by Elle Casey
“You came out to rescue me, didn’t you?”
“No, I came out to make sure you were gone.”
“I told you, I don’t drink and drive. You knew I wasn’t gone.”
“No, I didn’t know that. You were wasted. For all I knew you were passed out in the snow somewhere getting frostbit.”
“So you were out here to rescue me. You got all dressed up in eight layers of clothes, just for me.”
I refuse to talk to him anymore. He keeps trying to trip me up and I’m so cold it’s working. I stomp up the stairs to try and get as much of the snow off my boots and legs as possible. Jaws follows and shakes himself. It doesn’t do much good, but that’s okay. I plan to put his fuzzy, stinky, bad-breath-having self in the bathtub as soon as we get inside. That’ll teach him to kiss me on the lips.
“Thanks,” Jeremy says, stomping his boots behind me on the porch. “For the rescue.”
“You’re not welcome.” I go into the house ahead of him, fully intending to ignore him for the rest of the night, but he has other plans. He runs inside and grabs my upper arm, holding on until I turn around.
“What?” I glare at him, trying to discourage him from saying anything else that will embarrass me.
His voice is much softer, kinder. “I just wanted to apologize. For the way I acted earlier. There’s no excuse for it.”
I wasn’t expecting this. Some of my anger dissipates when his sincere expression comes through. “Don’t worry about it. No apology necessary.” I’ve been known to hold a grudge before, but I can’t with him. I just can’t. I don’t know why, either, because a grudge would probably be a good idea where he’s concerned; it would help keep him at arm’s length at a time when I’m finding it hard not to stare at his lips. I wonder what it would have been like to make out with him out in the snow…
He glances over at the kitchen. “Still have some of that chicken-fried steak?”
His question jerks me out of my crazy fantasy. “How’d you know I cooked chicken-fried steak?”
He smiles. “I’d recognize one of those anywhere. It’s my favorite.”
I pull myself from his grip and gesture to the kitchen island. “Go ahead, if you want it. I left it on the counter.”
“Where are you going?”
“To give the dog a bath.”
“Brush his teeth while you’re at it,” Jeremy says at my back.
“Sure, no problem,” I shout from inside the bathroom. “Where’s your toothbrush?”
He laughs but doesn’t respond. I find myself smiling at my image in the mirror. I guess we survived our first whole day together without anyone getting killed or maimed by frostbite. That has to be a good sign, right?
I roll my eyes. Who am I kidding? This is a complete mess. He’s a train wreck and I’m spending all my time worrying about him when what I should be doing is focusing on my work and myself. I’m just as much a mess as he is, but I don’t have a big fat bank account to pay my bills when I run out of money like he probably does.
Those snow plows better come tomorrow or who knows what’ll happen. At the rate we’re already going, one or both of us is going to come down with a serious case of cabin fever, and then I don’t want to know what kind of crazy stuff is going to happen.
Chapter Nineteen
JAWS IS ALLERGIC TO BATHS, or so he’d like me to think, the way he’s sneezing, coughing, and straining to get away the whole time. But when I’m done with him, using a comb I find in a drawer in the bathroom and my hair dryer to fluff his wiry brown and white fur up, he looks almost good enough for a dog show. Unfortunately, Jeremy doesn’t keep his toothbrush in here, otherwise, he’d have sparkling-white teeth too.
“Are you ready to make your grand entrance?”
Jaws glares up at me as I rest my hand on the inside handle of the bathroom door.
“Don’t look at me like that. You know you feel better without all that matted hair everywhere.”
The mutt shifts his gaze to the door, probably trying to cast the magic doggie spell he thinks will open it up. Apparently, he’s not speaking to me right now.
“Fine.” I open the door and let him leave. He runs over to the fireplace, sits down on the rug, and promptly starts licking his nether regions.
Jeremy’s on a stool at the island in the kitchen watching the dog. “Wow, he looks different. Better. What breed is he?”
“I have no idea. He’s not mine.”
Jeremy looks over at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. He’s a stray, I think. He didn’t have a collar and he followed me up here.”
“From Manhattan?”
“No, from the little grocery store down in the town a mile from here.”
“Huh. I thought I recognized him.” Jeremy points his fork at the dog. “That’s Stanky.”
“Stanky? Do you know his owner?”
Jeremy shakes his head and stands, taking his dish to the sink. “Nah. As far as I know, he’s the town stray. Everyone just calls him Stanky because he stanks.” Jeremy chuckles.
Little Stanky isn’t stanky anymore, and that name seems kind of disrespectful of the little lion heart he has beating in his chest.
“I’ve been calling him Jaws, but it doesn’t really fit. I need to come up with something else.”
“You planning on keeping him?”
I shrug, realizing I hadn’t thought about it that far. “I don’t know. Maybe. If he wants me to.”
“Thanks for dinner.” Jeremy rinses his dish and leaves it in the sink.
“You’re welcome.” I walk over to my painting alcove, moving things around on the top of my new table. I already organized everything, but I’m feeling a little awkward being alone with a now sober hot guy in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He’s too attractive for comfort.
