She had expected a hello, or even a welcoming kiss, but Jake said instead, in a deep, rolling voice no woman should ever grow tired of hearing, “Close your eyes, Claire Darling.” And she did, immediately, allowing him to take the tips of her fingers in the warm pocket of his hands and lead her carefully into the apartment. The thought skipped across her mind that both times she’d entered Jake’s apartment she’d been sightless, and that intrigued her in the curious way that random thoughts sometimes do.
Claire could feel the bright afternoon sunlight pouring in through the windows, heating her cheeks with the recent memory of stirring awake under those windows with Jake’s sleeping profile beside her and his arm across her chest. Claire smiled with her eyes still closed, remembering a morning where life had stopped, if only for a moment.
“What do you see?” Jake asked, his voice a soft caress against her ear. His arm slid around her waist, and he pulled her into the circle of his arms as if he was conveying a great secret. Even though they were alone in the room, Claire felt like they were maybe the only two people left in the world, like everything and everyone had ceased to exist.
“Nothing?”
Claire answered in a question, confused and fearing she was giving an incorrect answer. A piece of her heart crumbled away from the whole, dislodged by a stab of disappointment that Jake was hinting at something that she could no longer see. It taunted her with the reminder that she was changing, drifting away from the enchantment that Jake offered her. Once she left this place, she might never find it again.
“Look harder. It’s there,” he urged her. “Can you see a shapeless pool of colors, suspended and dancing in the darkness?”
Claire clenched her eyes tighter, straining to see what Jake could see. Finally, when she let herself see beyond the plain blackness shrouding her vision, she could at last see a swirling mass of colors, the sparking remainders of light trapped behind her eyelids. They circled around and through each other in tangled ribbons of color that lost their shape and unfurled in a deep pool of dusky water. It was like discovering a place that had existed inside her all along.
Jake stepped behind her so that his bare chest was firm against her back. She could feel the dips and grooves of his body behind her, hard and soft, close and too far away. His arms rose from behind as his palms covered her face, adding another layer of shadow across her eyes. “Squeeze your eyes, Claire Darling. Let the pool begin to take shape. Watch the colors become so bright that if you squeeze any harder, they’ll burst on fire.”
She did as he directed and the colors began to shimmer and dance inside the dark, flashing in little lightning bolts, and coming to life as she clenched her eyes tighter and tighter. Claire felt light-headed as she watched the colors. It was a place between dreaming and awake, and she relaxed into Jake, his body against hers the only thing that held her upright. She floated inside the shooting stars that streaked across her vision, riding the currents of light as though she were bareback on a wild mustang racing across the dark night sky.
“You could stay here with me, forever.” Jake’s lips brushed against her cheek as she opened her eyes and the world steadied around her. Colors took their shape in the usual objects, but everything was just a bit different, a little brighter. He hugged her from behind, his arms wrapped tightly around her body. “Everything could stay exactly as it is now, just like this.”
Claire turned slowly inside Jake’s arms to face him, wanting, even momentarily, with every fiber of her being to believe him, to believe that everything could always be this magical, this perfect. “Here? Forever?”
He peered down sideways at her with bright eyes. “Yes, here,” Jake nodded, swaying gently side to side with her in tow. “I’ll build you a house of driftwood and carve a hole in the roof, so I can sing you to sleep every night under a blanket of stars.”
It was a wonderful, romantic thought, and for a second Claire thought how nice it might be to be a piece of driftwood herself, traveling from land to sea and back. But the reminder of David waiting for her tapped intrusively into her mind, poking in her daydream. She couldn’t stay. It was only a dream, after all, and one from which she must wake up. Her life was waiting.
“But I can’t stay,” Claire let Jake’s arms fall away from her as she turned to face him.
A tide of hurt filled Jake’s eyes as he looked at her, mixing with a sharp glimmer of jealousy. “Why not? What can’t I give you?” He took her up in his arms. “I know what David said to you, outside the pub last night.”
