Because of Audrey

by Mary Sullivan

  He followed her farther into the darkness and emotion blindsided him.

  Darkness and silence you could cut with a scythe. Smell of gas. Scent of earth, of damp moldering.

  “I hate this showing of weakness. I’m not much of a man right now. Maybe I never have been.”

  “You’re strong, Gray. You can be a man when you want to be, when it matters.”

  She stopped walking, and he bumped into her.

  “Yeah? When is that?” he asked.

  She paid an unreasonable amount of attention to the rock face, picking at a sliver of something silvery in the wall before saying, “When you kiss.”

  He wasn’t sure he’d heard her. “Say what?”

  She cleared her throat. “When you kiss, you’re all man, okay?”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Okay? Can we move on?”

  “Nope. Let’s explore right here a little longer, especially what you just said. You like the way I kiss?”

  She harrumphed. Interesting, Gray thought, that really is a sound. Onomatopoeic.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Yes,” she said with a repressive grimace. “I like the way you kiss, but don’t get your shorts in a knot. It isn’t going to happen again. Ever.”

  He grasped the back of her neck and planted a doozy on her unadorned lips, using everything in his experience to convince her that, oh, yeah, they were going to do it again. And again. And again.

  When he pulled away, he was breathless and gratified to see that she was, too. “How can you deny what’s between us?”

  “I can.”

  She smiled suddenly, a blaze of sunshine underground, and he realized he’d been had.

  “You did that on purpose.” He marveled at her deviousness. “You got me to kiss you, to distract me from my fears.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I’m good for the moment.”

  He couldn’t help returning her smile because that kiss had been pretty amazing.

  They moved farther into the cave. The kiss had helped. For now.

  The path they were on narrowed, and Gray tensed.

  She felt the change in him, back to fear. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You could kiss me again.”

  “That was a one-time thing because I was afraid you wouldn’t go any farther.”

  “I might not now.”

  “We’re pretty far in, Gray. No sense turning around. Face your fears. Let me know how to help.”

  “Keep—keep walking so we can get out of here sooner.”

  She chuckled. He tried to laugh, too, but couldn’t.

  “This is the Big Meander,” she said. “You have to bend over a bit. Okay?”

  He followed what Audrey did, aware that he was moving farther and farther into the mountain. He slipped on the floor and slammed his hand against the rock wall to steady himself.

  “Careful,” Audrey said. “The rocks are slippery.”

  “Are they wet?”

  “Yes. That’s why I had you buy hiking boots instead of wearing your jogging shoes.”

  She reached an arm to him. “Careful on this ledge.”

  He swallowed his pride and gripped her hand.

  “Now we’ll crawl through this passageway. I’ll go first.”

  She went through, and he bent forward to follow her, but it became too much. Bending over, his breath gusted in and out of him like a mini-hurricane. When he pulled himself together, he moved forward. At the top of the passageway, he found Audrey sitting on a large rock. Gray plopped down beside her.

  “We’re going to take a break,” Audrey said. “We’re going to turn out our lights for a minute and sit in the darkness.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Gray nearly turned and ran back the way he’d come. “No way.”

  “I think this will help you, Gray.”

  Audrey reached up to Gray’s helmet and shut off his lamp, so only hers illuminated a tiny corner of the cave around them. “Don’t do this,” he pleaded.

  “Shh. Trust me, Gray.” He found himself helpless against the tenderness shining in her eyes.

  She removed her glove and one of his, and held his hand in hers. Then all went black when Audrey turned off her lamp, too.

  Stygian darkness. The bowels of hell. A black darker than black. Deeper than onyx. A stifling vacuum swallowing undeserving boys and girls too young to be alert, too innocent to know that such darkness existed, but learning too early.

  Lifelessness. Nothingness. Hopelessness. Death.

  He sank into despair.

  “Shh. Listen.” Audrey’s disembodied voice arose out of the hush of the cold, damp cave like a ray of hope. “What do you hear?”

  “My heartbeat,” he wheezed. “Too strong. Heart attack.”

  Audrey squeezed his clammy hand. “Try again,” she said. “There’s another heartbeat here. It belongs to the earth. Step outside of your fears. Listen to the cave around you.”

  He did, straining to listen outside of himself, to not drown in the thundering of his pulse in his ears.

  He heard something...musical. “Water,” he blurted. “There’s water running somewhere.”

  “Yes,” Audrey said, her voice hushed with reverence. “There’s a stream that runs through this cave. That’s creation, Gray. That’s the ever-freshening renewal of life.”

  Slowly, his shuddering eased, and the fear inside of him shifted, morphed into an emotion less harsh, less debilitating. Hope grew. Despair retreated.

  He sat here in the darkness, and his heart still thundered. His fears hadn’t killed him.

  That first fall down the well hadn’t killed him because a sweet girl had kept him alive. This sweet woman had just gifted him with an easing of those fears that had held him captive for most of his life.

  Audrey switched on her lamp. Her lips touched his cheek and her mouth on his skin couldn’t be sweeter or more profoundly welcome. “Well done, Gray,” she said softly.

