by S. K Munt
‘Well I do, and I can’t help it. I was going to do all this stuff for her, to help her- she has this gorgeous old house that could look like a million bucks with a fresh coat of paint and stuff, and so I was going to be her handyman and work off my debt.’ Ryan’s hand slipped to rest just above Leigh’s tailbone as he pushed her right up to the railing, and heat blossomed from the point of contact outward so fiercely that she inhaled more water droplets than air and began to cough. The nature of his touch changed then- he lifted his hand and slapped her back twice before inching in beside her, turning completely on his side so that they could both fit. ‘But she died just two months later before I’d finished even three rooms and now, I have no way of repaying her.’
Leigh felt wretched for having been overcome with arousal while Ryan had imparted his tale of woe, and prayed that he couldn’t hear her thunderclap of a heartbeat, even over the motor and the whooshing water.
Breathe, relax… he’s just helping you keep your balance the way everyone does. And there’s not a girl in the world who wouldn’t feel this affected in your shoes, remember that.
She wondered how she’d feel if she were in his place, but his shoes were pretty hard to step into, even for someone with her imagination. He was such a mystery! She wanted to ask how Imogen had died, but that seemed like a really personal question, and he was so guarded!
Is he though? Ryan in the book may be, but what’s this guy got to guard?
‘Helping you probably made her feel incredibly good about herself,’ Leigh said, staring up at Horseshoe Falls and shaking her head in awe of the sheer size of them. ‘And that’s the catch with owing someone a favour, isn’t it? It makes you feel like less in comparison to them.’ She knitted her fingers around her phone and leaned sideways against the railing, watching the American side of the falls with their rocky base approach across the way but finding it hard to track the progress, when his eyes kept drawing her gaze to his. ‘The best thing you can probably do to honour her memory, is humbly bow your head in gratitude, and let her be the woman who died as an angel you owe your life to without trying to restore balance.’
‘That’s actually… huh. You’re right, you know… owing her one was bugging me, but not just because of what I didn’t get to do for her, but because of what I didn’t get to prove to her.’ He sighed. ‘But, I guess the fact that she broken my fucking heart when she died is homage enough, right?’ He tousled her hood and the flimsy plastic crackled while Leigh’s heart twisted enviously, imagining how beautiful Imogen must have been to break such a handsome, charming man’s heart by dying after only three months of knowing one another. ‘I don’t know where you fit wisdom inside this tiny little head, but you’ve got some in there.’
‘And I don’t know how you found a poncho to fit that big head,’ she teased right back, although she was kind of annoyed with the way he seemed to view her like her height and size qualified her as a special needs person, who needed to be applauded for every coherent sentence they uttered. That was the story of her life though, and she couldn’t blame him for it. She was small- people assumed that her maturity equalled her height. It drove her crazy, but Leigh had noticed that when it worked to her advantage, it drove other people crazier. Besides, how many assumptions had she made on his character because of THF? It was dizzying to attempt a calculation.
Ryan patted his head, cringing. ‘Ridiculous, aren’t they? Do I look like the epitome of the dorky tourist?’
No. It’s the exact shade of your eyes, you look like an eleven right now, and I’ll be keeping mine forever because you touched it!
‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling softly. ‘But I do too, and I couldn’t be more proud.’
‘For real?’ he complained.
‘Yes.’ Leigh turned to the front of the boat and held out her hands. ‘I mean, look at us, Ryan... We’re standing in front of one of the wonders of the world! Is there anything worth striving to be, more than a dorky tourist? How many people will dream of this over the course of time, but can barely afford to live let alone have such an experience?’ She shook her head in wonder again, feeling sentimental tears well up in her eyes as she watched the water roll over the mammoth precipice and slam into the gorge below. ‘They say don’t go chasing waterfalls right? Well, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do… so bring on the fanny-packs, and the souvenir post cards and the snow globes of beaches where it never snows, and I’ll store them on my shelf forever like jewels proudly.’ She slipped one of her fingers under her glasses and swiped the tear away and into the gorge, laughing. ‘Ha. And I just left a piece of me here too. Circle of life, right? I’m such a sop...’
