The Beginning of Always (32 page)

I shook my head and pushed Alistair away, both of us panting hard. He barely budged an inch and he was still too close; his breath blew across my face, down my cheek, engulfed me. His smell was everywhere, his essence was in me.

I needed to get away. I needed to leave. I couldn’t be around him.

“Florence,” he murmured into my ear. The sound was the voice of a lover, the beginning to a night of twisted sheets and sweaty flesh and mind-numbing pleasure.

I really needed to get out of here.

“Florence.”

I had to stop this.

“No,” I forced out. Alistair’s gaze flickered at the word. “No,” I said louder. I shook my head. “We can’t.”

I pulled my hands back, then reconsidered it, and then pushed him away. He took a small step back, but not because of the force of my palms. His arms still caged me in, and he was still close, too close. My fingers rested against his chest and his muscles strained underneath it, his heart thudding hard enough for me to sense it.

“We can’t,” I repeated.

Alistair didn’t answer. His eyes bored into mine, stormy and anguished, and I knew without looking down that he was still aroused. I was still aroused. I could feel the wet excitement between my thighs and the empty ache of my core that just begged for Alistair to fill it. I reached two fingers up and gently touched my lips; they were swollen and damp and singing with the memory of him lingering on them.

But no. My fingers curled into a fist and I dropped it. We couldn’t. I broke this connection, as if denying him eye contact would mean we could walk away from this unchanged.

That was a lie. A Pandora’s box of memories and emotions and needs had been cracked open. I swiftly attempted to shut it down, but the decade of desperation had already weakened it beyond repair, for both of us.

I slowly shook my head. I whispered, “You have to leave.”

It was in that singular moment that his emotions shuttered off, when the light within his eyes closed off and became blank. His features went from an excess of emotion, to absolutely nothing. He slowly pushed away from the wall, and as he extracted himself from my space, the sudden cooling brought an agony to my veins.

I wanted to cry. It was as if someone was tearing a part of me out of my grasp.

Instead, I ignored the pain. I feigned an easy smile on my lips and I just said quietly, with more conviction than I felt, “I’ll be out in a moment.”

Alistair stood an arm’s length away from me. I could just reach out my arm and gently graze his face if I wanted to. I could pull him back, bring him back. I could be weak and fall into every impulse and every taboo desire. But I kept my fists at my sides and my expression stoic. He considered me for several agonizing seconds, as if giving me time, giving me space would change my mind.

It wasn’t a problem with my mind, it was an issue with my heart. It sank and shuddered at the sight of him; it recoiled in horror, yet threw itself at the knives of possibilities of him. I tightened my lips, refusing to say anything. And it was then Alistair gave a short nod, turned around and walked out the door.

The sight of the back of his head was enough to make me scream.

I watched the closed door for several moments. And it was when I realized he wasn’t coming back, that I had gotten what I’d told him I wanted, that I slid down the wall to the floor. And only then did I allow the tears to escape and spill down my cheeks, true agony drowning me.

Chapter 17

S
andra wanted to cry and I really wished she wouldn’t. She clutched the camera between her coarse fingers and sniffed loudly.

I seriously did not want her to cry.

Bill, on the other hand, looked as if he’d won the lottery. He was laughing and smiling and kept pounding me on the upper arm until I swear he bruised it.

“My boy!” he boomed again and again. I flinched at each uptick of his voice’s volume and each slap of his palm.

“Okay, okay!” I had to put an end to it. Sandra’s camera flashed one more time and spots dotted my vision.

Bill laughed uproariously. Sandra burst into tears. I gave an audible groan.

“Senior p-p-prom,” Sandra sobbed by the stairs. She rubbed her cheeks with that handkerchief she always kept in her pocket. “College! Oh, William. Oh, William!”

Bill grinned wider, and I pretty much wanted to die.

