Cat burst out laughing. “A man of few words? No way. He talks all the time. That man never stops talking.”
I put my hands flat on the display case, waiting for her to stop laughing. “Not to me, he doesn’t.”
She sobered immediately. “Oh.” She looked to the left, thoughtful for a long moment. “When I have a problem, and I don’t want to talk about it, Otto can tell. He doesn’t talk to me then. He goes quiet. He waits me out. He knows I can’t let a silence brew for too long. Maybe that’s what he’s doing with you? Not that you have a problem, I mean.” She looked away quickly and tended to the small pile of debris she’d swept up.
Instead of answering her, I got back to dusting. I reached the high shelves that looked like they hadn’t been done in a while. What she said about Grandpa made sense. Her words comforted me. Feeling tender toward her, but keeping my back to her, I said, “Cat, I want to apologize sincerely for the way I acted yesterday. I do have a problem, actually, and I let my emotions get the better of me, and I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I could tell something was up. I forgive you.” She swept in silence for a little bit, and then she chuckled. It turned into a full-on laugh, then a cackle.
“What?” I asked, my brow furrowed.
She faced me and continued laughing, even putting a hand over her mouth.
I couldn’t help but smile. “What?” I asked again.
“The first thing I said to you was, ‘Put your hands up!’” She laughed harder, wiping her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she wheezed.
I laughed a little, too, because her laughter was contagious, and watched her. She doubled over and clutched her waist. She reminded me of James. He laughed like that, letting it take over his whole body. The thought made me smile. It was nice to think of James’s laugh.
She took a deep breath, and tightened her ponytail. “Goodness. Jesse, it’s no wonder you were a bit put off by me. Maybe we can start over?”
I took a step toward her and held out my hand. I wanted to shake her hand again, to touch her in any way, and I was glad she suggested it. “I’m Jesse. It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m Cat.” She slipped her hand in mine, smiling with her whole face.
I felt it again. Her soft touch caused the hair at the nape of my neck to rise.
She pulled away first, again, and put her broom in the closet. I hung up the duster and we stood awkwardly for a moment. It was time to go. We were done in here. But neither of us made a move to leave. She knelt down and opened a display case, picking up the spilled crinoids and placing them back in their basket for people to paw through again tomorrow. “Where do you and your mom live, anyway?” she asked.
I wanted to keep talking to her, but I didn’t want her to ask questions about me. About my life. I liked that she knew me as just plain old Jesse. “We live in California.”
“Wow, that’s neat. What do you do for a living?”
“Nothing as fun as this,” I said, and I thought I just might mean it.
“Well, that’s enough cleaning for tonight,” Cat said, standing up. She turned and our eyes caught. A silent moment passed. A buzzing started in my head, blotting out all sound. She blinked, breaking the gaze, and walked past me, her arm brushing mine. The air was sucked from my lungs and my chest felt tight.
I blinked away the stupor, and walked to the door. Cat grabbed her bag and was looking in the drawer under the cash register. “I can’t find the key.”
“I saw it earlier,” I said, walking toward her. I could have told her where it was. I should have. But my feet moved nearer, as if pulled by a magnet. “It’s here,” I said, my voice low and husky as I pulled the key from the drawer on the right.
Cat straightened. “I wonder how it got there,” she mused, and held out her hand.
I don’t know what came over me, but instead of dropping the key into her palm, I held out my hand, the key resting on it, the little Alden Caverns keychain hanging off the side. Cat didn’t look at me, but she looked at the key sitting there on my palm and bit her lower lip. My stomach coiled. She reached out and gingerly took the key, her fingertips brushing my skin. I held my breath, trying hard not to let her know what was happening inside me. Why was this happening inside me? I was in mourning. What was I doing?
Cat stepped away from me, creating the distance I’d been unable to make, and held the door open. “Good night, Jesse.”
“Good night, Cat.”
