Текст книги "Near and Far"

Автор книги: Nicole Williams

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

THINGS CAN CHANGE so fast. Too fast.

Example?

Spring break felt like it would last forever one Sunday afternoon while making love, and in what seemed like a blink later, I was on a bus heading west. Things changed too goddamned fast. Especially the good things.

That afternoon at the swimming hole had been the high point, the twelve-hour ride home the following Sunday had been the low, and for some sick, unfair reason, my low point followed me into Monday. Well, I guess it was actually Tuesday since we’d passed the midnight mark.

Alex had just flipped off the Open sign and was pouring herself another cup of coffee while I emptied the display of the remaining doughnuts. I’d been moving like a slug all day long, at barely half time. Even the first day of spring quarter hadn’t cheered me up, and I’d gotten every single class I’d signed up for. Art, art, and more art. Did I mention art?

I was doing what I loved and excelling at it. I was in the running for one of the most prestigious internships in the city. I had good friends who were always willing to share a laugh. I was healthy, living independently, and had managed to move forward from my past.

And there was one other thing. A monumental thing. I had the love of a guy who redefined what a good man was. I had the world at my fingertips.

So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that something was about to change? Like I’d come home to spring in Seattle to find my own personal winter about to set in? Why did I feel like I was walking around like I was waiting for the ground to fall out from beneath me? Why did I feel like the one person I cared about most was about to slip through my fingers?

Probably because I’d had to say a teary good-bye to him yesterday morning while knowing it would be another two weeks before I saw him next. I was pre-menstrual, and the clouds had been leaking rain non-stop since I’d pulled into the bus station. It was crazy how hormones and the weather could change a person’s entire outlook.

“So this Jolene chick pretty much followed you two around all week?” Alex plopped down on the display case I was cleaning, picking up our conversation from earlier. It had started out with what we’d done over spring break, then turned into a Jolene this, Jolene that fest.

“The only place we were safe was the other side of his bedroom door.” I smiled at a few memories as my heart ached. “So we spent a lot of time behind closed doors.”

“You saucy little sex-pot you.” Alex patted my head.

“Thanks?”

“So what are you going to do about this Jolene chick now that you’re hundreds of miles away from your boyfriend who she is probably, at present, knocking over the head with a fry pan so she can drag him into her bed and have her way with him?”

I slapped her hand away from where it was still patting my head. “So glad I told you. I feel so much better. So reassured right now.”

Alex laughed and twirled one of the chains coming off her black vinyl bustier. It was the first day of a new quarter. Chains, vinyl, and torn-up fishnets were the obvious choice. “Calm down, little kitten.”

“I might if you weren’t here, doing the opposite of calming me with your opposite of reassuring premonitions.”

She laughed again then cut it short when she saw my face. “Okay, let’s approach this rationally since approaching it emotionally is making you an angry cat.” She tapped her chin for a few seconds, then her eyes widened. “Are you worried about Jesse actually going for Jolene?”

After deciding that Alex was serious, I gave her question some thought. I didn’t need to give it much. “No.” It was a simple, truthful answer. Jesse didn’t possess a non-loyal bone in his body.

“Are you worried about him getting drunk off his ass and jumping into bed with her in his drunken haze?”

I rolled my eyes. Jesse did drunk about as often as he did disloyalty. “No.”

“Then what are you worried about exactly?”

That was the question that sent the proverbial punch to my gut. What in the hell was I so worried about? Why had I wasted precious time fuming over some inconsequential person? The lines in my forehead felt close to becoming permanent. “I don’t know.”

Alex’s eyes met mine. “So you’re not worried about Jolene and Jesse’s future relationship. Good, we got to the bottom of that. But, and this is one big but you better pay attention to, girl, because it’s a doozy . . . but you should be worried about Jesse’s and yours. Because this little jealous, insecure thing you’re dealing with will only hurt the two of you.”

And round two of the proverbial gut punch.

I thought about what Alex had just said for so long, the doughnut in my hand came close to petrifying. She was right on every single level I’d been wrong on. How had I missed that? What had clouded me to seeing it? Was it my tendency to glom on to the bad in life? Shit, I hoped not. Or was it because I loved Jesse so much I’d become a crazed person boiled down to raw emotion and instinct? I wasn’t eager for either of those possibilities to come out on top.

