Chelsea laughed. “He hasn’t changed at all! When we were kids he’d call me in the middle of the night. I don’t think he paid any attention to the time. And he couldn’t have cared less about a social life. I used to try to get him to go with me to parties and dances, but he always said no. He wasn’t like a regular teenager wanting to drink and make out. Eli wanted to save the world.”
He was doing his best not to let her words hurt him. He’d thought that back then they’d been in agreement about everything. “You must have been dying to get away from him.”
“Oh, no! Not at all. When I was with Eli, I felt that I was part of the whole world. It was all very exciting. Did he ever tell you of the things we did?”
“Dental care?” Eli’s voice was contemptuous. “That couldn’t beat a drive in the moonlight or skinny-dipping on a dark night.”
“But it did,” Chelsea said. “I remember looking down my nose at the other kids and feeling superior to them. Eli and I were working on saving the world, while all they thought about was how to get beer for Saturday night.”
Eli smiled. “Beer can be a lot of fun.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Beer and wine and fast cars and beautiful men—they’ve all been glorious.”
“And men who love polo ponies,” Eli said.
“Maybe not him,” Chelsea said. She put her plate down. “I better go.” But she didn’t move. She sat there, her long legs stretched out, and looked at the garden. “It’s very nice here, isn’t it?”
“I like it. I haven’t lived in a house for years.”
“Me neither,” she said. “It’s been apartments and hotel rooms, and . . .” Her voice began to trail off. “It’s very warm here and I haven’t been sleeping well.”
As he watched, she fell asleep.
Eli took the empty glass out of her hand and put it on the table. Quietly, he left the porch and went inside to his bedroom, shut the door, and called Jeff.
When Jeff heard his phone, he grimaced. Why oh why couldn’t the man manage his own life for even a minute?
Jeff was sitting on a bench under a gigantic oak tree in a little park in the middle of the cute little town of Edilean. Beside him was a young woman named Melissa, and he’d asked her about the tree. She’d told him that it came from a seed brought over from Scotland by the original Edilean.
“So the town was given the name of a woman?” Jeff asked, his eyes wide with interest as she told him the history of the town. She was pretty, with freckles on her nose, and she was a deputy sheriff.
“In your job, don’t you risk getting shot at?” Jeff asked.
“There’s not much of that in Edilean.” She turned to look at him. “You’re easy to talk to.”
“And you’re easy to listen to,” he’d answered. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“I’d—”
She didn’t finish because Jeff’s phone rang and it was the theme from Jaws. Eli. Jeff gritted his teeth. Now what? Eli wanted him to buy polish for Chelsea’s wings? He touched the phone on.
“You have to be me,” Eli said, without a greeting. “If she figures out I’m me I think she’ll leave. She needs me to be you.”
They’d worked together for so long that Jeff almost understood what his boss was saying. “She thinks you’re me?”
“Yes!” Eli said. “And if she figures out the truth she’ll leave.”
It wasn’t the first time someone from the past had thought Jeff was Eli. After seeing the photos, Jeff had understood the mix-up. But Eli’d had years of being what Jeff called Taggertized. Early on, his new relatives by marriage had pulled Eli into a gym and told him of the benefits of eating protein by the pound. By the time Eli was twenty, he looked completely different.
When the Taggert family had first met Jeff, they’d tried to do the same thing to him, but he’d just laughed at them.
“I think you should tell her the truth,” Jeff said and knew he was saying this mainly to impress the young woman next to him. She was unabashedly listening to his conversation. Was snooping part of her law enforcement job? “Just tell her the truth!”
“No,” Eli said. “I don’t want to be me. I don’t want to be someone she has to endure.”
Jeff got up from the bench and walked to the far side of the park. “Take her out somewhere nice, have a good time, then surprise her with the good news of who you really are.”
Eli sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s what I should do. I’ll tell her who I am, then of course she’ll leave, and you and I can go back to Langley. Pilar says DC wants me to fly to some station in Iceland and see what’s going on there. You can go with me.”
He saw Melissa get up, and he watched her cross the street, her uniform clinging to her. She waved to him, then he saw her hurry after some guy who looked like he should be on the cover of GQ. There was a stethoscope around his neck. Jeff was sick of Iceland and deserts and places with bugs bigger than his face. It had been exciting for a while, but lately he’d been wanting something more ordinary.
Jeff went back to the phone. “I’ll be there in a few minutes and I’ll pretend to be you. But what then?”
“I have no idea,” Eli said. “I’m playing this by the minute. I have no long-term plan.”
That sentence silenced Jeff. Eli was a master at planning. He had one-year, five-year, and ten-year goals. Eli often astonished people at meetings by quickly outlining a plan of action that would take many years to complete.
“Interesting,” Jeff said. “Where is she now?”
“Asleep on the front porch. I think she’s in a sugar coma.”
“You were alone with a beautiful girl and you put her to sleep?”
“At least I kept her here,” Eli said. “She’s going to wake up soon and I don’t know what to do to make her stay.”
