Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (74 page)

That’s exactly what Jack was. A one-eyed jack. And like Rio in the movie, I had seen the other side of his face.

“Ready?” I asked Ty after a while, a warm sensation rippling through me as I glanced at him. He was quiet, deep in thought, and staring up at the sky.

“Yep,” he said.

We said goodbye to the others and walked to his truck.  

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“No, not really,” I said. “Why?”

“I want to show you something.”

CHAPTER 16

We drove out to the highway and unrolled the windows as we headed out of town, gliding down US 20 and cutting deep into the desert.

I sent a text to Kate to let her know I’d be late.

“Thanks,” I said to Ty after I put my phone away. “What you said about Jack. It meant a lot that you said those things to the team.”

“I’m glad you’re not mad. I was worried you might be. But I couldn’t do it, Abby. I couldn’t sit there and listen to stories about good ‘ol Jack. No way.”

I reached over and took his hand and kissed it.

We kept driving. Finally, he slowed down and turned off the road and into a dusty lot.

“We’re here,” he said.

We were the only ones around. I knew we were somewhere in the Badlands. We got out of the truck into the pitch black night.

“I come here sometimes,” he said. “You know. Late at night. When it’s clear like this.”

My heart skipped a few beats and my breathing was shallow. 

“Really?” I asked, as he moved closer.

“I come to look at the stars. I do a lot of thinking. About you. About us. It’s a good place for it.”

He brought down the bed of the truck and hopped up and then offered me his hand. I took it, hoping he wouldn’t notice how much I was shaking.

“Cold?” he asked.

It wasn’t from the cold.

“No,” I said, staring up into his face, finding his eyes. They were large, full of passion. “Not really.”

But he grabbed the blanket anyway and wrapped it around me. He kissed me, perfect and tender.

“I wanted you to see this,” he said, looking up. “But it’s only a preview of what it’ll be like up in the mountains. I hope you can make it.”

It was dead quiet, our heavy breathing the only sound in the desert night. He leaned over and we kissed again and then he looked up.

I followed his eyes and finally understood why we were out here. It was the sky.

“It’s amazing,” I said.

It really was. The sky was out in front of us, horizon to horizon. Black and full of more stars than you could count in a year. 

“Wow,” I said. “Man, oh, man.”

“Best planetarium around. That you can drive to anyway,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to bring you out here all summer.”

I laughed for no reason and knew that he could tell how nervous I was. I wanted to be with him, could feel the pinpricks on my flesh, could feel his fast white energy on my skin, pulling me closer, drawing me in.

“I love you, Abby,” he whispered in my ear. The words hung between us as he waited for me to say something. I hugged him again, unable to speak.

I tried, but the words didn’t come out. I felt it, I knew it. But I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t say them. It was such an incredible night, full of love, full of desire. But those words. I couldn’t say them.

We looked back up at the sky.

I smiled shyly and tried to breathe.

“My dad used to take us out camping a lot when we were kids back home,” he said. “He loves astronomy. He taught us all about the stars and planets and black holes. He made each of us learn about one of the constellations and then we had to teach the others for the next time we were out.”

“That’s so cool,” I said.

“So your dad wasn’t around at all when you were growing up?”

I had told Ty about our dad, about how he had left when I was a baby.

“Nope,” I said. “Never knew him at all. He just left.”

“Left?” Ty repeated. “What an ass.”

“Kate never talks about him. She packed away all his pictures. All she’s really told me was that he broke Mom’s heart and did some bad things. That’s it.”

“Wow,” Ty said. “That must be hard.”

I nodded and let my head fall onto his shoulder.

“You asked me once about my religion,” he said. “This is it. The stars and planets, the trees. The river. This is where I’m happiest, where I can breathe. Where everything makes sense to me. Where I get my answers.”

I understood what Ty was saying, because most of the time, I felt the same way. Being out in nature, out on the river all day, reached me in ways nothing else could. It helped balance things, make them right. I lost my darkness when I was in nature. 

