Love Uncharted

by Berinn Rae

  “Let’s get this straight,” he said. He placed the Chernobyl Chicken Meltdown he’d been holding onto his plate. “Would his wife kill him basically to save his reputation? Doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff to me. No, no. I can’t buy that one. I think only a lazy historian would accept that conspiracy theory of Harding’s death.”

  “Lazy!” JJ leapt from her seat. Thud. Her chair fell backward in the process, causing a number of customers to stare. She stomped around the chair as best she could in such tight quarters. She started to raise her chair at the same time Kenn bent over to help pull it upright. Their hands touched. Hurriedly, she gathered her things and looked Kenn square in the eyes. He possessed the kindest, most compassionate eyes she had ever seen. Her rage melting, she began to feel … was that vulnerable? Still, his remark was careless at best and certainly judgmental.

  “Listen, just because a historian wants to explore an unconventional topic does not make him or her lazy.” The former professor could feel the tension in her jaw build as she tried to keep her voice down, her words measured. “Every good historian needs to be open to all the possibilities.”

  • • •

  Alex and Blake lingered in bed, each naked and lovingly caressing the other’s body.

  They were deeply involved in their separate thoughts and still united by the nearly spiritual experience their lovemaking had created. Then they heard the door — and then they heard JJ — and the reverie that pampered their senses vanished. They shot up and hastily began to cover themselves.

  “And if anyone had any lingering doubts,” JJ yelled loudly as she entered the house, “like you, Alex, wherever you are, you can just wipe them from your minds. Because, yes — he is one humongous pompous ass.” She threw her purse across the living room to the far side of the couch.

  Alex, wrapped in a robe and Blake, shrouded in a blanket, timidly stepped out the bedroom door. Alex was the first to speak. “You ran into him again?”

  JJ looked at the couple, her eyes opening wide, her mouth involuntarily forming a smile.

  “What?” Blake questioned.

  “It’s just awkward for me, that’s all. It’s like a bad horror movie. Instead of I Know What You Did Last Summer … No, I don’t even want to go there.”

  Chapter 10

  “You what?” Without waiting for a response, JJ demanded, “How could you possibly confirm a dinner for me without even leaving me a note somewhere?” It was Saturday afternoon. Her houseguests had been with her less than a week. Yet, already she felt the pressure of having continual company … even if they weren’t actually real.

  “I’m sorry, JJ, it just slipped my mind.” Truth was Alex hadn’t been able to think of anything else for the last couple of days. The prospect of JJ seeing this man again filled her thoughts — and very romantic ones they were.

  Of course Alex wanted for JJ what her creator had given her: a gorgeous man who loved her. Alex already recognized that JJ used her work as a thinly veiled attempt to hide her loneliness. That was fairly obvious.

  But Alex also wanted to get back to her own world, her own life … the tending to her small flower garden … to her cat, Mr. Whiskers … and the very personal unfolding of her life with Blake. She was eager to see where it all was going to lead.

  She prayed that JJ would feel the social pressure to go to her sister’s. So far the plan was going just as she had envisioned. Oh yeah! Anger! Alex knew that revealing the dinner party invitation was going to be met first with anger. She had expected that and accepted it. Now, she crossed her fingers JJ would do exactly what else she expected of her — go anyway. It really was too late to call and back out.

  Alex was more than willing to bear both the brunt of the anger and the criticism if it meant getting JJ to her sister’s. This would result in her encountering Professor Cooper again. More importantly, if all went well, it would result in JJ recognizing and falling in love with him.

  As these thoughts filled her mind, JJ ranted, “Do you have any idea how much I’d love to call right now and tell Nan I’m not coming? But it’s a little late. I’m supposed to be there in three hours.”