Jeff heard the panic in Eli’s voice and thought, If I ever fall in love, I hope someone shoots me.
But then he looked across the street. Pretty little Melissa was talking to a woman with a baby in a stroller. A bit of wind ran through the oak tree and a couple of leaves fell down. No, he didn’t want to go to Iceland—or for that matter, to Paris or London. He didn’t want to sit at a table full of men in uniforms as they made decisions about the future of the universe.
Right now all he wanted was to take a pretty girl out to dinner and know that he could ask her out on a second date. “I’ll fix it. She won’t leave,” he said, then clicked off his phone.
When Chelsea awoke, she lay still. She’d been dreaming about her last fight with Rodrigo. For weeks she’d suspected that there was someone else in his life, but he hadn’t had the courage to say so. But then, she’d thought she’d found something more in her life.
It took her a moment to come back to the present, then she looked around. The big deep porch was lovely and she wondered where . . . “he” was. Based on their talk, she was no longer sure who the man was.
But she liked him. He had a quiet sense of humor and he’d made her feel so good that she’d fallen asleep. Some date you are! she thought, laughing at herself.
She got up and opened the screen door. “Jeff? Are you in here?” When there was no answer, she looked around. Everything in the house was old and faded and worn—and cozy, she thought. It was very different from the places she’d lived in for the last few years. Everything had been new and modern, all of it painted white. In her crowd, to be truly sophisticated meant no color was allowed anywhere.
Chelsea went through the house, looking about, then returned to the living room—and there was Eli. Or was it Jeff? Whoever he was, he was just as she remembered him. Thin, serious, without humor.
In the grocery store he’d been wearing a smile, but he wasn’t now. He was shorter than she was and as thin as a jockey. And he was scowling with such anger that Chelsea took a step back.
&nb
sp; “Why did you stop writing me?” he asked in a low voice that was mostly a growl. “We were friends but you walked away from that. Do you have any idea how much you hurt me?”
He took a step toward her. “Did you think that having a brain makes me incapable of feelings?”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Chelsea began, but tears were coming to her.
“You didn’t mean to tear my heart from me? Do you know what you’ve done to my life? Because of you, I work all the time. The way you treated me made me feel that I’m not good enough for any woman. I—”
Neither of them saw Eli enter the room. He stood there in shock for a moment, then crossed the room in three strides. With a twist of his body, he pulled back his right arm and let it fly. His fist connected so hard with Jeff’s head that the smaller man flew backward and landed on the floor. Like some gladiator of old, Eli stood over him, straddling his body. “You don’t talk to her like that.”
Jeff put his hand to the side of his face and tried to flex his jaw. Pain was shooting up through his face. “You’re fired,” he managed to say. “Get out.”
“Good, because I quit.”
Eli grabbed Chelsea’s hand and went to the front door. He pushed it open so hard that it slammed against the exterior wall. He went down the stairs, still holding on to Chelsea, and stalked to her car.
Dropping her hand, he opened the car door but then leaned against the vehicle. His face was flushed from anger and she could see that he was trying to calm himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never hit anyone outside a ring.” He pushed away from the car. “I have to see if he’s all right. I have to apologize.”
“Like hell you will,” Chelsea said, then pushed on Eli until he was in the seat. She slammed the door and hurried around to the driver’s side and put the key in the ignition.
“I have to—” Eli began but broke off when Chelsea sped away so fast he fell back against the seat.
She drove out of Edilean and stopped at a roadside tavern. It was still early and there were only a few cars there. “How about some tequila?”
“Actually, I could use something to drink.” He was rubbing the knuckles of his hand, and he looked very upset.
Turning away, she smiled. She liked that he’d come to her defense, but she also liked that he felt bad about hitting someone. Sort of hero meets your best girlfriend.
Inside, they took a seat at a booth and ordered their drinks. Rock ’n’ roll was playing on the jukebox.
“So Jeff, what do you do besides beat up nerdy guys who tell the truth?” Chelsea asked over the noise of the music and the people who were beginning to fill the tavern.
He didn’t answer her question. “I didn’t like hearing what he said.”
“But that’s Eli. The way he said that was the exact tone of him. It was like he was a tape recorder and playing back what had run through his head a million times.”
He sat there for a moment, thinking about what she’d said. “Unfortunately, I think you’re right. You want to dance?”
“I’d love to!” She got up and he put his arms around her. Their bodies fit together well, and his movements were well timed to the music—and seductive. “So why hasn’t some woman snatched you up?” she asked.
“Women can’t tolerate my life. I’m gone most of the time. They want a depth of togetherness that I can’t manage.” He didn’t add that togetherness meant emotional as well as physical. “What about you? Weren’t you engaged once? What happened?”
Their hips were close together and moving to the music. Chelsea had her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. He was so good with the rhythm that she wondered what he was like in bed. Maybe if she stayed around, she’d find out.
He pulled back, looking at her to answer his question.
“Boredom,” she said as he whirled her about the floor. “He worked for my dad and I liked the family approval, but he was so much a creature of routine that I wanted to murder him. He came home at the same time, ate the same things. Six months after I met him, I knew what he was going to say before he did.”
