Purely Relative (12 page)

Though he kept his eyes on the road, I detected his slow
exhale. Whatever thoughts he had on the subject, he held back from vocalizing
them. His body language had already betrayed them.

“Gaines and Minor has a DC affiliate,” I quickly tacked on,
not that I’d mentioned my preference for DC in my interview. One hurdle at a
time, and requesting a transfer before even being hired tended to slam doors
shut on any further consideration.

We parked and grabbed his stuff.

At the threshold to my apartment, I placed a hand on his
chest and rose up on my toes to give him a hug. Even though he’d been traveling
for hours, he smelled like my Jon, all male with a hint of musk. “I’m so glad
you’re here. I’ve missed you so much.”

He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. There we stood
for several precious seconds, holding each other and reacquainting ourselves
with the fit of our bodies. When we finally broke apart, I unlocked my door and
led him inside.

My apartment smelled heavenly. The lingering scents of
butter, vanilla, and chocolate lured us straight into the kitchen where I had a
plate full of cookies ready for him. I wasn’t that great of a cook, but I could
make chocolate chip cookies in my sleep.

“For me?”

“Of course!”

“Come here, first,” he said, crooking his finger at me.

I tried to keep a leash on my smile lest he think I was easy
but somewhere between the insistent finger and my first step in his direction,
I lost all control over the thing. It split my face and tugged at my cheeks at
warp speed. No poker face with Jon. I was way too giddy.

After the first breathtaking kiss, I placed both my palms on
his cheeks. “I love, love, love you! I needed desperately to remind you of
that.”

“Oh, yeah? I think you need to show me. I’ve been aching so
badly for you that even one more second not spent holding you, making love to
you, is a torment.”

“Keep talking like that, mister, and I won’t be held
responsible for any clothing harmed in the making of this reunion.”

We shot out of the kitchen and ran to my bedroom where we
hibernated in bliss for the next two days, until it was time for Jon to go to
his parents’ house for Christmas.

I’d be lying if I claimed to be heartbroken over my
exclusion from the Cripps’ Christmas dinner. Apparently, their tradition was
Cripps only—no family friends, no boyfriends or girlfriends, romantic or
otherwise. Though both Jon and Jenny pushed to challenge the tradition when she
picked him up, I insisted they drop the matter. They honored my wish when I
told them I’d signed up for a Christmas Day 10k race that conflicted anyway.

I would have visited my parents in Albuquerque if money
hadn’t been tight, both for them and me. A quick online video chat with them
and each of my brothers had to make do for holiday wishes. Ian seemed equally
miserable all by himself in Houston. He had a project deadline that kept him
from coming to Dallas.

Other than Jon, I really didn’t have but a small handful of
friends in the Dallas area, and most were old college buddies. I had only been
living in the area since May and the few I’d made at work had scattered to the
four winds in the wake of the Anderson-Blakely debacle. I felt the void of no
longer having a cadre of close girlfriends deeply. I was a girl’s girl at
heart.

Refusing to succumb to the crushing loneliness, I did go to
the Jingle Bell 10K as a ghost runner, someone who hadn’t paid the entry fee
that also included a T-shirt. Running had become my rediscovered time for
reflection and planning. My temp job had ended, but the staffing agency
promised work usually flooded them right after the holidays and especially
after New Year’s. With a glowing recommendation from the computer people, the
agency moved me to the top of their list of talent to place. Though I’d sent
off a few resumes to DC, I was probably stuck in Dallas until my apartment’s
lease ended in May. I certainly couldn’t afford to buy it out early. That meant
I needed a job in Dallas while I job-hunted in DC and waited out my lease.
Gnawing financial anxieties put extra adrenaline in my step and the
six-and-change mile route flew beneath my feet.

Jon was waiting in my apartment for me when I returned home.
I was drenched in sweat and toting a soggy taco. His solemn brown eyes took in
my appearance. The longer he perused, the lower the corners of his lips fell.
Time for the upbeat fairy to wave her magic wand.

“Whew! What a run! I had a personal best, can you believe
it? I’m sorry, I’m all gross. I’ll take a quick shower and be right back.” Not
waiting for his response, I jogged to my bedroom, muscles protesting the hasty
demands I made on them after they thought they were done for the day.

