by Drew VanDyke
“Why not?”
“I tried to tell you that you didn’t know me, Will, but you didn’t listen. You just pushed what I said aside, as if I was telling you that out of fear or something, like I didn’t know what I was talking about and you know best. Guys do that, you know.”
“Do what?” I could see him getting annoyed with me lumping him in with other “guys,” but I couldn’t help it.
“They want what they want so they don’t listen. They discount girls’ – women’s – insights, especially about themselves. Think they know best.”
“Maybe it’s because the women won’t just talk plain to them. Won’t tell them what the hell is going on, in words us dumb guys can understand.”
My eyes narrowed as I took another bite of burrito, feeling the burn of fresh grilled jalapenos that was nothing like those pickled ones most people are used to. I bought some time to think by pulling out a little clear plastic container of chopped cilantro to add to the juicy goodness in my hands, making a ritual of it.
“How bad do you have to know?” I asked.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m serious. How much would you sacrifice to find out everything, all at once, right now?” See, I was getting sick of the dance, too, and I was tired and still hurting from everything that happened yesterday. I guess what I mean is, I was about ready to say to hell with it and just dump it all on him and damn the consequences. Double or nothing, roll the dice.
“I…I’d do anything for you, Ash.”
“But what if the price was me? What if by learning everything you lost me?”
“That’s impossible.”
“Here we go again.” I chucked the rest of the burrito in the bag, suddenly not hungry anymore. “You love me but you dismiss me and what I say. That’s not love.” I hopped off the tailgate and started walking away.
“Ash! Ash, I’m sorry. I’ll stop asking. Really. I love you, and I don’t care about your secrets.”
I stopped. Turned. “Yes, you do.”
“Okay, I do, but not as much as I care about you. I’ll wait for you to explain, okay? You’re the most important thing in my life, and if that’s the price…okay.”
“Okay?”
“Whatever it takes.”
He looked so forlorn there, twisting his straw field hat in his hands like some kid in a Dickens novel, that my resolve crumbled. “Okay,” I said, and came back to him. Once I had returned and we were standing there, I just had to kiss him, right? Kiss him stupid, as Amber used to say, though this time I got kinda stupid too.
We only broke up the clinch when a bunch of boys on BMX bikes started on the wolf-whistles. I smiled in embarrassment while Will winged a dirt clot at the road by their tires, and they took off, hooting.
“Want to take the afternoon off?” I asked with a sidelong grin.
“I think I can arrange that, seeing as I am the boss…just gimme a minute to call Rodrigo.”
On the way back to Will’s house, my house, I took my shoes off and stuck my feet out the window, rolling off my newly skewered butt cheek and laying across the bench seat to put my head in his lap. He stroked my hair and all was right with the world again, at least for today.
Epilogue
It didn’t surprise me when Sean confessed to sending me the emails, which actually helped him as they seemed to be warnings, if rather confused ones. In fact, after the shrinks got done with him they convinced the DA to let him plead to a year of inpatient treatment and a suspended sentence, as long as we, the injured parties, agreed.
Amber took some convincing but I knew Sean was under Jeanetta’s spell, not innocent but almost as much a victim as we were. That enchantment may have been metaphorical or may have been literal but no matter what, it was true and Amber agreed, and if Amber agreed, eventually Elle would too, I knew.
Jeanetta got eight to ten in the state women’s prison down at Chowchilla – I know, funny name, sounds like they should make cheap fur coats there, but look it up – and so for at least that long I don’t have to worry about her. The next time I went up to Lover’s Leap and waited, Shane didn’t appear. I even took Spanky with me, but he didn’t seem to see any ghosts.
Mom still haunts me but not Amber as far as I know, but won’t tell me why. I want to figure out what she needs to be at peace, but then again, a ghost mom is better than no mom at all. Dad and Adam seem to be cool with me staying with Will, which surprises me a bit, at least in Dad’s case. He always was old-fashioned when it came to premarital sex. It would probably surprise him to find out Will and I did it – badly, I have to admit – when we were in high school, and surprise him even more to find out how long we waited to do it again.
