“Nothing,” he said. “My heart, maybe. Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. I thought I heard something. Maybe Momma’s back.”
“Come on. Just one kiss? I won’t be able to sleep.” He was still holding my hand, and I let him pull me beside him on the couch. “You can pretend it’s acting if you want. Pretend you’re on a stage. Or I’m Colin Ashcroft and you’re Miranda.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You liked Colin Ashcroft, didn’t you?”
“Of course. But that was years ago. And you’re not Colin Ashcroft,” I said. “I mean, you know what I mean.”
He kept looking at me. “One. Kiss,” he said. He put a finger on my lips and traced around them. I’ll admit it felt good.
“You don’t get turned down much, do you?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This is weird.”
He smiled and stared at my mouth.
“I’m too self-conscious,” I said.
He didn’t say anything, but put a hand on the back of my neck and moved me closer.
“This is crazy,” I said. I realized that I was the only one talking, and thought I’d better shut up before I said something really stupid or bit him by mistake. I looked at him in the eyes, then looked at his lips, then swallowed.
“Shh,” he said, and he kissed me.
Joshua Reed kissed me. Joshua Reed, movie star. I barely remembered to close my eyes. It was sweet and light and lasted for just a few seconds. Then he pulled away and smiled at me again.
“Nice,” he said. “Thanks. Now I know.”
He got up, went into the kitchen, and brought me a mug of ice cream. We sat on the couch and watched the end of Cool Hand Luke. That was it.
Max hadn’t called by the time Momma got home with Beau Ray. And he didn’t call after that, either. Or on Thursday, even though he had said he would before heading to L.A. There was no sign of him around the house, and no messages on the answering machine. I figured Joshua might know if Max had left or not, but I didn’t want to ask him.
The upside is the kiss. The downside comes afterward, when you realize you can’t launch into the same conversations as before. After a kiss, you can find yourself in that deserted place—where even if it’s not leading to anything, you and the other person have both admitted something that tugs at the friendship, pulling it out of shape. Either you plunge forward and start to date and through that, keep talking, or you sneak backward and pretend like it never happened. But backward takes a little time, and while you’re waiting, it feels weird to ask questions like, “Do you know where Max is?”
What I’m trying to say is that, having kissed Joshua—or been kissed by Joshua—I suddenly felt naked or obvious on the subject of Max. It’s stupid, I know, because it’s not as if I thought that one kiss meant that Joshua Reed and I were an item. The opposite, maybe. I knew we weren’t.
Still, one kiss from Max and that’s exactly what I’d thought. But there was so much more history there. Max had been so long coming. Joshua’s kiss was because I could and because he asked. Max’s kiss was for everything that had gone before—and that was a lot. And so it stung something sharp to think that Max had not stopped by or at least called. It stung and ached at the same time.
On Thursday midmorning, I made Beau Ray call Max’s parents’ house, and they said what I had started to suspect, that Max had left for California a few hours before. I listened in on Momma’s extension. “He got on a plane with that Judy woman,” Mrs. Campbell said. She didn’t sound too happy about it.
I told myself that he was probably really busy. I told myself that Judy might be miffed at me and making it hard for him to get to a phone. Or maybe Charlene’s appeal had suddenly grown stronger in the midst of all those California strangers. I didn’t really know what to tell myself, though. Even Sandy didn’t have any good suggestions. Of course I didn’t have to decide anything right then. There was nothing to decide. I didn’t have any choices left.
Max finally called about a week later. I say that like I don’t know exactly how long it had been—but of course, I know—it was six days. Six days after he’d left without calling. Ten days after Beau Ray’s birthday when he’d kissed me and I’d kissed him back in the trees at the edge of our yard. He called on a Wednesday. Right around ten in the morning.
I was surprised to hear his voice—I was just getting back on kilter, but that’s what guys do. They use some sixth guy sense to know exactly when you’ve almost hauled yourself back to dry land, and then they show up and take you down with them, one more time. I don’t mean to say that Max called when he did because he was a typical guy, but it was striking. That Wednesday was the first day I’d gotten out of bed without thinking of him first.
