“Oh, she’s just skating by,” Graham agreed. “How’s school?”
“It’s good,” I said, eyes trailing over the books lining my shelves. “There’s a new teacher in town, which I’m sure you’ve heard about.”
“I did! He called me after the night he had dinner with you guys at Mom and Dad’s. That’s so crazy that he’s back in Mount Lebanon.” Graham paused. “Never thought I’d see that day.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Is he… is he okay? I mean, does he seem any different? Since everything happened?”
There were so many loaded questions behind the ones he asked, and for the first time since I left school Friday afternoon, I was forced to think about the one person I was trying not to.
Avoiding Reese had been easy when I’d just stayed home from school, but once I was back, it was impossible. I could still close my eyes and feel his hand on my elbow, see his eyes begging mine not to push him away.
But I’d spent all weekend with Cameron, and then the rest of the week with myself, reconnecting and dissecting every single thought and feeling. All of that led back to the fact that I couldn’t be close with Reese — not without feeling like I was doing something wrong. Besides, Cameron and I had talked that Saturday morning after happy hour, had agreed to spend more time together and work on getting back to the way we used to be.
Before.
Graham asking me if Reese was okay almost made me laugh, because the answer was too complicated to convey in one word. The truth was, I wasn’t really sure if he was okay — with being back in Mount Lebanon, with the loss of his family, with starting his new job.
With me.
It felt dangerous to be his friend, and so I hadn’t been. I’d let him in just marginally before I’d slammed the door again, putting that wall between us.
“He seems fine,” I lied to my brother after a long pause. “You know Reese. He’s drowning half his sorrows in beer and cigarettes, the other half in long piano tutoring sessions after school.”
“A little different from the old way he used to drown sorrows at the piano,” Graham noted. “I was surprised when I talked to him that you hadn’t been over there to listen to him play at his place. You were always listening to him when we were younger.”
“I was a bored pre-teen,” I lied again. Each lie came easier than the first, it seemed. “But I have watched him after school a few times. He’s actually pretty good with the kids.”
“That’s just so weird to me. I can’t imagine my old best friend being a good influence on any kind of child.”
I chuckled. “It’s weird, for sure, but he does a great job.”
My stomach turned again at the thought of Reese. I realized I never asked him if he was okay after our night out last weekend, if he had any questions or thoughts plaguing him the way I did. But it didn’t seem safe to ask, as if I already knew the answer.
Distance. That was my solution to everything I’d felt since he came back into town.
Graham and I talked for over an hour, catching up on Christina’s dental practice as well as his new place of employment. He was a computer engineer, garnering his intelligence from Dad, no doubt. When he was in Pennsylvania, he’d worked for a private computer systems company, but now he was in a government position. Listening to him tell me the details of it made about as much sense as the time Cameron tried to give me a solid understanding of hockey, but it was nice just to hear about that part of his life.
We dived into Cameron a little, to school and the fundraiser coming up that Mom and Dad hosted every year. And just like every time I talked to my brother, time seemed to fly, never enough of it to talk about all we wanted to.
The sun had already set by the time I told Graham I should probably get started on dinner.
“Okay, sis,” he said, but there was a long pause after. “Are you alright? I mean, are you happy?”
My stomach knotted. “Of course. Why?”
There was a sigh. “No reason. I just… Reese asked me that the night we talked, and I couldn’t really answer. It’s been a long time since I asked you.”
My eyes flashed to the copy of Anna Karenina again, and I frowned. Reese had been so fixated on that since he’d come back into town — on my happiness. I realized then that I hadn’t even thought to ask about his.
“Well, I’m happy.”
I paused when the words were out, weighing them, measuring how they felt once they were out. It didn’t feel like a lie, especially not with a dance waiting downstairs. Cameron hadn’t exactly acted much different that week, not outside of making love to me after that Friday night. But still, that alone had given me hope, had given me something to hold onto that I hadn’t had for a long time.
“Good. You deserve to be happy, sis.”
“Thank you,” I said. “So do you.”
“Well, on that note, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you on our call,” Graham said. “Christina and I… we’re pregnant.”
He should have been excited.
My big brother should have been so excited to tell me that. It should have been the first thing he told me when we got on the phone. But he and I both knew that hearing those words come from his mouth would elicit something from deep inside me, something bad.
It was a monster, a mixture of jealousy and pain, of sadness and utter joy. I would be an aunt. My brother would be a father. He would make our parents grandparents.
Just like I was supposed to.
“Oh, Graham,” I forced after a moment, my eyes welling with tears. “That’s… incredible. Congratulations. Please, tell Christina I said congratulations. Wow.”
“Thank you,” he said, and I could hear a pinch of relief in the breath that left him next. “I was a little worried to tell you…”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” I waved my hand, as if he could see me. “I’m overjoyed. I’ll be an aunt!”
“And you’ll be the best one,” he said.
“Do Mom and Dad know?”
“I just told them, right before I called you.”
“Do you know the due date?”
It was all I could do — ask questions.