But yeah, we’re doing it now.
Carefully, with precautions.
Will says he loves me, and I said I love him at least once, but I’m still not at all sure we're speaking the same language. We still haven’t talked any more about that night, and what he saw. I think he’s afraid to push, so we keep putting off that conversation, but it will come eventually.
Amber says I’m overthinking things, as usual.
So is this happily ever after?
I’m not at all sure. I still have a career, and I’m not going to drag Will around all over the world. He’d just get in the way. Oh, come on, it’s true. No matter how much the guy says he’d give up everything, it just doesn’t work that way. Guys need their stuff, and their buddies, and more importantly they need something to do, to achieve. Will wouldn’t be achieving anything as my take-along boy-toy.
For now, until my editor comes up with an assignment, I guess it’s just ever after, happily enough.
THE END of SwitchBack
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Read on for an excerpt from MoonFall, Knightsbridge Canyon Book #2
“This is absolutely crazy-making!” My twin sister Amber’s voice echoed off the pristine ivory walls of the guest bedroom where I’d temporarily holed up while we prepared for the remodel of the pool house, but I think my welcome was wearing as thin as the fabric in my socks. “You realize that you are certifiably insane, don’t you, Ashlee?” Her voice ratcheted up a notch at the end and sent the skeeby-jeebies down my spine.
It’s not every day you tell your identical twin sister that you see dead people. But Mommy Dearest doesn’t take “no” for an answer any better than Joan Crawford tolerated wire hangers. And if you think our Mother was a force to be reckoned with in life, you have no idea the kind of power she’s wielded since she’s been dead.
“I know it sounds nuts, but hear me out!” I yelled right back, following her out into the foyer.
Foyer. Sheesh. I thought they only had foyers in churches, but Amber’s entryway sure qualified, with gleaming marble tiles and a pin-light chandelier.
“You know you’re handling this all wrong.” Annabelle Scott, aka Ghost Mom, breezed into the room on a ray of light and with the musical scent of Jean Naté – at least her top half did. Her lower body got stuck outside the front door. She still seemed to be struggling, getting the hang of the translocation or bilocation or whatever you call it since she’d taken up residence with us in the sprawling single-story ranch-home Amber and Elle had recently purchased in the gated community of Knightsbridge Commons.
Stupid name, if you ask me. There was nothing common about any of the seven-figure homes that fronted the sloping wilds of Knightsbridge Canyon, not to mention the increase in property value I brought to the table when I turned the dilapidated old pool house into my own private writer’s retreat. I mean, hell, I loved my sister, but we really needed to have our own habitable space since she married Elle, and since Will and I were now officially dating and since I still did that wolfy thing every full moon.
“Really? You think?” My sister glared at me.
“I could so say the same thing,” I deadpanned, returning the thread of conversation to my mom as I went to the front door and let in her
wandering lower half while Spanky pawed at the air beneath her torso.
“Do not even try to pull that one on me.” Amber pursed her lips, tossed her hair over her shoulder and stuck her hand on her hip.
“Now, Amber. You know that Spanky has been acting odd lately,” Elle said on her way to the garage for a beer during halftime.
My twin looked past me in confusion when her miniature Schnauzer stood on his hind feet and pawed and licked at the air as my dead Mother ruffled his muff and made kissy noises in his ear.
“Yes, but to tell me it’s because our deceased mother is haunting us is just a bit more than I can stomach. Oh, and that not only you can see her and apparently speak with her, but that the dog can too. That’s just adding insult to injury.” Amber crossed her arms, pressed her glossy lips together and began to tap her toe.
“So, you can accept that I’m a werewolf, but you can’t accept the fact that Mother’s an apparition?”
“The word is ghost, Ashlee. G-H-O-S-T. Why do you always have to be so pretentious?”
“I’m pretentious? Who has to wear brands on their clothes in order to keep up with the Joneses and suck up to traditional society! I’m a writer, in case you forgot. Are my words too big and scary for you?”
