Lila's Thunder: The Almeida Brothers, Book One (20 page)

“Don’t be sorry,”
 was all the Dean said.  “I think I’ve heard all I need to hear.”

---

Back in New York City, Jack was re-reading a sentence on a legal brief that he had read ten times, already.  He couldn’t retain a single ounce of information about anything.  He couldn’t
think
.

Bitsy told him to leave it alone.
  In fact she’d told him more than once, all throughout that frustrating day, to leave it alone.

Leave
her
alone.

Jack knew that his grandmother was right, but after sixteen hours of burying himself in mountains of paperwork he’d had enough.
  The last paralegal had left almost three hours ago, begging Jack to give it a rest and join her for a drink at the bar, but he knew he couldn’t leave.  Anything outside of that cold, lonely office would cause too much temptation to go after Lila.

And his office was quickly proving too much, as well.

Against Bitsy’s better judgment Jack snatched up his phone, dialed his travel agent, and booked the next flight to Cambridge.

---

After sunset Lila and Chase sat in the grass on the edge of the Charles River Basin, which overlooked the beautiful Harvard campus.  Between them were a couple of sandwiches from Capriottis and two chocolate milkshakes.

“How was the campus tour?”
 she asked, bringing her knees to her chin and breathing in the green air.  New York didn’t have nearly enough of it.

“That depends,”
Chase said around the large bite. “How was your interview?”

“I yelled at him,” s
he answered honestly.  “I cried a little.”

Chase was horrified.
“You’re such a basket case.  My god.”

Lila
chuckled, it was something he always used to say to her when he was younger.  Before they’d fallen away from each other. “He’s probably regaling the wife and kids with tales of my crazy ass at the dinner table right as we speak.”

“How did you get on the subject of something that
made you cry in front of a
Dean
at Harvard University?” Chase was baffled. “What in god’s name were you guys talking about for you to have failed so epically?”

“About the kids back at school.
  Lonnie, Heather, Drew…”

Chase was nodding, recognizing the names and knowing the stories of each student she listed.

“You,” she finished.

Chase looked at her and set down his sandwich.
 

“You hear that?” h
e asked, looking across the bay where a cocktail party was being held on one of the docked boats.  The subtle strings of Sinatra wafted all the way across the water to grace their quiet sub-sandwich dinner.  “This was my mom’s favorite song.”

“I remember,”
Lila said, closing her eyes. “For a long time it was the only thing that could calm you down.”

He swiped his hands together and stood tall, holding
out his hands.  “Let’s go, Short Stack.  Dance with me.”

Lila rolled her eyes.
“No.” She gasped when, before she knew it, Chase bent down, grabbed her arm and threw it over his shoulder.  Her legs were off of the ground in seconds and she had no time to react.

Stunned at his speed and strength, Lila could only laugh as he set her on her feet before wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her to him.
  She begrudgingly allowed him, taking the hand he offered as they started a slow sway, each of them taking in the new sights and sounds that every step brought.

“I hate it here,”
Chase said, looking down into her eyes.

Lila looked right back up at him, won
dering when he’d gotten so tall. “I know… but it’ll get better.  Trust me, when you’re twenty-two and graduating Harvard you’ll understand why everyone pushed you so hard to go.”

Chase
smiled over the top of her head. “I wasn’t talking about Harvard.”

Lila knew he hadn’t been, but she hadn’t
had the courage to address it.

“So...”
  She shook the hair out of her eyes and clutched Chase’s hand a little tighter. “How’s Ashley?”

Chase blinked, as if the name were foreign to him, “Drunk?
  High? Probably some crazy combination of the two, I don’t know.”  He shrugged and a slow smile lit up his face when she laughed.  The sound seemed to encircle him in a warmth he’d almost forgotten existed.  With the hand he had around her waist, he pulled her a little closer.

Lila didn’t miss that Chase’s hold around her had grown tighter
, or how much stronger he was.  His bicep pressed into the side of her ribcage with a steely strength, encasing her all the way across her back to a hand that clutched her waist almost fiercely.  She felt small, delicate.  “I really hope you’re not doing drugs.”

Chase made a face.

Lila blushed.  He was right.  She knew him better than that.

“I may h
ave had a drink or two, but…” he trailed off.

“I know.
  It was silly of me to even suggest it.  You’ve never been a drug kind of kid.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” h
e said, softly.  “I do seem to have a drug of choice.  It’s just not the kind that will destroy me.  Not chemically, anyway.”

Lila wasn’t sure what he was alluding to, and narrowed her eyes. They danced in silence for a long while.
 “I got the job today.”

Chase’s face brightened.
“Holy shit, that’s amazing!”  He took her waist in each of his hands and pulled at her, as if to shake some excitement into her when he saw her somber face.  “Why the hell didn’t you say so? That’s unbelievable, Lila.  You’ve always wanted to work at a University.”

“I know.”
  She said with wide, joyful eyes.  “I have… and teaching! At Harvard!  It’s more than I could have ever asked for.  It’s beyond…”  She held her arms out at her side, motioning to the school across the water. “It’s beyond anything I could have asked for.  Anything.”  She took a heavy breath, rolled her eyes and let her hands fall to her sides. “But I’m not going to take it.”

Ch
ase cocked his head back. “What? That’s crazy.”

“I can’t leave the kids at
Dalton.”  She blinked rapidly. “I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t know how to leave them.”

