Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (44 page)

“Gray, if I ask you about something, will
you promise to tell me the truth, no matter what?” My voice shook
as I tried to muster up the courage I needed.

I turned to look at him for the first time
since joining him on this perch.

He smiled like something was funny, but then
I could see another thought play across his eyes and he turned more
pensive.

“Only if you promise not to be mad at me for
whatever you make me tell you,” he responded strategically.

That was a fair request, and not one I had
anticipated having to agree to.

“Okay.”

I paused to get my next words in order.

“Tell me what happened between us the night
of the fireworks, in Reykjavik. I know something happened, but I
have no memory of it.”

He looked stunned and totally guilty. It was
just as I’d feared. It was bad and I was right to have waited until
I was certain we were alone to get the story.

“If you have no memory of it, how did you
know to ask about it?” he countered, once he had gathered his
thoughts to make a defense.

“You know that phone you let me borrow, that
I never gave back?” I asked.

He nodded but there was no comprehension in
his eyes.

“Well, I just recently checked the messages,
and there was one from you…”

That still didn’t register with him. But
that would make sense because he’d sounded a little out of it to
me. He probably had no recollection of leaving that sentimental
message at two in the morning, not long after Grandpa’s
funeral.

“You asked me if that night in Reykjavik
with the fireworks meant as much to me as it did to you. I was
wondering what happened, and why you’d ask that question.”

I spoke in a hushed tone. I could barely get
the words out.

He looked stunned again. He was tense as he
stared at me, clearly trying to manage the inner conflict about
being truthful and upsetting me or lying to me and upsetting
me.

“Just tell me the truth. Please?”

I tried to be soothing instead of
accusatory. After a long pause when I thought he just wasn’t going
to answer me, he finally began.

“So that was your first day in Reykjavik.
And you’d spent the afternoon with Dana, as I recall.”

Though his eyes were turned out over the
meadow, his mind was much farther north and east.

My luggage had been lost on the final leg of
our journey. Dana was the only other girl in our group, though she
was at least five years older than me, which made her a grown-up,
in my estimation. Dan Gregory had given her a credit card and
instructions to take me into town and buy me the things I would
need until my luggage appeared. As it turned out shopping was her
favorite thing in the world, and shopping with a bottomless credit
card was the coup d’état (revolutionary seizure of power).

I met Gray for the first time at dinner that
night, after having undergone an extreme makeover where Dana had
purchased clothes and makeup (for both of us) and then dressed me
up so that I looked like her twin. My own Grandpa hadn’t recognized
me at first…that’s how different I looked.

“I thought you were older,” he said, already
apologetic.

I was beginning to think that ignorance
might be bliss in this one instance and that I should never have
asked about this.

“Did you notice how taken I was with you
that night when we all had dinner together? Dana did.”

He smiled ruefully. I didn’t answer, but no,
that had not been my impression—a convincing accismus, (feigning
disinterest in something one finds extremely interesting) and quite
reciprocal, if I was being honest.

“Are you aware that you’re a
sleepwalker?”

Significantly, there wasn’t a trace of
teasing in his question.

“Sometimes.”

Oh no.

“Well, I wasn’t.”

He stopped talking for a while, deciding
what he would tell me, and how to do that, I imagined.

“Anyway, Dana was mad at me and she’d gone
back in to Reykjavik to do some clubbing…alone.”

He laughed, shaking his head and rolling his
eyes.

“I’m pretty optimistic, or maybe arrogant is
the right word. When you came into my room so late I just thought
you’d picked up on my vibes and that you were being
very…friendly.”

He chuckled at his joke.

I was feeling more ill than I ever had up to
this point, which was an extreme low for me. I was so thankful to
already be seated.

“It was strange though. You were there, but
you weren’t. The bold move of showing up like that was offset by
the total silence,” he continued, laughing softly at the
memory.

“That didn’t occur to me at first, though.
It was dark, but I knew it was you. The only other girl in the
house was never quiet, especially when she was angry at me.”

