Adelaide Confused (3 page)

She waltzed right up to his
car, but for all her bravado, I could feel an anxiety she didn’t
often carry around men. “Mr. Wallace? Oh hello, I thought that was
you. We met here last summer, but I doubt you’ll remember me.
Francesca Black,” she prompted.

He turned and quite
literally took my breath away. He wasn’t generically handsome like
a catalogue model. He was striking, unforgettable. He had light
skin that seemed smooth as marble, and a contrasting shock of dark
hair. Pale, icy eyes framed in black lashes sat stark among his
various sharp features.

He wore nothing more than a
T-shirt and jeans, his tall, toned body fitting them well. I didn’t
believe he was everything she described. Real estate tycoon?
Doubtful. He didn’t look much over thirty.

“
You don’t strike me as the
type of woman men forget easily,” he said. It was the type of line
that made me want to roll my eyes. But then he smiled, and I wanted
him to love me too.

Francesca tittered. “I’ll
make sure you remember me the next time we meet.” She was wafting
her enthrallment at me, at least I suspected it was hers.
Suspicious, I turned to Stephen. He seemed to be in a trance,
staring mutely at Reed Wallace. With all of our emotions mixing I
was having trouble distinguishing my own.

“
Do the three of you come
to the club often?” He glanced past Francesca, his eyes shifting
from Stephen to me. When his attention focused on me, for that
moment the world went quiet. I noticed his scent, his movements,
his voice, each pulling me in, making me want to please
him.

His attention shifted back
to Francesca when she spoke. “This is Adelaide Graves and our
friend Stephen, they’re dropping me off. I’m having dinner at the
club tonight.” Her needy desperation was becoming obvious, it made
me uncomfortable. The whole situation made me uncomfortable. But
then he looked at me again and I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want
the conversation to end.

Reed Wallace reached out to
shake Stephen’s hand, then mine. I was happy when he touched my
hand, when he smiled at me. But the moment split and shattered when
I felt a creeping boredom.

His lack of interest cut at
me. But like so many times before, I shook it off, pulling my hand
from his grasp abruptly before looking away. The last few minutes
had felt like being dunked in a pool of warm and bubbly champagne.
But feeling his boredom had changed things. My warm fuzzies had
vanished, leaving behind a chill.

Reed was confused by my
reaction, but didn’t let it show. “I suggest you try the crème
brulee,” he said to Francesca. “It seems to get better here each
time I taste it.”

“
A girl only orders dessert
if she wants to prolong the date, so I can’t make any promises
yet.”

He laughed, she laughed,
and Stephen watched spellbound. The whole thing seemed strange, my
reaction, Stephen’s. Francesca had redefined the concept of playing
hard to get, but here she was behaving like a needy
puppy.

“
I’m leaving,” I
interjected. Catching Francesca’s eye I added, “If you want those
carpets I suggest you don’t keep Brock waiting.” I grabbed Stephen
by the sleeve and hauled him away with me.

I’d already installed him in the passenger
seat and was about to get in the car myself when I heard the beat
of approaching feet. I felt his curious interest before I even saw
him. He was feeling incomplete, like he needed something, no, more
like he wanted something.

I turned, door in hand, a
foot resting on the floorboards. Francesca had walked toward the
club entrance, but was now stopped, rooted in place watching. I
didn’t need to be an empath to know she was jealous.

Reed Wallace stopped a pace
or two away and gave me a winning smile. “You left so abruptly, I
just wanted to be sure I hadn’t said something to offend
you.”

I didn’t know what he was
fishing for. I thought silence might irritate him most, but I felt
like ripping him a new one, so I went in the direction that made me
feel best. “That’s a bit pretentious, thinking you have the power
to offend me when we only met moments ago.” Pretentious but true,
he had put me off. The whole introduction had been strange and
unsettling, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

He raised both hands, a
helpless gesture meant to appease me. But my response had only
increased the curious interest that drove him—to what, I wasn’t
sure. “You’re right, forgive this pompous ass,” he
joked.

I gave him an empty smile
while sinking down into the bucket seat and shutting the door on
him.

Stephen told me I’d been
unnecessarily rude, and even more rude than usual. I told Stephen
he had a man-crush, and that Wolverine would be jealous. He gave up
speaking to me after that. I could tell he was thinking of
Francesca since I was feeling extremely lustful.

My own emotions were felt
and experienced the same way as everyone else’s. So I had to be
logical, often evaluating myself through questions. Did I have
something to feel sad about? Was there a reason I should be
excited? A reason to be aroused? If the answer was no, like it was
then, then I assumed I was picking up feelings that were not my
own.

Yes, feeling the longing
and attraction of another person was extremely uncomfortable. And
stewing in the car with a horny teenage boy was not my favorite
pastime. The only thing that made it bearable was that he didn’t
know—and would never know—that I was invading his privacy that
way.

I parked the car and waited
while Stephen collected his backpack. The porch light was on and I
caught a glimpse of his mother pacing behind the screen
door.

“Thanks for letting me tag along.”

“
It’s no pro—” A blurry
white haze formed in my peripheral vision, costing me my train of
thought. I turned and searched the dark corner of his home,
wondering if I’d imagined it.

He looked to where I was
squinting. “What? What is it?”

I shook my head. “Nothing I
guess.”

I woke up around nine the
next day, sleeping more than the needed eight hours. Peaceful sleep
hadn’t always come easy for me. I’d continued sharing a room with
my sisters after the accident, a mistake, though at the time I
didn’t know it.

Emotions weren’t reserved
for the waking hours. Dreaming was said to be the process by which
our minds organized themselves, absorbing or flushing away
countless thoughts, images, and emotions.

