You Again

by Peggy Nicholson

  “Damn!”

  With that yell echoing off the tiled walls, Jessica spun— to see the sauna door crash open. Her heels snagged on something. She stumbled, the backs of her knees bumping the chaise longue—and sat down hard. A steam-wreathed, near-naked shape erupted into view.

  “Yoww!” Waving something shiny over his head, the man took two running strides poolward, then launched himself into the air. “Son of a—” The curse ended under water. Bubbles rose.

  Openmouthed, Jessica sat, pool water raining down upon her head and shoulders.

  Clouds of steam rolled forth from the sauna.

  Diminishing echoes…pool water lapping out from that perfect cannonball…the gentle hiss of steam…Her apparition writhed deep underwater, flesh-colored but for a scrap of red she hoped to God was a bathing suit.

  The lunatic was drowning. She was a doctor, and she ought to save him. Jessica pushed back a strand of damp hair and looked around. Wasn’t there anyone else to—

  “Damn!” A dark head broke surface. He sucked in a lungful of air, then rolled under like a dolphin.

  Jess stared as a pair of very large bare feet pointed, then arrowed gracefully back toward the bottom.

  She stood. So he wasn’t drowning. He was—whatever he was doing, she didn’t want to know. Was too enraged to trust herself to ask politely. She’d have to change clothes now, skip that first seminar.

  As she turned toward the exit, she heard him break surface again.

  “Hey, you! Miss! Ms.?”

  Jessica Myles stopped. Closed her eyes. Opened them far, far too wide, then shook her head slowly. No. Oh, no. It was just because she’d been thinking about him all morning.

  “Ma’am? Would you happen to have a dime?” asked the voice, a shade deeper than whiskey tenor, still with its hint of Texas drawl, still with that undertone of laughter.

  Jessica closed her eyes again. Usually he carried a Swiss army knife, but when he didn’t have that—

  “I’ll give it back, Scout’s honor, I just need it for a—”

  “Screwdriver.” They spoke the word as one.

  She nodded, eyes closed, resigned. Reaching blindly for the clasp of her briefcase, she groped inside. It had to happen someday, somewhere, somehow. But could she live through it without crying?

  “Jess?”

  She’d always seen his voice as a color—sunlight through honey, Southern Comfort by firelight. She found a coin, looked at it, then turned. “How about a quarter, Sam?”

  He breaststroked toward her, his eyes locked on her face, something silver and metallic held aloft in one hand. “You’ve…cut your hair.”

  He’d always liked her hair. He’d gathered fistfuls of it sometimes when they made love, his hands gently, fiercely possessive. She’d cut it the day after she left him.

  “Would a quarter do?” she repeated patiently. He’d never stuck to one topic for long. He was as right-brained and scattershot as she was linear and left.

  “Nope.” He dragged a muscular forearm across his face, wiping dark hair from black brows. “Too wide for the slot.” He deposited the piece of metal at her feet, like some treasure he’d brought back from the depths just for her.

  She flipped the quarter over his head, watched it sink. Steam hung in swaths from the ceiling, a cloud pressing down on them, pressing down on her heart. “You burned your fingers.”

  He stopped swishing his hand through the water. “Didn’t think it’d come apart at that joint. Was trying to free the valve just above.”

  Sam Kirby had never met the gadget he didn’t think he could improve. When he didn’t lose the parts or wander off to his next project, leaving a pile of metallic rubble in his wake, he was generally right.

  That trait had been endearing for the first six months, a source of irritation, then despair for the last six, when her life was already crumbling into chaos. She hadn’t needed Sam’s help creating more. Jessica remembered coming home exhausted to find their cuckoo clock, a wedding gift from Sam’s lab mates, reduced to its cogs and springs. She’d followed the trail of components from the livingroom coffee table to the kitchen counter. The cuckoo itself had been left inexplicably in the fridge, nesting in a bowl of salad he’d forgotten to cover. She remembered sitting huddled at the table, clutching the bird to her breast, sobbing her heart out, till Sam returned with the takeout Chinese he’d dashed out to buy. He’d dumped his bags in the sink and carried her off to bed.

  Later she hadn’t been able to tell him why she’d cried.

