We went around once. The cutoff to Cooper’s Point came and went.
“Head okay?” he called back.
“Better,” I said.
So we went around again. It was darker still this time, but I felt safe—certainly safer than I had standing beside my vandalized car back at Omie’s. James ran immediately ahead, his feet rhythmically striking the ground, lean legs in a fluid stride, butt tight, back straight, arms pumping easily. He glanced behind every few minutes to make sure I kept up. Had I fallen, he would have been there. I knew that. It was another gut thing.
Did he alter his pace to help me out? Probably. But he built up a sweat anyway. I could see it on his neck and his arms, in the spikes of his hair and on his face each time he looked back, and when we finally reached our starting point again and stopped, he was breathing as hard and deeply as I was.
Gesturing for me to stay, he got two fresh waters from the car. We drank them leaning against trees at the start of the woods. Dusk had fallen; for all practical purposes, we were hidden away. It was incredibly peaceful—peaceful until his eyes met mine one more time, and one more time I felt the pull.
He pushed off from his tree and came toward mine. “Do you know what in the hell this is?” he asked, sounding truly perplexed.
I shook my head. Oh, it was physical attraction of the most basic kind. But it wasn’t supposed to happen. Not between James and me.
Between James Meade and me? No way.
But I could see it in his eyes and feel it in my body, and when he put a hand on the back of my neck and pulled my mouth to his, there was something live between us that caught fire and burned. The kiss went on and on, turning this way and that, deepening and withdrawing and deepening again, but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t nearly enough. By the time he drew back, my arms clutched his shoulders and his clutched my waist, and it wasn’t enough.
His eyes were dark in the encroaching night, his voice hoarse. “Do we want to do this?”
I shook my head, but my hands betrayed me by curving around his shoulders and sliding over sweaty skin to the nape of his neck—and the sweat was as appealing as everything else. Chemistry? Omigod. Chemistry didn’t began to explain the need I felt just then.
He kissed me again. His hands didn’t have to guide my face this time, so they found my breasts, and what he did with them was incredible, but it wasn’t enough.
I could barely breathe, could barely speak, but as I drew back enough to grab the hem of my top, I whispered, “Don’t want to do it, but will die if we stop.”
I imagined that the strangled sound I heard was a laugh, but it was quickly muffled when he pulled his own top over his head. I wanted my breasts against his chest. He wanted them in his mouth. He got his way. With one nipple drawn in and the other rolled between his fingers, my knees went weak. I clutched him now so that I didn’t fall.
A final time, in the heat of it, I thought it—James Meade and me?—but in the next instant the thought was gone and never returned. Identity had no chance against raw passion, which was what we shared. To this day, I have no idea how we got out of our shorts, what I leaned against as he thrust into me again and again, whether either of us spoke, or how James knew to withdraw in the instant before he climaxed. But it was good. It was incredible. I couldn’t speak for James, though the sounds that came from his throat were something of a testament, but for me, it was the longest and most intense orgasm I had ever had in my life. And as if that weren’t amazing enough, we just sat there for a while—James on a log, me astride him, both of us buck naked—sat there until the fire had cooled and evening set in.
We dressed then and went to our cars. We didn’t touch. He seemed lost in thought, and I didn’t know what to say either. When we stopped, our eyes met, and for a minute longer he seemed confused. Then, quietly and with an odd unsureness, he said, “Want to meet her?”
I followed him to his house. It was a large brick Colonial, as I had expected it would be, only it wasn’t on Birch with the others. It was on the south end of town, not far, actually, from Tom’s and with the extra land that James wouldn’t have found had he bought a house on Birch. There were no lights on either side of his home or even across the street, just those flanking his own front door and warming the windows inside.
The babysitter greeted us. She looked to be about my age, though her face wasn’t familiar. James introduced us, paid her, and she left.
I was assuming that the baby was asleep when he led me through the kitchen to an open family room, and there was a very little girl, sitting in the middle of the floor holding the corner of a fleece blanket, while the rest trailed to the side. Her hair was short, thick, and dark, and her footed pajamas were pink. More vivid colors—shapes, numbers, animated animals—came from the large-screen TV to which she was riveted.
We didn’t speak, and for the longest time she didn’t know we were there. I looked at James. He didn’t take his eyes from the child.
Then something tipped her off. She looked back, saw James, and her entire face lit. In an instant, she was crawling our way. Not once did she take her eyes off his face. He was on his haunches when she reached him and caught her up into a hug.
I actually took a step back then. It seemed such a private moment, such an adoring moment, that I didn’t belong. But then James stood and brought the child closer. She had a small arm around his neck and large eyes on me.
“This is Mia,” he said in an exquisitely gentle voice.
Seeing her close up, I caught my breath. She was beautiful, and I told him that. Unable to resist, I took her little hand. “Hello, Mia,” I said in a voice that was as gentle as his, but then, there was no other way to greet this child. With creamy skin, tiny rosebud lips, and dark eyes with just the slightest slant to suggest Asian descent, she was all innocence. Her hand was warm, but it didn’t quite grasp mine. I was a stranger.