His words stung as they pricked against her cheeks, making little tears spring up into her eyes. She hadn’t known he’d heard any of that, and it tore at her heart in a way she hadn’t expected. It hurt her to hurt him, however unintended it was, and the accidentalness of it all made it hurt even worse. She tripped over the words filling her mouth to respond.
“I know what he filled your head with, how he’s trying to force you to love him like he loves you,” the words flew out of Jake’s mouth. “And we can’t both have you. So stay with me and forget those things, Claire Darling—forget them all and never worry about them again.”
As he spoke, the hurt in his eyes shifted into some other emotion, a mix of determination sprinkled with envy she’d never seen in Jake’s spirited gaze. His hands were tight on her arms, and Claire winced. He wasn’t hurting her, not exactly, but his grip along with the plea in his words and the ache in his eyes told her how distressed he was, and that ripped through Claire. Hurting Jake had been the last thing she’d ever wanted to do.
“But never is an awfully long time,” Claire whimpered pitifully. She thought of David, of his rich, heavy voice and the familiar comfort of his arms around her. As much as she wanted to stay here with Jake, another part of her that was equally as strong wanted David more.
“Yes, but forever is longer. I haven’t had my whole life yet to love you, but I will spend the rest of forever making that up however I can.” His fingers gripped tighter, more urgently. “Just, please don’t leave. Stay.”
His eyes burned into hers, and she closed hers against them, trying to force away the memory of those same eyes meeting hers across the coffee shop, or reflecting the sunlight as he lay in the park, or, the most haunting of all, gazing down at her as he lay above her. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it couldn’t be that way forever, but when she opened her mouth to tell him so, he pushed his lips against hers, muffling her protests with a kiss. She cried out into his mouth, but then yielded to him and let herself kiss him back, just one last time. He gathered her up into his arms and she clung to him.
“I can’t,” Claire cried, tearing herself away from him as her heart finally snapped in two, crushed under the pressure that weighed on her. She wrenched the acorn pendant in its jewel box from her jacket pocket and thrust it into his hands, leaving him startled and staring at her. She pushed past him, her tears finally trickling onto her face. He reached for her, called her name, but she was gone, covering her face with her hands as she raced out of the door and down the stairs.
Claire was surprised when Jake’s hand caught hers on the sidewalk outside, his breath coming in long, hurried streams as he jumped over the fire stairs attached to the building.
“Meet me in three days, Claire,” Jake panted, holding up three fingers in front of her as he regained control of his breathing. With each deep breath, the beveled lines in his stomach rose and fell, and Claire tried not to let the acorn tattoo winking up at her distract her. “Three days. Wednesday. At the Con Edison Clock Tower. Okay? Noon. Meet me there and marry me. I love you.” Then, before she could even blink, he cupped her face and kissed her fiercely, then let go, running down the street and away from her.
Chapter 18
By the time she banged on Nik’s door, Claire’s hair had unraveled into a tangled, limp mess, she’d lost no less than two buttons off her cardigan, and her left shoe was covered in sidewalk muck. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most gracious way she�
�d landed on Nik’s doormat. But Claire was largely oblivious to all these things, preoccupied with the impossible task of trying to hold the pieces of her heart together inside her chest.
Nik yanked open the door on the fifth rap, looking like some strange, angry alien with the tips of her hair folded into triangles of foil and thick green sludge smeared across her face. Two thick slices of cucumbers stared demandingly at Claire as Nik secured a loud, animal-printed robe around her tiny waist. She must have been prepping a new look for Monday. If Claire had been even the tiniest bit less of a wreck, she might have laughed.
“Who the hell is it?” Nik barked, blind behind the cucumber eyeglasses. “And don’t you make me take off my cucumbers, because I will—”
“It’s me,” Claire wailed, throwing herself through the doorway and onto Nik’s sofa. Nik’s overweight and perpetually uninterested orange ball of a cat, Professor Bedazzled, regarded her smugly, determined her uninteresting, and went back to cleaning his paw.
