Brilliant

by Lark O'Neal

  “Shh.” He pulls me into him, into his chest, sitting up to cradle me. “I know.”

  I’m crying silently, my emotions such a trash heap that I don’t even know which part I’m crying about. That I should never have done this? That I do feel love pouring through me right now, for him, for us, and at the same time, a yearning for Kaleb, a need to reach for him.

  Trying to calm myself, I say, “This is the very definition of quixotic, right?”

  “Doomed with good intentions? Maybe.” He strokes my hair. “Maybe it’s more complicated than that.”

  I lift my head. “What do you mean?”

  He faces me, taking both of my hands in his. “You love me, Jess.”

  The words travel a thousand miles and back, wrap around my throat.

  “Our timing was the worst,” he says, tracing the lifeline in my right hand, then my left. He raises his eyes. There’s only the light coming in from a streetlamp outside and all I can see are the shadows in his irises. “I still believe I’ve known you in other lives, that we were supposed to meet this time—and I was supposed to fix it and I didn’t.”

  “Oh, Tyler, no, don’t say that. Don’t.” I bring his hands together in a prayer and kiss the fingertips. “I found my father because we came together. And you got back into the snowboarding world. You are so good. People love watching you.”

  He nods. “Come on. Let’s not bum each other out, okay? Let’s get you back to the hotel.”

  “Tyler—”

  But he’s getting up, too thin even in the soft light, and I am worried that I’ve just made everything worse, for him, for me, for Kaleb—for all of us.

  * * *

  He pulls into the circular driveway of the hotel in the black car I thought was so sexy when we first met. How much my life has changed in six months! The library is right next door to the hotel, the library where I had to go to use the Internet to try to find some crappy job. For a minute, it overwhelms me. “Life is so different for both of us than when we first met.”

  He nods solemnly. “Goes like that, I guess.”

  “Tyler, look at me, please.”

  But he doesn’t. He ducks his head, takes my hand, and plants a kiss on the back of it. “Just go, Jess.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  As if he’s struggled with himself over it, he suddenly breaks his stillness and reaches across the small space, kissing me one more time. His mouth is hot and flavored with grief and it makes me cry. “I love you, Jess. I really do.”

  “I know,” I whisper. “Remember, I will always be there in your hour of need, okay?

  “You, too, Jess. I mean it.” Then he releases me and I’m blindly crossing the sidewalk, my heart and soul in a roar. I have no idea if what I just did was the right thing.

  Or the exact wrong one.

  KALEB

  I hear her come in even though she’s trying to be quiet. The time on my phone is 12:36. I roll onto my back, waiting.

  The shower goes on, and it stays on for a long time. Mercedes is asleep in the room I originally slept in this afternoon, but I asked if she would trade me, thinking I would try to make things right with Jess. Give her some room to make her choices. Maybe actually try to be one of those choices instead of the dick she’d happily send to Mongolia.

  She finally comes out of the shower, dressed in pajamas that are suited for the cold climate—long sleeved t-shirt and long pajama pants. Crawling into the bed next to me and curls up close. In a very quiet voice, she says, “I finished it with Tyler.”

  Something in her tone makes my gut ache, something I don’t want to hear. To give myself some space, I pretend I’m asleep, but I don’t push her away when she curls up against me, her arms around my waist, her face pressed into the space between my shoulder blades.

  It’s only after the minutes pass that I realize she’s weeping, holding onto me and pouring hot tears, and with a rock in my gut I realize that she slept with him.

  Bitterness pours through me, dark and unquenchable.

  This woman will ruin me if I let her.

  Taking her hand from my waist, I slide out of bed and leave her in the dark, weeping and conflicted and I sleep the rest of the night on the couch, my heart a stone.

