by Vivian Lux
Harper stood on the sidewalk, bundled into her coat, her hair swinging in the sharp, biting wind. It was freezing out here, but we all stood in place like statues, staring. I felt like I needed to memorize her, but it wasn't this memory that I wanted to keep. I wanted to remember her naked body and the way her cries sounded as she tried to keep quiet. I wanted to remember her waking up next to me and smiling before she kissed me. I'd been waiting for that moment my whole goddamned life.
Harper looked from Cal, to me, then back to Cal again. Then she leaned forward and pressed a long kiss to Cal's lips, I waited, drumming on my thighs. My fear from that morning was coming true. We'd left the room and the spell was broken, and now we'd never get it back.
Then she twisted. I leaned forward and her lips caught mine. I took her chin in my hands to tilt her mouth up so that I could take as much of that sweetness against me as I could.
I kissed her as long as I possibly could, for as long as she could stand to stay there in the cold.
Then she pulled away. "Bye," she breathed.
Then she grabbed her suitcase and turned to the revolving door and walked out of our lives again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harper
It'd been two and a half weeks since I returned from Reckless Falls and New York City still didn't make any fucking sense to me.
No matter how hard I tried, I kept missing appointments, spacing details, and sending Cecily into paroxysms of tight-lipped, smiling rage. It was like I'd forgotten how to be Harper McCabe, Children’s Book Author, the woman I thought was me. My old self was competent, capable and wholesome and completely devoted to her career and her brands. This new self was a walking fucking disaster who couldn't get her shit sorted no matter how hard she tried to sit down and focus.
The subway car gave a sickening lurch sideways and I grabbed for the pole, not even caring that I didn’t' have hand sanitizer. The rocking, swaying motion of the subway had been bothering me more and more each day. I clung to the pole dizzily and tried to get my head on straight but the thoughts wouldn't coalesce in my brain. God, I owed storyboards to...who? Somebody... Who the hell did I owe storyboards to?
The car lurched again and I stumbled a little and sat down heavily on an empty seat. I looked up and caught the eye of an old woman scowling at me. Or maybe that was just the way her face looked with its heavily drawn on eyebrows. I couldn't tell and it made me laugh. I wished I had my sketchbook out so I could draw her really quickly, but with the way my stomach was acting, there was no way I could look down without puking on my shoes like a drunk. But then again, maybe I should sketch her, so I could bring it to...whoever it was that needed it.
The sway of the train brought a nauseous feeling to my stomach as I realized I could not for the life of me remember who it was that I owed work to. This would have never happened before I went to back to Reckless Falls.
The blare of the loudspeaker announcing the next stop made me jump to my feet. I tried to push my way to the front of the to the door, but they were two men blocking my way. "Excuse me?" I called. "This is my stop."
They didn't move.
"Excuse me?!" I called, at the same time that the loudspeakers blared out, drowning out my voice.
The door slid open as we slowed. "I have to get off!" I shouted, tapping the guy in the shoulder, then shoving him. "Move!"
He finally turned, slowly, blinking like I'd disturbed his nap. "What's going on?" he asked in a big bass voice.
"This is my stop! Please let me by!"
His eyes widened, and he stepped aside, startled. "Sorry about that," he said. I yanked my bag through the tight space that he'd given me, just in time for the doors to slide closed again. "Motherfucker!" I cried, then I collapsed against a seat and suddenly I was crying. Great heaving sobs, the kind of snuffling, snotty, nose-running weeping I hadn't allowed myself to cry since I was a kid.
"Hey now," the big guy said. "You can get off at the next one, it ain't so far."
I looked up at him, feeling suddenly affectionate for the poor guy. "It's not that," I said. Then I blinked. "I honestly don't know what it is. I feel like I'm falling apart."
The big guy nodded sagely. "It's the city. It gets under your skin sometimes."
"So it seems," I said. That must be it, I told myself. Culture shock. Going from the tiny, bucolic hamlet of Reckless Falls back to here was a big change. No matter that New York had been my home for the past five years, Reckless Falls was my home first.
That was probably why everything here seemed so strange and why I felt like I was moving underwater. That was why I had no appetite and could barely keep food down even when I did eat. Having to adjust to the pace of my life again was making me crazy.
But as the door slid open and I exited the subway with a throng of other people, something just didn't sit right. A little, nagging thought in the back of my skull, the tiny little alarm bell that belonged in my gut sounding louder every second.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Callum
I pulled up in front of the assembled guests, all decked out in their cold weather gear they had clearly bought right before coming to Reckless Falls. Raising my voice, I called out for them to watch me as I guided them through a quick safety check. "And over here you'll see..."
"What did he say?" came the cry from the back.
"Can you speak up?"
"Can we take these out on the highway? It's not like there's anyone on the roads."
I took a deep breath and tried not to lose my shit. In the two weeks since Harper left, the tour business had fallen back. It was the natural ebb and flow of the seasons and people's vacation times, but knowing that didn't make it suck any less. I needed money, so I was willing to take on anything, even if it meant losing my sanity in the process.
