Going the Distance

by Julianna Keyes

  “We’ve gotta get going,” Brant said, nodding at Dale and Ritchie. “You bring the trees to the classroom, say good-bye to your girlfriend, and head back after, okay?”

  He’d kill them all in their sleep and love every second of it. “Yeah.”

  “Good-bye, Olivia.”

  “Bye, Brant. Dale. Ritchie.”

  The men nodded, Ritchie squeezed Honor’s hand, and they left. Olivia and Honor took one dolly and led the way, Jarek trailing after. He tried not to stare at her ass, but the jeans she wore fit her perfectly, and it was hard to stay focused.

  “Nice shirt,” she said over her shoulder, shooting him a smug smile.

  His lips twitched. He’d been razzed about the shirt all morning. She’d given it to him last night after he’d spent a good hour apologizing wordlessly in bed, showing her how good a boyfriend he could be if he put his mind—and hands, and tongue, and a few other things—to it. Her gift from Shanghai was a white T-shirt covered almost entirely in bright tattoo-inspired artwork. He’d held it between two fingertips like it was radioactive before squinting at the name scrawled across the chest and getting the joke. She’d looked rueful as she recounted her fruitless search for Hardy Boys merchandise, ultimately settling on the Ed Hardy T-shirt.

  Said shirt clung to the sweat on his back as they crossed the courtyard and stopped in front of her classroom. Honor said good-bye and went back to work next door, and Olivia turned. “This is really nice of you,” she said, studying him thoughtfully.

  He shrugged like it had been no big deal. “You gave me something,” he said, fingering the shirt. “Figured I’d repay the favor.”

  “So we’re even now? One knock-off T-shirt for two dozen beautiful trees?”

  “This is a knock-off?” He tried to look offended. “I’m taking some trees back.”

  She laughed, then turned when a raised voice came from inside her classroom. The Chinese teacher was yelling at the kids to get away from the windows where they stood with noses pressed to the glass, taking in the scene outside.

  “I think you have to come in now,” Olivia said.

  “No,” he said firmly. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “No.”

  She pushed out her bottom lip and gazed at him woefully. “Jarek.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  She trailed her fingers down his forearm, her touch cool on his heated skin. Then she gripped his hand and yanked him after her into the room. “Back to your seats,” she ordered. The kids scurried away, as though racing there might mean she’d never seen them at the window in the first place.

  Tiny voices murmured curiously as they took in the tall stranger standing in front of the whiteboard. He took off his sunglasses and waited stiffly as they gazed up at him in awe. Olivia let go of his hand and he felt untethered.

  “Don’t just stare at him,” she admonished the room. “What do we say when we meet somebody new?”

  “NICE TO MEET YOU!” the class screamed.

  Jarek flinched.

  Olivia was trying not to laugh. “That’s true,” she conceded. “But what do we say first?” She waved and mouthed the words, “Hi, how are you?”

  “HI, HOW ARE YOU?”

  Then they all looked at him expectantly. “Uh, fine,” Jarek replied.

  Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Ask how they’re doing.”

  “How are you?” he echoed weakly.

  At least this time he was ready for the volume. “I’M FINE, THANK YOU! HOW ARE YOU?”

  “You already asked that,” Olivia pointed out. “He’s doing fine, obviously.” Her lips curled in a knowing smirk. He scowled at her and the class giggled, even though they weren’t in on the joke. “This is my friend Jarek,” she told the kids. “He came to give us some trees for our play. Isn’t that nice?”

  “YES!”

  “What do we say when someone helps us?”

  “THANK YOU!”

  A long pause.

  “Uh-oh,” Olivia said, eyes wide. “What do we say when someone says thank you?”

  “YOU’RE WELCOME!”

  He stared daggers at her, but she just smiled politely. “You’re welcome,” he said through his teeth.

  “THANK YOU!”

  “I have to get going,” he said under his breath.

  One of the kids, a little girl in the front row, stuck her hand in the air and asked something in Mandarin, then pointed at the CD player sitting on a desk.

  “Hmm,” Olivia said. “I’ll ask.” She turned to him formally. “Jarek, we were just about to sing a song. Would you like to sing with us?”

  The kids squirmed in their seats like live wires, unable to contain their glee at the prospect of a new participant.

  “I really wouldn’t,” he said.

  “He said yes!” Olivia exclaimed.

  The room exploded in cheers.

  “Okay, Rose. Start the song, please. Number four.”

  The little girl who had started this trouble in the first place darted to the front, punched a few buttons, and a song he hadn’t heard in thirty years started playing. The kids jumped to their feet, shuffled in place, and started singing along as best they could when they were merely emulating sounds and not words. And damn Olivia, singing and dancing along with them as he stood there wishing he were dead.

  “Put your right hand in,” she sang loudly, snatching up his right wrist and putting it “in” something invisible in front of him.

  “I’m breaking up with you,” he whispered.

  She was laughing too hard to answer. Her lips shaped the words to the song, but all that really came out was “ha ha ha.”

  The kids were ecstatic, putting their hands in and then both their feet, then, when prompted to choose an action, Olivia looked at a little boy wearing a Spiderman costume—in fact, four boys were wearing Spiderman outfits—and held up her hands as though looking for an answer. “What do you think, Alan?” she asked. “What should we do now?”

