I bristled at the truth in his accusation.
“You can’t please everybody,” he went on. “And you’re definitely not pleasing yourself.”
I stood up, causing Reece to stand as well. I turned to face the fire, pulling the blanket tighter around me. I didn’t want to see his face when I spoke my thoughts.
“When I’m with you I feel safe and happy. When I’m with him I feel I’m with someone I can relate to. That’s not fair to either of you. And you…you’re so blind. You have had something great in your life for so long you may not even realize it anymore.”
The silence between us was brief but without strain or awkwardness. When Reece spoke, he was closer than before.
“You’re referring to Amber, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to reply.
“I could never take so great a friend for granted, not ever. I love Amber but the feeling is platonic. I’m comfortable with her but with you I feel a rush and I think about you when I’m not even with you. If I try to stop, the thoughts come on even stronger. Even if I never knew you, and I can’t imagine that now, I can’t see myself getting together with Amber.”
I felt tears burning behind my eyes but I willed them to stop. “Excitement fades, then what? I’ve heard that the best love grows from friendship. I don’t want you to pass up a good thing for someone so unworthy of all that you feel.”
“I know a good thing when I see it,” he stated. “I could spend a life time discovering you.”
“You only say that because you don’t really know me-“
“So let me know you,” he interrupted.
I turned to face him. “No. It has to be Amber. I can’t ruin a friendship for something that might not work out.”
Staring down at me Reece clenched his jaw. He grabbed my arms and his grip was forceful, but he lessened it as his stormy eyes drifted to my lips. Inwardly I warned him not to do it.
“I’m sick you know,” I said.
A grin played at the corner of his lips. He knew exactly what I was thinking. He pulled me close and tucked my head beneath his chin and much too soon he let go and with it went the feeling of belonging.
“I’m not giving up,” he warned as he began walking to the foyer. He turned before opening the door. He smiled as he looked me over. I knew what he was thinking, that I was flushed, that I was left colder than before--colder without him--and that what I really wanted was to be with him. Soberly, I knew that was impossible. For me to be with him I would have to hurt my closest friend. It was a choice I wasn’t strong enough to make. I remembered what I told Amber and I would have to keep my word.
Chapter 28
School passed by uneventfully that week. I tried to avoid running into Reece, which was unproblematic since we didn’t share any of the same classes. Lunch was tricky but it seemed that Amber was capturing most of his attention and she was kindly sharing her lunch with him, packing extra goodies like rice krispie cookies and deviled eggs – some of his favorites. For his part Reece paid close attention to anything she said by making great eye contact, and he seemed genuinely interested in her thoughts. Had he always been that way or was I noticing now more than ever?
While laughing at something he said, Amber unwrapped another rice krispie cookie and offered it to me. Her face was aglow and her eyes were sparkling. That is what real love looked like I told myself. I smiled back at her and offered to share the cookie with Tavia but she politely declined. She was too busy being engaged with Adam, so there I sat – the odd one of the bunch. I carefully peeked up through my lashes to watch as Reece took up Amber’s trash and threw it away. I looked down at my half eaten blt and finished off the remainder of my water bottle. I started to excuse myself when Tavia pulled me close and nudged me in the arm.
“Are you okay? You’ve been awfully quiet.”
Summoning a polite grin for her I shrugged my shoulders. “Of course, I’m just going to finish some homework so I don’t have to worry about it later.” I was acutely aware of Reece’s eyes on me as I walked away.
I was sitting in the library trying to ferret out some facts for an assignment when I heard someone pull out the chair in front of me. I looked up to see Reece reclining comfortably, his hands still in his jacket pocket. He was assessing me, but said nothing. Nervously, I turned my attention to the paper before me. The longer the silence continued, the more nervous I became. I bit the end of my pen and pretended to read. I heard Reece exhale and position his arms on the table.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” He asked.
Putting my pen down I raised my eyes to look at him. How could I tell him that if I chose him, I would lose Amber? Love may be hard enough to find and harder still to hold onto, but finding a true friend seemed even rarer.
He was waiting and I didn’t know what to say. I found myself stammering.
“It’s better this way, you’ll see.”
“Better for you or for me?” He challenged.
“For neither,” I answered softly.
“You just contradicted yourself.” He pointed out.
“We’ve already discussed this Reece. I thought I made myself clear.” I bristled at my own inflection.
“If you’re holding out for one person that hurts everyone. Doesn’t she deserve to be loved the way I love you?”
“But you can’t love me, not really. You don’t even know me. I think you’re just attracted to me because I’m the newest face in town, maybe a little different.”
“Don’t try and analyze me,” he said in a low, angry voice. “Give me more credit. I know how I feel and I know what I want.”
He sighed in frustration. “I have been fair with her. I told her how I feel. She knows. We talked about it at your house.”
“Well, I can’t do that to her, I just can’t. I have had very few friends in my life. I know how hard they are to come by. Unless she has love in her life I don’t think I deserve to have love in mine…at least not with the one person she has an interest in.”
