Personal Geography (17 page)

“What exactly about violating my privacy is
funny
to you?” The rage that had been smothered by a perfectly reasonable explanation reignites. Fury rips through me like wildfire.

“Absolutely nothing. Nothing about that is funny to me, and if I’d thought it through, I never would’ve done it. I apologize. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

His regret is doing little to soothe me. Before I can snap at him again, he says, “Please, Kit. It was stupid and impulsive. I can’t stand the idea we might end this way. Please. Come this weekend like you were planning to. We’ll talk—same rules as always. If you don’t want to stay after that, we won’t sign the contract. You’ll go home. I won’t bother you again. But you can’t tell me you weren’t looking forward to it. You were going to let me pick you up. I’ll fly Matty out myself if you don’t want to do that anymore, but don’t toss this whole thing because I couldn’t resist picking up the phone. Haven’t I earned that? Another chance? I’m cashing in my royal fuck-up card. I don’t expect another one. Please.”

I want to go. I’d hang up and get on a plane now if I could or teleport if it had been invented. To have his hands on me… I mash my palm into my forehead. Which would be dumber? Issuing an engraved invitation to betray my trust again? Or depriving myself of this man because he made a mistake? The second man I’ve ever…

No, don’t even go there.
That
would be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. You like Cris. You’re fond of him. He’s smart and funny and thoughtful, sexy as hell, and the sex is…perfect. But the L-word? Oh, hell no. You don’t L-word people
.

“Okay.”

“Do you want Matty to come?”

“No.”

If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it all the way. Besides, I was looking forward to Cris pulling up to the curb in his beat-up Jeep and having an extra hour with him. Not that I would’ve copped to that before and I certainly won’t now.

“Okay. I’ll see you Friday, eleven, at the airport.”

“Okay.”

“I really am sorry, Kit. Thank you for giving me another shot. I’ll make it up to you.”

I shake my head and grind the heel of my hand into my brow. “Don’t make up for it. Just…just don’t fuck up again.”

“I won’t, pet.”

Please, Cris, don’t.
I will break into a million, tiny, fucked-up pieces, and Rey will be stuck gluing the fragments back together. Again.

“Okay,” I mutter one last time, not waiting for him to say anything else. I hang up and bang my head against the desk.

‡

I
t’s sunny and
warm as I step out the doors and scan the drive. Locating the mossy green Jeep with the mop of dark hair in the driver’s seat doesn’t take long. I head toward him, clutching my bag, knuckles white around the leather handles. Why did I agree to this? But when he lopes over to greet me, I remember. It’s because some of the tension that’s been choking me for the past several days melts when I see his face.

He stops a few feet in front of me, and before things can get super-awkward, I blurt out, “Hi.”

“Thank you for coming. You look nice.”

“Thanks.” I find it difficult to accept compliments, even though I know the bright red sundress I changed into is more than flattering. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

He doesn’t. He looks delicious in a sage T-shirt, dark grey shorts, and his de rigueur flip-flops. His hair is mussed more than usual from the ride, his eyes wide with caution. He cracks a crooked grin. “Change your mind yet?”

I scowl to cover up my answering smile. “No.”

“Good. Can I take your bag?”

He slings it into the back of the Jeep and opens my door, offering me a hand up. When he turns the key in the ignition, a song I recognize comes on. “High and Dry.” He pulls out into traffic, and the Jeep melts into the trickle of cars leaving the terminal.

“Radiohead’s one of my favorites.”

I glance sideways at him, suspicious, but he’s too focused on the road, aviators glinting in the sun, to look back. When the song ends and “Daughter” comes on, I allow myself a small smile.

“Pearl Jam, too?”

“Yep.”

Cris has made this mix for me. Or, at the very least, has put it in on purpose. A CD of his favorite bands: Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots. It plays in the background as he’s telling me about growing up in Kona and about his parents, Malcolm (who everyone calls Mal) and Mary. They’ve been happily married for forty-two years. His dad had polio as a kid and recovered, but in his mid-thirties, he started having problems with fatigue and muscle weakness and it’s gotten steadily worse since then. I remember Cris telling me the first time we met that his father’s not in good health. This must be what he meant.

When we get to his house, he keeps up his autobiography. He was a reckless adolescent, but when he wasn’t too busy fucking around, he managed good enough grades to get him into Stanford. While he was there, he double majored in English and political science, dabbled in the art studio, and got a master’s in journalism. He wanted to work for the AP in some far-flung and preferably dangerous corner of the earth, but his dad had gotten worse so he came home and never left. Small-town news didn’t interest him much, but he’d worked on the Stanford paper and had done some cartoons, so he started freelancing. He landed some regular gigs, and that’s what he’s done ever since.

“It’s nice to have flexible hours, and I can work from pretty much anywhere there’s an Internet connection. The money’s not great, but what do you expect for being a smart ass who draws stick figures?” He smirks and scarfs down another bite of quinoa salad.

If I ever meet Cris’s dad, I’ll get down on my knees and thank him for showing his son around the kitchen. Cris has never made me anything less than scrumptious.

What are you, receiving a telegram from the Mayor of Crazy Town, Burke? You’re never going to meet Cris’s parents.

