Material Girl (44 page)

But maybe, just maybe, she was selling herself short. Maybe she wouldn't have gone so far as to disrespect him like Dad did. Maybe she would at least have respected him. Funny, wasn't it, that now she adored him? Yes, but… did

she adore him enough to walk away from the Lears? Did she love him? Really, even the word sounded fragile. Okay, so what if she admitted that she did love him—not that she was ready to admit such a huge thing—but what if? What would happen in two, three, even ten years' time? Would she grow bored of him? Would he still love her? Or would he, like her own father, grow to despise her? And if he did, where would that leave her? Completely alone?

Like she wasn't already completely alone. Like she had some rich, full life to be envied. What a fucking joke.

Robin was really beginning to despise herself and what she had become, was really beginning to believe that what she had been searching for all this time was not a thing, but maybe something as simple as herself. It almost felt like there was a person, the real Robin, a better Robin, lying beneath a shroud of privilege and the Lear name, still very much alive, but buried by the weight of her name.

“Hey, baby,” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts with a gentle squeeze of her knee. Robin glanced up, realized they were almost to Houston. She pushed herself out of her slump, stole a glimpse over her shoulder. Cole was stretched across the backseat, asleep. How long had he been asleep?

“You haven't said a word the last hundred miles,” Jake said.

A long time, apparently. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Jake smiled thinly; his hand slid from her knee. “Listen. I've been thinking.”

“About what?”

“About… us. And this… this thing between us. There's something really special between us, I think, but I'm starting to worry that the whole goddam world is conspiring against us.”

“Are you talking about my dad? Because if you are, believe me, I am-—”

“No, not just your dad,” he said, and reached up, rubbed his eyes. "Shit, I don't even know how to talk about all the things going around in my head right now. I just know that when I look at you, I think to myself, God, is this woman for me? Am I that lucky? I have fallen in love with you,

Robin. I can't think of anything else, there is no other place I want to be, and honestly, the more I am with you, the harder it is to be apart from you."

The warmth of his sentiment, however undeserved, or frightening, seeped through to her jaded heart. “Jake…”

“No wait, before you say anything…” He looked at her, held her gaze for a moment, his hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two o'clock. “I feel that way about you, but at the same time, I know that I don't have what you have—I will never have what you have.”

“Please, you have no idea what you are saying. I don't have anything—”

“Looks to me like the only thing you are missing is your own country,” Jake said, sighing. “I'm only saying that I understand why your dad feels like he does. I can understand why my mom believes you are just messing around with me. But I guess the question is, how do we feel? How do we know this is right and we aren't headed for a fall? How do you feel? I love you, Robin. But I need to hear you say it.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. She could feel it coming, the crash and burn—the Inevitable Question, the defining moment in a relationship where the couple must pass on to the next level or abandon their attempts at togetherness. The strange thing was, Robin could feel her answer to the Inevitable Question in the pit of her belly, where a horde of butterflies flit about every time she saw Jake. But she couldn't deny the fear that what he said was true—he was not accustomed to her lifestyle, and by the looks of things, he would not achieve her lifestyle anytime soon. She had heard him grouse enough about his bills to know that he lived from job to job. It wasn't that she didn't have faith in him. That wasn't it at all. If anyone would succeed, it would be Jacob Manning.

But at the moment, she had no faith in herself, no faith that she would not retreat to the cover of her shroud, no faith that she could turn her back on the Lear wealth and all its privilege and walk away.

Jake sighed. “I guess your silence is my answer, huh?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I'm just trying to think.”

“That's not good.”

“Jesus, please don't misunderstand me. I think you are wonderful, Jake. But I… I'm afraid of the expectations.”

He shot a quick, confused look at her. “What expectations?”

“Yours. Mine. Everyone's,” she said, shrinking into her seat. “How do we live up to it all?”

“Ah,” he said, nodding slowly, and frowned, his brown eyes filled with confusion. And hurt. A lot of hurt. “Okay, I get it—”

“No, you don't get it, you can't get it,” she blathered helplessly. “I am just trying to figure out where I belong.”