  She slammed the door on that memory. “I suppose you’re the substitute speaker for the banquet?” Sam’s Nobel last year had been awarded in molecular biology, not medicine, but his field of pure research was impinging more and more on the practices of her world. Gene therapy was no longer science fiction, but the coming reality. Thanks in no small part to the man at her feet.

  “’Fraid so. Doug Vincent shanghaied me on my way back from Holland. We were supposed to meet at the airport, suck down a few brews, before I made my connection to San Fran. I’m presenting a paper out there…”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Vin had to bribe me to pry me off that plane. Claimed the best pad thai in the world can be had right here in the city, and he’d prove it if I’d please, please entertain his quacks for him.” Dark eyes— gift of his Italian mother—caressed her face as if he was memorizing it, feature by feature. “Waste of breath and good money,” he added absently. “All Vinnie had to do was tell me you’d be here and—”

  “What’s pad thai?” she cut in. Dear God, how was she going to end this? Get away?

  “Lord, Jess, where’ve you been living—in a medicine cabinet? Thai noodles—with peanuts, shrimp, all kinds of good stuff. First time I tried it I swore off mu shi pancakes and General Tzo’s forever. We’ll have to—”

  “No.” She shook her head as she took a step backward.

  “Wait.” His “shucks, ma’am” manner dropped away in a word. His brows drew together. “We have to talk.”

  “That’s what we’ve been doing.” Like water bugs skating across the surface of a swamp. It was just possible if you didn’t stop. “Congratulations on your Nobel, by the way.” Not that his winning one had been a surprise. Everyone had been predicting it since the day he published his first paper, demanding it after his book came out.

  She remembered the first time she’d heard that prediction, her happiness dropping out from under her like an elevator with a cut cable. The moment when it finally had hit her that he was brilliant—not just a whimsical, wonderful, bumbling space cadet, but a true rocket scientist— in that moment, she’d known it was over. That she’d never keep him. Though she’d tried. God knew, she’d tried.

  “I meant to send you a card.” Congratulations would have been the gracious gesture, the proper one. Some three centuries of WASP forebears demanded she make that gesture. She’d gone as far as buying the card, something tastefully understated, of course, an embossed scallop shell, sand on cream parchment, no preprinted message. But she hadn’t been able to form her own message, let alone mail it.

  “I sent you one—a postcard from Stockholm,” he reminded her. “You got it?”

  “Yes.” His had been rude, funny, not tasteful at all— she’d dropped it in the trash can.

  “And the birthday card I sent you last year?”

  She nodded. She hadn’t opened the envelope, but his handwriting—she’d known it the second she saw it. That card had wrecked her sleep for weeks. “Look…” She took a deep breath. It would only hurt more if she waited. Get it over with. “Look, I’m going to be late for the first seminar. I’ve got to go.”

  “Stay, Jess.”

  Did he choose those words on purpose? It was all he’d said that first night, when she’d meant to duck out his apartment door after her chemistry lesson. “Stay, Jess,” he’d whispered, kissing her eyelids, the tips of her ears, the angle of her jaw. “Stay…” When he’d found the corner where her neck met her s
houlder, she’d whimpered and dropped her books. He’d laughed then deep in his throat, knowing he’d won, and at last kissed her on the mouth, and she’d been lost. Had never regained herself, not in eight years of trying. Damn him.

  “Stay…”

  Damn you! “I can’t.” She backed up another step, but couldn’t tear her gaze free from his, couldn’t turn away until she did.

  “Talk to me, dammit!” His voice was no longer honey smooth.

  “Look…” She retreated another step, shaking her head. “It’s over, Sam. Let it go.” You’re such a moron, thinking we can talk it out, patch it up, end up as friends. Not in this lifetime. You never knew me at all, if you don’t know that.

  “Jess—”

  “Look—” It’s dead. “Let’s not talk it to death.”

  “Talk it to—huh! You wouldn’t say a word. Not… one…damned…word! Wouldn’t return my phone calls. Sent back all my letters. Cut and ran every time I hit town. Only word I ever got from you was my quickie divorce papers. Talk it to death—God give me strength!”

  “There was nothing to say.” And in her family, even when there was, you didn’t say it. Silence and dignified withdrawal, that was the way you handled anger and pain.

