Knowing how I hate to be alone, and how I especially hate to be alone in our big house, I shudder.
“Maybe that’s why he wants to rent out the Carriage House,” I offer. “So he’s not so alone up here.”
“Maybe.”
Finn reaches over and flips on some music, and I let the thumping bass fill the silence while we sort through my clothes. Usually, our silence is comfortable and we don’t need to fill it. But today, I feel unsettled. Tense. Anxious.
“Have you been writing lately?” I ask to make small-talk. He’s always scribbling in his journal. And even though I’m the one who’d gotten it for him for Christmas a couple years ago, he won’t let me read it. Not since he showed it to me one time and I’d freaked out.
“Of course.”
Of course. It’s pretty much all he does. Poems, Latin, nonsense… you name it, he writes it.
“Can I read any of it yet?”
“No.”
His answer is definite and firm.
“Ok.” I don’t argue with that tone of voice, because honestly, I’m a bit nervous to see what’s in there now anyway. But he does pause and turn to me.
“I don’t think I ever said thank you for not running to mom and dad. When you read it that one time, I mean. It’s just my outlet, Cal. It doesn’t mean anything.”
His blue eyes pierce me, straight into my soul. Because I know I probably should’ve gone to them. And I probably would’ve, if mom hadn’t died. But I didn’t, and everything has been fine since then.
Fine. If I think hard enough on that word, then it will be true.
“You’re welcome,” I say softly, trying not to think of the gibberish I’d read, the scary words, the scary thoughts, scribbled and crossed out, and scrawled again. Over and over. Out of all of it, though, one thing stood out as most troubling. One phrase. It wasn’t the odd sketches of people with their eyes and faces and mouths scratched out, it wasn’t the odd and dark poems, it was one phrase.
Put me out of my misery.
Scrawled over and over, filling up two complete pages. I’ve watched him like a hawk ever since. He smiles now, encouraging me to forget it, like it’s just his outlet. He’s fine now. He’s fine. If I had a journal, I’d scrawl that on the pages, over and over, to make it true.
“Hey, I’m going to go to Group again today. Do you want to come with? If not, I can go myself.”
This startles me. He normally only goes twice a week. Have I missed something? Is he worse? Is he slipping? I fight to keep my voice casual.
“Again? Why?”
He shrugs, like it’s no big deal, but his hands are still shaking.
“I dunno. I think it’s all the change. It makes me feel antsy.”
And shaky? I don’t ask that though. Instead, I just nod, like I’m not at all freaked out. “Of course I’ll go.”
Of course, because he needs me.
An hour later, we’ve walked down the hallways filled with our mother’s pictures, past her bedroom filled with her clothes, and are driving to town in the car she bought us. We both pointedly avoid looking at the place where she plunged over the side of the mountain. We don’t need to see it again.
Our mother is still all around us. Everywhere. Yet nowhere. Not really.
It’s enough to drive the sanest person mad. No wonder Finn wants extra therapy.
I leave him in front of his Group room, and watch him disappear inside.
I take my book to the café today for a cup of coffee. I’ve grown accustomed to the rain making me sleepy since I’ve lived in Astoria all my life. But I’ve also learned that caffeine is an effective Band-Aid.
I grab my cup and head to the back, slumping into a booth, prepared to bury my nose in my book.
I’m just opening the cover when I feel him.
I feel him.
Again.
Before I even look up, I know it’s him. I recognize the feel in the air, the very palpable energy. I felt the same thing in my dreams, this impossible pull. What the hell? Why do I keep bumping into him?
When I look up, I find that he’s seen me, too.
His eyes are frozen on me as he waits in line, so dark, so fathomless. This energy between us… I don’t know what it is. Attraction? Chemistry? All I know is, it steals my breath and speeds up my heart. The fact that he’s invading my dreams makes me crave this feeling even more. It brings me out of my reality and into something new and exciting, into something that has hope and life.
I watch as he pays for his coffee and sweet roll, and as his every step leads him to my back booth. There are ten other tables, all vacant, but he chooses mine.
His black boots stop next to me, and I skim up his denim-clad legs, over his hips, up to his startlingly handsome face. He still hasn’t shaved, so his stubble is more pronounced today. It makes him seem even more mature, even more of a man. As if he needs the help.
I can’t help but notice the way his soft blue shirt hugs his solid chest, the way his waist narrows as it slips into his jeans, the way he seems lean and lithe and powerful. Gah. I yank my eyes up to meet his. I find amusement there.
“Is this seat taken?”
Sweet Lord. He’s got a British accent. There’s nothing sexier in the entire world, which makes that old tired pick-up line forgivable. I smile up at him, my heart racing.
“No.”
He doesn’t move. “Can I take it, then? I’ll share my breakfast with you.”
He slightly gestures with his gooey, pecan-crusted roll.
“Sure,” I answer casually, expertly hiding the fact that my heart is racing fast enough to explode. “But I’ll pass on the breakfast. I’m allergic to nuts.”
“More for me, then,” he grins, as he slides into the booth across from me, ever so casually, as though he sits with strange girls in hospitals all of the time. I can’t help but notice that his eyes are so dark they’re almost black.
