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anger even more clear. Cees looked from Arie to the back of her furious friend.
“I’ll be right back. I need to go talk to her before she drives off angry.”
Arie nodded and Cees pulled the door closed behind her, leaving Arie standing in an unfamiliar house, clutching bath towels while the ex-lover she couldn’t remember ran after someone else.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Cees pulled the front door shut and jogged across the grass toward Lilly’s ridiculous little Saturn. She caught up with Lilly because she was still fumbling in her luggage-sized purse for her keys.
Before she could say anything, Lilly turned around. The motion light illuminated Lilly’s face with an icy light. Damn it, she was wearing her battle face. The one she wore on the playground, the dance ß oor, and according to rumor, in the bedroom. Cees searched her mind for the best thing to say to defuse the situation.
Lilly, as usual, knew just what to say. “You are so damn stupid. I thought hetero women were stupid for chasing after men who don’t want them, but you’re stupid too.”
Cees winced. The accent was par for the course with Lilly’s anger; so were the insults.
“It isn’t what you think.” Cees tried to keep her voice modulated in the hopes that Lilly would do the same.
“It isn’t? Really? Let me see. The person who stepped on you and then kicked you out the door with the trash is now standing in your house in front of your bedroom with some clean sheets in her hand.”
“Those weren’t sheets. They were towels. I was planning on letting her have my room and I was going to sleep in the… You
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know what, Lilly? I don’t have to explain myself to you. You are not my mother.” The words were automatic. A response launched on the pressure that she’d felt since walking out of the hospital with Arie.
“No, I’m not your mother, but I was there for the weeks and months you wandered around trying to Þ gure out what you did wrong and how you could Þ x it. I was there when you Þ nally started getting your damn pride back, and I was there when you Þ nally got angry and bitchy. And I’ve been here as you tried to put the pieces together by sleeping with someone who means nothing to you.”
“That’s not true. I care about Miranda.”
“Really? Enough to let her hurt you?” She glanced toward the house. “Twice?”
Cees wanted to deny that Arie still had the power to hurt her. She wanted to, but she was afraid that it might be a lie. Lilly ferreted out lies as easily as her mother. “She needs my help, Lilly.”
“Who’s gonna help you?” Lilly pointed at her chest so hard that if she had made contact, one of her long nails would have done damage.
“No one will need to help me. It’s just until she gets better and—”
“And decides she doesn’t want you again?”
English might not have been Lilly’s Þ rst language, but she was deadly with it. Cees resisted the urge to turn away from her friend. In all the years they had known each other, they’d had Þ ve real Þ ghts. Oddly, the Þ rst had been over a boy. The last—before this one—had been over Arieanna.
“I’m not trying to get her to want me. I loved her once. I loved her with everything I had, but she didn’t love me back.
Now she’s hurt and she’s alone. I can’t just—” Cees gestured with her hands, at a loss for words, because in all honesty, she didn’t know why she felt she had to be the one to help Arie.
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Lilly’s anger and the fact that she still had to look down at her made Cees remember how they had met. She’d had the misguided idea the small stranger needed help when she was bullied in the school yard. Boy, had she been wrong. Lilly fought like a cat threatening to scratch the eyeballs out of anyone who came near her. Cees would have smiled at the memory if the cat wasn’t standing in front of her now, back hunched, hair electric.
“Don’t come crying to me when she hurts you.”
“I won’t come crying to you because I won’t get hurt. She’s just a friend.”
Lilly smacked her lips and started chewing viciously on a piece of gum that must have been tucked into the side of her jaw the whole time. Her claim to fame at Providence Elementary School was being the girl who had chewed the same piece of gum for two weeks before her mother found out about it and made her spit it out.
“You need to look up the deÞ nition of ‘friend’ in the dictionary.
Heartache isn’t normally involved. I need to get going. I’m not paying the cover at the club.” Lilly must have realized then that she hadn’t locked her car because she opened the door and got inside, still fumbling around in her purse for her keys.
Cees caught the driver side door before Lilly could slam it and tweaked the set of keys hanging from the ignition. Instead of a thank-you, Lilly slammed her purse into the passenger seat.
“Call me tomorrow and let me know how it went, okay? I’ll even listen if you want to tell me about some guy you met.”
“No, you call me when she’s out of your life for good.” Lilly started the car, so Cees had to practically lean in through the window to hear the second part of her statement. “Oh, and by the way? I’m telling Momma,” Lilly yelled.
Cees would have laughed if she didn’t think Lilly was serious. “You don’t have to do that. I was planning on calling her tomorrow to tell her anyway.”
Lilly must have spotted the lie coming because she just
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smiled. “You can step away from my car now or you can hop away later.”
Cees backed away quickly and Lilly yanked her door shut and gunned out of the driveway without so much as a proper look behind her. Cees winced as the Saturn’s tires peeled off down the street. The cold and the thought of a conversation with Momma Nguyen about Arie caused her to shiver. Back in the house she was relieved to see that Arie was not standing in the hall peeking out the window as she would have been.
