Breakable (34 page)

That was new
.

He picked up both bags and walked … to his room? Jacqueline followed, glancing at the scant but clean furnishings the same way she’d examined the town as we drove through – logging details and missing nothing. I turned the corner into Dad’s room, but it wasn’t Dad’s room any more. Grandpa’s bed sat against the far wall, flanked by his night table and a new lamp. His dresser sat opposite. There was new bedding on the bed, and the walls were the barest hint of blue. Another of Mom’s paintings hung over the bed, and a mirror suspended by a threaded length of rope hung over the dresser.

Dad set both bags on the floor by the bed. ‘I thought you two would need your own space … when you visit. I moved back to your Grandpa’s room a few weeks ago. I can get a look at the gulf first thing in the morning now, figure out how the sailing will be for the day.’

‘What a beautiful room,’ Jacqueline said, looking out the window at the squatty palm tree cluster next to the house. The beach was visible in the distance. ‘I love it. This is one of your wife’s paintings, isn’t it?’ She walked closer to examine it, and I continued to stare at my father.

‘Yes, it is,’ he answered. Turning back to me, he said, ‘After you went through some of her things over Christmas, I decided that she’d have been sad to think that her paintings were wrapped up in an attic instead of out where they could
be seen.’ Dad’s lips compressed. ‘Well. I’ll let you two rest up from your drive. Got plans tonight, I assume?’

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight. We’re meeting up with Boyce tomorrow.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll see what I’ve got for dinner, if you want to eat here. Several pounds of redfish, caught yesterday. We could do something with that.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.’

He nodded again and pulled the door mostly shut behind him.

I sat on the bed heavily. ‘Holy shit.’

‘We never talked about Mom – sentences that began with
she would have been
.’

Jacqueline lay on her stomach and I lay facing her, my finger drawing invisible patterns on to her back.

At dinner, the three of us had talked about my impending graduation, and the research project with Dr Aziz that had altered my entire way of thinking about what I’d learned in the past four years, sending it spinning in an unexpected direction.

Your mother would have been proud,
he’d said, and Jacqueline grabbed my hand under the recently varnished table, because she knew the weight of those words.

Now we lay in bed, in the room my parents had shared whenever we visited this place during my first thirteen years. Dad was back in Grandpa’s room, which he’d painted a seafoam green. Another set of Mom’s paintings hung there.

The pantry was back to holding food, along with neat stacks of storage boxes housing old files. The holes in the wall had been painted over. The three-pronged lamp had been replaced with a normal ceiling fixture. I’d chuckled, standing in that snug alcove when Dad sent me to fetch a clove of garlic. I felt safe, standing there, and was struck by the realization that I’d always felt safe there. Somehow, that had been managed while everything else went to hell.

‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ Jacqueline turned to face me in the dark, her eyes reflecting the subtle moonlight from the window. The sound of the waves pulsing across the sand drifted through the window like a slow, gentle heartbeat.

‘Thank you for coming with me.’

She scooted closer. ‘You aren’t going to tell me where you’re applying for jobs, are you?’

‘Nope. And you know why.’

‘You want me to transfer to the best music programme I can get into, without regard to where you’ll be,’ she recited, her tone an audible eye roll. ‘But … I can’t stand the thought that in six months –
five
months – we could be on opposite sides of the country from each other.’

I had no intention of putting distance between us for the next two years – but I wouldn’t tell her my plan until I’d pulled it off. There was too much luck involved, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed. I traced her hairline from her temple to the corner of her jaw and cupped her face in my hand. ‘You aren’t going to lose me. But I’m not doing to you what he did. You have dreams, and I want
you to follow them. I
need
you to follow them. Because …’ I took a breath. ‘I love you, Jacqueline Wallace.’

She swallowed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I love
you
, Landon Lucas Maxfield.’

My heart swelled and I leaned over her, kissing her, loving her, claiming her. In her formal words, I heard the echo of my future – a future I was so sure of that no distance would have daunted me:
I take thee, Landon Lucas Maxfield
…

Luck could be earned and created. It could be discovered. It could be regained. After all – I’d found this girl. I’d found my future. I’d found forgiveness. My mother would have been happy for me. For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel guilty about that.

