“I’ll be just fine with all my real friends around me. Up ’til now, you’ve been a good friend, but …”
He lifted his hands to her face and ran his thumbs along the sides of her cheeks, making her shiver. “I don’t want to be your buddy, Jory. I don’t want to be just another one of the guys you run around partying with.”
Lyle’s words had hurt and she wanted to hurt him back. “Let me be real honest with you, Lyle, all right? The only guy I’ve ever been crazy about is Michael Austin. I’ve felt that way for years, and even though I date other guys, no one’s ever been able to change my mind about him.”
Lyle said nothing, but his eyes looked dark and hurt. Jory wished she could take it all back. Lyle had been good to her and kind to Melissa. He said, “In other words, ‘Buzz off, Lyle.’ Is that the bottom line?”
She raised her chin. “You got it.”
“Thanks for being honest, Jory. You get your wish. I won’t bother you anymore. You drove yourself here, I guess you can drive yourself home.” He walked away and quickly disappeared into the clusters of people.
Alone in the moonlight, Jory swallowed a lump of hot tears. She didn’t care. Let him go! She sniffed and ran her fingers through her hair, damp at the temples from anxiety. She glanced about, not sure what to do or where to go.
She heard a familiar voice call her name from across the clearing and her stomach did a somersault. She turned to see Michael Austin coming toward her.
Chapter Thirteen
Michael wore a cockeyed grin as he approached her, weaving slightly as he walked. Jory knew instantly that he’d been drinking. “Hey, Jory. What’re you doin’ here?”
He’d greeted her like a long-lost friend and she realized exactly how drunk he had to be. Michael had rarely been very friendly to her, especially over the past few months. “Looking for a good time,” she told him gaily.
“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Michael said, looping his arm over her shoulders. “We’re all having a real good time.”
All thoughts of Lyle and their argument fled. “It looks like you’ve gotten a head start, Michael. How long have you been here?”
He attempted to read his watch. “Hands look fuzzy,” he said, tapping the face. “Gotta get the thing fixed.”
“Are you … uh … with somebody, Michael?” Jory asked.
He leaned into her and scratched his head, as if trying to remember. “Just some guys.”
Jory was relieved. She felt euphoric over his being nice to her and she didn’t want to share him, even if he was smashed and wouldn’t remember a thing in the morning. “Why don’t we sit down?” she asked.
“In a minute. First, I need to get a beer.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough beers?”
It was the wrong thing to say. “I know when I’ve had enough,” he said abruptly.
Anxious not to lose him, Jory flashed him one of her most fabulous smiles. “Of course. So why don’t I sit here on the car and wait for you?”
“Works for me,” he said with a wave of his hand.
She watched him thread through the crowd toward an area with two stainless steel beer kegs and a washtub of other drinks. She knew that it wasn’t smart for him to be drinking so much, but she also knew what he’d been through since Melissa’s illness began. He deserved to blow off some steam.
A guy came toward her and Jory stiffened, willing Michael to return. “You a friend of Austin’s?” He asked.
Jory hesitated. “Yes.”
“Me too. I’ve been trying to get him out of here for an hour. But he won’t go.”
“He doesn’t do this sort of thing often,” she said, feeling a need to defend Michael.
“I know. You think you can get his car keys from him and get him home? He’s too far gone to drive, and I’m not much better off myself.”
Slightly ashamed that she hadn’t thought of it herself, Jory asked, “Where are they?”
“In the pocket of the windbreaker he’s wearing.”
“What about you? How will you get home?”
The guy glanced behind him toward a blond-haired girl waiting patiently beside a red car. “I have a ride.”
“Oh … yeah, sure. Don’t worry, I’ll get Michael home.”
The guy left with the girl and Jory waited, holding her breath, until Michael wove his way back through the crowd. He dropped a cola in her lap and took a long swallow from a plastic mug. Jory realized that in spite of all he’d had to drink, he hadn’t forgotten that she was too young for beer. She was still just a kid to him. She stood and slipped snugly beneath his arm. “So what now?”
