Legacy (8 page)

Chapter 10

W
es was half-starved after spending the middle of the day moving in, and his nerves were raw from walking on eggshells around Corinne. After he had set his bike up and found that she had closed the door to her bedroom, the tension across his shoulders eased, and he allowed himself to hunt around the kitchen for some lunch.

The prospects were grim. Although he’d brought over what remained in his fridge and pantry, Wes had skipped his usual grocery run in preparation for the move, and now he was left with stale bread, canned tuna, and some mayo and mustard. He fixed himself an edible sandwich, finished off his lunch with a Clif bar, and dug out his phone to make a grocery list—which he figured would be pretty long since Corinne had next to nothing.

Twenty minutes later, his roommate had still not emerged, so Wes scribbled a note on the back of a Chinese takeout menu, telling her he’d be back in an hour, and he taped it to her door sill.

His trip to Rouse’s was epic. His shopping cart had never been so full, nor had the bill ever been so high, but he returned to the house almost two hours later with provisions like milk, cereal, and eggs, bread, sliced turkey breast, and greens, paper towels, trash bags, and dog food, and—best of all—potatoes, fresh asparagus, and ribeyes for dinner. He also tucked a six-pack of Abita Purple Haze in the fridge for good measure.

Wes wasn’t expecting Corinne to be over-the-moon grateful about his haul, but he at least thought she’d to be awake to see it. When he got back to the house, everything was as he’d left it, the door to her bedroom still closed with the note still dangling from the frame.

It wasn’t until after he’d come in from cleaning the barbecue pit and loading it with fresh coals that he started to worry. It was after 4:30, and there were still no signs of life. Even if she was just sleeping—and three and a half hours was a ridiculously long nap—Wes didn’t think she’d had anything to eat since he’d arrived. He crept into the hall and listened outside her bedroom.

Nothing.

Extreme fatigue, Wes knew, was a symptom of depression. No one could blame Corinne for being depressed, but in his college exercise physiology and psychology classes, Wes had learned enough to know that depression could be caused by chemical imbalances or by life events, and that either cause could trigger a vicious cycle that trapped a person. Before Michael died, Wes would not have called Corinne depressed. Prickly, yes; depressed, no way. She was always feisty—and as vibrant as her paintings. She ranted; she did not brood. She analyzed; she didn’t sulk.

If she was depressed in the wake of losing Michael—as Wes had no doubt she was—then that alone could make her want to sleep all the time, but her own inactivity deprived her brain of serotonin and endorphins, which would only worsen her depression.

But this was something Wes was equipped to handle. He leaned toward the door and knocked gently.

Nothing.

“Corinne...?” he called, softly.

Still nothing.

Wes knocked again, more firmly this time, and only silence answered him. Unbidden, an image of her terror-widened eyes came to him. She’d looked so lost that morning, like she was drowning in her fear. And just at the prospect of moving Michael’s things. Wes again felt like he’d been punched in the sternum just thinking about it.

Could the panic attack have been enough to sap her of her strength and send her into such a deep sleep that she couldn’t hear him? Or was it something else?

Another statistic from one of his health classes rose in his mind:
the leading cause of death for people 25-34 is suicide.

Wes gripped the door handle and turned, knowing full well that Corinne would probably resent the intrusion. He pushed the door open, preparing himself for a beat down.

Corinne lay there—on top of the covers—in a fetal position, eyes gently closed and lips just parted. Her brown hair fanned across the pillow behind her, and for once she looked peaceful and content. As still as she was, Wes could clearly see that she had lost weight—and Corinne had never had much to spare. Her jeans gaped at the waist, and the curve of her hip was muted.

Still, quiet like this—not yelling at him or crying or freaking out—Corinne was beautiful. He allowed himself the acknowledgment that she was probably just as beautiful when she was yelling, crying, or freaking out, but that he was likely too pissed off or—truth be told—too scared of her to see it.

That was it, he realized. That was what Michael had that he didn’t. Not only had Michael seen the beauty—which everyone saw—he hadn’t been afraid of the crazy. He was immune, so he could totally handle her.

And, somehow, Michael had thought that Wes could totally handle her, too.

So far, so good.
He could almost hear Michael saying it.

