“Did you work when Laura was alive?”
“Yes. We rehabbed brownstones and apartments in Manhattan and flipped them. She was the designer and the general contractor, and I worked with various sub-contractors doing different things, like finish-carpentry, drywall, some plumbing and electrical.”
“Sounds like you were a great team.”
“We were. In pretty much every way.”
I can’t think of what to say to that. All I can imagine is what it might feel like to be so in love with someone, so perfectly matched, and then have it all disappear in a single moment when your back is turned. I try to picture what that day was like for him — the day he got the news that his wife was gone. But I can’t. Nothing in my life could have been even remotely devastating. My morbid curiosity gets the better of me and I speak before I think.
“What happened the day she died?”
Asking that question puts me squarely in the role of Asshole of the Year, but it was out of my mouth and in the air between us, so he either had to answer or completely ignore me. I’ve gotten the impression over these past couple days that Jeremy has manners and he feels bad when he doesn’t use the good ones, so I prepare myself for what I expect to be a very sad answer.
He faces the stove as he speaks. “We were working a job. A renovation on the Upper East Side. One of the subs ran out of material. Drywall tape, if my memory isn’t totally shot. I was going to go get it, but I was up to my elbows in soldering, just finishing up the installation of a sink in the kitchen. Laura said she’d go, and I just grunted. I was angry at the stupid pipes, if you can believe that. I wasn’t even thinking about my 9-month-pregnant wife having to go out in the rain to get something as stupid as drywall tape. I remember I didn’t even stick my head out to give her a kiss goodbye.” His shoulders move as he stirs a pot of what I assume is sauce. “That was something we always did. We never parted without a kiss. I think that was the first and only time it happened.”
“Superstition?” I ask.
“No. Maybe kind of. It’s just that Laura was always saying you never know when it will be your time to go.” He sighs and stops stirring, his hand just hovering over the stove. “I used to go along with her silly ideas, kissing her before she left every time, knocking on wood when I said certain words like cancer or HIV, whatever; but I never believed in that stuff the way she did. I never thought God would take her away so young. We were doing everything right. We were good people. We gave to charity and treated people the way we wanted to be treated. We were playing by the rules, but we still lost.” He shakes his head and hisses as he stirs the pasta in boiling water. “She was convinced she was going to leave earlier than the rest of us, and I was convinced she was crazy to even think it.”
The goosebumps are back, and I have the strangest desire to look over my shoulder. But I don’t, because I don’t believe in ghosts, and even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go looking for one.
I try to think of something supportive to say, but my brain draws a blank. Again, I just let the words fly out. “So, to sum everything up, it was basically the worst day of your entire life.”
“Yes. Easily, it was the worst day of my life. The death of my parents was bad, but nothing like the day Laura left me.”
The room has gone so dark with his sad memories, I can’t stand it anymore. I have to lighten things up.
“So what are your plans now?”
Jeremy puts two bowls down on the island counter and then strains the water from the pasta in the sink. “What do you mean?” He comes over and puts half the noodles in one bowl and the other half in the second.
“I mean, what are you going to do with your life now? You’ve been in solitary confinement, mourning for around nine months, but you have to come back to the real world eventually. So what’s the plan for that?”
He pours sauce over both bowls of pasta, hissing when some of it splashes up and hits his bare hand. I try not to stare as he puts his mouth to his skin and sucks on it, but it’s impossible not to. I can picture those lips on mine so clearly.
I squirm in my chair, uncomfortable with the fact that my brain can talk about his tragedy at the same time it’s fantasizing about being naked with him. What is wrong with me? What kind of sex-monster am I?
“Says who?” he asks, jerking me out of my troubled thoughts.
I have to think for a second about what I asked. Oh, yeah. Plans for the rest of his life.
“Says everyone who cares about you. Says your own common sense. Says your survival instinct.”
“I’m surviving out here.” He pushes a bowl in my direction and hands me a fork, smiling for the first time since I started this conversation.
I take the fork from him, nearly having a heart attack when our fingers touch and another spark flies out into the air between us.
I literally try to laugh my reaction to his touch off, acting like he’s a comedian. “Ha-ha! You call that surviving? If I hadn’t thrown the booze out into the snow, your liver would be getting pickled right now.”
He doesn’t say anything to that; he just digs into his spaghetti, feeding himself a bite big enough for a St. Bernard.
We eat in silence for a while before he talks again.
“I guess my plan up until now has been to just forget.”
“And now?”
He shrugs. The air between us is positively electric. I’m holding my breath.
“I dunno. Maybe I should make a plan.”
I point at him with my fork. “You should! Absolutely. That’s what I did.”
He looks up. “You made a plan? When? Last night?”
“No, silly, a couple months ago.” Has it only been that long? It feels like it was a year ago that I made that fateful decision to end my lease. And ended up here with this gorgeous man, snowed-in together in his cabin.
Deep breath. Just relax.
