“I’m so sorry,” I say as I reach out to rub his shoulder. “I had to get away. I was going crazy here,” I explain.
“I know what happened,” he says. “Missy told me.” Oh, that’s a bit embarrassing.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about it. It’s real hard for me to...”
“Naw, it’s cool,” he says.
I look him in the eye and he does look like a big version of the little boy who stole my thunder when he was a baby. I was so used to getting all the attention. For ten years I was the baby and then he came home from the hospital. It’s one of my most vivid memories. The key feeling that always comes to me is that of envy. It’s the first time I’d ever felt really and truly jealous.
“Yours was the first diaper I ever changed,” I say, as I pretend to elbow him in the rib. “Believe me. I wished it was my last.” He pretends to be wounded and winces.
“Pretty good right elbow you got there, Sparks,” he says, a grin finally pulling up the corners of his mouth, making his eyes sparkle.
“Let’s eat,” I say and we creak down the stairs and make our way to the breakfast table. Dillon is watching me the whole time. I start to feel like I’m growing a horn out of my head or something.
“How’s your momma?” he asks. There’s sadness in his tone. I just put my head down. How is my momma? Well, she just told me things about her I never knew. She told me about the vibrant oil painting being called Sadie’s Mountain, that she painted it at our real kiss rock, about miscarriages, and she asked me to save the mountain.
“She wants me to help save Gauley Mountain,” I reply. All the mouths open at the breakfast table at the same time. They look at me like I’ve got fire coming out of my ears.
“Oh, no she didn’t!” Missy says.
“Yes, she did,” I say, hurt.
“You can’t be comin’ over here buttin’ into this, Sadie! This is a big huge fight you just shouldn’t be getting’ in the middle of.”
I say nothing as I fork a pancake on my plate and slather real butter all over it. I look at Dillon. He, wisely, keeps quiet.
“These sure do look tasty,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“Get some eggs, too, Sadie. You’re too skinny as it is. Get another flapjack, too.”
“I can’t eat that much,” I whine. Some things never change. No matter that we’ve been apart, we easily fall right back into the roles we played. I was the baby and she was the wanna-be mother. Being five years older than me, she always thought I was her baby. But I’m going to that meeting tonight. There’s probably nothing I can do about it but I’ll go and try. That’s all anyone can do.
Dillon watches me during the whole meal. Our eyes meet now and then and we exchange smiles. He doesn’t say much except to correct a sport statistic he claims Jake got wrong and to compliment the chef for her superb meal. I say next to nothing but I notice that Seth isn’t looking at me like he hates me anymore. That’s something—to say the least.
I help Missy clear the table and walk Dillon to the door.
“Are you kicking me out?” he asks with a big grin on his face.
“You’re the one who walked over to the door after looking around like you had to go,” I say.
“Can I take you somewhere today, Sadie?”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I lean in and whisper, “To the town hall meeting about Gauley Mountain?”
“Yes,” he says. “But before that, I had another idea.”
“I’m game,” I say, feeling every bit as feisty as I sound. This is not like me at all.
“I’ve got to go to work for a bit. But I can come get you in about two hours,” he says, enthusiastically.
“What should I wear? Wait, this isn’t a date, is it?”
“Not if you don’t want it to be.” I guess he’s not going to tell me. “Wear what you’ve got on,” he says, looking down at my faded jean shorts for a bit longer than is really needed to assess my attire. I feel like covering up behind a screen. I realize I don’t have a scarf on over my scars. But he hasn’t looked at me weird even once. No one here has, actually. I rub my throat and look at him with a new outlook.
“Two hours then,” I say.
“Two hours,” he says, as he walks down the porch steps. Two hours suddenly seems like a hundred years. This is just not normal to want to be with him every second of every minute. I yawn. Maybe I should take a nap.
Down the driveway, he’s parked a white Toyota Prius Hybrid. I grin at him behind his back. So, he’s an eco-guy; The TOMS and the Prius. I admit to myself right then that I want to get to know him again. We could be friends—like old times. Yeah, he scares me, but all guys do.
