Vulnerable (7 page)

Leisurely, she browsed through the café-bookstore, her sullen mood not yet lifted. She could easily go for some Chunky Monkey right about now and not even feel a pang of guilt. Yet she was not so low that she did not have the willpower to talk herself down. When D'Becca felt lack—of love, of attention, of compassion—food or shopping was her cure. Standing in the center of the classy bookstore owned by Troy's ex-lover, she tried to recall exactly why she came. The magazine section was to her left, and she could grab
W, Elle, Vogue
and
George
since she was there. Along the wall, lined with magazines on every subject imaginable, two men were flipping through tech and sports magazines. When she passed them, D'Becca felt their eyes travel the length of her; and while she was in no way fazed by the attention she received, it felt kind of good that she managed to maintain some level of effect on men.

She reached for
Seattle
and stared at the cover. Sebastian Michaels,
the fifth richest man in Washington State, was on the cover. He had a year-round tan—not too dark, but darker than his natural skin tone. His salt-and-pepper hair made him look distinguished, and the suit he wore was most likely designed by his personal tailor in Italy. The cost of Michaels's yearly wardrobe could put, at the very least, a dent in India's rising poverty. D'Becca flipped through the magazine until she came to the article on the high-profile entrepreneur. Before she could start to peruse it, the bolder one of the two young men sharing the magazine section with her said, “Hello!” He held a race car magazine and an iced espresso drink, and wore a silly, immature grin. Right off, she detected that he was the type who took chances when it came to women solely because he had nothing to lose.

D'Becca took her time meeting his startling green eyes. “Hello,” she said, but barely looked up from the magazine.

He was
young
. Maybe twenty-six, if that.
I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I really am seriously not in the mood. The attention
he's
giving me doesn't make me feel any better about myself.
D'Becca replaced
Seattle
on the shelf and she could see the guy's lips start to form words—some corny, inexperienced, sad and pathetic line he used on every woman he tried too hard to pick up. She interrupted his generic introduction she had heard far too many times with, “Excuse me,” and walked around him.

Why am I in here?
Visibly bored, she started looking at titles displayed on a small table. She reached for a book and glanced over to the black guy from Café Neuf. He was toward the rear of the store at a picnic-style table stacked with “employee recommendations.” Curious, she watched him. Every time he picked up a book he read the blurbs on the back cover. She began to mimic his actions by picking up a book, pretending to be interested in the cover or the flap, and then replaced it and repeated the action
several times. When she looked back over to where Rawn was standing he was still there, taking a serious interest in the employee recommendations.

On impulse, she approached him holding several magazines in her arms like she did schoolbooks when she was a child. “It's you!”

“Excuse me.” Rawn frowned.

“You were mean to me. Remember? At Café Neuf?”

“Mean?” Rawn chuckled. He pretended to be vague about having seen her at Café Neuf a week or so back and replaced the book on the table. “So, you live around here?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“I do.”

“Are you into poetry?” D'Becca retrieved the book Rawn replaced on the table moments before.

“Actually, I've been trying to ease thirteen-year-olds into it. It's good to start early as possible with poetry. Besides, the Internet—if it's going in the direction I think that it is—it's only a matter of time before it will eventually change the way young people learn. The influence, and well…Poetry won't stand a chance if the Web changes the way we process information.”

“You're an idealist, I see. Poetry's a hard sell.”

Amused, Rawn replied, “It can be.” He watched her looking over a poem from a book by Browning. “Listen, I was about to go and have a coffee. You want to join me?”

“You aren't…Are you picking me up?”

He chuckled, and her insinuation made Rawn feel awkward. “I asked if you'd like to join me for coffee.”

“I came here to get a book for a friend. Why don't I join you afterwards?”

“Okay, sure,” his tone casual.

D'Becca walked around him, flipping her hair off her slender
neck, throwing him that same attitude she exhibited at Café Neuf—uppity and insecure.

