Do You Feel It Too?

by Nicola Rendell

  Your dutiful servant,

  General Robert E. Lee

  General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States

  GenRobertELee@ReenactmentSocietyofGeorgia.org

  Lily looked up from my tablet. She gave me a series of slow, deliberate blinks. “Pretty standard stuff for you? Receiving emails from the dead?”

  I tipped my hand side to side. “Depends on the location. But I gotta say,” I said, considering the email with its parchment-scroll background, “this is right up there with the weirdest. You game?”

  “Absolutely!” Lily bit into a hot English muffin smeared with butter. “God, it’s so fun to be with you.” She delicately shielded her lips with her hand, smiling as she chewed. “I adore this.” She wiggled her toes against my leg and tucked the last of her muffin in her mouth. “I adore every minute with you.”

  Adore was one word for it, I thought as I watched her dust muffin crumbs off her cleavage and then lean over to feed Ivan a slice of banana. But it wasn’t the only word.

  After we did the dishes and grabbed a shower together—so fucking sexy, goddamn—I heard Lily’s sister downstairs. Lily darted out of the bathroom with a makeup brush in one hand and a hairbrush in the other, wearing nothing but her lingerie. Light pink with black trim today. Christ. Totally oblivious to her hotness, she listened to the footsteps and said, “I’ll just put on my clothes and take him downstairs. I’m just about ready to go.” She spun on her heel. Today’s panties were lacy shorts. I was such a goner for that ass.

  But there was no need for her to hurry her sexy self. I was dressed already, and I really dug playing airplane with the little guy. “You get dressed.” I unbuckled Ivan from the high chair. “I’ll take him down.” I held him on my hip as he yanked at my earlobe. Together, we zoomed off through the door into the stairway.

  As I headed down the stairs, Lily’s sister opened her door. When she saw me, she let out a gasp and pressed her hand to her mouth. “I’m trying so hard not to fangirl all over myself,” she said, and that same blush Lily sometimes got reddened her cheeks.

  I held Ivan close to me with one arm and reached out to shake her hand. She made a little whimper and leaned against the doorjamb. We made the Ivan exchange and she said, “I heard there was a small situation last night.” She added a Lily-like cringe. “A blowout?”

  “It was no problem at all.” I wiped a little glop of snot out from under Ivan’s nose, and he giggled at me.

  Daisy jiggled Ivan as he yanked mercilessly on her earring, and she glanced up the staircase at Lily’s door. She pursed her lips and took a big breath. “OK, fangirling aside, please be good to her. She deserves happiness. Not some guy who’s going to disappear. Because I can tell you from experience, that’s a truly terrible feeling.” She looked up at me with a mix of dismay and protectiveness. “There is hardly anything worse in the world. Believe me. I should know.”

  There was one definite difference between Daisy and Lily—the hope in their eyes. Lily had it, but Daisy didn’t. It was special kind of sparkle that was hard to explain but easy to see. The very idea of Lily ever losing that glittering hope made me sick. “I won’t hurt her,” I said, not glancing away from Daisy’s worried eyes for an instant.

  “You promise me? I might be a fan of yours, but I’m her sister first and always.”

  The last thing on earth that I wanted to do was hurt Lily. Never. “I promise. You’ve got my word.”

  “Good,” Daisy said. “Insert obligatory half-joking threat from older sister here,” she added. And then nailed me with the mother of all glares.

  Whoa, shit. The Glare had actual force, like a gust of wind. I gave her a nod. “Absolutely. Understood. But can I ask you something?”

  Her glare softened one half of one percent. “What do you want to know?”

  “This fear of flying. How can I help?”

  Her ferocity lessened and was replaced with a more sisterly and protective concern. She blew out a long breath and let her shoulders go slack. “I was wondering if that would be an issue. She told me about Brazil.”

  “I proposed a change of itinerary on that one. But I still want to know what it is that she’s going through.”

