Going the Distance (11 page)

“You going to tell me what it is?”

She straightened in her seat and shook her head as though clearing it. “No. It’s in the past. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You look like you need to.” He gave himself a mental kick.
Shut up, ass hat.

“Thanks, Jarek. You don’t have to do this.”

He frowned. “Do what?”

“This.” She gestured between them. “Be nice, or whatever.”

“I can be nice.”

She patted his hand. “I know you can. What’d you do today?”

Relieved, he let her change the subject. “Worked. Same as always.” He decided not to tell her he’d spent the better part of an hour drawing trees, trying to figure out how much wood he’d need to make her a little forest for her class play. He couldn’t decide if he was doing it because he wanted to, or because he still felt bad about what had happened at the bar. And he
really
couldn’t decide which reason was worse.

The server came by and dropped the bill on the table without pausing. They watched her stroll off, bemused. “Guess we’re done,” Olivia said.

“You go now!” Jarek whispered in a high-pitched voice. “You stay long enough!”

She giggled. No one had ever actually said those words, but the service at the delicious-but-unwelcoming hole-in-the-wall restaurant was never exactly friendly. They’d take it personally, but everyone seemed to receive the same level of disinterested service, Chinese or otherwise.

Something in his chest loosened up when she laughed, showing all those white teeth. “You actually ready to go?” Jarek asked.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

He put his hand on her back when they left the restaurant, the closest he’d ever managed to come to holding her hand. Stacey had always insisted on holding hands but Jarek hated it, and after they broke up he’d never done it again.

It was only seven o’clock, so they stopped in a couple of stores on the way back. Olivia bought more DVDs, including the fourth season of
Parenthood
, which she’d forced him to start watching, and now they were both hooked.

He was worried his feet would start to drag when they approached his building, or that his hands would tremble when he unlocked the door, but the worst thing that happened was running into Dale in the hallway when they stepped out of the elevator.

“Hey,” Dale said, looking between the two of them. He was wearing a red muscle shirt and looked ridiculous.

Jarek felt the irrational urge to explain the situation.
I’m just going to show her something. She’s not staying. She’s not my girlfriend, except she is.

“Hey, Dale. Working out?” Olivia nodded at the towel in his meaty hand.

“Yeah. Training Ritchie. He wants to be in shape for that teacher friend of yours.”

“Be nice to him.”

“Me? Always.” Dale got into the elevator and Jarek took the keys out of his pocket.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Am I?”

He opened the door and she gasped as though he’d revealed a treasure trove of gold. Olivia braced a hand on the wall for support. “Is this really happening?” she breathed.

“Shut up and get in before I change my mind.” He swatted her ass as she sauntered past. The place didn’t look too bad with the light from the setting sun coming in. It was minimally furnished, but what was there was nice, modern. Better than everything she had.

“I like it,” she said, peeking into the bathroom. “Do you ever use the kitchen?”

“Not really.”

“Ooh. A television.” She stroked her fingers along the top of the screen reverently. “Imagine watching
Parenthood
on this.” To date they’d watched everything on her laptop, since her apartment had come with neither a television nor a DVD player. It was cramped in her twin bed, but he’d gotten used to sitting close beside her, the computer balanced on her knees as they watched.

“I got you something,” Jarek said, feeling a pang of discomfort.

She looked at him with interest. “Yeah? What?”

He plucked a DVD from behind his back. He’d bought it at the store when she wasn’t looking. “Your favorite movie star.”

Olivia wrinkled her nose, but not in distaste. “Julia Roberts? She’s not my favorite.”

“Look at that smile. Those teeth. It’s you.”

She laughed. “I like Julia Roberts, I don’t
look
like Julia Roberts. Also, she’s playing a prostitute here.”

“What about those boots you wore the other night? You could clomp around in nothing but those, smiling, and you’d be a dead ringer.”

“Good to know you fantasize about prostitutes, Jarek.”

“You want to watch it?”

She looked at him. “Do
you
want to watch it? You always complain about my movies.”

He shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. Whatever. It’s your call. We can watch something else.”

“No.” She squeezed his fingers and took the DVD, plucking it from its sleeve. “Let’s watch. I like this one. Thank you.”

For some reason he didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t making a big deal about it—and it wasn’t a big deal, the thing had cost, like, a dollar—but he’d done it to cheer her up, and thought maybe he had. And there she went again, making him do things he wouldn’t normally do, without asking him to do anything at all.