They had been like this since March when all the college acceptances came. I had fought to keep cool and not make a big deal about it, but every time a big envelope arrived, they both made a spectacle of it. They rounded me up. They circled around it like a cult sacrifice. They watched me with bulbous eyes as I tore into the envelopes with my fingers. They forced me to read the whole thing aloud to them, the whole entire stupid packet. Then they’d cheer, snatch the letter from my fingertips, pass it around, and call everyone they knew in a fifty-mile radius. And Bill would throw a BBQ and Sandra would bake a cake and holy shit, it was too much. I seriously wished I hadn’t applied to so many schools. After the fourth acceptance, their antics were getting old. Real old.

The letters finally stopped trickling in and I had to make a choice. Just this past Monday, I’d finally sent in my intent to register at University of Michigan. The school had pretty much given me a full scholarship, and I could get by with some minor loans and a part-time job, plus Bill offered me the use of the truck, which would help. But otherwise I was on my own, so U of M was the best option. It was a good option, it was a good school. There were a lot of pros, and I’d enjoyed the town when I visited.

And as much as it pained me to say this, one of the pros was that Ann Arbor was not even a three-hour drive to St. Haven. Funny how that worked out. I’d spent years plotting my escape to an opposite coast, to a large city with faceless, nameless neighbors. And I had succeeded in finding my way just barely two hundred miles away. I hadn’t even crossed state lines.

But a decision had to be made, and made it was. I was, as Bill proudly boasted to anyone who was willing to stand still enough to give him the illusion they were listening, going to be a “U of M Wolverine.”

“Nothing as purely Michigan as the wolverine! Our state animal! Yes, we’re proud, real proud of him.”

I didn’t bother interjecting that wolverines hadn’t been spotted in the state in nearly two hundred years, or that the wolverine was really just an overglorified pissed-off weasel, or that our state mammal was technically a deer.

Not that any of that mattered to Bill or Sandra or anyone in this godforsaken town. Our graduating class was mercifully small and, unfortunately, wholly unacademic. A handful of kids, including me, were going to four-year schools while the rest gave vague plans for jobs or the community college in Holland. Plenty of the guys I had grown up alongside were tied to their family farms, a fate I secretly thanked Bill for not subjecting me to. Although, for what it was worth, Bill knew better than to order me to stay locked to the land. I’d always helped out, worked, pitched in as requested, but there was never even a sliver of a notion that I would one day inherit the farm. I didn’t want it, and above all, I was pretty sure Bill didn’t trust me with it.

So, that led to the obvious answer of college apps, which led to the inevitable rejection/acceptance season, which led to decision making and campus visits. And now, everything was winding down.

I fought for a while with a sense of grief or sadness to be closing this chapter, but none came. Life dragged on, and it was taking me with it, and all I could be thankful for was that it was dragging me out of St. Haven. Not far, but out nonetheless.

Another flash of white light punctuated my thoughts and now I went temporarily blind. Sandra and Bill chattered to each other while continuing to harass me with their camera bulb. Irritation creeped in and I fought the urge to get annoyed.

Today was supposed to be a happy day, a good day. I had promised myself to give that to myself, to others.

“I need to get going,” I announced loudly, grabbing my suit jacket that was hanging by the kitchen door. “Florence is waiting for me.”

“Oh! Wait just a moment.” Sandra tore past me into the kitchen, and the sound of the fridge door opening and closing banged loudly from the room.

“Look, I’m taking Florence to dinner in town, so she won’t be eating at home,” I protested. I cast a look over my shoulder to Bill, as if to say, “Please reel this in before it gets out of hand,” but he only shrugged and grinned congenially.

“Then Nicolas!” Sandra now cried between the din of glass baking pans making contact with kitchen table. “Or they can just heat it up for breakfast. You know how I worry about them eating well.”

“Forget it,” I muttered, turning around just as Sandra pushed past me, her arms laden with heavy Saran Wrapped pans.

