by Nancy Warren
“Please, Gillian, it’s not like that.”
“Go away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Get out!”
So he did. And his heart felt heavier than an entire moving van of furniture.
Gillian ignored the pounding on the front door as she’d been ignoring it for the last ten minutes. She’d peeked out the upstairs window of her grandparents’ house and recognized Tom standing there.
The bouquet of flowers in his hand made her soften for an instant but not more than that. Flowers were easy to come by. Trust wasn’t.
The banging continued.
She flicked on the TV.
“Gillian? I know you’re in there,” he yelled.
“Man’s a genius,” she mumbled, turning the set up louder.
She didn’t pay attention to the station. It was some kind of game show with a lot of clapping and electronic music.
It didn’t matter. Nothing could drown out the noise. The pounding on the door echoed in her ears, seemed to pick up the beat of her heart.
Finally the banging stopped and she breathed a long sigh of relief, only to jump half out of Grandpa’s old recliner when a fist rapped sharply at the window.
Tom’s face appeared, and he held up the flowers. “I’m sorry,” he yelled. It must be raining, for his hair clung damply to his skull and water dripped off his ear.
She clambered out of the recliner, walked to the window. Saw him smile at her and pulled the blinds down so hard they sounded like a hailstorm. With a flick of her wrist she closed the louvers.
The sharp rattle of his knuckle on the glass set her teeth on edge. She ought to call the cops. Except that he was the cops.
“Damn small town,” she muttered. Maybe it was time to move on, to somewhere big and anonymous where a person’s past mistakes didn’t stick to them like some kind of visible skin condition. Was she the only person in the history of Swiftcurrent who’d been wild in his or her youth? She couldn’t be, but perhaps she was the only one who tried to stay in town and live down a reputation.
The trouble was, the townspeople wouldn’t give her a break. If she stumbled on a cracked bit of sidewalk, she saw the eye-rolls. Drugged up again, they’d be thinking. If she fumbled with her wallet in the supermarket or dropped her purse, she felt the weight of the town’s disapproval heavy on her shoulders. And if her perfect cousin was anywhere near, she was worse. The harder she tried to appear in control and sane, never mind perfect, the more clumsy and inept she became.
She had a feeling she was lumped in the same category as old Earl Hardminster, who sat outside the liquor barn wearing a torn hunting cap, smelly old clothes, and a guitar with a broken string. Didn’t matter about the broken string. He never played the thing, only left the case open for money. As soon as he had enough, he went into the liquor store and stocked up.
He slept wherever he could find some shelter and on really cold nights, Tom sometimes found an excuse to arrest him so he could spend the night in jail where it was at least warm and dry.
Yep, she and Earl. They were quite a pair. The town drunk and the town addict.
Maybe it was time to move on.
Except she didn’t want to go.
She slumped back into the recliner and stuck her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to go anywhere. This old house comforted her like the smell of home-baked oatmeal cookies, or the wrap of a faded quilt.
She had ideas, some energy seeping back now she was no longer living with Eric, and the stubborn feeling that if she could prove herself here, where attitudes were already against her, she could somehow get back that long lost sense of possibility, that she could be anything, do anything she wanted.
No. She wasn’t running away. She’d done that once before and look how that had turned out.
Eventually, the banging, window-rapping, and the yelling ended. Good, she thought, as she crawled up to bed right after the news. Tom had received her message. She didn’t want his flowers, she didn’t want his apology, and most of all, she didn’t want him.
She readied herself for bed, slipped into her favorite gown. It was floor-length Indian cotton cut in a traditional style. She thought of it as hippie chick meets Victorian maiden, which summed up how she felt coming back to sleep in her old bedroom. The sheets were cool as she slipped between them, the comforter her old one with the faded roses that sort of but not quite matched the old wallpaper with a different kind of rose stamped all over it.
Her grandparents had never changed her room when she left, and now she was glad. If she could go back to where she’d first taken a wrong turn, maybe she could straighten everything out.
She settled down in the clean sheets that smelled of lavender and made her miss her grandmother, who’d been the only real mother she’d ever known. Minutes ticked by and sleep wouldn’t come. She’d hurt her grandparents when she left, hurt them worse when she returned, but at least she’d been able to show them she’d cleaned up. They had always believed in her.
This bed was all lumps. She turned and fidgeted, yawned. and tried to figure out what kind of work she wanted. What did she know how to do? She didn’t even have her high school diploma, so who’d hire her? She could cook, clean, garden.
The great irony of her life was that she’d run away to the big city, only to discover eventually that she was a home-body who liked small towns. She was basically an old-fashioned woman who wanted to take care of a home and a family.
She punched her pillow and tried to make it less lumpy, while the sounds of the old house settling for the night jarred instead of soothed her.
Her grandfather had died right in this house. Was that spooking her? She turned. Thought about it and almost wished his ghost would appear. He loved to talk about the old days and she’d listen to him. She’d ask him to tell her the story of how he and grandma met. Neither of them ever tired of it.
Rain pattering on the roof was normally as restful as a lullaby, but tonight it drummed like a headache. The chintz curtains flapped at the window, which she’d left open a crack to let in fresh air.
