“Oh, the show is home. They’re my family. Sometimes I think we’re a little ship floating around the country. I don’t want to buy a house in L.A. and be tied down, be stuck. If I’ve got Alistair, we’re at home.”
Avery spoke quickly, as though trying to prove how easy this all was. Look! We’re, like, totally friends now! Or maybe Avery had sensed Merritt’s teenaged attraction and was trying to remind Merritt that Merritt had been the only one. Maybe, despite Iliana’s accusation that Merritt hid her feelings (if she even had any), Avery could feel Merritt’s attraction now, the attraction that made it impossible to look at Avery without looking too closely. Avery shouldn’t have gone walking with a lonely lesbian in the lavender twilight if she didn’t want to be noticed, Merritt thought.
“If I lived in L.A., I’d have to have lunch with my mother.” Avery pulled a honeysuckle bloom off a passing vine, smelled it, and tossed it at Merritt. “I never want to be stuck. I love everywhere we go, but I feel free when we leave. If I could move every day, that’d be perfect. There’s something about looking at everything when you know you’ll probably never come back. Do you like to travel?”
Merritt remembered sitting in a coffee shop telling Avery how her mother had been single and they’d lived in a studio apartment with yellow spider plants, yellow walls, and a yellow cat. Then there was the yacht. In her memory, her mother and stepfather never courted. Her mother simply led her out of the apartment and onto the deck of the Astral Reveler. They set sail, and in her memory—which couldn’t possibly be true—she spent days alone: just white deck and blue sky. Then she turned seven, her mother put her in boarding school, and never came back.
“Traveling just gives you more places to miss.”
Merritt hadn’t meant to be honest. The right answer was, Yeah, of course, but you know…too busy. It had always been easy to tell Avery the truth. She had to remember Avery had just been one of those girls who had project-friends, and everyone got sick of their project-friend. That still hurt. Merritt had had so few friends.
“Is Alistair King just as charming as they make him out to be on TV?” Merritt asked.
“Yes! I shouldn’t tell you this, but Alistair’s not really from L.A. He’s totally down to earth. He’s from Stone, Wyoming. His dad and all his brothers were miners…are miners. He’s so cute. He says we’re going to do King and Crown until he’s visited one city for every person who never got out of Stone. He cares about everyone, everything, and me too. I can count on him for anything.”
“I’m happy for you.” She wasn’t, but it was the right thing to say. “He sounds like a wonderful boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend—”
Avery’s heel caught in a crack in the steps. She grabbed for a railing, but there was no railing because the stairs had been installed in 1950, when people still believed in natural selection. But Merritt had spent hours practicing aikido with Iliana. Even in the dark, she knew the exact trajectory of Avery’s fall. Without thinking, she caught Avery. For a second, Merritt held her. Avery’s body felt warm, her curves a perfect match for Merritt’s angles. Merritt’s mind went still. Her body relaxed as though she had been holding her breath for fifteen years and finally released it. Iliana would say that was supposed to happen while meditating, but meditating felt nothing like holding Avery, who was still trembling with surprise. Merritt hadn’t come on this walk for Lei-Ling, she admitted. She had come so the girl she had once been could hold Avery for the moment they had never had.
And then Merritt had stood there too long. Avery’s feet were back on solid ground and she was pulling away, pushing her hair over her shoulder and, saying, “I…um…so clumsy. Wow. You’re strong. Do you do ballet barre?”
Avery sat down and took of her shoes. “These’ll kill you.” She held up the heels. “Shoes just tie you down.”
* * *
At the bottom of the hill, they turned down a street lined with tall oaks and stately bungalows. Avery put her shoes back on.
“I love walking in a city, just walking and walking,” Avery said.
“Don’t you get accosted by fans?”
“Sure. They all recognize my hair. It’s signature hair. My mother’s idea. But our fans are so sweet. I get letters all the time. Paper letters and pictures of people’s kids. It’s like we’re part of their lives. They watch King and Crown when they’re sad or to get ideas for their daughter’s wedding. I’m not saving the world like Alistair and his charity foundation, but I’m making people happy. There’s not enough of that.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
They walked another block in silence. Then Avery spoke thoughtfully.
