738 Days: A Novel

by Stacey Kade

The reminder of that grates unexpectedly, surprising me. I don’t want that from him. I just explained that to him, and I meant it, too.

  But …

  It’s too early to be thinking about this stuff. I push thoughts of Chase, his ex, and her weirdo behavior out of mind and concentrate on keeping my worry about where we’re going and why in check.

  True to Chase’s word, a cab is waiting for us at the back entrance of the hotel.

  The ball of tension in my stomach grows bigger, reaching out tentacles into my arms and legs and dragging them into slow motion as we exit the hotel into the parking lot, where the taxi waits.

  “Come on,” Chase says. He opens the back door of the cab, but seeing my hesitation, slides in first.

  I follow him, and the driver bobs his head at me in greeting as I close the door. He looks normal. No hint of sociopathy in his wrinkled face. Not that that is so easy to see, as I know too well.

  Chase’s leg brushes against mine as we turn out of the parking lot onto the street, and I find I’m distracted, at least temporarily, by the feel of him against me, and as ridiculous as it sounds, the way his legs look in his faded jeans.

  He’s toned beneath the velvety-looking fabric. No skinny chicken legs for him. Does he lift weights? Go running? Definitely something because I saw workout clothes yesterday.

  The noticeable cut of his thigh muscle beneath the denim sends a greedy surge of desire through me. I kind of want to run my hand over it.

  Chase takes my coffee and tips his head toward the wrapped bagel I’m still clutching tightly in my now sweaty hand.

  “You should eat,” he says. “We won’t have time once we’re there.”

  “Wherever there is,” I say, in one last attempt to elicit details.

  But he just nods.

  Gah.

  I do my best in the moving vehicle, juggling the open bagel, the cream cheese, and the plastic knife.

  But the blueberry bagel sticks in my throat, despite my clumsy slathering of topping, and I’m struggling to swallow.

  Chase takes the plastic knife from me and gives me back my coffee.

  But as I take a sip, I watch him, momentarily stumped by the messy utensil and the lack of a place to discard it. A small flaw in his otherwise perfectly thought-out plan.

  He looks around for a second, as if searching for a handy receptacle that he somehow previously missed. Then he shrugs and sticks the knife in his mouth to clean the cream cheese from both sides before sticking the knife in his pocket.

  I choke on a laugh.

  “I am resourceful, if nothing else,” he says with a grin as he wipes the corner of his mouth.

  After about ten minutes, the cab slows on a nondescript patch of road. I lean away from Chase to look outside for something, anything, as a clue to our final destination. In the patch of woods to my right, a brown peak pokes out sharply above the rapidly changing colors of the tree line.

  A mountain? But it’s painted brown, like an oversized science-project volcano made of papier-mâché.

  The cab makes a turn onto a gravel drive toward the “mountain.” A metal gate, the kind found at parks and cemeteries, stretches across the drive, but half of it has been left open. There’s an eerie, abandoned air to the area.

  I sit up, tense, on the edge of the seat.

  The cab bounces over potholes and crunches over fallen leaves until the driveway expands into a parking area. And beyond that, a familiar setup: an open area spotted with small patches of fake green grass that looks almost black in the pale early morning.

  It’s a miniature golf course.

  But dark shadowy figures and shapes crouch over the Astroturf squares, turning it into a nightmarish landscape.

  Um, hell no.

  I look to Chase for explanation as the cab pulls to a stop, but he just shrugs with a smile.

  Then the course lights snap on, along with brightly colored bulbs strung on lines around the perimeter of the course, and the space is transformed from creepy abandoned playground to a festival-like atmosphere.

  The course appears to be a mix of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters and settings. The mountain I saw from the road is decked out as the mine from Snow White, with pickaxes drawn on the side of the mountain, each bearing a Dwarf’s name.

  A giant red boot dominates the center of the course. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, maybe?

