The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet (27 page)

Jack smiles, but his eyes are alert. “Go do
whatever you’ve got to do. Don’t worry about us.”

I go into the house to my bedroom. I shut the
door and sink down on the bed. Crap, it’s only ten in the morning. Is it too
early to call? Alan is probably still sleeping. I grab the phone and dial his
number anyway.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Please don’t let it be the
service. I don’t want to leave a message and I suddenly need to talk to him
today. Since I left the beach, it has bordered on painful.

“Yes?” a voice speaks into my ear.

Alan. He answered the phone himself, in that
abrupt
go away
manner of his. My heart starts to accelerate. A tell; his
answering his phone himself. He’s been waiting for me to call him.

My fingers tighten on the receiver. “Hi. It’s
me.”

A pause. “I know. I saw it on the caller ID. I
didn’t think it was Jack calling me.”

I laugh, even though that wasn’t the response I
wanted from him.

“Chrissie—”

I cut him off. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I
should have. There’s been a lot going on here.”

More silence.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call,” Alan
says. “In fact, I almost left for New York today. Then changed my mind about an
hour ago and didn’t.”

Every muscle in my body tenses. Weird, blunt Alan
honesty. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of that one.

“I’m glad you didn’t leave,” I say.

“Are you doing all right, Chrissie?”

I tense. Why did he change the subject?

“I’m good, actually—” I search for something
funny to say, something to lighten up this call that is going not at all the
way I expected. “—which is odd. I should probably be depressed between seeing a
divorce lawyer and pretty much moving back in with Jack in the same week, and
my days seem to consist of spending most of my time staring at the ocean with
Jack, trying to figure out what to do with my life. Pathetic, huh?”

He doesn’t laugh. Oh shit.

“So long as you’re doing well. That is what’s
important. I meant it when I said if you need anything, ask. I’ll help you any
way I can.”

His voice is different this time, and why the
hell did he repeat that again? I feel my body cover in icy pricks.

“I’ll remember,” I assure him.

“I leave in three days, Chrissie.”

My heart stills.

“Last leg of the tour,” he explains. “Four
months. After that, I’m staying in Europe for an extended period of time.”

My heart drops to the floor. Before I can ask him
to explain or say any of the things I want to, he hangs up the phone.

~~~

I
wake in my bed and Kaley is a hot sweaty ball in pink PJs curled into my side.
I check the clock. 6 a.m. Shit, I slept eighteen hours straight.

I stare down at Kaley, her inky brows and little
cherub cheeks. I kiss her curls. Nothing. Sound asleep. I’ve still got maybe an
hour to myself depending on when Jack put her in bed next to me.

I scrunch up my face. Jeez, how pathetic I am at
times, moping in my bedroom and crying over a guy like a little girl. But the
tears felt good in a strange way, like I was draining the last of the junk out
of me, and the sleep that followed felt really, really good for a change. I
don’t know what to make of that. My thoughts are clear and I feel surprisingly
energized today. Now I just need to make a plan for my life. Or rather, figure out
how to fix things with Alan.

Fuck, he’s leaving Malibu and not coming back.
Why would he do that? And why did he tell me?

I slip out of bed and push my feet into my
slippers. I go down the hallway and out of the house. I’ve even beaten Jack
outside to watch the sunrise today.

I breathe in deeply the fresh ocean air. I love
the smells of home. They are familiar. Comforting. I sink down on the top step
at the cliffs and I hug my legs with my arms, my cheek resting on my knees. My
gaze settles on the stretch of beach that I walked with Alan the first night we
met.

God, he was so beautiful, even back then during a
time he was lost and broken and unsure of himself. The most beautiful guy I’ve
ever seen. No wonder I was such a doofus, tongue-tied and saying lame things. I
laugh. Alan was sort of a doofus, too, that night. Funny. It’s never occurred
to me before. We were both kind of tentative and awkward in the darkness on the
beach. He wasn’t any more certain of what to do with me than I was with him.

I frown. Strange. I wonder why he was that way
with me. I was the virgin. The inexperienced one. He was already a star and had
definitely been around.

Another vivid image fills my head, a memory I
don’t want but I can’t block it.

Jack’s fundraiser party, and Alan. I still
remember his words in real time clarity. I don’t know how many times I’ve
played them in my head trying to figure out what happened that day in the pool
house.
You are not leaving, Chrissie. I have not said everything I need to
say to you. Baby, don’t go.
Then the look in his eyes when he stared at me.
Anguish and pity.

More words come to me from that day
.
Only
today the fragments start joining into a picture and they suddenly make sense.

Alan came to the party to tell me about Neil when
no one else in my life would, and I wouldn’t let him. Alan tried to warn me and
I wouldn’t listen. He loved me enough to swallow his pride, crash Jack’s party,
to try to stop
me from hurting me.
And I didn’t let him. I walked away.

I walked away in New York.

I walked away in Malibu.

I walked away at Jack’s party.

I walked away two weeks ago.

The years flash through my head in crisp images
and out of nowhere I understand Alan completely. Why he is always near. In my
worst moments and in my best, he is always there with me. The things he does
that infuriate me, they are just to be with me. Us being friends—Alan did that
as well. I didn’t. I could have never managed such an emotionally complex thing
if he hadn’t done it for me. How he always steps in at my worst moments to keep
me from crashing completely.

How could I have not understood? Alan doesn’t
just love me. He loves me desperately and I have fucked us up over and over
again because I couldn’t see it.

I caused the end of us every time, but Alan has
never let go. And he didn’t on the phone yesterday. I don’t know why I keep
messing things up with him so thoroughly, but I do know Alan is in Malibu today—that’s
why he told me his plans and didn’t just leave—and if I go there, he is waiting
for me.

Twenty-seven, soon-to-be divorced and with a
child, and I am where I always seem to end up. Chrissie alone on the cliffs
after having been wrong about everything.

Neil never really loved me. Not in the way it
should have been.

Alan has never stopped loving me.

And I have hurt us all by not seeing a damn thing
in my life clearly. But everything is sharp and in focus and clear today. I see
the road I want to take and I know how to get there. Hopefully it’s not too
late.