What would grandpa tell her to do? If he was here and she could ask him. The thought of making a success all on her own, with her lack of education and her wild past against her, was not conducive to relaxation and sleep. And grandpa didn’t seem inclined to visit and give advice. But then when had she listened to his advice? How many times had he suggested she finish high school through one of those adult programs? She could probably even do it online. And now, she thought, she was ready to take that advice. Why not? It was a start.
She turned again in the single bed whose mattress hugged her with every turn. It didn’t matter what she thought about, so long as it wasn’t Tom. Or Eric.
Or any living human being on the planet with a penis.
There were definitely too many of those and all they ever did was screw up her life, she thought miserably. She’d never really been on her own. Maybe it was time to see what she could do. A high school diploma would allow her to go to college if she wanted to. Get herself trained for something. It wasn’t too late.
The old house creaked and moaned around her. She still wasn’t accustomed to the nighttime noises and they could be unsettling, reminding her she was all alone in a hundred-and-something-year-old house where her grandfather had died—and who knew how many others?
She knew her grandfather’s ghost would only want to help and protect her, but even a benign spirit walking at night had her eyes opening in the dark, because it certainly sounded like something strange was going on.
There was a tapping, scraping sound that seemed to be coming from close by, as though bony fingers were tapping the wood siding outside her window.
She’d heard that sound before.
Sitting up in bed so fast she almost hit the dormer ceiling, she recalled those wild nights of her youth when she’d flouted authority every chance she got, going so far as to invite boys to climb right up into her bedroom.
&nbs
p; Looking back now, she suspected she’d wanted to get caught, wanted to shock her grandparents in some way, perhaps punish them for giving her a home so her mother was free to abandon her. Whatever the reasons inside her seething teenage brain, her grandparents, as far as she knew, never found out about those boys who’d climbed the sturdy vine and shared her bed.
Alex knew, but she never said anything. Sure, she disapproved, even tried to read her a couple of lectures, but Gill wasn’t going to listen to a geek her own age who, she suspected, was jealous.
Maybe her grandfather had known all along. Maybe he was slapping the wisteria against the wall in some poltergeist punishment from the afterlife.
It wouldn’t surprise Gill. Life seemed perpetually to punish her.
The last boy she’d invited to climb the wisteria, the one she’d wanted more than any other, hadn’t bothered.
Tom.
She thumped back into bed. Well, she could forget that old fantasy. Tom hadn’t climbed in her window when he was young and as foolish as a man like him would probably ever be. If he hadn’t done it then, he wouldn’t do it now.
Would he?
Another rattling scrape. Her eyes flew open. What if he hadn’t gone away? What if it was Tom out there now?
She jerked upright and ran, barefoot, across the room to the window.
The warped wooden frame squealed and fought her as she yanked on it but finally she got it open and stuck her head out.
Surely, she was wrong.
Rain pelted the back of her head as she blinked down into the darkened garden. Sure enough, a bulky, dark shape was attempting to climb the wisteria, which was probably as old as the house and hadn’t been pruned, fertilized, or cared for since her grandmother died.
She knew it was Tom climbing up. She recognized the shape of his head. And he was clutching that bouquet in his teeth.
But it was raining hard, and he wasn’t a nimble boy in his teens anymore.
“What are you doing?” she called to him.
“Mmmphingmmumnegguuu,” he mumbled through the flowers.
Her heart stopped and then tumbled back in time and she was every towered princess from every fairy tale being rescued by her prince.
Except that this prince wasn’t doing so well.
The old, gnarled vine was slick with rain, moss, and who knew what. It was also frail with age.
And Tom was a solid man. He climbed with rugged determination, but she could see he was having trouble hanging on. His boots kept slipping.
“Come around to the door,” she cried. “I’ll let you in.”
He shook his head, the flowers flapping side to side.
“You’re crazy. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“Mmmingelluuummmorrry,” he said.
Knowing conversation was not only fruitless but probably taking his concentration from his task, she shut up and watched, a ball of fear forming in her throat.
He managed a couple more feet. He had maybe four more to go and then he could hook his hands to her windowsill and haul himself in.
He planted a foot on a gnarly “V” of vine branches, put his weight on it, and raised the other foot.
A dreadful snap made her clamp down on a shriek. Oh, God, oh, God. He was going to fall and cripple himself, maybe worse, and it would be all her fault.
He hung there by his hands, and she could see the vine gleaming wetly, dark brown and gray. His hands curled tight and she prayed as she’d never prayed before that the vine would hold.
She heard his feet scrabble around and then a grunt and she felt rather than saw that he’d found another foothold.
Her heart was pounding, her hands clasped together, cold and shaking. Please, please let him hang on.
“Only a couple more feet,” she said.
He was making a hell of a racket and she had a feeling the wisteria would never recover, but she couldn’t stop the emotion stinging her eyes as she watched a stolid, respectable, community law officer attempting to break and enter.
She’d never been so happy in her life.
Suddenly, a search beam seemed to hit her in the face. Tom slipped and scrambled not to fall.