Jacqueline was invited to transfer into three of the five music programmes she’d applied for, but when she got Oberlin’s letter of acceptance, none of the others mattered. Ten seconds after signing into her email, she shot off my sofa, squealing and sending Francis right under the bed. Once I was certain she was
extreme happiness
squealing and not
I see a spider the size of my hand
squealing, I opened my arms and she jumped into them.

‘Congratulations, baby,’ I murmured against her lips, loving how blissed out she was.

She texted Erin. She called her parents. She emailed her high-school orchestra director.

And then she calculated how far apart we would be when she moved, if I remained here. Two engineering firms in town were actively pursuing me, and I was considering them seriously. I’d nailed a second interview for an amazing position with one that specialized in semiconductor robotics – a design job so cool I couldn’t have even imagined it four years ago, when all my energies were focused on getting into college at all.

I took her out to celebrate and refused to discuss the miles and hours and years ahead. ‘Not tonight,’ I repeated, until she relented. If we had to be long distance for two years, then that’s what we’d do. But Jacqueline’s admittance into Oberlin had given me a new goal.

Back in December, I had dinner with Joseph, Elliott and Elliott’s little sister, Reni, who was visiting from Cleveland, where she was a third-year med-school student at Case Western. Their transparent attempts at playing matchmaker went down in flames, but they set the two of us up in a different respect. Fascinated with the details of the research project I’d be part of for the next five months, Reni told me about one of her mentors, whose field of research was bioengineering.

When I emailed her about possible job leads, she passed my résumé to that professor. He was one of the three founders of a small bioengineering start-up in Cleveland. One of the others knew Dr Aziz, and she’d spotted his name in my list of references. A week later, I got a call and a request to apply.

Luck had started the ball rolling. The rest was up to me.

‘Why won’t you tell me where you’re going for this interview, at least?’ For forty-five minutes, Jacqueline had been trying to cajole clues out of me during commercial breaks in the zombie drama we were watching. ‘Aren’t we supposed to tell each other everything?’ Her honeyed tone and earnest secret-discovering expression – wide blue eyes staring up into mine – almost made me cave. She was too good at this.

‘Nice try,’ I smirked, and she scowled.

‘I’ll just ask Cindy.’

‘Which is why I didn’t tell her, either.’

She stamped her foot at that, which made me laugh until she pressed me into the corner of my sofa and said, ‘I love it when you laugh. You’re so pretty.’ She wound her arms round my neck and clutched at my hair, pulling me closer for a kiss.

I shook my head and traced her lips with my tongue before diving inside. Settling in to kiss her senseless, I whispered, ‘Flattery will get you nowhere … but please,
please
keep trying.’

My graduation party was a cookout in the Hellers’ backyard. After not leaving home for over eight years, Dad took three days off to attend the ceremony. His appearance was also a show of faith in his best friends. Watching the three of them together, I hoped this weekend was the beginning of a new habit for him.

I hadn’t told anyone my future plans yet, though Charles, Cindy and Dad knew about the offers I’d had, and they’d exchanged knowing looks at breakfast this morning, when I told them I’d made my choice. I had one person to tell, though, before I let them in on my final decision, and that person was standing in my kitchen, packing barbecue leftovers into the fridge.

‘I accepted a job on Friday,’ I said, and she barely responded. I wondered what was going through her mind
until she finally looked up, unable to rearrange the little containers any further. My brave girl was barely holding back tears.

I led her to the sofa and pulled her into my arms. ‘It’s a start-up – less than ten employees right now. The founders are cardiology researchers developing non-invasive ways of mapping electrocardiographic activity, to help with diagnosis and treatment of heart disorders. They also want to develop better invasive devices – and they wanted someone with a basic knowledge of durable soft materials.’

The crease between her brows told me I’d lost her. So I told her the pay, which would be supplemented with stock options. ‘If the company does well – and it
will
– the employees do well. My start date is the week after July fourth.’

She looked up at me, trying to smile and not fooling me for a second. I knew what she was thinking –
twelve hundred miles apart
.

