by Karina Halle
His neck smelled like that delicious aftershave and natural musk. Maybe I could stay like this forever.
But my tears slowed and my breath and heart resumed to a reasonable rate. And I think I soaked his jacket front.
I reluctantly pulled away and grimaced. I fished out a damp tissue from my pocket and dabbed it up.
“Sorry,” I whispered, embarrassed.
He looked down and smirked. “Hey, I’ve had worse things on me. Goat shit, regurgitated wine...this is nothing.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I quickly wiped the now soggy tissue across my eyes and nose. His face remained only a hands-length away from mine, and I didn’t want to look completely wretched. I noticed he still had his arms around me, so, obviously, I didn’t look that bad. That said, he was crazy, so...
Something came across his eyes. They started to go back into his sexy, sleepy default mode and his brows twitched almost painfully, as if he remembered something. He took his hands off of me while looking slightly abashed. It felt like there was a weird tension hanging in the air and he just noticed.
He cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “You’ll be OK now.”
“Sure,” I muttered, looking at my mascara-smudged hand.
“Believe me. I’ve been there. I’ve seen stuff. You’ve let it all out; it can’t do any more damage. It’s when you don’t let it out, well...”
He put his hand in his pocket, produced a prescription bottle of pills and shook it for effect.
“What happened?” I asked cautiously. How much stuff did he have in his pockets?
“That’s a story for another time,” he said simply. I sensed a humorous inflection in his voice even though his eyes remained blank.
“Oh,” I said stupidly.
“I’m not schizophrenic. Just so you know. Just sort of bipolar.”
“That makes sense.”
He rolled his eyes. “The medication can really mess with your head, not to mention the fucking gigantic gut I get. Too much and I resemble Tom Arnold. Too little and, well, I’m really not crazy if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried. And you don’t look like Tom Arnold. You should get some up-to-date analogies though.”
“That’s because I’m only taking just enough to get by. And even with the minimal dosage, I get this.” He grabbed his stomach. He had barely anything to grab.
“Women love this,” he said with a wink.
“I’m sure your girlfriend does,” I said quietly.
“You’d think,” he joked, “but she just nags me to go to the gym. Have you ever been to a gym? It’s the gayest shit ever. I went for the first six months of us dating until I got tired of paying someone to torture me.”
“I’m sure she understands.”
He shook his head. “You’ve seen what she looks like. She’s got some pretty high standards. Anyway, she doesn’t know I’m still on medication.”
That surprised me and I searched his face to see if he was kidding. His deadpan expression didn’t aid me at all.
“You’re joking. How could she not know?”
He shrugged. “Because she doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t she see you taking pills?”
“I can be discreet. I doubt it would make a difference.”
I narrowed my eyes at this new information. I already felt quite biased, but now I knew Jenn was a bitch.
“And you live with her?” I said incredulously.
“Uh huh,” he said casually. “Anyway, changing the topic now...you’re going to be OK?”
“I don’t know,” I sniffled and sat back in the seat.
“That was a rhetorical question. Which means yes, you are.”
He eyed the clock. “And we should probably start heading back. Just try and let me know if you feel like laughing hysterically again so I can turn up the volume.”
Dex started the engine and brought the car back onto the highway. I felt exhausted and slightly relieved at the same time. I closed my eyes and had almost drifted asleep when a question pulled at me.
“Dex?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did you mean when you said you’d been there? You’ve seen stuff?”
“Go to sleep, kiddo.”
“OK,” I sighed sleepily. And soon everything faded to black.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I woke up from my short, dreamless sleep as I felt Dex’s car come to a rolling stop. We parked on the street in front of my house. Even in the dark, with leaves scattering in the wind and tossing the thin branches of our cherry trees about, it looked like the nicest place on earth.
“Home sweet home,” Dex said.
I felt awkward. Did I hug him goodbye? Shake his hand? Both seemed strangely inappropriate.
“Feels like the end of a first date, doesn’t it?” he remarked, a smirk deepening one corner of his mouth.
I blushed furiously. “Yeah, I guess.”
Amused, he opened his arms and said, “Come here.”
I leaned over and hugged him. He squeezed me very tight, grunting humorously. I squeezed back, not wanting to let go but also not wanting to give him the wrong idea. The wrong idea being that I wanted keep touching him.
Eventually I pulled away and looked to the side.
“Hey,” he whispered, as he slipped his hand under my chin and tipped it up. I had no choice to but to meet his eyes. They danced in the dark. “You OK?”
I stared at his lips, my breath deepening. The urge to kiss him grew frighteningly strong, so much it surprised me. I obviously wasn’t OK but for different reasons than he thought.
I saved face by closing my eyes and nodding. “I’m good.”
Satisfied, he let go of my chin and sat back in his seat. “Fabulous.”
I quickly opened the door and hopped out of the car before I did or said something stupid. I heard “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” faintly playing from the speakers, which immediately reminded me of his sing-along session in the car yesterday. Felt so long ago.
