Love Scars - 5: Covered (2 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “Frank’s been going on and on about it all week. He’s suddenly a fanboy.”

“Ew.”

“He needed another groom for the wedding, and he asked Brad.”

“What?” I said. “But Brad lied to us too.”

“But was it about anything so terrible?” Lisa said. “He just wanted to be seen as a normal person, I suspect.”

“It’s not the same,” I said.

“I might have suggested the groom thing a little bit,” Lisa said. “If Brad’s at the wedding, maybe J.D. will come too.”

“He won’t,” I said.

“He would if you forgave him.” Stacey came into the kitchen wearing her
Waves
sleep shirt over a pair of boxers and her hair sticking out all over. Working nights was perfect for her sleeping-past-noon lifestyle.

“We both think you should,” Lisa said. “You know. Forgive him.”

“After all, he faced down a guy with a rifle to save you,” Stacey said.

“It was to save his precious scanner,” I said, but Stacey rolled her eyes and Lisa frowned.

“I forgave Brad,” Lisa said.

“Brad didn’t sleep with you while he let you think he was someone else,” I said.
 

“Anyway,” Stacey said. “You get to walk with Frank’s brother, the doctor without a border, and I get Brad McDreamy.”

I practically choked with alarm. “Stacey Deven, you
don’t
have a crush on Brad.”

“As if!” She looked mortified. “Ew? He’s old!”

Lisa and I looked at each other with mega relief.

“But he is cute,” Stacey continued. “And rich. And Mason Brewer’s going to lose it when he sees me with Brad.”

“Argh,” I said. “So Brad told Frank yes, he’d be a groom.”

“You know Brad.” Lisa shrugged her shoulders.

“He’s a good guy,” we all said together.

“Speaking of the wedding,” Lisa said. “Tomorrow we’re picking out bridesmaids dresses. Nordstrom’s, one o’clock, before Stacey and I go to work.”

The next day was a Friday, and in the morning I drove down to Sacramento hoping to catch Dr. Barton during his office hours. Jane Marks must have gone up to the dig. She wasn’t at her desk in the reception area. But the professor’s door was open, and I peeked in to find him playing a game on an iPad.

“Dr. Barton, could I speak with you a few minutes?”

“Ms. Deven.” He switched off the device and set it aside. “My first appointment is late. Come in. Sit down.”

“Thank you. First the fun stuff.” I put two square embossed envelopes on his desk. “Invitations to Lisa
Newberry’s
wedding at the end of July. One’s for Jane. Lisa wasn’t sure where to send them, and when I told her I was coming in today she asked me to drop them off.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Dr. Barton said. “My wife and I should be back from our vacation by then.”

“I also wanted to return this. It came in the mail yesterday.” I handed him the internship check. I hoped he didn’t hear my little whimper. It wasn’t my money, but it still hurt to let go of $6,000.

“Yes, Ms. Marks explained about your claustrophobia problem. We learn as we go. Next summer we’ll require students to take a tour
before
we select the interns.” He dropped the check in his desk drawer. “You weren’t the only one we had to replace. Mr. Morgan dropped out too.”

“Mr. Morgan? Oh, you mean Brad.” I wondered if Dr. Barton knew one of his students was the COO of a multinational corporation.

“Bradley Morgan, yes. It seems the first in command at BlueMagick has taken an extended leave of absence, and Mr. Morgan’s been called upon to fill in.”

“You mean the CEO? J.D. Reider?”

“That’s the name. I knew Bradley worked there, but I had no idea he was an executive.”

The whole thing must have been a ruse from the beginning, a way to get into Dr. Barton’s good graces. Brad and J.D. wanted the same thing Steve’s company wanted, what I had tested for in the dig tunnels.

And now J.D. was gone. I desperately wanted to believe it was because of me. His kisses had been so tender. Our bodies had melded together so perfectly.
I’m here,
he’d said.
I’m here now.
And when I heard his voice the world was safe again. On some level it had to be real.

I wanted him to be in as much pain as I was in.

