“Your hands are like ice. You should take a hot bath.”
“Can’t get the water heater going either,” she said, teeth still chattering. “The pilot went out. I wasn’t even that cold until I spent twenty minutes on the back porch trying to get the damn thing working. And my warm coat’s halfway across the country in a moving van.”
He could have offered to take a look at the water heater too, but instead he said, “I have hot water at my place.” When she cocked a skeptical brow at him, he sweetened the lure. “Tankless electric heater. Infinite hot water, as long as I’m not running the wash or something while the shower’s going.”
“I don’t even have a real towel here,” she confessed. “I forgot to leave one out when I was packing boxes. I’ve been drying with the little one from my gym bag.”
“Mine are Egyptian cotton.”
* * * * *
“I never should have come over here in the first place.” Tess flipped her hair over and toweled it vigorously, loving the rosemary smell of Jake’s conditioner and the hedonistic texture of his towel.
“Why not?”
She tossed her hair back and started brushing it. “Because it makes my cozy getaway cottage in the woods look like a piece of crap, that’s why.”
He chuckled and slid the bag from the donut shop toward her across his kitchen table. “You still have a donut left.”
“I always forget how good these are.” She took a big bite and sighed with pleasure at the familiar taste. The donut shop in the middle of town still made them from scratch each morning using an old family recipe. Nothing in the city ever tasted quite the same. “Napkin? Or I’ll get glaze in my hair.”
Jake retrieved a paper towel and Tess finished brushing her hair out, regretting her decision not to bring more of her styling products in the “roughing it” kit. The air was dry and her hair promised to be a floating nimbus of static electricity later on. But she was so happy to be warm again, she didn’t care. She could’ve stayed in that magical shower another two hours with no complaint.
“I should get one of those water heaters. I’m sure old landlady Tarrant wouldn’t mind.”
“No need. I went over and got your own heater going while you were in the shower. I could have probably fixed a dozen others during the time you were in there.”
“I was really, really cold,” she said, not sorry at all. “Thank you so much, by the way.”
“You’re welcome. Any time.”
“I just realized, even when my stuff gets here I’m going to need a shower curtain. My old apartment had a glass shower door, so I don’t have one. And I’m already tired of washing my hair under the faucet. I wonder where the closest place is to buy a shower curtain where nobody will know me?”
“There’s a home store in Smithville. That’s about thirty minutes away, you could probably risk it. Want to go for a drive? I’m playing hooky from work this morning. Headache.”
She glanced at him for a second, checking his expression. Cool, amused. He didn’t give much away these days. Not that he ever had. Even in high school, when she’d been busy making sure he was firmly ensconced in the Friend Zone, Jake had always looked like he knew something she didn’t. Tess had had dreams about that look. Her very first hot dream, as a matter of fact, had featured Jake Hogan’s subtle smile and his hands on her wrists, pinning her down to her flowery purple comforter while all her stuffed animals looked on from their shelf above the headboard.
Variations on that theme would be replayed in her dreams for years to come. Wide variations, sometimes. But always the dark hair, the fair skin, the too-blue eyes. Lean and long, with an easy, animal athleticism. Pinning her, tying her, containing her. Holding her accountable. She’d been trying not to think about those dreams this past week, but seeing him almost every days had brought them back with a vengeance. She really wasn’t sure what riding in a closed vehicle with him would do to her libido; it was way too much like a date for comfort, and shopping together seemed intimate somehow.
In real life Tess usually dated blonds—sandy linebacker types with eyelashes too pale to see, who worked out a bit too much and let her get away with shit. None of them had ever suggested tying her down, probably because they feared being laughed out of bed or kicked in the nuts. Her dark-haired dream lover was always there when the dates were over. Like Fate.
“Sure, I’ll go for a drive.”
* * * * *
He teased her for her shower curtain choice—yellow duckies in sailor hats—but offered to pay for lunch at a diner down the road from the store. Tess accepted, but with a certain dawning suspicion.
“Are you trying to fatten me up?”
“Am I trying to fatten you up? That’s absurd.” But he smirked as he held the door open to let her precede him.
“See, I can tell you’re lying because of all that psychology stuff Allison studies. You repeated my question in your answer, which was also a question. Total bullshit. You are trying to fatten me up. Every time you see me you want to feed me.”
“That’s what Allison’s research is about?” He smiled at the waitress, prompting a flare of unexpected, unreasonable jealousy from Tess. “Two, please. Can we get a booth?”
“Yeah. Something to do with that and computer games. I don’t know. It seems like she and Seth both get paid to sit around and play games a lot of the time.”
“Nice work if you can get it.”
“If you’re into playing games.”
“And are you?” he asked, as they slid into the booth and accepted menus.
“Am I what? Coffee and a water, please,” she added, before the waitress could ask.
“Same for me. And we’ll need a few minutes to decide.”
When the woman walked away to get their drinks, Jake’s attention returned to Tess. “Are you into playing games?”
His voice curled around the phrase as if it was heavy with subtext and needed some extra support. Or maybe Tess was supplying that subtext on her own.