They stood, toe to toe, watching each other in silence before a bewildered Chase took her hand, again, and wrapped his arm around her waist.
  They began in a slow circle in the grass once more, neither knowing what to say.

“I think
you’re making a big mistake,” he said softly into her ear, a grimace clouding his face.

Lila gripped his hand. “
I’ve had a lot of practice with big mistakes so I should pull this one off flawlessly.”

“O
r just don’t make it at all,” he came at her with a counter offer, gritting his teeth when she didn’t reply.

Lila didn’t know what she was doing here.
  Dancing with Chase in the grass when she’d just left Jack only a few nights before.  God only knew what kind of reaction he would have if he saw the two of them here in Cambridge.  He would have probably assumed that they’d set the whole thing up-- that they’d been having secret rendezvous’ this entire time.  She placed her chin on his shoulder as her eyes scanned her surroundings. She told herself how foolish it was that she was here, she
knew
how foolish it was, but she couldn’t make herself walk away.  Being near Chase had become something she hadn’t even realized she needed until she’d run into him on the plane.

“So I was watching Titanic the other night…”
  Chase started out of the blue, hungry to lighten the mood.

Lila snapped her head back, holding back a laugh.
  Titanic had been one of their favorite movies of all time since the first time they’d watched it together.  Even five years ago Chase had the same dry, biting wit that he had now, never letting a single cheesy line or mannerism go un-challenged as they watched that movie.  Dozens of the Titanic jokes they’d shared from all the years blazed through her mind, and she couldn’t help but laugh.  They must have watched that movie a hundred times, finding something new to laugh about each time.

Chase stared at her smiling l
ips. “What an offensive piece of filmmaking,” he said with disgust. “Do you remember the night when we counted how many times Jack and Rose said each other’s names?”

Lila threw he
r head back, laughing joyously. “Oh god!  What was it? 155 Jacks and—“

“177 Ros
es.”  Chase shook his head. “It’s like they were confirming that, yes, they
did
know the name of the person they were screwing and were happy to confirm it by screaming it at the top of their lungs every five seconds.”

“Jack!” Lila cried, flailing her body dramatically.

Chase held her steady. “Rose,” he yelled into the starry sky. “Rose!”

Lila came to a quick halt. “And the mom?”
 she beamed.

“That crazy white woman.
”

Lila died laughing.

“What an acid
bitch
,” Chase breathed with a shake of his head.

“
Scattered to the
winds.
” They both said at the same time, in the same over-the-top, cheesy tone of voice that Rose’s mother had used throughout that entire movie. They burst into simultaneous laughter.

“God forbid she
have to work a day in her life,”  Lila said with a roll of her eyes. “You know what, though?… I don’t even care. It’s still one of my favorite movies.”

“You’re si
ck.”  Chase mumbled, looking away for a moment before meeting her eyes, again.  “I guess I can give it a few points for being so unintentionally hilarious.”

“That it is,” s
he agreed, holding her breath when his hand slid from the middle down to the small of her back.

“I miss you,” h
e whispered.

Lila’s stomach fell to her feet, and she tried to pull away.

But he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t,” he admonished, his eyes searching hers with a flash of impatience.

“Chase, maybe we should
n’t be… dancing together on a bayshore.  I already have some crazy person following me.  God only knows what they would do if they got a picture of us dancing.  I could say goodbye to Dalton, that’s for sure.”

“Goodbyes seem to be your forte these days--shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Don’t be cruel.”  Her heart pounded at the quick turn this conversation was taking.

“I think I’ve waited long enough for an explanation, Lila.
  Or don’t I deserve one?”

Lila opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t.

“I just need to know when the hell you and Jack…”  He couldn’t even find the right words, and found himself looking up into the sky as if it held all the answers.  When his head came back down his eyes were ripe with mystification. “When the hell did that happen, Lila?”

“I don’t know.
  It just… happened.”

“But you
hated
him.”

“Yeah,” s
he agreed, with a small laugh, nodding. “I did.  I made a lot of unfair assumptions about Jack, but when I actually sat down and took the time to get to know him I realized he’s just…”  Her eyes met his and she forced herself to stop talking, “He’s just a man in pain.”

“And I’m just
a man in pain,” Chase shrugged. “You’re just a woman in pain.  Aren’t we all doomed to be in pain in some way or another? What’s so special about Jack’s pain? Huh?  Does he have a more convincing sad puppy face than the rest of us, or does he honestly have you so brainwashed that you’re actually taking his bullshit at face value?”

“Jac
k and I weren’t even really dating and
why
am I justifying myself to an eighteen year old?” She looked up into the sky, begging for patience.

Chase held her tighter, closing her in. “Have you always wanted him? Is that why you kept me around for as long as you did?”

Lila threw her head back. “Of course not. Now let me go.  You don’t know anything about it.”  When she tried to move his arm from around her waist she was surprised at his strength. The hardness of his heaving stomach, his core, against hers should have been indication enough that hers was a losing battle.  For the first time that night she could feel his arousal against her thigh, shaking her to her core.  “I should have never come out here.  I could lose my job.  I find myself saying that sentence more and more with each passing day and its high time I started to recognize the truth behind it.”

“None of
that matters,” Chase whispered passionately. “You won’t need Dalton, Lila, I’ll take care of you.  I get my parent’s inheritance once I graduate. You can take that club at school and turn it into a god damn global charity foundation if you wanted to.”