Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later (18 page)

Just hearing his name bugs me. I don’t know if I buy all the monster stories, but no matter, I don’t like him. Right from the get-go I thought he sucked. He was arrogant, too full of himself, and looked like a dumb mistake that only Jessica could make.

Yeah, I’m angry, and I don’t even know why. The last thing I want is to find out.

The combination of my deadline for the second of a three-part series, which, of course, passed last week, and the guest is getting to me.

Ah, the guest. How do I avoid her? Not easy in this small house, but lucky for me she’s been out mostly, busy running around, seeing all her old friends.

It’s ten thirty in the morning and I’m closing in on my computer. Physically getting to it, I mean, but I’m not there yet; I’m still reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. And Jessica is still asleep in the guest bedroom just down the hall from my office.

A couple of minutes ago I heard sounds, moving-around sounds, closet doors opening, footsteps, and general waking sounds coming from Jessica’s bedroom. She’s been staying here for more than a week, and it’s still no easier. Hey, I’m totally over her, but she’ll always make me uncomfortable.

That almost stopped me from marrying Elizabeth. Not that I don’t love her, because I do. Who could not love Elizabeth? But with her as my wife, it’s a package deal; Jessica will always be around someplace.

I liked it better when she was married and off in France.

Maybe one day this whole thing will fall into perspective—all about being young and dumb combined with too much to drink—and it’ll fade into a vague memory, always unpleasant but not torturous.

Or am I letting myself off the hook too easily?

Maybe it’s really not that important. When I’m forty and look back, is it going to look like a mistake that didn’t have legs, that just went away, or a life-altering event?

It doesn’t look like it was that important to Jessica. It was probably just another nothing fling that, no doubt, she regrets. After all, it was her sister. But she’s probably found a way to rationalize it so it comes out looking like an alcohol-based indiscretion.

Wouldn’t she be stunned if she knew all the time I spend agonizing over that month.

Like this morning. This morning was another one of those tremendous times in bed with Elizabeth that got spoiled when Elizabeth mentioned her name.

I can’t let myself get caught in this shit, so instead I grab my jacket and head out the kitchen door to my car. I look like a thief escaping from a crime the way I run down the driveway. Head down and shoulders hunched, I fling myself into the front seat, turn the key, ram the car into first, and speed off. To safety.

I would dearly love to stay away all day, but I’ve got this serious deadline I’m already late for, so I just pick up a coffee at the Coffee Bean and head back.

My first piece of the three-part series for the
Sweet Valley News
comes out tomorrow. I could work at the newspaper office, but then they would see that I was just starting the second piece. That would really put them on my back. I suffer from deadlineitis. The minute I get the assignment—it could be three weeks in advance—I start suffering and planning excuses for being late.

Actually, having Jessica in the house should be good discipline. It should keep me locked away in my office, where I have no choice but to work. Or YouTube some old game or watch porn. Wouldn’t be the first time.

When I pull up the driveway, I can see Jessica in the kitchen reading a magazine. There’s no way to avoid her. She has to have seen the car, so I have no choice but to come in the back way through the kitchen; otherwise it’s too obvious that I’m avoiding her. Only strangers use the front door.

Since Jessica is Jessica, totally involved in her own feelings, I figure she probably isn’t even aware of my angst. After all, the whole thing happened more than five years ago and was so quick, only a month. I was probably one of a lot of guys who fell for Jessica over the years. It was almost a natural rite of passage. That’s all. Kids’ stuff.

But I can’t fool my own responses, and even thinking about that time sends a quick, disgusted shudder shooting through my body. How could I do that? I still don’t know. I quickly shake my head like that could wipe out the thoughts.

Instead, I force myself to think about this morning, about making love to Elizabeth, about the deep, satisfying warmth of that love, of her soft, pliant, trusting body in my arms. Mistake. That only makes the guilt all the worse.

As it happens, I was wrong. Jessica didn’t see me. In fact, she’s so involved in her magazine that she doesn’t even hear me coming until I open the door, and then she jumps and lets out a little yelp.

“Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I am really sorry, but still it was kind of funny the way she jumped. I give a little laugh.

She does, too, and it’s the first comfortable, natural response either of us has had since she arrived last week. I’m still smiling because it really was a funny sight and because, despite myself, I like the comfort.

But our smiles dissipate, and there’s a sharp drop into silence. The chasm between us, deep and dark, reopens.

“I have to work,” I say, and it comes out stronger than I meant, like I’m blaming her for keeping me. Without waiting for a response, I walk out of the room toward my office.

“Yeah, right. Like I’m stopping you,” she says, almost under her breath.

But I hear and, turning to look back, say, “You don’t
anything
me.”

I don’t know why she makes me so angry, but she does.

Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t belong here.