“How’s your uncle?” she asked.
“He died,” Merritt said quickly.
“When?”
“After we graduated.”
After you left.
“Oh, you were a just a kid. I’m so sorry. How did you make it by yourself?”
“Same way I always did.” Alone. “Uncle Oli willed me the hardware shop. I worked construction until I could make enough money to keep it in the black. Oli had let it slide. My friend Iliana moved her dojo into the back building. She works at Hellenic Hardware for free rent, and we practice together, but she says I’m undisciplined.”
“I’m sorry, Merritt. I really am.”
It wasn’t fair for Avery to come back after fifteen years of dead silence and feel sorry for her.
Merritt changed the subject. Now that Iliana had read The Open Communicator she told Merritt it was a way of deflecting pain.
“Remember sneaking into the Vale auditorium?”
“You were such a delinquent,” Avery said affectionately.
“I was a model student and an athlete.”
“Lacrosse…” Avery trailed off.
“Lacrosse is a beautiful sport.”
“And you were a lovely player.”
“I still am.” Merritt shot Avery a smile that would have melted the girls at the Mirage, not that that meant anything. “Or so they say.”
“Are you dating?” Avery asked.
“Depends on the night.”
“That’s not dating. I bet there are a hundred girls sexting you right now.”
Merritt shoved her hands in her pockets.
“I bet you don’t even text them back,” Avery added.
In the shadows of old oaks, Avery didn’t look much older than she had at eighteen.
“Nobody is sexting me,” Merritt said. “I don’t give them my real number.”
It wasn’t true. She would never do that to a woman, although everyone joked that she did.
“So some little old lady is getting your messages? I bet her grandkids got her a smartphone so she could do Facebook and now…lucky old lady. Do the girls take your photo while you’re sleeping?”
“Creepy. I’ll give them your number next time.”
Children had drawn a messy hopscotch in chalk on the sidewalk, and Avery skipped down it.
“Remember how we used to crash the country club pool?” she asked. “You had that black swimsuit that looked like it was made out of a wool overcoat. So modest! Porn sites around the world shut down when you put that thing on. It had global ramifications.”
“It was a man’s suit from 1915. They didn’t just go around in Speedos with their junk hanging out.”
Avery had worn a cream-colored bikini. It was like she was naked, except not quite naked enough. Merritt had swum down to the bottom of the pool, looking up through the water at Avery’s pale, beautiful body. She’d had to put six feet of water between them because otherwise the sight of Avery swimming in the moonlight would have broken her heart.
The street widened. They were nearing the building Merritt was in the process of buying. The Elysium. Merritt hadn’t meant to walk past it, but she hadn’t meant not to.
“This is my new project,” Merritt said. “I’m closing in a week or two.”
She stopped in front of the Elysium, motioning for Avery to follow her into th
e alcove that housed the front gate. The wrought iron revealed a central courtyard. Inside the walls shone with green lichen. Avery peered through the gate.
“A place like this shouldn’t go empty. It’s the deal of a lifetime,” Merritt said. “Short sale. Way under market value. I had to sell my house to buy it, but it’s worth it.”
“Oh, Merritt. It’s where your uncle lived.”
It was the only place that had ever felt like home.
“Whatever. It’s a building. It’s a great investment. I knew about it because I lived here. That’s all.”
They took a few steps into the courtyard. Avery gently wrapped her hands around Merritt’s biceps. “Are you trying to get me alone?”
Did Avery purse her lips? Almost? Like a kiss that turned into a smile? That was how they had been at Vale, pretending to flirt with each other and dropping sexual innuendos to make the other girls nervous or to make them laugh. The only difference was that Avery just wanted to be a provocateur. Merritt had wanted her for real. She still did, if she were honest with herself…which Iliana said she wasn’t.
“I might if I thought it would work.”
“How do you know it won’t?”
“So many reasons.”
“You always played hard to get,” Avery said, flirting casually.
Merritt pulled out of Avery’s grasp. Avery looked embarrassed.