  “Nothing to—God, Jess, how about why? You could have started with that.”

  “You know why.” Her throat ached with the words.

  He shook his head, slinging drops of bright water.

  “You do.” How could he not admit it? She’d never seen him as a coward, even when she’d hated him. She couldn’t bear to see him so now. “You know.”

  “Okay.” He swiped a hand upward to catch a drip, left his hair standing in spikes. “Okay…so maybe I do. I’m not a total idiot. Still, Jess, you owed me the words. You still owe me. Are you going to stand there and say them at last, or turn tail and run like a rabbit again?”

  “A rab—!” If she’d had something besides her briefcase to throw at him, she’d have thrown it. It had taken every last ounce of her courage and dignity to break away from him, and he’d seen her as a rabbit? Hands clenched, she stalked toward him, stood over him, her blood thumping in her ears. “All right then. If it’ll make you feel better to hear it, Sam Kirby, then I’ll say it, and-I-hope-you’resatisfied!”

  He cocked his square chin, with its cartoon-hero cleft, up at her. “So lay it on me, baby. I’m all ears.”

  “I left you…” Her voice broke and she gritted her teeth. She would say it if he insisted on hearing it. She wasn’t the wretched, heartbroken child she’d been eight years ago. She was a doctor, her own woman, nobody’s baby. Nobody’s fool. “I left because you cheated on me.” Her eyes filled instantly with tears, and she spun away. She wouldn’t cry, she would not!

  “I what?” she heard him say as she started toward the door.

  So she’d cry, but she’d be damned if she’d let Sam watch her—or worse, try to comfort her. “You heard me!”

  As she reached the exit, she heard the splashing sound of a large wet body lunging from the pool.’ I what? What are you—Jess, come back here!”

  “You go to hell!” She shoved through the doors, hiked up her skirt and ran like a rabbit.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EIGHT YEARS APART, ten minutes reunited, and they were doing it already, Jessica fleeing in frozen silence, Sam pursuing at the top of his lungs. “Dammit, Jess, come back here!”

  She couldn’t think—had never been able to think—when he yelled. It didn’t matter that he’d never once laid a hand on her but with tenderness. Didn’t matter that he came from a family where his mother broke plates and swore in Italian when mad, his father roared and stomped, and all their arguments ended behind a closed bedroom door with peals of laughter.

  In Jessica’s family emotions were controlled, or hidden away until they could be. Anything else was unthinkable. Jessica banged through the glass doors and out of the health club.

  An approaching woman stopped short and lifted her gym bag to fend her off. “Sorry!” Jessica gasped, dodging around her. Sixty feet down this corridor, turn the corner, then another sixty feet to the elevators, she calculated as she ran. She’d never make it.

  Behind her the doors slammed back. “Jess! Oof!”

  The woman squawked.

  Jessica stole a glance behind. Skidding down the hall, Sam waltzed his partner around and around in a desperate effort to stay upright. Wrapped in the arms of a virtually naked and dripping stranger, the woman let forth with another shriek while she thumped him with her bag.

  That wouldn’t hold him for long. Jess wrenched open a door marked Fire Exit and flung herself into a dimly lit stairwell. Only fifty floors to the lobby! Heels clattering on iron steps, one hand riding the cold steel of the banister, she plunged down the stairs. Get away, hide, sort it out later! Her heels rattled across a landing, clattered down the next flight of stairs.

  Above her the door crashed open. “Dammit, Jess, you’ll break your fool neck!” The sound of a heavy body taking one flight in three bounds. “Listen to me!”

  “Just leave me alone, Kirby!” Briefcase flailing, panting for breath, she wheeled around a landing and rattled down into darkness. He would catch her. Images of laughing games in the night, mock pursuit, hide-and-seek through their darkened apartment, her delighted shrieks when he pounced from the shadows. Being carried off to bed upside down over his shoulder, giggling and kicking helplessly, his hand on her bottom. No!

  “Jess!” He was closer.

  Tears streaming, she flew down another flight, landed on her toes. She couldn’t win this race. So change the rules! She groped for the door, found its knob, wrenched it open, stumbled into the bright light of a corridor, staggered toward a corner and around.

