Текст книги "The Girl Of Diamonds and Rust"

Автор книги: Susan Ward

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

“You don’t have to be afraid. Everything is going to be OK, Chrissie.”

Neil stays balanced above me, reclined on a hip, his body angled. Those long fingers start to touch me everywhere. Up my arms very slowly, then my collarbone, to roam my breasts and then everywhere. He doesn’t kiss me. He gently touches and stirs me until I am languid and aroused and he is fully erect.

I stare up at him. For the first time in many weeks, I want him. I want him now.

“Make love to me,” I whisper.

He turns me in his arms until I’m straddling him and consumes my mouth in quiet, thrusting kisses, his tongue dancing and playing, fucking my mouth with the same unhurried glide as his fingers moving on my flesh.

I feel his erection between my legs, touching me there, but he keeps us separated. He lifts my hair and his lips are on my neck. A hand brushes feather-light up my back.

There is something different in me. I can feel something different in Neil. I am impatient inside and he is slow, achingly slow in this. He spreads me on the bed, his tongue running over my breasts and I can feel his fingers between my legs and then in me. As he cups my sex he teases me with the lightest of contact.

“I love you, Chrissie,” he whispers, and I feel myself tighten and grow wet there.

I melt into his touch, wanting him hard and moving inside me, but he continues this controlled erotic play on my body and it is unlike Neil.

He has never made love to me this way. Not ever. A light kiss on my neck. A finger brushing my flesh. A kiss on my stomach. It is slow and tender and loving. I start to cry and I really don’t know why. The tears roll down my cheeks and I can’t stop them.

His lips tease my ear. I inhale a deep breath. “It’s going to be OK, baby,” he murmurs against my flesh.

A part of me aches even as all of me turns to mold into him. Baby? Why did he call me that? Neil has never called me baby before. Only one guy has ever called me that: Alan.

His tongue moves on my breast, circling my nipple before he takes it slowly into his mouth. I arch up into the play of his lips as his fingers move downward spreading me there.

He enters my body in achingly slow degrees. Inch by inch until he’s buried all of his erection in me. He doesn’t move. He holds his body still, breathing raggedly, kissing and touching me.

My senses swirl even as my emotions scatter with my thoughts. Why is he having sex with me this way? It’s almost as if he thinks I can’t take anything too passionate, too physical, too intense. Or maybe what I’m feeling is him, is his own reaction to all the shit I put him through with me. Maybe he’s afraid to touch me. Maybe he’s unsure he wants this, after having gone through that with me. I don’t know what is happening here between us, but the quiet of his body is unnerving.

I realize the last month has changed us both. Death lingers in your flesh. It’s metaphysically altering. It changes you.

Why didn’t I remember this? I should have remembered that before I went to the clinic. I feel vacant inside, hollow. Such a simple thing, Rene said. Quick. No big deal. Life goes on.

Only it’s not a simple thing. Death, in any form, changes you. And I definitely should have remembered that before I let Neil go with me to the clinic.

I start to cry harder. Everything around me, inside me, inside Neil, no longer feels familiar and I know it’s my fault. I just want to feel good somehow, any way again. I need him to fuck me hard like he always does, physical without the emotional convolution. I want only to feel in my flesh. I don’t want to think. I want not to hurt. I want my heart and mind to go mercifully blank and I want Neil to fuck me until I’m numb in my flesh.

I start to writhe beneath the tight cocoon of his body, my hips rising up in a frenzy, plunging him deeply within me as I devour his mouth with my kisses. His hands move and try to steady me. My nails cut into him as I run them up his back and bite his lower lip. I force him deep within me again. He fights it. I arch upward into him, rougher this time.

Over and over, until I feel the excitement build in his flesh, his muscles growing tauter, the skin across his face straining in the way it does when I’ve pushed him to come and he doesn’t want to.

I wrap my arms and legs around him, and he starts raging in my body. The thrusts are gloriously painfully and I lay pliant beneath him, wanting it harder, deeper, always deeper. He is pounding in me in a way that numbs me.

