Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

  Rochelle stood on the spot, staring at Travis. Her heart had lifted. And then it had plunged. It wasn’t hot blood she was feeling anymore, either. It was pure ice-cold rage.

  She didn’t hit him. She’d decided a while back that if violence wasn’t OK for men, it wasn’t OK for women, either. But, man, was that hard to remember right now. Her hand ached to hit him. Her hand burned to hit him.

  Stacy was still standing there, too, and Rochelle could see how miserable she was at being caught up in this. Part of Rochelle wanted to stop, to take care of her sister, but most of her needed to keep going. Needed to know. However bad it was—nothing was worse than not knowing. Nothing was more damaging than not facing the truth.

  “So this is your sister,” she said to Travis, amazed that she could still keep her voice level. “Who is nothing like your wife.”

  “Not my wife. My ex.” His moment of uncertainty and indecision was gone, and he was Travis again, standing still and solid and telling her straight out. Like he was trustworthy. Except that maybe he wasn’t. “She’s saying she’s nothing like my ex-wife. Although actually, if you ask me, there are similarities.”

  “You were married before,” Rochelle said, ignoring that. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “You were quoting me a while ago, right?” he said. “OK, now I’ll quote you. What kind of person hasn’t made mistakes by this point? Yeah, I was married. For three years. It’s been over for seven. It was a long time ago.”

  “You still should have told me.”

  “Yeah. I should have. I guess I’d confessed so much by then, I was afraid to pile on any more. And it was so long ago, I told myself it didn’t matter. Does that make me a stand-up guy?” he said, before she could. “No. It doesn’t. And we can talk about all of this, but I’d rather do it alone with you. And I’d like the alone part to start right now.”

  “Nice,” Zora said. “And what did you confess? What did you do? Inquiring minds want to know.”

  He looked at her. “Do not push me,” he warned. “And why are you even here?”

  “Nice again,” she said, not a bit daunted. “It’s a story. It’s because of the hills. I wanted to shoot them.”

  Huh?

  “Well, don’t tell me the story now,” Travis said with a ruthlessness that could only come from a brother, so that was what he had to be. Which still left the matter of the wife he hadn’t told her about. “Tell me some other time when you haven’t just torpedoed my hard-won love life, and I might be interested. I assume this is, what? A quick visit?”

  “Yes, because I have to go back to my boring-ass job on Monday,” Zora said. “I came by to ask if I could sleep on your couch.”

  “No,” he said at once. “At least—” He blew out a breath. “Look. I’ll tell you, in case you haven’t figured it out. You’re thirty seconds away from walking out of here with Stacy. And, oh. This other person standing here? This innocent passerby caught in the crossfire? She’s Rochelle’s little sister. Her name’s Stacy, and she’s a very nice girl who’s going to come back in, oh—” He looked at Rochelle, then back at Stacy. “Half an hour, so I can help her with her statistics class. But right now, both of you are going to do something for me. Make friends, and then, Zora, you can ask to sleep on Stacy’s couch. Or get her to go with you to my place and stay there. Because at the moment, I’ve got one priority, and that’s convincing Rochelle to do some making up tonight. And I’ve got a very small place.”

  “You do not get to say that, bud,” Rochelle said. “Any of it.”

  “I don’t get to announce that that’s what we’ll be doing,” he said. “You bet I get to say that that’s what I’m aiming for. And I get to get my sister out of the way while I do it, too. And, no,” he said when Rochelle would have protested, “I’m not just talking about sex. I’m talking about talking. I’m talking about us getting through this one, too. Together. It’s been too hard to get here, and I’m not letting it go without a fight.”

  “Nice,” Zora said again. “No, literally, bro. That was pretty hot. Very decisive and alpha. But man, I’d forgotten how bossy you can be. I guess that works on women, huh? So weird to think about my brother’s sex life. You’re right—I don’t want to know.” She looked at Stacy. “Got a couch?”

