“I’m so sorry for him,” Jecca said, but inside she was elated. Beautiful man, heartbroken, in need of consoling. The summer was looking more interesting by the second.
When they got to Edilean, Jecca made the appropriate sounds about how cute the little town was. Historical buildings had been restored and every façade was under a strict code for conformity of appearance. No glass and steel structures allowed in Edilean!
As an artist, Jecca appreciated it all, but she was working hard to get out of her small town in New Jersey where she’d grown up. Right now, she only admired cities, specifically New York.
As for Reede, he was going to be a doctor, so he could work anywhere—and now his connection to Edilean was broken. Jecca had a vision of the two of them living in Paris. He’d be a renown heart surgeon and she an artist revered by the French. They’d visit Edilean and see Kim often.
When they reached the Aldredge home, Jecca was smiling. “When can I see Kim?”
“Anytime. My wife is already at the hospital, and I’m going over there as soon as I unload your suitcases. You can go with me if you want.”
“I’d love to.”
He drove them the ten miles to the hospital in Williamsburg, and when she saw Kim sitting up in bed with a sketchbook in her hands, Jecca laughed. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy. Resting.”
Kim’s parents politely left the room.
As soon as they were alone, Jecca said, “I told your father I wanted to go painting at Florida Point and I thought he was going to faint.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did!” Jecca said. “So spill the dirt.”
“I told you not to say that name to anyone from Edilean.”
“You did not,” Jecca said.
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t.” She glanced at the door, then lowered her voice. “It’s the local makeout point—and has been for centuries.”
“Centuries?” Jecca asked in disbelief.
“Certainly since WWI and that ended in—”
“1918,” Jecca said quickly. “And donand8220;An’t remind me of the Great War. That’s when Layton Hardware was founded, and if I hear one more time that we Laytons have a tradition to uphold . . . Okay, so what about that war?”
“Somebody called the place the French Letter Point. That’s old slang for a condom and they were used a lot there. Somewhere along the way it got shortened to F.L. and since that stands for Florida . . .”
“I get it,” Jecca said. “So I’m to say Stirling Point to anyone over thirty.”
“Good idea.”
“So let me see what you’re designing,” Jecca said and picked up her friend’s sketchbook. Kim’s passion was jewelry and she loved organic forms. That was one thing that had united the three young women when they’d met at school. Whether it was jewelry, paintings, or sculpture, they liked reproducing what they saw in nature.
“I like this,” Jecca said, looking at the branch-like designs. They flowed in a way that would hug a woman’s neck. “Will you add any jewels?”
“I can’t afford them. I can barely afford the silver.”
“I could get Dad to send you some steel ball bearings.”
Kim laughed. “So tell me what you said to your dad to get him to let you come. And tell me again about you and all those men in tool belts.”
“Gladly, but first I want to hear all about Laura and Reede and the bad boy preacher.”
Kim groaned. “Whatever you do, don’t mention any of that while Reede is around. And don’t make jokes!”
Jecca stopped smiling. “Really bad, huh?”
“Worse than you can imagine. Reede was really in love with that little slut and—”
“Has that always been your opinion of her?”
Again Kim looked at the doorway. “Actually, it was worse. I thought she was ordinary.”
Neither she nor Kim would ever say it out loud, but having been born with a talent in art made them feel grateful but also, well, sometimes disdainful of people who didn’t create. “How ordinary?” Jecca asked.
“Bland. Nothing she ever did was different from what everyone else did. The way she dressed, what she talked about, what she cooked, everything was tasteless, flat. I could never understand what Reede saw in her.”
“Pretty?”
“Yes, but not in a way that would cause any notice.”
“Maybe that’s why she left. Maybe she was intimidated by Reede,” Jecca said. “I only saw him once, but if I remember correctly, he wasn’t bad to look at. And he must be smart or he wouldn’t be in med school.”
Kim was looking at her friend hard. “Did you come here to see me or my newly single brother?”
