The First Time at Firelight Falls

by Julie Anne Long

  And there followed a little pinprick of fury, like a lit cigarette brushed against her skin: how could he just bail on her like that? When the notion of him had reached little tendril-like roots into her dreams and plans for the future, and she hadn’t realized how deep they’d gone until they’d been yanked out.

  Maybe he’d been looking for an out.

  No. She didn’t believe it. When she’d walked out of his office, his face was as white and stunned as Jude’s was that time he broke his collarbone.

  “Is my dad Jasper your destiny, Mom?”

  She took a cleansing breath.

  “Well . . . it’s not like with Auntie Avalon and Uncle Mac, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was my destiny to be your mom, baby girl, and he was . . . he . . . kind of helped me along the way.”

  “Like how broccoli’s destiny is to be nutritious, and the cow poop Uncle Mac puts on it helps it grow?”

  “Um—”

  “Or like how when Auntie Avalon bought the big house and Uncle Mac was already living there so they had to get together? Because of the house?”

  That was a pretty amusing interpretation of events. She’d have to remember to tell Avalon.

  “I’d say Jasper’s role in my life has been somewhere in between cow poop and the house and Devil’s Leap.”

  They sat side by side in silence on Annelise’s eye-searing counterpane, her arm looped around Annelise, who cuddled up against her, burrowing her head in a bit. They were both a little drained. Eden had to admit that in exchange for a whole raft of potential complications she’d won a certain peace she didn’t know she’d been craving.

  Why, then, despite the newness, did her life feel like it had constricted instead of expanded?

  Annelise put a hand on Eden’s knee and looked earnestly into her face. “My dad Jasper is famous, Mom,” she said somberly and sleepily, as if breaking the news to her. “Really famous.”

  “He is, indeed.”

  “So, Jasper . . . where did you grow up?” Her mom began the friendly questioning.

  The old Harwood dining room—the heavy old round oak table that had belonged to their great-grandmother was set with a platter of roast beef, tureens of mashed potatoes and gravy and steamed broccoli, a typical Sunday dinner, even if it wasn’t Sunday. Hearty and basic.

  The only exotic thing was their guest. Jasper had politely taken a big helping of everything on the table and made yummy noises when he tasted the roast under the watchful eyes of her mom and dad, Annelise, Avalon, and Jude. Her dad had taken an inordinate amount of time carving the roast at the table with a big glinting knife while everyone silently watched. For the first time it occurred to Eden that Jude’s surgical skills might have been passed onto him by their dad.

  “Well, I was born in upstate New York. Small town. Moved around a lot with my mom, though. Arkansas, Alabama, Texas, Reno, San Francisco. I grew up on the road, I guess,” Jasper told her.

  “Some of those are cities,” Annelise pointed out. “And some of those are states.”

  “That’s true. You’re pretty smart, Annelise.”

  “Yep,” she said easily. No one in the Harwood family had much patience for stating the obvious.

  He grinned at her.

  She smiled back. Pleased. But it was pretty clear Annelise was comparing and contrasting Jasper with the rest of her family. Working things out in her head in her way.

  “Went to Los Angeles when I was eighteen to get into the music business, and that’s been home ever since. I don’t know who my dad was. And look at me now!”

  Everybody was already looking at him, so his point was a bit unclear.

  “You can be anything you want, Annelise, no matter how many parents you have,” he explained.

  “Ah,” said Jude, nodding, sagely, but with great irony, when it seemed as though no one else would say anything.

  “Jude here is a heart surgeon. He can cut your heart right out,” her dad volunteered suddenly.

  Eden was tempted to kick her dad, though she kinda understood where he was coming from.

  “Well, usually we’re trying for a little more accuracy in the operating room, but I suppose in a pinch I could certainly do that,” Jude agreed.

  Jude, the smart-ass, was enjoying himself a little too much. Eden longed to kick him, too. She was only within kicking distance of Avalon, who hadn’t done anything yet to warrant it.

