by Seth King
Sure. See you soon.
I skip upstairs and tell myself to focus on worrying about the job situation after seeing Stellan. Soon I settle on a tight tank top and black yoga pants, and once my hair is in an acceptable state I head out the door a little past twelve. The outfit is a little racier than I’m used to, but I’m halfway hoping that Stellan will be so pleased he’ll finally take me off into the woods and have sex with me, and that possibility puts a spring in my step as I hop down the steps and get into my car. I actually know the park he’s talking about; I used to go there as a kid when my mom wanted to get my little brother out of the house and let him run around and exhaust himself. It’s got baseball fields and meadows and all that, but its best feature is a network of little trails carved into the hills that will take you anywhere in town if you want them to. I simply can’t wait to share it with him.
Twenty minutes later I park my car and head for the baseball area, but I freeze when I see Stellan give a high-five to a guy in baseball clothes who looks somewhat like him, who then gets into a truck and drives away. Shit, I think as Stellan leans against a fence post and starts throwing a ball up in the air. He’s in tight white baseball pants stained with orange dirt, and his sweaty white wife beater is covered in grime. His messy blondish hair is peeking out from under a black baseball cap, and unless my eyes are deceiving me, he’s gotten even tanner from being in the sun all morning. As my stomach falls out of me and my heart bump-bumps in my ears, he notices me, smiles, saunters up, and hugs me. And not just any hug- he envelops me with his big arms and clutches me to him while rubbing my back a little with one hand, and as I breathe in his intoxicating scent I say a silent prayer that this embrace could last forever.
“Hey, babe,” he says as he pulls back, shattering my fleeting moment of heaven. “Thanks for coming. Sorry I’m so dirty, the game got pretty intense. And what’s that weird smile about?”
I cover my face with my hand. “Oh,” I blush, “I didn’t know I was smiling, I guess I just, um, liked being called ‘babe,’ that’s all.”
“Okay, then, it’s your special word now.”
“Well, good,” I grin, pleased with myself. “And don’t worry about it, you look fine. So what’s the plan?”
“Hmm,” he says as he looks off towards the woods. “I’m pretty worn out from the game. How about we just walk?”
“You read my mind.”
We start down the path, and I can’t help but smile as I breathe in the clean air and take in the sights and sounds of the forest. The park has an appropriate name, as it’s practically Raleigh’s own paradise. The path is closed in on both sides by lush walls of green, but the first hints of red and yellow and orange are just starting to peek through, reminding me that soon the whole city will be a blazing parade of autumn. We pass a beautiful black-haired jogger, and she admires Stellan like he’s a Chippendale dancer before looking over at me and screwing up her face in confusion. I’m not that offended, because I am fully aware that Stellan is way more attractive than me, and I don’t deserve him at all. I’m not used to being seen with someone so phenomenally gorgeous, and to be honest it kind of embarrasses me. I’m not an idiot, and I know exactly what they’re thinking: why does that plain girl think she’s good-looking enough to be with him? How smug of her. I just hope I can get over it soon so I don’t constantly feel like a buffoon whenever I’m with him in public in the future, if there even will be a “future” for us at all.
“So, sorry about last night,” Stellan says, pulling me out of my thoughts. I blush as I picture the previous night’s events. “You have to understand that this whole, I don’t know, getting-close-to-people thing doesn’t really come easily for me. I’m still figuring it out. But I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy myself, or that I regret hanging out with you. I had a really good time, Taylor.”
He peers over at me, and for the first time that I can remember, he looks shy. His eyes are vulnerable, expectant, and his posture is a little less big-boss-in-town than usual. He’s waiting to find out if I had a good time, and he’s nervous about what I might say. It may be the most adorable thing I have ever encountered.
“Of course I had fun,” I tell him, and he sighs and flashes a big puppy smile. “I just wish that maybe you could, you know, maybe start giving me little advance warnings before you get up and storm off.”
