Return to Me

All I could do was nod. Yes, I trusted him. Yes, let’s hurtle straight past these next endless months, straight past Manhattan. Yes, aim for the future, and never, never, never stop.

  Finally, after driving through the dense, green heart of Lewis Island, navigating down winding streets I’d never seen before and, frankly, never needed to see, Jackson parked on the side of the potholed road. He killed the engine, then pushed his door open. Cold air surged inside, a tangible reminder that while the rest of the country sweltered, summer had yet to come to Seattle.

  “It’s freezing out there,” I said. “Polar bears would protest.”

  He leaned toward me, eyebrows cocked up: For real? Then he said, “You’re going to have to toughen up if you want to survive the East Coast winters with me, Rebel.”

  Forget the “Rebel.” It was the “with me” that warmed me now and made me seriously consider what Dad had offered: his tacit approval if I chose to stay with Jackson over Mom’s wishes. That “with me” convinced me to open the door and follow him outside. The wind rushed me, furious, and I staggered back.

  “Okay, cold,” I gasped.

  Jackson was rounding the hood of the car, already sliding out of his leather jacket. “You aren’t going to last five minutes in winter.”

  “No,” I said when he handed me his coat. “I don’t want you to be cold, too.”

  “I’m a guy. I never get cold.”

  “Tell that to Shackleton.”

  “You’re a nut,” he said, and tugged me to his chest, wrapping his jacket around me like wings. I burrowed in, inhaled deeply, and smelled sweet saltiness. Call me odd, but deodorant is overrated on Jackson. After a long bike ride, he smells like a guy who can take on the world. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his neck and felt his question beneath my lips: “Did I tell you that I like my women smart?”

  “Women?” I said, pulling back and stabbing my finger in his chest. “As in plural?” Stab. “As in a stable of women?” Stab, stab. “As in a plethora of women?”

  “You must be warmer now,” he said, rubbing his chest.

  After days of rain, the air smelled clean and moist. The clouds parted, revealing the sun. The warmth felt good on my face.

  “This,” I said, stretching my arms sunward, “is almost better than being kissed.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said, challenged the way I knew he’d be. He kissed me the way I wanted: long and lingering and very, very thorough. The sweet urgency of his lips, the slow stroke of his tongue along mine, made me wobble, unbalanced. That kiss-induced tippiness only made Jackson grin wickedly at me, confident that nothing bettered his kiss. He grabbed my hand and led me down a paved path, fringed on either side with purple-flowered vinca and feathery ferns.

  “Close your eyes,” Jackson said.

  It was too much work to stay crabby after a kiss like that—even after a drive that had lasted an eternity during what I might add, yet again, was One of Our Last Hours Together.

  Finally, he let me open my eyes at the edge of a small pond I never knew existed, lined with tall, striated reeds and nestled within a ring of trees. In the middle of the pond floated a tiny dock, sized for two people, complete with crank and steering wheel. Two ropes connected the dock to the shoreline, and Jackson began winching the dock toward us.

  “What is this place?” I asked, my voice quiet, as though I knew this was a special space.

  “A bird-watcher’s sanctuary.” He opened the gate and waved me aboard. “Your dock awaits.”

  “Are we allowed here?”

  “Remember? It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Anyway, my dad’s listing it on Monday. So think of it as us providing some quality control to maintain my dad’s carefully cultivated reputation as the leading waterfront real estate agent in the Pacific Northwest.” Jackson lifted his eyebrows. “So, my badass girlfriend, what do you say?”

  “You had me at badass,” I said before I sashayed onto the dock, glancing over my shoulder with the sultriest look I could muster.

  Mission accomplished. Jackson cleared his throat. I gave silent thanks to Shana for making Ginny and me practice a billion expressions and struts for her photo shoots.

  Jackson navigated us to the center of the pond, and once there, I gasped because I finally understood why he had brought me here—not to see this dock or admire the birds. Hidden among the trees was a tiny house, all wood and windows and built upon stilts.

  “This is so you,” he said, standing behind me with his arms wrapped around me.

