Текст книги "The Girl Of Tokens and Tears"

Автор книги: Susan Ward

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

CHAPTER TEN

I zip closed my duffel bag. My last final of summer session is done. I’m out of here for three weeks.

The phone rings. I click on the cordless. “Hello.”

“Hey, Chrissie. You got everything arranged to come up here?”

Neil. I smile. “Yep. Bag packed. Ticket booked. Are you ready to meet me at the airport tomorrow?”

“More than you know,” Neil says in a husky growl. “You can count the new calluses on my hands when you get here.”

I laugh. Neil staying one extra week after me in Seattle slipped into all summer in Seattle for Neil. But it wasn’t as awful as I feared it would be, being alone in the condo for eight weeks.

There was a weird sense of relief, getting a breather from both Rene and Neil. A loss of tension in the air. A loss of tension in me.

I lay back on the floor, curled around the phone. “Have you missed me at all?”

A long sigh. “You know I have.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

A pause. “Chrissie?” Neil’s voice has changed.

“Yes?”

“You don’t just sit around down there alone in the condo without me, do you? You should be having fun. Going out.”

“You can be such a conceited jerk at times, Neil,” I say flippantly, though the emotion running through me is uncomfortable.

I wonder if Neil has just told me, in a guy roundabout way, he’s fucking around. And I’m pissed off with myself because I realize I’m pretty much just sitting around when I don’t have classes.

“What time is your flight?” Neil asks, ignoring my jibe.

“I get to Seattle at 3:30.”

“Are you staying the whole three weeks until fall semester begins? Or are going to go to Santa Barbara also?”

“Nope, the entire three weeks you’re stuck with me.”

“Good. You’re not going to get out of the apartment for days,” he whispers.

“I’m counting on it, Neil,” I whisper.

I try not to let clearly form in my head the shabby apartment Neil is living in, unpleasantly located in a cheap-rent neighborhood of Seattle. He shares it with Josh Moss and Les Wilson.

A two bedroom rat hole above a store, with walls so thin that knowing the guys are in the next room when I visit Neil definitely doesn’t put us, sexually, at our best. I wish Neil would come to Berkeley instead of me always going to him.

I hear the guys in the background calling for Neil. “I’ve got to run, Chrissie. Night.”

Click.

