Wanderlust

by A. R. Hadley

  He couldn’t allow that kind of love — our kind — to wash over him like … what? Like cool, steady rain on a hot summer day. A relief from the sweltering heat.

  Annie wanted Cal unconditionally. All of him. Every bit. God, it felt so good to admit it.

  Had anyone ever wanted so much of him? Had anyone truly meant what they said? Someone who wouldn’t ask him to be someone he wasn’t and someone who would accept him for him. All the way. Forever.

  "No, you don't understand, do you?" Annie spoke over his silence. "I don't need time, Cal. I don't need to think!" Fuck thinking. "I want you." She glanced at the ceiling. "How ironic." She glared at him. "Those words." She shrugged. "That's what you said to me."

  He looked at her, a puppy without a tag, lost on some unfamiliar street. Lost. She stepped closer to him with powerful strides, eyes charged.

  "That's what you told me the first night." Inches from his face, his chest, his eyes, she readied her main point. "You said..." She perched up on her tippy-toes, leaned close to his ear, and whispered, "I want you."

  Nothing followed but bated breath and the knowledge in their body language of what those three words now meant, maybe what they’d always meant.

  Annie dropped her head. She couldn't help but yearn for his mouth to speak a different three little words.

  "Baby," he whispered, pulling her against his chest. He nestled his face in her hair and moved his lips over her ear. "Annie..."

  The safety of his embrace, his strong arms reassuring her, remained despite everything. She never wanted the tower of his body to crumble. She spoke into the crook of his neck. "You knew I loved you before I ever said the words." She sniffled but ceased to cry.

  He tangled his fingers into her hair. "Have you not known the way I feel about you every time I touch you?"

  She picked her head up, still in his grasp. "That's the only way you show me."

  “Annie, that’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Cal let go. Annie did too.

  “Why can’t you feel this?”

  “I feel this,” he said, a nervous tic in his voice. “No one has ever made me feel the meaning of those words the way you did last night. The way you’ve made me feel them all along.” He cupped his palms over his face, pinching a triangle over the bridge of his nose. "Fuck."

  "You're right," she began, and he turned his head toward her. "I haven't thought about a future that includes children, a house, dogs and cats and picket fences." Annie paused to try to stop that annoying prepubescent boy from fiddling with her voice box. “But, I want you, Cal … Calvin Prescott.”

  God. It was no good. Her throat had razor blades in it.

  “I need you to tell me how you feel and often. I need to hear those three words said out loud. I need you. I don't need time to know I would go anywhere with you. I'll stand by you." She shook her head and smirked. "Cliché, right? I don't care. I will stand by you. I do. Maybe you’re the one who needs time, but I … I just need you. All of you. I don't want there to be any more restraint or what-ifs."

  No more lying or running or hiding.

  "Promise me you will come back to Miami." He entered her space. Their space. Magnets yanked on their skin.

  Her throat changed from razor blades to Death Valley.

  Cal pushed strands of hair from her face and cradled her cheeks. He searched her eyes. "Promise me, Annie."

  His damn commands. She swallowed past the salt basin of dry-dry-dry. "I promise."

  Dropping her gaze, she separated herself from their molecular poles and made to walk away, but he grabbed her hand, stopping her. She put her palm on her temple, tilted her face to the floor, and fought tears. Her chest shook — fucking shook — as she took in a breath. They communicated so well without words. She knew what his gentle tugging meant.

  He turned Annie around and pulled her body toward his. His hands already circled her neck, fingers grabbing at her hair.

  Their bodies wound together like magnetic thread.

  Even though her chin pointed toward the floor, she could feel him looking at her face and body as he always did — with a hunger — always seizing her, holding her and gripping her without having to lift a finger or say a word.

  "Cal, please … don't touch me," she said, pushing him away at the elbows. Heart sick, melting, stomach knotted, she had to fight her body from wanting him — the wanting always at an apex no matter what. "Don't even look at me like you want to touch me. Don't tell me you want to touch me. Don't put your hands on me."

  As she stepped away, Cal let out an audible breath. He didn't like what Annie had said or how sad she looked as she’d said it, but he understood her pain and accepted it. He was aching to hold her and kiss her, and his eyes couldn't hide it. He would try his best not to actually put his hands on her body, but he didn't think he could ever look at her like he didn't want her. It would’ve been a lie. He would always want her — always.

  "You’re asking a lot."

  "Asking you to love me. Asking you to be with me. Yes..." She swiped a finger under each eye. "I suppose it is a lot."

  She hesitated, still hoping for the words I love you to part from his lips, but he was silent, and so she turned from him, picked up her bag, and walked toward the door.

  "At least wait for the car inside."

  "I can't," she replied without a glance in his direction.

  As Cal watched Annie go, she seemed to move in slow motion, dragging his heart along by an invisible thread. He was hurting, confused, and divided.

  Cal loved Annie.

  He loved everything about her, and he truly wanted her to be happy, even if it meant being without him. That fantastic lie was the only bright spot sitting in the shade of his heart.

  The door shut. Closed on his heavy. She left.

  Why can't you feel this? she had asked. Any more feelings and he would be a walking stick of dynamite.