  “Well, she used to be pretty gung-ho about working on it. She even got a passport a while ago . . .” Daisy glanced up the steps, like she was making sure the coast was still clear. “Never used it, though. Never even took it out of the envelope, I’m guessing. She’s tried everything. And I honestly don’t know that she can overcome it.”

  It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear, not so much because I was hell-bent on having her come with me on a plane, but because I could tell that the very idea scared her. And I didn’t like that idea one goddamned bit. But intense emotions were strange. Once people got it into their heads that something was going to happen—good, bad, mysterious—things like logic didn’t necessarily apply. “So I shouldn’t push it?”

  Daisy shook her head. “Not unless you want to lose her.”

  From behind me, I heard Lily trotting down the steps. I turned to find her in white shorts and a striped long-sleeved shirt with buttons on the shoulders. The shirt made her tits look incredible, even without a single hint of cleavage. She joined me on the steps and put her arm around me. “So you two met!”

  Daisy nodded and gave Ivan a few kisses on his cheek, watching me over the top of his head. “Now I’m going to make a graceful exit before I make a fool out of myself. Very nice to meet you.” She looked back and forth from Lily to me, lingering on my eyes just long enough to make her point one last time. Kapow.

  It was important to me to leave no question in Daisy’s mind about my intentions. There was no way in hell I could convey as much in a single glance as she had, so I just straight up said it. “Never,” I told her. “I promise.”

  Lily peered up at me, clearly confused. “Never what?”

  Daisy gave me a big warm smile at last. “Never mind,” she said, laughing, and closed her apartment door.

  Lily’s mouth dropped open, and she barked out a how dare she sort of gasp. “Did she give you a speech?” Lily asked. “Did she give you the Glare?”

  The General had the Noise. Daisy had the Glare. Seemed about right. “Oh yeah,” I said, reaching for my keys. “She sure did.”

  32

  LILY

  We went into full Powers of Suggestion production mode. We drove around town, drinking sweet tea and getting what Gabe called transition shots, which, he explained, he would then send to his production editors to put in between the various segments. Determined to make Savannah shine like the gem that she was, I picked out her prettiest places—the tree-branch arches of Oak Avenue at Wormsloe, the orderly gardens at the Owens-Thomas House, the row houses of East Bryan Street with their pastel shutters. I took him to the offices of the Historical Society in Hodgson Hall, where we dug up photos of infamous haunted houses from their glory days, and then we got footage of each house in the here and now: the long-abandoned 12 West Oglethorpe with its Greek columns and its rumors of a man who leans on the building scaring the bejesus out of tourists; the Willink House on East Saint Julian, where neighbors say they hear the doors slamming at all hours; 432 Abercorn, which was dark somehow, even in the middle of the day. And it would have all been just perfect. Except for one thing, which bothered me like a price tag stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

  Throughout our morning, his phone kept on buzzing constantly, either in his pocket or on the dash. It was a little reminder, each time, not only of how different our realities really were, but also that the outside world was trying to break into this little bit of heaven we were living inside. And I wondered how, in the midst of all those endless notifications, my little messages would ever be able to get through.

  But I squashed worries as best I could and took him to get chicken salad from Back in the Day Bakery and ice cream from Leopold’s. Then we headed out to Battlefield Park, where he set up his drone—no bigger than a liquor box—and
taught me how to fly it while we sat in the shade under the big magnolias. Using the joystick to make it zoom around town brought back that pure joy of driving the pink radio-controlled Mustang around our yard when my sister and I were kids. Sitting together on the grass, I gave him a bird’s-eye tour of the house where I grew up, the movie theater where I’d gotten my first kiss, and the parking lot where my sister had taught me to parallel park. Once we flew the drone back to us, we got snow cones and lay together in the grass. I looked up into the leaves with my head on his stomach. Heaven.

  He said, “It was good to see all your important places. First kiss and all.”

  I turned to face him with a spoonful of strawberry ice almost to my mouth. “For the record, I’d like to see where you got your first kiss.”

  He chipped off a spoonful from his cone and glanced up into the trees. “I think the first kiss was in Texas. But it might’ve been Delaware.”

