Days Like This (37 page)

Girlfriends.  That was one way of
putting it.  There’d always been women, but especially during those hazy days
following his second divorce, when he’d wandered, adrift, for far too long.  A
silent, solitary wraith, tall and lean and needy, beer bottle in hand, wending
his way through the crowded bars of L.A., some kind of dark emptiness burning
inside his gut.  Beautiful faces coming at him from out of the crowd, plastic
smiles, eager eyes.  Hours spent cruising the winding roads of Laurel Canyon,
windows open and the top down, scent of eucalyptus heavy on the night breeze as
some random blonde in the passenger seat threw her head back and let the wind
muss her perfect hair.  Sometimes, if the night and the woman were right and
the emptiness was crowding him, he’d take the Porsche out onto the freeway,
open her up, and let her run.  He never thought about dying.  The speed, the
danger, were a rush.  So was the sex.  Exciting, yet at the same time
unfulfilling.  There’d been a lot of women, so many women he’d lost track.  And
things he’d never told Casey.  Things he would never tell her about that dark
and directionless time in his life.

He hadn’t understood what drove
him.  Not then, not until years later.  It hadn’t been about driving too fast,
drinking too much, sleeping with too many women.  It wasn’t sex he’d been
looking for; it was connection.  He was looking to fill that emptiness inside
him, searching for that slender, golden thread of connection—the connection he
had with Danny’s wife—in another woman. 

Of course, he hadn’t found it. 
That wasn’t the kind of thing you could replicate.  Back then, he hadn’t
understood the concept of soul mates.  Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood it
even now, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven.  But if the concept was real, if
soul mates truly existed, then he’d met his when he was twenty years old.  She
just happened to be married to another man.

“You still in there somewhere, dude?”

He glanced over at his daughter,
studied her face, the innocence that belied her streetwise attitude, and felt
something tug at his heart.  “Don’t call me dude,” he said. 

“This time,” she said, studying
him keenly, “you went so far away I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t a hard question, but I
bet there’s a lulu of an answer.”

What was it about this kid that
made it impossible to lie to her?  “Before Casey,” he said, “yes.  I had a lot
of girlfriends.”

“Casey doesn’t strike me as the
type who’d much like that.”

“She doesn’t.  She says I was
looking for love in all the wrong places.  Like the song.”

“Um…what song?”

“Johnny Lee?”  She shook her
head.  “
Urban Cowboy
?”  Another negative.  “Travolta and a mechanical
bull?”  She shrugged.  “Jesus, kid,” he said, “we really have to work on
updating your pop culture references.”

She woke feeling like roadkill, irritable
and exhausted, with a major headache and an upset stomach.  It felt like the
worst kind of hangover, which would have made sense if she’d gotten drunk last
night.  But she hadn’t.  Casey stumbled to the kitchen, still in her robe,
teeth unbrushed, her hair a mess.  The smell of frying bacon hit her full in
the face, and her stomach lurched.  Standing over the stove, Rob said, “I’m
having a few people over this afternoon to jam.”

When she didn’t respond, he
raised his head and looked at her.  “You look like shit,” he said.

She glared at him through bleary
eyes.  “Thank you so much, Dr. MacKenzie.”

“Seriously.”  He touched her
cheek, her forehead.  “You don’t feel feverish, but you look awful.”

“I’m fine.  It’s just a
migraine.  Stop fussing over me.”

“You don’t get migraines.”

“There has to be a first time, doesn’t
there?”  She crossed the room, took a mug from the cupboard, and poured herself
a cup of coffee.

“I wish you’d see a doctor. 
Something’s not right.  You’ve been sick ever since I got home, and lately all
you do is sleep.  Are you sure you don’t have mono?”

Fighting the urge to heave the
coffee mug at his head, she said through gritted teeth, “I.  Am.  Fine.”

“Why are you so goddamn
stubborn?”

“For God’s sake, MacKenzie, will
you stop hovering over me and just leave me the hell alone?”  She slammed her
mug on the counter, sloshing hot coffee over the rim.  “I am going back to bed,
and the first person who has the audacity to come near me will suffer the
consequences!”

She slept for another four hours,
awoke to bright overhead sunlight and a digital clock that read 12:36 p.m.  Her
headache was gone, and her stomach seemed to have righted itself.  She got up,
showered and dressed, and chalked it up to some 24-hour bug.