Rawn sat at one of the tables in the bookstore's small attic café. He looked around to see if he could seek out D'Becca in the bookstore below, but he was unable to spot her.
Did she leave?
Thoughtlessly, he glanced at his watch, and his waiting for D'Becca felt much longer than it naturally was. Out of the blue, she appeared at the table, and came across in a way that suggested to Rawn she had looked all over to find him.

“There you are,” she said in a cavalier voice.

She sat in the accompanying seat and placed a bookstore bag on the table and her oversized bag on the striking maple hardwood floor.

“What did you buy?”

“An Oprah book. A friend in Deauville is into books she chooses for her book club, and I send her the ones she isn't able to get her hands on. It's amazing!”

“What's that?”

“The Oprah Winfrey phenomenon. She can share her ‘favorite things' and the Zeitgeist trusts her judgment and they go out in droves and buy a favorite
thing
. How do we ever really know if we sincerely like something, or if we're swayed by an invisible force to go along with it?” D'Becca sighed. “I don't know your name.”

“Rawn.”

“D'Becca.”

“That's different.”

“What's different?”

“Your name.”

D'Becca avoided Rawn's warm and sensual eyes, making every effort not to display even a nominal degree of intrigue.

“What did you want?” And he added, “I'm buying,” out of respect.

“I'm taking a risk. Surprise me.”

When Rawn left the table, D'Becca could not resist checking him out.
This guy is dangerous. I'm not in a good place. This is trouble.
She tried to distract herself by looking at her watch even though she made note of the time while climbing the wide-planked stairs that led to the café. Occasionally she looked over at Rawn at the bar talking to the barista preparing the beverage. D'Becca admired her French-manicured nails so as to prevent from looking over to Rawn being cordial, if not reverential, to the teen-something barista. D'Becca smiled secretly; some part of her was reacting to how attentive and friendly he was to the young café worker while she flirted in that not-really-experienced sort of way.

He returned with the tea served in a small porcelain teacup and sat with a private look on his face. Apparently the barista said something to him and he was embarrassed for her, or amused.

D'Becca took her first sip of the tea. “If we could taste paradise, this could be it. Good choice.” Her full mouth spread subtly.

“I'm sure you've heard it before, but you have a—your smile pops!”

“Pops?” She chuckled, looking directly into her cup of tea. Her voice blasé-like, she said, “Thank you.”

“You don't look like someone who lives on Crescent Island.”

“How is someone supposed to look who does live on Crescent Island?”

“Do you own a pair of Birkenstocks?”

With a hearty laugh, she exclaimed, “Hell no!”

“Enough said!”

“Well, do you own a pair? Because it's not like you—your energy doesn't
feel
like someone who's from the Pacific Northwest.”

“That's not because I'm black, right?”

“Of course not. You're…you have a look, a feel. Classic comes to mind.”
D'Becca scanned the six-table café. “You see that guy?” she said. “Over there,” she directed with her chin. Rawn followed D'Becca's gesture. “He
feels
like he belongs in the Pacific Northwest. And he has that nerdiness, L.L. Bean thing going on.”

“Yeah…”

The young man, with an early thirties look about him, sat across the small attic-style room and Rawn could only see his tight dirty-blond curls; his upper body was hidden behind a laptop. His table was cluttered with a coffee mug, an already-read
Wall Street Journal,
an empty plate, and several books on a variety of subjects that he had not yet purchased piled in a chair.

“He probably made his first million at Microsoft, retired and is trying to decide exactly what he wants to do now.”

“I know someone who retired from Microsoft last year. He's thirty-five. He's in Dubai right now, and he's—he has private jet money. So,” she said, and took a small sip of her vanilla mint tea. “What should I be looking like?”

“There are no women to compare you to.”

She glanced over at the order counter. “Not the barista?”

Rawn checked out the barista reading
The Stranger,
her elbows resting on the counter. “She's got that Capitol Hill look about her—tatts and piercings.”

“Why are you here?”

“You mean on Crescent Island? Teaching brought me here.”

“Ah, there's the connection: Easing thirteen-year-olds into poetry.”

