His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  The Sawyer she was talking to didn’t technically have a body, but she could have sworn she saw his stomach sink as he said, “Fuck, I’m sorry, Willa. If I’d known…”

  He trailed off then, because they both knew the answer to the rest of it. Sawyer truly was an asshole back then. He probably would have not only still not bought them a meal, but he would have rubbed their faces in the fact that their mother had squandered all that settlement money on a book.

  “No wonder you didn’t want to acknowledge me when you saw me here,” he said, quiet as the night.

  She stayed silent, because that was exactly why. They listened to the night air for a while after that, the cool breeze making Willa want to put on a jacket even though it was the middle of summer. German weather wasn’t anything like the weather in Greenlee, Virginia where the nights were so sticky and humid, you didn’t even think of breaking out a sweater until September came around. Standing next to Sawyer didn’t help either. It was like standing next to an old-fashioned ice box for way to long. Cold by association.

  “Maybe my coma is karma,” he said into all that quiet. “Retribution for what all I did to you. Maybe that’s why I’m stuck as a ghost now.”

  Even a week ago, she would have liked to think the same. But she shook her head. “No, karma doesn’t work like that. And even if it did, you would’ve woken up as soon as you realized the error of your ways.”

  She thought of what had happened after her brother died, then. His ghost looking down at his body…confused, only to become even more scared, when a portal suddenly opened up behind him. An oval in thin air with a tableau of two Asian-American women in a doctor’s office, one dressed in a hospital gown. They were holding hands and smiling as a doctor did some kind of procedure under the gown while they watched what was happening on a monitor.

  An invitro fertilization procedure, Willa would figure out by her first year of med school. But back then she could only stare at the scene in confused panic, having never before seen a ghost get his portal.

  “Thel!” Trevor yelled out to the older sister who’d always served as his fiercest protector as the portal started to suck him in.

  But Thel couldn’t see ghosts like her and Marian. Not hearing him, she fell to her knees beside their brother’s large, fallen body screaming, “No! No!”

  “It’s okay, my dearest boy,” Marian called out to Trevor with tears in her eyes. “This is where your story with us ends. Go on to your next book. Turn the first page.”

  Willa would never forget the look of understanding that suddenly bloomed over Trevor’s scared face. Or the sight of him relaxing into the sucking wind. And then he was gone, the portal snapping shut around him as soon as he was inside.

  Leaving nothing but the cicadas, the drunk driver’s last wheezing breaths, and the sound of Thel sobbing.

  “No, this isn’t about karma,” Willa whispered to Sawyer. “This is about you.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a few types of spirits roaming around in our world. Most of them have been traumatized in one way or other and can’t let go.” She thought of her own father, and the white teenager from the next town over, still wandering around on the road outside their house after killing Trevor. “But you’re not dead yet. You’re what my mama calls undecided. You haven’t decided which side of the spectrum you want to be on.”

  “Undecided,” he repeated. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Of course I don’t want to be in a coma. Of course I’d rather be living.”

  She peeked over at him. “Would you?”

  He opened his mouth. Then closed it, refusing to confirm or deny what she’d just suspected out loud.

  And the easy mood between them became real awkward after that.

  SIX YEARS LATER, Willa rushed Sawyer through his stretches.

  “Turn over, please,” she said, hating to short-shrift him on the stretching, but suddenly needing to get out of there.

  However, Sawyer just laid there, stiff as a board.

  “Turn over please,” she repeated.

  He hesitated some more, but finally lifted up. She watch his muscles ripple underneath his thin t-shirt as he turned over…to reveal a tent inside of his sweat shorts.

  One so huge, it made her whole body heat. But not with embarrassment. With memory. A memory so powerful, she didn’t realize she was staring until he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” she somehow managed to wheeze out, her mouth now dry as a desert. “It happens.”

  Which was true enough. However, when it’d happened before with patients, she’d quickly and efficiently brought the session to an end.

  Those other times, her body definitely hadn’t warmed at the thought of pulling down those briefs and taking him in her hand. And her dry mouth definitely hadn’t begun to water as she imagined putting her lips around his full length and finally tasting him there. The sweat, the need, the desire, she could practically feel it rolling off of him.

  “Why do I feel like we’re both thinking the same thing?” he asked her.

  His hoarse voice snapped her out of the fantasy. And when her gaze flew up to meet his, she found his swamp mud eyes dark with lust.

  The sexual tension that had faded into the background during the workout was back with a vengeance now. Pulsing with electricity. Drawing her closer. Making her want to climb up on the table, and…

  She shook her head. “We’ve gone over our allotted time. I should go.”

  “No, stay,” he said. “We don’t have to…do anything. But I want to talk to you some more. I like talking to you. I feel comfortable with you for some reason.”

  Yes, “for some reason” he’d never know or be able to understand.

  “I’ve really got to go,” she said again.

  “I thought you were done with work for the day. Why do you have leave out of here so fast?”

  His question only compelled her to move faster. She packed up her things in record time and headed straight for the door, calling over her shoulder. “I’ve got another appointment.”

