When she still didn’t say anything, he sighed. “You’re going to make me tell you the whole story, aren’t you?”
“Nope. Not if you don’t care about getting to know me better.”
“Right. The whole story, then. Except I haven’t told this to anybody, and I have a feeling it isn’t going to help me much to tell it now.”
“I’m real big on honesty,” she said, and he looked into those blue eyes and knew she was telling the truth.
“We’ll see how big you are on it when you hear this. But I’m pretty big on honesty myself these days, so what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.”
He stopped a minute, and she sat there and waited some more until he finally spoke. For an outspoken woman, she sure could shut up when she had to. She knew how to push a man to talk. By not filling in the gaps.
“I had this partner,” he said. “I guess you know that, if you looked me up. Steve Harrison. Flashier guy than me, the public face. He was married to somebody he’d been with since before we’d started, when all we had a wild idea and no capital at all. I’d known her since the beginning, too. I liked her, even if I thought she deserved better than him. Fidelity-wise.”
“Oh, boy,” she breathed. “I have a feeling you’re right. I’m not going to like this story.”
“Yeah. Steve had really gotten into the whole tech-star thing, you know. Well, I probably had, too, to be honest. Hadn’t kept my feet on the ground nearly as well as I’d tried to believe. I hadn’t been a real stick-to-it kind of guy when it came to women lately, either. Not exactly the faithful type myself. Not the unfaithful type,” he hurried to add, “just . . .”
“Never mind,” she said. “I get it.”
“I didn’t even know the two of them had been having trouble until this one night, though, right before that trip when I came up to the Northwest. When I met you.”
“Uh-huh,” she said into the silence. “This one night.”
“Anyway, Claire—his wife—she showed up at my place that night crying, so I poured her a glass of wine, and then I poured her another one, and we killed that bottle and opened another one, and she told me all about it.”
“I think I can tell the rest of this story,” Rochelle said.
“You said you were big on honesty.”
“Maybe not as big as I thought. But go ahead. You’re helping me stay strong. So you know.”
Well, wasn’t that good news? No. He plowed on. No choice, now. “They’d split up, and I guess it was a low point for her, the way it can be, I suppose.”
“Uh-huh. Been there.”
“So she was telling me she’d wasted her life. Asking me, did I think she was still pretty, did I think anybody would . . . want her.”
He shrugged convulsively, more of a shudder, remembering. Exactly how wrong he’d played it. And the nagging suspicion that maybe he’d been pissed enough at Steve that he’d thought, How about if I did your wife? What would you think about that? And what that made him.
He didn’t say that to Rochelle, of course. He wasn’t a complete moron. “And I said, sure, of course, she was still beautiful, and she was going to find somebody better who deserved her. Maybe laid it on kinda thick. She was pretty, and we were both a little drunk. And she came up closer and said . . . had I ever wanted to kiss her.”
“I got it,” Rochelle said. She didn’t sound happy about it, either.
“So we . . . yeah,” he went on. “We started fooling around, and it was getting serious, going pretty far, and then she sat back and looked at me and . . . and asked me.”
Big brown eyes swimming with tears and passion, or maybe just wine and desperation. Claire, whom he’d always had a thing for, lying back against the arm of his couch, her shirt gone, her breasts swelling soft and round above the cups of the lacy bra, the abrasion of his beard burn showing red on her white skin, her breath coming hard from her pretty pink mouth.
“Please, Wayne. Let’s do it. Please.”
He wasn’t looking at Rochelle now. He was staring across at the steel doors, remembering.
“The way she said it,” he said slowly, “it snapped me back. It made me see that it wasn’t about me. It was about her trying to prove something to herself, and to Steve, even if he’d never know. It should’ve been with somebody who cared about her, not somebody who was willing to nail anybody who showed up. Steve was my partner, too, even though I wasn’t liking him too much at the moment, and she was way too vulnerable right then, and I’d be an asshole both ways.”