Downstairs, the house was silent,
the only sound that of the ticking clock.  Ravenous, she made herself a ham
sandwich, washed it down with a glass of milk, then went looking for Rob. She
found him in the barn, in his studio, hunched over his unplugged Stratocaster,
making notations with a stubby pencil on a sheet of music paper.  Walking up
behind him, she lay both hands on his shoulders and said, “Hey.”

He stiffened.  Let out a breath. 
And hunched lower over his work.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and kissed
the top of his head.  “I didn’t mean to snap at you.  I’m not sure why I’ve
been so grumpy lately.”

Still not speaking, he plinked a couple
of notes on the guitar, erased the mark he’d just made, swiped away the eraser
dust, and penciled in a correction.

“Oh, for the love of God.  Is this
the way you intend to play it?  Well, fine.  If you ever decide you want to
speak to me again, I’ll be at your sister’s house.”

And she slammed the door behind
her for emphasis.

***

Rose was painting in the
wonderful, sunlit studio over the garage that Jesse had set up for her when
they got married.  Casey sat on a wooden rocker, watching her sister-in-law
slap acrylics onto an oversized canvas.  “So,” Rose said, “where’s my little
brother?  The two of you are usually joined at the hip.”

Casey rolled her eyes.  “It’s
probably better if we’re not in the same room right now.”

Rose turned away from the canvas
to look at her.  “Are you two fighting?”

“Not exactly.”  She picked up a
tube of yellow paint that had inexplicably migrated to the wrong side of the
room.  “He’s in one of his moods.  I woke up feeling terrible this morning.  I
hadn’t slept well, I had a headache, and I was tired and dragged out.  He
started hovering, like a mother hen.  He does that sometimes, and it makes me
crazy.  I snapped at him, and apparently I wounded his delicate sensibilities. 
I went back to bed for a couple of hours, and when I got up and tried to
apologize, he got the way he gets—”

“Oh, boy.”

“—and I wasn’t in the mood for
it, so I left and came over here, where the company is a little more agreeable.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s that stupid
jackass MacKenzie temper.  He’ll get over it.”

“Oh, I know.  He always does. 
But when he gets that way, it’s definitely better if we’re in separate places
until he cools off.”

“I’m just a little surprised. 
Every time I see the two of you, you’re wrapped so tight around each other that
I wonder if I should go find a fire extinguisher in case you spontaneously
combust.”

She sighed.  And said in
resignation, “My name is Casey, and I’m an addict.”

Rose’s brow furrowed.  “Have I
missed something?”

“Not that kind of addict.  A
MacKenzie addict.  That man should come with a warning label.”

“Oh,” Rose said.  “I see.”

Casey sat up straighter.  Clasped
her hands and said, “I don’t think you do.  May I speak frankly?”

“I thought we were speaking
frankly.  But feel free to elaborate.  As long as you’re not about to go into
any of the intimate details of your sex life with my brother, we should be just
fine.”

“It’s nothing like that.  It’s
just that something happened recently, and I really need a girlfriend to talk
this over with.  Somebody who might possibly understand.”

“Talk away, girlfriend.  I’m all
ears.”

“This will probably sound crazy
to you, but bear with me.  I’ve just recently realized that I’m in love with my
husband.  Totally, completely, utterly, madly in love.”

A single beat passed before Rose
said, “Come again?”

“See, I knew you’d think I was
nuts.”

“I don’t think you’re nuts, but I
also don’t get what you’re talking about.  Maybe you can translate it into some
kind of English that I can understand.  Because I thought you were already in
love with him.”

“I was.  I am.  But it wasn’t
like this.  Not at first.  Or…maybe it was, and I was just in denial.  For a
long, long time.”  Her sister-in-law was looking at her as though she were
speaking Swahili.  And maybe she was.  Struggling to find the right words, she
said, “I’m going to use a musical metaphor, because what else do I know
anything about?  When we got married, the way I felt about him…or at least the
way I
thought
I felt about him, was like a sweet, tender love song,
played in three or four chords on an acoustic guitar.  But I’ve come to realize
it wasn’t that at all.  Because underneath that tender love song, there’s this
symphony, with screaming electric guitars and a full orchestra, with strings
and horns, and—”  She glanced up at Rose, who still looked bewildered.  “You’re
not getting it, are you?”

