Dodging Trains (33 page)

Jude.

In the end, Zoe and I settle on an outfit she thinks is too dark and I think has a too-deep neckline. My husband bought it for me. I’ve worn it a couple of times, but it’s not me.

“Shut up,” Zoe says. “Your waist is crazy narrow, and this dress really shows off your curves.” Her critical eye scours my backside before she scales to my head. “Okay, so those long, chocolate locks of yours will need a twirling. Hmm.”

I don’t like the look on her face. Zoe pinches her mouth with two fingers and blows air into her hand, getting ready to shoot me The Truth.

“I’m done watching you get thinner. And thinner and thinner. Something has to be done. You don’t have a butt anymore either, and guys love a good butt.”

“Guys? I’m married,” I say.

Zoe’s head snaps up from the shoes she’s holding, and blue eyes ten shades lighter than Jude’s ignite with fury. “But he’s not doing it for you now, is he?”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry.”
Zoe’s pitch slinks low and repentant from next to me in the cab. It took her long enough.

“You’re mean. I should have stayed at home,” I say, but her hand goes out and pets my cheek, fingers feminine-smooth, silky soft and different from Jude’s.

“What good would it do though, sweetie? You need to live a little.” She means well, and I love her. She needs to stop talking.

“
You
fucking live.” My outburst is unintentional and leaves Zoe momentarily speechless. The taxi driver turns up the radio, some country song melding with the smell of
Wunderbaum
. Who decided car fresheners were worthy of an invention anyway? I feel sick.

“I am living.” Zoe’s voice lowers through the words. “We’re going to a concert. We’ll have drinks. Dance, Nadia. Remember dancing?”

“I don’t want to dance.”

“Bull. Once we’re there, the crowd will be fantastic. Everyone will be on their feet, probably rushing the front of the stage and mosh-pitting.”

“Oh no,” I mutter as her short, black nails go to her mouth for a quick nibble of happy-jittery energy.

I stare out the window. Let my eyes first fix then give up on each palm tree passing us. Zoe is the life of the party, a quirky, charming blast to be around in this mood. Just—
you
have to be in the mood too. I hope she calms down.

I should go home.

“Emil…” Zoe hums. “He’s so freaking hot. Kisses like a pro too.”

“Emil who?” I ask because it will make her talk about something besides mosh pits.

Her jaw drops in exaggerated surprise. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the lead singer of Clown Irruption? He squirms up there on stage, all smarmy and slinking around his microphone. All sweaty, and then—”

“Ew,” I say.

“Oh come on, ‘sweaty’ is like sex. Or, like, sex
is
sweaty.”

I groan. “I’m not comfortable talking about this, Zoe.”

“Which you need to get over and I’m helping. Did you see when he was singing that one song, the super-sad, really beautiful song, how he massaged his bulge on the mic stand? I swear he’s got a full-on joystick. Maybe I’ll volunteer to help him with it.” She yells the last part, because the driver has notched the radio up to concert level, despite the tune being slower than a psalm.

Zoe bounces closer to me. Leans her chin on my shoulder so she’s sure I can hear her when she says, “You notice that? The driver”—she wheeze-shouts now—“is a fellow prude of yours!”

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BO

Sex is a dance with her. A slow tango where skin flows over skin. It is slick readiness, a quiet welcome. It’s smooth, warm, right, and all wrong.

There’s no move she makes I don’t preempt. When it’s new, I follow. When I’m different, she forms to me. She was the ground I walked on. The air I worshipped. The first years together she was my everything.

With Ingela, sex is love. It is guilt over not giving her what she’s worthy of.

This girl. She deserves so much. And I?

I don’t have it all.

The way she looks at me. It’s knives sharpened and twisting in my gut because the extent of her love is beyond my capacity. I tell her again, for the seventh time in five years, what the answer always must be:

“Ingela, I can’t. You are the best person I know. You deserve someone with the chops to love you hard and forever. I’m not that man.”