  “Broken hearts in every zip code, I’m sure,” I teased. I rolled over onto my stomach in the grass so I could see him better and propped myself up on my elbows. “What about your parents? Where are they?”

  His smile got so wide that his beautiful eyes were surrounded by lines of happiness. “They retired to a little town called Jasper, Arkansas, right on the border with Missouri. One of the prettiest places you’ve ever seen. I bought a cabin down there for when I visit. It’s not Savannah, but it’s my kind of paradise.”

  I was no geography ninja, but I had a pretty good idea where that might be. “So that explains your vote for the Ozark Howler? Finding a way for me to meet the parents?” Even though I was a little sassy when I said it, it made my heart sort of melt.

  “You’re onto me. But not just them, actually. My brother and his wife live there too. And so do these little treasures.” Gabe grabbed his phone from the grass, opened it up, and went to his photos. He used the map view at first, and the whole globe seemed to be littered with tiny thumbnails. He zoomed in on the southeastern US and brought up one of him with two little girls in an enormous pile of leaves. The girl on the left was maybe two or three—chubby, towheaded, and rosy cheeked. “That’s Lacy,” he said, beaming with pride. “And that”—he pointed to the other girl, who was lanky and dark headed, and she had his hair and that same wonderful smile—“is Gabriela,” he said, smiling even harder. I knew that feeling. I felt just the same with Ivan. Like my heart was about to burst. “They named her after me. Isn’t that awesome? She’s so smart. It’s magic to watch her grow up. The last time I was there, she and I put the constellations on the ceiling of her room with those little glow-in-the-dark stars. You know the ones?”

  Know them? “My mom is still peeling them off the walls of my room. And I’m thirty-five.”

  Gabe let out a wonderful laugh. “Gabby is a lot like you. Thoughtful, kind, and always thinking. Fantastic sense of humor.” His eyes darted up from his phone, and he stopped himself. I knew that hesitation—I often had to stop myself from going on and on and on and on about Ivan. But the pride in Gabe’s expression made me think not so much of him as an uncle, but of what he’d be like . . . as a dad. He’d be a natural. And the idea made me feel tingly in a way that made me very glad I’d kept a thought inside my head for once.

  He put his phone aside and gently swept my hair from my cheek. The wind rustled the trees above us, making a cool breeze cut through the midday heat. Gabe seemed just as oblivious as I was to the other people in the park. I knew they were there, with their Frisbees and their dogs, but they seemed so far away. He tucked my hair behind my ear and finally said, “I like being with you, beautiful. A lot. When I’m with you . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s crazy. It’s like things make sense in a way they didn’t before. Like maybe you’re what I’ve been working toward and I didn’t even know it.”

  I had looked for so long for someone who made me feel like he did, that wild and intense passion that overcame logic and common sense. I had never wanted some ordinary romance—what woman did? I had always wanted to be swept off my feet. And maybe that’s why now I really did feel as though I was falling, falling, falling.

  I balanced my chin on my palm and, with the other hand, dug my fingers into the place where the grass met the soil, as if to ground myself a little. “What I said to you yesterday, in your truck, I still mean it. I don’t want to say goodbye to you either.” I tugged on a blade of grass and pulled it out at the root, smoothing the dark-green leaves between my fingers as I plucked up my courage. “But surely you can’t stay in North America . . . forever.”

  Oh jeez. Forever. I’d just said forever. Strong work, Lily. Way to take it one step at a time.

  But Gabe didn’t seem shocked at all. He blinked slowly and nodded again. “That is true. That will be a thing we’ll need to deal with. For now, for the rest of this filming season, I can stay in the States. I want to stay in the States.”

  I felt my cheeks begin to redden. I wasn’t used to this sort of thing at all—this take-charge, anything-for-me attitude. It was almost overwhelming. Who was I kidding? It was totally overwhelming. “You really, really don’t need to do all for this for me.”

  “But I want to, Lily. For the first time, I have someone other than me to worry about. And I need that. I like my life, but I like it better when I think of you in it.”

