Authors: Rian Kelley
“I’ll try to do better,” she says.
“Better?”
“You know, not tempt you so much.”
“Impossible. Looking at you is a temptation. Listening to you breathe, the scent of your skin. You being you is a huge temptation, but maybe you’ll understand better when I need to have some distance.”
The sun catches his hair, spinning it into pure fire. He looks more devil than wolf.
“I won’t take it personally,” she promises.
“You should,” he tells her. “You should definitely take it personally. No one else has ever made me feel this way.”
He lowers his head and brushes his lips over hers. It’s a brief contact, and then he’s holding her hand and pulling her back to the trail.
“Let’s eat,” he says. “And then you can tell me more about growing up Genevieve Vout.”
Chapter Nineteen
Her mom is on the treadmill when Genny returns home. She’s already worked up a sweat and is wiping her neck with a towel when Genny steps into the room.
Her mom knows how to suffer appropriately through exercise. She lifts a hand to acknowledge her daughter, but she doesn’t smile and she doesn’t hop off the machine to plague Genny with questions.
Genny lingers. She’s been bothered all day by her mother’s reaction to Truman and she wants to hear, in her mother’s words, why she doesn’t trust him.
Genny prowls the room, lifting hand weights from their perch and going through the motions of bicep repetitions. Then she sits on the stationary bike and pedals half-heartedly. Finally, she picks up her mom’s magazine—
O
—and settles on the crunch bench next to the wall length mirrors. It doesn’t hold her interest for long, though there is an article titled,
“True Love in Real Time.”
She scans it, looking for herself in the
life examples, but she’s really too young to find a match.
“
True love is a soul connection from which the life of the relationship grows.”
Genny believes this. She
feels
it with Truman as she feels it for Hunter, but in two totally different ways. With Hunter, their connection was always friendship.
She’s about to start a real brood about that, when she hears the treadmill slow. Genny drops the magazine and looks over her shoulder. Her mother is standing with her hands on her hips, breathing deeply to calm her racing pulse.
“You have a good time?” she asks.
“Yes.” Good. Troubled. Amazing. And frightening. She learned a lot about Truman. A lot about herself. And she realizes that she’s just beginning to learn about the real nature of romantic relationships. It’s far more complex than the easy companionship she had with Hunter. More exciting, too.
“You’re frowning,” her mother points out, then takes a sip from her water bottle. She crosses the short distance to where Genny is sitting, nudges her feet off the bench and eases herself down. “What happened?”
Her mother’s voice is sharp. Her eyes are narrowed as she
tries to pluck the details from Genny’s brain—at least that’s what it feels like to Genny.
“That,” Genny says. “You expect that something happened.” She watches her mother’s mouth move into a thoughtful pinch. “Why don’t you like Truman?”
“I don’t
dis
like him,” her mother says.
“You liked Hunter. He didn’t even have to work for it.”
“You’re right,” her mother agrees. “That was a mistake.”
“So you won’t treat Truman the same, based on the actions of another person?”
Genny’s relying on her mother’s sense of fairness, and her own trailblazing, never a follower nature to help her out.
“Truman and Hunter are very different boys. Night and day.”
Genny sees that. Hunter was day, sunshine and carefree. Truman is as strong and as mysterious as the night.
“I didn’t really have to worry about Hunter. He was. . .” she shrugs. “Tame.”
“Truman is not some wild creature,” Genny says.
“No,” her mom agrees. “But he is. . .older,” her mom finally decides on an adjective.
“I’m older,” Genny correct. “By two months.”
“That’s not what I mean. Truman seems to have a more secure hold on life. He’s very confident, isn’t he?” her mom points out.
“That’s a bad thing?”
“Confidence comes from experience,” her mother says very reasonably.
Genny doesn’t have an answer for that. Her mother is right. Truman’s confidence is part of his allure. When Genny is with him she feels safe, like no one and nothing can touch her. She also feels like the center of his universe.
Her mother touches her fingers to Genny’s forehead, smoothing out the frown lines.
“I’m not against you seeing him,” she says. “I’d just feel better if you take things slow.”
“We are,” Genny says.
“His idea?” her mom guesses.
“We’ve agreed on it.”
