Going the Distance

by Julianna Keyes

  “I brought some pictures, if you want to see them.”

  “Of course.” He shifted his weight and she moved back, startled, then forced a smile and pulled out a small paper envelope of printed photos. He noticed then that she hadn’t brought her camera; she’d probably removed all the pictures of Chris from the pile, bringing him the censored version of her trip. God, he fucking hated her right now. He tried to keep it from showing in his eyes, downing the last of his scotch in one burning swallow.

  “Um…Do you want to sit down?”

  “No. Here’s fine.” He took the photos, flipping through them casually. Busy streets, towering Buddhas, the Golden Palace, colorful fruits and flowers, fried insects for sale. Palm trees, beaches, the occasional shot of Olivia posing next to some random object, several glowing sunsets. At one point she tried to comment on the pictures, but he silenced her with a grunt and she subsided. If he hadn’t already made up his mind, that would have sealed it. Olivia never tolerated his mood swings; she was only doing so because she felt bad. Which she should. Which she would.

  “These are nice,” he said, setting the pictures on the counter. “Where are the rest?”

  She ran her thumb over the edge of the envelope, watching the paper flex. “Those were the best ones. That’s all I brought.”

  It hadn’t escaped his notice that of the three reflection photos, she’d only printed one, the one with the shop window. The one that wouldn’t have meant anything without the other two to show the continued presence of the guy in the blue shirt. Of Chris.

  “Yeah?” He looked down at her, waiting until she met his stare.

  “Yeah.”

  “How was your trip?”

  Her smile was strained. Her eyes creased at the corners, but they were a cloudy blue, desperate and sad. He didn’t even want to think about what his own eyes looked like right now. “It was great,” she said. “It was beautiful.”

  “Easy to get around?”

  She rolled her eyes. “So easy. Way better than it is here. Everyone I met spoke English, signs were in English. And it was so cheap. I ate a scorpion.”

  He lifted a brow. “No kidding. And?”

  “Not good, but not terrible.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, just the scorpion.”

  “I mean, is there anything else you want to tell me?” Maybe he could forgive her. Maybe he could let it go, wouldn’t watch her walk out the door and begin the inevitable process of hating him. Maybe if she told him the truth right this instant, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  But she didn’t. “No,” she said.

  His palm had been pressed flat against the cool surface of the counter, but now it closed into a fist, so tight his short nails cut into his skin. “No?”

  She sucked in a breath and shook her head. This time her look was pleading. Please don’t ask me. Please don’t ask me.

  “How’s Chris?” he asked.

  Olivia made a small sound, something like a sob she tried and failed to keep inside. Her lower lip trembled, and for the first time since he’d seen her, he didn’t want to kiss her. He wanted to hurt her like he hurt.

  “How did you know?”

  His breath came out in a whoosh, as though she’d sucker punched him. He hadn’t realized until just then that he’d been holding out hope he’d been wrong. That she’d stare at him guilelessly and ask what he was talking about. He never considered her answering his question with one of her own.

  “Just tell me,” he said.

  “I didn’t know he was going to be there.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She glared at him, though she had no right to. “I didn’t,” she insisted. “He showed up. My parents told him where I was staying, and he was waiting for me when I got there.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t know,” she repeated, a satisfyingly desperate note creeping into her voice.

  “Were you going to tell me?”

  For a second it looked like she might cry, then she pulled it together. “No.”

  Both his eyebrows raised. “No?”

  “No. I wanted to avoid this.”

  “What? Breaking up?”

  She straightened. “We’re not breaking up.”

  He coughed out a laugh. “I don’t think you get a say.”

  “Nothing happened, Jarek. There was nothing to tell you.”

  “So if I went on vacation with some other woman, you wouldn’t want to know?”

  Her nostrils flared. “I didn’t go on vacation with him. He showed up.”

  “Right. Did you fuck him?”

  Now her fists clenched as she tried to stay calm. “No.”

  “Share a room?”

  “No.”

  “But you hung out together.”

  A pause. “Yes. He wanted to…make amends.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  She scowled. “How you think, Jarek. But I said no. And he accepted that.”

  “Really? You said no? When two weeks ago you said you didn’t know what you’d do when the two of you got together again?”

  “That’s right. Two weeks ago when you said you loved me and told me not to tell you that I lov—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand and shoved her back into the refrigerator, hard enough that her head bounced. She winced, but he didn’t let go. “Don’t you fucking say it!” he roared.

  She pushed at his chest but he didn’t move, even when the tears that had been threatening to spill over finally made good on their promise, painting two shiny tracks down her cheeks. She clawed his hand away, chest rising and falling, hurt and angry. “You’re a coward, Jarek. You only want the answers you feel like hearing. You don’t want to hear that someone cares about you. You don’t want to hear about my trip. How Chris showed up and I turned him down and then we hung out together because I’ve known him my entire life and he was the only person I knew in the whole country. What was I going to do, avoid him? He had the room next to mine.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Does that mean nothing to you? That I could have gone back to having everything the way it used to be, but I didn’t?”

  He gripped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “All I know is that you fucking lied to me, Olivia.”

