First Thing I See (21 page)

                Shauna quickly bonded with Lauren and the
three of us spent half the day drinking wine and taking turns telling stories
about Shauna and me in high school and Garrett and Kennedy in high school.  We
giggled like old friends, and every once in a while I looked across the room
and saw Kennedy watching me with a smile.  I could tell he was enjoying his
time with his brothers, but yet he was always aware of where I was. 

                “Hey!”  I called out when I saw him standing
leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed staring at me, while
his brothers were in the midst of a conversation next to him.  “What are you
looking at?”  I smiled and he smiled back.

                Kennedy refilled his glass and reached for
the half empty bottle of wine the three of us were drinking and walked over to
where we were standing.   He refilled each of our glasses.  Shauna and Lauren
mindlessly positioned their glasses for refills, while never breaking in their
conversation.   He slid behind me and wrapped his arms tightly around mine,
clasping my hands together beneath his.   

                Shauna was telling Lauren a story that I had
heard a dozen times, about the time that we cut school and took her dad’s car
to the beach to meet two boys.  One of the boys had brought iced tea spiked
with vodka and Shauna had drunk too much and I had to drive home.   The only
problem was that I had never driven a stick shift car, and it took us almost
three hours to drive the twenty miles drive home between all of my stalls and
clutch pops.  Two blocks from her house, I rear ended the car in front of us,
which happened to be the two boys that we had met at the beach.  In the three
hours it took us to get home, they had already sobered up and drove back.  

                “I hope you don’t drive a stick shift
Kennedy.”  Shauna laughed as she finished her story.

                “No, and I’ll keep that in mind when we go
new car shopping for her next week.” 

                “New car shopping?”  I wrinkled my nose in
confusion at him.

                I watched him take his drink off the mantle
and swallow back the yellow liquid in the small crystal tumbler.  His other
hand stayed on my hip.  “How did you think you were going to get around
Chicago?  We don’t have the mass transportation that New York has, you need a
car here.”

                “Ugh…I hadn’t really thought about it.  How
far is it?  Can’t I walk to work?  I really can’t afford a car payment.”

                “
We
can afford a car angel.  And you
are
not
walking to work no matter how far it is.  Look what happened
last time you walked home after a late night.”

                My chest fluttered at his commanding tone
and the thought of us being a
we
.  But I couldn’t let him buy me a car,
even if he was ridiculously rich.  “That’s very sweet, but it isn’t your job to
take care of me.”

                Well that was the wrong thing to say.  His
eyes hardened and his jaw tensed immediately.  Our playful, giggly conversation
had just turned into something else.  “It is my job and perhaps we should have
this conversation later.” 

                I saw Shauna and Lauren watching our
interaction as if we were a daytime soap opera.  Lauren was smiling at me and I
got the feeling she thought the whole conversation was funny for some reason. 
Not wanting to ruin the day or show any disrespect to Lauren in her home, I
took a deep breath and decided Kennedy was right, and the conversation was best
for when we were in private later.   I smiled back at Lauren and turned to
Kennedy and reached up on my tippy toes and gave him a quick kiss on the
mouth.  “Okay, later it is.”

                 He must have assumed I would react
differently, because he squinted at me and smiled, shaking his head as he
walked back to his brothers. 

                  Lauren excused herself and Shauna and I
were finally alone.  “What’s going on with you and Garret?”  My smile widened.

                Shauna launched into details about the long
night they spent together after we had all went to her game and then out to the
bar.  I could have skipped the part about how he had what she estimated to be
about ten inches hidden in his pants.  But I secretly wasn’t surprised knowing
that Kennedy was his brother.  She told me that they had been texting and
talking every day since, which caught me by surprise.  “You talk to him every
day?”  The look of shock clearly registering on my face.

                “Yep, I can’t believe it myself.  This is
the most I have spoken to a guy in a long time without him breaking any of my
top ten rules.   I’m so excited that I think I’m going to reward him later
dressed in my modified cheer uniform.” 