“July twenty-fourth as of now.”
I sniffed, the first true smile breaking my face as the tears spilled over.
My brother was having a child.
It hit me like a cloud of glitter and a bucket of ice water all at once.
“Well, I better get off here and call Mom. I’m sure she’ll be dying to gush about all things baby-related,” I spoke through my tears, sniffing and laughing, likely sounding like a maniac. “I’m so happy for you, Graham.”
“Thanks, sis. Let’s talk again soon, okay?”
I agreed, and then the call was ended.
I didn’t pick it back up to call Mom.
Instead, I sat in the chair, in the library, my eyes drifting over the books to the closet that hid the furniture that would have made this room a nursery. And for just one split second, I let myself be sad. I let myself be selfish and angry for just that one, lonely moment.
Then, I stood, letting my feet numbly carry me to the kitchen to start dinner.
I worked through the task of cooking, trying to keep my focus there, but it wandered like a dandelion seed in the wind. I’d land on a thought, one of Reese, perhaps, or of my future niece or nephew. Then, the thought would be swept away again, momentarily floating until it landed on Cameron, or on our sons.
They would have been cousins-to-be, if they were alive. I would have rushed into their room to tell them. We would have gone to the hospital to see their new baby cousin when he or she arrived. They would have spent holidays together — Christmases unwrapping gifts on Mom and Dad’s Persian rug under the tree, Easters hunting eggs behind the church.
When dinner was finished, I ate alone. Cameron took his in his study, trying to finish up the work he had to do. I left him alone, all the while waiting for our dance later. I’d tell him then, when he had me in
his arms, the soft music swaying around us. I’d tell him that he would be an uncle soon.
Just like I’d once told him he’d be a dad.
Keeping myself busy for the next couple of hours was nearly impossible. I tried watching television, tried starting a new book, but mostly I just stared at walls, my thoughts running away with me.
Around eight, I slipped inside Cameron’s office with a gentle knock at the door, wearing only a lavender silk camisole he’d bought me for Christmas one year. He glanced up at me when I entered, reading glasses low on his nose, and then his eyes were back on the numbers he was crunching.
I expected him to do a double take, but it didn’t bother me when he didn’t.
That was my man — always hard at work.
“Someone still owes me a dance,” I said, coming up behind his chair with one fingertip running the length of his bicep up to his shoulder. My hands massaged him next, and he groaned at the touch, leaning back in his chair long enough to kiss my knuckles.
“I’m still not finished here,” he answered reluctantly. “We might have to postpone that dance.”
He pulled his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose, and disappointment seeped into my bloodstream. My hands had stilled on his shoulders.
“You can’t slip away for just one dance?” I tried.
Cameron turned in his chair, pulling me into his lap as he sighed. His tired eyes searched mine, and I wondered if he could see it — the pain. Could he see that I was hurting? Would he ask me what was wrong?
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just can’t tonight. But I want to,” he said quickly. “Will you give me a raincheck?”
My heart sank again, but I just leaned forward, pressing my forehead to Cameron’s. Just one week ago he’d made love to me like he was coming back to me, and now I was face to face with that distant man again.
But, changes didn’t happen overnight, and I tried to comfort myself with that fact as I answered.
“Okay.”
Once he was back to work, I let myself out of his study as quietly as I could.
It was fine that he had to work. So, he’d spent one Sunday locked away — there were plenty of Sundays. Just one week before, we’d spent almost the entire day on the couch together, me reading and him looking over his week’s plans. He had worked a little, but he’d also been there with me — holding me, watching the television at times, rubbing my feet when they rested in his lap.
Marriage was about compromise. He promised me a dance, and I knew I’d get it. Just not tonight.
I padded into the kitchen, clicking on the speaker and swaying my hips to John Legend as I fixed a mug of hot chocolate. And I smiled, because it was Sunday, after all.
Everything is just fine.
The chocolate seemed to help, along with a movie, and I felt marginally better by the time Cameron and I finally crawled into bed that night.
Just before he clicked off the lamp, I told Cameron about the news from Graham.
He stilled, the moment stretching between us for a long second before he pulled the sheets up to this chest.
“That’s wonderful,” he finally said.
“It is, right?”
I willed Cameron to pull me into him, to ask me how I felt, to ask if I was okay with it all. He had to know. He had to feel it, too — the mixture of joy and pain. Did he have a hole in his heart, too? Was it aching with this news the same way mine had?
But I couldn’t be sure, because he didn’t hold me or ask me anything, at all. He just rolled over, his back to me, and said his last words of the night with absolute nonchalance.
“We’ll have to send them a gift.”
He fell asleep just moments later, his breaths evening out, and I laid with my eyes on the ceiling.
That was just Cameron — he never had many words, and I was one of the few people in his life who knew the reason why. An abusive father who punished you every time you spoke will do that to you, make you careful with your words. When Cameron did speak, it was purposeful, and always after he’d thought on those words for a long time.
He’d come around. He’d ask me how I felt, and we’d work through this new journey together — just like we always did.
