Before Ever After (24 page)

H
ey, Nonno told me that story,” Paolo said.

Shelley gave him an incredulous look. “Max told you about the River Man?”

“Yes. I grew up thinking of him as what you Americans call the boogeyman. He lures humans into the river to live with him in his underwater kingdom, right? The story my grandfather told me was the one about a young boy the River Man had taken. He offered the boy all kinds of wonderful toys and riches to convince him to stay with him, but in the end the boy chose to return to his family. The River Man took pity on him and let him go.”

“Well, that definitely sounds like the Mother Goose version of the story I heard,” she said.

“I take it that the moral of the story he told you wasn’t that kids shouldn’t talk to strangers?” Paolo asked.

“No, not quite.”

T
hey called him Gestrin.” Max took a sip of his wine. “The people in the villages believed that he was a water spirit who sometimes took the shape of a handsome young man. He had a nasty habit of dragging hapless humans into the river and drowning them.”

“Gee, sounds like a fun guy,” Dex said.

“One of the most well-known River Man folktales is about how Gestrin lured a beautiful girl named Urška from the middle of festivities in the old Ljubljana town square and leapt into this very river with her. She was never seen again.”

Brad edged his chair away from the river. “Perhaps we should finish our meal inside the restaurant?”

“The River Man is long gone, I assure you,” Max said. “And we have another one of Isabelle’s ancestors to thank for that. His name was Pavel.”

“But I thought you said the River Man was just a myth?” Shelley asked.

“All myths spring from truth, luv,” Max said, “and tomorrow you will see the place from where they both flow. By the way, do you know how to scuba dive?”

The group walked back to their apartment under a canopy of twinkling fairy lights strung from the cafés along the river.

“So are we really going scuba diving tomorrow?” Shelley asked.

“Weather permitting, yes,” Max said.

“And you’re not the slightest bit bothered by the fact that my closest underwater experience has been to grasp for the soap at the bottom of my bathtub?”

“Not at all. Did I mention that I happen to be a certified diving instructor? As a matter of fact, we can practice by grabbing other things in the tub tonight.” Max gave Shelley’s backside a squeeze. He glanced in the direction of their apartment building and stopped midstep. His smile disappeared from his face. “Wait here.”

“What’s the matter?” Simon asked.

“Stay together.” Max strode toward the apartment’s arched doorway.

Shelley watched him walk away. The scene reminded her of one of those slow-motion hunting sequences in a Discovery Channel documentary. She couldn’t tell, however, if Max was the hunter or the prey.

A tall figure stepped out of the shadows. Max staggered back from the man.

Shelley strained to see the stranger’s face in the darkness.

The man took a step toward Max and into the light of the streetlamp. His silver-white dreadlocks gleamed. He looked no different, she thought, from the T-shirt-and-jean-clad college students who congregated in the cafés. Except for his face. It was a boy’s face, pale and soft—with dark eyes harder than stone.

Max spoke.

Shelley thought she heard him call the stranger a name she had heard earlier that evening: Gestrin. She decided she was mistaken.

Max stood between the blond man and the rest of the group. The stranger was speaking in a language Shelley did not understand. Max’s back was toward her, and all she could see of his reaction was the tension at the base of his neck.

“Do you think we should go over there?” Shelley whispered to Brad.

Before Brad could answer, the blond stranger glanced over Max’s shoulder and caught sight of Shelley staring at him. She looked to Max for safety but did not see any reassurance in his eyes. The stranger shifted his gaze to Max. And then back to her. The slowest smile crept across his face. He brushed past Max. Max grabbed at his arm, but he was too late. The man strode past him and now stood in front of Shelley.

“Good evening.” The stranger’s voice carried a damp chill, like a fog
settling over the marshes. “I’m Mihael.” He extended a slender hand to Shelley, his shoulders hunched forward, ready to hug her—or pounce.

Shelley saw Max’s jaw harden as she clasped the man’s hand. “Hi. I … I’m Shelley.”

