Near and Far

  “Was that what I thought it was?” I bit my lip to keep my excitement contained.

  “Yeah, it was. That was me slitting my own throat when I had my opponent right where I wanted him. That was one misfit taking one for the misfit team.”

  I’d known it all along. I forgot it along the way sometimes, but Garth wasn’t the hard shell of a man he liked us all to believe he was.

  “Thank you.” I beamed at him. “So, so much.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He waved at me dismissively. “Get the fuck out of here and go fuck your boyfriend already.”

  Well, the redeeming thing had been nice while it lasted.

  “Fuck, that felt good.” Garth hopped up like new life had just burst into him. Arching his head back, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!! FUCKITY FUCK, FUCKERY, FUCKER!”

  Jolene and Josie must have had their music blasting or were comatose because Garth was shouting so loudly, the next zip code could have heard him.

  “FUCK!!!”

  “Done?” I twisted my finger into my ear.

  “Just getting warmed up, Topless-Wonder.”

  “I’ll leave you to it then. Have fun.” I shoved away from the dock and started swimming for a certain clump of trees in the distance. I’d only gotten a few yards when I stopped. “Hey, Garth?” He looked like he was about to break into another chorus of curses. “Thanks. For a self-proclaimed asshole, you’re a pretty decent guy. From one misfit to another, I’m glad we’re on the same team.”

  From the looks of it, Garth would have been more comfortable having his nether-region waxed than receiving a compliment. He looked off in the distance and scratched the back of his neck for a moment, at a total loss. How could someone render a man like Garth Black speechless? Give him a compliment.

  Finally, he glanced my way. “Rowen. Go fuck yourself.” His words were softened with a smile and a wink. In terms of endearment, that was the pinnacle in Garth’s world.

  Before things got any more record-breaking with Garth, I continued my swim back to Jesse. If I thought I’d swam fast the previous one-way, that had nothing on the return trip. Not only had Garth just fallen on his own bet sword, but Jesse was a few more kicks away, naked and still hopefully . . . ready.

  When I resurfaced after my dive beneath the willow branches, I didn’t see anything naked or ready waiting for me. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if I’d picked the wrong section of trees when someone bubbled to the surface behind me. I almost burst out of my skin in surprise before those strong, familiar arms wound around me.

  “Looking for someone?” Jesse lowered his mouth to my ear.

  “Yeah. But you’ll do.”

  “I know I should at least pretend that hurt my feelings, but I need to confirm something first.”

  I rolled my head back and let it rest against Jesse’s shoulders as his hands traveled up and down my body. “What do you need confirmed?”

  “Was that what I thought I heard coming from Black’s mouth?”

  “Yes. And from the sounds of it, it’s what’s still coming from his mouth.” Garth sounded like he wasn’t only making up for lost time, he was making up for future time as well.

  “And am I right to guess you might have had something to do with that?” Jesse’s hands stopped moving, but his fingers started, and they were about to send me right over the edge.

  “Yes,” I sighed, draping an arm behind his neck. “Yes, you’re . . . oh my god, you’re good.” He chuckled against my neck, his pace slowing. “I mean, yes, oh my god, you’re right.” Come on, he knew better than to expect a logical string of words to come from my mouth when he was doing those kinds of things to me.

  “Why? Why was it so important to you that I not lose? Why beg Garth to let me win?” His fingers stopped altogether, and while I could at least think, that wasn’t what I wanted to concentrate my efforts on.

  “For the same reason it was so important to you that I didn’t lose to Jolene back there. For the same reason you pretty much shoved her off your back. We’re a team.” I twisted until I was facing him. Cupping his face, I kissed him softly. “Win or lose, we’re in it together. Right?”

  Leaning his forehead into mine, Jesse’s eyes went soft. “Win, lose, on top of the world, or at rock bottom . . . I’m with you, Rowen Sterling. To the very end.”

  It was my turn for my eyes to go soft, although mine went so far they formed tears. “To the very end.”