“Damn. How did you get so smart?” I stood up feeling like the epiphany dump had put me in need of some fresh air.

Alex hopped down from the counter. “Making a bunch of mistakes.”

“If that’s the measure of a person’s smartness, I should be a regular Einstein and a half.”

“Okay, well I lived and I learned.”

My brows came together. “Are you implying I haven’t?”

Alex paused on her way down the hallway, probably heading for Sid’s office. “We’ll see.” She gave me a small smile before—yep—rounding into Sid’s office and closing the door.

I was going to need that fresh air for more than one reason.

Grabbing the trash with one hand, I carried the old doughnuts in my other and break-necked for the back door. It was still raining, but at least it’d slowed to a drizzle. Between the events of the past twenty-four hours, the rain, and sheer exhaustion, I couldn’t go another step. The dumpster wasn’t even ten feet away, but it might as well have been ten miles. I was spent.

Setting down the garbage bag, I leaned into the brick wall and tried to calm my mind. Confusion had set in, and it was moving fast, its contagion spreading. Even standing became too much. After dropping to the ground, I buried my head between my knees and focused on breathing. For no solid reason I could point to, my world felt like it was crumbling, piece by piece. Either I needed to get a concentrated dose of Midol injected in my ass or get a solid eight hours of sleep and wake up feeling normal. Or normal for me, at least.

“Where have you been all week?”

As yet another sign that I was a mess, I barely even flinched when that strange voice hollered at me. I rubbed my eyes before looking up. No tears, but they’d been close. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me to see the homeless woman from last week coming toward me, but it did. I’d almost convinced myself she and what she’d said had all been a hallucination.

“Girlie? Did you hear me?”

“Spring break. I was in Montana.” My voice was robotic, and my movements felt the same.

“Doing what?” The woman stopped in front of me. The expectation in her eyes told me what she was looking and hoping for. I held out the box of doughnuts. She snatched the box out of my hands, backed into the wall, and was one doughnut in before I’d worked up a reply.

“Seeing my boyfriend. Seeing his family and friends, too.” A heavy dose of home sickness stabbed at me. I loved my life in Seattle, but I never longed for it or ached for it like I did Willow Springs.

“How was it?” she asked around a jelly doughnut.

I didn’t know why I was sitting there having a semi-personal conversation with a homeless person who had scared the crap out of me, but I needed to talk to someone. Thankfully, she seemed to be firmly back in her rocker.

“Great. I had an amazing week.”

She finished the rest of the jelly doughnut before asking her next question. “Then why are you in an alley all alone looking like you’re about to start crying?”

I literally couldn’t escape perceptive people. Not even in a garbage-ridden alley on the scary side of Seattle. “I’m confused.”

“Confused about what?”

I swallowed. “So many things.”

“Things about your boyfriend?”

“Maybe . . . Yes.” I sighed and scuffed the tip of my boot against the asphalt. “I don’t know.” Those three words summed up my current state of mind. It seemed, after nineteen years of life, I didn’t know shit. I felt like I’d known some yesterday, but today was a whole other story. I didn’t know why I was so upset or why that anxiety had settled over me, and I really didn’t know why I was having a conversation with a stranger. One who ate a box of doughnuts for dinner.

“Excuse me for saying, Girlie,” she started, her eyes boring into mine, “but love doesn’t seem like it should be so confusing. It doesn’t seem like it should be so hard.”

“Why not?” I wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing; the verdict was still out.

“Because it’s love,” she said with a shrug. “It should come easy.”

I sat there a while longer, reeling over what she’d just said. Part of me knew that was true. Another part of me screamed it was a lie. Should love be easy? Or should it be hard? Should it even be either?

In twenty-four hours, my mind had become a giant mass of confusion.

THE NIGHTMARES WERE coming every night, and what was worse than their frequency was that Rowen has somehow made her way into them. That’s a world and a part of my life I didn’t want her anywhere close to. I’d protect her from it at all costs.

I’d bolted awake last night after a repeat dream. I was in the basement again, chained to the pipe, more animal than boy, but I wasn’t alone. I heard another chain clinking against a pipe across the room. When I saw her, there was no denying it was a young Rowen. She was crying, curled up into a ball, and trembling. No matter how many times I called out to her, or how loud, she didn’t hear me. She didn’t know I was chained on the opposite side of the room from her. Then the basement door opened, and I heard familiar shoes coming down the stairs. When the shoes stopped on the basement floor, they paused. When they started moving again, they weren’t coming my way. They were going toward Rowen. I fought against my restraint so savagely, the leather around my neck rubbed the skin raw. Drops of blood dotted the floor when I heard the first scream come from the other side of the room.

And then, mercifully, I was ripped awake.

THE LAST TWO weeks were long. Partly because I hadn’t seen Rowen and partly because I hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night. What was waiting for me the moment my eyes closed and my brain drifted off made me force myself to stay awake. My first five years of life, I’d done the opposite because any dream world was an improvement.

Rowen and I’d talked every day since she left at the end of spring break, but she seemed different. A bit removed or preoccupied.

Or maybe her seeming removed and preoccupied had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. I certainly wasn’t the carefree Jesse everyone was used to, although I tried to play the part. Most people accepted the facade, but a few—my mom, Lily, and Josie—saw through it. They’re too perceptive, and part of me was irritated by that. And part of me was grateful because I knew if and when I did need to talk to someone about my reincarnated demons, I’d have someone. Of course Rowen was the person I’d go to first with anything. . . but not that. I didn’t want her in that world. She’s been through so much, and it was my job to protect her from any more darkness.

So, yeah, the last two weeks had been bad, but things were looking up. The next day was Friday, and I had the weekend off to go visit Rowen. I would work through whatever was going on in my head, Rowen would be none the wiser, and everything would be just fine.

It sounded easy enough, but I knew doing it would be the opposite.

The afternoon chores were done, and I was up in my attic bedroom changing into fresh clothes. After Jolene had stumbled in on me three different times while I was changing in the laundry room, Mom and I decided my bedroom might be a better place to change. At least until Jolene learned to knock.

After clasping my belt into place, I grabbed my wallet out of my dirty pants. I was about to slide it into my back pocket when I paused. For months, I couldn’t go longer than an hour without checking to make sure it was still there. Then I’d gone months without checking. I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d checked to make sure it was still tucked into the last card slot of my wallet. I had a sudden urge to check. That unsettled me. A lot. The frantic feeling jolting through me was foreign, yet familiar. I’d lived that frantic feeling in a past life. I didn’t want to live, or even revisit, it in this life.

I inhaled as I opened my wallet. Slipping my little finger into the last slot, I slid it along the bottom. My throat went dry. I slid my finger back again, making sure I hadn’t missed it. Surely it was still in there. After sliding my finger back and forth a couple dozen times, I emptied the entire contents of my wallet. Maybe it had fallen into a different slot. My driver’s license, a few dollar bills, and a photo of Rowen fell to the floor. My wallet dropped beside the mess a moment later.

Hitching my hands on my hips, I scanned my room. It wasn’t meticulous, but it was clean by guy standards. Something that small could be anywhere though: buried in the floor planks, hidden between the sheets of my bed, hiding beneath my boots in the closet. It could have been anywhere, but I didn’t unleash a full-fledged search and rescue because I knew it wasn’t there. I could feel it. Or I suppose what was more true was that I couldn’t feel it.

The connection between myself and an inanimate object making itself known again terrified me more than any of my nightmares. Unlike the nightmares, that was real. That was happening. I was feeling a familiar pang of obsession, my heart racing as I grew more frantic, feeling an actual connection to something I didn’t want to feel a connection to.

If ever a person could regress so quickly, it was me. Weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed it, but there I was living it.

I didn’t know how long I stood in my room, inhaling and exhaling, trying to fight back the feelings crashing over me like waves, one right after the other. But I failed. Nothing could pull me off the runaway train I was on, at least not yet.

The next night, though . . . the next night, I’d be with Rowen. If anything or anyone could get my mind off of it and give me some clarity, it would be her. I’d be okay. Tomorrow, things would be so much better.

Having no other assurances to give myself, I put my wallet back together, slid it into my back pocket, and left my room. I had an hour before dinner, and I was going to use it to clear my head. In Rowen’s absence, the best substitute was saddling up Sunny and tearing through a few miles of countryside.

