The Kiss on Castle Road (A Lavender Island Novel)

by Lauren Christopher

  Damn it, where was his lab coat?

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Natalie said.

  He turned and filled a couple of test tubes. “Now’s probably not the best time.”

  “I won’t take up much of your time, I just wanted to say a few things while we have some quietude. It’s always so busy here. It’s nice to be alone with you for a second.”

  The test tubes clanked together beneath his suddenly indelicate touch, and he mentally cursed himself. He lifted the rack and walked over to the incubator. “Maybe we could do this another time.”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Elliott froze. Sorry? He hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “For what?” he asked over his shoulder, as casually as possible.

  “For creating such an awkwardness that we’re now avoiding each other.”

  He stalled over one of the buttons on the incubator, then finished punching in the correct temperatures. “I don’t think you need to apologize for that.”

  “Just hear me out.”

  She was right behind him now. Touching distance, he was sure. He wiped his brow and gave the buttons one more try. On the second attempt, he got it right and the machine finally began whirring.

  He turned and was immediately face-to-face with her. Or face-to-chin. Or breasts-to . . .

  He took a deep breath and sidled away. Where had he put his lab coat?

  He fumbled along the countertop for his locker key, put it next to his laptop mindlessly, then pretended he was looking at something important on the screen. “I think I need to wrap things up here.”

  “We can leave together.”

  Four hearty cuss words floated through his head, and he bit them all back. Good move, Sherman. That wasn’t very well thought out. But at least some fresh air might do some good. He grabbed his locker key and strode toward his lab coat.

  “I can drive you,” she said. “I promise to stay on the road this time.”

  He pulled the coat out of the locker and shuffled it over his shoulders. He closed his laptop and attempted to straighten his lab desk, almost knocking over a rack of empty tubes, then piled a stack of scientific journal articles he’d printed. As he untangled the paper clips holding the articles together, a small index notecard fell out of one of the stacks and landed faceup on the counter.

  “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” —Anaïs Nin

  It was an index card that the Colonel had given him. The Colonel had left seven in the last week, all in his own linear handwriting—one on Elliott’s laptop, one slipped inside. Two had been in his lab-coat pockets, and two had been rubber-banded with his mail. They were always about courage.

  Elliott had been realizing the truth of what the Colonel had told him—courage in the face of danger was actually doable. His adrenaline-fueled experience in the cart about to go over the cliff had shown him that. But courage in the face of rejection was where you really needed to pull your bootstraps up. Facing your own feelings—and then laying them bare for someone else to see—was where real courage took place.

  Elliott stared at this latest card and took a deep breath.

  “Okay, Natalie,” he finally said, stuffing the notecard into his pocket. “Let’s head home. I have a few things I need to talk about with you, too.”

  The night air blew through the golf cart as they bumped down the unpaved hill toward Elliott’s house. Natalie had decided to forgo the main road and off-road it on a path she knew went directly to his hill. She tried to ignore the fact that he was clutching the passenger doorway with white knuckles and instead focused on driving.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “About your driving? It kind of sucks. Where’s the road?”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I figure that’s the kind of things friends say to each other, right?”

  She swung past the little cottages toward Elliott’s place on the ocean. Hardly anyone was out this late, so the narrow path was their own. “I meant, what do you think about my being a good friend or a bad friend?”

  “I think you’re a fine friend. You’re just a crazy driver.”

  She took a hard turn onto the paved portion, and Lily’s Elsa doll flew off the seat between them and scuttled across the floorboard, landing in the street.

  “Darn it.” She put the cart in reverse. Elliott leaned out and swiped the doll up. She barely let him sit back before she floored it again.

  “So anyway, is it because you said you have feelings for me, Elliott? Maybe we should have talked about that more so we could have a more relaxed friendship. I like that you were so honest with me—I really do. I respect that a lot. And I feel like I didn’t acknowledge your honesty. And I feel like I’m not being very straightforward or honest with you. But friends are honest, right?”

  Elliott was gripping the passenger doorway again. “I imagine so.”

  “I truly want us to be friends. I really like you.”

  “I like you, too, Natalie.”

  “But you avoid me.”

  The wheels bumped over the wooden pier to the other side of Diver’s Nook and puttered down a slight dirt hill, then began rounding the cove.

  Elliott glanced at something in his lab-coat pocket and then took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ve been avoiding you.”

  Natalie looked over at him, surprised he’d admitted that. Although it was true of her, too, it was hard to say out loud.

  “Watch the road, please.” He pointed ahead.

  She refocused her attention and concentrated on the rest of her speech.

  “I don’t want things to be awkward between us,” she said. “I want to hang out with you. I hope you’re not avoiding me because I kissed you. Or because you said you have feelings for me. Or because I’ve recommitted to my mancation, and you think it’s something personal.”

  She turned to stare at him again. He was slumped now in his seat, looking tired.