“Oh fuck, Chrissie,” he groans, pulsing within me as he spills into my flesh. He collapses against my body, sex-damp and quivering. And I don’t know why, but I now know I’m going to leave Berkeley with Neil.

CHAPTER FIVE

We stand at the international departure gate at Oakland Airport. Rene clutches me against her in a firm and breezy hug.

“You stay sweet,” she orders, tapping my chest with an index finger.

“You stay cute,” I reply automatically, but our ritual banter hurts me today.

Her enormous brown eyes fix on me intently. “I’ll be back from Costa Rica in a month.” She makes a face. “That is if I can survive that long with my mother. I’ll call when I get back. Make sure I have Neil’s tour schedule. I want to see you both before I start medical school.” She laughs, sparkly and excited. “I won’t have time after.”

I nod, trying hard not to break down here in the airport.

She pulls Neil against her. “You be good to her, jerk, or you’re going to have to deal with me.”

Inwardly I cringe, because it almost feels like I’m a baton being passed on in a relay race, as if by giving me over to Neil she can walk out of my life with a clear conscience. Christ, Rene, I’m a person not a thing.

I smile as Neil hugs her. She rushes toward the gate, pausing to do a swish with her hips and a whoop, her arms stretched above her head. “We survived University of California Berkeley.”

That was said loud enough to pierce the sound barrier. And then she disappears down the ramp, her laughter trailing behind her. I roll my eyes. Everything works for Rene. Almost every set of male eyes on the ramp lock on her to watch her go.

Once she’s out of view, I turn to Neil and he gives me a gentle wraparound hug.

“Someday, Chrissie, you’re going to have to explain to me why you’re friends with Rene.”

I laugh and peek up at him sheepishly. Neil knows exactly when and how to make me laugh. My emotions begin to settle and the anxiety of seeing Rene leave starts to fade.

“She’s not that bad,” I reply.

Neil shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “OK. She sort of cares about you in her own warped way.”

I rebuke him with my eyes, but I am not in the mood for a snappy comeback. I am silent as we walk from the airport terminal.

Neil opens my car door. “How much longer will it take you to be packed up and ready to go?”

I shrug. “Not long. I just want to leave a note for the management company so they know what to do when the movers arrive.”

Neil leans against my open door. “High-rise condos. Management companies. Boy, you are definitely going to be slumming it in my place in Seattle. It’s a good thing we’re only going to be there a few days. You’d probably leave me if we stayed more than a week.”

I roll my eyes and Neil leans in to kiss me, but I’m chaotic inside again. Seattle and the road. I don’t know what I’m doing. Not really.

Neil sinks into the driver’s seat of the Volvo and puts the key into the ignition. “Have you called Jack yet? Let him know about your change of plans?”

I stare out the window. “Nope.”

“Why not?”

I shrug and look at Neil. “Just haven’t. I’ll do it when I get settled in Seattle.”

Neil frowns and shakes his head, and I ignore his unspoken criticism.

As we pull into the condo parking lot, I spy Josh Moss leaning against a wall, smoking. We cross the parking lot and he straightens up, tossing his cigarette onto the pavement. He nods in Neil’s direction and doesn’t look at me.

“You ready to get on the road, man?” he says, giving Neil a one-arm, firm, fast hug.

“I’ve just got to grab our stuff,” Neil says, rummaging in his pocket for the elevator key.

Josh frowns. “Our stuff?”

Neil shrugs. “Chrissie is going back to Seattle with me and out on the road.”

Josh’s gaze shifts to me and the way he’s staring makes me uncomfortable. Josh has never liked me, not really, but it’s never before felt like he hated me. What’s changed? Why does he hate me?

The tic twitches in Neil’s cheek. “You got a problem with Chrissie going out on the road with me?”

The sharpness of Neil’s voice makes me jump. I stare at the guys wondering what this extremely tense moment is all about. The scene holds the feel of shit going on I don’t know anything about.

Josh shakes his head. “No problem.”