  A stone. I will my heart to be a stone, hard, cold, unbreachable.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  JESS

  The next morning is overcast, adding a sense of gloominess to all of our moods. Kaleb is aloof, and I am still stinging over everything that happened last night, Tyler and Kaleb and the way he left the bed last night—and what was he doing there, anyway? I’m pretty sure he guesses what happened with me and Tyler, and there’s no privacy for us to have the talk that will straighten it all out. Mercedes is not as bouncy as usual, and I ask what she did the night before. “I had some drinks at the bar downstairs,” she says. “I invited Kaleb, but he wasn’t up for it.”

  “I came back here and nobody was here. Where did he go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  My lungs deflate.

  On the way to Electra’s house, I ask the driver to go past Billy’s, the restaurant where I worked when a car drove into it. The day I met Tyler and my friend Virginia was so badly injured that she died.

  It’s shocking to see that nothing has happened. Boards have been put up over the windows, but the half-wrecked look of it is still there. “I can’t believe they haven’t even torn it down,” I say.

  “What happened?” Mercedes asks.

  “I was working here when an old man drove through the front and knocked it down. My friend was killed.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No.” I shake my head, feeling the shattering glass, the sound of the crash, go through me. “It was kind of the day everything changed, though. I lost my job and had to get a new one.”

  “And how did that change everything?”

  I glance at Kaleb, who is frowning at the restaurant and the sideways sign. “It was a long series of events,” I say and meet her eyes. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

  She gets it, glances at Kaleb, then nods at me.

  Electra is waiting with a full spread when we get to her house—eggs, bacon, hash browns, biscuits, everything. Henry is there, too, dressed up as he ever gets in a wrinkled button down shirt and hair he’s tried to brush down. He hugs me tight. “You look so beautiful, Jess. I’m so happy to see you!”

  There’s a boy about eight there, too, lean and slightly suspicious at first. His big dark eyes are wary, and his pants are a little too short, and Mercedes sits down beside him on the couch, holding out her hand. “Hi,” she says, “I’m Mercedes. Who are you?”

  He grins, showing the big teeth that have just grown in. “Like the car?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah. I guess that’s the car my mom wanted. What’s your name?”

  “Calvin. I live in the apartments over there, but Miz Electra say I could come have breakfast with y’all.”

  She inclines her head. “Not from around here, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. We moved here from Louisiana.”

  “Glad to meet you.”

  Kaleb stands with his hands in his pockets to one side of the room, like he’s some kind of awkward stranger. I pull Henry over to meet him. “This is Kaleb Te Anga,” I say. “My dad’s nephew.”

  “So good to meet you, Kaleb. I saw the commercials with Jess and you two light up that screen like a couple of suns.”

  It would take someone much meaner than Kaleb to not be melted by the goodness in Henry. I see his shoulders ease. “Good to meet you. Jess has nothing but great things to say about you.”

  “Does she?” He looks tickled.

  “Come on and eat, everybody. It’s getting cold.” Electra herds us all into the kitchen where we crowd around the old table I’ve never seen so packed.

  “So you two used to be neighbors, huh?” Mercedes asks. She’s still oddly stiff around Electra. I forgot that I was going to ask her about
it last night.

  I point to the back door. “I lived in a tiny house in the back.”

  Kaleb hasn’t sat down yet, and peers out the window. “There?”

  I give him a puzzled look. “Yeah, why?”

  For a long, long minute, he looks at me, then back to the house. “Not what I had in mind.”

  Calvin, the boy, asks, “Are you from England?”

  Kaleb sits down next to him. “Even better. New Zealand.” He fills his plate and launches into a story about the warrior Maoris. Caleb is instantly, completely smitten.

  We all eat and laugh. Electra draws out both Mercedes and Kaleb, just the way she used to do with me—hearing the spaces in their stories and the ghosts of mothers who are no longer there, whether living or dead. It occurs to me that she’s mothering all of us—not just me, but Calvin, too, and maybe even Henry, who fills his plate three times, a bit sheepishly.

  “Henry, tell us about the show,” I ask.

  “Not that much to tell. Fella bought every single thing I had, then moved it all to some gallery downtown and there’s going to be a big show in about two months. Maybe you’ll still be in Colorado?”

