Kaleidoscope (7 page)

This made sense.

But he’d again called me “baby.”

And I needed to address that.

So I asked, “What is that?”

His head cocked and his eyebrows drew together. “What’s what?”

I drew in breath and on the exhale, stated, “You calling me baby.” Then I went on quickly, “Not that I don’t like it. It’s sweet. It’s just not…” I hesitated,
“us.”

Something happened to his eyes, his face, his whole big body and that something made me brace at the same time it made my heartbeat escalate.

“You know what it is,” he said softly.

I didn’t.

“I don’t,” I shared.

His eyes stayed locked to mine and I knew him relatively well, or I used to. But even if we hadn’t been separated for years, I still would not have been forewarned to the fact he was about to blow my mind.

“Before, we had Elsbeth between us. My head was fucked about that, about her, and it took almost a decade to get it unfucked. Lookin’ back, havin’ you back, I now know and I reckon you know, that’s the way it was. She was between us. She knew it too. And she didn’t like it. But it didn’t matter. My head was fucked so I couldn’t see clear of her and not doin’ that, I didn’t see you.”

I knew my lips had parted. I also knew my eyes got big. And last, I had no clue what to say.

So I said nothing.

“Now she isn’t between us,” he finished.

It was then I knew what the “baby” business was.

I just had no idea how to react to it because I never considered it. He was beautiful. He was kind. He was smart. He was funny and interesting and affectionate.

But he was my best friend’s boyfriend.

That didn’t mean my mind didn’t go there in vague ways, not stupid enough to wish for something I could never have, just silently covetous of what Elsbeth had. And, because of all that he was and that Elsbeth had it, in the end, infuriated she threw it away. Angry enough to end an important friendship because of it.

Sitting there, all that was Jacob, and all that being spectacular sitting across from me, holding my eyes, I finally understood that the reason I was angry at my friend was because, in throwing Jacob away, she took him away from me.

And now I had him back, but also, he was saying I’d always had him a different way, we just didn’t go there and he was going to take us there.

Yes. I had no clue what to say but my body had a clue how to feel. Warm and there were a lot more tingles.

“Jacob—” I started on a whisper.

But he interrupted again.

“You saw me, asked me out to dinner that same night, no fuckin’ around. Since then, you’ve called twice for no reason except to connect, and, baby, before you freak that I noticed that and what it said, I’ll tell you, I’m fuckin’ glad you did and I’m also fuckin’ glad about what it said. The boyfriend you were on the fence about, you got off the fence in less than twenty-four hours after seein’ me again and decided to get shot of his ass. And you didn’t waste any time gettin’ me right where I am tonight. That is not friends reconnecting. You know it. So do I.”

“I—”

“Don’t deny it.”

I shut my mouth.

When I did, the skin around his eyes got soft and his mouth twitched and I’d seen that before but not during an intense discussion where Jacob Decker was essentially telling me he was into me. So although before I liked it, now it made my hands start shaking. Therefore, I clasped them both around my beer bottle in my lap.

“Now, layin’ this shit out for you, I fucked up,” he continued. “In a big fuckin’ way that I been dealin’ with since summer. Hung up on a bitch, and Emme, honey, I know you two were once tight and women don’t like men referrin’ to women as bitches but there’s no denyin’ what Elsbeth pulled this summer exposed her as just that. I thought she was what I wanted and my only shot at gettin’ it and to be the man I felt I needed to be, I’d selfishly let that go. I been kickin’ my own ass about that for fuckin’ years then kickin’ my own ass when it hit me I shouldn’t have been.”

He stopped and it appeared he wanted a response from me and the only one I had was to nod, which fortunately was all he needed for he kept talking.

“But I got a kaleidoscope that I’ve been carryin’ with me everywhere I go for the last nine years that I was too blind to see until very recently that holdin’ that thing with me proves that shit irrevocably wrong.”

At the mention of my gift to him, my pulse started beating so fast I could feel it in my fingertips.