“You want a beer?”

“Sure.”

He grabbed two bottles from the fridge and joined her on the couch. They sat a full two feet apart as the movie started. “This is kind of a novelty,” Olivia remarked.

“What?”

“Not sitting in your armpit. Having an actual couch, and a television.”

“It’s a palace.”

She had a bed, a wardrobe, and a nightstand in one room, a desk and chair in the other, and the dining room table in the third. They spent a lot of time in bed, not all of it fooling around.

“It’s kind of a luxury.” She stretched out, crossing her feet on his table, then glanced at him. “Do you mind if I look in your bedroom?”

“Ah, sure.” He paused the movie, but didn’t move as she headed toward the closed door.

“This is it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’s the door closed?”

“No reason.” He’d left the window open, and it must have blown shut. No doubt she thought he’d done it to keep her out, which, four weeks ago, he probably would have.

She turned the knob and pushed open the door. If she was expecting something awful, she wouldn’t find it. He had a king size bed covered in a black comforter with some sort of abstract silver print on the bottom, a basic bedroom set, and a picture of the ocean hanging on the wall over the headboard. The place had come furnished, and he’d never given much thought to how it looked until now.

Olivia disappeared into the room for a minute, then came back out, beer bottle dangling from her fingertips. “Pretty harmless,” she said, rejoining him on the couch.

“Get over here.” He patted the cushion next to him.

“What about all the space this couch affords us?”

“You think I watch these movies for fun?”

“I thought they were teaching you how to be romantic.”

She scooted closer and he put his arm around her shoulders, dropping his hand onto her breast. “I’m trying.”

By the time the movie ended, they were both breathing hard. She liked to torment him sometimes, insisting he not disturb her while she was watching, demanding that he rewind if he made her miss a part. Today had been no exception, but her damn hands had been wandering pretty freely, and when Julia Roberts informed the snooty saleswoman that she’d lost a big commission, Jarek started repaying the favor.

As the credits scrolled down the screen and the familiar theme song played, he pinned Olivia against the cushions and yanked off her pants. She straddled him as he freed his cock and rolled on a condom, then dragged her down where he needed her most. Her eyes sank shut and she bit her bottom lip, taking him deep. He watched her face, stroking her neck and her back, eyes settling on their joining bodies. He heard her breath hitch and looked up to see her flushed cheeks as she watched him watch them. She smiled and he kissed her, thinking that he’d been doing a lot of kissing this past month. Maybe more than he’d ever done in his whole life, all combined.

It didn’t take long before they were both groaning, Olivia’s hands tangled in his hair, pulling so hard his scalp ached. Jarek didn’t complain as the orgasm was wrenched from him, hips pistoning upward as he held her in place. She came then, too, muttering incoherently into his ear, some strange combination of his name and God’s that made him feel fucking amazing. Since the night at the bar, he’d been making her come the way he’d tried so hard to do for the first month. He’d had to open up to get the results he wanted, but it hadn’t killed him. The trade-off had been worth it. The harder she came the harder he came; quid pro quo. Or something like that.

She made a silly, strangled sound as she eased off and stood, and he held her still for a second so he could look at her intimately. She squirmed and pried at his fingers but he didn’t let her go, giving her a filthy look as he leaned in and swiped his tongue through her swollen folds. She shuddered and pushed him away, picking up her panties and quickly dressing.

“You in a rush to be somewhere?” he asked when she glanced at her watch.

“I have to make some signs for tomorrow,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table as she laced up her sneakers. “I’m going to turn my desk into a store, and let the kids come shopping.”

“Yeah?” Jarek found his own shoes and put them on. “What are you selling?”

“Oh, the usual. Toothpaste, tissues. Bananas and pencils. Whatever previously learned vocabulary items I can find.” She straightened and picked up her purse, noticing that he was waiting for her. “What are you doing?”

He walked to the door and held it open, avoiding her eyes. “I have to go get something. You reminded me.”

“Get what?”

He hesitated. “Milk.”

She folded her arms under her breasts as they waited for the elevator. “You have to get milk at ten o’clock at night?”

“So? I drink it at breakfast.”

“Ah. Another piece of the puzzle.”

“Just get in, Olivia.” He shoved her into the elevator and she elbowed him in the stomach, laughing when he subdued her easily.

