Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap

by Julie Anne Long

  “Is it yoga?” he asked, finally.

  “Is what yoga?”

  “Is that how you got thighs like anacondas? Thighs that can strangle a grown man?”

  This was pretty funny. “I’ve never tested that particular application. But I suppose it could come in handy. Yeah, I do yoga. Not with a good deal of commitment, but I do it. San Francisco hills, you know. Good for the legs.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  The water lovingly lapped them and they were quiet.

  “Big job, getting that wallpaper off,” he said idly.

  “Yep.”

  “That master bedroom’s thirty by thirty, I believe.”

  “The length of a football field, if you ask my scapulas and trapezoids and the rest of the muscle gang.”

  “Boy, there’s like five more rooms that size. And then you’re going to what, paint them?” He mimed big up-and-down paint roller motions.

  “Yes. I’m going to paint them.”

  All of those words—I’m and going and paint—made her want to sink deeper and deeper into the water.

  “Wow. That’ll take you days. For just that one room.”

  He was a sadist.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you going to start painting?”

  “I thought I’d go with the main room, downstairs.”

  “Have you ever painted a room before all by yourself, Avalon?”

  She hesitated. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  That sentence was suddenly fraught.

  He seemed to know it.

  They both stopped talking.

  Still, she had kind of the sense he was working up to something.

  “You know that main room? The one you put the giant couch in? My mom used to play the grand piano and sing there.”

  She widened her eyes. “Really?”

  She remembered seeing the piano that day she’d been inside. It was pretty hard imagining Mac’s mom abandoning herself to song. She was like Mac’s dad: beautiful in an otherworldly way. She sounded as rehearsed and elegant as Jackie O giving a tour of the White House whenever she spoke. She seldom joined them out on Devil’s Leap, and when she did she was a politely remote figure arranged neatly on a towel, as if someone had brought their favorite doll out for an airing.

  “Yeah. She liked the acoustics.”

  “I remember thinking your mom was so pretty. Her hair was shiny and straight like my Barbie, and no other mothers I ever saw had hair like that. She never seemed like a mo . . .”

  She stopped herself in time.

  He shrugged with one shoulder; the water moved a little, rippling toward her. “It’s okay. You’re right, she wasn’t very mommish. Not like your mom was, with the snacks in her purse and the Band-Aids with Sponge Bob on them and the flip-flops shoved in the car door pocket so there was always a spare pair when someone broke one, and how she was just sort of part of everything you did. Momming really wasn’t my mom’s thing.”

  He said it easily enough. But it was hard to hear that he’d been fully aware of what he lacked in the midst of all he had.

  Even back then Avalon must have sensed that he’d needed to be loved. And she had loved him.

  Even if he cared for things, it was entirely possible he just didn’t know how to love back.

  “It could have been a lot worse, honestly. Hell, how many kids do you know who got an Audi convertible for their sixteenth birthday?”

  He was being glib, but his voice was soft, soft as the water, soft as the muted colors of the sky.

  She smiled, but didn’t want to. And she didn’t ask what had become of that convertible.

  She had a hunch that it was among the things auctioned off when his dad had been hauled away to jail.

  The loss of everything must have been terrifying; it must have felt like being sucked toward a drain.

  She fought the urge to reach out and grip his hand. As if she could pull him out of the rubble the way he’d hoisted her out of the attic. Her heart was an amnesiac; it ached as if it was actually being pulled toward him, even though this guy had once made a fricassee of it.

  But maybe . . . maybe he was working toward some truth, now. Maybe she was about to hear some explanation she’d longed nearly her entire life to hear. Something that explained that chasm between how things had felt when she was with him and the things he’d said.

  And hope was like a glittering shard, shortening her breath. Hope . . . and fear.

  “Mac . . . I’m—I’m sorry all of that happened to you.”

  He nodded once. Quirked the corner of his mouth. And sighed.

  “Those days at Devil’s Leap were the happiest I’ve ever been.” He almost whispered it. Confiding a secret.

