Going the Distance (3 page)

“I have to contribute something to our quilting circle discussions.”

Olivia stopped suddenly, the light from a flickering lamp casting shadows under her eyes. “Everyone talks about me at the school. They talk about me in the street and in the shops and in the restaurants. And it’s one thing if I can’t understand it, but it’s different when I can. I don’t want anything from you, Jarek. Just company on this run. And I don’t want to be the subject of anybody’s discussion. Is that too much to ask?”

He stepped close and she shifted back. He didn’t press the issue. “There’s no quilting circle, Olivia.”

“He didn’t like me anymore, and if I feel the sudden urge to pour out my heart, I’ll call, okay?”

He held up his hands as though he were harmless, as though those hands hadn’t inflicted more damage on more people than she could ever imagine. “I’ll wait for your call.”

She resumed running, her breath coming out erratically. She was doing a noble job of keeping her face blank, but he could tell she was upset. He wondered if the boyfriend had spread rumors about her; Jarek was a dick, but he didn’t do shit like that, either.

“Tell me something about yourself,” she said, eyes on the path in front of them.

Jarek ran close enough to brush their arms together. She glanced at him but didn’t move away. “I like green peppers.”

“That’s the best you can do?”

People rarely called him on his shit, and he couldn’t help but smile. A glossary of unpleasant terms could be used to describe him: daunting, menacing, asshole. He’d heard them all. His brows were always pulled together like he was unhappy, and his mouth was stuck in a perpetual scowl. It worked for him, and it kept people at bay. But she didn’t seem to care. “What do you want to hear?”

She pursed her lips. “Nothing, maybe.”

He nudged her again. “Nothing?”

“You could tell me why you were late on purpose.”

He almost stopped in his tracks, only his forward momentum kept him moving. “Come again?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me. I saw you taking your time on the street, looking at your watch. What was the point? Did you change your mind?”

He appreciated honesty, even when it was entirely unexpected, so he told her the truth: “I wanted to see how you’d react.”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to see if you’d flip out.”

“What would that prove?”

Well. He’d thought it would tell him something, but he was fast learning he didn’t know shit about this woman. “It didn’t prove anything except that your apartment faces northeast.” When she didn’t say anything, he continued, “Why’d you come out, then, if it bothered you?”

“Because I didn’t have anybody else to run with, and it’s too dark to go alone.”

“Better than nothing, huh?”

Now she gave him the once-over. “I thought so.”

“Ouch.”

She shrugged and he touched her elbow to stop her. She turned to look at him, breath coming quickly. God help him, she might be the prettiest woman he’d ever seen.

“Okay,” he heard himself say. “I’m sorry. Let’s start over. I don’t have anyone to run with, either.”

“You don’t need anyone.”

That was true; he didn’t. But he wanted someone. He wanted her. “I wanted the company, too.”

“Then give me something better than you like green peppers.”

He ran a hand across his jaw like he was thinking. “I’ve been looking at your ass in those pants all night. And I’m sorry. I’m not coming on to you, I just couldn’t help it.” He was a liar; he was totally coming on to her, with the apology bullshit and the too-close running. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it, and not because she was clingy as he’d feared, but because he didn’t know what the fuck she would do to him.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”

They started moving again. “That’s it?” he asked.

“What more do you want?”

“Nothing,” he said, but it was a lie.

By the time they finished the route they’d exchanged no more than six words, but Jarek had run close enough that their breath mingled, that he’d touched her arm with his, her thigh with his knuckles. He couldn’t figure her out. He’d had one proper girlfriend in his entire life, and that had ended when he was twenty-one. He’d made a life out of understanding people, reading body language and nonverbal cues, but even when Olivia spelled things out, he couldn’t get a handle on her. Which was precisely why, even though he wanted nothing more than to quite literally get a hand on her, he wouldn’t.

They reached the end of the path and doubled back, exiting early at his urging to walk down a busy shopping street with no shortage of food vendors. Jarek bought them both lamb skewers and bottles of something that purported to be orange juice, but tasted like poison.

“You like this?” he asked, gesturing with his bottle when Olivia continued to drink hers without complaint.

She looked at him in surprise. “No,” she said. “It’s disgusting, I’m just really thirsty. Plus these are unexpectedly spicy.” She held up a skewer and shot him a smile. She had a very wide smile, he decided. It showed too many teeth. It should have made her look really happy, but it didn’t. It just looked…polite.

“You still pissed about earlier?” He bit into his last piece of lamb and looked down at her.

“No.” She didn’t return the look, was, instead, staring into a shop selling thousands of counterfeit DVDs.

“You need to go shopping?”

“Always with the questions, Jarek.” Olivia tossed her empty wooden skewers into a trash can and he did the same, trailing her into the store. The woman standing at the ancient cash register greeted her with a smile but the look of surprise was reserved for Jarek; Olivia was a regular here, then.