Jeremy walks over and stops just outside my little painting area. “Sooo, you paint, I guess.”
“Not walls.” I smile to myself, remembering our first conversation. It seems like it was so long ago, but it was only last night.
He laughs. “No, not walls. But what kind of painting? I mean, what style?”
“Depends.” I pick up a new brush I bought in Manhattan before I left and drag it gently over the canvas that’s propped up on the easel. Usually I can already imagine what will be there when I look at a vast expanse of whiteness, but not right now. Not when Jeremy is standing so close. His presence commands all of my attention, even when I’m acting like it doesn’t.
“Modern stuff like Picasso or more traditional like … Renoir?”
“I’ve done some impressionistic stuff. Picasso wasn’t always into cubism, you know.”
“No, actually, I didn’t know. My parents would have loved for me to study art, but I refused.”
“Why?” I look over and see him staring at my blank canvas.
He shrugs. “Dunno. I resisted a lot of things my family put on me.”
“You don’t get along with them?” I put the brush down and open up a tube of paint, checking the color. The red is hard to see in this light. I can already tell I’m not going to be able to paint anything after sundown.
“They’re nice people. I just … I can’t be with them for too long at a time. I feel … stifled. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
I think about my parents and how they were so much older than my friends’ parents. I never felt stifled in their presence. I felt … safe. And loved. “I’d give anything to have my mom and dad with me again.”
“When did they die?” Jeremy takes a step closer, stopping just next to my easel.
“A few years ago. They had me when they were both in their fifties. I’m one of those surprise babies.”
“You can’t be more than thirty years old, though. Did they die young?”
“Yes. In a car accident. Drunk driver.” I try not to look at Jeremy when I say that, but I can’t help it. He was just out in his car after downing half a bottle of whiskey.
His eyes are tear
ing up and his expression is going dark. “That’s how I lost Laura.”
My throat starts to hurt as the tears try to get out. I won’t let them, though. Now is not the time for crying. Jeremy doesn’t need a crybaby on his hands. He’s too much of one himself, I think.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I sound like a man, my voice is so scratchy.
“I’m sorry about your parents.” His voice is similar to mine. He twists his head away and acts like there’s something very interesting to see out of the dark windows. His hand reaches up to wipe at his face. When he’s looking at me again, his cheek carries a trace of wetness.
“Thanks.” I smile a little, thinking of my mom and dad. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m glad it happened to both of them at the same time.”
“That does sound a little crazy,” he says, not unkindly.
I sit down on the stool I dragged over from the kitchen earlier and grab another tube of paint to check it out. The blue is also impossible to see in this light; it might as well be black.
“It’s just that they were so in love. If only one of them had died and left the other one, it would have been a big mess. I don’t know how I would have handled it.”
Jeremy nods, but doesn’t say anything.
“They held hands all the time.” I smile, thinking about it. My friends used to make fun of me, and I’d pretend to be embarrassed, but I never was, really. I knew I was lucky then, and after all the unsuccessful attempts I’ve made at trying to find true love, I know it even more now.
“I used to go into their bedroom when I was little, before they were awake in the morning, and I’d find them asleep holding hands.” I shake my head at the memory. “They had something almost no one ever finds. A …”
Jeremy and I speak at the exact same time.. “…One in a million love.”
My head jerks up and I stare at him. He’s staring at me too.
“That’s what Laura and I always said about us. We had a one in a million love.”
My lips tremble as I try to hold onto my smile. “I never heard anyone else say that before.”
“Laura used to quote things from books to me. We’d read together on the couch at night. I still remember one she said a lot.” He looks off into the distance as he speaks. “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
“Who wrote that?” I ask, feeling his pain now. I’ve never had anyone say anything like that to me, but to lose a partner like that to a drunk driver? Geez. No wonder he’s swimming around in the bottom of a bottle. He’s lucky he hasn’t offed himself yet. I’m sure many other people would have done the deed had it happened to them.
“Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights.”
“Wow. I don’t remember that line from the story. I think it’s been too long since I’ve read it.”
Jeremy leaves the room in a hurry. “I think I have a copy in my bag.”
I put the paint tubes back as I wait for him to return. He’s there two seconds later with a well-worn copy of the novel.
“I have another one marked she said a lot. After I’ve had too much Jacky D, I read this over and over to myself.” He hands me the book, open to a page that has pencil underlining in it.
I read it aloud. “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
I look up at him and see him for who he really is, for the first time since I’ve met him. “The world is a mighty stranger to you.”
He nods, his throat working up and down as he tries to keep his emotions under control.
“Is that why you don’t hang out with your family?”
He shrugs, reaching over and taking one of my older brushes from a can on the table. “Maybe.”
“How do you think your wife would have reacted if it had been you who passed away?”
He plays with the bristles, bending them back and forth as he answers. “Much better than I have, for sure. She was always the rock of our family. Not just for me, but for everyone. She just had this way about her. She could see the inner you, to the best part of you. She knew how to bring that out.”