Chapter 9
Cat
“Gin,” Aunt Glory said, triumphant. Valerie, Audrey, and I all sighed. Aunt Glory always won. Always. Mama sent us with a pineapple upside down cake, so I took a bite, savoring the rich flavor on my tongue. I moaned in pleasure, and Aunt Glory swatted my arm playfully and said, “Let’s keep it PG for the boy.” She tilted her head to the couch, where our cousin Tyler sat, fiddling with some new part for his motor scooter.
Tyler groaned. “Mom, give it a rest.”
Valerie laughed and slid out of her chair, plopping onto the couch beside Tyler and entwining her arm with his. Tyler was fifteen, and for his entire life had been trying to keep up with us girls, his only cousins. I remember when he was born. I was only four, but I will never forget pressing my fingertip gently to the translucent squares that were his impossibly small fingernails. He was our baby, and we had deemed ourselves his protectors, a fact which seriously annoyed him.
“Want to go for a walk around town?” Val asked him, trying to appease him. He hadn’t wanted to play gin.
Audrey sat on his other side. “Yeah, come with us, Ty. We’ll get ice cream.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to walk around town. I want to work on my scooter.” He’d bought himself a motor scooter earlier in the spring, but it needed a lot of work. “Hey, Audrey, Keaton’s pretty good with car repair. Do you think he knows anything about scooters?”
Audrey shrugged. “I don’t know, but surely they’re not too different. I can ask him, but he’s at work right now.”
Tyler sighed. He wanted wheels. He wanted independence. I fully understood. When I got my car, earned with my money from working at the cavern, I’d never felt so free. There wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go, but I liked knowing I could go somewhere.
“Come on, let’s go on a walk,” Valerie said, standing and tugging on Tyler’s hand. “All of us.”
Aunt Glory fanned herself with the cards she was shuffling. “I’m staying here, but you go on ahead.”
“We might see the movie star,” Valerie coaxed, singsonging the words.
Aunt Glory waved her hand dismissively. “Psh. I’ve been with an actor before. He had an ego the size of Australia.”
Valerie put her hands on her hips. “Good grief, Aunt Glory, I didn’t say we were going to be with him. I just want to look. I want to get a good look.”
Glory laughed, but Tyler put his face in his hands. “I’m not going on a celebrity hunt with you.” His voice was muffled behind his hands.
Audrey laughed and pried his fingers away. “If we happen to come across Jesse Relic, we’ll leave him to Valerie. You and I can go bowling or something.”
Tyler sighed at the metal scooter part in his hand. “Fine. I guess it’s that or sitting around here with my mom all day.”
Glory stuck her tongue out at her son.
“I’ll stay with you, Aunt Glory,” I said, taking the cards from her and dealing a two-hand game.
After the others bustled out the door, Glory studied her cards but spoke to me. “No interest in the local celebrity?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see the point.”
“I think the point is just a little bit of fun.”
Everybody was always trying to get me to have more fun. Fun in the traditional sense. The kind of fun they liked. But I had my own ideas of fun, and a brief encounter with a celebrity was not it. I couldn’t imagine it. A picture with him, a small thrill...maybe. But there’s no way there’d be anything more. There’s no way
I’d want anything more. It seemed to me most celebrity relationships were riddled with infidelity, drugs, parties, scandals, and one-night stands. All things I wanted to avoid at all costs.
So I said the only thing I knew would get Aunt Glory off that topic. “Otto’s grandson is in town. He’s working at the cavern.”
Glory’s right eyebrow lifted, higher and higher. It was her party trick, and it never failed to make me laugh, which I did, loudly.
“What’s he like?” she asked, leaning forward.
I tapped a card against my lip, thinking. I shared most things with Glory. She was like my diary, and I knew she would keep my words locked up tightly. “At first, I was thrown. It’s silly, but I thought that if his grandson were here, I’d suddenly take second place.”
Glory nodded, setting down her cards and serving herself a second piece of cake. “I only have one child, but I’ve heard that’s not how it works.”
“Yeah. Once I stopped being afraid and childish, I realized that. But then I got kind of mad.”
“At the grandson? Or at Otto?”
