Going Back (10 page)

She tapped lightly on the door,
then inched it open. The lamps on both night tables were turned on,
filling the room with an amber light and encouraging Daphne to push
the door all the way open.

Brad was seated on the edge of the
double bed, his back to the door. His knees were spread apart and
his elbows were balanced on them. He propped his head in his cupped
hands and stared out the window at the darkening night sky. He
seemed oblivious to Daphne—and to the party raging in his honor
just down the hall.

Daphne was startled. Not that she
thought of Brad as a party animal, but she couldn’t imagine why he
was sitting there, all alone, instead of enjoying the
festivities.

She allowed herself a moment to
study him. The cotton of his shirt stretched smoothly across his
shoulders and upper back, revealing the sleek lines of it. Daphne
decided that she preferred his slim build to Jim’s hulking one.
Brad’s forearms were slim, too—he’d rolled up the sleeves of his
shirt, and she could see the bronze skin he’d exposed, the dark
webbing of hair, the lean muscles tapering down to his wrists. She
recalled the afternoon, a couple of days ago, when he’d waved his
hands beneath her nose and pointed out the absence of callouses on
his fingers and palms.

Daphne would bet her entire savings
account that Jim had calluses all over his hands. She wondered
whether Sheila preferred calloused hands on her men.

Whatever Brad’s reason for
isolating himself from the rowdy party down the hall, Daphne wasn’t
going to disturb him. She reached for the door knob, intending to
close the door and leave him in peace.

He turned suddenly. As soon as he
saw her, his lips curved into a broad grin and his blue eyes
widened with delight. “Hey, Daff,” he called to her.

She was too tactful to ask him why
he’d isolated himself in the master bedroom. “I was looking for a
place to fix my hair,” she lied with an apologetic smile. “I can
use the mirror in the bathroom, though, if you want to be
alone.”

“No, come on in,” he said, waving
her inside.

She didn’t want him to think she’d
been lying, so she walked directly to the dresser and examined her
reflection in the mirror above it. Her hair looked fine to her, but
she patted and prodded it a few times with her
fingertips.

“How’s the party?” Brad
asked.

Daphne turned from the mirror and
appraised him. He certainly didn’t look like a man desperate to
avoid a social gathering. Faint dimples marked his cheeks, and his
eyes continued to glow, their brilliant color set off by his thick,
dark lashes. “Hot and crowded,” she answered, assuming that Brad
must have left the party for the bedroom because he needed a break
from the crush of people and noise.

Just like the last time, Daphne
recollected, unable to ignore the obvious connection. Here was
Brad, cooling off outside the party, and here was Daphne, finding
him.

Perhaps he was able to read her
mind. Or perhaps his smile faded for some reason totally unrelated
to his memory of that fraternity party eight years ago. Either way,
his solemn expression informed Daphne that he didn’t want her
company. “Well,” she said with forced brightness, “I guess I’ll be
getting back—”

“Stay a minute,” Brad cut her off,
gesturing for her to join him.

Daphne’s innards tensed up. She
didn’t want to sit beside him on a bed and think about the last
time she’d found herself sitting on a bed with him.

Of course, she might be reading
much too much into his invitation, his enigmatic gaze, his decision
to escape a boisterous party by shutting himself up in a bedroom.
Thoughts of that last time might be the furthest thing from Brad’s
mind. To bolt at his friendly invitation would be cowardly and
rude.

Drawing in a deep breath, she
crossed to the bed and lowered herself gingerly onto it, as far
from Brad as she could be without tumbling off the end of the
mattress. She arranged the flowery fabric of her skirt primly
across her knees and folded her hands in her lap. Then she waited
for him to say something.

Brad’s face relaxed into a smile
again, and he hoisted himself higher on the bed, leaning his
shoulders against the headboard and swinging his legs up so that
his feet brushed Daphne’s thigh. He crossed his ankles and sighed.
“It’s great seeing the Perskys,” he remarked, his tone light and
cheerful. “The last time I saw them was at our fifth-year reunion.
Did you go to that?” he asked, frowning slightly as he tried to
remember.

