Evenfall (12 page)

“You will,” Andie assures him.

“Cort, we still on for Thursday?” Chris says.

Cort nods. “I’ll drive if you bring breakfast.”

“Deal. See you then.”

“What’s Thursday?” Andie asks after Chris is gone.

Cort shifts in his seat. “We’re kind of working on a project together,” he says. “What do you think about dessert?”

Andie’s sure she can’t fit anything else, but after Mary clears the table, she brings over two plates. In the center of each is a small tart, no bigger than a half dollar. A tiny strawberry adorns the center of each one.

While Cort’s ordering coffee, Andie takes a bite. The tart is so lemony it makes her mouth pucker, but there’s a sweetness there too in the thin and brittle crust.

“You must have made a good impression,” Cort says.

“Why do you say that?” Andie’s saved the strawberry for last. She lets it sit on her tongue, the flavor unfolding like the essence of a warm summer day.

“Those are Chris’s prize berries. Right now, he’s growing them in a little greenhouse until it warms up, and he hoards them.”

“You got one, too,” Andie points out. Cort has eaten his tart in two bites.

“Really? They’re so small I’m not sure I noticed,” he says, but Andie knows he’s joking. Cort, she’s starting to realize, notices everything.

When the check comes, they both reach for it, but Cort is quicker.

“This is supposed to be on me,” Andie says. She tries to peek at the bill, to see what she owes, but he deftly keeps it out of her reach.

“We’ll just have to do it again so you can settle your debt,” he says. “I know how you Murphy women hate to owe anybody.”

“I’ll take you to Johnny’s, then. That’s not payment—that’s punishment.”

“Depends on the company,” Cort says, standing. “Ready to go?”

The room is starting to clear out. Most of the tables are empty, and the crowd at the bar has thinned. On their way out, Andie spots Mary and Janet near the hostess station.

“Bye, Cort,” Janet calls brightly. “See you soon!”

Cort mumbles a good-bye. Mary laughs and waves good-bye, including Andie in the gesture, but Janet’s gaze is pretty cold.

Glad I’m not up against that, Andie thinks, amused, but puts a little extra wiggle in her walk anyhow as she slides past Cort and out the door. She can always blame it on the shoes.

THE silence on the ride home is different from the silence during the trip to the restaurant. It’s heavier, laden with expectation. Andie’s planning her exit from the truck almost
as soon as they leave the parking lot, and Cort’s first words don’t help.

“So who’s the guy?”

“What guy?”

“The guy you’re cooking meals with shrimp and garlic for. The Italian guy. The one you don’t want to talk about.”

“What makes you think there’s a guy?”

He sighs. “Andie, I’ve been…” The sentence trails off. There’s a hush before he starts again, carefully. “I’ve known you since I was six years old. There’s always been some guy. Why should now be any different?”

Andie doesn’t speak for a second. “He’s not Italian,” she says finally. “He’s American, and I’m pretty sure it’s over.”

“Is he why you left?”

“Partly. I needed to come home anyhow, to help Aunt Gert. When Frank died, I was in the middle of my thesis, so coming back for the funeral was about all I could manage.” She shrugs, forgetting he can’t see her in the dark. “She wasn’t in a big hurry to get things settled, and said the summer would be fine. I think I was hoping the extra time…But it didn’t work, and Neal and I broke up right before I came home.”

“How come?”

She wonders which answer to give. She thinks about Neal, about the way the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles, his slightly spicy scent, his smooth, manicured hands. There’s a vitality to him, a kind of humming energy, that draws people in. In the three years she was with him, she never knew him to sit still. His energy was enthralling
at first, until she saw it for what it was. By always planning for the future, he could avoid being fully there, with Andie, in the present. She’d known that even before she’d discovered the affair. She thinks of his apartment, filled with sleek, sharp-edged objects, and then the palazzo of her studies, the dust slowly drifting through its halls.

“Remember when you were talking about living out West, how it never really felt like home?” she says finally, as they’re bumping down her driveway. “Well, Neal never really felt like home to me.”

“Where is your home, Andie?” Cort asks, but that’s a question she can’t answer. She only knows it’s not here.

When the truck pulls up in front of the door, Nina rises from her place next to the steps, wagging her tail. Cort kills the engine and shuts off the headlights, so that the dog becomes a dark shadow, illuminated only by the moon.

