The Beach House

by Georgia Bockoven

  She came around the side of the bed and sat next to him, drawing her leg up until it touched his. “It’s boring around here without you.”

  Jesus, it wasn’t a dream. Not only could he feel her heat, he could smell her perfume, a heavy, musky odor that permeated his lungs and left him sucking for cleaner air. “What do you want, Tracy?”

  She smiled. “First you have to promise you won’t tell.”

  It took a while to sink in that she was flirting with him. He would have been less surprised if a giant wave engulfed them and washed them out to sea. “Look, I’m tired and—”

  She put her hand on his leg, high up near his groin. “Come on, Chris, all I’m asking is one little promise.”

  Angry that she thought he was so gone on her that all she had to do was touch him and he would do whatever she asked, Chris took her hand off his thigh and moved to the middle of the double bed. “You’re after something, Tracy. Why don’t you just tell me what it is so we can skip all this other shit.”

  She took some time before she answered. “It’s really hard for me to admit this.” She did the thing with her hair again. “But Janice made me see how wrong I’ve been about you. We only have two more weeks.” She shrugged, bringing her shoulders forward and exposing the tops of her breasts. “I want to make the best of them.”

  She was lying. He could see it in her eyes. “Sorry,” he said, feeling an intoxicating sense of power. “I’m not interested.”

  “Janice told me that you were still mad about the other night,” she said, providing her own explanation for his refusal. She smiled seductively. “She tried to convince me it was serious, but I told her you’ve been mad at me before and that it never lasts very long.”

  “Look, Tracy, I don’t know what game you’re playing or why, but I’ve got to get up early. If you’ve got something to tell me, either get it over with or save it until I get home.”

  “Where are you going?”

  She’d asked in such a way that it was obvious she already knew the answer. Like looking at the back of the crossword puzzle book, he suddenly understood, and everything fell into place. Somehow Tracy had found out about his being in the movie. “No place special,” he answered her.

  “Can I go?”

  “Why?”

  “If I don’t get away from here, I’m going to go crazy. You know what a pain in the ass my mother can be when she gets on one of her kicks.” This time her smile was coy. “Besides, she’d have an absolute shit fit if she found out what I did.”

  She’d thrown the line, knowing there was no way he could resist taking the bait. “What did you do?”

  “First you have to promise you won’t tell.”

  She didn’t care about any promise; it was getting him to do what she wanted that mattered. For the first time in all the years they’d known each other, he had the upper hand in something. “Forget it,” he said. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Why are you being such a—” She caught herself. “Why are you being so stubborn? All I’m asking for is—The hell with it. I guess I’ll just have to trust you.” She turned on the lamp beside the bed, sat back, spread her legs, and waited for Chris’s reaction.

  A shaft of heat hit his testicles. He felt himself grow hard—which was precisely what she’d been after. Instead of being turned on, he was pissed. Big time. She’d made a fool of him again.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?” he asked coolly.

  “The tattoo.”

  Even knowing it was a mistake, he couldn’t stop himself from looking. There, high up on the inside of her thigh, an inch below the elastic on her blue bikini panties, was a rose encircled in barbed wire. All Chris could think about was how long she’d sat with her legs spread while some stranger got his rocks off branding her.

  “Isn’t it great?” she said.

  “Yeah, I guess. Whatever makes you happy.”

  “You want to touch it?”

  He stared at her. All this because he’d had a couple of lines in a movie? “No thanks.”

  She moved closer. “I don’t mind. It’s kind of—”

  A light tapping drew their attention. The door eased open before Chris could answer. Janice came inside and closed the door behind her. She was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt with LIFE’S A BEACH printed across the front.

  Tracy smiled triumphantly. Chris didn’t move.

  “I thought I’d find you in here,” Janice said, returning the smile.

  Tracy turned and settled in next to Chris, leaning her back against the antique carved oak headboard and her shoulder into his. “You might want to wait for an answer before you come barging in next time.” With deliberate movements, she closed the front of her robe. “What do you want, anyway?”

  “You need to work on your timing,” Janice said. “This is when Chris and I go running every morning.”

  If Janice had been a little closer, Chris would have kissed her. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.”

  Janice nodded and left.

  “I thought you said you wanted me to leave so you could get some sleep,” Tracy said accusingly.

  Chris reached for the shorts he’d left on the chair beside the bed. “I figured you’d be uncomfortable if Janice found us together.”

  “Why should that bother me?”

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “I don’t know, maybe I thought it might screw things up for you if she told your boyfriend about me when you got home.”

  She flung herself out of his bed. “You’re a loser, Chris Sadler. You always were and you always will be. You and Janice deserve each other.”

  He pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Thanks. And just think, it’s all your doing. We never would have met if you hadn’t insisted she come along.”

  Tracy flung the door open and almost ran into Margaret, who had just come from the bathroom. They stared at each other for several seconds before Tracy said through clenched teeth, “Would you please get out of my way?” Margaret stepped to the side, and Tracy went into her own room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Want to tell me what just happened here?” Margaret said to Chris as he came around the bed.