I was just shoving through the front door when Dad called me into his office.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” I hovered inside the office doorway, trying to sound and look like carefree Jesse Walker.

“I was just talking to your mom, and she mentioned you were planning on heading to Seattle for the weekend.” Dad slid off his hat and dropped it on the desk. “Is that right?”

I nodded. “That’s right. I figured I’d leave as soon as we finished up tomorrow afternoon.” Just thinking about spending the next night with Rowen beside me calmed me. Not all the way, but enough so I felt like I could breathe again.

Dad sighed. “I was afraid of that. It’s probably my fault for not coming out and saying it, but, Jess . . . this is calving season. I know it’s early this year thanks to the warm weather, but nonetheless, this is when I need you most, son. It’s go time now through the end of summer, and after fifteen years of this, you know there’s no such thing as days, let alone weekends, off.” Dad’s hard words were softened by his voice and expression, but still . . .

“Wait. What? Are you saying I can’t leave to see Rowen tomorrow?” That’s what it had sounded like, but in my current state, I needed everything spelled out.

Dad’s forehead lined. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

I braced myself in the doorway. “Just like that? You’re going to tell me I can’t go see her? Dad, I’m not a little boy you can tell what to do and not to do. I’m twenty years old. I get to decide who I want to see and when I want to see them.” I’d never spoken to my dad like that before. I might not have been blatantly disrespectful, but I was bordering on it. I didn’t look up to anyone on earth as much as I looked up to my dad, but him telling me I couldn’t see the person I wanted to see, fresh on the heels of that wave of emotions, made me feel like a cornered dog. I needed out of the corner no matter what.

“I’m not telling you this as your father, Jesse. I’m telling you this as your employer. The height of our season has started, and I need you here. You’ve got responsibilities and obligations to fulfill, Jess.”

“I’ve got responsibilities and obligations to Rowen, too.”

“That’s right. You do. And you’ve got them here at Willow Springs.” Dad stood behind his desk chair, his arms folded over the top of it, watching me carefully. “Life’s about figuring out how to manage and balance your responsibilities and obligations.”

“How do I balance the fact that Rowen is expecting me in Seattle this weekend and you’re expecting me here?”

Dad quirked a brow. “Son, that’s easy. Rowen, thank god, loves you so much she’ll forgive you and wait for you. The cows? They won’t wait when a hundred-pound calf is ready to push its way into the world.”

I thought about that for a minute. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew Dad was right. I’d been the idiot for thinking that even though Willow Springs was in firing-on-all-engines mode, I’d be able to take a few days off and head to Seattle. I’d ignored or played ignorant to the truth because I hadn’t wanted to see it. I didn’t want to think that anything would keep me away from Rowen. I still didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t claim ignorance anymore.

“Shit,” I muttered, propping my forehead on the doorway. That pretty much summed up the whole day.

“Jesse—”

“Sorry. I just . . . Today hasn’t exactly been made of win, if you know what I mean.”

“First, no need to apologize. Shit, and worse, pretty much sums up the difficulties of a long-distance relationship.” Dad moved to the front of his desk and leaned into it. He’d had the chair and desk for over a decade, and I’d never once seen him actually sit in the chair. We were too restless a breed to sit comfortably behind a desk. “Second, is something troubling you, son? I know I may not be the most sensitive person on this ranch, but you’ve seemed a little . . . off lately. Anything you want to talk about?”

There was so much I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t know where to begin. Once I opened up about it, I couldn’t pretend it would all magically disappear. “No, I’m good. You know how it is sometimes. Too many thoughts, too little gray matter.” I tapped my temple and forced a smile. I was just heading off to make my nightly call to someone—the first nightly call I wasn’t looking forward to—when dad cleared his throat.

“Jess, I’m sorry. You know I think the world of Rowen, and the fact that she thinks the world of you puts her that much higher in my esteem. Maybe she can visit here instead. You know she’s welcome anytime, and I’ll try to give you as much free time as I can when she comes. It wasn’t too long ago when I was a young cowboy trying to making things work with a vivacious city girl.”

“How did that work out for you?” I asked.

“Truthfully? It was hard as hell, and there were more days I thought we’d never make it than days I thought we would.”

Just the reassuring words I needed to hear at that stage in my life.