Again, I’ve reduced her to this; her body, the one I just took to the skies in ecstasy, wracks with grief. This is why tonight is the last time we break up. I hate myself. I have to accept that I can’t make her happy.

It’s time I quit chickening out, quit running back to her over a bleak fling and whenever I need solace. To me, she’s comfort and familiarity. I’ll never stop loving Inga.

But to her, I’m still everything.

CAMERON

The chase is over. Right here, right now, this is
it.
Even if it only lasts thirty seconds, the rush of what I’m about to do floods me and makes me
feel
. It’s so intense, every muscle in my body goes rigid with anticipation.

The air is sharp and early-morning raw. I stare out from my post on an overhang off Firam Peak. Let my eyes judge the steep drop into the ravine on the backside of the mountain. Jagged granite walls form unpredictable patterns that crash to the bottom the way
I
will soon, and a light dusting of snow contrasts starkly with the somber stone.

I shake my arms. Not to relieve the tension but to make sure I’m nimble and ready. I didn’t invite my friends, Dan and Marek, along today. I’d be better off with someone else around, of course, but nothing compares to the thrill I experience as I step forward alone. I’m on the edge now, in every sense of the word.

I draw in a breath of icy oxygen. Crack my fingers inside my gloves and adjust the strap on my helmet. I’m ready.

It’s so easy to plunge off the cliff. All I do is heave up on my toes and extend my arms. A light bend at the knees and I’m off, flying.

Ah, yes. I fly.

So good.

The wind howls around me. I’m fast—I’ve jumped a dozen times into this ravine so the speed doesn’t surprise me. When we started base jumping, Dan and I would heave ourselves as far out as we could to stay clear of the rock walls during the free-fall. With the velocity you take on, the smallest miscalculation will throw you against the ragged stone, toss you around, and beat you about like a rag doll. It’d be hard to survive.

It gets boring, though, to be careful every time. Which is why, at this point, to get that rush—the woozy bliss inundating my brain for hours afterward—I simply tip off the edge.

The wingsuit I wear is advanced technology. I stretch my arms out to the side, the fabric spanning open at my sides. A familiar sting of disappointment sings through me as I realize I’ll never fly without the squirrel suit. I can’t even begin to imagine the drug it would be to base jump with no security equipment. Straight to death, of course. I chuckle to myself at the thought.

I’m reaching the white ravine floor too quickly. Fuck, I’m lightning fast. The parachute on my back is a click away, but I postpone it, postpone it—

I’m on top of the world!

I’m so fucking alive while I plunge to what could be my last moment on Earth. I curl my body into a somersault and shout my rush out in an echo against the surrounding rock.

“Wooh-hooh!”

The ground shoots up toward me. No one, no one is here to help—or hear—if I hurt myself.

I pull the strap of the parachute. It deploys in the nick of time. Again, I’ve done it. I’ve survived by calculating the fall correctly. The parachute slows my speed so I tumble onto the snowy blanket with minimal impact to my legs. Somehow I’m lame enough to hit the snow with an arm under me, and my ring finger snaps—the same one that gave up in Italy a year back when I raced down a pine tree with my legs on each side like a fucking cartoon character. It’s a miracle my balls are intact.

I squirm and laugh on the ground. Fucking A—what a loser I am, breaking a finger of all things. What a girly thing to do, right?

Once I’m done laughing and groaning in pain, I climb all the way back up again to the car—a goddamn mile and a half up a trail only fit for mountain goats. Note to self: “Park at the bottom the next time and walk up
before
you jump.” It’s what we usually do anyway—because Dan and Marek are smart and can handle delayed gratification. Me? Not if I can avoid it.

In the car back to my dorm in Deepsilver, I can’t stop grinning. Dan and Marek won’t need me to tell them I flew solo today. No doubt, my face will give me away. They won’t whine for long, though. It’ll be more of a “Shit, dude,” sort of situation, as in: “You’re nuts,” and “don’t do it again,” and—“I wish it were me.”