This was because that kaleidoscope was something it took a lot of courage to seek him out and give to him. It also was something that meant the world to me to give, most especially the message I gave with it. I still figured he’d kindly taken it from me because he was that kind of guy. I also figured he then gave it away because it wasn’t his type of thing.

But knowing he took it everywhere threw me.

It also delighted me.

Beyond belief.

Therefore, I whispered, “Everywhere?”

“Been to some interesting places, Emme, baby, and that has always been with me.”

My breath started escalating and I knew Jacob didn’t miss it when his eyes dropped briefly to my chest before cutting back up to mine.

“Now,” he said gently, “unlike your very-soon-to-be ex, I’m not a dick. You gotta sort that and I gotta give you the space to do it. So tonight is not gonna end where I’d wanna lead it.”

My breath quickened even more.

He wasn’t done.

“But one thing I did learn from Elsbeth that you’re gonna get the benefit of, honey, and that’s that a man looks after his girl. That means I’m payin’ for your insulation and I’m installin’ it. And that means you’re gonna let me.”

“Your girl?” I asked, my voice coming out in a near on squeak.

“Yeah,” he answered, his voice deep, low and firm.

“This is, well… kinda weird.” Understatement! “And fast.” Extreme understatement!

“Met you twelve years ago and we’re just gettin’ here. I don’t call that fast. I call that a waste of fuckin’ time I’m about to rectify.”

Again, I was speechless.

Jacob wasn’t.

“So, summin’ up, you got until Sunday to get your head together about McFarland. On Sunday, you scrape him off. On Sunday night, the boys are gone, you learn the true meaning of me callin’ you ‘baby.’ ”

I could no longer feel my pulse beating just in my fingertips. It was beating somewhere else, somewhere special, somewhere private, somewhere
awesome
.

“Jacob—” I began again but his head cocked again.

“You don’t want that?”

I shut up.

“You want that,” he murmured, his gaze on my mouth, the skin around his eyes again going soft but his mouth didn’t twitch because the look in those eyes was hot and intense and I could tell he wasn’t finding anything funny.

The pulse radiated out from that awesome place and I felt my entire body get warm.

His gaze lifted back to mine and he unfolded from the couch, putting his beer bottle on my coffee table. It was then my entire body got stiff as he moved toward me and leaned in. That was, my entire body but my neck, which bent back to hold his eyes.

Then I held my breath as he slid the tips of his fingers along my forehead, sweeping aside my bangs, before they went back until his fingers were tangled in the strands and cupping the back of my head.

That felt unbelievably nice.

He dipped closer.

I started breathing again only to hyperventilate.

“He’s been jacked by a woman,” he said quietly, “a smart man learns. And, baby, you know I am not dumb. And what that man learns is not to waste time on bitches. But more, not to waste time when he finds one who he knows is worth it. Now, you got until Sunday. You with me?”

He stopped speaking and I knew he wanted a response but I just didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t cope with this, this massive shift, this incredible gift, the offer of all his beauty.

He got so much closer all I could see were his hazel eyes. And that close I noticed that, although his lashes were dark, short and spiky, there were a lot of them. So dense, they were fascinating, and I found myself wanting to take up the challenge of counting each and every one.

“Emme,” he whispered.

I blinked and focused.

“You with me?” he repeated.

“I think our conversation about insulation took a very weird turn,” I replied.

His eyes lit with warmth and humor and I lost my fascination with his lashes because I’d seen that look in his eyes frequently when he was with me but I’d never seen it that close and it was so beautiful, I wanted to hold onto that moment for eternity.

“Right,” he said. “You got until Sunday. You feel like pickin’ up the phone, I’m busy but I always got time for you. You need space from me ’til then, you got that too, baby. Yeah?”

I decided my best bet was to nod.

So I did that.

“Okay,” he murmured. I felt his hand in my hair pull me forward and I felt my breath stick in my throat before I felt his lips touch my hair and there he kept murmuring to say, “Strawberries.”

