Random (Going the Distance) (21 page)

“Yeah,” he says fiercely. “Yeah, it was. My dad is a big skier, and he saw that I had talent early. We used to go together all the time, and he was the one who pushed it, got me the right instructors, all that. I was five when I started. Fell in love.”

“So then what? Your mom didn’t like it?”

“Oh, she loved it. They both loved it when we excelled at anything. Kate, she’s a genius at math, took all the honors in that realm. She also rules at dressage.”

“Is that horses?”

He nods.

“What about your other siblings? Do you have any brothers?”

“Nope.” He twines my hair around his fingers. One of his arms is raised to cradle his head, showing the dark blond hair in his armpit, and something about it makes me feel aroused all over again. “That’s kind of the problem.”

“You’re the heir.”

“Yeah.”

I smile, thinking of how I’d imagined him a prince of some northern realm. Funny that it’s kind of true. “What about the others?

“Jane’s the oldest, then Temple, then me. After me is Kate.”

“That’s three. What about sister number four?”

He looks at me. His eyes are such a wild color that it’s hard to even look at him. “Ann was the youngest. She died.”

My heart goes still. “I’m sorry.”

“In another family, she would have been fine. In ours, she self-destructed. Her big thing was Paris, you know? She loved it. She was fluent in French, the language, the literature. When she was fourteen she fell in love with this loser in Aspen over the winter holiday. She got pregnant and had to have an abortion.” His voice cracks. “The guy was fucking thirty years old. She was fourteen. My parents broke up the relationship and then took everybody else to Paris, while she was sent back to Philly to suffer.”

I bury my head in his chest. “I hate this story.”

“The guy ended up going out with Ann’s best friend, which the bitch was more than happy to let Ann know about, and she gathered all the pills in the house and downed them with a bottle of my dad’s best Scotch. The maid found her in his office the next morning.”

“That’s terrible, Tyler.” I press my cheek into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“When did that happen?”

“Five years ago. I was twenty, in the big fuck-up time, and when I heard about it I, uh, kinda lost it. It was a dark time.”

“Lost it?”

Just then a siren goes off. Electrifying. “What is that?”

“Flood warning. Let’s get dressed.”

“What do we do after that?”

“Nothing, really.” He stands up and tosses me my shirt. “This house is pretty high. Should be okay.”

I gather up my clothes and head for the bathroom, where I can wash up a little and comb my hair. When I emerge he calls from the kitchen, “Come look. It’s like a river.”

He’s standing at the windows that face down to Manitou, and there below us is a street filled with black, fast-moving water. It spills over the curbs onto the lawns, rising to the level of the windshields of the cars, clear up to the porches. “Oh, my God.”

“That’s what the signs are warning about.” He pulls me close to him, my back against his chest. “That’s a hell of a lot of water.”

“That’s all because of the fire?”

“Yeah. There’s a canyon to the west of the city, and there’s no vegetation there now to stop the water.”

“Can’t they do something to redirect it?”

“I don’t know. I think they’re trying all kinds of things, but—” He shrugs.

“I know. It was a big fire.” We watch the water pouring down the street. The fire last summer was unsettling for the whole city, burning for a week right where you could see it, the smoke pouring through the air all day long, all night long, ashes falling on cars and drifting through the air, and then one night the flames poured over the top of the mountains and spilled into the city and ate a bunch of houses, like a dragon. Another fire, even bigger, burned just a few weeks ago in a forest just north of the city, but it wasn’t as unsettling somehow as seeing fire pouring over the top of the mountains.

Now this. “Is this the first time it’s flooded here?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes there’s water in the street, but not like this.”

I turn to look at him. “Are you safe?”

He rubs my arms. “If you could see this from the air, you’d see that my house is on the top of a hill that’s about three blocks from the canyon. I’m safe, I promise.”

The rain has moved on—we can see the gray sheets over Colorado Springs, moving east. “Could you see the Black Forest fire from here?”

“Yeah. I had a great view.” He moves to the back, where the doors open onto the wide wooden deck, and points. “The big hospital is right over there. You can see it when it isn’t raining. The fire was right there.”

I nod.