I take the cordless phone to the kitchen and drop it into the receiver. I wander to my glass patio doors. I stare across the Bay to the city. Alan is there. Blackpoll’s San Francisco concert date of his world tour. It’s the closest we’ve been to each other for over a year. I wonder if Alan is standing across the Bay thinking of me.

~~~

When I wake, I’m on my couch and the living room is filled with cruel morning light. My head hurts. My mouth is dry. I can feel that I drank too much last night. I fell asleep without making it to the bedroom.

I roll over, stretching and yawning, trying to rally my muscles into action. I definitely need more than my share of coffee today. I look at the clock on the wall. Crap, it’s midmorning. I’ve got to get to the airport for Seattle by one.

I wander into the kitchen and grab the instant coffee. As the water heats in the microwave, I down a tall glass of orange juice and I run my finger over the newspaper lying on the counter. It’s folded with the block ad of Blackpoll’s West Coast concert schedule glaring up at me. Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, then away.

After giving it a good crumple, I toss it in the trash. The only thing more foolish than having that darn thing lying on my counter for two weeks is spending an entire night thinking of Alan.

It’s over, Chrissie. He’s out of your life. Married.

I stir the instant coffee into my cup and head for the bathroom.  An hour later, I’m in my bedroom, dressed in a simple black sundress, trying to decide if I’ve packed everything I’ll need for three weeks, when there’s a soft knock on my front door.

Groaning, I move toward the hallway. Rising up on my tiptoes, I look through the peephole. A large body, so close to the door that I can’t make out who it is. I undo the chain. I open it a crack and my heart drops to my knees.

Oh my god! I don’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t find a single word in my head.

The perfect lines of Alan’s face change from enigmatic to amused.

“The correct moment to say hello passed about three minutes ago. Are you going to invite me in, Chrissie?”

I flush. Crap, how long have I been standing here doing nothing but staring at him?

Alan doesn’t wait for my response. I clutch the door for support as he moves around me into my condo.  He tosses his leather jacket on a chair and then sinks onto the sofa.

I try to still my spinning emotions by focusing on closing the door and locking it. I’m feeling more than a little flustered and more than a little stupid, but in my wildest dreams I never would have believed that Alan would cross the Bay to drop in on me, uninvited.

I step from the door, and then do a fast float of the room with my eyes for a place to sit. I drop down onto the chair where he tossed his jacket.

“You’re looking good, Chrissie,” he says softly, shattering the acutely silent air.

My vision ignores my will and fixes on him. “You look good too, Alan.”

It’s petty, but I hate that he does. Alan looks even better than he did during our spring together. Fit, tan, rock star chic. He’s stylishly dressed in the kind of clothes he wears for interviews: a flowing black shirt and leather pants. His long, wavy hair is just the right amount of tousled. Must have wanted to give his fans a dose of fuck-me hair in the morning.

“Are you enjoying school? What are you studying?”

I inhale a long breath. God this feels weird. “Music.”

I drag my gaze away from him. In spite of how many times I’ve imagined this moment, I never expected it to feel like this. Miserably uncomfortable. But then we didn’t exactly part as friends and having him here sitting, strange and distant, forces me to remember he’s married.

“Jack bought you a nice condo, I see,” he says casually, fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket. He lights it without asking if he can, takes a long drag, and stares at me through the smoke. “I’ve wondered what it would look like. The place you chose over me.”

My face burns. Only Alan could make a glib pejorative directed at himself a cutting insult. If there had been a hint of anything in his voice—kindness, gentleness, affection—that comment would have played so much differently. But it held only the clip of meanness.

I stare at him. Elegantly mean Alan. Emotion rockets through my veins, raw and unwanted. It’s mean Alan who is sitting in my condo with me today.

“If there’s a reason why you dropped by, tell me and then leave,” I whisper, in spite of my resolve to stay emotionless. “Otherwise, your being here is ridiculous, and I should go to the airport for my flight to Seattle.”

He arches a brow. “Seattle?” he repeats in a rough sort of way.  “Why are you going there?”

Normal question in not normal context.

I stare at him without answering.

His eyes do a casual study of my living room and then shift back to my face. “How long have you had a guy living with you?”

I tense. How does he know that? My gaze focuses on Neil’s surf board and wetsuit propped against the wall.

“I don’t see as how it’s any of your business how long I’ve been living with Neil.”

His eyes flare and widen. “And I don’t see why you care if I know.” He stomps out his cigarette on a plate I left on the coffee table. “It was a polite question. Conversational. Nothing more.”

That comment hits me like a slap on my face.

I force myself to look at him directly. “I think you should leave, Alan. Why did you come here?”

He takes out another cigarette, lights it, and takes a long drag, staring at me through the smoke again. “I’m in San Francisco. But you know that.”

I pretend not to understand what he means.

He says, “It seemed ridiculous...” There is just enough edge in “ridiculous” that my scalp prickles. “…not to cross the bridge to see you.”

I change course. “So how is Nia?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

I blink at him.