“You don’t have to walk me home, Jarek.”

“I’m not.”

“You are too.”

“Am not.” He absolutely was. But he knew what she was doing, too. He didn’t want her to stay, and she was making up a reason to go so he didn’t have to. And now that the situation had been reversed and she was the one bolting after sex, preparing to leave him alone in that big, empty apartment, he didn’t like it one bit. What kind of immature asshole did that? He did, obviously.

So he did the only thing he could think of to appease the guilt, and walked her back to her door, bypassing all the stores on the way, insisting he needed milk from the place at the far end of the street. He walked her upstairs and kissed her good night and waited until both doors were locked before going home. He bought milk in case she was watching, though he already had some in the fridge. Then he stripped down and lay in his king size bed and asked himself what the fuck he was doing.

J
AREK’S
P
HONE
R
ANG
at ten o’clock the following night. He usually saw Olivia on alternating days, so tonight he’d spent the rainy evening alone indoors, watching television and reading. He’d found a show hosted by a tall Canadian man who promised that learning Mandarin was fun and easy, but it had turned out to be neither of those things.

He gave up on languages and tried to read one of Olivia’s sappy
Chicken Soup
books, but he wasn’t in the mood to have his heart strings tugged. He was pretty sure those grasping fingers would find nothing to hold onto, anyway. He was so bored he was almost ready to cross the hall to knock on Dale’s door—the guy talked a big game, but every time Jarek saw him he was in the gym or at home, not out banging “hot Asian chicks,” as he liked to boast. Then his phone rang.

He stared across the room for a second, half-hoping it was Olivia. After their fight he’d given her his number and punched hers into his contacts, though he’d never once called her. And, because she knew he was an emotionally destitute moron, she never called him either. There was pretty much only one person on the planet who chose to call Jarek, and he knew what he’d hear when he answered. Still, he picked up.

“Hello.” Not a question.

“Oh my God, he’s alive! Honey, I still have a brother!”

Jarek could hear Katrine, Jonah’s wife, shout back. “Hallelujah!”

He rolled his eyes. “Is it comedy hour already?”

“We’re just getting started, my friend. I’ve got weeks of material stored up.”

Jonah waited for Jarek to speak, but Jarek knew how to wait him out, and that’s what he did. He knew what he was supposed to do here—apologize. He was supposed to say he was sorry for being a lousy brother, for not calling or e-mailing or sending postcards, but that was Jonah’s burden to bear. Jonah was the good son; Jarek was the other one.

“That’s it?” Jonah asked. “You’re not going to say anything?”

Jarek opened a bottle of beer and drank half. “How are the kids?”

“They’re great.” He lowered his voice, and Jarek could picture him ducking into the bedroom and closing the door. “They’re terrible, Jare. They’re monsters.”

He laughed. “They are not.” His four-year-old nieces were twin angels, with Katrine’s red curls and gap-toothed grins. He wasn’t much for kids, but they were hilarious and impetuous, and he appreciated them all the more from across the ocean.

“What are you doing?” Jonah asked. “Drinking a beer? Describe it to me, please. Katrine has us on a diet where I’m not supposed to have wheat for some godforsaken reason.”

“It’s delicious,” Jarek answered truthfully. “I’m sitting around in my underwear, watching porn and drinking amazing beer. Life is great.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Spare me. You love your life. You rub it in all the time.”

“You’re right. I do love my life. And I’d love it even more if my brother called to say he was alive from time to time.”

“I’m building furniture in China, Jonah. There’s nothing to worry about.”

They were fraternal twins with nothing else in common. When Jarek enlisted, Jonah had gone to college and gotten a degree in horticultural science, then started a successful landscaping business. He’d been carefully cultivating new life while Jarek had methodically wrung it out of people. Jonah had married Katrine and started a family; Jarek remained very much a loner. Jonah was a volunteer firefighter; Jarek couldn’t remember the last time he’d helped somebody on purpose.

“Tell me something else then.”

He took another swig of beer. “I lied about the underwear.”

Jonah was silent for so long Jarek thought the connection had cut out. Then his brother spoke. “Tell me about Olivia.”

The bottle slipped through his fingers and bounced on the couch cushion. He snatched it up before it could spill, and gripped the phone tight as he fought to keep his voice level. His brother and his boss were fucking gossips. “What’d Brant tell you?”

