by Claire Cain
Where You Go
Claire Cain
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Sneak Peak
Copyright 2018 Claire Cain
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All opinions are those of the author and in no way represent any entity or person other than the author at the time of writing.
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Book Cover Design by Rainbeau Decker
Formatting by Jeff Senter, Indie Formatting
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ISBN-13: 978-1-7327718-1-9
To my husband: I’ll always want to go where you go.
Chapter One
“So… you’re back,” I said abruptly, flopping down in the plastic chair and huffing out a breath to calm myself.
Simmer, Alex. Simmer.
“It’s been a long year,” he said. One side of his mouth quirked in a smile, but it was more weary than lighthearted.
“And now what?” I heard myself ask.
It wasn’t that I didn’t mean to ask him, but that I was amazed I was able to speak in a somewhat normal tone instead of the croak and squeak I felt like making. My whole body was lit with an awareness of him—his closely cropped hair and glacially blue eyes.
Years ago, I visited Alaska with my family. We took a helicopter to a glacier and hiked around on the slab of melting ice with rain jackets on our bodies and crampons on our feet. I remember looking into one of the crevices, which the guide had called a “crevaahsss,” and thinking it looked like the most terrifying depth. The white snow intensified as it slipped down into the unknown oblivion of the hole, and the outer edges were bright blue. As the slopes gave way to darkness, the blue deepened into a navy-black that chilled me in a way I’d never forgotten.
So when I said his eyes were glacially blue, I meant it. They chilled me. It was a haunting kind of blue. And maybe it was my imagination, but I was sure they’d gotten more intense since I’d seen him a few years back, maybe because of the slight tan on his face or the gentle silver streaks in the longer hair at the crest of his widow’s peak.
There was nothing left of the boy whose mom had shared my mom’s nursing bras.
Which was ridiculous. Because what universe was this? Yes, of course it was him. Just older. Wiser. Hotter.
Ok, stop.
This was Luke Waterford, longtime friend, friend from in utero, former co-creator of Mud Pies, Inc., in the sandbox in the backyard at his parents’ house. Absolutely no cause for alarm.
“I have some time off now, so I’ll stick around another day or so. Then report back and we start training again in a few months.” He folded his hands on the table and looked at them now laced together and stretched out between us in a strangely open gesture.
“Wow. Training again? You just got back.” I was still working to clear my head, forgetting all sense of the art of conversation. I took a deep breath and inhaled the sultry smell of coffee surrounding us at our corner table in the coffee shop that had sprung up in our town sometime after we both moved away. We hadn’t even ordered coffee, but I wished we had so I’d have something purposeful to do with my hands, my mouth.
We’d run into each other at the grocery store that was just a few blocks south of our parents’, and formerly our own, neighborhood. Luke’s family’s house was an easy five minute walk, just a few streets over from mine. The fact that I’d only run into him one other time in the past decade since we said goodbye before I left for New York, also at that same grocery store, was amazing. But this time, instead of an awkward greeting in the canned vegetable aisle and a review of recent life events—including a deployment to Iraq and a girlfriend back in North Carolina for him, and a master’s degree and a boyfriend for me—he asked me to meet him at the coffee shop next door.
By the time I checked out with my grapes, triangle of sharp cheddar, and a fresh baguette and tossed them in the car, he was already seated at a two-person table in the corner of the bright, bustling shop. It didn’t occur to me to stop and get in line, both because it was after three pm and if I had coffee I’d never sleep, and because once I saw him sitting there, waiting for me, I entered his gravitational pull and there was no escaping it.
“Yeah. Deployments are slowing down so there should be a break. We used to be lucky if we got nine months of dwell time, let alone a year.”
“Dwell time?”
“Time between deployments. This time it should be at least a year, I think.” He was looking at my face again, and I didn’t know why, but the word “dwell” made a twinge of wanting prick my spine. Like maybe, in some version of this story, instead of awkwardly staring at each other and catching up with surface-level factoids, he’d spend that dwell time with me. Like we hadn’t only exchanged casual emails for the last decade and had that one awkward-but-friendly run in five years ago, but were instead closer.
“Wow.” Apparently, all I knew how to say was “wow.” My education and all of my grown-up experience was failing me. So long, composure.
I looked down at my lap and traced the hem of my khaki shorts with a nude fingernail I’d painted earlier that morning. My olive skin looked darker in the summer, and with the subtle, skin-toned polish, it looked down right tan. My bright white tank top also accentuated my skin and my dark hair now spilled over one shoulder and reached to my ribs. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and olive skin were the trade-offs gifted me by my Italian heritage to balance the very necessary relationship I had with my tweezers and aesthetician.
