And then? What changed? Over the years, as we did things together, we sometimes had conversations that came to resemble two people sharing their honest feelings and real thoughts about each other. We often jogged together, or played catch, or kicked a soccer ball back and forth. During those private times we discussed things, real things, subjects that might have surprised anyone else. It was not often, but often enough that I shared some of my most intimate thoughts with her over the years. And she didn’t fail to reciprocate in her own cryptic way.
I nudged her back a little so I could stare into her eyes. I needed her to be honest. Something felt different about it. Something felt more intense in a way I’d never noticed. Like, opposite sex kind of intense.
“Why didn’t you tell Dustin?” I finally asked. It took a long while. The TV provided background noise. My voice was still a whisper. It was a small apartment. My room, Dustin’s and my parents’ bedrooms all opened into a little, tiny alcove. Only three steps away from it, and you found yourself in the kitchen, and further still, a dining room where a table was set up.
Her shoulders shrugged up and down in exaggerated motion like she was thinking hard about that, or perhaps avoiding the real reason altogether. “He’s my friend. We don’t talk about personal stuff.”
Did she mean we weren’t friends? It was ridiculous she’d even say that. It made far more sense for her to talk to Dustin because I was not around during the last four years. I remembered the last night we spent together before I left for my freshman year. We shot hoops until two in the morning. We didn’t talk much, but got hot and sweaty as we tried to annihilate each other. She seemed especially aggressive that night until we fell to the pavement of the court and stared at each other. We made passing comments for another two hours and eventually hobbled home. Nothing profound was said or discussed. I didn’t even mention I was leaving for college, yet there we sat together. I’d always been confused by our relationship; and unsure if our association should even be considered a relationship. She was just unlike the typical girl. She never talked like one, flirted like one, or even seemed to acknowledge she was one with me.
“You haven’t talked to me for real in four years,” I finally said. It was rare for me to share my thoughts with her now. Even rarer when I showed her my doubts.
“You haven’t wanted me to.”
“That’s not true. You were…”
“What? What was I ever to you, Sam? Because you left all of us like we were dirt under your fingernails; you even seemed relieved to get rid of us.”
“That’s a load of bullshit, Natalie. I went off to college, sure, but I never treated my family or you like that. You have chip on your shoulder about me and you have for a long time. What is it? Because I got bigger? Stronger? It’s human biology. I can’t help it if you’re a girl, whether you want to be or not. But you’ll punish me for it, won’t you? Friends? How do you figure?” She fidgeted next to me, and I knew I was agitating her. It stunned me when I finally figured it out. “Holy shit. It’s because I left, isn’t it? It’s simply because I left here, and you perceived it as me leaving you?”
Her face was turning warm with blush and she shoved me off. “You don’t know anything!”
All at once, I knew something. Something so far from what I ever considered: Natalie liked me. Her mother was dying and I was the one she told. This was Natalie, my difficult, obstinate, rude, funny, brave neighbor girl. This was Natalie telling me how she felt about me. Not just her mother. This was her way of reaching out to me.
“Don’t I?” I said finally to the silence that grew taut between us. She hid her face from me, but it was due to her embarrassment this time, not grief. I’d never seen her hide, or cower, or avoid people or situations. Nothing. Never. She faced any bully with both fists clenched and her shoulders back, even if they were a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier in muscle than she. But this? She was hiding her true emotions.
“Natalie?” My tone was soft, but clearly taunting her. “Can’t you look at me?” She could never resist a dare. Not even an emotional one.
She raised her head and scoffed. “Duh. As if looking at your ugly face is hard.”