He couldn’t look at Rochelle. Why had he started this? But he had. It was like, once he’d stopped pretending, he couldn’t help it anymore. The truth just came out.
“So I told her no,” he said, “and it seemed like that was even worse than if we’d done it, because I was rejecting her, like the making out hadn’t been good enough, like she hadn’t been sexy enough. When in reality,” he went on, knowing that saying this was an even worse idea, “hell, I’m a guy. It was plenty good enough, because there she was, halfway to naked, and she looked good that way. She cried and ran out, and the whole thing was pretty damn horrible. And the next day, I breathed a great big sigh of relief and flew to Spokane and thought I’d been an idiot, and thank God that was over.”
“And then you found somebody without all that tricky baggage, somebody you didn’t have to say no to.”
“Oh, hell.” He should have known that that would be how she’d take it. He hadn’t told anybody this, and he shouldn’t have done it now. “No. That wasn’t it. My flight was canceled, I was frustrated and stuck, and nothing seemed like it was going right with my life, even though I should’ve been on top of the world. And then there you were, and you were exactly that. Right. I should have . . .” He stopped, waited, breathed. “I can’t say it well enough. I told you, I’m not good at talking.”
“Well, no, you’re not wowing me right now.”
“I know I’m not, but I’m telling you anyway. I screwed up, and I kept on doing it. The plane landed, I went into the office, and Steve punched me in the face.”
“She told him.”
“Yep. They’d made up, and he’d ‘confessed’ all the cheating he’d been doing, and I guess she wanted something to confess, too.”
“She wanted to make him jealous, to make him want her. So she said she’d slept with you.”
“She sure did. And how could I say no, I didn’t? That she’d come on to me, and I’d turned her down? When that was her big thing she could hold over his head? It would’ve been like slapping her in the face all over again, and he wouldn’t have believed me anyway. And in any case, it didn’t matter. All it did was make the end come faster between us.”
“How long were you partners?”
“Eight years. Which is about two dinosaur ages in the software world.” A lot of history to vanish in a day, but vanish it had.
He told her the rest of it, then. How they’d agreed that Steve, the public face of the company, would buy Travis out, because he wanted it more. And if Travis thought Steve would have a hard time keeping it going without him, or keeping his shaky marriage intact—well, either Travis would have the satisfaction of being right, or it was wishful thinking. Anyway, it didn’t matter anymore.
“You’re right,” Rochelle said. “That’s a sad story. And you come out of it a lot better than I thought, by the way. That was stand-up of you not to tell him. And not to sleep with her, too.”
“Better if I hadn’t come so close.”
“You want a list of the dumb mistakes I’ve made? It’s long.”
“You’re generous.”
“I’m alive. Anybody who hasn’t made any mistakes by the time they get to this point? Either they’re lying to themselves, or they haven’t ever tried anything. And if you’re going to forgive other people, I guess you’d better be able to forgive yourself.”
He sat for a moment and took that in. “The rest of it’s sadder,” he warned her. “And worse. As far as how I come out of
it.”
She just looked at him some more, and he turned the water bottle in his hands and wondered how much to tell her. Why was he telling her at all? Because they had a bunch more time to spend in here, and spending it making out wasn’t an option. Because it was the only way she was going to trust him. Or maybe even because he wanted her to know who he was. Some sort of protective layer seemed to have been scraped off him these past months, or some self-delusional one. He’d made his mistakes, he’d faced them and done his best to atone for them, so what difference would it make to admit them?
“It takes a while,” he finally said, “to dissolve a partnership in a successful company. To work out the details. It takes lawyers.”
“The payout,” she said.
“Yep.” He had the feeling she wasn’t going to be impressed by how much money he had. In fact, that would probably make her warier than ever. “So in the midst of all that, my mom called, said my dad was having another bad spell, and maybe I should come home. And I was impatient again, because I’d just been home at Christmas, and I was busy, and that was the last thing I needed. So I said I’d come home when I was done, but it was going to be a while.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered.