Mihael pressed her hand to his lips. They felt cool against her skin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shelley.”

Max clenched his fists at his sides.

Mihael held on to her hand. “You are a friend of Max’s, yes?”

Shelley felt as if she had just let the big bad wolf in for tea.
Is your grandmother home?
the silver wolf asked.
Can anyone hear you scream from here?

“Yessiree!” Brad came to Shelley’s rescue with his best used-car-salesman impression. “We’re all friends here, right? I’m Brad, by the way.” He grabbed Mihael’s hand and shook it as though he had just closed a sweet deal on a rusty pink Cadillac.

“And I’m Simon.” Simon pumped Mihael’s hand.

Mihael kept his eyes on Shelley.

Dex yawned a decibel higher than normal. “You know, it’s been a long day and we were just heading back to our apartment.”

“Yes, we really should be going.” Brad took Shelley’s arm. “It was nice meeting you.”

“I am from the National Museum of Slovenia,” Mihael said. “I needed to go over some last-minute details for your dive at the archaeological site tomorrow with … er … Max.”

“Why? Is there a problem?” Simon asked.

“No, no problem at all. Max and I are
old
friends,” Mihael said. “We lost touch after we had a—how do you say it in English? Ah, yes—a misunderstanding. But all is well now, right, Max?”

Max clenched his teeth.

“Well, I won’t keep you. I believe you have an early day tomorrow.” Mihael turned to Shelley. His lips curled, exposing yellowed teeth. “It was nice meeting you, Shelley.”

• • •

Ghosts. Sometimes the scariest ones were not the ones that went bump in the night, Shelley thought. Sometimes they looked like the blond girl you sat behind in history class during your pimply phase, and hopped on the treadmill next to yours years later. They were the people who left invisible bruises on you—faces you tried your best to forget and believed you had—until they showed up at your gym as perfect as they were when you were fifteen, and still as capable of making you feel like the last person picked for the volleyball team with a flip of their highlights.

But it wasn’t the ghosts themselves that were scary. It was how they haunted you with old secrets. It didn’t matter that you now had clear skin, had grown four inches, and wore padded bras. They would always remember how you spilled your lunch over yourself when you tripped in front of them in the cafeteria. Shelley had seen her fair share of ghosts. That’s how she knew Max had just seen one himself.

Max had not uttered a word since they returned to the apartment. Mihael had stirred old feelings in him. Shelley did not know what those feelings were, but she was certain that they ran far deeper than any teenage angst about bad skin. She lay beside him in the dark, thinking how much farther away he felt than an arm’s length of cotton sheets.

“Who was that man, Max?”

His breathing was shallow.

“You seemed … scared.”

Max rolled to his side, away from Shelley. “I was.”

“Why?” She remembered the coldness in Mihael’s face. “Is he dangerous?”

“All men are dangerous, Shelley.”

“Not you.” She touched his arm.

Max stiffened.

Shelley pulled her hand back. “Do … you need to be alone?”

“Yes.”

She stroked her cheek. It stung from the three-letter slap. The
s
left a scratch. She pushed herself off the bed.

“But I don’t want to be,” he said.

Shelley turned around. “Then let me help you.”

“You can’t.”

“I’m … here.” She fumbled for the words. At that moment, they felt so true, but she couldn’t help but worry that they sounded hollow. How long would she be able to stay by his side?

“You shouldn’t be.” He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands.

Shelley stood up to leave. Why did she do this to herself? Why did she make lists and not follow them?
Meet. Date. Run
. Granted, she couldn’t get far without getting lost in Slovenia …

She heard Max sob. Damn. His tears trumped her ego. However deep his old wounds ran and whether he liked it or not, she would have to do. She steeled herself with a breath and sat on the bed. She drew Max’s hands away from his face. “Believe me, Max, I’m quite the expert at doing things I shouldn’t.” She brushed her lips against each of Max’s eyelids. “Like this.” Her lips fluttered over his mouth. “And this.”

