Chapter 11
As their breathing gentled, tendrils of mist began to creep into the garden. She smiled at the picture he made, framed by roses, his tousled hair silvered in the dim light.
He reached for his tuxedo jacket to draw over them, but she stopped his hand.
“I was afraid you might get cold,” he said.
“Not with you to warm me.” She settled herself more snugly against him, if that was possible, and could feel the rumble of laughter in his chest.
“Are all teachers’ daughters so shameless?”
For answer she flirted her toes against his shins. She marveled at how the feeling of his nakedness against hers, although so strange and foreign to her, still seemed right and natural. They were still learning each other; her eyes followed the gleam of moonlight along his flank as his fingers smoothed the tumbled hair back from her temples, and then ventured farther.
“You have the nicest body,” he said, his gaze moving appreciatively over her. “No, I mean it. All the girls I see every day have such a stingy look to them. Your body is so—generous. In the giving sense, I mean.”
She touched his face, tracing the curve of his lips as she had imagined doing that first night in the graveyard. His lips quirked under her fingertips. “Tickles,” he said.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” she said. “I see a different side of you every time we’re together. It’s like—I don’t know, like layers being peeled away.”
His woodsmoke eyes were suddenly grave.
“This is the one I want you to remember, then,” he said. “This is the real me, here with you now.”
“I’ll remember.” As if she could ever forget.
As she lay looking up at him, a dazed smile found its way back to his face. “I still can’t believe you’re with me like this.”
With him was where she belonged; she knew that now. “Of course I am,” she said. “I love you.”
For a second his expression went blank, and she had time to start to feel nervous. Maybe she shouldn’t have said it. Then his face began to work, and he screwed his eyes shut as if to fight it, turning his face away.
Startled, she sat up and put a hand to his shoulder, trying to turn him toward her to read his face. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and a dawning suspicion constricted her chest.
“Tan,” she said softly. “Has no one ever said that to you before?”
His head, still bowed, shook once.
“Then I’ll keep saying it,” she vowed, despite the lump that had formed in her throat. “And keep showing you. I love you, Tan. I do.”
His throat convulsed as he swallowed. “Thank you.” It was a hoarse whisper. He pulled her to him and held her, so tightly that she could feel the beat of his heart as if it were her own. “Thank you,” he whispered again, the words soft and broken against her ear.
This was the newness of him, she realized: the mockery and the bitterness had fallen away like a cast-off skin. Bare as a newborn, naked of all defenses, he was giving himself into her keeping.
The night was the longest Joy could remember, and she was grateful for the gift of it. There was more talk, more laughing; more kisses, more loving. She felt as if she and Tanner were in a place out of time, that the world had come to a stop just for them.
But finally they had to return to reality. When the sky lightened with dawn’s approach, they helped each other dress, with much stifled laughter like naughty children.
“Your skin smells like roses.”
“And you have petals in your hair.”
They met no one on their way back through the woods and to her dorm. It was as if a spell was over the world, she thought, and they were the only two people awake. She couldn’t stop smiling; neither could he. When they reached the side door nearest her room, she stood on tiptoe for one last long kiss, burying her hands in the softness of his hair. He caught one of her hands and brought it to his heart, holding it there as he looked into her eyes. There was no need for either of them to speak.
As she closed the door behind herself and crept up the stairs and down the hall, hoping not to wake anyone and alert them to her return, she felt more than ever that she was in the midst of a spell. The prince exploring the sleeping castle where the enchanted princess lay, perhaps. She eased open the door to her room and bundled together some nightclothes so quietly that there was no change in the peaceful breathing coming from Maddie’s bed.
In the bathroom she changed out of her crumpled dance dress and into cotton pajamas. She washed her face with cold water, hoping to take the blush out of her cheeks, but it was no good: when she looked in the mirror she saw that she still looked radiant. Her lips were swollen from kissing, and her eyes were far too bright. And underneath the fabric of her pajamas, her skin still held the memory of his body.
She sat down abruptly on the tile floor, overwhelmed.
In just a few hours, everything had changed for her. She was linked to Tanner as irrevocably as if they were husband and wife. Nothing would ever be the same.
Joy gave her father a heavily edited account of the dance, and a similarly edited account to Maddie and Tasha. Neither of them looked as if they believed they were getting the whole story. After all, said Maddie, “You left early and didn’t get back to the dorm until after I was asleep. That’s suspicious, young lady.”