“Not really.  I’m sorry.”

“I had no idea I felt this way. 
I don’t know when it started, or how long it’s been going on.  Years.  Since
before Danny died.  Maybe even before Katie died. 
Years.
  I was in
denial for all that time.  Maybe it was like he said to me:  abstinence makes
the heart grow fonder. Maybe that’s what made me realize the truth.  I don’t
know.  I just know that one afternoon while he was away, it suddenly hit me,
and I realized that somewhere along the line, what I felt for him had turned
into this.”

“This,” Rose said.  “This what?”

She waved her arms wide.  “This
gargantuan
thing
.  The kind of thing where your heart feels like it’s
going to just burst free from your chest.  The kind of thing where, when he
walks into the room, your throat closes up and your mouth goes dry and your
palms get sweaty.  And you start shaking all over, and you just sort of melt. 
And you can’t breathe, or even formulate a coherent thought.  And God forbid
you should try to speak, because nothing would come out even if you tried.  And
you develop this peculiar kind of tunnel vision, where everything and everybody
else just fades away, and he’s the only thing you can see, and you just want to
jump him like a starving lioness and rip his clothes off and feast on him,
and—am I making myself clear?”

Dryly, Rose said, “I think I’m
starting to get the picture.”

“I’m thirty-five years old, Rose. 
I’m a grown woman who should be acting with some level of decorum.  But I am so
far gone that I don’t care anymore.  I’ve never felt so high in my life.  It’s
just that…I’m also a little confused.  A lot, if we’re being honest.  I married
my best friend.  My sweet, wonderful, kind and supportive best friend.  And,
damn it, he wasn’t supposed to turn into this raging sex god!”

At a sound in the doorway, she
looked up and into her brother-in-law’s eyes.  She flushed from the roots of
her hair to the tips of her toes.  Rose glanced at her husband, frowned and
shook her head
no
, and without a word, Jesse turned and disappeared out
the door and back down the stairs.

“Nice,” Casey said.

“It’s okay.  I’m sure he must
have heard the words
raging sex god
before.  Somewhere.”

“I’m really having trouble with
this.  I’m all afloat.  I don’t know who I am any more.  Or who he is.  Or
which way is up, and I feel so vulnerable, in a way I’ve never felt before.”

“You’re afraid?  Of loving my
little brother?”

“Does the term abject terror mean
anything to you?”

“I don’t get it.  Where’s the
down side to all of this?”

“When I married Danny,” she said,
“I was so in love with him.  He made me feel alive, in a way I’d never felt
alive before.  And I just closed my eyes and jumped in, feet first, without
ever looking back.  It was wonderful, and it was terrible, and I was so wrapped
up in him that I lost myself.  It took me a dozen years to realize what I’d
done to myself, and then I had to fight so hard to reclaim any sense of self. 
To find out who I was.  To regain self-respect.  And now—”  She paused.  “Now, I’m
deathly afraid of making the same damn-fool mistake with another man.  And
losing myself again.”

“Honey, you’re not the same
person you were then.  You’re older, and stronger, and smarter.  And you’ve got
yourself a really good guy, and I’m not saying that just because he’s my
brother.  I mean—”  Rose shrugged.  “I’m not saying that Danny wasn’t a good
guy.  But I will say—and please don’t take this the wrong way—I never saw you
look at Danny the way you look at my brother.”

“I know.  And it scares the bejesus
out of me.”           

“I’m not following.”

“The way I feel about him…it’s so
damn big that I don’t know where to put it.  If I lost myself so completely
with Danny, how am I going to survive something this much bigger without
disappearing like I did before?”

“Frankly, I don’t understand how
this could come as a surprise to you.  I’ve been watching you and Rob for two decades. 
You light up like Times Square at New Year’s every time he walks into the
room.  You always have.”

Casey clamped her mouth shut. 
Took a breath.  “I was horrible to him this morning.  No wonder he’s mad at
me.  I’ve just been so angry lately.  I thought it was because I wasn’t dealing
well with him being gone.  But he’s been back for two weeks now, and I’m still
so irritable that I can barely live with myself.”