“I didn’t know he was single until an hour ago! But now that I’ve heard, I’m not exav h17;m noctly torn up about it.”
Kim started to say more but she saw her mother about to enter the room. “You have my blessing,” she whispered and squeezed Jecca’s hand.
Blessing or no, over the next few days Jecca found it impossible to get Reede’s attention. If anything, he was better-looking than she remembered, and at twenty-six, he was close to being a full-fledged doctor.
But hard as she worked she couldn’t get him to notice her. She wore shorts that showed her legs, low-cut tops that displayed a lot of her breasts. But he never looked. In fact, she never saw him look at anything. He just wandered around the house in old sweats, watched TV some, but mostly stared at the walls. It was like his body was alive, but his mind wasn’t.
A couple of times, Jecca saw Kim’s mother looking at her as though she knew that Jecca was trying to get her son’s attention. She seemed to approve, because she was very nice to Jecca. She even gave a party and invited a lot of people from Edilean—most of whom were unmarried men. They all seemed to be interested in Jecca, but she paid no attention to them. Her mind was on Reede.
After three days of trying to get his attention, Jecca gave up. If he wasn’t interested in her, that’s the way it was. She wasn’t going to keep on dressing like she was trying to get a job as a stripper.
She got Kim to draw her a map of how to get to Florida Point—she whispered the name—put on her normal jeans and T-shirt, grabbed her case of watercolors, and used Kim’s car to drive out of town to the isolated place.
She spent two days at the Point, working constantly. Kim had been right that it was a magnificent site. There was a tall rock cliff that had long views on one side and looked down into a deep, clear pond of water on the other. First, she photographed the views, holding down the button on the digital camera so it clicked rapidly. She’d never been good at painting from photos, but maybe she would learn.
She worked hard to capture the blue mist that came up out of the Virginia hollows and gradually disappeared into the treetops. She played with putting one shade on top of the other to try to re-create the way the light faded then brightened.
She experimented with working slowly and meticulously on one painting, then whizzing through the second one.
On the second day, she didn’t go up the path to the top of the cliff but stayed below to study the flowers, the seedpods, the bark on the trees, the leaves. She didn’t try to arrange anything but painted what she saw. Leaves naturally crossed one another in a perfect balance of light, color, and form.
A couple of times she stretched out on her stomach to see some flowers that were the size of a ladybug, then re-created them with her watercolors. She used her camera’s—thank you for the gift, Dad—close-up icon to enlarge the flowers so she could paint the stamens and pistils, the veining on the petals, and the tiny leaves.
When she got through, she had a flower that filled an eight-by-ten piece of the heavy watercolor paper.
She was so absorbed in what she was doing that she heard nothing until a shout made her jump. Turning, she looked through the bushes and realized how hidden she was from the grassless, worn area around the poe lround tol.
Looking up, she saw a man standing on the
high rocks. The sun was behind him so she couldn’t see his face, but she could see that his beautiful body was naked. And it looked like he was about to make one of the infamous dives off the cliff.
“For you, Laura Chawnley,” the man yelled. “Good-bye, forever.”
Jecca drew in her breath. It was Reede Aldredge up there. An extremely depressed young man was about to dive off a cliff into a pool of water of dubious depth.
Jecca dropped her painting and tripped over her box of watercolors as she ran to the open area. “No!” she yelled upward. “Reede, no!”
But he didn’t hear her. In horror, she watched him do a perfect swan dive off the high rock and head toward the pool. He cut down into the water gracefully—and didn’t come up.
Jecca seemed to wait for minutes, but there was no sign of Reede. She didn’t think about what she did, just jumped into the cold water, clothes, shoes, and all. She wasn’t a good swimmer but she could move well enough to look for him underwater.
She went down, eyes open, but saw nothing. She went up, grabbed a lungful of air, then went down again, holding her breath as long as she could. No Reede. The third time she went down she thought she saw a foot ahead of her. She swam underwater as fast as she could and grabbed the foot.