My hair did, indeed, smell like strawberries. That was what the shampoo smelled like that cost an arm and a leg and a vague promise to the devil I’d bear his children to populate the earth with devil’s spawn in order for my hair to get this soft, sleek and shiny.

But Jacob murmuring that word against my hair, I decided to make that promise not at all vague. I’d produce demon spawn to hear him say it again and again.

Alas, he did not say it again.

But what he did was a whole lot better.

His hand at my head pulled me slightly back, his fingers drifted through my hair to my temple then curled so the backs could glide lightly across my cheek and down, touching the side of my lip in a way that was a promise I felt sear through me from lips, through my heart, straight between my legs.

Was this happening?

“You can shake and bake with the best, Emme,” he told me, his hand settling cupping my jaw, and at words that were so far out of the moment, I stared.

Then, at the reminder of the dinner I served and that it might be good, but it was a far cry from gourmet and it was
so
Jacob to mention it, tease me about it, and it was also
so
Jacob to go out of his way to take us out of intense and put me at ease, that suddenly a feeling I didn’t quite get but I really liked stole through me and I felt my lips smile.

“Gourmet all the way with me, honey. That’s why you got the buffalo-flavored Shake ’n Bake.”

“I cook next time,” he declared, and Jacob was an excellent cook. Amazing. And he didn’t shy away from anything, even gourmet.

And what he said meant he intended to cook for me.

That stole through me too.

“I expect Indian,” I told him and something about him shifted, relaxed, and I knew, in sharing I was going to be eating with him again, I’d also shared I was “with him.”

My breath started coming faster again.

“You got it,” he replied, leaned in, kissed my forehead, leaned back and caught my eyes. “Later, Emme.”

“Drive safe, Jacob.”

He grinned.

My heart jumped.

His hand slid away from my jaw and I watched him saunter out of my living room.

Then I sat immobile and listened to the front door open and close.

And last, I listened to the distant sounds of his truck growling out of my drive.

Been to some interesting places, Emme, baby, and that has always been with me.

I sat unmoving and remembered standing outside the door to the hotel room he was staying in since he left the apartment to Elsbeth. I stood there heartbroken for him, heartbroken for me, and I gave him that kaleidoscope. I remembered what I said. I remembered his eyes got warm and surprised and he took the box and opened it, pulling out the piece of beauty within and holding it like it was precious.

I also remember he didn’t let me into his room.

He just kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, “I’ll always remember you, Emme,” before he pulled back, gave me a smile that got nowhere near his eyes and backed into the room, closing the door on me.

Taking the kaleidoscope with him.

At the time, I got it, why he had to close the door on me. At the time, I was distraught at what his breakup with Elsbeth meant to him.

And to me.

So I’d walked away and let him go.

But at the time, I also was dealing with things, things I didn’t share with anybody, not Elsbeth, definitely not Jacob.

I still had that secret.

Words came to me. Words said in a man’s voice, a man no one knew was in my life. A man who was special to me in a way I knew no one would get. A man I shared with nobody.

I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

I closed my eyes and called that moment up in my mind.

It was a month after I got out of the hospital. I’d visited him. He could not visit me. He’d been concerned. Eaten up with it, it was plain to see. But he could not come to see for himself I was all right.

He had to wait for me.

We were sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee.

I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

It did. Being sick like that, it did.

I didn’t get it then. I didn’t get it when he said that to me. I only got it when Jacob pointed it out.

I opened my eyes and looked to Jacob’s beer bottle on my coffee table.

You can shake and bake with the best, Emme.

I knew right then that Jacob saying that meant that he intended to keep the goodness, the easiness, the familiarity of what we had safe.

He just intended to add really great things.

I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

I took a sip of the beer that I held until then forgotten in my hand.

And when I was done, I whispered, “I think I just woke up, Harvey.”

And when I did, pure joy flowed through me.

So I smiled.

One hour, two minutes later…

I lay on my back in my bed, staring unseeing at the ceiling and going over the last two days in my mind again and again.

No way I could sleep.

No way.

So I rolled, turned on my light and saw the ring Dane had given me the night before on my nightstand.