Max looked up at her. “You mustn’t.”

“Too late.” She cupped his face in her hands. He looked at her differently than when they were in Austria. She knew he had wanted her then. She had felt his hands on her. She had felt his lips on her breasts. But now his eyes held a deeper longing. Or was it an older one? It was hard to tell beneath the sheen of tears. Part of her wished they only hid lust. It was simpler. Safer.

“Shelley …”

“Max, tell me what you want,” she whispered.

“Too much.”

“Why?”

“Because I want …” His pain caught in his throat. “I want you to stay.”

Shelley might have broken Max’s egg timer, but now she was jostling inside it. Giant grains tossed her around, closer to a whirlpool of choice. Stay. Run. Stay. Run. She was falling through the funnel, tumbling against old walls: her father’s death, her mother’s grief, her life before this moment. But as she reached the timer’s narrowest point, she realized that she knew exactly where she was. She was nowhere else but now. Looking into its eyes. Breathing it in. Kissing its lips.

Max kissed her back. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her on top of him, tearing away at the clothes that kept them apart. Shelley felt his hands tremble against her naked back. She sat up and guided them to her hips. His fingers dug into her skin, pressing her against him. She clung to him with her thighs, urging him deeper, away from the grasp of shouldn’ts, mustn’ts, and thoughts.

They drifted away.

Then fled. Faster and farther from apron strings and scrapbooks, sickly cats and empty tombs, haunted barns and basilisks, dead friends and ghosts with silver blond hair.

Sister Margaret shut her eyes tight and held her hands over her ears.

Shelley woke up alone on a very rumpled bed. She didn’t have to wonder for long where Max was. The smells drifting from the kitchen revealed his whereabouts. She threw on Max’s shirt and sprang out of bed before thoughts about things other than breakfast could snuggle next to her. She didn’t want to have time to think. Or regret.

She found Max standing in front of the stove, folding over a wild mushroom omelet. She wrapped her arms around his bare chest, clinging to everything that had made the night before a good idea. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, luv.” Max set his wooden spoon down and lifted Shelley off her feet. He kissed her on the mouth.

The identity of the blond stranger remained a mystery to her, but it didn’t matter as much as seeing Max acting like himself again. He was entitled to his ghosts. After all, she had her own. She had woken up disappointed that they were still there, hovering close. Waiting. Whispering. Waving goddamn lists. She shooed them away. “Looks like someone’s feeling better this morning.”

“It’s a choice, Shelley,” Max said. “As is everything.”

Brad and Simon walked into the kitchen. Dex trailed after them. He eyed Max’s pajama top on Shelley.

“Hey, break it up, you two. Feed us. We’re starving,” Simon said.

Max set Shelley on her feet.

“Well, good morning to you, too,” Shelley said.

“So, Max, are you going to tell us about your gorgeous but creepy-in-an-I-could-be-an-ax-murderer-sort-of-way friend or what?” Brad picked up a piece of toast.

“No, not really,” Max said. “Coffee?”

“Okaaaaay … I’m glad we cleared that up,” Brad said. “Boys and girls, watch and learn as I masterfully attempt to change the topic without the slightest hint of awkwardness. Observe. This is a gorgeous apartment, Max. Is it yours? Wait. Don’t tell me. Another of your gazillionaire friends owns it, right? You must introduce us sometime. I’d love to know who their decorator is. I love the neoclassical aesthetic. Oh and yes, I’d love some coffee. Black with some Sweet’N Low if you have it, please.”

A small cluster of white tents was pitched on the muddy riverbank. Max parked the Volkswagen at the edge of the camp. The group walked toward the tents through the damp marshes. Water seeped into Shelley’s sneakers, wetting her socks.

Brad stopped to train his camera at the river. It flowed free and dark, unlike the tame stream it dwindled to in the city.

Dex took Brad’s cue. He fished out his camera. “Shelley …”