I look up and recognize his curious expression and realize that I’ve said too much. He’s going to want an explanation now and I can hardly refuse him, especially since he’s revealed so much about his life and his past.
I chew my lip, nervous about where this conversation is going to go next.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“TELL ME ABOUT IT,” JEREMY says. “This big plan of yours.” He winks at me to take the sting out of his mocking tone.
I twirl some pasta around my fork, wishing the conversation weren’t about me. “This is great spaghetti, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
Silence. I keep eating, hoping he’ll come up with something more interesting to talk about.
“So?” he prompts. “You made a plan?”
“It’s no big deal. I just … decided to make a change in my life.”
“A change from what?”
I look up, expecting to see a smile, but instead I see genuine concern. It makes me go warm inside and loosens my tongue.
“I was teaching art classes at a high school for several years, but I just got to the point where I wasn’t into it anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I push pasta around in my dish. “Maybe I’m not a good teacher. My students seemed happy enough, but I stopped painting in my free time.”
“That’s not good.”
He says it like he understands, and it fires me up, reminding me of the reasons why I’m out here in the middle of nowhere with no snowplows. It was a good reason, and I need to stop second-guessing myself.
“No, you’re right, it wasn’t good at all. I’d been painting since I was in grade school, and then I just stopped.” I shrug. “I hit a wall. I couldn’t do it anymore. My creativity dried up and my muse left me.”
“Wow. You’ve been painting since you were that young?”
I smile at some memories flitting across my mind. “My parents decided I was a prodigy when my classmates were drawing stick figures and I was drawing self-portraits in crayon on the walls using the bathroom mirror to see myself.??
?
When he laughs, my head jerks up and I catch him looking genuinely happy for the first time since I met him. His eyes crinkle at the corners and his grin reveals beautiful teeth that could be featured in a dentist’s ad.
“You drew your face on the wall?” he says.
I nod. “Yep. I covered every wall in the house with my work. My parents finally got me private lessons to try and curb my juvenile delinquency a little.”
“Did it work?”
“Nope. I just made better drawings on the wall than I was making before.”
“Classic. I wish I could have seen that.”
“Oh, you can if you want.” I think of the stack of binders I boxed up and put in storage. “My mother took pictures of every one of them and put them in photo albums. She documented my progress as an artist all the way through college.”
“Wow, that’s awesome. I wish I had done that. With my marriage, I mean. Then I’d have something to look at when I start to forget.”
“I thought you were trying to forget,” I say softly.
“Not everything.” He grabs more pasta onto his fork, but his mood isn’t as dark as I expected it to be, considering the subject matter.
“What parts do you want to remember?”
He swallows his food and points a fork at me. “No fair changing the subject. We’re talking about you now.”
“Just answer that one question,” I beg. I’d much rather talk about him than me.
“Which parts do I want to remember?” He lets out a long sigh and stares off into the distance. “I’d like to remember everything and nothing.” He moves his head and his gaze locks onto mine. “Obviously I’m a fucked up individual.”
“No, not fucked up. At least not for that reason. I know exactly what you mean.”
“You do? Well explain it to me, because I don’t.”
“You want to remember everything because it was so wonderful, but you want to forget it all too because it hurts so much that it got taken away. Sometimes you must think to yourself that you would have been better off never having met Laura. That’s got to be totally depressing in and of itself.”
His hands rest limply on the counter as he looks at me. He chews very slowly. We’re staring at each other so intensely, I finally have to look away. I focus on the fridge behind him instead. After a few seconds, I look at him again.
“What?” I say, trying to break the tension.
“Hearing you say it makes me angry at myself,” he finally says.
“Why?”
“Because. First of all, you’re right. That is how I feel. And second, it’s idiotic. It’s a vicious circle going nowhere but down. And worst of all, it’s disrespectful of Laura’s love for me. She deserves better than that.”
“I guess.” I shrug. “If you say so.” I’ve gotten kind of lost in the philosophy, but I’m glad he seems to be perking up.
He sounds frustrated but energized. “She’s gone, but to think that she never should have been around is worse. It’s totally worse. I know that it’s worse. Why am I doing that to her?”
“Great. That’s a good sign, right? Clarity?”
“Yeah.” He bows his head and scratches at the back of it. “I guess I was so messed up with the booze and the drugs, there was no hope of any clarity for me.” He looks up. “But that’s how I wanted it, you know? It’s how I needed it to be.”
“But not anymore?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.” He looks behind him at the fridge. “If there were any beers in there, I’d probably be drinking them.”
“Because you’re an alcoholic?”
“No. Because I don’t think I know how to handle Laura’s death on my own.”
“Most people don’t. That’s what therapy is for.”
“Have you ever gone to therapy?”
I push the last of my food around in my bowl, uncomfortable now that he’s bringing the conversation back to me. “No. Art has always been my therapy.”
Jeremy gestures over to the covered painting. “Is that one therapy for you? That painting over there?”
I can’t look him in the eye. “Maybe.”
“I didn’t peek at it, you know.” He says this softly, as if he knows how important it is to me. “I wouldn’t do that.”