Jon didn’t follow me like I had expected, hoped. When I
emerged from the bathroom in my robe, towel wrapped around my hair, he sat
exactly where I’d left him. One hand cradled his fist and his head tilted
downward, Rodin’s The Brooder, if such a sculpture existed.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“As in for the rest of the day?” A gremlin in my gut stirred
from its slumber and stretched.

“No, as in why do I feel like I’m losing you?” He raised his
head and rolled it back, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. “I can’t do another
long distance relationship. Not with you.”

But he was able to do it with Thalia, for years even. The
gremlin ripped off a chunk from inside me and began munching.

“So, what are you saying? This is it? You’re leaving me?
Dumping me? We’re over?”
And on Christmas Day too?
The gremlin climbed
up to my heart and gripped it with its clawed hand. “I said I was looking, and
I am. I will. These things take time though. If I could snap my fingers and get
a job, I would.” A tear rolled down my cheek. I didn’t care if he saw it. He
was being so unfair and heartless, what was a couple of tears?

He jumped to his feet and rushed to me, pulling me into his
arms. “Dumping you? Leaving you? Hell no! I’m not dumping you. I know I’m the
one who left, but I really thought ... I honestly believed you would come with
me.” He pulled back and cupped my cheeks, using his thumb to wipe away my tear.
“What’s here in Dallas for you? You don’t have a job or family nearby. You
haven’t lived here long enough to make many friends. The weather is terrible.
It sucks in Dallas and this is my hometown! What’s the difference if you’re
broke here or broke in DC? I don’t get it. Help me understand why this is an
obstacle for us? What better time for you to move to DC than when you aren’t
employed?”

The gremlin backed off for a second, licking its fingers,
and still eyeballing my heart hungrily.

“Okay,” I began on a sigh, “let’s discuss this.” I moved and
sat down on the sofa. He followed and sat next to me. “I need to be able to
stand on my own two feet. I can’t do that with you holding me up. I’m only
twenty-three, I need to feel independent before I can feel dependent.”

“Why is accepting help from me, temporary help I’ll point
out, depending on me? You’d accept help from a stranger if your tire blew out
on the side of the road, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the same.” I pulled my arms
around myself.

“How is it not? It’s not like I asked you to stop working or
told you where you could work and what hours. I’m not trying to dictate your
life. I want … I need to feel like I’m an important part of it.” He moved his
hands as he spoke, a gesture I rarely saw him do except when very keyed up.

His anguish slapped me full force in the face. I had never
taken the time to consider his point of view, other than he was pushing me into
a world he chose without consulting me. I had to voice that, as much as I
feared escalating our conflict. “But you have dictated it by taking the job in
DC without even discussing other alternatives with me. You dropped it on me as
an accomplished deed. You never once mentioned you had inquired about your old
job, that you were unhappy being a field agent and wanted your old job back.”

He shook his head as I spoke. “No. No. No, that’s not true.
I told you when I lost my cover at Anderson Blakely that they might put me at a
desk job and that I might be happier with it since that’s what I’m best at. I
told you I left a job that I loved for a woman I thought I loved but turns out
I really didn’t.”

“Oh, therein lies one of your fears. You gave up a job once
before for a woman and it was the wrong decision. You weren’t going to do it
again even though you yourself said you knew I was different and that I was,” I
used my air-quote fingers, something I normally loathed, “the one.”

Turning on the seat cushion to face me fully, he took my
hand. “You
are
the one. But you talk about needing to feel independent.
I need to feel that way also. For too long I’ve put my own wishes on hold for
women, to do whatever it took to make them happy even if it made me miserable.
Gayle, I’d crawl to the far corners of the world to be with you but I need to
feel like, for once, someone I loved would do the same for me. I don’t feel
like I’m asking you to give up much.” He swept his arm in an arc and surveyed
my apartment. “This. Dallas. And maybe DC is little farther away from your
family than you’d like, but you’re only an airplane trip away.”