Daphne shook her head. “I was
living in Atlanta at the time,” she said. “It would have cost too
much money to fly to Ithaca just for the weekend.”

Brad had probably been living in
Seattle then, and he’d been able to afford the trip. Even without
his big salary, she realized, he was rich. Rich and handsome. It
didn’t seem fair.

“Well, it’s good seeing them. Steve
told me Melanie’s pregnant, only nobody’s supposed to know about it
yet.”

“If nobody’s supposed to know about
it, why are you telling me?” Daphne said, feeling her stomach start
to unclench. She was beginning to accept that this was going to be
a safe little chat and nothing more, nothing she couldn’t
handle.

Brad laughed. “If nobody’s supposed
to know about it, why did Steve tell me?” He flicked a bit of lint
from his trousers, then settled back against the headboard again.
“It’s good seeing Phyllis Dunn, too,” he said. “She looks
fantastic.”

“She always did,” Daphne pointed
out, not at all envious. Having grown up with a pretty sister, and
having befriended pretty classmates in college, Daphne was used to
being surrounded by women who outshined her in the looks
department.

“Who’s the gorilla she’s got with
her?”

“Jim,” said Daphne. “They’re living
together at the moment, but don’t let that stop you.”

“Don’t let it stop me from what?”
Brad asked innocently.

“Phyllis thinks you look fantastic,
too,” she said slowly, wondering whether his obtuseness was just an
act or he was truly unaware of Phyllis’s interest in
him.

He snorted in disbelief. “In that
case, Phyllis needs those eyeglasses even more than you
do.”

Daphne detected nothing false in
his tone. She laughed, amazed. “You do look fantastic, Brad,” she
told him. “You’re a handsome man. I should think you’d be aware of
that by now.”

He contemplated Daphne
thoughtfully. “I’ve had better days,” he confessed somberly. “Today
was a rough one, and I don’t feel fantastic, so it’s hard for me to
imagine that I look anything other than wiped out.”

Daphne smiled sympathetically. “Are
you coming down with something?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I had lunch
with my mother today,” he said.

A deceptively simple explanation.
Daphne understood that something about his mother was troubling
him, and she sensed that he wanted to talk about it. She wasn’t
certain why he wanted to talk about it with her, of all people, but
he certainly seemed to be looking for a willing listener. “Did your
mother give you a hard time?” she asked.

“Other than the fact that she wants
me to live with her instead of moving to New Jersey, no. She gave
my father a hard time—in absentia. They’re having
problems.”

“Marital problems?”

He nodded. “I don’t know what’s
wrong with them. They’re so great together. They’re both
attractive, accomplished people. They have the same taste in
everything. They’re even good in bed, from what I gather. But
they’ve gotten it into their heads that they don’t belong together
anymore.”

“They’re adults,” Daphne gently
reminded him. “They must know their own feelings.”

“I’m not so sure,” Brad argued.
“They’re a perfect couple, Daffy. They’ve been married for
thirty-five years. I love them both—and I’m convinced that they
love each other, too.”

“Sometimes love isn’t enough,”
Daphne pointed out. She was speaking hypothetically, having had too
little experience with love to be an expert on the
subject.

“Love and
marriage both?” he posed. “Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in
marriage. I believe it’s there to hold two people together until
they can figure out how to make their love stronger. I guess it
doesn’t always work out that way.” He sighed. “I don’t know what it
is that’s tearing them apart. Worse than that,
they
don’t seem to know what the hell
it is.”

Despite his pensive smile, Brad was
obviously anguished about his parents’ difficulties, which
surprised Daphne. So many people got divorced these days. She
imagined it must be hard to take when your own parents were
splitting up, but it wasn’t as if Brad was a little boy caught in a
custody battle.