  “I hope I am.”

  “That reminds me, though, sweetheart.” He pats his pockets, and pulls a folded glossy brochure. “Isn’t this your friend?”

  Before I pick it up, I know what it will be. The brochure about Tyler’s show, with that prominent painting of me covered only in the drape of my hair that is the centerpiece. My eyes stare right out of the page.

  “Yep,” I say, not picking it up. “That’s Tyler. He landed a show in New York City. Some of the portraits are of me.”

  “What?” Mercedes snatches the paper off the table. “Holy shit—er—I mean cow. These are really good.” She opens the brochure. “I like this one of you, too, Kaleb.”

  He very slowly raises his eyebrows at me. A question.

  I shrug. This is not on me. No way.

  “Wait, you didn’t know?” Mercedes asks.

  “That her boyfriend painted a portrait of me?” His eyes narrow. “No.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I mutter.

  “It’s good,” Mercedes says in her no-nonsense voice. “Look.” She turns the brochure around and holds it up for him to see. There’s the tiger portrait of Kaleb, looking so intensely Maori and fierce and uncompromising.

  Which he is. He gives me another ironic—bitter?—little glance. “Interesting.”

  “She’s naked!” Calvin cries and giggles, covering his mouth.

  “So she is,” Mercedes says, and when she looks at me, there’s speculation in her eyes, something sharper than I’ve seen before. “You know, this is going to be such good publicity.”

  “Will it?”

  “Oh yeah. Can I keep this, Henry?”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you excuse me for a minute?” Kaleb says, and, without waiting for an answer, stalks out the back door.

  “Sorry,” Henry says. “Did I do something wrong there?”

  I pat his shoulder. “Not you,” I say. “Me.” I drop my napkin on the table. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  Kaleb is standing in the garden, looking at the house, his hands loose at his sides. When he hears the door, he glances over his shoulder. “Don’t, Jess. I can’t talk to you right now.”

  I hesitate, then my anger rears up. “You aren’t the boss of everything here, you know.”

  “The boss of everything?” He turns, his expression thunderous with those heavy brows. “We aren’t five years old.”

  “Right.” I cross my arms against the cold. “We are presumably adults who can use our words to talk to each other instead of just making pronouncements and storming around looking moody and uncommunicative. You’re pissed. I get it. Talk to me about it.”

  “You want me to talk?” He steps closer, his voice low and furious. “You’re being a fool for that guy, Jess. He’s violent and a loser and you love me.”

  “I know that, you idiot. I went to his house last night to let him go, to tell him that.”

  His face shows no softening whatsoever. “Fuck him, you mean.”

  I wince, but I’m not backing down. “You told me to finish it. I did.”

  He shakes his head, looking sad. “You cried when you got back.”

  Looking him straight in the eye, I nod. “It was sad.”

  “When were you planning to tell me about the paintings?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t seem important.”

  He takes a breath, walks toward the alley, hands on his hips, shoulders square and tight. The wind rustles his black curls, and I think of the tiger pride bristling down his spine. At the alley, he lifts his head, breathing in, and I feel the power of him from even across the yard.

  On the way back, he stops and looks at my old house, then back at me. “I should have realized, but I honestly didn’t know it was so hard for you, Jess. Before.”

  I wait.

  He closes his eyes, lets go of a breath, and something worried moves through my gut. “You…I….” He stops and I see his throat move as he swallows and meets my gaze. “Look, I love you, but there’s something happening with me over Tyler, and I don’t like who I become.”

  “I broke up with him,” I say. Again.

  “Right.” He nods. “I’m sorry, Jess, but it’s my turn. I need some time.”

  What can I really say to that? I bow my head, aching.

  “Let’s go inside. We are being rude to everyone.”

  “You go,” I say, pierced.

  He takes my arm, not unkindly, and says close to my ear, “We have a commitment to see through here, to each other, to the people who are paying us to make this movie, and right now, to the people who love you and want to spend time with you. Put on your acting face and let’s pretend we worked it out.”