Reede jerked around so fast that he made Jecca’s head hit the rock side of the pool. The next thing Jecca knew, she was going down, down, down.
But Reede grabbed her under her arms and swam with her to the top. She was only vaguely conscious as he carried her to the rocks, and put her down. He bent, as though to start mouth-to-mouth, but Jecca began to cough up water.
Reede sat back on his heels. “What the hell were you trying to do?” he half yelled at her. “You could have died in there if I hadn’t been here to save you.”
“I wouldn’t have been in there”—she paused to cough—“if I hadn’t gone in to save you.”
“Me? I didn’t need rescuing, you did.”
“I didn’t know that, did I?” Jecca said as she sat up—and saw that Reede was naked. She was determined to be sophisticated, a woman of the world, and not mention his nudity. She kept her eyes on his. “I thought you were attempting to . . . to . . . end your problems.” She was having trouble keeping her mind on words.
Reede seemed unaware of his lack of clothing. “You thought I was trying to commit suicide?” He looked astonished as he stood up and walked a few feet away.
Jecca knew she should turn her head, but she couldn’t help peeking. The backside of him was truly beautiful: a back sculpted down to a small waist, beautiful buttocks, and strong legs. He didn’t get a body like that by spending all his time studying.
She hadn’t noticed but there was a pile of clothes stacked on a rock. “Maybe I have been a little down lately,” he said as he stuck a leg in his pants.
A littleoulittle down? Jecca thought. He could have walked under the belly of a cockroach. She said nothing because she saw that he wore no underwear. But then he shouldn’t cover all that beauty up.
“Actually, I think I’ve handled it all rather well,” Reede said. “A truly horrible thing was done to me.”
“Treacherous,” Jecca said.
“Yeah,” Reede agreed.
“Diabolical.”
“True.” He put his other leg in the jeans but didn’t zip them, just left them hanging open.
I guess it would be too much to run and get my camera, Jecca thought. “Dastardly.”
“All of it,” he said as he slipped on old, beat-up sneakers, then pulled a T-shirt over his head and covered up those pecs and those abs.
“A real travesty,” Jecca said, but she didn’t mean him and his ex-girlfriend. She leaned back on her arms and watched him fasten his jeans. The show was better than any movie she’d ever seen.
He returned to hand her a towel and squat down in front of her. “Are you okay? Physically, I mean.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Mind if I look at you?”
Jecca leaned back against the rock. “I’m all yours,” she said, then added, “Doc.”
He ran his hands over her head, feeling for bumps. “Laura has a right to do whatever she wants. Follow my finger.”
She looked from side to side.
“If she wants someone else, she has free will. Any pain anywhere?”
She started to ask if a body that was tingling all over with desire counted, but didn’t. “Nothing I haven’t felt before.”
“Good,” he said. “You look okay to me.”
“Thanks,” she said without enthusiasm. “So you didn’t try to kill yourself?”
“Hell no! I’ve been jumping off that cliff since I was a kid—but don’t tell Mom that or she’ll start a petition to get the place closed down, or dynamited.” He paused. “So what are you doing up here?”
“Painting,” she said.
He looked around, but saw nothing. Jecca got up, went into the bushes, returned with her watercolors, and spread them out on a rock.
“These are good,” he said. “I’m no art critic, but . . .” He shrugged.
“You know what you like?”
“Yeah.” He gave a little grin at the cliché, then sat down and leaned back against the rock.
Jecca left her paintings in the sun to dry and sat beside him, but with three feet between them. “Are you better now?”
“Yev> m">Rs,” he said. “The whole thing with Laura was a shock as much as anything. Maybe you’re too young to say this to, but—”
“I’m nineteen.”
“Old enough to hear, I guess. I’ve never been to bed with any woman except Laura.”
“Really,” she said, astounded.