He started to ask if she had a big DVD collection, then stopped himself. “You must watch a lot of movies.”

“Mmhmm.” She fingered through a box of colorful titles, just flimsy cardboard faces inside cellophane. He stopped her when she came to an old Julia Roberts movie, that famous smile gracing the cover.

“That’s you,” Jarek said.

She frowned up at him. “What?”

“The smile. The teeth. That’s you.”

“That’s Julia Roberts.”

“You’ve never heard that before?”

She laughed. “No. That smile makes her famous.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

“Well. It’s nice to hear you make an assertive statement for once.”

He laughed and went outside to wait for her, passing off his half-full juice bottle to a kid collecting recyclables. Olivia exited a few minutes later, toting a small green bag full of illegal materials.

“So you’re a criminal,” he observed, walking beside her as they headed to her apartment.

“Here to corrupt young minds.”

“I don’t think you could corrupt anybody.” He glanced down to watch the emotions play across her face, too quick and varied to identify.

“No,” she agreed. “I don’t think I could.”

They stopped outside her apartment, much as they had last night, only this time the green door was closed. Olivia turned to unlock it, and Jarek leaned in to pull it open, getting close enough to smell her shampoo, telling himself it was the last time. She was an anomaly, a question without answers, and he always needed answers. That was the last thought he had before she kissed him.

He kissed her back for ten seconds. He was too much of a dickhead to stop any sooner, and too self-serving to stop any later. She had a hand on his shoulder as she stood on her toes to reach him, and he took one step forward to press her into the wall as he kissed her back. And then he pulled away, breathing hard.

“I’m not what you’re looking for,” he said. He meant it in a nice way, but it didn’t sound nice. And he knew it was too dark for her to see his face, to see that he meant it nicely, not that anyone had ever looked at his face and considered it
nice
. Then, before he could do something even nice
r
, he turned and strode off down the street without looking back.

“O
KAY
, E
VERYBODY
, one more time to prove to me that you really,
really
know this…” Olivia pointed to the three shapes she’d drawn on the board and mouthed the words as the kids enthusiastically screeched their names: “CIRCLE! SQUARE! TRIANGLE!”

“Excellent! I’m convinced. Does everybody understand the assignment?” They didn’t understand half the words in that sentence, but they did know “understand,” and they’d been staring at the crayons and blank paper on their desks for the better part of five minutes and were desperate to touch them.

“YES!” they cried.

“All right, then. You can draw any picture you want, but you need to use at least three circles, three squares, and three triangles. Begin!” Olivia realized she was still holding up three fingers, and tucked her chilly hand in her pocket to warm up. Since January, she’d become addicted to speaking with her hands, nearly poking out her eye on several occasions. The Chinese used hand signals to communicate numbers one through ten, and she’d studiously learned them in her first week, facilitating her visits to the local market where she couldn’t always understand the quoted prices.

She strolled around the room to study the kids’ work, expecting to see a riot of shapes and colors, but instead found almost unanimously neat rows of circles, squares and triangles. Three of each. No pictures.

“Guys!” She held up a hand to interrupt their not-so-creative processes. “I don’t want you to just draw three circles. I want you to draw a
picture
.” She was a terrible artist, but Olivia did her best to draw a house on the whiteboard, naming the square base, triangle roof, and circular sun as she did so. “See? Make a picture. Do you understand?”

“YES!” They got back to work, this time somewhat less certainly. Olivia wound her way through the tiny maze of tables, each holding five students, most of whom were now merely coloring in their shapes.

“Liv?” Olivia made her way over to Rose, who had drawn her best approximation of a snowman standing next to three triangular trees. She sighed. It was an imitation of the holiday picture that was taped to one of the windows, left over from the Australian teacher’s stint. But at least it was a picture.

“Good job, Rose.” Olivia smiled and patted her shoulder, and Rose looked relieved. Olivia paused next to Davy, a quiet, strange boy being raised by grandparents who dressed him in approximately seven layers of clothing to compensate for the chilly weather. The poor kid could barely walk, and his arms hadn’t touched his sides since November.

Davy’s artwork was more abstract than Olivia had intended, but he was deeply focused, for once enjoying his time in class. She didn’t know a lot about art, but his piece was rather impressive for a boy who still wrote half his English name backward.

She checked on the rest of the kids, made a few suggestions and encouraging remarks, and glanced at the clock. Five minutes until the three o’clock bell rang and classes let out for the day. Olivia sat at her desk and skimmed the next day’s lesson plan, just as she’d done when she’d arrived that morning, and again at lunch. She’d only brought three books with her to China, and she’d burned through them in two days. Lazhou didn’t appear to have a library, though they did have a massive bookstore, and she planned to head there after work, determined to buy something to help pass the time.

