by Lark Lane
We went through a side gate to the back of the house. There was a keg on the lawn and a bar on the back deck. A tall blonde in cutoffs stood out among the dancers on the grass.
“That’s her,” Brad said. “My angel.”
I’d known the guy since sixth grade. He was always a romantic, but never so hopeless. “She’s great,” I said.
The air was warm and smelled of night jasmine, and I breathed the scent deep into my lungs. The house was shabby, but nothing serious maintenance and updating couldn’t put right. The property itself was another story. It was already invading my senses, permeating my soul.
The rolling lawn, the oak trees, and the granite outcroppings set me at ease. A path ran along the side of the yard past the boulders to what might be a Japanese garden. I was suddenly homesick.
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’m going to walk around a bit first. Get a sense of things. And Brad: may the best man win.”
“Dude, I thought you were on my side.” Brad made a face and headed straight for his angel.
I followed the dirt path lined with rocks and driftwood to a rock garden with a small fountain and a few bonsai. The best thing was a lush Japanese maple that spread in an arch at the top of a rise in the path. The tree had to be forty or fifty years old. I walked under the leafy green arch into a magical kingdom of color.
There were roses everywhere, reds, yellows, whites, pinks. Dutch iris and a few late daffodils, dahlias, azaleas. Many more flowers whose names I didn’t know. The roses were in their first bloom of the season and smelled wonderful. The flower garden was separated from a vegetable garden by two topiary plants shaped like alpacas—weird but great—and a few rabbit topiary at the alpacas’ feet.
I picked a newly opened American Beauty, a perfect mix of yellow and pink, and sat down on a cast iron bench next to the statue of a mischievous fairy. I held the flower to my nose, drinking in its fragrance. I wanted to go straight to the airport and fly the Lear up to Seattle, grab Mom and Scarlett and bring them down here to see this. They’d fall in love with it.
A charge of anxiety shot through me. I stood up. This was a mistake. I didn’t want to lie to the woman who planted this garden. Hell, I didn’t even want to know her. We’d find another way to deal with Steve Heron and MolyMo.
I left the rose with the iron fairy as an offering and headed back to the SUV to get the Pashley. Brad would know I’d gone when he saw the bike was missing. I opened the back and reached for the bike and noticed the paper bag next to the back wheel. I’d forgotten the bottle of Grey Goose I brought for the hostess.
Funny how your whole life can turn on an incidental, meaningless moment. If I hadn’t seen that brown paper bag lying on the floor of the SUV, would I have gotten on the bike and gone home? I honestly don’t know.
You might as well take it in, I told myself. No harm in that.
I grabbed the vodka and went through the gate to the backyard. Brad was in heaven, dancing with his angel on the lawn. He’d kill me for interrupting them, but I wanted to drop off the bottle and get out of there.
“Dude,” Brad said when he saw me. “Hey, Lisa, this is J.D., my best friend.”
I shot daggers at him with my eyes, but it was too late.
“Best friend?” she said. “I thought he’d only been working for you two weeks.”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” I said. “I wouldn’t be at BlueMagick if it wasn’t for Brad.” That much was true.
“Brad’s a good guy.” Lisa flashed an amazing smile.
Of course Brad was crazy for her. That smile defined her in an instant. She had the same inner calm as he did, the same contentment that looked out on the world and expected to find good things. Brad and Lisa were both basically happy people.
She looked in the bag. “Ooh, Frank’s going to like that.” She handed it back to me and grinned, jerking her thumb toward the deck at the back of the house.
My gut felt like it turned over. “Oh, no.” I must have said the words aloud, because I could feel the strange looks coming from Brad and Lisa both.
My attention was caught, bound up, and focused on a girl sitting with a guy on the deck steps. Her arms were wrapped around her bare legs and her long brown hair was draped over her shoulders. She had the deepest, sweetest brown eyes, and I was falling into them.
Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!
My heart pounded like a maniac. Against my will, my body followed Brad and Lisa to the deck. Lisa threw her arms around the guy as he stood up, and I vaguely heard her call him Frank.