He had gotten her to agree to the roommate proposal, and he had talked her down from a panic attack. Yes, he had cost her $8,000, but he was digging himself out of that hole, and progress was being made.

Maybe he
could
handle her.

“Corinne...” he whispered.

Her face registered nothing, no fluttering eyes, no frowning. Wes reached over and lightly grabbed her shoulder and gave her the slightest nudge.

“Corinne,” he spoke a little louder. Eyes still closed, Corinne rolled onto her back and flung her right arm onto the pillow above her head. A dreamy smile came to her lips.

With that one languid motion, she became someone else, a woman issuing an invitation to be kissed, to be touched.

But he was not the man she invited.

Talk about a rude awakening.

Wes stepped back at once. He understood instantly that he had trespassed, standing where he should not, seeing what she’d never have him see. He walked backward towards the door and had almost made his escape when Corinne opened her eyes.

“Whoa!” she said, sitting up in bed, bleary, but becoming fully alert. “What are you doing in here?”

To his relief, Corinne didn’t seem furious, as he should have expected. Just confused.

“I...um...I was checking on you,” he stammered, lamely. “It’s been hours...and I knocked and called your name a few times.”

Corinne scrubbed her face with the palms of her hands, waking herself up. She spoke through them.

“Ok, House Rule #1: Do not wake me up unless there’s a fire,” she said. “Ok?”

In spite of himself, Wes smiled. He couldn’t really see himself following this rule, especially if she planned to take three-hour naps on a regular basis, but he agreed anyway.

“Ok,” he said, nodding. “Anything else?”

Corinne swung her feet over the edge of the bed and planted them on the floor before interlacing her fingers and stretching her hands above her head. The motion pulled her t-shirt tight against her breasts, and Wes quickly looked at his feet.

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t think we should be in each other’s rooms.”

Wes stepped back again until he was standing fully in the doorway.

“Ok, so House Rule #2: I stay out of your room. You stay out of mine,” he affirmed.

Corinne crossed the room and made to leave, but Wes stood in her way.

“What are you doing? I have to pee,” she announced, eyeing him skeptically.

“Well, just hold on,” he said. “I have a few rules of my own.”

Corinne gave him a pointed look and crossed her arms, cocking her hip.

“Oh, you do?”

“Yeah. House Rule #3: All residents in this house—including Buck—get a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise six days a week.”

Corinne’s eyes bugged.

“What?!? Hell, no.”

“Why not?” Wes asked, calmly.

“That has nothing to do with rooming together.”

Wes crossed his own arms.

“I disagree. Exercise improves mood, and health, and appetite, and sleep. It’ll help us get along better.”

“That’s just ridiculous,” Corinne sneered, shaking her head.

Wes wanted to sneer back, but he kept his tone even.

“Well, so is sleeping away a perfectly good Sunday afternoon. We can have house rules, or we can have anarchy. Take your pick.”

She glared at him, and he could see that he was winning. Was this one of the ways that Michael had managed her? Ultimatums? He realized that besting a woman like Corinne could be quite an ego-builder, and he suppressed a smile.

“Does yoga count?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“What about walking?”

“Definitely.”

She deliberated for another minute.

“Fine. Now, let me pass.”

Wes held up a hand.

“Hang on, now. You got two rules. I get one more,” he said, sounding reasonable, but knowing that he was pressing his luck.

“What?” Corinne cocked one eyebrow, humorlessly.

“House Rule #4: We eat three square meals a day.”

Corinne rolled her eyes.

“I see what you’re doing.”

“Get your shoes on. We’re going for a walk,” he told her. “I’m going preheat the oven. We’re having steak and potatoes tonight.”

Surprise overtook Corinne’s face.

“We are?”

This time he couldn’t stop the smile.

“Shoes on, C.”

Wes turned to head for the kitchen, but he didn’t miss it.

“Shoes on, C,”
she mimicked in a nasally voice, but as soon as he slid the potatoes into the oven, she stood in the kitchen doorway wearing her sneakers.

Chapter 11

B
uck was ecstatic. He jumped with so much excitement that Wes couldn’t snap on his leash until he ordered him to sit twice.

Corinne checked her watch as they stepped outside: 5:11. Sunset time was 7:36. She still had more than two hours before she could re-dose.

