Telling Tales (23 page)

I’m startled when he finds me, under the stairs. Though not because I haven’t seen him for the better part of twenty-four hours and was starting to wonder if he’d undergone another minor freak-out. More because I’m in the middle of my own minor freak-out, and didn’t realize it until he looms over me in this dark little space, torch in hand.

I’ve got the light on in here, but it’s still spooky when he suddenly puts said torch to his face, and says, “Mwa ha ha, I guess we didn’t all die in here.”

Just like he used to, only with that little extra kick of awareness, of nostalgia, of something else I can’t quite name. Like the way that everything is now, on the eve of saying good-bye. Tomorrow we’ll all be getting into cabs and going our separate ways, though none of us have actually really said it. We haven’t said:
Well, I guess the month’s up. Let’s get out of here, Scoobs.

It’s just going to happen. I know it is. And that’s probably why I’m in here, rooting through bits of old bicycle under an old lamp that doesn’t work while praying for as few spiders as possible.

“What are you looking for?” Cameron says, after a moment—but only because he’s smart. And because he’s either grown to know me or knew me all along, and doesn’t have to open with something lame and leading like
Hey, what are you doing in here?

He knows what I’m doing in here. He knows I’m looking.

“Nothing,” I say, but he’s smarter than that too.

“You know, I doubt you’re going to find a secret note from Warren in here, explaining why he did all of this.”

I put the bit of old bicycle down. Clap the dust off my hands. Give him a
look
that he probably can’t see, through the semi-darkness. So weird that my memories of this little space are now clouded by him, by the blind feel of him and the way he said my name.

Christ, I think this whole place is now clouded by the blind feel of Cameron Lindhurst. I won’t be able to go anywhere in here without first remembering all of the things we’ve done together—though such a problem may be moot, soon enough.

Wade’s already got a buyer for the place, and it’s more money than I ever imagined having in my life. Just like that, courtesy of Professor Warren. All we have to do is say the word.

“I wasn’t looking for an explanation,” I tell him, but the exasperation in my voice makes it sound like even more of a lie. In fact, it’s so much of one that he doesn’t even acknowledge what I’ve said. He just plunges right into: “You should face facts, Allie. There probably isn’t one.”

And I know he’s right. I know it. Professor Warren left us this house without a word about why, and we stayed here without any understanding of what drove us, and now I’m standing in front of Cameron with all of these feelings inside me, and I don’t get any of them either.

I look up at him and everything just kind of swells inside me, the memory of him saying
You’re mine
swells inside me, and then suddenly I’m blurting it out just as I did before, only this time there’s almost no excuse for it. I’m not in the throes of passion. There’s no more reason why he should say it back now, with only a month between this and barely knowing each other at all.

But I do it anyway, because that’s what the occasion calls for. No more waiting five years to tell someone how I really feel. No more panicking at the last moment, frantically searching through old rubbish for an explanation or a clue or just anything, really, anything at all.

I want him to know now. I want it to be clear. No subtext.

No secrets. No hiding behind sex.

“I love you,” I say, though I only fully realize how much I mean it once it’s done. I think of all the times I never dared to say it to Wade and my stomach flips over, my mind goes blank, briefly—but it’s OK, isn’t it?

I mean, Cameron’s not like Wade. It’s not as though he’s going to laugh. It’s not as though I’m really shoving myself out on a limb here, even though the seconds tick by and it’s really starting to feel as though I have. I can feel the tree branch, bending. I can feel myself slipping, slipping, and Cameron’s not saying anything at all and, oh God, I’m a fool.

I’m a fool for feelings that don’t exist. I was sure they did, but what do I know about anything? I pined over a guy who gives me a shrug about it, after five years of painful waiting and longing. I really have to wake up, you know. Life isn’t a fairytale that ends with the handsome prince sweeping me off my feet.

It’s just Cameron in a cupboard under the stairs, looking all tense and weird before he finally kisses me on the cheek, too hard.

That’s what my life is. Being kissed on the cheek too hard. As though I’m some elderly aunt that everyone kind of likes, and any second now I’m going to give him a boiled sweet and a pound coin, then never see him again. He’ll come to my lavender-soaked funeral, and look down at my powdery dead face, and that’ll be it.

I really don’t know why I ever expect anything more.

***

Kitty goes first. For some reason she’s packed another suitcase full of Professor Warren’s old cardigans, but hey—I’m not going to question her on it. Yesterday I was busy looking through broken bicycles and old lamps, searching for the secret behind yet another impenetrable man.

We all deal with things in different ways.

“We’ll speak tomorrow,” she says, as she gives me a one-armed hug. Mainly because that’s the deal now. We have to call each other every Tuesday without fail, and say all the things we always meant to before.

Things like:
We’re best friends. Let’s not ever stop talking to each other, again.

“I’ll call you,” I say, and I mean it. It’s not just some little placatory thing you tell somebody, to smooth a good-bye. It’s real and it’s good and even if there’s nothing else I get to take away from all of this, at least there’s that.