“Be better if it was now, baby,” his mom had said on the phone.
He’d sighed. “Is he actually in the hospital?”
“No. But I think you should come anyway.”
Another flare of impatience. When his dad had had the first episode of shortness of breath and chest pain and the doctor had diagnosed congestive heart failure, Travis had been as worried as everybody else. His parents had sold the farm and moved to town, though, and his tough-as-leather old man had had valve replacement surgery and had come through it OK. After that, his parents had settled into a new normal, a quiet life punctuated regularly by more of his dad’s “episodes,” which had resolved every time. Travis hadn’t been able to keep running home for every episode. He’d had a business to manage.
“I’ll come,” he’d promised. “For a day or two. As soon as I’m done with this.”
He and Steve had been within a few uncomfortable days of final signatures when his mom had called again. He’d picked up the phone, and before she could say anything, he’d said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can, if you still need me. I said I’d come visit, and I will. But this is important.”
He hadn’t told her what it was about. Time enough for that when he got there. He wouldn’t tell them what was behind it, even then. They didn’t need to know that, or he didn’t want to see the look on their faces when he said it. Especially not on his dad’s. His dad thought the world was black and white, good and bad, and, most of all, right and wrong. What Travis had done would’ve been nothing but wrong, no matter what anybody else had done, and he hadn’t wanted to hear it.
“Oh, baby.” His mother’s voice had broken, and all of a sudden, he’d been sitting up straight, ice running down his spine. “Daddy died.”
HOLDING ON
Rochelle sat still, her hand at her heart. “Oh, no.”
When they’d first gotten stuck in this elevator, she’d been plenty uncomfortable. Travis had relaxed her, and after that, he’d turned her on. He’d talked to her about not taking her clothes off, had smiled at her, and the tingle had turned to a buzz. Exactly like before.
And then, of course, he’d started talking about cheating. By the time he got around to not cheating, her emotions had been up and down so much, you’d have thought this elevator was actually working. And when he’d said, “She told me he was dead,” her heart was in the basement.
Her hand went out to touch his own, lying relaxed on his knee. His knuckles, she realized, were as decorated with the white crescents and dings of scar tissue as any she’d ever seen. That hand was altogether too big, too hard, and too banged-up to belong to an office worker. Travis was a walking, talking contradiction. If he hadn’t been here teaching computer science, she’d have assumed he was lying.
He turned and looked at her, his expression set. “Yeah. All that time I’d been dicking around, thinking I was doing the important stuff—I’d been missing seeing him for the last time.”
“But you couldn’t have known. You said it was sudden, a turn for the worse.”
He shrugged impatiently. “Sure I could’ve. If I’d listened. Anyway. I went home for the funeral, and I thought, all right, here you go, Cochran. Lost your dad without a chance to say good-bye. Lost your partner. Lost your company. Not doing so hot, are you, big shot? Time to try something different.”
“So what did you do?” She’d thought she hadn’t wanted to hear his story, because it hadn’t fit her model of her dream man. But there were no dream men. He was just a man. Just a man screwing up and determined to try again. Just like her.
“I did a lot of things.”
“The pickup,” she realized. “That rig you’re driving. Was it . . .”
“My dad’s? Yep. I thought about why he was driving something that old, and . . .”
“Oh. Because your mom would get the newer car,” she realized.
He looked startled. “How do you know?”
“Because that would be my dad, too. Besides that my dad’s a farmer, and farmers don’t get rid of something if they can keep it running.”
“Yep. Farmers hold on.” He leaned his head back against the wall, and for once, she wasn’t looking at the strong brown column of his throat and thinking how much she’d like to kiss it. Well, she was, but she was thinking something else, too. About how much pain there was in the twist of his mouth.
“So you . . . what?” she asked. “Sold your car?”