“I think you belong with me, dammit,” he said gruffly, now staring straight ahead. “But you have to come to that conclusion yourself.”

“You're angry,” she sighed wearily, her inability to explain herself weighing her down. “I am just trying to be honest. I am just trying to say that… that expectations are inevitable, aren't they? And we might not be able to fulfill each other's. Where will that leave us?”

He didn't answer right away, just stared straight ahead. After a moment he said softly, “I don't know where anything leaves us right now.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way.

An hour later, Jake pulled into her drive and roused Cole from his sleep, directing the stumbling teen to his pickup. He hoisted their bags onto one shoulder and turned to face Robin. She was standing at the passenger door of her Mercedes, silently watching him, despising herself for having hurt him. He looked at her for a long moment, his jaw working with the clench of his teeth, but then he looked away, down at the ground.

“Jake…” she said, but couldn't finish, having no idea what to say, her confusion as deep as his hurt.

“No, never mind,” he said solemnly. “Don't feel like you have to say anything, because you don't. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to hear it.”

“Please don't—”

“Look, I gotta go,” he said, cutting her off, and stepped forward, pecked her on the cheek, then turned abruptly and headed for his truck.

From the truck cab, Cole was watching, and as Jake pulled out of the drive. Cole turned and looked at her over his shoulder. Even though it was dark, and she could barely make out his face, Robin could have sworn that he looked as confused as she felt.

After a restless attempt at sleep, Jake passed Sunday at Hermann Park at a baseball game. He swung at the ball with fury, wrenched his back twice, but went three for four before it was all said and done. Part of him expected to hear her calling out to him to get up on his toes; another part of him hoped he never heard her voice again. The hurt or the disappointment was too much for his puny, unused heart to hold. And he resented the hell out of the fear, which, no t hank s to her, had kept him awake most of the night. A dull fear he had once felt about the prospect of even falling in love was now a fear that he might not ever be in love again.

And then there was the fear that he might never touch her again… or be touched by her.

As he stood in right field, waiting for the batter to swing at something, he thought he should have seen it coming, should have known the minute he kissed her the first time that it couldn't last, that all his little fantasies were just that—fantasies. The first time he laid eyes on her, he knew—a woman like that would never settle for someone like him. How he had allowed himself to believe otherwise was a great mystery and had to be his greatest, crowning stupidity.

When the game was over, and his hope that she might come completely obliterated, he drove out to his mom's to get Cole, thinking they could go for an ice cream.

Mom was sitting on the back porch, snapping peas. “Hey, Mom,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek.

“Jacob.”

He sat down next to her, stared out over the clover-infested yard.

“You doing all right?” Mom asked, without looking up from her work.

“Yeah.”

“Cole says you had a fight with the girl.”

The girl. Jake sighed, unwilling to have this conversation, and looked down at his hands. “I wouldn't call it a fight.”

“Well, you can't say I didn't tell you so,” Mom said, shaking her head, and Jake couldn't decide if he despised his mother or loved her for her keen, unwaveringly critical insight.

“No, I can't say that,” he said, and with another sigh, stood up. “I'm going to take Cole to get an ice cream.”

Mom kept on snapping peas.

Jake found Cole in his room, lying on his bed and throwing a tennis ball against the wall. In usual fashion, he barely acknowledged Jake when he came in, but at the mention of ice cream, seemed to perk up a bit.

Neither of them said anything in the drive over to the Tastee-Freez. Cole stared out the window. When they were seated in the orange plastic benches, and Cole was hunched over a double banana split, Jake asked, “So why are you in such a rotten mood?”

Cole shrugged, took a huge bite. “Tara,” he said through a mouthful of butterscotch- and chocolate-covered ice cream.

The admission surprised Jake; he couldn't believe Cole was willing to talk about it. “What about her?”

Another shrug, another bite. “She dumped me. Sorta.”

“Then she's stupid.”

“No, I'm a jerk,” Cole said, putting down his spoon.

“What do you mean, you're a jerk? You're not a jerk,” Jake said, figuring he probably was a typical, fourteen-year-old insensitive clod. What male wasn't at that age? “What happened?”

