Purely Relative (The P.U.R.E.)

by Claire Gillian

  She reached out and gave my hand a pat. “He’s crazy about you, you know that, don’t you? You can’t doubt that.”

  “I know. I don’t.”

  “I have a confession,” she began, cocking her head oh so slightly. “He asked me to ask you to dinner to plead his case for him.” A soft laugh escaped my lips at that. She continued. “Not that I wouldn’t have asked you for my own selfish reasons anyway.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” I took another large swallow. A fuzzy haze started to coat the inside of my head. I’d probably hit my alcohol limit. Any more and I wouldn’t be able to drive. I pushed the glass to the side.

  Jenny nodded in its direction. “Jon said you were a bit of a lightweight and that I was not to let you drink at all. Oops.” She glanced from the glass to me, and then back to the glass. “Don’t worry about driving. You’re more than welcome to crash here.” She winked at me and added, “I have a very cozy guest bedroom.”

  I burst out laughing and dropped my head. We’d finally breeched that topic. “Oh my God, Jenny, I am so embarrassed about that ... still.”

  She flipped a hand. “Eh, no worries. Not that I ever wanted to see my little brother having sex nor do I ever want to witness it again, but honestly, I didn’t think he was much the type for that sort of thing. He’s always been so— I dunno—proper and virginal. That’s why I knew you were different, you know.”

  I couldn’t help but snort at her impression of her brother, correct in some respects but far from the mark in others. I supposed brothers and sisters didn’t always know each other so well once they became adults. Ian had certainly surprised me. “Thanks. I think.” My cheeks warmed. Time to change the subject. “Okay, so new topic. What happened with Jason? I’m dying to know.”

  Jenny leaned toward me, eyes wide. “Oh! Now there’s a soap opera. I’m glad Tully finally spoke up and told Jason she was sick of playing in the friends zone. Apparently, the fully pieced together story was: Jason ran out after Tully but was too late. Kat caught up to him and they left to go talk. They ended up having a huge fight and broke up. She brought him back to my parents’ house after you and Jon had left. Without even asking, Jason took Dad’s car and rushed off and didn’t return until the wee hours of the night. According to Mom, Tully picked him up the next morning with this big shit-eating grin on her face, and they went back to Austin early.”

  “A-ha! I knew it!”

  “Everybody knew it, except Jason. Such an idiot. I guess he knows now.” Jenny snickered but set down her glass. In a more somber tone she added, “Sometimes, you have to turn off your brain and do what your heart tells you, consequences be damned.”

  I thought the truth of her words probably depended a great deal upon how odious those repercussions might be.

  We talked about all the other events at Chez Cripps during Thanksgiving, including her own drama, late into the night. By then I was fully sober. I said my goodbyes and went home to canoodle with consequences I wasn’t ready to challenge.

  Chapter 12

  The morning Jon was due to fly home for Christmas, I woke at six and cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. I baked cookies and decorated and at two o’clock made my third pass through DFW’s congested pick-up zone watching for Jon who had landed at one-thirty.

  On my fourth pass, there he was. My heart tap-danced in my chest watching his face light up when he recognized me. That smile alone might have made me swoon with happiness but for the Homeland Security guard wagging his finger and tapping his watch at me as I idled at the curb.

  Geesh, take a load off, buddy, and Merry Christmas to you, too!

  I jumped out of the car to help Jon load his briefcase and carry-on in the trunk. That was all he brought because, of course, he wasn’t staying, would be leaving in just three short days. He took me in his arms and bent me back, shooting an “I dare you to say anything” grin to the surly guard before he gave me a kiss that barely skirted the boundaries of decent public behavior.

  Jon saluted the guard after he stood me back up, then kissed the tip of my nose. “Can I drive?”

  Since I already had my hand on the passenger door when he asked, I didn’t bother to answer; I slipped in and buckled. He leaned over to give me another kiss.

  “We better scoot before the curbside commando gives me a ticket,” I said grinning.

  “Your place?” he asked with a sidelong glance.

  “Yes, please!”