  “It’s what a treehouse wants to be when it grows up,” I said, leaning against him.

  “I still don’t see why you want to build corporate offices.”

  I sighed. We’d had this conversation countless times before. No matter how often I tried to explain that commercial work was a lot more financially prudent than residential work and that Dad’s family was expecting me to be the resident architect in their real estate development business, I knew Jackson wouldn’t understand. He was forever pointing out that Dad hadn’t worked at the family firm since he was in business school.

  So now I gestured to the pint-size house and said, “I’ve got to see it.”

  “First, we should talk,” Jackson countered.

  Just like that, I forgot about the house; such was the power of those three dreaded words: We should talk. If you have good news, do you preface it with “We should talk”? No. You say, “Guess what?” Or, “You won’t believe this!” We should talk is what doctors say when they’re about to break it to you that you have a few months to live. It’s what a boyfriend says when he’s about to tell you that your romance had a shelf life that expired yesterday. But now I wasn’t so sure anymore that I needed, or wanted, to break up.

  “How can I talk? My teeth are chattering,” I answered with a cheeky smile to buy time while I thought.

  Jackson looked at me long and hard, as though he could hear me weigh the sure risks of staying together versus the unsure rewards of attempting and failing. Then he said, “Everybody says long-distance relationships are impossible. That it’s totally stupid to try.”

  Wasn’t that what Ginny and Shana—who both had a lot more experience in the Guy Department than I did, with their endless buffet of boys—had been telling me for the last month?

  “But is it so stupid?” Jackson asked gruffly.

  Here I was, alone at an unfamiliar crossroads in an unfamiliar neighborhood of a serious relationship. To the west was here, now, Seattle, the impossibilities of long distance. To the east was the future, New York, and being prudent and practical about my future plans, which had never included going off to college with a high school boyfriend. And through it all, like an aria of abandonment, I heard the crying again, the high-pitched heartbreak. On the verge of throwing up, I only managed to keep my arms at my sides instead of clenched over my stomach.

  “What?” Jackson asked, watching me carefully, as if he sensed my crazy, conflicted emotions.

  Part of me wanted to tell Jackson now about the inconsolable weeping, the inkling that something horrible would happen with this move. But tell him now and he would think I was an official nutcase. I’d be yet one more casualty of my family curse: Every woman on my mother’s side has ended life alone, all spinsters. That is, except Mom. Case in point: Consider Grandpa George, the portrait of loyalty, who was there for every one of my performances and play-offs. Even he bolted when Grandma Stesha heeded her “calling” to lead tours of woo-woo weirdness to inexplicable rock formations and purported fairy circles around the world. Not even Mom faulted Grandpa for the divorce when she was about to set off for college.

  But then there was Mom’s overriding “why bother?” attitude about Jackson, a boy who didn’t have a short list of colleges. The only college decision he had made was to refuse to consider the Naval Academy, which his dad was pushing him to attend. And even louder, I heard Grandma Stesha’s conviction about our family curse: No man was capable of staying at our sides, not when generations o
f our women could predict their heart wounds, prophesy their futures, see through their lies.

  So, as usual, I stamped on the sparks of my foreboding and spoke in a torrent of words, forcing them out so fast I staved off any vision: “I’m afraid it’s not going to work out. I mean, it was hard enough to see you as it was—and this was with us living an hour from each other. So how’re we going to keep close with three time zones and three thousand miles separating us? How?”

  “Skype, text, IM. You name it, we’ll try it.”

  I knew what he was suggesting—we buck conventional wisdom and prove the improbable: Eighteen-year-old kids can fall in love, forever love. Jackson leaned down then to kiss me, a tender pledge: I will be true.

  Resisting that was impossible. I threw my arms around Jackson and pressed close, my chest against his, missing him badly. His hand cupped my neck and he kissed me, imprinting his lips on mine.

