Finally the receipt was handed over, and Colleen burst out into the Carolina sunshine and took a deep breath. Weepy webs of kudzu hung from the trees behind the mall, swaying in the wind. She felt like they were congratulating her.
She had just paid for her trip tenfold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bitty
Dear Stranger,
Last night was rough. Especially for Colleen and Tamara. We got stuck in the rain and had to hang out in the trailer with nothing but candlelight and several bottles of spiked whipped cream. I’m still not quite sure how they worked, though it was good stuff. Whipped cream fills me up so fast (in high school, I’d actually had an idea to start a Reddi-wip diet because it was filling and satisfying), I barely had any, while those two just went to town with it. Now, I don’t know how a bottle of that stuff compares to, say, a bottle of wine or a decent amount of vodka, but by the looks of it, it was pretty strong.
And by the looks of them this morning, it has a lingering effect. I just hope they’re okay back there with the car moving, because the last thing Colleen needs is vomit all over her new stuff.
Anyway, I ended up at the wheel, since Colleen is anxious to just end this trip now, and the more miles she can sleep through, the better. At least that was the original plan.
But here’s the thing. I got to thinking about my conversations with Colleen regarding my marriage and my regrettably stupid handling of the Blake situation. God, what a child I was! So out of control, spoiled, selfish. And it went on, boy, my self-pity over his leaving clung to me like a spiderweb walked into in the dark. I couldn’t even find all the strands of disenchantment.
Naturally, I thought of him over the years. Many, many times. You can’t have a platonic marriage like mine without harking back to the big love of your life, who wanted you fiercely at all times. I’d felt thoroughly loved by Blake … until he left. Stupid how I made that about me, when he had so much serious stuff to worry about. Colleen was right about that—she’d tried to point it out, but I wouldn’t hear it. Then and now. Poor me. That was all I could think.
Honestly, I probably deserved all the angst I suffered as a result.
So these were the thoughts that were chasing themselves around in my brain as I drove and that highway hypnosis took over, lines flipping under the car, boom boom boom boom, until sometime after the Florida/Georgia line, and almost in Savannah, I saw the exit that I remembered (how?) from the one and only time I’d gone to Blake’s parents’ house with him.
As I recalled, it wasn’t that far off the highway, and it was only a few turns, but it would still be insanely selfish to take the exit while those two slept in the back, expecting to wake up well closer to home.
But what the hell? It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining but not burning, the top was down, the air was clean, and this was the chance in a lifetime—and, let’s face it, I had absolutely no other plans. I still wasn’t sure where I was even getting off this ride. Certainly not where I’d begun, in Henley, but maybe in Lumbarton, where I could rent a car and—what, slink back to the place that had already deemed me persona non grata?
No, I didn’t want to go back to Winnington until I had a divorce settlement and a moving company, which meant this world was my oyster. I needed to keep my eyes open as I drove—figuratively, in addition to literally—because anyplace along the way could have been my new home. Savannah? Charleston?
Lunville. That was where he lived. The sign said
35 MILES
. I pulled over gently, so as not to rock the trailer too much, and pulled up Google on my phone. Punched his name in, and there it was, on Maple Street, which I’d remembered, since it’s hard to forget when someone
actually
lives on Maple Street.
This was a hell of a chance to take. A really stupid chance. He was undoubtedly married and maybe even unrecognizable. Maybe
I
was unrecognizable. Maybe it would be just a huge awkward exchange, but I was okay with that. I know that’s hard to believe—I wouldn’t believe it myself, as I’ve never exactly been
Zen
about embarrassing situations (see cat rescue, previously)—but this was one of those chances that not only felt worth taking, it felt
necessary
. So, with no questions about the integrity of my mission, I drove on, following the turn-by-turn instructions until I pulled up in front of a vaguely familiar Victorian house, dark blue, with a cheerful porch and a big black shiny Ford 150 out front.
No, not the same one he had in college. But completely consistent with Blake. I knew it was his.