I smiled. That was better than the tragic, embarrassed, suddenly girlie–acting Natalie. This Natalie, who was emotional, yet so valiantly tried not to be. This Natalie, who, for perhaps the first time ever, I noticed was a girl… a woman, warm and near me. I moved my hand almost by rote to her face. My palm cupped her cheek even as she stiffened at my touch and her gaze skittered off in a different direction. Wow! It was so weird for me to touch her like I would another girl. Like I was with Jennifer a few hours ago. But that was casual, easy, and almost flirting. So what if we kissed and cuddled? It didn’t mean a damn thing beyond the confines of this afternoon, and a casual afternoon make–out session. But Natalie? It felt like my heart grew heavier in my chest. That was strange. And huge to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely after an almost embarrassed pause. We weren’t good at this. We didn’t know how to be caring or emotional or intimate with one another. Yet here we were, almost out of nowhere, trying to be. She told me something devastating, tragic, and truly horrific that she hadn’t told anyone else. That meant something. I knew it clearly, as clearly as I knew her dark eyes and how she swung a baseball bat. I knew telling me was tantamount to another girl offering me her virginity, or her love. She was trying, albeit awkwardly, to connect with me, to let me know for some reason she needed me. It had been years since we’d done more than say hello, or pass through the same room together, always with my parents and brother close by. But here she was needing me, now. I never considered what moving beyond this might mean because until this moment, Natalie was just a girl I grew up with. Or at least, I pretended to think she was just a girl I grew up with, even though there was always something more between us. Whatever that was, it was eternally fierce. We were fierce rivals, fierce competitors, fierce friends, fierce teammates; whatever we were to each other was never casual.
I leaned forward and my lips touched her temple, half on her hairline and half on her skin. It was just a soft kiss of my lips to her head. I held her there and she kept her head tilted towards me. We paused that way for a long, sustained moment. Her face was looking down. This wasn’t the fierce Natalie I knew and remembered. This was a timid, embarrassed, almost holding her breath Natalie. Perhaps more than anything she could say or do, that showed me there was something there I never dreamed of, or caught on to, or even wanted. But there it was. And here we were.
I just barely lifted my mouth off hers and brushed my lips towards her ear as I whispered, “I’m sorry.” This time, I apologized because I never knew what was happening between us. This time, it was because I couldn’t imagine losing my mom, much less fathom Natalie enduring the loss of her mom.
Tears once more gathered in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to let go of her.”
Pain filled her voice. No long rants, or cries, or telling me how she felt. I knew that about Natalie. This was just as telling as most girls who break down. Somehow, seeing someone who was usually so strong and tough now crying and showing her soft side was much harder than observing it in anyone else. It clearly showed how big this was for her, and how far-reaching her grief extended.
There were no words for us. I knew that, and Natalie knew that. She lifted her eyes and we stared at each other. Her lips pressed together as she shook her head. Her eyes swimming in tears, this was Natalie talking to me; but mostly, needing me. The feeling of being needed by the strongest, most obstinate personality I’d ever encountered, male or female, was heady stuff. Like the President of the United States asking you for advice kind of heady. I think now, although I couldn’t articulate it at the time, knowing that she needed me then might have been the biggest compliment of my life.
People like me. They think I’m fun and smart and want to hang out with me. But have any one of them ever needed me? Or sought me out, or
my comfort, or maybe even my opinion or advice, as Natalie seemed to? Had I ever felt like my existence mattered to someone else’s survival; let alone, to the extent they couldn’t survive without my support? Until that moment, I never felt that sensation. I had no idea I even wanted to feel it. I had no clue how powerful the feelings it unleashed in my chest would be.
Her lips parted slightly as if she’d taken in a gasping breath. Her tongue came out and she touched her lips with barely the tip. I stared and she saw me staring. I lifted my hands and buried them under her hair, just behind her ears, pulling her face to mine and our lips touched for the very first time.
It was shocking. Pressing our lips together was like offering newly planted seeds a glimpse of the sun, or pouring water on dry dirt. Everything seemed to bloom from that moment on. We were soft and easy at first, something Natalie and I never were before; but right then, we separated and stared at each other. I have no words for the way my breath caught in my chest. Our kiss seemed to hypnotize me. I’d never been kissed like that before. She leaned in and her hands cupped my face as she pressed her lips against mine, slipping her tongue inside my mouth. I closed my eyes and felt like I was falling into a deep, swirling hole. My stomach started pitching this way and that. My reaction to her kiss was like I’d never been kissed before.
