Palmetto Moon (17 page)

“Good night, Vada.” The room is suddenly oppressively hot. Frank whips off his T-shirt and stands over her, watching her sleep, wanting to wake her up. He presses a kiss against her temple and lingers on the tiny pulse beat. “I love you.”

In the dim early-morning light, the room is even more dreadful than it was last night. My skin crawls at the memory of the pair of huge palmetto bugs that scurried under the bed. Just the thought of those awful things and all their relatives prowling the night away makes me shudder. I rake my hands through my hair desperately, quickly raise the blanket up to make sure they didn’t invade my cocoon during the night, and tuck it back around me.

Frank looks so beautiful. Peaceful. His breath is slow and steady, and his cheeks are flushed from the room that is already hot. My good sense is still at war with my body, and I’m certain this familiar stirring is one of the ambiguous warnings Rosa Lee and Mother used to go on about. But like most admonitions that come from parents, they’re hard to take seriously when no one will explain exactly why something is wrong. Especially when it seems undeniably right.

I feel things about Frank I don’t understand. I want to touch him, and I want him to touch me and not stop at common boundaries. Even the fragments of my anger are no match for his charm, his patience, his easy way. Of course, he knows exactly what he’s doing, using kisses, that smile, and his kindness to try to make me forget what he did yesterday.

No matter how good his intentions were, it wasn’t his place to intrude into my arrangement with Miss Wentworth. Granted the woman, and what was obviously a brothel, did give me pause, but that’s not the point. Frank’s protests made me all the more determined to do what I wanted. I’m concerned his behavior was a window into our future, a glimpse of what my life will be like after I say, “I do.” Is that what he thinks a marriage is, him deciding everything, simply because he’s a man?

But in a way, I’m glad Frank did chisel in, because it made me stand up to someone I love, for what I want. I’ve only done that once before in my life and that was the night after I graduated college, after three glasses of sherry. Maybe I should have kept up my protest about marrying Justin, instead of stealing away like a thief in the night. I should have put my foot down and refused my parents. But if things hadn’t happened the way they did, I would never have met Frank.

His challenge opened my eyes to what is possible, not just in my life but in life itself. Otherwise, I’m sure the notion of being any man’s equal would have never occurred to me. Of course, my father would make fish eyes and keel over at the very idea of a woman and a man as equal partners in anything, much less a marriage, but I think that’s what a real marriage is. Or at least what it should be. But was Frank simply trying to appease me? Is he even capable of seeing me as his equal? Would any man be? He stirs a bit and turns onto his side, so his broad back is facing me. Is that a sign?

“Vada.” He sighs out the word, and I’m not sure if he’s awake or if he’s dreaming. “Are you up?”

“Yes, Frank. I’ve been up for some time.”

He rolls over, and his smile is glorious. His mussed hair and the stubble on his chin make him even more desirable. “Did you sleep well?” My heart races, and I can’t help but squirm at the thought of what is under his opaque cotton sheet.

“Yes, thank you.”

I know about the birds and the bees, about going all the way, but technically, I’m not sure what going all the way is. Girls at college threw that term around when they were in love, like the words themselves were dangerous and fun. He raises up on one elbow and looks at me like he’s contemplating asking me to join him. I want to, but I don’t have the slightest idea what I’d do. I imagine there would be hours of delicious wet kisses that would make me think I’d like to go all the way with him.

He pulls the sheet over his bare shoulder. “You okay? You look a little scared.”

“I’ve never been alone with a man before—in a hotel room.”

“Relax, Vada. You’re safe with me. Why don’t you get dressed?” He laughs softly and flops onto his back, his hands covering his beautiful eyes.

As charming as Frank is, I’m not laughing, and the silence is awkward, but what am I supposed to do? It wouldn’t be wise to give in to these feral urges, not until I’m sure Frank Darling is the man I think he is, the man I want him to be.

She crawls off the couch and bends over her suitcase, pulling out a few pieces of clothing and a lone shoe. Her round bottom is staring at Frank through her paper-thin nightgown; she looks to see if he’s peeking through his fingers and seems satisfied that he’s not. She rummages for the other shoe, stands, and digs her fists into her slim hips as she considers where the mate might be. Frank can see her breasts, full and beautiful, the outline of her nipples.

She turns her back to him and gets down on her hands and knees. Good God. He’ll be hard the rest of the day. He raises up just a bit to see her hesitate before she reaches under the couch. She jerks out the prodigal slipper with a little squeal, tossing it about like a hot potato, and then checks the shoe to make sure the roaches haven’t moved in.

Frank can’t help but laugh. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. And no peeking.” She looks over her shoulder as she rushes into the bathroom and seems sure that Frank hasn’t seen a thing. She tries four or five times, but the door is warped and won’t stay closed.

“It’s okay, Vada. I can’t see through the door.”

Her laugh sounds nervous; she turns on the faucet in the sink. There’s not enough water pressure to cover her dreamy sigh. Frank imagines her naked, bathing with the same rough terry-cloth rag he used last night. Water dripping down her breasts. The rag moving over her flat white belly, between her legs. She turns the water off.