“At the grandson. Jesse’s his name. Jesse Morgan,” I added quickly, so she wouldn’t confuse him with Jesse Relic. “Anyway, he seemed irritated that Otto and I are so close, so I got irritated right back that he stayed away for so long, breaking Otto’s heart.”
“Hmm,” Glory said. “I do that, too. When someone is mad at me, the first thing I do is get mad right back.”
My shoulders dropped in relief. Glory always understood me. I loved her and respected her, so if she had some of the same terrible human impulses I did, it made me feel better about myself. “Then I noticed that Jesse was...well, sad. He’s here for some reason, a bad one, I think. Something happened that brought him here, but he doesn’t talk about it. So then everything I felt toward him turned around and I just wanted to help.”
Glory narrowed her eyes. “How old is this grandson?”
I blinked at her. Where was she going with this? “I’m not sure. A little older than me, I think. Why?”
“I’m just noticing the way you talk about him.”
My heart flapped in my chest, the beating erratic. A slight panic started to build in my veins. “How do I talk about him?”
“Like you’re attracted to him.”
I sat there and thought through every single thing I’d just said to her. “Nothing I said indicates such a thing.” I could hear the defensiveness in my voice.
“It’s not in your words, it’s in your tone. It’s in the way your eyes move around, and in the way you’re holding your hands.”
I glanced down at my clasped hands.
“What about Matteo?” Aunt Glory continued.
I rolled my eyes. “Why does everyone think Matteo and I have a thing?”
“He’s the only man you ever talked about or expressed interest in. Until today.”
I sighed. “Okay, first of all, Matteo likes caves. I like caves. He owns a cave system and lots of gadgets. I like cave systems and gadgets. And I’ve seen his picture. He’s cute enough, but you know…”
“He doesn’t give you goosebumps.”
“Nope.” I slumped, defeated.
“How about this Jesse? Does he give you goosebumps?”
I slipped my hands under the table and leaned forward, hiding my arms, because at the mere mention of Jesse and the way he made me feel, goosebumps prickled at my skin. “Why is that your conclusion? You didn’t let me finish. Isn’t it normal I’d talk about a new coworker? About a member of Otto’s family?”
Casually, completely unperturbed, Glory took another bite of cake and regarded me. “Sure.”
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. She just kept eating her cake and smirking at me over her fork. I caved. “Jesse would give goosebumps to a potato.”
Glory laughed long and loud, slapping the table, and choking a little. She stopped to take a drink of her water, and shook her head lovingly at me.
“Are you finished?” I asked, pretending to be annoyed.
She grinned. “I’m just happy, Cat. Let me have this.”
I sighed. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Of course it matters.”
“He’s not staying. I’m sure of it. He’ll go back to California, back to his mom and his home, just as soon as whatever it is that’s bothering him is worked out.”
“So? Can you say hot summer fling?”
I tried not to smile, but couldn’t manage it. “I don’t think I’m the fling type, Aunt Glory. I take everything seriously, so why would this be different? I get attached quickly and easily, and I don’t exactly want a broken heart. Besides, he’s not interested in me.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Did I ask him if he’s interested in me?” I gaped at her. “Of course not.”
“Then you don’t know if he is or if he isn’t.”
“I do know.”
“Cat.”
“He’s too hot for me, okay? I’ve honestly never seen someone so attractive. He’s not interested in me.”
Aunt Glory shot me a death glare. “You are beautiful, Catherine Sparrow. Your eyes shine and sparkle with your inner light. Your heart is pure and good and kind. And your outer beauty matches.”
“Well, I thank you, but trust me. My outer beauty does not match Jesse’s outer beauty.”
She scoffed. “Ridiculous. Beauty is subjective. I might look at this Jesse and think he’s too pretty. Or that he looks like a Ken doll.”
I laughed. Jesse was better than a Ken doll.
“But there’s more to attraction than looks,” she continued. “There’s that secret sauce. That special connection. The goosebumps.”
I looked her straight in the eyes. “You mean animal lust?”
She laughed again. Nobody laughed at my humor like Aunt Glory, and I reveled in it. My cheeks were probably glowing. “I mean exactly that, Catherine. So tell me, is there animal lust?”