  “I shall do my very best,” he said with a wink.

  “How’s DC?”

  “Cold. Lonely. Depressing.” Another quick glance.

  I fidgeted with my hands in my lap. “Here, too.” Yet I also knew I was half the cause of our misery.

  Most of the drive was quick and lively but with a mournful undertone. Jon told me about DC—his new apartment, his neighbors, the sights and sounds. I told him about my temp work, my DC applications, and an Anderson-Blakely co-worker I’d had lunch with one day.

  We were nearly at my apartment when I said, “I also went to a couple of interviews.” I caught my breath after I said it and in hindsight should have kept that to myself. In my defense, I’d sent those companies my resume before Jon told me about relocating.

  Though he kept his eyes on the road, I detected his slow exhale. Whatever thoughts he had on the subject, he held back from vocalizing them. His body language had already betrayed them.

  “Gaines and Minor has a DC affiliate,” I quickly tacked on, not that I’d mentioned my preference for DC in my interview. One hurdle at a time, and requesting a transfer before even being hired tended to slam doors shut on any further consideration.

  We parked and grabbed his stuff.

  At the threshold to my apartment, I placed a hand on his chest and rose up on my toes to give him a hug. Even though he’d been traveling for hours, he smelled like my Jon, all male with a hint of musk. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve missed you so much.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. There we stood for several precious seconds, holding each other and reacquainting ourselves with the fit of our bodies. When we finally broke apart, I unlocked my door and led him inside.

  My apartment smelled heavenly. The lingering scents of butter, vanilla, and chocolate lured us straight into the kitchen where I had a plate full of cookies ready for him. I wasn’t that great of a cook, but I could make chocolate chip cookies in my sleep.

  “For me?”

  “Of course!”

  “Come here, first,” he said, crooking his finger at me.

  I tried to keep a leash on my smile lest he think I was easy but somewhere between the insistent finger and my first step in his direction, I lost all control over the thing. It split my face and tugged at my cheeks at warp speed. No poker face with Jon. I was way too giddy.

  After the first breathtaking kiss, I placed both my palms on his cheeks. “I love, love, love you! I needed desperately to remind you of that.”

  “Oh, yeah? I think you need to show me. I’ve been aching so badly for you that even one more second not spent holding you, making love to you, is a torment.”

  “Keep talking like that, mister, and I won’t be held responsible for any clothing harmed in the making of this reunion.”

  We shot out of the kitchen and ran to my bedroom where we hibernated in bliss for the next two days, until it was time for Jon to go to his parents’ house for Christmas.

  I’d be lying if I claimed to be heartbroken over my exclusion from the Cripps’ Christmas dinner. Apparently, their tradition was Cripps only—no family friends, no boyfriends or girlfriends, romantic or otherwise. Though both Jon and Jenny pushed to challenge the tradition when she picked him up, I insisted they drop the matter. They honored my wish when I told them I’d signed up for a Christmas Day 10k race that conflicted anyway.

  I would have visited my parents in Albuquerque if money hadn’t been tight, both for them and me. A quick online video chat with them and each of my brothers had to make do for h
oliday wishes. Ian seemed equally miserable all by himself in Houston. He had a project deadline that kept him from coming to Dallas.

  Other than Jon, I really didn’t have but a small handful of friends in the Dallas area, and most were old college buddies. I had only been living in the area since May and the few I’d made at work had scattered to the four winds in the wake of the Anderson-Blakely debacle. I felt the void of no longer having a cadre of close girlfriends deeply. I was a girl’s girl at heart.

  Refusing to succumb to the crushing loneliness, I did go to the Jingle Bell 10K as a ghost runner, someone who hadn’t paid the entry fee that also included a T-shirt. Running had become my rediscovered time for reflection and planning. My temp job had ended, but the staffing agency promised work usually flooded them right after the holidays and especially after New Year’s. With a glowing recommendation from the computer people, the agency moved me to the top of their list of talent to place. Though I’d sent off a few resumes to DC, I was probably stuck in Dallas until my apartment’s lease ended in May. I certainly couldn’t afford to buy it out early. That meant I needed a job in Dallas while I job-hunted in DC and waited out my lease. Gnawing financial anxieties put extra adrenaline in my step and the six-and-change mile route flew beneath my feet.