  Rochelle was the one who wanted to pull at her hair now. “I have to get back to work,” she said. “I don’t leave my desk. I’m professional. That’s my deal. So, Stacy, you go on and stay here, and Travis, I’ll see you tonight. Maybe. Because ever since I met you? I’m so messed up.”

  “Well, baby,” he said, “that makes two of us.”

  For all his brave talk, Travis was . . . well, all right, he was nervous when he pulled up outside Rochelle’s house that evening. No use pretending otherwise.

  She hadn’t stuck around this afternoon. She’d headed right back upstairs, and the look she’d shot him had told him that he wasn’t invited to follow her.

  I’m professional. That’s my deal. She couldn’t afford to have personal crises at work. He got it. He’d never been the type to do that, either. It seemed that things had changed, though, because he would have given just about anything to be able to talk it over right then.

  Now, it was six thirty, and he was ringing her doorbell, not sure what to expect. At least Dell wasn’t outside, for once. He supposed she couldn’t pretend to be watering her garden in the near-dark. Besides, there would be nothing to see. He hoped.

  He waited a minute, the door opened, and it wasn’t Rochelle. It was Stacy, with Zora right behind her, chewing on a carrot and looking as inquisitive and bright-eyed as a chipmunk.

  “Hi,” Stacy said.

  She looked a whole lot better than she had this afternoon. You could even say she was bouncing. She and Zora must be getting along. Which was the least of his worries right now.

  “Hi,” he said. “Rochelle ready?”

  “Nope,” Stacy said. “I think she’s going to make you wait. Want to come in?”

  “Sure.” He stepped inside and, at Stacy’s invitation, sat on the living-room couch.

  “We’d hang out,” Stacy said, “but we’re in the middle of making dinner.”

  Zora raised her carrot at him in a sort of rodent salute. “You could come into the kitchen,” she said, “but you don’t want to. Because we’re talking about you.”

  She walked out, and Stacy looked at her, then back at Travis, and ended up following his sister. Which suited him. He didn’t need anyone to watch him pretending to be calm.

  He looked around, since this was the first time he’d sat down in here. Rochelle had gone to quite a bit of effort, he suspected. The walls were painted in some kind of . . . blotchy way, a sort of variegated yellow-gold that reminded him of Italy. That style had a name and was supposed to be artistic, he was fairly sure. She had a round oak dining table with mismatched chairs decorated with seat cushions in different striped and flowered patterns, and the table was set with a vase of hydrangeas from the plant he’d given her. That made him feel a little better. If she’d decided to break up with him, she would have tossed his flowers. There were some framed pictures on the wall, family photographs and art prints, mostly Van Gogh. Rural landscapes made up of the same sorts of greens and golds you saw around here, and one of irises that he liked a lot.

  It all spelled ‘Rochelle’: neat, practical, and feminine, but a little bit exotic, too. A little bit unexpected, a little bit exciting. He liked it.

  He was looking at his watch for about the fifth time when he heard a door opening somewhere in the back of the house. A few seconds later, Rochelle walked into the room, and he stood up without knowing what he was doing. Her hair was mussed in a way that set his heart pounding, her makeup was soft and sultry, and she was wearing skinny jeans, low-heeled boots, and a cream-colored top with a sort of ruffled neckline along the draped V. Nothing that wasn’t classy. And nothing that wasn’t sexy. Which was very good news.

 
She stopped a few feet away, picked up a soft brown leather bag and a long sweater from a chair by the door, and said, “So what do you think?”

  “I think,” he said, “that you’re trying to blow my mind. As usual. Either you’re trying to make me really, really sorry to lose you, or really, really glad not to. Which is it?”

  She tossed her hair back over one shoulder, shrugged into the sweater, and said, “Kinda depends on you, doesn’t it?”

  “Then,” he said, “let’s go for a drive.”

  He headed out of town toward Ithaca. Looking for subconscious better memories, maybe, or just a long, lonely stretch of winding rural highway. Easier to talk when you were sitting side by side, he figured. He turned the radio to a country station, because she liked that, but kept the music low. And then he waited.

