Tab Bennett and the Inbetween (37 page)

“Don’t be mad at me,” Alex called over the sound of the shower. “I just meant that it was a harsh comment. But by all means, hate him if you want to.”

“It was just that he called me babe, like he used to, and that was just too much. Call me names; beat me up; throw me down a flight of stairs; fine. Whatever. I draw the line at….”

He stepped out of the shower, running a comb through his hair before he reached for the towel on the back of the door.

“You were saying?” Alex’s grin told me he knew why I’d lost my train of thought. And he liked it. He walked over to me and stood in front of me.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly as I pulled the towel from around his waist.

He laughed as he knelt on the edge of the bed and, pushing me back, climbed on top of me. His skin was still wet and warm from the shower as I ran my hands over his back.

He kissed my neck, catching my ear between his teeth. I felt him pressing heavily against my thigh. His fingers teased me where I was warm and wet too. I managed a sort of strangled “mm-hmm” but that was really the best I could do.

We both heard it even though we didn’t want to; another minute and it would have been too late to stop. As it was, the knocking at the door got pretty loud before Alex stopped kissing me to yell “What?”

From the other side of the door Robbin said “They’re back.”

“Your cousins have impeccable timing.” Alex sighed with disappointment as he rolled off of me but he was dressed and ready to go before I could even muster the energy to stand.

“You should go down. I’ll be there in a minute.” He looked uncertain about leaving me. “If I’m not down in fifteen minutes you can send out the guard.”

He kissed my cheek. “I’ll give you ten.”

*******

“It hasn’t been ten minutes yet.”

I opened the door expecting to find Alex but it was Matt. He’d just gotten out of the shower; he smelled like Irish Spring soap and the kind of strawberry shampoo Rivers had used. He looked tired but I guess we all did.

 “I don’t need an escort,” I said gently.

 “Or so I heard.” We smiled at each other as he shifted nervously from foot to foot. “Can I come in? I want to talk with you for a second before you go downstairs.”

“Sure.” I took a step back into the room. He followed me in and closed the door then stood. “What do you want to talk about?” I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

His thoughts were confused and sad and uncertain. He was considering leaving. He was wishing he hadn’t come.

 “Would you braid my hair for me?” he asked.

The request caught me off guard. It had been years since he’d asked me to. Long before he stopped talking to me Rivers had starting doing it instead. Of course now I know why; it was practically the only time she could touch him without rousing suspicion.

“I’ll try but I can’t guarantee anything.” I wasn’t sure my fingers would remember how to weave it; I always wore my hair down or in a haphazard bun, a braid required attention.

 “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He handed me a comb and sat on the floor in front of me with his long runners legs stretched out in front of him. He leaned against me as I combed and divided his honey colored hair into sections. Over, under, through – my fingers remembered the pattern instantly. It turned out pretty well too; neat if a little crooked. I wrapped a rubber band around the end of his braid and patted him on the head to let him know I was done but instead of jumping up, he relaxed, resting against my knees.

 “I was very lonely and very angry after Rivers died,” he said without preamble. “I wanted a distraction and Nina was distracting; interesting and accommodating and easy. I didn’t have to do anything or feel anything. Just thoughtless sex and release; another body in the bed at night for the first time since I came to the World. I was using her to fill this unfillable space. It turns out she was using me too.”

I pictured her lying at the bottom of the stairs; her big eyes empty and her pale cheeks cool as dirt.

“I’ve been terrible to you, and I’m sorry about that, but I would never purposely put you in danger. I hope you know that.”

“I do, Mattie.”

“If she had hurt you because I gave her the opportunity to try…. I don’t know what I would have done. I hope you don’t think I was involved in any way.”

Although I had been proven a rotten judge of character again and again, I couldn’t even consider that Matt had turned on me like that. Sure, he might get angry, he might ignore me and say hurtful things when he decided he could bear to speak to me, but I just couldn’t believe he would stand by and let me die, that he would take part in a plan to have me killed.

“I believe you.”

“Really?” He jumped to his feet in one graceful leap and quickly planted a kiss on my cheek. “Thank you.” He thought of Rivers, of how happy she would be that we were friends again. He missed her even more than I did.

“Will you tell me why Rivers left?”

The question caught him off guard. “Do you really want to have this conversation right now?”

I had a sense that it was now or never. Either he would tell me right then – compelled by grief and regret and a renewed feeling of love for me – or he never would.

“I need to understand what happened to her. Why did she ever come back?”

He sighed and lowered himself back to the floor.

“I told Rivers about us, about what we are two months before you two graduated from high school. Things between us had become...confusing. She needed to know, so I told her and I don’t regret it.”

His eyes were far away as he remembered the night he told her. I saw her face, felt their kiss, tasted wine. I heard something glass breaking against stone and the sound of her laughter.

I stayed silent even though there were about a million things I wanted to say.