  She wrenched her face from his grasp and gathered up the photos, her spine straight. “I’m leaving now. Find me when you grow up.”

  He didn’t say a word as she walked out, though he knew she was expecting him to. He did follow her, however, taking the stairs to the ground level, emerging in the lobby in time to see her round the corner to the street where she’d soon pass the construction site. Where she’d learn what he had done.

  Jarek kept a safe distance, halting when he saw Dale call to her from just inside the fence, beckoning her to the lounge trailer. She hesitated because she hated Dale, but she’d just fought with one of the few friends she had, so off she went, like a lamb to the slaughter. He waited until she climbed into the trailer, then jogged over to stand out of sight next to the open door. He heard Dale offer her a beer and inquire after her trip. The tear stains on her face had to be obvious, but his loyal companion didn’t waver. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do, and thanks to Olivia’s late arrival, he probably had three extra beers in his system to further fuel his mission.

  There was a pause, then the shuffling of paper as Dale obediently looked over her photographs. “This one’s nice,” he said.

  Jarek gritted his teeth and rested his head against the trailer. There had been men who’d wanted to do his old job, wanted to have the stomach for it, but just didn’t. They’d waited outside the cramped rooms until he emerged with answers, laying witness to the devastation he’d left behind. He felt like those men now. He wanted to look but he didn’t. He didn’t have the stomach for it anymore, but he didn’t move a muscle to stop it, either.

  “Yeah,” Olivia said reluctantly.

  “This one, too.”

  “Okay. Thanks
.”

  “You have nice tits, Olivia.”

  “Okay, Dale. Give me my pictures back, I’m going to leave.”

  There was the rustle of the plastic bag, then a muttered curse as Dale held onto the picture. “Let me keep this one,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Come on. At least I’ll have something in front of me when I jerk off. Jarek’s stories about you are hot and all, but I like a visual aid, you know?”

  He could picture her freezing, all the color draining from her pretty face. And then she took the bait.

  “What did you say?”

  He imagined Dale shrugging, face ruddy from alcohol and indignation on behalf of his betrayed friend. The friend using him to break her heart the way he didn’t have the balls to do himself.

  “Relax,” Dale said dismissively. “I knew you’d be up for anything. And I knew you two screwed in the carpentry trailer. I fucking knew it.”

  “You don’t know anything.” Her voice was like ice.

  “No? I don’t know how he watched that sappy movie so you’d let him finger you that first night? Why wouldn’t you let me touch you, Olivia? I don’t care if you banged your friend in Thailand. I’m not fussy.”

  “You’re disgusting. Keep the photos.” The words were cold, but her voice broke halfway through.

  “Come on, just tell me what it was like swallowing his cock in the shower in Beijing.”

  “Fuck you, Dale.”

  “And how many fingers you let him shove up your ass.”

  Her breath caught on a sob and there was a thud as she threw the photos down and stormed from the trailer. She noticed Jarek at the last second, looking at him through watery blue eyes, her face composed apart from the tears.

  “Olivia.” He didn’t know what the fuck else to say.

  She strode through the site, out to the street, putting on sunglasses to hide her eyes. He followed her and she let him, didn’t push him away when he walked right beside her, tugged her arm to move her out of the way of a careening bicycle. She didn’t even fight when he wiped the tears dripping off her chin with the hem of his T-shirt, and that’s when he knew it was worse than he thought.

  The woman he knew made him work for every inch. Forced him to sit through a thousand awful movies, open himself up, spend fourteen hours on a train. That was the woman he’d worked for. The woman letting him made him nervous. This woman was someone else entirely, and he had no idea what she would do.

  She let him into the building, and he followed her up four flights of stairs. She let him come into her apartment, then kiss her, then take off all her clothes and lay her on the bed while he stripped, too. He didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t even know what he was doing, just that he couldn’t seem to stop. She barely moved beneath him, returning his kiss with a detached passion, parting her legs at his urging, but not wrapping them around his hips. He stroked her all over, fondling the breasts he’d told Dale about in great detail three nights ago when they’d gone out and gotten drunk because he didn’t know what to do with himself. The night he’d told Dale everything, the one thing he’d promised Olivia he’d never do.

  He teased her nipples until they were tight and her heart drummed against her ribs so hard he could feel it. All the while he buried a hand between her legs, pushing two and then three fingers inside, manipulating her the way he’d finally—finally—learned she liked, feeling her grow wetter and wetter. He rolled on a condom and fucked her, kissing her neck and the spot beneath her ear that usually made her moan, but today she bit her lip and stayed silent.

  He moved gently inside her, then harder, and still nothing. He pulled out and slid down her body, pressing her legs open and covering the swollen pink flesh with his mouth, licking up everything and pushing his tongue inside. She failed to hide a moan behind her hand, so he kept going, inserting two fingers into her pussy, stroking the rough spot on her inner wall, feeling her clamp down unwillingly. He knew her now, and she knew him, like it or not. He would make her come no matter how long it took and she knew this too, which was maybe why she let it happen. He sucked her clit against his teeth and she came, bearing down on him, though the hands that usually fisted painfully tight in his hair were resting on the pillow beside her head. The foot that was normally pressed between his shoulder blades was planted firmly on the mattress. He was touching her, but she was not touching him.

