Cammie gives me a dirty look. “Stop looking at her like that.”
I don’t respond, because I know exactly what she’s talking about. I wink at Olivia. My ex-wife accused me of the same thing. When I look at her, I can’t seem to look away. It’s been that way since the first day I saw her under the tree. All other beauty, since then, has reminded me of her. No matter what it is, it’s just a reflection of Olivia. The little witch has me spellbound.
I catch Olivia’s eyes and we stay there for a good six seconds, locked in a gaze so intimate my stomach hurts when we look away. I see her throat working as she tries to swallow her emotion. I know what she’s thinking.
Why?
I think that every day.
I pay the check and we climb back into my car. The girls don’t want to go back to Olivia’s.
“Caleb, he could crush you,” Cammie says. “I’ve seen him in person. No offense, but I don’t think you could take him. He’d. Crush. You.”
Olivia’s head is between her knees. She doesn’t want to joke about something so serious, but it’s hard with Cammie and me making light of everything. I see her back shaking in silent laughter. I reach over and snap her bra.
“You too, Duchess? You don’t think I could take care of Dobbie?”
“Dobbie was torturing small animals by the time he could walk. I once saw him bite the head off of a mouse and eat it.”
I make a face. “Really?”
“No. But, he eats his meat very rare.”
I snicker. “Is it true what they said about his mother? Her molesting all those kids in that church?”
Olivia picks at some fluff on her pant leg and shrugs. “It would seem so, yes. He spoke many times about the things his mother would do to him. It makes sense — his need to, um … force women to love him after having a mother like that.”
“Damn,” says Cammie from the backseat. “I thought having daddy issues messed you up.”
“Was he ever aggressive toward you?” I glance at her from the corner of my eye.
“No, no, he was very quiet. Almost gentlemanly. The girls told me that he would ask permission before raping them. That’s sick, isn’t it? Let me rape you … I’ll ask first and kill you if you say no, but let me ask anyway.”
The corner of her mouth dips in and she shakes her head. “People are so messed up. All of us. We just hurt each other.”
“Some of us a little more so, don’t you think? For instance, our good friend Dobson could have become an advocate for abused children rather than becoming a serial rapist.”
“Yeah,” she says. “His mind was broken. Not all abuse victims have the strength to make it through what he went through and come out with their brains all in one piece.”
I love her. God, I love her so much.
“Can we just not go back to my place?” she says. “It feels weird being there.”
“What about Cammie’s?” I suggest.
Cammie shakes her head. “I’m staying with my boyfriend while I close on my new house. Olivia hates him.”
I look at my watch. Jessica will be at my place until she leaves for work in a few hours. She only stays over a couple nights a week, but even so, I don’t like the idea of taking Olivia somewhere I have had sex with other women.
“We could get a hotel,” I say. “Hide out until they catch him.”
Olivia shakes her head. “No, who knows how long that will be? Just take me home, it’s okay.”
I can see the fear on her face, and I want to ask again where Noah is.
“I have an idea,” I say. When they press me, I won’t tell them what it is. It’s a ridiculous idea, but I like it. I make a U-turn and slide my car between the early morning traffic, heading back to her building.
“Do you want to grab some clothes?” She nods.
We make a brief stop at her building. I go up to her condo, in case Dobson is watching, and grab a duffel bag out of her closet. I open a couple drawers in her dresser until I find underwear. I stuff it into the bag. Next, I go to her closet and randomly choose a few items for her and Cammie. Before I leave, I stop at the other closet. His.
I pull open the door, not knowing what to expect. His clothes are there, all neatly on their hangers. I slam the door shut a little harder than I intended. I make one more stop in the living room. There is a table where he kept his whiskey in a decanter. The bottle is empty. I open it and hold it upside down.
Dry.
How long has he been gone? Why? Why didn’t she tell me?
I don’t say anything when I climb back into the car. Cammie is snoring softly in the backseat.
I pass her the bag and she mouths thank you.
Anything, Duchess, anything.
Soap sprayed on my windshield and the car vibrated as the jets beat water across the windows. Olivia pulled away from my mouth and glanced over her shoulder. I kissed down the elegant lines of her neck then laced my fingers into the back of her hair, steering her mouth back to mine. Things were getting out of control — for Olivia. For me, this was normal. A girl straddled on my lap, wearing a skirt … in the car wash … things could only get better from here. Not with Olivia. Things would not get better from here. Despite the fact that she was my girlfriend … and I loved her, and I wanted her naked and on top of me, I didn’t want to take something from her that she wasn’t ready to give.
I grabbed her by the waist and replanted her in her own seat. Then I gripped the steering wheel and thought about my great aunt Ina. Aunt Ina was sixty-seven years old and she had warts … gross … nasty … protruding — warts. I thought about her chins and her cankles and the hair that grew out of her arm wart. Aunt Ina seemed to do the trick. I felt slightly more in control.
Olivia huffed in the seat next to me. “Why do you always do that? I was having fun.”
I kept my eyes closed and leaned my head back. “Duchess, do you want to have sex?”