  Just then my phone chimed. Without looking at the screen, I knew it was Mom, with her impeccably timed interruption at the faintest hint of arousal, no different from the night of my first date with Jackson. I knew she was going to remind me that it was time to come home, time to step back into the antiseptic life she had orchestrated for me, which meant clearing our damned home of dust balls and clearing my life of Jackson. I ignored the phone and deepened our kiss, as if I could truly lose myself. It was Jackson who stepped away, breathing hard.

  “Not yet,” I moaned.

  The phone chirped insistently. I sighed, irritated at my mom—even if, in some small way that I refused to inspect too carefully, I felt a tiny bit of relief at this reprieve from having the breakup talk with Jackson. Dad’s unexpected approval had thrown my decision off kilter.

  Jackson raked his fingers through his hair, looking frustrated before he managed a wry grin. He was always so Zen, my Jackson. For now he pulled me close, leaned his forehead against mine, and whispered, “Thanksgiving, and you’ll be back. November isn’t that long away, Rebel.”

  I nodded and leaned against him but didn’t tell him about the plane tickets Dad had offered. Jackson’s fingers combed through my hair, making my scalp tingle with pleasure. The feeling almost made me want to grow my hair out, if it meant having his fingers for a few moments longer, that gentle downward pull, that melting along my spine.

  Maybe I should tell Jackson, Yes. Why not try?

  The phone rang again.

  “Geez! What’s her deal?” I groused, frustrated.

  “Well, your mom was the one who asked me to come early so we could hang out together.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a surprise….”

  So we climbed back into Jackson’s car and drove home, my hand in his until he needed to shift the gear. Only then did Jackson move my hand to rest on his thigh, and squeeze me gently, as though he wanted me to feel him even as he let me go.

  Chapter Three

  As soon as Jackson pulled into my driveway, my two very best friends skipped down the front steps, waving at us. Six years ago, our mother-daughter book club was formed—Bookster Babes, so called because all our names were inspired by literature. Ginny for Virginia Woolf. Mine from the gothic novel Rebecca. And Shana from a torrid seventies romance novel, which the three of us surreptitiously read, graphic sex scenes and all. Now whenever Shana falls for a guy, Ginny and I tease her, “Yeah, but is he ‘Ohhhhh, Ruark!’ ”

  Over the last six years, we’ve held a Bed & Bookfest celebration, always at my home on Lewis Island, always once a season, always overnight. We have never skipped a single meeting. And apparently, we weren’t going to miss this last one.

  “Surprise,” Jackson said, and leaned over to kiss me a moment before my girlfriends yanked me out of his car. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to drive me to the airport.”

  His look—Are you crazy?—melted me.

  “Okay, Jackson, she’s all ours now,” announced Shana, sweeping her hair out of her eyes to mock-glower at him. He laughed, a sound that made me prematurely homesick for him. I was glad we’d have until tomorrow to say good-bye. Whether it was our final good-bye, my girlfriends wanted to know as soon as we stumbled through my treehouse door, leaving our moms in the main house until the evening book discussion.

  “Hurry,” said Shana, slinging her pink sleeping bag onto the floor. “We have got to talk.”

  “Not another talk,” I groaned as I wedged my sleeping bag between hers and Ginny’s. Then, following Shana’s lead, I flopped onto my stomach.

  “Oh, good.” She brushed her long bangs out of her wide blue eyes to study me approvingly. “You broke it off with Jackson. What’d you say?”

  “We didn’t break it off exactly.” I hid my face on my arms so I wouldn’t see Shana and her five feet seven of long, lean disapproval. If left to her, Jackson would have been dispensed with weeks ago in a swift, clean text. Her formidable time-management skills were acquired not from juggling homework, like the rest of us, but from juggling boys. It wasn’t unheard of for her to log a six-mile run early on Saturday morning with one boy, study with another at ten, and cap the day off with a late-night movie with a third. After her record five-boy day, Shana had called me up to complain: “That was exhausting. There’s only so much flirting you can do before you realize you just can’t have another tongue in your mouth.”

  “Shana! Gross!” I had protested.

  But she was adamant. “It’s true.”