Merritt strode over to a copper drainpipe and pulled off a piece of ivy. English ivy looked elegant, but it ate buildings like a sci-fi monster. Suddenly, she felt her throat tighten. For all the times she had driven away from Avery’s house and cried because the night would never end the way she wanted, for that night at prom, for the shame of seeing Avery with Alistair and realizing how little she had meant to Avery.
“After all these years, just don’t.”
She didn’t speak loud enough for Avery to hear her, but a second later she heard Avery’s footsteps on the gravel. When Merritt turned, Avery was standing so close Merritt had to take a step back. The wall of the Elysium stopped her.
“I’m sorry,” Avery said. “I’m sorry about that night.”
She held Merritt’s gaze, suddenly serious. Merritt had the sense that it took all Avery’s effort not to look away.
“I haven’t thought about it in years.” She knew Avery could see the lie.
“I was an asshole.”
“We were kids.” Merritt forced a smile. “You were straight. Is that why you never called me? Tell me you haven’t been feeling bad about that for fifteen years. I haven’t.”
Of course Merritt had felt bad. She had felt bad when Avery didn’t return her calls and when Avery’s father told her Avery had moved back to L.A. She had felt worse when Uncle Oli suffered a heart attack and the doctors said he would make it but he didn’t. She had walked out of the hospital into a summer night almost like this one and realized the only person who could have comforted her was Avery, and Avery was gone.
Avery hesitated. She looked frozen with uncertainty. Merritt had seen the same expression on young carpenters cutting expensive hardwood, as though they wanted to stop time because making the wrong cut was so inevitable and so costly.
“I wasn’t straight,” Avery said, her voice a gasp.
Merritt must have misheard. “You were straight. That’s why you chose Alistair. You can’t change who you are.”
“I know.”
Avery was straight. That was why she had left.
Merritt tried to joke, but it just sounded bitter. “There’s a signing bonus if I can get you to play for my team.”
“We’re on the same team.”
No! Avery was straight. She’d sensed Merritt’s infatuation, and it had disturbed her. If Avery was straight, she’d left because she didn’t want her best friend’s lust. Maybe she was even a homophobe. But if Avery was gay, she’d simply left because every single person Merritt cared about eventually realized she was unlovable.
“You’re not straight?”
“No.” Avery looked like she was going to run and it was taking all the fight she had in her to stand in front of Merritt.
“Since when?”
“Always.”
“In high school?”
“Since I was a kid.”
“And that’s why you’re dating Alistair King all over television.”
“He’s my best friend.”
She and Avery had been best friends. That’s what they’d called those nights by the river when Avery had stroked her hair and rubbed her shoulders—just simple, platonic affection—until Merritt thought she would die of complicated lesbian longing.
“You’re not a real couple.” Merritt shook her head in distaste.
“And we don’t actually remodel those houses, and we certainly don’t do it in one week. And there’s never any dry rot. I don’t even know why they put dry rot in every episode. Alistair’s actually asexual, but don’t tell anyone. That’s not part of the brand image.”
“And Alistair knows you’re gay?”
“Of course.”
Avery’s words sank in.
“What the fuck?” Merritt’s voice came out in a rough whisper.
“It’s the show. Please don’t tell anyone. We play straight people. It’s the…thing we sell.”
“Don’t tell anyone? I don’t care. I thought we were friends!” Anger rose up in Merritt’s chest. She’d been nothing to Avery, not even a confidante. “What did you think I would say? ‘I can be gay but not you’?”
“I was scared.” Avery’s trembling hands said she still was.
“We were in Portland. We were at Vale. The most liberal, hippy, kale-eating— You were gay the whole time?!” Merritt meant to say something glib, something reuniony. Oh my gosh, what a crazy coincidence! But it was too late. “You could have told me. You could have at least said goodbye. Did you think I’d hit on you if I knew you were gay? Was that so terrible? You couldn’t say no? You had to disappear without a word?”
Avery looked stricken. “I…thought you might…I knew you wouldn’t.”