Ken was sensitive enough not to ask Todd any questions about how it was going with Elizabeth. Like, was there going to be a rapprochement between the sisters? Was Elizabeth coming in for the wedding? All the things he’d have to wait for Caroline to tell everyone.

They managed to have a good conversation over the next hour, a half hour down to town and a half hour back, without anything too personal. Only guys can do that.

When they hit downtown Sweet Valley it was closed up tight. The main street was almost empty except for some shopkeepers hosing down the front of their shops. Without the girls in UGGs and the guys in jeans, it could be right out of an old MGM movie of a small mid-twentieth-century town in the Midwest, where everything was clean and safe. And happy.

*   *   *

Actually, Sweet Valley still retained a lot of those qualities. It was probably one of the reasons Jessica didn’t want to leave. She wanted this life for herself and for her children.

People thought she would be the first one to escape to the big city, L.A. or New York. And she did, with Regan, but truth be told, she hadn’t liked it. She missed Sweet Valley and all the people, even the ones she didn’t like so much.

Maybe Todd fell in there someplace. Those couple of weeks when she first came back from France and was living in the same house with Todd were excruciating. Sometimes explosive, like the day they were alone in the house, both desperately trying to avoid each other. She had to wait for him to leave the house before she could safely sit in the kitchen and read instead of being trapped in her bedroom.

But then he came back unexpectedly. And he was so nasty he practically accused her of standing in the way of his work. She’d shot right back with the same bite.

“Yeah, right. Like I’m stopping you,” I say, almost under my breath. But he hears me and turns around and says with a really nasty look on his face, “You don’t
anything
me.”

How dare he say that to me. You don’t
anything
me!

I’m sitting there, in the kitchen, fuming until I can’t sit anymore. I tear down the hallway to his office. The door is closed, but I’m way too angry to knock—that feels too supplicant—so I go straight to my bedroom, grab my purse, and storm out the front door, where I practically run into Caroline Pearce. In fact, she’s blocking my way with her big, ugly body.

“Wow! Lovers’ quarrel?” Caroline says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sorry.” But, of course, no one could be less sorry. “I thought you were Elizabeth,” Caroline says, running her hand through the new growth of red hair that’s just beginning to grow back after her chemotherapy.

“You’re sick,” I say. Then it hits me: She really is. But I’m still annoyed at her. I say, “You know what I meant.”

I suppose anyone else might have spent a little more time like trying to rectify that unkind error, but unfortunately for Caroline, she hit the wrong sister.

“Elizabeth’s not home?” Caroline asks. “How about Todd?”

I don’t even answer. Or look back. I just race over to my rented Mustang convertible. Hey, I still have the credit cards. Knowing Regan, probably not for long.

No question that he hates me. Todd, I mean. Not in front of Elizabeth, but if she isn’t watching, it’s like loathing. Like it was all my fault and he wasn’t part of it.

It’s not true. It was both of us. Crazy. Horrible.

Until he didn’t.

Being far away helped, but it wasn’t a cure, only a palliative. I’m too impatient for palliatives.

I have to get out of here.

I spent the last week seeing everyone I wanted to see and lots I didn’t want to see. I even spent time with like Winston, who expected me to fall head over heels for him. Well, over my heels anyway. But I’ve
so
had it with rich men. Besides, he’ll always be the class clown to me—except now he’s become a decidedly unfunny clown, egotistical and arrogant. A real prick.

No place to go, nothing to do, just sit around and wait for Regan to call and then not answer the phone. Strangely enough, he hasn’t called, which is way creepier than if he did. The silence is unnerving. How long before he decides to come out here? Except that I don’t think his pride and vanity will let him. No, Regan is definitely not the sort of man to chase a woman. Besides, he’s probably still stunned that I would leave him—wonderful, rich, gorgeous him. On the other hand, he isn’t a man used to losing.

That last thought like unnerves me. The power that originally attracted me to him, redirected, could be very scary.

Right now, there’s no good place for me. But the best of the no-good places is here, with Elizabeth. At least it’s best for me.

And there I go again, selfish Jessica, always wrapping the world around myself.

What can I do? Twenty-seven is too late to change. Besides, I have some good qualities. My best one is that I love Elizabeth. I would give up my life for my sister. I almost did. One time when we were in high school, this lunatic madman came at her with a sledgehammer. I jumped in between them, and I didn’t even have a weapon. All I had was crazy fury and determination to save my sister’s life.

And later, afterward, I knew I really would have sacrificed my life for my sister, and that gave me way the best feeling about myself I have ever had.

So how could I ever explain the Todd thing to her?

I drive the two blocks over to Lila Fowler’s house. Even though Lila is my longtime best friend, we actually haven’t seen much of each other since I left Sweet Valley, but like old friends, five minutes together and we’re back in high school.

But Lila isn’t home. The housekeeper says she’s at the hairdresser. A place called Dario’s at the new mall between the Gap and Starbucks, not the first Starbucks, the third one.