Maybe his brother won’t even find out we’re talking. I should find out if he’ll be at that meeting for some reason. He’s probably some coal-loving enthusiast just waiting to blow up the mountain—violate a beautiful, innocent, life force to take what he needs from it and leave it broken and empty. This feels very personal all of a sudden. Sudden wrath powers through my bloodstream at a rapid pace. Not the mountain, too.
Chapter Nine—Chemical Affinity
“You didn’t have to change,” Dillon says, as I greet him at the front door.
“Well, I didn’t want to go on a ‘friendly-outing’,” I say putting quotation marks in the air, “wearing those ancient jeans.”
“You look...perfect,” he says. I blush under his gaze.
“Thank you,” I say, as I smooth my hands over my beige silk summer dress just above the knee and straighten my teal silk scarf. I push up the sleeves of the beige cardigan and watch his gaze move down to the teal espadrilles on my feet. I’ve got a beaded purse over one shoulder to hold my iPhone and some lip-gloss.
Instead of taking a nap, I’d brushed and curled my hair so I could wear it down. I purse my lip-glossed lips and bat my eyelashes. The way I’m feeling, I don’t think I needed that pink blush.
“Thank you. So where are we going?” I ask.
“It’s a mysterious place,” he says, making his ghost story voice. I know it well. He used to love to tell me ghost stories or Moth Man stories when we were kids.
“So you’re not going to tell me?” I ask as we stride down the steps and toward his Prius.
“Nope.” He looks amused.
He opens the passenger door for me and I slide into the car. He goes around the back side and eases into his seat, turning the key.
“Is it on?” I ask. It feels like the engine isn’t on, but I guess it’s not. Not the gas part anyway.
“Yes, smart-mouth. It’s on,” he says, smugly.
He smells so good. Not like cologne. It’s just his distinctive scent, the same since he was a kid. It does things to me. Brings back memories. His scent is the essence of kindness. But there’s more now. I look at his hand resting on the gear shift and wonder what his hands would feel like on mine, running along my jaw line, scooping up my breast, running up the inside of my thigh...Stop this! I shake my head.
We drive for a bit in silence. Once in a while I peek up at him. I want to paint his image in my mind so well that it never becomes a driver’s license photo in my mental file cabinet ever again. His straw colored hair glistening in the sun. His tan skin—the way it glows. The perfect arch of his thick eyebrows. The freckle on his right temple. I want to kiss that freckle. I shake my head again. What is going on with me?
He reaches over and with his long finger turns on the stereo, taps the iPod screen a few times to make his choice. Suddenly there’s a soft piano that begins to enrapture me. Then a unique raspy, soulful woman’s voice fills the car. She sounds familiar but I can’t place her voice.
“Who is this?” I ask after a bit.
“Adele,” he replies.
“Oh, yeah! I like her, Rolling in the Deep, right?”
“The very same,” he says, as if he wants me to listen to the song instead of talk. It’s about holding someone. It says Make Y
ou Feel My Love, on his iPod plugged into the dashboard. I listen closely as she sings. I look up at him through my lashes. He stares at the road, his expression impassive—maybe hopeful.
I sink into the seat and listen to Dillon’s love song to me. I take in the aching sound of the violin as it cries to me, almost like a lone wolf howling in a low holler. He’ll do anything for me. I know that now. Even if it hurts him and I don’t want to hurt him. I want to give in—feel everything he has to offer. Let him make my dreams come true, as Adele says. But I can’t.
A stinging tear falls down my cheek before I even know I was going to cry. My lips twitch under the feelings so I hide behind my hair. He takes my hand carefully, silently.
He knows I understand him but he says nothing. I clutch his hand tightly as I let his song tell me all he wants to say. This isn’t breaking the friend rules, really, since he isn’t saying it’s for me. I just know it is, that’s all.
I think he knows music has always been the way to reach me. All the way back to when he let me put on that little musical on his front porch when I was six and he was nine. I wrote a script and everything. I made kids audition. No one really tried hard. I think they were just bored enough to let me have my way.