He comes around to her side of the cab, but Andie is already on the ground, precariously balanced on her stiletto heels. He offers his arm, and she takes it gratefully.

“They’re pretty, but not really made for the country,” he says, nodding toward her shoes.

“Neither am I.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You seem to be holding your own okay.”

At the door, Andie turns to him. He smells like warm grass, like rain. “Since you were six?” she asks softly.

“Yeah,” he says. When she kisses him in the moonlight, his face is white as bone.

july

BEING with Cort is by far the craziest thing Andie’s ever done. It’s crazier than the time she “borrowed” her biology teacher’s red Honda on a Friday night to visit her boyfriend at a neighboring prep school; crazier than when she and her best friend Samantha skipped classes and hitchhiked to New York sophmore year to see the Rolling Stones, geriatric but still hot in their Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour, and wound up alone in a trashed hotel room with two passed-out roadies and some second-rate actor Andie still sees sometimes on late-night television. It’s even crazier than moving to Italy alone, with no money and only her classes and cramped living quarters paid for.

Andie knows this. She knows Cort’s too young, too wide-eyed around her. She knows she’s on the rebound, that
what she needs is space and quiet, time to think, not the complications of an affair. But she can’t seem to stop. She refuses to think about how this will, inevitably, end, and concentrates instead on the slow, delicious pleasure of kissing Cort, the taste of sweat-slicked skin and the feel of his muscles beneath her hands. Her days have already fallen into a rhythm around him. She wakes early and begins work so as to have the rest of the morning free. She pretends it will always be summer, that there will always be a canopy of green leaves casting shadows on the walls of this room, that this time will never end.

He’s in her bed now. It’s late afternoon and the sheets are twined around their legs. She runs a nail across his shoulder, leaving an angry red line, and he catches her hand and brings it to his lips. From the waist up he is the color of sand, the color of the iced coffee he brings her each morning. His thighs and ass are glaringly white, as if someone had highlighted these parts to capture her attention.

He releases her hand and traces his finger across her collarbone, moving so slowly Andie shivers. She’d like to keep him here for the rest of the day, but in a few moments he’ll start to look for his clothes, kissing her as he pulls them on. He’ll tug her down the stairs with him and they’ll kiss beside the front door until her lips are swollen. When he steps outside, he’ll hold her hand until the last possible second. When he walks down the path to his truck, she’ll turn the radio up, run the water, anything so she doesn’t hear him leave.

Sex with Cort is refreshingly uncomplicated. He’s not afraid to show how much he wants her, and he wants her
pretty much all the time. There’s no pretense, and Andie can’t help but respond. She feels as vulnerable as if she’s sixteen and in love for the first time, like a cut with a scab peeled off, all open and aching just when she thought she was healed.

He stretches and rolls over, putting his feet on the floor. She gazes at the long length of his back and can’t help but touch it, running her finger up and down his spine.

“Hey, cut that out. Some of us have to go back to work,” he says, and twists to kiss her before standing up.

She raises an eyebrow. “Going back would imply you’d actually been, and I thought you were out gallivanting with your buddy Chris this morning,” she says.

“Good point. I almost forgot, he sent you these,” he says, retrieving a slightly crushed brown bag from the floor along with his jeans. He drops the bag next to Andie. “He seems to think you need fattening up.”

Andie peers inside. There are two small muffins, studded with tiny pieces of strawberries. The smell of sugar and corn reminds her that she hasn’t had breakfast, and all at once she’s ravenous. She pops a piece of muffin in her mouth. It’s delicious, so much so that as soon as she finishes eating the first she polishes off the second one.

Cort laughs. “So can I tell him you liked them?” His pants are on, but he’s on his hands and knees, searching for his shirt beneath the bed.

“I think it’s in the hall,” Andie says, and rises to help him look. “Just what were you guys up to today? Spreading fear and terror in the forest?”

“Nah, it’s not hunting season yet. The deer are safe from us.” He pauses, plainly distracted by the sight of her bare breasts. She tosses him his shirt, which she found puddled in a heap just outside the bedroom door, and it almost hits him in the face before he grabs it.

He pulls his head through the neck opening, and Andie quickly tugs on her own shirt, sans bra. She’s buttoning it up as Cort comes over and slides his hands up her stomach, cupping her breasts and backing her up against the wall.