Plastic crackled, and the hand was on her shoulder now. She looked up at Ryan, and was struck by the way he was staring down at her, eyes back to neon blue. ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’
But Leigh shook her head. ‘Nuh-uh. I’m a reader.’
He frowned, all lashes and brows and blue and perfect. ‘But you’re so…’ he cocked his head. ‘You said something about needing the iPad, to work?’
‘I’m a book reviewer. I have a blog but that’s it.’
He frowned. ‘A what?’
‘It’s like an online column.’ He didn’t know what a blog was? That was weird. He seemed fairly up-to-date on how the world worked. ‘Only no one pays me to do it, unless I get on a roll, and then advertisers notice me, and throw me some cash to put an ad or two up.’
Ryan scratched his chin. ‘But… that’s your job, right? So you write for a living?’
But Leigh shook her head. ‘No. The money I earn writing could have me living in the Sahara Desert for all it pays. Right now, it’s going really well, and so I decided to take this trip, to visit the places where my favourite books have been set to see if I could get more followers, and it’s working. But I had to save like crazy to get here and as far as popular book blogs go, I’m only just on the radar.’
‘So what do you do?’
‘I waitress. Well, right now I waitress. Last year I was a librarian by day and a hostess at a strip club by night. The year before that I worked in a shoe shop part time and did go-go dancing- clothes on- at a club for, well, a few weeks before I got claustrophobic…’ she cringed internally, realising how flighty she sounded. ‘I’ve had heaps of jobs, and this blog is just one more of them. But I’m no writer.’
‘You talk like one and live like one,’ he insisted, wiping a droplet of water off her nose and smiling softly.
‘I also wield punctuation like a hostess at a strip club,’ she joked, wiping under her eyes with her thumb and hoping that her make up hadn’t smeared. ‘I’m getting better but no, I’ve never aspired to be a writer.’ She looked down at the book and poked it gently, wiping away a few beads of water. ‘I don’t want to write the stories, but read others and when I can, like now, live them a little.’
‘And what about careers and stuff? Don’t you have a dream?’
Leigh smiled and inclined her head towards the falls. ‘This is it. Do what I have to do to make money, and then spend it on living to compensate for all the time I spend curled up with a book and eating and trying to work out how I want to live.’
‘That sounds pretty cool actually,’ Ryan mused. ‘No pressure to be something or someone- just happy.’
‘I wouldn’t say no pressure…’ Leigh said, thinking of her parents and their desire to see her settled down. ‘Eventually I want the other stuff too; the husband, the kids, the pretty house and the fireplace… in a place like this too, if I can manage it. But I’m in no rush.’
Ryan glanced out over the water, looking down at his pinkie ring as he held the book between the railing and the front of his poncho with his body weight. ‘I’m pretty sure that I have, or had, some wild dreams about my own career… I’m just not exactly sure what the end goal was.’
‘Oh, you want to be a rock star,’ Leigh said, watching his profile and thinking: ‘And by God, are you a rock star!’ ‘Fronting a metal
band, trashing hotel rooms, writing songs… But what you really wanted was-’ she stopped herself before the words ‘Kylie’s heart’ could slide off her tongue and felt her stomach roll while Ryan’s skin paled.
Oh, shivers! What am I thinking? Leigh, you idiot! This is Ryan, Weaver, but not YOUR Ryan Weaver!
Ryan shot her a look. ‘Did you just give me a bio based on the book lad?’
Leigh winced. ‘I’m sorry, yeah I did… crap Ryan that…’
‘It’s okay, really,’ but he didn’t look okay. He sighed, staring at the book. ‘It’s just weird to think that someone thinks they know me better than I know myself.’
‘I don’t,’ Leigh assured him. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘I know. And that sucks even worse because as cool as this is, it’s just another dead end.’ He could have burned holes through the book, given how hard he was staring at it. ‘You’re probably right about Imogen’s reasons for giving me this character’s last name though. She was an obsessive reader, one whose equal I’ve probably never met…’ he slid her a wry smile at his own joke, which made Leigh grin just as she snapped a picture above his head. ‘Her house is full of books, and she loved the sexy ones.’