  Maybe there was more I wanted to say, and maybe there was more he did too, but when Jesse’s mouth crashed into mine as he shifted me above him, there were no words left. When Jesse entered me, I lost everything. All the words on the tip of my tongue. All the thoughts swirling through my head. All control. The only thing I felt was Jesse and his love.

  I kissed him back, moving against him, hoping that was all he felt too. It didn’t take either of us long, but when we did fall apart around each other, the last thing I remembered thinking before crying out and the first thing I remembered at the end of it was that surely no one had ever loved another person the way I loved Jesse Walker.

  THINGS CAN CHANGE so fast. Too fast.

  Example?

  Spring break felt like it would last forever one Sunday afternoon while making love, and in what seemed like a blink later, I was on a bus heading west. Things changed too goddamned fast. Especially the good things.

  That afternoon at the swimming hole had been the high point, the twelve-hour ride home the following Sunday had been the low, and for some sick, unfair reason, my low point followed me into Monday. Well, I guess it was actually Tuesday since we’d passed the midnight mark.

  Alex had just flipped off the Open sign and was pouring herself another cup of coffee while I emptied the display of the remaining doughnuts. I’d been moving like a slug all day long, at barely half time. Even the first day of spring quarter hadn’t cheered me up, and I’d gotten every single class I’d signed up for. Art, art, and more art. Did I mention art?

  I was doing what I loved and excelling at it. I was in the running for one of the most prestigious internships in the city. I had good friends who were always willing to share a laugh. I was healthy, living independently, and had managed to move forward from my past.

  And there was one other thing. A monumental thing. I had the love of a guy who redefined what a good man was. I had the world at my fingertips.

  So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that something was about to change? Like I’d come home to spring in Seattle to find my own personal winter about to set in? Why did I feel like I was walking around like I was waiting for the ground to fall out from beneath me? Why did I feel like the one person I cared about most was about to slip through my fingers?

  Probably because I’d had to say a teary good-bye to him yesterday morning while knowing it would be another two weeks before I saw him next. I was pre-menstrual, and the clouds had been leaking rain non-stop since I’d pulled into the bus station. It was crazy how hormones and the weather could change a person’s entire outlook.

  “So this Jolene chick pretty much followed you two around all week?” Alex plopped down on the display case I was cleaning, picking up our conversation from earlier. It had started out with what we’d done over spring break, then turned into a Jolene this, Jolene that fest.

  “The only place we were safe was the other side of his bedroom door.” I smiled at a few memories as my heart ached. “So we spent a lot of time behind closed doors.”

  “You saucy little sex-pot you.” Alex patted my head.

  “Thanks?”

  “So what are you going to do about this Jolene chick now that you’re hundreds of miles away from your boyfriend who she is probably, at present, knocking over the head with a fry pan so she can drag him into her bed and have her way with him?”

  I slapped her hand away from where it was still patting my head. “So glad I told you. I feel so much better. So reassured right now.”

  Alex laughed and twirled one
of the chains coming off her black vinyl bustier. It was the first day of a new quarter. Chains, vinyl, and torn-up fishnets were the obvious choice. “Calm down, little kitten.”

  “I might if you weren’t here, doing the opposite of calming me with your opposite of reassuring premonitions.”

  She laughed again then cut it short when she saw my face. “Okay, let’s approach this rationally since approaching it emotionally is making you an angry cat.” She tapped her chin for a few seconds, then her eyes widened. “Are you worried about Jesse actually going for Jolene?”

  After deciding that Alex was serious, I gave her question some thought. I didn’t need to give it much. “No.” It was a simple, truthful answer. Jesse didn’t possess a non-loyal bone in his body.

  “Are you worried about him getting drunk off his ass and jumping into bed with her in his drunken haze?”

  I rolled my eyes. Jesse did drunk about as often as he did disloyalty. “No.”

  “Then what are you worried about exactly?”

  That was the question that sent the proverbial punch to my gut. What in the hell was I so worried about? Why had I wasted precious time fuming over some inconsequential person? The lines in my forehead felt close to becoming permanent. “I don’t know.”

