Stray (4 page)

Jamie tips the driver and the taxi pulls away. We stand in the dark, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, eyeing the rustic clapboard house as though it’s riddled with booby traps. Miriam isn’t back yet but she will be in an hour or so, and when she sees I’ve come home early she’ll figure it out and it’ll be on. The third degree. The overreaction. The guilt. I blow white breath through my lips and turn half-formed arguments in my muddy brain. “Can we just stay out here?”

Jamie chuckles, the brief, heavy sound of the condemned. Miriam will find some way to use my mistakes against him, fuel for her argument:
Synergist Coding is dangerous
.

Jamie peers down the drive. “I guess we’ve got a little time to come up with an alibi.”

“She won’t stay late at Emilie’s and miss the chance to play curfew cop.”

“Mmph.”

Columbia Avenue becomes a slowly balding forest in late October. The dry rustling of dead leaves overhead and the squelch of damp ones underfoot. Out in the forest, the Border River rushes, deep, wide and wild. I picture flying down its bank, the leap I’d make to cross it and the mountains beyond. “We could go for a run?”

“We could join the circus.” He squeezes my hand. “Wouldn’t make a difference. She’d find us eventually.”

I sigh.

He sighs.

Neither of us moves.

The narrow house looks warm and inviting from the cold shadow of the sidewalk. Light filters through a gap in the living room curtains. Miriam’s studio on the right sits in darkness. Upstairs, a lamp glows behind the study blinds, always on. I’ve loved this house my whole life but since the truth came out about who and what everybody was and wasn’t, moms, twins, fate, futility and mutant DNA, the atmosphere of the place exhausts me. It’s all a bit too My Life as a Greek Tragedy and I don’t want to talk about or “process” anything. April wasn’t my real mom. Miriam is. It hurts too much to think about it and I’m sick to death of feeling like an exposed nerve ending. Miriam tries to give me space, let me deal with things my own way, but she’s a fixer and sometimes it gets the better of her and, inevitably, things end in yelling and tears. Mostly, I stay quiet and avoid being in the same room as her, the strategy of a coward.

“Come on,” Jamie says, tugging my hand.

We make our way down the sloping drive, Jamie holding my arm to keep me from skidding on the gravel. We clamber up the steep back steps to the landing and Jamie takes the key from my fumbling hands and lets us into the dizzying light and clamour of the kitchen.

Brightness momentarily blinds me. I stumble over to turn the stereo off, flicking the switch, then the small TV on the counter. Miriam always leaves things on, like she’s out of time, fleeing a burning building. Buffy pads up the hall, meowing in greeting. I lean against the cupboards to keep from losing balance in the uncommon hush and hold my head. “I think I need to lie down.” I don’t feel bad. It’s just the endless rotation of everything around me that makes it hard to stand.

Jamie dumps our things on the long wooden table. “Go ahead. I’ll get you something to eat.”

Buffy meows and follows Jamie to the counter, purring, twining herself around his legs. I know just how she feels. “I’ll be upstairs, then.”

The corner of his mouth forms a wry curve. “Miriam will be home soon.”

I grin, bumping my way out of the kitchen like a slow-moving and badly aimed pinball. I pause in the hall where Miriam’s eclectic artefacts cramp the bookshelves by the stairs. The light on the answering machine blinks and I press play. Miriam’s voice crackles from the speaker. “Hey, kiddo. Wasn’t sure you’d check your cell. I’m gonna stay at Emilie’s tonight. We’re doing the final edit tomorrow and it will save me backtracking. Hope the dance was fun. I’ll keep my phone on – if you need to get hold of me. Night.”

I frown at the blinking light. Is it some kind of test? Some reverse-psychological get-me-onside thing? But a more interesting thought presents itself. I have the house to myself till morning - an unprecedented gift of time, circumstance and opportunity. My mind reels with the possibilities and I blink at Nan’s statue of the Mother of God where she sits on her shelf above the phone, her plaintive eyes. “Don’t be like that,” I whisper, turning the Holy Virgin to face the wall. I call over my shoulder, “Miriam’s not coming home.”

A snort comes from the kitchen. “I heard.”