She kept her eyes on me through a tour of the kitchen, where James filled her bedtime bottle, and then it was up to her room, done up in yellows and pinks, where he settled into a rocker and let her drink, and still she looked at me. By the time she was done, she was comfortable enough to give me a smile, but it was a sleepy one. She babbled a little while James changed her diaper, but even the babble was sleepy. By the time he put her in her crib, with her favorite bear in the corner, her favorite square of fleece in her hand, and her favorite mobile playing a lullaby, she was asleep.
He turned down the light and turned up the monitor. Then he took my hand, led me into a master bedroom suite that I couldn’t see because he didn’t bother with a light there at all, and made love to me again.
He was truly incredible. Totally aside from stamina, which he had in spades for a guy with more gray in his hair than black, he was so strong and at the same time so gentle that I was beside myself with need when he finally entered me. He wore a condom this time, which meant that he stayed there through not one, but two orgasms—and I’m talking simultaneous ones, which is so rare. But it was like his excitement spurred mine, which then spurred his, which spurred mine more…
I’m sorry. I’m not being very articulate, certainly not poetic here, but you get the idea. Suffice it to say that when we finally separated, I was totally spent. I thought he was, too, until, with little warning, he scooped me up and carried me into the shower.
We needed it. After four miles of running and two bouts of sex, we were pretty ripe. Soap took care of that—lots of soap and lather and scrubbing. Ah-hah, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we were going to make love again, there in the shower.
Nope. There was plenty of feeling and touching—he scrubbed me, I scrubbed him—but we didn’t go farther than that. Actually, a kind of shyness set in when those oversize bath sheets of his covered each of us up. For my part, I was trying to understand what had happened and why and what I was going to do with it. He must have been thinking something similar because, with his towel hooked around his hips, he straightened his chest, dusted w
ith wisps of newly washed and dried hair, and said with vague amazement, “Annie Barnes? Who’d a thought it?”
I blushed. How flattering was that?
And being waited on for dinner—how flattering was that?
After checking in on Mia, he led me to a sleek kitchen with ash cabinets and state-of-the-art appliances, and plied me with a fabulous Pinot Noir while he grilled us a foursome of burgers. I ate my two as quickly as he ate his. I was starved.
By the time we were done, all sorts of little warning bells were dinging in the back of my mind, but I kept them there—muted, way in the back—until I was in the van and on my way home. Then they rang out, and it struck me. If James Meade could have chosen anything that would keep me in the Meade corner and out of mischief, it was this.
After I’d been floating for the last two hours, that realization grounded me.
Then I walked in and found Phoebe in the kitchen waiting, only not in pajamas. She was fully dressed. With more lucidity than I had heard from her in months, she told me that Omie had suffered a massive heart attack earlier that evening and was dead.
Chapter 18
PHOEBE AND I weren’t the only ones driving over to the diner that night. The kitchen had closed as soon as word came of Omie’s death, so it wasn’t as though food was being served, but people streamed in to console the family and also each other. Omie was widely loved in Middle River. She had touched most of our lives.
For Phoebe and me, as well as for Sabina, who arrived soon after us, there was a special mourning. Omie had been a close friend of our mother’s. So we were there for Alyssa’s sake as well.
Those of us who had come—and then some—were back the next morning, now bringing the cakes and cookies, casseroles, finger foods, and soups that we had made late into the night. None of us expected Omie’s family to work in the kitchen that day. We streamed in and out, heating this, chilling that, putting the other on platters and carrying it out front—and I say “we” meaning Middle River in the largest sense. If ever there was a sense of community, it was here. Coming together in times of need was what small towns did. I could appreciate that. I could even admire it.
So yes, here was another truth. TRUTH #8: Small towns have their strengths. They can offer comfort and support in ways that a city may not.
But as long as I was onto this business of truths, there was more. What was it I said earlier—that I looked at my sisters and saw intelligent women whose lives were wasted in a town that discouraged free expression and honest thought? I wasn’t entirely right. I had seen Phoebe at work; she provided a vital service for the townsfolk. Likewise Sabina; that Data Center of hers, with its server behind glass and Sabina its mastermind, was impressive. And now here they both were, communicating easily with all of these people, joined in their grief, taking comfort and giving it back. Honestly? I envied it.
That said, for this day, at least, I was part of it all. No one doubted my having loved Omie, or my grief now that she was gone. We worked side by side in the kitchen, feeding each other and all those children, nieces and nephews and grands, that Omie had left behind. Her body rested in the local funeral home, but she was waked here, and her spirit was strong.
Under the spell of that spirit, people seemed to forget that they hated me. Omie’s death was a distraction that mellowed them.
It had that effect on me, too. I was able to smile at Marylou Walker, though she had been decidedly chilly last time I was at News ’n Chews. I could nod politely at Hal Healy without staring at that arm around his wife, which seemed more inappropriate than usual. I even acknowledged some of those who had slammed the door in my face the day before.
Kaitlin was a sweetheart. She spent a lot of time helping wherever I was, and my acceptance by her triggered acceptance by her friends. They talked with me, and they smiled. Hal Healy wouldn’t have been pleased.