If her parents were considering a
divorce, she’d be upset about it, of course. But Brad...

He’d never revealed his
vulnerability to her before. That was why she was so surprised by
his sensitivity about his parents. She’d always thought of him as
rich and handsome, but never human enough to suffer. He had always
seemed so confident, so positive of his strength and good fortune,
so secure of his place in the world. She simply couldn’t imagine
Brad Torrance as the victim of an emotional upheaval.

Except that here he was, in front
of her very eyes, obviously emotional. “Maybe they’ll work it out
and get back together,” she said. She had no grounds for such an
optimistic prediction, but he needed cheering up.

He offered her a small grin. “I
hope so,” he said. “They really do belong together. I’m just hoping
they realize that before they do something they’ll
regret.”

Daphne returned his smile. How
strange, she thought, that the last time she’d found herself
sharing a bed with Brad they’d engaged in the most intimate of
acts, and yet she felt closer to him now than she had then. “Buck
up, Brad,” she said. “Put it out of your mind for now. There’s a
party out there just waiting for you to make the scene.”

He nodded and pushed away from the
headboard. “You’re right. I guess I’d better go face my fans.” He
smiled again, a heartfelt, radiant smile that penetrated Daphne
with its warmth. He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek.
“Thanks,” he whispered, standing and then extending his hand to
help her to her feet.

His kiss meant nothing, she
reassured herself. It was the sort of kiss friends gave friends,
the sort of kiss that punctuated a moment of gratitude. It meant
nothing at all—and it meant so much that Daphne reflexively
tightened her fingers around his as she rose from the
bed.

They left the bedroom together.
Brad released her hand as soon as they entered the hallway,
allowing her to walk ahead of him. Two of Andrea’s actor friends
were staging a mock fist fight before a spellbound crowd in the
arched entry to the living room. To avoid interfering with their
performance, Daphne and Brad detoured into the dining room. It
occurred to Daphne that she still hadn’t managed to have a drink,
and she continued on into the kitchen, planning to fix herself a
glass of cold soda.

She wasn’t shocked to discover that
Paul was exactly where she’d left him the last time she’d seen him.
He had undone his bowtie, allowing the ends to dangle from his
collar, and his audience had changed. But he was still leaning
casually against the counter and discoursing on the peculiar
characteristics of his students. “What they consider rock-and-roll
is really nothing more than the product of a few technicians and a
few big businesses,” he pontificated. “Today’s so-called rock music
has little of the down-home grittiness of the old Stones or even
the Beatles.”

“Where’s your on-off button?”
Daphne interjected, poking him in the ribs. She turned to his
audience and grinned. “Pick a subject, any subject. Paul will talk
about it ad nauseum.”

“What he was saying was
interesting!” argued an overly made-up woman with multiple earrings
in each ear.

Paul laughed good-naturedly. “Not
to worry, folks—Daphne is the love of my life. She’s allowed to
insult me whenever her little heart desires.” He wrapped his arms
around her, planted a loud kiss on her forehead, and then let go of
her. “Let me guess, love-of-my-life—you want some of that ginger
ale I promised you an hour ago.”

“Better late than never,” she said,
scouring the counter in search of a clean plastic cup. She found
one, handed it to Paul and caught a glimpse of Brad hovering in the
doorway, watching her.

“Is he the love of your life?” he
asked quietly, a curious smile teasing his lips as he directed his
gaze toward the red-haired man dropping ice cubes into the cup for
Daphne.

“No,” she clarified. “I’m the love
of his life. Paul, this is Brad Torrance. Brad, Paul
Costello.”

Paul twisted
around, noticed Brad’s outstretched right hand and hastily set the
bottle of ginger ale on the counter so he could return the
handshake. “So, you’re the man of the hour,” he said grandly. “One
of that old Cornell gang of Daphne’s. Shall we burst into a chorus
of
High Above Cayuga’s
Waters
?”