Her mother’s mouth curves into a smile, not a worry in sight. “Good. And maybe you can hang out around here some?”
“You want to chaperone us?”
“I want to keep you close,” her mother corrects. “And chaperone—just a little. You won’t even notice me.” Her mother stands and starts for the door. “Invite him to dinner, OK? Soon.”
Genny thinks about that, but her mother intrudes with,
“The more I get to know him the better I’ll feel about the two of you. Unless, of course, there really is something to worry about.”
She arches an eyebrow.
“No,” Genny says. “I’ve misbehaved a lot more than he has.”
Her mother’s response is a face of exaggerated horror. “You’re right. Maybe I should be warning
his
mother. . .”
Genny doesn’t move from the bench until she hears her mother’s shower running, then she slips across the hall and into her bedroom. She paces the floor for a few minutes, then realizes what she’s doing and throws open her closet doors. She wants to wear something tomorrow that will hold Truman’s attention, though that doesn’t seem to be a problem. She tries to ignore the wired feeling pulsing just beneath her skin. She doesn’t understand why she’s so keyed up, but it’s been building since this afternoon.
She decides on a pair of
Mankind
jeans that fit with little room for comfort and a lavender blouse that camouflages her least favorite body part—she has biceps that would make Popeye weep.
She pulls her Blackberry out of her purse and presses speed dial for Serena but her call goes straight to voice mail. She leaves a message, though she’s probably talking with Victor and their conversations tend to be marathon in proportion. Genny probably won’t hear from Serena until class tomorrow.
She uses the remote to turn on the flat screen TV mounted on her wall. CNN is looping through the world’s latest tragedies; the Discovery station is broadcasting the fragile existence of the Snowy Owl; she leaves it on TVLAND and a rerun of
Emergency!
An hour later, her mother knocks softly on her door. Genny calls for her to come in.
“Did Truman feed you tonight?”
“Picnic,” Genny reminds her.
Her mom is dressed in a white silk robe, the sash cinched around her tiny waist. Her mother, at five feet eleven inches and one hundred and thirty pounds is truly willowy. Genny wishes she had a little more grace.
Truman must be six foot, she thinks. He stood taller than her mother this morning, but just barely.
“That was a long time ago,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
Probably, but Genny isn’t thinking about food.
“What did you have for dinner?” she asks.
“Caesar salad.” Her mom sits down on the edge of Genny’s bed. “With chicken. I ordered out from Salazar’s.” She runs a hand over Genny’s hair. “Your father’s coloring, my crazy curls.” She smiles, then pushes to her feet. “Do you want me to call in an order for you?”
“No. I’ll raid the refrigerator later if I want something.”
“You won’t find much there,” her mom warns. “I cleaned it out tonight. We’re down to a bottle of ketchup and two eggs that
might
be good.”
Genny knows that’s not an exaggeration. “I’ll be OK.” She rolls onto her stomach and watches as her mom pauses at the door. “Do you know how to make cookies?”
“Cookies?”
“Sorry.” Cookies is just another name for sugar as far as her mother is concerned. “Truman’s mom can’t bake, either.”
“Ah, a woman I can get along with,” her mom says.
“You never cooked when you were a kid?”
“That was ages ago,” her mom admits. “And I wasn’t very good, even then. I remember a decent mac and cheese, but it started from a box. And I was pretty good at putting lunch meat on a piece of bread. Why the interest in cooking?”
Genny shrugs. “It’s something I’ve never done,” she says. And she’s thinking about surprising Truman with a batch of something that tastes divine.
“Do you want to take a cooking class?”
Genny wasn’t thinking about investing that much time and energy. “I think I’ll stop at the grocery store tomorrow,” she says. “And go from there.”
And she’ll get Serena to go with her. Her parents, after all, work with food. She could probably help.
Her mom says good night then and closes the door behind her. Genny lays awake, on top of the covers for another hour before the tension in her nerves becomes too much.
Chapter Twenty
Up here, where the sky is attainable and the stars are not so out of reach, Genny finds a connection that goes deeper than herself, deeper than possession. She supposes it’s her spirit she’s feeling--the freedom to throw it out there and the thrill of trying to keep pace with it.