The box was open.

I flipped it shut and put it in the nightstand drawer.

Dane giving me that weirded me out, but it was the kind of gesture that you didn’t make an “euw” face and throw it across the room.

So, after I’d tried to refuse it, gently saying it was too much, and he’d refused my refusal, adamantly and repeatedly, I’d given up, thanked him and kissed him.

He’d done what he always did when I kissed him. He escalated things and made love to me.

I’d had two lovers in my life, and to say Dane was better than the first one was a massive understatement.

Still, I read enough, watched enough TV and movies, heard enough girlfriends talking about it, I knew I was missing something.

Even from Dane.

I knew this because I’d never had an orgasm with a partner. Not once.

I faked it.

It wasn’t a good thing to do but eventually things just kept going, it got tedious, and I had to do what I had to do to end it so I could get some sleep.

Thinking on this brought me to the memory that Elsbeth had not shared often, but she had shared. And what she shared was that Jacob had no problems in that department. They’d started their relationship young and had been together for five years. Elsbeth and I were the same age and she’d been twenty when they started out. He’d been twenty-three. She had not been a virgin but she’d been an orgasm-during-sex virgin.

According to Elsbeth, Jacob had taken that particular virginity and done it spectacularly then went on to give that to her frequently and unfailingly.

Now I was thirty-four and had two lovers and no orgasms that had been given to me by anyone else but me.

And I had sexual knowledge of the man who that night told me he was interested in me and intended to do something about it.

So even though it was late, I was me, he was Jacob and I was psycho.

Not to mention, these thoughts were tamping down the joy I’d felt earlier, and I didn’t like that much.

So I got out of bed, wandered through the dark to the kitchen and nabbed my phone.

I called him wandering back to my room through the dark.

“You okay?” he answered.

“Just to say, if I wasn’t, although you have superhuman strength and an off-the-charts IQ, I’d still probably call 911.”

“Babe,” he replied.

I waited but he didn’t follow that up.

So I asked, “Babe, what?”

“Babe,” this time there was a smile in his voice, “get on with what you’re callin’ about.”

“Right,” I muttered as I walked up the rounded staircase that was reason three I bought this house. Reason one being the view I saw from the circular drive. Reason two being the extraordinary wood starburst inlaid in the entryway floor.

“Emme,” he called.

“Sorry,” I replied. “I was thinking about my starburst.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Is this too late to call?”

“No, but just to say, no time is a bad time to hear from you.”

Good answer. So good, it made me feel mushy inside.

Safe in that feeling, I admitted, “I can’t sleep.”

“Emme—”

There was concern in my name and a hint of Jacob being what Jacob had been recently. Determined to go full steam ahead, do most of the talking and the talking he did blowing my mind.

So I interrupted him.

“No, please, Jacob, hear me out.”

He said nothing.

I walked down the hall toward the light coming from my room trying to find the courage to say what I needed to say.

Walking into my room and seeing the pretty I’d wrought with my own two hands, some YouTube videos and a lot of elbow grease, I found the courage.

“This is weird,” I said softly, making my way to the bed. “I know things about you.”

“Girl talk,” he murmured, and I knew he knew what I was saying.

“Yeah,” I agreed, climbing into bed and sitting cross-legged on it.

“Bad shit?” he asked and I felt my head jerk.

“Bad shit?” I repeated.

“She bitch about me?”

She hadn’t. Ever. I didn’t even know if they ever fought.

God, she was so stupid.

“Was there bad shit?” I asked hesitantly.

“I didn’t think so until she dumped me,” he replied and I felt my lips smile.

“That came out of the blue for everybody, honey,” I told him. “Not just you.”

“Right,” he replied, that word clearly a prompt to get on with it.

So I did.

“Just us having this conversation is weird, Jacob.”

“Why?”

“You were once my best friend’s boyfriend.”

“So?” he asked.

“So, this isn’t a thing girls do.”