  Which was true. The center closed at six, which meant she had to get all the way back over to Richmond and pick Trevor up. Thank God for the new car. She never would have made it on time using the bus system like she used to, which was why she usually picked him up before coming back to Greenlee.

  “Wait,” he called after her. “Willa, wait, goddammit!”

  She stopped and against her better judgment, turned around.

  He was sitting up on the table now, which meant the tent wasn’t so much on display. But it was still obvious between his legs, and she forced her eyes up to his muscular torso. Tight with tension, it matched his face, which was now a dark storm cloud of emotions.

  Her throat caught at the beautiful sight of him. Unable to leave, but unable to look away.

  “Will I be seeing you again next Tuesday?” he asked, voice low. The question was simple, but the way he held her gaze made Willa’s entire body tingle.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered, hoping and praying seven days would be enough time to regain her composure. Plus… “I owe you five more sessions.”

  He didn’t answer. Just watched her. So hard, Willa felt like she was grabbing on to a lifeline when she reached out behind her and found the doorknob.

  “See you then,” she mumbled before rushing out of his home gym and practically running through the house to reach the front door.

  Being outside was like escaping a vacuum. All the air rushed back into her lungs, and Willa drank it in huge gulps, bending over at the waist and propping her hands on her knees.

  “He likes you, you know.”

  Willa turned her head to see Kate Greenlee Grant leaning against one of the porch’s white columns.

  Willa straightened up, her eyes cutting back toward the house.

  “Don’t worry, after that exchange, he’s most likely back in his gym with those silly weights of his.” Kate rolled
her eyes. “That’s how he handles anything that’s bothering him these days—you know there used to be a lot more of you about the property.”

  Willa looked left and right, wondering what she was talking about.

  “Coloreds,” Kate supplied off Willa’s questioning look. “But not anymore. Most of them disappeared after your mother won her case against my husband and the ones who are left don’t particularly care to talk to me, even though I told them I’ve changed my mind about all of that now that I’m dead.”

  Kate made a clucking sound, dismissing her family’s legacy of slavery and oppression with a wave of one elegant hand.

  “But if it’s me you’re worried about, then don’t be,” Kate continued on cheerily. “I’ve been dead for quite awhile now, and have had plenty of time to think about my family’s long held beliefs while knocking about this house on my own. So you’ll be happy to know I won’t do anything ghoulish if you decide to pursue this affection with my son.”

  Wow, thought Willa, just when you thought you had seen it all, the former Southern belle who drowned in the bathtub shows up.

  “No, I wasn’t worried about that…” she answered, trailing off.

  “Oh then was it because he was so very cruel to you in high school?”

  “No, I’m pretty much over that,” Willa answered, not bothering to add that this was because Sawyer had already sincerely apologized to her in Germany.

  “Then I don’t understand,” Kate said, her eyes fluttering with confusion. “You’re an attractive woman, and my son has needs. I’m sure you do, too. Why not meet them together?”

  “Okay, well it was nice talking to you, Mrs. Grant,” Willa said started for the porch stairs.

  “I’m merely saying I wouldn’t interfere if you decided to take things further with my Sawyer. Interfere or blame you. One of my biggest regrets in the afterlife is not having slept with more men while I was alive. And perhaps a woman or two—I’d always wondered about that while at Mount Holyoke…but then Quentin came up from the academy for our Winter Weekend party, and things moved fast after that. We fell in love so quickly, I dropped out of school as soon as he proposed. Really I was too young to get married—only nineteen—but that’s how girls like myself did it back then...”

  Okay, time to go.

  Seriously, she thought as she rushed away from the rest of Kate’s story. Now Sawyer’s mother was trying to get the two of them to hook up?

  Willa raced around the house and back down the hill, toward her own side of the river. She really, really should have stuck to her policy about not speaking to ghosts outside of her property lines. With the son and with the mother.

  Finally making it to the foot bridge, she ran across it to her own property.

  But it wasn’t enough of an escape. By the time she reached the car, she could feel his eyes back on her. Staring her down.

  “Don’t do it,” she whispered to herself.

  But it was already too late. While her mind was telling her what not to do, her body was already turning itself around to look for him.

  She found him easily. He was on his balcony. Staring straight at her. Even on crutches, he gave off the impression of a king of old. Surveying everything he called his. Including her.

  “He does that a lot,” a voice said behind her.

  Willa didn’t realize she’d been caught staring again until her sister snapped her out of it.

  She turned to see Thel standing there, the key ring attached to the vehicle’s squat key fob hanging off her index finger.

  “I’ve seen him out there every night when I’m singing,” she said, coming to stand beside her. “But he’s usually sitting down, and this is the first time I’ve seen him out there during the daytime.”

  Willa forced herself to look away from Sawyer and say, “Thanks for bringing out my key.”

  “No problem.” Thel nodded to Pappy’s old wooden cart, which still sat behind the house, fully ready to take a trip into town despite the death of both of its owner and its horse. “Saw it on the bookshelf by the back door and I came out here to see if you were maybe hanging out with Pappy. Thought maybe you’d want me to go into town to pick up Trevor.”