There were moments when new people entered the diner and I wondered if a tire-slasher was among them. There were certainly moments when I wondered if TrueBlue was here. Marshall Greenwood was. I saw him numerous times, but he steered clear of me. I wanted to think that in the presence of Omie’s goodness, he was wallowing in guilt.
Most important, though, without the distraction of mourning Omie, I would have been agonizing over James. It was a pretty big thing that had happened out there on the varsity course, and I’m not just talking about erasing the humiliation of my wait for Aidan at Cooper’s Point. I’m talking about sex in the woods and again at his house.
I take sex seriously. I didn’t have it until I was twenty, and in the thirteen years since, I’d been with three guys, each of whom I stayed with for multiple years. I didn’t sleep around, and I certainly didn’t sleep with guys I barely knew, and I barely knew James.
Did I make a conscious decision to sleep with the enemy? No.
Was I scheming to ruin him while his tongue was in my mouth? Absolutely not.
Grace would have been disappointed in me. She would have said I had squandered a golden opportunity. But in all honesty, who James was and what he did was the farthest thing from my mind when we were making love. In those moments, he was a guy to whom I was powerfully attracted and who—omigod—was powerfully attracted to me! I felt a tingle just thinking about it even hours after the fact.
So I kept busy. I did talk with people, but I felt most comfortable working in the kitchen. Washing platters was perfect. Same with loading and unloading the dishwasher. It kept me out of the spotlight, with my hands busy and my mind on Omie.
Did James show up? Of course. I think that I sensed it the instant he walked into the diner, and I was in the kitchen at the time, which says something about the sexual antennae we humans have. I had a weird feeling; I glanced at the pass-through, and there he was.
I stayed off to the side so that he wouldn’t see me. I mean, what could I say? Even in spite of that powerful attraction, I was confused. I would have thought that James’s last name alone would have been a depressant. But it wasn’t.
He found me in a moment when there were few enough people in the kitchen so that he could say a few words without being heard.
And that’s all he said—just a few words—the first of them while he kept his eyes on the lavash I was taking from a large plastic bag and arranging in a dish. “Got your tires straightened out?”
“Uh-huh. Normie managed to locate the right ones over in Weymouth.” I looked up in time to see a twitch in the corner of James’s mouth that suggested he knew what else was in Weymouth. Then his eyes met mine, and an instant something passed between us.
I could barely breathe, certainly couldn’t look away. I was relieved when he finally broke the spell by saying, “I can’t run on weekends. No babysitter. Can we do Monday?”
“I’ll be in New York Monday with Phoebe. We’re due back Tuesday night.”
“Wednesday morning, then?”
“Okay.”
He nodded, tapped the stainless steel counter, and turned to leave, and I thought that would be it. Then he looked back. “I don’t do one-night stands.”
Well, what in the devil did that mean? That there wouldn’t be a repeat of what we had done because it had, in fact, been a one-night stand and he didn’t do those? Or that there would be a repeat of what we had done because that would make it something other than a one-night stand, which was fine?
I couldn’t ask, of course, because by the time I wanted to, he was halfway across the room. All I could do was watch him work his way around counters and shelves. His back was straight, salty hair neat, blue shirt neat, gray slacks neat, loafers neat.
To this day, I don’t know for sure whether people saw us talk and thus deemed me worthy of trust. But after James left, I did get some questions. People were wondering whether Omie’s death was from simple old age, or whether it had been hastened by something external to her. Apparently—I hadn’t known this—longevity ran in Omie’s family. Her mom had died at ninety-six and her dad (who was much older than his wife
, hence his death when Omie was still relatively young) at ninety-eight. Omie had only been eighty-three, which sounded plenty old to me, but not to these others. They wanted to know why she had been sick on and off for the past year, why the bouts of pneumonia, why the massive heart attack at the end.
They were nonchalant about it, asking quietly, almost rhetorically. But they did ask. And they asked me. That meant something. It was like they knew I was looking, and that made me their advocate. Like they didn’t have anyone else to ask. Like they trusted me.
Maybe the last was pushing it a little. Still, by the time I left Omie’s at midafternoon, I was feeling a sense of heightened responsibility.
I turned on my computer. My friend Jocelyn had e-mailed to say that she had reached the part in Peyton Place where Tomas Makris was stripping Constance MacKenzie with his eyes, and that she thought he was absolutely fabulous. I wrote back telling her that, yes, Tomas was totally sexy but that the point of the relationship was Constance coming to accept her own sexuality. How far we women have come in this sense. I could never have done what I did with James if I didn’t like sex—but I didn’t write Jocelyn this part. My friends knew nothing of James at this point.
Greg e-mailed to say that they had reached fourteen thousand feet but were being slowed by wind and snow, and I have to say I felt an inkling of unease. People died climbing mountains, and Mount McKinley was a biggie. Was being caught in a blizzard at fourteen thousand feet any less dangerous than walking through the war-torn streets of Afghanistan? I wasn’t so sure.
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