  “Is your real name Jasper?” Avalon wanted to know. She sounded very polite and even a little awestruck, uncharacteristically abstracted. Which was funny, given that this was Avalon. Probably she was storing up all kinds of teasing fodder to unleash on Eden later.

  Then Jasper grinned at her, and Avalon went a little misty-eyed. “Yep. But you can all call me Jazz if you want. That was my childhood nickname.”

  “Yeah, I’m not gonna do that,” said her dad.

  This statement launched a tense wordless interval that was almost long enough to convince Eden this dinner was a terrible idea.

  But in some fashion, just like Annelise had asked whether her grandma and grandpa knew about Jasper, Eden had wanted this to happen in order to sort of officialize Jasper’s role. She wanted her parents to experience him, to have opinions, to know him for Annelise’s sake, to be able to field questions.

  She wanted to live from a place of open honesty from now on.

  Because not doing that may have cost her Gabe.

  Annelise finally broke the silence.

  “Why does your hair look like that?” Annelise wanted to know.

  Eden had a hunch this was the question that Annelise had on low simmer for the past couple of days.

  He chewed and swallowed. “Freedom,” he said finally.

  Avalon’s and Jude’s heads popped up like prairie dogs, and their eyes were suspiciously bright. As if this answer was too good to be true.

  Her dad muttered, “Oh, for the love of—”

  A grunt signaled the fact that her mom had kicked her dad under the table.

  “A grown man can wear his hair any way he likes in a free country, Annelise. And so I like to express my freedom in ways that sometimes surprise people, because it’s fun to see what people do or think. Like your pink streak. It’s pretty and surprising.”

  Annelise mulled this somberly while Eden clamped her teeth together at the tone with which he delivered the wisdom. And maybe this was what he thought dads did. Imparted wisdom. He’d never had an example of his own, after all.

  And yet it wasn’t a terribly wrong thing to say.

  “I could loan you my brush,” Annelise offered shyly.

  Oh, her precious girl. Annelise was born with a built-in bullshit detector and a heart like a satellite dish. Color was one thing; unruliness was quite another.

  She was both her mother’s and her father’s daughter.

  Everyone waited, breath bated, in the short fraught silence that followed.

  “That would be great,” Jasper said kindly. “Thanks.”

  Annelise smiled at him, and he grinned back.

  “So Jasper, how long are you in town?” Jude wanted to know.

  “I’m off tomorrow. Gotta bunch of tour dates up and down the West Coast. Interview, live spots on radio, stuff like that.”

  No one at the table had any idea what would comprise “stuff like that.”

  “Did you know a jasper is a kind of rock?” Annelise told him. “We learned about geology and geography and stuff in school. Isn’t that funny? Because you’re a rock star!”

  Everyone laughed. Jasper lit up with surprise and delight in her cleverness.

  “And we learned in geography about volcanos and stuff. And my principal’s name is Caldera. A caldera is like a steaming hot thing.”

  “Boy, I’ll say,” Avalon said under her breath.

  Finally providing an excuse for Eden to kick her.

  And Jasper’s face, quite ironically given his namesake, turned to stone.

  “So what happened?”

&n
bsp; Mac and Gabe were sitting in the Misty Cat, as they often did after Veteran’s Hall meetings on Tuesday nights, in large part because open mic night was every Tuesday, and it was often inadvertently entertaining. Given the Misty Cat’s associations, Gabe would prefer another bar at the moment, but really, it was the cleanest and it had the best beer, and apart from Jasper making love to Eden right there on the stage, not much would make him more miserable than he was now.

  Mac Coltrane was probably the only person in the world who knew how deep the thing with Eden went. This was the first chance he’d had to talk to Mac about it.

  Gabe took a sip of his beer. “Jasper Townes happened.”

  “Brutal.”

  Gabe looked at him, dryly amused. “You’re not going to butter me up and tell me what a great guy I am and how I’m so much better than he is and I was a SEAL, for God’s sake, and just look at me?”

  “No, man,” Mac said in all seriousness. “It’s Jasper Townes.”

