by Deanna Roy
“I guess I expected to see some pictures of musicians or things that would show that side of him.” I wandered the room, running my fingers along a perfectly tidy desk with a stack of Little Golden Books. Chance definitely wouldn’t have had those around before moving out. Mrs. McKenzie had done some creative editing of his room.
His mother tapped the desk absently. “Oh, well, some of his posters and keepsakes regarding that were a little, how can I describe it? Dark.”
I got it now. Chance had listened to bands that didn’t fit Mrs. McKenzie’s puritanical worldview. I suppressed another smile.
“I love it,” I said. “Thank you so much for showing me.” I fingered the Pokémon cards. “I collected these too.”
“You seem a little younger than him,” she said.
“Not much. I’m graduating the University of California in June.”
This made her perk up dramatically. “Oh, how exciting.”
“I didn’t ever talk to Chance about schooling. Did he go to college?”
Her face darkened a little and she wandered the room, straightening figures that were already perfectly aligned. “Chance decided to learn a trade,” she said. “He worked in home building up until he left town.”
I wondered what his job actually entailed. I imagined him using those talented hands for hard labor. Maybe that had made them strong as much as the guitar playing.
I knew what Mrs. McKenzie wanted to hear. “Well, he’s a lovely boy. Very well raised.”
This brought her back around to me. “Let’s make some tea while we wait for Redmond,” she said. “You promise me you’ll come back tonight?”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure what he needs me for, but I’ll do what I can to get back here.”
This placated her and we headed back through the house. I let out a long-held breath. Compared to facing a potentially irate Chance, this might be the easiest part of my trip.
Chapter 41: Chance
Redmond was gone to fetch Jenny by the time I got out of the shower. I toweled my hair off and thought about that one night we’d been together. Just remembering her made me ache with need of her. I wasn’t totally sure why she’d come, but I’d listen before making any judgments.
We were meeting at the hotel. I didn’t want her here with all the guys around, and I certainly wasn’t going to face my mother. I assumed Jenny would know better than to tell my mother about my return, but I could deal with that later if the cat was out of the bag.
Charlie had taken off in a huff after dropping me off. I was grateful for her help in all this. If she hadn’t clued me in, I wouldn’t have even known Jenny was here. When the dust settled, I’d make it up to her.
I pulled on my jeans and a shirt and walked out in the hall. Ace was sitting on the sofa, drinking a beer. “I jumped your truck,” he said. “Battery was deader than a doornail. It’s still running out there. Pete is watching it.”
“Thanks,” I said, and sat down to pull on a pair of shoes I hadn’t seen for half a year. It felt good to wear something other than the same boots day in and day out. Maybe I’d throw them out. I was definitely sick of them.
“You sure about this girl?” Ace asked. “Kinda crazy, coming all this way to find you.”
“I’m curious to hear why,” I said.
“I’m not gonna lie,” Ace said. “I’m getting some weird vibes.”
I stiffened but played it cool. Ace had never really been a friend of mine. “She’s different. Grew up in Cali. Girls are different there.”
He stared at his beer. “I reckon you know what you’re doing.”
I’d had enough of this conversation. “Thanks for the jump, man,” I said. “Catch you later.”
“Later,” he said, still looking at his bottle.
I went outside. Pete sat on the bumper of my truck, a cherry red Dodge I’d bought after the accident, not wanting to ever drive the old one again.
“Damn fine truck,” Pete said. “I shoulda stole it while I had the chance.”
“If I’d known I was leaving, I never would have bought it,” I said. “Just sat here gathering dust.”
“’S’all right,” Pete said. “Made this rathole look classy.”
Money I could have given my mother, I thought. I had a lot of beef with her, but I didn’t want to see her destitute.
The engine rumbled clean and easy. I opened the door and climbed in. “Wish me luck,” I said.
“With a girl that hot, you’ll need it,” Pete said with a laugh. “You don’t deserve her.”
“Probably not,” I said.
He waved and turned for the porch.
I dropped the gearshift into reverse and headed out of my own driveway for the first time since last fall. Because the weather in November and March was so similar, it felt the same, like I’d never left.
Except now there was Jenny.
I didn’t really have to drive over to the Fairfield. It was an easy walk. Redmond said Jenny had come on foot, so I’m guessing that’s why she chose it.
But I wanted to have a way to get around town, just in case.
When I got there, I parked out front. I hadn’t heard from anybody in a half hour. I wondered if they were stuck drinking tea with my mother, and had to grin at the thought of shit-kicking Redmond drinking from a rose-painted cup.
I sat up when I saw Redmond’s truck pull in front of the entrance. The light popped on inside the cabin, but from my position, I could only see him. I guessed Jenny had opened the passenger door.
He asked her something, then nodded. Then I saw a girl in a hat appear on the other side and go in. She wore a long flowy dress that reached her ankles. Her hair was tucked up in the hat.
Was that Jenny?
Redmond didn’t take off for a moment, and I wondered what was going on. The girl went inside the hotel.
Then my phone buzzed. It was Redmond, saying Jenny would meet me in the lobby when I was ready.
So that was her.