  JJ, who had been leisurely curled up on the living room couch, remote control in one hand while the other dug through the popcorn bowl, brought her feet to the floor in an exaggerated, agitated manner. Sighing deeply she glared at Alex, who, in turn, looked down at her shoes and tried to appear remorseful. Alex knew this event meant nothing less than JJ fulfilling her destiny. Destiny. Synchronicity. Kismet. Whatever you want to call this moment, she thought romantically, it appeared the universe was working toward finding a soul mate for the very person responsible for bringing Alex her own soul mate.

  The one thing Alex didn’t want was to screw this up. It was best, as far as the flow of the universe was concerned, that JJ be carried along by the tide of events — even if it meant blindfolding her and dragging her along kicking and screaming.

  • • •

  JJ finally paused in her tirade and rose from her place on the couch. Alex took the opportunity to speak. “I suppose if you’re going, you should start to get ready.” JJ glowered fiercely at her. This … this … she didn’t even know what to call her. A person … a character … a creation of her imagination … was meddling in places she had no right to.

  JJ began to say something more … then stopped. A strange, almost trancelike look enveloped her. “Let me get this straight,” she said, a little softer and in a more thoughtful manner. “You talked to my sister over the telephone?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Alex paused.

  “And she spoke with you and heard you?”

  “That’s usually how those conversations work.”

  Conversations between two real people, JJ thought, yeah. Up until now, she had assumed she was the only one who could see these two, the one individual who could talk to them. But, of course, neither of them had left the house. Now, though, JJ’s perspective was beginning to change. You wouldn’t expect a conversation to occur between a figment of an overworked and stressed-out imagination — in the form of Alex Zurich — and a real person. If Alex were solely the product of a personal hallucination, then logically JJ should be the only one who could talk to the pair.

  “I know how these things work,” JJ mumbled to herself. “I’ve watched enough television shows and movies. They’ve laid all the ground rules out for me.”

  This changed how she viewed everything. The characters were looking less and less like a runaway imagination and more and more like real people.

  Blake, who up until this time had been engrossed in a book on quantum physics, looked quizzically at JJ as she ran this through her brain, not unlike a Labrador retriever trying terribly hard to understand its master.

  “If we were solely a part of your imagination, then Alex wouldn’t have been able to talk to your sister, right?” he asked.

  “Darn! That blows that theory out of the water.” She sighed. Even though JJ couldn’t understand what was going through his mind at that moment (an odd feeling for her), she was more than a little impressed with his attentiveness to the conversation. Just a moment ago, he sat reading, apparently oblivious to his surroundings. Now he offered up his understanding of the situation.

  “If no one else can talk to you,” she said, “then I can be pretty comfortable that I’m the one going through this … this … well, experience. If everyone can talk to you and see you, then I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. Up until now, you were my personal hallucinations. I’m just not sure what to call you now.”

  “Try calling us real.” Alex, holding one hand on her hip, looked offended.

  “But real is impossible. It defies all the currently known scientific laws.” Now, JJ suddenly looked horrified. “What if everyone can see you, not just me, as I’ve just naturally assumed so far?”

  It had been several days now that the trio had been sharing the house. And in that time, Alex and Blake had not left — they had not even gone o
utside except for the throwing-over-the-railing incident, but that didn’t count. While JJ didn’t want to make a point of confining them to the house, she had done her best to keep them inside. No need to press anyone’s luck, now was there?

  Blake rose, padding to the front door, unlocking, and opening it. He stepped out onto the stoop. He scanned the neighborhood. Everyone had at least a little patch of yard. One house sported the stereotypical white picket fence. The house directly to the right wore a shiny metal flowerpot of purple petunias, yellow and purple pansies, and a few tall, dark pink snapdragons. A few houses down he saw that one house had a wraparound porch, baskets of red geraniums adorning it.

  Alex and JJ shared a worried look. They had both shot up ready to take action when he rose — even though they hadn’t a clue what action they may have to take.

  “Blake,” they pleaded in unison, but it was too late. He was already testing JJ’s theory.

