I twisted off the beautiful, two-carat prison and held it out to him. He regarded it a long moment before taking it. His quiet footsteps echoed as he walked away.
If only I felt relief. If only I felt sadness. If only I felt something.
•••
“France? You can’t move to France!” Jules’ eyes widened in shock.
“Like hell I can’t.” I shoved clothes into my suitcases, not bothering to fold anything; I just wanted to get out of New York as quickly as possible.
“What about Connor?”
“What about him? We broke up.”
“When?”
“Right after the funeral.”
“Jesus—why?”
I shrugged.
“That’s not an answer!”
“What am I supposed to say, Jules?” I demanded. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
“Come live with me in New Paltz.”
“And do what? I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t move across an ocean; this is drastic.”
“Yep.”
“Who are these people?”
“My mother’s oldest friends. I need to start over. I can’t do that in New York, and I can’t do that with you watching me with those eyes.”
“What eyes?”
“You know, those Jules-judgmental eyes. You’re worried I’ve gone off the rails.”
“Haven’t you? You broke up with your fiancé, and you’re leaving the only city you’ve ever lived in.”
“I quit my job, too.”
“Obviously.”
“Connor was a symptom,” I murmured.
“I don’t understand.”
“When I found out my mother was going to die, I cried in the shower for hours. He pretended he didn’t hear me, but I knew he was home.”
Jules looked at me, words lost on her tongue.
I closed my eyes. “I just can’t do it anymore—I’m tired.”
“You’ll be so far from—”
“Home? This isn’t my home. Not anymore.”
Chapter 5
Kai
“What is this?” the blonde asked in stilted English as she stroked a finger across the brand on my chest. It was puckered now, a callused souvenir of all that I’d lost. Sometimes I felt it burning, a phantom pain that was as real as any I’d ever known.
I winced at the memory; two years felt like yesterday. Time hadn’t dulled my grief.
“A brand,” I evaded, my mind sluggish. I was in Spain, or maybe Portugal. Most of the time I was too drunk to notice where I was, or where I slept—or the women. So many women, and the guilt—it’s why I kept moving. Stay still and I’d sink like an old battleship.
“What’s it for?” She pouted her sultry lips.
I found her irritating, and there were only two things to do at this point; get up and leave, or bury myself in her and lose my thoughts all together.
“You want to waste our time talking?” I asked, bringing her face close to mine for a kiss.
She purred in the back of her throat. Thankful for the brief respite, I grasped her hips and hauled her on top of me.
My memories disappeared like a wisp of smoke.
•••
I left the blonde and headed to London without purpose.
It was raining. There was nothing unusual about the weather—it always rained in England; it didn’t matter what time of year it was or what season.
The pub was dark, and I pushed back my University of Tennessee baseball cap in an attempt to see. I perched on a stool and grinned at an attractive woman that approached the wooden, scarred slab of a bar.
“Buy you a drink?” I drawled.
The brunette smiled, dimpling. A flush stole up her cheeks as I perused her with bold eyes. It was almost too easy—they never put up a fight, but I was glad because I didn’t want the challenge. I wanted to forget.
“Sure.”
“What will it be?”
“Surprise me,” she said, her posh London accent rolling over me. She attempted to tease, yet I didn’t get the tingling rush of the hunt.
It had been a long time since I’d felt much of anything—I doubted I’d recognize it when I did.
Dipping my hat, I ordered a bourbon and ginger ale and squeezed the lime into the glass. “There ya go. It’s a good old fashioned Southern drink.”
She raised an eyebrow, took a sip, and then smiled. “This is good!”
I chuckled. “Don’t sound so surprised. What’s your name?”
“Erin.”
I didn’t care; I wouldn’t remember it in the morning. It was always the same. Every night, wherever I was I’d go to a bar, single out a pretty girl and go home with her, hoping it would be enough to see me through the next day.
Some nights I didn’t even bother; it was too much effort, the guilt of being alive too much. Whenever that feeling stewed near the surface, I knew it was time to move on. Sometimes I had a few weeks in a place before that happened; sometimes it wasn’t even a day.
I never knew peace.
Two years ago with only Tristan’s baseball cap and my grandfather’s mandolin, I picked up, headed for Asia, and hadn’t talked to my family since. I walked dirt roads, ate unusual foods, and wondered why old men with craggy, brown faces and very few teeth were so happy—content even.
“Want to sit with me a minute?” I asked.
Erin looked over her shoulder at her three friends, who were seated at a battered table.
I leaned my five-ten frame toward her, appearing taller than most men over six feet. It was the confidence, Tristan used to say.
“Just a minute?” I coerced.
“Okay,” she said, sliding onto the stool next to me. “What’s your name?”
“Kai.”
“Where are you from, Kai?”
“Wherever.” Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed two blurry shadows. I swiveled my head, expecting my best friends to be sitting at the other end of the bar. Instead, I saw two middle-aged men, who looked nothing like Reece and Tristan, and they peered back at me in curiosity. I sighed. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Let me tell my friends—in case you’re a crazy person.” She smiled.