  “Later.” He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Janice is waiting for me outside. We’re going for a run.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk.”

  “Yes,” she said to his retreating back. “We do indeed.”

  Chapter 10

  Chris and Janice were almost to the rocky promontory that held the house Tony rented before either said anything. Finally Chris turned and faced her while he ran backward. “Thank you for rescuing me.” She’d come to get him an hour and a half early. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t for sure. I just woke up, saw that Tracy was gone, and made a wild guess.” She spoke without lifting her eyes to look at him.

  Chris dipped his head to put himself in her line of vision. “Are you mad at me?”

  “Disappointed.”

  “I didn’t ask Tracy to come to my room.”

  “Maybe not, but you obviously didn’t ask her to leave, either.”

  “I did. She wouldn’t.”

  Janice stopped and stared at him, her hands planted on her hips. “Oh? And just how hard did you try?”

  He smiled. He loved that she was mad and that she’d cared enough to risk everything, including her pride, to rescue him from Tracy. “You are unbelievably beautiful.”

  “Don’t even try that crap on me. I know how you feel about Tracy.”

  “How I felt,” he corrected her.

  “You can’t just turn something like that off. It takes—” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and turned away from him.

  Chris came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “You scare me,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. I’m one tough babe.”

  “I’m falling for you, Janice
, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  She was very still. “What do you want to do?”

  “Keep you here with me—move to St. Louis, practical things like that. But there’s not a damn thing I can do. At least not now. That’s what makes it so hard.”

  The fight left her like an outgoing wave. She leaned her back into his chest. “How did we go from hating each other to this?”

  He tightened his arms around her, snuggling his chin into her neck. “I don’t know and I don’t care. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Somehow we’re going to find a way to make it work.”

  “Promise?”

  This one he could give easily. “I promise.”

  She turned to face him, tilting her head back and reaching for a kiss. “We’ve got now. We’ll worry about tomorrow later.”

  He’d never tasted anything as sweet as her tongue as she explored his mouth. He grew hard with wanting her, but this time the reaction was as mental as physical. With desire came a wondrous need to love and be loved. He wanted to fight battles for Janice, to give her flowers and oceans and sunrises. He wanted to hold her hand when they went places together, and he wanted to lie down naked with her in front of a roaring fireplace. He’d never made love. Yesterday his virginity had been an embarrassment. Today, knowing the first time would be with Janice, he was glad that he’d waited.

  He held her close, letting the feel of her body imprint itself onto his. “I’m going to see if I can postpone the trip to L.A. until the end of the month.”

  “So you’ve made up your mind you want to do the movie after all?”

  The statement had just come out. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. No more angst, no more putting it off, no more indecision. “I guess I have.”

  “Have you told your mom?”

  “Not yet.” He saw that the sky had started to clear, going from a gray black to dark purple. This was his last day on the set with Tony. He really couldn’t miss it. “I have to get back. Tony’s picking me up early today.”

  “Let’s go someplace tonight,” she said, taking his hand as they retraced their steps to the house. “Just us.”

  He bent to kiss her. Where they went didn’t matter. Knowing they would be alone was enough to send liquid fire coursing through his veins. “I’ll get home as soon as I can.”

  Chris didn’t get back that night until almost midnight. Tony was leaving for Los Angeles in the morning to prepare for some upcoming interior shots, and the crew had planned a surprise party for him. Chris had felt obligated to attend. After six attempts to reach Janice and receiving a busy signal four times and letting it ring ten times twice with no answer, he finally gave up. He’d told her before he left that morning that it might not be possible to get away early. She’d said it was okay, that they could postpone their plans for another day. At the time it had been easy to say and hear because neither believed it would happen.

  Tony gave Chris his address and phone number when they got in the Jeep, insisting he would be put out if Chris didn’t use them. On the way home they’d talked about what Chris should expect when he went in for the screen test, about joining the Screen Actors Guild, and about what to look for in an agent.

  By the time they pulled off the highway, Chris had been indoctrinated with Tony’s philosophy on “being in the business.” He conceded it was an exciting way to make a living, but that Chris was never to forget that first and foremost it was a business. Along with that piece of reality, Tony had delivered a short, stern lecture about Chris living below his means and investing every dime he could get his hands on against the day it would all come to an end—and he wasn’t ever to try to fool himself about that: his career as an actor would come to an end one day.

  Most of all, he was to keep his head out of his ass when it came to Hollywood parties and the hangers-on who were always around trying to buy friendships with free drugs.

  It was the speech Chris had expected from his mother that morning. Instead, after about fifty questions, he’d gotten a remarkably calm acceptance and not one thing about talking to his dad first or the possibility he would someday regret giving up his last year of high school.

  “I’m going to be watching you,” Tony said when they reached the house. “Screw up and I’ll be on your case so fast, you’ll think I was hiding in the closet the whole time. You get in trouble, you’ve got my number.”