  Of course he could feel it.

  But he’d never really allowed it completely, and now, coming from a twenty-five-year-old girl — a woman who would want a child one day because eventually most all of them did — he was afraid to feel it and accept it, so it was temporary. Annie wanted him now in this moment, but in the next, she might move on the way he always had to move on.

  She would be unsure. She would change her mind. She was young and would want a little taste of everything — the world, the moon, the stars, — and he could only give her … what? Himself.

  Cal forsook what he could give Annie, forgetting he was already giving it to her, blind to the lessons he’d been taught, only seeing his hurt, his lonely, his want, and he wanted Annie to be happy — her happiness depended on being without him. He’d always had to leave the good, give up truth, let go of beauty.

  Jesus Christ.

  Why couldn't he at least have said it, though?

  Because I love you wouldn't keep her there.

  For a while. Maybe. But that would be it. She would tire of him. She would move on. She’d said she needed him, but needs changed. Her age didn't matter, but it would still affect her life choices. He’d known from the start it was wrong. Not morally. But wrong to steal her youth. She would want more. Need more. Who was he to provide it?

  They should never have waited so long to discuss all of this.

  The last week since the note and the fight and the bleeding in the kitchen sink — they’d just been fucking. Like animals. Like beasts. Like two people who couldn't get enough expression out of skin without pounding it or sucking it, biting it, and extracting soul from marrow.

  Why hadn't he brought it up again? They were both scared witless. He’d moved to Miami to get away from his life. And Annie had forced him to look at himself in a way he hadn't for years. In a way maybe he never had. She saw things inside him he’d never known existed.

  What did he see in that reflection? The one she’d forced upon him at first glance.

  The challenge.

  The rising.
<
br />   The birth.

  Now it was truly upon him. He had nowhere to run. Except he was still running. Running … home?

  She was home.

  He was a fucking prick.

  Enough of this conjecture.

  He had to push Annie away to keep her safe. He’d kept her close as long as he could because she was real, comfort and truth. But for her own good, he had to leave her alone.

  Could he? It didn't matter.

  He had to be there for Constance. No twenty-five-year-old would want to move to California to help him play nursemaid to his mother. Annie would think he was weak. She could never see that side of him. No one did.

  No one needed him.

  A need was a few minutes in the sun … fulfilled. A moment. It eventually set, though, went down beyond the horizon, and when it came back up, people had started something fresh and new. The sunrise ushered in change.

  Light would never erase darkness eternally.

  Annie hoisted her red, hardback suitcase onto the window seat in her room, flipped open the locks and the lid, and stared at the emptiness.

  She might as well have been looking in a mirror.

  She didn't do empty anymore, or she did. She was numb … a little.

  The sensation in her stomach hadn't gone away. When had it begun? When she’d first said hello to him at the party in June? When she’d first said the three words last night after they’d moved away from the wall, the passion, and the nirvana? Or in the car on the ride home or in the bubbles of the bathtub? How about when she’d tossed and turned through the night in his bed? Or was it when she’d stepped outside his door — unable to look in the man's eyes any longer, to share air, smell him, to imagine things he maybe didn't want or couldn't let in — into the sun after she’d stubbornly refused to wait for the car inside his apartment?

  She had broken down earlier outside his front door, sweat mixing with tears, holding nothing back, realizing it would probably be the last time she would be in that space with Cal, realizing it may be the last time she was in Cal’s space.

  The memories had flooded her mind like a deluge. A flash of things that were finished, completed, or a dream.

  She’d stood outside the door, touching it, running the tips of her fingers over the grain, asking him questions with her palm, asking for him to open it.

  Had he been just on the other side doing the same?

  Then she’d faced the street, cleared her mind — almost — trying to think of nothing else but the way her body felt on that warm, windy morning, her head against the solid door of the solid house, squinting from the bright of the sun. Her backside slid down against it until her bottom met the concrete. She shut her eyes and didn’t open them again until she heard the honk of the horn from the Uber.

  "Peek-a-boo." Maggie popped her head through the crack in Annie's bedroom door. "How's it coming?"

  Shaking herself from the morning's memories, Annie sighed and surveyed the empty suitcase as if it held something.

  But it didn't.

  "That good?" Maggie joined Annie near the window seat and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "I'm sure going to miss you."

  Annie had probably heard those words at least a hundred times in the last week, but she feigned a smile. The ceiling suddenly looked friendly, so she tilted her head up and stared at it, wishing her lip would stop quivering and her mind would stop the stupid thinking. Her brain refused to give her a reprieve.

  Maggie dropped her arm. "What's wrong?"

  "I'm fine. It's nothing." Annie went to the dresser and took out some shirts. "I'm tired.” She shrugged.

  "Don't give me that. You're not fine.” Maggie sat on Annie's bed, waiting for further explanation.

  "I can't get into this with you. I'm not going to listen to you say I told you so."

  "I won't judge you." Maggie's legs hung over the edge, and she crossed her ankles. "I love you."

  And there they were, the three little words that were so hard for Cal came out of her friend’s mouth with ease.