Holy Crap. I must have done it this time. You know, they say honesty is the best policy. But sometimes saying nothing is better than saying anything at all. My mother must have thought so too, because the next thing I knew she’d vanished like Hurricane Endora in a displacement pressure zone and all of the doors in the house suddenly slammed open with the inrushing wind. Spanky and I cowered on the floor, hands and paws over our ears.
“Honey, we really need to have the airflow in this home analyzed.” Elle sauntered by on her way back to the living room, detouring to shut the front door. “My ears just popped. And why are Ashlee and Spanky on the floor? Oh, and, cute shoes,” she said as she picked up my mother’s flats, which had miraculously stayed behind and taken on physical form when she disappeared. And please, don’t ask me. Ghost Mom defies all logic.
Elle continued, “And they don’t belong in the middle of the room, anyway. You taught me that.” Then she sauntered away to wherever she goes after she drops her one-liners.
I looked up into Amber’s face and she gave me a look that about broke my heart.
“Ouch.”
Ouch is our safe word. If you don’t know what a safe word is, Google it. In this case, it means that in the sparring of our everyday lives, one of us has crossed the line. It’s like the difference between guilt and shame.
Simple metaphor? Ouch is like the bell and the referee returning us to our own corners to lick our wounds. A little too much truth in a raw and angry moment can often feel like betrayal. Amber would probably explain it better, but suffice it to say this was like ramming a katana blade through her abdomen.
Yeah, I know, right.
Ouch.
“Amber. I’m sorry.” I looked up at her as she stood there with tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t really mean it.”
“Yes, you did.” She turned her ire against me. “You judge me, Ashlee. And I don’t need it. Elle and I get enough of it from the closed-minded community around here. And we do our best not to complain about it. I really don’t need it from my family too.”
“You’re judging me too. It’s not like I asked to have Mom flitting around like the blobby green thing in Ghostbusters. It’s her choice who to manifest to, I guess. Either that or it’s an unexplainable supernatural thing, just the way it is. Anyway, not my fault!”
“It never is, Ash, but you keep running away anyway, gallivanting around on your spa junkets.”
I pointed a finger. “Now that’s just envy.”
Amber put her hands on her hips. “Okay, so what if it is? Do you ever invite me along?”
I stared at her. “I never thought about it.”
“Exactly!”
“But you have Elle, and JR, and…”
“And I’d like to get away now and then, don’t you think?”
“It’s my job,” I mumbled, but she’d made her point. “Okay, tell you what. You have a standing invitation to join me at any resort I’m reviewing – but it’s on your own dime, unless I can get it comped. It’s not like the magazines are going to cough up.”
“Fine.” It didn’t sound fine, but that was progress.
“Okay.”
“Good.” Amber glared.
“Well, you started it,” I mumbled, as if that was a good reason for overreacting.
Elle walked past again shaking her head and I felt even worse.
I looked to Spanky for comfort, but he scurried away.
Wow. Why do I even try?
You know you’d better take stock when even the dog cringes from your presence and your ghost of a mom refuses to haunt you. But Amber was right. I was out of line. Here I was spinning the story of her life into my interpretation of reality and that never gets you anything except a bunch of hurt feelings.
I swear, I get so mad at myself for some of the stupid things I do I just want to disappear for a while, make myself invisible, you know.
So, I did the next best thing. I left the house.
THE END of the excerpt from MoonFall, Knightsbridge Canyon Book #2
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Drew's Acknowledgements:
For Leslie Suzanne:
You always were and always will be
My better half
Love, Andrew
Thanks to Dave for believing we could do this and for making it happen
Thanks to Caitie Daphtary for being my (IDTBR) "identical twin beta reader."
Thanks to Dad and my hometown of Turlock, California for giving us such fertile ground to grow our stories, and thanks to my mom, Joan Elaine, whose presence continually haunts me, for better or for worse.
David's Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Nick Stephenson, Ryan King and Bella Roccaforte, great authors all, for the feedback provided that made this a better book. Thanks to my lovely and talented wife Beth, my first, last and best beta reader, for all her hard work and support.
Formatting by LiberWriter.com
Cover by Shardel