I’m not sure my feet touch the stairs before I burst through the door of my bedroom, not feeling the pop of the doorhandle. It lies crushed in my hand. “Oops.” I hide it in my desk and turn to face the carnage of at least three days’ worth of neglected laundry that litters the floor. I stumble, off axis, as I bend to scoop up wrinkled clothes, bruising myself against bedpost, doorjamb and wall before dumping the lot in the bottom of the wardrobe. A quick scurry for scattered shoes and it’s tidier than it has been in weeks. Miriam won’t believe it.

I smooth the quilt then turn to the dresser mirror to look myself over. Dilated pupils, opal black, and blood-red lips in the lamplight. My heart stamps like it’s wearing heavy boots. With numb fingers, I fumble the elastic band from the end of my braid and shake out the folds of my hair. I teeter, overbalance and catch myself on the bed end. Not good. The inability to remain upright could undermine my whole seduction sales pitch and I need to pull it together. I’m not an expert and we haven’t gone far in our physical relationship, what with my tendency to faint “mid-snog”, but I’m pretty sure falling on my ass won’t be much of a turn-on.

We’ve never talked about sex. Not directly. Jamie never pressures me for anything, never complains. I’m the complainer – the one always wanting more. But how much more? What do I really want?

Everything. I want everything. The jealous intensity of wanting him grips me. I want him completely. Possession. Knowledge. Wholeness. Belonging. Things I’ve never thought to name. I want more than signals connecting us; I want a physical, irrefutable link, something tangible that can never be erased whatever happens. It’s wrong. Selfish. Jamie’s cure waits in Germany. Helena. The Affinity Project with their rules about “unsanctioned relationships” will come for me any day now and it’ll all be over. That’s where the choking sense of urgency comes from – the threat of the unbearable end.

It makes me desperate and terrified because as much as I want Jamie, I have no idea what I’m doing or whether I’m ready to do it. All I’ve got is theory. I’ve sat through health class, wrestled condoms onto bananas and heard war stories from friends. I know what can or can’t make me blind, infertile or even mad. I’ve flipped through bodice-ripping novels, scanning pages for the mind-altering sex that destines, dooms and defines its protagonists. And surely Jamie and I must be candidates for mind-altering bliss given the chemistry involved – the least of our encounters is electric charged.

What it comes down to is this: tonight may be my only chance to be with him and I’m more afraid of missing the opportunity than I am of taking it, whatever my inexperience and ineptitude.

“Screw it.” I wrestle the shirt up over my spinning head. It comes off with a snap. Static crackles in my hair. I lean on the dresser to keep from falling, breathless, brazen. The holsters are tricky. Bending down causes blood to rush to my head but I manage to release the clips without crushing them and the silver guns fall from my thighs, clattering on the hardwood floor. I pause over the waistband of my tiny brown shorts, hands trembling at the sound of Jamie’s footsteps on the stairs. Too late. I stifle a squeal and straighten up too fast, nearly toppling. Jamie nudges the door open and freezes like he’s been paralysed by a ray gun – glass of orange juice in one hand and a plate with one of Miriam’s gargantuan muffins in the other, Buffy still mewling in worship at his feet. “Everton?”

I look down, embarrassed by the heat in my face, and gesture at my boots. Words come thick and stuck together. “Dunno I can manage these.” I hold the bedpost and lift my foot to tug at the laces one-handed. The room tips and the floor hits my knees. The thump makes Buffy hiss and dart out into the hall, but it’s a numb landing, like I’m encased in foam rubber. Jamie moves. Plate and glass clatter on the desk. Then he’s there, helping me onto the bed.

“Told you.” My laugh sounds foolish in my ears and I don’t brush the hair back from my face, preferring a place to hide. Jamie crouches in front of me, still holding my arms, not saying anything. I rub the red spots on my knees and wish I could think of something funny to say, something cool and ironic because I want to be shirtless and brave, not shirtless and lame. How on earth had I ever instigated anything as remotely sexy as the night after Barb shot me? How had I ever touched him or kissed him and not been crippled by shyness?

Jamie lets go of my arms and begins to unlace a boot. I know he can hear the drumbeat in my chest and I grit my teeth, forcing myself to look up; he has his eyes on the job. I watch his strong hands pull the loops free, one at a time in slow methodical strokes, loosening the tension from the top of my calf, down the long shinbone to the tight ankle and high arch of my foot. He slides his hand, cool and smooth, beneath the leather tongue, cupping the back of my knee and slips the boot free. Where red marks from the boot stitching track the top of my foot, he presses his thumbs, kneading the tender grooves, applying pressure in a circular pattern from my toes to the crest of my foot. I close my eyes and try not to moan. Finally, he lowers my foot to the floor and draws his hands up the back of my calf to hook his thumbs in the sheer stocking, drawing it down and off.