“But you want to know what?” Dad lifted his left hand and pointed at his ring finger. “I’ve still got this on my finger twenty plus years later, and I wouldn’t trade a day of hardship with your mom for a day of easy-breezy with someone else.”

“How do you think she feels?”

Dad chuckled. “You’ll have to ask her. I learned a long time ago that answering for your mom adds another day of hardship to the running tally.” Grabbing his hat off the desk, he slid it on and beelined out of there. I didn’t know why, but Dad went a little stir crazy if he was trapped in his office for more than a few minutes. “You’re a good man. You’ve got a good woman. You live a good life. Why the long face?”

I didn’t want to tell him it was because I was afraid the drain was about to be pulled. I didn’t want to say I was worried all the good in my life had just hit its expiration date. I didn’t want to admit any of that, so I forced a smile and slugged him lightly in the arm as he passed by. “I’m not so sure I’ve got a good employer.”

“You’re right. You don’t,” Dad said as he headed out the front door. “You’ve got a great one.”

I wanted to stall. I never wanted to make the call I needed to make. I didn’t want to disappoint her. My afternoon had taken on a whole new level of suck; how much worse could it get? Pulling my phone from my pocket, I was about to find out.

Rowen picked up on the second ring. “Hey, you.”

God. Just hearing her voice made my day about a hundred times better. “I miss you, Rowen. I miss you so damn much.” It wasn’t exactly a greeting, but it was all I could get out.

“What a coincidence. I miss you so damn much too. Good thing for both of us we get to spend the weekend together.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. There’s been a change of plans.” Keeping my voice strong when I felt anything but was hard.

“Change of plans? What change?” That right there, Rowen’s voice dropping in disappointment, was what I’d give my right leg to keep from ever hearing again.

“I can’t come this weekend. Dad needs me here.” Keeping my answers short was the only way to keep up the strong act.

“You’re not coming . . .” It sounded like she was talking to herself, but those words sliced through me.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You have no idea how bad I want to be there, Rowen. How bad I need to see you.” I dropped into the chair close by and waited for her reply.

“You have no idea how bad I need to see you either.” She paused suddenly, like she was choking on something. She was quiet for so long I checked to make sure I hadn’t lost the call. “Oh, well. I guess we’ll just have to suck it up and make due, right?”

Truly, a horse kicking me square in the stomach would have been less painful. I half-wished one would kick me to help dull the other pain trickling into my veins. “Can you come here instead? I’ll be busy, but I’ll sneak away when no one’s looking. At least we’ll have a couple nights together, and I promise not to sleep a wink. At least when I fall asleep in the saddle, I’ll fall off with a grin on my face.”

“Jesse—”

“Come on. Just say you’ll come. It won’t make any difference that our plans changed so long as we’re together. Come.” I was one more come away from begging, but that was all right. I wasn’t above begging. Rowen was quiet for so long, I convinced myself she was working it all out in her head.

And that was when she sighed. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I’ve got work, Jesse. I’d planned on you being here, so I got scheduled for a shift. I have a school project due on Monday I haven’t even started yet.”

“Can’t you get someone to cover for you? And bring your project, and I’ll help you with it. Hell, I’ll do it for you. Just come. Please.” There I was, Jesse Walker, a desperate man.

“Jesse, I can’t—”

“Rowen—”

“Dammit, Jesse, I’ve got a life too, you know. I can’t just up and cancel it all because you changed plans. I can’t plan my life around yours, and you shouldn’t expect me to.” I couldn’t tell if Rowen was more upset or angry. I’d learned that, a lot of times, she disguised one with the other.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. That’s not how I meant it.” I lowered my head into my hand. Words had always been my ally, but they seemed to have become my enemy. “I don’t expect you to put your life on hold for mine. I’d never ask you to do that. It’s just—”

“Then what were you just asking me to do, Jesse?”

I rubbed my temples and took my time answering. “To come visit me. If you were available.”

“I’m not.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have assumed you would be.”

“Good thing for you I love you, so you’re forgiven.” The lightness of Rowen’s voice was returning, but a darkness consumed me. “I wish I could, though. I wish I could just drop everything and come.”

“Yeah. I wish I could, too.”

Rowen and I talked for a couple more minutes. For the first time, I felt worse at the end of our call than I had at the start.