“Do the fires bother you?”

“No.” I look up at the top of the mountain behind us. “I’m sad that animals get hurt, but I read that the aspen need fire for their seeds to open. And Ponderosa pines can be burned up to 70% or something like that and still recover.”

He smiles and kisses me. “Good. C’mon, let’s get some food and sit out on the deck. I’ll get some towels and dry off the chairs.”

“I might need a sweater.”

I help him set up the deck, and then he fetches a sweater from the closet—it’s one of his and too big, but it smells of him, of pine trees and snow, and I love having it around me.

Dinner is a full meal, beef stroganoff with noodles. “You made this from scratch?”

He laughs. “It’s not a challenging dish.”

“I’ve never gone out with a guy who can cook. I like it a lot.”

“Stick with me, kid. I’m a man of many talents.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So I see!”

Outside, with the view of the departing rain in front of us and the sound of the rushing water to our right, we feast on beef stroganoff, and it’s one of the best things I’ve had in ages. The meat is tender, swimming in a gravy that’s not too thick or heavy, and the noodles swirl around gathering up flavor. “I need to learn to be a better cook,” I say.

“I can teach you.”

“Will you? I’d like that.” I take my time layering meat and noodles, then make sure my fork has exactly the right balance. “I only know how to cook a few things. My mom was starting to teach me when she died. And I’ve thought lately that maybe she wasn’t the best cook in the world.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Like, her idea of cooking was to open a box or cook a frozen pizza. She worked, so she didn’t really have that much time.”

“What did she do?”

“She worked in an auto parts store. A clerk. But the hours were long.”

A bird starts to whistle in a pine tree, as if to announce the storm is over. I feel absolutely peaceful and content right this second, and I wish I could stay here in this moment for a long time. “Hey, that woman Lena, at the Spoon? How long were you guys together?”

His eyes flicker down and away from me. One shoulder lifts in a quick shrug. “I dunno. Six months, maybe?”

Is he hiding something? “How long ago?”

“A while now. But she took the breakup kind of hard.”

“A while meaning…?”

He purses his mouth and all it makes me want to do is kiss him. “We broke up around Easter, so what’s that? Three months ago, maybe?”

“Oh.” I sigh in relief. “Did you know she’d be pissed off if I came in? As your…like…girlfriend?”

“Yeah. But when I told you to apply, we weren’t seeing each other, were we?” His blue eyes are dark in the silvery post-rain light. “I’d only just met you.”

I scowl at him. “You
are
a ladies man, aren’t you?”

He puts his napkin on the table and takes my hands. “Correction. I
was
a ladies man.” He lifts my hands to his mouth and kisses each palm in turn. “I swear, Jess, you are different. Everything about this feels different.”

The slope of his nose and the angles of his cheekbones charm me. His eyelashes make him look like a child. His mouth is like a painting, and I want to kiss it for a thousand years.

And it’s not just the way he looks. He is thoughtful and full of ideas and energy and talent. I can tell he’s had a rough road in some ways, maybe made some mistakes, but there’s something good and true and real at the heart of him.

He is earnestly holding my hands. His eyes are clear and asking for my trust.

I will keep one little part of my heart close and safe, but for now, I’m giving him the rest. “This feels kind of big to me, and I’m not as experienced as you.”

“Let’s just see where it goes, okay? Without making trouble before we need to?”

I smile. “That’s not a bad idea.” I remember the Facebook message from my dad. “Oh! I told you that I emailed my real dad in New Zealand, right? He emailed me back! How amazing is that?”

He smiles. “Pretty amazing.”

“He wants to set up a Skype call. Do you have that on your computer?”

“Of course. Ask him for his details and you can do it from here.”

I’m finally finished with my supper, and line the fork and knife up on the plate. “I’m kind of nervous, actually.”

“I can understand that. How old were you when you left New Zealand?”

“Six, I think? Maybe seven.”

“Did you go to school there, then?”

“Sure. And I used to know a lot of Maori words, like all the colors and numbers. I’ve forgotten them now.”

His finger trails along my arm. His eyes with their dark lashes are on my face, focused. “That’s really cool. Do you remember anything?”