What does that mean? Are they getting divorced? Maybe the stories in the press aren’t true. Maybe they’re not deliriously happy together.

“Where’s your boyfriend? Seattle? Is that why you’re going there?” he asks.

“Yes.”

It’s probably a stupid question, but right now it feels like the most important question in my life. “If you don’t know or care where Nia is, why did you marry her?”

His simmering gaze locks on me, and I feel the punch even before he bites out through clenched teeth, “To forget you.”

I can barely breathe. Weird, convoluted, harshly spoken, Alan honesty. I don’t know how to deal with him when he’s this way. I’m relieved when his eyes move from me to focus on stomping out his cigarette.

“It didn’t work,” he adds on a rasp. “I still think of you, always.”

“Were you thinking of me when you married Nia, four months after I left New York?”

I watch the dark light in his eyes change. His gaze clouds into something painfully harsh.

“I think of you when I fuck her,” he says in a brutal, quiet voice that is deafening. “Is that good enough for you, Chrissie?”

I flush deep crimson and my eyes fix on his face. I fight to recover from the shock of him saying that, and realize he’s watching me and expecting some kind of reaction. He’s assessing every change in my expression. I don’t know what has slipped onto my face, but his features lose their harsher arrangement.

“Do you ever think of me?” His voice is so quiet I can barely catch his words.

“I think of you every day, Alan.”

His posture and expression change in a flash. For some reason my answer kicked up his anger. I can see something powerful coursing through him.

He stands up, pacing the room as if struggling to contain something. He takes a deep breath, stops, turns, and then stares down at me.

“Then can you do me the courtesy, Chrissie, of explaining why you haven’t responded to a single phone call or letter. One returned call would have sufficed to tell me directly to fuck off.”

The last of that is said through gritted teeth. Calls? Letters? What is Alan talking about?

“You called? You sent me letters? I don’t understand,” I choke out.

His gaze burns into me. “What don’t you understand, love? That even the worst cunt would have picked up the phone once, or answered at least one letter?”

My face snaps up. I feel shaky inside. My heart stops.

Oh no…cunt. I see it on his face and I don’t want to. Alan isn’t here because he loves me; he’s here because he hates me. Oh God, he hates me. Alan is here because he hates me.

“I understand you leaving New York, Chrissie. What I can’t understand is why you had to be such a bitch after you left.”

Everything inside me collapses in a fast free-fall.

I spring from my chair and race to the kitchen. I don’t want Alan to see me cry. My fingers curl around the edge of the sink, my head lowered as I struggle to breathe in and out.

He thinks I’m who walked away from us. It’s too much for my emotionally undone senses. That I haven’t a clue why I never received a phone message or letter from him doesn’t matter. Alan hates me. It would have been so much better if Alan hadn’t come to Berkeley. If I had never known this.

Alan’s voice sounds behind me, void of emotion, but at least no longer angry.

“Why are you crying, Chrissie?”

“You can be so mean sometimes, Alan. Why did you come here if all you wanted to do is insult me and call me names? I would have preferred to pass on that.”

“I would prefer not to be here as well.” He says it coldly.

“Then why did you come?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “It did seem ridiculous to be in San Francisco and not to see you, Chrissie. So I came here.”

“You sent me roses for Christmas, didn’t you?” I whisper.

A long pause; I can feel him staring at me.

“Yes,” he says, the edge returning to his voice again.

I push my lips tightly together, fighting a fresh wave of tears. I knew they were from Alan. I knew it in my heart. I felt it in my skin.

“Was there a card with the roses?”

“No,” he says in a rough way. “I had given up sending you cards by then.”

“How long after I left New York did you continue to call me? Send me letters?”

“I don’t see as how that’s important now.”

“It’s important to me.”

He takes a minute.

“A year.”

Another heavy silence between us, and the emotion warring in the room isn’t only my own.

“Why didn’t you call me, Chrissie?”

The room is suddenly overfilled with the feel of Alan. His anger. His hurt. I’m dizzy and confused.

“I didn’t know you tried to reach me. If I’d have known you called me, I would have called you back. But I didn’t know. I didn’t get your messages or anything else. I thought, when I left New York, we were over. Clean break. You told me we were over if I left. What was I supposed to think?”

“I was angry. It was bullshit to get you to stay. I didn’t mean it when I said we were over. I regretted saying it the moment you walked out the door.”

Time stops around me, heavy and silent.

“Where did you go the summer after you left me?” he asks in a worried way. “Linda wouldn’t talk to me about you. It got me concerned. And Jack doesn’t take my calls since New York.”

Concerned. I can’t begin to process that one, or what I hear in his voice.

“I drove across country with Rene. An after graduation road trip we’d planned all through high school. Jack thought it would be good for me. So we went.”

“So you weren’t in Santa Barbara?”

“No.”

“I traveled to Santa Barbara two weeks after you left to try to reach you. Went to your house. Maria said you weren’t there. I’ve always wondered if she lied to me.”

My senses slowly grow aware that I’m still facing the sink with my hands clutching the counter, the only thing keeping me on my feet.

Two weeks. He only just missed me. “I wasn’t there.”

Another long exhale of breath. “Chrissie, look at me,” Alan orders.

I can’t move. If I let go of the counter I will drop to the floor.