Her answer came quickly. “No.”
“So what’s the point of doing that?”
She paused to think. “I don’t know. Everyone else messes around. Why can’t we just … you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said, turning to look at her. “Why don’t you inform me what exactly it is that you have in mind?”
She blushed. “Can’t we just compromise?” she whispered this without looking at me.
“I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve been having sex since I was fifteen. I think I am compromising. If you’re asking me to feel you up like I’m a fifteen-year-old boy, I’m not going to do it.”
“I know,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry — I just can’t.”
Her voice pulled me out of my selfishness. It wasn’t her fault. I’d already waited a year. I would wait another — I wanted to wait. She was worth it.
I wanted her.
“The thing with messing around is — you slowly work your way toward sex. It starts with hands and then mouths and then before you know it you’re doing all three, all the time.”
She blushed.
“Once you start, you don’t stop. It’s a slow decline toward sex. So, if you’re really not ready to have sex, don’t start doing the other stuff. That’s all I’m saying.”
I opened the bottle of water that was sitting in my cup holder and took a sip. The car wash rattled around us, strips of soapy rubber slapping the metal. I felt those slaps.
She climbed back into my lap. God, I hope she can’t feel my erection. She put a hand on each side of my face and pressed her nose against mine. Her nose was cold. This was the softer side of Olivia. It was the side that caused me to want to stand over her like a dominating Alpha male and bare my teeth at anyone who came near her.
“I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m sorry I’m so messed up.”
My hands went back to her waist. “You’re not messed up, you’re just sexually repressed.”
She giggled. It was so girly and soft. When a woman made that sound, I couldn’t help but smile.
I looked down
at her toned legs. All I would have to do was unzip my pants, she was already right-
“You’re going to have to go back to your seat.” My voice was gruff.
She scuttled back looking guilty.
We sat in silence for a few minutes as the dryers came on. I watched the drops of water shimmy across the windshield until they disappeared. What had I gotten myself into? I’d fallen in love with someone I couldn’t fix. My coach called me a fixer. It started my sophomore year when I saw a couple of the freshmen on the team struggling with their game. I worked with them on the side until their defense improved. Coach always used my side projects as starters. My junior year I had ten guys come to me on the side and ask for private practice sessions. I don’t know why, but I was good at it. Now, my need to fix things had transferred onto the women I was attracted to. I thought back to my ex-girlfriend, Jessica. She had been perfect, until…
I clenched my teeth. Maybe that’s why things hadn’t worked out between us. She was too perfect. Olivia was so beautifully broken. The hairline cracks in her personality were more pieces of art than flaws. I loved flawed art. Michelangelo’s statue of Lorenzo with its warped base that rose to accommodate his foot, the Mona Lisa’s missing eyebrows. Flaws were seriously underrated. They were beautiful if you looked at them just so.
I knew I was lying to myself by thinking I could fix her. But, it was too late. I didn’t know how to let go. She broke the silence first.
“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” she said.
“There’s always the option of asking me.” I put the car in gear and pulled forward. She watched my hand on the stick shift — she always did that.
Car wash — over. Pounding need to be inside of her — not over.
“I feel like you’re always trying to sneak into my mind. You’re like Peter Pan — always climbing in windows and causing trouble.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Did you really just call me Peter Pan?”
“I’ve called you worse.” I eased the car into the traffic.
“A llama,” she said. “I loved that.”
I laughed at her obvious sarcasm, and the lust spell was broken. I was back to just needing to be with her.
“Peter Pan wants to sneak into your mind and know what you’re thinking,” she tried again. She was looking at me so earnestly, I gave.
We pulled up at a red light. I reached over and grabbed her hand. Okay, if she wanted my thoughts, I was going to give them to her. Maybe it would do her good to be inside the mind of a normal, adult male. Maybe she’d play with said ‘normal adult male’ with a little more caution. I raised her fingers to my lips and kissed them. I conjured up an image of her on my lap and my voice dropped low so she knew I meant business.
“If you climb into my lap while wearing a skirt and kiss me like that again, I’m going to pull off your panties and fuck you.”
Her face blanched. Good. I needed her to be scared enough to not do that again. I wasn’t Superman. I was a man — a man that very much wanted to make love to his girlfriend.
She didn’t let go of my hand, if anything her hold on it tightened. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was biting her bottom lip, staring straight out of the windshield with glassy eyes.
I choked back a laugh. By God, I think I actually turned her on. My little Duchess — always the surprise.
From that day on, Peter Pan was our code word for — what are you thinking?
“Peter Pan.”
“Leave me alone.”
“You invented this game.”
We were lying on her floor, supposedly having a study session. Her lips were still a little swollen from our kissing session.
“I’m covered in Cheeto dust and trying to study. You’re annoying me because for the last forty minutes you’ve been staring at me, and it’s breaking my concentration.” She put another Cheeto in her mouth and let it melt. I grabbed her hand and stuck one of her fingers between my lips, sucking the “Cheeto dust” off. It was a new Oliviaism.