  Alex’s eyes met mine. “So you’re not worried about Jolene and Jesse’s future relationship. Good, we got to the bottom of that. But, and this is one big but you better pay attention to, girl, because it’s a doozy . . . but you should be worried about Jesse’s and yours. Because this little jealous, insecure thing you’re dealing with will only hurt the two of you.”

  And round two of the proverbial gut punch.

  I thought about what Alex had just said for so long, the doughnut in my hand came close to petrifying. She was right on every single level I’d been wrong on. How had I missed that? What had clouded me to seeing it? Was it my tendency to glom on to the bad in life? Shit, I hoped not. Or was it because I loved Jesse so much I’d become a crazed person boiled down to raw emotion and instinct? I wasn’t eager for either of those possibilities to come out on top.

  “Damn. How did you get so smart?” I stood up feeling like the epiphany dump had put me in need of some fresh air.

  Alex hopped down from the counter. “Making a bunch of mistakes.”

  “If that’s the measure of a person’s smartness, I should be a regular Einstein and a half.”

  “Okay, well I lived and I learned.”

  My brows came together. “Are you implying I haven’t?”

  Alex paused on her way down the hallway, probably heading for Sid’s office. “We’ll see.” She gave me a small smile before—yep—rounding into Sid’s office and closing the door.

  I was going to need that fresh air for more than one reason.

  Grabbing the trash with one hand, I carried the old doughnuts in my other and break-necked for the back door. It was still raining, but at least it’d slowed to a drizzle. Between the events of the past twenty-four hours, the rain, and sheer exhaustion, I couldn’t go another step. The dumpster wasn’t even ten feet away, but it might as well have been ten miles. I was spent.

  Setting down the garbage bag, I leaned into the brick wall and tried to calm my mind. Confusion had set in, and it was moving fast, its contagion spreading. Even standing became too much. After dropping to the ground, I buried my head between my knees and focused on breathing. For no solid reason I could point to, my world felt like it was crumbling, piece by piece. Either I needed to get a concentrated dose of Midol injected in my ass or get a solid eight hours of sleep and wake up feeling normal. Or normal for me, at least.

  “Where have you been all week?”

  As yet another sign that I was a mess, I barely even flinched when that strange voice hollered at me. I rubbed my eyes before looking up. No tears, but they’d been close. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me to see the homeless woman from last week coming toward me, but it did. I’d almost convinced myself she and what she’d said had all been a hallucination.

  “Girlie? Did you hear me?”

  “Spring break. I was in Montana.” My voice was robotic, and my movements felt the same.

  “Doing what?” The woman stopped in front of me. The expectation in her eyes told me what she was looking and hoping for. I held out the box of doughnuts. She snatched the box out of my hands, backed into the wall, and was one doughnut in before I’d worked up a reply.

  “Seeing my boyfriend. Seeing his family and friends, too.” A heavy dose of home sickness stabbed at me. I loved my life in Seattle, but I never longed for it or ached for it like I did Willow Springs.

  “How was it?” she asked around a jelly doughnut.

  I didn’t know why I was sitting there having a semi-personal conversation with a homeless person who had scared the crap out of me, but I needed to talk to someone. Thankfully, she seemed to be firmly back in her rocker.

  “Great. I had an amazing week.”

  She finished the rest of the jelly doughnut before asking her next question. “Then why are you in an alley all alone looking like you’re about to start crying?”

  I literally couldn’t escape perceptive people. Not even in a garbage-ridden alley on the scary side of Seattle. “I’m confused.”

  “Confused about what?”

  I swallowed. “So many things.”

  “Things about your boyfriend?”

  “Maybe . . . Yes.” I sighed and scuffed the tip of my boot against the asphalt. “I don’t know.” Those three words summed up my current state of mind. It seemed, after nineteen years of life, I didn’t know shit. I felt like I’d known some yesterday, but today was a whole other story. I didn’t know why I was so upset or why that anxiety had settled over me, and I really didn’t know why I was having a conversation with a stranger. One who ate a box of doughnuts for dinner.