Out of habit, I hold my breath as we drive over New River Gorge Bridge.
“You still do that?” he says, when he notices I’m not breathing. I nod yes and wipe my cheeks. “Okay, I’ll do it, too,” he says, as he takes a deep breath and his cheeks turn into a balloon.
Before the oxygen is cut off from our brains we’re over the hurdle and I want to curl up in his lap again. The lump has shown up in my throat. The lump makes me mad because it reminds me of Donnie.
“How’s your family?” I ask nonchalantly as if I’m trying to make small talk so I’ll stop crying.
“Mom’s good. She’s still at the house down a bit from you all. Donnie...” I wince and my hand twitches in his hand. He stops for a second and looks at me, confused, “...He’s married. I have two nephews. One’s eight and the other’s just a two year old. The kids, they’re great. The best reason to go over there is to see my momma and the grand youngins as she calls ‘em.”
“They live with her?” I say, astonished. He’s that close. I realize my whole body is stiff. Dillon looks at me puzzled. My body is talking to him. Whispering my secrets. I open my hand and he lets go.
“Donnie moved back. Momma needed help with the house. She didn’t want to sell or rent it out. Might end up with one of the Whites moving in or something.” I laugh. The Whites of West Virginia must still be pretty famous around these parts.
“They still raising hell?” I say, my façade coming into place.
“As far as I can tell. Rumors are that they’re still shooting each other, drinking, snorting pills, just like always.”
“Who’s your source?” I ask with a playful wink.
“Donnie’s in charge of the Ansted Police Department now. Runs the place and his two officers like they’re in the military. He’s heard some stuff about ‘em.”
I look up at him, shaken. “Yeah, hard to believe, huh. He came back from his tour in Iraq and took over when old Roemer retired about two years ago.”
Adele is singing another song about always loving me. As the guitar croons I’m oscillating in a complete stupor.
I have no thoughts.
I’m blank for quite a while.
I can’t even think about the situational irony here. My rapist is the Chief of Police. The Chief of Police! I almost can’t stay in my seat. I grasp the door handle as if—what? Am I going to jump to my death? I just feel like I can’t breathe again. The hole in my chest feels like it’s growing to monumental proportions. Like everything on the inside of me is scratching to get out.
In the background I hear Dillon talking about his nephews and his sister in law. Nothing he says really registers in the thought processing part of my brain since my body is a shaking mess. I just make “Uh-huh,” noises so he doesn’t think I’m ignoring him.
“Sadie, what’s wrong?” he says, concern etched into his forehead. Oh, it’s okay. I’m good at this. I just turn my voice up to that sweet spot.
“I’m fine,” I say, blinking at him. That look says he doesn’t believe me. “We’re here,” he says, pulling up to the famous Mystical Gravity Tunnel I saw when I drove up yesterday.
“Oh! We’re going in there?”
“Unless you don’t want to,” he says, concerned again.
Oh, good. No, this will be a good change of pace. I can’t sit here realizing a rapist is in charge of the police department anymore. It makes me, what? It makes me MAD! That’s what this is. I’m freaking furious. I get out of the car and slam the little light door way harder than is needed to close it. I stomp in the direction of the metallic wolf guarding the metal building.
“If I tell you the secret will you calm down?”
“What secret?” I say, breathless as I pace back and forth like a ravenous animal in a cage. Where’s Numb Girl? She’d come in handy right about now. I don’t know this feeling I’m having right now. I don’t know what to do with all of these raging thoughts. I want to kill Donnie, rip him to shreds with my bare hands, boil his bones in hot water and watch him scream. Tell him ‘Good boy’ when I’m done with him.
When I look up Dillon seems absolutely helpless. “About how the Gravity Tunnel works,” he offers, uncertainly.