  “Why? I behaved like a baby.”

  “It takes a lot of guts to face a fear as big as yours. You didn’t run from here screaming. You’ve got cojones, buddy.”

  Really?

  “It was amazing to share your overcoming your fears with you.”

  Gray drank in her praise, not sure he accepted all of it, but taking in what he could. He’d survived. He’d wanted to run, to scream, to weep, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed through his fears. He smelled like a construction worker. He’d been sweating. He didn’t care. He’d survived.

  They stood and continued on. He barely noticed the names that Audrey called out as they moved farther into the cave. Devil’s Washboard. The Register Room. Upper Register Room.

  “Take a minute to look around, Gray.”

  “Wow,” he said, noticing an impressive rock formation that looked like a wavy sheet hanging from the roof and walls, impossibly thin to still be rock.

  “They’re called cave curtains.”

  When he looked, really looked and opened his mind and his fearful heart to the splendor of the cave around him, his breath backed up in his lungs. His chest expanded.

  He hadn’t expected such beauty, not underground where he thought all things bleak, forsaken. Passing through caves, he’d seen things in the beams of their headlamps that had taken his breath away, but these cave curtains stunned him.

  Audrey chatted about stalactites, calcite deposits, dripping water and carbon dioxide, but Gray registered none of it. She pointed to great white lightning strike formations, which she said were buildups of gypsum, a too-ordinary word for otherworldly grandeur.

  “Well,” she said, studying his fac
e and smiling. “We might have a convert.”

  “Audrey?”

  “Yes, Gray?”

  “This is all awesome. Outstanding. But I’m exhausted. I need to get out of here.”

  “Okay. We can go back and eat up top.”

  “First, I need to take a whiz. Point me to a private corner.”

  “No!” she shouted.

  She shrugged off her backpack and rummaged inside until she produced a bottle. “Here. Use this.”

  “Seriously? We’re underground. We’re in the earth. It’s organic. Cavemen didn’t use bottles.”

  “We don’t sully caves in any way. We don’t leave our sewage for others to walk on later.”

  Their helmet lamps sent light and shadows bounding around the walls.

  “There’s a Caver’s Creed. It goes like this. Take nothing but pictures,” Audrey recited. “Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.”

  Gray stared at the bottle in Audrey’s hand. “I can use that if I have to, but it’s a narrow opening. What do you use when you have to go? You don’t have the luxury of being able to aim.”

  “A wide-mouthed Mason jar.”

  Gray burst out laughing.

  “I’m just joking. I use this carefully.”

  “I can hold my water until we get outside,” Gray said. “I’m not going in that.”

  Audrey led Gray back the way they’d come. He had come to terms with his fears, yes, but he needed to bask in sunlight and fresh air. His body followed Audrey’s like a heat-seeking missile.

  They reached the culvert and climbed up and out. Gray shot his fists into the air.

  “Yes! Yes!” He’d survived. He’d faced down his fears and had lived to tell the tale.

  He turned to Audrey and kissed her, in celebration of life, to impart his eternal gratitude, her spirit vibrating with energy and commingling with his. Their bodies became fluid and pliable.

  “God, I’m glad to be out of there,” he breathed against her hair. He felt new, fresh, vibrant. “I’m reborn. I’m a new man.”

  He grasped her arms and shook her, careful to be gentle, holding in check the violent, life-affirming emotions running through him. “You did this. You gave me life.”

  He kissed her again, an ecstatic hard smack of his lips on hers. She stepped away from him, as though she, too, restrained feelings that threatened to run amok.

  The sun shone like a brilliant gem, turning the forest into a green carpet, bringing their surroundings into sharp focus and carving the evergreens above them into relief against the azure sky.

  Life became so brilliant, it hurt his eyes. After years of having a huge part of him locked away, all of him was alive and engaged. His body hummed. His psyche sang.

  Audrey laid out lunch for them—granola bars, cheeses, nuts and protein drinks—her actions mundane in contrast to his newfound radiance.

  He loved life. Joy coursed through his veins, enlarging them, filling his heart with boundless verve. He laughed for the pure pleasure of hearing it echo against the rocks.

  “Squirrel food,” Gray said, studying their lunch.

  “Healthy food,” Audrey replied.

  Gray found a private spot to relieve his bladder then returned to Audrey. They ate. Gray couldn’t get enough of it.

  After lunch, while she packed up, quietly, thoughtfully, Gray said, “I understand.”

  She stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “I understand how you turned to rock collecting and caving. I understand what draws you.”

  Audrey smiled. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I won’t ever do it again. I’m not cured, but I’m better. I don’t like darkness, but I see now how you could turn to it.”

  “And do you understand why you didn’t?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I do. I love the outdoors. I love sunlight and fresh air and weather. I get juice from what’s above ground.”

  “You’re air and I’m the earth.”

  “But I don’t see you that way. I don’t see you as earthbound. I see you as air.”

  He leaned his arms on his knees. “You have a stunning lightness of being, a bright light that hasn’t been diminished by anything.”