  “Excuse me for saying, Girlie,” she started, her eyes boring into mine, “but love doesn’t seem like it should be so confusing. It doesn’t seem like it should be so hard.”

  “Why not?” I wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing; the verdict was still out.

  “Because it’s love,” she said with a shrug. “It should come easy.”

  I sat there a while longer, reeling over what she’d just said. Part of me knew that was true. Another part of me screamed it was a lie. Should love be easy? Or should it be hard? Should it even be either?

  In twenty-four hours, my mind had become a giant mass of confusion.

  THE NIGHTMARES WERE coming every night, and what was worse than their frequency was that Rowen has somehow made her way into them. That’s a world and a part of my life I didn’t want her anywhere close to. I’d protect her from it at all costs.

  I’d bolted awake last night after a repeat dream. I was in the basement again, chained to the pipe, more animal than boy, but I wasn’t alone. I heard another chain clinking against a pipe across the room. When I saw her, there was no denying it was a young Rowen. She was crying, curled up into a ball, and trembling. No matter how many times I called out to her, or how loud, she didn’t hear me. She didn’t know I was chained on the opposite side of the room from her. Then the basement door opened, and I heard familiar shoes coming down the stairs. When the shoes stopped on the basement floor, they paused. When they started moving again, they weren’t coming my way. They were going toward Rowen. I fought against my restraint so savagely, the leather around my neck rubbed the skin raw. Drops of blood dotted the floor when I heard the first scream come from the other side of the room.

  And then, mercifully, I was ripped awake.

  THE LAST TWO weeks were long. Partly because I hadn’t seen Rowen and partly because I hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night. What was waiting for me the moment my eyes closed and my brain drifted off made me force myself to stay awake. My first five years of life, I’d done the opposite because any dream world was an improvement.

  Rowen and I’d talked every day since she left at the end of spring brea
k, but she seemed different. A bit removed or preoccupied.

  Or maybe her seeming removed and preoccupied had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. I certainly wasn’t the carefree Jesse everyone was used to, although I tried to play the part. Most people accepted the facade, but a few—my mom, Lily, and Josie—saw through it. They’re too perceptive, and part of me was irritated by that. And part of me was grateful because I knew if and when I did need to talk to someone about my reincarnated demons, I’d have someone. Of course Rowen was the person I’d go to first with anything. . . but not that. I didn’t want her in that world. She’s been through so much, and it was my job to protect her from any more darkness.

  So, yeah, the last two weeks had been bad, but things were looking up. The next day was Friday, and I had the weekend off to go visit Rowen. I would work through whatever was going on in my head, Rowen would be none the wiser, and everything would be just fine.

  It sounded easy enough, but I knew doing it would be the opposite.

  The afternoon chores were done, and I was up in my attic bedroom changing into fresh clothes. After Jolene had stumbled in on me three different times while I was changing in the laundry room, Mom and I decided my bedroom might be a better place to change. At least until Jolene learned to knock.

  After clasping my belt into place, I grabbed my wallet out of my dirty pants. I was about to slide it into my back pocket when I paused. For months, I couldn’t go longer than an hour without checking to make sure it was still there. Then I’d gone months without checking. I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d checked to make sure it was still tucked into the last card slot of my wallet. I had a sudden urge to check. That unsettled me. A lot. The frantic feeling jolting through me was foreign, yet familiar. I’d lived that frantic feeling in a past life. I didn’t want to live, or even revisit, it in this life.

  I inhaled as I opened my wallet. Slipping my little finger into the last slot, I slid it along the bottom. My throat went dry. I slid my finger back again, making sure I hadn’t missed it. Surely it was still in there. After sliding my finger back and forth a couple dozen times, I emptied the entire contents of my wallet. Maybe it had fallen into a different slot. My driver’s license, a few dollar bills, and a photo of Rowen fell to the floor. My wallet dropped beside the mess a moment later.