  It’s tattered around the edges—a chunk of the boot has broken off to reveal the white concrete beneath, and the mountain appears to be streaked from sun discoloration or a bad paint job—but the effect is charming. Like a tiny forgotten town tucked away as a secret but only for those who deserve to find it. Something out of a fairy tale itself.

  Tucking his sunglasses into the neck of his shirt, Chase slides out of the cab, and I climb out after him. My fear is receding under the weight of curiosity.

  “It’s closed for the season, so none of the water features are on,” Chase says. “But we have it to ourselves.” He frowns at my fleece jacket. “You’re not too cold, right?”

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, looking around me in amazement. Now that I’m out of the cab, I can see a bridge over an empty basin painted blue that’s likely meant to represent a river. A shiny green troll—it looks more like a Martian—crouches beneath the bridge with a greedy expression. A dark line divides his head from his body, probably where the water would normally hit.

  Beyond that are a small gingerbread house with old-fashioned Christmas tree lights playing the role of candies to lure Hansel and Gretel and a “tower” that’s only a little taller than me with a tattered rope braid of “hair” hanging from a window at the top.

  A kid, probably only a few years younger than me, wanders over from somewhere with a huge yawn to stand by the first hole, two metal putters in hand. He nods at us in acknowledgment but, other than that, looks utterly bored and half asleep.

  “How did you do this?” I ask Chase, unable to keep the delight off my face.

  He shrugs. “Max is from Wescott. They’re excited to be the location for a movie and involved in any way with the production. Emily made a few calls.”

  “Emily the production assistant who showed us around yesterday,” I say. The one who wanted so badly for me to leave that I think she would have carried me out, piggyback style, if required.

  He grins at me. “She called late last night to ask if I needed anything. So I told her what I wanted.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “I bet this is not what she was thinking.” But once he asked, it would have been tough for her to find a gracious way out without admitting why she truly called.

  “Probably not,” Chase agrees with a wicked smile. “But she did it.”

  And would hate me so much more for it. Oh, well.

  “This is okay?” he asks turning toward me, hesitation in his voice. “I wanted to do something away from the movie, something outside.”

  Because you haven’t had much of that lately, is the unspoken thought.

  And he’s right.

  It strikes me, then, that his excitement this morning was to share this with me. All because … I let him?

  Who messed him up so badly that a little kindness and forgiveness went so far in his currency?

  “Yeah,” I say softly, moving to thread my arm through his. “It’s awesome. Thank you.”

  “Good.” His pleased smile is something to behold; it makes me want to do crazy things to see it again.

  Chase leads the way to the kid and collects our clubs and balls, along with the scorecard and requisite tiny pencil, which he stuffs in his coat pocket.

  “We’ve got half an hour to get in nine holes,” he says, offering me a club and my choice of either a green or blue ball. I take the green one. “Think you can keep up?” he asks with a challenge in his voice.

  Ha. Guess he is right that we could certainly know each other better.

  “I don’t know,” I say, doing my best to inject doubt into my tone. “I�
��ll do my best.”

  20

  Chase

  “You’re a fucking ringer,” I say in disbelief, as Amanda’s ball clunks off the giant’s heel, spins into the green-painted metal pipe presumably meant to represent a bean stalk, and then bounces neatly into the hole.

  We’re on the sixth hole, and she’s under par. Well under it. My score is almost double hers.

  Amanda laughs and steps onto the concrete curb bordering the putting green. “Nope, just lots of practice.”

  “How is that?” I ask, glancing at her and then back down to line up my shot. They give you three holes in the little plastic mat at the entrance to serve as tees. Why? Doesn’t that make it unnecessarily complicated? Real golf is nothing like this.

  She shrugs, walking on the curb as if it’s a balance beam. “My dad is one of four brothers. But he has three daughters and five nieces. I don’t think he knew what to do with us. So he took us miniature golfing and bowling—”

  I swing and my shot ricochets between the giant’s feet and then rolls back out at me. “Damnit,” I mutter.