I was breathing in tiny breaths that were
too shallow. The edges of my vision were starting to blur.

“So I pulled you close, but when I kissed
you I realized something was wrong. You were soft and warm, but you
were like a statue. I wasn’t getting any response. That’s when I
switched on the lamp and figured it out. It was a totally different
version of you than what I thought I’d been kissing. You had no
makeup on, your hair was in two braids and you had pink socks on
your feet. You weren’t even looking at me.”

He smiled, wistfully, his mind still far
away.

“So I walked you back out into the hallway.
Then the fireworks started.”

The suburb we were staying in was having a
founder’s celebration and midnight fireworks were shot off the
entire week.

“I grabbed a couple of blankets and took you
out on the deck to watch them with me. Do you remember that?” he
asked, hopefully.

I shook my head, completely speechless. I
had watched the fireworks on a different night, probably the next
night, but I was with Grandpa, not Gray.

“It was nice. I could tell you were still
asleep, but you’d started talking, well, answering questions, that
is. I don’t know how, but you managed to stay asleep during all
that racket,” he chuckled.

“I was just playing around and I asked you
if you liked me the way that I liked you. I thought I was just
being facetious, but later I realized that even then I meant it.
Seeing you so innocent and sweet like that, tasting you like that,
I was totally addicted. I wanted to believe there was meaning to
the way you’d been drawn to me, even unconsciously.”

He paused, replaying scenes of our time in
Iceland. I was doing the same thing.

“Then over the course of the next few weeks,
when I really got to know you, there was no going back. You treated
me like a friend, instead of a…conquest.”

He was playing with the ring on my right
hand. Then his eyes flashed up to mine, capturing them
inescapably.

“I couldn’t tell how you felt about me, but
I knew I had to have you, Ellie. No one else would ever do for me.
But I wanted you for every reason, not just the right ones. That’s
why I had to back off, and keep my distance…across the
Atlantic.”

He smiled that half smile I loved, though it
was dusted with a bit of ruefulness.

It was a tremendous relief to hear that
things hadn’t gone nearly as far as I was beginning to fear.

“What did I say?”

I would probably be sorry I asked this.

There was a tender sweetness in his
expression that melted my reserve.

“I asked you if you liked me and you said
‘Yes.’ So then I asked you if you’d like to be my girlfriend and
you said ‘Yes.’ On our last night in Reykjavik you stopped by to
see me again. I asked you if you’d marry me and you said
‘Definitely yes.’”

He laughed quietly and I realized I was in
his arms now. I’d been concentrating so hard on what he was telling
me that I’d missed that part. It was a familiar pose. His lips were
on my neck, kissing in a path that started under my ear and made
its way down and around to the top of my spine and then across to
the other ear. The guilty pleasure was astonishingly immobilizing.
It felt like I was dissolving. Before I was overcome by
speechlessness I managed a caveat, though weak and
unconvincing.

“If you keep that up I’ll never be able to
climb down from here,” I warned without moving, in a voice that was
barely there.

I couldn’t make myself pull away, even if I
wanted to. He needed to learn to respond to verbal cues anyway.

He paused for a moment and said, “It’ll be
worth the wait. Besides, you recover amazingly quickly.”

And he started in on the kissing once more.
When it seemed like I might truly pass out—the old familiar blurred
edges of vision in combination with that strange hollow roaring
inside my ears—I dropped back into his chest, blocking any further
advances from that angle. He held me silently for a while, just
breathing.

My mind was sorting though a basket of
recurring dreams. What I used to consider world-class mental
concoctions regarding the men I loved began to take on new
dimensions in light of the information Gray had just provided.
Which were truly dreams and which were actually memories,
masquerading as dreams?

If he asked me to marry him during one of
these sleepwalking episodes—the very thing my soul would have
craved above all else at that point—then it was no wonder I
imploded after Grandpa died and I thought I’d never see Gray
again.