After Redmond took off, I got out of my truck and headed inside. The lobby was tiny, just a couple sofas on a rug on the opposite side of the room from the desk.
Nobody was there except the manager, who smiled at me but returned to her work when I showed no signs of approaching.
I sat on one of the sofas, tense, leaning forward with my hands clasped. She must've gone upstairs to her room first. I suddenly washed cold with doubt. What if she’d changed her hair, cut it all off? I might not even know who she was when she came down.
We’d been in dim places for almost the entire three hours we knew each other. I suddenly doubted my ability to recognize her.
The wait was interminable. I finally texted Redmond to say I was there and ask if I should get Jenny’s direct number.
He said no, Jenny would give it to me. Just be patient.
So I sat a little longer.
The woman at the desk glanced at me occasionally. If our eyes met, I’d nod casually. After a while, that gesture seemed strained, so I made sure I never looked her way.
The elevator dinged, and I jumped to my feet. I straightened my collar. My heart was hammering ninety to nothing.
But when the doors opened, a little old lady in a walker inched forward. I sank back down to the cushion. I was actually starting to sweat it out a little. Was this one of those girl things? Making the guy wait?
Then I realized the lady was turning to thank someone behind her. I watched her move slowly out of the way, then an arm appeared, and a hip in jeans. Someone was holding the door.
When I saw the shoulder covered with pink dreadlocks, I stood up again. As soon as the older woman was clear, Jenny popped out of the elevator. She jumped aside to avoid the walker, then came to a dead stop when she saw me standing there.
She looked both different and the same. Her hair was as I remembered, long and pink and wild. I don’t know why I even thought I could have forgotten that face. Seeing it again, I felt like I’d only looked at her just yesterday.
> But instead of a fancy dress and killer heels, she wore soft jeans and a blue T-shirt with a giant daisy on the front. Her feet were encased in funny little hot pink high-tops.
She gave a little wave. I felt dumbstruck, seeing her again. This girl had come all the way from California, looking for me.
“Funny running into you again,” she said.
I laughed. “It’s a small country.”
She smoothed her hair back from her face and sat on the other sofa. I lowered back down, returning to my leaning position.
“I can’t believe you were so close,” she said. “I thought it would take weeks to track you down.”
“Just happened to be looping back across,” I said.
“Did you hitch back here all the way from LA?”
“Nah. After I left, I went up to Portland for a few days, then I decided to just skip all the way across to New York. Took a bus.”
“A bus.” Her eyes flitted along my face, my button-down shirt, my jeans. “I don’t think I’ve ever ridden a bus.”
“Well, I’d never ridden in a limo,” I said.
She huffed out a little laugh. “I never did up until Frankie.” She frowned after she said his name. “I’m sorry about the gossip rags.”
My fingers tightened. “So tell me about this director guy.”
She bit her lip in such a cute way I wanted to nibble at it too. But we had this stuff to get through first. I waited for her to answer. She was clearly trying to put the right words together.
“We had an…agreement. I was sort of a publicity tool for him. Not a real girlfriend.”
This made me sit up a little straighter. “Are you one of those high-end call girls?”
“No!” she said quickly, the sound echoing in the empty room. The woman at the front desk looked up.
Jenny noticed her and her face turned pink. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.” She stood up and looked around. “I guess to my room.”
She seemed hesitant, so I took the gentleman’s route even though I didn’t want to. “I have my truck. We can go somewhere. A restaurant, maybe.”
Jenny glanced at the front door, then back at the elevator. “No, it’s fine. We can go up.” She shoved her hands in her front pockets and the innocent gesture had the opposite effect on me. The T-shirt pulled tight across her chest and all the images of her on the beach came roaring back. She and me, alone in a room. Sounded like a recipe for a crazy night, but I wouldn’t make any assumptions.
Not yet.
“Then we’ll go up,” I said, and followed her to the elevator.
She seemed timid when we were closed up inside. She pressed the button for the third floor and stared at the panel. I could smell her bath soap, fruity and light. The urge to touch her pink hair was almost impossible to suppress.
“So how did you find me?” I asked. “Couldn’t have been easy.”
“I got lucky several times,” she said. “The big tip was the guitar. It’s rare enough that I was able to track down who sold it to you.”
“Smart. Didn’t realize you knew your guitars.”
She shrugged. “I don’t. Paul from the Sonic Kings told me. I found them to see if they knew where you were.”
I was dying to ask why it was critical she found me, but I figured she’d tell me in her own time. No sense rushing things.
The doors opened to a standard hotel hall, patterned carpet and wall lights. She tugged her key card from her back pocket and slid it into a door a short ways down the corridor. When the handle clicked, she seemed to hesitate, but then soldiered on.
Curious. If she was so worried about being alone with me, why come at all?
It had to be connected to the newspaper articles.
I followed her into the room. She seemed unsure where to sit. The bed was still made, her suitcase open on the bedspread. “I should move this,” she said, her voice at a slightly higher pitch. She shoved the dress she was wearing earlier into it and flipped the lid.
“Let me get that,” I said. I lifted the suitcase and set it on the floor by the wall. The big hat hung over the corner of the television. I touched it. “You were hiding your hair?”