I want to tell him not to be so self-deprecating. He’s very clever, and sometimes it’s only the court jester who can get away with pointing out hypocrisy and injustice without being beheaded. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I wanted to tip the scales back. I don’t want you feeling bad about me knowing anything about you. When we first started playing our little game, I would’ve answered a dozen questions to your one. I just wanted to talk to you. You’re fascinating. I knew you weren’t keen on sharing, but I had no idea…

“Anyway, you can ask me anything you want this weekend, no trade necessary. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Nothing’s off-limits. I’d erase what I found from my brain if I could, but since that’s not an option, this is the next best thing I could come up with. Whatever it takes to make you feel better about this, Kit, it’s yours.”

Whoa. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Aren’t you worried about what I could do to you? You said it yourself. I’m not the only one who values my privacy.”

“No.” He leans back in his chair, fingers threaded across his abdomen. He looks calm, collected. If I’d promised myself to someone like that… That’s moot. It’d never happen. “You’re not going to wreck me. Even though I screwed up and you’ve got a temper on you, you wouldn’t. I get the feeling you know a little too well what that’s like—”

I freeze, my body preparing for flight. I know exactly what that’s like.
Get your too-talented fingers out of my brain, Cris Ardmore.

“—and you wouldn’t do that to anybody else. No matter how pissed off you were. It’s not your style.”

If I don’t get some relief, I’m going to suffocate from the tension constricting my lungs. Memories of my parents, of Hunter, are crashing over me, and I have to stop the flood somehow. I’m torn. Half of me wants to run all the way back to the airport, but the other half is desperate for Cris to unwind this godforsaken coil before it gets wound any tighter. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“Okay.”

But I can’t leave, either, so I dig the contracts out of my bag and thrust them at him with a pen. Even in my scattered state, I’m the model of efficiency.

Cris signs them after a cursory glance. “Mr. Walter is expecting a copy?”

“Yes, sir. I was going to send him pictures from my phone.”

“I’ll do you one better. Come, pet.”

Sweet relief.
Pet
. This I can handle. There’s no hesitation when he offers me his hand. I take it on reflex, and it reinforces the possibility that all will someday be right with the world. He guides me toward the door to the studio, and I’m surprised. This isn’t standard operating procedure. Then he veers off toward the door that leads to his room, and I stop in my tracks. Surprised doesn’t cover this.

“I have a scanner in my office.”

Oh.

“And I thought you might like to see my room.”

Oh.
He’d said
anything
, but I haven’t asked for this. I wouldn’t.

“Have your other subs been in your room?”

“A few of them.”

“To sleep with you?”

“No. Well, once. For…emotional reasons.”

I frown, although I’m not sure why. Why should I care if
all
of Cris’s subs had slept in his room? In his bed?

“Her sister died unexpectedly,” he clarifies. “She found out in the middle of the night, and she came to me.”

The picture of a teary, distraught woman being cuddled and consoled by Cris is at once heart-warming—he’d be a port in the storm, a solid lifeboat you could grieve in while the seas raged around you—and heart-rending. To be held safe in his arms while my humanity is most fully on display is something I’ll never get to have, and that ugly, unfamiliar feeling rears its rangy head. Jealousy. Is this what it feels like for everyone? How do people live like this?

His thick eyebrows crease, measuring my response. “Is this okay?”

I’m about to cross a line, but it feels more like attempting to cross the Grand Canyon on a tight rope. I can step across this threshold and become something more (or less?) than a sub to Cris in recompense for him shredding my veil of anonymity. Do I want this? This…intimacy?

“Yes.”

He guides me down the hallway like I’m being led to the executioner. Or maybe down the aisle. I’m not sure which prospect is more horrifying. He opens the door to a room that’s larger than my room or the studio, but smaller than the main house and divided in half by wood screens.

The half closest to me has a low shelf running against one wall with a brace of monitors—TV and computer—and a desk with nothing on it in front of it. Odd.

“Doesn’t look like that by the end of the day,” he volunteers, “but I like to start fresh.”

On the other side of his office, there’s a table crowded with high-end tech: a fancy printer, the promised scanner, and some things I don’t recognize. The table’s surrounded by shelves full of the tools of his trade: stacks of paper, pencils, pens, inks, brushes. And books. Always more books. What’s got my attention, though, are the walls. They’re covered with clippings: news stories, maps, photos, comics—a few his, most not. The thoughts and work of a lifetime accumulated on the walls of this room in the middle of paradise.

He gives me a few minutes to look around before taking my hand and steering me between the screens to where he sleeps. There’s a simple, low, platform bed against one wall, covered with a navy duvet; on either side are stacks of books in place of nightstands. The rest of the room is spare, a dresser the only other furniture and a few doors cracked open to reveal a closet and a bathroom. Utilitarian but comfortable. He’s spent the personal touches elsewhere, and I’m guessing doesn’t spend much time in here aside from sleep.

I remember he’s still holding my hand when he squeezes. “Ready?”

It’s a few seconds before I gather myself and slip back into Kit’s skin, which I shouldn’t have shed in the first place. Whether or not we’ve sent the contract to Rey, I’ve still signed it, so a hurried “yes, sir,” it is. This switching is difficult; I’m going to get whiplash. I’m relieved when Cris scans the contract and shoos me off to my room, telling me to be in the studio in twenty minutes.

*