I couldn’t talk. I had to get out of there. Danger Will Robinson!
“Nora, this is J.D.,” Brad said. “We work together at BlueMagick.”
“Hi, Nora,” said someone using my voice. My hand reached out to shake hers. “It’s nice to meet you.”
What was my hand doing? I had to get out of there. She smelled like mint and rosemary. I wanted to run my hands through that thick brown luxury of hair and pull her close, feel my lips on hers, right there in front of God and everybody. Must run. Must run now.
Her hand was so small in mine. Everything in me screamed a primal demand that I protect her. The only way to protect her from me was to turn around right that minute, walk through the gate, and ride out of her life.
“Hi,” she said.
Damn. I was hoping she’d have a screechy voice. Something, anything, to drive me away from her. No such luck.
Then she was gone. She followed Frank and Lisa to the bar. It was my chance to get out of there. I looked at the gate. All I had to do was turn and walk. Make my legs go, one foot in front of the other. Easy peasy.
I think I would have done it. I think I still had a measure of self-control left, enough to get me through that gate and peddling down the driveway. She was at the bar talking to Frank and Lisa, her back to me. I could disappear while no one was looking.
If only she hadn’t reached behind her head and swept her hair over one shoulder, exposing the perfect tanned skin of her back. If only she hadn’t turned just then and looked at me, her eyes drilling deeper into me than I could bear, ripping through scars I thought had healed twice over.
If only I hadn’t walked in her garden.
Chapter 5
“Yeah!” a male voice in the living room screamed.
“Die! Die! Die!” someone answered amid obnoxious laughter.
Crap. Videogames. Word about the party had gone viral, and the house was crammed with people.
Loud people. Obnoxious people. The two people types I hate.
I was still in my room getting ready. The noise gave me high anxiety, but if I didn’t get out there soon Lisa was going to come find me. I put on a pair of shorts and a pink cotton tank top and pulled the curlers out of my hair. I’ve never been able to use a curling iron. I blow my hair almost dry and roll it up for ten minutes to get the frizz out.
As I ran a brush through my hair, my sour expression in the bathroom mirror shocked even me. I smoothed the frown line between my eyebrows and tried to force a smile.
Ack. Didn’t help.
I sighed and went out to face the dragon, a/k/a our guests. This is for Lisa, I told myself. Normal people have parties. Normal people like parties. With Stacey away on her graduation trip, it was the perfect time to have one. Lisa shouldn’t have to suffer because she lives with her fucked up best friend.
In the living room half a dozen people sat around the TV watching a couple guys play games from my niece’s retro collection, all violent. I couldn’t stand them, but they were Stacey’s way of dealing with what happened. I was in no position to judge someone else’s coping mechanism.
In the kitchen a girl Lisa worked with was cutting limes into wedges. “Hey, Nora,” she said. “Can you take these to Frank? He’s outside at the bar.”
“Sure.” I couldn’t remember her name. I said, “The margaritas must flow!” It was supposed to be funny but came out sounding lame. I picked up the bowl of cut
limes and went out to the back deck.
The heat had let up now that the sun was going down, and a DJ was set up next to the keg on the lawn. Lisa never said anything about having a DJ. I had no idea where she came from. The lawn was thick with people dancing on the grass. Deep in the crowd, I caught a glimpse of Lisa’s blond hair and her arms up over her head.
My nerves were doing their own dance in my stomach. Inhale…exhale… I’m such a wimp. I will not freak out. This is practice. If I could get through this party, maybe I could face Foresthill.
Foresthill. See? I could think the word and not fall apart, as long as I wasn’t blindsided by it. I’d been thinking about Steve’s offer all afternoon. All my student loans paid. It would change my world. And if I found what Steve wanted and got the bonus, we could get the new roof the house desperately needed. Stacey could start college this fall without going into debt.