  "Last night"—Annie glanced over her shoulder and stared out at the ocean—"I told Cal that I love him for the first time."

  Maggie sat straight up and planted her feet on the floor. "He didn’t say it back?"

  Annie shook her head, then began to dart from dresser to suitcase, gathering more clothes.

  "Annie, stop. Sit down."

  "No." Tears slipped down her face, but she didn't make sounds, only the shuffle of her feet as she perused the room, suitcase to dresser.

  "Annie, Cal tries to protect himself."

  No shit.

  With a stack of jeans in her hands, Annie stopped dead in the middle of the room and looked at them. The insides of her cheeks were raw from being bitten. "I bought too many clothes while I was here."

  Maggie took the pants from Annie, set them on the bench, and then she returned to the bed and patted the spot next to her.

  Annie obeyed her gentle gesture and sat, then Maggie swept pieces of hair behind Annie's ear. "He's ... difficult."

  Annie eyed Maggie and made a sound: a sob mixed with an implied yeah, duh.

  "He doesn't say what he feels easily," Maggie continued.

  "Yeah … well, he's very open in the way he expresses himself … physically. More than anyone I've ever met. Fuck..." Annie sighed. She dropped her head to Maggie's shoulder. "I love his stupid, annoying difficultness." Annie lay there a moment, only breathing, then she sat up and wiped under her eyes. "Maybe not so much right now." She laughed a little.

  "I didn't expect you to fall in love, sweet girl."

  "Sometimes I forget how long you've known him. My God, I must look foolish. You told me I would hurt from this. From him."

  "Anyone who doesn't love you is the fool."

  "I know he loves me." Annie stood. "I'll keep fighting him … even while he's pushing me away. As much as I can stand anyway. He expects people to give up on him."

  "When did you get so intuitive?" Maggie asked with her special brand of maternal fondness. Annie gave a sweet roll of her eyes. "No. That's right, you've always had excellent intuition. I suppose I've given him the impression”—Maggie shifted her gaze—“these last few years, that I've given up on him." She glanced at Annie, then away. "He's such a pain in the ass sometimes." A smile spread across her face, and as she shook her auburn curls, her eyes danced with fire.

  "Were you ever in love with him?" The words were out before Annie could regret them. And she did not regret them.

  "Annie. Jesus."

  "What? He's quite a lovable asshole, and he is sexy as fuck."

  Maggie laughed and shook those curls again. "No. I've always loved him. Not in love. But there was a time I fancied him. In college. But no. Never with what is in your eyes when you look at him. No."

  "Fancied him?" Annie grinned.

  "John's influence. His word. Maybe my husband is right," Maggie said, pausing as Annie's eyebrow shot up. "John says Cal needs time. I don't know why, after a million years of brooding, but maybe he still needs it."

  "That's what Cal said too. Time. Tiempo," Annie said as Maggie cocked her head to the side. "Yeah, that's Rosa's influence."

  "You’ll come back to pack up the rest of your new wardrobe and your photographs?"

  Smiling, Annie’s eyes said yes, but her mouth said something else entirely. "I don't regret it, Maggie." Confidence laced her voice.

  "The clothes? Honey, I wouldn't regret them either." Maggie smirked.

  "No. You know what I mean."

  "I know, sweetie."

  "You couldn't have warned me enough to stay away from him. I would’ve found him." He would’ve found me. "I don't regret a single minute of the summer."

  My summer.

  Annie would never regret the summer, being with her friends, the ocean, or the sun or the heat. She would never regret Cal or regret loving Cal the only way she knew how. She’d never regret feeling his love over her, embracing it, and allowing it to heal her wo
unds rather than infect them, drawing strength in the weakness, in the sadness, and in the opening of her afraid-to-feel heart.

  a memory

  a day trip

  a fog on the glass of time

  a breath

  smeared

  forgotten

  my toes point me in every direction

  I sway with the wind

  I am a dandelion

  I feed off sun and water

  alas

  I need wind to show you my moves

  blow me

  watch me

  I'm unbreakable

  nothing will keep me

  from what I pursue

  Distance

  space between two places or people or things;

  emotional separation

  Annie stepped out of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport into the arrival/departure pick-up area — into the somewhat cooler, definitely dryer, Pacific weather.

  She spotted the waiting, running car right away. The two-door, champagne-colored convertible Saab with the top down had a pug in the back seat, pacing and panting with a face only Beverly Baxter could love.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall, whom does Beverly Baxter love?

  Her mother’s self-love was apparent in the way she fixed her attention to the rearview mirror, applying a bright shade of red to her plump lips.

  Annie figured her mother didn’t even see her because she didn't flinch or change direction when Annie dropped her backpack onto the seat. Beverly only fingered her wavy, copper-cropped hair and continued to inspect her appearance.

  Annie’s polar opposite in every way, but that was her mother all right — locked, stocked, and loaded.

  "Did you have to bring the dog, Mother?" Annie might have rolled her eyes, but a smile lit under the hood of her lashes as she eyed Barney and stepped toward the rear of the car. He was a good dog. His company kept her mother from flying completely off the radar. "Pop the trunk, please."