Joy permitted herself one admission. “He’s an amazing kisser,” she told Maddie, who looked a bit envious. Joy wondered if Jeremiah was about to be deemed unsatisfactory and kicked to the curb.
Beltane night already felt like a dream in her memory. Finding the rose garden should have frightened her, especially when she trekked up the ridge the next day and was unable to find it again. She couldn’t understand why it didn’t scare her that she and Tanner had stumbled into something that had no rational explanation. The way she had always assumed the world to operate didn’t hold any more. She tried to find a way to explain it away, but part of her had already accepted it.
She was actually more surprised at herself for sleeping with Tanner. She knew better than to jump unthinkingly into intimacy. There were too many risks, and she knew she shouldn’t let herself off the hook for that. But everything about their time together that night felt as if it had unfolded in the only way it could have. Did ordinary logic even apply in an enchanted garden that didn’t usually exist? She could almost dare to hope that their time there had been enchanted also, a perfect thing that existed apart from day-to-day reality in its own self-contained bubble.
Back in that day-to-day reality, the marquee and stage had been disassembled, and the grounds had been restored to more or less their usual appearance. By Monday morning most of the students had caught up on sleep and were prepared to knuckle down for the last big academic push before finals.
She was making plans with Maddie and William for a study session when Sheila burst into the coffee bar and stormed up to their table. “Well, you’ve done it now,” she snapped at Joy. “Melisande’s gone.”
“She’s—what?”
“You heard me. She and her entourage have cleared out. Bet you’re not feeling so clever about your star-screwing career now, are you?”
Dread was forming in Joy’s stomach. Melisande had taken Tanner away?
“What could Joy possibly have to do with Melisande leaving?” asked William.
Sheila glared. “You know damn well that she was practically stalking Tristan. Melisande didn’t have any choice but to take him away. Now she’ll probably never come back, all thanks to Stalkerella here. Nice job, Joy.”
She left the three of them silent. Joy felt hollow inside. Tanner was gone. And she had no way of contacting him. Did he even know her phone number or email? She had no idea. They were completely cut off from each other. And for how long? Melisande could keep him away as long as she liked, at least until her guardianship expired with his birthday.
“Did you know?” William asked her.
She shook her head, not trusting h
er voice.
“So he didn’t even say goodbye?” Maddie demanded.
“He may not have had a chance,” William pointed out. “If it was a sudden whim of Melisande’s, it might have happened too fast for him to get in touch.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that because you’re a guy. I swear to god, you’re all the same.” She was warming up for her favorite rant now. “Guys are all just rotten bastards. We girls trust them, and they screw us over every single time. When it comes down to a choice between manning up or taking the easy way out, they’re cowards through and through. It was the same—”
“Will you shut up!” It was so unusual to hear William raise his voice that it even shocked Joy out of her distress, and she looked at him in amazement. Heads turned at nearby tables.
William’s usually mild expression was thunderous. “You’re always going on about how all guys are jerks. Did you ever think that maybe it just seems that way because you only date jerks? There are plenty of us who are perfectly decent guys. But apparently you have some need to be with assholes. So just lay off, Maddie, will you?”
He shoved his chair back from the table, grabbed his backpack, and slammed out of the coffee bar.
Maddie looked as if she’d reached out to pet a kitten and had it turn around and bite her hand off. “What’s his problem?” she said, bewildered. “I was just letting off steam. He’s never minded before.”
Joy didn’t answer. Had Melisande really left just to get Tanner away from her? And could he really have been taken by surprise? It was hard to believe such a large-scale move had been carried out at the last minute and without Tanner having known about it.
But if he had known about it, why didn’t he tell her? To spare her feelings? Or, worse—what if Joy was just a diversion for him while he was in town, and he’d never meant to continue a relationship with her?
That couldn’t be right. She remembered the way he had looked at her, the things he had said. His tenderness. He cared for her; he had to. If only she could know for sure how he felt about this move—whether he was yanked away against his will, or whether he followed Melisande with no more than a shrug for what he was leaving behind.
Her thoughts were on a hamster wheel and wouldn’t be still. Maddie still looked poleaxed. Both of them sat in silence until the coffee bar started clearing out and they realized it was time for their next class.