Random (Going the Distance) (13 page)

Tyler doesn’t say anything, either. We just sit in his kitchen, chewing. I sneak a sideways glance at him and he’s looking right at me. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” It’s hard to look at him.

He stands up suddenly. “Grab your sandwich and come with me.”

He leads me down a hallway and into a big room at the back of the house. It has windows on three sides, all made of small panes and each one frames a view—the mountains, the tip of Pikes Peak jutting up between two other mountains, a pine tree branch, a square of sky with a cloud puffing across it. Canvases are stacked against the unwindowed wall, their faces modestly turned away. A neatly made bed, just a mattress and box springs on the floor, is tucked against the far wall. The room smells faintly of paint and time and maybe a little of Tyler himself.

“This is my studio.”

“And bedroom?”

“
A
bedroom. It’s always good to have a spare.” He gestures to a pair of fat chairs. “Have a seat.” Carrying the sandwich, he opens the back door, which leads to the deck. I can see straight over the valley, practically to Kansas. He comes back and sits beside me. “This is why I rented this house. This room, this view. Isn’t it amazing?”

He kicks his long legs out in front of him and I realize he’s shed his shoes. His feet are as gracefully shaped as the rest of him, his toes long and white. I have a vision of myself touching his arch with my big toe.

But really, I just love the sight of him here in this room, looking out toward the view with an expression of peacefulness. It’s only the contrast that makes me realize how troubled he really is. What are his secrets?

Why is a guy who has a trust fund living thousands of miles from his family and working as a cook?

Things don’t add up.

He finishes his sandwich and balls up his napkin, then leans back in his chair, head resting on the back. It makes his eyelids fall as he looks at me, but it still doesn’t obscure the startling jewel color of his irises. “So…truth.”

A ripple of nervousness moves through me. “Okay.”

“I paint portraits. Some are nudes, I won’t lie. Some are not. I paint old people and young people, men and women.”

I nod, listening.

Suddenly he leans forward, hands open as if to capture something from the air. “I’ve been struggling for a while now with how I want to take things to the next step, what I’m trying to say, and when I saw you in that restaurant, I had a kind of—vision or something.”

“What kind of vision?”

He hesitates, reaches out and brushes a lock of my hair away from my face. “I’d rather explore it and then show you. Sometimes talking kills an idea.”

“Are you going to show me your paintings first?”

“I will if you want me to. But I’d rather wait.”

He’s nervous enough that I find myself relaxing into the role of comforter. “I guess I don’t mind.” I’m finished with my sandwich now, and he takes the napkin from me, dropping it with his in a trashcan by the door. From a table he takes an enormous sketch pad and settles it on an easel.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing just yet.” He gives me a soft smile, a genuinely happy smile, and something about it warms me. I’m still nervous, and if he asks me to get naked, I really don’t know what I’ll say.

He spreads a dark blue cloth over the bed and shoves a couple of pillows under it to make a sort of messy base. “Do you mind taking off your shoes?”

Shoes are easy. “Nope.” I kick them away and strip off my socks. He takes my hand and leads me lightly to the bed. I sit down in the middle with my back to the windows. The light is very even in here, filtered and somehow green. “This is a great room,” I remark. “But I would put a lot more plants in here.”

He chuckles. “I can imagine.” He stands away, inclines his head.

“Do you want my hair down?”

“No, the braid is beautiful.” He purses his lip, narrows his eyes. “Here’s the deal. I really need to see the skin of your shoulders, see how the light works. If I brought you a piece of fabric to cover up, would you take off your shirt and bra?”

For a minute I hesitate, wondering if I’m being the world’s biggest idiot. But it seems pretty elaborate for a seduction. I mean, why not just start kissing me, which he hasn’t done since I’ve been here? “I guess I don’t mind.”

“Thank you.” It’s heartfelt, and I’m starting to feel like a prop. Like he only wants me here to paint me and then he’ll be finished.

He carries the towel over, a paisley thing, and I turn my back and strip out of the tank top and bra, and sit back down with the towel wrapped around my torso. “How’s this?”

