“Just in time,” she quipped as she scurried back down the stairs, not bothering to put on shoes. She’d given herself a mini pedicure and painted her toenails a perfect shade of candy apple red last night and her feet were clean and soft. She’d put on socks if the night brought a chill. The California sunshine was doggedly hanging on, so although it was well into fall, the days were still warm and the nights, perfect sleeping weather.
The door-knocker sounded again. “I’m coming!” she called out, but this time she did slide back the hatch on her peephole. “It’s you,” she said, and pulled open the door.
“Were you expecting someone else?” Trevor asked as he came inside with his cardboard tray of food, the aroma of all-beef patties and fresh-cut fries wafting in behind him. She ducked her head to hide her smile when she read the look of sheer relief on his face. He really had been afraid she’d not let him in.
“No one else,” she said. “But that last time I opened my door without checking first, I was stuck dealing with you. I didn’t want to make that mistake again.”
Trevor shot her a bemused look, but his grin made her toes want to curl. Ouah! The man was lovely to look at. His close shave didn’t make him look younger like it did to so many men, but served to outline the full cut of his jaw, the square chin, the only thing symmetrical on his face. His lips were well-defined, but not too full, and a dimple on his left cheek made one side sit slightly higher than the other. When he smiled, it was the quintessential crooked grin of every fictional hero. His eyes weren’t quite level, but that might have been due to the scar that started just above his right eyelid and cut through his brow, giving it a slightly disjointed appearance. He actually had a notch in the bridge of his nose, too, as though he’d taken a hockey stick in the face, but it only added character to his features. And the way his hair kept falling forward on one side…. No, certainly not male-model handsome, but Phoebe would put his face on the cover of a romance novel any day.
His was the kind of face she would love to paint. The kind she’d love to photograph. She pictured him in a garage, his bike mounted on a lift beside him, a myriad of tools spread haphazardly on a workbench in the background. He’d have at least a day’s scruff, maybe more, and she’d smear grease along the rasp of his jaw. A gray tee shirt like the one he’d had on at the gas station, sprayed liberally so that it clung to the contours of his lithe body, but maybe with a vintage biker logo emblazoned across the chest. He’d be armed with the tools of the trade: an impact wrench in one hand, a tire in the other. His clear, blue eyes would peer straight into the camera as though he’d been interrupted in the middle of a job. He wouldn’t smile. No, his mouth would stay relaxed, neutral, caught right before he’d figured out how he was going to react to the disruption. Her eyes lingered on his mouth a little too long and she felt her skin warm when he flashed her a knowing smile.
“I’d like to photograph you,” she said, figuring the truth was the best recourse. It would explain away her prolonged scrutiny…almost….
“Really?” He actually sounded intrigued, which surprised her. “Why?”
Was he fishing for compliments? Well, she wasn’t shy. She’d give him a few. “You’re kind of a conundrum in my eyes. You’re not a big guy, but you have this big personality that makes you almost larger than life—it can be a little overwhelming, I’ll have you know.” She led him to her little table and gathered up the few things that were there so he could set the food down; a water glass, a series of sketches, a few soft-leaded pencils.
“So I’ve been told,” Trevor stated good-naturedly.
Phoebe continued, coming back to the table with a couple of paper plates and a stack of extra napkins. “Your build and coloring are totally boy-next-door, but the way your face is put together? Let’s just say you have remarkably sensual features, Trevor. When you smile, instead of tilting up the way most people’s do, your eyes curve down, giving you an almost lazy, devil-may-care look about you. Very attractive, especially to the ladies.”
She went back to the fridge and pulled two water bottles out. Trevor had purchased shakes and sodas for both of them, so it wasn’t that they really needed more to drink, but Phoebe needed to keep busy. Telling a man what made him attractive was something she did on a regular basis in her line of work, but Trevor wasn’t here for a job.
And she still hadn’t decided whether or not she could trust him. She wasn’t ready to jump into some deep, emotional conversation with him yet, either, just to figure out whether or not he’d really changed like he said he had. But it was nice to have company after so many days of just herself and the folks who came bearing sustenance.
Trevor stood behind a chair when she returned to the table, indicating she sit down, and then he joined her on the other side of the table. He still had that lopsided grin on his face, clearly enjoying her talk him up. He didn’t seem vain about it; it was more like he was fascinated by how she saw him.
“Thank you,” she said, once he was seated. Phoebe wasn’t surprised by his gentlemanly manners—she hated hearing people say that chivalry was dead; she simply didn’t believe it—but she appreciated him all the more for it. “For bringing dinner. I really am hungry.” She unscrewed the cap on her water bottle and took a long sip of it first. It made her feel a little better about the frighteningly unhealthy meal she was about to indulge in. “And for forcing yourself on me. I appreciate the company.”
He blanched noticeably, his smile gone, and belatedly, she realized her tasteless choice in words. “I shouldn’t have said it that way.” She reached across the table to touch his arm. “I was just teasing and it came out wrong. I mean it. I’m glad you stayed. I didn’t think I wanted company, but now that you’re here, I’m glad.”
He nodded and then turned his arm so he could take her hand, and reached across the table for her other one. “Will you say a quick prayer with me?”
