“So plants have to have real sunlight in order to breathe?” he asked, his eyes wide in wonder.
“Respirate, honey. It’s called cellular respiration, and sunlight is one of many different kinds of light that plants can use. For instance, plants can live pretty well with fluorescent light, too. Remember when I showed you how green the fluorescent lighting looks in photographs? That’s because it emits a green spectrum or wavelength of light, and green light is what the plants use. Incandescent light, like from light bulbs, is yellow and the plants can’t use that. There’s also very expensive light bulbs that greenhouses use in the wintertime called full-spectrum lights that give off the right kind of light, too.”
JT was amazed. Not just at her knowledge, but at her ability to explain it so that an eleven year old could understand. Hell, she’s making me understand it, and science was too dry and boring in school for me to pay much attention to. He continued to listen without wanting to seem obvious, now interested in the way plants breathed. Respirated, he corrected himself with a tiny smile.
“So would using a green light bulb work, then?” Zach asked with a child’s clear logic.
“No, sweetie, it wouldn’t. That would just be paint, but wouldn’t change the type of original light. Here, I’ll show you. Watch my hand.”
She illustrated a sweeping wave in the air. “Light travels in waves, like this. Different colors have different waves. Some move faster in shorter arcs, so that the waves are closer together, like this.” Her hand cut the air in a quick, narrow M. “Some move just as fast, but the waves are flatter, like this.” She repeated the motion, but didn’t move her hand as high or as low as before.
Understanding shone in Zach’s eyes. “And do some move slow and big, like this?” His arm made a grand, ambulating curve.
Korina’s smile glowed. “Exactly! And depending on how it moves is what makes it appear as a different color.”
Zach was bouncing in his seat. “So that’s why rainbows are rainbows! Something in the air breaks up the waves and lets us see the colors!”
“You got it, kiddo. And that something is simple old water. If the light hits it just right, it breaks it apart, that’s called refracting it, and makes all the colors appear separately.”
JT sat and listened as they took off on a further tangent about light, enthralled by how she understood this well enough to break it down into simple terms and explain it to her son. Maybe it’s not so boring on this bus after all, he pondered. If this is her idea of sixth grade, I might just have to revisit primary school here in the afternoons.
Zach grumbled but continued to grind away on his math worksheets. Korina stayed at the table with him, watching but not badgering, and refocusing him to his work when his attention started to drift.
She sat quietly staring off into nothing, her chin resting on her hand. The other held a pen, its tip poised just above the open notebook lying on the table in front of her. She would occasionally sigh and jot something down, then read it over, make a slightly disgusted face and scribble out what she’d written.
JT sprawled across the loveseat, resting his head on his long arms, his large frame making the piece of furniture look to be little more than an oversized chair. His eyes were slitted to almost closed, his face pointed toward the window behind her; he appeared to be either almost asleep or consumed with boredom at the passing green countryside. He assumed it was green, anyway. The heavily tinted windows transmuted all the colors into varying shades of blackish-blue.
Had Korina turned her head just the slightest bit, looked toward those thinly-opened eyes, she would have found them gazing directly at her. Into her.
–Look at me, dammit. Just turn your head once and look over here. I miss you, and this is all I can have. I can’t even trust myself to talk to you unless others are around. I know I’ll slip and say something I shouldn’t. Like I’m crazy in love with you.
Korina closed her eyes, gave her head a slow, tiny shake, and shut down the mental conversation he was trying to start. If he only knew how many nights she’d spent cuddled up next to her son instead of with Mark. Ever since the nightsweats and shaking started (and his erection deflated and wouldn’t come back), Mark was afraid to do anything more than hold her hand. Kori was a shredded mess, and there was no way in hell she was going to let JT inside her head to poke around.
She opened her eyes and scrawled another line, then promptly swirled her pen over the words to obliterate them.
“What are you writing, Mom?” Zach asked, looking up from his workbook. He didn’t really care. He was eager to find a distraction from doing his math, and this one would do just fine.
