Crazy Love (3 page)

Though it might make me sound stalker-ish, I have to admit (with a certain amount of shame) that I’d gone there hoping she’d be there. I’d noticed her here a couple of times before and had been dying to meet her. I’d had little to fill my days with since I’d been back, and it’s embarrassing to admit that the thought of seeing her again that day had been the motivation I needed to get out of bed. Unfortunately, she was always swamped with customers, and I didn’t want to interfere with her business. As I threw my cash down on the counter and picked up my cup of lemonade, I found my feet taking me in her direction. As I drew closer to her, the view only improved. I decided today was the day I would introduce myself.

The beautiful girl who’d captured my attention bagged a purchase for an elderly couple and with a hint of a smile, waved farewell. Those eyes, which I could now see were robin’s egg blue, appeared guarded. Though I figured she was roughly my age, her eyes seemed ancient, like those of a scarred and damaged soul. Though something in the back of my cluttered mind told me to keep on walking, I found her absolutely mystifying. I’ve always been a people watcher, fabricating their histories in my imagination. This woman’s story completely eluded me, which naturally had me curious as hell.

Her bronze skin was flawless except for a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. As she lifted her hair off her shoulders and fanned herself, my eyes drifted to the glistening skin of her cleavage and I imagined nuzzling the long, slender neck that her open top buttons exposed.

Her table displayed framed art of some sort, but I’d been too distracted by her looks to take a second glance at what she was hocking. I lingered at a neighboring booth, feigning interest in their imports from Thailand. I watched as she took advantage of her lull in customers, flipping open a thick textbook. Though I couldn’t make out the subject, the fact that she appeared to be a student only served to stoke my attraction. With her distracted, I was able to get a better look at the inventory she sold.

As my gaze passed over the 5X5 booth, I saw she exclusively sold framed gravestone rubbings. Now, having a brother who’d studied painting, I’d been schooled in art basics through osmosis. But cemetery art?

I shook my head. The impressions were done in various hues of chalk, on high quality paper, and likely executed by someone who knew what they were doing. That was the entirety of my knowledge about this particular medium. Caught flatfooted, I had no idea how to begin to talk to her about her morbid product.

As I paused, puzzling over an opening line, a man crossed in front of me temporarily blocking my view. My dream girl looked up from her book and greeted him with a white, welcoming smile that froze me in place. The man stooped to kiss her cheek, and she gave him an admiring once over with those killer eyes of hers. As they chatted, he leaned on her table in a familiar way. She tossed her hair, and I realized I was grinding my teeth. My stomach dropped into the basement as I recognized the man’s stance, his build, and the taken way she looked at him.

It was Trip.

God, I love books. The smell of them, the texture of the paper between my fingers as I prepare to turn the page, the sound the spine makes when you are the first person to crack one open. Books have been my safety net since I first needed to escape my reality. My mom used to punish me by taking the light bulbs from my room so I couldn’t read at night. Of all the things that woman did to me (and allowed to be done to me), that was probably the most traumatizing. My little brother felt sorry for me and shoplifted a flashlight for me. I’d spent many nights burrowed under the blankets losing myself in alternate worlds. I remember almost everything I read. I can even tell you where something is on the page. This secret talent of mine had been a huge advantage, considering how much school I had missed over the years.

I cracked open a textbook as I wilted in the heat of the River Street Marketplace where I attempted to sell my rubbings. Rubbings. My roommate, Jayse, always giggles like a thirteen-year-old school girl when I use the term. As cultured as he likes to
think
he is, most of the time Jayse’s behavior is very junior high.

After years of having my ass grabbed at Hooters while I put myself through undergrad, I’d decided to press on to pharmacy school. Thanks to my mom’s complete lack of maternal instincts, I’d had a full ride for all four years at Mankato State. I still had to waitress, though; not every college student has the added responsibility of feeding two younger siblings. But then, not everyone has a mommy like mine. Thankfully, the winds of fate blew my egg donor back into our lives right before graduation, and this time she happened to be “on the wagon.” Since my grandparents and aunt lived close by and could keep tabs on her, I took a chance and chose a school many states away. For the first time in forever, I was on my own. I spent year one of the program doing nothing but hitting the library and working. Now I was well into year two, and my grades rock--- if I do say so myself. Maintaining my grades for grants was still my top priority, and my study routine was non-negotiable.

But a girl has to eat. No longer flush with overly generous tips from horny Vikings fans, I picked up shifts waitressing at Black Keys, a swanky local piano bar. The tips weren’t quite enough for me to buy much more than ramen noodles, so I’d recently started selling my tombstone rubbings a couple of weekends a month.

Between customers, I crammed. That particular morning I was prepping for a Pharmacokinetics test. South University Pharmacy program had been a mega bitch to get into. It was a pretty exclusive program, and I’d studied my ass off for the PCAT. I took it twice to be extra competitive. Succeeding in the accelerated program would be cake if I could keep my shit together.

Easier said than done, based on my track record.

For the first year, hanging out with my roomie and his crew had been plenty of social life for me. They were a rainbow-colored safety net; being surrounded by a gaggle of gays provided the platonic security blanket I needed to cushion me from myself and my less-than-stellar judgment. But this semester I’d been partying way too much. Year two of rooming with Jayse Monroe was starting to take a toll. A vocal music major, he and his zany Armstrong College friends were highly trained canines when it came to sniffing out “an occasion.” Nightly invites to raves and drag shows certainly weren’t helping me stick to my carefully crafted study schedule. Having reluctantly embraced “
the
party capital of the south,” I’d been balancing my work, study, and social schedules like a circus performer juggling torches. Deep down I knew I’d end up toasty, but that’s how I roll. I’m ashamed to admit I take comfort in all the chaos.