“Claire? What the hell happened? Tell me who did it. I’ve got a gun around here somewhere.” Nik beaned the cucumbers at the Professor, who blinked back at her without emotion. She flung herself on the couch beside Claire, wiping green sludge on her house robe before smoothing away the frizzy curls from Claire’s face. Her big blue eyes were wide with concern, and perhaps even a tiny bit of anticipation. There wasn’t much Nik loved more than a bit of unexpected excitement.
“Oh, I don’t even know where to begin,” Claire sobbed, choking a little bit on her own tears. “So much has happened—first Jake, and then David, and then David, and then Jake.” She made little wheezing noises as she tried to suck in air between her words. Claire was vaguely aware that she was being very unladylike about it all, blubbering, and sniveling obscenely. She snuck a nervous glance up at Nik, only to find her biting her lip savagely and scowling. That expression, the rest of her so disheveled and silly looking—even for Nik—coaxed a bitter laugh out of Claire’s mouth.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Nik sniped at her. “I know you’re not laughing at me, coming in here looking like yesterday’s shit. So, spill it. What happened? Who do I need to kill?”
“You don’t have to be mean.” Claire sniffed, slightly offended. She tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to smooth down her clothing and make herself more presentable. It wasn't always easy to tell when Nik was being serious or not. She might actually have a gun.
“You only get one emotion out of me at a time,” Nik scolded. “Now, quit stalling and tell me what happened. Here, this usually helps.” She plopped a disgruntled Professor Bedazzled heavily into Claire’s lap. He looked up at her with big orange cat eyes only a few shades lighter than his fur and blinked. Nik was right. With the fat cat in her lap, things seemed a tiny bit better.
“That’s the only kind of man you really need,” Nik lectured, pointing fixedly at the Professor. “He doesn’t eat a lot, he sleeps with me without being grabby, he doesn't talk back, he keeps himself clean, and when he pisses me off I make him chase a little red dot around the place like an idiot. Now, talk.”
In a monologue ripe with run-on sentences and punctuation in sharp, surprised gasps and narrowed eyes from Nik, Claire gushed the events of the past few days, alternating between blushing and sobbing as she recounted the details of her romantic night with Jake, followed by the dramatic events surrounding David’s sudden arrival and the ensuing passionate episode. She ended her rant with Jake’s proposal from that morning, feeling overwhelmed as she tried to articulate everything that had happened around the surprise of her own words. Said out loud, Claire wondered how it was even possible. Until just a few short days ago, her life had bordered on humdrum and now here she was, a hot mess on her best friend’s sofa, describing a tangled love triangle as complicated and melodramatic as any daytime soap opera. She would almost have been proud of herself had her heart not been so broken.
When she’d gotten everything out, every last awkward detail and flushed confession, Claire took a deep breath and looked up at Nik, who sat nearby with her eyes blinking rapidly and her mouth stuck open, her face clear of any other expression. She looked like she was having some kind of brain-overload induced stroke. It was probably the one time in her life that she had spent more than five seconds without commenting. Claire glanced nervously between Nik’s deer-in-the-headlights look and the artsy melted record clock on the wall, semi-patiently twisting her fingers while she waited for a reaction. Three minutes ticked by, four.
“Are you shitting me!?” Nik practically screeched at Claire, whopping her savagely with a beaded throw pillow and sending Professor grunting to the carpet. “From the prim little Ms. Baker to the trollop of Babylon in one weekend. Who are you and what did you do with Claire?” Nik fanned her face, taking big, exaggerated breaths. “You’re gonna crack my mask, you know. Be right back, let me wash my face.”
Nik jumped off the couch leaving Claire alone and listening to the sound of Nik slapping the faucets off and on and making a lot of little noises in her bedroom. She was banging around an awful lot. She was probably stalling. Claire had just given her a lot of information to process, and all of it totally unexpected. Finally Nik emerged, her face pretty and clean and pleasant, still in her house robe, but carrying one of Claire’s black work dresses and a pair of black pumps in one hand.