“Please, look at me, Chrissie.”

He brushes the hair from my neck with his fingers. I want to turn into him. I want him to hold me. My entire body feels vacant with shock, like I’ve been run over by a truck. All this time, I thought he ended it with me.

“I apologize for being an ass earlier,” he murmurs, his voice pulling me from my thoughts. “I didn’t mean a single word. Not the cruel ones. I’ve been nervous since I walked through the door.”

My fingers curl tighter around the rim of the sink. “I’m really glad you came to see me. It’s been hard wondering why we ended not at least as friends.”

Alan’s body eases closer into me, not touching, but close enough to surround me with the feel of him anyway.

“It’s been hard for me, every day, not being with you,” he whispers.

I hear him swallow.

“I love you, Chrissie. I never stopped.”

“I need you to go, Alan.”

He places a feather-light kiss on my neck. It ripples along my nerves, and then jolts in my sex.

“Are you still in love with me?” he murmurs.

“I want you to go.”

“I have two days, Chrissie. I don’t have anywhere I have to be for two days.”

Two days. The blood starts pumping even more fiercely through my body. That unrelenting pull. The electric current. The want. Here, now, over a year later in Berkeley.

“Do you really want me to leave?” Alan whispers.

I hesitate.

He turns me around, away from the sink, and eases into me, one hand planted on the counter, holding his body just beyond me. I lift my face and his mouth lowers. The touch of his lips is just a touch, gentle and yet a sharp reminder of how we used to be. I feel his finger lightly on my cheek, nothing more, but the feel of him is all across my flesh.

I part my lips and he deepens the kiss in slow degrees, giving the feel of him, inch by inch.  I’m about to melt in my skin. He slowly pulls back.

I open my eyes to find him staring down at me.

“Tell me now, Chrissie, if you want me to leave.”

His expression betrays nothing. He hovers over me, watching my shifting emotions as my brain, my body, fills with my need.

“Please, tell me you want me to stay,” he says softly.

I take in a steadying breath. I say nothing and he leans into me. His lips touch my neck, my breathing increases, my head tilts back as my heart accelerates. I don’t stop him. Then I’m pinned against the counter and he’s kissing me passionately.

I lock my mouth on his as we devour each other’s lips in an almost desperate, frenzied way. I let him press my body against him, lifting me into his pelvis, molding us together, giving me the feel of him there.

He lifts me from the floor, never breaking contact with my lips, and he carries me from the kitchen. Somehow, he knows where to take me and eases me back on my bed. I don’t resist as he undresses me and I lie still as he gazes down at me. The cool air of the room touches my flesh, and the warmth of his fingers brush it away.

He starts to remove his clothes.

A kiss on my arm; my heart skips a beat.

A touch on my shoulder; tears in my eyes.

He covers my entire body with a kiss and a touch, but he doesn’t say the words whispering through my memory. He doesn’t need to. A kiss: I’m sorry. A touch: I love you. Soon, all I’m feeling is him and I’m out of my mind with the feel of him.

His clothes are in a pile on the floor. He’s naked, standing there staring at me. He exhales, a ragged shudder through his limbs, and then he’s in me. I close my eyes and I revel in the feel of him, the taste of his mouth, the bite of his fingers as he holds my hips, easing out of me slowly, and then again, harder, slamming into me.

He moves faster and faster.  I wrap my legs around him. I rake his back with my nails. I bite his shoulder. I run my tongue along his flesh. I feel myself tighten and tighten. I’m whimpering and he’s overfilling me as I melt around him.

He lifts up onto his knees, taking my hips with him, going as deep as he can go inside me. I come quickly, calling out his name. Alan follows with another hard thrust, and the surface of his flesh is claimed by trembling as he pours himself into me.

Slowly he quiets, lowering us to the bed, until he’s on top of me, his face in my hair.  I kiss his head. My fingers wander the surface of his back. We’re both quiet inside, and I’m lost in Alan, again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A sound, distant and faint, pulls me from sleep.

My slowly focusing senses finally identify what woke me. Oh crap, the cordless phone in the kitchen. I never went to Seattle. I never called Neil.

I check the clock on the nightstand and it’s after midnight. I lift my face from Alan’s chest and ease away from him. I gaze down at him, blinking. It still feels just enough unreal that he’s here in my condo in Berkeley that I almost can’t take my eyes off of him.

After the second time we made love, Alan fell asleep quickly. I stared at him for hours afterwards before sleep finally made me stop doing it.

There’s enough light in the bedroom that I can see the perfect lines of Alan’s face. He looks so peaceful in sleep right now, younger and less intimidating than he did when he brushed past me into the condo yesterday. I want to run my fingers along his features, and memorize, with my touch, how he looks at this moment. But I don’t want to wake him.

I slip from the bed, take Alan’s shirt from the floor, and tug it in place as I quietly go from the bedroom to the kitchen.

I grab the cordless from the counter and click it on. I slide downward, my back against the counter to sit on the floor. “Hello?”

“Chrissie…” is said in a long, amused, aggravated growl. Neil. Silence. Then, “What happened?”

I scrunch my nose. “I missed my plane.”

Laughter. “Obviously. I waited at the airport for two hours before I figured that one out. What happened?”

The tension uncurls, just a smidge, from my body. He isn’t angry.