“Come here often?” he quips, as he sprawls out in the booth. I have to chuckle, because now he’s just going down the list of cliché lines, and they all sound amazing coming from his British lips.
“Fairly,” I nod. “You?”
“They have the best coffee around,” he answers, if that even is an answer. “But let’s not tell anyone, or they’ll start naming the coffee things we can’t pronounce, and the lines will get unbearable.”
I shake my head, and I can’t help but smile. “Fine. It’ll be our secret.”
He stares at me, his dark eyes shining. “Good. I like secrets. Everyone’s got ‘em.”
I almost suck in my breath, because something is so overtly fascinating about him. The way he pronounces everything, and the way his dark eyes gleam, the way he seems so familiar because he’s been in the intimacy of my dreams.
“What are yours?” I ask, without thinking. “Your secrets, I mean.”
He grins. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Yes.
“My name’s Calla,” I offer quickly. He smiles at that.
“Calla like the funeral lily?”
The very same.” I sigh. “And I live in a funeral home. So see? The irony isn’t lost on me.”
He looks confused for a second, then I see the realization dawn on him.
“You noticed my shirt yesterday,” he points out softly, his arm stretched across the back of the cracked booth. He doesn’t even dwell on the fact that I’d just told him I live in a house with dead people. Usually people instantly clam up when they find out, because they instantly assume that I must be weird, or morbid. But he doesn’t.
I nod curtly. “I don’t know why. It just stood out.” Because you stood out.
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s going to smile, but then he doesn’t.
“I’m Adair DuBray,” he tells me, like he’s bestowing a gift or an honor. “But everyone calls me Dare.”
I’ve never seen a name so fitting. So French, so sophisticated, yet his accent is British. He’s an enigma. An enigma whose e
yes gleam like they’re constantly saying Dare me. I swallow.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I tell him, and that’s the truth. “Why are you here in the hospital? Surely it’s not for the coffee.”
“You know what game I like to play?” Dare asks, completely changing the subject. I feel my mouth drop open a bit, but I manage to answer.
“No, what?”
“Twenty Questions. That way, I know that at the end of the game, there won’t be any more. Questions, that is.”
I have to smile, even though his answer should’ve annoyed me. “So you don’t like talking about yourself.”
He grins. “It’s my least favorite subject.”
But it must be such an interesting one.
“So, you’re telling me I can ask you twenty things, and twenty things only?”
Dare nods. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Fine. I’ll use my first question to ask what you’re doing here.” I lift my chin and stare him in the eye.
His mouth twitches again. “Visiting. Isn’t that what people usually do in hospitals?”
I flush. I can’t help it. Obviously. And obviously, I’m out of my league here. This guy could have me for breakfast if he wanted, and from the gleam in his eye, I’m not so sure he doesn’t.
I take a sip of my coffee, careful not to slosh it on my shirt. With the way my heart is racing, anything is possible.
“And you? Why are you here?” Dare asks.
“Is that your first question? Because turn-about is fair play.”
Dare smiles broadly, genuinely amused.
“Sure. I’ll use a question.”
“I brought my brother. He’s here for… group therapy.”
I suddenly feel weird saying that aloud, because it makes my brother sound less than somehow. And he’s not. He’s more than. Better than most people, more gentle, more pure of heart. But a stranger wouldn’t know that. A stranger would just slap him with a crazy label and let it be. I fight the urge to explain, and somehow manage not to. It’s not a stranger’s business.
Dare doesn’t question me, though. He just nods like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
He takes a drink of his coffee. “I think it’s probably kismet, anyway. That you and I are here at the same time, I mean.”
“Kismet?” I raise an eyebrow.
“That’s fate, Calla,” he tells me. I roll my eyes.
“I know that. I may be going to a state school, but I’m not stupid.”
He grins, a grin so white and charming that my panties almost fall off.
“Good to know. So you’re a college girl, Calla?”
I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about why you think this is kismet. But I nod.
“Yeah. I’m leaving for Berkeley in the fall.”
“Good choice,” he takes another sip. “But maybe kismet got it wrong, after all. If you’re leaving and all. Because apparently, I’ll be staying for a while. That is, after I find an apartment. A good one is hard to find around here.”
He’s so confident, so open. It doesn’t even feel odd that a total stranger is telling me these things, out of the blue, so randomly. I feel like I know him already, actually.
I stare at him. “An apartment?”
He stares back. “Yeah. The thing you rent, it has a shower and a bedroom, usually?”
I flush. “I know that. It’s just that this might be kismet after all. I might know of something. I mean, my father is going to rent out our carriage house. I think.”
And if I can’t have it, it should definitely go to someone like Dare. The mere thought gives me a heart spasm.
“Hmm. Now that is interesting,” Dare tells me. “Kismet prevails, it seems. And a carriage house next to a funeral home, at that. It must take balls of steel to live there.”
I quickly pull out a little piece of paper and scribble my dad’s cell phone on it. “Yeah. If you’re interested, I mean, if you’ve got the balls, you can call and talk to him about it.”