“What in the Lord’s name is going on over there?” Mr. Taft from next door called out, a flashlight the size of a satellite dish pointed at them.
“It’s me, Mr. Taft.”
“Gillian? Is that a burglar? You want I should call the police?” The neighbors’ little white dog, not wanting to be left out of things, started barking.
A bubble of borderline hysterical laughter formed in her chest and she fought it down. “This is the police.”
“What are you talking about, girl?”
“This is Sergeant Perkins.”
“Tom Perkins? Is that you, son?”
“Mmmummmpphm,” said Tom.
For another excruciating minute the searchlight held them in blinding brilliance and she fought the urge to quote: Romeo, oh, Romeo, thinking it was a good thing Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet in warm, sunny Italy and not in the rainy Pacific Northwest, where the lovers would have been more likely to expire of bronchitis than blighted love.
“What’s that you got in your mouth?”
“Flowers,” Gillian answered for him. And the flowers were as drippingly wet as everything else.
“Something wrong with your door?” Mr. Taft wanted to know.
“No. This is more romantic,” she explained, feeling her heart melt as she saw the expression on Tom’s face. He was making a complete and total fool of himself in front of one of the biggest old busybodies in Oregon state, and he was doing it for her.
“Irving? What’s going on?” Daisy Taft’s voice joined the night chorus. Tom sent Gill a desperate glance, but what could she do? He seemed incapable of moving, impaled by the beam of that powerful flashlight.
“Um, Mr. Taft? Do you think you could turn off the flashlight? We’re fine.”
After another moment, the light went out and it was blessedly black.
“Irving? What’s all the noise next door?”
“Hell if I know,” said her long-suffering spouse. “I expect it’s one of those crazy sex games like you see on TV.”
The thought of Irving and Daisy watching crazy sex things on TV—and worse, imagining Tom acting one out, was more than her already hysterical emotions could bear. She was laughing and crying at the same time, so hard she was having trouble breathing.
With a lot more speed than finesse, Tom made it the rest of the way. She held out a hand to help him but he shook his head and motioned her to move aside. So she did, snapping on her bedside lamp to help light his way as she watched him grab the sill, his fingers white as he gripped and hauled a leg over.
He planted one boot, then ducked and swiveled the rest of his body inside. Then he rose to stand before her, dripping, cold, covered with broken twigs, bits of dirt, and the stringy gray remains of a spiderweb decorating one cheek.
He took the wet, bedraggled flowers out of his mouth and presented them. “I’m twelve years late,” he said, “but I finally made it.”
And if she hadn’t been in love with him before, Gillian fell headlong at that moment.
20
Gillian reached for the flowers and then threw herself into Tom’s arms. He tried to hold her off, but she wouldn’t be deflected. She plastered herself against every soaking, cold, shivery inch of him she could reach.
She felt as though ice cubes were being rubbed on her breasts and belly and the sensations of pulsing heat and shocking cold pushed some long-forgotten wild button inside her. She lifted her face, pulled his head down, and kissed him for all she was worth.
“Gillian,” he said, pulling back, “I’m sorry.”
Well, duh. Actions speak louder than words and he’d groveled all the way up that vine. “Apology accepted.”
Her lips sought his again.
“I want to explain,” he panted when he’d freed his mouth once more. “We should talk about this
.”
Gillian was as much into we should talk as any woman who’d come of age in the Oprah era, but there was a time for talk and there was a time for action. Right now, she wanted action.
She gagged him with the simple expedient of slipping her tongue into his mouth.
Once she’d shut him up, she made the most of her position. She licked deep into his mouth, tasting him, his heat and his need, feeling her own needs rise as he sucked greedily at her tongue, grabbed her hips and pulled her tight against his erection.
She gasped and jumped, feeling as though a sponge full of ice water had been squeezed over her most sensitive spot.
“Let’s get you out of these wet things,” she said, stepping back. As she did so, his gaze darkened and traveled her body. She glanced down at herself and saw that the sheer cotton was now plastered wetly against her breasts, the nipples hard and dark beneath the white gauze.
The sides of the gown were dry and still hung loose at her sides but where she’d touched him the cotton was like opaque shrink wrap. Her breasts, belly, and the dark curls at the junction of her thighs were on vivid display, while the glowing cotton around her gave her an ethereal appearance.
“You look like a sex goddess,” Tom told her.
She decided she liked the image and at this moment she felt exactly like she looked—all her focus and energy in her erogenous zones, everything else fading softly into the background.
He began to shuck his clothes, his eyes never wavering. It wasn’t easy; the damp cloth clung and seemed reluctant to leave him. She didn’t blame it. But he persevered until there was a soggy pile of boots and clothes on the floor by the window and he wore nothing but dark green plaid flannel boxers. They were so darling and old-fashioned on his young, virile body that she smiled.
He saw the smile and crossed to her. “Oh, great. One look at me naked and you’ll be laughing your head off.”
She ran her fingers lightly along the hard ridge that rose in his boxers. “I can guarantee that is not going to happen,” she promised. “You’ve filled out a lot in twelve years.”