“An idea for a story,” she answered, glancing at his half-finished page.
Zach set down his pencil and folded his hands on the tabletop. “What’s it about?”
“People. Now get back to work, kiddo.” She tapped the open workbook with her index finger.
“Which people?” he stalled, ignoring her hand on his book.
“Just people. C’mon honey, after this page you’re all done for the day. Finish up.”
“I’m not one of those people, I hope,” Rafe interjected, throwing her a pointed look. “That one you did about me got that whole ‘Rafe fell off the stage’ thing going again.”
This was the first time Rafe had mentioned her fiction, and she wasn’t sure how to react. She didn’t know how he felt about it, or about being a character in it. “Uh, no, Rafe. It doesn’t have you in it.” She fought the urge to look down at her fingers and watch them fidget with her pen. “About what I wrote… I’m sorry. I didn’t know any of you could get to it and read it. I didn’t mean to cause you any problems.”
JT watched the interplay with interest, suddenly not so bored any more. He mentally applauded Korina for not looking down at her hands (he was certain she desperately wanted to) and for holding Rafe’s gaze without waver.
“Do you know,” Rafe said, leaning forward and folding over the corner of the page he’d been reading, “they actually put double rows of reflective tape on the edge of the stage on my side? For two solid weeks I had that glaring up at me. Every time I looked down, every time a spotlight hit it…it even reflected the pink gels, and they’re dim.”
Korina felt a smile threatening and she bit the inside of her bottom lip. “Why didn’t you just peel it off?”
“He did. But we’d put it right back again,” JT quipped, unable to keep his mouth shut any longer.
Korina lost the battle and giggled. “I’m sorry, Rafe. I really am. I’m not laughing at you, honestly. It’s just…just…” She snorted as the laugh took over.
Rafe feigned a hurt look. “Uh-huh. Sure you’re not.”
“Now, come on Rafe, you have to admit the tape was better than what we did for the next few gigs after you fell off the stage that first time.” JT’s eyes twinkled in the merry web of laugh lines as his smiled widened.
“The first…the first time?” Kori sputtered. “I only heard about it happening once.”
JT sat up a little straighter in the loveseat. “Well, we didn’t want it to get around, but he fell off quite regularly there for a while,” he said with an even wider grin.
“I did not! It was only those two times,” Rafe interjected.
“Well, it would surely have been more often if not for the signs and then the tape along the edge.” JT was thoroughly enjoying making Korina laugh while simultaneously jibing Rafe.
“It would not! You guys thought you were so clever taping up pieces of paper with ‘The Stage Ends Here’ and ‘This Way To Downstairs’ written on them. Lucky for you I took them down before the audience arrived,” Rafe smirked.
“No, it was lucky for them. By then, you knew where the edge of the stage was,” JT retorted. “Kept you from falling off, they did. Man, that had to be embarrassing, landing on the fans…”
“Hah!” was all Rafe could come up with in rebuttal.
Kori put her hands over her face, tryi
ng to end to the giggle fit, but it wouldn’t be tamed. She gasped, trying to catch her breath. It didn’t do any good. She erupted in giggles again and slid lower in her seat to ease her achy stomach muscles. “Oh, stop….I can’t….take any more…” she managed as another gale gripped her and tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
Zach had been listening and watching with rapt attention. This was better than any distraction he could have come up with. “Did you really fall off the stage a lot, Mr. Rafe?” he asked.
“Don’t listen to him, Zach. It was only twice, and I’ve gotten glasses and contact lenses since then.” He favored Zach with an indulgent smile.
“Wow, you gotta wear them both? It’s no wonder you fell off then. How come you’re not wearing them now?” Zach stared at him from across the narrow room in wonder.
JT snickered behind his hand. Let’s see how he gets his foot out of his mouth to answer that one…
Rafe’s smile strained. “No, Zach. I wear one or the other, not both together. I wear the contacts on the stage because the glasses fog up, and sometimes they reflect the lights on the inside and I can’t see through them.”