  “Well, why not?” Shana demanded now. “It so does not make sense to stay together. You’re going to meet a ton of guys in New York. And the minute you’re gone, girls are going to pounce on him.”

  “Nice, Shana. Really nice.” Ginny reached down from her perch on the window seat to squeeze my hand. Her glossy brown hair striated with light streaks fell over hazel eyes that tilted at the corners, and I could completely understand why my mom marveled over how beautiful mixed-race kids were whenever she saw Ginny.

  “What? He goes to my high school, not yours. I see the way girls look at him. And she should know that they’re so going to make their move.” Shana pointed her finger at me before crawling into her sleeping bag. The pitfall of being so thin (not that I would know) is being perpetually cold. “Look, wouldn’t you rather know?”

  There it was, the question Grandma Stesha had put to my mom in my hospital room when I nearly drowned, and again two years ago before she left to launch her tour of fairy sites in Scotland: “But, Betsy darling. Isn’t it better to know?”

  Maybe I wanted to celebrate my inner ostrich and bury my head and forget how frightening it had been to know at seven that I might drown. Maybe I didn’t want to know what was going to happen in the future any more than my mother did when she tucked me tight in the hospital bed after my near death. As though she didn’t trust me to escape fate or tempt curse, she had ordered me, “Stop dreaming.”

  And so I did.

  The story Shana was spinning now of Jackson cheating on me was my nightmare. The rare times the women in my family—Grandma Stesha and her three sisters, Mom and her two—gathered, the conversations were filled with stories lamenting their shared curse: Not a single one aside from my mother had a soul mate. That was not a future I wanted to inherit.

  “Do you guys ever get the feeling… that something’s not right?” I asked tentatively.

  An uncomfortable frown flitted across Ginny’s face, a look she wore the rare times I broached the topic of my maternal line’s purported sixth sense. “You’re just having moving jitters,” she said, zipping her sleeping bag to her chin with one efficient tug. “That’s all.”

  “You mean something not right, like, with Jackson?” Shana nodded sagely, as though I had finally seen the light. “I mean, you’re only eighteen. You’re starting college and, let’s face it, that means it’s fishing season. Besides, we’re way too young to be this serious about anyone, even during college.” She flipped onto her side, propping her chin on her hand. “It’s not like you’re goi
ng to marry him.”

  That echo of Mom was eerie: You’re way too young. Irritation snaked up my skin. Why was everyone ringing my wedding bells when I hadn’t even slept with Jackson?

  I asked, “Why are you so sure I should break up with him?”

  “Because first,” Shana responded, now sitting up cocooned in her sleeping bag, “your mom might have gotten married because she was knocked up at twenty-four. But most people don’t. And if they do, they grow out of each other. And, hello, you’re going to college; Jackson’s got another year left in high school. What are you going to talk about? Prom?”

  Those remarks might have stung once, except for two things: Shana was right. There were my parents, superstars in their careers. Dad, a producer at his first game company in San Francisco, and Mom, a publicist at a start-up cell phone company in Seattle. All of that derailed with the two pink lines on the pregnancy test that was me. And second, Shana had given this rant for female independence a million times.

  I stage-whispered to Ginny, “Watch out. She’s about to invoke the head shave.” Together, Ginny and I intoned: “We’ll shave your head if you get married before you’re thirty-five. Go see the world.”

  “Well, my parents are right. That’s what we should do. See the world before we settle down.” Shana grinned before whipping out her camera to take a candid shot of us. “But I plan to shoot the world.”

  Ever since her father gave Shana her first camera when she turned five, she’d vowed to make her living somehow with her photography, like her father wished he could but didn’t dare. She couldn’t understand his hesitation any more than mine to commit to the same kind of risky livelihood with treehouses. The last thing I wanted was to incite that particular monologue now, so I stayed quiet while she lowered her camera to check the photograph. If I thought she’d forgotten her train of thought, I was wrong. Shana continued without looking up from her camera, “So tell him that you want to have an open relationship. That way, if you want to date other guys, you can.”