“Out of the way, please!” she chirped, hurrying past Bill to make her way to the door. “These need to be heated or chilled, otherwise the cheese will get clumpy at room temp!”

With a slam of the screen door, Sandra disappeared with a huff.

“She’s just wasting her time. I don’t know why she bothers cooking on her days off. You’d think she’d get sick of serving others,” I said. Sandra was a career waitress at the local diner, the type that poured your coffee, called customers “hon,” and knew all the regulars’ breakfast and lunch orders.

Bill shrugged in his cracked leather jacket and grunted. “She does what she does, and if it makes her happy, then I’m damned if I’ll tell her otherwise.” Bill fisted his keys and gestured with the other hand for me to move my ass. I grabbed the boutonnière and corsage that Sandra had made and hustled out.

“Lesson one, Al: happy wife, happy life. Always do what makes your girl happy. It’s your responsibility,” Bill said as he locked the door behind him.

“Love! A hand, please!” Sandra called from the driveway. She was balancing the pans against the side of the car while trying to open the back door.

“Wait here, we’ll drive over together.” Bill trotted over to Sandra and wrenched open the car door, then lifted all the pans from her arms and stooped into the seats to rest them on the backseat.

I watched them from the porch, just examined them busying themselves over this total non-necessity of a line item. Sandra hunched over in the car, readjusting the pans just so to prevent spillage. Bill circled around, opening Sandra’s door and kissing her on the cheek, patting her puffy blond hair. Sandra beamed up to him as she chattered away at something I couldn’t hear.

“Al, your tie is crooked.” Bill jogged towards me from Sandra’s car. She backed out of the driveway after giving me a little wave. She was still going over first to heat up the food she’d made. For whom, I had no idea; Florence wasn’t going to eat and Nicolas was probably hiding at his friend’s house.

“Ah shit,” I muttered and quickly undid my tie. The tie was stupid. I had gotten it for this occasion, but I had no idea how to tie it. After halfhearted efforts based on the instructions I’d found in the package, I had managed a sad knot. Now, I undid it and started over, but Bill pushed my hands away and pulled the tie towards him, taking me roughly with him.

His fleshy fingers flipped the silk deftly and with skill. His hands were clean, but they were still dark and chapped with portions of his skin torn off, discoloration spotting his flesh.

“Neckties are for special occasions, Al. For powerful men.” Bill grinned at me. “Your old man has never worn a tie in his life, except the day I married Sandra. One tie! One day! That’s it!”

I couldn’t help but give a small smile at this familiar story. “Best day of your life, right?”

“Damn straight, boy!” He nearly shouted in glee.

“My son is going to wear a tie for the rest of his days. He won’t work in the fields like his old man.” Bill was focused on my tie and his efforts, but a faint glimmer of emotion sparkled in them. “You’re going to be someone who matters, Al. Someone important. Someone with a say.”

In that moment, I’d never felt more like Bill’s kid, with his grizzled cheeks that were starting to sag with age. He was barely forty, but appeared older after so many years in the sun.

“A college man. My son, a Wolverine.” He shook his head and said to himself, “Who would have thought?”

This was awkward. Bill looked at me expectantly, and I nodded slightly, not knowing what else to do.

“Hey, Bill. Um … thanks.”

He beamed at me and then patted my tie, which was now in a sturdy knot. He reached over to the porch railing and grabbed the corsage, thrusting it back into my arms.

“Now, why don’t we go ahead and fetch your princess?”

“Bonjour!” Sandra chirped loudly as she swung the Reynoldses’ front door open for Bill and me. Bill laughed and brought her into a bear hug right on the porch; I had to take one step back to avoid getting decked with Sandra’s swinging feet.

Sandra squealed in delight and clutched at Bill’s shoulders. Jesus, it had only been ten minutes since they’d last seen each other.

A thump sounded above me just as I entered the foyer. “Alistair? Is that you?” Florence’s voice carried down the stairs.