My heart was pounding, and to be honest, part of me wanted to turn back and run. This could really be a fool’s errand. I knew that. But the curiosity was deep. If nothing else, it would make a good story for Colleen when she woke up—and for a diary.
I parked and scrambled in the glove box for a piece of paper. On the back of a duplicate check, I wrote, “This is Blake’s house, I’ll be out soon,” and taped it to the steering wheel with a Band-Aid from the first-aid kit that
of course
Colleen had.
And I went to the door.
I had to knock twice and was about to give up and leave—part of me wanted that, I think—when it opened, and there he was.
There is no
I would have known him anywhere
because he looked exactly the same. There was no way
not
to know him. I wasn’t, however, sure the same could be said of me, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of insecurity and worry—what would I say? “I don’t know if you remember me, but…”—until his surprise wore off enough for him to speak.
“I’ll be damned.”
“It’s possible,” I said.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Great question.”
He glanced behind me, at the car and the trailer, and frowned. “That’s … yours?”
“Um, no, it’s—it’s a friend’s. I was driving and I saw the exit for your town and, well, I’d been thinking about you and just thought I’d stop by and see how you are. You know, how your life’s gone, what you’re up to, if you have … kids … or—”
“I’m fine, I’m a mechanic, I don’t have kids or—” He smiled. “And I never would have seen this coming in a million years.” He took a step back. “You, uh, you want to come in?”
“Sure.” I glanced back at the car. They’d be fine. It’s not like someone was going to come steal them. “For a minute, I guess.”
He ushered me in and offered me water because he had to go to the store but hadn’t so it was all he had. I took it. Water was about all I could deal with at that moment. Also that was a point for him, I was glad he wasn’t drinking beer at the very stroke of 5
P.M.
like so many overgrown, underdeveloped frat boys I’d known. Or like Lew, who drank Macallan 25 neat throughout the day like he’d been prescribed it.
We sat down on the couch and talked, small talk, for I don’t know how long. It seemed like forever, given how little we were actually saying. It might as well have been the Sunday morning news, a lot of filler material and human interest stories, but not a lot of meat.
At one point, I thought I heard the distinctively thin slam of the trailer door, but no one came up to the house, thank God. I wouldn’t have imagined Colleen would do that, but she might have been irked enough with the detour to do just about anything.
So it turned out, he’d never been married, though he’d been engaged for two years. To a woman who was nothing like me, so scratch that old wives’ tale—he either didn’t have a type or he never wanted to be with someone like me again. He’d dated like anyone else, had a few jobs before opening up his own repair and body shop, which did really well, thanks to some NASCAR connections he’d developed. His brother had married Blake’s high school girlfriend—another imagined scenario to scratch—and now they lived just down the road, but Blake had taken his parents’ house because he wanted to restore it to its original glory and he had the time and skill to do so.
No, he’d never gone back and finished college. He could have, he acknowledged. Still could. But what was the point now? He was doing great. He didn’t need it.
His regrets about college had nothing to do with his education.
“I’m sorry,” I told him when he said his mother had passed away just three months after his return. “Not just for your loss, because that’s obvious, but I’m sorry I made the journey harder for you by … by punishing you for doing the only right thing.”
The small talk came to a screeching halt as we started talking like real people again.
“I’m sorry it hurt you so much.”
I held up a hand. I couldn’t bear for him to apologize to me for
anything
, given what he’d gone through. “Please. Seriously.”
He splayed his arms, universal signal for
Okay, whatever you say
,
and a tense moment passed.
“Well, I’d better go,” I said, standing up. “This was a crazy impluse, but I really just had to see how you were doing. I was really in the neighborhood, and strangely knew where you lived but not your phone number. I—I’ve thought about you so much.”
“Me too.” He touched my nose and looked down at me.
And suddenly all the awkwardness dissolved. That small gesture, and I melted. It was I who made the first move, without even thinking—and with years of inexperience and uncertainty under my belt since I’d last been intimate with any man—I snaked my hand up behind his neck and pulled him toward me, into a kiss.