“Did you ever get blind enough from the lights on your glasses to fall off the stage, Mr. Rafe?” Zach asked eagerly.
Rafe’s smile fell right off his face. It was the push Kori needed to end her giggles. “I’m sure he didn’t. And that’s enough stalling, mister. Finish your page. Please.”
Zach looked up at her, disappointed. “But it’s getting too hard. I don’t understand the next questions. Will you help me?”
She sighed, knowing this was another favorite stalling tactic, but one that he pulled out only when he was really pushed to the limits of his understanding. Next would come his frustration if she didn’t intercede. “Okay. Which problem is it?”
JT watched the two blond heads bow together over the table and inwardly sighed, sensing his feelings for her growing even deeper as he watched her both mothering and teaching her son.
Should I? He’s so damn blond sometimes that you’d never guess it came from a bottle. But if I don’t talk to someone, my head might bloody well explode. And he is my best friend… JT absently chewed the rough callus at the tip of his thumb. And if I can’t trust him to keep quiet, then who can I trust? Besides, it is only us here on this bus. He’s got nobody to tell who doesn’t already know.
He glanced over at Rafe. He appeared to be lost in his book again. “Rafe?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yeah, JT?” he answered without looking up from the page.
“I need to talk to you.”
“So talk.” Rafe marked his place on the page with his finger and settled his gaze squarely on JT’s face.
JT’s eyes swept over to the table; Korina and Zach were still engrossed in dividing with fractions. “In private?” He looked back to Rafe again.
“Sure,” he replied.
JT watched as he lop-eared the corner of the page he’d been reading. I hate it when he does that. He’s ruined almost every book on the bus. He indicated the tiny bedroom at the back of the bus with a slight tilt of his head, then rose from the loveseat.
Rafe closed the door, affording them more of a semblance of privacy than actually having any. The walls were little more than vinyl over a foam core, the door just pressboard. Still, someone would have to press an ear to the door to really eavesdrop on their conversation over the drone of the diesel engine.
He sat on the foot of the bed, looking expectantly at JT, who was making quite a show of fluffing the pillows before he, too, sat down, cross-legged, and heaved a heavy sigh. The quiet moment stretched on as JT wondered where to begin, and if this wasn’t a mistake. A phrase his mother used to say when he grumbled about his childhood chores floated into his mind: Once begun is easily done, and he decided to just say it and get it over with.
“Before I tell you anything, Rafe, I have to say this. This isn’t my secret to share. It was told to me in confidence, and if keeping it inside didn’t make me feel as if the top of my head was about to blow off, I wouldn’t be telling you. And I know that as my closest friend, I can trust you not to say anything to anyone else.” JT’s eyes bore into Rafe’s.
“I swear, JT. I won’t say a word.” Not on purpose, anyway.
JT leaned back into the pillows and swiped a hand over his face. “I’m sorry I’ve been so touchy lately. It’s just that… ah shit, Rafe. Mark’s only got about three, maybe three and a half, months left to live. They don’t want anyone to know right now. Korina only found out for certain about a month ago, when her family came to Dallas. Then she and Mark told me. Their son doesn’t know yet. She’s been crying on my shoulder off and on for the better part of these last weeks.” JT didn’t mind stretching the truth to fit, given the circumstances.
Rafe blinked once, slowly, and blew out a breath. “I know already. Kori told me, more to cover for your behavior, I think, than because she wanted me to know.”
JT was surprised. Not at Kori’s disclosure, but at Rafe’s ability to keep the secret for more than a day.
Rafe continued, “Do you remember the sound check in Kansas City when your voice cracked and you blew up and stomped away backstage? That’s when she told me, and said she’d been an emotional drain on you because she was leaning on you for support. She didn’t want me to think you were just being an ass for no reason.”
JT chuckled softly. “For no reason? Well that, at least, is reassuring.” His face sobered. “He wants to stay with the tour for as long as it’s physically possible, although at first I didn’t understand why.”