Luke was looking at me when I finally looked up at him.
His stare—because it was a stare, not a gaze or a passing glance—sent a jolt through me. Something in his look felt heavy and purposeful. No longer was I haunted by that blue—now I was hunted. To what end, I didn’t know. I smiled at him and must have furrowed my brow in question.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Since we’ve been in the same room together, on purpose, for more than a minute. It’s strange.” He said it in a gravelly, quiet voice that seeped into my rib cage, and I forgot we weren’t alone. He shifted in his seat and squared himself to the table, and to me.
“I know. It’s crazy seeing you again but so good. You look…” I stopped before my mind betrayed me.
Hot.
Dangerous.
Dangerously hot.
“Old? Tired?” he offered with a chuckle. His eyes
softened.
“No! I mean yes, you do look older, but who doesn’t just shy of thirty when the last I saw you was nearly five years ago, and the last time we had a full conversation in person was almost ten?” I couldn’t keep eye contact with this person. This man. I looked away a moment and then braved the glance back at him. “It’d be pretty strange if you still looked eighteen. You look like this life suits you, I guess. Like it fits.” I smiled at him, trying to make sure that smile didn’t convey any of the wistfulness I felt or just how great he looked. I pressed my hands to the table to avoid reaching out and touching him.
“Well, fair enough. I guess it better suit me since I’m practically halfway to retirement. But you.” He stopped a minute, waited for me to look at him. I did. “I mean, wow, Alex. You look…” He trailed off too, giving me that focused stare again. I looked away.
“Old? Tired?” I offered with another smile, rigging my courage and meeting his eyes again.
“Damn good. Damn good is what I was going to say.” He said it with certainty and an edge that surprised me. He’d been casual and calm and quiet so his vehemence was startling and more than a little thrilling. His eyes skipped across my face and followed my hair over my shoulder, then jumped back to meet mine.
I swallowed hard and chuckled nervously, trying to force my dry lips to form actual word. “… thank you. Thanks? Thank you.”
I wasn’t sure why I said it three times, ok? It just happened. It was better than letting my jaw hang down to the table and giving him a clear view of the state of my tonsils. His mouth quirked up into a crooked smile like he was both amused by and pleased with my response.
And then, his eyes again. They seemed… something—heated, maybe? But also genuinely happy. The wrinkles around them were visible—proof of the ten years we’d been apart and some of the squinting against the sun and smiling he must have done. He always did have the best laugh, and so many of my earliest memories with him were of us laughing together.
The summers before third grade, we used to lie in the shade of the Russian olive tree in my parents’ front yard, and I’d lie with my head on his stomach. We’d be there for hours, throwing the tiny white olives up in the air, trying to hit each other in the face and then laughing hysterically. When his belly rumbled under my head signaling it was time to eat, I’d laugh even more. I’d turn my head slightly to look up at him and press my ear and listen to his voice bounce around his body. Our hair would be matted and dirty from running around the yard all day and resting in the dirt and giggling when we’d eventually surrender to the call to dinner or time for him to go home. The memory hit me with a surprising force and all the while, I was staring at him.
He looked back at me with a striking intensity, and I had to look away. I forced my gaze down and focused on his hands, still outstretched on the table. They looked strong, and big, and warm. My own hands were my typical cold limbs, and I realized they were still pressing hard into the table, bracing me.
For what? I didn’t know. But I felt the need to brace myself.
I was still looking at his hands when I saw them moving—stretching out farther. Well really, just one, the right hand, sliding across the table another three inches before it covered my own.
Impossible.
My mind stuttered with the movement, and I tried to memorize each detail of that moment. His hand was impossibly warm. And big. My hand was covered completely before his continued forward and wrapped lightly around my wrist. I was still gaping at his hand—his warm, perfect, lovely, big hand—encircling my wrist when I heard him speak and my eyes jumped to meet his.
His full lips curved upward at the edges just a bit, and his blue eyes sparkled like he was some kind of movie star. I tried not to leave my mouth agape as I watched his every movement and my brain circled around the sensation of his hand on my arm like he owned me. Like he’d carved the moment out of marble and I couldn’t move, and I didn’t ever want to move.
“I’m so glad I got to see you. I have to head out, but maybe we could get dinner this week?” He raised his eyebrows and I realized it was my turn to speak.
“Oh! Yeah. Yes. I leave Wednesday, so I’m not sure when you had in mind but—”
“How about Monday?” He interrupted me before my waffling could continue.
“Monday?” I swallowed. “Like, tomorrow?” I felt a tingle of nervousness and a simultaneous overwhelming feeling of annoyance at my hesitancy. This was Luke. My friend.