“On the computer? Not especially. You?”
Jake shrugged. “I have an Xbox.”
“I have a life.”
There it was, that extra bit too much that always popped up and got her into trouble. The words flew out of her mouth and slapped Jake smartly, making him blink a few times. Tess watched him, horrified at herself, fascinated with the way Jake’s reaction played out across his face.
The waitress came back and they ordered, Tess picking at random from the menu. She wasn’t hungry for any of it. Food tasted like cardboard lately, and her digestion had grown temperamental.
When the waitress left and Jake finally responded, it wasn’t what Tess expected. Not anger, not even his usual smug coolness.
“Do you, Tess? Have a life, I mean?”
As if he really wanted to know. He’d been hinting all week, prodding ever so gently at the subject of what she’d been doing with herself lately. Of how she was doing. She had sidestepped, talking about old times or movies or anything other than her current state of mind.
“I was trying to write and work full time until a few weeks ago. I was always on deadline for somebody. But in my spare forty-five seconds each day, between work and making the New York Times bestseller list, sure I had a life.” Once upon a time, she’d had exactly the life she’d set out to achieve. She’d even enjoyed it for a while. Now, she didn’t know what she had.
He almost frowned, then shrugged. “Congratulations. Been meaning to tell you.”
“Thanks! It’s been very exciting.”
And it had, in a way. Tess had started writing detective novels in her spare time while working a crime reporting spot. It seemed like the thing to do; she’d always wanted to see if she had a novel in her, and half the journalists she knew were writing something or other on the side. She enjoyed it, looked forward to writing far more than her “real” work, but she’d never kidded herself she was writing great literature. Nobody had been more surprised than she when she’d secured a
n agent and then a four-book deal, based on one book, one partially completed manuscript of a sequel and a sketchy synopsis of the rest of the series.
It still startled her to see her name jumping off the glossy book cover in the grocery store, even more so to see the prominent gold “New York Times bestseller” star added on the latest printing.
If only Tess could write the actual remaining books, she’d be in great shape…but she hadn’t written in months. That’s what the quiet was supposed to do for her, let her focus on finishing the next book in time for her deadline a few months away.
Unfortunately it still wasn’t quiet where it needed to be—in her mind. What worried her even more was that panic hadn’t set in yet. It should have by now, but it seemed her brain wasn’t up to that much effort.
“So you’re really going to write those full time now? And…what, go on book tours? Whatever big-name authors do? Kind of a gamble.”
“You’re so supportive. I have some savings, advances were great, and I’ve earned out on the first book already so royalties are coming in. I’m doing okay. And the rent on Mrs. Tarrant’s cottage is a lot cheaper than my place in the city.”
Jake nodded, shrugged again. “You were a good reporter, Tess. A good journalist.”
“A better journalist than I am a novelist, you mean.” She knew how he felt on the subject. He’d put a review of her first book in the local paper, and most people read it as a glowing endorsement. Tess, knowing Jake as long as she had, read between the lines and discerned that the praise was all puffery, the equivalent of complimenting somebody’s shoes because you can’t tell them their dress is awful. She hated that, deep down, she knew his review was a fair one. “Sorry to disappoint, but I have a much larger readership now that disagrees with you.”
“I’m not disappointed because it’s bad, Tess. I’m no snob, and it’s a decent book. But I know you can do better. Reading it, it’s like you’re holding something back. I wouldn’t say phoning it in, but some part of your voice isn’t coming through the way I know it would if you were really passionate about this.”
It had to happen sometime, this talk. Tess knew that. Jake always had to try to get to the bottom of things. But she’d enjoyed just talking about nothing with him all week, and she resented the hell out of his pressing her into this serious conversation about very real issues she didn’t want to discuss. Like her life and her work and what was going on in her head. “What makes you qualified to judge that?”
“I’ve read everything you’ve ever written. Even some of the stuff that was never published. Or have you forgotten?” His calm was more infuriating than she could have imagined.
She regretted ever sharing that “stuff” with him, her earliest stories and scribblings. Her fourth grade creative writing project about a homeless squirrel, her appalling fan fiction attempts in middle school, the teenage poems she’d never shown anybody else. He’d proofread all her high school essays and school paper articles, and she’d proofread his, even after Danny had found out and pitched a fit about it. All those afternoons turning into late nights working on the yearbook and talking, sometimes about the future but mostly about nothing. And then they’d both walked away, but they’d been walking back toward each other ever since. Everybody knew it. Everybody still teased them about it. Fate.
“So that makes you the expert?”
“No, knowing you since before elementary school makes me the expert.”
“Oh, and what do you know?” Tess countered. “That I like cherry lollipops better than grape? That I know how to diagram a sentence? You don’t know a thing about me that matters.”
“I know more than you think.” He eyed Tess with an intensity she felt straight down to her toes. She felt pinned there by his cobalt gaze, and her heart fluttered madly.
“Like what?” she asked, more hesitantly. This wasn’t quite the turn she’d expected the dreaded conversation to take.
Jake leaned closer, pitching his voice lower. “Like you hate grape lollipops, grape soda too, because you drank one once at the county fair and threw up later from the teacup ride. Like you used to sell term papers junior and senior year. Priced according to grade, thirty bucks for an A, twenty for a B, and there were never any lower than that. Like you used to go down to the creek alone in the dark and skip rocks and make wishes on the stars. And like you never actually slept with Danny Fields.”
She had to swallow before she could make her voice work again.
“How would you know? Were you spying on me?”
“The fuckwit kept a list on the inside of his gym locker. He wrote the names there with a laundry marker. It was a long list, but you weren’t on it, and I couldn’t help but see it because his locker was right next to mine senior year.”
“He really was such an asshole. But I wasn’t talking about Danny. Plenty of people knew I never put out for him. He wouldn’t have kept dating me so long if I had. I meant about the creek. How would you know that? I never told anybody that.”
Jack gave her a lopsided smile then leaned back to let the waitress place their sandwiches in front of them. He waited until she was out of earshot before speaking again.
“I used to go night fishing down there by the bend, where the swimming hole is. One time I was finishing up and I heard something. I don’t know why, but I ducked behind a tree. I saw you feeling around on the bank for good rocks to skip. You only stayed a few minutes. Your longest skip was five. Before you left you looked up at the sky—it was June, and you would have been about fourteen, fifteen at this time, because I was fifteen—and you said the ‘Star light, star bright’ poem out loud.”
“I didn’t know anybody heard me,” she murmured.
“You didn’t say your wish out loud though. You never did.” He pushed his food around, acting about as interested in it as Tess felt.
“It won’t come true if you say it out loud. How many times did you spy on me like that?” Tess thought she should probably be creeped out to find that she had been secretly observed, but she couldn’t feel threatened by Jake if she tried. Ticked off at him, yes. Stalked by him, no. She nibbled on her BLT, waiting for his answer.
He shrugged, looking chagrined for the first time since mentioning it.
”I don’t know. Maybe a few dozen times? Over the course of a few years, not all at once. It was never on purpose,” he added hastily. “But I worried about you, out there all alone in the dark. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I would sit and wait until you were done and then make sure you made it home safely.”
“So you spied on me and followed me?”
“I didn’t want anything to happen to you.” He was embarrassed about being caught after so much time, but he wasn’t defensive in the least, wasn’t apologetic about what he had done. “Even in a town like Cranston, it isn’t smart for a teenaged girl to wander around in the dark by herself. Especially if she goes to the same place every time. You should know that, a woman living alone in the city.” He eyed his grilled cheese, sighed, then took a huge bite.
She couldn’t argue with his logic, but still wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Jake had watched her most secret moments, had shared something she’d always thought was private. She didn’t feel violated but she did feel wary, vulnerable to attack in a way she wasn’t used to.
For several minutes they ate in silence, which could have been uncomfortable but somehow wasn’t. Tess finished first, leaving half her meal on her plate and pushing it away with a decisive gesture.
“Well. Thanks, I guess. For lunch, and for the protective stalking.”
“You should try going out there again some time. It seemed to help.”
Tess considered that. “It did in a way. It was so quiet, and I was all alone. Or thought I was, at least. I could zone out, not have to think about anything or worry about what I was going to say. Just be.”
“Zen stone-skipping.”
“Exactly. But you can’t go back. I’ve never been able to reproduce t
hat.”
Jake chuckled. “You don’t really have a Zen vibe going on now, that’s for sure. And do you worry about what you’re going to say? Because it seems more like you just—”
“Come right out and say it? I know, and it’s hard considering my foot is stuffed in my mouth so much of the time. You’d think that might keep me from saying more stupid stuff I’ll regret, but apparently not.” She shrugged, embarrassed to admit it but oddly relieved to confess. Jake munched the last bite of his sandwich, friendly and interested in what she had to say. He’d always been insidiously easy for Tess to talk to. “Afterward I always realize what I should have said, and wish I’d said that, but it’s too late. Then I obsess about it and beat myself over the head. Sometimes I wish I could stop talking altogether. Duct tape my mouth. Let people infer their own meaning.”
“So stop for a while.” He looked at her expectantly. “Why not?”
“Because talking is how people communicate.” And she wasn’t quite ready to give up on trying, to stay home and go the full Boo Radley. It seemed too extreme a solution.
Jake frowned thoughtfully. “That’s one small part of communication. Why not try letting that part go since it’s getting you into trouble? See how you do without it for a bit. As an experiment. It might be good for you. Help you notice new things. It could even inform your writing voice.”
“You’re always so interested in me doing things for my own good. Why is that, Mr. Hogan?” Her tone was joking but her question was serious. She felt as if she were at the edge of discovering a secret, something about Jake that she needed to know and couldn’t quite put her finger on.
His eyes narrowed, and Tess’ stomach did a backflip. Dream-Jake.
“Clearly somebody needs to pay attention to what’s good for you. Right now, you’re running rampant.” Young lady.
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