  “Jess, dammit, which way did you—”

  Ahead, an elevator, the light lit above it. Two men moved toward the opening doors, then turned to stare.

  “Wait! Hold it for me!” she squeaked, racing at them. “Please, wait!”

  The bald one shrugged and stepped on board, the other grinned as he braced his forearm to hold the doors open. Looking past her, his grin faded. “What the—?”

  She didn’t look back, knew who was gaining. “Please!” she panted as the man grabbed her arm and swung her inside. She fell against the control panel, punched buttons at random. “The door button! Where’s the—”

  “Hold it!” Sam’s arm and leg thrust through the closing gap, followed by his head and shoulders. His teeth were bared. His wild eyes found Jessica just as she slapped a last row of buttons. “Jess—”

  “Forget it!” yelled the man beside her. Lunging to meet her pursuer, he flattened his hands against Sam’s chest— and shoved. Sam’s scowl turned to surprise as he toppled from view. “Catch the next one, buddy!” crowed Jess’s defender. The doors closed. The car started down.

  “What the hell was that?” muttered someone.

  Gasping for breath, Jess turned—to find half a dozen men, doctors all, no doubt, their brows raised and eyes entranced. Scarlet-faced, she spun away and swiped at her tears. No nightmare could top this reality!

  Beside her, the bald man had collapsed against the wall. Clutching his ribs, he seemed to be choking. No, it was laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” demanded the man who’d pushed Sam.

  “G-good going, Ed! You just came as…as close as I bet you ever come to a Nobel prize,” gurgled his friend. “That was Sam Kirby, the guest of honor, you just shoved assover-teakettle!”

  Drop-jawed, Ed stared from the giggler to Jessica, then back again. “It was?” He swung back to Jessica. “That was Sam Kirby? The Sam Kirby who cloned the Bouncer gene? Who wrote No Nonsense?”

  Jessica hunched her shoulders and nodded.

  “Did he hurt you?” demanded her knight.

  “Oh, no! No!” This was the crowning humiliation, and there was no way to explain. Jess shut her eyes and shook her head. “No, nothing like that at all. No. Absolutely not. Just a…disagreemen
t.”

  The elevator bumped to a stop, the doors rolled open. Nobody stepped out. “She pushed every button,” someone reminded the group.

  Across the hall, the arrival light above the opposing elevator blinked on. Its doors rolled open—to reveal Sam, slouched against the back wall, his arms crossed, a thundercloud scowl on his face. Their eyes met and he bolted upright.

  Someone leaned past her to jab frantically at the door-close button. Jessica aimed a finger at Sam, nailing him to his spot by sheer willpower. “You just stay where you are, you…you Texan!”

  “Hate t’tell you, babe—” Sam started out his door, then stopped as her doors drew together. “That’s not an insult, where I come from.”

  “And that’s precisely the problem!” Jessica called through the gap.

  “You tell him!” someone chuckled.

  “Shuddup,” another man grunted.

  Jessica closed her eyes and willed herself to the ends of the earth. Not fifteen minutes in Sam’s company, and he’d dragged her down to his level. She’d felt more emotions in the past quarter hour than she had in the past four years. How did he do it? Her control was in tatters, and with it her pride.

  Her eyes snapped open as the car stopped. She heard the faint sound of six people each sucking in a breath and holding it.

  The doors opened, then…nothing. The light across the way stayed unlit. Everyone breathed out.

  “He can’t know which floors you pressed,” a basso profundo voice noted behind her.

  “Must be ahead of us now,” someone else added as the doors rolled together.

  Two floors down, the elevator stopped again.

  As their doors glided open, across the way the doors to Sam’s car were just closing. They jolted to a stop, then reversed as Sam slapped his door-open control.

  Jessica mashed her door-close button.

  “No, the problem is your dad—the walk-on-water, world-famous, kiss-my-sweet-fanny surgeon!” he yelled, starting out of his car, then ducking back in again when he realized he’d never catch hers.

  “You leave my father out of this!”

  Sam’s bellow carried faintly through the intervening steel. “That’s all I ever asked you to do! Leave him out of our…” His voice faded as the car dropped below floor level.