What Are Friends For?

by Patricia McLinn

  “That guy you told me about.”

  “A guy I told you about? Warren?” Or did he mean Josh?

  “That kid? No, the guy you were going to marry.”

  “Oh.” That guy. To say she hadn’t expected this was like saying she hadn’t expected the sky to be brown this morning. “What about him?”

  Dredging up memories, she geared up for an unemotional APB rundown of height, weight, coloring, age and distinguishing marks. Then Zeke caught her off guard for the second time in half a minute.

  “Do you ever hear from him?” he asked.

  She cut him a look and found him staring. “Not since we broke it off.”

  His lips barely moved, but she thought she heard a curse.

  “It was mutual. We were after different things. When it came down to it, we were too young to get married. It’s a good thing we realized it in time.”

  “Do you think about him?”

  No. “Why are you asking me this stuff?”

  “To gather data. It’s a crude method, but convenient.”

  Data. Great. “I have something more important to talk to you about than some detached scientific interest in my past relationships.”

  “Relationships—plural?”

  She ignored that. “This is about something right now and important. Zeke, you need to talk to Cristina.”

  That stopped him. In fact, it seemed to freeze him in place. “Talk to her? I thought you were going to run interference for me with all these people.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I said I’d help you so you could handle stuff yourself, and that’s what I’m doing by telling you that you have to make it clear to her that you don’t return her feelings.”

  “Feelings?”

  You’d think she’d said a dirty word. Darcie waved a hand in front of his face, checking if he was in a trance. “Hello? Zeke? Are you in there? Have you noticed how she treats you?”

  “She’s a kid.”

  “She’s sixteen. That’s not much younger than…” No, maybe better to skip the topic of how he’d lusted after Jennifer since that age. Before Darcie arrived at an alternative, he spoke.

  “Not much younger than when we first made love.”

  One sentence. That’s all, and it provided about a thousand things to react to. That he’d referred to it at all. That he’d said it with such ease. That he’d called it making love. That he’d said first as if there might ever be another time.

  “But that’s the point,” he continued. “That means I’m old enough to be her father.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t say that to her! That’s just what we need. Major Cristina drama all over the place. As if most of this year’s court aren’t already basket cases. For the sake of the festival, will you please tell her the score. Diplomatically.”

  “Are you—?” His gray eyes seemed to deconstruct her component parts so he could reassemble them in a way that made sense to him. She knew that look. He hadn’t heard half of what she’d said “—are you jealous?”

  “Jealous?” Not even Zeke could think she was jealous of Cristina Wellton, but if he was thinking along the lines of her being jealous, had she given something away? “Why would I be jealous?”

  “Because those girls…” He clearly was thinking through this possibility he’d raised. “Because they have a chance at what you wanted—to be Lilac Queen.”

  That was his opinion of her? She stood straight, confident that no sign betrayed her. Training from the police academy had taught her to shake off physical blows and training at her father’s hands had schooled her to show no reaction to emotional blows.

  “For a genius, you are one idiot male, Anton Zeekowsky. I am not jealous of these girls. I am concerned that the festival goes on without a hitch, and that includes one of our princesses having a hissy fit like you’ve never seen. Listen to me, Zeke.”

  He was focused on something over her shoulder in the direction of the stage. She put her fingertips to his jaw and turned his face toward her. The touch was a mistake. His skin was too warm, the flesh too firm, the bone beneath it too hard. She jerked her hand away, tucking it behind her back until the tingling subsided. “Are you listening to me, Zeke?”

  Now she had his complete attention. She wasn’t sure this was an improvement.

  “Cristina has set her sights on you. You might not take that seriously, but she does. She definitely does. And she is not accustomed to failing. It’s going to be a jolt for her. You’ve got to think of a way to tell her, and soon. You’ve— What?”

  He was shaking his head. “I’m not good with words. I wouldn’t know how to talk to her about feelings. I told you, I like…” He locked gazes with her and a blaze of something crossed his face. “…doing.”