~~~

An
hour later, I am showered, dressed and moving through the house like a
madwoman, determined to get to Malibu as soon as I can.

I hurry down the hallway to Jack’s bedroom. 9:30
a.m. and everyone is still sleeping, even my dad when I can’t recall a single
time he’s slept through the sunrise. My little demon must have worn him out
yesterday. They must have worn out each other. Kaley’s still snoozing in my bed
when she wakes like an alarm clock at 6:30 every morning.

I knock once on my dad’s door and don’t wait for
an answer. I go into the room and drop the baby monitor on the side table.

Jack opens his eyes and then frowns. “Is
something wrong?”

I smile. “Kaley is still asleep. I’ve left the
door open to my room and I’ve put the monitor beside your bed. Everything is
fine. Can you take care of Kaley?”

He sits up, rakes his long blond waves from his
face and looks at the clock. Jack swings his legs out of bed. He yawns. “Where
are you going? How long will you be gone?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I might be back tonight
or Kaley and I might be out of your hair forever.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I
park in the driveway of the Malibu house. There’s no car here. Shit. I try to
still my emotions and not let them run away with me. I’ve managed to hold
myself together during the long drive here from Santa Barbara. And I’m
definitely going to need calm to make it through what I hope is going to happen
with Alan.

I stare at the house. It doesn’t mean anything
not to see his car here. Maybe it’s in the garage. Knowing Alan, he might not
even have left the house since I left two weeks ago. Two weeks brooding and
alone, shut indoors at the beach, would definitely be
so
him.

No matter how it looks, Alan is here, I tell
myself. I called him, I got the answering service and left word that I would be
here in two hours. He wouldn’t leave. Oh, he’ll manage to look indifferent
about my return when I walk through the front door and he will probably
maintain an expertly blank expression as I say to him everything I need to say,
but he wouldn’t leave, not after I told him to expect me and not after waiting
two weeks for me to do this.

Nope, that’s not his style. Being an asshole;
yes. Being anything but British polite, albeit in a weird, purposely crass way;
never. Such a contradiction. The secret to Alan is understanding the
contradictions. The parts that are really him and the parts that are theatrics.

Why didn’t I figure this out earlier?
“Staying
in Europe for an extended period of time.”
Bullshit, Alan, as if you would
.
He only told me that to get me to stop my indecisiveness and make the first
move.

Well, I’ve made a move. I’m here.

I grab my purse, climb from the car and rush up
the front walk. I slip my key into the lock, but pause before turning it. Fuck,
what if he’s not alone? I’ve been gone two weeks. What if he has Elaina or
someone here?

Good one, Chrissie, why didn’t you think of that
before you slipped the key into the lock? I open the door anyway and step into
the entry hall. I pause. I listen. My eyes flitter around the room. It’s empty.
No one is here. Alan definitely isn’t here. I can tell by the emptiness in the
air.

Disappointment and relief roll through me at
once, and I go into the bathroom and do a quick check of myself to make sure I
still look halfway decent after the drive here. I use his brush to fluff up my
hair, touch up my lip gloss, and grab a tissue to dab at the few smears of my
eye makeup.

I stare at myself in the mirror. Not great,
Chrissie. But better.