  “So,” she said as he turned left at the stoplight and onto the highway. “Divorced.”

  “Yep.”

  He could feel her eyes on him, and he said, “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’ Tell me the story, of course. Tell me why you didn’t tell me. Tell me whether you’ve got . . .” She waved a hand, but her voice didn’t sound one bit casual. “Kids. That’s the one I really want to know. Tell me.”

  “No,” he said. “No kids. I’d have told you that. She was . . . Kim was . . . the last person to have kids.” He laughed, but it didn’t come out too good. No surprise. “Free spirit. Saving the world. Kids don’t tend to figure into a life like that.”

  “That the kind of woman you want?” she asked. “Is that why you like me? Free spirit?”

  “Yes. No.” He sighed and piloted the car around a long, smooth curve. Almost nobody else out here. Nothing going on. Just the two of them, driving on into the darkness. “I want to know what the right answer is. Want to give me a hint?”

  “The true answer,” she said at once. “That’s the right one.”

  “The true answer,” he said, “is that I don’t want a ‘kind of woman.’ I want you.”

  Silence for a long moment, and then she said, her voice a little unsteady, “Do not try to sidetrack me, buster. Because that was killer. Tell me the story.”

  “All right, but it’s not pretty.”

  “Hey. You’re talking to the woman who sent her bridal gown up in smoke in the dead of winter, stomping around the backyard in a fuzzy bathrobe and boots and a temperature of a hundred and one, crying all the makeup off her face. I know ugly. Tell me the story.”

  He took a moment to put it together, and she sat there and waited for it. What was this, the second (third?) time he’d bared his soul? Why? Maybe because she had burned her bridal gown. Maybe because she’d listened every other time he’d talked. Maybe.

  “Kim,” he finally began. “That was her name. Wait. I already said that. Anyway, we met in college, had moved in together by senior year. She was very bright, very passionate. I was steady, and she was exciting, and that seemed to work pretty well. She liked running off to different places to do . . . good deeds, I guess, and having me to come back to. She didn’t make much, because she worked for nonprofits, in between the running off. Passionate, like I said.”

  “So what happened?”

  He shrugged. “So we got married, the way people do when they’ve been together for four years. And I told myself I didn’t want my dad’s life anyway.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You didn’t get married in church.”

  “Nope. At the beach. Barefoot. In a pagan ceremony. Which was stupid, as far as I was concerned, and more than that as far as my folks were, but you could call it a compromise. Because guess which one of us wanted to get married.”

  “You.”

  “And you’d be right. So we got married. And eventually, ‘steady’ probably became ‘boring,’ in her case, and ‘exciting’ maybe became ‘flaky’ in mine. Also the way people do. Mismatch. Nobody’s fault. Except it was. At least that’s the way I saw it.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He glanced across at her, hesitated, then said, “I’d sure like it if you’d slide on over beside me while I told you this. It’s not that easy to talk about. Which is why I don’t. I told my dad the whole story, and that’s about it. My mom probably knows, but if she does, she’s never said.”

  She didn’t play coy, and she didn’t say anything cute. She just unbuckled her seat belt, slid on over, and buckled herself in again. He felt her there, warm and fragrant, and something settled into place inside him, just like that.

  And he felt better. Just like that.

  “I was a nice guy then,” he finally went on.

  “You still are.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not that nice.”

  “Travis.” She had her hand on his knee again, but for nothing but comfort this time. “Tell me.”

  He was still driving, and he was remembering, and telling her. It didn’t come out easy, but it came.

  Kim had been in Chile, because they’d had a big quake there, and she’d been volunteering. Gone for nearly three months while he’d earned money, had tried to be glad that he could support her in her dream, and tried not to resent that she hadn’t been there to support him in his. She was doing what mattered to her, they were both independent adults with independent lives, and money wasn’t an issue. That was the good thing about working in tech.