“When I visited Gumble-Wesley Academy–it's where I teach…I liked it and decided to get a place on the island instead of in Seattle.” Rawn leaned his forearms on the edge of the table. “What about you?”

“That's a long story. It's complicated. It's crowded. It's sad. But I'm trying to learn not to be so hard on myself.”

“You make it sound like your life is like a Jane Austen novel. Everyone has a story that has a range of things we didn't expect.”

“True.” She looked into his magnetic eyes and could not bear to hold them for long. “Sages and mystics—they claim but for the complicated and the sad, one cannot have a life worth talking about. It makes sense, but in theory. In the real world…”

“What exactly has happened in your life? What, are you like a walking wounded?”

“No, I'm not a
walking wounded,
but each of us has
some
…regret?”

“Regret? Sure,” said Rawn, his eyes resting on his cup on the table. “But I suppose I haven't lived long enough to know what it's like to hold on to it.”

“Well, perhaps not. It's coming. What are you, twenty-nine?”

“Thirty-three,” he corrected her. “And with a birthday on the way. You don't look like you've lived long enough to have that much regret.”

“How old do you think I am?” she asked.

“Oh no, I miscalculated once. Never again.”

D'Becca was the type who never felt the need to lie about her age. Over the years, she met a number of women whom she believed were self-conscious about aging, which meant they struggled with the woman they had become. She never got that, and she always hoped that as she aged she would feel even better about herself. Although desperate to live this beautiful life she had long imagined as a child, even back when she was naïve and insanely insecure, D'Becca not once fibbed about her age. “Thirty-seven, and with a birthday on the way.”

“Thirty-seven?”

“Thirty-seven and some change, yes.”

“And when's your birthday?”

“December.”

“Okay, I know my mother would think this is rude…”

“No, no Botox or facelifts or Restylane. But…yes, my lips. Collagen. And I confess it's because so many other women in my line of work, and actresses, do it. It's the one thing I felt I had to give in to.” She was forthright.

His eyes fell onto her hands, wrapped around the small teacup. “You look…nice,” he felt obliged to tell her.

Solemn, she thanked him. D'Becca lowered her eyes since his rested on hers longer than she felt at ease with. “This is really good tea, by the way.”

“I think you said that already.”

“Oh, I did, didn't I.” D'Becca was on the verge of feeling—this guy was a little too…He was starting to make her feel much too self-conscious, something D'Becca had not felt in a long while.

“Are you through here?”

“You mean in the bookstore?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Why?”

They walked through city centre where a variety of shops dominated the quaint streets near the pier and landed a stone's throw from, what the locals loosely referred to it as, “the centre.” The streets leading into Rawn's neighborhood, between the pier and the centre, were wide-laned and tree-lined. The homes, built close to one another, were modest but charming, unlike the homes in D'Becca's neighborhood, Crescent Hills, on the opposite side of the centre. The real estate was pricy, and pseudo-baroque with meticulously manicured lawns that were so perfectly green they looked synthetic. Where D'Becca resided, each address in the rolling neighborhood had luxury vehicles parked behind gated driveways. Conversely, street parking was the norm in Rawn's neighborhood, because many of the dwellings had no off-street parking.

“I've always liked this side of Crescent Island. It's attractive,” D'Becca said.

“What? As opposed to Crescent Hills?”

“The real charm is west of the centre. Expensive real estate doesn't necessarily mean charm.”

“Why are you living on Crescent Island? Why not live in the city? Seattle has some really great neighborhoods.”

“When I was working in Paris and Milan, I dreamed of coming home—back to the States—and living in a place that was unspoiled. A well-kept secret. I couldn't believe it when my dream came true. I mean it was here all this time and I didn't even know it. I'd heard about Crescent Island—the forgotten island—but never came over here. A few years back I had this large, really great apartment on Queen Anne Hill. I loved it, and not because it was also rent-controlled. It had one of those not-so-easy-to-come-by Seattle views—Lake Union from one window, and the Needle from another. Yet I wanted to be tucked away. Like so away from anything remotely urban.”