  Well, fuck that. When the contractions eased he rose over her and slammed his cock inside, too deep and too hard, making her wince. But she didn’t cry out. She turned her head to the side and stared at the wall as he fucked her until he came, and she never made a sound.

  He remembered her telling him once about the awful words they’d spray painted on her car, how she’d paid twice to have it repainted. And how she’d decided to leave it after the third time, because she couldn’t keep affording to make the same mistakes. She’d never fought back, because Olivia didn’t fight fire with fire. She doused it with icy water, then stood, staring pensively at the smoldering ashes as though trying to decide if she should sweep them up or let them blow away in the wind.

  Jarek didn’t know what he wanted her to do. He knew only that she had bested him at his own game, and she hadn’t even been playing.

  “Get out,” she said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “OKAY, GUYS, ARE YOU READY?”

  “READY!” the class whisper-screamed, the lowest volume setting they knew.

  “You’re going to be great. We’ve been practicing for a long time, and I know you can do this.”

  Their collective attention was promptly seized by Alan shuffling out from the tiny changing area. Instead of the expected Spiderman suit he now wore red tights, a red T-shirt, and a red cape. And red socks with a web pattern, the only sign of his former role. The little girl who had originally been cast as Red was sick with the flu, and they’d had only one hour’s notice to replace her. Because Alan both secretly loved performing and had choreographed most of the dancing, he was the best choice for her replacement.

  “Shh,” Olivia warned the kids before they could laugh, pressing a finger to her lips. Then, “Thank you for your help, Alan.”

  “You’re welcome,” he responded automatically. She squeezed his hand and instead of folding his arms and rejecting her, he actually squeezed back. Her eyes stung and she blinked rapidly, telling herself not to be ridiculous. There were five days left in the school year; seven days until she left China for good. That’s why she was emotional.

  It had been fifteen days since the breakup. She hadn’t seen or heard from Jarek. She hadn’t visited the site or tried to call. And she wouldn’t. They were over. After Dale’s taunts she’d wanted nothing so much as to return to Jarek’s apartment, find the biggest knife he had, and stab him through the heart. Instead she’d stormed out of the trailer and found him listening—listening!—right outside, like the coward he was. And then she’d gone numb. All the heat that had suffused her at Dale’s words, the betrayal that burned in her blood, it had frozen solid. She couldn’t feel a thing. So she let him follow her home and kiss her and fuck her, and afterward as he lay on top of her, their hearts pounding in sync, she reached the conclusion that had been too long in coming: if this was all he had to offer, she would rather be alone.

  Part of her was furious with her parents for having a hand in Chris’s “surprise,” but deep down she knew they were just trying to make up for the past year. They thought she had no friends, so they sent her one. They sent her the best man they knew.

  The moment she turned and saw Chris, her heart had stopped. For so long his had been the only face she’d wanted to see, the smile that warmed her, the anchor that kept her tethered to everything she knew and loved. But he wasn’t that man anymore, and even though he apologized and took responsibility for everything that had happened, it didn’t make a difference. Some small piece of her had always wondered if they could ever try again. They’d been so perfect once, surely one rough year o
ver the span of a lifetime wasn’t such a bad record? Then he’d taken her hand and asked for a second chance, and she’d said no. And she’d meant it.

  He’d accepted the rejection with the same grace he applied to everything else, and then because he’d booked the hut next to hers for the rest of the week, they spent the trip together. What was she supposed to do, hide every time he came looking for her? She had already fled to the other side of the world, she wouldn’t keep running.

  So they’d toured the island, watched movies in the outdoor dining room, gone snorkeling and hiking and lain on the beach, and celebrated her birthday with banana pancakes and coconut ice cream. When the week was over they’d taken the twelve-hour bus back to Bangkok and said good-bye at the airport. She’d spent the entire flight back to Shanghai debating what, if anything, to tell Jarek, and in the end she decided to say nothing. His overreaction to her day trip with Marcus supported her choice, and Chris’s surprise had nothing to do with him, anyway. Nothing had happened, and she didn’t want to fight with him when they had so little time left together. Plus, if he didn’t ask, it wasn’t really lying, was it? And how could he know?

  “O-liv-ya?”

  She glanced down at Davy, dressed in his butterfly costume, glitter smeared across his smooth cheeks. “Yes, buddy?”

  “I want to go to the bathroom.”

  “I want to go to the bathroom!” someone else piped up.

  “I want to go—”

  “Okay, okay!” she hissed. “The bathroom is down the hall. Two people can go at the same time. Davy, you are first. Sam, you can go, too.” It was always this way; when one had to go, they all had to go, even when they didn’t.

  She checked her watch and blew out a nervous breath. It was eleven-oh-five; according to the program, they were scheduled to go on at ten after. They’d been seated in their assigned row until seven minutes ago when they’d filed backstage to make their final preparations. So far the other class performances had been a mixture of Chinese and English, songs and dances and things she hadn’t understood but the parents had been delighted by. And there were a lot of people in the audience; over two hundred, she’d estimated.