                We both laughed.  Shauna hated when men
mentioned that she should wear her cheer uniform as foreplay.  But if she
really liked them, and they didn’t mention it, she would introduce them to her
‘modified cheer uniform’, which meant an old skirt that left her ass cheeks
hanging out and a low cut tight cheer top, sans bra and underwear. 

                “I’m so sad that I am not going to be near
you in the city anymore, if you guys became a couple you could move to Chicago
and be closer to me!”  The alcohol and my current state of happy daze had made
things seem so simple and easy to solve.

                Shauna looked at me like I was crazy and
then broke down laughing.  “You are so funny drunk and in love.  I used to love
drunk Hope, but I think drunk in love Hope is even better!”

***

                It was after midnight by the time we
returned back to Kennedy’s apartment, and I felt like I was floating.  Kennedy
poured me a glass of wine and I watched him build a fire.  I could see the
muscles in his back flex as he reached in to pile the wood and I was sure that
there wasn’t one part of him that I didn’t find sexy.  We sat on the floor in
front of the fire with only the Christmas tree and fire lit. 

                “Thank you for the best Christmas I ever
had.”  I whispered as I settled in between his propped up knees in front of the
fire. 

                He kissed my forehead lightly.  “You’re
welcome, but I didn’t do anything.   Garret and Lauren did all the work.”

                Was he serious?  “You cleaned out a closet,
bought me a new wardrobe, gave me a new job with an amazing memory in my new
office and brought my best friend to Chicago.” 

                “Those have nothing to do with Christmas.  I
would have done all of that if it was August and you agreed to move here.”  He
gently stroked my hair, pushing escaped tendrils behind my ear and a soothing
motion.  “So now that I think about it, I really didn’t give you a Christmas
present.”

                The man was crazy.  “Your logic is a little
warped there Mr. Jenner.”  I laughed and tilted my head into his touch on the
side of my face.

                “As long as we are on the topic of my logic,
I’m buying you a car.  We can call it your Christmas present if that makes you
feel any better.”  His voice was stern.

                “I can’t let you buy me a car too Kennedy.” 
I turned and leaned into him. “It’s very sweet of you to want to, but it’s too
much.”

                He contemplated my words with narrowed eyes. 
“What I have is yours now, Hope.  I live a certain way.  I work hard for it,
and I enjoy my lifestyle and a certain amount of indulgence.   We can’t exist
in two different worlds.  I want to take care of you.  I need to take care of
you.  Let me.”

                With just his few simple words and the look
in his eyes, I realized it was important to him.  He needed to take care of
me.   He didn’t just want me, he needed me.  I understood what he meant. 
“Okay.”  I whispered lightly, his eyes not releasing mine.

                I was a nervous wreck on the drive to Dad’s
house from the airport, because I hadn’t told Dad I was moving to Chicago yet. 
Moving in with Kennedy. 

                “You okay?”  He squeezed the hand he was holding
as I stared out the window watching the city fall into the distance and the
small town on the horizon.

                “Yes, just tired.”  I lied.

                “Hope.”  His tone was authoritative and I
wondered how he knew I was lying so instinctively.

                I leaned my head against the cold window
glass as my face flushed giving away my lie.  “I might also be a little nervous
about telling my Dad that I’m moving in with you.”

                He pulled our linked hands to his mouth and
gently kissed the back of my hand.  “I’ll talk to him about it.”

                “You will?”  Even though I was 26 years old,
I still felt like a little girl when I was around my dad. 

                “Of course I will.  I should have probably
spoken to him about it before now anyway.” 

***

                Candace did her usual gushing over Kennedy
and touched me as little as possible while pretending to be happy to see me
too.  I left Kennedy in the attentive hands of Candace and her awe struck
daughters and went to settle in and put our things away.  A few hours later, my
Dad still wasn’t home yet, so I thought it would a perfect time to go visit Mom. 
I hadn’t been able to spend more than an hour or two in the house with Candace
without Dad home in years.   There was only so much that I could take of her,
and watching her flirt with Kennedy was pushing me to my limit.

