Selfie (31 page)

He pulled back. “Of course I’ll get bored.” He paused while my heart shriveled. “But I’ve got faith I’ll find something else to do. Day trading? Writing? Sure. I’ve got half of the Great American Screenplay in my dresser drawer—why not? But that’s the thing. You and me, we can keep busy. But we can keep each other busy too, so I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

Some of the sunshine seeped into the day again. “Okay,” I said, that same wistful smile creeping back. I looked at the failed breakfast on the table and shook my head. “You did so well with the veggies when you heated the lasagna that one night. What the hell happened?”

He kissed me again, until I melted into his chest. Each individual muscle group in my back and neck dissolved into goo, and my heart started to thaw again, after that frozen instant of panic.

“I got distracted.” He rubbed the top of my head with his chin. “Because I was happy.”

I tilted my head back and smiled better this time. “You were happy?”

He nodded. “Still am. But, baby, we’ve got to get you to your stylist at work—your roots are totally showing.”

I gasped and covered the top of my head with my hand. “Oh fuck—you’re so goddamned tall!”

He laughed—but he didn’t let go. In fact, that’s where we were standing when there was a knock at the door.

“Fuck,” Noah muttered. “She can’t see this disaster—she’ll never let me live it down!”

My day was happy again. I stood and kissed his cheek. “Okay—you throw that crap away, and I’ll distract her. We can go get those doughnut things that turned me on the other day.”

He narrowed his eyes like he was going to argue about being turned on by a pastry, but I smacked his ass and trotted toward the door.

Viv looked . . . sad, when I let her in, and without thinking I opened my arms. She burrowed in, and I remembered those moments with Jillian. Hugging girls tight was nice—they were soft and they smelled
really
good, and girls like Viv didn’t seem to have a problem at all with holding tight and trusting you’d hold them back.

“How you doin’, sweetheart?” I asked semiplayfully, and she nodded against me. “Not so good?” I’d never touched hair like hers, with those amazing corkscrews and tiny curls, but I stroked her head, careful not to tangle, and then half laughed.

“What?” she asked, still jammed against my chest.

“Your hair,” I said in wonder. “It is
so soft
.”

She pulled back then and smiled at me, her eyes red-rimmed but her soul intact. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Your brother’s is too, but it’s . . .”

“Slimy,” she said with sibling disgust.

I shook my head. “No, smooth but—”

“You have no idea how much shit he puts in it so it does that.”

I frowned. “I didn’t see anything on the counter—”

“No. No, you’ve got no idea. He probably keeps it in his overnight bag. He is a vain motherfucker, and you should know that about him.”

I laughed. He was vain, and cooking was something he had to concentrate on. Oh, thank God. “It’s so good to know he’s not perfect,” I said, meaning it.

She raised an eyebrow at me, looking as skeptical as a three-year-old about broccoli. “God, are
you
in for disappointment.” In the background, some of the clatter from the kitchen escalated, and she tried to look around my shoulder. “What’s that noise? Shouldn’t we be going in for breakfast?”

“He’s cleaning up from dinner,” I said with a straight face. “We decided to go for coffee and doughnuts.”

“Oh, thank God.” She sniffled a little and stepped back. I found a box of Kleenex on the mantel and handed it to her. “He’s a horrible cook. I mean, Gran taught him how to make side dishes but anything else he tries, he destroys.”

Oh lordie—she was more than dear, she was a gift from the gods. I took the Kleenex from her and carefully wiped under her eyes and made her blow her nose.

“You and I are going to have long talks,” I told her, my morning happy completely returned. “And you are going to tell me all the ways in which he isn’t perfect.”

She looked at me sideways. “Why is this important?”

“Because I believe in happy endings,” I said soberly, and hello, Vinnie’s almost-forgotten psycho cow. She burst back into tears again, and I was still cleaning her up when Noah ran back in.

Well, at least I knew I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t perfect.

We stopped at the kite store, at Noah’s direction, one of those places full of beautiful bright rainbow wind twirlies.

“Oh . . .” Viv complained as we looked around the store. “Noah . . . No. Just—”

“Gran loves them,” he said. “And watch—he can pick kitsch out of a designer boutique. It’s insane—it’s like a superpower.”

I ignored the heathens. “Look at this!” I called from the corner of the store. I held it up and watched both sets of brown eyes widen. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

A bear—with arms that caught the wind—flailed and chased a hunter. As the bear’s arms spun, the hunter’s pants fell down and pulled up and fell down. You know—’cause he was bare-assed, shitting in the woods and now he was being chased by a bear?

I loved it.

Delighted, I spun the arms around as fast as I could and
bloop-whoop-bloop
, there went the poor hunter’s trousers.

I looked up at Viv and Noah, nodding excitedly. “What do you think?”

“It’s hideous!” Viv squawked, and I sort of deflated.

“Really?” Couldn’t they see it was wonderful? The woodwork was perfect, and it spun like a dream, and
bloop-whoop-bloop
, his pants just wouldn’t stay up.

“Hideously
awesome
,” Viv said, and when I looked up she was rubbing her side as Noah set something down quickly in front of him.

“Are you okay?”

“Gas,” she muttered. “Because I haven’t eaten yet. It’s great, Connor. I think you actually picked the one thing Gran will love the best.”

I nodded at Noah, looking for approval, but he was sort of staring at me, jaw slack, eyes wide and limpid.

“It’s great, right?”

“Yeah,” he said weakly. “She’s right: you’re the only one who could have picked it out.”