  “Thanks,” Willa mumbled, happy to know her sister would have picked Trevor up if it came down to it.

  But then her sister looked around and said, “Maybe you should start parking back here. There’s plenty of room next to Pappy’s cart.”

  Willa shook her head and started toward the car at the front of the house, refusing to acknowledge the man watching them from his balcony. “No, let’s definitely keep parking in front of the house.”

  “Why?” Thel asked as they approached the car. “The driveway goes all the way around and there’s more room back here.”

  How to explain about Trevor? All the lies and omissions? “It’s just better if we park in front. And it’s my car, so just do it Thel, okay?” she snapped. She then held out her hand. “Can I have my keys now?”

  Thel, who’d never been the one to put up with people snapping at her, narrowed her eyes at Willa: the quiet sister who’d rarely gone against her when they were kids, and who hadn’t snapped at her once, not even when she showed up out of the blue in Germany after nearly five years of radio silence.

  “I think I’ll drive into town with you to pick up Trevor,” Thel said, keeping her voice level. She went around the car and got in on the passenger side. With the key still in her hand, so Willa would be forced to demand the key back and kick her all the way out of the car if she wanted to avoid going into town with her.

  Which of course, she wouldn’t. It wasn’t Thel’s fault she’d caught her usually very responsible sister at her worst moment. Caught up in feelings she had no business having for someone she could never be with.

  She slid into the driver’s seat and asked, “So where are we with circling back around to those other opera programs you turned down before SoCal decided to lose their minds?”

  “You trying to change the subject?” her sister asked with a sharp sideways look.

  Yes, that was absolutely what she was trying to do. But also… “I’m really wanting to move sooner than later, Thel. I think it will be better for Trevor if we don’t live in a town with only two other brown people anymore.”

  “I ran into Grace visiting one of her friends at the hospital the other day. She says she’s coming back to look after Greenlee place again. So that brings it up to five brown people altogether,” Thel said, her voice straining with forced enthusiasm.

  “So all the other programs turned you down, too?”

  Thel deflated in her passenger seat. “Yes,” she admitted with a depressed sigh. “They said they’d already filled all their spots for the fall.”

  “But I thought they didn’t officially close auditions until the end of July.”

  “That’s what I said, but apparently that’s the story they decided to tell me.”

  Now it was Willa’s turn to throw her sister a suspicious look. She didn’t understand how one program, let alone six different ones, would turn her sister down. According to Thel, she’d studied at one of the most prestigious programs in Europe and had even recorded a well-received album under her stage name, Sirena Gale.

  But now nobody wanted her in their program? Even though her voice was back, and stronger than it had ever been, thanks to Thel’s dedication to rehearsing during her five-year sabbatical?

  “Maybe we should just move to some city with a few different opera houses. I have my masters, so I could find a job.”

  “A job that will support you, me, Marian, and Trevor? And allow you to pay back all your student loans, plus the ones left over from med school?”

  “It’s fine. I want to help.” And even more than that, she had to get out of Greenlee. Her sensible mind was practically screaming at her to run. Run now, before it got to be too late.

  But her sister shook her head. “No, I’ll keep looking for another paid residency. There has to be one
place he—”

  She broke off and crossed her arms over her double-D sized chest, no miracle bra needed, thanks to the surgery she’d gotten after getting the go-ahead from her oncologist.

  “I’ll find something,” she promised. “I’m tired of not pulling my weight. Just give me a few more weeks, okay?”

  How could Willa say no? Her sister had overcome so much just to get to a place where she could consider reviving her career. Willa couldn’t not support her.

  But she also couldn’t stay here.

  The image of Sawyer on his balcony invaded her mind, filling her heart with dread. Too close. He was getting too close. And it was too dangerous for her to live in Greenlee now that he was back.

  She had to figure out a way to move everyone she loved away from here. Fast, before everything she’d kept hidden came into the light.

  8

  “Turn over please, Sawyer.”

  Shit, you’d think he would have learned his lesson from the last time, when he ran her out. But no, here it was Tuesday again. They’d gone even harder today, with Willa asking to see his regular workout and giving him corrections on that, on top of her own set of exercises.

  But the massage had made it all worth it. Those hands of hers were magic, and it had felt like his whole body was sinking into the table when she’d started rubbing him down.

  His gimp leg especially. She’d taken his prosthesis off to massage it and he didn’t know what she was doing down there, but his leg liked it. The usual tightness that came after he took off his peg had disappeared, replaced by a relaxation so deep, thoughts of having the same problem as last time had disappeared from his head.

  Truth be told, he’d been more worried about falling asleep right there on the table.

  But now here she was asking him to turn over, and here he was knowing he’d tented his shorts. Again.

  “Don’t run off,” he said as he turned over.

  Just like last time, her dark eyes went straight to the tent. And, oh fuck, that only made it worse. Watching her look at it. His cock went even harder, from wood to pulsing steel. Begging for her touch.