“Hey, Nora, are those for over here?” Lisa’s boyfriend Frank called to me from the makeshift bar in a corner of the deck. He poured a red mixture into a cocktail shaker along with some ice and said, “Come get some.”
I set the limes on the bar as he threw away the empty bottle of cheap vodka. Frank did everything with precision, and he always cleaned up his mess as he went. Plus he was happy all the time and played well with others. He was twenty-five, two years older than us, all angles and sharp edges, with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a great smile, and he was super strong from working with horses and alpacas at the equine center.
He poured his masterpiece into two plastic martini glasses, squeezed a lime wedge in each, and handed one to me. “Cranberry martini a la Frank.”
I downed the cold drink in two gulps. “Oh, yeah. This recipe is a keeper.”
He refilled my glass from the shaker and we sat down on the deck steps together. I forced myself to watch the dancing. I didn’t mind all the people in the house, but the ones on the lawn made me nervous as hell. They’re friends, I told myself. Friends of friends, anyway. Harmless.
I remembered what Steve said outside Dr. Barton’s office: Face your fear and get to the other side of it. Something like that. Great concept. I’d get right on it.
“I have a feeling I’ll need a few more of these,” I told Frank.
“We all have our little crosses to bear,” he said as we clunked our plastic glasses together.
I finished my drink and set the glass down on the step beside me. I needed the alcohol, but I was drinking too fast.
“Speaking of crosses to bear, he’s back,” Frank said. “How nice.”
Lisa and Brad emerged from the dancing crowd. Frank had come to a kind of peace with the situation. They met here at the house last semester when Brad joined our study group. It was obvious right away Brad liked Lisa, but Frank seemed to ignore the fact.
When I asked him about it once, he quoted Sun-tzu: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
“Did you meet his friend yet?” I said. Brad had left earlier after remembering he was supposed to give a friend a ride. “Apparently the guy’s been out of work for a while, and Brad thinks he needs some fun in his life.”
“Let’s hope he’s not one of those bozos.” Frank indicated a group of idiots over by the keg, doing shots and harassing each other like they were still in high school.
“My thoughts exactly.”
The bozos were obnoxious and loud. One guy shoved another and made him spill his beer all over himself. “Hey, dude! I look like I pissed my pants!” The others shrieked with laughter. My hands started to clench. I shook them and wiggled my fingers until the feeling passed.
I shifted my focus back to Lisa and Brad. He’d changed from his usual pressed shirt into something casual. He actually looked pretty good. How did Lisa do it? She had two guys madly in love with her. I didn’t even have a casual date.
I guess being an obsessive-compulsive control freak wasn’t so attractive.
“I wasn’t sure she’d get tonight off from the restaurant,” Frank said, his gaze fixed on the dancing couple. “It’s good to see her having fun.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Frank. Brad is just a friend. Lisa loves you.”
“She does,” he said matter-of-factly. “But sometimes I wonder what if I hadn’t got there first?”
“You did get there first.”
He’d liked her since high school, when she and I were freshmen and he was a junior. Lisa and Frank as a couple was one of the few enduring facts of my life. Besides Stacey, they were the only people I still knew from before. I desperately needed what stability I could hang onto.
I needed Lisa and Frank to keep being Lisa and Frank.
“Hey, have you heard from Stacey?” Frank said.
“She called this afternoon. She’s having a blast,” I said. “She and her friends have been on Pirates of the Caribbean five times.”
“Did you tell her about the internship?”
“Yes. And that you’re staying here while I’m gone.”
“She doesn’t mind?”
“The opposite. She says this big house is too empty with only two people in it.”
Actually Stacey had asked at first if Brad could stay, but there was no point in telling Frank that.
My grandpa was a carpenter. He built this house in the country in the late 1960s with dreams of a big family to fill the five bedrooms. Since then, “the country” has changed. Doctors and lawyers and politicians and tech millionaires moved into Granite Bay and demanded their own zip code. My grandma left the house free of a mortgage so we were able to stay, but most of the time I feel like an imposter among my neighbors.