“Perfect.” He leans down and brushes hair off my face, touches my shoulder. “Jesus, your skin is beautiful.” His fingers move along my collarbone, up my neck, and ripples follow along the path behind his touch, raising goose bumps. He’s staring down at me with an unreadable expression. I look at his soft lips that are so perfect for kissing. He touches my mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Perfect,” he whispers again, and rises gracefully, heading over to the easel. He takes a box of something or other off the table and starts drawing, looking at me intently. No, not exactly at me. At me made of light and line.

“Do I have to stay still?”

“Yes, please. It won’t take long. I’m just doing some sketches right now.”

“Am I allowed to talk?”

“You’re talking right now.”

“I could sing songs. I know a lot of songs.”

“Maybe not.”

I knew he would be studying me. What I didn’t realize is that I would be able to look so intently at him, at his long body and broad shoulders, his beautiful forearms and the thick shine of his hair. As he works he sucks his lower lip in and out of his mouth, and I want to put my tongue right there.

He flips the paper over the top of the tablet, puts down the stubby pastels he was using, and comes back over. “This time, maybe don’t talk. Can you recline, sort of draping yourself over the pillows?”

Holding on to the cloth, I recline, letting my head fall backward to show my throat. Ever so slightly I let the cloth slip a little, wondering if he’ll notice. My body pulses as he pulls my bare foot forward.

“That’s great, that’s great,” he whispers. “Just like that. Don’t move.”

Three more times we do this, Tyler moving my body around. None of it is sexual, just to get a better angle, I can sense that. I’m starting to be super curious about what he’s doing, page after page of quick drawings. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would do
pretty
stuff, exactly.

He comes back, sits beside me and takes my arm, pulls it sideways. My knee is propped up, and this time he picks up my braid and pulls the rubber band out. I notice that his face is flushed, a burn of bright color over his cheekbones, and he doesn’t look at
my
face.

“This time I would like to take away the cloth. Would that be okay?”

I clasp my arm over me. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. If you’re not up for it, that’s fine, too.”

But I want his eyes on me. I want his hands on me. “I think if I have
my
shirt off, you have to have
yours
off.”

He stares down at me. “It’s not very pretty.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“I want to stare at you while you stare at me.”

The tops of his ears go very red as he looks at me for a long moment. Then he stands and begins to unbutton his shirt. I notice there’s a prominent hard-on beneath his jeans and it makes my whole body go soft in reaction. He’s very aroused but not acting on it. With a quick gesture he flings off the shirt and then stands there almost defiantly.

He’s
so
wrong about his body. His shoulders are rounded and strong, his chest powerful with lean muscle. And, unlike the guys I’ve known before, he has hair on his chest. Crisp golden hair. His nipples are pink. And hard.

There are scars everywhere, too, but I don’t care. Script tattoos cover his ribs, his sides, dance along the scars. A poem or paragraph covers his right ribs, but I can’t read it from here. His belly is lean, with more hair going in a line down the middle of it, and he absently touches it.

“Pretty isn’t the right word,” I say. “Very sexy.”

“Now you.”

I lift my hand. “Take it.”

Without touching my skin at all, he leans over and pulls the towel away. I try not to dodge his eyes, but it’s strange to be stared at so intently by someone I haven’t been naked with. For a long, long moment he does nothing but stand there, looking down at me.

Then, quietly, he says, “You’re like something I dreamed.”

My skin goes hot. As if his eyes are hands, I feel them brushing all over me, my throat, my chest, my belly.

“Just. Like. That,” he says, and hurries back to the easel. He works fast, and the flush is all over him, down his neck and up his ears. I feel my nipples get hard with the caress of his eyes, and it’s hard not to squirm.

At last he’s done. He comes back and offers me the towel.

Instead I hold out my hand.

For one second he closes his eyes, then opens them and makes a noise of capitulation. He falls down next to me, hauls me into him. His lips find mine and we’re kissing, our bare chests pressing together, skin to skin, belly to belly. His kisses are hard, tongue thrusting into my mouth, teeth nipping my lips, and I meet them with a pent-up violence of own, digging my hands into his hair and pulling him harder into me. His erection shoves hard into my crotch, and it’s both too much and not enough.