I think about the little classroom opening onto a green lawn. Trees. Water in the distance. “Water everywhere.” And unbidden comes a handful of words: “
Awa
,” I say and feel like a different voice is saying it. “That’s a river.
Whanga
is a bay.” I touch my nose, neck, arm. “
Ilu, kaki, ringa.
”

“Your whole face changes when you say those words.”

“Really?”

“You must’ve been adorable when you were six, with your New Zealand accent in your American school.”

He inclines his head, lowers his lids and peers up through the slits as if he’s framing me. “Hmm,” he says, and stands up. “C’mon. Let me show you my paintings.”

Chapter EIGHTEEN

I
’m nervous as he leads the way into the studio. The light is cool and moody still, coming in through the bank of windows. The bed is neatly made, which is somehow reassuring.

“Okay.” He stands by a stack of paintings against the windowless wall. He’s barefooted below his jeans, wearing only a plain blue t-shirt, his hair slightly tousled, and I can see the vulnerability on his face. He’s never been more beautiful to me than he is right now, both eager and afraid. My heart is pounding, too, and I put my hand on it, wondering what I’m so worried about.

“Remember, I didn’t start painting at all until I was twenty-one. Like, never an art class of any kind, no drawing or sketching in my free time. All I ever did was snowboard.”

“Ok.”

He turns the first painting, and then another and another and another, going down the line to reveal the subjects in a hurry, seven, then twelve, then sixteen. There are young faces and old, male and female, most in underwear or nothing much at all, but it’s not about nudity or sexuality. The eyes are exaggeratedly large in all of them, and in some other features are bigger, too, like ears or the crooked teeth of a teenage boy wearing boxer shorts and a knit cap with tassels hanging down around his neck.

A puff of wonder leaves my lips. Stepping forward, I admire one, then another. A middle-aged man with a chef’s apron over his bare tattooed chest and enormous, exhausted eyes, a cigarette burning in his right hand. It makes me think of being poor and working too hard. The next is another middle-aged man with perfect hair and eyes as hard as diamonds. “Is this your father?”

Tyler frowns. “How did you know that?”

“I don’t know.” I look back at the face. “Cruel mouth, expensive haircut. And he kind of has the same color eyes you do.”

He nods. His arms are crossed over his chest as he watches me.

I had been afraid that they would be terrible, so terrible that even
I
would realize it, and then I’d be embarrassed for him and worried about what to say. But they’re
not
terrible. They’re really, really good. I pause in front of one of a woman—my age, maybe—wearing a swimsuit. Her breasts and lips are exaggerated here, like balloons. Her eyes are filled with tears. “Tyler.” My voice is as hushed as if I’m in a church. “These are amazing.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. Look at him. “Really amazing.” I point. “I love what you’re doing with the idea of nakedness. Revelation?”

“Yes!” He steps forward, eager now, and points out details in several of them. “I was so proud of this, the way her hands look.” Another. “And the ears here. Listening, get it?”

“I do.”

There are still some facing the wall. “Are those in progress or something?”

“Uh.” He makes a little noise. “No.” Turning to look at me, he takes my hand. “I’ve been trying to decide whether I should show them to you or not.”

“Old lover?”

A nod. “Lena.” He raises one finger. “It’s not that I think you’ll be mad. It’s that maybe it isn’t fair to her to show you what I saw in her.” He pauses, his eyes very serious. “Does that make any sense?”

I close my eyes, and in answer sway forward and kiss him. Maybe I’m a fool, but it seems an example of honor and kindness. “Yes,” I whisper against his soft lips. “Yes, very much so.”

His hand rests on the small of my back. “Thank you.”

We skip past the portraits of Lena. One of the last is a self-portrait, Tyler from the back, naked, his body circled with scars like a snake that’s squeezing him to death. His head is turned toward over his shoulder, eyes lost and vacant, one hand reaching. It knocks the air out of my lungs. He says nothing as I absorb it. A dozen responses run through my head, but they all sound trite or pat. It scares me at little, seeing that he feels so lost. “When did you paint this?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“You aren’t your scars.”

“That,” he says, “is entirely a matter of perspective.”