I go to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine
and sink onto a sofa in front of the wall of glass in the living room. I check
my watch. Nice, Alan. Nice one. He’s going to make me wait for him. It’s 3:30
now. Maybe an hour? Enough for him not to look like he was waiting here for me
and enough not to risk me leaving. Yep, he’ll make me wait an hour.

I slouch back into the couch and slowly sip my
wine.

The minutes tick by, draining from me the
confidence I had when I entered the house. The waiting slowly makes my nerves
grow more ragged and my legs jiggle endlessly. My internal strength turns to
mush as all the things I didn’t think about when making the decision to come
here jump up and demand to be considered.

My carefully constructed plan did not include
Alan not being here when I arrived and I sure as hell didn’t expect him to make
me wait this long.

It feels like something isn’t right here. My body
grows cold. Oh no, maybe I was wrong about everything. What the phone call with
him really meant. What Alan really wants from me. What’s going to happen here
once he arrives.

Maybe it’s not going to be a happy ending like in
Pretty Woman
, two people rescuing each other. Oh crap, maybe it’s going
to be the ending of
The Way We Were,
two people meeting one last time,
knowing they love each other, knowing it will never work, and walking away.

The front door opens and I jump, startled from my
thoughts. Shit, how long have I been sitting here? I quickly take note of
things around me. It’s night and I can hear Alan moving around somewhere in the
house. Why did he bypass the great room? I know he knows I’m here. I called
him, for Christ’s sake, and he must have seen my car parked in the driveway.

More minutes tick by without an appearance from
Alan. I listen to him doing whatever he’s doing. What the hell is he doing? Why
doesn’t he just come in here? If he stretches my nerves much tauter I won’t
have the courage to carry this through. To get the words out that I hope we
both want to hear.

Crap, maybe he’s purposely delaying this
inevitable face-to-face with me. He knows why I am here, it’s not what he
wants, and he is giving me space, time, to back out.

Fuck, is that what he wants me to do? Oh God,
what I’m doing is stupid. Maybe he’s right. I should keep my mouth closed, make
up some lame excuse for being in his house and get the hell out of here.

I spring from the chair and go to the wall of
glass, staring at the ocean. Everything inside me is running wild and frantic
and loose. I’ve felt just on the verge of being out of control since I made the
decision to leave Jack’s and come back to Alan. Until Alan returned it was a
good feeling, the wildness in my flesh, the certainty that tonight would end
with Alan. With us together, the way it should be. My future certain. My heart
where it wants to be. Me back with him.

Back with Alan? Oh lame, Chrissie, that is so lame.
He
isn’t yours to come back to. What you are really doing is waylaying him
unexpectedly in some random impulse to force a relationship into what you want
it to be. Oh, this is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong…

I hear footsteps close, something drop on the
tile, and I kill the voice of that little girl inside me who creates all my
mess and is trying to urge me not to do this. Too late. I can’t run. And I
can’t stop this. He knows I’m here. I need to face him and do this no matter
how it turns out. It’s the only way I’ll ever know peace in my life again.

I whirl and Alan’s eyes lock on me. I pause,
letting the thrill of him run through my flesh, letting it fortify me,
reminding me that I am only initiating what we both want and why we want it.

My vision widens. A suitcase. He fucking packed
before seeing me. He’s leaving. Oh no, this is not what I expected in my first
minute with him.

I lift my gaze back to his, anxious and confused.
I rein in my welling panic and somehow I manage to smile and say in a silly
way, “I came back.”

Oh fuck, why did I say such a stupid thing?
Please, Alan, laugh. I’m nervous as hell.

I realize that my gaze is fixed again on the
suitcase in the entry hall and I lift my chin to find his eyes on me, his
expression enigmatic.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. Shit, I
can’t tell if he’s amused, annoyed or angry. I can hear the sharp sound of my
own breathing in the intense quiet of the room.

“Yes, I can see that,” he says finally.

After what seems like forever, he steps into the
great room and it’s not lost on me that he moves toward the bar and not my
pitiful self hanging back at my spot near the wall of glass. I follow him with
my gaze, trying to read him, but I can’t. But not kissing me, going to the bar
first, fixing a drink—
not good, Chrissie. Not good.

He drops ice into a glass.

“Are you going somewhere?” I ask quietly.

He doesn’t look at me. “New York. I’m in the mood
for a change of scenery. Southern California gets tedious after a while. I
don’t know how you live here full time.”

The edge in his voice makes my nerves pop and
there are more mixed messages in those three little statements than I care to
decode in a single day.
Change of scenery? Tedious?

“It’s what I’m used to, I guess. It’s where I’m
from, Alan,” I mutter in what sounds, even to me, like a rambling sort of way,
but my internal mess since seeing the suitcase isn’t helping any.