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I feel like that too, sometimes anyway.”

“I know. I can tell that you get this. I find that pretty amazing especially since you almost drowned in a lake.”

“Well, technically I did drown.”

He kissed me again and I melted into him. We kissed for a long time under those stars, that sky, his hand caressing my hair and then dropping down to my waist and pulling me into him.

The wind rushed through the junipers and an owl hooted in the distance.

We sat for a moment longer quietly soaking in the night. I looked back up at the stars, trying to shake off the emotions that were pooling inside.

“It’s late,” he said.

He helped me down from the truck and closed the back of the bed. He put his lips on my mouth again, the cool empty land vast around us.

“I had a great time, Ty,” I said when he dropped me off back home. “I loved looking at the stars with you. It was…” I paused, searching for the right word. “Magical.”

He nodded, but I could tell he was troubled about something, that something was on his mind. I closed the door over and the truck’s light went out and we sat quiet for a moment.

“I know when you give your heart to someone it’s not a small thing,” he said. “It’s the biggest thing. The hardest thing, to love someone like that, to give them everything you have. Everything that matters.”

I nodded.

“And I know that you are sensitive and see worlds around you that I can’t see. I know that you’re unsure of us in that way.”

“I’m not unsure of you.”

“And I know that you still love Jesse, and that you feel like you’ll betray him if you’re with me.”

“It’s not exactly like—”

“Listen, Abby,” he said. “I’m here. I’m alive. And I’m crazy mad in love with you. I think about you on the river, I think about you before I fall asleep. When I wake up. When I’m out looking at the stars. When I shouldn’t be thinking about you, I’m thinking about you. And all I want is to be with you. For us to be together. That’s all I can think about. It burns inside sometimes.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“But I can’t settle,” he said. “I can’t have just a part of you. I want, I need, all of you. I’ll wait for you forever if I really have a chance. If you’re really able to move on. But if you gave your heart to him and you can’t take it back, you need to let me know so I can find a way to release this, this… hold you have on me.”

I inhaled as I sat there, lost in his words. There was so much to say, so much I needed to tell him. That I did love him, that I never wanted him to release me. All these thoughts flew through my head, spinning and spinning and not able to come out. Stuck, stuck, stuck, right there in my throat, even with his desperate eyes locked onto mine, waiting for me to say it. To say something.

But I couldn’t.

I stayed quiet. Again.

“Good night,” I said finally, my heart pounding in my ears, as I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Good night, Abby,” I heard him whisper sadly.

It wasn’t the way the night was supposed to end.

CHAPTER 17

The morning dragged, not because I was tired from being out late with Ty, but because of the growing guilt over not being able to tell him how I really felt about him.

And an eight-hour shift at Back Street wasn’t helping any.

I finished unpacking the boxes in the back before taking my lunch, trying to focus on all the money I was making for my trip to Barcelona.

I checked my phone and saw that I had missed a call from Paloma. She left a message apologizing.

I thought about Ty and his sad, lonely eyes as he drove away last night. I hoped he wasn’t still upset.

“Hey, you guys going to the Brandi Carlile concert next week?” David asked as I walked over to the door.

“No,” I said. “The guides are having our end-of-the-season party over at Amber’s house that night.”

“Are you talking about Amber Svenson who lives over on Delaware Avenue?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Do you know her?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s a party animal. I see her out all the time.”

I laughed, wondering if he was just joking. She didn’t seem like that at all. She was always quiet and reserved out on the river.

“No way,” I said.

“Total way. Late night, at the clubs, she’s a beast. But the parties at her house suck big wang. I’ve been. Trust me, it’ll wrap up by 10. Just meet us afterwards. We’re starting at Velvet about that time.”

“Yeah, I guess we could do that,” I said. “Sounds fun.”

“Damn right I’m fun.”

Kate pulled up and waited with the car running.

“Say hi to Sista Craig,” he said, a little hurt. “I see she’s avoiding me.”

“I will. See you after lunch.”