  Focus, Barrett. Focus. The object of this conversation was to avoid a major Cristina meltdown. Possibly to leave enough of a bridge between Ashley and Zeke that if he and Jennifer… Better not to think too much about that.

  “I know you’re not all that comfortable with words, Zeke. But in this instance, I don’t think action is the solution.”

  “Darcie?”

  She looked up. “What?”

  Zeke was leaning into her. He was going to kiss her.

  A kiss on the cheek. That’s all. She’d had them before. Thousands probably in her lifetime. From relatives, friends’ parents, longtime neighbors and from guy friends. The kiss would land on her cheek and he would continue on toward her ear, then glance off, like two cars brushing bumpers.

  But he didn’t. He pulled back after touching her cheek. Straightened. Leaned in again. His lips met hers, warm and hungry.

  That was their sole connection at first. It was enough, too much.

  Then his hands lightly cupped her shoulders, and she had the sides of his jacket fisted in her hands, holding on so she didn’t grab him, his body, his skin.

  His hold tightened, his arms wrapping across her shoulders in a circle he made smaller and smaller. She had to release his jacket or have it bunched around his throat.

  She felt the heat of him, the intensity, through his mouth, into hers, Her now-empty hands curled with exquisite sensation.

  A piercing alarm broke through her fog. Was it not just her on fire, but the whole building?

  No…no, the sound was human. Almost human. Familiar. Like…

  Ashley.

  Darcie pushed weakly against Zeke, not putting any distance between their bodies, but at least disengaging their mouths.

  “How could you? How could you?” Ashley screeched. “You horrible, horrible man! How can you betray Cristina?”

  “Who I kiss has nothing to do with her,” Zeke said.

  Ashley gasped, tracks of tears marking her cheeks. Tears of rage, Darcie realized.

  Jennifer came around the corner, abruptly stopping as she took in the situation.

  “Ashley,” Darcie stated in her everybody-stay-calm tone.

  It failed miserably.

  “And you!” Ashley wailed. “Stealing another woman’s man! That’s the lowest of low.”

  Somewhere under the ongoing assault on her nerves and the recognition that it would not help the situation, Darcie felt an urge to laugh.

  “Ashley.” Jennifer’s tone warned her daughter not to go too far.

  “No!” the girl cried. “They’ve betrayed her! Cristina loves him.”

  “If she loves anybody, it’s herself,” Zeke said. “Not me.”

  Ashley’s mouth gaped with shock.

  Zeke appeared unaffected. “Darcie was my first love. She’s the reason I came back to Drago.”

  The shock she’d seen on Ashley’s face descended on Darcie like a contagious disease. She felt numbed, unable to process what she’d heard.

  At a distance she was aware of Ashley’s tears renewing, then giving way to gulping sobs. The look Jennifer gave them—Zeke still with his arms wrapped around Darcie—could almost be interpreted as fighting a grin, before she guided Ashley toward the privacy of the back e
xit.

  Then shock fell away, and Darcie shoved at Zeke’s chest with the heel of her hand. More than pushing him away, she pushed herself away. Far enough away so she wouldn’t grab him and hold on.

  “Darcie?”

  “I told you to talk to Cristina. I said—”

  “She was heading this way, too. I didn’t think it would only be Jennifer’s kid who saw me kiss you. I thought if Cristina saw us—”

  “I said talk, not lie. Lies never make things better. Never.”

  “Darcie.”

  She kept going.

  He’d thought it was a great opening.

  In fact, made to order. A way to show her what he’d been feeling these past days without having to dredge up words.

  When Darcie had said he had to talk to that girl Cristina it fit with what Jennifer had been saying.

  It had started with Jennifer hinting about Zeke-Tech donating stuff to the town. He’d been doing pretty good ignoring those hints, when she’d said she supposed the request came as a surprise, since Darcie wouldn’t have let on how desperate the town was.