  The kid stared at her as though looking over a precipice and trying to decide if he should jump off or run away. Jarek knew the feeling. She made him feel that way every time she looked at him. And like an idiot he’d been leaping over the edge, with no clue what might be waiting for him.

  Alan, however, chose the sane option, and folded his arms, refusing to speak.

  “Okay,” she called brightly, as though he hadn’t turned her down. “Who else?”

  The kids unanimously agreed to stick their butts in, and Jarek staunchly refused, even as he watched Olivia bob up and down, ass sticking out, making him think very inappropriate things. The song ended and he made a mental note to pass its name along to the agency he’d worked with in his previous career. This was torture in its purest, most melodic form.

  The kids clapped and giggled as they sat down, and Rose turned off the CD player.

  “I’ve really got to go,” Jarek said, and Olivia relented.

  “Okay, everybody. Jarek has to go now. What do we say?”

  “GOOD-BYE!” Some of them may have said his name, but it was hard to tell.

  “Bye.” He waved abruptly and started for the door. He could hear Olivia’s sneakers behind him and turned when they were outside, far enough away that they couldn’t be overheard—even if they couldn’t be understood—but still well within view. He put his sunglasses back on and looked down at her.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked. She was a master interrogator, smiling as she cut off fingers and pulled teeth.

  “No.”

  “Not even a little bit?”

  “You do this every day?”

  “All day, every day.”

  “You’re a sadist. And a masochist.”

  She laughed. “Do you still want to run later?”

  “With you? Absolutely not.”

  She batted her eyes and, like a pussy, he caved.

  “I’ll see you at seven.” He kissed her on the forehead and strode back acros
s the courtyard, determinedly ignoring the snickers and whispers that emanated from every classroom.

  They ran along the path by the water. Spring was in full bloom and the sky was full of fuzzy white cottonwood seeds, blown free from the trees and filling the air like warm snow. Jarek plucked several out of Olivia’s hair as they ran, admiring the way her ass twitched in her shorts, and the bounce of her breasts with each step. He was sufficiently distracted that she had to swat him on the arm to get his attention.

  “Are you listening to me?” she demanded.

  “I—” He was going to lie, but she had a built-in bullshit detector. Plus he was pretty sure she’d seen him ogling her tits. “No.”

  She huffed and shook her head, but he knew she wasn’t mad. “What were you saying?” he asked.

  “I was telling you how excited the kids were about the trees you made. Davy—I don’t know if you saw him in the front row?—he’s already talking about what colors they should be. And I can’t be sure, but I think the Spidermans are trying to come up with ways to climb them.”

  “The kids seemed to like you,” he offered as penance for not listening.

  “Some do. Some don’t. You saw Alan, right? The Spiderman who wouldn’t pick a dance move? That kid loves to dance, but he hates me. Won’t say a word.”

  Jarek thought back to the boy who’d dismissed Olivia’s offer during the song. “That kid doesn’t hate you,” he said seriously. “He just doesn’t know what to make of you.”

  She shot him a baleful look. “I’ve been his teacher for four months. He knows what to make of me.”

  He shrugged and jogged a circle around her, knowing it drove her nuts. “I’m just telling you. He’s intimidated. He wants you to like him.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I know how to read people.” Plus, he knew exactly how it felt when Olivia offered you an opportunity you didn’t know what to do with.

  “So what do I do?”

  He circled her again, tugging her ponytail until she tried to elbow him in the stomach. “Just keep trying.”

  She stomped on his foot and nearly tripped them both. He caught her around the waist with one hand and braced the other on the low wall before they could topple into the water. “That was a freebie,” he murmured in her ear, righting them. “Do it again and I’ll let you fall.”

  She tipped back her head to look him in the eye. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m still going to make you pay for today’s little stunt.”

  She was the picture of innocence. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Did you really think I was going to dance in front of a room full of children? Stick my ass out?”

  “I saw you tapping your feet to the beat. Don’t be an Alan, Jarek. You can dance if you want to.”

  He smacked her ass, hard. “We’ll see about that.”

  They jogged in silence for a minute, then Olivia spoke. “Was it just me, or were Brant and Dale acting stranger than usual today?”

  “They’re just dickheads.”

  “Did you tell them anything?”

  “Anything like what?”

  “Like that I was your girlfriend.” She was watching the pavement at their feet, not looking at him. She looked…shy. For once.

  “Ah…yeah. I mentioned it.”

  “You did? Why?”

  He cleared his throat. “They made me.”

  “What?”

  “They’re huge gossips, Olivia. They have nothing to do with their time, so they spy on me. Brant even called Jonah and told him.”

  “Who’s Jonah?”

  “My brother.”

  “Oh, right. Your brother.”

  He glanced down at her. She was still watching the path. He’d pried into the most painful part of her past, and had never offered her more than the most basic facts about himself. He sighed inwardly. “We’re twins.”

  She looked up in surprise. “Twins?”

  “Yeah. Fraternal. He’s six minutes older.”

  “Wow.” She was quiet for a few minutes.