My mind spun back to last night, when he gave me the key. When my fingers brushed his palm and the feeling shot straight to my chest, then dropped down into my stomach in a flurry of butterflies. I supposed that was animal lust. I thought it must be. But there was something else there, too. Something more. And how could you tell if the other person felt it, too? “I don’t know, Glory. I just don’t know.”
Chapter 10
Jesse
I tapped my fingers on the tabletop, staring at the headlines on the newspaper that hid my grandfather’s face. I’d finished eating my oatmeal at least ten minutes ago. Grandpa lowered his newspaper to scoop another bite of his oatmeal, put it in his mouth, set the spoon down, rattled the newspaper to straighten it, and kept reading.
“Hasn’t that gone cold?” I asked.
Grandpa peered over the edge of the paper at me, his eyes twinkling. “I don’t mind.”
I sighed loudly, annoyed at his slow morning rituals, annoyed at my impatience.
“She won’t be here for another half hour,” Grandpa said from behind the paper. It swayed gently with the force of his breath.
“Who?” I said, hoping I wasn’t that obvious.
He chuckled and set the paper aside. He spooned the last of his oatmeal into his mouth and drank the last of his orange juice. “Do you have stars in your eyes for Cat?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. I looked away from him, out the window and down the hill toward the parking lot, which stayed stubbornly empty. I said the thing that used to be true, something I’d always been able to count on. “I don’t get stars in my eyes, Grandpa.”
The words were hollow on my tongue.
He nodded thoughtfully, folding his hands on the table. “Hmm.”
What did that mean? I watched his hands, finally daring to look at his face. “She doesn’t know I’m a movie star. I like that.”
Grandpa’s eyes slowly widened and he sat back. He swiped a hand over his gray stubble, as if he were thinking deeply. He only s
haved once a week, maintaining that it was boring and he didn’t enjoy doing it, but that he didn’t like how a beard felt, either. “You’re a movie star? With that ugly mug?”
I stared at him. His smirk slowly changed into a smile, which changed into a laugh.
I shook my head, laughing too. But something wasn’t sitting right. “You never told her about me?” I was both grateful and distraught by this notion. I didn’t want Cat to know I was an actor. I wanted this small space where I was not Jesse Relic, but just Jesse. A respite from my other life. But he hadn’t talked to her about me at all? He hadn’t shared me with her?
If he hadn’t, I didn’t imagine he talked about me with anyone else, either. I’d been here more than a week now, and he hadn’t had any social calls. I sulked, knowing I was behaving like a child, but still wanting my grandfather to be proud of me.
His eyes let me know he could read between the lines. “Oh, I told Cat about you. I talked about you all the time, Jesse. She’s heard all about the years you stayed here. She knows you were scared of the small passages, but that you loved the forest. She knows you also thought my cooking was terrible. She loves stories about that little dog we had. Noodle.”
I smiled. “Noodle followed me all around these woods.”
“That dog worshipped you.”
Leaving Noodle behind had been the second worst thing about leaving, bested only by leaving Grandpa and only slightly ahead of leaving these woods. I may have been too frightened to spend much time in the caves, but I was not frightened of the woods. They’d been my second home while I was here. I’d climbed trees and found crawdads in the creek, got lost and found myself again.
“Cat has heard a lot of stories from that time, Jesse,” Grandpa continued. “But I didn’t have any new stories to share with her. I’d mention when you called, tell her how glad it made me to hear your voice. But you didn’t talk to me about your work. I told Cat about you, but only the parts you gave me.”
A stone settled in my gut. I liked it better than the fist in my chest, but only by a small margin. I hadn’t given myself to him. He’d respected it, but mourned it, too. I’d so thoroughly taken Mom’s side that I hadn’t even let myself see things from his perspective. Had these years been lonely for him? I was suddenly grateful beyond measure that Cat had been here. I hoped Cat filled the void Mom and I left. And I hoped he had more people, too.
Broken Hollywood (Sparrow Sisters Book 1) Page 7