“You’re not a martyr,” Reece protested. “She will be fine. She will be happy. She will fall in love with someone else. It happens all the time. She is not that weak.”
“But I am…” I insisted, bringing my hand up to my heart. “Since I’ve moved here the strangest things have been happening, things I could have never dreamed up. I’m still grieving for my dad and I’m trying to adjust amongst all this insanity. I’m worn out.”
I began stacking my books and started to stand when Reece reached out and grabbed my hand. He looked at it with questioning concern and ran his finger across my ring.
“You know why I feel the way I do?” He asked. “You’re a mosaic of emotion and I find you endlessly interesting.”
“I’m not,” I objected. “I’m someone that’s lost and trying to find a place in the world.”
With that I grabbed my backpack, my books and I walked away from him.
Chapter 29
After I walked home from school on Friday I felt like baking to keep my mind off things, especially the way Reece had been ignoring me. He didn’t call during the week and he didn’t acknowledge my presence at lunch. He wasn’t being rude per se but he was sitting at another table and Amber was, quite predictably, with him. I couldn’t be with him romantically but was I losing his friendship too? Was that the price of my honesty?
I opened a cabinet and pulled out one of Anne’s cookbooks. I flipped through the pages until I spotted a recipe for blackberry cobbler. I checked the freezer to make sure she had some frozen blackberries and vanilla ice cream and then I set out to gather the other ingredients. As I measured the flour I found myself dusted in it as well. I was making a mess and yet the real mess was the one I was making of my life.
After placing the casserole dish in the oven I began cleaning up. I took the ice cream out of the freezer and scooped out a spoonful. I was slowly devouring it when I heard the doorbell. I had flour streaks on my black shirt and as much as I tried wiping it off, some rem
ained. Holding the spoon and a mouthful of ice cream, I went to open the door. Standing there in his dark brown jacket was Reece. His eyes missed nothing and I knew I couldn’t have been imagining his contained amusement as he looked down at me.
“Would you like to come in?” I asked as I held the door open and licked the spoon clean.
He didn’t move.
“I have somewhere to be,” he responded before clearing his throat. “Since I was in the area I wanted to stop by and see you.”
I let go of the door and moved as Reece stepped inside and glanced around. “Baking something?” he asked. “It smells great.”
“Just a cobbler,” I clarified.
“Actually, I stopped by to ask if you were busy tonight. I thought we could go out and do something.”
I stood there in a pregnant pause. I found myself wanting to say yes but his timing couldn’t be worse.
“I’m sorry Reece, I already made plans.” I summoned a smile for him. “Another time?”
I tried not to react to his disappointment. He looked like he had more to say but he shook his head in defeat and trudged down the porch steps to his waiting truck. I went to the window to watch him leave but he was still sitting there. His head was resting on his fist while his other hand gripped the steering wheel. I wanted to go to him, I wanted to comfort him--as well as myself--but I remained frozen in place. I heard him rev his engine and I backed away from the window. I walked into the kitchen and placed the spoon in the sink. I heard him cut the engine. Moments later I heard another knock. Confused, and way too eager, I rushed to the door and when I opened it, he came in authoritatively and put his arm around my waist and pulled me into the living room before I could object. Gripping me tight, his face was full of fury.
“I want one more thing from you and I want it willingly.”
Seeing that I wasn’t resisting, he put the full weight of his body on mine and we fell on the couch. His lips engaged mine and his fingers raked through my hair until he was pulling it. I held onto his back and pulled him tighter and there we were, locked in mutual fervor. And all too soon he stopped. He looked down at me and lifted his weight off me. Beads of perspiration were forming on his face and I was out of breath but it wasn’t enough. All I knew in that moment was how good he felt, how great he tasted and how it couldn’t be over before it even began. I touched my lips with my fingers and once he had his fill of looking me over, he helped me stand.
“I did that for me but I wanted to leave you with the same memory.” He let go of my hand and grinned devilishly. “I’ll always be here for you but there are some things you have to figure out for yourself.” With that he left, leaving me standing there still touching my lips and feeling less confusion than before. He wasn’t a friend and couldn’t be a friend because I was in love with him. I had a chance to say yes, that I would be his significant other and I wasted it. What was it that my dad had said to me just a year before? “Don’t waste your chances – there are so few of them.”
Chapter 30
Still reeling from my intimate encounter with Reece just hours before, I removed my headband and brushed my hair until it shone. I looked agitated and I thought about canceling my plans with Haven. When he had called I thought about saying no. Time seemed to be dulling my connection with him and I didn’t know if it was because we both weren’t putting the effort into talking, and relationships require two, or because our moment had passed.
I smoothed my blue v-neck shirt and rubbed lotion on my hands. I didn’t like what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I saw the dark features of a sad and lonely girl. I didn’t resemble the happy girl I had once been - the girl who smiled so cheerfully from a framed photograph in my room.
It had been taken when I was fourteen. My dad and I had been camping in our back yard and with Pandora by our sides we were sitting on a log in front of the fire pit holding drinks; dad had a beer and I had a root beer. We were trying to smile but burst into laughter as the self-timer on dad’s old Kodak went off.
