The Promise of Stardust (41 page)

“Matt, seriously, we don't have to do this,” Elle said, her eyes glimmering. “You look um, green.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

The chain clicked and began to pull us along the upward slope. I was going to die for my pride. Elle was sitting beside me, and she took my hand. We reached the top, and Elle cawed, “Woo-hoo!”

“Yeah!” I yelped back. Surely, she didn't notice my voice cracking like an adolescent boy. If I'd had the brains to go on a steel roller coaster, it might not have been so bad, but as we cornered and swung up and down along the creaking structure—I swear I could see wood rot on every railing—it took everything I had to hold the guttural death cry inside my chest.

As we pulled to a stop and the attendant opened our car's door, Elle let go of my hand. She stood with grace and smiled over her shoulder. “I offer my sincere apologies. You're fine, not green at all.”

“Then how come my legs won't support me?”

She smiled brightly. “Why, Dr. Beaulieu, you must have suffered a spinal-cord injury. I just happen to know a brilliant young neurosurgeon. Would you like his number?”

“Funny,” I said, rising on my wobbly legs that felt like disconnected stilts.

We were walking the length of Pine Point, a wide beach with soft, powder-white sand and icy water with our pant cuffs rolled high, our feet bare, testing the flat hem of the waves. We laughed, we bantered, and we commiserated about how complicated our professional lives made our personal ones.

About a mile down the beach, she dropped on the sand and sat cross-legged. “I haven't been here in years, not since that day.”

“Which day?”

Sadness slipped over her face. “When we found out I was pregnant.”

I sat beside her, scanning the beach and remembering.

She scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through her fingers like an hourglass while she studied me. “I'm so homesick.”

“Mom said that, but I thought it was wishful thinking on her part.”

“No. Homesick. Knowing Gramps's house is still up here waiting for me is pretty seductive when it's a hundred and ten degrees with a hundred percent humidity in Houston.” She grabbed more sand and let it fall through her lightly clenched fist. “Can I change the subject and be morbid for a minute?”

“Okay.”

“I made a will, in case something goes wrong on the mission,” she said.

“You are
not
going to die.”

“It's unlikely, but the risks are high, and everyone accepts them as part of the bargain. I won't belabor this, but there was something I didn't want to put in the will—in case my dad reads it. He never knew about Celina. If something happens, would you see to it that her ashes are buried with whatever remains of mine are found?”

My mouth gaped, and while I regained my composure, she continued speaking. “The house would go to Christopher, and neither he nor my father would understand if they found the urn by accident.”

I felt sick but muttered, “Jesus.”

“You wouldn't have to tell Carol. You and your mom could take care of it quietly.”

“Why my mother?”

“I named her as executrix.”

“You didn't name Adam?”

“No.” She paused for a moment. “No. I figured I'd need an executor who at least knew about the baby, and I'd rather not leave any posthumous surprises. This is a little neurotic, maudlin even, but I need to have her buried with me.”

“Stop talking like you're going to die.” I stood and marched down to the water, my mind replaying the video footage of
Challenger
blowing up, drifting, and falling into the sea.

A couple of minutes later she arrived at my side and took my hand. “Just promise me, you'd take care of her.”

Elle was acting like this was a shared custody arrangement. In all these years we'd barely talked about Celina, and now this. “I will ask one thing in return,” I said.

She nodded. “Anything.”

“Don't die.”

She looped her arm through mine. “If I
live
up to my end of the bargain, you won't have to live up to yours, and strangely, I can deal with that.”

“Elle, I mean it. Don't go.”

“I have to. I want to. I'm so happy I can barely stand it. And I fully intend to come back—alive. But if it goes wrong …” For the briefest moment Elle rested her forehead on my chest. “Celina was a real person to me; I don't want to leave her there in an unmarked grave. I asked your mom, but she dismissed me, like talking about Celina all these years later was an emotional indulgence. And maybe it is. But I need this one thing. Will you do it for me?”

I swallowed the acid in my throat. “Okay.”

She exhaled. “Thank you. We don't have to be morbid anymore. I'm prepared now, and if you're prepared, the evil spirits don't dare land on you.” She let go of my arm. “Now, I'll race you back to the car.” She took off down the beach.

I watched for a second or two, waiting for my soul to catch up with hers. I was powerless to stop her, but I could try to follow her example. “Hey, no fair, Peep!”

We weren't supposed to kiss good night, but we did. There's something about first love. There's something about loving a woman that never goes away. There's something about night skies and shooting stars and the way Elle beamed every time she looked up at them.

Did it start as a peck on the cheek, innocently, inadvertently, softly? Perhaps. I don't know if she kissed me or if I kissed her, but it happened down by the riverbank in the light of stars from a million aeons past. Before I cognitively grasped what we were doing, need took over. I wanted to climb inside her skin. I wanted to steal her up to the widow's walk and make love to her like the first time.

I wanted to make the fifteen rotten lonely years in between then and now disappear like rain into the sand on a beach. I wanted to start where we belonged. Together.

Her voice was husky when she said my name. “Matt.”

I was kissing her neck, pulling down the shoulder of her T-shirt, trying to get closer.

“Matt, wait.” Just those few inches she stepped back were like a slap across my face, shoving me into the reality of a world where I was engaged to Carol, and Elle was living with Adam.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“Right. Oh, shit,” she murmured. “What are we doing?”

We were loving each other the way we were supposed to. “Give me a minute so I can come up with a good answer, maybe one that can bulldoze away all the reasons we shouldn't be doing this,” I said.