He laughs, the deep, confident sound bouncing off the trees and reverberating off into the forest. “Trust me, I’m working on it. Anyway, I realized I should’ve told you more about what’ll happen in Nashville, so here goes. This weekend is the ten-year anniversary of the company my dad founded. We’ll drive in on Friday, probably stop by some kickoff dinner at some fancy restaurant that night, and then come back and sleep at my house. In separate bedrooms, of course,” he adds pointedly. “And we might not get a lot of alone time, anyway, since my dad’s security hovers around me like fruit flies whenever I’m home.”
“Your dad has bodyguards?” I ask, disappointed that seducing him might not come as easily as I had been thinking.
“He doesn’t like to take chances with his safety. Anyway, we won’t have to do much on Saturday, probably just make an appearance at the company golf tournament on our neighborhood course, and then drop by the dinner at the clubhouse that night for an hour or so. As soon as I have the talk with my dad about the money, it’s all over and done with. We can leave early Sunday morning, and I can have you back for a late lunch, if you want.”
The thought of separating from him and no longer having an excuse to hang out with him makes my heart hurt already, even if that moment is still almost a week away.
“Sounds good,” I say, and then smile as I picture all the time I have before our goodbye.
We turn onto a smaller path. “What are your parents like, anyway?” I ask him as we walk. “Just so I know what to expect.”
“Let’s just say that neither of them are anything like me,” he frowns. “My dad’s a cocky asshole, and my mom’s sort of cold and distant and impossible to figure out. The ultimate WASP. I feel like I barely know her, even after all these years. She’s a handful, but I’ll help you deal with her, I promise.”
She sounds just like you, I want to say, but I hold it in.
“My dad spends five days a week working out of town and only comes to Nashville for the weekend to make a few passive-aggressive remarks to our maids and then disappear into his office,” he goes on. “He runs a hedge fund in New York, which basically means he takes his friends’ money and invests it and then makes them even more money. My mother refused to leave the South, said she’d rather die than become a Yankee, so she stayed behind.”
“Loyal to the South- sounds like my kind of lady,” I tell him, and he scrunches up his forehead.
“Trust me, you have nothing in common with my mother, and that is the highest possible compliment I could ever give you. You’ll figure out why when you meet her.”
“Oh. Okay then. Well, do you have any siblings?”
He looks down at the dirt, looking tortured beyond comprehension. “I did. I had a brother, James. He died years ago, though.”
I stop in my tracks.
“What?” he asks.
“I…I’m sorry,” I sputter as I try to pull myself together and resume walking. Suddenly his darkness, his moodiness, his issues- all that suddenly makes a little more sense to me now. He has a dead brother- wow. If it was even possible, the instinct to mother him and take care of him just became even stronger. And something I noticed at dinner last night comes to mind, too- the two sets of initials engraved into the silver Rolex he wears, along with the letters RIP. One was JG- James Goode. His brother. But the other initials were CH. Who is- or was- that?
But still…something ominous won’t stop rolling around in my stomach. This doesn’t explain all of his problems. I get the feeling that there is much more in his past that is fucking up his present. Something’s wrong with Stellan Goode, I just can’t put my finger
on what exactly that is.
“I had no idea, Stellan,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry for bringing that up.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I actually like talking about him. It makes me feel like he’s being remembered.”
I reach over and squeeze his big shoulder to comfort him- I can’t help myself. It makes my stomach flip over and my skin feel chilled, though, and I pull back after a moment so I won’t pass out or rape him or something.
“He was a little like me, but happier,” Stellan says wistfully, and I walk a little closer to take advantage of this probably brief glimpse behind the curtain. “Always laughing and playing pranks on people. But he also had a huge heart and loved to help people out in any way he could. And he was really athletic, and good at everything he did. He was the best person I ever knew.” His eyes grow stormier. “I was thirteen when it happened. He had just gotten his driver’s license, and he was excited about driving his new car, so my parents asked him to pick me up from practice after school one day. It was early December, playoff season, really late in the afternoon, and this icy, slushy rain started falling, and the roads got really messy all of a sudden. Right when he was turning into my school, some tourist from Alabama who didn’t know how to drive in the ice T-boned his truck and killed him.”