“You haven’t spoken to her in nine years, and, I’ll point out, Emme, it’s been fuckin’ nine years, which is a long time.”

“You hooked up with her this summer.”

“So?”

I didn’t have an answer to that “so.”

When I said nothing, he asked, “What’d she say?”

“Pardon?”

“Elsbeth. Girl talk. What’d she say?”

I was not a psycho. I was an idiot.

I couldn’t tell him that.

Thus I should never have called him.

I didn’t even know why I did, except he was Jacob and I’d always been able to talk to him about anything. The problem with that was, back when, I’d never really had anything deep and personal to discuss.

Now I did but that deep and personal involved him.

I wasn’t an idiot. I was a psycho idiot.

This called to mind the fact that I’d left all my girlfriends in Denver and had not replaced them in Gnaw Bone. It also called to mind the fact that all my somewhat friends in Gnaw Bone were guys who worked at a lumberyard. And this called to mind the fact that not one of them was a candidate for a conversation about a potential new boyfriend I was getting
before
getting rid of my old one who happened to be one of their brethren, and all the things I needed to discuss.

Primarily, that I’d never had an orgasm during sex and I was worried that was on me, not my partners.

And I didn’t want to disappoint Jacob. Because if I did, that would be an end to him and me. Not the new good stuff we might have. The old great stuff we just got back.

I needed a girl posse.

I didn’t share this with Jacob either.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just that this is…” I paused then finished, “I don’t want to lose what we have.”

He was losing patience at my evasiveness and I knew this with how he asked, “Emme. What. Did. She. Say?”

“I—”

“Okay, honey,” he cut off my protest knowing that was what it would be. “I know I dropped a bomb on you tonight, you didn’t hide it. You also didn’t try to escape it. And what we got started from me meetin’ you through her. Neither of us can escape that. But I think, you dig deep, back then you know what was growin’ between us. I don’t know if you felt it. I just know I didn’t. I also know Elsbeth did and put a stop to it. Now I see it, I feel it and I’m gonna explore it. So I dig that this is a shift and you need to talk shit out, this change, how we started. And I’ll give you that, late at night, first thing in the morning, anytime. But to talk it out, just sayin’, baby, you actually gotta talk.”

“I know personal things about you,” I told him.

“Like what? That I snore?” he asked, and my heart plummeted because Dane snored and I hated it.

“Do you snore?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” he answered.

“So why would you ask that?” I pushed.

There was laughter in his voice when he replied, “Because you aren’t givin’ me shit, babe, so I’m tryin’ to pull it out. Have no clue what she said to you, so I’m guessin’.”

“It wasn’t that you snore, and just so you know, I wouldn’t call late at night to talk to you about snoring. Though, also just so you know, I really hope you don’t.”

“I hope you don’t either,” he returned.

“I don’t snore!” I snapped.

More laughter with his, “Good we got that straight.”

“Jacob—”

“Talk to me, Emme.”

“I can’t—”

“Emme, I’m lying in bed lookin’ at your kaleidoscope sittin’ on my nightstand, knowin’ you’ve been with me every day for nine years. Which means I wanted you with me every day even when I didn’t realize it. Which means you mean something to me and not a little something. You think I’d make that play tonight if I thought makin’ it would fuck us up?”

“No,” I whispered because I didn’t. He wouldn’t do that. Ever.

And he was lying in bed and my kaleidoscope was there.

Have mercy.

“So, I made a decision and carried it out but I know what’s at stake here and I’m gonna bust my ass to lead this careful, gentle so it doesn’t get fucked up. I know this is fast, but from here we don’t have to go fast. We just gotta go forward. And we gotta do it honest. So talk to me.”

“I know you’re a good lover,” I blurted.

Jacob said nothing.

So I called, “Jacob?”

“And you’re wound up about me bein’ intimate with Elsbeth,” he said.

“No,” I contradicted.

“No?” he asked.

“Well… no.”

More nothing from Jacob then, “So, fill me in here.”

“It’s just weird,” I shared.

“It’s weird,” he said.

“Don’t you think so?”

