Lexie pulled alongside a cottage. It was difficult to get a complete picture since it was quite dark, but from the small section that the car lights illuminated I noticed it was smallish and sunny yellow. She threw the car in park and was out before I knew what she was doing. She mounted the three concrete steps that led to the white double-sided steel frame door. Even as I opened my door she had already unlocked the cottage and had disappeared inside.
The porch light lit up not long after, confirming that there was electricity. I snatched Lexie’s suitcase from the trunk, and the few bags of supplies we had picked up along the way. I had only bought the essentials, deodorant, a toothbrush, underwear as well as a couple of pairs of cheap jeans and a few plain t-shirts in various dark colors. I had never been as glad as I was when I changed out of the Sponge Bob t-shirt once and for all. I had to admit that I had a tough time imagining someone as built as Aiden wearing that kind of thing. Lexie had said that Trinity had bought it for him. I guess you did weird things when you were stupid in love, like wearing lame-ass clothes.
When I strode through the door I was surprised at how big the place was. It was supposed to have been a cottage but seemed more like a small house. The floors were light colored Oak and glossy as if they had been freshly washed.
The place definitely had a country feel, with white-faced kitchen cabinets and Maple counters. The walls that rose above the counters were painted mustard yellow. The ceiling was a lattice work of exposed beams in a dark grainy wood. Copper pots, pans and rooster-shaped molds, filled what seemed like every bit of free wall space. There was a matching set of rooster folk art paintings on rough wood. A gas range was wedged between the cupboards along the farthest wall away from the door, and a built-in stainless steel fridge, polished to a brilliant finish, was directly across from the stove. The place was surprisingly spotless despite the fact that no one was supposed to have been living there.
“Come on,” Lexie said with a grin.
Excitement lit her face in a way that made me smile, clearly she’d had some good times in the cottage.
To the right of the kitchen was a small dining area with a rustic looking dark brown wooden table, with simple square legs and bench style seating, topped by red plaid cushions. Past the dining area was a living room. Here the color theme shifted to shades of blue, but kept to the country theme. The wallpaper was the strangest design I had ever seen before, definitely girly. It was clear no man had had any say-so in the decorating because who in their right mind would have picked butterfly wallpaper. The only redeeming fact was that it wasn’t in pink or peach, but navy and sky blue with dots of lemon yellow. The other impossibility was how the wallpaper matched perfectly to the fabric covering the cushions of the claw-foot love seat. A heavy cornflower blue recliner chair, sat next to it. The one thing I could appreciate was the floor to ceiling entertainment center adjacent to the seats. The doors were closed; I only hoped that there was something good inside.
“This place is all Mom,” Lexie said.
“Yeah I kind of figured that,” I said with a smirk.
Lexie’s gaze swept across the room.
“I can’t even remember how many country folk stores we had to hit to find all the things that she’d had in her mind and…”
Her face went dreamy, but just as quickly clouded with emotion.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, as if trying to forget something that was too painful to remember.
I understood how that felt more than she knew. Instinctively I took a few steps closer to her. Every part of me wanted to take her in my arms, let her know that she wasn’t alone because no one deserved to suffer that way and not be comforted. I stopped myself midway, when without warning her expression shifted and the tears that had filled her eyes dried up. It was as if it had never happened. And in that moment I saw myself reflected in her bland expression. In my world when things got tough or your feelings threatened to break you, you either brushed the hurt away as if it had never existed, or you let it take you over. Survival meant you always chose door number one, because door number two was way too fucked up to open.
“The bedroom is through here,” Lexie said, continuing on with the tour.
We walked down a short hall that was painted eggshell, passing a small bathroom on the right and a storage closet on the left. There were two dark wood doors across from one another at the end with gleaming brass knobs. There was no questioning that someone had cleaned the place recently, which left me feeling as if it wasn’t as good of a hiding place as Lexie liked to believe.
“Does someone come in and clean this place?” I said.
Lexie paused then turned to face me.
“Yeah, there’s a lady that comes when we call her to set up the place. I gave her a call before we got on the road,” she said with a shrug.
“But isn’t that kind of a problem if she knows that you’re here, we’re here?” I asked, not sure that I liked the idea of a cleaning lady knowing I was there. Now that I had accepted that I was in fact a wanted man, paranoia was working through me like cyanide, a poison that slowly built up inside you until it eventually killed you.
“She’s fine, and besides she won’t be back unless I call her to clean up,” Lexie said.
She laid a gentle hand on my arm then curved her lips in a poor attempt at a smile. Her whole demeanor had become stiffer and more controlled since we had arrived. I could tell that she was doing her best not to let me see that the place was dredging up some pretty powerful memories.
“It’ll be fine, I promise. I would never put you in danger.”
I stared at her, stunned by her statement. It sounded like something I might have said to Gab, but never had those words been directed at me. I was the protector, nobody had ever kept an eye on me, I hadn’t needed it. For some reason that I still wasn’t clear on, Lexie, in a few words was telling me that she had my back. An unexpected shudder ran through me. I shook it off, not allowing the warmth that was spreading inside me to take hold.
