The Girl of Tokens and Tears

by Susan Ward

  “Who are you trying to convince, Chrissie? Me or yourself?”

  Direct hit. Again. No matter how you try to fix your life, I’m learning you can still have doubts and regrets and I am at times regretting breaking it off with Neil.

  I look down at Jack. “No one. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. I’m just pissed off because Neil is not a dump and run guy. And it really pisses me off that you thought he could treat me that way.”

  “I didn’t believe it. I worried it. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to me.”

  ~~~

  I go into my bedroom and pack my bag, determined to get the hell out of here quickly.

  Last night was tense and awful. Breakfast this morning was even worse, and I just want to get out of here, before one more thing comes my way to make me feel badly about the decisions I’m making in my life.

  I lug my duffel to the front door, but before I can open it, Jack’s there quickly. He takes the bag from my hand.

  “I wish you were staying longer,” he says.

  “I’ll call you when I get back to Berkeley.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Three days.”

  Jack nods, his lips scrunched together, his chin moving out just a touch in that way he has when he wants to ask more and won’t do it. I can tell by his expression that it’s in his thoughts that I still haven’t told him where I’m going. And it’s suddenly not unnoticed by me that I’m lying to my father, again.

  I follow my dad into the driveway and wait by the open car door as he tosses my duffel into the back.

  He kisses me on the forehead. “Drive carefully, Chrissie.”

  I smile. “I will. I’ll call you Wednesday.”

  I climb into the car, Jack closes my door, and I put my key in the ignition. I drive away and it hurts, really hurts, to see my dad still in the driveway watching me.

  I’m not a little girl anymore. I shouldn’t feel badly about not telling Jack about Alan and me. I have a right to my own life and privacy. Jack certainly keeps a thing or two private from me. But I do feel badly, like I did, as a little girl. All the things I hid from my father, and all the worry and pain I gave him because of it.

  As I drive beneath the high black metal Hope Ranch arch of our neighborhood, I give it the finger. There’s no hope for me here. I will always be the same; blurred, messy, and never certain of anything.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When I get to the Malibu house, I pull into the driveway and am surprised to see a car there. I’m a day early. Why is Alan already here?

  I hurry up the walk, not bothering to grab my bag, and use my key to let myself in. I find Alan in the living room sitting in a chair at the far side of the room before the wall of glass, and it looks like he’s been doing nothing for a while but sitting in that chair staring off into space. He doesn’t even have a drink in his hand.

  I hang back at the edge of the foyer and just gaze at him. He’s bathed in bright light, only mildly tempered by the shading on the glass, and the sight of him takes my breath away. I slowly start picking out other details of the room. He hasn’t been here long. His bag is sitting there where he dumped it and Alan is a creature of perfect order. It would normally be put away. And he’s wearing the type of clothes he travels in—soft jeans, loafers, and a loose, dark silk shirt.

  There’s something on his face that puts me instantly on edge. “You’re a day early. Is everything OK? Are you OK?”

  Alan runs his fingers through his hair. “Exhausted.” He laughs softly. “But I’m good. Very good.”

  My brows hitch up since I don’t know what to think of that. He sounds almost pleased—or is it relieved?—about something. I can’t tell for sure because he does look exhausted, and more, a strange kind of look of almost tired serenity.

  “You look really tired, Alan. It makes me feel awful that you did the extra travel to see me.”

  He shrugs. “Don’t feel awful. I want to be here. It’s just road fatigue.”

  “You look more like roadkill,” I tease and he smiles. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  “I traveled back early to take care of something and I think it’s finally OK. That’s why I’m in Malibu and that’s why I’m just sitting here. I’m savoring not having anything left to fuck up my life. And I’m definitely better than OK now that you’re here.”

  I smile even though I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about, but he does seem happy.

  “I hate missing you, Chrissie.” He crosses the room to me, his eyes unwavering on mine. “I hate leaving you. And I hate not being here with you.”

  I should probably ask him what’s stirring this up inside him tonight, this uncharacteristic happiness, but it doesn’t matter. Not now. Maybe never.

  “Then take me to bed,” I say. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  Suddenly, I’m in his arms and he’s kissing me, all over my face, sloppily, unlike Alan, overly exuberant, confusing and wonderfully so.

  “I love you,” I whisper against his lips.

  “Let’s be good to each other,” Alan whispers as I am carried from the room.