It had been two days since she’d kissed Jarek, two days since he’d backed away as though she’d burned him, and said he wasn’t what she was looking for. The rejection had stung, but more than anything, she was embarrassed. A tiny bit humiliated. The first man in over a year whom she’d wanted to kiss had not wanted her to kiss him. She felt like an over-aggressive man-eater, though she had little doubt he knew how to protect himself.

Just the memory of the encounter made her cheeks flame, and she waved good-bye to the kids when the bell rang, still lost in her mortifying memories. He’d kissed her back, that much she knew. The actual moment when she decided to kiss him was a blur, but the kiss itself was starkly clear, frozen in her memory the way things you’d rather forget tended to be. His cheeks had been cold but his mouth had been warm, his lips surprisingly soft given his terminally stern countenance. He’d made a quiet, pained sound as they’d kissed, and Olivia had put a hand on his shoulder to get closer, feeling his reassuring strength under her fingers. She’d been so damn lonely, and there was something about him that she wanted. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t intimidated or cowed by her. Or maybe it was just the way he was completely different from Chris, the boyfriend—then fiancé—she’d been with for ten years.

She dropped her head into her hands and willed away the thoughts. She hadn’t found the courage to return to the gym, though she desperately wanted to get back on the treadmill, get back into the company of people who at least understood what she was saying, even if they didn’t like it. As it was, she’d made a fool out of herself and would wait until that shame had burned away before showing her face at the construction site again. Somehow she doubted he’d told the members of his “quilting circle” about her unrequited passion, but the possibility had her shaking her head anyway.

“O-liv-ya?”

She jerked upright to find Davy still sitting at his desk, then had the fleeting thought that he was stuck there, as round and cumbersome as the Michelin man. “Sorry, Davy!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “I didn’t realize you were still there. Don’t you need to go home?”

He looked at her with big, solemn eyes and nodded, glancing anxiously at his paper as she approached. The abstract print was carefully colored and shaded in a riot of blues and greens and yellows. It was actually incredibly beautiful. Strange, soulful little Davy was an artist, in a roomful of kids who’d already had their creative instincts scrubbed away.

“Davy,” Olivia said, taking the tiny seat next to him. “This is very, very good.” He gestured at the wall and said something in Mandarin that she couldn’t understand, but could guess at. “You want to hang your picture?” she guessed, taking the page and standing to hold it next to the whiteboard.

He nodded cautiously.

“What a great idea.” She found one of the plastic sleeves she used to preserve her few handmade teaching materials, and tucked the paper inside, using a thumb tack to pin it to the wall next to the board. “How’s that?”

Davy shot her a tentative smile, then methodically put his eight crayons back in their tiny box and tucked it into his backpack before heading for the door. He paused. “Thank you,” he mumbled into one of his many sweaters.

Davy disappeared across the courtyard, trailing after a dozen other stragglers, all toting the same bright blue pack that bore the school’s logo. Over the excited laughs and shouts of children she could hear Honor, the Chinese teacher the next class over, alternately calling good-bye and scolding kids for doing something or other they had been forbidden to do.

Honor was twenty-five, slim and cute, though not “beautiful” by Chinese standards—or so Olivia had been told on her first day, both by Honor and another teacher. It was her first exposure to the brutally honest assessment Chinese girls inflicted on themselves and others: too fat, too tall, too short, eyes too small, ears too big. Olivia had winced and assured Honor that she was indeed pretty, but the teacher had waved away her compliments, and Olivia wasn’t sure if she didn’t understand or just didn’t believe her.

Now she went to the classroom door and stood just outside, a few feet away from Honor. She glanced over and smiled. Honor smiled back. “Hello, Olivia.”

“Hi, Honor. How was your class?”

“Fine, thank you.” She took in Olivia’s hands, still jammed in her pockets. “Are you cold?”

“Yes. Pretty much always.”

“It will be warm soon.”

“I hope so.” Even today, a bright and sunny day in mid-March, it was still cold enough to warrant a jacket, though maybe she could take off one of her underlayers.

“What will you do tonight?” Honor asked.

Olivia glance over, surprised. “I want to go to the bookstore,” she said. “Then…home, I guess.”

“To your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

Ha.
“Yes.”
Always.
“What will you do?”

Honor picked imaginary lint off her green dress, somehow managing to look remarkably slim despite wearing a sweater and thick tights beneath it. “I will have dinner with my friends.”

“That sounds nice.” Olivia desperately wanted to be invited, and for a second she thought Honor might ask. Then Mary, one of the Chinese teachers who had booted Olivia out of the mah-jongg party, approached. She gave Olivia a cursory smile, then started up a loud, speedy conversation with Honor in Mandarin.