I heard Beau Ray telling a story about physical therapy, but I figured it was Susan or maybe even Tommy, apologizing for missing Beau Ray’s birthday. I wandered into the kitchen, and Beau Ray said “yeah, she’s here,” and handed me the phone. Max sounded so close, it made me well up and my stomach go all fluttery.
“It’s you,” I said. “Are you still in California?”
“Yup,” he said. “You know, they really do have palm trees everywhere.”
“Are you still testing?”
“The testing is over. I guess you could say I’m being graded now. A lot of waiting. Maybe I have a couple meetings. But it’s still early in the morning here. I haven’t talked to Judy yet today.”
“You seeing her a lot?” I asked him.
“Some,” he said. “She explains things better than Sasha. He just tells me to show up places, but doesn’t say why or what I should expect. It’s kind of annoying.”
“You don’t sound like you’re suffering,” I said. I meant it as a joke.
“Neither do you, Leanne.” The words came out of him sharper than I expected. He didn’t sound like he was joking.
“Oh, you know,” I said, not sure how to respond. He sounded different. “It’s all the same stuff out here.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So have you seen Charlene?”
“Sure,” he said.
“She still out there?” I asked. I hated hearing my voice get all pleady.
“Yeah. I don’t think she’ll ever go back. She thinks she was made for California,” he said. “Listen, I just called because, well, I said I would and I don’t know when I’ll be back in Pinecob.”
“You don’t?” I asked him. “I mean, is that like a week or a month…”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to, you know, mislead you.”
“What about your job?” I asked him, my words rushing all together.
“I quit.”
I felt hollow, hearing him say that. Half his life at the Winn-Dixie and he’d up and quit, no notice. I didn’t know what else to say after that, so I told him that I had to be going. I lied and said that a pot on the stove was boiling over. Of course, when I hung up, I sat there. The pot and I, we were both empty.
I started to get over it, him. You do that. You have to. Vince was dead in Kansas and Max was gone to California, so what could I do but get up and go to work like I was supposed to? I registered for the fall semester of extension classes. I invited the guys over for a movie with Joshua. I took Beau Ray to get his hair cut, and got my own trimmed as well. I even brought Beau Ray to the Buccaneer one night, when Lionel and Scooter were there. I was glad that none of them knew about me and Max and the kiss in the trees behind our backyard. It made things easier when his name came up.
Not that Lionel would have noticed. He was all over Max’s cousin Lisa, who had visited from Roanoke a few times in the previous weeks, and not to see Joshua it seemed. And Scooter wouldn’t have noticed—he had set his sights on Loreen, having heard a rumor that Sandy was seriously involved with someone in Hagerstown. But hanging out with that crowd felt different than it had before. It didn’t feel like home any longer, and set me to brooding somethin
g awful.
A couple afternoons later, Beau Ray and Joshua were out back, tossing around Beau Ray’s football. Beau Ray could still throw high and fierce, but Joshua not so much. Theater geek that he’d been, I don’t think Joshua ever played on a football team, and on one of his weaker tosses, I hustled out into the middle of the yard and intercepted the ball.
“Hey, give it,” Beau Ray said.
I said I wouldn’t until he told me who he’d gotten it from.
“Secret,” Beau Ray said. So I held it from him and dodged away when he tried to grab it from me.
Joshua stood back, watching us. “Now, now, kids,” he said.
“We don’t have secrets. We’re not supposed to,” I told Beau Ray. “Like locks. Dad said.”
“Not with presents,” Beau Ray said. “Give it!”
“That’s only before you give a present. It’s not supposed to be a secret after.” I turned to Joshua. “Tell me the truth, did you give this to him?”
Joshua shook his head. “I didn’t,” he said. “Should I have?”
“Give it back, Leanne!”