I push the paper across the table, staring him in the eye, framing it up as a challenge. Dare can’t possibly know how I’m trying to will my heart to slow down before it explodes, but maybe he does, because a smile stretches slowly and knowingly across his lips.
“Oh, I’ve got balls,” he confirms, his eyes gleaming again.
Dare me.
I swallow hard.
“I’m ready to ask my second question,” I tell him. He raises an eyebrow.
“Already? Is it about my balls?”
I flush and shake my head.
“What did you mean before?” I ask him slowly, not lowering my gaze. “Why exactly do you think this is kismet?”
His eyes crinkle up a little bit as he smiles yet again. And yet again, his grin is thoroughly amused. A real smile, not a fake one like I’m accustomed to around my house.
“It’s kismet because you seem like someone I might like to know. Is that odd?”
No, because I want to know you, too.
“Maybe,” I say instead. “Is it odd that I feel like I already know you somehow?”
Because I do. There’s something so familiar about his eyes, so dark, so bottomless. But then again, I have been dreaming about them for days.
Dare raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I have that kind of face.”
I choke back a snort. Not hardly.
He stares at me. “Regardless, kismet always prevails.”
I shake my head and smile. A real smile. “The jury is still out on that one.”
Dare takes a last drink of coffee, his gaze still frozen to mine, before he thunks his cup down on the table and stands up.
“Well, let me know what the jury decides.”
And then he walks away.
I’m so dazed by his abrupt departure that it takes me a second to realize something because kismet always prevails and I’m someone he might like to know.
He took my dad’s phone number with him.
6
SEX
Finn
Nocte liber sum Nocte liber sum
By night I am free.
Alea iacta est The die has been cast. The die has been cast.
The die has been fucking cast.
Serva me, servabo te. Save me and I will save you.
Save me.
Save me.
Save me.
“Hey, bro.” Calla walks into my room, abruptly, unannounced, and I instantly close my journal, hiding my thoughts behind its brown leather cover. “What’s up?”
I smile, swallowing my panic, hiding everything carefully and completely behind my teeth.
“Not much. You?”
“Not much. Just restless.”
She hops onto my bed, sitting next to me, her fingers immediately tracing the letters on the front of my journal. She knows enough not to open it.
I shrug. “We should do something.”
Act normal.
She nods. “K. Like what? Wanna drive to Warrenton beach?”
To see the old Iredale wreck? We’ve seen it a million times, but whatever.
“Sure,” I answer simply. Because sometimes saying fewer words makes it easier to conceal the crazy.
We climb off the bed and Calla turns to me, grabbing my elbow.
“Hey, Finn?”
I pause, staring down at her. “Yeah?”
“You’ve seemed….off this whole week. I thought when you went to group a second time it’d help, but you still seem strange. If something’s wrong, you’d tell me, right?”
Youcan’tYoucan’tYoucan’tYoucan’t. You’re crazycrazycrazycrazy. Don’tTellHerYourSecretSecretSecret.
I swallow back the voices.
Act normal.
“I’m fine,” I lie. A blissful lie to spare her worry, to spare my pride, to spare me the humiliation of being dragged away to a padded room, to a place where keys are thrown away and the crazy people are forgotten, replaced by medicated shells.
“Promise?” Calla is
hesitant, her red hair standing out like fire against my white curtains. She almost always accepts my word, but this time, she knows me. She knows I’m lying.
“Repromissionem,” I assure her. She rolls her eyes.
“You know, sometimes, Latin just complicates things. That took you five syllables to say what you could’ve said in two.”
I smile and shrug. “It’s a dignified language. It has character.”
“If by dignified, you mean dead, ok.”
She laughs and I pretend to, because honestly we’re shells anyway, medicated or not. We’re not the people we used to be. We just look like it on the outside.
We clatter down the creaky steps of our house, bickering back and forth, doing our best to seem normal because mom always said fake it ‘til you make it. We’re definitely doing our part.
As we round the corner into the large, elaborate foyer, the distinct roar of a motorcycle splits apart the serene atmosphere of the funeral home. We stare at each other.
We don’t typically get mourners on motorcycles this far up the mountain.
Dad steps past us, eyeing Calla curiously.
“Thanks for referring someone to me for the carriage house. I wasn’t expecting your help with that, considering how much you wanted it for yourself.”
Calla stops still, frozen in place, while she stares at dad.
“He called?”
He?
Her voice is filled with anxiety and happiness and hope. I stare at her. What the hell is this?
Dad nods. “Yeah. This morning. That’ll be him now, to look at it.”
Calla spins around and stares out the window, and I look over her shoulder.
A black, aggressive motorcycle, a Triumph, is parked on the circular drive, as a tall dark-haired guy stands in front of it, removing his black helmet.
Calla is so absorbed in watching him that she doesn’t realize how closely I’m watching her.
She smiles a beatific smile. “It’s been days since I told him about it. I thought he didn’t want it.”
My dad raises his eyebrow. “He still might not. He’s just here to look at it. Really quick—how did you meet him?”
She pauses. “I met him in the café at the hospital the other day. I’ve bumped into him a couple of other times. He’s been there visiting someone. He seems nice.”