by Vivian Lux
I looked at him startled. "What about your interview?" I hissed.
Gray looked at me, looked at Harper, then back at me again. "This more important," he finally said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Grayson
Since I am almost a gentleman, I offered Harper the passenger seat, and settled for folding myself nearly in half to fit in the back of Cal's pick up. I hated that I had to sit back here, like some kind of fucking third wheel in all of this, but once I realized that I could brush Harper's hair back from her neck, and kiss her shoulder as she talked, I felt much better.
"It's just, I have to get back," she said, and I couldn't help but hate the way her hands fluttered in her lap. I hadn't seen that nervous tic of hers the whole time she'd been home, but now that we were on our way to the airport, she was back at it again, that same folding and twisting and turning of her fingers that she did whenever she fretted about something. Back, before...all this, I used to wish that I could grab her hand and kiss them still, and even though I knew I could now, I just couldn't quite reach from back here. Goddammit.
"I have to get back, it was actually a really big risk coming here in the first place."
"How the hell was it a risk?" Cal said angrily. Harper and I both turned to stare at him. "What?" he fumed, glancing at us. "You came home for the holidays. How the hell is that a risk?"
"Well," Harper said, lifting her chin a little bit. "Literally the second I was about to leave, my agent came up to me and informed me that we were entering talks. My book is being optioned by the Children's Television Network."
"Hey..." Cal said, sort of trailing off at the end.
"You watch the Children's Television Network?" I teased. "You sound impressed"
"Don't be an ass. My sister's school kids are like, addicted to that channel."
Harper nodded. "Right. They're a big fucking deal. And they are in talks not only for a ten show season to start, but also to work with a toy company on licensing the characters from my book."
"Wow," I heard myself say. There was this weird, sort of gliding sensation, where two realities existed simultaneously. Harper, the girl next door, the girl I'd always love to tease, the one I’d pined for. And Harper, this confident woman in front of me, who, unbeknownst to me, was rising to the very top of her career, very, very fast. I shook my head as if to resolve the sudden double vision.
But she was still the same woman. A very, very impressive woman.
"So that's cool," Cal said. He still sounded pissed off though.
"I know," Harper said. "I should've stayed. I should have been on the phone, marketing, making contacts and charming them with my winning personality and all that..." She trailed off into a hysterical laugh. "But I really wanted to come home and just take a break from it all for one second and now I'm afraid that I torpedoed my chances of achieving all the stuff I've been working toward."
"I'm sure you didn't," I said reassuringly.
She twisted in her seat to look back at me. "You say that, but my agent is saying something different. I sort of went a little the dark over the holidays, radio silence is really bad in this industry. You have to keep engagement up, always new content, all this crap that I just feel so bogged down by." She looked at me imploringly. "It was really nice to kind of escape from all that, but I need to stop hiding. If I'm going to achieve any of these goals, I need to be there. In New York City. I need to be there in the meetings, letting people meet me, shaking hands and smiling and all that shit."
I sat back, not knowing what to say. My knee was jammed into the back of her seat, my other braced against the back of Cal's seat, and a little tiny nudge of claustrophobia was starting to close in. She was right. All the stuff she'd been working for was finally happening. All the stuff I hadn't realized she'd been doing behind the scenes to achieve the success she had was finally coming to fruition. It would be pretty freaking terrible to keep her at home. As appealing as it was to think of her forever chained to my bed — or... our bed... or whatever the hell was going on — I couldn't do that.
I looked out the window.
Whatever this thing was — strange as it was — it wasn't wrong. That was pretty clear. In fact, I sort of even liked the idea of having a second pair of hands that let me do to her all the things I wanted to. I could do even more with her body this way. Back on New Year's, it had actually turned me on once or twice to see what Cal was doing to her. And — God strike me down on the spot if I ever admitted it — I'd even learned a few tricks that my best friend had up his sleeve, that I planned on making my own. Cal was a smart dude, methodical as hell and it didn't surprise me that a bossy motherfucker like him would be more into a little bit of the kinky shit. Spanking her...I would have never thought to do that, but goddamn was I grateful to have seen it.
I wanted to see him do it again.
But it wasn't going to happen.
We were shooting up the expressway now, only five minutes away from the airport, our time together coming rapidly to an end. Harper leaned forward craning her neck to look out the front windshield. "I always like this, right here," she said pointing. I could hear the desperate note in her voice to try to keep things light, easy. Keep the conversation from going into some serious place.
So I indulged her by leaning forward. "What, the lights?"
"Yeah, see how they're all short right here? So they don't get hit by the incoming planes?"
I nodded. "They look silly," I observed.
She twisted to smile at me. "I don't think they look silly at all. When I was a kid we used to fly out of this airport, I always thought of it as such a hallmark of the big city. Now I really am off to one." Her voice trailed off wistfully.
Cal took the ramp around the airport to the passenger drop-off then pulled over to the side. Cal and I stumbled and scrambled over each other to pull her suitcase from the back of the truck, even though giving it to her meant she was really leaving us.