Technically, this wasn’t really true since she had already taken almost a capful of ZzzQuil when she’d gone into her room, but she would definitely need another dose to be able to sleep tonight after such a long nap. Corinne was glad now that she’d stashed the bottle in her bedside table; Wes certainly would have seen it when he woke her.

It had been so strange to wake up and find someone in her room. What surprised her most, though, was that it hadn’t scared her. Or even pissed her off, really. It was sort of...
nice
that someone else was in the house.

With Buck pulling ahead, they crossed through the yard and turned left on St. Joseph.

“Settle down, boy,” Wes told the dog. After he’d lifted a leg along the half fence that edged the front yard, Buck seemed to relax enough to stop pulling, but he sniffed the ground excitedly as they walked.

“It’s been a while since I took him,” Corinne admitted, coming up beside Wes.

“I can tell,” he glanced down at her, but he smiled.

It was only when they stood side by side like this that Corinne remembered how tall Wes was, 6’2” to her 5’4”. Michael had topped out at 5’11”, but to Corinne, he’d always seemed larger than life. No man seemed taller, and certainly not Wes, whom Corinne had always thought of as younger, too. In fact, Wes was older by two months.

“What?” Wes asked, narrowing his eyes at her. She was still craning her head, studying him.

“You had a birthday recently,” she said.

Wes looked surprised, but he nodded.

“Yeah, last month. Why?”

Corinne shook her head.

“I was just thinking about Michael’s birthday, and I knew yours was earlier,” she said, watching the road in front of them now. “I knew it was March. I just didn’t know the date.”

“The 20th. When’s yours?”

“June 17th.” She and Michael had gone on their first date the week before her birthday. It would be two years this summer. Corinne doubted that Wes knew this, but she didn’t feel like telling him, so she said nothing, and they walked the rest of the block in silence.

Spring was half over, Corinne realized. The azalea bushes on her street had bloomed. Those were her favorites, and she had not even noticed them beginning to open in the previous weeks. Now, their spent petals were another bittersweet reminder that life goes on.

Corinne sighed at the thought, and Wes glanced down at her again.

“What?” he asked, again.

She shook her head.

“Michael,” she said, simply. She had pulled on a sweater before they left, and she was glad for it now, jamming her hands into the pockets and letting her nails dig into her palms to keep the tears from starting.

“Yeah, I know,” Wes offered.

Corinne inhaled deeply through her nose.

“Look, I might need to make up another rule,” she said on the exhale.

They stopped at the corner of Ray Avenue to let a car pass, and Wes faced her.

“Which is?” he asked.

Corinne started walking again so that she wouldn’t have to look directly at him.

“Michael is the only thing we have in common, but I
can’t
talk about him all the time. I’ll lose it,” she said, quickly, wanting to get past the admission of all of her pain. That alone was risky territory. They passed a mailbox that was covered in Carolina jasmine, and she let herself drink in the rich yellow, focusing on the color instead of her feelings.

“He’s not the
only
thing we have in common,” Wes offered. “There’s Buck...”

Corinne laughed at that, and Buck, hearing his name, tilted his head back to eye them appreciatively.

“And there’s the fact that we now both exercise six days a week...” Wes added, smiling.

Corinne rolled her eyes.

“And there’s steak. Don’t forget the steak.”

“Who could forget steak?” Corinne allowed.

Buck paused to sniff the base a eucalyptus tree with interest and then marked it himself.

“No, I get it,” Wes said, giving her a grim kind of smile. “I know you never really understood how Mike and I were friends.”

Corinne felt her eyes bug, and her face flamed.

“That’s not what I meant at all,” she insisted, honestly. “I mean it just might be hard for us to be...”

“Friends?” He’d raised an eyebrow and looked amused now, his dark eyes dancing in the late afternoon light. She couldn’t help but see the humor, the cosmic irony in it, and she laughed a tired laugh.

“You have to admit it. Michael had...very singular taste in friends,” she said, lightly, smiling even, but the truth of it, the rare beauty of it stuck in her like an arrow.

“You mean it’s weird for a guy to be best friends with a narcissistic jock who parties like a rock star and in love with a badass, genius painter who doesn’t have time for that shit?” Wes meant for it to be funny—and it would have been—if she still thought of herself that way.