“Maybe you’ll fill the place up with kids someday,” Frank said. “When you find the right guy.”
“Right. What a romantic you are.” This house was perfect for a bunch of kids, especially with the huge yard, but the thought of having a family terrified me.
“I hope Lisa thinks so.” Frank took a small box out of his pocket. “Do you think she’ll like it?” He showed me the engagement ring inside, a gold band with a marquis cut diamond.
“Gorgeous! Does this mean you got the job?”
Frank was a resident large animal veterinarian at the equine center in Loomis. Until he went to vet school, I had no idea animal doctors did residencies like people doctors.
“I’ll be permanent staff at the end of summer. I’m going to ask her tonight.”
“That’s wonderful, Frank.” I said, but a sliver of doubt bugged me. It was horrible, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure Lisa would say yes.
The music changed pace to something driving, more relentless. I hugged my bare legs and rested my chin on my knees, and my hair fell over my shoulders and arms like a protective shawl. I hoped Lisa wasn’t going to get all dirty dancing with Brad, lost in the pulsing beat.
She loved Frank. She’d never told me anything different. But I knew my best friend, and I knew Brad had gotten under her skin. She was fighting the attraction out of loyalty to Frank—and love. But it was a beautiful evening at the edge of summer, and the perfume of jasmine filled the air, and geeky Brad wasn’t so geeky on the dance floor—dance grass?
They looked good together. Too good.
“Frank,” I said. “When I get back from my internship, why don’t you just stay? Move in permanently.”
I didn’t hear his answer.
My heart started pounding. The sound of rushing blood filled my ears, and my mind went blank. Someone gasped—I’m pretty sure it was me—as an amazing guy opened the side gate and walked into my life. I mean walked across the lawn to Brad and Lisa.
He was tall and lanky, in khaki-colored carpenter pants and a sleeveless brick red shirt that exposed his lean muscular arms. His easy gait—he walked in slow motion, truly—reeked of self-confidence and physical strength.
He held up the brown paper bag he carried. Lisa looked inside it and pointed to the house. They all turned toward the deck.
His eyes met mine. I couldn’t b
reathe. In the whole world, there was nothing but those eyes, dark, kind, intelligent, and deep. I blinked and grabbed Frank’s half-finished martini and swallowed the rest of it, grateful as the cold tart liquid reminded my body to function.
He walked toward me, his loose brown hair falling forward. He had great cheekbones and nice lips. I was gawking but I couldn’t stop. Did I say nice lips?
“So. Brad’s friend.” Frank grinned and offered his hand to help me up. “Not in the bozo category.”
I needed that hand, not to pull me up but to anchor me to the planet. I rose to my feet, dizzy and disoriented. Then Not-A-Bozo smiled at me, and I was lost.
Chapter 6
I felt ridiculous. I was bedazzled and unsure, like a love-struck kid. Now I’m the first to admit I’m one screwed-up individual. Obsessive about order. Anxious in crowds. But shy? No. In my life, never. And yet, looking at Brad’s friend, a swarm of butterflies invaded my stomach. I actually felt myself blush.
“Sweetie!” Lisa waved madly at Frank and came running. “I didn’t see you get here. Any news?”
“The best,” Frank said. “You’re looking at the newest on-staff large animal vet at the Loomis Basin Equestrian Center, starting in August.
“I knew you’d get it!” Lisa squealed. “They’d be fools to let you get away.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” Frank grinned at me as Lisa threw her arms around him.
“That’s awesome, buddy,” Brad said. “Great news.”
What a drag. I was definitely Team Frank, but a broken heart on a good guy like Brad wasn’t pretty. If only I knew someone else for him, but—pathetically—Lisa was my only real friend.
“Congratulations.” Brad’s friend gave Frank the paper bag. “I hope this adds to the celebration.”
“Grey Goose.” Frank’s face lit up. “Excellent vodka. Cranberry martinis all around.”
“This is J.D.,” Brad said to me. “We work together at BlueMagick.”