‘Sounds like my kind of girl,’ Leigh admitted grudgingly.
‘She was bonkers, but adorable. Once, I found a book in the microwave and another time, I stubbed my toe on one in her bed, can you believe that? It was under the sheet, way down the bottom. And it was a hardcover too, so I ended up with a chunk taken out of my big toe.’
Oh, I bet she took all sorts of chunks out of you buddy- with her teeth! Pfft. What kind of name is Imogen anyway?
‘Huh…’ Leigh swallowed hard and had to turn and face the front of the boat again, wiping her camera lens with her finger before taking a horizontal shot of Horseshoe Falls and wondering how one got to be an Imogen. She had a spare room back at her place, and she wouldn’t mind squishing Ryan in there with all her books. ‘That’s funny…and sounds like something I’d do, if I weren’t so obsessive about making my bed, that is,’ she clicked again, but the boat rocked and the image she captured was blurred, like the lines her mind and body were drifting across back and forth like a purposeless fog in want of something it wasn’t certain it wanted, and knew it should not want. ‘I’m waiting for shelving to be built for mine and when it does, they’ll be going up in alphabetical order- by genre.’
‘Cool. I’m a neat freak too,’ Ryan said. ‘That is one thing I know. Imogen’s house has character…. But it drives me nuts.’
‘Wait-’ Leigh chose to ignore the fact that Ryan and Ryan also had OCD in common. ‘You’re still living there?’
He nodded. ‘She left it to me. Not just that house either, but one of her summer cottages. Her car, her husband’s inheritance and her own…’
‘Whoa!’ Leigh exclaimed, envious but also sort of sad. Ryan had a complete life that he’d apparently earned on his back in the space of three months. She tried to imagine what a woman like that had been like; to be strong enough to pull a grown man from perilous waters, sweet enough to take care of him, and manipulative enough to take advantage of his fine body... and came up with no comparison. ‘She just gave it all to you? Was she an heiress or something?’
‘No. She just had what anyone works toward, and no one else to leave it to, so she passed it all on to me. Shocked the hell out of me...’ He glanced at her, smiling sadly. ‘So if you think I don’t understand why you won’t take the iPad, well, trust me when I say you couldn’t possibly understand how bad it feels to get something for nothing, until you’ve received what I have.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Leigh agreed, thinking of her parents. ‘I don’t know why you’re feeling like you owed her one though,’ Leigh gripped the railing so that if her claws shot out, he wouldn’t see them. ‘Sounds to me like your presence was payment enough.’
‘Yeah well, we had fun, you know? Always messing around and stuff… I don’t think my company was worth a million bucks worth of happiness on her part but you were right… there must have been something in it for her, huh?’
Yeah, the view and a lot of sleepless nights...
Leigh snorted. ‘That’s too bad…’ she peeked over the side of the boat and muttered. ‘You look like you’d be good at it too…’
Keep your heroes separate from your amnesia patients, missy! The guy in the book might give multiple orgasms, but the amnesia patient with his name is as much of a fantasy, without the special, sexual powers that heroes in books are given!
‘Huh?’ Ryan leaned over and nudged her. ‘What? Good at what?’
‘Nothing…’ Leigh said idly, feigning interest in a bird flying overhead but feeling her girlie parts clench and betray her. She hadn’t expected him to hear THAT. ‘It just sounds like you were really good for her too, like I said before. Helping hands and all... under the sheets… even if you couldn’t quite get her there...’
Ryan’s laughter was so loud that she almost jumped. He turned her around, and flicked her nose. ‘It wasn’t like THAT!’
‘Sure it wasn’t,’ Leigh was hoping that the way her glasses were fogging up from the damp air and her breath, were concealing her scepticism. ‘I mean, the amount of times that I’ve injured myself in another man’s bed just because I was hanging out-’
‘Pfft!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Leigh, the woman was like, seventy, okay?’
Leigh’s head snapped up, excited and appalled as the Imogen in her mind ceased to look like a supermodel and resembled one of her mother’s quilting buddies. ‘What? But you were in her bed!’