“Good. There better not be.” Neil shoves the key into the wall panel, turns it, and calls the elevator.

The three of us are silent as we make the short ride to the top floor. The doors open and Neil grabs my hand, his fingers tight around mine, pulling me along with him out of the elevator ahead of Josh. I peek up at him from the corner of my eye, trying to read his abrupt change of mood. He’s pissed off about something. What happened downstairs? I don’t want to be a problem with the guys. I don’t know why I should be, but it feels like I am.

I drop my purse on the table beside the door and kick off my flip-flops.

Neil points at my duffel and the small carry case next to it. “Is this all you’re taking to Seattle?”

I nod, watching Josh sink onto the couch. I smile at Josh. “Do you want something to eat or drink before we hit the road?”

Stoic and reluctant, he shakes his head. I beat a fast retreat to the kitchen and write the instruction note to the management company and the movers.

When I return to the living room, the guys have already taken downstairs Neil’s boxes of shit. I sit on my knees in the center of the living room, wondering if there is anything I should take other than the small collection of clothes and personal items I packed. I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone or what I’m going to need. Oh well, I guess pretty much everything I own can go to storage in Santa Barbara to be dealt with later.

I stare at the condo, feeling teary again. It looks so stark, so unhappy without everyone’s junk everywhere. A part of my life over. An ending, and perhaps it’s time to make the ending complete.

I debate with myself and brush at a tear.

“Are you ready to go?” Neil asks.

I look up, startled to see him standing over me. He

starts to collect my bags. I make a fast decision.

I point. “Take the duffel, but leave that one.”

He sets down the small black bag, a quizzical arch to his brow. I smile.

“Go load my stuff,” I say. “I’ll be right behind you in a few minutes. I need to take care of one more thing.”

Neil leans over, kissing me. “We’ve got to hit the road, Chrissie. Don’t take all day.”

“I won’t. I’ll be fast. I promise.”

I watch Neil disappear through the front door and then I pull my black bag across the floor and unzip it. I rummage through my things, collecting the little tokens I kept from each time I went to Alan: room keys, his t-shirt, some little knickknack that caught my eye.

I fish out my journals, the ones with my Alan entries and then the photo of us holding each other as we sat on Alan’s terrace our first spring together. That picture I cut from the newspaper before I left him in New York.

I jump to my feet and go to the moving box I haven’t sealed yet. I take out the old cookie tin with his letters, lay my keepsakes of Alan carefully within, then I seal it with mover’s tape. I bury it deep within the other things in the box, then I seal the box and write across the top storage.

I brush at my tears, and will my feet to follow Neil out the door. Downstairs I find him and Josh waiting by the van.

“You got everything you need, Chrissie?” Neil asks.

I smile, staring up at him and I can feel my eyes are sparkly and round. “I have everything I need.”

He looks at me, a touch confused, and opens the door as he takes my bag from me. I fight to get breath in and out of me as Neil waits expectantly for me to climb in.

Neil drops a kiss on my lips and I climb into the passenger seat. An end of a life. The beginning of a new life. Another fast turn on the road and I am lost again.

CHAPTER SIX

Inside the van is so quiet it is nerve-racking. Neil hasn’t spoken a word since we left Berkeley, there is a hovering feeling of conflict between him and Josh, and there isn’t even music on since Josh is sitting on the mattress in the back, guitar in hand, working through whatever sound he is hearing in his head.

I stare out the window at the endless, ugly miles of road. Crap, who would have thought Northern California looked like this? The freeway between Sacramento and the Oregon border isn’t really a freeway. It’s more like two lanes cutting through nothingness where people drive fast.

I lean my cheek on the door, letting the air from the open window tease my hair as I watch Mount Shasta pass me by. Well, that’s a little cool. It’s kind of pretty, still covered with snow on the top in June. Ahead of me I start to see more trees. Giant trees. Redwood? Jeez, is the drive all the way to Seattle going look like this? Barren. Unpopulated. Boring. Why aren’t there people here?

I shift in my seat until I’m facing Neil. “How long will it be until we reach Seattle?”

“Another 10 hours, if we drive all the way through.”

My eyes widen. “Ten hours? You mean we’ve got 10 hours more of this?”

Neil laughs. “Ten hours if we want to make it to Seattle tonight. What do you think being on the road is? It’s road, Chrissie. Haven’t you ever been to Northern California and Oregon?”

I crinkle up my nose. “Nope, I’ve lived a pretty deprived life.”

Neil flicks on the turn signal and looks in the mirror, readying to change lanes. “Somehow I don’t think deprived covers it.” His eyes settle on me for a brief moment, serious, then back to the road. “Not having second thoughts are you?”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

Neil smiles at me. “Good. This is just the drive to Seattle. When we go out on tour, the travel will be more comfortable, more interesting for you.”

“Will it? I still don’t know what you expect me to do here.”

“Whatever you want. Anything. Nothing.” He gives me a look that goes straight to my heart. “Just be with me.”

He lapses back into silence and I study him. I still don’t quite get why Neil wants me here, wants to drag me along in his life, back to Seattle and out on the road. I may have never been out on the road, but I do know a thing or two about musicians.

Most musicians wouldn’t dream of taking their significant other out on tour with them. Shit gets crazy on the road. Men get crazy on the road. The girls get crazy on the road. It’s a place to do anything, no regrets or explanations, where no one tells and everyone just parties. I’m far from a party girl and I’m not exactly a roll-with-it kind of girl either. I’ve heard stories about the road all my life. The last thing Neil should want is me along with him here. Especially if he loves me…nope, he shouldn’t want me here.

I stare ahead at the road. Stupid, Chrissie. Stupid. Neil loves you. That is the only thing about your life that’s totally clear and why you left Berkeley with him. You may not know what you feel. You may not know what you are doing here. But you do know, it is a fact, that Neil loves you. No guy would go through the shit he went through with you if he didn’t.

I ease out of the passenger seat. “I’m going to grab a soda from the cooler. Do you want one?”

“No. I’m good, Chrissie.”

As an afterthought, I drop a kiss on his cheek before I make my way to the back of the van. I sink onto my knees on the mattress that covers the floor, close to Josh, and I reach into the ice chest.

I pop open a diet coke, and sit with my back against the van wall. “What are you working on?”

Josh looks at me, impatient and irritated by the interruption. “Not shit now.”

My cheeks cover with a burn. “Sorry. I’ll get out of your way.”

He runs a hand through his black hair. “No. Don’t bother. I could use a break. I think I’ll sit up front with Neil for a while.”

I don’t really want to sit on the floor in the back of the van, surrounded by luggage, boxes, instruments and surfboards, but I nod in an it’s OK with me kind of way. Josh crawls past me and up to the front and I remain alone in the back, wondering what I’m supposed to do here. I can’t even see the scenery since there aren’t any windows, pitiful diversion though it was.

I zip open my black case, pull out a journal, then settle on my stomach, tapping the pen against my lip. I scrawl across the top of a fresh page the date and a notation—Day One on the Road—but when the words start to flow out of me, I’m not really writing about the road.