Olivia sighed and collected her things.

On Thursday she bumped into Ritchie at the outdoor market. She wasn’t much of a chef, but she was getting tired of the limited number of items she could order unassisted at the noodle shop, and cooking at home helped pass the time.

“Hey, Olivia,” Ritchie said, approaching from behind.

She glanced over her shoulder as she bought a plastic bag of sliced beef—she was pretty sure it was beef—and smiled. “Hey.”

“Planning a feast?”

“Party of one. What are you up to?”

“Not much. Just getting some exercise.”

“How’s your ankle?”

“It’s okay. I’ll live.”

“You’re tough.”

Ritchie scoffed and adjusted his glasses. “Yeah.” They walked together as Olivia shopped, taking her time so she’d get home later. After a few minutes Ritchie interrupted her thoughts, asking, “How do you do it?”

She paused as she rifled through a box of ginger. “Do what?”

“Ignore everybody.”

She gave up the hunt and looked at him, surprised. “What?”

He gestured at the openly staring fellow shoppers. They were the only two white people in the crowded market, and though several of the vendors were no longer interested in Olivia’s visits, there were many people who still studied her. She felt her cheeks redden, but he would never know the real reason she had learned to ignore the stares and comments, a full year before she’d ever arrived in China.

“Practice,” she said, with a shrug that belied the sadness in the word.

He seemed to buy it, because it was a few more minutes before he asked, “Why haven’t you been at the gym?”

For lack of anything better to do, Olivia kept a pretty regular routine, turning up around seven o’clock in the evening on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, then one afternoon on the weekend. She felt bad lying to Ritchie twice in a row, but wasn’t about to tell him she’d come on to Jarek and been soundly rejected. She made up a story about feeling a cold coming on, citing it as one of the hazards of working in a school, and he didn’t question her. “Do you want to come over for dinner?” she asked as penance. “I’m not much of a cook, but…”

“Sure,” Ritchie said quickly. “I could use a change of scenery.” They’d hung out infrequently since meeting in February; Olivia thought he was nervous around women and, being of the female persuasion, she probably set him on edge. He was good looking, if a bit on the small side, jittery and anxious in a way that made her want to reassure him the way she would a younger brother, if she had any siblings.

They stopped at a small stand so Ritchie could buy drinks for dinner, the sun rapidly setting now, turning the sky pink and orange. Olivia waited at the curb, fiddling in her pocket for her keys, and tuned out the noise pollution just as she’d become so attuned to ignoring everything else. Unfortunately this time she ignored the rapid pinging of a bell, the last warning she had before one of the large bicycle wagons used to collect trash crashed into her, sending her sprawling forward onto her hands and knees.

“Olivia!” Ritchie shouted, darting out to help her up, collecting her scattered purchases. “Are you okay?”

In the street they saw the tipped wagon, one of the back wheels spinning to a stop a few feet away. Evidently it had come loose and the worker had lost control, the heavy wooden wagon toppling onto Olivia’s back. If there was any blessing to be found, it was that the thing was empty, so while she might be covered in scrapes and bruises tomorrow, she wasn’t covered in garbage.

“I’m okay.” She winced, waving away the onlookers. The worker gestured and rambled apologetically, and Olivia shot him a smile, assuring him she understood it was an accident. “No problem,” she said in Mandarin, earning a relieved look. “Let’s just go.”

Ritchie carried her bag back to her apartment where she popped a few painkillers and promised him she didn’t need a doctor. She’d had to go to the hospital for a physical as a part of her visa requirement, and wasn’t anxious to return to the cold concrete structure with even colder nurses and doctors muttering things she couldn’t understand. She’d played sports growing up and knew when she was truly hurt and when she just needed rest, ice, and anti-inflammatories.

Even still, he ordered her to sit at the tiny dining room table to wait while he made a surprisingly tasty stir-fry, then kept her company for a couple of hours, asking questions about her job. It wasn’t until long after Ritchie had left and she’d eased carefully into bed that Olivia realized
his
questions hadn’t bothered her in the least.

It was midafternoon when Jarek entered the gym trailer on Saturday. He shook the rain from his hair and wiped his sneakers on the mat inside the door, nodding at Ritchie, who was doing sit-ups on one of the mats. He didn’t bother with stretching, just got on one of the two empty treadmills, and turned the speed up higher than was comfortable. He’d come in every night this week, and Olivia hadn’t turned up. He still wasn’t sure what he’d say or do if she did show, just that he wanted to see her. He’d turned down women before; some had taken it gracefully, some had been angry, but never before had he walked away from one he’d wanted. And it killed him that he’d walked away because she made him nervous. A kindergarten teacher versus a former interrogator, and he was the one on edge. Fuck.