I open my eyes on his, like he has been waiting for me, like he isn’t going to talk or move until I look at him. I tuck my hair back behind my ears as an act of courage, dropping my gaze and lifting it again, like I can adjust to the intensity of his stare by practise. “Thank you.” I sound hoarse.

“The other?” He draws his teeth slowly over his lower lip and I need more air and lift my shoulders to make room for breath.

“Please.” I might be begging for mercy.

He begins again in the same unhurried and methodical way as before and this time I watch him as he works in the dim light. He’s taken his jacket off downstairs, the fedora too. The pale khaki shirt hangs loose over his shoulders and open at the neck, a deep V of bronze to the middle of his chest where two surviving buttons hold the fabric together. His brow is grooved with concentration, and his grey eyes lie hooded in shadow. I want to touch him, to run my fingers through his thick hair, dig my knuckles into the base of his skull in the way that I know he loves, but I can’t move. I’m paralysed, overwhelmed by the gap between my longing and my ability to do anything about it.

Jamie removes the second boot and starts to massage the red marks in my skin, his touch amplifying the giddy sense of intoxication that makes me sway where I sit. I want to touch him so much I begin to visualise it. My hand stroking the side of his face, the feel of his jaw, the strong lines of the side of his neck, the thick rope of muscle over his shoulder, the smooth slope of skin beneath his shirt, the ridges of his scarred back and the angel in ink. The tingling would travel in waves up my arm and through my chest and make me greedy for more.

It’s a moment or two before I realise he’s stopped moving, that he’s frozen with the stocking in one hand and my foot in his other and that he’s staring at my toes. “How are you doing that?”

I blush and bite my lips. “Sorry.”

“It’s not Kinetic Memory Transfer because it’s not a memory. What is it?”

My shoulders move up around my ears. “What I want.”

His lips part and the crease deepens in his brow. “You’ll faint.”

“I don’t think I will.”

He hangs his head and exhales. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m fine.”

He looks up. “You just fell over.”

I force myself to hold his gaze. It’s as hard as looking at the sun. “Then lie down with me.”

He chews his lip and scans my face, an internal war behind his eyes that keeps him motionless and silent so long I grow afraid to do or say anything that might bring him to a conclusion. “If you were sober–”

“If I were sober, I would definitely pass out. What if this is the only way I can override it?”

“In time your body will adjust.”

“We don’t have time. They could come for me any day now, you know that. What if this is the only chance we have to … to be together?”

He moves onto his knees and leans his forehead against mine. “Everton, you’re killing me.”

“Don’t you want me?” My throat tightens. “Don’t you want this?” I ignore the slip of my tears and press my mouth to his, drawing his kisses slowly to the surface, salting his lips. “Don’t you want me, Jamie?”

“You need me to convince you?” He cups my face and then multiple images slam into me, a sensory payload, as he gives me access to a storehouse of memory as wide as a temple where my body lies enshrined and catalogued. It overwhelms me, sensation, emotion, hunger and need, confronting and intimate, the knowledge of how he sees me, the way I move, the sound of my voice, how I feel to his touch, the fragrance and taste of my skin and what all of this does to him. How can I doubt it?

The KMT lifts. I whimper and grip his shirt front to keep myself from falling. I can’t speak. He laughs softly, wrapping his arms around me. I lean heavily on his shoulder, my face pressed against his neck and mumble, “Okay. I believe you. I believe you. You want me … almost as much as I want you.”

His body rocks with laughter and he strokes my back. “I can’t agree to that until your suffering matches mine, love.”

“What do you call this, then?” I lift my trembling hand.

“Barely a notch on the Richter scale.”

“Then put us both out of our misery and make love to me, damn it.”

He growls and moves, lifting me in his arms as he gets to his feet, easy and effortless. “You are blind drunk,” he separates the words. “Whether that would allow us to do it is not the point. The point is that I will not take advantage of you.”

I
growl. “Haven’t we established that I am not only consenting but practically begging you? You’re not taking advantage of me!” I thump his chest with the palm of my hand. He grimaces. “Sorry.” I hiccup. “I’ll be gentle.”