I stared at him unspeaking for a second, maybe two. The
gremlin sat back and burped. I reached a hand out and stroked Jon’s cheek. “I
never said I wasn’t coming. I have been looking for a job in DC.”

He covered my hand with his. “You only said you’d consider
it. That’s all the reassurance you’ve given me. Yet you had two interviews here
in Dallas. How am I supposed to interpret that? And you’ve turned down my
marriage proposals,” he glanced off to the side, his lips moving as if
counting, “fourteen times, if I’m not mistaken. A man could totally get the
wrong idea here.”

“I love you.” I moved my hand to touch his lips, as if I
could halt the words he spoke and their import. “But I’m scared. Scared of
moving to a new city where I know no one but you, of putting everything I am,
all my hopes in another person. Other than my parents, I’ve never put that much
trust in anyone else. But know this, if there was any person who could convince
me to do it, it would be you.”

His eyes glistened and the idea of Jon, my strong Jon, being
nearly in tears tore at me. I moved into his arms and held him and he me. We
stayed that way for a long time until finally one of us stirred and coaxed the
other into the bedroom.

Our lovemaking was slow and deliberate, drawn out as if we
might never have the chance to be together again. I couldn’t help but liken it
to a form of goodbye.

Jon borrowed my car to run errands and check in with the
Bureau over the next few days, always returning to me in the evening with
dinner in hand and full tank of gas in my car. He didn’t ask me to marry him.

I drove him to the airport in leaden silence. The sun hadn’t
yet risen above the horizon. The chill in the air between us was as frosty as
the wintery Dallas weather. Given that I’d played taps a week earlier for my
car’s heater, the cold had settled in and made itself at home.

I pulled to the curb to drop him off, no Homeland Security
patrol to shoo me away at that early hour, so I cut off the engine. I might
have been hoping for a long goodbye.

Jon sat silent and unmoving before leaning over to kiss me.
I could tell he was upset, but he hadn’t put any further pressure on me since
our conversation on Christmas day. His kiss was solemn and tender, but the look
in his eyes, so like a little boy who had lost his pet, gutted me.

“I’ll call you as soon as I get home,” he said unbuckling
his seatbelt.

Home. His home, not mine. “Yes. Safe travels.”

He opened the door and launched himself out to retrieve his
bags from the trunk before I could say any more, even tell him I loved him.

The trunk slammed, and it was like a prison door shutting me
off from the rest of the happy world until I’d served my time. I wish I knew
what crime I’d committed other than loving someone. I watched him stroll toward
the electric doors without a single glance back over his shoulder.

I sat there in my icy cold car until
he disappeared into the terminal. I waited—I don’t know what
for—but I waited, unable to move, not even a muscle, until the first tear
broke through the dam and froze on my cheek.

I slammed my palm against the dash, the useless heater vents
specifically. I hated that stupid car. It had already begun its death spiral,
needed a ton of work, and was nothing but a money pit.

I hated Dallas, too. The traffic sucked. The weather was
blisteringly hot in the summer, and the tornadoes in the spring scared me to
death. Autumn had started off with promise but had then pummeled us with one
ice storm after another as it gave way to winter. God only knew what the rest
of that season would bring.

I hated my apartment. Ever since I’d found an intruder
hiding in my closet during the Aphrodite debacle that had taken three lives,
toppled the city’s premier CPA firm, and cost me my job, I’d had a touch of the
heebie-jeebies. Further condemning the place was the cockroach I’d seen that
morning dancing the Macarena, no doubt inviting all his little friends and
relatives to come party with him.

I hated public accounting and never wanted to do another
inventory observation or bank reconciliation as long as I lived.

I hated everything about where I was except Jon, only he
wasn’t with me anymore. The one thing, the single solitary thing I loved most
about my life had abandoned me in the wretched place known as Dallas, Texas.
Nothing was bigger and nothing was better in Texas. Not for me. Not anymore.

In a move I had never once in my terribly responsible and
law-abiding life made or fathomed making, I grabbed my purse and ran into the
airport after Jon. Homeland Security could have my car. I didn’t care anymore.
All I cared about lay inside the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, and I
would reclaim it and hang on and never let it go.