “with Hunter.”

              “Of course not,” Truman says, his voice thick with confidence. “You were friends, and intended to stay that way.”

              She nods. She really messed that up.

              “I’m surprised you didn’t realize that sooner,” he says. “Unless he was your first—” He stops and she feels his eyes on her, examining her face and the new blush that pulses beneath her skin. “Is that it, Genny?” he asks softly. “Was he your first?”

              Genny hears the binding on her book crack under her twisting hands. Her
first
what? Boyfriend? Yes. Lover? No. They never got beyond kissing.

              “Never mind,” he says, and Genny can hear a lot of understanding in his voice and wishes he would explain it all to her. “I get it. I’m usually not this slow,” he admits. He pries the fingers of her left hand loose from the book and his fingers linger on hers for a moment. “Let me drive you to the game tomorrow?” he asks and Genny nods, knowing it’s unavoidable, the game and her feelings for him.

Chapter Ten

              Friday is a learning experience for Genny. Before the day is over, her mom will teach her about regret; Hunter will show her that silence is a deadly weapon; Truman will reveal a secret that shifts the axis of her universe; and her father will prove that some boys never grow up.

It all begins at three-thirty in the morning, when her mother shakes her out of bed—literally. Her mom is a periodic insomniac who hates whittling the hours off the night on her own. Sometimes she wakes Genny up as early as two o’clock with a deck of cards in hand and asks her to play Five-Hundred Rummy. This morning, it’s scrapbooking. She has a satin-covered photo album under her arm and a box of family photos and certificates of achievement resting on the end of the bed.

              “What?” Genny pushes the hair out of her eyes and glares at her mother through the sleepies blurring her vision. “You don’t scrapbook.”

              “I do today,” her mom says. “I’ve been wanting to for

a while. I’ve been collecting all sorts of decorations for your life book. And
so
many photographs.” She picks up a handful of glossy images and waves them in Genny’s direction.

              “Arg!” Genny groans and flops back onto the mattress. She pulls the sheet up over her face but manages what she hopes is a last piece of advice, “Take that box to a professional,” she suggests. “Let the experts do it. That’s the Genevieve way.”

              Silence greets her request, followed by the fastest sheet-pulling-somersaulting-wake-up-call known to mankind.

              “Mom!” Genny protests from the floor, in a tangled heap of blankets and her own limbs.

              “That wasn’t fair, Genny,” her mother says. “I never hire out for the personal things. I don’t have someone come in to do the laundry or to cook. I don’t hire someone to go watch your volleyball games. Or to help you find the
right
dress for a dance.” Her mother places a hand on her hip and bends over Genny. “Look at my face, Genny,” she instructs. “Do you know what you’re seeing?”

              “Double trouble.”

Her vision is still sleep-blurry, producing two images of her mother as she squints against the overhead light.

              But her mom is right. Sort of. They get by with dry cleaning and take-out. But the other stuff, she’s strictly hands-on. She made it to every one of Genny’s volleyball games last year. She sat on the bench closest to the team and when they were winning, her mother’s voice rose stridently above the crowd; and when they were losing, especially if it was a grievous loss, Genny sometimes felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. Just a light touch. Just enough Genny knew when she left the court she had someone waiting for her.

              “A loving and attentive mother.” Her mother’s voice is gently prodding.

              “I do the laundry,” Genny grumbles as she picks her way out of the bedding.

              “I don’t mind dropping it at the dry cleaners,” her mom says.

              “Jeans? T-shirts?”

              “They do mine.”

              “I bet they wouldn’t do the towels,” Genny says.

Genny’s standing, though lightly on her feet. She rubs her face with both hands then treads across the chilled, aged hardwood to her bedroom door.

              “Are you coming?” she calls back.

              “I’m already there. The dining room table,” her mom says, then breezes past her. “We have boxes to go through and need a lot of space.”

              Her mother brewed a pot of coffee and laced Genny’s heavily with cream, just the way she likes it. Still, Genny takes a wary sip before committing herself—her mother just as often puts in too much or too little grounds as she gets it right. This time it’s as close to perfect as Genny has ever tasted from her.

              “Wow,” she says, placing her cup carefully onto the table, amidst photos and old letters, paper awards and blue ribbons. “You really want to please me.”