“She explained that, too. In a way, I suppose it makes perfect sense. I mean, who would want their last memories of their father to be a long stretch of him being bedridden and wasting away?”
“You know, it takes some mighty big bollocks to decide to face death full on, and want to live out the end of his life as voraciously as he can.”
They both lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. JT wondered if he would have the wherewithal to spend the end of his life that way if it were him dying instead of Mark. Probably. But he knew himself well enough to know he’d also fight his own demise every step of the way. And he’d want to spend every possible moment with the ones he loved. Especially Kori; he didn’t think he’d so much as let her out of his sight if his life was winding down.
“JT, are you sleeping with her?” Rafe asked quietly.
Where in the hell did that question come from? Oh, fuck… “What? Sleeping with her? Hell, no, Rafe. Do you think I’ve gone completely crazy? Her husband’s here, for chrissake.” That’s it, JT. Steer him into the present, where your answer is the truth.
Rafe wasn’t to be dissuaded. “What about before? Look, you said she didn’t know for sure until they joined us in Dallas. You two were practically welded together for weeks before that. But she didn’t know then that her husband was ill. So what gives?”
JT was momentarily stunned. If he told Rafe about her beyond-normal senses, he would betray her trust. Rafe would also be likely to think of her differently, behave oddly when he was in her company, or even worse, he might try to avoid her altogether.
This would also be a truth that Rafe would have a hard time sitting on, especially if anyone questioned what was sure to be his peculiar behavior toward her. If he admitted to their relationship, that would be just as bad. And again, Rafe would find it difficult to contain that knowledge. Even if I swore him to secrecy, begged him to say nothing, he couldn’t keep it to himself. I know him too well. Korina told me once to just open my mouth and let the words fall out. That’s Rafe personified, I swear. No thought, just out it comes and then ‘Oops! I shouldn’t have said that…’
JT hunched forward, stared down at the hands he’d folded loosely in his lap and released a long breath. When he spoke, his voice was low but strong. “Korina had her suspicions that something was wrong. She couldn’t really pinpoint how she knew, but I think it’s the intuition people get. You kn
ow, like how I can tell when something’s eating at you? Anyway, Korina said he sounded funny when they would talk on the phone, and that he sometimes said things that seemed off. She didn’t get into specifics. But she did say that he seemed to be asleep a lot when she called home, and that it wasn’t like him. And those times when he was awake, he still sounded tired.”
JT shifted his gaze to Rafe’s. “She thought maybe he was depressed. She even tried to quit and go back home. I talked her out of it more than once.”
“Why didn’t you just let her quit? I know she’s quite the all-purpose woman, and I do like her, but she’s not irreplaceable, JT.”
JT sighed. Here’s where it would get tricky. “But that’s the thing, Rafe. To me, she is irreplaceable. Even more so now than before.” His glance shifted back down to his hands, where his right thumb beat a rhythm on the back of his left hand. “I want her, Rafe. Not just in my bed, although God knows I want that desperately. I want her around me. All the time. I want to see her smile and hear her laugh. I love to listen to her singing off-key when she really digs a song and gets loud. I want to see her face in the morning when her hair’s all a mess and the pillow’s left creases on her cheek.”
JT closed his eyes, his face a mask of heartache. He mumbled a barely audible “Fuck,” then fell silent again.
Rafe’s jaw dropped. “Are you telling me you’ve fallen for her? This could be a huge mistake, JT. She’s going to be very alone very soon. And utterly heartbroken.”
“I know,” JT sighed, opening eyes that looked haunted. “And I don’t want to take advantage of that. It’s tearing me to shreds. This is the woman I’ve been searching for, for a very long time. I’m in love with her, Rafe. Desperately, hopelessly, head-over-heels… Name a cliché, and I’m it. And there’s not a fucking thing I can do to tell her.”
Rafe’s gaze didn’t waver. “She doesn’t know?”
Dream Me Off My Feet (Sex, Love, And Rock & Roll) Page 31