And I was well on my way to that point today, with this tour in particular. It was part of a giant family reunion going on at the B&B, and I was about to start leading twenty-eight very ill-equipped people — who couldn't downhill ski or snowshoe or ice-climb or really anything close to fun or interesting — on the world's slowest snowmobile tour. And none of them seemed to be able to find the wherewithal to actually listen to what the fuck I was saying.
"When are we going to get going?" a high-pitched voice whined. A little chubby kid who looked like he'd never set foot outside of his gaming room sneered up at me.
"We're gonna get going as soon as I finish the safety demonstration," I barked. "Which we can't do you if you keep putting your hands all over things."
The kid yanked his hand from the throttle like he'd been scalded and I heard an aggrieved gasp from the woman who was clearly his mother. I sighed and rolled my eyes heavenward and started running through my safety spiel in one long exhale. With my mouth on autopilot, I was free to let my mind wander, and it wandered back to where it had lived for two weeks now.
Harper.
I still couldn't get the sight of her leaving out of my head. The way she hadn't even looked back at us. She really did believe it was just a fling with any old guy. Guys.
"What the fuck?" I said out loud. I heard another gasp and suddenly I remembered the tour...and the safety lesson I had just finished...and then punctuated with a curse while I still had everyone's attention.
"Excuse me, what did you say?" snapped the kid's mother as she leaped from her snowmobile and floundered through the snow to clap her hands over her kid's ears.
"Ow mom! What the fuck?" the kid cried.
*****
I walked into the house and slammed the door on this stupid, stupid day. Another refunded tour. This was getting bad.
I took a deep breath, trying to collect myself...
And then stopped short, straightening up and sniffing again. "What the hell?" I asked the air.
I walked around from my mudroom into my too small kitchen. "What the fuck?" I asked Gray. "Are you...baking?"
Gray stood up and slammed the oven door closed. Without meeting my eye, he
whirled in place and opened the refrigerator. "I do this when I'm freaking out," he explained, grabbing two eggs and cracking them into a bowl.
I watched him, completely taken aback. "You've been holding out on me," I said. "I could have been demanding fresh-baked goodies as rental payment this whole time."
"Well, no offense but I wasn't freaking out two months ago," Gray said. "I just started freaking out recently." He stood there with the bowl hugged to his chest, whisking the eggs in frantic, jerking motions. I recognized it because I think it was the same motion my heart was making.
"You're thinking about her, aren’t you?" I finally said.
Gray turned and looked me in the eye. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his chin, almost as if in an act of defiance. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "I'm thinking about her."
I closed my eyes and then opened them again. "Me too. Too much.
"All the fucking time."
"I fucked up a tour today," I confessed. "Another one."
"Because you were thinking about her?"
"Yup."
"What did you do?"
"Swore in front of a family reunion."
Gray chuckled and tapped the whisk against the bowl. "If I had a family reunion to swear in front of, I would have done the same thing," he sighed. "We shouldn't have let her leave." His whisking was starting to slow down.
I shook my head. "No."
He looked up at me. "We're idiots..."
I closed my eyes. "Yeah," I sighed. Then I opened them. "Should we...go get her?" I asked.
The sound of the bowl clanging into the sink was my answer, because he was already out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Grayson
"What is it?" Cal asked, as he flicked on his blinker.
I looked down at the cracked screen of my phone and grimaced. "Text from Rett."
"What did he say?"
I sighed as I stared at the backlit screen. In the dark, the afterimage was burned into my retinas like an accusation. "He wants to know if we're going to the pub tonight on account of the fact that it's apparently Friday." I leaned my head back on the headrest. "I actually had no idea it was Friday."
"Me neither."
"You gonna answer him?"
"What should I say?"
"Um..."
"Hey man," I spoke aloud as I pretended to type. "Can't make it, sorry. Me and Cal are driving all night so we can bang your sister...together."
"What the fuck, dude?"
"Calm down, I'm just kidding." I switched off the blinding light of my phone. "But seriously, what the hell should I say?"
"Tell him..." Cal trailed off as he switched lanes to get around a semi-truck. We had to be going at least eighty miles an hour, but I trusted Cal. I always had.
"Tell him that my dad's hosting a trivia night tonight," Cal said in a burst of inspiration.
I sat up straighter. "That's fucking brilliant," I said as I started to type.
"Yeah, tell him that all these teams signed up and the place'll be packed."
"Rett hates people," I said, nodding. I hit send and waited. Then laughed. "He says fuck that then, he'll see us later." I exhaled sharply. "Shit, I feel like an asshole lying to him though."
"Let's figure out one thing at a time here, okay?" Cal said, his voice tight. "Deal with the whole Harper thing first?"
I nodded. "You sure about her address?"
"She sent me a Christmas card last year. I put her address into my phone."
I looked at him. "Just in case...?"
"Just in case," he said smugly.
I shook my head in disbelief. "You are one weird dude."
"I'm a prepared dude. It's coming in handy now, isn't it?"
"I guess so," I said, falling silent as I looked out the window into the passing darkness. When Cal had suggested it, it made total sense. Go see her. Go get her. We were both falling apart, fraying at the edges, sniping at each other and utterly and completely failing at being reasonable human beings. It was clear what we both needed to do. If nothing else, we needed more closure, something to put to rest this strange, anxious love affair we had going on.