“Now, Ms. Deven, we do have one problem remaining,” Dr. Barton said. “You’re six units short on your degree...”

We worked out a schedule for me for the fall, and Dr. Barton gave me the paperwork to get the ball rolling on my PhD application. I wasn’t excited about it, but I didn’t know what else to do. Steve Heron had been right about one thing. My whole life alternated between
can’t
and
have to
. At least Dr. Barton was willing to continue as my advisor, even though I’d dropped out of his pet project.
 

My next stop was the student union. I’d arranged to meet Steve the same place as before to return the scanner. I was early, so I went inside to buy a cold drink. It was only mid morning, and it had to be over eighty degrees out. I needed something cold for the drive to my final errand at the Galleria to try on bridesmaid dresses.

I picked up a forty-eight ouncer and filled it with ice before putting in the tea. The union was practically empty. On my way to the exit an argument echoed from the other side of the wall, the corridor to the bathrooms. I didn’t think anything about it until a certain name was mentioned.

“You owe me.” A woman’s voice. “J.D. threw me out. They deactivated my badge. I’ve lost everything. My severance, my stock options. I’ve lost him.”

“J.D. Reider was never yours to lose.” I recognized Steve’s voice. “Our sources say he was using you the same way you used him.”

“He loves me! He just doesn’t…”

“He just doesn’t realize it?” Steve laughed. “How many women have sung that song? Poor sad Nicole. A man in love doesn’t throw his woman under the bus.”

“Whatever. You still owe me. I stole that scanner for you, and they know it. They’ll file charges.”

J.D. was telling the truth.

“But they don’t know it. You’re pathetic, Nicole, but you’re not stupid. You wouldn’t admit to such a crime, and they have no proof. But I have proof. I have the scanner, and I have the MolyMo checks you cashed.”

He was lying to her. He didn’t have the scanner yet.

“You bastard,” she said.

“Leave my mother out of this. Ba-da-boom. What? No sense of humor? Nicole, Nicole. Here’s my advice. Tell BlueMagick you want a nice fat severance package or you’ll sue for sexual harassment. And stay away from me and MolyMo. I never want to see you again.”

“Bastard.” She was crying now. The click-click-click of someone running in stacked heels got louder. I flattened myself against the wall as the red-haired girl emerged from the corridor and headed for the student union door.

Crap!
Any second, Steve was bound to follow. No way was I giving him that scanner. I spun and rushed in the opposite direction out of the building, circling the long way around when I got outside. I made it to my car, but I couldn’t relax until after the split to Business 80.

Hell, I didn’t relax until I pulled up at Nordstrom’s at the Galleria and no one followed me into the store. I found Lisa waiting in a dressing room upstairs, a strapless pale pink gown hanging next to her.

“Here you go,” she said. “Try this on. Stacey’s getting into hers right now.”

I stepped into a cubicle and stripped off my sweaty clothes. My heart was still pounding, and I couldn’t get Steve’s cruel voice—or Nicole’s desperation—out of my head.

I wished…I wished I’d been generous with J.D. Understanding. Not so fucking fragile and quick to take offense. He had his reasons for hiding his identity, and none of them were about hurting me. After all, as Stacey said, he came to Foresthill to save me.

My phone buzzed, and I dug it out of my bag. It was a text message from Steve:
Did I miss you?

Suddenly everything was clear, even as it was all falling apart. I knew what I had to do. I took the MolyMo check out of my bag. “Fuck!” I ripped it to shreds before I could think twice.

“You okay in there?” Lisa said.

“Yeah, fine,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

I took a picture of the shredded check with my phone. It was the right thing to do, but that didn’t stop me from crying inside as I attached the picture to my answer:
Returning scanner to rightful owner. Won’t be depositing check.

“Oh, Stacey,” Lisa said on the other side of the curtain. “You’re gorgeous. You’re going to show me up at my own wedding.”

I felt wobbly. In the last hour, I’d given away $56,000 and lost the chance to pay off another $150,000 in debts. And I wasn’t finished. I knew what I had to do. I had to sell the house.

“Best bridesmaid dresses ever.” I put on a smile and opened the curtain. “Can someone zip me up?”

“Aunt Nora, you’re beautiful,” Stacey said.

“Your expression is priceless,” I said. “I actually believe you.”

“J.D.’s going to fall in love with you all over again,” Lisa said.

But J.D. was gone. And I was the one who sent him away. I was alone.

Orcas Island. Third Friday in July

One day on the island was pretty much like any other. I’d retreated into a timeless world, like summer vacations when I was a kid. The only marker of time’s passing was the Fourth of July fireworks in Eastsound put on by the Orcas Island Chamber of Commerce. That was a week ago. Or maybe two.

Off shore an occasional speed boat buzzed through the sound of seagulls and surf. Scarlett had gone down to feed the dogs, and Mom was working in her garden. I was set up on the lanai with a guitar in my lap and a pad of paper on the table in front of me.

I spent most days out here, pretending to keep busy. Surfing the internet. Writing a song. My thoughts of Nora had diminished to every hour instead of every minute. Most of the time it was nothing specific.

I didn’t picture her dark eyes, beautiful and sad with the occasional flicker of humor that made me want to throw her down and climb all over her and taste every inch of her skin.

I didn’t play her sobbing screams at the cabin in my head repeatedly and want to kill the tattooed murderer with my own bare hands.

I didn’t fantasize swooping into Nora’s life like Sir Lancelot to carry her away to a happily ever after—only to have her cut me down with a slicing look of betrayal and disgust.
Get out!
I heard those words every night as I tried to fall asleep and every morning as I began another day.

Mostly I didn’t think of these things. Mostly I watched the ocean and the birds and walked in the garden and listened to Mom’s bad jokes and Scarlett’s rants about how the US had become a totalitarian police state. And underneath it all, my life took on a constant low-grade sense of emptiness, an emptiness I’d never be able to fill. The place created by the gods for Nora.

Nora, who hated me.

Scarlett dropped a bag of dog food on the lanai’s tile floor and went inside. A few minutes later she was back with two glasses of iced coffee. She handed me one and sat down at the table.

“How is your song coming along?” She nodded at Mom’s guitar, an old Taylor 810 that had a mellowed, gorgeous sound.

“I’m just fooling around.” I set the guitar down in its stand and closed my journal. I’d finished a couple of verses, but the song wasn’t close to ready to show anyone. I took a sip of the iced coffee and leaned back in my chair. “This is great. I should come up every summer. Fly out of Granite Bay the first day of hundred-degree heat and stay until it cools down in October.”

Scarlett raised a disapproving eyebrow. “What about BlueMagick?”

“Brad Skypes me if he needs needed anything.” I gestured at my laptop, open on the table. Brad and I talked on the computer every day. Legal had set up a public policy division to work on rights legislation. The first five demo vehicles were street licensed. BlueMagick didn’t need me there in the flesh. Everything was fine.

“Hey, you two.” Mom emerged from the maze with a basket of cut flowers on her arm. As usual, she wore a long colorful dress with her hair pulled back by a scarf. She was like a beautiful hippie earth mother, though she rolled her eyes whenever I said so. She joined us on the lanai and dumped the flowers out on her gardener’s bench.

I watched her sort the roses. “I just found out the red ones are American Beauties,” I said. “Not the pink and yellow ones.”

She smiled at me indulgently like only a mother can and said, “How is your song coming along?”

I looked at Scarlett. “What is this, a conspiracy?”

“I told Lori we’d be gone through August,” Scarlett said. Lori was Mom and Scarlett’s housekeeper. I’d forgotten they were leaving for England in a couple days.

As they talked about their vacation plans and Mom sorted flowers by color, the voices on the lanai faded to background noise. I stripped the roses and filled the basket with petals to take to Nora. She was in her room asleep, with her dark hair spread over the pillow. Her cute green piranha pajamas lay on the floor beside the bed, and when I pulled back the blanket she was naked.