I must have smiled involuntarily because he handed me my bag from behind the seat and said, “Want me to start singing again? I’ll sing you the whole CD. ‘My Life’, ‘Piano Man’, ‘She’s Always a Woman’...”
I could tell he was joking, but I secretly wanted nothing more. I swallowed hard and gave him a shy smile. “Guess this is goodbye?”
“For now,” he said. “Go and get some proper sleep and rock their fucking faces off at the meeting tomorrow. I’ll call you when I’ve got something interesting to say.”
“Sounds good. Bye, Dex.”
I was about to close the door when he stopped me. “Wait!”
He reached behind him into his bag and pulled out his newsboy cap. “Wear this tomorrow. It’ll cover up your brain hole. And you’ll look really cool.”
I took it from him, plopped it on my head and tipped the brim. “Thanks.”
He saluted me with his fingers as I shut the door.
I turned and walked towards the house, hearing the car drive off. I looked behind me, and he was gone.
I sighed, pausing at the front door to gather my thoughts, before unlocking it and returning to my old life.
***
As one can imagine, the next day turned into utter madness times a billion.
First of all, I came home to find my mother asleep in my bed, apparently waiting up for me. Thankfully, Dex had given me his cap, which covered up the wound on the back of my head, and I did not need that to freak out my mother.
Of course she bombarded me with a ton of worried-mother questions that I easily deflected by saying how badly I needed to sleep, which was true; however, it didn’t make a lick of difference in the end, considering I woke up feeling like absolute shit.
Every single bone and muscle in my body ached to high heaven. I couldn’t even bend down to tie my boots and had to opt for ballet flats. Those, coupled with a turtleneck to hide the ever-deepening bruises on my neck and Dex�
��s cap on my head, made me look an awful lot like Yoko Ono after all.
My choice of wardrobe was the least of my worries, though, because along with my physical pain, I was also in a state of mental shock. I was so tired and exhausted to my core that I was borderline delirious. Even forming sentences seemed to be a challenge, which did not bode well for answering the phones.
Even two Red Bulls couldn’t help my jumbled thoughts, although they did elevate my heart rate to cardiac arrest status, which doubled by the time I walked into my meeting.
But through crazy luck or the pity of the universe, I somehow not only got through the meeting with Frida and the head honcho, John Danvers, but I won them over and got the promotion.
Yeah, I know.
I can’t explain it myself except that I managed to project a very professional and enthusiastic image and even showed them some of the advertising plans I created back at the university. The position was just for a production coordinator, which was a pretty stressful and lowly job, but it was still better and more relevant to me than being stuck in reception. Plus, it paid $3 extra an hour, and I would get benefits.
I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day. Literally. All the painkillers I was popping, plus the lack of shut-eye, made me feel like I was floating away to la la land.
My position started the next Monday, which meant all this week I had to train my replacement (turns out they had the temp who subbed for me last week in mind), which in turn meant a fairly easy week for me. I could just make the other person do all the work.
Easy is what I needed. With my brain and body all jumbled I needed things to go as smoothly as possible. I wanted to put the weekend behind me more than anything and start focusing on a new path. The longer I engaged in the everyday swing of “normal” life, the more absurd the idea of being a ghost blogger became.
Plus, I hadn’t heard from Dex. I know he said he’d call if he knew something, but still; I guess a part of me hoped he would call anyway.
Later that evening, I went onto my Facebook to check his profile like the snoop I am. I found no evidence he had logged on recently, but people had written on his wall during our absence. Some guys, some girls, mostly inside jokes and potential plans. It felt weird knowing Dex had a life outside of me and the lighthouse, as egotistical and stupid as that sounds.
It only hammered home that Dex was still just a man. A befuddling man but just a man in the end. A man with a hot Wine Babe for a girlfriend, an interesting and varied job, a nice voice, a social life and a sordid past. A handsome, beguiling man whose eyes read your very soul and whose smirk held you in contempt. A man I tried my hardest to not think about.
That was easier said than done. Ada kept bringing him up around the dinner table.
“I think he looks creepy,” Ada said haughtily between petite bites of her roast. “I was starting to doubt if you’d ever come back.”
“Thanks, Ada,” I muttered, glaring at her.
“Well it would have been nice if we had had a chance to meet him,” my mom complained wistfully, “instead of having to stare at him from a distance.”
“Yes, well, I thought maybe you’d embarrass me,” I replied truthfully.
“Oh, whatever, as you would say. Why would that matter?” my mom said, exchanging a look with my father, who was silent as he normally was whenever there was food in front of him.
“Because she has the hots for him,” Ada interjected.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please. I just met the guy.”
She wagged her fork at me. “I saw the way you were ogling his Facebook pictures.”
She turned to my mother. “He has a girlfriend too.”
My mouth dropped. “How do you know that?”
“Maybe I know how to use a search engine better than you can,” she answered primly.
“Perry,” my mother teased, looking at me, “you do like this man!”
“No!” I exclaimed and nearly threw down my fork.
“The lady doth protest too much.” Ada smirked.