I bought it, and Viv picked out the bag—something sort of boring with a pale pink bow and cream-colored paper that looked really expensive—but the windmill fit right in. We went to get coffee, and I was practically dancing in excitement.

“So, what’s she like? I mean, Noah says she’s sweet, and she taught him how to cook, and you guys decorated the house just great, so I know she’s got good taste—”

Viv burst out coughing.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah, but you’re making me dizzy with all that bouncing. Noah . . .”

Noah nodded, and looked at me, crooking his finger. “C’mere, baby,” he said softly, and I walked into his space. He didn’t put his hands on my hips or my shoulders, and I fidgeted, wondering why.

“Do you want to be out here?” he asked and for a moment my mind went blank.

“I’d forgotten I wasn’t out already,” I said, feeling stupid.

He nodded. “I will touch you in public all you want. Just . . .”

My choice. He couldn’t tell me what to do here—it had to be my choice.

Well, I was no longer bouncing. But I really needed to touch him. I grabbed his hand and turned back around, and pretended like I hadn’t just taken steps to slide my world sideways.

“Okay,” I said, “so coffee?”

“Yeah,” Viv said, “and food maybe. Noah, next time you invite a girl over for breakfast, let Connor cook.”

About an hour later, Noah negotiated the big town car down a tiny country road that was probably designed to handle pickup trucks and cows—and the pickup trucks were an afterthought. The terrain varied from green meadows to trees to wide plains with a sweeping view of the bay, and I wondered who lived out here and why. How did they make their living, and where were the houses? Were the houses out here, and I just wasn’t seeing them? I’d seen a couple of offshoots of this road, and I figured there
must
be houses—because I’d also seen little clusters of mailboxes, grouping together for comfort.

The car jounced over a particularly hard rut, and I yelped as my head hit the side of the car. “Jesus!”

Noah grimaced and looked over at me. “Sorry, Con. Man, this road gets worse and worse—and Dad keeps saying he’s gonna gravel it over, and he keeps forgetting.”

“It’s the money,” Viv said apologetically from the back. “He doesn’t want you to—”

“God
damn it
!” Noah smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “I knew it. I told him I make decent money, but—”

“But you’re paying off student loans, and he knows
that
,” Viv said pertly. “Don’t worry—between me and Gran, we’ve got enough. He says he’s calling the gravel people tomorrow, and then collecting from the neighbors. He’s got to—you’re going to rip the chassis out of this thing, and I don’t think the production people are gonna give you a new one.”

Viv had left her car—a tiny yellow Prius—at my house, and I wondered how she’d even gotten it down this road. Then it hit me—she’d been coming from Cheddar’s place. She’d said that at the coffee shop, that she’d left a bunch of her stuff there, and she didn’t have the heart to go get it now that he’d broken it off with her.

Poor noble bastard. I wish I had his balls.

But we’d already established that I didn’t—I’d shot my wad holding my boyfriend’s hand as we walked down the boardwalk. Nobody had looked at us twice, nobody had shouted, “Oh my God! Connor Montgomery is gay!” But that was because we were in Bluewater Bay. I’m pretty sure if we set foot in Seattle or Tacoma or anywhere but here, we’d be doomed.

I started making plans to call Jillian right then and there.

The rutted road finally came to an end right where a concrete driveway started, and I rolled down the window so I could get a good look at the house.

It didn’t disappoint.

A two-story farmhouse, with turrets and archways over every window, it was painted barn red with blue and yellow trim. On the front lawn whirled, twirled, twisted, and spun pretty much every wind ornament I
hadn’t
gotten at the kite store—most of them rainbow. All of them blurred with motion from the breeze that swept right off the sound in the distance and across the marsh grasses that covered the small hill.

“Oh, Noah.” I was helplessly enchanted. “I love it here.”

“I knew you would,” Noah said, while behind us Viv said, “I don’t believe this.”

I looked back over my shoulder. “You don’t love your house?”

She shook her head. “My whole childhood I wanted a normal house, like all the normal kids.”

My shoulders slumped a little. “I lived in that house,” I told her. “I got kicked out of it too.” For the first time in a while I thought of my mother. Dad had been the one to sign the contract—but did Mom think of me? Even a little?

“That sucks,” she muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I shrugged. “Just . . .” I looked at the house again, now taking up all of the view in the front. “Just be happy you live here.”

Noah parked the car in a carport, a nice one attached to the house. He went to open the door there, and my face fell.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking. “I guess I wanted to go through the front.”

He laughed and seized my chin, and abruptly I realized I’d been surrounded by his smell for three days, and that I wanted to be closer to him, surrounded by sweat and minty body wash and something dark and rum-like.

He kissed me, hard and open, while his sister slid into the door behind us.

He finished, and I was left, boggled, staring at him in total stupid. “What did you just do to me?”

“Hopefully I relaxed you. This is my dad, my grandma, and some woman I haven’t seen in thirteen years. I know you think life is a movie script, but trust me, these are
not
movie people.”

“Huh . . .” I thought about that while he led the way into the house. “I thought all people were movie people.”

Noah rolled his eyes, and I ignored him. I was too busy looking around at what was about to be my favorite place in the world.

Oh my God.

The hallway was purple, the doorjambs were cream-colored, and the living room was royal blue with gold accents on the walls. I looked up the staircase immediately to my left, and saw that the newel post and railing were painted every color in the rainbow, and the first door I could see was ruby red.