He didn’t wait for her response—she should have expected this, too, but he’d caught her by surprise—but just bowed his head and in a few words, thanked God for the food and asked him to cover them in wisdom and grace. When he lifted his head, he was smiling again. He squeezed her hands and let go. “Thanks for answering your door tonight.”
They unwrapped their burgers in hushed anticipation and made meaningless small talk over the meal. It was delicious, every bite. When Phoebe realized that she wouldn’t be able to eat the second order of fries herself, she slid it to the middle of the table and they shared it. When they both reached for the same strip, she laughed out loud. “Which one do you want to be? Lady or the Tramp?”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever been called Lady before,” Trevor chuckled, letting go of his end of the fry.
“You’ve been called Tramp before?”
He shook his head. “Actually, haven’t been called Tramp before, either, now that you mention it. But if those are my only two options, I’ll go with Tramp. He was a pretty awesome dog.” He picked up another fry and waved the end in her direction. “I’d say Lady suits you just fine.”
As opposed to Tramp, Phoebe thought. She didn’t think she was ready to ruin a pleasant evening yet, but then, would she ever be ready? The opening was there, a prime opportunity to segue into why Trevor was sitting across the table from her. She knew he wanted to talk about their brief but life-altering encounter so many years ago. He wanted to reconcile things between them, to set things right. But Trevor Zander, Jesus freak, hadn’t walked in her shoes after she’d left him standing in the church foyer, and no matter what they said tonight, no matter how good it might feel to clear the air between them, to talk to someone else about Lily—Oh, Maman, how I wish you were here—to share the burden of her guilt and shame and grief with someone else, it was only a temporary boon, she knew. In the end, it would still be hers to carry.
“I’ve been called worse.” She spoke in a low, steady tone, and she was relieved that her voice didn’t crack, even when her throat tightened around the
words.
Trevor sat back, the paper basket of fries forgotten between them. She stared at his chest, counting the times it rose and fell, wondering which of them would speak next. But he simply waited for her to continue.
“With good reason, too,” she admitted, all at once driven by the need to tell him the worst about her, to get it out where he could see it, judge it—judge her—and they could move on, regardless of how the evening ended. “I was pretty wild back then. My poor grandparents. They had their hands so full after my mom and dad died, and I only made their job harder, pushing them, challenging them to prove their unconditional love for me again and again.”
Trevor remained still, his expression attentive and kind, and Phoebe saw the younger version of him sitting in the pew ahead of her in that shadowy church, listening to her tell him why she was there. The déjà vu made her pause so she could tamp down the fight or flight impulse that had her wanting to order him out of her house.
“By my sophomore year in high school, I had a reputation that I’d made for myself. I went to every party I could. I did things I wanted to forget the next day—this was before roofies were so prevalent, thank goodness—but it was like an addiction, you know? I hated myself and what I was becoming, but I couldn’t stop, either.” She studied her hands, no longer able to look him in the eye. “I hated myself, but I just wanted to be loved. I missed my mother terribly—both my parents, but my mom, especially. She seemed to recognize this darker side of me, my tendency toward living on the edge, and she met me there time and time again when she was still alive, bringing me back from the brink before I did anything really stupid. But after she was gone, no one stopped me from going over. It was like a free-fall—the exhilaration and the rush that ended with a crash-landing ending that broke me again and again. Because I kept going back for more. Loving the rush, hating the crash.”
Trevor shifted in his seat, but Phoebe kept her head down, desperate to finish now that she’d begun.
“No one came for me. No one ever showed up when I really needed someone to hold on to me. My sisters were dealing with grief in their own ways, even Gia who was too young to really understand that Maman and Papa weren’t ever coming back. We three older girls shared the guest room; we even shared the queen size guest bed the first few months—our choice—but somehow we all ended up dealing with our grief alone. I really believe that the only reason we’re still connected is because of the G-FOURce.” She glanced up at him briefly and noted the slight cock of his head, the question in his eyes. “Our sisters’ secret club. We’re the Gustafson Four. Grandpa G always says we’re a force to be reckoned with. Hence G-FOURce.”
“Ah. Yes. I remember now.” She thought she heard a smile in his voice.
“Don’t get me wrong. My grandparents were steadfastly there for me, for all of us, but I always felt like they were only there for me after I’d picked up all my shattered pieces, reassembled them into something they kinda-sorta recognized, and limped home. They didn’t know, and I never held their inability to see it against them.” She frowned at her own words, realizing they weren’t quite true. “At least not until that night,” she amended, remembering Grandpa G embracing Renata, comforting the wounded—albeit whole—sister, while she, Phoebe, stood on legs trembling so badly she was afraid to take a step lest she crumple to the floor…she, Phoebe, the one who’d been bent and broken and crash-landed one too many times. All the girl’s sisters and all the girl’s friends couldn’t put Phoebe back together again.
“I do understand some of what you’re saying, Phoebe.” Trevor’s voice broke into her maddening thoughts. “I just want you to know that. I do get it—the rush and crash, the self-loathing after the free-fall. The promises made to myself again and again…broken promises every time. That part, I get.” He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward a little, but he clasped his hands together in front of him instead of trying to touch her. She didn’t know if she completely believed him—how could he possibly know?—and she was glad he didn’t reach for her.