“You don’t even know what you’re quoting there, blondie,” I shot back.
“Girls,” my dad said sternly but gently. “Let’s let Perry relax a bit. It’s not every weekend that you blow up my brother’s lighthouse.”
I couldn’t tell if my dad was actually angry, as was usually the case with him. I had, after all, blown up his brother’s lighthouse, which couldn’t be taken lightly. Even though it wasn’t really my fault, it did look that way.
However, I picked up some compassion in his voice and gave him an apologetic face.
“We’re just glad you are OK, pumpkin.” He reached over and tapped my hand. “And proud too. Let’s toast your new job, cin cin.”
I beamed despite myself and we raised our glasses of wine. Ada raised her soda with a dry expression, though I could see the tiniest hint of sisterly affection.
After dinner and more small talk about my new position, I retired to my room ready to conk out. It was seven p.m., and somehow even getting twelve hours of sleep didn’t seem like it would be enough.
I packed some things into my purse when I heard the door shut behind me. Fearing the worst, I spun around in a panic.
It was just Ada staring at me in horror.
“What the fuck happened to your head?” she cried out, and raced over to inspect me.
I swatted her arms away and awkwardly felt my head. The cap had fallen off, leaving my snazzy Band-Aid exposed.
“It’s nothing, go away!” I glared at her.
She crossed her arms to indicate she wasn’t about to go anywhere. “What happened? Tell me or I’ll tell Mom. And Dad!”
I knew she would, too. I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know what version. The official story or the truth?
Despite all our differences, though, Ada was my sister. Looking into her jaded eyes, impeccably done up with the best makeup, I knew she had some reserves of belief left for me.
“Do you want the truth or the official story?”
“What’s the story you’ll end up blogging about?” she asked smartly.
She had a point there. If we were in fact still doing this project—at the moment I didn’t know what Dex would salvage from his camera, let alone the fact the whole thing might get shot down—we would obviously show people the truth. That meant my parents, the authorities, Uncle Al, would all find out the truth was wildly different from anything they had heard.
That said, I also knew they wouldn’t believe it anyway. No matter what kind of proof we provided, no matter how well I wrote about the experience, they would assume I made it up. Well, let them.
“So?” she said impatiently. “What is it? What happened? For real.”
“OK,” I said hesitantly.“For real? You better sit down. And check your cynicism at the door.”
She sighed and flopped down on my bed, all gangly limbs and rolling eyes.
I started from the beginning but left out the part about the Creepy Clown Lady because that would just open another can of worms. By the time I finished, I could see Ada was struggling with it.
She chewed thoughtfully on her nails and watched me closely. “So...that’s the real story?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, I don’t care, but you wanted the truth and you got the truth. Dex can confirm what I said.”
“But you said Dex never saw this Rodney guy.”
“Roddy. And he did, he just wasn’t....manhandled by him.”
“I...I don’t know what to say,” she got up and started pacing.
“Well, you don’t have to say anything.”
She appeared to think that over for a few beats before a curious look came across her face.
She asked, “Do you remember when we were really young, or I was really young, anyway, and you were like ten or something, and we would go to the ski cottage every winter?”
I did, vaguely. There were a few years where we went skiing in the mountains every winter, though I didn’t know what that had t
o do with anything.
“Do you remember the room we slept in?”
Again, vaguely. A small, stereotypical cabin room with bunk beds and its own ensuite. I remembered the smell of the fireplace at night and the smell of melting snow on the windowsill come morning but nothing else.
“Kind of,” I said slowly.
“Do you remember some boy you called Sam who would come and visit you?”
The name rang a bell. I tried to think back but was bombarded with images from a million vacations, and a million boys who could have been called Sam. I had one image, though, of a young boy white as the snow outside the window, but it was so hazy and fleeting that it could have been a dream.
“Sam,” she continued, “would come every night and knock on our window. I would wake up and find you at the window trying to open it. I remember I would ask you what you were doing and you would say, ‘Sam’s here. I have to let him inside; he’s cold.’ ”
The memories started to pour back into my eyes. I saw Sam’s sweet, impish face at the window, looking so small and so cold. He must have been around eight years old but tiny for his age. I remembered I would open the window and invite him inside, but he would never come. He said he had to stay outside because his mother was mad at him. I remembered it now, the sharp cold as it came through the window and kissed my feet, the frost that gathered on his eyelashes like fairy dust.
“Yes, I remember,” I told her. Her face grew grim which quickened my pulse instinctively. “What about it?”
“I never saw Sam,” she said carefully. “And I was on the top bunk too. And I remember you would get up every night, always at one a.m., and you would creep over to the window and open it. You would talk to yourself for who knows how long. Then you would close the window, look up at me and say ‘Sam had to leave.’ But there was never anyone there, Perry.”
I stared at her dumbly while processing this insane piece of information. I had a bad memory and that happened a long time ago, but now that she brought it up I remembered it all as clear as day. I mean, I knew I had imaginary friends when I was wee, but there clearly was a boy named Sam. Right?