“Traded rides. Left mine with my mom.”
“What did you have?”
A different twist of his mouth now, a humorous one. “You’ll laugh.”
She smiled back at him, her heart lifting at his change in mood. “Try me.”
“I had my teenage self’s dream car. Nothing anybody in San Francisco would ever be impressed by.”
“Camaro,” she guessed. “Firebird. The painting on the hood and everything. Black.”
He laughed, the sound sudden and rich in the confined space. “Close. Black Mustang ragtop, black leather interior. Man, I thought I was all that, didn’t I?”
“And now your mom is.”
“She is one dashing widow,” he agreed. “Not that she cares. She thinks it’s impractical. Especially black. ‘A black car in the desert?’” he mimicked. “‘Honey, no.’ She won’t sell it, though, in case I want it back. No matter how many times I tell her it’s hers.”
“So it really is hot where you’re from.” She had her head on her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. She was smiling up at him, forgetting to be wary, forgetting to be sexy and make him sorry, just because Travis had a mom who sounded too much like her own. And because he’d loved his dad.
“Down near the Mexican border. The Sonoran Desert. And, yeah. I grew up on a farm myself. Not a rancher, though. Sorry about that.”
Contradiction time again, or maybe the reason she’d been so drawn to him. Because something familiar in him had called to her, and something in her had answered. Or maybe that had just been the tequila. “What did your dad farm?” she asked, trying to pull her wayward heart back under control.
“Lots of things. Alfalfa, cantaloupe, watermelon. Not one of the big, rich farms like around here. Making a living, that’s all. Owing the bank.”
“So you really are a country boy.”
“Maybe. When you scratch the surface. Maybe.”
“So why Wayne?”
He blinked. “Huh?”
She circled her hand again. “Hey. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Keep up. Wayne? Travis?”
“Oh. Yeah.” He leaned his head back again. “Travis was too country, and when I went to college, I decided Wayne sounded classier. Like somebody who’d be rich someday.”
“Travis is hotter,” she informed him.
“So then what did you do?” she asked.
“Huh?” he said again. “And yeah, I’m being slow. Can’t help it. A, you turn my head around. You smell too good, for one thing. And B, you’re the quick one here.”
“I didn’t go to college,” she said, trying to ignore the sneaky fingers of desire that kept trying to creep into places they shouldn’t. “I didn’t even take one class. I don’t think in outline form, either.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” he said. She searched his face and decided he meant it, and smiled a bit more.
“What did you do,” she elaborated, “after your dad died? How did you end up here?”
“It’s kind of a story.”
“Thought we were telling stories. Thought that was the whole idea.”
Just then, she heard something. A metallic clang that echoed through the elevator shaft and made her jump; a judder through the mechanism. Travis’s arm went instantly around her, and she was holding her breath, and realizing that she was holding his thigh, too. That she had her hand clamped above his knee and was hanging on.
And then the voice. “Hey! You all down there?”
“Yeah,” Travis called back. “Right here. Between two and one, I think.”
“Hang on,” the voice said, and that was all.
She took her hand hastily off Travis’s thigh, and after a second, he pulled his arm away.
“Guess the rest of your story will have to wait,” she said, and realized her voice had come out shaky.
He handed the water bottle back to her. “Here. Finish it off. He’s not going to let us fall now. He’d lose his job.”
She laughed, although it didn’t come out exactly right, and took a long drink, then dropped the empty bottle beside her.
There was more clanging coming from the shaft, and Travis took her hand and held it tight. “Almost there,” he said. “Almost out. Hang on.” And she did.
VISITORS
Rochelle had never felt more conflicted. On the one hand, she wanted to get out of here. Her shirt was clinging damply to her skin, she needed to pee, and the clanging that echoed through the elevator shaft had brought back all her nerves. She squeezed Travis’s hand and focused on breathing, and he sat beside her, big and solid and strong, and gave her something to hold on to.
Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho) Page 7