Had I smiled and laughed like that since his death? I looked at my reflection again. I couldn’t even remember…
Life was much less complicated before love entered the equation. If Reece and Haven had feelings for me, I honestly couldn’t understand what it was they saw in me.
“You seem different. Did something happen?” Haven asked as he drove past town towards his place.
He looked at me with worry but I was busy tracing, albeit mindlessly, the curves on the passenger door. We had spoken few words and all I could do was shake my head.
“You may not realize this,” Haven began. “But do you know why I found the painting so attractive?”
I shook my head.
“The girl in the portrait wears the same expression that you so often do: thoughtful but mystifying. She reminded me of you. I thought about keeping it for myself for that reason alone but I knew you were drawn to it and the painting seemed to be made just for you.”
I looked over at Haven and gave him as genuine a smile as I could muster; it was weak as my heart was heavy, but he smiled back.
“I have a lot on my mind is all,” I explained. My problems, which seemed important to me, were really quite trivial. I thought about what Haven had once told me about not feeling like he had a place in the world either. I decided to question him about it.
“How can you not feel a part of the world when all of you will be in it longer than anyone else?”
There was a brief silence before he answered. “Just how much do you think we can really enjoy life? We’ve watched people we love die, we’re different and can’t draw attention to ourselves, and we are unable to escape the miseries of the world.”
Haven looked somber, “People are not meant to live that long.”
I nodded slowly and offered my own thoughts. “I know loneliness and I know death…I’ve only felt it a short time. I can’t imagine experiencing it for a generation or two…that and the horrors we know go on each and every day. I’m really beginning to wonder how much longer it will be before God says ‘enough is enough’ and puts an end to this.”
Haven glanced from the road to my face with a pensive gaze. “If you were God,” he proposed. “What would you do?”
I turned in my seat to give him my full attention. “I would most likely be a dictator and a short-tempered one at that. I don’t possess the kind of wisdom, patience or love that could give a world free will. I don’t think there can be real love or generosity of spirit when force is involved.”
I looked down, ruminating. “I see and hear enough. I wouldn’t want to see what God sees…I can’t even find the right path in my life so I can’t pretend to know how to solve the world’s problems.” I raised my eyes to meet his. “What about you?”
His eyes darkened as he looked at me through his lashes. In a voice so low I could barely make it out he asked, “Do you really want me to answer that?”
I nodded.
“I’ve seen enough. Most like us have been hardened over time. How can we care about humanity when humanity doesn’t even care for one another? The things people do to each other, the mistakes that each generation makes without learning from the one preceding…I’d have no mercy. I’d look at them as beings worth punishing for wickedness as vile as our own. But then, every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of something that reminds me of the good: A father playing tag in the yard with his son; a mother tenderly cradling her baby as she nurses her; a teenager assisting a stranger without being asked; a child looking at her surroundings in awe and wonder; the stranger that gives his life for another…Heroes lurk in the hearts of some but could I save the world for the few? That’s a question I can’t answer because the beast inside me wants to see most of them annihilated and when I say that, I mean eradication is far more merciful than existing in this kind of state longer than necessary. Humanity-” he said as he pointed to me, “They’re the lucky ones.”
“Well,” I said softly. “We need to make su
re we live for the good.”
“Let me ask you something else,” he put forth. “How much pleasure do you think we get from life?”
“As much pleasure as we allow ourselves.”
Haven raised his brows as if he wasn’t expecting that kind of answer.
Chapter 31
Haven took my coat and hung it on a burnished burgundy coat rack in the hallway. Lauren came around the corner and gave me a warm and soothing smile. She took me in her frail arms and gave me an embrace. She smelled lightly of gardenia and her fair hair was pulled back in a loose chignon; as always, she was the most elegant woman I had ever laid eyes upon. I could see in her the great beauty she had once been and still was.
She led me into the great room where coral flares gleamed in the fireplace, adding partial warmth to the great space around us. With his arms folded across his chest, Levi was looking out the window and turned to acknowledge us. He looked down at me, nodded, and motioned with his head for Haven to follow him. Haven apologized and excused himself. Lauren led me to the couch and sat down near me. Moments later I felt a light breeze pass behind me as Lacey came around the couch and took a seat across from me. She was wearing a long nightgown and she was barefoot. Her fair hair cascaded down her back in a loose braid and she was carrying Grendel in her arms. The cat seemed to be tolerating her with great annoyance, although he remained still and silent. Lacey greeted me nonetheless.
“You must know by now. How are you handling it?”
“I’m not...” I said. And I wasn’t.
“You’re as we are…” she hissed in a low, teasing voice. “But different.” Giggling, she laid her head back on the chair and let the aggravated cat go free.
“I’m not,” I assured her. “I’m as ordinary as any other girl.”
“You’re a dormant,” she said, sitting up. “That’s rare and anything but ordinary. With you who knows what could happen, but they-“ Lacey gestured to Lauren and to the empty space behind me. “They have a weakness for strays.”
Willow Page 17