  ~~~

  I lie on the bed naked. I hear the sound of the Polaroid. I watch the picture drop to the floor.

  I stare up at Alan, trying not to let him see how difficult this is for me. “I hate having pictures taken of me. Why are you doing it?”

  “I want to preserve how you look today,” he whispers, and his voice is so damn seductive, and the feel of him is all around me, so I don’t even flinch when he takes another one.

  Alan slept fifteen hours straight after we made love the first time, and has been Playful Alan ever since. We haven’t eaten and he hardly lets me get out of bed.

  I run my fingers through my hair and he smiles wickedly, taking another shot of me.

  “Why do you want those?”

  He drops the camera and moves up the bed toward me on hands and knees. He kisses my stomach. “I’ve got two more months on the road.” His mouth moves lower to my pelvis. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to do it.” His tongue runs up to my navel. “I want a picture …” He’s above me, his mouth close to my ear, “…so when I’m alone thinking of you, I can look at you exactly how you are, and stare at you as I finish thinking of you.”

  It takes me a moment to figure out what he just said. Then I flush, embarrassed as I push him away. “God, Alan, you’re obnoxious today. Why are you always you’re most obnoxious when you’re happy? Give me those pictures.”

  He laughs, holding my struggling body against the bed as I try to take back from him the little picture squares. “Do you ever think of me in private intimate moments?”

  My cheeks go scarlet even though he phrased that well. “I’m not answering.”

  “No?”

  His eyes are gleaming now and he’s reclined on a hip beside me. “I’ve gotten very good at imagining you and doing this,” he whispers.

  My eyes stray and I inhale sharply. I’m more than a little shocked and definitely uncomfortable now. He’s fully erect and stroking it with his hand and enjoying my astounded expression. Alan is passionate and unpredictable in bed…but this? It’s so far beyond his level of nasty with me that I don’t know what to do.

  I realize I’m watching and I swallow and look away.

  “No, Chrissie, watch me,” he breaths into my ear as his thumb brushes my lip. “I want to imagine you watching me do this when we’re not together.”

  My lips part to accommodate my breathing and my gaze moves back to him without my command. His eyes are serious and dark, and they widen as his strokes move quicker. His fingers start to play in my hair as his own breathing changes.

  “You don’t know how hard it is for me when we’re not together,” he whispers, and as he moves his hand up and down, I’m getting incredibly hot and shouldn’t. My muscles are pulsing and I’m moistening there.

  His tongue swirls around my nipple and my breath hitches in
my throat. His mouth drops open as his breathing increases with the slow building movement of his fingers. My teeth sink into my lower lip, every inch of skin scorching and wanting him as I watch him release into his own hand.

  A sound snaps me out of the stupor of my unexpectedly vivid arousal. The Polaroid and another square floating to the bed.

  “That’s the picture I want. Me watching you want me while I do this.”

  And before I can say anything, his hands are gripping my hair, dragging my lips back to his. Frustrated, into his kiss I murmur, “Don’t ever do that again. It’s nasty and unfair.”

  Against my mouth, I feel the vibration of his laughter. Then his kisses roam from my neck to my breast, as his hands deftly massage my sex before his mouth replaces his fingers there. I dig my nails into the flesh of his shoulders and moan. My head starts to move on the pillow as Alan, with his tongue and fingers, in record time releases the want in my body he put there.

  When my shakes subside and my breathing calms, he lifts his face, staring up at me. “I’m never unfair,” he says on a low seductive whispers.