Corinne tried to keep smiling, but the muscles in her face just wouldn’t hold. They just slipped into something like a wince. Wes watched the whole thing, and his eyes went from playful to cautious until she turned away.

“What?” Wes asked, softly. He stopped walking, so Corinne had to stop, too. She thought about ignoring his question and continuing on, but she didn’t think she had the strength to play it off. Maybe being honest would take the least out of her.

“I’m not that person anymore,” she said, looking back up at him, ready to see the truth confirmed on his face. Instead, she saw confusion.

“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning.

Corinne frowned back.

“I’m not the person Michael fell in love with. I’m not ‘badass’ anymore,” she said, gesturing back in the direction of the house. “I can’t even move furniture without having a breakdown, and I’m certainly not a painter. I can’t picture
wanting
to paint.”

There it was, the admission that she had lost everything when she lost Michael, even herself. The only thing that kept her from crying over it again was Wes’s bewildered expression. Maybe she’d gone too deep for a personal trainer and short-circuited him.

“Trust me, Corinne, you’re still badass,” he said, finally, looking at her without a trace of duplicity. “And you’ll paint again...When you’re ready. You’ve just taken a hit.”

She watched him for a long moment. If he pitied her, he did a good job of hiding it, and, either way, Corinne was grateful.

They crossed Howard Street, and Corinne felt weary of being the focus of so much attention.

“What about you? Won’t having me as a roommate interfere with your rock-star lifestyle?” she teased.

“Um...I’ll manage.” A hint of wariness hardened Wes’s eyes, and Corinne remembered too late that Michael had once told her Wes’s rule about girls. He never brought them home. Hook-ups always happened at the girl’s place, not his, so he could leave when he wanted to.

“That’s because he’s a pig,”
Corinne had told Michael.

Whether or not Wes thought that Corinne knew this rule, it hardly seemed fair to judge him about it now. Or even bring it up. Who was she to look down her nose at the way anyone else led his life? Glass houses and all that. There was a reason she had become a total basket case. Maybe Wes had his own reasons for his actions.

And maybe—just like her—he wished like hell things were different.

When they reached Souvenir Gate, they turned left and headed back down on St. Patrick. A couple in running attire sat on the steps of a house to Corinne’s left. It was clear that they’d just finished a run. Both dripped with sweat, and the young woman rested her heels on the lowest step while she stretched her hamstrings by reaching for her toes. The man, who looked a little older, grabbed the tail of her long braid and gave it a playful tug, making the woman laugh.

Corinne watched them hungrily. Happiness was such a fragile creature. The couple in front of her might have years ahead to make each other happy. Corinne hoped that they did. But the life that stretched out before her seemed very long indeed to watch other people be happy.

At that moment, the young woman must have felt Corinne’s eyes on her because she looked up and waved. Corinne waved back, a little abashed at being caught staring, and turned away again.

Buck had settled down considerably as they made their way back, but when they rounded Juliette and turned back onto St. Joseph, he started pulling again, eager now to be home.

“I think someone’s ready for his dinner,” Corinne said.

“Yeah, and Buck’s hungry, too,” Wes deadpanned.

Corinne laughed.

“You’re funny,” she offered.

“Yeah, I am,” Wes said, mounting the steps to the front porch and eyeing her like she was the last person on earth to figure this out.

And maybe she was. Michael had told her this several times, but she hadn’t seen it. Corinne remembered thinking that Wes was juvenile for scraping off the “sham” on Michael’s bottle of Axe Dual 2-in-1 Shampoo & Conditioner in their shower.

Well, it
was
juvenile, but it made Michael laugh for a month.

“The steaks will be ready in less than an hour,” Wes said, stepping inside the house ahead of her. “Don’t even think about disappearing in your room. If you fall asleep again, I’m giving yours to Buck.”

Corinne halted in the doorway and raised an eyebrow. She was half-tempted to head to her room without a word, but she thought better of it. After everything he’d done for her in the last couple of days, that would be worse than ungrateful.

Still he couldn’t just boss her around. That wouldn’t do.

“So, do I have leave, Your Grace, to go take a shower?” she asked with no small amount of sarcasm.

Wes turned and eyed her over his shoulder with a wicked grin.

“Granted.”