“Dumb, huh?”
“Actually, it’s kind of nice,” she said. “Faithfulness seems to be a forgotten virtue in our country.”
“I’m sure Kim told you that I fell in love with Laura when I was in the eighth grade. We were together through high school, college, and since I’ve been in med school.”
“Sounds like a long-term marriage. Maybe she wanted someone she didn’t know every little thing in the world about.”
He looked at her. “You’re smart, aren’t you?”
She didn’t answer, just smiled in a way that she hoped was both seductive and mysterious.
Reede didn’t seem to notice. “Laura said something like that. She said that guy didn’t know what she liked to eat, to wear, or what she was going to say before she said it.”
“If she’s that predictable maybe she’s a bit of a dullard.” She didn’t know how he’d take what she’d said, but some reality needed to be injected into the situation.
“You’ve been talking to my sister. She says Laura is as dull as tarnished silver—without the silver underneath.”
“That sounds like Kim.” Jecca hesitated. “So what do you plan to do now?”
“I think I’ll make my family happy and stop moping. Then I think I’ll make up for lost time.”
“Women?” she asked and couldn’t help thinking, Me first!
“One or two maybe. I’m certainly not going to waste another second being miserable.”
“Good,” she said. “Maybe you and I could . . . uh, do something.”
Reede stood up and stretched. “Sorry, kid, but I need to hit the books. I think I’ll go back to school and see what’s going on there. I’ve wasted weeks being—” He waved his hand. “That’s over now.”
Jecca stood up and tried to think of something clever to say to make him stay, but nothing came to mind.
He stepped away from her, then turned back. “Thanks for this.” He motioned to the deep pool. “It wasn’t very wise of you to jump into unknown water like that when you’re not good at swimming, but I appreciate it. I really do.”
He hesitated for a moment, then took her chin in his hand and kissed her on the mouth. He meant it as a sweet kiss, one of gratitude, but it made Jecca’s knees weak. She’d had a crush on him for a year, and that combined with seeing him so
gloriously naked and watching him dress, sem">im dresnt vibrations through every nerve in her body.
She put her hands up, meaning to pull him to her, but he ended the kiss and stepped back to look at her.
“Wow! You are grown up. I better get out of here before I take advantage of my little sister’s friend. Thanks, Jecca, for listening. For everything.”
In the next minute, he was running down some path she’d not seen. She heard a car start then drive away.
She sat down on the rock where her watercolors were spread and heaved a great sigh. “Damn, damn,” she said aloud, then a breeze came by and she shivered. When Reede was there she’d been so warm she hadn’t even noticed her wet clothes, but now she was freezing.
She gathered up her paintings, her supplies, and Reede’s towel, and got to Kim’s car just as it began to rain. By the time she got back to the Aldredge house, Reede had already packed a few belongings and left home.
His parents were smiling at her.
“Reede said you saved his life,” Mrs. Aldredge said.
“I tried to,” Jecca answered, “but he wasn’t drowning. I just thought he was.” After she changed clothes, she told them a cleaned-up version of the story, and they said that her actions may have jolted Reede out of his depression.
“I don’t think so,” she said, but it was nice that his parents thought they had.
As for Kim, the minute they were alone, she asked Jecca if she’d slept with Reede.
“I wanted to,” Jecca said, “but he wasn’t interested.”
Since Jecca was a very pretty woman and men usually went for her, Kim wanted to know every detail. “Even if he is my brother.”
Jecca told Kim a more complete story than she’d told his parents. This one included the naked parts. But Jecca didn’t reveal what Reede had told her about Laura being the only woman he’d ever slept with. To do so would have been a betrayal of his trust.
“He thinks you’re a kid like me,” Kim said.
“I think you’re right,” Jecca said. “But maybe it’s better that he left. I probably would have embarrassed myself with him.”
“You met some of my other relatives,” Kim said. “I could fix you up with a date. You seemed to like Tristan.”