  Jon was waiting in my apartment for me when I returned home. I was drenched in sweat and toting a soggy taco. His solemn brown eyes took in my appearance. The longer he perused, the lower the corners of his lips fell. Time for the upbeat fairy to wave her magic wand.

  “Whew! What a run! I had a personal best, can you believe it? I’m sorry, I’m all gross. I’ll take a quick shower and be right back.” Not waiting for his response, I jogged to my bedroom, muscles protesting the hasty demands I made on them after they thought they were done for the day.

  Jon didn’t follow me like I had expected, hoped. When I emerged from the bathroom in my robe, towel wrapped around my hair, he sat exactly where I’d left him. One hand cradled his fist and his head tilted downward, Rodin’s The Brooder, if such a sculpture existed.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “As in for the rest of the day?” A gremlin in my gut stirred from its slumber and stretched.

  “No, as in why do I feel like I’m losing you?” He raised his head and rolled it back, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “I can’t do another long distance relationship. Not with you.”

  But he was able to do it with Thalia, for years even. The gremlin ripped off a chunk from inside me and began munching.

  “So, what are you saying? This is it? You’re leaving me? Dumping me? We’re over?” And on Christmas Day too? The gremlin climbed up to my heart and gripped it with its clawed hand. “I said I was looking, and I am. I will. These things take time though. If I could snap my fingers and get a job, I would.” A tear rolled down my cheek. I didn’t care if he saw it. He was being so unfair and heartless, what was a couple of tears?

  He jumped to his feet and rushed to me, pulling me into his arms. “Dumping you? Leaving you? Hell no! I’m not dumping you. I know I’m the one who left, but I really thought ... I honestly believed you would come with me.” He pulled back and cupped my cheeks, using his thumb to wipe away my tear. “What’s here in Dallas for you? You don’t have a job or family nearby. You haven’t lived here long enough to make many friends. The weather is terrible. It sucks in Dallas and this is my hometown! What’s the difference if you’re broke here or broke in DC? I don’t get it. Help me understand why this is an obstacle for us? What better time for you to move to DC than when you aren’t employed?”

  The gremlin backed off for a second, licking its fingers, and still eyeballing my heart hungrily.

  “Okay,” I began on a sigh, “let’s discuss this.” I moved and sat down on the sofa. He followed and sat next to me. “I need to be able to stand on my own two feet. I can’t do that with you holding me up. I’m only twenty-three, I need to feel independent before I can feel dependent.”

  “Why is accepting help from me, temporary help I’ll point out, depending on me? You’d accept help from a stranger if your tire blew out on the side of the road, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s not the same.” I pulled my arms around myself.

  “How is it not? It’s not like I asked you to stop working or told you where you could work and what hours. I’m not trying to dictate your life. I want … I need to feel like I’m an important part of it.” He moved his hands as he spoke, a gesture I rarely saw him do except when very keyed up.

  His anguish slapped me full force in the face. I had never taken the time to consider his point of view, other than he was pushing me into a world he chose without consulting me. I had to voice that, as much as I feared escalating our conflict. “But you have dictated it by taking the job in DC without even discussing other alternatives with me. You dropped it on me as an accomplished deed. You never once mentioned you had inquired about your old job, that you were unhappy being a field agent and wanted your old job back.”

  He shook his head as I spoke. “No. No. No, that’s not true. I told you when I lost my cover at Anderson Blakely that they might put me at a desk job and that I might be happier with it since that’s what I’m best at. I told you I left a job that I loved for a woman I thought I loved but turns out I really didn’t.”

  “Oh, therein lies one of your fears. You gave up a job once before for a woman and it was the wrong decision. You weren’t going to do it again even though you yourself said you knew I was different and that I was,” I used my air-quote fingers, something I normally loathed, “the one.”