I’m writing about things dark and heavy in my heart, a forgotten snippet from another journal from years ago—parts of me have been quieted, new parts of me stirred awake, parts of me I leave behind, and parts of me I take. A part of me I don’t want anymore. A part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in Berkeley.

~~~

I open my eyes and sit up in alarm. The van is still and empty and morning sunlight is streaming through the windshield. My journal and pen lie beside my pillow and someone, most probably Neil, pulled an unzipped sleeping bag over me.

Where the heck are we? Why is it so quiet? And how long have I been asleep in here?

I brush the tangled hair from my face and scooch on my knees to the door and slide it open. I stare. I’m surrounded by trees, dirt and nothing. A sound makes me lean out of the van.

“Morning,” says Josh.

I frown. He’s sitting on a redwood picnic table beside a small portable stove of some kind, with a pot I can only assume is coffee sitting on the flame.

I climb out of the van. “Where are we?”

“Harris Beach State Park, Oregon.” Something on my face makes him laugh. “Haven’t you ever been camping before?”

I shrug. “Nope. Haven’t been to Oregon either.”

He takes a sip of his coffee. “Get used to both. Neil loves camping and Neil loves the beach here. Decided last night not to push through to Seattle and cut over to the coast while I was asleep. I was as surprised as you when I woke up here.”

I laugh and Josh gives a smile, albeit a small sort of reluctant one, but it’s a smile. A definite improvement over yesterday.

I sink down to sit on the table next to him, and settle my feet on the bench. Through the thicket of trees encircling what I can now tell is a campsite, I can see the beach ahead.

He reaches for the pot on the stove. “Do you want some coffee?”

“I’d love some.” After he hands me a cup I take in more details of my surroundings. Jeez, I’ve never been camping before. There has got to be a bathroom somewhere.

I feel the pressure of eyes on me and turn to find Josh studying me. Something in how he is looking at me makes my fingers tighten around my cup and my cheeks flush.

He says, “You fucked with my boy’s head pretty good. He was a mess when he came back to Seattle in December. Did you know that? A fucking mess in Seattle. A fucking mess on the road. If all you’re going to do is give him more shit why don’t you bail on the tour before we head out on the road in Seattle?”

The color on my face turns into a burn. He looks away, staring out at the ocean, his jaw tense. I don’t know what to say to that. A part of me is humiliated, a part of me pissed off because Josh has gotten more than a few things wrong, and a part sort of respects what a loyal friend he is to Neil—but it leaves me not knowing what to say, so I say nothing.

His eyes lock on me again. “Neil isn’t like the rest of us assholes. He’s a good guy. He never screwed around on you once. Not once in four years and I’d know it. Pussy gets shoved in his face 24/7 while we’re on the road, and he doesn’t fuck around. And then you mess with his head. You dump him just to prove you can or some other shitty rich-girl mind-fuck game. Then when he’s got it together again, you take him back so you can fuck with his head again. Don’t fucking do it. Leave him alone if that’s your game here.”

I’m breathing so heavily I’m nearly hyperventilating. I want to run as quickly and as far from Josh as I can, but that definitely deserves a response, and if I don’t respond Josh is going to think he’s right about everything and treat me worse on from here.

I stand up, meeting Josh’s hostile, waiting gaze directly. “I didn’t fuck with his head. We had problems. We fixed them. It’s none of your business what we do. Stay out of it.”

I meet him stare for stare.

Josh breaks off first, tossing his coffee onto the ground. “No problem. I just wanted to make sure you know where I stand here. The band is finally going somewhere. I don’t want you to fuck up everything for everyone by fucking with him again.”

I lift my chin. “That’s not going to happen, Josh. Neil wants me here and I’m going on the road with him, whether you like it or not.”

He shakes his head and looks away.

“Do you know where Neil is?”

He points at a path. “Down there you’ll find Neil on the beach.”

I toss Josh a stiff smile and head down the path toward the beach. I cut through brush and trees and then realize I could have taken the road here. It hugs the edge of the forest I’m cutting through. Jeez, what a prick Josh can be, sending me this way.

I walk down the road, into the parking lot that hugs the beach. The view is gorgeous, an unspoiled expanse of sand and an relenting, roiling current as the waves hit the shore and the giant rocks that rear from the water. The shoreline is practically deserted.