"Robin said I should ask her to this dance. So I did, and she said yes. And I was gonna ride with Danny Futrell, but Grandma said no, 'cuz she doesn't like his dad, and she was gonna take me and all that, and that was just like really

stupid. So then I started thinking about it, and I dunno… it just seemed really weird or something."

“What, the dance? When is it?”

“It was last night,” Cole said, and picked up his spoon, took another bite as if that explained it all.

“Why didn't you say something? I could have got you to the dance—”

“No, I decided not to take her.”

Jake groaned softly. “You called her, right? You made some excuse?”

“Yeah,” he said in a less than convincing manner. “I told her I had to do something for Grandma. She said I was a jerk and now she won't talk to me. And I found out today she went to the dance with Danny Futrell.”

“Well, hell, kid, don't worry about it—”

“I'm a jerk. No girl is ever gonna like me. Especially if Grandma has to drive me.”

Jake definitely felt his pain on that front. He tried not to smile, looked at Cole's young face, could see the handsome man he would become and knew that girls would be sticking to him like white on rice sooner than he knew. “Girls are gonna like you fine, Cole. But here's the thing. When you sign up for girls, you gotta expect to crash and burn now and then. Girls are strange creatures—they get upset about funny things and make us miserable. But it's worth it in the long run, and I promise, you will recover from Tara. There will be another girl.”

“Except I don't want another girl,” Cole said, twirling his spoon in the melted ice cream.

“So she's pretty special, huh?”

“She's got really pretty eyes.”

Man, oh man, Jake thought, as he reached across and helped himself to a spoonful of melted ice cream, he and Cole were exactly alike in that regard. Who would have thunk it? The two of them, captured by a pair of pretty blue eyes, unable to look away, running headlong and fast toward a massive wipeout.

“Robin says girls like presents when it's not their birthday or anything. You think I should give Tara a present?”

Cole looked so hopeful, that Jake believed for a split second he was looking at his own reflection. He nodded, took one last bite of the banana split. “I think that's an excellent idea. Let's go over to Wal-Mart and see what they've got.”

They spent an hour at Wal-Mart going through long aisles of girl stuff. Cole finally took Jake's advice and got a little bottle of perfume. When Jake dropped Cole off at his mom's, he went out back, found her on the porch drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

“Cole has a gift for Tara. Will you help him wrap it up nice?”

“Oh Lord,” Mom said with a roll of her eyes. “He's just gonna get his feelings hurt, that's all.”

Jesus, her bitterness was endless, and Jake was suddenly struck with the thought that he did not want to end up like his mom, bitter and angry and old. “Mom,” he said evenly, “Just this once, could you not criticize?”

That startled her; she looked up at him with her watery eyes. “Well, I'm not criticizing—”

“Yes, you are. You always do. You're so unhappy that sometimes I think you try to make the world around you just as unhappy so you won't be alone.”

Mom blinked, stunned. She swallowed, looked as if she tried to find something to say, but when she couldn't, she looked down and methodically stubbed out her cigarette. “Well, I never meant to criticize.”

She looked so stunned that Jake instantly felt contrite, and put a hand on her bony shoulder, squeezed it lightly. And she managed to startle him by reaching up and covering his hand with hers, patting woodenly. But it was a show of rusty affection all the same, and it touched a rusty part of him.

“I best go find the paper,” she said on a sigh as her hand slipped from his, and stood up, wrapped the ratty old sweater tightly around her and walked past Jake without looking at him. “I'll talk to you tomorrow, Mom,” he called after her and thought he heard her say good-bye in return.

The sky was thickening as he went outside, rows and

rows of big black clouds hanging low over the city. He drove slowly, hardly noticing the lights or pawnshops rolling by, not even noticing when yellowed lawns turned to the lush green of the Heights. His mind was too wrapped around a hodgepodge of thoughts, all of them too vague to really latch on to, the cacophony of them exhausting him.

It had begun to sprinkle lightly when he turned onto his street, and at first he didn't notice her car, parked politely at the curb in front of his house. As he turned into his drive, he saw her sitting on the top step of his porch just beneath the overhang, her arms crossed over her knees, hugging them to her.