  “Darcie doesn’t hide much,” he’d said dryly, thinking how she’d been driving him around town, showing him Drago’s problems. What she wanted was crystal clear.

  Jennifer had tipped her head and squinted. “Darcie? Darcie Barrett?” she’d said, as if unsure they were talking of the same person. “You find she doesn’t hide much?”

  “I can tell what she’s feeling more than with most people. So she must not be hiding stuff.”

  Jennifer laughed. He didn’t think she was laughing at him, precisely. She sounded too delighted to be mocking him. But he had no clue what she was laughing about.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— It’s just so…sweet.”

  “What is?”

  “You and Darcie. Darcie could be one of those guards in front of Buckingham Palace, with nobody getting any reaction she doesn’t want to give. Including me. And have you ever seen her with her mother?”

  Oh, yeah, he had seen that. “Maybe with her mother—”

  “Most people, Zeke. So, either she lets you see more of what she’s feeling than she does with other people, or the two of you are connected, like I said last night.”

  He shook his head. “All Darcie does is give me grief. I think she’s still hung up on that guy she was engaged to.”

  “Oh, Zeke,” she’d said with a soft smile. “You two need to talk, you really need to talk. Let her know how you feel.”

  That’s when Cristina and Ashley had come up, making it impossible to get more information from Jennifer.

  So, he’d gone to talk to Darcie. But she’d gotten onto that stuff about that silly girl.

  But when he’d said, I wouldn’t know how to talk to her about feelings. I like doing he’d meant Darcie. As he’d looked down into her face—in those seconds before his mouth had touched hers, deleting all coherent thought—he’d thought she’d understood.

  Apparently not.

  Oh, hell, maybe he hadn’t been thinking. He’d looked into her face…and he’d wanted to kiss her. He’d needed to kiss her.

  All this flashed through his brain in the moment after she walked away, he said her name and she kept going, one arm extended, palm out in a clear order not to follow her.

  But that didn’t stop him from watching.

  Some insight hovered at the edge of his consciousness. But it took a back seat to the visuals of the current moment blending with memories of a certain backseat.

  The woman had one fine rear view. Her strong, straight back going down to the smooth roundedness of her buttocks, then the flow of slender curves in her thighs and calves.

  He’d felt the warmth of her back just now. But once, he’d touched her in all those places, and more. It hardly seemed real except for the stirring of his body reminding him how real it had been. Urgent and fumbling and terrifying and spectacular.

  Each reaction rolled together with the others. Each of them and all of them connected in his memory to the sensation of Darcie’s skin under his hands, against his body.

  And another memory, more elusive. Something of Darcie that had never left him. What was that?

  Pushing out the exterior door, Darcie shot a look over her shoulder, as if she’d felt his regard. He smiled at her.

  Maybe in the hope that she might hold those memories as good ones, too. Mostly because he couldn’t help it. It had become a conditioned response in only these few days. He saw Darcie’s face, and he smiled.

  She quickly moved out of sight.

  The thought that had been hovering at the edges of his mind finally found an opening: He would never understand women. Never had, never would. Great hardware, but their software was plain screwy.

  He wouldn’t try to build a bridge because he didn’t have those engineering skills. He wouldn’t try to play the cello because he didn’t have musical talent. When it came to women, he had neither the skills nor the talent. So he would stop trying to solve that particular mystery.

  As soon as he figured out the cause of that…what? Hurt? Sorrow? deep in Darcie’s eyes.

  He needed to think. There were three places in Drago he used to go to think. But it wasn’t anywhere near sunrise. And he hadn’t set foot in his father’s shop since the day he’d died.

  That left one.

  Darcie passed under the wrought iron arch that arose from stone pillars at either side of the entrance to Old Cemetery.