“Oh my gosh,” I gasp.
“I can still remember running up to the car,” he says, looking unimaginably haunted. “The woman’s minivan was dark blue with a white stripe, and she had an Auburn flag flying above her door. I’ll never forget seeing that flag waving in the wind while we waited for the ambulance to get there. I wanted the stupid wind to stop blowing, to stop making the flag look pretty- didn’t it know what had just happened, that my life had just been destroyed?”
Suddenly the police report about the dead person makes sense- he was probably waiting out in front of the school and saw the whole thing happen. My God. And no wonder he resents his father for making him play sports- his practice was the reason his brother died.
He looks over at me and holds up his hands. I’d never noticed before, but he has very faint scars in the middle of each hand, like little prick marks. “That’s how I got these scars. I tried to push stuff around to get him out, and I got burned by hot screws sticking out of the metal.”
“Oh my God, I…I can’t imagine.”
His eyes vacant, he shows me his phone and presses the home button, making his background photo pop up, a shot of a very cute teenager who looked a lot like Stellan, just with darker hair and lighter eyes.
“This is the last picture we have of him. I miss him every day. I see him in my dreams, though, and that helps a little. He doesn’t say much, just smiles at me and watches me, but I’d like to think I’m making him proud.”
“You are,” I tell him, overcome with the need to make him realize this. “He is proud. I know it.”
He stares down at his phone with a distant frown, and after a few seconds he shakes his head. “Anyway, I remember that on the night we met, you said I seemed old. This is why. I felt like I became a hundred years old the day he died, and I haven’t felt any younger since. Well, maybe besides the last day or two, actually.”
I want to ask what he means, but he keeps talking.
“The worst part is the anger. I’ll never get over that part of it; the infuriation that such a stupid, preventable accident robbed my brother of his entire life. It just wells up from the deepest part of you and takes control. Which is something you have experienced firsthand by now,” he says as he shoots a sly smile in my direction. The reaction in my belly leaves me breathless. “And also, the randomness of the whole incident gave me control issues. If one little detail about that day had been different- the timing of the red light, the temperature of the atmosphere, the time my brother left my house to get me- he’d still be here. I feel like if I assert control over every aspect of my life, some little slip-up like that won’t be able to happen again and wreck everything. That’s another thing I’m working on.”
I get a flashback of the way he manipulated my movements last night, taking full control of me. Is it weird that I maybe don’t want him to work too much on that issue?
“Anyway, all this all ties into the reason we have to go to Nashville,” he continues. “My father blames me for James’s death since he was on the way to pick me up from practice when he crashed. I don’t think he’s looked me in the eye since the day of the funeral, actually. He checked out emotionally that day and hasn’t been back since- except to belittle me or act like an ass. My mom checked, out, too- she told me it was too hard to look at me because I looked so much like James- but at least she was never mean to me, just cold. My dad still takes tiny little things I do and blows them out of proportion just so he can use something against me, and the fact that I don’t date…that’s his current problem with me. So, the only way I can keep myself from being cut off is by making him think I’ve changed, by knocking this thing off the list of reasons to hate me until he can find something else.”
“It’s terrible that you’re going through all this,” I tell him. “It’s going to work. We’re going to convince him, trust me.”
And have fun doing it, I think. But he shakes his head.
“Listen to me, being such a downer. I’m sorry for even bringing this up when I’ve got such important questions to ask you.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
He narrows his eyes. “First of all, tell me about Noah.”
“What? I told you the other night, he’s just a friend.”
His expression stays suspicious. “Friends don’t ‘like’ every single picture their other friends post on Facebook, especially if they’re guys.”
I bite my lip. “Oh, well, I didn’t know you even looked at my profile. And I didn’t realize he was doing that.”