  I tied my little blade of grass into a knot. “So do I.”

  “This . . . ,” he said, caressing my cheek a bit more firmly, “. . . matters. We’re just starting. I want us to be solid for whatever comes in the future. Leaving so soon would be like . . .”

  I knew exactly what it was like, because I felt that way too. But until that moment, I hadn’t quite pinned down the feeling. Now I finally had it. “Like poking dough before it’s risen.”

  “Right.” His eyes twinkled in the dappled sunshine. “So what do you say?”

  Deep down, a part of me did worry that this was just a North American monsters–themed Band-Aid on a much bigger issue. I felt as though there was a bridge up ahead, and I had no idea how to cross it. He lived in Hollywood. I lived in Savannah. But he was willing to upend his plans for me, and the very least I could do was meet him halfway, with open arms and an open heart. And so I scooched closer to him, took his beautiful face in my hands, and whispered, “I say, Ozarks, here we come.”

  33

  GABE

  After a fantastic make-out session in the grass—her, me, the Ozarks, hell yeah!—we arrived downtown just in time for the VIP private ghost tour. It began at the edge of Colonial Park Cemetery, on the corner of Oglethorpe and Habersham. The tour guide was a big brute of a guy who could’ve been a stunt double for Mr. Clean, right down to the thick ridges of skin on the back of his bald head. I watched him dig around in his shirt pocket. From there he produced a pair of horn-rimmed Harry Potter bifocals and studiously checked some handwritten notes in a leather-bound journal. If there was one thing I’d learned in this business, it was to expect the unexpected.

  I’d also learned to be careful with experts—they tended to get proprietary about being filmed. Of course, Markowitz always left the explaining to me. He said I had the showbiz face; I said he was the king of the semi-wuss move. But before I’d even begun to explain the situation to her, Lily walked right up to the guide, shook his hand, and explained who we were. If it had been me, I would have expected there to be a whole bunch of discussion about rights, credits, and even compensation. Might’ve even been a total nonstarter. But for her, he couldn’t get the microphone on his shirt fast enough. She thanked him, shaking his hand with both of hers, and came back to me beaming.

  “I like a woman who takes charge.”

  She gave me a wink. “Oh, I know you do.”

  Fuck. I pulled the two high-res GoPros from my bag, one for each of us, and we were off. As she watched through the viewfinder, smiling, laughing at the tour guide’s legitimately awful punny jokes, she wrinkled up her nose and pinned her tongue between her teeth.

  I c
ould watch her do that forever.

  Right as the walking tour advanced down another block toward Chippewa Square, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked to verify what I knew already. Markowitz. Just as I was about to power it off, Lily glanced at my phone and whispered, “Go ahead! I’ve got this!”

  I nodded at her and fell back a ways. I watched her hips sway as she rounded a corner with the rest of the tour, and I answered the call. “Hey, man. Make it quick. I’m in the middle of something.”

  The elliptical whooshed in the background. “Just calling to see if I should change the Brazil ticket. Tell me you’re both going, Powers. Throw me a bone!”

  Aww, shit. Markowitz wasn’t going to like this fear-of-flying thing one bit. “Change of plans. Brazil is out. We’re doing the Ozark Howler next.”

  I heard his pace on the elliptical slow by at least half, which only ever happened when some serious shit was going down. “Hang on. You’re going to pass up drinking caipirinhas in Rio and using machetes in the Amazon for . . . the Ozarks?”

  The guy knew all my weak spots—I did love a decent drink and a chance to play Eagle Scout in the rain forest. It wasn’t going to happen, though. It was a bummer, but I wasn’t going to push her. We’d make the best of it. “You heard me. She’s got a problem with flying.”

  Markowitz made a sort of strangled croak. “Well, that’s going to seriously jam up the jimmer, Powers. A cohost . . . that can’t fly? What are we gonna do? Skype her into the Congo? FaceTime her into the tundra? I don’t want to be an asshole about this,” he said, which was, as I knew full well, his announcement that he was about to be an asshole, “but are you thinking with . . . your head or your head?”