He breaks away from my mouth and plants kisses down my throat, down the middle of my chest. His hands find my breasts and push them up to his mouth, and he tongues my nipples, first one and then the other. Lapping, which makes me squirm, and sucking, which makes me grab his shoulders. He pushes me backward. “Let me touch you, explore you.”

I fall backward, half draped over the pillows, which thrusts my chest slightly upward. I reach for him, but he pushes my hands down and holds them there while he straddles my thighs and bends over my breasts. At first I watch him, mesmerized by the sight of his beautiful lips moving on my flesh, taking the rosy tips into the pink inside of his mouth. I’m enchanted by the fall of light over his broad shoulders, so powerfully made, and the way his lashes fall on his cheeks. His ears are so red at the top that it’s endearing.

Then he begins to brush his hands over my skin, lightly tracing the whole of my torso as if to memorize the shape of me. He watches his hands, then bends to suckle my breasts again, stopping and starting. Fingers, palms, lips, tongue. My eyes fall closed as shocks of pleasure pulse through me, running around my ribs, following the line of my spine. He covers every inch of my torso with kisses and licks, dipping his tongue into my belly button, tracing the curve of my breast, suckling my neck while he holds my arms and brushes his hair over my chest.

“Jess,” he whispers over my mouth, and kisses me, pulling me close, and we fall into some other land.

And then it’s my turn. I roll him over and begin to kiss him and explore him the way he did me, straddling his hips so that our jean-covered parts are pulsing back and forth. I sit up and touch his pink nipples with my fingers, then my mouth. My hair falls down around us like a curtain. Beneath my fingers the scars sizzle, and I trace the one I can feel all around his side. I think of him nearly dying, bleeding too fast, and suddenly, I don’t know why, I’m transported to the restaurant, the car coming through, and through, and through. I push the memory away, but it keeps returning, and I’m thinking of Virginia, with blood all over her head, and my mother, and—

He stops me. “What’s wrong, Jess?”

“I don’t know.” I fall into the space he makes for me at his side and press my palms to my head, as if I can erase the visions battering the movie screen of my mind. “I’m getting flashbacks of the crash. Give me a second.”

“Let me hold you.” He pulls me into his embrace, and the friction of our skin together is more comforting than I can express. I curl in close, pressing my cheek into his chest. His arm is tight around me. I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block the visions. A buzz starts up, closer and closer, and I know what’s coming.

I put my hands over my ears, but it’s too late, the buzz is there, and I’m standing beside my mother on the sidewalk, screaming, trying to get someone to help me take the icicle out of her head. That’s my darkest secret and the guilt I’ll never get over, that I was there and I couldn’t help her. Couldn’t save her. So I’m screaming for help and my mother’s staring straight up at the sky, and there is so much blood on the sidewalk that it’s like a swimming pool. I never knew blood would be that red, that there could be so much.

Tyler is murmuring into my ear, his voice rumbling through his ribs into my cheekbone. His arms are tight, and he pulls the cover over us. I realize I’m shaking really hard. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“Just breathe, baby.” He rocks me a little, and our skin slips, sweating, and he kisses my forehead and just keeps doing that, all those things, until the violent shaking in my body stops.

I lie there, silent and shattered.

He lies there with me. He doesn’t ask any questions. He says, “I’ve got you.”

Outside, rain starts to fall, bringing the smell of freshness and hope. Without looking at him, I spread my hand on his chest. “Sorry for ruining things.”

“Nothing is ruined.” He picks up my hand and twines his fingers through mine. “Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to, but when I had my accident, I discovered it could help sometimes.”

Around us the room is like a cloud, soft and gray and quiet with the rain pattering on the windows and roof. “What did you talk about?”

“How scared I was. I heard the window start to fall, and by the time I looked up it was hitting me. I could feel it in my hip, but the shocking thing was how much blood there was so fast. I knew I was going to die.”

“Yeah. So much blood.” I keep my focus on our hands, his strong fingers lacing with my thinner ones. I swallow. “I kept thinking if I could get the icicle out of my mom’s head, then she’d be okay.”