“Have you ever dated him?”
“No.”
“Okay. And who’s the other guy in your pictures, the tall guy?”
I raise an eyebrow, teasing him. “Stellan Goode, are you jealous?”
He looks me squarely in the eye. “Yes, I am. The thought of you with someone else is infuriating to me.”
I look away, suddenly knocked breathless. “Um, he’s just a guy I used to date,” I breathe. “He’s nothing now, though. He doesn’t even live in this country, actually.”
“Was he your only boyfriend?”
Why all these questions?
“Um, no,” I answer as we turn and enter another deeper, darker section of the woods. “I’ve had about four relationships, I guess, and all of them lasted about a few months. But they all sort of fizzled out, and never really become anything too serious.”
This brings up another fear I have about myself, that I’m not as dazzling or captivating as I should be, and guys just naturally lose interest in me after a while because I’m nothing special. But I don’t say it out loud.
“Stupid of those guys to let things break off, but it worked out for me in the end, so I’m glad,” Stellan says with a smile, and I look away so he won’t see the color of my face.
“Anyway, tell me about you,” I say after a moment. “Are you allowed to date, with all your religious rules and stuff?”
He looks away. “Um…yeah. I guess. I don’t know.”
I bite my tongue. I don’t want to seem crazy, but this is technically our third hangout, so I guess this isn’t too off limits to ask. “When was your last relationship?”
“A while ago.”
“What happened?”
I try to make eye contact but he averts his face. “It didn’t work out in the end.”
“Um, okay then. What kind of girls do you usually go for?”
“Smart ones,” he says without thinking.
“That’s all?”
“Hmm. Just think of a Playboy Playmate or something, and then picture the complete opposite. They usually end up being intelligent and brunette and maybe a little bit reserved. And if they can make me laugh, that’s always a plus.” H
e glances over at me with a smile. “And a little goofiness never hurt, either.”
I don’t know whether to blush or be offended. “Did you just call me goofy?”
“Trust me,” he laughs, “it’s a good thing. It’s entertaining. Like when you weren’t paying attention at dinner last night and you walked into that chair and sort of shrieked a little- that was funny.”
I roll my eyes. I don’t even remember doing that, but knowing me, I’m sure I had.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he says with blazing eyes that feel like they’re shooting straight through me. “I like that side of you, Taylor. Don’t hide it.”
I look away, unable to meet his gaze for fear of bursting into flames.
“And I was wondering one more thing,” he says mischievously, “something that has to do with the subject we’re on right now, something kind of personal…”
“Okay, I am not telling you that,” I say, knowing exactly what he wants to ask.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s…I don’t know, tacky.”
And because I don’t know how he’ll react to the news that my list of conquests is five guys long. Four of them were the boyfriends I just mentioned, and the fifth was some jock from Texas who Cara introduced me to at the lake house last summer on a night when I’d already had way too much to drink. You can guess what happened next. None of them could compare to Stellan on any level, though, and I’d choose him over any of them in a heartbeat. Even though we’ve never technically had sex, he still blows them out of the water just doing one tenth of what they did. Would he think that’s too many guys, though? Or not enough, and he’ll think I’m some sad spinster or something?
Suddenly Stellan stops and holds out a hand.
“Shhh.”
“What is it?” I ask, and he motions for me to be quiet. I follow his gaze to a disabled woman who is struggling to get into her car in a small parking area along the path while fumbling with a pair of metal crutch-like contraptions that she can’t seem to maneuver. But that’s not where Stellan is looking: he’s peering past her, at two guys who look about our age sitting on the tailgate of their truck, sniggering at the woman’s failed attempts to get into her car. One of them turns to the other and whispers a word that sounds suspiciously like “retard,” making his friend collapse into a fit of giggles. Something in Stellan’s posture changes, and slowly he turns around to face me- and for the first time, I am truly terrified by him. His veins are popping out of his neck, his breathing is hard and ragged, and his eyes are wide and deadly.