“We weren’t being careful enough at the time. Both of you were constantly wondering around alone. It was careless but Bennett was concerned about restricting your freedom unnecessarily. That night she disappeared, Francis, Pop, and George were all in the Inbetween at a council meeting and you were off somewhere with Robbin. I was waiting for Rivers here. She and Nina went to the mall after school; she promised me she wouldn’t be late. By the time she got back here it was already after dark.”

“Do you think Nina kept her out on purpose?” I asked.

“I do now.”

It pained me to think of all the time we’d spent with Nina over the years. I couldn’t help but wonder if every trip to the movies or the mall had been part of a plot to kill us both.

He cleared his throat and continued, “There was a boy on the front stairs of the Manor when she pulled in but she didn’t think anything of that. He was just sitting there waiting; he waved to her when she got out of the car. She thought he was someone’s friend. She said hello and they talked for a minute about how the dark, moonless sky made it seem like you could see every star in the Milky Way.

“When she asked him who he was waiting for he said, ‘I’m waiting for you. King Daniel is very anxious to meet you.’ He looked up at her and that’s how she knew; she saw his eyes. She bolted for the back door but even running as fast as she could, he was faster. He caught her without even trying. If I hadn’t come down to look for her she would have died that night.

 “She seemed ok after, shaken but ok. We talked for a while and listened to music up in my room while she calmed down. She left my room at about 1:30 and it was just after 6:00 when Francis woke me up to tell me she was missing.”

I remembered that morning all too well; the panic as we searched the grounds; the way everyone watched me; the looks that passed between my cousins when they thought I wouldn’t see.

“For a long time after that, I thought she was dead. Then she called me one night from a truck stop out on 95 and said she wanted to talk, as if she hadn’t been gone for three years without a word. I drove out there like a mad man. I couldn’t wait to see her. She was sitting on a bench outside smoking a cigarette, just waiting for me. She was a little thinner and her hair had gotten long, but otherwise she looked exactly the same.

“But she was different. You must have noticed that; she was uncertain and timid once she came back, always second-guessing herself. She felt like she had abandoned us and she never forgave herself for it. It changed her, that one bad choice.

“So you want to know why she left? She panicked; that’s it. Nicholas scared her. You’ve seen him, I’m sure that isn’t difficult for you to imagine. She didn’t want to die and she thought her best chance to live was to disappear completely, to just leave behind everything that tied her to the Inbetween, to me, and to you.”

“Why did she come back?” I asked, giving Matt the chance to tell me about the offer Nicholas had made to Rivers, whatever it was.

“I don’t really know. You know how she was; she never really gave me a straight answer. I guess she just got tired of running.”

That’s when I realized he didn’t know that Nicholas had followed her around, taunting her, making her life on the road twice as miserable as it would otherwise have been. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

********

 “You OK?” Matt asked as we reached the bottom of the stairs down which I had recently shoved his girlfriend.

I thought about it for a second, taking stock of my emotional state as I stepped over the spot where Nina landed, willing myself not to remember the noise of her head hitting the marble tile. Hollow. Like a melon.

 “I wanted to know and now I know,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not sure how I feel yet except that it seems ridiculous to be mad at Rivers for leaving, mad at her for staying away, and mad at her for coming back.”

“Well, enough of that, then,” he said. “On to the next trauma.”

George and Francis were waiting with Alex and Robbin. They turned toward me in unison as I stepped into the room.

 “Sorry we’re late.” I said as I crossed to Pop’s desk and perched on the edge. No one said anything. Their staring was making me nervous. Were they keeping secrets from me? Still? It took me a minute to realize why the conversation didn’t pick up again; the room was silent because George and Francis were seeing me and my collection of bumps and bruises for the first time.

“Holy shit,” Francis whispered.

“It’s nothing.”

Red faced and sputtering, he turned to Robbin. “This is your fault,” he yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you? Look at her. I can’t believe you’d leave her alone. Now! Now when everything is coming to a head and she needs your protection. I’ve been begging you to back off for years and now? Now is when you decide to do it?”

“It wasn’t like that, brother. You weren’t here.” Robbin’s voice was scary calm.

 “Don’t you brother me,” Francis yelled at the same time as Robbin said “You weren’t here,” for the second time. Anyone could tell that he was on edge; a few more minutes and he was either going to cry or rip Francis’ head clean off. Frankly, I didn’t want to see either.

I held my hand up to silence them, thrilling a little when they stopped bickering at once. “I’m fine,” I said, calmly addressing them both. “Really. I am fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” George said. “You look like you’ve had the shit kicked out of you. Twice.”

 “I’m pretty sure that’s an accurate count,” I said, ignoring Matt’s snicker. “Now someone please tell me what’s going on.”

The focus of the tension in the room shifted from me to Alex, drawing my eyes to him too. He stood by the window with his eyes closed, his head resting against the glass.

“Another box arrived while we were upstairs.” He lifted his head, turned toward me, and held up a thick, cream-colored envelope with my name written across the front.

I tried but I couldn’t make my hand reach for it. “Will you tell me what is says, please?” I asked.