  “Good afternoon,” Blake called out to Mr. Higley, the elderly gentleman who lived directly across the street out with his golden retriever, waving as if he were the proverbial friendly neighbor. “Fine and you? Who, me? I’m a friend of JJ’s cousin Alex, visiting from Kansas. No, no sir! You are right! Mine is definitely not a midwestern accent. British. Thanks! I love your country, too.”

  And then Blake gave Mr. Higley a friendly goodbye wave and sauntered back into the house.

  Once inside, he rolled on the balls of his feet, a small, smug smile slowly forming on his lips, hands in his pockets. Alex and JJ relaxed; relieved that was extent of his actions.

  “I just passed the can-they-see-you? test with flying colors. And yes, they can see you — I mean me!”

  Alex looked at the living room clock. “JJ, I don’t mean to bring up a sore subject, but it is getting closer to time for your sister’s party.”

  “Yes, it is now, isn’t it?” She glowered again at Alex. “We’re not completely done with this topic. You and I are going to sit down and talk, soon!”

  And with that JJ turned on her heel and headed straight for the shower.

  • • •

  JJ allowed the hot water to beat down on her, to run down her back, to massage her tired, sore shoulders, to gently lift the stresses of the day from them. Having visitors was taking its toll on her. Well, that wasn’t quite right. Not knowing how they got there or if she was just going crazy was the real stressor. The next thing she knew she had tears running down her face.

  Tears. Yes, she was tired of dealing with just about everything. And the prolonged and unplanned visit of Alex and Blake had only added to her frustrations. She didn’t want to go to her sister’s and play social butterfly. As much as she loved Nan, she would have preferred to spend the Saturday evening at home alone — okay, almost alone. But definitely on her own couch, in her own cocoon, curled up with some book that took her thoughts off of what her life was like right now.

  The tears that fell freely in the shower had more to do with her frustration at being in a place in her life she really didn’t want and hadn’t planned on … at least not at such a young age. My friends are settling into relationships, she thought, and here at twenty-eight I’m a widow.

  In these moments when she let her guard down how much she realized how much she missed Geoff. Witnessing just how solicitous Blake was to Alex, the obvious love the two had for each other, and the tender (and now passionate) way they looked at one another, aroused feelings she tried hard to keep buried.

  When she saw them exit the bedroom half clothed the other day, she felt more envy than awkwardness. Will I ever know those feelings again? Or am I destined only to write about them in my books?

  God, these were questions JJ preferred not to ask … feelings she preferred not to feel. She had submerged them, she thought, the loneliness, the grief, the longing to be loved by a man. She had hoped they would simply disappear. But they hadn’t. They had only grown fiercer and would occasionally — like right now — explode unexpectedly to the surface of that sea of emotional turmoil and threaten the core of her daily living.

  Of course, there was a reason why JJ hid them so well. If she actually dealt with them, she was afraid she would begin to question absolutely everything that was left of her life. And quite frankly there wasn’t much.

  Except for her writing. She clung to her writing like the passengers of the Titanic had clung to their life rafts and shards of the ship. She saw her life as the Titanic, and she was drowning fast in icy cold water.

  Chapter 11

  “You what?! How could you? Deb, I swear … ” Kenn, at a loss for words, let his voice trail off.

  Deb Dilley, secretary in the history department at the University of Northern Ohio, jumped into the silence to offer an apology.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing even accepting social appointments on my behalf.” She could imagine Kenn glaring ferociously at his cell phone.

  The secretary, from a safe position in her second floor apartment, tried to find just the right words. She had known this would not be an easy call to make. She had thought all day as she cleaned her kitchen, scoured her tub, and now finally sat down to relax, exactly when to place the call.

  She knew he would be mad … yes, downright irate. And he did not disappoint her. But she was so certain of the ultimate rightness of her actions that she willingly accepted the consequences.

  Deb knew Kenn would never have accepted the invitation on his own. And this was far too rare an opportunity to pass up. It was his destiny calling — and he was too damned deaf to hear it.