  “I can also play poker, change a flat tire, and fix a leaky shower head.” She hops off the curb and makes her way past the giant and the bean stalk toward me.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Not my favorite things to do,” she admits. “But I felt bad for my dad. He was always outnumbered. And Liza approached everything like her entire future depended on getting it right on the first try. You should have seen her trying to line up the plumber’s tape.” She rolls her eyes. “Super-stressful for all involved. Mia was, still is, in her own little world.” Her mouth curves into a wry smile, and she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “That left me.”

  Her smile fades slowly. “Until I was … gone. Now he doesn’t seem to know what to do with me.” She gives a forced laugh, rolling her club between her palms.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, fully feeling the inadequacy of those words but having nothing else to offer.

  She lifts a shoulder in a stiff shrug. “It’s okay.”

  Except it clearly isn’t.

  Amanda leans her putter against the score stand and then moves in front of me. “All right, so here’s the deal: you’re swinging from your arms.”

  I stare at her. “Yeah, that’s kind of how it works.”

  “No, you need to use your shoulders. Stiffen at the elbow, like you don’t have any joints from the shoulder down.” Her hands are light on me as she makes adjustments.

  The sky behind the fake mountain is orange with the impending sunrise, and the light sets the red in her hair on fire. She’s beautiful. And her forehead is wrinkled with concentration, which is fucking adorable.

  I work on maintaining the new stance she’s given me. “Why do you think that is?” I ask, taking a couple of practice swings when she steps back. It feels weird not to bend my arms. But I can’t do much worse this way than I’ve done on my own. “Your dad, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, reclaiming her club and resting it over her shoulder, like a baseball bat. “It wasn’t like that at first. Everyone was so excited I was alive.” Her mouth pinches in. “But it didn’t even feel real to me. You know, when you’ve imagined something so many times—” She cuts herself off.

  I look up from where I’m attempting to line up my shot again. “No, I get it.” I spent my first couple years in L.A. imagining a triumphant return home to Tillman after my Emmy win or my big payday as a lead in a box-office hit.

  Yeah, well. Everyone defines success differently, and as it turns out, no one else in Hollywood agreed with my definition.

  By the time I realized I had peaked—surprisingly, there is no “this is as good as it gets” banner strung ceremoniously across your doorway, just people making promises about even better things in the future that never come to fruition—my life was declining so fast and so furiously that there was no way I could go home for anything resembling a victory lap.

  “I think he’s angry with me,” Amanda says quietly. “For not being smarter, faster, fighting harder.”

  I step out of position, toward her, the denial immediately leaping to my tongue. But I hold it back. She won’t believe me. Because she blames herself, she assumes everyone else does, too.

  Instead, I make myself return to the tee area. “No,” I say. “I bet he blames himself.”

  She makes a skeptical noise.

  “Think about it. His job was to protect you, keep you safe, and that didn’t happen.” I shrug. “If it was me, I’d feel like I failed my kid.” And kept failing her by not being able to deal with it and face her. “He probably feels guilty for messing up your life.”

  “Yeah? He has a hell of a way of showing it,” she says, but her tone is thoughtful. She watches my ball slowly putter its way past the giant’s feet without trouble. “Good job.” She steps toward me, her hand out for a high five.

  But I ignore it and lean in to kiss her.

  Her lips are cool, but her mouth is warm and vaguely coffee flavored. With my free hand, I tug on the front of her fleece, pulling her closer. Her fingers are cold against my skin when she rests her hand at the back of my neck. When her tongue slides boldly into my mouth, I can’t stop a groan from escaping.

  I catch her lower lip gently between my teeth, and she makes that soft gasping sound that goes straight to my head. I want to hear that noise when I’m inside her.

  Moving from the corner of her mouth, along her jawline, I leave open-mouthed kisses, and her hand clutches tighter at me. “We could get out of here,” I murmur against her skin, soft and scented with the hotel soap.