After a few hours of between-customer cramming, I felt like I’d absorbed most of what I needed from my reading assignment. I was going back over the finer points when Trip Beaumont arrived. I smelled his sexy cologne before I saw him, but the sight of him
never
failed to impress me. Ripped, swaggering, deliciously dangerous Trip. Looking into his bedroom eyes, it was easy to see how a silly girl could throw away her aspirations for some sweaty extra-curricular activities with him. Good thing I’m rarely silly.

Still, he’d been friendly as hell, and something about him really revved my sex drive.
That
made me super nervous. I could smell “bad boy” all over him as easily as I could smell that musky scent he wore. So far, I’d managed to keep things casual, but the more we hung out, the more I enjoyed his dry humor and laid-back confidence. I’d confessed as much to my sage roommate the night before, and he’d advised me to “stop being such a prude and bed that boy”.

In jeans and a simple white t-shirt, Trip looked especially fine that particular Sunday. I was very tempted to take Jayse’s advice. As Trip approached my booth, his dark, unruly hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it carelessly aside as he leaned in and kissed my cheek. When he lingered a second longer than appropriate for a casual greeting, I may have tingled in unmentionable places.

“Mornin’, Annie.” His baritone voice had a raspy quality that most likely came from smoking too many imported cigarettes. The romantic in me – as deprived of oxygen and sunlight as she was – liked to imagine Trip was born speaking this way, skipping the prepubescent stage completely. That drawl of his was something straight out of
Gone with the Wind.
Though I’d been raised by a southerner – and I use the term “raised” loosely – hearing that coastal drawl fall from his perfect lips made me want to ditch my stuff and drag him to his place…or mine.

Get a grip, Annie. Time to pull out the KYPO list
.

Whenever I find myself too distracted by a boy, Jayse and I construct a “keep your panties on” list – KYPO for short. Trip’s wasn’t very long, but it was drama ridden and written in bold capital letters. He was 30, older than me by five whole years. This fact did little to discourage my interest, since I’d always preferred older men. He was also divorced,
and
he had a kid. Not ideal for me, by any means. I silently chanted these items from my list to myself like a mantra.

Lately, Trip had become a sweet distraction and he’d appeared in the right place at the absolute worst time. We’d first met at Bonaventure cemetery four months ago. Covered in charcoal, I was rubbing gravestones when I first caught sight of him. I sat in stunned silence as I watched this breathtaking man focus intently on the tree line. His brow furrowed, and he made large sweeping motions with his paint brush as I drooled over him. As if he sensed my eyes on him, he turned those baby blues in my direction. A crooked, approachable smile overtook his chiseled face, and I found myself grinning stupidly back.

It was obvious from early in our first conversation that we had several friends in common, not to mention chemistry! We had exchanged phone numbers that afternoon before going our separate ways. As luck would have it, I saw him again a week later at Jayse’s boyfriend’s art show. He’d purchased two of Dale’s sculptures, one for his mother’s gallery and one for himself. Trip had several women flocked around him that night, but as soon as he saw me, he walked away from them without a word. We flirted a bit more, and I’d been surprised to discover that Trip and Dale were good friends. He was so hot and so easy to talk to that lately I thought about him when I should have been thinking about drug classifications and their negative side effects.

I was starting to think this was one-sided. With the tiny exception of suggesting I pose for a private nude sitting, he’d remained a total gentleman. A kiss on the cheek and the occasional hand on the small of my back had sadly been the limit of our physical contact. Feeling like a profiler, I worried aloud that he might be gay. Jayse, Grand Wizard of Gay-dar, assured me he wasn’t.

I didn’t know a whole lot about him. Trip was a master of turning the conversation back on me. That first day we met, he asked me how I got into rubbings. I explained that I started doing them when I was twelve. Back then, the house we rented backed up to a graveyard, and it was my personal retreat from the yelling and ugliness with my mother and her scumbag boyfriend.

After school, I often detoured to that cemetery. I’d pull out my library books and read nestled amongst the mature trees and headstones. Soon I was sneaking there on weekend mornings to avoid the two of them altogether. One day, as I sat under a large oak, I spotted an elderly woman spraying down an ancient grave marker with a bottle of water. Curiosity tugged at me, and I earmarked the page of my book and crept closer to see what she was up to.

Using a soft brush, she gently removed bird droppings from the stone. She dabbed at the stone and paused...and I, feeling a bit spellbound, waited to see what she’d do next. After testing the stone, presumably to see if it was dry enough, she used masking tape to fix some funky type of paper tightly to the stone. I watched as she took rubbing wax and coaxed the design from the stone’s surface onto the rice paper. She spotted me watching and introduced herself as Pearl. Pearl explained that time and the elements wore away the information on the old tombstones and that she was preserving historical records. For whatever reason, I found the whole thing terribly romantic and became enamored on the spot. It wasn’t long before I was trying it myself.

When word got out about my ghoulish hobby, the kids at school teased me pretty badly. I’m sure if they’d had my home life, they would have preferred hanging out with the dead, too. By the time I reached high school, I’d chosen to embrace my creepy reputation and went full-on Goth. I dyed my hair jet black (huge mistake), and let my boyfriend tattoo an onyx rose on my shoulder blade. That phase (and the boyfriend) had come and gone, but good old Black Beauty was sure to be with me forever. Ya gotta love the wisdom of youth.

I wondered what Trip might think of my rose tattoo and blushed when I realized I hadn’t responded to his greeting.

“Hey.” I blurted and flipped shut my pharm book with an audible thump. Though my mind shrieked ‘no,’ my hormones screamed ‘do me, do me, do me!’