Now I was the one fake smiling, trying to ignore that no matter how much I tried to stop it from happening, Lexie was growing on me.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said in a gruff voice.
Lexie released her hold on my arm and strode forward. She opened the door on the right, moved inside then turned on the light in a fluid motion. I followed her lead. When I entered the bedroom I was surprised to see that the décor was so far removed from the rest of the place. It was like having a tiger print rug thrown in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton.
There wasn’t one speck of pink or purple, or any of the pastel girly colors that I had expected a female room to have. Not that I was an expert on the matter. The walls were painted black which by itself might have been a bit depressing, yet it wasn’t at all. Several painted silhouettes of pure white trees were sketched on the canvass of black, giving it an edgy appearance. Black and white snapshots of Trinity, Aiden, and others I didn’t know, were bundled together in collages. Among the strangers, I picked out one woman who bore a striking resemblance to Lexie. It made me think that it must have been her mother.
Embarrassed to spend too much time looking at her personal photos, I locked on the headless torso of a mannequin. It was snow-white except for the silver necklaces and clear beads that hung around the neck, giving it a touch of feminine, and also kind of brightening the place.
The queen-sized bed was covered in a white bedspread, with a tree much like the one on the wall at its center, only the black and white were reversed. A zebra print hung over the head of the bed. There was no denying that whoever had design the room had taken quite a bit of time doing it. Even the silver-toned, brushed finish fittings on the lamps and white furniture, matched. A silver candelabra light fixture hung over the bed with bare white frosted light bulbs. I was the last person to have any idea about decorating, but I had to admit that the place was cool. Even as I thought it, I couldn’t believe that I had actually described something as being cool. I had always
thought the word cool was the kind of thing that nerdy college kids said.
“This is my room,” Lexie said.
“I like it,” I said.
“Good, because you’ll be sleeping here,” she said. I snapped my head around to look at her.
“But this is your room, you should stay here. Hell I’m fine sleeping on the couch.”
I knew she had agreed to help me, but that didn’t mean she had to give me everything that she owned. There were limits to kindness, and taking her room was completely out of the question.
Lexie’s eyes met mine. “But you just said that you liked it.”
She tilted her head to the side in question.
“I do like it, but it’s your room. You should stay in it.”
She cut her eyes to the floor. “I don’t want to sleep here.”
“But why? I mean there’s no question that you spent a shit load of time putting it all together. It seems strange that you don’t want to bunk here.”
I backed out of the room into the hall, trying to make my point. I wasn’t having any part of throwing her out of her own space.
“I don’t want to sleep there,” she said.
She brought her gaze back to my face. The pain that I had witnessed earlier was back. Seeing her discomfort locked the rest of my protests in my throat.
I nodded. “Fine, if that’s what you want,” I said, not wanting to upset her any more than she already was. Her face brightened again.
“I’ll sleep in the other room,” she said, motioning to the closed door across from where we were standing.
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m starving,” Lexie said. The rapid shift in conversation was a little jarring, but I went with it. I had to respect that she had her reasons for not wanting to talk about her reasons for steering clear of the room.
“Yeah me too,” I said.
Lexie led the way back to the kitchen. She began unpacking the few groceries that we had picked up. Since I had no idea where anything went, I sat on the edge of the bench at the dining table, watching her work. I hadn’t noticed until I had sat down, that the house had been built in a way that though the dining area and kitchen were separate, the view between the two rooms was open.
“Can I do anything?” I asked, increasingly feeling guilty that I was sitting on my ass doing nothing.
“Nope,” she said, not bothering to look at me. “Do you like omelets?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
She laid a carton of eggs on the counter near the stove. Without pause Lexie began cracking eggs in a bowl like she had done it quite a few times before. I watched her throw all the ingredients together and toss it into a frying pan. Not long after, the house filled with the delicious aroma of fried eggs and toast. My mouth was literally watering by the time she strode over with two plates laden with food.
“Thanks,” I said.
I knew I was smiling at her with a goofy expression on my face. It had been too many years since anyone had cared enough about me to cook me a meal, and serve it without having to pay for it. When we were on the road I did all the cooking in the trailer for Gabriel and me. Usually it was heating up a can of ravioli or soup, nothing like real food. If I was being truthful I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since before Ma had died. It seemed more than a little sappy to be kind of choked up over something as insignificant as an omelet, but I sort of was.
“You like it?” Lexie said, smiling.
She ate her food with a little more class than I did. I was happy to see that she wasn’t the kind of girl who picked at her food, and said she was full before she’d had more than two bites.
“No one has cooked for me like this in a very long time,” I blurted out.
I hadn’t known I was going to tell her that, until after I had spoken. Now that I had, I couldn’t help but think how it had been a fucking pathetic comment. The last thing I wanted was her pity. In my opinion someone feeling sorry for you was right up there with being called a pussy.
Like Pa had always said, shit happens and you sucked it up because nobody wants to hear about the crappy parts of your life, they want you to smile and say hell yeah, everything is just peachy on my side of the world. I found it strange that I was actually buying into one more concept that Pa had hammered into my head more times than not. I guessed that was the weird thing about parents, no matter how bad they were, they always seemed to leave their mark on you, in my case it was both literal and figurative.