“Do you want to hear the highlights or the lowlights?”

“Oh, definitely the lowlights,” he says, amused.

“I drank too much last night and passed out on the couch. I woke up late. Can we just leave it at that?”

Neil laughs. “If you want to.”

I definitely want to, I think to myself, feeling really shitty, even though we have an understanding. An expressed understanding. When we’re not together, it means we’re not together.

Neil’s rule, not mine, delivered before I left Seattle, surprisingly tucked into an overly long non-Neil like discussion about how he doesn’t want me ruining my college years waiting on a guy who spends most of his life on the road. It was just a touch arrogant. A touch conceited. Totally Neil. Totally sweet.

My fingers tighten around the receiver.

“Why didn’t you call?” he asks. “I’ve been worried.”

“Trying to figure out how to fix everything. Then I fell asleep.”

“You’re still coming right?”

“In a few days. There are some things I should really take care of.”

“Chrissie.” Another growl. “I want you here now.”

I laugh, but I don’t feel like laughing. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Call me with your flight info.”

“OK.”

“Night, Chrissie.”

Click.

I hold the phone in my hands and just stare at it. I spring to my feet, turn the ringer off on the cordless, grab a glass of ice water, and leave the kitchen.

When I enter the bedroom, I freeze. The light is on and Alan is sitting up in bed, smoking.

“A little late for someone to call. Everything all right?”

I tense, searching his eyes, wondering if he could hear me from the kitchen. “That was Neil. He wanted to know why I never made it to Seattle today.”

“What did you tell him?”

I shrug. “That I missed my plane.”

Alan stares. “Why is he in Seattle?”

“Work. He doesn’t live with me anymore.”

I climb onto the bed and sit facing him.

His eyes soften with amusement. “What is he? A broke musician?”

There’s enough edge in the way he says it that it should piss me off, but it doesn’t.

“A brilliant, broke musician.”

Alan laughs. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less if he’s got you interested, Chrissie.” His finger lightly traces my cheek. He leans into me. “Give us a kiss, love. You were gone too long.”

I melt into him, into the play of his fingers, the feel of his lips, but he holds the space between us. His mouth leaves mine in a slow disconnect, and then he pulls back the rest of his body.

“So what’s he like?” Alan asks.

My heart stops in my chest. I can’t believe Alan just asked me that.

“Neil?” I repeat stupidly.

Alan lights another cigarette. He laughs, amused. “Yes, Neil. What’s he like?”

I shrug. “The exact opposite of you. Very low key. Outdoorsy. Likes to surf.”

He watches me, unruffled. “Did you meet him in Berkeley?”

“No. Santa Barbara.”

“Before or after me?”

I have to give it thought. “The same night I met you. We bumped into each other on campus and have been sort of hanging out together ever since.”

I put my water on the nightstand. God that sounded lame.

Alan laughs. “Why is it the girls who are everything wrong for you are the ones you cannot forget? He probably couldn’t forget you either, and bumped into you on purpose. You’re probably all wrong for him, too.”

My body grows cold and I fight to keep from my face that that jab hurt me.

“Why do you think I’m everything wrong for you?”

He takes me in his arms and moves me until I’m curled in bed beside him, my head and arm on his chest. “Because you won’t run away with me,” he whispers, and I know the voice, the silky ribbons of theatrics. “Tell me you will and we can leave Berkeley together.”

I feel his words in my center, but my calm inside suddenly vanishes and I’m messy again. This night has been so much more for me than I thought it would be, and it hurts how much I wish I could leave here with Alan.

“You look really good, Alan. Better than you did…”

I break off unable to finish.  My eyes do a fast float over him. I pause at the ink on his wrist. I don’t recognize it as part of each detail of Alan I carry in my memory.

I trace it with a finger. I’m not sure what it is and I don’t remember it. “Is this new?”

“New. I got it last year. After you.”

I run the line with my finger again. I look up at him. “What is it?”

He closes his eyes and laughs. “You don’t recognize it?”

I frown. “It looks like barbwire, but it’s too fragile and the artist forgot the spikes.”

“Infinity symbols. The artist made them the exact size of the clasp on your bracelet.”

My eyes fly wide. Into my silence he just stares; beautiful, enigmatic and sad.

He lifts a curl from my face. “Linda gave me the bracelet to return to you when we left The Farm. I kept it. It was the only thing you left behind in New York.”

He pulls his shirt from my body and his fingers start moving along my arms, then tracing and touching everywhere. My lips. My neck. My breasts. Stomach. Lower. Even my scars. Everywhere. His mouth begins a slow trek. My nipples harden in urgent anticipation as I’m bathed in the exquisite slowness of  Alan making love to me.

My mouth presses against his flesh, kissing randomly and not caring where. I run my hands up his powerfully muscled arms. I kiss his wrist. “I like the new ink.”

His face changes. “I hate it. It makes me think of you, and I don’t want to.”

His mouth closes over mine, trapping my words within me before I can answer him. I feel his flesh searching at my sex, then buried deep within me. The feeling of him inside me is overpowering this time. I arch up, meeting him, pushing him deep inside of me.

He lifts his face above me and his eyes are blazing. “It’s the only thing you left behind in New York other than me.” Then I’m held tightly beneath him, and he is pounding into me.  My heated blood moves through my body. I writhe. He isn’t gentle, but there’s no pain. There’s nothing in my body, my veins, or my senses, except Alan.