“So you think she would have just gone on with her life?”
“Don’t you?” He looks up at me, the brush forgotten.
I look down at the book in my hand, imagining I can sense traces of the woman who held it before me. “No, not really. I mean, I didn’t know her, but no one who feels that way about her husband would just bounce right back and be fine after. She’d suffer.”
“Yeah, but she wouldn’t have … she …” He looks over my shoulder with unfocused eyes. He’s silent for so long I think he’s lost his train of thought. But then he shrugs, comes back to the present, and throws the brush on the table, missing the can it came from entirely. “Doesn’t matter. She’s gone and I got left behind.”
“Is that how you see it? That you got left behind?”
He shrugs. “Pretty much.”
“And what about your daughter?”
His expression changes lightning quick to one of anger. “What about my daughter?”
“Did she get left behind too?”
He walks away from the alcove and into the family room. “I don’t want to talk about her.” He drops down onto the couch and slouches down really low.
Alarm bells are ringing in my head, telling me to back off, but I can’t. I keep thinking about that phrase in the book, about how everything becomes a stranger. He’s a stranger to his own daughter, and it’s so unfair. He has a choice about how he’s living his life, and he’s making the wrong one.
I page through the book and see another underlined text. I read it loud enough for him to hear. “Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”
“Exactly!” Jeremy shouts, throwing something across the room.
“She didn’t leave you on purpose,” I say softly.
“So? It doesn’t make any difference. She’s gone. That’s all that matters. I’m alone. Forever.”
“But what about your daughter? You don’t have to be gone from her life. You’ve made the choice to do that, but is that fair to her?”
Jeremy roars, standing and spinning around to glare at me. His face is deep red and every vein in his neck is standing out. I can see that his hold on his temper is tenuous, but I don’t back down. I glare back, waiting for an answer.
“Don’t talk to me about my daughter. Ever.”
“As long as you’re in the this cabin, I can talk to you about anything I want.” I shrug. “And right now I want to talk about that beautiful baby I saw at your brother’s apartment. She’s beautiful, you know. Does she look like your wife?”
Jeremy storms over to the front door and throws it open, grabbing his coat off the hook and stepping outside.
“I’m not coming out there to rescue you in the dark!” I yell as the door closes.
“Good!” he shouts back.
I settle down onto my stool, cringing at the pain in my butt cheek from my fall in the driveway yesterday, and look around the canvas through the window overlooking the front yard. I watch as Jeremy grabs the axe and starts chopping the hell out of the stump under the pine tree.
I pick up a nearby pencil and begin to sketch something on the canvas. I can finally see what is waiting to be painted.
Chapter Twenty
I’VE BEEN SKETCHING FOR AN hour straight, the images coming through loud and clear. But when I hear the clomping of Jeremy’s boots on the porch, I throw down my pencil and toss an old paint-stained bedsheet over the canvas. I can’t afford to piss Jeremy off and have him destroy my inspired work. Surely he’ll be gone by tomorrow and he’ll never be the wiser.
The door opens and a blast of cold air flows into my painting alcove. I grab my coat and
shove my arms into it. I’ve learned that the fireplace takes a while to re-heat the room once the door has been opened.
Jeremy shuts the door and leaves his boots on the mat. Then he surveys the room. “You painting?”
“No, just sketching.” I get up from my stool and head towards the living room so he won’t be tempted to come over and look at what I’ve done.
“You feel better after attacking that tree stump for an hour?” I ask as I walk around the couch and take a seat in the armchair next to it.
He shrugs. “A little.” His head drops as he slides his hands into his front pockets, stiffening his arms and lifting his shoulders. “I wanted to come in and apologize, actually.”
When he looks up, I see a vulnerability in his expression that makes me want to weep. I’ve suffered the loss of my parents and many doomed relationships, but I know I’ve never been in as much pain as he has. I can see the scars from it reflected in his eyes.
There’s a part of me that wants to do anything I can to make it go away, to heal his hurt, and that makes me nervous. I’ve been known to do stupid things where men and my heart are concerned, always a sucker for a lost cause. I know I shouldn’t let my path be changed to another direction by a man in as bad a shape as he’s in right now, but it’s tempting. The only thing keeping me from jumping in head first is the knowledge that he doesn’t need a woman in his life right now; he needs a whole army of therapists.
Jaws leaps up and settles himself down in my lap, turning a few times in circles until he’s comfortable. He lets out a long breath, props his head on my arm, and closes his eyes. At least one of us is relaxed.
Jeremy walks over and gently kicks the couch. He’s nervous, maybe. I wait to hear what he has to say, not wanting him to rush but hoping he’ll be honest and say what needs to be said.
“I have a hard time controlling my emotions when conversations about… my family come up.”
“You mean about your daughter.” I stare him down, daring him to fly off the handle again. He has to deal with this sometime, so why not out here in the middle of nowhere, where no one but me will see him react? Seems like the perfect situation to me. I’m no therapist but I’ve been told I’m a good listener.