  “If we’re going to be honest, here—I’ll say that it’s probably all of those things,” he said. “But mostly I’ve been avoiding you because I’m attracted to you. I just don’t know how to behave, I guess.”

  His honesty threw a little dart into her heart. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but knew that would just confuse things further.

  “Oh, Elliott.” She let out a deep sigh through the open windshield.

  “Road.” He pointed again.

  “Would it help if I admitted something, too?”

  He seemed to think that over. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I will. I watch you on the beach running every day.”

  He turned and stared at her. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He looked back at the road, watching the cliffs go by. “Why do you do that?”

  “It makes me feel close to you, like we’re the only two out there on the beach, and we understand each other somehow.”

  He stared straight forward for half a minute, seemingly thinking that over. “You could join me sometime.”

  “I can’t run as fast as you. I’d never keep up.”

  “I could slow down.”

  “How slow?”

  “For you? A crawl.”

  She smiled. “A light jog might do. Would that eliminate the awkwardness and allow us to be friends?”

  “It might. Or it might not. Depends on how cute you look in your running clothes.”

  Natalie grinned back at him and steered the golf cart straight up his hill. “You might be shocked to know that my running clothes consist of a man’s sweatpants and sweatshirt. Not very exciting.”

  “We’ll definitely be friends then.”

  She laughed and pulled up into his drive. “Can I come in? I just had a few more things I wanted to say. I won’
t keep you long.”

  He seemed to look at something in his pocket again, then shrugged. “Sure.”

  She followed him through the back door they’d entered with Alice, past the same kitchen, past the same dining table. Nothing looked as cozy or romantic as it had that night, though. Instead of candles and dinner for two, Elliott now had papers strewn all over the dining table—stacks and stacks—along with some empty paper plates. A laptop sat at the head of the table, surrounded by empty coffee mugs, cords, and a headset.

  The living room looked similar—papers stacked on almost every flat surface. Natalie could see where Elliott must have carved a small place for himself on the floor in front of the fireplace. Another empty coffee mug sat there.

  “What are all these?” she asked.

  “Journal articles.” He quickly shuffled several of them out of the way, clearing a place for her to sit. “I’ve been reading up on other scientists’ studies of gene sequences for the sea lions in every rookery up the California coast. Plus, reading up on the history of the island and doing some studies on the other animals that live here—trying to see if the environment is affecting them. Here, have a seat.”

  “Don’t mess up your papers. They’re probably all organized how you like them. We can go outside.”

  He looked up, eyebrows raised, papers stalled midair. “Now that, Natalie, is being a good friend.”

  She grinned and wandered out to the patio. The night was warm for June in California—a cooling ocean breeze brushed across the patio and blew across her face. The ice plants on the hill below were ready to explode into their blooms, but the buds were all closed for the night. Natalie pulled her hair from her lips and plopped into a chaise lounge, kicking her legs out in front of her. The ocean rolled out in the distance, the stars rolled out above. Elliott perched on the chaise next to her.

  “You don’t look very comfortable,” she said. “Do you always wear your lab coat at home and sit so stiffly like that?”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t often have Natalie Grant lying on a chaise lounge on my back patio.”

  She took in his lowered eyes, his messy hair, and then noticed a bit of a smart-ass smile quirking the corners of his lips. “You’re liking this honesty thing, aren’t you, Elliott?”

  “It is kind of liberating.”

  “Do you realize you’re flirting?”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “Yeah, and you’re kind of good at it. So have fun. But here’s the thing—I need to remind you that this has to stay purely platonic.”

  “Got it.”

  “I need to finish this mancation thing. For myself, not just for the bet. I need to know that I don’t need a man to show or tell me my worth. Can you understand that?”

  He nodded.

  “I need you to know it has nothing to do with you—I truly enjoy your company. So I’m wondering if we can just put everything else aside—forget about the kisses and the awkward attraction—and simply be true friends for each other while I learn a little more about myself. Doris said you could really use a friend right now who just lets you be yourself. And I know I could.”

  He looked up at her—the open, accepting expression back on his face. It was an expression she hadn’t seen since the Castle, as he’d shut it down right after she’d talked to him on the beach. But now here it was again: compassion, acceptance, concern, and a kind of caring in his eyes she realized she’d missed.

  He nodded solemnly. “I’d like that,” he said softly.

  Relief flooded her. She had Elliott back. And now she needed to be this kind of person to him—the selfless person who acted on what was best for a friend, not what was best for her.

  “So now, since you’ve been so honest with me, I should really be honest with you. You’ve asked me a few times about the reason for my mancation—do you really want to know?”

  His warm smile slowly slid away. “I don’t know. Do I?”

  “I’m not sure. But it’s part of me, and since we’re friends now, I’ll tell you.”

  He shifted on the chaise but never took his eyes off her. He wasn’t afraid of what she was going to say. He looked ready to fight a dragon for her.