  Amanda laughs, a bit unsteadily, and pushes me away. “We’re in the middle of something here.” But her eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed with the cold and want.

  “We could definitely be in the middle of something else,” I offer.

  “No way—you’re not getting off that easily,” she says, tipping her club handle toward me.

  I smirk. “Really?”

  She blushes. “I mean the golf game. The one you’re currently losing,” she says pointedly. “Besides, this was your idea.”

  “You know I occasionally have terrible ideas, right?” I ask.

  She sticks her tongue out at me.

  I heave an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”

  “What about your parents?” she asks as we make our way around the giant, which is pretty much just a pair of legs and the lower part of a torso, to the back half of the hole so I can finish.

  The question catches me off guard, which is stupid because I should have been expecting it. It’s a logical progression from talking about her family.

  “Not much time for mini-golfing,” I say. My ball has stopped about three feet from the hole, but there’s a weird outcropping of “beans,” stones painted green, that might get in the way.

  “Elbows,” she reminds me, resuming her perch on the curb.

  For a second, I think she’s going to let me get away without answering. But then as I straighten my arms, she says, “So you trust me with your body but not in general.”

  I glance at her sharply and yes, she’s teasing, but there’s a level of seriousness in her expression as well. Her personal life is, by circumstance, far more exposed than mine. Which means I have her at a disadvantage.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t talked to my mom since I was eight.” I look up from the Astroturf to Amanda. “She left. She’s an artist in Sedona, last I heard. Silversmith, I think, or something like that. She makes jewelry and metal sculptures and stuff.”

  Amanda frowns at me. “But you said your brother—”

  “He’s my half-brother. My dad remarried when I was ten. Layla. She’s cool.” She tried. I had to give her that. But I was miserable and my dad was determined to ignore it, which only made the environment at home that much worse. Heavy with poison, resentment, and unspoken words.

  I knock the ball toward the hole with a clumsy move that’s more b
ump than swing. But it goes in, giving me the best score I’ve gotten all game.

  I retrieve the balls from the hole.

  “What about your dad?” she asks, stepping forward to take the pencil and scorecard from my pocket and writing down my new number.

  My jaw tightens. “Do we have to talk about him?”

  She looks up, startled.

  “What I did … it’s not something I’m proud of,” I say, trying to explain, but the words come out sounding clenched.

  Her expression softens. “No,” she says. “We don’t have to.” She tucks the pencil and card into her jacket pocket.

  But now that the topic is hanging out there, I can feel it pressing down on me.

  As we follow the sidewalk to the tower, the one with the weird rope dangling from it—Oh. Rapunzel. I get it.—I feel the words gathering at the back of my throat, pushing forward.

  “La Estrella, that’s our ranch, has been in my family for a long time,” I say. “My great-great-grandfather came from Poland. Learned English, moved to Texas from New York, and bought land on the cheap. Or won it in a poker game, depending on who you talk to.” I shrug, my mouth curving up at the memory of my grandfather detailing exactly how that supposedly happened—it involved a hot blonde and an extra ace of hearts, according to him. The story got more and more outrageous every time he told it.

  Amanda stops at the tee, listening to me, her club forgotten in her hand.

  I shift uncomfortably. Having her attention on me while I’m talking about this is harder than I’d thought.

  Handing Amanda her ball, I nod for her to go ahead. “Don’t stop. We’re burning daylight now.”

  She hesitates.

  “Please?” I ask.

  With a look of sudden comprehension, she takes the ball and lines it up on the tee. “Keep going,” she says.

  “It’s what the Mroczeks do. We ranch. Every generation,” I say. “‘We’re raising the food that feeds America.’” Hearing my dad’s words—the ones he recited over and over again, then shouted at me—come out of my mouth gives a weird sense of déjà vu.

  “So what happened?” she asks, her club connecting with the ball, the soft hollow sound loud in the silence.