  He covers me with his body, then swirls his tongue in my mouth.

  When he pulls back I groan. “That was all out of order. I always want to boff after you do that.”

  Alan laughs, amused. “Boff? How come you can say British slang words for sex and not American?”

  I make a face and laugh. “Probably because my first was a Brit.”

  Alan grins. “Was he any good?”

  “I don’t know. He’s the only Brit I’ve ever done.”

  He kisses my shoulder. “He better be the only Brit you ever do,” he says, and then the smile leaves his eyes. “It’s getting harder to leave you. Not that it’s ever been easy. But it is getting harder.”

  I stare up at him. “It’s getting harder for me, too.”

  He pulls me against his body and surrounds me with his arms. “You could go out on the road with me. It’s only two months. It’s not like girls don’t do that.”

  I drop my gaze from his and pull away, taking the sheet with me. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

  I’m almost out of the bed and his hand stops me. “Christ, that’s not what I meant. I was referring to taking time off from school. I don’t have girls travel with me on the road and there’s no reason you can’t travel with me.”

  I stare at him, shaking my head, trying to steady my anger. “I can think of a lot of reasons.”

  He rakes a hand through his hair, frustrated with me, and then I’m hauled up back against him, back in his arms, back in the bed. “I don’t care what anyone knows or thinks about us. Why do you care so much?”

  I don’t want to argue, and I definitely don’t want to ruin the day with this conversation, since it forces me to think of all that will happen and not happen after I graduate. Probably nothing will change with us and that’s the hardest part of knowing my life is changing again; that we will be the same, existing only here, and all other parts of us separate.

  “I can’t travel with you and don’t ask me again.”

  He makes a strange sound, half exhale and half growl. “God, you’re frustrating. We can both have so much more, but you won’t even talk about it. You haven’t even told me what you plan to do after you graduate. What happens, Chrissie, once you’re done with school?”

  I let out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know. How’s that for an answer?”

  He lifts my chin, forcing me to look at him, but his eyes are no longer angry, they are rapidly searching my face as if he’s looking something and not finding it.

  “I don’t know,” I repeat, not knowing why.