Harper stood on the sidewalk, bundled into her coat, her hair swinging in the sharp, biting wind. It was freezing out here, but we all stood in place like statues, staring. I felt like I needed to memorize her, but it wasn't this memory that I wanted to keep. I wanted to remember her naked body and the way her cries sounded as she tried to keep quiet. I wanted to remember her waking up next to me and smiling before she kissed me. I'd been waiting for that moment my whole goddamned life.
Harper looked from Cal, to me, then back to Cal again. Then she leaned forward and pressed a long kiss to Cal's lips, I waited, drumming on my thighs. My fear from that morning was coming true. We'd left the room and the spell was broken, and now we'd never get it back.
Then she twisted. I leaned forward and her lips caught mine. I took her chin in my hands to tilt her mouth up so that I could take as much of that sweetness against me as I could.
I kissed her as long as I possibly could, for as long as she could stand to stay there in the cold.
Then she pulled away. "Bye," she breathed.
Then she grabbed her suitcase and turned to the revolving door and walked out of our lives again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harper
It'd been two and a half weeks since I returned from Reckless Falls and New York City still didn't make any fucking sense to me.
No matter how hard I tried, I kept missing appointments, spacing details, and sending Cecily into paroxysms of tight-lipped, smiling rage. It was like I'd forgotten how to be Harper McCabe, Children’s Book Author, the woman I thought was me. My old self was competent, capable and wholesome and completely devoted to her career and her brands. This new self was a walking fucking disaster who couldn't get her shit sorted no matter how hard she tried to sit down and focus.
The subway car gave a sickening lurch sideways and I grabbed for the pole, not even caring that I didn’t' have hand sanitizer. The rocking, swaying motion of the subway had been bothering me more and more each day. I clung to the pole dizzily and tried to get my head on straigh
t but the thoughts wouldn't coalesce in my brain. God, I owed storyboards to...who? Somebody... Who the hell did I owe storyboards to?
The car lurched again and I stumbled a little and sat down heavily on an empty seat. I looked up and caught the eye of an old woman scowling at me. Or maybe that was just the way her face looked with its heavily drawn on eyebrows. I couldn't tell and it made me laugh. I wished I had my sketchbook out so I could draw her really quickly, but with the way my stomach was acting, there was no way I could look down without puking on my shoes like a drunk. But then again, maybe I should sketch her, so I could bring it to...whoever it was that needed it.
The sway of the train brought a nauseous feeling to my stomach as I realized I could not for the life of me remember who it was that I owed work to. This would have never happened before I went to back to Reckless Falls.
The blare of the loudspeaker announcing the next stop made me jump to my feet. I tried to push my way to the front of the to the door, but they were two men blocking my way. "Excuse me?" I called. "This is my stop."
They didn't move.
"Excuse me?!" I called, at the same time that the loudspeakers blared out, drowning out my voice.
The door slid open as we slowed. "I have to get off!" I shouted, tapping the guy in the shoulder, then shoving him. "Move!"
He finally turned, slowly, blinking like I'd disturbed his nap. "What's going on?" he asked in a big bass voice.
"This is my stop! Please let me by!"
His eyes widened, and he stepped aside, startled. "Sorry about that," he said. I yanked my bag through the tight space that he'd given me, just in time for the doors to slide closed again. "Motherfucker!" I cried, then I collapsed against a seat and suddenly I was crying. Great heaving sobs, the kind of snuffling, snotty, nose-running weeping I hadn't allowed myself to cry since I was a kid.
"Hey now," the big guy said. "You can get off at the next one, it ain't so far."
I looked up at him, feeling suddenly affectionate for the poor guy. "It's not that," I said. Then I blinked. "I honestly don't know what it is. I feel like I'm falling apart."
The big guy nodded sagely. "It's the city. It gets under your skin sometimes."
"So it seems," I said. That must be it, I told myself. Culture shock. Going from the tiny, bucolic hamlet of Reckless Falls back to here was a big change. No matter that New York had been my home for the past five years, Reckless Falls was my home first.
That was probably why everything here seemed so strange and why I felt like I was moving underwater. That was why I had no appetite and could barely keep food down even when I did eat. Having to adjust to the pace of my life again was making me crazy.
But as the door slid open and I exited the subway with a throng of other people, something just didn't sit right. A little, nagging thought in the back of my skull, the tiny little alarm bell that belonged in my gut sounding louder every second.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Callum
I pulled up in front of the assembled guests, all decked out in their cold weather gear they had clearly bought right before coming to Reckless Falls. Raising my voice, I called out for them to watch me as I guided them through a quick safety check. "And over here you'll see..."
"What did he say?" came the cry from the back.
"Can you speak up?"
"Can we take these out on the highway? It's not like there's anyone on the roads."
I took a deep breath and tried not to lose my shit. In the two weeks since Harper left, the tour business had fallen back. It was the natural ebb and flow of the seasons and people's vacation times, but knowing that didn't make it suck any less. I needed money, so I was willing to take on anything, even if it meant losing my sanity in the process.
And I was well on my way to that point today, with this tour in particular. It was part of a giant family reunion going on at the B&B, and I was about to start leading twenty-eight very ill-equipped people — who couldn't downhill ski or snowshoe or ice-climb or really anything close to fun or interesting — on the world's slowest snowmobile tour. And none of them seemed to be able to find the wherewithal to actually listen to what the fuck I was saying.