“What do you want with me? Did you want to clear the air? It’s cleared. I don’t care. Go back to Alistair. I’ve not been thinking about you for fifteen years. I don’t want anything from you. You’re on TV. I’m happy for you. Great. You did what you wanted to do. I absolve you. I—”
“I wanted to make love to you,” Avery blurted.
Even in the moonlight, Merritt could see her blush.
“That’s ridiculous,” Merritt said bitterly. “If you wanted to, you would have. I wasn’t hard to get.”
She cast around for something to do or fix or touch. She should tell Avery to go so she could pull ivy. You couldn’t let ivy get its fingers into lime mortar. She couldn’t let Avery get her tendrils back into her heart.
“Look at me, Merritt,” Avery said. “I made a mistake, and I’ve regretted it every day since I left Portland.”
“Well, that’s on you. You didn’t care enough to call. You didn’t care enough to text me. I’m not hard to find.”
Quickly, as though she might lose her nerve, Avery clasped Merritt around the waist, awkwardly, almost like a child…but not at all like a child because it was Avery. All those times Merritt had watched her, dreamed about her, wanted her so much she had trembled with desire and the unattainability of Avery Crown.
“What the hell are you doing? You don’t get to—” The air in the courtyard felt warmer, stiller, electric. Merritt thought she could hear the echo of music. “No, Avery.” It came out like a question.
Did she mean yes? Her arms were encircling Avery’s waist. Like on the path, she felt every cell in her body yearning for Avery.
“I’ll leave if you tell me to,” Avery whispered.
There was only one absolutely right answer. But she couldn’t offer it. The only word on her lips was “Avery.”
Avery pulled their hips together. Merritt felt the connection deep in her core.
“You’re not…
” Merritt said.
But Avery was. Kissing her. Every sensible thought ran through Merritt’s mind. Avery was closeted. Avery was drunk and Merritt hadn’t noticed. Avery had abandoned her. Avery would break her heart again. Then Avery caught Merritt’s lips with a soft nip of her teeth. The move seemed unpracticed, as though Avery had seen someone kiss like this in a movie and was going to try it, quickly, before she lost her nerve. Her artlessness did not do anything to lessen the shiver of desire that seared straight to Merritt’s clit. Merritt couldn’t think. She could only feel. She lifted Avery onto her hips, and Avery wrapped her legs around Merritt’s waist, swathing them in a cloud of tulle. Merritt spun around and pressed Avery against the wall of the Elysium, driving her tongue into Avery’s mouth, pressing her hips against Avery’s. She pressed her thigh between Avery’s legs, straddling Avery’s beautiful dress, crushing it between them. Desperately. Hungrily. For all those nights. It felt so good.
Then Merritt jolted back into the present and her good sense. She set Avery quickly down on the ground. Avery tried to pull her back into a kiss, her breath coming out in an impatient whimper that almost undid Merritt’s resolve.
“No.” Merritt took another step back, stumbling on the loose gravel. “It’s too weird.”
It’s too hard. “You’re practically married to Alistair King. I’m not doing this.” Merritt’s body said, Please, please do this, but she had felt something deep down inside, something raw and real. It was the heart that all those other girls said she was missing. “I’m not because…” She tried to think of a reason that wasn’t the truth. I want you. You hurt me.
Avery grabbed Merritt’s hand before Merritt could take another step back. Merritt’s black belt in aikido meant she could easily have broken Avery’s grasp. She could have thrown Avery over her shoulders and onto the ground without bruising the pale skin of Avery’s back or disrupting a single hair on her head. Iliana would probably say that if Merritt had really learned the principles of peaceful resolution practiced in the dojo she would have also been able to walk away.
Avery cradled Merritt’s hand in both of hers, stroking the center of her palm. The sensation made Merritt’s head swim. She felt like her body was expanding and contracting at the same moment, and that feeling coalesced in the pulse between her legs. The touch was so simple, so small, and so erotic. Maybe Avery also understood the principles of peaceful resolution. You didn’t have to be strong to subdue your opponent. If you believed the teachings of aikido, you didn’t have to hurt them to win.
Worth the Wait Page 3