              “It’s three-thirty in the morning,” her mother says reasonably, sitting across the table from her and half-hidden behind a sheaf of heavy, masculine-looking paper. “Starbucks isn’t open and so far, I haven’t found one willing to deliver, anyway.”

Genny looks at the stickers and paper art, still in their cellophane wrapping, spread out on the table. There are baby rattles and volleyball nets; fancy, scrolled picture frames and gold-glitter trophies. In another pile, her mother arranged personal letters. Genny picks these up and looks through them. Some go back before Genny was born. All the way back to when her mother was a teenager in Paris and Milan.

“Your mom wrote these,” Genny says, reading silently the words her grandmother, a woman who Genny never met because she died too soon, dedicated to the page and to her only child.

              “Yes,” her mom says. “I thought we could include those, at the beginning of the book. Later on, when you’re interested, maybe when you’ve started your own family, you’ll want to understand the relationship I had with my mother. After all, she’s in here somewhere—” her mom taps her chest. “I see her in the mother I’ve become, the softness. My mother was very kind. I hope I inherited that from her.”

              “You did,” Genny assures her.

              “She was seventeen when she gave birth to me,” her mom reveals. “I think that’s why I was so intent on leaving North Dakota as soon as possible. I thought I might get trapped there.” Her mother lays aside the letter she was reading and folds her hands on the table. “We had a hard life, Genny. My mom worked at a grocery store, which brought in enough money to pay rent, keep the lights on and put food in our stomachs. But no extras. Most of the time that was Ok with me, because I had her, but sometimes. . .” Her mother’s eyes grow misty as they focus inward, on her youth. “Sometimes I wanted a dress or a blouse that didn’t come from Goodwill, you know?”

              “And that’s when the scout found you?”

              Her mother nods then laughs quietly. “I used to take the bus to the airport and stand in the departures terminal, gazing out the windows, at the sky that was so big, limitless, and the jumbo jets that could take me anywhere.” She focuses on Genny for a moment. “She found me watching a line of people boarding a plane to Chicago.”

              “And made you a star.”

              “No. She discovered me. She gave me an opportunity and then I worked like a dog. That first year, I never had a day off. That’s not an exaggeration.”

              She slides a photo across the table. “This was taken the day I left for Milan. My mother insisted the modeling agency purchase a round trip ticket for me, just in case. She knew she had no way to bring me home if things didn’t work out.”

              In the photo, Genny’s mother is standing with her mother. They’re outside and surrounded by snow drifts. Genny’s grandmother was a short, slight woman with blond hair and a smile so full of pride for her daughter that it outshines even her mother’s beauty.

“But you never used it.”

              “No. Not even when she died. My uncle Carter packed her things, arranged for her funeral. I would like to go back one day, lay a wreath on her grave. I loved her, Genny, I just couldn’t go back. There are some places that should never be revisited.”

              Genny turns the photo over and covers the back with glue. She centers it on the first page of her life book, presses the edges to make sure it stays, then looks among the assorted glitter pens for a red one
.
Beneath the photo, Genny writes
:
Where Love Begins, Mom and her Mother, 1984.

            
 
She looks up at her mom. “Why don’t you move her grave here? Then you can visit her whenever you want.”

              Her mother’s lips open in surprise. “I never thought of that,” she says, and then carries on, thoughtfully, “I suppose I could do that. Other people have done it, I’m sure.”

              “Since when do you need to be a follower?” Genny challenges.

              “You’re right. I’ve never followed anyone in my life.” A frown pinches her lips together. She picks up the letter she was holding earlier and gazes at the scrawled words. “But maybe I should have, once or twice,” she concedes. “Sometimes a woman needs to follow. Maybe it’s a fifty-fifty thing, when a man’s involved.”

              Genny pulls the letter from her mother’s fingers. Her father used a black, felt-tipped pen to write a last love letter to her mother. In it, he suggested that Genevieve bend a little. That if she met him in New York, where he was playing, then he would know that her heart was at least as invested as his. Before signing his name, he wrote, ‘Remember Rome and Paris and London?”

              “Did dad follow you?”

              “In the off season,” her mother admits. She sighs heavily. “I was approaching the end of my modeling career then. Any day, someone somewhere would decide they no longer wanted me. That’s how tenuous the business is. There’s never anything like retirement planning, or even the decency of a pink slip. Just a lot of phone calls never returned. Cancellations. Zero bookings.” She stares intently at Genny. “I was afraid to stop, afraid to turn down a job. I was thirty-one years old, you were four.” A softness turns her lips into a beautiful bow. “I brought you with me everywhere. You spoke better French than I did.”

              “But you didn’t have time for dad?”

              “No. It was a mistake,” her mom admits.

              “So you didn’t meet him in New York?”

              “No.” She flattens her hands against the table and stares at them. “The letter came with a ring. Neither one of us were big on marriage, but. . .he wanted to show his sincerity.” She folds her hands into fists and places them in her lap. “I sent the ring back. We didn’t talk again for a while and then I received paperwork from an attorney, describing a very fair custody agreement.” Her eyes find Genny’s. “He’s a good father, honey. He gave up on me, but never on you.”

“I know.” Genny slides her fingers over the pile of photos her mother was sorting earlier. She knows she saw an image of her father, younger, in full uniform and tapping a bat against a cleat. He was smiling into the camera, like he was very fond of the person snapping the shot. She finds it and holds it up. “Did you take this?”

Her mother nods. “Home game against St. Louis. April nineteen-ninety-five. You weren’t one yet and I had you strapped to my chest. You kept putting your hand in front of the lens, trying to grab it.” Her mother laughs at the memory but then says quite seriously, “You had us both from your first breath.”

              Genny turns the photo over and starts running the glue stick over the back.

              “You never told me any of this stuff before,” she notes. “Just how you guys met. Why you guys never got married. Why you couldn’t stay together. But none of the memories.”

              “They hurt,” her mother admits.

Chapter Eleven

              By ten-thirty that morning, Genny realizes that Hunter has a severe case of amnesia. Selective amnesia. He seems to remember everyone else just fine and has no problem following his usual schedule, arriving on time to his classes. Genny knows this because she spent the morning looking for him, trying to talk to him, to get him to acknowledge her. She’s on her way to calculus, late, after following Hunter to his class, walking abreast of him, talking
at
him because he wasn’t answering her and refused to even look at her, when she decides that in this case, her mother isn’t right—following a man shouldn’t happen fifty percent of the time. It shouldn’t happen at all.

              She’s fuming.
There’s got to be steam rising from my head,
she thinks. She will not waste any more time on the bone head. In fact, she won’t even think his name again, ever.

And, she decides, she’ll work at taking
Hunter’s
bone head’s infantile behavior in stride. It must be a male thing, she tells herself, like testicles. They’re ugly to look at,

hairy to hold (or so she’s told) but it’s something you’ve got to do if you want to be everything to your guy.

              “Crap,” she mutters.
What a bunch of crap.
She feels absolutely no need to hold a hairy sac of marbles in her hand and certainly no need to follow a guy around like she’s president of his fan club. So what if their friendship is lost? Completely obliterated? Hit by an asteroid and disappearing fast from the universe?

              She has other friends. She could even have another boyfriend, though she’s convinced now that there has to be something wrong with Truman. He acts like he’s known her forever and everything about him seems perfect, but it’s an illusion. Perfection doesn’t exist. Not even in Snow White’s magic mirror.

              She’s at least two minutes late when she strides through the door and straight into Marilyn’s breathy request for an excuse.

              “No excuse, Ma’am,” Genny admits. “Throw the book at me.”

              She can tell Mrs. Lombardi is startled by her careless attitude, but doesn’t care. She finds her seat, two aisles over from Truman, who’s watching her with a bemused look on his face. Genny gives him her profile and resolves that she will not turn

to look at him. She won’t stare obsessively at his hands, or dwell on his lips. She refuses to look at that crazy red-brown hair or even to curl her hands when the memory of its luxurious feel strikes her brain and makes her fingers tremble. She will not be drawn into his magnetic field of attraction at all during the next fifty minutes even if it kills her.

It almost does. By the time the bell rings, she has a stiff neck from denying what has become an involuntary action and she feels sunburned by Truman’s determined gaze.

She stays after the bell rings to accept Mrs. Lombardi’s reprimand. But she doesn’t get detention. Her teacher sits in the desk in front of Genny’s and offers her advice.

“This is about the break-up,” she guesses. “Kids here talk. Faculty, too,” she admits with a grimace. “I guess it was very public—of course, all it needs is an audience of one and then the news spreads, people get their hands all over it and suddenly what’s left is lot more exciting than the truth.”  She folds her manicured hands over the back of the chair and leans into Genny’s space. “Maybe you can’t see this right now, but there will be other guys. More than you’ll want to bother with.”

“It’s not about the break-up,” Genny says. She knows Mrs.

Lombardi is trying to be nice, and she doesn’t doubt the woman’s sincerity, but it really boggles Genny’s mind that
no
one seems to count the loss of friendship as the real tragedy. “We were friends,” Genny says. “
Friends.
For three years.”

Genny watches the light dawn on Mrs. Lombardi’s face. It seems to raise a halo around the woman’s head.

“Ah. And now he doesn’t know you’re alive. Yep. Classic male ignorance. Hear no evil, see no evil.”

“What does that mean?”

“Men don’t like to deal with messy emotions. Most of them haven’t had the training and have no clue what’s even going on inside us. So they assume. They think we’re devastated. Totally unable to go on without them. What is life worth, after all, when the best part of it has hit the road?” Mrs. Lombardi smiles and it makes her blue eyes shine. “It’s not their fault, you know,” she continues. “We spend a few good weeks, months, years building them up so what are they supposed to believe? They walk away thinking they can deflect bullets. Melt stone with their laser gaze.” Mrs. Lombardi laughs and shakes her head. “Until men have proven themselves in the most difficult circumstances, they’re still boys.”

“So what do I do?

“Nothing. The smart ones come around.” She pushes a lock of chestnut hair behind her ear and regards Genny seriously. “You may not see it happen. Some people need to circle the mountain a few times before they’re flattened by falling rock.”

“So I just let it go,” Genny says, feeling the last light of hope extinguish.

“No. You have to do better than that. You’re seventeen. You’re gorgeous. Life is a conscious decision,” she advises. “You wouldn’t volunteer for a colonic cocktail, would you? Have fun,” she insists. “And if
that
happens to become public, all the better. He won’t understand it. It will encourage self-reflection.”

So, if Hunter sees her having fun he’ll remember the good times?

“He’ll miss me,” Genny says.

“Maybe. If not, at least he’ll think he was missed about as much as a hang nail.”

Genny leaves her calculus class with her eyes wide open. Her mother never told her about
men.
What they think and how they feel and how absolutely delusional they can be.

              She enters the cafeteria, her eyes automatically scanning the crowds for Serena. She really should let her best friend in on this revelation. She wonders if Victor feels like Super Man. Probably. She can hear Serena insisting that it’s her job to make sure of it. And in return? Will Victor stay? Or will he wander, looking for another leading lady?

              She spots Truman sitting at a table near the windows. He’s not alone. Of course. Every seat is taken: two senior girls; the running back of their football team; tall, skinny Ruben Marisol, captain and center of their basketball team; Ruben’s girlfriend and Genny’s teammate, Francesca; two junior girls who look so much alike, Genny wonders briefly if they’re twins.

             
Life is a conscious decision.

             
Genny likes her teacher’s words so much, she lets them propel her across the room. She’s two yards from Truman’s back when he feels her presence; she’s at his elbow by the time he turns toward her. His brown eyes register surprise before they get that warm glow.

              “Can I speak to you for a minute?”

              Her tone makes it clear that she expects instant gratification. Not that Truman would refuse her. It’s not in him. It’s not polite.

              “Sure.”

Truman stands. Genny notices that his food tray still holds a half-eaten burger and a couple of fries. He grabs his Coke and then uses his free hand to guide her through the small knots of animated teens.

His hand rests lightly on her back, just above her hip and over the cashmere sweater she’s wearing. His touch is so hot, she’s sure it burned away the soft yarn and is leaving the shape of his palm, and even the small details of his fingerprints, on her skin.

Great, now I’m having fantasies of being branded.
That has to fall under some disorder in the Physician’s Handbook.

By the time they clear the doors and are standing outside, under a clear sky and amidst the cacophony of city noise—car horns bleating and voices raised above the whipped wind of traffic—Genny has her mind clear again. She called him out with a purpose. No more lining up like all the other sheep, which is how Genny is beginning to see romantic relationships: passage to the slaughterhouse.

              “What’s wrong with you?” Genny asks. She holds his gaze, even as her body temperature rises.

              Truman’s eyes blink. Once. Twice.

              “Wow.” He laughs, surprised but clearly enjoying himself as he rocks back on his heels. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You’re different today.”

              “I’m not a sheep,” she agrees. “But we’re not talking about me,” she presses. “We’re talking about you. Truman Lennox. What’s the worst thing you can say about yourself? I want to get it out in the open,” she explains. “So that I can make an informed decision.”

              “About what?”

              “About whether or not you’re worth my time.”

              “Don’t we kind of figure that out as we go?”

              She buzzes him. “Wrong. Because, you see, Truman, my first impression of you is sheer perfection and I know that can’t be true. No one is perfect.”

              He nods. “I’m not perfect,” he agrees. “I work real hard at doing the right thing. That’s all.”

              “Why?”

              “
Why?”

              “Yeah. Most guys our age already think they’re as good as it gets. Some even think they can deflect bullets. How come you know that good is something you have to work at?”

              “Don’t you?” he asks. “You weren’t always the golden child.”

              No. But she had her defining moment: a long, protracted time of reflection while she was trapped in the wreckage of her father’s car.

              “Would you feel better if I give you a list of references?”

              She thinks about that. “Yes. Have you had a lot of girlfriends?”

              “A couple,” he admits, then reaches to smooth away the frown that settles above her nose. “I am seventeen,” he reminds her.

              “So am I,” she whispers the thought. She doesn’t like being the novice.

              “And you’ve had a least one boyfriend, right?” he prompts. “Should I ask him for a character reference?”

              “It won’t be good,” she warns.

              “Good thing I form my own opinions then,” he says.

              She takes his point as gracefully as she can, pursing her lips as she thinks it over.

              “It’s just that you seem to know me so well. It doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve been at Fraser three days.”

              “But I’ve known that I was coming for three months,” he tells her. “And I did a little snooping.”

              Her eyebrows rise in question.

              “I read the school newspaper,” he confesses. “It’s online, you know. I wanted to get a feel for the school and my classmates, see if this is a place I wanted to be,” he explains. “During volleyball season you showed up there a lot. They had a picture of you, vaulting through the air to make a shot. Your hair was pulled back and you were sweaty.” She makes a face, but he ignores it. “But determined. Your face blazed with it. I like that kind of honesty, tapping emotion at heart level.

              “I planned to meet you,” he confesses. “I knew before I got here that you were someone
worth
meeting.” And then his lips curve in a movement that is slow and steamy and melts her resolve. “I just wish I knew ahead of time that keeping you alive was going to be a full time job.”

              “What else did you learn about me?”

“They quoted you,” he says, and his smile grows to one of appreciation. “One of the best quotes I’ve ever read.”

              Genny groans. ”What was it?”

              “The peer reporter asked your opinion of sports and all the glitter that surrounds it and you said, ‘That’s my bloodline, ask me about something I can control.’” He laughs.

“Then I googled you. That’s why I know about the crash, your volunteer work, the citation you received for free running.” He frowns when he mentions it. “That made me pause. Put that together with the ride you took in your father’s car and a person has to wonder—“

“If I have a death wish,” she finishes for him.

“Exactly. But the crash was an accident.”

“And free running is a sport.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m not the only one,” Genny says. “There are lots of us. Some kids are crazy and run races. There’s even a guy who places bets.

“Well, then, it’s a sport.”

She tries to ignore his sarcasm but admits, “I haven’t been in a while. Maybe only a handful of times since the ticket. It really freaked out my parents.”

“Really?” He feigns surprise.

“Cut it out.”

“OK. So long as you know I don’t approve, either.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” It’s her turn to be sarcastic, but he just folds his arms over his chest and waits her out. So she turns her attention to his earlier observations, “I have a sense of humor and a competitor’s spirit,” she says. “That made me worthy of your interest?”