  “Kaleb, please,” I whisper. “You made all of this happen, brought me into this. Don’t leave me in it by myself.”

  “God, Jess,” he says, and I wonder if he knows his hand has tightened on my elbow so much. “Why’d you have to fuck him?”

  My ears are hot around the edges. “I guess I had to know.”

  “Great. Glad you solved it.”

  Then he lets go and walks inside, and when I go in two seconds later, he gives a brilliant performance of a man who loves a girl, even kissing me once, right on the cheek. I do my best to live up to it, but every artery in my body is spurting the red blood of loss.

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  On the ride back to Aspen, the three of us retreat to our corners. Mercedes writes with quick tap, tap, taps on her iPad. Kaleb listens to music on his phone, his powerful profile turned away. I pretend to read, forcing myself not to go into some wild back and forthing with blame and guilt and sorrow and all of it. Maybe it was stupid to sleep with Tyler. I mean, I guess it was, even though technically, it wasn’t cheating since Kaleb broke up with me.

  I never really broke up with him, though, if I’m honest. In my heart, I haven’t broken away from Kaleb at all.

  Okay, no. I force myself to open my book and read. I cannot go through this over and over in my head and still be able to function in the morning.

  We are met at the hotel by Bob, who whisks us away from the hotel to a condo complex not far away. “We’ve moved everything for you. These are going to be the permanent lodgings for everybody—we just had to wait to get a block after the holidays. Both of you are on the third floor with views of the slopes. Mercedes, you’re in building four, just on the other side.” He seems nervous with her. “Shall I show you there?”

  “Thanks, sweetie. I’m fine.” Hauling her bag over her shoulder, she says to me, “I’ll see you first thing, all right?. Thanks for letting me tag along. Text me if you need me.” She waves at Kaleb. “You, too.”

  In stony silence, we ride the elevator, and go through a repeat of our arrival. Bob opens a door for me, and it leads to an anonymous but luxurious ski-lodgy kind of apartme
nt with wood beams in the ceilings and oversize furniture and a big stone fireplace.

  “All your things have been moved for you,” Bob says. “Kaleb, you’re right down the hall in 12-C. We have meals in the main lodge. Dinner is a casual buffet at 7:30 if you want to meet us there; otherwise, a car will pick you both up at 6 am and take you to the set. Any questions?”

  I blink. Look over my shoulder. “Can I get someone to do some shopping for me? I like cooking.”

  “Of course, of course!” He pulls out his phone and texts somebody. “Helen is one of my assistants. She’ll be right over.”

  I try to give Kaleb a look like, “wow” but he’s ignoring me still. Fine. “Thanks a lot. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  They leave me in the apartment and for one minute, it feels too quiet after all the activity and motion of being in a crowd, and with Electra and Henry, but then the sane side of my brain rights itself and I look around the apartment with something like glee. The kitchen and living room are divided by a wide granite counter and the appliances are all very high end—gas stove, double-door fridge, stainless dishwasher tucked under the counter. The cabinets are stocked with dishes and silverware and pans, and also a few staples like sugar and powdered creamer and salt and pepper.

  The living room and bedroom both open to a wide deck that’s protected from the neighbors by stone walls, and there are two flat screen televisions, a whirlpool bathtub, and shower that has jets on the walls that I don’t understand until I read a little instruction panel that tells me how to program it to turn on the steam and add scents like eucalyptus and lavender.

  A person could be lonely in worse places. The thought makes me laugh, and while I know on some level that I’m just pushing off the craziness lurking at the back of my brain, it’s better than feeling bad. My little house in Colorado Springs, with its tiny stove and six-foot living room, would all just about fit into the living room here.

  Life has been worse.

  With that in mind, I find a pad of paper and write out a grocery list. Maybe she’ll let me come along, so I can see where the store is. Tonight, I’ll have a long soak in that giant tub, eat something delectable I’ve cooked for myself, and read a book.