He leaves the bar, tall scotch in hand, and
settles on the arm of a chair in a posture I know too well. He takes a
cigarette from his pocket and lights it.

He just sits there, staring, smoking and
drinking, only this time I’m thankful for his deliberate pause because I need
time to process what’s happening here. Time to process this unexpected wrinkle;
Alan not seeming pleased that I’m here and putting down card one that he’s
leaving.

I move from the wall of glass and sink into a
chair across from him, close but a cautious distance away.

I stare at my fingers, trying to reconstruct the
no longer organized speech in my head. It was all so clear when I left Hope
Ranch. Now the words of my heart are scattered and most probably inappropriate
since there isn’t a thing about Alan to suggest this is going to go at all like
I hoped it would.

I can’t find the words in my head. I can’t
assemble new ones. The sound of ice clinking against the glass drags my
attention back and I look up to find him watching me quizzically as he takes a
long drink of his scotch.

I struggle to maintain my composure. “I have some
things I want to say to you, Alan, if you have time before you leave for New
York to listen. It’s why I’m here. I didn’t want to say them on the phone.”

The minutes slip away without notice with him
staring at me and me staring at him.

Alan leans forward to stomp out his cigarette in
an ashtray. “Are you going to say the things you came here to say, Chrissie, or
am I supposed to try to figure them out on my own?”

His voice makes me jump. Crap, I’ve made him
angry. And the subtle change in his gaze makes my cheeks color profusely.

My breathing shallows. “Are you going to be mean
or can you please just listen until I finish?”

His expression changes. Frustration and something
else. “If you say something, I’ll listen. But you are not saying anything,
Chrissie. You’re just sitting there, staring at me, tight-lipped like always.
Is there a point to this, love? I’d really appreciate it if you got on with
it.”

I stare at him, the harshness of his voice
turning me numb. He rakes back his shoulder-length hair with an aggravated
hand. I don’t know which direction to go—forward or to stop this while I still
have a measure of my pride intact.

I study him. Then I start picking out details of
him that I missed in the first round of this. The tense lines of his face. His
inaccessible posture. My lids go wide.
Oh shit, Alan isn’t angry. He’s as
nervous as I am. He’s not angry. He’s nervous. And I’m frustrating him again.
He doesn’t know what to make of me. What to do.

Some of the franticness in me wanes. I blurt out
the first sentence that comes together in my head. “You’re the love of my life,
Alan. I knew it in New York. I know it today. And I don’t think anything is
going to change that. For either of us.”

I wait anxiously for a reaction. None. Nothing
changes. Not his eyes. Not his expression. Not his posture.

After a minute or two of telling myself just to
get it all out, I do a fast once-over of my mental checklist, assuring myself I
haven’t forgot anything and I plunge onward.

“I want four things, Alan. That’s all I ask if
you have an interest in trying to make a go of us again.”

I pause to take in a steadying dose of air and I
can already tell this won’t sound aloud like it does in my head. His gaze
sharpens. I almost stop.

“I’m moving into this house with Kaley,” I
announce into the acutely tense air. “This is where I’ve decided to live if you
want to live here, too. I won’t ever travel with you. Not ever. Don’t ask me
to. To be with me, you have to be here. And when you’re home, you’re home. I
expect you to be really here with me. And when you’re on the road, I don’t want
to know what you do there. Not ever. If you can’t be discreet then don’t do
it.”

He arches a brow. Damn. That amused him, but he
doesn’t speak which is a good thing or I’d lose my nerve to finish and I’m only
a third of the way through the things I want to say to him. I search for the
next item on my A thru C list. 

“Don’t ever lie to me,” I whisper. “I don’t know
if I will forgive you everything you do, but I do know I won’t ever forgive you
for lying to me. Not ever. Not after my marriage to Neil. You have to promise
me that. It’s the only way I can move forward with you.”

He looks like he’s about to say something, and
then doesn’t. His jaw tightens and I can see I’ve struck a nerve in him and I
didn’t want to.

I run my tongue along my dry lips. “Let’s keep
this simple. When it’s good, it’s good. And when it’s bad, I’m gone. That’s
what I want, Alan. I love you. And that’s never going to change. That’s what I
wanted to say to you. That’s why I’m here. I love you.”

I sit breathy, my pulse drumming in my ears, and
oddly relieved even with my internally messy running frantically through me
because none of this went in the way I thought it would.

I breathe in. I breathe out, trying to steady
myself. But I’ve said it. And that’s a good thing. For the first time in my
life, I’ve said everything to Alan that I want to say—
well, almost
everything. I can’t do that one last thing. Not today
.