The bedroom door was open, though there was no light on inside. Cees hesitated and looked inside. Arie was curled into a tight ball on the bed. Cees reached in to shut the door, but just as she did Arie’s face distorted and she placed a hand over her forehead. She had mistaken Arie for half asleep. She was wide-awake and tense with pain.
“Arie, what’s wrong?” Cees walked into the room.
“My head.”
“Where’s your bag? Did they send anything with you?”
“Took it already.”
“Okay. What can I do?” Arie didn’t say anything and Cees walked into the room and touched her back. The muscles there were so tense they trembled. Cees felt her throat close as she tried to imagine what kind of pain would cause Arie to be almost rigid from it. Don’t scare her by getting upset.
“How long before the meds kick in?” Cees asked, her voice devoid of emotion.
“Don’t know, maybe Þ fteen minutes. They’ll make me nauseous before they make me feel better.”
“Can I help you get under the covers?” Cees asked.
Arie didn’t speak for so long Cees almost repeated herself.
“I don’t want to move.”
Cees sat down next to her on the bed, careful not to shift it too much. Her hand went to Arie’s back again, and since Arie didn’t protest, she let it stay.
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“Did my argument with Lilly cause this?” she asked in a near whisper. A small movement from Arie told Cees that Arie wanted to protest, but couldn’t.
“Hang on a second.” Cees stood up, cut the light out in the living room, and pulled off her shoes.
When Cees sat back down on the bed, Arie mumbled a barely discernable “thanks.”
“Did your headache just start?”
“When we left the hospita
l.
“Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you if your head was hurting?”
“Thought it was just nerves.”
Cees, too, had had a bit of a headache upon exiting the hospital. The feeling of helplessness and fear was familiar. She had tried to forget it, but here it was again. The palms of Cees’s hands itched. She wanted to Þ x this. She wanted to Þ x Arie’s pain so she could go back to her own apartment and Cees could somehow move on with her life. Not move on in the way Lilly thought she should. Cees had admitted to herself long ago that she would never fully get over Arie. She had simply gotten better at hiding her loss. The fact that Arie hurt now tore her apart. She began to rub Arie’s back. It didn’t take long before Cees felt some of the tension ease from the tight back muscles. “Is this okay?”
she asked, careful to keep her voice soft so as not to inß ict more pain.
“Yes, please.”
Cees smiled, relieved that she could help in some way. At least for now. The thought, negative and remote, had nothing to do with Arie and everything to do with her father’s slow, agonizing death from cancer. Even with the attentive support of the Nguyen family, she had still felt lonely. Until she met Arie.
Arie’s back slowly began to relax, and impulsively, Cees whispered, “Can you turn all the way onto your stomach?”
Arie immediately began the slow process of uncurling
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herself from her pain. Cees crawled onto the bed with her knees on either side of Arie’s hips and put her hands in Arie’s short brown hair, the shock of feeling it again not as profound as she thought it would be. She kept her Þ ngers gentle and worked her way through the soft, thick hair and up to Arie’s temple.
“Don’t lift up, just relax,” she said. Cees spent several long minutes working the stress from Arie’s scalp before she worked her way to her tense neck muscles.
“Cees, you don’t have to do this.” Arie’s voice was mufß ed by the pillow. It sounded as if she had just awakened from a night of lovemaking.
Cees pushed the spark of arousal to the far recess of her mind. “I know I don’t, but I feel so helpless when I see a problem that I can’t Þ x.”
“I bet you don’t have many of those,” Arie said, sounding drowsy and relaxed.
Cees’s thoughts went to the day her father told her he wasn’t going to get any better. “Try to get some sleep,” Cees said as her Þ ngers settled on Arie’s trapezius muscles and rubbed, soothing gently until sleep released Arie from the pain.
v
The voice from her dream was back; so was the darkness.
There was no weeping this time. This time the quiet was interrupted by one word. “Yes.” Arie felt herself reach for that voice. Her Þ ngers touched it, grazed it, found the spot, and curled around it, pulling it close. This time the “yes” was desperate, pleading, and, yes, weeping, but not sad or desolate. This voice was joyful and so very familiar.
Arie opened her eyes and would have sat up had her short-term memory not kicked in, reminding her of the splitting headache she’d had and at the same time, Cees’s panacea for it.
Arie mentally took stock of herself the way she had when she
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had awakened in the hospital alone in the dark and in pain. She had told herself to move her toes and waited the agonizing split second it took her drugged brain to recognize the command.
Assured that she hadn’t lost the use of her feet and hands, she lay quietly, listening to the sounds of this new place and the pleasant scent of laundry soap and cinnamon candles.
A soft sigh to her right caused Arie to turn her head quickly without thought of the possibility of pain. Her eyes landed on Cees’s relaxed face. She must have fallen asleep next to her. Arie could just make out the small dimple in Cees’s chin. She had the absurd thought to place a Þ nger there but decided against it.
At one time, Cees had been her lover. My lover. Arie tested the words though she made no sound. She wasn’t sure if she should feel distress or joy. Truthfully, she felt neither. She was simply curious.