‘She couldn’t use her upstairs bedroom- she’d moved down to the main floor, smart arse!’ His eyes burned with accusation. ‘She was a retired nurse, which was the main reason why I went home with her. She was also a widow with a big ol’ place to look after, and very much alone because her only living relative, her older sister, had retired in Greece.’ He frowned. ‘And that was who she was visiting, when she passed away. She had cancer apparently, and knew her time was up so she re-wrote her will with her sister overseas and never came back.’
Leigh’s mouth popped open. ‘If she was so old, how did she get you out of the water?’
‘I’d washed up near the edge, so she just had to yank me out. Didn’t even get a cold, the tough old bat… but it’s not like she dove into the whirlpool wearing a cape and stilettos and lingerie!’
Leigh giggled, flooded with relief. This guy could never be ‘her’ Ryan, but it was nice to eliminate the male escort element from the already fading fantasy. ‘Ahhh…. Okay that makes sense. So it was like, pension funds that you inherited?’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes flashed. ‘I can’t believe you thought I was-’
‘I’m sorry, honestly,’ Leigh said. ‘But in my defence, you sort of steered me toward the toy-boy ledge, and I jumped.’ She waved to the fall. ‘In a barrel of contempt... but I’m back now.’
But Ryan scowled playfully at her. ‘I’m not shocked that you assumed that I slept with her- if she’d had two working hips, I don’t doubt that she would have tried to climb on board.’ He leaned down and whispered in her ear. ‘I’m insulted that you thought I was sub-par at it- and worth anything less than a million.’
He did NOT just say that!
To keep her eyes from rolling back, Leigh rolled them derisively. ‘Oh, all guys think that…’ But images of Ryan working to prove what a tremendous lover he was in a bed full of books had her panting thinly. Then, she recalled the scene in The Hardest Fall where her real Ryan had tied Kylie to his bed head and had gone down on her for hours until she fell asleep, exhausted- proving what a control freak he was, and she felt a delicious tingle at the junction of her thighs.
Fiction. Fiction, fiction FICTION! But he’s single, single, SINGLE! I’m not so undesirable, am I? Ry’s leered at me a few times, and Bruce seemed to… oh crap- Bruce! Date! Okay Leigh… your mama didn’t raise a whore… and this guy is way out of your league, further than
the hotelier’s son even!
‘Perhaps they do,’ Ryan said nonchalantly. ‘But I have these dreams sometimes you know? And in them- I know what I’m doing and she seems twice as convinced…’
Leigh wished she hadn’t worn such tight jeans, but she forced herself to look up at him. ‘Wait… you’re basing your skills on your dream exploits? That’s not fair! What about your real ones?’
‘I don’t remember any,’ he said simply.
Leigh was stunned. ‘But… you hinted that you’re a player!’
‘I thought I must have been- until you told me the real reason why women have had odd reactions to me. Now that I know that, well, I have no idea what kind of history I have.’
‘But... but Bruce said that you do so well with the local women.’
‘Picking them up in bars is akin to shooting fish in a barrel,’ he agreed blithely. His eyes darted to hers. ‘And I’ve had a few fun evenings with some stunning fish over the last few months, don’t get me wrong. But I haven’t actually taken one home since I became Ryan Weaver. We kiss, clothes start to come off and cars fog up but… I haven’t…’ he squinted out at the water. ‘Doesn’t mean I haven’t got mad skills though. If I know what I’m doing in dreams, they have to be memories, right?’
‘And what do you remember?’ Leigh asked, her voice more breath than sound.
‘Screaming. Shaking… my name….’ He wet his lips and then ran his hands back through his hair. ‘Fuck. I need to jump in.’
Leigh tittered, even though she too, was on the brink of kicking off her boots and taking a dunk in the frigid waters to break her fever. Maybe this Ryan didn’t know what he was like in bed, but Leigh knew what his likeness was like in bed and he would have been worth billions. ‘Do you remember lots of different faces? Houses?’
But Ryan shook his head, the shadow coming back to his eyes. ‘No. I have glimpse, darkness, a voice… and it’s always the same voice.’ He swallowed, and looked down at the water. ‘Fuck.’
‘What?’ Leigh asked, hoping that his sudden downshift in mood would act like a wet blanket for hers.