“That you’ve been seeing her for a while. That she’s a kindergarten teacher.”

“Sounds like you know everything already.”

“You like her, Jare?”

“She’s fine.” He smirked. Jonah would think he was being stubborn, but Olivia would appreciate the humor.

“Is she there now?”

He studied his feet, crossed at the ankle on the coffee table. “No.”

“Then tell me about her.”

Jarek rarely talked to his brother about women, in large part because he didn’t know enough about the women he slept with to relay the information, and partly because Jonah was a decent guy who loved family life and didn’t really want to live vicariously through his brother. “She’s just a girl. We hang out sometimes. Run together. Get something to eat. She’s got terrible taste in movies.”

“Is she pretty?”

He finished the beer and got another one. “Yeah. She’s pretty.” It was the understatement of the year, but he wasn’t going to gush like some stupid sap.

There was a flurry of high-pitched squealing in the background, muffled when Jonah covered the receiver with his hand. After a second he was back. “The girls say hi and that they miss you.”

“Tell them I say hi.”

“They also want to know if you can send them presents.”

“Sure.”

“And they want to see you on the computer.”

Jarek blew out a breath. “I told you, and I’m sure your gossipy friend Brant told you, the Internet here is spotty. I can’t connect in my apartment.”

“So? Go to the one of those Internet cafés you mentioned.”

“I—”

“If you don’t want to Skype, send an e-mail at least. Send some pictures. Keep in touch.”

“We’re in touch right now, and it’s going really great.”

“Seriously, Jare—”

“Okay, okay. Stop.” There weren’t a lot of things Jarek felt bad about, but Jonah had been his best friend growing up, and was one of the few people who’d never given up on him, no matter how hard he pushed him away. “I’ll send some presents, okay? And a letter or something.” He really didn’t want to go into the Internet café again. Truth be told, the place was grimy, and he just didn’t like it. Plus he couldn’t type, and sending e-mails took forever. Especially when you had nothing to say.

This time Jonah waited him out, knowing he’d gotten the knife in and telepathically twisting it. “How’s the landscaping going?” he asked lamely.

“It’s going all right. Keeping busy.”

“Good.”

“Dad’s been asking about you.”

“Don’t.”

“When the meds are working, that is.”

“I said don’t.”

“He hasn’t got a lot of time left, Jarek. A couple of months, maybe.”

“Good.”

“Shit. Don’t say that.”

“Then don’t bring it up. I’m not coming back. Drop it.”

“What about the funeral? Will you come for that?”

“What do you need, money? I’ll pay for it. Will that shut you up?”

Jonah was quiet for a long time. Jarek felt like a dick, but he wasn’t going back to Virginia to say good-bye to his father. He was as good as dead, as far as Jarek was concerned. He was a shitty father who’d loved the wrong woman, and he’d taken it out on his kids. How the hell Jonah managed to look past that—fuck,
move
past it—he’d never know. And he didn’t care. Two more months and the man would be out of his life permanently, and they could stop these rote conversations where Jonah reminded him he was a bad son and Jarek reminded him that Aidan McLean was a bad father.

“You want to talk about anything else?” he asked.

“What’s Olivia’s last name?”

He sighed. Jonah was a manipulative bastard when he wanted to be: make him refuse to talk about their father, then give him a chance to redeem himself by discussing Olivia. “What are you doing, Googling her?”

“So what if I am?”

Jarek sat up a little bit straighter. He didn’t appreciate Jonah’s methods—he was supposed to be the one who knew how to get information out of reluctant people, after all, but…He’d told himself he wouldn’t investigate Olivia, even though he desperately wanted to. He’d alternately promised himself that he didn’t care what her little secret was, then switched to reminding himself that he respected her privacy. But if Jonah did it…

He was going to hell. “Her last name is Clarke,” he said, gnawing on a knuckle. “With an e. She’s from Michigan. Candor, Michigan.”

“Candor…Michigan…”

“And she went to John Millford East High—” That’s what was printed on the T-shirt she slept in.

“Yeah, here she is.”

“That quickly?”

Jonah was silent, and Jarek knew something was wrong. “Spit it out, asshole,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended. Or perhaps just as harshly. “What are you looking at?”

“Um…some photos. Newspaper articles.”

“Dude.”