“Yeah I guess it’s hard when you’re on the road all the time,” she said, taking my comment in stride. I appreciated her casual acceptance.
I finished everything on my plate and would have probably gone for seconds if they had been available. Lexie finished her omelet, stood up and cleared the dishes. She dumped them into the dishwasher. I hadn’t realized that the dishwasher had existed until Lexie had opened the door, since its front blended in perfectly with the cupboards. After a few minutes of digging, she retrieved a bottle of wine and two long stem wine glasses from a storage space behind a folding door.
She placed the wine and glasses on the table, then came back with a corkscrew.
“Do you want to do the honors?” she said, passing me the cork screw.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
When I took it from her, our fingertips brushed against each other. It felt good to feel her skin against mine, even if it was just our fingers. As bizarre as it might have sounded, being with Lexie gave me a snapshot of what it might have been like to have a girlfriend. Not that I had ever even wanted a girlfriend. As far as I had heard, having one was more of a pain than benefit. Sure regular sex was a bonus, but it went hand in hand with broads being all needy and controlling, something that I wouldn’t have had the stones for. But this thing between Lexie and me was all about necessity. In the real world I would never have looked at her twice. She was the kind of person you dated and eventually married, something I would never do.
I tugged the cork out of the bottle of red wine, a French vintage from 2005. I poured us each a glass. Lexie took hers in her delicate fingers and sipped. From her reaction it didn’t appear that she even liked the taste of it.
“Pricy,” I mused.
I didn’t know much about wine, only that the older it was, the more expensive it tended to be.
“Are you sure that your father is going to sanction us drinking this?” I said with a crooked grin.
Lexie had already told me that her father didn’t give a shit what she did or didn’t do, since apparently he was all up in his new wife’s ass. I didn’t know if that carried over if money was on the line.
Lexie’s face pinched as if she had bitten into a lime.
“Like I really care,” she said then laughed bitterly. “He hasn’t been here at the cottage since he and Mom divorced. In fact if I’m telling the truth, I haven’t been here since…”
Her voice trailed off, and once again I saw unshed tears swim in her eyes. She shook her head, as if she wasn’t allowed to feel what was pushing to be released.
“How old are you Ransom?” Lexie asked.
It was glaringly obvious that she was trying to shift the subject away from her family, something that I had already noticed her doing on more than one occasion. I found her evasiveness a bit amusing because it mirrored my own reactions to her questions about Pa, or anything other than Gabriel and being on the road. Only I wasn’t as tactful as Lexie was when I didn’t want to talk about something.
“I’ll be twenty-three in a few weeks,” I said, scratching my head. It seemed as if I’d just had a birthday and another one was just around the corner.
“How about you?” I countered.
“I’ll be twenty-one in August,” she said.
“Next year,” I grinned. “You’re practically jail bait,” I said with a chuckle.
Lexie glared at me. I was immediately sorry that I had said it because obviously it had pissed her off, though I had no idea why.
“I didn
’t mean anything…it was just a joke…”
“Yeah well, your comedy sucks big time,” she said with a scowl.
“Shit Lexie, tell me how you really feel,” I said.
All traces of amusement had left me, and I was on the defensive.
“Are you PMS-ing?” I said ready for a fight, but not really sure why.
Lexie leapt up, knocking her glass over when she did. Garnet colored wine spread across the table.
“No I’m not PMS-ing,” she hollered.
The tears that had been jockeying to get out from the moment we had walked into the place, fell freely now.
“Shit Lexie, I’m sorry, please don’t cry,” I said, instantly regretting my shitty comment. Once again I was reminded about how very unschooled I was with women. Sure I could take them to some amazing places in the sack, but this other stuff, feelings and shit, or whatever it was, felt like maneuvering through land mines, you just never knew when you were going to blow your foot off.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, racing out of the room.
I heard the door slam a few minutes later. I grabbed a handful of paper towels, sopped up the wine, then sat down again at the table. I took a huge gulp of wine. I decided that getting a little buzzed was better than feeling guilty for upsetting Lexie. But I was also pissed off that she hadn’t even bothered to tell me what exactly she was ticked about.
The wine was smooth, and it didn’t take long for me to understand the difference between the crap they sold in the supermarket and the good stuff. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to be able to decipher the different flavors, only that it tasted good. By the time I had downed another glass, a pleasant warmth had enveloped me. The whole Lexie thing seemed way less important. I reasoned that it would all smooth out in the end, that’s how things worked, or at least I hoped that was the way.
I polished off the rest of the bottle in silence, then strode down to Lexie’s room. The door to the adjacent room was firmly closed. I listened at the door for a few seconds but heard nothing. I figured that she had already fallen asleep. I still felt weird taking her room, but I decided to keep my trap shut since I had already stirred enough shit for the night. I left the bedroom door open. I had always hated closed doors and confined spaces. I could thank Pa and his closet punishment for my phobia.
Ransom (Holding Ransom # 1) Page 27