She leaps without looking. She’s come this way so often, she knows where her feet will land and exactly how many strides it will take to position herself for the next jump.
Up here, the sky is so big it’s like looking at the ocean. And there’s a hush, like the wind that travels just above the surface of the sea.
She’s drawn to water. Part of being born Cancer. A water sign. She is moved by the tides, feels more peaceful standing in the surf than anywhere else in the world. Except up here.
She’s stood in almost every ocean on the planet. A benefit of being born rich. Genny travels with both parents. She’s been as far away as Madagascar; has held lemurs and orphans in her
arms; has tried Alpine skiing and helped build a school. Somewhere around age nine she developed a world conscience.
It’s true, what is said about the children of wealth. Indulgence kills the soul. Genny got just enough reality, with the support of a mother and father who knew poverty, to work out the juxtaposition of excess and dearth. She doesn’t understand why things aren’t more evenly spread out among the people of the world, but she’s more likely to look for a cure for it than to OD over it.
She scales another building and lands squarely on her feet. She runs miles up here some nights, never breaking her pace. It’s after midnight and the streets below are quiet. Occasionally, she catches a burst of laughter from a passing group of people or the squeal of brakes as a car overshoots a turn. Otherwise, it’s like being inside a bubble.
She circles through Chinatown, hopping from one roof top to the next, and makes her way back to Knob Hill. She passes a loaded cable car, on its last run of the evening, its bell clanging as it enters an intersection. She’s almost back to where she started when she notices a tall silhouette against the backdrop of the lit sky. It doesn’t cause her alarm. She usually runs into another runner.
As she draws closer, her pace slows and she begins to feel the pull on her senses that only happens when Truman is near.
“Genny, what are you doing?”
It comes as a whisper inside her head, but she turns toward him and breaks the silence of the night.
“Truman?”
His movements are slow and sure. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his jacket and his shoulders loom large. His face is shrouded in darkness, so she doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He stops in front of her and turns so that his profile is illuminated. Grim.
“I was hoping you’d come back this way,” he says. “If you didn’t, at least I’d get a feel for what I’m missing.”
“You followed me?”
He nods. “I was out walking and saw you leave your house. You didn’t hear me call your name, but then you were very. . . focused.”
His voice is lacking enthusiasm. In fact, Genny detects criticism in it.
Her fall. He’s seen her up here, in his mind’s eye, and watched her die. But that can change—the future is in a constant state of morphing—and all it takes is a shift of the wind, or a pause before leaping. She decides to attack his mood head-on.
They’re standing in the middle of a square, flat roof and she holds up her arms to include the cityscape and the sky. “You’re not impressed,” Genny says.
“It worries me,” he admits. “I suppose Mario Andretti would understand the rush you get from being up here. I keep thinking of the possibilities. . .”
“That’s the draw,” she says, deliberately misunderstanding him. “Up here, that’s all that exists. Possibility. This close to the sky, it’s easier to believe that life exists beyond my fingertips.”
“Death, too.”
“Is this the night?” she asks.
Will she fall tonight? Will Truman be able to save her?
“No.” He scans the skyline, then says, “Not tonight.”
An awkward silence persists. Genny shifts her weight from one foot to the other and listens to the gravel crunch under foot. She folds her arms over her stomach and pushes her hands under the sleeves of her thin cotton shirt. She feels Truman’s stare like it’s an accusation but refuses to let it work on her.
“So you were just out walking?”
“I don’t sleep well,” he admits. “I walk a lot.”
He steps closer but makes no effort to connect with her physically.
“I hate the night,” he says. “It’s crowded with thought. They used to ricochet through my head like bullets.” The sadness in his smile makes her heart slow and skip a beat. “The mind can be a very small place.”
Especially if it’s filled with visions of death.
Genny closes the gap between them and slips her hand into his.
“I know you don’t believe it,” she says, “but I’m safe.” And when that doesn’t lift the heaviness from his face, she adds, “I’ve been told I have a very long lifeline.”
Truman turns her hand over and gazes through the shadows at her palm. He traces the line with his finger, raising goose bumps on her arms.
“Not a single break,” he agrees, but his words are as shrouded in darkness as the stars.