Already, I felt the drive to move on. After I said goodbye to what’s-her-name in the morning, I’d hop a train or a plane bound for somewhere else.
Maybe Amsterdam. Tristan always wanted to visit the Red Light District. I’d go there.
What else did I have to do?
•••
“I bet chicks are digging that brand of yours,” Tristan says, pointing at my shirtless chest.
I grin and shrug. We’re both dressed in ratty jeans rolled up to the ankles and wading into the silvery water. I can almost feel the sun beating down on me, almost remember the smell of Monteagle in summer.
“What country are you in now?” Reece asks from the bank.
“Not sure.”
“Have you become an alcoholic?” Tristan teases.
“I can still remember my name, so what do you think?” I quip.
“I think you’re boozing hard,” Reece says with concern.
“You always were the mother hen, weren’t you?” Tristan laughs, but Reece doesn’t smile.
“It’s going to catch up to you, you know,” Reece says, as if Tristan hadn’t spoken.
“Don’t listen to him, Kai. If you need to drink to get through this, then do it.”
“It’s been two years,” Reece says, his anger evident. He rarely gets irate, so when he does, it means I have to listen. “You going to drink yourself to death? Is that what you want?”
“I want you guys back.”
“We’re dead. No amount of drinking will change that fact. Don’t these dreams make you crazy?” Reece wonders aloud.
“These dreams feel more real than the life I’ve been living.”
“You call this a life? Traveling from place to place, but not actually doing anything. L
osing yourself in the arms of women you can’t recall?”
“You guys are so melancholy. You’re worse than a Nirvana album. Here.” Tristan tosses me a fishing pole. “Morning’s coming, and then Kai will have to leave. Might as well get in some good fishing. What do you say?”
I grip the rod, cast it into the lake, and get an immediate bite.
“How the hell do you do that?” Tristan asks.
“I’m a regular Huck Finn.”
“Kai was always a better fisherman than you, Tristan. Always has been, always will be. Doesn’t matter where we are.”
“At least I still have my luck with women.”
“Yep, you found El Dorado when you got Lucy,” I say.
Tristan grins. “I did, didn’t I?”
“We should all be so lucky,” I mutter.
“Luck? You call this luck?” Tristan fumes, and looks like he wants to throw a punch. He chucks his pole instead, and it splashes into the water, shattering the dream lake’s serenity. “We’re the ones that died.”
I grimace. “Like I could ever forget.”
Reece shakes his head. “You have one life, and you’re wasting it.”
“I wonder what you’d do in my shoes,” I say, my own voice rising. “Would you be any different?” My gaze slides to Tristan. “You would’ve had Lucy. You would’ve had a woman to love you back to life. I don’t have that. I’ve got a bottle of bourbon, a mandolin, and the need to keep moving.”
Tristan looks at me. “That’s what you think. Your life can change in a heartbeat.”
“I know that,” I state.
“You ready for it?” Reece asks.
“Won’t matter if I am or not. What do you guys know that I don’t?”
“Not a damn thing,” Tristan answers.
Chapter 6
Sage
I pressed my forehead against the cold window of the airplane. Sighing in exhaustion, I pulled the seat belt tight against my stomach and attempted to tune out the flight attendant’s chirpy voice filtering through the intercom.
I took out the Sky Mall magazine, flipped through it, and marveled at the things people could be coerced into buying. Who wanted a Lord of the Rings chess set, a washroom for their cat, or a hideous frog fountain?
People are deranged.
I put the Sky Mall catalog back and took out the airline’s safety brochure. The first page I turned to had an illustration of an airplane floating in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, complete with smiling passengers hopping into life rafts as though they had reached their destination.
Right.
I shut the brochure and closed my eyes, anxiety curling in my belly at the thought that I was about to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an aluminum death trap.
“Nervous?”
I looked over to see a middle-aged, matronly woman who reminded me very much of my mother. It suddenly hurt to breathe. I didn’t respond.
“Is this your first time going to France?”
“Yes,” I replied, answering both questions simultaneously. I turned my head back to the window and gazed out at the runway. In the darkening light, men in orange jumpsuits sprayed down the plane, trying to scrape off ice and snow in preparation for takeoff.
I tugged at the collar on my thick, black sweater as a cold chill trailed down my neck.
“Vacation?” the woman asked, attempting to pull me into a dialogue.
“Sure.” I closed my eyes again, hoping my obvious desire to be left alone would stop the woman’s attempt at chitchat.
It didn’t.
“Are you going to Paris? Paris is so romantic, even in this kind of weather. French winters are more rainy than snowy, but it’s still a wonderful city.”
I made a vague sound in the back of my throat. The flight attendant finished her safety demonstration, and the pilot announced it would be a few more minutes until takeoff.
The woman droned on, “You look like you’re in college. Is this your Christmas break?”