                “I need to get out of here for a while.”  I
whispered to Kennedy quietly.  He nodded.

                “Candace, we are going to go over to the
cemetery, we will be back in a few hours.”  I saw her jaw flex and anger
flicker from her eyes and wondered if Kennedy saw it too.  The man didn’t even
have to look at me to know if I was lying, I was certain he would be able to
see through Candace’s fake exterior.

                We stopped at the florist and I picked out
flowers for Mom and Kennedy picked out flowers for Lilly.  As we were about to
walk out of the shop, I walked straight into Coach Fitz.  There was no way to
avoid him.   “Umm…Hi Coach Fitzsimmons.”  I uttered and a sudden awkward
feeling settled in.

                “Hello Hope.  Nice to see you.”  The
awkwardness between us was thick.   He looked to Kennedy and Kennedy extended
his hand. 

                “Kennedy Jenner.”  They shook hands. 

                “Mark Fitzsimmons.”  An uncomfortable
silence for a moment.  “Umm..I was a Coach at Hope’s high school.”

                I felt flush and wanted to run out of the
store.  Kennedy looked to me and then to the Coach, assessing the situation.

                “Is that so.“  His face was a mask of stone
and his tone icy.  Kennedy put his hand on the small of my back and steered me
around Coach and out the door. 

                Neither of us said a word the short drive to
the cemetery.  I was glad that he suggested we drive, because the walk in the
cold would have been frigid with the ice between us.    We cleared off the
ground in front of Mom and Lilly’s headstones in uncomfortable silence and rested
the flowers on the brown frozen grass.

                Kennedy sat on the bench, watching me as I
fidgeted with the flowers, stalling for time before I had to face him.  “You
and Coach have a past.”  More of a statement than a question.

                I continued to clean the brown grass and
pick at imaginary weeds.  “Yes, but it’s not what you are thinking.”

                He reached out and took my hand and let out
a deep breath.  “Jealousy is not something that I am used to feeling.  I know
you must have had boyfriends, but I saw the tension between you and him and I
wanted to beat the crap out of him.  I had to get out of there.”

                Tears stung my eyes and I closed my eyes and
squeezed his hand.  I knew I had to tell him the truth.  No lies, not ever.  “You
should have beat the crap out of him.”  He looked up at me and I saw pain in
his face.  “It’s a long story.  Could we go for a walk while I tell you, it’s
not something I’d like to tell you here.” 

                He nodded and took my hand.  We walked
through the cemetery, and around town, for almost two hours in the cold.  I
told him the whole sordid story, from Candace’s affair to the years of living
with a stepmother that hated me and pretending everything was okay for Dad.  I
told him how she blamed me for Dad finding out and the ensuing difficulty in
their relationship.  I watched his jaw tighten as I told him through tears
that, after so many years, I started to believe the things that she said, and
that my move to New York was to get away and reinvent myself.

                He wiped the tears from my face and cupped
my cheeks.   “She was jealous of you.”

                “Why would Candace ever be jealous of me?” 
Shauna had said the same thing a few times before, but I thought she was just
trying to make me feel better.

                “Jesus Hope, you really have no clue.”  His
face was serious as he searched my eyes.  “You are beautiful, from head to
toe.  And not just on the outside.  The fact that you don’t see it or use it
just makes you that much more gorgeous.“  He kissed my lips gently.  “She’s an
aging beauty queen that is desperate for attention and you don’t even notice
all the attention you get.”

                My heart swelled at his words.  I wanted so
badly to believe him.  To see myself the way he saw me.    I was so afraid to
admit who I was to him, but he didn’t see me any different after knowing.  I
loved him for understanding me and for giving me back a part of who I used to
be.