“Here,” she tossed the clothes onto Claire’s lap. “You’re lucky you have extra clothes here. We can’t have you running around like you just escaped from some sleazy detective movie in that ripped up librarian cardie. What’s with that skirt anyway?” She wrinkled her nose at Claire, reverting to her normal teasing self. “That’s a Davie pick, isn’t it? Yeah, that looks like something Mr. Fuss-Ass would pick for you—black and white and boring as shit.”
Claire groaned a little and rolled her eyes, relieved by Nik’s ability to assess and insult David’s taste in clothing at one time. She shimmied out of her torn clothes and pulled the black frock up over her legs, slipping her arms through the sleeves, wishing she’d had a shower. It was a simple black sheath dress and paired with the black pumps it looked almost funereal—too on the nose of Claire’s present mood for her liking. “I feel like I’m going to a funeral,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Oh, you might be,” Nik snapped, towel drying freshly washed hair that gleamed with stripes of platinum blonde through the fiery red, making her look even more like a lit match flickering in white hot flames. “I still haven’t figured out if I’m going to off one of them, or both.” She looked at Claire as she wrapped the towel in a small, tight turban atop her head. “Men suck, honey,” she said, paraphrasing from one of their all-time favorite chick flicks. “They will ruin your life.”
Claire grumbled back onto the couch. “No,” she said, “That’s the problem. They’re both just so stinking wonderful and different. I love them both. I don’t know what to do!”
“First,” Nik shook her head disapprovingly, “we don’t say ‘stinking.’ Man up and swear, Claire—fucking wonderful.” She slumped on the sofa beside Claire, sticking her tongue out at Professor, who’d finished his bath. “As much as I hate to say this—and it goes completely against my better nature, mind you—but I think you’re going to have to choose.”
“You don’t say,” Claire muttered glumly. That was about as obvious as the choice between breathing and not breathing. Of course, she didn’t want to choose. That meant losing someone. And, to make matters worse, the burden was on her. She had three hearts waiting on her, but only two hands in which to hold them.
Nik rolled her eyes and crossed her legs Indian style, struggling with the short robe and trying not to flash Claire. “So, let’s make a list, then.”
Claire knew all about making lists and perked up a bit at the task. “Jake is wonderful. He makes me feel things that I’ve never felt before, and he’s charming, and romantic, and spirited. He’s like a little boy at heart that enjoys the little things, and he makes me feel that way, too, like I could be y
oung forever.
“But David—well, he’s Davie. He’s strong and confident, even though he can be moody, but we have so much history already. He’s always been there for me, taking care of me. Trying to imagine life without David is like… like life without air.” She wailed the last.
“Hold up,” Nik interrupted, her hand in the air. “You realize you’re calling him David right? I have literally never heard you call him by his big boy name.”
Claire paused to think about it. But it was true. Somehow in the midst of all this, David had stopped being Davie. “They make my heart beat faster, and slower. They make me unbelievably happy but unbearably sad; hollow and overflowing; strong and weak; passionate and virginal.” She took a deep breath, swallowed it. “How am I supposed to choose between the man who showed me my heart, and the man who fills it up?”
Nik looked stricken, but indulgent. Looking defeated, she peeled herself from the couch and walked behind Claire, patting her on the shoulders gently and pulling her messy locks back into a ponytail. Emotional outbursts were never Nik’s forte, and ones that involved love and sappy feelings were even farther off the scale of her comfort zone. “Do you still have your travel bag in the office?” she asked, as if it were the perfectly logical next step in the conversation.
Claire sniffed back tears. “Yes.”
“Good. Then we’ll stop on the way.”
“The way where?” Claire was confused—she needed answers, not more questions.
The Acorn Tattoo: The Neverland Series Part 1 Anniversary Edition Page 10