  Her heart was now pounding so hard it was a wonder it didn’t send ripples of water toward him.

  “That’s why . . .” He gave a muffled little laugh. “That’s why I originally wanted to buy the house. If you do sell it to me, you can use the hot springs any time you want.”

  His eyes were on her. Soft and dark. Mesmeric. Once so beloved.

  But something about his last words struck her as just a little . . . odd.

  A bolt of suspicion smote her.

  She coughed a laugh. “Oh. My. God.”

  Conviction violently uncoiled in her like a spring and practically shot her out of the water. She grabbed her towel and rubbed almost viciously over herself as if she could strip off whatever remained of her idiocy.

  She’d startled him. “Avalon . . . what the . . . are you okay?”

  She paused. “This whole . . . thing . . .” She gestured to him and the hot springs with a swoop of her hand. “. . . the abs, the voice, the hot springs . . . was a ploy, wasn’t it? To talk me out of the house?”

  She could hear her voice stag-leaping octaves. She was aware her fury was all out of proportion to the circumstances. She was furious at herself for getting sucked in again.

  She rammed her jeans on, which required a lot of rapid, dramatic hula-hooping, and jammed her feet into her flip-flops.

  “I’M NOT GOING TO SELL YOU THE HOUSE,” she said, once dressed.

  He was clearly shocked. “I swear to God, Avalon, that’s not what—”

  He lifted himself out of the water.

  Oh, that dripping, gleaming, lean muscle.

  She would not look at it.

  And then she did.

  Turned and stared at him hard. If there was any luck, he’d turn to stone right there because that was the direction he was heading anyway.

  “You . . . you . . . God, you really turned into a Coltrane, didn’t you, Mac?”

  Mac froze. “Now wait a goddamn minute!”

  What the hell had just happened? One moment he was sitting in the warm pool, wading into deeper emotional waters than he’d yet dared. And the next she was running away as though a scorpion had bit her on the ass.

  It was almost funny how she knew what the cruelest insult would be. And only someone who really got him would understand how to hurt him that way.

  Suddenly she bolted.

  Yikes! In seconds she’d be out of view.

  “Fuck fuck fuck.” He punctuated the grab of each article of clothing with that word. But he didn’t have time and he wasn’t about to let her head back by herself.

  Her hair came down and flew out behind her in damp streamers.

  And suddenly they were in his dream. He was chasing her; he couldn’t catch up.

  He nearly tripped scrambling into his jeans, hopping on one foot and then the other. He swore fervently but there wasn’t time to tie himself into his boots. So he just grabbed them and ran barefoot, very inadvisable, but in a few seconds she’d be out of view, and at least this was mostly dirt and flattened scrub and fuck it, he could chance it. He was all but tippy-toeing on the balls of his feet like Wile E. Coyote sneaking up on the Road Runner.

  Chapter 15

  “Avalon. Avalon. You have it wrong! I swear to God! Please, tal
k to me, for God’s sake!”

  She only picked up the pace. Of course she knew how to run, sort of, in flip-flops. They’d lived in flip-flops as kids. Running in them without falling flat on your face was kind of an art.

  Between her flippy-flopping and him mincing in his bare feet over the ground, it was the slowest, most ridiculous pursuit ever.

  “Avalon! LOOK OUT FOR THAT WELL!”

  She stopped so abruptly her arms windmilled. Her head whipped to and fro looking down at the ground.

  He caught up triumphantly.

  Still hopping. He seized the opportunity to drop a boot and shove a foot in.

  She glared at him. Two bright pink spots of temper high in her cheeks.

  “There’s no well, is there? I should have known the only way you know how to get your way is through bullshit.”

  “No. I wouldn’t let you fall down it regardless. But I’m not going to let you walk back to the house by yourself.”

  She just growled ferally and spun and took off again.

  At a flippy-floppy trot.