Michael scanned the party scene. “I don’t know … ”
“We could dance,” she said, deftly sliding her free hand into his pocket and taking the keys to his truck.
“We could.”
She slipped the keys into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt, where she kept her own. She remembered that it was only a week after his surgery and asked, “You are recovered, aren’t you? I mean, the last time I saw you, you couldn’t even stand up straight.”
“See what a few beers can accomplish?” he said. “Naw, I’m all better, Jory. Fit and perfectly healthy.”
She thought she detected sarcasm in his voice and didn’t want to be the one to bring him back to reality. Not when she knew firsthand how much reality hurt. Michael put his cup on the hood of the car and took the cola from Jory’s hand. “Are we gonna dance or not?”
She went to his arms without a word. Slow music pulsed through the woods, throbbing with words of broken promises and lost love. She felt nervous, being so close to him, as if she might wake and discover it was all a dream. He draped his wrists over her shoulders and toyed with the back of her hair. He touched his forehead to hers and she closed her eyes, held her breath, and hoped the music would never stop.
“Let’s get out of here,” Michael said, his voice low and soft.
Her eyes flew open and her mouth went dry. “All right.”
She watched him as he fumbled for his keys, feeling guilty because she knew they were safe inside her pocket. “What’s wrong?”
“Can’t find my keys. Hell, I just had them … ”
“No problem.” Jory displayed a dazzling smile and hooked her arm through his. “I’ve got my car.”
“But my truck … and my buddy … ”
“Who’s going to miss you in this crowd? And so what if your truck sits here all night? You can get it tomorrow.” She was glad he couldn’t follow her logic because she had none. She had only her smile and bravado.
Michael shook his head, as if to clear it, but didn’t protest as she led him to where she’d parked. “Ah, you brought your lean, mean machine,” Michael said when he saw her convertible.
“Put the top down,” he ordered. “I want to ride with the wind in my face.”
She lowered the roof and maneuvered the car through the maze of other vehicles. At the road, she asked, “Why don’t we just drive? I know these back roads like the palm of my hand.” She didn’t want him to decide he had to go home. She just wanted to prolong the night spending time with him.
“Suits me,” Michael said, scooting down into the bucket seat and crossing his arms.
Jory drove cautiously. Fields stretched on either side of the two lanes and there wasn’t another car in sight.
“Is this the best it can do?” Michael asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is this as fast as this baby can go? I want to go fast, Jory. Real fast.”
She stared over at him. His face was pale in the moonlight, his eyes dark hollows. “Buckle up and hang on,” she said, remembering the last time she’d blasted down these roads and a cop had stopped her. She reached out and turned up the radio full blast, gunned the engine, and floored the accelerator. The car responded instantly, and she watched the speedometer needle climb from the fifties through the sixties and into the seventies. The road beckoned like a long white
river. The wind stung her face. Fence posts and telephone poles streaked by in a blur. Her exhilaration and sense of recklessness rose until she felt at one with the wind and the moon and the night.
Jory tipped her head back and laughed. The sound seemed to bounce off the stars. She looked toward Michael. Her heart almost stopped. Michael was sitting on the top edge of the front seat, with one arm grasping the seat belt and the other raised above his head. The wind whipped his hair.
“Michael, no!” She pumped the brake, jolting the speeding car, causing it to careen. It took all her skill to keep it on the road. She managed to slow down and coasted along the shoulder of the highway, where the vehicle finally rolled to a halt. The screaming radio shattered the stillness. She turned it off so violently that the knob broke.
Lazily, Michael slid downward into the seat cushion, as if nothing had happened. “Why’d you stop? I was having fun.”
“You scared me to death! Are you trying to get killed?”
“I just wanted to feel what it was like … ”
“Then go to Busch Gardens and take a ride on the roller coaster!” Jory’s whole body quivered. “What’s the matter with you?”