  Kenn had been moping around for weeks, calling himself one big pompous ass. He had met the woman he believed could be the love of his life, but she was a stupid romance writer. “She claims to have been a history professor at one time. But no self-respecting academic would stoop so low to write trash that amounted to little more than pulp fiction,” he’d told Deb.

  Deb knew all too well as she talked to Rob that Kenn would never agree to go. He hated being matched up with anyone. She felt that accepting the dinner appointment on his behalf was the only option — that and not telling him about it until it was too late to back out. Praying his Bostonian etiquette forced him to go didn’t hurt either. And she would deal with the backlash when it came. (And boy would it come, she thought.)

  “It’s probably too late to cancel,” Deb suggested tentatively.

  “That would be bad form,” Kenn said. That brought a smile to her face that thankfully he could not see. Bingo! I called that one right!

  “I’ve got to prepare. However, this is not the end of the conversation,” he said, as if addressing a child. “You can be sure we’ll discuss this again Monday morning.”

  “Yes, professor,” Deb said, trying desperately to sound contrite. She flipped her cell phone closed. “Yes, success!” She did a little victory dance around her living room.

  Chapter 12

  JJ walked up the front steps of her sister’s Cape Cod. Painted a snappy white, with crisp crimson trim, the house had an attached garage that Rob had added several years ago. A large metal star hung over the garage door. A large oak tree stood in the front yard, the last of its golden fall leaves twinkling in the setting sun. Four wicker chairs and two small end tables graced the roomy front porch. She rang the doorbell, and then let herself into the house. One of the perks of being a relative, she thought. No need to be formally ushered inside.

  She had brought a bottle of wine with her. Even though she wasn’t looking forward to whomever it was her sister wanted her to meet, she resigned herself to the fact that she was, indeed, trapped into this evening. She was determined, for her sister’s sake, to be as pleasant as possible. Bringing the wine seemed like the right thing to do.

  Oh, yes. This was not the first round of draft choices for JJ’s new husband. While she continually protested these dinners, Nan cheerfully and deliberately continued holding them. JJ knew her sister meant well.

  JJ explained several times over she had a differ
ent set of priorities now. When the time came, she knew the right man would walk into her life. Until then, men were just not a major attraction. Or so she tried to convince herself.

  Her mind revved up to high speed to present all the obstacles to dating. It had only been three years. Far too early to be seeing anyone yet, let alone thinking about a serious relationship. Actually, if she were honest with her sister, she would explain she wasn’t ready to even consider replacing the image of Geoff with some other man. It was just totally impossible. So what were all those sensual feelings at the Café the other day with Kenn Cooper?

  Enough! JJ purposely pushed such thoughts from her head. She refocused on where she was, feeling like a Christian about to enter the lion’s den.

  As she walked into Nan’s living room, she pasted an automatic smile on her face. It wasn’t difficult; she loved her sister. Nan brought out the best in her. On seeing JJ, Nan jumped from her overstuffed dark blue chair. The two sisters hugged. JJ handed her the bottle of wine.

  Rob and the guest stood up. As the siblings released their embrace, Rob stepped up to give his sister-in-law a kiss on the cheek. “I’d like you to meet — ”

  “You!” JJ felt every muscle in her body tighten.

  “Dr. Kennedy King Cooper,” Rob whimpered.

  Making no pretense of even being polite to Kenn, JJ quickly and awkwardly dragged her sister by the arm out of the room. Nan’s free arm flailing, she managed a smile and a single index finger wave to the men. “Back in a nanosecond.”

  Rob turned to Kenn as the women left. “I’d say that went rather well, now didn’t it?”

  • • •

  “Nan! How in the world could you do this to me?” Absolutely infuriated with her sister, JJ paced the kitchen. “After I told you I didn’t want you to try to set me up with any guy, you set me up with the man I met in the bookstore. He’s a complete egotistical maniac.”

  “Honey, you knew who were meeting tonight. You should have said something.”