There’s just too many emotions battling in me right now. The only thing I can do is throw my head back and laugh. It’s a hard belly laugh—a stress reliever. I think I’m going to pee my pants if I don’t stop laughing. I try holding the laugh in and that makes me just keep giggling. I think I’m doing the pee-pee dance.
Dillon is on the fence. He’s part amused with that grin but then he’s also confused, hence the body language, hands up as if to show he’s no threat to me.
“No, I’d rather it stay mystical,” I say as I suppress the rest of my giggles by biting my thumbnail. “I need a restroom.”
“I thought you might,” he says dryly but then that grin comes back. My faults make him love me more.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I say as I stand at an odd angle, my ankles tilted to the right, and watch Dillon climb the wall on the other end of the room as if he’s Spiderman. He was always good at climbing things—especially our favorite tree down by Rich Creek, the one that looked like a magic tree. The limbs were low enough that even I could climb it.
“I told you I’d tell you the secret,” he says, and turns around to face me, just his heels holding onto the edge of the wall bracket.
I shake my head no.
“Do you want to try the chair?” he asks.
“Okay,” I say, cautiously.
“Have a seat,” he says, and motions to the chair near the corner of the room. I sit down and he walks in front of me, so I cross my ankles. “Put your arms on my shoulders,” he says, as he bends down and grips his hands under the bottom of the seat.
“Haven’t we broken enough rules?” I ask.
“It’s just so you don’t fall,” his breath warm in my face. I close my eyes and experience his fragrance, feel the warmth of his body, imagine his scent and mine mingling in the air between us as if our auras were tangible things ready to coexist.
I place my arms on his shoulders and wrap my hands around his neck. Live wires again. He doesn’t move and I don’t open my eyes. “Do you feel it?” he says.
When I open my eyes he’s smoldering again. I say nothing but I let my eyes say yes for me. He smiles and picks up my chair with me in it. “The Laws of Attraction,” he says, as he effortlessly sticks me to the Spidey wall and I feel like I have to lean into the back of the chair. In this moment, we are not talking but it seems like our bodies are—like they are speaking on their own frequency.
“It’s called Chemical Affinity,” he says, his voice deep and controlled. “Attraction is something studied in science but completely unpredictable. You se
e, there is no real reason why one atom is drawn to another other than one is positively charged and the other negatively charged.”
“Yes,” I acknowledge. He doesn’t step back and I leave my hands entwined around his neck. My knees are pressing against his chest with my feet dangling.
“Sometimes an atom will come in proximity to another atom and there is just this huge explosion as they fly into on another. Marriages happen in the world of atoms for no other reason than certain molecules are attracted to others.”
My body gets warm and I start to tremble all over like there’s something unseen between us completely intangible but very real, very powerful, and as old as the beginning of time. My breathing increases its tempo, so does his. My heart is pounding to a new rhythm.
It’s been ten years since I’ve wanted this, but I want to kiss him so badly I begin to ache for him. That little rosebud deep in my stomach, deadened by years of neglect, is slowly rising causing growing pains.
I lean forward because I can’t help it—because we are two atoms drawn together, one positively charged and one negatively. He moves the chair to the peg below so that I’m forced to open my knees and reach up to his mouth. When we come together it’s like a force of fervor ignites between us as our teeth clash together momentarily.
I kiss him like I need him, because right now I do. He kisses me like he wants to crawl inside me, to be one with me. We’re all hands and mouths and tongues moving together in unison, making up for all the years of kisses that haven’t happened. I forgot what this felt like for real.
“Hmm—hmmm!” someone clears their throat loudly. I gasp, pulling away from him and then remember where we are. We are both out of breath.
“This kind of thing is not allowed here!” says the man who owns the place in an irritated tone. “Please, put the lady down and be on your way, Dillon.”
Dillon is staring into my eyes. Tahoe blues. “Just give us a moment, please,” he says, as he pulls my chair from the wall, never taking his eyes off mine, and sets me to the tilty floor.
He helps me up and it’s not just the gravity defying floor that has me unable to get my footing. I start to blush and hide myself under his arm. I can hear his heartbeat through his shirt.
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