They kiss, standing up, until her labia are swollen and chafed from the friction of Cort’s jeans and the hard mound of his erection. She pulls at his waistband, fumbling with the button, and he lets go of her long enough to undo his pants. She tugs his jeans and then his boxers over the round muscles of his ass, pushing them down so they puddle around his ankles.

She’s reaching for him when he presses her back against the wall. He leaves a soft, slow trail of kisses along her neck, then tongues her nipple through the thin cotton of her shirt. Andie moans. She wants him inside her, but he moves his head lower, pushing aside her shirt and blowing gently on her belly, her pubic mound, and finally her clitoris. She arches herself toward him, and he cups his hands under her, holding her still. He brushes against her with just his lips, then the tip of his tongue, pressure so light Andie can barely feel it. She squirms and digs her fingers into his hair, urging him closer, but he gently holds her away. He waits until she’s almost frantic before settling into a steady, firm rhythm, and Andie leans into him so hard she almost knocks him over.
She comes in a matter of seconds, gripping his shoulders to hold herself steady.

After the last spasm she’s limp, a sponge wrung dry, but Cort stands and picks her up. He helps her position her legs around his waist, and enters her with a single slow drive, rocking her back against the wall. She squirms in his grasp, trying to take him deeper.

“Jesus,” he gasps, burying his face in her neck. He bends and thrusts, bends and thrusts, clutching her so tightly when he comes, Andie’s certain he leaves bruises. There’s a slick of sweat pooling on their chests, and when Andie arches back to look at him, her skin comes away with a small sucking sound.

Cort staggers backward and collapses on the bed, still holding Andie to him. “Jesus,” he says again. “I’ve had fantasies about you since I was twelve, and I swear none of them were like this.”

“Luckily I can’t say the same,” Andie says drily, wriggling down the length of him and to her feet. She stands and begins searching once again for their clothing, now scattered about the room.

They dress, moving slowly in the summer heat and aftermath of physical effort, stopping to kiss, to touch. Cort tugs her close, stooping to rest his chin on her head.

“So what’s going on this afternoon for you?” he asks, gently rubbing her earlobe. Andie leans into his touch. She can’t help herself.

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll check on Aunt Gert.”

“She okay?”

Since her dizzy spell in the bedroom two weeks ago, Aunt Gert has been scarce, coming to the big house only rarely, and never inside. Andie checks on her most afternoons and joins her for dinner when Cort can’t get away. Gert is always polite but vague about how she’s been spending her days, and seems to have no pressing need to resume cleaning out the house. Today, up early and restless without Cort’s presence, Andie spotted her aunt wandering through the far pasture, looking ghostly in the early morning mist. The scene, cool greens and grays, stayed with her even after the mist had burned off, so that she had to get it down on canvas. To get a better vantage point, she’s moved her easel up to the attic, where the round window frames the view of the meadow. The attic is cool in the early morning air, not hot as she expected, and the light is perfect, soft and golden. It’s the first time in months she’s been inspired to paint, and she finds she wants to keep the image of her aunt to herself, a secret even from Cort. She doesn’t tell him about her aunt’s wanderings.

“I think she’s fine. Maybe just a little tired from the heat,” she says instead. They walk downstairs and outside, arms wrapped about each other’s waists. Nina’s dozing in the shade of Cort’s truck, which is filled with rolls of fencing wire, posts, and what looks like feed buckets.

“How about you? Looks like your dad has an afternoon of slave labor planned,” Andie says, nodding toward the truck.

“Um, no, not really. It’s for a project for Chris,” he says.

Andie raises an eyebrow. “What, he’s building a corral to keep customers in?”

“No, not exactly.”

Andie waits, and after a pause he continues, looking sheepish. “Look, I haven’t been exactly straight with you,” he says, and the words are like ice to Andie’s heart. She’s learned the hard way that no good can come of a sentence that starts like that, especially when it comes from a man in her life.
I didn’t want to tell you…I
’ve been meaning to let you know…I haven’t been exactly straight with you.
Dimly, she can hear Cort talking, but she’s too busy imagining the worst to listen. There’s another woman somewhere, and she’s been a fool. Again. Although how another woman ties in to the supplies in Cort’s truck, she can’t imagine. Maybe the woman has children—children!—and there’s an animal that needs a pen, a dog or a pony that Cort bought for them.