Michael shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Don’t get so bent out of shape. It was a little like riding in my balloon, only faster.”
“But there’s no basket to hold you in,” she said, gritting her teeth.
He stared at her, his eyes calm in the moonlight. “I know.”
The words sent a chill through her, more intense than the fear. She sucked in a long, shuttering breath. “Why don’t we try it again,” she said. “This time I’ll keep the speed down and would you please keep your seat?”
“You don’t have to get pushy,” Michael said, grinning.
Her hands trembled, but she returned a shaky smile. “I’ll try not to act so bossy the next time my passenger almost climbs out of my car when I’m doing seventy.” She put the car into gear and inched out onto the highway. She drove more slowly, glancing at Michael every few minutes. He was brooding now, quiet and pensive. She wanted to touch him, chase away the darkness that was engulfing him.
“I know someplace I could show you,” Jory said brightly, with an edge of mystery. “It’s a great place and I know you’ll love it.”
He only shrugged, so she drove until she came upon a dirt road, where she turned off and followed the trail that was sheltered by overhanging trees. She came to a clearing where moss hung from trees and a stream gurgled in the woods. Jory cut the engine, and night noises filled up the silence.
Michael looked around. “Where are we?”
“A place Melissa showed me.” Jory wondered if she should have told him because he might want to know how Melissa had discovered it.
Instead, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The sweet scent of orange blossoms and night-blooming jasmine drifted on an occasional breeze. “I like it,” he said and she relaxed. “I wish I had a beer,” he told her. “The wind and the ride seem to have sobered me up.”
“What’s wrong with that? Now you can see the hands on your watch, I’ll bet.”
“Because sober isn’t where I want to be. Because when I’m sober I know the truth.”
The look of pain that crossed his face etched a line across Jory’s heart. “What truth, Michael?”
“That my sister’s dying. And it’s all my fault.”
Chapter Fourteen
His words stunned her. It took a moment before she found her voice. “Michael, that’s not true! How can you even think that?”
“Because it is true. Who’d she get that lousy bone marrow from? Who told her it was ‘primo stuff’? It isn’t first-rate after all, Jory. It’s killing her.”
“Michael, it isn’t your fault. Melissa would never think that. You were the best donor—” she paused, “the only donor. Without you, she had no hope.”
“And with me, she got a one-way ticket to doom.” A bitter frown formed on his mouth. “She trusted me … ” Michael opened the car door and walked away. Jory scrambled after him, anxious and fearful.
At the stream, he stooped and gathered a handful of pebbles and began to bounce them into the water. “The first time she was in the hospital, I thought I’d go nuts.” A pebble plopped, sent rings through the moonlit water, and sank. “Every day, I’d go in and see what the chemo was doing to her. It invaded her, turned her inside out, and made her hurt so bad. All the doctors said was ‘It’s normal. It’s always this way.’ I hated those doctors, and I hated what their ‘cure’ was doing to her.”
He’d said the word cure like it was dirty.
“But the chemo did help,” Jory told him. “It put her into remission, and she went home and back to school.”
Michael depleted his supply of rocks and stared out across the stream. “Yeah, she did. I thought, ‘It’s over. A nasty business, but all behind us now.’ ”
“But she relapsed,” Jory said, reliving her own reaction to the news.
“It was like a bad joke. Like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. You know, every time she promises to keep it upright for him to kick, and every time he gets suckered in and runs to kick it.”
“And Lucy jerks it away,” Jory finished.
“That’s the way the doctors were. ‘So sorry, Melissa. But we have this other cure. Want to go for it?’ ” He mimicked Dr. Rowan’s voice. “And I said, ‘Go for it, Melissa. You can have my bone marrow, and afterward you’ll be cured.’ ”
Jory searched for words of assurance. Anything that would make him stop blaming himself. “Sometimes I feel like I’m responsible too, Michael. I wanted her to have the transplant. I encouraged her too.”