  That actually made Gabe laugh. Just one short “Ha!” however, because now that the initial anesthetizing numbness had worn off, everything really hurt. As if he’d been dropped from an airplane and his chute hadn’t opened, only instead of smashing his bones and organs it had smashed all of his emotions and his hopes and dreams.

  There also remained the possibility that he had deliberately left the cord unpulled. As if he’d been trying to protect himself from something.

  “So, um, how do you feel, exactly?” Mac was tentative.

  “I feel,” Gabe said thoughtfully, “as if, maybe . . . I’ve had an organ removed, an important one. Did you know that all of your organs can function as a sort of kill switch, and when they malfunction they can stop your heart? I feel like my kill switch has been activated. Kind of like that.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “Holy shit,” Mac breathed. Alarmed and impressed.

  “But I’m sure I’ll feel better after a couple of beers,” Gabe said with mordant cheeriness. He raised his beer bottle in a sardonic toast.

  “She’s not dating Townes? Or sleeping with him?”

  He stifled a wince. Dating and sleeping. Both words were horrible. “She says no,” he said shortly.

  “Then why wouldn’t you believe her?”

  “Why, indeed? Why indeed?”

  He in fact did believe her. That was part of the problem. He still couldn’t quite locate the source of the misery he was experiencing, and he was pretty certain a lot of it was self-authored.

  Although it was possible he’d been a big enough dick that he’d driven her right into Townes’s arms for some patchouli-scented comfort.

  His fingers clamped around the bottle.

  But Eden was nothing like impulsive.

  Then again, she’d done it in the truck cabin with the principal.

  Which sounded like a pornographic game of Clue.

  “Eden is a good person, Gabe,” Mac said cautiously. “Just a really lovely nice person.”

  Gabe glared at him. “You better have a point.”

  “I would say she’s on the level. I’ll admit the Townes thing is kind of a wild card, though.”

  “You know what Bud said? Beware of enigmatic women.”

  “Bud Wallace? Like he’s Yoda.”

  Gabe snorted at that.

  “She’s really not all that mysterious, Gabe. One big secret notwithstanding, and knowing Eden, you can kind of get why she wouldn’t want to trumpet that.”

  It was true. She was that smooth cool surface over brilliant fire, sweetness and warmth. She wasn’t a grandstander.

  “Avalon says she met Townes, and there was zero chemistry between them. Like she was barely tolerating him for Annelise’s sake.”

  Gabe went still. “When did Avalon meet him?” he demanded.

  Mac hesitated. “At a family dinner last night,” he admitted. “I couldn’t make it. Couldn’t reschedule a meeting with a contractor.”

  Gabe was silent, astonished at how much weightier his heart managed to get at the news. But of course. Townes was part of their family now, the Harwoods. He had more of a right to be there than he did, at this point.

  And he thought about that cozy night up at Devil’s Leap sitting around the dinner table, and it was pretty much what he wanted from life.

  “She could have told me that Townes was Annelise’s father. I mean, I get that it’s awkward and improbable, but I thought we were straight up honest with each other. There were even a couple of moments where she could have told me. Aaaaaand . . . she didn’t. I felt like a complete and total ass in that pizza joint when she was there, sitting with him. It sucked for so many reasons.”

  “I agree she could have done that better. Which part of you is hurting the most? Stop me when you feel a twinge. Your pride? Your ego? Your, um, heart?”

  “I get a ping off all of them.”

  This wasn’t Mac’s comfort zone. Providing comfort, that was. Then again, Avalon was doing wonders with his emotional vocabulary.

  “You know, Gabe, this isn’t a foxhole. I mean, she didn’t train for how to integrate a rock star into her life and yours. Maybe you can cut her some slack. Maybe she was afraid of losing you, and she chickened out when she had those chances to tell you about him. Not everyone is Joe Courage like you are.”

  “Joe Courage?” Gabe snorted, incredulous.

  But a second later, something Mac had just said settled on him and in sank a sort of uncomfortable truth: afraid of losing you.

  He went quiet.