Her eyes glazed for a second, and I dropped her hand.
“Since when do you read the paper?” It was slightly buried underneath her body. She raised her ribcage to let me pull it out and I rolled onto my back.
“I saw it when I was checking out at the grocery store.” She looked half guilty. I unfolded it and looked at the front page.
“Laura,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but seeing her picture caught me by surprise. I got a sick feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about it.
“New leads in the Laura Hilberson case,” I read. The paper said that one of her credit cards had been used at a gas station in Mississippi. Since the gas station had no video surveillance, they weren’t able to get a shot of who was using the card. The teenager behind the counter was high at the time and didn’t remember anything at all.
“You dated her,” Olivia said. I nodded. She pushed her textbook aside and rested her head on her fist. “So, what was she like? Do you think she would just disappear? Do you think someone took her?”
I scratched my belly. “It was like a week. I didn’t know her very well.” That isn’t true. Why am I lying?
Olivia knew I was lying.
“Tell me,” she says.
“There’s nothing to tell, Duchess.”
“Caleb, you’re one of the most perceptive humans I’ve ever met. Are you really telling me that you have no insight into this situation?”
My brain locked and I wasn’t sure which way to send my tongue. This was such a touchy subject. I was about to tell another lie — or maybe it was the truth, when Cammie came barreling into the room, saving me.
“Oh my god! Did you guys have sex?”
I propped my hands behind my head to watch as they started their usual playful arguing.
Where was Laura? This was crazy.
Laura Hilberson was a compulsive liar. I knew it within three dates. She was a pretty girl, shy for the most part, but everyone seemed to know who she was. It might have been because her parents owned a yacht and she invited everyone on the weekends. Our college was a private one. Olivia was one of the handful of students who attended on full scholarship. No one else really needed a scholarship.
I asked Laura out after we were assigned to a group project in Speech class. Date one included her telling me about her best friend dying from a four-wheeler accident three years earlier. She cried when she told me, saying she was closer to the girl than she was to her siblings. When I asked her how many brothers and sisters she had, she paused only briefly before saying — eight. Eight siblings. Wow! I thought. Her parents must be stretched pretty thin. How did they even manage to hug everyone in one day?
Date two was spent on her parents’ yacht. For all their money, they were simple people. Her mother made us sandwiches for lunch, one slice of turkey, white bread and a tomato. They spoke about their church and the mission trips Laura had gone on throughout high school. When I asked if any of her siblings went with her, they stared at me blankly. Laura saw a school of dolphins just then and we all were distracted with watching them play in the water. Later we went back to their house so I could pick up my car. They lived in a modest two-story, the only indication of their money really being the yacht, which they called their splurge.
She showed me around the house while her mother got us some Cokes from the garage fridge. I counted the bedrooms: one, two, three, four. Each one had a queen, except for Laura’s — she said she preferred a twin. When I asked where everyone slept, she said that most of her siblings were older than her and had already moved out.
My internal alarm really went off when I said goodbye to her family in the foyer. On the wall to the right of the front door was a huge montage of family pictures. Grandparents, Christmases, birthday parties — my eyes scanned each one as we chatted about school and upcoming finals. When I finally said goodbye, I walked to my car knowing two things: Laura was an only child, and Laura was a compulsive liar.
Date three should never have happened. I was thoroughly turned off after I figured everything out. It was a group date and I landed up paired with Laura. We went on a road trip to see the Yankees play the Rays. Everyone knew it would be an embarrassing game for the Rays, but we wanted to get out of town and have some fun before finals killed us. Laura drove with me and one other couple. She sat in the front seat chatting about her last trip to Tampa, when her sister got lost at the beach and her parents had to call the police.
“I thought you were the youngest,” I said.
“It was a long time ago. I think she was only five,” she said.
“So, that made you how old?”
“Three,” she answered quickly.
“You have a memory of that happening?”
She paused. “No. But, my parents tell me about it all the time.”
“Is your sister in college now?”
“No. She’s in the military.”
“What branch?”
“She’s a Navy SEAL.”
My eyebrows went up. I checked my rearview mirror to see if John and Amy heard her in the backseat.
They were both slumped over, sleeping.
Damn.
It was dark. I was glad she couldn’t fully see the expression on my face. There were no women in the Navy SEALs. I may not be fully American, but it was a pretty well known fact. Or at least I thought it was.
“Well, that’s impressive,” I said, for lack of anything better. “You must be proud.” Or lying.
For the remainder of the drive, I asked what each of her siblings did, and she had an answer each time.
At that point I was simply doing it for amusement. At the baseball game the next day, I wedged myself between two of my friends so I wouldn’t have to sit next to her. The lies were exhausting me. But, that night I went back for more.
I asked her about her mission trips, trying to decode some of her psychology. Christians weren’t supposed to lie — not this big anyway. This was delusion. Maybe she wasn’t right in the head. She acted normal socially. God. This was blowing my mind. It made me wish I’d done what I’d wanted and studied psychology instead of business. I asked one of the girls in our group about her later that week.
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