Cees’s lips parted and moved as if she were dreaming, and Arie remembered part of hers. Yes, of course. The voice. It had been Cees; she was sure of it. Was it a dream or a memory? Had they been making love? Was she remembering? Arie squeezed her thighs tight against a slow throbbing that had begun there. She openly stared at Cees’s mouth. How many times had she kissed those lips? How many times had that simple word urged her on?
“Yes” meant “please continue,” didn’t it? In such a breathless tone it could mean nothing else. Arie closed her eyes so that she wasn’t looking at Cees, but she didn’t need to look at her to remember what she looked like. Her short-term memory was in peak condition—she could remember everything about her, from the way her lower lip was drooping slightly to the way her dusky lashes rested against her cheek. She carefully turned on her side despite the fact that her mind was telling her to go back to sleep.
What if Cees woke up and caught her staring?
She couldn’t seem to stop. She had noticed that her body seemed drawn to Cees no matter where she was in the room.
When she wasn’t in the room, Arie felt as if she was in a constant state of waiting until she appeared. She wondered if Cees felt
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the same way about her, before quickly scuttling away from the thought.
Aside from the moment when Arie thought Cees was going to kiss her in the waterfront apartment, Arie had sensed no attraction or any other feelings from Cees other than a desire to help. Still, Arie wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think Cees went around kissing just anyone.
Something bad had happened to them almost two years ago.
She knew that much. Whatever it was had left her living in that stale, cold apartment while Cees lived in this home alone. Arie was starting to realize that if her memories ever returned, not all of them would be pleasant.
Whether or not her mind was letting her remember the relationship, she had felt angry when Cees had gone after Lilly.
And Lilly, well, there was no doubt that there was a lot of anger in her eyes when she looked at Arieanna. Arie’s surprise at the situation changed to anger as soon as Cees had walked out the door. Her emotions had gone from relief that Lilly was gone, to anger that she had spoken to Cees as she had, and Þ nally to complete and utter jealousy that Cees had gone after her. The headache followed on the heels of the deluge of emotions, and Cees’s touch had chased away the pain. This time Arie sighed.
She was relying on Cees too much. She meant what she’d said last night. She didn’t want to disturb Cees’s life any more than she already had, but she was happy and grateful when Cees had ignored her protest and insisted she come home with her. She enjoyed being around Cees. She wasn’t ready for that to end, not yet.
Cees moved, she whispered a word, a half word in her sleep.
It reminded Arie of the dream, and her face ß amed. Now fully on her side, she watched for another uttered phrase, but a slow frown had started to crease Cees’s brow, and Arie ached to smooth it away. Cees’s lips were no longer parted and were tense. Arie wanted to soothe out the furrow, but she was afraid she’d wake her. She tried closing her eyes against temptation, but she could
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still see Cees behind her closed lids and when she opened them again, Cees was closer.
It seemed natural to kiss the furrowed brow, she hardly had to move at all, and when her hand went out to stroke Cees’s chin, that seemed natural too. Cees tilted her head back, and as if in a dream, Arie kissed her. The moment their lips melded, Arie felt her body take over; she didn’t need to remember. She just knew.
Her hips scooted forward toward Cees though she didn’t pull her close. The kiss was soft but searing. Cees’s lips parted and Arie hesitated, sensed what she was
supposed to do, but almost fainted from the sheer pleasure of Þ nding the tip of Cees’s tongue with her own. She deepened the kiss ever so slightly, thinking it couldn’t get any better than it already was. Cees made a small sound in the back of her throat, a small yes. Arie urged her to lie ß at on her back and pulled herself fully on top of Cees.
Arie could tell that Cees was fully awake because she was pulling her close, her hips grinding, pressing up into Arie’s hips.
Arie dug her hands into Cees’s hair and held her head while she kissed her hard. Arie felt herself falling into Cees; her body taunted her with dark memories of remembered pleasure that was still too far out of reach. Please let this be happening. Please don’t let this be a dream, Arie thought as she ran her hands down Cees’s sides while her hips kept a rhythm she couldn’t have slowed if she tried. Arie broke the kiss, but her hands had crept beneath Cees’s pants and were now cupping her buttocks, urging her on, encouraging the rhythm that was both giving them pleasure and driving them crazy.
Abruptly, the warm body beneath her stopped moving, the hands that had been gripping her ass now held her hips hostage.
Fear or something close to it ripped through her body as she realized she didn’t know what to do next. Cees’s heart was beating so hard Arie could feel it through her shirt. Cees needed something, and Arie wanted to give her exactly what she needed.
At one time she knew what Cees liked; she was sure of that, but now… Arie jumped at the sound of Cees’s voice. “We have to
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stop now,” Cees said, but her voice told a different story, a story that Arie knew she had heard before, only she couldn’t remember the beginning, middle, or end.
Arie felt the same sense of hopelessness she had felt when she Þ rst awakened in the hospital. She loosened her grip on the front of Cees’s shirt and let her body relax in defeat. When Cees gathered her into a gentle, nonsexual embrace, she told herself that it was for the best, this was what she could handle. Regardless of whether or not she could remember their relationship, she knew there was something more to their estrangement than a simple argument.
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