  He had a clear view for at least a few yards so he shoved his other foot into his other boot and stuffed the laces in and ran to catch up to her. He flanked her most of the way but she never turned.

  Her temper was a force field that could have repelled Star Wars–type lasers and it didn’t matter because he was going to see her safely home.

  She ignored him all the way to the house, rammed her key into the lock and slammed into the house.

  ARRGH.

  He clawed his fingers up through his hair.

  “Well, fuck me,” he muttered. It was safe to say that had not gone the way he’d hoped it would.

  He stood there indecisively, staring at the door.

  She reemerged a minute later with the dog in her arms and gave a little yelp. “Jesus, Mac, are you still here? Shoo! Go home.”

  “Not going anywhere until you talk to me.”

  That was the plan, he decided.

  Chick Pea selected the azalea nearest to the porch rail to tinkle on. Then returned and hopped up on the lounge chair.

  Mac eyed her dubiously as she did all this. That was definitely a sort of hybrid dog-cat. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an unusual thing.

  Avalon finally heaved a sigh. “Fine, Mac. Say what you have to say.”

  “Can I come up there on the porch? Or do I have to semi-shout it from where I’m standing?”

  She actually hesitated. And finally she stood aside. Well aside. As if in the absence of the availability of a hazmat suit, distance would have to do.

  Two pairs of brown eyes, hers and Chick Pea’s, watched as he made his way up the flagstone path to the porch.

  He took a deep breath. And then the words came in a rush, as if he was arguing for his life. He kind of was.

  “Okay. I want to tell you some things about me. The reason I really hate the song ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud.’ My mom used to play it on that grand piano in that room with the chandelier and sing in this very sort of pointed, melodramatic way, just banging away and howling with her eyes closed, and my brother and I knew she was passively-aggressively singing it to my dad and about my dad. And oh my GOD I hated it. I wanted to curl up and die. It was farcical. Back then it was torture. Every day was a cavalcade of tension. Of things implied but never said. No one ever talked to each other and my brother and I were both together and alone because I couldn’t really talk to him, either.”

  “Jesus, Mac . . .”

  “Not fun to hear, right? I used to go out to the hot springs with my brother to get away from Mom and Dad fighting. Going at it hammer and tongs. Yelling at each other, over each other, about each other. Never, ever solving a damn thing. Sometimes I think they liked big houses because both loved the sound of their own voices, so the echo in a big marble foyer was just an added bonus. I have never told anyone that in my entire life.”

  The silence almost rang. As if it was the aftermath of a little explosion. Perhaps a stair crash.

  Her eyes were on him, softer now. But still wary.

  “So you don’t talk to your mom at all?” she ventured. Not accusingly. Trying to understand.

  “No. Not really. She remarried a plastic surgeon. Her nose changes subtly every year. I get the Christmas card.”

  She tried and failed not to smile at that. “Maybe you can make a flip book out of them.”

  It was a relief to laugh at that. She was such a smartass, but it came with such warmth.

  They had inched closer to each other, without realizing it.

  “What about Ty?” she pressed.

  He blew out a breath and swept his hand through his hair. “Ty kind of turned into my dad, if you exclude the bit about felonies and federal prison, and that was exactly what my dad always wanted. He’s a venture capitalist. Puts deals together for other companies. Brokers buyouts, that sort of thing. He thought I was an idiot for joining the national guard. He was always sticking up for my dad. We fought. It got ugly. We haven’t talked in about eight years.”

  She was still. He watched her shoulders rise high as she pulled in a long breath.

  “Wow. I just . . . Yeah, I can imagine you wouldn’t back down.”

  He couldn’t quite read her tone. Soft, just a little ironic. But not without affection. And not without a certain sadness. She did know him, after all.

  He was breathing easier, now. “It’s just . . . I wanted to be as different from my dad as possible. My dad was a destroyer. So I wanted to build things. My life was chaotic. I wanted order and predictability. I never really learned a damn useful thing, unless you counted getting hair gel just right. I never felt I’d been much good to anyone. I wanted to know what it was like to grow or create something from the very beginning, to know my life had an impact and a reason. It felt like if you could plan it, and build it, and see it, and touch it, then no one could rip it right out from under you.”