“It’s nothing…bad. I mean, she didn’t do anything. It just looks like maybe…”

“Jonah!” Jarek had been in a lot of rough situations in his life. There’d been several occasions when he’d been pretty certain he was going to die. And yet somehow, he couldn’t remember a time when his heart had pounded in his chest so hard he thought it might burst out.

“Okay, man, okay. Well, she
is
pretty.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m just reading the article, hang on. I’m trying to understand.”

He was the slowest reader in the entire world. Jarek was looking around for his shoes, ready to storm the nearest Internet café to Google Olivia Clarke, Candor, Michigan, himself, when Jonah spoke. “How much do you know?” he asked.

“Nothing. She said she did something that people didn’t like.”

“Yeah. Basically it looks like this town is crazy about baseball. In the past twelve years, eight kids from that high school you named went on to play in the major leagues.”

“Okay…”

“And apparently there was some sort of scandal, where half the team was accused of gang raping a drunk girl on New Year’s.”

His heart stopped. He thought of Olivia, the way he’d fought to make her come the way he thought she should—

“It wasn’t Olivia,” Jonah added.

“Motherfucker!”

“Sorry, sorry. This was a year ago. The girl was in high school. And I guess somebody filmed it with their cell phone and a video got passed around, and somehow Olivia was the one that turned it in to the police.”

Jarek pinched his brow. This was a sad story, but it didn’t explain shit. He waited for Jonah to continue, and in the background he could hear clicking as his brother scrolled through web pages.

“Okay,” he said. “It looks like the video was e-mailed between guys on the team, and the coach was on that e-mail list. And Olivia found it on his computer and that’s how she turned it in. Turned them in. The team.”

He knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “What was the coach’s name?”

“Um…” More clicking. “Chris Masterson.”

Her fiancé. The golden boy. “Was he in the video?”

“No, not according to this. He just knew it existed, but before he could turn it over to the authorities, Olivia did. Nine members of the team were arrested and charged, suspended…Okay, here’s where it gets weird.”

“What?”

“When you read the bigger papers, the national stuff, it’s pretty cut and dry. They raped this girl, got caught, reputations ruined, scholarships lost, blah blah blah. People are saying that’s the least that should have happened to them.”

“Okay. Right.”

“But then when you look at the smaller stuff, just Googling Olivia’s name and the town and stuff, it paints a different picture.”

“Like what?”

“Like, these people fucking hate her, Jare. They think she stuck her nose in, ruined those boys’ lives, took away their futures. She had to close her Facebook account, quit her job…Seven police incidents at her apartment in three months…Hey, did you know she was engaged?”

He ran a hand over his face. “Yeah.”

“Well, that ended. Wow. Shit.”

Jarek groaned. “What?” This was exactly why he wasn’t going to pry. He didn’t want to care, and now that he knew, there was no way he’d be able to keep himself from asking her about it. Plus she could see right through him; she’d know something was up the second she set eyes on him.

“There are some web sites about her. Like, hate sites. It looks like they haven’t been updated in a few months, but it posts her address and phone number, her schedule, pictures of a car with stuff spray painted on it…Vandalism, mostly. Threats.”

For some reason he remembered that first night when he’d asked her if she always ran indoors and she said yes. How there’d been something off about the way she’d answered. And now he knew. She had to run indoors. She’d had to stay inside to avoid everyone. For a full year.

“What about the case?”

“Um…Didn’t go to trial. The girl dropped the charges. But the damage had been done, according to this article. The boys’ reputations had been ruined. And the team had to cancel the season, since they’d lost half their players.”

Jarek finished his second beer and spun the bottle across the coffee table, catching it before it toppled over the edge. “Well.”

“She didn’t tell you any of this?”

“We’re not that close.”

“Must have been pretty bad if she fled the country to escape it.”

“Yeah.” She must be pretty fucking desperate for friends if she was willing to let him into her bed four nights a week. Let him walk out when he was finished, never asking him to stay, never asking him to call her. She’d been so damn lonely when they’d met, she’d been willing to accept anything, just so she wouldn’t be alone. And he’d sensed it and taken advantage.

“Do you—”

“It’s late, Jonah. We’ve got a thirteen-hour time difference, remember?”

“It’s only eleven o’clock your time.”

“I’ve gotta go.” He had nowhere to be, but he couldn’t keep talking about this. He’d spent his life demanding the truth, and now that he had it, he didn’t fucking want it.