Me and Kitty are good, whispering-through-the-darkness-of-the-dorm-room friends again. I don’t even have to worry about it, with her, or hang myself out on a limb. She just comes right out with it before she gets herself into the honking cab that’s waiting on the driveway.

“I love you, my little friend,” she says, and I get to say it back to someone. I get to say it back!

God, I don’t know why I’m suddenly crying. Though luckily, Wade steps in, so it’s not as though I have to embarrass myself any further. I just wave as the car pulls away and Wade waves too, and then even better he puts an arm around me.

Or maybe it’s even worse, because it’s just not him I need to do that to me anymore. Once upon a time, maybe, but not now. Now I just love someone else, another person to add to my collection of people who don’t love me back, who don’t put their arms around me, who don’t feel the way I do.

Who just gaze at me from their too faraway place on the driveway, and don’t say anything at all.

***

Wade goes next, and it’s fine. It’s really fine. It’s funny, in fact, because I don’t cry the way I did for Kitty. I just hug him extra tight and when he says, “I wish things could have been different,” I actually laugh.

“No you don’t,” I tell him, and then he holds my face in his hands. He kisses me, lightly, on the mouth.

“I wish
I
was different,” he says, and yeah, OK, I almost cry over that.

God, I hadn’t thought that this day would be so hard. It hadn’t seemed like anything as it rushed up to meet us. It just hadn’t felt like some moment when we’d all get in cabs and go our separate ways, as though the only thing keeping us here was a strange set of terms courtesy of Professor Warren.

Just
one
month
, he’d stipulated. And we all stuck to that like glue, for reasons unknown to the universe.

“Good-bye, Wade,” I say, and that’s it. The Candy Club is no more, once again.

I mean sure, we’ve all vowed to meet up again—probably somewhere around Christmas, or hey, maybe in the New Year! But unlike the bond that me and Kitty have re-forged I know that those are just empty promises of people with busy lives and things to do and oh, we’ll never have this again.

This time next year, the house will be sold. We’ll have all moved on, and only the fondest, faintly embarrassed memories of actually acting on our insane sexual tension will remain.

***

I think it once I’m in the cab, with everything getting smaller and smaller behind me. I should have hugged him. I shouldn’t have let things be the way they were with Wade, all bitter and clumsy and not knowing what to do with feelings that have no return.

And then I realize it, with a great gush of something that isn’t quite sadness: it doesn’t
matter
if they have no return. My life is shaped by feeling those things anyway. By being full of love, even when it doesn’t come back to me.

I’m glad that I’m this way. I don’t want to be any other—too scared to run the final race. Too afraid to really feel anything, in case or because of or is it OK if I do?

It’s OK. It’s OK if I do. The Queen has found her heart, and all is well in the land of Hamin-Ra.

Or at least, I think it is until I go through my bag, searching for tissues. And then I find it, the thing he probably intended me to discover once I was home—a story, I think it is. He’s folded the sheets of plain paper in the middle—five pages thick, I think, which just makes me thrill from head to toe—and I open them slowly.

Because you know, I’m not excited or anything. It’s not as though I think this is going to be some tale of hidden feelings or a story about how much he secretly loves me, and even if it is, well. Well. Maybe I don’t want a story anymore. Life isn’t a story. I want the real thing, you know, the real thing.

Only then I see the words. These words from my strange, still, lost at the bottom-of-a-lake Cameron. So closed down and careful about everything he says, until right now. Right at the last second when it’s almost too late—but not quite.

I ask the driver to turn around. I do, because it’s not a story at all—or maybe it is. It’s the end of one, the end of my story, and it says:
And
then
he
told
her
how
much
he
loved
her
back, truly and madly and deeply.

The
end.

Awakening

by Elene Sallinger

He will open her eyes to the ultimate pleasure…

The minute Claire walked into his shop, she aroused every protective instinct Evan ever had. She looked so fragile, so lost. He ached to be the one to show her a world she’d never dreamed of, to awaken within her the passion she was so ripe to share. It only takes one touch for him to see how open and responsive she is to his dominant side. But the true test will be whether he can let go at last and finally open his heart…

Festival of Romance Award Winner

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, starred review

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Control

Charlotte Stein

Will she choose control or just let go?

When Madison Morris wanted to hire a shop assistant for her naughty little bookstore, she never dreamed she’d have two handsome men vying for the position—and a whole lot more. Does she choose dark and dangerous Andy with his sexy tattoos? Or quiet, serious Gabriel, whose lean physique and gentle touch tempt her more than she thought possible?

She loves the way Andy takes charge when it comes to sex. But the turmoil in Gabe’s eyes hints at a deep well of complicated emotions locked inside. When the fun and games are over, only one man can have control of her heart.

What readers are saying:

“Forget
Fifty Shades of Grey
...take a look at this and see how long you can stay in control!”

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For more Xcite Books, visit:

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