  He nudged her. “What’s wrong?”

  She scratched her cheek. “Have you ever slept with someone and then realized that you didn’t really know anything about them?”

  Ah…He was definitely not going to answer that question. He’d slept with tons of women he knew nothing about, but he preferred it that way. Olivia made a scoffing sound and he risked a look down at her. She’d obviously read the answer on his face. “Never mind, Jarek.”

  “You knew I had a brother.”

  “That’s all I knew. Are you a lot alike? Was he in the army as well?”

  “No. He’s a gardener. A ‘landscape architect,’ if you believe his business card.”

  “A landscape architect?”

  He pursed his lips. “A gardener.”

  “Is he married?”

  “Yeah. They have twins. Girls. Picket fence, the works. They go to church, he volunteers, she’s a ballet teacher.”

  “Wow. That’s so…perfect.”

  “Yep. He’s perfect. Everyone says so.”

  Another quarter mile in silence. “What about your parents? How long ago did your mom…pass?”

  He cleared his throat awkwardly, swatting cottonwood seeds out of the air, the fluffy pods clinging to his dark shirt. His life before the army wasn’t really a secret, he just never talked about it. It felt strange and foreign, but he tried anyway. “She died when I was six. Pancreatic cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “What was she like? Were you close?”

  “Yeah. I mean, the way any kid is close with their mom. She was really beautiful. I remember she always wore dresses and lipstick. She liked to go out a lot, dancing, restaurants, stuff like that.”

  “Were they really in love?”

  “My parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  Now it was his turn to be quiet. “My dad was in love with her,” he said finally. “And I guess she loved him. But he wasn’t really…enough for a woman like that, I don’t think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He never went out with her.”

  “So?”

  He shot her a meaningful look. “So I didn’t know it because I was six, but she wasn’t going out alone. There were other men. A lot of them. I mean, she was beautiful and alive, and he just wasn’t.” He tried to keep his voice level and his face blank, not letting her see how difficult this was. How alike he and Aidan McLean were, no matter how many times he’d sworn he wouldn’t be his father.

  “And he didn’t mind?”

  “He didn’t do anything about it. Then one day she didn’t feel well and she went to the hospital, and a month later she was dead. And my dad never really got over it.”

  She heard something in his voice then, because she stopped running and waited for him to stop too, turning to face her. “Did you? Get over it?”

  “Yeah. Let’s keep going.”

  “Jarek—”

  “Let’s keep moving if you want to talk about this. I don’t want to have a fucking heart to heart in the middle of town, okay?”

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay.”

  They ran another quarter mile before he spoke again. “He was different after she died. Worse. Like he didn’t know how to be a real person, or be around other people. He was angry.”

  “Did he take it out on you guys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it worse for you than your brother?”

  He used the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat from his brow. “No. It was the same for both of us. We processed it differently, obviously. He became a gardener and I beat the shit out of people for a living.” That was over-simplifying things, but she was smart enough to see it. He’d spent his entire life vowing to be nothing like his father, then he’d enlisted and they’d done an aptitude test and lo and behold, he was best suited to hurti
ng people. Jonah, for whatever fucking reason, was destined to plant flowers.

  “How long has he been sick?”

  “Awhile now. Something to do with his liver. Jonah tells me about it, even though I asked him not to.” He hadn’t spoken to his father in four years. What did he say to the man who’d helped turn him into some soulless asshole? He hadn’t beaten his kids for fun or sport, the way some abusers did. He’d just punished them severely for every little thing; forgetting to make your bed merited the same beating as a suspension from school. Somewhere along the way he and Jonah had diverged. Jonah took the beatings personally and tried to be better, but Jarek started to feel nothing. He recognized the pain, but on the emotional front, he was a blank slate. And that was how it had been when he was working: doing whatever it took to get results, then going home and sleeping with a clear conscience. He’d never had so much as a bad dream. He was the perfect asshole.

  “That’s enough, all right?” he said when she opened her mouth to speak. He didn’t know what she was going to say, another question or some sympathetic remark, but he didn’t want to stay on this train of thought. He wasn’t even sure what had prompted the sudden sharing, except that he didn’t want to keep shutting her out in case she finally gave up and walked away. They had until her contract was up at the end of June; he’d just let the pieces fall where they would and pick them up when she was gone.

  “Sure.” She didn’t do anything to make him feel worse, didn’t look at him with pity or try to hold his hand. She just ran beside him, her breathing even, footsteps matching his, until they’d run the entire length of the path and back, exiting near her apartment.

  “Do you want to get something to eat?” she asked as they weaved their way through traffic and pedestrians on the busy street.

  “No.” He gripped her arm and fairly dragged her the short distance to her building. After the conversation he’d done little more than watch her tits and ass bounce, and he wanted nothing so much as to lose himself in her for a little while. “Just open the door, okay? Let’s go upstairs.”

  She read his intention easily, discomfort flashing across her face. “Are you okay? Maybe—”

  He took the keys from her hand and opened the green door, nudging her into the stairwell. “I’m fine, Olivia. I’ve wanted to fuck you since you bent over that dolly this morning, and I don’t want to wait anymore.”