What Brings Me to You (31 page)
Read What Brings Me to You Online
Authors: Loralee Abercrombie
“Charley, where are you going to live after finals?”
I nearly choked on my romaine lettuce. “Um, Collette said I could stay with her as long as I wanted,” which was true but I wasn’t too keen on it. I didn’t want to cramp her style, I just didn’t like the idea of owing someone and she had let me stay with her over the winter holiday.
“On her couch?” He asked visibly getting upset.
“It’s better than on the street.” I quipped.
“You should go home.”
Now I was getting upset. He didn’t know everything, but he knew enough, so I thought. “Jaime, we’ve been over this, I’m not going there. Why would you even suggest that?”
“You can’t stay with Collette,” he said emphatically without even addressing my question.
“Why not? I told her I’d give her some money for rent and food and stuff. It’s just, even with all that I’ve saved and the money I get back every semester I still can’t afford six hundred a month for an efficiency.”
“Move in with me instead.”
I choked again on my diet coke and had to quickly grab a napkin to stop the brown liquid from running out of my nose. When I’d stopped hacking I just stared into his face. “I’m sorry?”
“I said move in with me. It makes sense. You wouldn’t have to pay me rent, you could save your money and we’d get to spend time together.”
“We are spending time together,” I pointed out, stalling for something better to say.
“Thirty minutes every other day, does not a relationship make.”
“Do you have a two bedroom?”
“No.”
“So I’d be sleeping on the couch there same as Collette’s,” I huffed, believing fully that I’d quashed the argument.
“No.”
“Jaime, what are you really saying to me?”
Oh God, please don’t let it be what I think it is.
“I’m saying that I love you Charley and I want you to live with me.”
Shit!
“You what?” I cried drawing attention to our table from surrounding patrons. “Okay,” I started, trying to calm myself against the feeling my heart quickening. “You need to slow down. First of all, you love me? Jaime, I know we’ve been dating for a while but--”
“Three months,” he cut me off. “We’ve been together for three months, Charley.”
“That still doesn’t mean we know each other well enough for you to say that you love me. Second, live with you? Sleep in your bed? We’ve done little more than kiss and even those have been…erm…virtuous. How can we make a leap from a peck on the lips to sharing a toothbrush?”
“First, Charley, I think you know me plenty well enough. You know everything there is to know about me. I’m the one who’s still learning about you, but I know that I love you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Jaime.” He continued on like he didn’t’ even hear me.
“Second, you don’t have to sleep in my bed with me. I’ll stay on the couch for as long as you want until you’re comfortable.”
“What if I’m never comfortable?
“That’s your prerogative,” he said sucking in an exasperated breath. “I’d never push you to do anything you’re not comfortable with Charley.”
“Because you love me,” I repeated slowly. Testing the words out on my tongue.
“Yes. I love you, Charley. You don’t need to say it back, but I need to know if this, you and me, is something you want and soon.”
“Jaime…I…want to be with you. It just seems really sudden. ”
“I told you from the start that I’m interested in being more than friends. That hasn’t changed. I think that’s what you want too. I know it’s certainly what you need, but there’s something holding you back. I’m not going to go anywhere so you have all the time you need to figure out what it is that’s keeping you from loving me the way that I love you. Until then we can go as slow as you want. Understand though, I love you and I want to be with you.”
“In the biblical sense?”
“Yes, but not entirely,” he said far too seriously.
“So this
is
because we’re not having sex?’
“No, Charley. Shit! It’s not about sex. It’s about commitment.”
“What do you mean? I am committed to you” I said the words but as soon as they hit the air I knew they weren’t one hundred percent true. He did too. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I know that you’ve been distant and that things between us have been off. I mean, the fact that we’re arguing is proof of that. I attributed it to work stress and finals, but now I don’t know. You’ve put up a wall between us. I’m willing to give you time if you can tell me, honestly, that this is something you really want.”
“Jaime…I…do…I mean…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” He repeated. The growl in his voice beginning to intensify.
“I mean I need more time.”
“I can wait, but not forever. You have to think about my needs, too Charley.”
“So we’re back to the sex thing.” I bit back.
“Dammit, Charley, you know that’s not it! If your intent is to piss me off it’s working. You want me to make it more clear to you? Fine. I’m not going to let you lead me around by my dick for another three months. How’s that for honesty.” I blinked my eyes rapidly in disbelief. He was angry. It was measured, I could tell he was restraining himself but there was a dark anger bubbling underneath the surface and for a moment I was terrified. “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I’m frustrated, Charley. Not just sexually. I want to be with you. I’ve done everything I can think to show you that I love you, but you won’t let me in. You’ve been playing games with me, and I’m tired of it.
“I’m not playing games with you, Jaime!” He held a hand up to stop me from saying anymore. The contemptuousness of the gesture clammed me up right away. For the first time, I felt our age difference and I hated it.
“You know what?” He asked visibly putting a lid on the fury that was threatening to rise to the surface. He looked down at his hands and when his eyes met mine the only emotion I could read was exhaustion. “Just call me when you’re ready.”