  “When I was twelve, my mom’s boyfriend at that time cornered me in the kitchen one afternoon and pushed me up against the wall and grabbed me between the legs and called me a cock-tease. I didn’t even know what that meant when I was twelve.”

  She delivered the story the way she always thought back about it—with a nonchalance she’d conjured over time. But she looked up now at Elliott’s wide eyes that went from shock to anger in a flash.

  “Jesus, Natalie,” he whispered.

  She lowered her eyes. Spitting it all out like that had felt good—it was like admitting something she’d refused to think about—but now it felt as if a dam were cracking. Her nonchalance had been manufactured. It had just been keeping her from falling apart.

  “He didn’t do more than that. But he sneered at me beneath all his oily hair and said that I shouldn’t walk around the house in shorts like that, or in my pajamas, because did I want him to grab me like that? Did I want other men to grab me like that? Of course I said no, and he backed off, and my mom broke up with him a week later—probably for an unrelated event because he was a jerk enough to have surely offended her in a million ways, too. But I have to admit, after that, I was always very careful not to walk around the house anymore in shorts, even when boyfriends weren’t around. I can’t believe that jerk convinced me I couldn’t wear shorts in my own house. So anyway, as the years went on, and I found men staring at me, or trying to get me alone in corners, I always had the notion it was my fault. Because of what I was wearing. Because of what he said. So I started wearing big baggy men’s clothes just to be safe.”

  Elliott was very still, staring up at her from under his bangs, his mouth a grim line. “How long did you feel that way?”

  “Pretty much forever.”

  Elliott’s jaw danced.

  “Is this too much information for you?”

  “No,” he said. “I told you I’d listen.”

  “But you look angry.”

  “I am. I’m angry at him.”

  A swift gush of relief swept through Natalie—relief and something else, something like absolution—and a warmth settled through her core. Although cerebrally she knew that guy was a creep, and wrong for sending her thinking in that direction all those years, she hadn’t ever had someone agree with her. And certainly never had a man agree with her. She’d never told her mom or sisters because she’d been afraid they’d think he was right—maybe she shouldn’t have walked around the house in shorts when there was a man there. But saying it out loud right now, and having Elliott look as though he wanted to pummel the guy, gave her a feeling of comfort and solidarity she hadn’t known were hers to have. It made her feel as if she could finally tell someone about the most recent events, too.

  “I figured out when I was about nineteen that my logic was flawed. But old habits die hard. I still feel more comfortable covered up. The hats help.” She touched the brim of hers. “But I still find myself in too many bad situations. The most recent was a boss who I thought was working out, but then he cornered me in his office and became very handsy. When I tried to push him away, he said it was my fault for leading him on.”

  Elliott’s head shook once, and he let out something of a huff through his nose. “Okay, first of all, I’d like to apologize for all men in general. Can I do that?”

  Natalie gave a small, reluctant smile. “I suppose.”

  “And I’m sorry those idiots transferred blame onto you all those years. You should never apologize for simply being a beautiful woman. Unwanted advances are never your fault, Natalie. They’re the guy’s fault.”

  For some reason, tears stung the back of Natalie’s eyes. A sense of beautiful relief ov
ercame her. “But you can see then how I’m having trouble not knowing what’s right with you. I want to give you comfort as a friend, and hug you when you’re having a bad day, but now that you’ve admitted you’re attracted to me, I don’t know if that’s being a . . .” She waved her hand in a windmill. It was still hard for her to say it.

  Elliott frowned and filled in for her. “Tease?”

  Relief that he got it flooded her again. “Yes.”

  “Natalie, no. You’ve made things very clear. I just—”

  “And then when I kissed you on the hill!” She was on a roll now, her thoughts coming faster. She flung her other hand out in matched exasperation. “I just . . . You can see how I thought maybe something was wrong with me. Because where did that come from? I want to be your friend, and there I was kissing you, and I didn’t mean to do that at all. Maybe something is wrong with me. Maybe I’m incapable of having male friends.”

  “You’re not incapable.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “But I was feeling a little attracted to you.”

  He lifted his head up. “Yeah?”

  “But I can’t,” she said quickly. “I mean I can’t be. And it was only a little. And I need to complete this mancation and prove to Paige and myself that I’m as strong and independent as I keep claiming I am.”

  He sent her a skewed smile. “Just my luck.”

  Another little dart went through her when she saw the pain in his smile, but she wanted him to know what a kind man he was. He was a good man. A true gentleman, as Doris said.

  “You’re going to make some woman very happy someday, Elliott. And I do think you’re a long-term kind of guy, despite your uncertainty at the Castle a couple weeks ago. And I’m really not. I might be a commitment-phobe, after all. I do tend to do flings. I get bored with men really fast.”

  He nodded but just stared at his hands clasped in front of him.

  “Except you,” Natalie said, realizing its truth as it came out of her mouth. “I haven’t gotten bored with you at all. Maybe this friendship thing really is best between us.”