Luckily he seemed to want the same—and I’m telling you, there were fireworks. It was bliss. It was like all the wrongs over the years bled away and left one tender new right, and this was it.
I sank against him, allowing him in, his mouth, his tongue, his breath, his soul. He reached down and pulled my shirt up and nudged his hand under the elastic of my undies and down. I already knew I was ready for him, but he smiled against my mouth when he felt it, and I felt a surge of even more desire for him.
“Let’s go in the bedroom,” he said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him.
I swallowed. “Okay.” But I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want his hands off me for even a second. I didn’t want his mouth more than an inch away. I needed him inside me, not following me for an impossibly long ten or fifteen seconds into the bedroom and onto the bed.
He must have known, because he slipped his fingers into me, worked me for a moment, then eased me down to the floor. There wasn’t time to go anywhere else. There wasn’t a minute to be wasted. Even if we had all day, or all week, or all year, there wasn’t a moment to be wasted. So much time had already been lost.
He needed to be inside me or we’d both explode.
I kicked my pants off and parted my legs under his hand, then gasped as he pressed his fingers in. He worked me for another moment while I tore at his belt and unzipped his pants and wrestled them off him. He sat up and pulled his shirt off, and I did the same with mine.
“You look so incredible,” he said, and his gaze raked over me like something physical.
“I—” I didn’t have an answer. Didn’t need one, though, because again his mouth was on mine and I was slipping away. I felt him unhook my bra, and it fell away like a falling leaf.
He kissed his way down my neck and stopped at my breasts, alternately flicking his tongue across them and sucking so intensely that a coil of nerve shivered straight through my core. He glanced at me, then trailed his tongue across my stomach and abdomen and, not gently, moved his mouth onto me. He was good at this. He’d always been really good at this. His mouth was warm, his breath hot against me, but of course, that was only part of the art. The rest he did like it was instinct, always knowing where to touch me, when to back off and when to go stronger.
My nails scratched at the floor, nothing to hold on to or brace myself with as he moved his tongue expertly in just the right spot, driving me to the point of insanity, then instinctively moving his tongue down to enter me in tantalizing promise of what was to come.
I had missed this.
There was no other him. There would never be another him. No one would ever be able to play me in quite the way he could. Three months I could have waited, back then, and this would have been mine all this time, but, no, my selfishness and impatience had deprived us both of this for too long.
I would do my best to start to make it up to him now.
He moved back up my body and put an arm protectively across me, kissing the spot right under my ear.
I reached for him and took him in hand, feeling myself grow wetter at the feel of his hardness in my grasp. I had never wanted a man, anything about a man, the way I wanted him. I wanted to do everything with him, anything with him, I wanted to be the one to do everything he wanted. I think at the bottom of it all, my trust in him was so complete that I felt safer with him than I felt alone. He allowed me to think about things I never dared think about alone.
My mind was racing with all these thoughts. Thoughts I hadn’t allowed into my mind in years.
“Come here,” I managed to say, and he paused, then moved over so I could take him in my mouth. Another thing I’d never wanted from another man. But this one, I wanted everything. I wanted to taste everything. Everything about him made me want more. It had always been that way. It wasn’t intellectual, I hadn’t made a decision to want him or imagined him to be a superhero of some sort. I knew exactly who he was—that had been part of the problem, hadn’t it?—but when we got close to each other, there was no controlling the physical attraction.
Tonight I knew I could not get enough.
He knelt beside me while I turned on my side and sucked him, bracing my hand on his leg, which was ripped with hard muscle. But his touch on my side was soft. He pressed hard into my mouth. I ran my tongue across him, hoping to make what was already hard into something he couldn’t bear. I reached out and we twined fingers for a moment.
Camaraderie, it felt like.
In this together.
His breath grew labored and he drew back out of my mouth and moved over on top of me.