But now, as we zoomed through the night, bouncing along the bottom of New York State in Cal's pickup, I started to have second thoughts. Harper had put it out in no uncertain terms exactly why she was heading back to New York City. The career, the one she'd always been wanting, was finally coming true. Of course we had to let her leave, wasn’t that what being there for her was all about? Wasn't this all about her to begin with?
As I looked out the window, into the inky black darkness of the Southern Tier, I felt my fist closing, my fingernails digging half moons into the side of my palm. "We said this is about her, didn't we?" I suddenly burst out.
Cal sort of jumped, like I'd caught him thinking. I looked over at him to see that his shoulders were nearly to his ears. "What?" I asked.
"Yeah. I guess we did, didn't we?" Cal said slowly.
"No," I said, heading him off at the pass. "I'm not talking about that. Because yeah, fuck that dude, I'm not into you that way.
"Thank fuck for that," Cal said, grinning. "You're not my type."
I rolled my eyes. "I was going to ask though, isn't this sort of about us too, in a way?"
"What do you mean? Are you coming on to me, man? I'm flattered and all..."
"Oh shut up for a second and let me finish," I complained. "I’m trying to figure shit out too here." Cal opened his mouth like he was about to give me even more shit, but mercifully fell silent and started listening as I tried like hell to form my thoughts into words. "What I'm saying is we started something here right? You and me and her. It's a two-way street... though I guess in this case it's more like a three-way street... but still, we said it's about her. But it's not only what she wants, it's what we want too, isn't it?" I was actually honestly asking this question. "Isn't it?"
"And what the fuck do we want?" Cal asked.
I spread my hands helplessly. "Her?"
Cal tapped his fingers on the steering wheel a second as he processed this, and then cleared his throat. "You mean, for like a girlfriend or something?"
I nodded. "Don't pretend you're not thinking the same thing," I told him.
"But like, we...share her or something?"
"We share bath towels right now, right?" I felt the need to point out.
Cal made a grossed-out sound. "Yeah and you never pick yours off the bathroom floor."
"Well I promise if we have to share Harper, I'll treat her a little better than a bath towel," I replied snottily.
"And I'll treat her better than you," Cal replied, equally snottily.
I looked at him. "So is this why we're driving down to New York City? To see if she'll be like... our long-distance girlfriend or some shit?"
"Or some shit," Cal repeated. "I don't know. All I know is that I can't stop thinking about her and I know you can't either, so we gotta go see her."
I nodded into the darkness. "Yeah," I said softly. "We gotta go see her."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Harper
I was never one of those "thank God it's Friday" people. Mostly because I spent my weekends catching up on work that had piled up during the week. But more than that, I liked my job, so it didn't really make me excited that I was getting a break from it.
Except today.
Fuck today. Thank God it was fucking Friday because otherwise I might actually die.
The conference room was overheated, that was the first problem. The air had that strange, nostril-tingling overheated electrical smell and the air was heavy with static electricity. I looked over at Cecily and noticed that three errant hairs had escaped from her perfectly arranged bob, standing upright to dance crazily above her head. I made a mental note not to let her touch me until she shocked someone else. Then I smiled as I remembered how Everett used to scuff his feet across the carpet and force me to touch his finger. One time we did it in the dark and both jumped when we
saw the blue spark flash. It hurt, but I'd been convinced I gained super powers at that moment, and went outside to try to jump off the roof, ready to fly. Cal had convinced me to at least aim my flight towards the snowdrift that had gathered on the leeward side of the house, so I'd flung myself over that way and ended up landing directly on top of Grayson as he was trying to sled down the hill.
I shook my head and sat up straighter, realizing that the room had gone suddenly silent. Feeling like a kid caught not paying attention in class, I straightened up and smiled, catching Cecily's glare out of the corner of my eye.
"Yes, I think that would work just fine for us," Cecily said smoothly. I nodded along with her, wondering what I had just agreed to.
Everyone around me started talking again, and I blinked rapidly, trying to focus. Did they want me to talk too? Was I supposed to be contributing right now? Why did I not know what was happening...at all?
Maybe it was the strangeness of the situation. That's what I told myself anyway, sitting here in the middle of the TV executive board room, listening to them hammer out the details of how to bring my work to life on the screen. Yeah, that was surreal. Maybe that was why their voices kept fading in and out, why everything suddenly started spiraling around and around. I felt so damn dizzy.
There was a sharp crack against my ankles. I looked up to see Cecily, smiling brightly and nodding, prompting me. "Could you repeat that?" I said.
The gray bearded executive leaned forward and repeated his question, but once again I had no idea what he said. In fact, it didn't even sound like English. The dizziness increased and I pressed my palms against the table. "Excuse me," I said, standing up swiftly. If I didn't make it to the bathroom right now, I was going to vomit across this glass top table.
I rushed out into the hallway and took a wild guess as to which way the restroom was. I ran almost blindly, praying to whatever God of fashion there was that I wouldn't twist my ankle on my stiletto heel and send myself sprawling across the floor.
