by Lark O'Neal
All at once, the sound dies and the lights go out. “Cut!” Peter calls.
Kaleb and I break apart, but he holds my arm. “Give me a second,” he says in my ear. “These bloody pants are so tight you can see the hair on my balls.”
I crack up and slide a glance downward. “Not to mention a woody like a log.”
“Tree, girl, it’s a tree.”
“Oh, believe me,” I say, raising my eyes, “I do know.”
He does that thing with his lower lip, his tongue sliding out to touch it, dampen it as if for kissing or something else. “You’re not helping.”
I blink, holding his gaze for one long second, and lean in, covering my mic, even though I’m sure nothing is working right this second. “You mean you can’t stop thinking about the fact that I am wearing absolutely nothing under this skirt?”
He smiles, very slowly, very hot, very Kaleb. “It’s you who can’t stop thinking of that.”
“Listen up!” Peter calls. “Looks like the power is down on this whole side of the road. Let’s call it a day—go rest up and be ready for a long one tomorrow.”
I bump sideways into Kaleb, hip to his thigh, and he laughs, holding my arm. He leans in close. “Payback is a bitch, remember.”
* * *
Back in my room, I’m pacing and irritable, and click on the television to check the day’s Olympic trials. It takes awhile to get to the slopestyle trials, but there’s Shaun White and then the Norwegian whose name I can’t pronounce, and Tyler, making a beautiful run. He looks better in the interview, standing with his coach Alice, who is beaming, her coyote face looking softer when she smiles.
He has sent me four emails since the night in the Springs. All of them are simple: I respect your wishes, but I’m not giving up. Here is a poem.
It makes me smile, every time, but I don’t reply. Heating things up with Tyler while I’m trying to figure out my life is just not going to help anything.
Clicking off the TV, I pace the apartment, into the bedroom, the bathroom, back to the living room. I am sick of reading. Sick of cooking simple, single meals for myself. Sick of no social life. Sick of pining over Kaleb, who clearly is not going to forgive me.
I text Mercedes: Let’s get out and go somewhere. I’m sick of this apartment.
She texts back: There’s a wine festival
Perfect.
Holding my phone, I consider my next move. What have I got to lose? I walk down the hallway to Kaleb’s room and knock on the door, determined not to let his mood control mine. When he answers, he looks grouchy. “What?”
“Do you want to come to a wine tasting with me and Mercedes?” I raise a brow. “You look like you could use it.”
“Wine?”
I smile. “You can show me all your sommelier secrets.”
His grin is so natural that I’m transported to that day we first went to the beach, riding on his scooter to Cloudy Bay, and I smelled the sea for the first time in more than a decade. He was so easy with me, so fully himself, and, somehow, I chased him away. It makes me so sad that I’m almost ready to cry.
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “Ring me when you’re ready.”
My heart lifts, but I try not to show it. “Be downstairs in fifteen minutes. Mercedes is meeting us there.”
The driver takes us to some ritzy hall and we get in without any fanfare, largely because we’re with Alejandro Mascarenes, the actor who is playing Rome’s father, and Mercedes’ lover.
“My dad has a winery in New Zealand,” I say, proudly. “Kaleb was studying viticulture before all this acting business came up.”
“How cute,” Mercedes says. “You’ve gone all New Zealand, telling us that.”
Kaleb is wearing a red hat that shows off his dark hair. “I still am studying, it’s just a little more challenging to get the time.”
“Is that right?” Alejandro asks in his accented voice. They really could be father and son, both so good-looking and dark. “Why don’t you give me a few pointers?”
“Brilliant.” He glances over his shoulder. “Do you want to tag along, Jess?”
I do, but Alejandro puts his arm around Kaleb’s shoulder and they’re moving away, even as Mercedes slides her arm into the crook of my elbow. “Let’s go our way.” Her voice is odd.
I ask, “Are you okay?”
“We had a fight this morning. He might have heard that I had a late night in the bar a couple of days ago.” She tugs me over to a table where a tall woman with blackest short hair is pouring samples of Malbec. “What’s this one?” she asks.