  Audrey’s violet eyes shone warmly. “Thank you, Gray. I’m so proud of you. You did well.”

  He wasn’t sure what was going through her head, but she seemed to have been nearly as strongly affected by today as he’d been. She deserved honesty. “I nearly cracked when you turned out all the lamps.”

  “I sensed that. But you didn’t. That’s the key.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  She turned away, almost as though she were shy with him.

  He felt the same way, inexplicably shy, but unwilling to let this momentous event pass without celebration.

  “Come back to my place. I’ll make dinner.”

  She didn’t look at him, but her quiet yes spoke of acceptance of more than dinner. Just as his invitation had been for more. So much more.

  They drove to the city in silence. Audrey dropped him off at the condo and drove home to change.

  Gray checked his refrigerator, realized he had nothing for dinner, and ran across the street to the organic market, where he bought steaks and salads and a box of Godiva chocolates for dessert—dark chocolate with fruit and liqueur fillings.

  Back at the condo, he quickly got ready.

  Audrey arrived at six. She walked across the room, an exotic bird against the neutral backdrop of the generic furniture in a black dress with lime-green polka dots. Before she sat, he spotted a big pink bow at the back of her waist, drawing his eye to how small it was compared to her hips.

  Elizabeth Taylor.

  Those wide eyes, though. That porcelain skin. That fresh face.

  Audrey Hepburn.

  She turned him inside out with her contrasts.

  Before he lost control and dragged her into his bedroom, he offered her a drink. They drank wine and ate broiled steaks and wild rice salad. Audrey ate like a real woman. She didn’t pick, didn’t pretend that she didn’t have an appetite.

  After dinner, Gray opened the chocolates. Heads together, they studied the legend. She chose an orange-and-Grand-Marnier filling and bit into it, leaving a smear of dark chocolate on her bottom lip.

  Gray groaned. “Do you have any idea how tempting you are? How beautiful?”

  She shook her head.

  “Let me show you.” He reached to drag her across his lap.

  “Gray, I don’t think—”

  “No,” he whispered. “Don’t think.”

  He licked her lip, tasting the fruit and the liqueur and the flat bite of dark chocolate. Sinking his tongue into her, he tasted more, her lips and the skin inside her mouth silken with erotic welcome.

  He wanted her more than he needed air. More than sunlight. She was sunlight. And purity. And sex. More contrasts.

  You don’t deserve her. You shouldn’t have her.

  Be quiet.

  You know what you’ll do to her. You’ll betray her any day now. John Spade will make sure of that.

  His desire for her nearly submerged his conscience. Nearly, but not quite. His overwhelming gratitude and a deep abiding tenderness drove him to love her, but his innate decency said no.

  He pulled away slowly, tempted to take what he wanted, what she seemed willing to give, but he would hate himself afterward. Maybe she would, too.

  He sent her home because it was the right thing to do. Beyond the lovemaking, he had nothing to offer her but heartache.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JEFF HAD STOPPED SWEARING. Teresa had that effect on him. She lightened him. Dispelled the gloom of his spirit that the darkness of his eyes caused.

 
He walked into the parish hall with his hand in her grasp, where it now seemed to belong. He knew she meant to guide him, but he held hers for more than that. He enjoyed touching her, even in so small a way.

  Teresa had nagged him into attending an after-dinner social organized by volunteers at Jeff’s church. After his first outing to the coffee shop where he’d had so much fun and stimulation seeing his friends, he hadn’t resisted doing other things Teresa wanted. He got a kick out of giving her a hard time when she made suggestions for outings, though. He liked how she used her humor and wits to talk him into things.

  He didn’t want her thinking he was a pushover.

  But he was. Where Teresa was concerned, he would walk on water if she asked him to. How could a man change so much in such short a time? How could he go from not wanting a stranger living in his house to dreading the day that stranger would leave? And not only because of what she was teaching him, but for her?

  He’d grown used to her habits, to having someone else in the house all day and to the sounds she made when she read. He called them her “musing” noises, her judgments on what was written.

  She read the paper aloud every day and debated the news with him, informing him stridently when she didn’t agree and even more when she did.

  How could he let her go? How could he not? He was nothing more than a job to her, a client.

  After all of these years without a woman, with only casual relationships with women in town, he wanted more. He wanted it all, with Teresa. He trusted his rapidly developing feelings. It had happened this way with Irene, too. Hard and fast.

  He heard voices he recognized calling his name. They joined a table and Teresa introduced herself.

  “Who’s here?” Jeff asked, having learned there was no shame in admitting he couldn’t see.

  Everyone spoke up, so Jeff knew who was at the table. Teresa left to get food.

  When she returned, she said, “Coffee at three. Date square straight ahead.”

  After she sat with her own coffee and snack, someone asked, “What do you think of our town?”

  “I love it,” Teresa replied. “Jeff told me how it used to be, and how city council decided to upgrade to bring in traffic on the weekend. I really like Main Street. Accord makes a great travel destination for people wanting to get out of the city for a few days.”