  She was silent for a moment, taking this in. “Mac . . . you’ve always had value. You know that now, right?”

  He wished she would say, “You, in fact, meant everything to me.”

  Because he once could have said those words to her and it would have been true.

  “Sure,” he said softly. Because she was waiting for reassurance, hurting on his behalf. And he wanted to reassure her.

  She’d fallen silent again.

  Somehow, like shadows stretching toward each other, they’d moved closer still.

  “Anyway. I was good at the work in the guard and I made friends based on what I could do and on my own strengths, not who my dad was or how much money I had. I knew I’d made the right decision for me.”

  Her big dark eyes were fixed on him, and her mouth was turned up in a sort of rueful way. “I just . . .” She gave up and made a helpless little gesture with her hands, almost supplicating. “That’s one of the finest things I’ve ever heard.”

  He loved the word finest. Elegant and somber, almost ceremonial.

  “Yeah, I’m a prince. I didn’t actually like the regimentation one bit.”

  “I was gonna say . . .”

  He laughed and so did she.

  It felt luxurious to be known. “I’m better at leading, I think. Which I eventually was able to do. And I know how to survive. And so . . . here I am.”

  There passed a moment of silence interrupted only by Chick Pea making snorkeling noises into her flank as she cleaned.

  “I honestly don’t know what I would do if my world fell apart like that, Mac.”

  “Ah, you’d be fine. You’re a fighter, Avalon. You’d probably go about it differently, but I have no doubt you’d still buy this house out from under me.”

  She laughed again, and he knew then, definitively, that it was all right. That whatever had spooked her back there he had fixed for now.

  “I swear to you . . . all I wanted to do was show you the damn hot springs because you were sore. That bathing suit with the frill on it was so worth it.”

&nb
sp; She flashed a swift little smile. “I believe you.”

  The mood was feather-soft, suddenly. “So you like my abs, huh?”

  “Nope,” she said instantly.

  They both knew this was a big lie.

  “So since I just told you something pretty awkward, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here in Hellcat Canyon, Avalon. I read SilliPutty. I have my theories.”

  “Oh, is that how it works?” She sighed. “I might as well tell you. Corbin cheated on me. To be more specific, I caught him cheating on me.”

  He hissed in a breath. “That sucks, Avalon. I’m sorry.”

  This won him a bleakish laugh. “Nothing a little retail therapy couldn’t help.”

  She gestured to the house.

  His theory had been correct. She was kind of doing what he’d done: trying to impose a little order on something in the wake of destruction. Metaphorically reforming something that had fallen into disrepair.

  He thought of a dozen things he could say about Corbin and how he was out of his fucking mind to cheat on her. But he didn’t want another guy in the conversation any longer than necessary.

  “You’re through?” he said shortly. “The two of you?”

  “Yeah,” she confirmed. “Mac . . . can I ask you something?” She sounded tentative.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think GradYouAte is stupid?”

  He was so astonished by the question for a moment he was speechless. “Stupid? Avalon, it’s amazing.”

  She pushed a streamer of still-damp hair behind her ear. “It’s just . . . some days I feel like I got caught up in the momentum of it before I knew whether it was what I really wanted. I had this idea and we just sort of made it happen. I bought this house because I wanted to make a deliberate choice. To do something from the beginning to the end. Kind of like you did, I guess.”

  He moved closer, nearly closing completely the remaining distance between them.

  “Listen, Avalon . . . I know I’ve given you a little shit about it. But you created a virtual world, something that had never before existed, from just an idea. As far as I’m concerned, you’re like Hermione Granger with a wand, conjuring something from the ether. No matter how you feel about it now, I’m convinced you can do anything you want. You’re kind of a sorceress.”