  He’d gone out to SFO to pick her up that night. Eleven thirty p.m. by the time the plane had come in, and he hadn’t cared. He’d gotten there early so he’d be sure to spot her, had stood there holding a bunch of pink roses like the sap he’d been. She’d come running through the security gate to him, and he’d picked her right up off the ground and swung her in a circle and laughed out loud, and so had she. Somebody had even taken a picture, he’d noticed out of the corner of his eye, probably because they were so cute, and so in love.

  And then he’d driven her home, parked the car, and walked with her to the apartment in the Mission that was still barely furnished, because she didn’t care and he didn’t have time. Their arms around each other, her talking a mile a minute, him listening and smiling and waiting for the moment when they’d climbed the three flights of stairs. After he’d opened the door, because she’d lost her keys, of course, and he was picking her up again to kiss her for real.

  She’d dropped the flowers, and he still remembered seeing them fall onto the hardwood floor. Bouncing, like it was slow motion, the moment frozen in his memory, frozen in time. The last beautiful thing. Before he’d scooped her into his arms, had stepped on a rose and crushed it, and hadn’t cared a bit. He’d carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed, and she’d pulled at his shirt and he’d pulled at hers, and they’d made laughing, reckless, desperate, half-dressed love, gasping and stroking and kissing.

  Afterwards, he’d rolled to his back, held her over him, kissed her again, and said, “I love you, I ever tell you that? And I missed you. Don’t be gone so long next time, OK?”

  She’d wriggled down, put her head on his chest, stroked his shoulder, and said, “Yeah. Well. I might not be, because I have something to tell you.” She’d laughed again, an uncertain sound this time. “I guess there’s only one way to say this. I’m pregnant.”

  The shock had frozen him for a second, and he literally hadn’t been able to speak. And then he’d said, “Whoa,” in a voice that hadn’t even sounded like his. “Whoa,” he’d said again, and laughed. “Whoa, baby.” He’d held her closer, hugged her to him, and laughed again. “Wow.”

  “Wayne. Wait. There’s more.”

  It had been something in the way she’d said it. His arms had still been around her, but his whole body had gone still. “What . . .” He’d swallowed. “What’s the more?”

  “It isn’t yours.”

  “Wow,” Rochelle said quietly. “That sucks.”

  “It wasn’t my favorite moment of all time, no.”

  “So let me guess. Some other guy down there saving the world?”

 
; “Yep. He didn’t matter, of course. He wasn’t important. It was just one of those things. ‘It’s like a war zone, Wayne,’” he quoted, and no matter how long it had been, the anger was still right there. “Like she couldn’t help herself, but it didn’t matter, because it was just ‘release of tension,’ and fidelity was an archaic construct anyway. I told her that if she’d thought it was an archaic construct, maybe she could’ve clued me in before she’d married me, and she just sighed like I was hopeless. Like it was my problem.”

  He was going a little fast, so he eased up on the gas, relaxed his hands on the wheel. “Sorry. It was a long time ago. Shouldn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it should,” she said. “So what happened?”

  “Well, see, that was the other part that made it OK. To her. Because she decided to have an abortion, in the end, and then we’d be back to normal. But she hadn’t wanted to sneak around on me, because she believed in honesty.”

  “Just not fidelity.”

  “Right. It was just a big ol’ mess all around. I knew I didn’t have a right to tell her what to do. It wasn’t my body, and it wasn’t even my baby, but the whole thing . . .” He swallowed. “It made me sick. That she could do it in the first place like it didn’t matter—”

  “Like you didn’t matter,” Rochelle said. “Yeah. Been there.”

  He glanced at her. Her hand was still strong on his leg, and it still felt good. “Yep. And then that she could get rid of the pregnancy like that didn’t matter, either. She told me it was good that it had happened, in fact, because it had forced her to really look at whether she wanted kids. And to realize that she didn’t. ‘There are so many more important things happening in the world than one person’s children.’ That’s what she said. That if you had them, you cared about them more than the rest of the world, and it wasn’t right. Attachment as the root of evil, and all that.”