Pressing my fingers into her scalp, I tried to make her mouth immobile under mine as the passion between us seemed to grow more intense. It soon became a fierce kiss of lips and tongue and teeth and most of all, us. So much of us. We did everything physically the same, so why not that too? We were all in, no matter what activity it might be. We were hard and demanding on each other without pause. This was how a kiss that mattered was supposed to feel like. It consumes and engages every part of you, from a physical plane to a mental and emotional dimension. I had never felt so engaged from a single kiss.
She moved up and straddled me. We were holding each other’s heads. I linked one of my hands with hers and she gripped mine with the familiar strength and desperation I knew she was capable of. But instead of competing with me, now she was gripping me in an almost desperate grasp. What was she trying to hold on to? Her sanity? Her emotions? I didn’t know exactly; I just knew how tightly and critically she was reaching out to me for whatever she sought.
We turned eventually and she lay on top of me. We kissed and kissed and kissed. It might have been an hour until somehow, it all kind of slowly ended. She lay on my body, warm, silent and content. Natalie was so rarely warm, silent or content. We fell asleep that night on my parents’ couch. I was already long past the age of parental rules or concern. The next morning when I woke up with a kink in my neck, she was gone.
That kiss… never again has any kiss felt that good. Never again has any other woman kissed me like that. That kiss was the start of the rest of it… the rest of what I thought would be the relationship that lasted all of my life.
****
Except now, as my brother sits staring at me in reproach. All these years later. After something as innocent as a kiss was long buried in our history. I slogged through my pathetic story of how Natalie caught me at the office and the woman I was with. He didn’t once interrupt me or try to chastise me. His facial expression didn’t even change.
At the end, while I humbly sit in my underwear, he asks, “Well, what are you going to do about it? Give up?”
I glance up at Dustin. “What can I do? I don’t even know where she is. And when I find out… what can I do?”
“Anything more than you are now. First, you find her, Sam. You know her better than anyone else. Figure it out. Figure her out like you used to. And what do you say? Whatever it takes. You say and do whatever it takes.”
“What if it’s still not enough?”
“For once, you’ll have to make it enough, Sam.”
“What do you mean, ‘for once’?”
He shrugged before leaning against the wall, then came over and sat next to me. “I know you always worked hard and were ambitious, but it all came pretty easily to you. School. Friends. Girls. Even your job. But Natalie? She’s never been easy for you. I always thought that was the draw, and half your problem with her. You need to figure out why you did this and tell her why you did it, then tell her what you intend to do to change it, or fix it, or what you should do together. But it’s going to take all you’ve got. You owe each other more than calling yourselves names, or being holed up drunk without even an apology to her. Find out why you did it and fix it, Sam.”
“I hear you. More than just an apology. But first, do you have any idea where she is?”
“None. She didn’t answer my texts or calls and neither did you; that’s why I came here.”
I stare at my hairy legs. “Every person I think she might have gone to, I have to discard because they are connected to me, or our family, or her job. I doubt she’d go to any of them. It makes her too vulnerable. Too weak–looking. No tears with Natalie, and especially not with outside people.”
“Anything change of late? Could she just be driving somewhere? She’d run. I think she’d run fast and hard from something like this. Imagine what she’s got to be feeling; she can’t handle that. You know it, and I know it. What else would she do, but try to ignore her thoughts, or else run from them?”
“Run from them. You’re right,” I agree, and my heart squeezes again, because my actions sent her off into the night, literally alone and running.
So she must be driving somewhere. She probably threw her phone out the window after I bugged her once too often. She would try not to think about me, or what she saw, or what it signified to her and her life. She would definitely never want to just stop and think about how it made her feel. Dustin was right, she had to be running.