~~~

I lie on Alan’s chest, wishing away the soon to come daylight.

His arms tighten around me. “I’ve been out of my mind since you walked out on me in New York.”

I lift my face. “I didn’t walk out on you. Stop saying that. I told you that when I left New York. I had to go back to Santa Barbara. I wasn’t leaving you.”

An emotional shudder rolls down his arms. “By the time I landed in San Francisco I hated you, but more, I hated myself for wanting you. I hated you and I came to you anyway.”

I kiss his chest. “I left New York because of me. Not you.”

He stares; the emotion-sparks in his eyes changing too quickly for me to read any of them.

“So now that we’re together, where are we, Chrissie?”

I lay my cheek back on his chest. “I don’t know.”

I can feel Alan’s stare, intense and indecipherable as it burns into me. Then, after several minutes, he leans in, capturing my lips and starts kissing me again.

~~~

I open my eyes and then shoot upright in bed. The stillness in the air makes reality cruelly inescapable. I’m alone in the condo. Alan is gone.

He left while I was sleeping without so much as a goodbye. Why would he do that?

Then, all the reasons it is better this way, one by one, flitter through my head. Nia. Neil. That it would hurt too much for me to watch him walk out my door.

I lie back down and curl around his pillow. It’s better this way. An ending we both needed. The dangling strings tied up. One last goodbye, understood, with the least amount of pain.

My eyes fix on an object on the nightstand. Alan’s silver lighter, and I recall that day in New York when he threw one at me and it hurt so much seeing it laying on the floor. I pick it up, an oversight, nothing more, but maybe not since I’m never sure of anything with Alan. I run my finger along its cool surface, feeling its coldness without bite. It was just an oversight, nothing more, but touching it hurts me, anyway.