I bite the inside of my cheeks to try and control my stupid smile. It wants to take over my entire face. “Thank you.”
“But I’d love to see it.”
“Not today,” I say in a rush.
“Okay, not today. Maybe before I leave?”
“Maybe. No promises.” I can only imagine what he’d think seeing that painting. He’d know right away I’m hot for his body. Out of the ten million things I could have chosen to paint, I put him on the canvas? A guy I just met and disliked for most of the time I’ve known him? Yeah. I’ve got it bad.
He reaches over and takes my empty bowl and fork. “You in the mood for dessert?”
My heart flips over twice. Is he flirting with me? Was that supposed to be as sexy as it sounded?
“Maybe. What’s on the menu?” Will he say himself? If he does, will I be happy and take him up on the offer or will I run?
He turns around and wiggles his eyebrows at me. “A surprise.”
“Ooo, I love surprises.” I rub my hands together, acting like I’m getting into the mood when what I’m really doing is freaking out. I’m on auto-flirt-pilot.
“Just give me two minutes to clean up my mess, and then I’ll show you. Get your coat and boots on.”
“Oh, boy. I hope this dessert isn’t at the quick-mart or whatever that place is. I’ll never make it, not after all those noodles.” I hold my stomach for extra drama.
“Are you kidding?” He laughs. “That’s carbo-loading, baby. You could walk to the Wal-Mart from here on that fuel. But don’t worry, I’m not going to take you far. Just to the edge of the woods.”
I look out the window. It’s pitch black out, but I know the place he’s talking about isn’t more than twenty feet from the front door.
I get dressed in all my gear, while butterflies battle each other for space in my belly. By the time Jeremy’s done with the dishes and dressed in his boots and coat, I’m ready for anything. I’ll even make snow angels if he asks me to, as long as he does it with that smile of his.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JEREMY TAKES A MIXING BOWL out of the cabinet and walks to the door. “Off we go,” he says, grabbing the door handle. “You ready?”
I join him and smile, wondering what the bowl is all about. “Ready for anything.”
He pauses before turning the handle. “Anything?” His eyebrows go up.
I punch him playfully on the arm. “Get your head out of the gutter, boy.”
He yanks the door open and shoves me outside. “Well, all right then, if you insist!”
I half expect him to slam the door shut and lock me out of the house, but he’s right behind me, herding me across the porch and down the stairs. Jaws is at his heels.
“Where are we going?”
“Just keep moving, Lady! Head for the trees.”
I take one step off the porch and promptly sink up to my thigh in snow. “Holy crap it got deeper out here while I slept!”
“Worst winter since 1977!” he says, way too brightly. He picks Jaws up and holds him in his armpit.
“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” I grumble, struggling to stay upright.
“See that tree over there?” He points, using the bowl, to the left of the cabin at a giant evergreen with broad branches full of snow.
“Yes.”
“That’s where we’re going. Come on … follow me.” He trudges through the snow with large, swinging elbows and high steps that bring his boots almost to his waste. I follow in the churned up snow he leaves behind. It’s a lot easier moving forward in his path than making my own. In the lights coming from inside the house, shining out of the cabin windows, I can see Jaws’s curled
up hindquarters and his scraggly tail hanging out from behind Jeremy’s arm. He doesn’t seem to mind being the baggage of the guy he tried to eat earlier. I guess he and I have that in common: one minute we hate Jeremy, the next we love him.
My heart spasms painfully. I just thought-said love.What insanity is this?! What’s next? A marriage proposal? Jesus!
We reach the tree in a couple minutes, and I’m sweating like I’ve just run a mile, too exhausted from my trekking to worry about the direction my innermost thoughts are taking.
“Okay,” Jeremy says, putting the dog down on a pile of snow, “you’re going to stand here with the bowl above your head.” He hands me the bowl and starts to walk off.
“Where are you going?” I ask, mystified. Are we about to do a moondance? Are we catching the moon’s rays or something? Is he a Wiccan and just forgot to mention it?
“I’m going to climb.”
“Climb?” I say mostly to myself, as I watch him stop at the base of the tree.
He looks back at me and gestures with his arm. “Hold it above your head.”
I slowly raise the bowl up. “The bowl? Like this?”
“No, put it on top of your head.”
Well, he’s obviously completely crazy, but what the hell. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere. If he wants to do a moon dance, who am I to argue? I turn the bowl upside down and put it on my head. My arms drop to my sides and I wait.
He starts laughing so hard, he falls over into the snow.
I slowly lift the bowl off my head as my face burns. “What?”
He struggles to his feet, and points at me, his hand flapping like a bird wing in slow motion because he’s still laughing. “Not that way, you goofball.”
I cock my arm with the bowl behind my head, ready to wing it at him.
“No! Don’t throw it! Just put it on your head the other way!”
I stare at the bowl in confusion. “What other way?”
“Right side up! How’re you going to catch any snow with it upside down?”