My extremely handsome, war-hardened, blue-eyed, gloriously warm-handed friend. But still, my friend.
“Yeah. I’ll pick you up. How’s six? I’ve got an early flight on Tuesday morning.” He let go of my wrist, and I immediately felt an unreasonable urge to grab his other hand or at least force him back to that place and recover the warmth on my now-bereft and apparently needy wrist.
“Yes. Yes. I’ll be ready,” I said as I busied my hands with grabbing my purse, rising out of my chair at the same time, clearly too eager to get away from him. He stood too and stepped in front of me, spreading his arms. Before I knew what hit me—and it did feel like a hit—he wrapped his arms around me.
To say that my lungs ceased functioning might have been an understatement. To say he smelled like everything a beautiful, grown man should smell like was too obvious. To say that feeling myself crushed against what was the very hard, tall, muscular, grown-up body of my childhood best friend was confusing and thrilling and terrifying and delicious and somehow also embarrassing… well clearly that was an understatement, too.
I wrapped my now gelatinous arms around him and patted him politely on his back twice—a friendly pat—and as I stepped away I found myself still unable to breathe as I stood so close to him. I turned and made for the door like my tail was on fire and heard him laughingly shout, “See you tomorrow!” as I just barely avoided knocking a woman and her child over.
Smooth exit, obviously.
I sat staring out at the Great Salt Lake from my parents’ back deck in our small Northern Utah town. They lived on the bench of the mountains and even though I made every effort to escape the place growing up, I missed it from the moment I left. I savored the cool air that filtered around me as I sat in the shade and reveled in the fresh scent of grass and the chirps of birds—so different from my apartment in New York. June in Utah was like heaven compared to the humidity and permanent garbage smell that saturated the New York air when it got hot.
My thoughts swirled around my encounter with Luke.
Luke!
I never managed to tell him everything I wanted to at eighteen or any point before that, and back then I had convinced myself it was right. But I wasn’t sure, even still, that it was the right choice. Or at least, I wondered what might have been if I had told him everything.
I’d geared up for it more than once and then stepped back, too scared of what life after high school and my own ambitions would suffer if I admitted it. If I admitted how terrifying and all-encompassing my feelings for him were, even when I’d hardly seen him since we’d entered high school.
At the time, it didn’t feel like I had a choice.
We’d been friends since childhood, or really before, as our moms liked to point out by telling stories of how they’d been friends while pregnant and Sal, Luke’s mom, had borrowed the nursing bras my mom used for my older sister and brother for Luke’s first six months until I was born. This created an incredibly awkward space for us in the moments after Sal shared it so matter-of-factly since we’d been just on the other side of puberty and painfully aware of bodies and breasts and just exactly how one became pregnant. I knew for a fact that the lovely Adriana Moore, my own beloved mother, reveled in making us squirm.
That comment made eye contact with Luke unacceptable for a solid week. Then we forgot it, or pretended we did, and moved on to other woes of middle school.
We moved in different groups in high school—me, fairly studious and involved with clubs, friends, and dances, and he, essentia
lly non-existent. The divide began in ninth grade, and I never knew why, but we eased away from each other. I wondered if what happened with Louis, his older brother, was the wedge between us, but at the time I had no idea why it would be. With distance, I decided it was at least a factor.
Louis was Luke’s idol, and late in his senior year, his on-again off-again girlfriend Jen got pregnant. They both graduated, but instead of heading off to Stanford like he’d hoped and like Luke’s father, Dr. Louis Waterford, Sr. had done, Louis and his then-fiancée moved to a small apartment in town and got jobs. Jen had planned on college in Hawaii, but living so far from home was impossible with a new baby on the way. Their aspirations of college—and Louis’s dream of becoming a doctor—were indefinitely placed on hold.
Luke was quiet when it happened. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me about it, and after we overheard the news while my mom talked with Luke’s mom one day after school before he walked back to his house, we just sat in my backyard and watched our breath puff out like smoke in the frigid Utah winter. Not long after that, the space between us grew.
From what I could see, Luke did the minimum to get by in school, and while it drove me crazy that he seemed so nonchalant, I couldn’t bother with his attitude. I knew my goal was to get out of the town we grew up in, out of the Rocky Mountain and Utahan culture that felt suffocating to me even before I knew it, and out into the world. New York City or Chicago or LA or Paris. Somewhere big and metropolitan and awake all night.
He had other plans. I didn’t realize how much I had hoped I’d be a part of them until the end of our senior year. We weren’t talking much at that time, but we kept tabs on each other through our mothers (or at least, I did him). He approached me one day in the senior parking lot. To get a real picture of what life was like, let me drop you in the moment, there with eighteen-year-old Alex and perpetually missing Luke: