My Once and Future Love (15 page)

I walked into the kitchen and slugged his
arm. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

“Hey! What are you on about?”

“
This
. I told you not to leave obvious
marks.”

He touched it. “That’s a good one.” He
grabbed the waffle that popped up out of the toaster. “Ooo,
hot.”

“Dumb-ass. My dad is going to
freak
when he sees my neck!”

“Wear a scarf,” he said with his mouth full.
“It’d be cute.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the apple he
left on the counter. “I don’t
have
a scarf, or a
short-sleeve turtleneck, or make-up thick enough to hide this
thing. You realize you have to flee now before he kicks your
ass.”

“Is he really going to notice with all that’s
goin’ on, Bethie? A love bite’s a bit insignificant right now. Just
hide it with your hair or somethin’.”

“
Mom
will notice and she’ll tell him,
and she’s smart enough to put two and two together if they know
you’re in town.”

“What, you never made out in high
school?”

“
No
.”

“Not ever?” He asked like he couldn’t imagine
people existing with such a history.

I looked away. “Kissing you was the first
time I kissed anybody.”

“Wow.”

He took my face in his hands. “I’m
honored.”

I blushed. “Shut up. No fair being sweet when
I’m annoyed with you.”

He gathered me into his arms. “If it’ll make
you feel better, I’ll take you shopping.” He looked down. “Are you
naked under my shirt?”

“God, you have a one-track mind.”

“Didn’t answer my question.” His hands slid
under the hem of the tee.

I batted his hands away before he could
distract me with their talents. “Quit that. I’m mad at you.”

He grinned. “No, you’re not.”

Okay, I wasn’t
mad
, but definitely
inconvenienced. The hickey was not a good thing to come home with
and I wished I could hide out until it faded, which, with my fair
skin, couldn’t come soon enough.

“Don’t wanna play, Jacob.” I sat on one of
the dining chairs and bit into the apple.

Seeing me genuinely put out, his demeanor
changed and became more contrite. “I’m sorry, love. I’ll remember
next time.”

Guess it bothered me so much because it
reminded me I was still a kid in some ways, and stuff like this was
only the beginning of things that would chafe until I struck out in
the world on my own. The dorm still awaited, but with Mom’s
diagnosis… Well, I hadn’t decided if I could leave home, yet. On
the one hand, I’d have freedom. On the other, I’d worry.

He touched my shoulder. “Hey, what’s going
through that head, kitten?”

“Lots.” I rubbed my forehead. “Too much,
lately.”

He moved a chair close to mine, sat, and put
his arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him.

“I’m here, okay?”

“I know. Until you have to leave.”

He didn’t reply to that, and I didn’t ask him
to. We sat cuddling until the mood settled and we could turn our
attention back to food.

After breakfast, I wanted to get dressed, but
needed a shower somethin’ awful. We went through a round of
you
go—no, you go
and ended up with him using his mother’s bathroom
and me using his. I braided my hair over the side with the bruise,
which sort of concealed it.

“What would you like to do today?” he asked,
leaning casually on the doorframe.

“Aren’t you supposed to box up the
house?”

“Technically, but I think I’m allowed to
spend a day with my girl.”

I’d never get tired of hearing that—
my
girl
. “I don’t know…” I looked in the direction of my house.
“Mom might need something.”

“We could go to the beach, take your camera,
escape the heat a bit…”

That smile wouldn’t sway me this time. “Let
me check in first.”

He sighed. “Alright.”

He plopped on the couch in front of the TV
and reached for the remote. Rolling my eyes, I left through the
back to climb over the wall again. No one was in my yard or showing
through a window, so I dropped to the ground and hurried to my
room. The pencil was where I left it, allowing me to get back
inside. I dressed properly, then reached for my make-up.

Caking on concealer hid the hickey a bit
more, but not entirely, so I’d still need to be careful to keep my
hair over it if I ran into my parents. I loaded a roll of film into
my camera and left it on my desk next to my purse.

My room was at the start of the hallway to
the bedrooms. There was a bathroom between mine and my brother’s
old room, then Mom and Dad’s was at the end. I walked out to the
front to check the driveway first. No cars, but one could be in the
garage.

A note was stuck to the fridge:

Elizabeth,

We went to see the nutritionist for your
mother’s new diet. Then we’ll stop at the store.

Dad.

Okay, I guess I wasn’t needed. New diet?
Fighting cancer required specific food? Well, whatever worked. If
eating powdered duck bills upside-down would kill the cancer, I’d
feed it to her myself.

I left my own note about spending a few hours
with a friend, grabbed my stuff, and left the house, using the
sidewalk to get to Jacob’s this time. His door was unlocked.

“So?” he asked.

“They weren’t there.”

“Lucky me.” He turned off the TV.

I followed him to the garage where his
mother’s car was stored. “Aren’t you going to lock the front
door?”

“I’ll do it after I move the car. Have to put
the lock on the garage, anyway.” He pushed the garage door up.
There was no automatic opener. He opened the passenger door for me.
“Hold that,” he said, and dropped a padlock in my lap.

He backed the car to the end of the driveway,
locked both doors, and pulled onto the street once it was clear,
then tuned the radio to his favorite local rock station.

It was a half-hour drive to the beach he’d
chosen, one of the little places you took stairs down to with some
tide pools and a bit of sand. The only other person there was a
diver going into the water just as we took to the stairs. The air
was at least ten degrees cooler than inland and smelled fresher
than at the sunbathing beaches. Though I wasn’t really a swimmer,
the peace of the waves always called to me.

Jacob sat on the last step to take his boots
and socks off. I sat two steps above him and pulled my camera out
of my bag. He continued stripping down to a pair of black swim
trunks.

“Join me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t do the ocean.”

He shrugged and stood on the sand. “Your
loss, pet.” He took off at a run and dove into the waves, coming up
again where the water was armpit high.

He was gorgeous wet in general, and here the
sun was making his eyes crystal blue and glowing like beacons. I
raised my camera to my eye and zoomed the lens on his face, now in
profile. He dove into the waves again. The water was gentle today,
not even making peaks. I wondered if he could see the diver under
there.

I kept an eye to where my boyfriend was, but
turned my camera to other subjects—a hermit crab, a couple anemones
in a tiny pool, the carving of the cliff wall to the beach.
Capturing nature in interesting ways fascinated me and I liked when
a photo of something natural looked like it could be something
else. Focused on the view through my lens, I didn’t notice he came
up behind me until he shook his wet hair like a dog.

“Hey! Watch it!” I jumped away from him and
shielded the camera.

“Should keep your ears open, love,” he said,
grinning. “Give us a cuddle.”

I evaded his arms. “No, you’re wet!”

“Didn’t seem to mind a week ago.”

“That was in the shower.” I dodged another
grab. “Stop it. Expensive equipment in my hands.”

“So put it down.” He stalked me like a
cat.

I could make a break for it, but he was a
faster runner and had a bit of a stride advantage. Didn’t want to
run with the camera, though—it was Mom’s. “I don’t feel like
playing right now, Jacob.”

He sighed. “Fine. What do you want to
do?”

“I was doing it before you interrupted me.
Sorry we have different interests.” I so didn’t need his craving
for attention right now.

“Just horsin’ around. Don’t have to be a
bitch about it.”

“I’m not being a
bitch
. I was
protecting my camera.” Now I wished I drove
.
The camera
strap went around my neck and I turned for the stairs, grabbing my
bag on the way up.

There was a fruit stand across the road where
I could sit in the shade. He could swim until he grew gills for all
I cared…no one got away with calling me names.

For once, he didn’t chase after me.

What, I’m not worth chasing?

Whoa, there, with the crazy talk.

Well, he never lets me have the last word.
What am I supposed to think?

And even as I thought it, I saw him wait for
a car to pass, then jog across the road. He was dressed again. I
stopped peeking and pretended to find a cantaloupe very
interesting.

“Let’s go, Bethie.”

“Huh? Oh, hi. Hungry?” I walked to the
register and requested, “One basket of the strawberries, please.”
The girl handed me the berries in a paper bag in exchange for my
money.

“Done?”

“Yes.” No cars were coming, so I crossed at a
walking pace. “Where are we going?”

“Home.”

I had to open my own door this time.

“That’s mature.”

“Don’t want to waste your time.”

“God, you’re such a drama queen.”

He drove onto the street. “You’re more
interested in being with your parents right now. I heard it in your
voice when you came back to the house. The camera’s just your way
to avoid thinkin’ about it.”

“They teach you that in Psych 101?”

“Beth, you didn’t talk the whole way down
here.”

“You had the radio on loud!”

“So turn the bleedin’ thing down. Known you
long enough to know when you’d rather be elsewhere, pet.”

“Sorry if my mother having
cancer
is
inconvenient for you.” Of all the… If we weren’t so many miles from
home, I’d get out of the car right here. “This morning was nice.
I’m
not the one that ruined it.”

He shook his head and exhaled, his grip
tightening on the steering wheel. Seriously, there was nothing he
had to have a tantrum about. I wasn’t the one picking fights.

Back in LA, he dropped me off in front of my
house. I slammed the car door and stomped inside, not caring if he
left or not. My parents were in the kitchen putting away
groceries.

“Hi, honey,” Mom said.

“Have fun, Elizabeth?” Dad asked, his head in
the pantry.

“Took some shots. I’ll be in the dark room
unless you guys need anything?”

“Nope.”

I nodded to Mom and took my camera into my
brother’s former bedroom. The roll I happened to have was only
twenty-four exposures, so I’d gone through it fast.

Working in the darkroom was therapeutic.
Everything was timed and measured. Structured. Mom and I worked
with an amber safelight to see what we were doing. As long as the
light was at least four feet from the paper, there were no
problems.

First, I had to load the film on a reel in
the dark. To process the negatives, I needed to put it through
pre-soak, developer, stop bath, fixer, wash, wetting agent, and
drying for at least four hours for them to harden completely. We
hung the sheet with a weight at the bottom to straighten it. The
strip could then be cut into individual images.

It was around one o’clock when I started,
which meant I could check the strip around dinner time to see about
making prints. The AC vent was sealed off in this room to help the
drying process, so the duration was usually shorter in summer.

An enlarger was used to project the image of
a negative onto a base for printmaking. A sheet of photographic
paper was exposed with the enlarged image from the negative. The
exposed paper was processed, first by immersion in a photographic
developer, then halting development with a stop bath, and fixing it
in a photographic fixer. The print was then washed to remove the
processing chemicals, and dried. We spaced the prints out on a
clothesline.

I left the room and came upon my smiling
mother.

“What did you use this time?” she asked.

“Color. It was what I had handy.”

“I look forward to seeing them.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Playing nine holes. He needed some man time
after the visit to the alternative health center.”

“I thought you were seeing a
nutritionist?”

“We did, but that’s where she’s at and we
talked about stuff other than pills and injections. Research says
you have better chances with a positive outlook, so we discussed
spiritual wellbeing, too. That kind of thing makes your dad
uncomfortable.”

I followed her into the kitchen. “I can
imagine. So, what’s this fancy diet?”

“Completely organic, with the nutrient ratios
specific to my body type to keep my strength up once I start
chemo.”

“But we don’t know that you’ll need that,
yet. The doctor said--”

“I’m just preparing. I’d rather expect the
worst and be surprised by the best. Besides, the food is still good
for me either way, so it won’t hurt.”

“Yes, Mom.”

How she could think about the badness, I
didn’t know. It terrified me.

She showed me the recipes in her new cookbook
and talked about the yoga instructor she met. I guess once she had
a path, it was full steam ahead.

We made dinner when Dad came home, then I
went back in the darkroom.

I worked on print after print, slowly seeing
my subjects revealed. The photo of Jacob standing in the water took
my breath away, and I wondered again why he wanted me as a partner.
He could rule the world with his charisma and ambition.