INGELA

My cell just buzzed. It’s four in the morning on a weekday. On an instinctual level, I know who it is. I’m not one to give myself breaks; not once, not once, do I
not
answer when he calls, so I sit up, adrenaline diluting my blood and telling me to go-go-go.

“Stop missing me, asshole,” I say into the receiver.

Brooding, emotional, feel-sorry-for-himself, wishy-washy, sexy nightmare Bo. He’s the epitome of inconsiderate. I’ve been studying in the US for over two years now, but my ex keeps calling me from home. Not giving a damn about the time difference, he calls right when the hell he needs me.

I fumble for the light. Turn it on. Squint and clutch my phone tighter. “Hej,” I puff out next since he doesn’t respond right away.

“Hej, Inga,” he breathes back. Voice silky, like the damn singer-guitarist he is, he says what I knew he would as if he didn’t hear my initial greeting. “I miss you.”

“You’re horrible, Bo.”

“Come on, Inga—this is hard.”

I know what he means by hard. “Is it?” I ask, sitting up straighter. “Is it, now? Then, why did you break up with me for the fifteenth time in, like, what…”

I don’t want to repeat the number of years out loud. Bo and I were an item on and off between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. All I care about right now is him shutting the hell up. Whenever I’m almost over him, he’s there again. Black-velvety soft voice in my ear, making adrenaline, my worst enemy, course through my body until I tremble.

The man on the phone drove me to the brink a while back. There’s a reason why I’m here and not in Gothenburg where I’d be subject to his erratic moods on a daily basis.

For the millionth time, I wish I didn’t remember the good parts. Me, starting out as the sixteen-year-old groupie of his local band. The parties, the fun. The endless nights in our own little world in the dump he rented with two fellow bandmates. I swallow a lump in my throat. It was supposed to be us always. Not just for a few years. And he wasn’t supposed to be… the way he is.

“Inga, did you hear what I said?” Bo whispers now, like he cares that I should be asleep at this hour.

“No.”

“I call you, and you don’t even listen?”

“Doing my best,” I say. By the displeased huff he makes, I can tell he understands; I’m doing my best at not listening to him.

“I’m accepting a scholarship to a one-year guitar clinic in Los Angeles.”

Even sitting, my knees go weak. Deepsilver, the gorgeous little college town I’ve set new roots in here on the East Coast, must be only hours from Los Angeles by plane. The pull is on my heartstrings already—I’m too close to where Bo will be.

“Why?” I ask. “They can’t teach you anything here that you can’t learn in Gothenburg, I’m sure. And the band—are they replacing you?”

He puffs a snicker. “Naw. I don’t think so.” Bo is aware that he’s the chick magnet of the bunch and the reason they’ve been doing decent as a college band since they moved to the big city.

“I might check in with some labels while I’m in L.A. The band is with me on this. Probably heading over too, if I can scrounge up some gigs for us. Maybe we’ll tour the East Coast. How about that, Inga? We’ll pop by your little town.”

“Uh-huh, whatever.” I hurt. I try not to admit it to myself, but I miss him so much. The need to have him with me under my covers sucker-punches me. No one. No one is like Bo in bed. I feel the ghost of his hands on my skin as he lets out a quiet laugh on the other end.

“You’re so silly, Ingela. Just give it up already. I’ll take a couple of days in Deepsilver on my way there, okay? I’ll treat you well.”

I blush. There’s a reason to his sexy chuckle, to his sudden promise. As soon as I’m the slightest bit turned on, my breathing stops cooperating. Five years of on-and-off dating has Bo tuned in to the smallest changes in me the way he is to his guitar. So yes, he’s completely aware of his effect on me.

“Fuck you,” I mumble.

“Do you swear as much in English as you do in Swedish?” he purrs like he’s describing dirty pleasures.

“None of your—”

“—goddamn business?”

“Yeah, that. Bye, dick.”

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