It was unfortunate and pitiful, but my
response to the facts of my conscious knowledge being at war with
what was true in my subconscious mind explained so much. It was
almost a relief.

Then I began to consider some of the more
intensely physical, ‘next level’ dreams I’d had about Gray…

“Do you still sleepwalk?” he eventually
asked.

“Apparently I’m not the right person to ask.
It’s pretty scary, but I have to admit, I honestly don’t know.”

My mom hadn’t mentioned it in ages, so I
thought it was a thing of the past.

“Hmm. When we’re married I guess I’ll just
have to handcuff you to our bed at night.”

And he laughed at his joke, nuzzling the top
of my head with his nose and chin.

I could hear the click in my mind. It was
the sound of the switch as my vision went slightly red, but sharper
and more in focus than it had ever been. It was just a stupid joke.
But it was also a symbolic truth. I was never going to be given a
choice in this. It was long past being a done deal in Gray’s mind.
In fact, he’d paid a whole group of people to watch and ‘block’ me
from making any choices for myself. He was so good at manipulating
my emotions and my memories that I’d never be sure whether any
decision I made was truly mine.

It felt deceptively good at the moment, but
I knew that this lovesick hormone induced haze would burn off
eventually, probably in the bright light of hindsight, once I was
married to someone infinitely more powerful and intelligent than
me, who possessed me body and soul, who would handcuff me so that
my spirit and will were no longer mine to direct, and never ever
would be.

Though this spot felt very private, seconds
later when the scopophobic sensation broke through my
consciousness, I realized that we were actually perched upon what
was a natural stage. I was certain that Phil and Elsie must be
nearby, and that he was watching me now—watching Gray have his way
with me. And watching me let Gray do it, consciously, this time. I
hated myself. I hated being manipulated and I hated being watched.
I was done.

The self-disgust and anger translated into
action as I abruptly pulled away from Gray’s hold, stood up and
moved to the place where I had come from, trying to get down. He
didn’t understand my motivations, but he understood my object, and
gently pushed me aside.

“Let me go first, and then I’ll help you
down,” he suggested, cautiously.

He knew he’d crossed the line and that an
apology wouldn’t undo the damage at the moment. I tried to hide the
tears as I walked silently back up the path toward the main fire
road in the direction of our campsite. The tissues were a good idea
after all, and I quietly wiped my way through all of them. Gray
walked by my side, kindly redirecting me with a hand but no words
at several points when I started to head in the wrong direction. He
knew I was aiming for the relative comfort and solitude of my place
in Elsie’s tent.

When we got back to camp we were alone. I
headed for cover. He stopped me before I could unzip the door,
holding my wrist.

“Can we talk about this?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t talk at
all…about anything.

“Ellie, honey, I’ve really upset you. I’m so
sorry.”

He was perfectly sincere.

“I’m sorry too,” I whispered, tears
surging.

Then I pulled my hand away, turned my back
on him and escaped inside the tent, zipping the door behind me. I
tried to be quiet, but I couldn’t stop crying. I was too distraught
for the normal censor of embarrassment to quiet me.

Walking back to camp, I’d made my mind up
about what I was going to do next but I was having trouble psyching
myself up for it. It was really going to hurt, if it worked, that
is. The tears had more to do with the finality of my decision and
its repercussions, as opposed to offense at Gray’s faux pas joke,
though that offense had sparked my new determination. I felt bad
for him about that; he would not know there was a distinction.

About ten minutes later Elsie came inside.
She was all concern.

“What’s wrong Ellie?”

“My back is really sore…and…it hurts when I
pee.”

It wasn’t exactly true, the way that saying
‘my head is really sore, and it hurts when I think’ would have
been, but I was preparing to fly standby on my only ticket out of
there.

She felt my forehead, checking for fever.
All I needed to do was think about the handcuff remark, or one of
any number of ‘dreams’ and a convincing fever simulation could be
arranged.