I took a breath. ‘So my only question is this – do I want to live in Oberlin and commute to Cleveland, or live near Cleveland and commute to you?’ I watched her shifting expressions as she realized what I’d just said. Her eyes widened and filled with tears. Her mouth dropped open and she stuttered something that sounded like
What?
‘Oh – didn’t I tell you that part? The company’s located in Cleveland.’ Half an hour from Oberlin.

We would have six weeks’ separation between when I moved to Ohio and when she did, but I shoved that thought
away as she came into my arms. Today was my celebration, and I carried her to my room to show her all the ways I intended to celebrate.

Six weeks apart had been hell.

Once my flight landed, I was ready to punch out a window to get off the plane, through the airport and outside to Jacqueline’s truck.

After lunch with her parents, the two of us were leaving on a two-day road trip back to Ohio. We planned to stop for the night just inside Kentucky, drive most of the day tomorrow, and meet the moving van at her new dorm tomorrow evening.

As always, everything and everyone else disappeared when I saw her. She leaped from the truck and met me in front of it, wearing a white sundress with a gauzy little short-sleeved cardigan over it, unbuttoned. My bag hit the ground and I pulled her into my embrace. ‘Miss me?’ I asked, our lips an inch apart. One hand at the base of her spine, I pressed her close as the other hand slid up under her sweater to encounter bare skin.

Her little dress was backless.
Holy shit
, this was going to be a long day – pre-noon and I was already imagining closing and locking the door to our hotel room tonight.

‘Kiss me and find out how much.’ She went to her toes, her eyes mischief incarnate as my fingertips trailed up over her shoulder blades.

Walking her backwards to the passenger side and pressing her to the door of her truck, I wanted to unfasten those tiny hooks at her nape, and she knew it.

What she didn’t know: I had some torture of my own to impart.

Closing that final inch, I captured her mouth with mine. I traced her full lips with the tip of my tongue and just barely swept inside as we kissed.

‘Mmm …’ she moaned, her tongue darting out to tease my upper lip before sucking my tongue into her mouth. I deepened the kiss bit by bit as our tongues tangled, and suddenly she pulled away. Her feet went flat on the ground and her hands gripped my biceps under the sleeves of my T-shirt as she stared up at me, eyes wide.

‘Lucas.’

‘Hmm?’

She stared at my mouth. ‘Did you …? Is that …?’

‘Like it?’ I asked, and she visibly shivered head to toe. ‘I knew you missed the lip ring. I figured you needed something else to play with when we kiss.’

Nodding, she said, ‘Let me see.’

Obediently, I opened my mouth and she peered inside at the little ball that sat dead centre on my tongue. ‘Oh … Oh, God …’ She licked that sweet lower lip as her eyes shifted to mine. ‘Is it true, what they say about that?’

A corner of my mouth tipped up on one side and one brow rose. ‘I guess we’ll find out tonight, won’t we?’ I kissed her again, my tongue delving fully into her mouth. She moaned – an impatient, breathy entreaty. Breaking the kiss, my hand curled round her nape and I whispered into her ear. ‘So tell me, how long does that
bad-boy phase
thing last? Because I’m trying my best to prolong it.’

She sucked in a breath and tucked her face to my shoulder. ‘Oh,
God
. I can’t believe you know about that.’

I tipped her chin up. Her face was pink.

‘How am I doing, Jacqueline? Fulfilling your every bad-boy wish, or is there something I’ve overlooked? I may have a steady job and be madly, deeply in love with my girlfriend …’ I kissed her as she clung to me. ‘But I have a
wicked
imagination.’

There used to be a point in time separating
before
from
after
. On one side lay everything good and beautiful – a dream that couldn’t be touched in waking moments. Memories of my mother were trapped there, and I fought to forget them because they did nothing but hurt and condemn. The opposite side was struggle. Endurance. My
after
was raw reality, and there was nothing to do but survive it.

Then came Jacqueline. This love. This healing. This new reality where before and after were no longer divided by a solitary rift. Where every moment was a tangible memory and a promise of what was to come. Every moment was a before and an after. Every moment was a
now
to be lived – and I would savour every one, beginning this second, with the girl in my arms.