“Well we were both wrong, weren’t we?” His tone was bitter.
“But the odds were so bad without it,” Jory rationalized, not sure she was addressing Michael at all.
“That’s the way it is with doctors,” he interrupted. “They’re always quoting the odds. Makes me wonder why they don’t play the horses and leave people alone.”
An icy lump settled in Jory’s stomach. Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his arm. “It’s going to work, Michael. I know it is. Melissa is seventeen years old and she’s pretty and smart and she has everything going for her. W-we just have to have h-hope … ”
Her voice broke and Michael gave her a piercing look. “Come back to the car,” he said gently, taking her hand. She followed, fighting for composure. She couldn’t lose it in front of Michael. Mature girls don’t cry, she reminded herself as they walked.
At the car, Michael climbed into the backseat, nestled into a corner, and pulled Jory next to him. He placed her head against his chest and stroked her hair. She settled into his embrace and listened to his heart, its rhythm calm and soothing.
His mouth pressed against her temple. “It’s okay, Jory. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to get so morose. I’m sorry.” She couldn’t move, didn’t want to move. “I just feel so helpless,” he whispered. “I thought my bone marrow would stop it. I thought that after the operation, she’d wake up the next day and smile and get up out of her hospital bed and be well. Like a miracle would happen and Melissa would be healthy again.” His voice sounded thick and she was afraid to look into his eyes in case there were tears in them.
“It might happen yet,” Jory said, her voice small and hopeful. “Melissa’s a fighter and it’s worked for others. Don’t give up, Michael. Please.” She looked up at him finally. She wanted to make him stop hurting, wanted to make everything all right again. His mouth was but inches away. She stretched upward and kissed him.
This time he was not asleep and his lips moved beneath hers, hesitantly at first, then more urgently. His arms tightened and his hands began to move down the length of her back, urging her against him. She pressed into him, feeling energy and fire along the hardness of his body.
She shifted, brought her arms up around his neck and stroked his hair. His mouth left hers and began to travel, in frantic l
ittle trails over her hair, her face, her throat. She gasped, tugging him closer, wishing she could sink into him. He caught his fingers in the sides of her hair and found her mouth again.
For Jory, time stood still and six years of frustrated yearning erupted like a volcano. Her head spun and every nerve in her body tingled. Her blood sizzled. The scent of jasmine drenched the air, and the taste of Michael blotted out reason and doubt. His hands found her bare skin, making her shiver. She poured herself into the kiss, giving, giving …
Without warning, Michael broke away. The night air chilled her face and she shifted uneasily. The tilting world slowly righted itself. He was staring at her, his eyes unblinking, his breath coming in gulps. She drew back, confused and disoriented.
“Jory, I …” His voice shook.
“Don’t,” she said, reality rushing over her like cold water. She tugged her clothing into place with numb and clumsy fingers.
“Jory, I’m sorry. My God … what almost happened. What I almost did to you.”
She covered her embarrassment with nonchalance, trying to sound sophisticated. “What’s the big deal? You think some guy’s never tried anything with me before?”
“You’re my sister’s best friend. You’re a seventeen-year-old kid.”
Blinding anger exploded in her. She seized the front of his jacket and jerked it. “I’m not a kid, Michael,” she said through gritted teeth. “Stop treating me like I’m some stupid kid.”
Michael gathered her clenched fists in his hands and locked her eyes with his. His gaze stung and she felt naked and hot all over. His voice came low, his words gentle. “You’re right, Jory. You’re no kid. You’re pretty and soft and very much a woman. You don’t deserve to have it happen for you this way.”
Michael was rejecting her! The realization jolted Jory, and her anger became burning humiliation. She averted her eyes and mumbled, “You were drunk and I was scared because of almost having an accident. We got carried away talking about Melissa and … and … ” She struggled to rise, to get out of the car and run off. “We were just two c-crazy people …” Her voice wavered.