So, as I rolled onto my side, slipping one arm around his middle and curling my knees into the back of his legs, I repeated what I’d told myself in the kitchen earlier.
Everything is just fine.
And I think I really believed it, too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
Reese
It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in sheets drenched with sweat, but it was the first time in the new house.
I shot up out of bed, the faces from my dream just as vivid in the dark of my room, so much so that I almost reached out to touch them. My chest heaved, drops of sweat beading across my pecs as realization slowly came to me. With every blink of my eyes, my skin cooled. My fear subsided in a slow trickle, the images that had woken me fading to black like they were drowning in a silent river.
It had been a night terror, one I should have been used to having by now, but wasn’t. It was the day of the shooting, my family’s faces, the screams ringing out around me as I watched my father cover my mother and sister. They looked at me with absolute panic in their eyes, but their screams, their pleas — they were muted.
I couldn’t hear them, couldn’t reach them, couldn’t save them.
And it was me holding the gun.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, wiping sweat away as a frustrated breath left my lips. Swinging the sheets back, I let the cold air assault my slick, hot skin, my feet already carrying me to the shower. I turned the faucet and let the water warm, stripping out of my damp clothes before finally facing myself in the mirror.
I looked as awful as I felt.
Blake had convinced me to see a therapist after the third time I’d had the same night terror in New York City. It’s your guilt, an old man who knew nothing about me had said. You’re holding the gun in the dream as a symbol of the responsibility you feel for not being there with them that day.
At the time, I thought it was bullshit. But now, I wasn’t so sure.
Once the water was hot, I stepped inside, letting it run over my hair and down my back. I swept my hair back from my face, forcing a breath as my eyes focused on the tile my hand was splayed on in front of me.
It’d been a rough couple of weeks, January fading easily into February, everything picking up speed just like I knew it would.
I was tutoring a dozen students after school now, one on Saturdays, and all that on top of teaching my normal classes during the day. I’d mostly unpacked, save for a few boxes with personal items I wasn’t sure what to do with yet, and I’d officially caught up with everyone who still lived in Mount Lebanon whom I used to know at one point in my life. I’d been working long days, spending my evenings with people who annoyed me more than entertained me, and more than anything, trying to ignore the fact that I missed her.
Charlie hadn’t talked to me since the day she came back to Westchester. And that had been two weeks ago.
Sure, she’d spoken to me. She’d said hello when we passed in the hallways, told me about the book she was reading when I asked, even referred one of her students’ older brothers to me for afterschool sessions. She’d offered to help me set up the spring concert if I needed anything, but all that aside — she hadn’t talked to me.
Charlie was keeping her distance at all costs.
We didn’t have lunch together, didn’t walk longer than a few steps side by side before she was jetting off in another direction. What was more, she seemed happier than when I first arrived at Westchester. Maybe she was fine. Maybe she was happy.
But something under my skin told me otherwise.
I saw her smiling. I watched her laughing each and every day. But her eyes… there was something there, something I’d seen immediately the first day we’d reconnected — something she was hiding now, or at l
east, trying to. When I’d first come back, it was almost as if she were a zombie, and then she’d let me in that night we went up the Incline.
Now, she wasn’t a zombie, but rather an actress. She told me everything was fine with her words, but her eyes betrayed that lie.
Then again, maybe I was crazy. Maybe I didn’t have any fucking idea how to tell if she was lying or not.
Maybe, deep down, I wanted it to be a lie — that she was perfectly fine without me.
The water cooled a bit, so I turned the faucet more, watching as the steam filled the four walls of my standing shower. One hand kept me steady on the tile while the other rubbed my back muscles, sore from lifting and unpacking boxes all week. I rubbed out the tension in my lower back, still thinking of Charlie, and that’s when another muscle woke up, too.
It was just past three in the morning, and I knew I needed more sleep to face the busy Friday I had ahead. The more I thought about how a nice release would help me fall back asleep, the more my cock ached under the hot water. Every flash of Charlie’s doe eyes made me grow another inch, longer and harder, every nerve waking up at the thought of having her in that shower with me.
“This is so fucked up,” I groaned, but my hand was already moving from the muscles on my back, fingers wrapping around my shaft with a slow pump. I thought if I spoke it out loud, it would stop me. “Think of someone else. Anyone else.”
My resolve was weak, but I tried. I closed my eyes tight, fist curling over my crown before sliding down to my base as I paged through my mental stash of porn. I saw foreign tits bouncing, but then it was Charlie’s soft lips as she sucked yogurt off a spoon. I shook them away, remembering a hot anal video I’d found just before my move, but it was quickly shoved out and replaced with the image of Charlie’s thumb between her teeth, her eyes on my mouth, her small body pressed into mine.
“Fuck,” I grunted, surrendering to the need. I was already working myself faster, flexing my hips into my hand, the water providing a hot, slick lubricant. I pictured Charlie there with me, her small body bent beneath me, knees on the cold tile as her eyes locked on mine.
Best Kept Secrets (Complete Series) Page 11