  Turning on the seat cushion to face me fully, he took my hand. “You are the one. But you talk about needing to feel independent. I need to feel that way also. For too long I’ve put my own wishes on hold for women, to do whatever it took to make them happy even if it made me miserable. Gayle, I’d crawl to the far corners of the world to be with you but I need to feel like, for once, someone I loved would do the same for me. I don’t feel like I’m asking you to give up much.” He swept his arm in an arc and surveyed my apartment. “This. Dallas. And maybe DC is little farther away from your family than you’d like, but you’re only an airplane trip away.”

  I stared at him unspeaking for a second, maybe two. The gremlin sat back and burped. I reached a hand out and stroked Jon’s cheek. “I never said I wasn’t coming. I have been looking for a job in DC.”

  He covered my hand with his. “You only said you’d consider it. That’s all the reassurance you’ve given me. Yet you had two interviews here in Dallas. How am I supposed to interpret that? And you’ve turned down my marriage proposals,” he glanced off to the side, his lips moving as if counting, “fourteen times, if I’m not mistaken. A man could totally get the wrong idea here.”

  “I love you.” I moved my hand to touch his lips, as if I could halt the words he spoke and their import. “But I’m scared. Scared of moving to a new city where I know no one but you, of putting everything I am, all my hopes in another person. Other than my parents, I’ve never put that much trust in anyone else. But know this, if there was any person who could convince me to do it, it would be you.”

  His eyes glistened and the idea of Jon, my strong Jon, being nearly in tears tore at me. I moved into his arms and held him and he me. We stayed that way for a long time until finally one of us stirred and coaxed the other into the bedroom.

  Our lovemaking was slow and deliberate, drawn out as if we might never have the chance to be together again. I couldn’t help but liken it to a form of goodbye.

  Jon borrowed my car to run errands and check in with the Bureau over the next few days, always returning to me in the evening with dinner in hand and full tank of gas in my car. He didn’t ask me to marry him.

  I drove him to the airport in leaden silence. The sun hadn’t yet risen above the horizon. The chill in the air between us was as frosty as the wintery Dallas weather. Given that I’d played taps a week earlier for my car’s heat
er, the cold had settled in and made itself at home.

  I pulled to the curb to drop him off, no Homeland Security patrol to shoo me away at that early hour, so I cut off the engine. I might have been hoping for a long goodbye.

  Jon sat silent and unmoving before leaning over to kiss me. I could tell he was upset, but he hadn’t put any further pressure on me since our conversation on Christmas day. His kiss was solemn and tender, but the look in his eyes, so like a little boy who had lost his pet, gutted me.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I get home,” he said unbuckling his seatbelt.

  Home. His home, not mine. “Yes. Safe travels.”

  He opened the door and launched himself out to retrieve his bags from the trunk before I could say any more, even tell him I loved him.

  The trunk slammed, and it was like a prison door shutting me off from the rest of the happy world until I’d served my time. I wish I knew what crime I’d committed other than loving someone. I watched him stroll toward the electric doors without a single glance back over his shoulder.

  Chapter 13

  I sat there in my icy cold car until he disappeared into the terminal. I waited—I don’t know what for—but I waited, unable to move, not even a muscle, until the first tear broke through the dam and froze on my cheek.

  I slammed my palm against the dash, the useless heater vents specifically. I hated that stupid car. It had already begun its death spiral, needed a ton of work, and was nothing but a money pit.

  I hated Dallas, too. The traffic sucked. The weather was blisteringly hot in the summer, and the tornadoes in the spring scared me to death. Autumn had started off with promise but had then pummeled us with one ice storm after another as it gave way to winter. God only knew what the rest of that season would bring.

  I hated my apartment. Ever since I’d found an intruder hiding in my closet during the Aphrodite debacle that had taken three lives, toppled the city’s premier CPA firm, and cost me my job, I’d had a touch of the heebie-jeebies. Further condemning the place was the cockroach I’d seen that morning dancing the Macarena, no doubt inviting all his little friends and relatives to come party with him.