I should have been flattered that I still appeared young after all I had been through. I swore I looked like a haggard old woman at the end of my life, a crone that had seen everything. “I’m not in college.”
“Are you from New York? I don’t know how people live there. The huge buildings, the subway—the homeless.”
What would it take to shut her up? Her enthusiastic prattle grated on my last nerve. I thought about recounting my most horrific subway story that featured a homeless man exposing himself, wondering if it would stun her into silence. All I had hoped for after weeks of emotional upheaval was a long, quiet flight without having to engage with anyone.
“Excuse me,” I uttered, unbuckling my seat belt. “I need to use the restroom.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “But you can’t go now, we’re about to—”
“When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
A perky blonde flight attendant, perhaps the one who had spoken over the intercom, appeared in the aisle almost instantly. She must have had a sensor for recalcitrant passengers. “Excuse me, ma’am, you have to sit down.”
“I need to use the bathroom for one second,” I whispered, my voice beginning to tremble. Emotion flooded my veins as I tried to remain collected. It was everything I could to do to keep from screaming.
“Ma’am, we will be in the air in a moment. The captain will turn off the seat belt sign when it’s safe, and then you’ll be able to use the restroom.” The attendant’s voice was firm, her stance pugnacious.
I could only imagine how I appeared—gray eyes stained red from non-stop crying, my face white with pain and anger. Matted, dull chestnut hair I couldn’t be bothered to brush because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered; especially not appearances.
It was all bullshit.
The flight attendant’s tone turned combative. “Please sit down.”
For one long moment, I didn’t move, didn’t breathe. With reluctance, I took my seat and buckled myself in. The flight attendant nodded and then continued moving down the aisle, closing compartments in rapid succession.
The woman next to me remained blessedly silent.
As the plane began to pull away from the gate, I shut my eyes. I didn’t watch as I flew away from the city I had once called home.
•••
“Would you like something to drink?” It was the flight attendant whose pleasant mask was back in place. How did she do it? I wore my emotions like a sweater, and I didn’t have any acting talent to conceal my grief.
“Coke, please,” the woman next to me answered.
“And for you, ma’am?”
“What scotch do you have?” I inquired. It was an evening flight, but if it had been eight o’clock in the morning, I might have asked for it anyway.
“Canadian Club, Dewar’s, and Glenlivet.”
“Glenlivet, please,” I replied, handing the attendant my credit card and ID.
“Want anything in it?” She glanced at the ID and swiped the credit card before returning them.
“No, thanks.” I opened the mini bottle of scotch, pouring it into cup I’d been given. She rolled her cart along, serving other passengers.
“You don’t look old enough to drink.” There was a dose of protective concern in my companion’s voice.
It made me hesitate ever so briefly. “Well, I am. Would you like to see my ID, too?” Inhaling a shaky breath, I took a liberal sip, feeling warmth blast through me. “Consider it a sedative,” I said, trying for levity and failing.
“You’re afraid to fly, right?”
I didn’t answer as I gazed out the window into a bank of clouds. I wanted to forget the horror of the last couple of weeks, the endless days and nights of my mother’s pain, and then what came after.
The tears fell unchecked down my face, and I sniffed.
A tissue appeared, and then my compatriot put a hand on mine and squeezed in sympathy. It only made it worse, and I wondered if I would ever be able to take a deep breath with
out feeling like I was dying.
•••
Eight hours later, the plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Tired passengers unhooked their seat belts and stood, wanting to stretch their legs and disembark.
I didn’t move, waiting until it cleared. When half the plane was empty, the woman next to me rose and pulled a bag from the overhead compartment. With one final look at me, she inclined her head and left.
We had come to an understanding somewhere over the ocean.
I trudged through the airport, looking for baggage claim signs through bleary eyes. I wondered how tourists ever found their way through the labyrinth of French confusion. Even I, who spoke and read French, had trouble.
Only a few pieces of luggage remained when I arrived at the carousel. Celia, with her sleek brown bob and willowy form, waited for me. Had it really been a week since I’d seen my mother’s oldest friend at the funeral? Grief moved differently through time—it wasn’t linear; it was everywhere, relentless and constant.
“Hello, Sage.”
“Hello.”
“Want me to wheel those for you?” Celia didn’t wait for an answer. Reaching out, she began to drag my suitcases behind her, walking in silence to the car park. Though it was only ten in the morning, it was dark, and drizzling winter storm clouds hovered overhead. I hunched in my coat in a meager attempt to keep the rain off my neck.
“How long is the drive?” I asked, when we were on our way in Celia’s tiny car.
“About three hours,” Celia replied. “I’m sure you’re sick of sitting.”
I was sick of many things, but I kept quiet.
“Are you hungry? We could stop for something.” She maneuvered through the streets of Paris, channeling the energy of a New York City cabbie. I found it amusing as she cursed in French when a bout of road rage overtook her.
“Sorry, that’s the worst of it, I promise. The roads are a little wider once you get out of the city.”
Dandelion Dreams Page 3