  He takes me with him as he sinks into the sheets, his body molding into me and his arms hold me closely.

  ~~~

  I wake to the sound of glass hitting glass.

  I ease away from Alan and gaze up at him. It’s barely morning, he’s wide awake, when Alan hardly ever wakes before noon. His posture tells me he’s been sitting there quite a while, drinking and watching me.

  “You are not returning to Berkeley,” he snaps.

  All drowsiness leaves my flesh in a nerve-popping jolt. I scoot away from Alan, dragging the sheets to cover me, rapidly searching face, and then my heart drops to my knees because his eyes are hooded as they burn into me.

  He says, “You still talk in your sleep. Do you know that?”

  No, no, no! Why did he ask me that?

  “I didn’t know that,” I whisper, my voice sounding surprisingly calm even though every part of me is frantic and afraid.

  He takes a long swallow of his drink. “Neil hasn’t mentioned it?”

  Oh god! “I stopped seeing Neil.”

  Those black eyes fix on me, unblinking. “When did you end it with him?”

  My body chills and then heat rises on my cheeks. I try to stutter out a safe response and somehow manage to say nothing. His eyes lock on me again.

  “When did you end it with Neil? Don’t lie to me, Chrissie.”

  I sit up in the bed, struggling to meet his gaze directly, though the way he is staring at me makes it an unbearably painful thing.

  “I would never lie to you. I ended it with Neil because I love you.”

  He sets down his drink, running a hand through his hair. “God damn you, I ask you not to do it and you rip out my heart anyway,” he says through gritted teeth. “You won’t be straight with me even when I ask you to and yet you just answered me, Chrissie.”

  The phone rings and it makes me jump and it kicks up Alan’s temper. He reaches out and grabs the receiver.

  “What,” he bites off into the phone. “I’m in Malibu. I’m taking a couple days down time at the beach. No, I’m not discussing that.”

  My stomach turns. I can hear Nia’s voice through the phone. I can’t make out the words, but everything inside me grows cold. I don’t know which is worse. How Nia sounds talking to Alan. Or that he let me hear them talk because he is angry with me, and in Alan-like simplicity he can get in a blow during our fight without even being focused on me.

  “OK,” Alan says. “That’s fine. Tell them I’ve agreed to that.”

  He hangs up the phone and I stare up at him, shaking. “You’re such an asshole. Why do you have to be so mean when you’re angry?”

  I scramble from the bed, go for my bag and rapidly start packing up my things.

  “That’s it, Chrissie. Run. Give you an excuse to run and not have to face anything in your life directly and you take it. That is what you do, isn’t it, love?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean,” I hiss.

  Every line in his face tightens in extreme Alan anger. “You ran off in New York, and you fucked up everything for both of us. You fucked up my life, too. You don’t have a right to get angry today.”

  “It didn’t sound fucked up to me on the phone.”

  “I haven’t lived with Nia since six months before I came to see you in Berkeley,” he says, almost inflectionless. “We’ve been battling in divorce for four years. I gave her everything she wanted so I could finally get out. That call was her bleeding me one last time before we sign the papers. If you didn’t know what we are to me, why didn’t you ask? You are the only woman in my life, Chrissie. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”

  He holds me in an unrelenting stare and his gaze is brutally intense, shards of fury and despondency and hurt. It’s too much, all at once, from everything foggy to clear in a horrible, unimaginable way.

  I continue to pack, my body shaking so fiercely I can barely grab hold of my clothes and shove them in. “I’m not going to answer that. I think it’s better I don’t. I think I should leave before we both say things we’ll regret.”

  His eyes harden and some still functioning part of my brain warns that I’ve just fucked up big time as Alan calmly grabs his pants and pulls them into place.

  “That’s how you want to deal with this?” He shakes his head, not bothering to even
look at me. “You can leave if you want to, but if you do we’re over, Chrissie. Or you can come to the patio, once you’ve thought this through, and if you are honest with me I will listen and we’ll see where we go from there.”

  With that, Alan walks away. I stare at the door and sink down on the bed. He’s angrier than I have ever seen him, so angry he’s quiet. I shouldn’t even try to talk to him. The way he is now, this could spin out of control in any direction.

  He wants honesty…fuck…and the voice in my head reminds of all the reasons why this is so important to him. And the voice also reminds me of other things about Alan, warning how dangerous it will be for the both of us if tell him everything about Neil; of all the times people he loved have lied to him; though I was never, not really, deliberately dishonesty. At least, I don’t think I intended to be deliberately dishonest with him. Though I’m not even sure of that now. It always felt as if the parts of me not lived in this house did not hold the feel of realness. They were just things I did. Unimportant. Not mention, because the only parts of me that mattered were the parts of me here with Alan.

  The distraught look on his face as he left the bedroom shames me. I was so unkind to him in how I behaved in this…will he forgive me…will the truth be enough? I don’t know, and that I don’t scares the hell out of me and I am more afraid than I have been at any other moment in my life.

  Somehow I manage to go to my duffel, pull out some sweats, and dress. I open the door. The house is quiet when I step into the hall, and oddly it surprises me that it is. I don’t know what I expected, but not this heavy, waiting silence.

  I go toward the wall of glass and I find Alan on the patio just as he said he would be. Then I slide open the door and step out.

  After a minute or two, Alan pushes off the wall and stomps out his cigarette on the concrete. His jaw is clenching. His gaze shifts and his eyes lock on me.

  “Even after this I’m not sure I want us over,” he says, sounding frustrated with himself, but he is pulsing with anger even more strongly than he was in the bedroom. “You didn’t answer me when I asked before. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”