“Some women like that.” He spun her to arm’s length, then pulled her back to him.
“Where did you learn to dance?”
“From the relatives I gained by Mom’s marriage. So why didn’t you find something to occupy yourself?”
Chelsea shook her head. “You’re supposed to tell me he should have done exciting things to keep someone as fabulous as me around. Then you should hint that if you and I were together, you’d make every second an adventure.”
“If you were so bored with yourself that you were studying him, you weren’t exactly fabulous, were you?”
For a moment Chelsea was stunned, but then she laughed so loud several people turned to look at her. Still smiling, she put her head back on his shoulder, her lips against his neck. “Don’t you know that beautiful women don’t have to do anything? To be seen is enough.”
“Is that why you starve yourself? So nothing else is asked of you?”
“Of course. Only Eli ever expected me to be something more than a pretty girl.”
When the music stopped, he led her back to the booth, where they ordered some more drinks. Chelsea’d had a few shots of tequila, but Eli had only nursed a single beer. He knew he’d be the one driving home.
He was quite consciously trying to get her drunk. Maybe if she had alcohol in her system he could get her to tell him what was so deeply wrong in her life.
When he’d first seen her today, all he’d been able to think about was how she’d left him. He’d vividly remembered his pain over the years, his deep loneliness, the sense that his life wasn’t complete.
It was his stepfather Frank who’d understood the most. Since Eli’s mother had been nearly overwhelmed with babies, a new husband, and a home, Eli had worked hard to keep her from seeing the turmoil that was going on inside him.
But Frank had seen it—and he’d told Eli about his own childhood and how in an attempt to do his duty, he’d given up the solitude that he needed. Frank didn’t let that happen to Eli. Over the years, the two of them had often gone to Frank’s cabin in the mountains and spent days there. When his mother asked him what they did, Eli said, “We spend the time in silence.”
At that moment two toddlers were loudly crying because the three-foot-tall tower they’d built had collapsed. His mother had laughed in understanding.
It was only after Chelsea moved away that Eli realized how very important she had been to his life. The ache he felt at not having a person to share everything with had been like a wound—and he’d almost not recovered.
Frank had offered to find her. “No!” Eli had said. “If she wants me, she knows where I am.”
After Chelsea left, Frank had moved them from that area. Eli had decided that he wasn’t yet ready to leave home to go to college, so Frank sent him to an exclusive private school where he wasn’t labeled “the brain” or “the nerd.” After the Taggert family got him into a gym, he began to attain that elusive thing called popularity.
But Eli never found anyone who came close to filling the gap that Chelsea had left in him.
Of course he kept up with her, reading about her on the internet. And Frank made sure Eli had access to any information he needed.
In college there’d been a few girls, but not many. And as his studies neared completion, he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. Companies offered him money, cars, houses, vacations in exotic locales. He wasn’t tempted. But when the government offered what he and Chelsea used to have, the chance to help people, he said yes. Frank was so proud of him there were tears in his eyes.
Through everything, Eli never came close to telling anyone about Chelsea. But then Jeff, with his sarcasm and excellent brain, came into Eli’s life. Other than Chelsea, he’d never had a best friend. Jeff wasn
’t as adventurous as Chelsea, wasn’t willing to take on the world as she was, but at least he didn’t run away as so many people who’d worked for Eli did. Morons! he thought. Cowards to the core.
Jeff had nagged until Eli told him of Chelsea. He told of what they did as children and how they’d succeeded so spectacularly in getting Eli’s mother with a really good man.
But unfortunately, Eli had also told Jeff about how Chelsea had left him and how it had hurt something deep inside him. It was as though some fundamental part of him had been broken, and it had never come close to being repaired.
Eli had been glad that Jeff hadn’t spouted the currently popular phrase move on with your life.
Instead, Jeff had said, “I wonder why she did that?” After that, Jeff’s innate ability to turn anything to sarcasm had taken over—and that had been good for Eli. He had enough self-pity for both of them.
It wasn’t until Jeff said those horrible words to Chelsea that Eli had seen the truth. Yes, he’d blamed her for so much bad in his life. When some girl left him—usually in a rage—Eli had thought of Chelsea and how this wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t
for her.
But hearing that from Jeff made Eli see himself in a way he didn’t want to. The truth was that Eli had never really liked any of the young women he’d dated. They were too dull-brained, too uninteresting, too easy to obtain. Something.
In other words, they weren’t Chelsea.
In those moments when he heard himself through Jeff, Eli changed. First there’d been a burst of anger at himself—and he’d taken it out on Jeff. Eli had wanted to hit himself, but it was Jeff on the floor with what was the beginning of a black eye.
For a while Eli had been too horrified at his own actions to be able to think clearly, but as he began to calm down, he looked at Chelsea. But he wasn’t looking at her with the eyes of a wounded boy, but as a man. His mind wasn’t full of what-you-did-to-me, but of concern.
He looked at her as does that very underrated creature, a true, deep, and loyal friend.