The woman gives the history and tasting notes. Blackberry, coffee, black pepper. I smell it the way my father has shown me, trying to catch the fragrance at the back of my throat. I then swirl and sniff again, and the wine opens, fills my sinus cavity with blooms of plums. When I taste it, there are all the things I just smelled, along with a faintly unpleasant astringent note that might ruin it, but somehow pulls it together. “What is that?” I ask the woman, “that sour undernote? How do you name it?”
She smiles apologetically. “I don’t think I know what you mean? Sorry, I’m still a student. Let me see if someone can—”
“No worries.” I wave my hands, but I want to write this down. On a napkin, I scribble the wine, date, and the astringent note I want to ask about.
But then Kaleb and Alejandro are behind us. “What are you discovering, Jess?” Kaleb asks. “We don’t do reds as much.”
I offer him a taste of the wine and wait while he puts it through its paces, sniff, swirl, sniff, taste, swish, spit. Holding his glass by the stem he turns toward me. “What did you find?”
“Nothing really unusual for a Malbec, but right at the end, that sharp note really makes it special. What is that?”
His smile is genuine. “Good. That’s a tannin, just on the edge of being too strong, but in this case, it marries the others.” He gestures to the woman. “A couple of bottles of that, please.”
“For me as well,” says Alejandro.
The girl’s eyes widen and something clicks. “Oh, my gosh. You’re all filming Torches, aren’t you?” She looks at me and Kaleb and Alejandro, then narrows in on Mercedes, standing a little to the side, looking unsure until the girl says, “Oh, my gosh, oh my gosh! You’re Mercedes Williams aren’t you?” Her eyes fill with tears. “I am not much of a reader, but I love that book so much.”
Mercedes softens, flows toward her, takes her hands. “Thank you. That means so much to me. What’s your name?”
“Clara. I’m from Georgia and we’re not really supposed to engage with customers like this, like if we recognize actors or whatever, but nobody said I couldn’t say something to my favorite writer of all time.”
Mercedes just holds her hands and the girl has tears running down her face. “This is like the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Can I get your autograph?”
“Yes, yes. And if you’ll write your address down, I’ll send you a personalized copy of the book.”
“Really?” Clara’s voice squeaks.
Next to me, Kaleb says, “You were right.”
“About?”
“We should have something to say.”
I think of the woman in the New Zealand airport who wanted our autographs. “Yeah. It’s a nice thing to do.”
Chapter NINETEEN
We end up tasting—and buying—a lot of wine, and then find ourselves at a name restaurant, eating robustly and drinking more wine. My appetite never wanes, and I’ve forgotten that most people here still haven’t been with me when I eat. Kaleb laughs when Mercedes says in some concern, “You know how big a 12-oz steak is, right?”
“Oh, bro, she can eat the whole cow.” He is a little tipsy, as we all are, and everything about him is soft around the edges. His hair is a little messy and his eyes are running hot, and he slides in next to me without hesitation, his thigh pressed against mine. I imagine that I can feel the shape of the tattoo against my skin. He tears a hunk of bread
from the loaf on the table and dips in it olive oil and offers it to me.
I eye him warily. Acting again, or just getting drunk, his walls coming down? Either way, I have to be careful.
Once the server leaves, Alejandro asks, “How did the scene go this morning? Grant said it was not an easy one but you handled it very well.”
Touching my mouth to make sure there are no crumbs on it when I start talking, I lift one shoulder. “It was awkward, you know, but everybody was very professional and it was fine.” I look at Mercedes, and for the first time, I see there are blue shadows below her eyes, and they’re very bloodshot. She never told me about the fight. “It’s a very important scene, so I hope I did a great job.”
Kaleb shifts beside me. Uncomfortable, I think, and I glance over at him. Was that hard for him, thinking of me doing that scene? It gives me a whisper of hope.
“I saw the clips,” Mercedes says. “You were fucking great, Jess. It’s painful and sad and beautiful.” She looks as if she’s getting teary. “You look just like her. You do.”