  Before she headed home on the second half of her usual morning run, she liked to do a never-the-same-twice zigzag among the grassy paths and lilacs. It kept her lateral motion sharp, and gave her a chance to say hello to her grandparents, a few former teachers, a favorite neighbor and the mail carrier from her childhood, as well as acknowledge early residents of Drago. Today, though, it was her nearly-sunset run, squeezed between Zeke duty and putting in a few hours tonight so Benny could go to his daughter’s grade school spring concert.

  She’d handed it to Zeke right on a plate. “Why would I be jealous?” The perfect opportunity for him to say, You have no reason to be jealous because you’re the one I truly want.

  And what did he say? That she was jealous of those kids over the Lilac Queen competition. As if she wanted to live through that again! So much for Jennifer’s hints about Zeke having feelings for her.

  No, she wouldn’t think about that. She would concentrate on the here and now, even in this place devoted to the hereafter.

  Monuments to family names—Stenner, Truesdale, Fletcherton and others—rose tall. But smaller markers could tell as much of a story.

  Here a young mother died, followed two days later by her baby. There her husband’s second wife lived well into the next century. In the northwest corner, a husband and wife born in Vermont in the early 1800s who died here late in the century. Under a maple, six children in one family all dying within three months in 1918. Throughout, tales of sacrifice and loss.

  She slowed, then stopped in front of another grave. A simple headstone, a name, dates and three words, one to each line:

  Husband

  Father

  Friend

  Darcie couldn’t say if she had consciously noticed this headstone before. Definitely she remembered when Mischar Zeekowsky was buried here.

  It had been a bright fall day. Colors so crisp they seemed to crackle. The nearly silent crowd of black-dressed townspeople had spread among gravestones like a dour cloud below the scarlet and gold of the leaves and blue of the sky.

  Darcie had come alone. The first funeral she’d attended where she wasn’t surrounded by family, shifted from home to funeral to burial amid a knot of relatives.

  Attending the funeral of Zeke’s father had meant a decision to take time off school. Her mother had listened to her defiant declaration that she was going, and quietly said she would go with her.

  Odd, Darcie had forgotten that.

  So she was wrong—she hadn’t come to Mr. Zeekowsky’s funeral alone.
Martha Barrett had said so little that in Darcie’s memory she had faded into a colorless drop amid the ocean of townspeople who had turned out. Friend.

  She remembered Mrs. Z, standing at the doorway of her little house, taking the hands of each visitor between her own and thanking them. Husband.

  But the stark, clear vision for Darcie of that day had been Zeke’s face. Gone to granite and shut off from the world. Father.

  He’d been harder to reach after that. And far, far more determined to leave Drago. To become someone important, successful, admired.

  He’d practically hummed with impatience to get on with it. While she’d tried time after time to pull him back into the here and now of their lives.

  She sighed.

  Did Mischar Zeekowsky approve of what his son had achieved? Did he admire what Zeke had created away from Drago? Did he, like Zeke, believe this was a place to escape? Or was he glad to have his boy home?

  She wished she knew. More important, she wished Zeke knew.

  She touched the top of the headstone, then resumed her run.

  “Darcie?”

  Her mother was coming out of the side door of the garage as Darcie finished her cooling-off jog down the driveway. Darcie grunted a greeting.

  “The vegetarian dinners for the ball are taken care of,” Martha said, pulling off gardening gloves. Not lightweight Lady of the Manor cutting flowers for arranging gloves, but battered leather that looked as if they could stop a pickaxe.

  “Good. I, ah…what were you doing?”

  “Adding compost for the roses. I apologize if I carry the smell, but manure really is best for roses. The lilacs have done particularly well—”

  “Mom, you should have told me.”

  Her mother cocked her head in the patented Martha Barrett Look. “Why would I tell you, dear?”

  “Because you shouldn’t have to do that. I’ll do it.”

  Her mother looked amused. “It’s done. Besides, I intend to keep doing that and other yard work as long as I’m in this house and able.”

  Yard work? Darcie never really thought about the yard except for paying a neighbor kid to mow the lawn. “But with Dad gone—you shouldn’t do the heavy stuff. If I’m not here—”