"When are we going to get going?" a high-pitched voice whined. A little chubby kid who looked like he'd never set foot outside of his gaming room sneered up at me.
"We're gonna get going as soon as I finish the safety demonstration," I barked. "Which we can't do you if you keep putting your hands all over things."
The kid yanked his hand from the throttle like he'd been scalded and I heard an aggrieved gasp from the woman who was clearly his mother. I sighed and rolled my eyes heavenward and started running through my safety spiel in one long exhale. With my mouth on autopilot, I was free to let my mind wander, and it wandered back to where it had lived for two weeks now.
Harper.
I still couldn't get the sight of her leaving out of my head. The way she hadn't even looked back at us. She really did believe it was just a fling with any old guy. Guys.
"What the fuck?" I said out loud. I heard another gasp and suddenly I remembered the tour...and the safety lesson I had just finished...and then punctuated with a curse while I still had everyone's attention.
"Excuse me, what did you say?" snapped the kid's mother as she leaped from her snowmobile and floundered through the snow to clap her hands over her kid's ears.
"Ow mom! What the fuck?" the kid cried.
*****
I walked into the house and slammed the door on this stupid, stupid day. Another refunded tour. This was getting bad.
I took a deep breath, trying to collect myself...
And then stopped short, straightening up and sniffing again. "What the hell?" I asked the air.
I walked around from my mudroom into my too small kitchen. "What the fuck?" I asked Gray. "Are you...baking?"
Gray stood up and slammed the oven door closed. Without meeting my eye, he whirled in place and opened the refrigerator. "I do this when I'm freaking out," he explained, grabbing two eggs and cracking them into a bowl.
I watched him, completely taken aback. "You've been holding out on me," I said. "I could have been demanding fresh-baked goodies as rental payment this whole time."
"Well, no offense but I wasn't freaking out two months ago," Gray said. "I just started freaking out recently." He stood there with the bowl hugged to his chest, whisking the eggs in frantic, jerking motions. I recognized it because I think it was the same motion my heart was making.
"You're thinking about her, aren’t you?" I finally said.
Gray turned and looked me in the eye. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his chin, almost as if in an act of defiance. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "I'm thinking about her."
I closed my eyes and then opened them again. "Me too. Too much.
"All the fucking time."
"I fucked up a tour today," I confessed. "Another one."
"Because you were thinking about her?"
"Yup."
"What did you do?"
"Swore in front of a family reunion."
Gray chuckled and tapped the whisk against the bowl. "If I had a family reunion to swear in front of, I would have done the same thing," he sighed. "We shouldn't have let her leave." His whisking was starting to slow down.
I shook my head. "No."
He looked up at me. "We're idiots..."
I closed my eyes. "Yeah," I sighed. Then I opened them. "Should we...go get her?" I asked.
The sound of the bowl clanging into the sink was my answer, because he was already out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Grayson
"What is it?" Cal asked, as he flicked on his blinker.
I looked down at the cracked screen of my phone and grimaced. "Text from Rett."
"What did he say?"
I sighed as I stared at the backlit screen. In the dark, the afterimage was burned into my retinas like an accusation. "He wants to know if we're going to the pub to
night on account of the fact that it's apparently Friday." I leaned my head back on the headrest. "I actually had no idea it was Friday."
"Me neither."
"You gonna answer him?"
"What should I say?"
"Um..."
"Hey man," I spoke aloud as I pretended to type. "Can't make it, sorry. Me and Cal are driving all night so we can bang your sister...together."
"What the fuck, dude?"
"Calm down, I'm just kidding." I switched off the blinding light of my phone. "But seriously, what the hell should I say?"
"Tell him..." Cal trailed off as he switched lanes to get around a semi-truck. We had to be going at least eighty miles an hour, but I trusted Cal. I always had.
"Tell him that my dad's hosting a trivia night tonight," Cal said in a burst of inspiration.
I sat up straighter. "That's fucking brilliant," I said as I started to type.
"Yeah, tell him that all these teams signed up and the place'll be packed."
"Rett hates people," I said, nodding. I hit send and waited. Then laughed. "He says fuck that then, he'll see us later." I exhaled sharply. "Shit, I feel like an asshole lying to him though."
"Let's figure out one thing at a time here, okay?" Cal said, his voice tight. "Deal with the whole Harper thing first?"
I nodded. "You sure about her address?"
"She sent me a Christmas card last year. I put her address into my phone."
I looked at him. "Just in case...?"
"Just in case," he said smugly.
I shook my head in disbelief. "You are one weird dude."
"I'm a prepared dude. It's coming in handy now, isn't it?"
"I guess so," I said, falling silent as I looked out the window into the passing darkness. When Cal had suggested it, it made total sense. Go see her. Go get her. We were both falling apart, fraying at the edges, sniping at each other and utterly and completely failing at being reasonable human beings. It was clear what we both needed to do. If nothing else, we needed more closure, something to put to rest this strange, anxious love affair we had going on.