“Didn’t know if color was a thing here in Tennessee,” she said. “I was going out on a limb trying to weasel information out of people. I didn’t want to look alternative.”
“Redmond said you were with my mother.”
Her head snapped up. “She’s a lovely woman,” she said quickly.
I walked up close to her. “She’s a difficult woman.” I gave in to my temptation to touch her hair, fingering the soft dreadlocks. “Did she see these?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, her voice catching. She was achingly close. “But she apparently reads Star magazine.”
“Yeah, I knew she’d seen the photos. Were they in color?”
“Yeah. Maybe she forgot.”
Not likely. My mother had the memory of six elephants. “She was nice to you?” I asked.
“Very. Took me to tea. Showed me your bedroom.” She shoved at my arm. “I saw your Pokémon cards.”
“Yeah, that room is not the room I left,” I said.
“I figured. Unless you left at age ten.”
“She sanitized it. She thought my Grateful Dead posters were tools of the devil.”
She laughed. “I asked her about that. Why there wasn’t anything dealing with music.”
“She had an answer for everything, I bet,” I said. I didn’t get mad anymore about how she’d destroyed my room. It was past. She needed her fantasy about the kid I once was.
I knew we were talking about that director guy when we came upstairs, but I didn’t care about that part anymore. She was close, and I’d gone weeks without her, without anybody. I took another step in and pressed my hand gently at the small of her back.
She sucked in a breath, still looking at my chest rather than up at me, like she was trying to decide what she wanted. I was absolutely going to tip the scales in my direction.
“I think about the beach every day,” I said to her, and it was true. “You are one crazy impulsive woman.”
She looked up then, those silver eyes fixing on me. Her face was perfection, not a flaw on it. And she looked more natural today, not all glitzed up like at the party. Just simple. Easygoing.
I tweaked the hair near her forehead, using my hand on her back to keep her close. She smelled even more divine. “I like you like this,” I said. “Regular clothes. Like a real girl.”
This made her smile.
She had told me she was with that other guy only for show, and I believed her. Who knew how those Hollywood types worked? But she was here with me now, and that counted for more than something.
I could feel the puff of air from her breath as I leaned down and brushed my lips against hers. She melted a little against me, and I knew this was where she wanted to go. Maybe the beach had haunted her too.
I pressed in harder, sliding my tongue across her mouth until she parted for me. She tasted minty, like she’d brushed her teeth just before coming back downstairs. Her hands stayed by her sides and it became a little challenge of mine to get her to hold on to me. I’d play it nice and slow until she was the one to urge me on.
My hand in her hair slipped into all the dreadlocks and cupped her head. I drew her even more deeply against me, plumbing the sweetness of her mouth, breathing her in. I massaged the small of her back, the soft T-shirt bunching up beneath my palm until I found her skin, hot and smooth.
At my touch on her naked back, she jolted beneath me, moving forward. Then it happened, her arms came up and hung on to me. I jerked her tight against me, letting her feel the raging of my need for her. We were back, not on a beach in LA, but in my hometown now.
She was mine.
Chapter 42: Jenny
I hadn’t expected to get all up in Chance straight off, but here we were.
His hand was snaking up the back of my shirt, and I was pressed against that hard c
hest. His mouth was all over mine, and this boy, he had kissing down.
No way was I going to be able to resist this.
The lights were blazing, a nice change from all the dark of our first encounter. I wanted to see him, every muscle and plane. I wanted to get lost, let the world drop away, not think about the hard conversations ahead.
His lips made a trail down my jaw to my neck. He moved his hand from my hair to my waist, where it flirted with the hem of my shirt.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling his touch on me, the sensations spiraling up into a frenzy. I didn’t want to push anything, just let things take their course. He owned me in the most intimate way, his grain of sand taking over my belly, and he didn’t even know.
His hands moved up, finding the cups of my bra. “I see you went back to wearing underwear,” he said against my collarbone.
“Didn’t want to shock the southerners,” I said.
His fingers moved to the band in the back and I felt it loosen as he unfastened the hook. His mouth found mine again, and my knees wobbled. What was so different about this boy that I really felt things? There was no awkwardness or disappointment or an urge to hurry it up or tell him what to do. I just fell in.
Something slid down one arm, then the other, and with a little gasp against his mouth, I realized he’d pulled my bra off from underneath the T-shirt. It hit the floor with a quiet thump.
“Talent,” I whispered against his mouth.
“My fingers know what they like,” he said back.
My nipples felt super sensitive against the shirt. He broke the kiss and leaned down, covering my breast with his mouth outside the fabric.
His breath was hot and I clutched at his head, feeling the urgency sizzling through me, more potent than ever before. I wondered if it had to do with the baby, because suddenly I was crazy with it. I could not wait. I needed him now.
I jerked his shirt from the waistband of his jeans. I wanted my hands on him. The hot band of muscle cording up his ribs fed my frenzy.
I reached his chest and reacquainted myself with the hard pecs. I pictured him working out to maintain this gold standard of man chest and my knees weakened a little more.