Again, nothing until a murmured, but it was a very intensely murmured, “Fuck me.”

“What?” I asked.

“Nothin’, baby,” he said quickly. “You’re right. It’s weird. I don’t know how much she shared, but yeah, you hearin’ that from her is weird. But this isn’t me and her. This is me and you. And we haven’t even kissed, Emme. So, honey, don’t get wound up in this shit. You said one step at a time with McFarland, that’s the way we’re gonna take it. I’ll lead but you tell me the speed. You want slow, that’s how we’ll go. That work for you?”

“I don’t want us to get screwed up,” I told him.

“So we’ll take it slow,” he told me.

“I don’t want to lose you again.”

Jacob fell silent.

“I missed you,” I whispered.

“How bad?” he whispered back.

“I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it, that bad.”

“Baby—”

“Maybe we should just be us,” I suggested.

“And maybe this was the us we were always meant to be and we should be that.”

At his words, words that spoke to me deeply, my shoulders jerked forward with the force of my lungs hollowing out.

“Emme, you with me?” he called.

I closed my eyes tight, put my forehead in my hand, my elbow to my knee and I whispered, “What if you don’t like the way I kiss?”

“I’ll like the way you kiss,” he whispered back.

“What if you don’t?”

“You’re the smartest woman I know, baby, you’ll learn to give me what I like.”

That was an excellent answer.

“What if you don’t like the way I do other things?” I pressed.

“I will.”

“Ja—”

“You’ll learn, and just sayin’, honey, so will I. That’s the way it goes.”

Not in my experience.

“This is an important part of us takin’ it slow,” he carried on. “Said it before, I’ll promise it now, Emme, we’ll go at your speed. But I want us finally to go where what we got has always been leading.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked.

“Babe, would we be having this conversation if I didn’t?”

We wouldn’t. Absolutely.

I opened my eyes, sat up and admitted, “I’m a psycho.”

“You care about me, have for a while, don’t want to lose me. That’s not psycho, Emme. That’s real. And it’s smart. And it means a great deal to me. What you need to get from all I’m sayin’ is, because it means that much to me, I’m gonna handle this with care. You just gotta believe in me.”

“Do you believe in me?” I asked and got nothing so I felt my heart squeeze.

Then I got something.

And it was huge.

“Emme, what you’re worried about, I get. I like it. It’s sweet. It’s you. But outside of us makin’ our way in that, discovering that part of the relationship we’re gonna have, nothin’ else about you makes me think for even a second I don’t believe in what I could have with you. That’s somethin’ else you gotta get. I missed it. For years. There are three people in this world I trust with everything about me: my father, Chace and you. And I finally figured out I don’t give you that because you’re my girl but because you’ve always in a way been
my girl
. I felt it again last night. You feel it too. You just gotta admit it then we’ll sort the rest out.”

It was my turn to say nothing.

“Emme, baby, talk to me.”

“I want this,” I whispered.

And I did. Badly. And I might have done for a very,
very
long time. I just wouldn’t let myself think about it when he was with my friend and definitely not after I lost him.

“Good. You got it. Starting Sunday,” he replied immediately.

“There’s things to know about me,” I admitted.

“You’ll tell me and you’ll do that at your pace too.”

God, he was
so nice
.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“You gonna sleep now?” he asked.

No way.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Bullshit,” he muttered, a smile in his voice.

“Uh, reminder, Jacob, it’s just over twenty-four hours since we met in town and things have progressed at light speed. Since I’m the first human being in history to travel at that speed, I think it’s okay that I allow myself a moment to process the feeling.”

“I get you but I don’t want you losing sleep over this.”

So nice!

“Not sure you can do anything about that,” I told him. “But I’ll be okay.”

“Faye’s having a boy,” he announced, and I blinked.

Then I asked, “Pardon?”

“You in bed?” he asked back.

“Yeah, kinda. Sitting on it.”

“Get under the covers, Emme.”

His deep voice saying that started that pulse beating in that awesome place and I did what I was told.