I could tell that Beau Ray was getting mad. “Why won’t you tell me?” I yelled at him, but he’d started to shriek, so I tossed the football back and stomped inside.
Joshua came up to me a while later. “You should go a little easier on him,” he said.
I knew it, but it was hard to ease up.
“I asked him about it, after you left.”
“Did he tell you?” I asked.
“He told me someone.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?” Joshua asked.
I shook my head. “It’s stupid. It’ll sound stupid,” I said. “It can’t be Vince, but I want to say Vince.”
“Then say it,” Joshua said.
“Maybe it’s from Tommy,” I said. “That’s the kind of thing he would do.”
“Or maybe it’s not,” Joshua said.
Chapter 19
Come Crashing Down
The next time I answered the phone, who was on the other end but Marcy Thompson, hostess of Hollywood Express.
“Leanne, we met before,” she said. “This ought to be a cinch.”
Judy had granted Marcy another exclusive interview with Joshua, to coincide with the first days of the filming of Musket Fire. Joshua hadn’t been to the set yet and wouldn’t start commuting there for another week or so, but Hollywood Express still wanted his take on the mood of the project. Apparently, Marcy’s first exclusive interview had earned them high ratings.
Marcy said she was calling to confirm that some of her technicians would arrive on Sunday to test out their equipment and signal.
“They’ll stay in the driveway, out of your hair,” Marcy said. Marcy herself would arrive at eight on Monday morning. They would interview Joshua out in our backyard, as before. “Hopefully it won’t rain. Do you know if it’s supposed to rain?” Marcy asked.
I said that I didn’t think so, but that a lot could change in four days.
The vans showed up on Sunday around five. There were two of them, and it seemed like they were hardly in our driveway five minutes before Beau Ray was poking around at the equipment and listening through the sound guy’s headphones. When Momma finally dragged Beau Ray inside for dinner, he wolfed his food and talked nonstop about putting up the antenna and how the technical team was headed to the movie set right after Marcy’s interview ended. One of the technicians, Hank, remembered Beau Ray from earlier in the summer and had invited him along. Beau Ray asked Momma whether he could eat his dessert in the van, with Hank and the other guys. She just smiled and shushed him out.
I could hear the wind coming through when he opened the front door to go back outside. It smelled like a summer thunderstorm was headed for us, the smell of dirt and electricity. I was glad to see Beau Ray beside himself happy. I still felt a little guilty for having bugged him about his birthday football, though I’d dropped the subject by then. I wanted him to believe that Vince had sent it. I wanted one of us to believe he was still out there.
Beau Ray was still outside when I started to get ready for bed. Judge Weintraub was staying over, an occurrence that had become so regular, it seemed strange when he didn’t, though Momma asked me to keep it to myself if Susan called. I went up to the bathroom that Momma and I normally shared and gathered my toothbrush and scrub. I was walking toward Joshua’s bathroom when he came out of his bedroom, headed in the same direction.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“No, you go,” Joshua said. “I don’t mind.”
“I just need to wash my face and brush my teeth,” I told him.
“I don’t mind sharing,” he said.
“There’s not very much room,” I said.
The bathroom was narrow, so I let him go in first and get his toothbrush and toothpaste started, and then I did the same. We stood on the tiles, brushing away. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and smiled through my toothbrush, because it felt like such a kid thing to be doing, like a slumber party, the two of us crammed in there. I remembered being a kid and jostling around with Beau Ray and Vince, the toothpaste stinging my mouth, and being forced to spit into the toilet, because there was no room at the sink.
Joshua started to nudge me out of the way of the sink, so I nudged him back and then we were both pushing into each other, each trying to own the tiles in front of the basin. He laughed and toothpaste flew which made me laugh. Another shove and my elbow hit the bathroom door, which slammed shut. It didn’t hurt, but the bang was loud enough for Momma to call out, “Everything okay up there?” and finally I spit into the sink and yelled back through the door that it was.