He walked out.
I stomped back to the dorm and climbed the six flights of stairs to our room instead of take the elevator to blow off steam. The second I hit the room I powered up the laptop and waited the excruciating sixty seconds for it to boot.
Please let there be something from him. Please.
I twisted the pendant around my neck and bit down on my lip until it drew blood. I was so angry with Jaime. I know now it was misplaced anger but at the time I was furious.
How could he spring that on me? Three months isn’t that long? He loves me? He doesn’t even know me! And how could he say with such defininity that I need him. I don’t need him! I don’t need anyone!
In the midst of this internal rant I clicked on the new message from Teddy and by breath caught in my throat at his plea to see me.
It had to be a sign, I thought. Things were going south with Jaime and here was Teddy, my sweet Teddy, still yearning for me. That sweet warmth spread through my core again, and my mind did that weird muddly thing. I couldn’t make sense of the onslaught words and images I’d only catch fragments. Father. Love. An image of my real dad with his trumpet. The sinister face of Adam. Jaime’s eyes. Teddy’s smile. Then, like a flash, I had a revelation. With nothing but the sound of my heart thudding in my chest I typed out a response and hit send without rereading it.
My Teddy,
I want to see you too. Meet me at the Sinatra bar Friday at 7. I want you there when I meet my father.
Your Charley
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Teddy
I had it all planned in my mind. The bar was only a mile or two from the University of Tampa campus, so I’d park my car there and we could walk back. She could talk about whatever had happened with her dad and by the time we got to the University be done with it. If not, maybe take a detour by the river and walk near the water. The sound and smell of which would bring back all the good memories from our time at the beach and she’d forget about whatever had happened with her dad. Maybe we’d stay up and talk all night. Maybe she’d let me hold her hand and comfort her. Let me kiss her. Let me kiss her all night and into the morning.
I was much, much too early parking the car at UT, but I was paranoid about being late. Everything had to be perfect. Still, the waiting was making me crazy. I was so strung out from the sheer anxiety of seeing her again that I had to do something to help me get a fucking grip. I ran up to a friend’s dorm and took a swig from the water bottle filled with tequila he kept hidden under his bed. Then another. Then another. It wasn’t smart, it definitely wasn’t safe even though was going to be walking, but I needed it. I needed something to calm my nerves.
Charley agreed to see me. It was like the heavens had opened and God said, “You’d better not mess this up again.” I always wanted her to give me a second shot but until she’d agreed I didn’t think it was going to be in the cards for us. I didn’t give a shit, I took the bottle with me and sat at the bar at the Rath. I drank the tequila and chased it with beer until my hands quit shaking. I checked myself in the mirror over the bar again and again. I was drunk, or nearly drunk, but didn’t really look it other than the glaze over my eyes. At least from what I could tell in the condition I was in.
Christ! Am I enough for Charley?
I’d never been self-conscious but something about seeing Charley; her beautiful brown skin, her long, flowing tresses, her intense dark eyes, made me question everything including my appearance. I knew she didn’t care about that. Didn’t she? She told me once that physical appearance was only part of her attraction to me. She never seemed to mind how I looked, though she didn’t shower me with compliments about my body like most girls either.
Because she wasn’t most girls. She was my Charley. My Charley who I was meeting in…
Damnit!
I was late. I couldn’t risk getting in the car for the five minute drive to the bar. I was totally gone; so I pushed away from the bar and started walking down the busy, main drag of Kennedy Boulevard toward Hyde Park. The sun, which in any other locale would’ve already been close to setting, was still illuminating the sky. It became quickly apparent that after all I’d had to drink, walking in the May-Floridian heat wasn’t doing anything for me. I was sweating profusely and I’m sure it smelled like Cuervo.
Damn!
Why couldn’t we live in a city that actually had some semblance of public transportation? I was contemplating calling for a cab service, or a buddy to drive me over when my phone trilled in my pocket. I hoped it was Charley telling me she was running late or to ask where I was, but I remembered she didn’t have a phone. The caller ID said the last name I ever had expected or wanted at that moment.
Lacey.
You.
I didn’t want to answer it. It had been months since we’d last spoken in fact, the last time I saw you was the last time I saw Charley. Even with the uncertainty between Charley and I, what I felt and experienced with her was so much deeper than anything I had for you. I had finally allowed someone else to occupy the space in my head that you and the single-minded pursuit of a hook up used to fill. It was freeing and terrifying all at the same time. Sure the pleasure seeker in me was pissed that I was going after a “real” relationship, but I knew that I wasn’t really happy anymore just hooking up. I knew that, ultimately, I wanted a relationship like my parents; married twenty years to my best friend kind of thing. I wanted a woman, god I sound like such a pussy, but I wanted a woman like my mother; smart, sexy, independent. Charley had all of that and you had none. Not to me, not anymore, anyway.
You only ever called me out of the blue to chew me out or get me off and I wasn’t in the mood for either from you. I clicked ignore and kept walking. Having seen your name sobered me up considerably so I picked up my pace putting distance between me and the University campus. My phone trilled again. And again. The fourth call wasn’t from you. It was from Claire.