Alejandro tucks his arm around her. “Can I get you some bread, sweet?”
She lifts her wine glass. “I’d rather have a martini.”
Kaleb glances at me, and briefly, ever so lightly, touches my leg under the table.
I scoot forward, acting on impulse. “I need to go to the ladies room. Are you coming?” Kaleb lets me out of the booth and Mercedes stands up unsteadily. Not swaying, not overtly drunk, but I take her arm. “I am feeling a little lightheaded,” I say. “Prop me up.”
She isn’t an idiot, but she grabs my arm and we make it to the ladies’ room, a plush room with a couch and chairs and a woman standing there to offer face cloths for money. I have never seen it before, but I settle Mercedes on the couch and trade a five for a dry cloth which I soak in cold water and take over to her. “Hey, put this on your forehead. Are you okay? I didn’t see you drink that much.”
“I’m not drunk.” With her long gold-skinned hand, she presses the cloth to her forehead. I brush tiny white-blonde curls back. “Well, I’m a little drunk, but I get this vertigo thing that happens sometimes. Sort of vertigo, but I guess it’s like PTSD and they give me some Valium for it, but alcohol and valium, you know, so I don’t like to take it.”
I just sit with her. Two women come in and walk past us, each wearing a dress I know must have cost thousands. It occurs to me that with my haircut and new clothes, I don’t look entirely out of place.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
“Nope. Never.” She sniffs, pulls the cloth lower on her eyes. “I read somewhere that writers are made great by secrets. I have to keep mine.”
I make a soft sound between a laugh and a snort. “Tyler has secrets like that. Family secrets, life secrets. Maybe he should be a writer instead of a painter.”
She pulls the cloth off her eyes. “Rich boy has secrets? What, his mom was a tippler? Daddy liked to wear women’s underwear?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Interesting.”
Without realizing I’m going to ask, I blurt out, “Is Jules based on someone you know?”
“Someone I knew.” She looks down, pulls the cloth over her eyes, and I let her be.
But she sits up abruptly. “Not all of it, of course. You might have noticed I borrowed a lot from that Shakespeare dude.”
I laugh.
She inclines her head, sending tiny curls into new, delectable arrangements. “Want me to fuck Kaleb for you?”
At first I’m not sure I’ve heard her right. She simply looks at me, endless legs akimbo, enormous strange blue eyes steady. I could look at her forever, so odd and beautiful, like a Bratz doll I used to have. “Why would I want that?”
“Because then he will feel totally guilty and want to make it up to you and you’ll be even.”
“But—” I look at her, head to toe, the exotic face and beautiful breasts and long, long legs. “What if he fell in love with you?”
Her smile, so broad and knowing, spreads across her face. “He wouldn’t.”
I think of her coiled pose when he did the Haka. “Do you want him, Mercedes?”
“No.” She shakes her head, holding my eyes. “I told you, I am not into boys, and he’s still very much a boy, all proud and bristling.”
With a sudden sense of surety, I say, “I don’t think he would do it.”
She laughs. “Of course he would. He’s male.”
I think of him holding me so carefully when I had my nightmares. “He’s different.”
She shrugs. “Whatever. The offer stands if you change your mind.”
I give her a look. “Thanks, I think.”
“Come on. I’m all right now.” She stands up, miles taller than me, and reaches back to haul me to my feet. For one second, she holds my hand, close to her thigh. “You matter more to me than any guy, okay? Do you get that?”
“Yeah.” I squeeze her hand, feeling awkward and loved and overly emotional. “Let’s go eat. ”
* * *
By the time we get back to the condos, we’re all more than tipsy—but in a good way. Alejandro is a brilliant storyteller who kept us laughing all through dinner with snippets and tales from his life. Mercedes, too, seemed to gather herself, telling stories from the foster care system—all of them funny, not a single dark thread to any of them. Kaleb and I are climbing the stairs together when he flings an arm around my shoulders and kisses my head. “It was a good night.”
I allow myself the comfort of sliding my arm around his waist and leaning into him slightly. “It was. I haven’t eaten that much in months.”