Shading my eyes with my hand, I search the beach for Neil. He is sitting in the sand, legs bent and arms around them, staring at the water. The image he makes is peaceful and intense at once, and brings sharply to my mind the way Jack sits and stares at the ocean, a quietness and a troubled air covering their flesh simultaneously.

I feel a sharp prick in my heart. Why do all the men in my life—Alan, Jack, Neil—have a deeply buried troubled soul that they will not share with me? What I am seeing is familiar to me, eerily so, and a touch disturbing.

For some reason, I hold back and simply watch Neil for a while. He tosses a rock to skim across water, then he stills and stares. He is simmering with something internally, though the picture he makes to a casual observer would be one of contentment. But I can feel it and I am suddenly alarmed by it. Maybe he is regretting bringing me along with him to Seattle?

I plod through the sand until I’m near him and he gives me a smile over his shoulder. It’s a lazy and content kind of look, deliberately so, and I’m not fooled by any of it.

I sink on my knees behind him, laying my cheek against his back.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

Neil shrugs. “Nothing. Just thinking. There won’t be any quiet once we get back to Seattle and then on the road. No time to think.”

No time to think. Sounds like heaven to me.

“Do you want to hear something silly?” I ask him and Neil makes a small laugh. “I’ve never been camping before. Does this count as camping?”

Neil laughs harder. “Sort of. God, you have been raised a completely deprived girl.”

I look over his shoulder and make a face at him. “Pretty much. Why do you want a deprived girl?”

He kisses me lightly. “Because I love you.”

My vision clouds from the power of emotion with which he says that.

“We’re going to be OK, Chrissie,” he whispers.

I place my lips on his back where my cheek had been. I don’t know who Neil is trying to convince; himself or me?

“I know,” I murmur. “We’re both going to be OK.”

He springs to his feet and holds out his hand to me. As we near Josh, I lean into Neil and whisper, “I’m going to hate that van before this is through. All you guys in there at once. With only Josh it’s a nightmare.”

Josh picks up the stove from the table. “Don’t worry, Chrissie. We’ve already decided we’re going to draw up straws each night to see who gets to share the bed with you.”

Shit, he heard me.

Neil gives him a tap on the chest. “Don’t fuck with my girlfriend.” Josh laughs. Neil looks down at me. “We’re doing ten months on the road opening for Scream. The US leg of their world tour. An arena tour, Chrissie. No van. Tour bus. Road crew. Everything.”

My brows hitch up and my eyes widen. I knew things were going well for Neil, but I didn’t know how well. And God, why didn’t I ask him? I’m ashamed that in our month in Berkeley, I hadn’t really asked him anything about the band or his life in Seattle. We’d been too consumed with my shit.

“Chrissie, we haven’t done touring in the van for a year,” Josh says, tossing the stove inside and then closing the cargo doors. “Neil just drives this thing because he fucking likes it. Don’t think you’re going to get him to get rid of it. He won’t.”

“Fuck you, Josh. I like the van. It was more fun when we toured in the van.”

“The only one who liked the van was you, Neil,” Josh counters. “I’m with Chrissie. I hate that fucking thing.”

Neil laughs and opens the side door. “I’m going to get an hour’s sleep, Josh. Then we can head off on the road again.”

I let Neil pull me up into the van with him and I notice how tired he looks. Maybe he didn’t sleep last night. He settles on the mattress, pulling me into the tuck of his body.

He kisses my cheek. “Don’t let me sleep more than an hour, Chrissie.”

“OK.”

I lie against him, wide awake, but in a couple of minutes Neil is sound asleep. In the quiet of the van everything suddenly feels different, inside me, inside him, and all around us. There is a strange sense that life is about to change in some unknown way for the both of us, and in the air there is that feeling of companionable sadness and despondent hope in me and in Neil.

A vision of him sitting on the beach rises in my head. I know where the deeply buried sadness within me comes from, each moment of my life that makes it an unrelenting part of me. But after nearly four years I don’t know its source in Neil.

It should feel different, not good, when I touch him and feel what it is in me in him as well. Neil is still-water, in most moments of his life, an alluring at-peace soul, but for a moment I felt me in him.

I wish I understood what it is I’m feeling in him. I wish I understood why he loves me. I wish I understood why in this companionable sadness we sometimes share we always feel our best to me.

We feel good together. Right. Almost enough. But not quite.

It’s not Neil’s fault. He’s a wonderful guy. It’s me. I’m lost in a void. Going somewhere. Going nowhere. Having everything a girl should want. Having nothing completely fill me. Thinking of a whispering voice saying Chrissie as I let Neil hold me and sleep.