Frank eyes the sliver of a crack where the door doesn’t close. Glimpses of bare skin make him even harder. He lies on his back, not making a sound, barely breathing. But his silence takes him someplace he doesn’t want to go, memories of the preacher’s wife achingly sad and then so happy to see him. Lila always rode him in a desperate way, like she was trying to outrun the darkness that always seemed to dog her. When they came, she held her hand over his mouth and bit her lips together, for fear they would be heard, before they were dressed and pretending nothing had happened. Before her sadness returned.

Vada’s hand is wrapped around the edge of the door, ready to open it. “Are you presentable, Frank?”

“Just a minute.” He pulls on his dungarees and starts to button them. “All clear.”

She comes out of the bathroom and stops short, blushing hard at his bare chest, and for the life of him, all he can do is stand there with his shirt in his hand. He wants to make her sigh, make her moan. Maybe her face is flushed because she wants him, too, or maybe she’s just embarrassed that Frank is half-naked. She’s transfixed, like she wants what he wants, or, at the very least, is considering it. Then she looks away. He takes the hint and dresses quickly.

“Hungry?” Jesus, Frank. Can’t you think of anything to do for this woman besides make love to her and feed her? “Want to get some breakfast?”

She nods hesitantly, and it feels like they’ve backtracked to the tenuous moments when she slammed the car door in Memphis and didn’t say a word for three hundred miles. She kneels on the floor, snaps her suitcase shut, then abruptly opens it again and shuffles through it to make sure she doesn’t take home any six-legged souvenirs.

“Ready,” she says softly.

“Vada?” She doesn’t look at him. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“This. Us. It’s going too fast for me.”

Frank knows what she means, this pull that draws them together is so powerful, he accepted it the moment he saw her. But what is welcoming to him might be terrifying to a young woman like Vada. “You want to go slow?” He wraps his arms around her and rests his chin on her head. He holds her like a timid animal until he feels her body relax a little. “Then we will.”

Two meals and four hundred miles later, she’s still not talking. From time to time, she looks at Frank and smiles, almost apologetically, like she’s going to break off what they have going as soon as she gets back to Round O. He almost wishes she’d do it while she’s captive in this car. At least she’d be forced to listen while he tried to talk her out of it.

“We’re not far from Walterboro. I’ll call Tiny to come pick you up at the bus station.”

“Thank you, but I’ll call Tiny.” She nods and smiles wanly. “She gave me her phone number.”

The silence is killing him. “Vada? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I know we had a fight, and I thought we’d made up. But what happened back at the hotel to change your mind? Did I do something wrong?”

He holds his breath and hopes to God she doesn’t say yes.

“No, Frank. You were a perfect gentleman.” She pauses, looking at him far less adoringly than usual.

“It’s just that you seem different, Vada. I’ve had a lot of miles to guess exactly why that is, and I’ve told myself it’s nothing. But that’s not true. You’re unsure about me. About us.”

Her beautiful face makes Frank want to kick himself for not keeping his damn mouth shut back in Memphis. At this moment, if she wanted to sell her soul to the harlot, he wouldn’t say a word.

“It’s just that I’ve never been swept off my feet, Frank. I’ve never even been in love before. And while being with you has been wildly romantic, and then, of course, your proposal—I just want to go slow and make sure that what we have is what we’ll have fifty years from now.”

Frank wants to pull off the road and convince her there’s no reason to doubt him or their love. But the way her jaw is set, her eyes refuse to smile, and her lips are pulled into that tight line—all tell him that would set them back more than it would move Vada closer to the forever with him.

“Nothing good stays the same, Vada. It only gets better, and it’s no different with love.” She kisses the back of his hand, and he swears to God it feels like good-bye. “I love you.”

He’s sure she can smell his desperation, but she doesn’t answer him, just trails her hand out the window, her fingers sifting through the wind.

They pull into the tiny Greyhound station parking lot, and there’s not a soul in sight, no buses, just the heat rising from the asphalt. Not so much as a car passing disturbs the silence, until the Mayflower’s engine makes a pinging sound as it cools. She eyes the pay phone by the ticket stand.

Frank’s heart stops when she pushes the car door open. “I’ll wait with you until Tiny comes.” He sounds desperate. He is desperate.

“That won’t be necessary, Frank, but thank you for driving me.”

“It feels like we flew back, like we didn’t get enough time to talk.” She looks at him like he’s a liar, and she’s right. They just didn’t talk. “Besides, it would be wrong to leave you here all alone.”

“I need to think, Frank, before I get back to Round O.” She attempts a smile. “If Tiny doesn’t come soon after I call, I’ll walk over to the Dairy Queen and sit at one of the picnic tables and wait for her. I’ll be fine.”

“But what if it rains?” He gets out of the car, or at least partially, and leans over the roof that is doing less to separate the two of them than Vada is. She thanks Frank again and walks toward the pay phone. “God, Vada, if you won’t tell me what you’re thinking, at least tell me what you want, right here. Right now.”