I opened the car door, a wave of cold air greeting me.

“Hey,” Kate said.

“You look the part,” I said, staring at her jewelry and lipstick. “Press conference or interview?”

“Interview,” she said. I looked down at her shoes.

“Wow, must be a big story for the Choos to come out,” I said.

“It is Choo worthy.”

She smiled and shifted gears and we zoomed down Columbia.

“Did you have a good time last night?”

“Yeah, it was pretty good,” I said quickly. “But right now I’m more excited to see what’s for lunch.”

A picnic in the park was her idea and I smiled as we sat down and she started bringing out the items from a paper bag.

“Not your school lunch, that’s for sure,” I said. There were falafels, hummus, pitas, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and plain yogurt.

We sat eating, not saying much, watching the kids play and people walking around. It was a nice day, warm and clear. The dried grass dancing in the breeze, the sunflowers in full bloom by the side of the river.

When we finished, I leaned my arms on the table. Maybe she could help.

“It was a good night,” I sighed. “But there’s this weird thing it ended with.”

“What happened?” she asked, putting the little cartons back in the sack.

“Well, it’s this stupid thing I’m having trouble telling him. Ty tells me that he loves me, and I can’t say anything. I freeze. And now I’ve hurt his feelings. It’s a mess. And I think it has to do with…”

I stopped, hoping she’d say something. But she waited for me to finish.

“I can’t seem to tell him how I feel. And I’m not sure why. I think maybe it has to do with…”

I paused again, watching a lone kayaker paddling downriver.

“Jesse?” Kate said.

I looked at her.

“Yeah. Jesse.”

I put on my sunglasses, hiding my glassy eyes.

“Jesse was your first love. It’s always like that. That’s how it works, whether they’re alive or dead. When you love someone like you did Jesse that love will always be there. But it’s okay to love someone else, too. You don’t have to stop loving Jesse to be with Ty, Abby.”

I sighed.

“It feels like it,” I said. “That if I’m going to be with Ty, I’m ending it with Jesse.”

Kate rubbed my shoulder.

“Abby, it ended with Jesse the day he died in the car crash. He’s not here anymore.”

I wiped my eyes.

“And you’re going to have to either accept it or not, but if you don’t, you’ll probably be letting go of Ty. Nobody wants to compete with a ghost. It’s impossible. Jesse would have wanted you to live your life.”

I realized Kate was only trying to help. She was painting it black and white. But I could see a third color in all this.

Gray.

And gray can be a very complicated color.

CHAPTER 18

I drove over to the Bend Historical Society, which was across the street from the library. I had seen the old brick building hundreds of times without giving it a second thought. It was Kate’s idea to check into the history of Club 6 and what was there before. She had already looked into the bar’s recent past but hadn’t uncovered anything conclusive.

I turned into the parking lot and got out. Paloma was waiting for me in front. She had her hands stuffed in her jean pockets and was looking down at a crack in the sidewalk.

“Sorry I’m a little late,” I said.

She looked up and smiled.

“Oh, that’s okay. Thanks for doing this. I’m sorry again for freaking out the other night. But he had never been that close before. He was in the cage with me. Those eyes. The things behind them. I had to get out.”

She looked tired. But she seemed in control of her emotions. Like the way she had been when I’d met her over at the track. More or less normal.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m not really an expert at seeing spirits or anything. Maybe there was something I missed at the bar.”

I put it out there, mostly to make her feel better. It was true. I knew I still had a lot to learn, but I had confidence in what I saw or didn’t see. My abilities weren’t scientific or anything. But at the same time, I’d been seeing spirits for several years now. I hoped it wasn’t the case, but Paloma’s ghost may only have been in her head. 

We walked up to the counter and an old woman with gray hair and dark-rimmed glasses greeted us. She looked at us strangely for a moment. Maybe it was because of our ages. I doubted anyone under fifty ever came into the place.

“May I help you?”

“Yes, I called earlier about the history surrounding the Club 6 building,” I said.