“The summer before my junior year, I decided I’d had enough. Many of my partying friends had graduated, so in a way, it was a perfect opportunity to start fresh. And I tried. I got onto the yearbook staff and poured myself into photography and design for that—that’s the year I really discovered my love for photography. I didn’t go out on the weekends and I avoided the party crowd as much as I could. But Homecoming….” Her voice trailed off. She pushed aside her half-drunk shake and took a long swig from her water bottle. She hadn’t talked this much in ages, and for the last week, she’d hardly said more than the few words exchanged with the people who came to her door.
“I took pictures all night. I stayed as busy as I could all night long, but in the end, I just wanted to go. So I promised myself I wouldn’t drink or do anything else that might alter my reasoning.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat harshly, forcing the next words out of her like she was purging. “I’d just dance and have fun, right? Get it out of my system. And then I’d go home to bed at a decent hour and sleep in peace. No crash-landing. No regrets.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A single tear.
She shed one rebel tear the whole time she spoke.
Trevor watched the emotions play out across her face like actors on a stage. He saw sorrow, regret, anger, fear. He recognized hatred there—hatred of self, of others, of God. He watched a battle wage between love and resentment, with trust and bitterness as their seconds. He witnessed the obliteration of hope as she told him about her two-mile walk home in the dark, about the scene played out in the living room where she’d been assaulted and abandoned again, this time by those she loved.
“By Thanksgiving I suspected, by Christmas, I knew. On New Year’s Day, I left the house while everyone else slept in, and found a drugstore around the corner. I stood in line with my pregnancy test along with other people picking up their morning after fixes—aspirin, black coffee, another bottle of cheap liquor. The woman right in front of me actually had a packet of Plan B emergency contraceptive in her hand,” Phoebe said.
Trevor needed a break. He needed to stand up and pace. He needed to growl and hit something. But he stayed glued to his chair, prepared to listen until she was finished talking.
“I tiptoed in the back slider, sure Granny G would be awake and whipping up breakfast already, hoping I could slip down the hall to the bathroom without being seen. But the house was almost eerily quiet. Everyone was still sleeping soundly, peacefully, completely unaware that I’d been gone.” Her mouth lifted in what he assumed was meant to be a smile, but it only made the pressure in his chest more intense. “I knew, Trevor. I already knew. I had no doubt, whatsoever, that I was pregnant.” She shook her head, hard. “But when I saw that stupid pink plus sign, it was like reliving it all over again. I crawled into the bathtub, curled up in a ball, and cried like a baby.”
And that’s when the tear betrayed her.
“No one came, though. No one heard me. No one knew.” She didn’t even bother wiping it away, but let it trail down her cheek to the curve of her jaw where it hung there, on the edge, before free-falling. “No one knows,” she whispered. “Still.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “I hear you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Phoebe’s shoulders were hunched up nearly to her ears, her palms pressed together on the table in front of her, her fingers laced so tightly her fingernails were white. Trevor knew better than to touch her. She’d carried this burden herself for almost half her life and he understood that she might need a little time to really digest the idea that she no longer had to go it alone.
How wise was it that he was the one she was pouring out her soul to? He wasn’t sure he had an answer for that, but he’d called Vic while he was out getting food. He knew he’d have to answer to his friend and Phoebe’s sister if he didn’t toe the line.
“I need to move,” Phoebe said suddenly. “I can’t s
it here anymore.” She pushed back her chair before he could get around the table to help her. “Do you dance?” she asked.
Trevor stared at her a moment, his mind trying to catch up with her sudden change of direction. “Do I—do I dance?”
“Yes. Dance. You know, boogie? Do the hustle? Bump and grind? Maybe the Charleston?” She lifted both hands and crossed one foot back and forth over the other. “Tango?”
Still bemused, he held up his hand to stop her. “I’m a musician. I have moves. But…why?” He pushed her empty chair closer to the table and began gathering up their food wrappers and other assorted trash and shoving them into an empty food bag.
“Don’t do that.” She took the paper bag from him and tossed it on the table, then grabbed his hand, pulling him toward her computer. She moved her mouse to click on the speaker icon that had been muted, and Coeur de Pirate filled the air with a song. Trevor didn’t understand a word she sang, but Beatrice’s voice seemed imbued with the emotions of the story Phoebe had just told him.
“Put your arms around me and dance with me,” Phoebe murmured, her voice almost as husky as the singer’s. “It’s the last song on the album. Hold me up for one song, Trevor. That’s all I ask.”
So he did. Trevor took her in his arms and cradled her against him while they moved slowly, barely moving their feet. Drifting. She slipped her arms beneath his and around his waist, and rested her cheek on his shoulder. Just as she’d said, he wasn’t a big guy, but the way she leaned into him, the way her body seemed to melt in the circle of his embrace, her tension flowing out of her as they drifted around the room together, everything about the moment made him feel like a giant of a man. Hold me up, she’d asked.
Phoebe and the Rock of Ages Page 20