I was laughing and leaned against the door, making just enough room for Joshua to spit out his toothpaste. He leaned over to rinse his toothbrush, mashing me farther into the corner, pretending like he didn’t know I was there. He put his toothbrush on the counter and wiped his mouth, then he moved a few inches off, so that I was no longer smashed between him and the door.
“Bully,” I said to him. He still had a dot of toothpaste at the edge of his mouth.
“Brat,” Joshua said.
I reached out to poke him, but suddenly he took hold of my hand and moved toward me at the same time, pushing me back up against the door and kissing me on the mouth. He moved so quick that I thought the kiss would be hard, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t short either. I kissed him back. We were both minty.
He dropped my hand, and then his hands were everywhere and then my hands were everywhere and we were in that full-scale make-out phase that happens the first time, when you’re practically trying to inhale the person and you only stop when you need to breathe.
I could hear the howling of the wind outside. I could hear Joshua fumbling for the light switch but hitting the wall, and then the bathroom went dark. We kept kissing and hands moved everywhere and I was thinking, “what am I doing?” and “I don’t care” and “yes” all at the same time.
The bathroom was narrow, but long enough to lie down in, if you didn’t mind resting your head against the bathtub, or the cold of the tiles where the bathmat didn’t cover them, or the sound of feet bumping up against the wooden door. We were down on the floor, him on top of me, that comforting feeling of a warm body pressed close by gravity and mood.
“God, Leanne,” Joshua Reed whispered. His voice was low. “I want to. Are you sure?”
By then, my eyes had adjusted. In the strip of yellow light that bounced through the bottom of the door, I could see him, above me. I could feel him, on me, hard against my thigh. There was only cotton between us, which hardly seemed to matter, and my heart was racing. I wasn’t sure of anything, except that I was lying down, him on top of me, and it was dark, and I wanted to be there, and I’d always wanted to be there. I reached up and started to take off his shirt, then let him finish until he was bare-chested. My fingertips brushed that beautiful chest of his, feeling the heat of it. He wadded his T-shirt into a
ball, then gently lifted my head and placed it under me, like a small, wrinkled pillow.
“Better?” he asked. “Can’t have you hitting your head.” I put my palms flat against his chest and could feel his heart beating fast, and for that alone, I kissed him again, and we spun off, back into another round of kiss and press and rub. I ran my hands down his thighs, and he shivered and pulled away a little.
“Are you sure?” he asked again. “You know I want to. But you were right. All those things you said. You were right.”
“Don’t you hate it when I’m right?” I asked him.
He pulled back and looked at me. There was just enough light to see him frown. “No,” he said. “I don’t. I like it. It gives me something like faith.” He kissed my right shoulder, and then my left. “I like how you know why you do what you do.”
“You think I know what I’m doing right now?” I asked him. “I have no idea what I’m doing here with you.”
He kissed me again and I kissed him back and I felt his hands explore beneath my nightshirt and mine pulled back the elastic band of his shorts. He gave a little shudder.
“Oh, you know what you’re doing,” he said.
There’s a line, and then, there’s no line at all. You step across it and it falls away, like an old cobweb, or fog, or even a cotton jersey T-shirt. The boundaries between us were gone, there was just skin on skin.
“Jesus, I want to do this,” he whispered. “God, you feel so good.”
I felt like I’d won something, after all that time. I felt like I’d won something I’d wanted so long, and suddenly it had been placed in my arms, and still I couldn’t quite believe it was happening. I wanted to stay there, in that bathroom, the whole time. I didn’t want to drift off for even a moment of it. I wanted to stay sharply aware of where I was and how my body moved and how his body moved.
And so we rocked together, nothing fancy, nothing too hurried or too slow either, the wind howling outside and the bathroom dark and the narrow space along the floor. We rocked and we rocked, trying to keep our feet from bumping against the door in a giveaway rhythm, listening to the click of his ankle sensor as it hit the tiles each now and again.
Mean Season Page 24