“Please come up with a very good answer; one which will appease my guilty conscience,” she said. “God. You're engaged, Matt! And I'm with Adam.”

“Well, he's a prick,” I said. “But yeah, Carol.” She didn't deserve this.

“I thought you liked him,” Elle said.

“About as much as Hitler. Are you kidding me? I hate him.” I started pacing, something which is not easy to do on the slope of an uneven hill. It was hard to get a rhythm there. I needed a minute or two. Shit. Carol was back in New York. Carol, who probably stayed up most of the previous night and all of this day taking care of sick kids. And I was up here, trying to get Elle into bed, trying to justify my actions. Did Elle ask me to come up with a good reason? How about I still loved her? God, I still loved her.

“And all this time I thought it was just Adam who hated you,” she said.

“He hates me?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “He hates you.”

“Because he doesn't want you to have friends.” I didn't know why I said “friends.” Adam was jealous, plain and simple. He wanted to control her. I was Elle's first lover, and I was pretty certain that bugged the shit out of the Southern Green Giant.

She released a short snort of a laugh. “No. We have friends.” She sighed. “It's just that he's very protective of me.”

“Protective? Of what? I'd never hurt you.”

She shook her head slightly. “Of course you wouldn't, but you did—hurt me. Once. You broke my heart. I've forgotten about it, but he hasn't.”

I didn't see the windup coming. And the guilt and the realization that she could never completely forgive me hit me hard. I stood there a little dumbfounded. In the moment we kissed, I believed we could dig our way through the wreckage that split us apart. “You haven't forgotten.”

“I have mostly. He just knows we have history and that for a long time I was bitter. And he blames you for my inability to commit.”

I nodded. “Is he right?”

“I don't know how to answer that question.” She wet her lips. “Matt … he doesn't understand how symbiotic you and I are, how at ease, how you make me laugh.” She squeezed her eyes shut and her voice grew so soft that I had to lean in to hear. I sensed she was only half speaking to me, half realizing something, daring, maybe for the first time, to utter the words aloud. “He doesn't understand that I don't need anyone to protect me anymore. I'm a big girl. I know what I want.”

“What do you want?” I asked, hoping she would say me. Clinging to the hope she would grant me complete redemption even if I did hurt her once. So long ago. I wanted to kiss her again, to persuade her we belonged together, but she stepped back.

“We can't,” she said. “It's … lust. Besides the friendship, there's a powerful dose of lust between us, isn't there? God. Under the circumstances, maybe you'd better leave. It's not what I want you to do, but—I don't hate Adam. And you don't hate Carol. This is a mistake.”

“Elle—”

“It's just”—she hesitated—“lust, Matt. I know you. You would never have asked her to marry you if you didn't love her.”

I stood with my mouth hanging open. I did love Carol. Even so, I wanted to say that there was love and then there was the kind of love I felt for Elle. I wanted to say that my feelings for Elle were all-consuming. I wanted to say I hadn't exactly asked Carol to marry me. But somehow I did ask. Or she asked. Or we simply decided together. But I couldn't say any of that because Elle was making other points, valid points.

“Go home,” she said. “We can't do this. I won't cheat on him. It's a terrible way to end a relationship. It's such a betrayal. When you cheated—oh …” Her voice trailed off, and I knew she was thinking of how we had ended. “I didn't mean to bring that up again.”

“It was a hazing, Peep. I was drunk out of my mind. I did it without intention. I never meant to hurt you or to end it between us. I loved you. I still love you. You're my best friend. Elle, I wasn't trying to end our relationship. That was the mistake.”

“I know you didn't mean to. But this is a mistake, too. One we can't make. Please. You should leave. Before you say something or do something you'll regret. Because right now, if you try to rationalize this thing that we almost did, this thing we still want to do, you will be betraying her. So go home. Not because I want you to leave. But because you're an honorable man.”

It wasn't my good character that made me walk away that night—no matter what she thought. It was my need for Elle's respect, her faith, and her trust.

In the month that followed, the only time I heard Elle's voice was on her voice-mail message, but she'd sent e-mails. The
Atlantis
crew had begun their training in earnest, and they were spending hours and hours in the Neutral Buoyancy Pool, working on a full-size mock-up of Hubble. I kept trying. I dialed her cell and left another voice message, then called her home number, expecting the usual “Leave your message at the beep.”

Instead Adam grumbled, “Elle? She isn't here.” It wasn't his words. It was his tone. He sounded pissed off, and I wondered if she told him about what almost happened.

“Well, let her know I called,” I said.

“Tell her yourself. She has a cell phone,” he said, before the dial tone sounded.

I didn't like how he sounded, like he might slug her if she dared to enter the same room. “Right.”

I tried her cell again.

“McClure,” she answered this time.

“Wow, you're alive. I was beginning to doubt it. How are you? Are you still at work?”

“Nope, I'm home.”

“Then why didn't Adam pass you the phone?”

A long pause followed. “You talked to him? Listen, I have a new home number. Ready to jot it down?”

“What do you mean? You two have separate lines?”

“Very, very separate. Can you hold on for a minute?”

“Yeah.” My eyes darted around the loft as I tried to figure out what was going on.

In the background, I heard Elle speaking to someone, and then a door shut somewhere.

“Sorry about that,” Elle said. “I have a new apartment, and it has a very active Welcome Wagon. People keep dropping by. I planned to call and give you my new address.”