REM was the period of sleep
when we did our dreaming, and I was often stuck there. My emotions
and those I had caught off my sleeping sisters were supplied with
stories, the brain’s explanation. I woke to bizarre dreams, feeling
afraid, angry, or elated. I had felt it all. But always I woke,
unable to reach a deep and restful state.

This was about the time my
mother was becoming desperate to fix me. She tried therapy,
counseling, more therapy, pills, pills, hypnosis, meditation, and
more pills. For a while I was hooked on the drugs they gave me for
my insomnia.

Thanks to Ben I slept
peacefully now, drug free. When Mary died he moved into a yellow
trailer not far from the motel. Like all things that reminded him
of what he was missing, their old house was abandoned, closed off
and left unoccupied. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to sell it, to
move on.

He offered to let me rent
it after he realized I was having apartment troubles. Troubles
like: there weren’t many apartments on the island, they were
expensive, and I couldn’t stand being surrounded by
people.

That was my favorite thing
about the house, the location. It was a small and well developed
island, so isolating oneself was impossible. But I was about as
removed as you could get, living on a twisted back road with
outdated homes, often abandoned or just downright trashy. Oak trees
and bushes that smelled sweet, like honeysuckle, encroached on the
road, bugs sang, a dog barked... it was nice.

The house was a tiny square
of white wood siding set away from the street. A tin roof and red
brick chimney added to its charm. I occupied the only bedroom, a
loft that filled the sloping second story. Downstairs was simple as
well. The front half of the house was the living space, the back
half a kitchen overlooking the yard.

I spent the few free hours
I had before work puttering around, doing a few chores. I made a
grocery list. I took a stack of dirty laundry to the kitchen where
I had an upright washer and dryer stowed beneath the stairs. But it
wasn’t until I was wiping down the kitchen counters that I noticed
something was off.

I was whistling, whistling
while I worked. That was not my typical behavior so I surveyed
myself and noticed a faint pip, some sort of happy excitement. It
wasn’t like the excitement I usually felt, which was a naturally
strong emotion. It was so light and clean I’d almost missed
it.

I walked to the front of
the house. The feeling didn’t grow, but as I jogged up the stairs
it fizzled out. I was myself again. Confused, I went back
downstairs, wandering around the house while trying to gauge this
strangely familiar, yet odd, feeling.

I didn’t know how or why I
experienced what other people felt, but I was fairly certain there
wasn’t a convenient scientific explanation waiting for me. What
I
did
know
was that it was a lot like having a conversation. Most of the time
people walked around feeling indifferent, a sort of commonplace.
That was like silence—my sanity. Sometimes they would feel twinges,
small emotions which were like a whisper that I had to be standing
very close to catch. The opposite, the strong emotions people
usually felt when they laughed or cried were like a shout. I could
pick those up from far away.

I only had one neighbor
that lived close enough to give off emotions I might pick up, and
they’d have to be pretty strong at that. But I suspected he was
emotionally retarded (lucky for me) because I’d never felt a thing.
Not even once.

So I was half convinced the
excitement was my own. But logically I didn’t have a reason to be
merry; this was when I’d typically assume it wasn’t mine. But then
whose was it? I’d moved into this house shortly after coming to the
island at eighteen, and I’d lived here the six years since. Never
once in all that time did I feel something not my own. The house
was a haven, or it had been until that moment.

I looked out the front
windows hoping to see a child skipping down the street. Nope,
nothing, no one, quiet. I wandered to the kitchen, pushing aside
the lacy curtains to look out. Regretfully there was no trespasser,
no snooping salesman.

I squinted, trying to catch
a glimpse of my neighbor’s property. Our houses sat back to back,
the yards meeting with a sagging chain-link fence that the
shrubbery had nearly swallowed.

Emotionally everyone was
different, though I had noticed trends. In general, women were more
emotional than men. But like I said, everyone was different, some
more emotional than others. My neighbor was the least feeling man
I’d ever met—as in, no feelings.

Admittedly, I didn’t know
him well. It was possible that I would start feeling his emotions
if we spent time together, though the possibility that I might not
was more intriguing.

I opened the kitchen door
and stepped out into the overgrown and unkempt yard.

His name was Lucas Finch.
The only other thing I knew about him was that he was a mechanic
and owned a body shop in Brunswick. When I’d first moved in he’d
offered to cut my grass. I’d declined, but had since regretted the
decision as I lacked a green thumb... and a lawn mower. But it had
been a bad time, I’d just left home and my recovery had a rough
start. To say I was antisocial would be putting it
mildly.

Back then I hadn’t wanted
to see a face. I still didn’t like people much, but I had learned
to cope. With that in mind, I made my way to his property
line.

It wasn’t a matter of
simply climbing the fence. First I had to find a gap in the bushes.
And still there was a fight to push them aside, they scraped and
scratched at me. I nearly lost.

The fence gave a metallic
groan as I climbed aboard, and shuttered when I flopped off. The
first thing I noticed was how different our yards were. When I
walked through mine the grass tickled my calves, the trees and
bushes growing together, eating up the open space. His grass was
freshly cut, the bushes neatly trimmed to line the exterior, a glen
from a fairy tale.

The trees from my side hung
well into his. I wondered if he minded. Built around the same time,
our houses were nearly identical, though his was made entirely of
brick. I paused at the back door, realizing the emotion I’d been
tracking was gone.

I felt silly then, standing
there without a reason. The only logical explanation was that it
had been coming from him. Perhaps he’d won the lottery, or maybe he
was just helping himself to some afternoon delight. But now that
the feeling no longer lingered I began to doubt that he was even
home. A body shop didn’t run itself.

I turned to go, wondering
where the hell that feeling had come from, wondering if I was maybe
crazy.