  Chris couldn’t decide whether he brought out some big brother instinct in Tony or if Tony had stuck his neck out to get Chris his chance. The reason didn’t matter. The friendship did. He wouldn’t let Tony down.

  “I’ll let you know how it goes.” Chris got out of the car. “The test, I mean.”

  “We’ll do something to celebrate when I finish this shoot.”

  Chris closed the door and stepped away from the Jeep, waiting until Tony drove away before going in the house.

  The lights were on, but no one was around. “Mom?” He waited a second. “Janice?” Still no answer. He headed for the kitchen to see if they’d left a note and almost fell over a suitcase left sitting beside the sofa. He bent to pick it up and saw that it was packed.

  His mother came in from the deck through the sliding glass door. “I thought I heard you in here.”

  He looked down at the suitcase and then at her. “What’s going on?”

  She put her finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. Even though they were out of earshot for anyone at the back of the house, she still spoke softly. “Beverly is taking the girls home tonight. They’re leaving on a red-eye out of San Jose.”

  She might as well have told him she’d staked a claim in Alaska and they were heading there in the morning. Janice leaving? Beverly flying out of San Jose? None of it made sense. “I’m not following you.”

  “Tracy and Beverly have been going at it all day, or at least since Tracy got back from town this afternoon. You won’t believe what she did.”

  “Yes, I would,” Chris said, understanding dawning. “How did Beverly find out about the tattoo?” He couldn’t believe Tracy was dumb enough to tell her mother what she’d done, but then he was beyond questioning anything Tracy might do.

  “What tattoo?” Margaret asked.

  “The one on her—” Chris caught himself. “If Beverly doesn’t know about the tattoo, what got her going?”

  Margaret hesitated.

  “What?” Chris prodded.

  “Nipple rings.”

  “Jesus.” Tracy was really over the edge. “How did Beverly find out?”

  “They started bleeding. The doctor said—”

  Janice came into the room. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Would it be all right if Chris and I went outside to talk?” she asked softly. “I need to tell him something.”

  “Of course,” Margaret said. She looked at the clock over the stove. “I wouldn’t go too far, though. You only have a few minutes.”

  “Why does Janice have to go?” Chris demanded as Margaret moved to leave. “Why can’t she stay here with us?”

  It was obviously not something she’d considered. “I guess she could . . . at least it’s all right with me.” She looked at Janice. “How do you think your parents would feel about you staying?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to call my father and ask.” A glimmer of hope lit her eyes. To Chris she said, “Were you able to talk them into waiting for the screen test?”

  He’d forgotten that he was leaving himself in two days. “They said it was already set up, and that there were too many people involved to put it off.” He couldn’t just let her go. “But I’ll be back in—”

  “I don’t want you to miss your chance because you’re worried about getting back to me.” She blinked to clear fresh tears.

  “But you can’t just leave,” Chris said, reaching out and taking her in his arms. He held her as if the contact were what would keep her there. “When will we see each other again?”
/>   She burrowed into his shoulder, no longer fighting the tears. “I don’t know. Maybe I could come out the week after Christmas.”

  “But that’s forever,” Chris said.

  “I’ll write you every day.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I get to L.A.”

  “I’m going to leave you alone,” Margaret said, tenderly touching Chris’s arm as she left.

  “It’s not fair,” was the last thing Margaret heard Janice say before she closed the door to stand guard outside. She looked at her watch and calculated the minimum time it would take Beverly to get to the airport, seeking another minute or two for Janice and Chris to be together.

  Any way she figured it, they had less than fifteen minutes. No matter what happened to their relationship in the months to come, their love would never be as intense or as painful as it was for them at this moment. Nor would it ever be as sweet.

  Margaret’s heart broke a little for them . . . while a part of her envied them, too. Seeing them together had made her remember how it felt to love and be loved. Until then she’d managed to convince herself the feelings were ones she could live without. She knew now that she was wrong.

  Margaret propped a note of welcome against the seashells she’d gathered and left on the table in lieu of flowers for Joe and Maggie. She was leaving five days early to meet Chris in Los Angeles and didn’t want them greeted with a wilted bouquet. She’d already made one pass through the house, checking to see that everything was dusted and polished for their arrival, and was about to make another when an overwhelming sense of melancholy came over her.

  She went out on the deck. An early morning fog cloaked the ocean, muting the sounds of waves and shore birds. Drops of water fell silently from the eucalyptus leaves overhead, as if even they mourned her leaving.

  The past three and a half weeks had seen another circle completed in her life. The beach house was where Chris had taken his first tentative step as a baby and where, seventeen years later, he’d taken the step that would leave his childhood behind. She and Beverly had watched their children grow close and then apart, their paths to adulthood as disparate as life above the ocean surface from that below. This was where she and Kevin had come to make an attempt at reconciliation, and where she’d finally told him she wanted a divorce.