  “Maybe she knows you better than you think. And she anticipated all of . . .” Mac gestured to Miserable Gabe and the beer. “. . . all of this. You acting like this. All broody and self-righteous.”

  Of his friends, only Mac would get away with assessing him that way.

  And frankly he didn’t think anyone knew him as well as Eden did. Some of it she’d learned, and sometimes it seemed she’d been born knowing him. Which was not just a luxury. It was a freaking miracle.

  “The problem is,” Gabe said slowly, “and this is what kills me . . . is that she might have been right to end our whatever it was before we both got too deep in. Because who knows where this Townes thing is going. I mean, maybe she needs to get Annelise and her whole family accustomed to Townes being a part of her life. And that part of it doesn’t really include me at all. And maybe it shouldn’t. And maybe . . .” He drained his beer. “. . . I don’t want to sit by and watch that happen like . . . Brother Teresa.”

  And that would have been pretty funny, if it wasn’t so tragic.

  Mac laughed anyway.

  Gabe shot him a baleful look.

  “Huh. Do you think any of that is true?”

  He took a sip of beer. He mulled that over.

  “Nope,” Gabe said finally, with a ghost of a smile.

  Mac gave a short laugh, more sympathy than humor. “So tell me, Gabe, do you think she’s your destiny?”

  He gave the word destiny the sort of melodramatic flourish that would warm Annelise’s heart.

  Gabe was saved from answering that question when Glenn leaped to the stage, seized the microphone, and announced, “Everyone give it up for Mikey McShane!”

  Mikey’s songs tended to be heartfelt and literal, and Gabe and Mac often enjoyed them, not always for the reasons Mikey intended.

  “Thank you,” Mikey, whose hair was dyed black and whose nose piercing looked as though it might be a little infected, said to the smattering of applause. “This song is called, ‘The Polar Bears Are Dying.’”

  Mikey settled himself on the stool onstage, stuck his tongue between his teeth, and painstakingly went about tuning his guitar down a half step, as befitted a dirge.

  “What do you think this song is about, Mac?” Gabe wondered dryly.

  “I’m gonna guess it’s about dying polar bears, Gabe.”

  What would he do if he was afraid of losing? What would a polar bear do if it was cornered and afraid?

  Fight back.
>
  Lash out.

  “So what are you going to do?” Mac broke into what was turning into an epiphany.

  He didn’t have to say “about Eden.” The subject of all the sentences in Gabe’s life right now was Eden.

  It was a fair question. Mac had known him long enough to expect Gabe to know. To have a plan. When didn’t he?

  “He’s floating on a glacier all alooone . . .”

  Mikey sang.

  Which felt a little uncomfortably on the nose, at the moment.

  “Finish this beer,” he told Mac finally. “And survive this song.”

  Chapter 19

  Eden spread her fingers apart and pressed them to her forehead as she sat at the kitchen table and reviewed the printed directions to her new all-in-one printer. Maybe Greta at the New Age Store would have some magic reflexology tips. Greta, whom she was tempted to blame for the upheaval in her life, thanks to the stupid tarot cards. Several nights of fitful sleep with too much caffeine and not enough water and too much Gabe angst was enough to give anyone a headache. At least Jasper had left town. Her whiteboard might start to look accurate again.

  “Mom?” Annelise called from the computer room.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “What’s r-e-h-a-b?”

  “It’s a place you go if you want to break a bad habit. You pay money and helpful people help you to learn better habits,” she replied.

  “Oh!” Annelise shouted cheerily. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Seconds later, comprehension set in.

  And Eden broke land speed records dashing across the carpet to the computer room. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d left a narrow flaming trail of fire behind her.

  She positioned herself casually in the doorway. Panting.

  “Hey, Leesy. Whatcha looking at?”

  “About a billion things come up when I Google my dad Jasper!” she said happily.

  This was how she’d taken to referring to Jasper. As “my dad” didn’t feel entirely right, and neither did “Jasper.” Together they’d become a brand-new honorific.

  “Honorific” made Eden immediately think of Gabe, which caused her heart to sort of clunk painfully in her chest. She shoved that thought away.