What?
I ignored again though my interest was now thoroughly piqued. Whatever the so-called emergency (because you and Claire were famous for call-bombing about a foi gras shortage) I was not in the mood to hear it. The fifth call was the deal breaker.
Mom
lit up on the screen. Something serious had to be happening for all three of you to call me, and my curiosity got the better of me.
“Yello!” I said when mom picked up, realizing too late there was a slight slur in my words.
“Teddy-mouse, we…um…I need you honey.”
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Andy. He’s missing.”
“What do you?”
“He missing, sweetheart. He left in a rage two nights ago. Claire and Lacey haven’t seen him since. It’s likely he’s on another one of his benders, if so…it’s not good. They’re not even sure if he’s still in the state. We’re trying to get a hold of Mickey now for help, but it would be really helpful if you came over here.”
“Mom, has anyone called the police?” Her hesitation was enough. No. No one was calling the police until the situation turned absolutely dire. There was no way Claire or especially you were going to potentially tarnish the public image of Andy Cramer, HCI CFO. It was then I realized how deep your love for HCI went, Lacey. I didn’t know at the time, and honestly sometimes still don’t know, if your love of HCI extended to your love for me or the other way around, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t realize that your willingness to keep Andy’s name out of the papers wasn’t in the best interest of the company, my family or even him. It was in yours. Even knowing all this and knowing that I’d be hurting the woman I loved, again, I had to go. My mother asked me to, there was no way around it.
Fuck!
I wanted to be with Charley. I wanted to finally see her and put all the bullshit behind us and have her. But this was inexplicable. I didn’t know her phone number, because she didn’t have a phone.
Fuck!
I tried calling the bar. No one answered. I tried a second and third time. Finally someone picked up but they couldn’t hear me and all I heard on the other end was a loud crashing noise.
FUCK!
Someone had to tell Charley that I wasn’t going to make it.
I called Iris. Told her to warn Charley that I wasn’t going to be there. There was an emergency. She demanded to know what was the emergency that’d I’d stand up her daughter. Even under these circumstances, my loyalty to the Cramers, to you, ran deep. And Iris, shit, I couldn’t tell her anyway. Friends with mom and Claire? Husband, Paul Feinman? Oh no, if anyone was leaking the story of “unfit to lead” to
Fortune
it was going to be her. So I tersely informed her it was a private, family matter. She didn’t pry any further; I assumed because people in glass houses and all that shit, but she swore to do everything to get a hold of Charley. Goddamnit, I thought. Why she didn’t have a cell phone in the twenty-first goddamn century was beyond me.
I hopped in the Jag and raced to mom, Claire and you. Mom was calming Claire down with a glass of wine. Claire was rambling on and on semi-incoherently, but very loudly, she’d obviously had more than just one glass of wine. Mom was doing her best to comfort her and she simply nodded her head in the direction of the stairs.
I raced up the familiar steps to your room. I’d been in there countless times. I remembered when it was decked out in pink Barbie paraphernalia. Then when you got older you painted it yellow and green. I’d been in there to stack Legos while you played dress up, to read while you combed out your hair, to screw while we listened to a top forty station and told our families we were studying. We screwed around a lot in that room together throughout high school and some of college. It was strange being in there after Charley. Everything looked different. Skewed. Smaller, and in less detail. All your things were pristine but they seemed shabby compared to Charley’s tiny room and meager possessions.
I uncertainly pushed open the door. You were sitting with your head hung in your lap at the edge of your bed. The sounds of Claire’s inebriated rants were echoing up behind me, which is what caused you to look to the door. When you saw me leaning against the doorframe, you seemed different. Your face was the same, but your eyes had softened. They looked closer to how I remembered them from when we were kids. You’d been crying.
“Lace,” I whispered, clearing my throat because your vulnerability caught me off guard.
“God, where the hell could he be?” you sobbed. I walked over and sat next to you, placing a hesitant arm on your shoulders. You slumped into my side and cried all over the shirt I’d picked out just for Charley.
“I don’t know, Lace. We’ll find him though, okay?”
“What if…what if…”
“Don’t think like that. We’ll find him.”
“Thank you for being here. With me.” You said, looking up at me with those green eyes.
“Yeah, Lace, I’m here.” She kept looking at me, waiting for me to say something like, “I’ll always be here” or some shit like that but it wasn’t happening. I was there kind of against my will and it was all of a sudden I felt trapped and claustrophobic and I felt the weight of what being there meant for Charley and me. It was eerily quiet in the room, even Claire and mom’s voices had vanished.
Flee,
I thought. I had to get out of there. “I’m going to get you some tea, okay?” I asked already making a move to extricate my arm from your shoulder and leave the room as fast as I could.
“Teddy,” you sniffled. You’d grabbed me around my waist tighter then, looked up with bloodshot, lazer focused, green eyes, “don’t leave yet, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Lace.” I kissed the top of your forehead. A thoughtless and meaningless gesture at the moment, but it reminded me of how things with us used to be, back when I still liked you. Back when I thought you had a heart.