“You were starving when you came to us.”
I make a little noise of acknowledgment. “Not quite, but close.”
As we come close to my door, I pull out the key, and he waits politely as I unlock it. When I step inside, however, he comes with me, closing the door behind us and reaching for me.
I push him away, holding out a hand protectively. “Oh, no, not this.”
He leans back on the door, golden eyes dragon-sleepy, tiger-wise. “No?” His hands are cocked in his belt-loops. “You don’t want to?”
“Yes, I do, actually. But not like this, not drunk. Not after you’ve been wishy-washy, crazy man all day.”
He laughs, hoarsely. “Wishy-washy, crazy man?”
Slouching there, so relaxed and friendly, he looks so hot I want to rip everything off him and lick every inch of his beautiful skin. I want him in me, in my body, in my mouth, and I want his hands all over my body, too. I want him with a kind of savagery that presents itself as images of biting his shoulders, slamming into him—
Not now. Not like this. “Go, Kaleb.”
“Okay.” He straightens, leaning close, his mouth hovering over mine, a breath away. “Just a kiss, then?”
I press my lips together. Shake my head.
“Good night.” He drags a finger across my cheek and touches the tip to his own lips. I have to close my eyes to keep from reaching for him.
* * *
It’s the same dream. I’m hiding, and choking, and I can’t breathe, and there is screaming.
Screaming that’s my own, screaming that hauls me out of sleep into my condo bedroom at three am. My heart is racing, and I look down at my hands, expecting to see blood, but of course there isn’t any. My hands are shaking so badly that I can barely pull the covers off my body and my breath is coming in crazy little pants, and I feel like I can’t get enough oxygen. I try to breathe deeply, but my lungs freeze and I can’t, and my heart is racing so fast that I have to put my hand over my chest for fear it’s going to burst out.
In mindless terror, I run for the front door, remembering only at the last second to grab my key, and in my pajamas I run down the hall to Kaleb’s apartment.
It takes a few minutes for him to come to the door, long, long minutes when I am really afraid that my heart is going so fast that it will kill me, that I will faint for
lack of oxygen.
And then he’s there, hair kinked and crazy and messed up, eyes bleary. “Jess,” he croaks. “What—?”
“The nightmare,” I gasp. “I can’t breathe.”
His face clears and he pulls me into the apartment. “Shh, now. Come on. Let’s go lie down. I’ve got you.”
I’m so shaky that my knees wobble and he pauses, swoops me up, and carries me into his bedroom, where the sheets smell like wine and Kaleb in a heady mix. Gently, he settles me on the bed and climbs in behind me, and when his body connects with mine, his chest against my back, his arms around me, his head against my shoulder, I am warm again, I can catch my breath. “You’re safe,” he whispers, and then he’s asleep again.
* * *
I wake before he does, and head into the bathroom. There are his things scattered on the counter—his deodorant and razor and shaving cream, his wide-toothed comb and a Chapstick. In the high altitude cold, he’s been complaining about his skin being dry, and there’s a big bottle of lotion, too. I smell it, and it has the herbal notes I’ve been noticing.
In the kitchen, I start some coffee, then head back into the bedroom. He’s still asleep, shirtless beneath the covers, one muscled arm flung out toward the spot where I was sleeping.
Does he love me?
My gut says he does. His actions say he does, when he’s not being so aloof and mean. How do we get through this and back to where we were, back in Milford Sound, so completely unified that we were like one person?
Gently, I touch his shoulder. “Hey, I’m going back to my apartment. The car is coming in a half hour.”
He groans, turning over on his back, and wincing. “Too much wine.” His voice is hoarse. “You okay now?”
“Yes, thank you. I made you some coffee.” My voice is a little raw, too, which can happen if you scream your head off.
“Thanks.” For a minute, he lies there, looking up at me soberly. His chin has some scatters of beard that need to be shaved. One arm is flung up over his head, showing the thick patch of black hair under it. It makes my hips soften, and I know I need to get out of there. “Thanks for being there last night. I needed it.”