Okay, so my wife is driving aimlessly around the state somewhere. And worse, she isn’t one to do that. Natalie Ford always has a goal, a plan, a starting point and an ending point. She doesn’t do anything without a reason for doing it. I find it hardest of all to accept there’s no way to predict where she’d run to.
Changes? Of late? No. But I might not know. Of course, there were all kinds of subtle changes. The kind that build on each other like the nacre in a pearl, layer upon layer, until what started as a small change becomes buried and frozen underneath all the layers. It finally obliterates the original source of irritation. What used to be good and true fast becomes false and negative; somewhere we got lost in it all.
The only two times I ever saw Natalie lose her composure was when her mom died and when we put her dad into the home. Those were the only times that iron will of hers slipped beyond her control. But this? This is way different because she has someone to blame. Me. The anger she harbors for me right now must be eating her alive.
Her mom… As my thoughts review Natalie’s life, I am looking for any clue as to where she might be. I suddenly remember the other chip on Natalie’s shoulder: someone abandoned her.
Someone with whom we’d recently connected.
Christina Hendricks in Ellensburg, Washington! I rise with confidence as if a lightning bolt just flew up my spine. I know! I know where she is. There is no doubt. That’s where a running, scared, hurt, but unwilling–to–face–or–admit–it Natalie would flee to. I have something, an end point, a destination. My mission.
I forget my hangover, as well as my pathetic life and my guilt and shame. With renewed energy, I start hauling everything I need from the drawers and our closet. Dustin gapes at me before asking, “What? What did you realize?”
“I know where she is!”
“Where?”
“At her long-lost sister’s. She’s there. I know it.”
I go to the bathroom, and stop. The mirror shows my unshaven, unkempt reflection, and I stink. I have to clean up first. Frustrated, I start the shower.
“Are you sure about that? That you should go there?”
“Never more sure of anything in my life,” I reply. Finally, I have a plan. I do well with plans. Some
thing else Natalie and I share. We need a goal, a mission, and an endpoint. I just hope that this endpoint isn’t the end of us.
Chapter Seven
Natalie
Following Max Salazar’s car, we drive exactly twenty–three minutes. We start along the highway before passing the college and turning off onto increasingly rural streets the farther we go. Finally, we’re on a two–lane road, traversing acres of empty land. Barns. Houses. Fields. Livestock. This is for real. We are truly in the middle of nowhere. We turn onto a single lane road that takes us through the woods before ending at a one–story house with outbuildings and fields of wildflowers beyond. Trees dot the land here and there, but the vast, open spaces keep it from being heavily forested. The house has an impressive entry that welcomes and almost beckons visitors inside. With great care and hesitation, I turn the car ignition off before opening my car door and stepping out. After all these miles, and years of questions, this is where it ends? My head feels overburdened and muddled. It’s all too much. Sensory and emotional overload. Here I am, on an ordinary Thursday afternoon, pulling into the home of the woman who gave birth to me? It feels completely unreal.
I often face situations with strangers as a police officer that are very much out of my comfort zone. Even everyday traffic tickets can place me in awkward or weird situations. Human behavior can be odd, scary, weird, crazy, gross, annoying, and often violent. Yes, some humans are genuinely good. Some are so respectful of my authority, they appear intimidated and can hardly look me in the eye. I also witness acts of strangers helping strangers, and those make me glad I’m human. Unfortunately, however, my job often makes me question what has become of the goodness that used to identify the human race?
None of that, however, could prepare me for this moment. I had no intention of meeting this woman only an hour ago. My “Sure, let’s meet her,” was merely a retort to Max’s taunt. I did not give it enough thought or consideration. And now I was here. Doing something I just didn’t know how to. What should I do? Just knock on the door, and say, “Oh, hey, long-lost mother… here I am?”
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 8
